He was much slower getting to his feet than she so she cocked her leg back and swung a fierce kick toward his head. The timing was perfect. Her shinbone connected solidly with his face as his body began to rise. The resulting momentum propelled him over the rail…
* * * * *
Now she had trouble…the zombie from the basement had friends with him, and she had been spotted. The closest means of escape, the front door, was blocked and her options were limited.
She could turn around and go back upstairs or try the sliding glass door to the back deck. If the door opened without a problem, she could leap over the rail and into the intracoastal twenty feet below, but if the door stuck, like it did on humid days like this, she’d be trapped.
She turned and sprinted up the stairs, once again thankful for her obsession with the treadmill. It was not about having a firm ass anymore…now it was survival.
Once again she found herself in the master bedroom looking for an escape route and, once again, her eyes locked on the French doors.
“Ay yi yi,” she said. “It’s fight or flight.”
She decided to go with flight, and stepped onto the balcony, locking the door behind her. She looked over the rail and felt a slight rush of dizziness. The water slapped against the rip-rap below. Jumping was out of the question…she would have to push herself 15 feet horizontally to avoid the rocks, and even then, the water she would land in was less than three feet deep.
She thought about climbing down the porch rails like a ladder, but that idea was squelched by the presence of zombies on the second floor porch and more roaming around the back yard.
She turned around and looked at the doors, which she had locked on her way out. There was no way back into the house. She was essentially trapped.
A great blue heron glided by and landed on the roof peak of the Thompson’s house next door. Angel looked at the bird, and then gaged the distance from her porch railing to the Thompson’s roof. It didn’t look like more than eight feet, thanks to the packed layout of the neighborhood. The developers had gone to great lengths to squeeze as many million-dollar homes as possible into the plat.
She glanced over her shoulder, through the doors to the bedroom. Three zombies were shuffling in. It was now or never.
“If I don’t make it,” she thought, “at least they won’t get me and turn me into one of them.”
She climbed onto the rail, grasping the column to her right. She would get one chance and one chance only.
She glanced skyward.
“If you’re up there…” she said, and then without finishing the thought she pushed off and flew through the air.
The two-second flight seemed to last an hour. She had enough time to think about her mother, father and each of her three brothers. She wondered where they were and if the apocalypse had claimed them the way it had claimed her entire neighborhood. She feared for her mother the most. Her brothers could take care of themselves, but her mother was almost 80-years-old and nearly blind. She lived in an assisted living facility in St. Augustine.
If St. Augustine had been overrun…
She hit the roof and immediately flattened her body against it. She slid slowly backward anyway. She pressed her hands flat against the shingles and felt the heat burning her palms. She dug the rubber tips of her Reeboks into the shingles and managed to stop herself.
“Now what?” she asked.
There wasn’t a lot of time to waste; she couldn’t stay on the roof for too long and the sooner she got down, the greater her chances of escape.
She began carefully inching her way to the left. Ten feet away, she could drop down to the porch roof and then swing onto the porch. The Thompsons had sturdy teak chairs on the porch; one of them could easily smash a window, granting her access to the house. Once inside, she could get outside and run for it…assuming the zombies hadn’t yet gotten in.
It seemed to take forever to creep the ten feet. Once there, she carefully gripped the edge of the roof and swung her legs over. Her feet dangled over the surface of the porch roof. She couldn’t see how much of a drop it was, but again, it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the luxury of other options.
She let go and braced herself for the drop. It was over in an instant—probably less than a foot.
Without pausing to consider her accomplishment, she dropped to her knees at the edge and swung herself down to the porch. She picked up one of the chairs and heaved it through the window, then followed it into the Thompson’s bedroom.
She had never been in their bedroom before and didn’t pause to see what she had been missing. She exited to the hall, down the stairs to the ground floor and into the garage in search of weapons.
After some scrounging, she found a machete among Bob Thompson’s gardening tools. She hefted it and turned it over in her hand.
“This ought to work,” she said.
She walked back to the first floor and went to a window. Outside, there were a few zombies across the street trying to find a way into Craig and Adrian Miller’s house. She hoped the Millers had gotten away. Adrian was six months pregnant and Craig had just opened a new branch office for his software firm in Jacksonville. Their future was looking very bright…until this morning anyway.
She went to another window and glanced through the blinds—more zombies approaching from the west and the same on the east. Her only means of escape was out the back of the house toward the water.
“Can these bastards swim?” she asked.
The sound of breaking glass shattered the quiet of the house. Two zombies staggered through the destroyed slider.
Angel ducked behind a recliner and peered out at the unwelcomed guests. She gasped audibly when she saw Bob Thompson, himself, followed by the Millers. Adrian Miller’s pregnant belly was smeared with blood.
Angel felt sick.
She waited for the zombies to turn away and she sprinted for the recently created hole in the slider. She turned sideways and skipped through, but not before Adrian Miller’s hand grabbed her by the wrist. Without thinking, Angel raised the machete and hacked at the hand. It was severed cleanly halfway between the wrist and elbow. Angel ran outside and made her way to the water’s edge. As she stepped into the warm ocean water, she realized that Adrian’s hand was still gripping her wrist. She stopped and pried the cold, dead hand off of her own and dropped it into the water. Immediately, several small fish swam over to investigate.
“Just what we need,” she said, “zombie fish.”
She still didn’t feel comfortable standing still, so she looked around for her options. She could cross the inlet, since the tide was low, but that would put her on the strip of land separating the inlet from the intracoastal. Once there, she would basically be trapped on an island.
She could move along the shore of the inlet toward A1A. Maybe she could flag a ride, if there was any traffic and assuming zombies couldn’t drive.
Her other option was to go between the Thompson’s house and her own, back to the street and to her Range Rover. There was a spare key in a magnetic box under the bumper; she could make a break for it.
Of the three, her Range Rover made the most sense.
She switched the machete to her left hand and began creeping between the houses. She kept low and moved as slowly as she could, being careful not to make a sound.
As she moved, she mapped out her escape plan; in the car, out to A1A and north to St. Augustine to find her mother.
Angel didn’t know if St. Augustine had been hit by the zombies or not, but it was only a matter of time and she wasn’t going to leave her mother there one way or the other.
She reached the corner of her house and knelt behind a large barrel-palm, scanning for undead. The neighborhood was quiet, but not in a good way. Normally there would be people jet-skiing on the inlet, neighbors washing cars, walking dogs or working on their landscaping; the peaceful sounds of quiet.
Today, there was just silence—deadly silence.
Th
ere were no zombies in sight. The distance between Angel and her car was less than thirty feet. It would take her about three seconds to cover the distance, another three or four to reach under and retrieve the key, then maybe two or three more to open the door and get in the car.
Less than ten seconds, if nothing went wrong.
She took one more look around, inhaled deeply and bolted out from behind the palm. At the back of the car, she dropped to the ground and reached under the bumper, while she continuously looked for zombies.
Her fingers groped along the underside of the bumper…the seconds passed.
Where was it?
Had Steve found that one too?
Could it have fallen off?
Her mind began formulating an alternate plan…it was about four-tenths of a mile to A1A; she knew she could sprint the distance easily. She’d run further distances than that on the beach.
Even as she was telling herself to get up and run for it, her fingers found the small magnetic box. She yanked it out and slid the lid back. She jumped to her feet, tossed the box over her shoulder and ran to the door.
The silence inside the Range Rover was like heaven. She pressed the door lock button and allowed herself to take a breath. She was safe.
She dropped the machete onto the passenger’s seat, slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The Rover fired up, as it always did and she felt the flow of air from the vents over her face. Once the stereo system came to life, the comfortable silence was pushed away by the sounds of Rush singing “Closer to the Heart”.
She smiled faintly. The last time she was in the car she had been driving home from a girl’s night out. It was the first time in months she had actually laughed, actually felt good about life. She put the Rush CD into the stereo and listened to it at maximum volume all the way home, cherishing the memories it brought of a Rush concert during college. When the trio began playing Closer to the Heart, she had tried to hop up for a better view. A boy she didn’t even know watched her efforts for a few seconds before he offered to let her sit on his shoulders so she could see over the crowd. She held her butane lighter high and swayed back and forth to the music…allowing it to carry her away…
She pressed the eject button on the stereo; the CD slid out and she dropped it onto the passenger’s seat. The music wasn’t going to carry her away today; it was all up to her. She was on her own.
Static blared from the speakers. She hit the power button and killed it, then backed out of the driveway. As she slid the shifter into drive, she looked at the road separating her from A1A…and freedom. Four-tenths of a mile in the Range Rover would be a piece of cake, even with the small rotary-island halfway between here and there.
As she began moving forward, she glanced at the speed limit sign and laughed.
“Fifteen miles an hour my ass,” she said.
She punched the gas and bolted away. When she approached the island, she had to slow down. If it weren’t filled with trees, she would have driven straight over it, but she would be forced to ease around it in order to avoid the trees on the island and the large boulders on the side of the road to her right.
A golden retriever wandered into the road in front of her; she recognized it as Queenie, who belonged to the Appleton’s three houses away from her. The dog stopped in the road and looked at the approaching vehicle with an odd curiosity. Angel stopped and honked her horn. Queenie tilted her head.
“Come on, Queenie,” she said with concern. “Get out of the road, baby.”
Queenie didn’t move. Angel inched forward, hoping it would spur the dog into action, but it didn’t.
She would have to go around the dog. She backed up and turned the wheel to the right, easing her foot down on the accelerator.
A loud thud, followed by several more, jarred her concentration. In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of four zombies clawing and banging on the car. Reflexively, her foot stomped on the gas pedal. She felt a thud from the front-left tire and her mind instantly thought of Queenie.
She craned her neck around to see if the dog was okay, and then she remembered the trees and the rocks. By the time she looked forward again, it was too late. The Range Rover slammed into a four-foot coquina boulder. It climbed up in slow motion, stopped at the top and balanced for a few seconds before slowly leaning sideways and falling to the ground.
Angel braced herself for the explosion that would incinerate her.
It didn’t come.
Silence returned and she was looking at the world from a bizarre, sideways, worm’s-eye-view.
More adrenaline surged through her and she climbed up to the passenger’s door, opened it and pushed it up and out of her way. She felt like a soldier poking his head out of a tank. The zombies were moving toward her, slowly, but steadily. She pulled herself out of the car and jumped to the ground. Her feet were moving immediately. She risked a glance over her shoulder to locate her pursers; they were fifteen feet behind and moving like turtles stuck in mud. Another quick glance at Queenie, but all that was visible was the dog’s hind quarters. The rest of her was pinned beneath the Rover.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said to the dog as she sprinted away.
She could see A1A. If there were any cars going by, she’d be able to hear them, but there were no signs of life at all.
She rounded a slight bend in the road and stopped dead in her tracks—five zombies walking abreast in the road straight ahead. When they saw her, they immediately perked up and began shuffling toward her with purpose. She thought about the machete, still in her car. She couldn’t try to run through them without a weapon; she had to find another way out.
One of the benefits of living in a private neighborhood was knowing every inch of the layout. To her left was one of the few unfenced yards in the place. The backyard would take her directly to the parking lot of a small restaurant called The Matanzas Inlet. It would still get her to A1A, just not as fast.
She bolted for the yard.
She didn’t know the people who lived in the house; they had only lived here for a month or so. The original owners, the Masons, had moved to Oregon for undisclosed reasons.
She ran along the house until she reached the back corner, where she paused to check for zombies. With none in sight, she began walking cautiously toward the rear property line and the low retaining wall separating the yard from the restaurant parking lot. From a small gardening-tool shed to her left, she heard a banging sound. She paused, listening. She heard it again, the sound of something thumping inside the shed.
She glanced back. The zombies were still shuffling toward her, but they hadn’t reached the yard yet. She inched toward the shed.
Another thump.
Maybe somebody was hiding in there. Maybe it was a zombie. She froze, trying to decide what to do. It could be a child, frightened and alone. She had to check. A zombie wouldn’t be in the shed, would it? Of course, if a zombie had wandered into the shed and the door had been closed behind it, would it be able to let itself out?
Another bang.
“Aww, shit,” she said, as she moved toward the shed.
She really wished she had the machete.
When she reached the shed, she paused with her hand on the door. The banging was clear. There was somebody, or something in the shed.
She took her hand from the door and looked around for a weapon—a stick, a rock anything…
There was nothing in sight but a deflated soccer ball.
She put her hand on the handle again and prepared to run.
Another thump.
“Hello,” she called, tentatively.
No reply.
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
A blur of movement came at her face and she dropped to the ground, covering her head. Her heart pounded in her chest. After several seconds, she realized she was not being ravaged by the undead and she opened her eyes.
A black and white cat sat on the grass a foot from her head. He looked at he
r, slowly blinked his eyes, shook his head and walked away as if there were no problem.
“Jesus…” Angel said, standing up and brushing herself off.
More movement, but of a slower variety, caught her attention.
The five zombies from the road were in the yard now, less than fifty feet away. She was about thirty feet from the retaining wall. Hopefully, there would be a place to hide in the restaurant.
She hopped up and trotted to the back of the yard. The drop to the parking lot was about five feet. Although she knew she could make it without a problem. she walked along the wall to a spot where a tired looking Mitsubishi was parked against it. She stepped down onto the hood of the car and then to the ground. As she began to walk away toward the restaurant, she glanced inside the car.
Dangling from the ignition was a ring of keys.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Thank you.”
She lifted the door handle.
Locked.
“Are you serious?” she yelled, alerting the zombies to her new position.
The zombies turned in her direction and began moving toward her. She needed to get into the car—fast. A quick survey of the ground offered nothing useful.
“Damn it,” she said.
She stepped back from the car and lifted her foot. Closing her eyes, she slammed her foot into the window, shattering it. After glancing at the zombies, who were about forty feet away, she opened the door and slid into the car, ignoring the shards of glass on the seat, and turned the key.
The engine turned over, but refused to fire. She turned the key back, pumped the gas and tried again. The engine, turned and coughed, but still didn’t start.
The zombies were twenty feet away.
She tried the key one more time.
The engine turned over slowly, and then the battery died. She turned the key several times in rapid succession.
Nothing.
The zombies were ten feet away. One of them fell off the wall and landed on the ground, to her right, with a thud. It climbed to its feet and shuffled toward her.
Still Dying 2 (Dying Days) Page 14
