by Brent Abell
Something crashed upstairs and he heard George cry out in surprise. Jumping from the bar stool, Harry rushed from the kitchen and to the stairs.
***
George grinned when Harry entered the bathroom. He still held on to the curling iron and it had bits of hair, brain, and blood dripping from it. Harry’s face turned white when he saw the hole in the woman’s skull. Black fluid leaked from the wound and he felt like throwing up.
“You okay, Harry?” George asked.
“No, not really,” Harry answered and covered his mouth. “Man that shit reeks.”
“Well, you figure she’s been dead for a while.”
Harry held his nose and backed out of the bathroom. “Really? You don’t say.”
George laughed and got up from the edge of the tub. He gathered up the shower curtain and covered the woman’s body with it. Yes, she had tried to eat him, but he still wanted to her to have a small shred of her human dignity in death. He stood over her and silently lifted a prayer to whatever deity was listening. George had already been wondering if anything living large in the sky even gave a shit about the poor people scrambling to survive on the planet he had created. He had learned, as a child, that God had created man to worship him and he didn’t feel like they were getting any love in return.
“What a strange way to get people to fall on their knees for you,” George quipped to himself.
“What?” Harry asked from the bedroom.
“Oh, nothing…nothing. I was just thinking out loud to myself.”
George walked out of the bathroom and saw Harry sprawled out on the bed. He had his arms outstretched and he looked like he was making a snow angel on the bed. The sheets twisted around Harry’s arms when he moved them around and a child-like giggle followed.
“Bed angels!” Harry exclaimed.
George shook his head and tried not to laugh. Considering all they’d been through in the few short hours they’d known each other, he found Harry’s attitude refreshing. He hadn’t felt quite feel so jubilant after he had had to kill the woman in the bathroom. She was a human. She had a family, a husband, and three kids.
What happened to the others?
“Harry, get up, now.”
Harry stopped moving around and sat up on the bed. “What’s up?”
“If you didn’t see anything downstairs and I didn’t see anything on the second floor, where’s the rest of the family?” George pondered.
The two closet doors loomed large on the other side of the bedroom.
“Maybe they left for the FEMA camp?” Harry wondered aloud.
“Possible, but she hung herself. Why would she do that if the rest of the family had set out for the camps?” George questioned. “It doesn’t add up.”
Harry stood up and turned to the closets. “You take one door and I get the other?”
“Open them at the same time? What if we have four zombies waiting on us?”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“Of course not, you’ve been giggling too loud,” George prodded Harry.
“Let’s do it,” Harry said.
George put his finger to his lips to quiet Harry and both men took a position at a door. Each gently took hold of their respective door’s knob. George held up three fingers and counted down to two and finally to one. When George made a fist, they threw open the doors and backed away.
Nothing jumped at them or tried to eat off their faces. Only hangers of clothes and shelves of shoes greeted them. George reached in and moved the hangers to search the back of the closet and to check out the floor. Harry saw George’s inspection and did the same.
“Anything?” Harry asked.
“Not a damn thing,” George answered.
“Are we good to stay here tonight?”
“I believe so. Let’s move some furniture to the top of the stairs to block them off and then we can grab a bite to eat.”
Harry glanced back to the bathroom. “Are we going to leave her in there?”
“Got a better idea?”
“No, never mind,” Harry uttered.
“I’ll shut the door, that okay?” George offered.
“I guess,” Harry sheepishly answered.
“Fine, it’s settled. Let’s get to work; I’m tired.”
Harry and George pushed the dressers and end tables to the hallway and stacked them at the top the stairs. The furniture ended up being three dressers deep and end tables capped them all off. When they stood back and admired their handy work, they patted each other on the back and sat down in the bedroom for some food.
***
“What did you do for a living?” Harry asked through a mouthful of baked beans.
George finished chewing the mouthful of tuna fish before he answered. He wasn’t a big fan of the supposed ‘sea-chicken’, but food was food when the world ended. “I was an executive with an advertising firm.”
Harry nodded and stuffed another spoonful of beans in his mouth. George forced another bite and gave a disgusted look to the open can.
“If you don’t like it, why do you eat it? We have those MRE things,” Harry said.
George swallowed and forced the tuna down his throat. “Have you ever eaten an MRE? They make this tuna shit taste like a steak.”
Harry laughed and continued eating.
Once he had finished his tuna, he washed it down with a swig from his water bottle. Each of them only carried four bottles, so they’d have to be careful how much they drank. Nothing he’d seen so far led him to believe they’d be able to find more around. When it came to it, he figured they’d end up having to boil some over a fire one night to purify it and refill their bottle when it cooled. He didn’t have any pots, but he had a sterno camp stove and plenty of waterproof matches.
Harry moved up the bed and lay back on the stack of pillows. “Do you think we’ll be able to find a car that runs? St. Augustine is a long trip on foot.”
“I’m not sure if any would run after this long. Maybe we can look around for bikes, at some of the houses in the morning. Using bikes won’t be as fast as a car, but it beats the hell out walking.”
Harry laughed. George shot him a disdainful look and then cracked a smile. The young man did remind him a lot of Trent. He watched Harry roll around on the bed like a child and for a moment he felt the weight of survival lift from his shoulders.
“You remind me a lot of Trent, you know.”
Harry stopped rolling around and sat up. “You think so?”
“Trent wasn’t our only child. A few years before he was born, Sally miscarried our first one,” George spoke quietly and ran his hands through his graying brown hair.
“I’m sorry,” Harry replied. His voice too took on a quiet reflective tone. He looked down at George sitting cross-legged on the floor and pitied him. In the past few hours, he’d left his home behind, tried to come to grips with the prospect his son was dead, and he had shot his zombie wife in the head.
“Look, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. Maybe it was fate you finally wandered into my house and broke me out of the prison I had made for me and Sally. If you hadn’t come along, I probably would’ve put the next bullet in my own skull,” George said.
“Maybe I needed you.”
“Okay, don’t get all sentimental on me, kid,” George chided Harry.
“I’ve lost everything too.”
The father in George brought him to his feet and he ruffled Harry’s black hair like he was a kid. Harry stood up and hugged George. George hadn’t expected it and he returned the embrace. In the dead world, Harry was now his tether.
“Thank you, George,” Harry said with his head on George’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” George replied. “Now, let’s get some sleep so we can get on the road early tomorrow.”
They held each other a little longer, the feeling of belonging lingering between them. For that moment, they felt like a father and son. One pining for the parents he’d lost and the other for the
son he didn’t believe was alive. In silence, Harry took the bed and George went back to the sleeping bag he’d unrolled on the floor. Once George turned off the lantern and the room went black, they immediately fell into a deep slumber as soon as their eyes closed.
***
Harry awoke to the thin rays of the morning sun streaming through the crack in between the drapes. He could hear George snore softly on the floor and he knew everything was still all right. Through the door to the hallway, he could see the dressers and furniture they had placed at the top of the stairs to hold a zombie invasion at bay sat unmoved. During the night, he had dreamed of living a normal life again. In his dream, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the aroma of frying bacon filled his nostrils. He sniffed the air and hoped he could catch a whiff of the phantom scent again. The smell had seemed so real to him in his dream he had hoped he could carry with him to the waking world, but it faded away as reality crept back in.
George began to toss and turn on the floor and bolted upright. He panted and tried to catch his breath. Sweat beaded on his brow and he wiped it off with the back of his hand. Taking deep breaths, he tried to control his breathing. Where Harry smelled bacon when he woke from his dream, George still smelled the gunpowder from putting his undead wife down like a rabid dog.
“You okay, George?” Harry asked.
George closed his eyes for a moment to regain his composure. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I’m okay.”
Harry shot him a questioning glare because he didn’t believe him. “Bullshit.”
“Fine, maybe I’m not quite okay right now. Let’s just eat and get on the road.”
They both rummaged through their bags to find breakfast. Harry settled on a can of chicken salad and George opened the beans and rice MRE. He didn’t care for the main meal, but the oatmeal cookie had become one of his favorite foods in the apocalypse.
“Beans and rice? This early?”
“I like the fucking cookie, okay,” George answered and tore open the top of the meal bag. He wanted to heat it on the hiking stove, but he’d rather get moving. After spending so long in one spot, his experiences in the last twenty-four hours showed him how lucky he’d been.
George scooped out a bite with the plastic fork the meal came with and immediately regretted it. The sauce was a congealed mess and it made his mouth feel like he had eaten a vat of grease. When he swallowed, it slid down his throat and he swore he heard it splash in his stomach.
“Should’ve heated it up,” George muttered.
“That why you have that face?” Harry asked.
George nodded in reply. He was pretty sure he did make a funny face when he had forced down the first bite. In a way, he didn’t blame Harry for laughing; he probably would’ve laughed too if he’d seen himself.
They ate in silence for the rest of the meal. Once they had finished, they packed their gear back up and began to remove the furniture from the top of the stairs. It went faster to pull the barrier down than what it took to build it up.
“Well, we did a good job, I suppose,” George joked.
“You didn’t hear me kill the four zombies that busted up in here last night?” Harry chuckled.
“Must’ve been kids if you didn’t wake me up killing them,” George shot back.
Harry laughed and put his pack on his back. George followed suit and they started down the stairs.
“You think they had bikes?” Harry asked.
George reached the bottom of the stairs and held his pistol out. His eyes swept the living room and he found the door remained closed and nothing seemed different than it had the previous night. The house remained silent and George stepped into the living room. Harry followed quietly and they cautiously made their way through the overturned furniture. Coming to a halt in the kitchen, George began to search the cabinets and drawers again.
“I think the food’s all gone,” Harry stated.
George closed the drawer in the island he was rifling through. “Just looking for things like matches and an old school can opener. Never know how much of that stuff we’ll come across on the road and, since we’re here, we might as well have a peek.”
Harry helped George finish looking through the kitchen. They didn’t find anything worth taking and George approached the back door. He pushed the curtains covering the small window, in the top center of the door, aside and surveyed the back yard. A wooden swing set stood tall in the middle of the yard and the weeds had taken over the sandbox next to it. The grass hadn’t been cut in months and it looked like a jungle. He could barely make out a concrete path going from the back porch through the grass to the side garage door.
“Shit,” George muttered.
“What’s out there?” Harry asked and tried to sneak a peek into the yard.
“Tall grass.”
“So?” Harry shrugged.
“Snakes. This is Florida and tall grass is a haven for the bastards,” George moaned.
Harry stifled a laugh. “You’re afraid of snakes?”
“Yeah, problem?” George sternly answered.
“No, so now what?”
“We go out the front door and go through the big door if we can get it open. If not, I’m sending you around through the yard.”
“So, I get to fight the giant boas and pythons while you stand and listen to me scream on the other side of the fence?” Harry asked.
“Well, yeah,” George shrugged.
“I can feel the love,” Harry snickered.
“Be glad you don’t feel the love from them,” George laughed back. “Let’s go try the front door.”
George and Harry maneuvered their way back through the house and out the front door. The morning air was stagnant and stale. The sun had barely risen and the humidity was already stifling. George raised his arms to help free them from where the sweat made his tee shirt cling tightly to him. Harry looked up and down the street. Nothing moved except for a squirrel racing up a tree across the street. Behind the abandoned cars and trucks, he didn’t see anything moving about. No zombies, no people, no nothing.
George nodded in the garage’s direction and walked off the porch. He glanced down at the driveway and he could make out the faint markings of a home plate and a baseline. Kneeling to the concrete, he touched the barely visible chalk lines and rubbed his fingers together. After seven months, the last days of the boys in the house survived. He looked to his right, next to the house, and saw the same chalk markings but in the shapes of flowers and unicorns. At least he thought that’s what they were. The few scant rains they’d had wasn’t enough to totally erase the drawings of children from the world.
“Anything?” Harry asked.
“No, just thinking about how we didn’t find the others.”
“Let’s get the bikes and get out of here. This place is really creeping me out,” Harry said.
George felt the shiver up his spine too. The silence and lack of any people, living or dead, unsettled him. He stood up and walked to the garage door. “Help me lift up on the handle.”
George and Harry both took a hold of the handle in the door’s middle and lifted. At first, the door didn’t budge, but finally it broke free and lifted. The first thing to hit them was the cloud of rot and decay. The second thing to hit was the zombies.
When the door flew up, the handle slipped from Harry’s grip and he fell backwards. The zombie in front pushed George down to the concrete and fell on him. Two smaller zombies filed out of the garage and tried to help the larger one. George let go of his pistol and grabbed the thing’s shoulders to keep his teeth far away from him. The zombie snapped at him. Pus and blackened blood dripped from his mouth and a yellowish fluid ran from his eye sockets.
Harry jumped up and kicked the man in the side. It turned its head and glared back at him. The smaller two focused their attention on Harry and reached for him. He brought the baseball bat back, ready to swing, but hesitated. The zombie in the Florida Marlins jersey growled and tried to grab Harry’s
arm. Harry looked at the blood-matted hair and pictured how the boy would’ve looked in life. He tried to swing, but the bat remained on his shoulder.
George writhed beneath the bigger zombie. “Harry? I need you here.”
Harry saw the kid zombies stop, like they knew the bat was a danger to them. George’s voice broke his paralysis and he swung. The boy’s head split like a melon. The bat’s barrel broke through the fragile skull and the boy’s brains squirted out from the blow. Bits and pieces of brain and bone flew in the air from the blow and its eyes faded out to black before it dropped to the ground.
Before Harry could get a swing at the one on top of George, the other boy attacked. Harry watched the boy stumble toward him and he felt himself die inside. The white shirt the boy wore was streaked with huge swaths of dried blood and he wondered if it was the boy’s or someone else’s.
George pushed hard on the zombie’s shoulders and rolled to his left at the same time. The undead father became unbalanced and fell off George. The father landed right in the path of his son and the boy tripped over his decaying father. George scrambled away from the father and snatched his pistol from the ground.
The boy crawled, on the drive, toward Harry. His face was in a further state of decay than his brother’s. He noticed the torn flesh on his cheeks looked like bites and part of his right ear was missing. In other places, his skin appeared to be paper-like and flaked off in layers. The kid had a grotesque visage and Harry stomped down in his face. His shoe sank deep into the kid’s face. It reminded of him of stepping in deep mud and his foot made a sucking sound as he pulled it free of the crevasse in the boy’s face.
George heard the squishing sound from Harry’s foot and fired at the dad. His head exploded and the shot echoed loudly throughout the quiet neighborhood. The father dropped to the drive and didn’t move.
“You okay, Harry?”
Harry stared at the bodies and then gazed off up to the sky. George could see the glistening of tears on his cheeks.
