by Paul Hetzer
I was momentarily speechless. How in the hell did she know me?
“Your boy!” she said, getting to her feet over the protestations of her husband. “Your boy stayed with us last night! He said his ma and pa would be looking for him.” She was smiling broadly, revealing a fine set of straight, white teeth.
I felt the strength go out of my knees and if it wasn’t for Kera putting her arm around my waist I would have sank to the floor.
“Jeremy,” his name tore from my lips. “You’ve seen my son?”
“He came by late last night. He was real frightened. Said he was drawn to our candlelight through the window. We got some vittles into him and bedded him down for the night. He fell right asleep after he filled his belly up.”
She came up to me and put her hands on my arms, looking closely at my face, then Kera’s.
“Said his pa’s name was Steven and his ma’s Holly. Didn’t say nothin’ bout no young girl. You his sister?” she asked.
Kera shook her head.
“Didn’t think so.” The old woman gave me a stern look. “What happened to yur face honey? Looks like it’s been through the wringer.” She softly touched the bruises and bandaged cuts covering Kera’s face.
Kera flinched backwards from her hand. “One of those crazies, like what’s outside, attacked me.”
The old woman looked up at me curiously. “Didn’t even occur to us that you was his pa. We was expecting to see a man and a woman, not a man and a girl,” she stated matter-of-factly.
The old man ‘harrumphed’ behind her.
“Oh, this here is Hubert,” she said, turning toward the old man who still sat grumpily on the sofa. “Get up ol’ man and greet our guests.”
“And I’m Margaret Stoufer,” she said.
“Margaret, they pointed guns at us, broke into our home and brought them crazy people here!” He rattled off each of our offenses with a bony finger, then stood up from the sofa with a creak from the springs.
“Don’t be an ol’ grouch, Hubert. Shake the man’s hand and welcome him.”
He scowled at his wife then his hunched figure approached me and he held out a well-worn, long-fingered hand for me to shake. I took it gingerly and was surprised by his strong grip when his fingers wrapped around mine. He looked me in the eye and I was surprised again by the sincerity I saw hidden there when he said, “Welcome to our home.”
The Loonies on the porch must have heard our voices through the thin walls. Several started pounding on the doors and windows. We all jumped when it started.
Strength started to flow back into my legs with the hope that I had finally caught up with Jeremy.
“Where is he, where’s my son?” I asked impatiently.
The couple looked at each other than back at me.
“He said he couldn’t stay,” Margaret said sadly. “We begged him to, but he would have none of it. Said he had to get to his farm where he was meeting you and his ma. Speaking of which, where is she?”
I shook my head, a brief look of despair on my face. “She didn’t make it,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Margaret apologized sincerely.
Something banged hard on the front door, shaking it on its hinges.
“Guys, I think we better go someplace else,” Kera said in a hushed voice, her shotgun aimed at the door.
I motioned them out to the kitchen and hopefully far enough away from the front porch that our voices couldn’t be heard by the Loonies congregating there.
My heart was in my throat. I had missed him again although now I knew he was alive and I would find him.
“When did he leave? Which way did he go? Did he say anything?” I cornered Margaret and asked the questions with machine gun quickness.
“Slow down, sonny,” she smiled at me. “You got a fine young-un there.” She shuffled over to one of the bench seats at the kitchen table and tiredly sat onto it.
“We filled him with a hot breakfast, we insisted on it before we would let him leave. He left outta here about ten in the morning. We stuffed some extra food in that big ol’ pack he was hauling around. He headed south down the Parkway,” she indicated the road out in front of the farm. “He was well armed, I’ll attest to that!”
She slid one of the plates of food over to herself and shoved a forkful into her narrow mouth. “Said he was supposed to meet y’all today somewheres else, and if we were to see y’all to tell you he was real sorry and couldn’t stay there cause it was too dangerous. He was heading to the farm and would find y’all there.” She scooped another forkful of food off the plate on the table in front of her into her mouth, chewing silently.
Hubert, who had been staring out the kitchen window, let out a loud angry “Damn it!”
He turned to us, eyes ablaze with fury. “Them damn things are eating our chickens!” he spat out through clenched teeth.
I tried to shush him but he continued unabated. “How we gonna eat if they kill all our yard birds?”
“There’s nothing you can do!” I admonished him. “If you go out there they will eat you!”
He looked at me as if I had lost my mind, then shut his mouth.
“You’re kidding right?” Margaret asked after she swallowed her last bite of food. “Them people are cannibals?”
“Opportunists,” I replied. “They’ll eat whatever they can get their hands on.”
They both stood looking at me with their mouths agape. They really had been secluded here since this had all began.
“We have to be quiet,” I told them. “If they know we’re up here, they will be coming through those windows for us faster than a cat with its tail on fire.”
They nodded in unison, mouths still hanging open.
“Are y’all hungr—” Margaret started.
She was cut off by a loud crashing noise below us from what I assumed was the cellar door caving in from the mass of bodies assaulting it.
“They’re inside!” Kera hissed in terror.
Glass jars crashed to the ground and shattered below our feet. It wouldn’t take them long to be on the stairs and at the kitchen door.
“Help me move the table in front of the door!” I ordered, quickly rounding the table and grabbing an edge.
The four of us scooted the heavy wooden table across the floor and jammed it against the flimsy door. It would stall them although it wouldn’t stop them.
I fished in my pocket for the two shells and handed them to Hubert. “I hope you have more of these,” I said as his hands closed around them. “Go get your shotgun, and be quick!” I could hear the Loonies still testing the front door of the house.
“How do we get upstairs?” I asked Margaret.
“Through the living room and around to the hall.”
“Let’s go!” The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs from the cellar could be heard over the ruckus of those rampaging through the cellar’s contents.
I grabbed Holly’s rifle on the way through the living room and followed Margaret as she slowly climbed the steep, narrow staircase up to the second floor.
If that was the only way up to the house’s second story, we could keep those things from coming up the stairs until they were all dead or our ammo ran out. The second option worried me.
Hubert came up last clutching his old double-barrel in one hand and an equally old box of shells in the other.
“All I got,” he muttered as he squeezed by me.
We crowded into the first door off of the hallway at the top of the stairs. It was the house’s master bedroom. I rushed over to the window that looked out to the side yard of the house where the cellar doors were located. A handful of Loonies were still lingering outside the entrance while more were exploring the barns and sheds. One sat naked in the middle of the grass, gnawing flesh from a freshly killed rooster. The rooster’s blood coated its face and chest like war paint. I ran to another window that was situated above the roof of the front porch. I couldn’t see any more of the infected coming down the c
ounty road toward the farm. That meant we only had to deal with those that were here.
I had to get out of here soon. With each passing minute my son moved further from my reach. I didn’t know how long he could last by himself out in this new, horrible world. He needed my help, and I needed him. He was my last link to Holly.
We could hear banging emanating from the doorway that led to the cellar from the kitchen. With each blow, a splintering crack resounded through the house. The door was succumbing to the incessant pounding from the enraged Loonies.
Kera closed the wooden door of the bedroom, deadening the sound from below.
“Should we block the door?” she asked.
“Now I ain’t going to become no prisoner in my own bedroom!” Hubert growled. I realized that he was more bark than bite.
“We need to get down there and toss them things out on their dad-burn asses!” he continued with his (hopefully fake) bravado.
“I don’t think that is such a good idea, Hubert,” Margaret said. She was sitting on the bed with a distressed look on her wrinkled face.
Below us, the cellar door caved in with a crash and we heard the heavy table tossed aside with a thud as the infected poured onto the main floor of the home.
Decision time again, I thought. “Let’s get some furniture in front of the door.” I made the snap decision to try and escape. Shooting them as they came up the stairway was just too risky without knowing their total numbers. I also was worried that too much gunfire would lure more of them from the surrounding countryside.
“And then what?” Hubert asked in his rough, ancient voice.
“Then make as much noise as we can to draw them in the house and upstairs. While they’re busy trying to break through that door we slip out the front window onto the porch roof and then drop down onto the driveway and get as far from here as we can!” I said, laying out my improvised plan to my three companions.
“Mister McQuinn,” Margaret said, getting laboriously to her feet, “I can barely stand to get out of bed. There will be no sliding out windows and jumping off roofs for me.”
Of course Hubert had to offer his two cents. “I told y’all before, this is my home and I ain’t leaving it.”
“I’m open to suggestions, but we can’t stay here,” I said sharply over the clamor of the infected raging through the house below us.
Time was getting very short.
Margaret went to her husband and put her arms around him. She hugged his frail body tight to her even frailer body. She whispered something into his ear and he in turn took her face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead.
She turned to me and Kera. “Mister McQuinn,” she said in a soft voice, “me and my Hubert here, we’re too old to be running away from anything. This is our home. We can’t leave it. You kids go on and escape like you said. We’ll keep those crazy people here long enough for you to git away.” She smiled pleasantly at us, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Kera grabbed my arm tightly. “We can’t leave them here to die!” she hissed.
There were sounds on the stairway outside the bedroom.
I looked at her helplessly then turned to the old couple “You don’t understand what those things are capable of. You have to try and get out of here,” I pleaded.
Hubert shook his head. “Young fella, you have a lil’ boy out there by hisself. Don’t you worry a stitch about us. You go on and git outta here.” He actually managed a smile. Old Hubert wasn’t the tough piece of rawhide he made himself out to be after all.
“We can’t leave you!” Kera cried, her voice nearly hysterical. “Everyone else in this world has gone crazy!” She ran up to the old woman and grabbed her hand in hers. “Come with us, please.”
Before Margaret could answer, the bedroom’s doorknob jiggled wildly. Then something banged heavily into the door, shaking it on its frame.
Margaret smiled down at Kera. “Young missus, we’ve already lived a long life. If we gotta die, it’s going to be in our own bed in our own home.”
Margaret backed away from her and sat back down on her bed with her husband.
Kera whirled on me, desperation in her voice and tears dripping down her cheeks. “Steve, we have to stay and fight! We can’t just leave them here!”
The bedroom door was shaking on its frame with each blow from the fists hitting it on the other side. Small cracks appeared in its thin paneling.
“Kera, we have to go. We’re out of time!” I said quietly.
She looked down at the couple sitting on the bed. The old lady just sat there smiling up at us while the man had his shotgun up and locked on the door, a resolute expression on his leathery face.
“Honey, you gotta go. Anything else is folly!” Margaret admonished Kera with a shooing motion from her hand.
Kera looked at me and grimaced, then nodded her head resignedly.
The assault began on the bedroom door in earnest. It seemed like thin, weak doors was the status quo in this old house, and like the others, I knew this one wouldn’t last long either.
Hubert balanced his shotgun across his knees, pointed steadily at the door, sitting on the bed with his wife. He looked at us with an ornery expression. “Now you two git going or I’ll put a load of buckshot in your asses myself.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and mouthed ‘I’m sorry,’ then ran to the front window. After a few seconds wrestling with its sticky latch, I threw it open. The porch roof was a mere foot below the sill. Kera handed me her shotgun and pack and ran back to the old couple. She threw her arms around their necks and whispered, “Good luck!”
They shooed her away. She grabbed her gun and I helped her out onto the roof. I handed out both of our packs and the two rifles. The bedroom door was splintering down its center from the fists and legs attacking it from the other side. I held up a finger to Kera to let her know I would be out in a moment, then turned and strode to the disintegrating door while I drew the katana sword from my belt. Without hesitating I repeatedly jammed the sword through the door panel and felt the reward of it meeting soft resistance on the other side with each stab. The blade was soon covered with a thin sheen of red and blood began leaking across the hardwood floor under the door. The banging on the other side of the door stopped.
Both old people sat on their bed with their mouths gaping open in surprise and horror.
I smiled sheepishly at them. “That should slow them down.”
I walked to the window and wiped the blade clean on one of the curtains, earning a gasp from Margaret.
Oh well, I thought, she had much more to worry about then bloodstains on her window treatments. I slid the blade back into its sheath and crawled out the window.
I stuck my head back inside and said, “You can still come.” They looked back at me with a kind of awe as they sat together with their arms around each other on the small bed.
“Good luck finding your boy,” Hubert said in a subdued voice; Margaret silently shook her head ‘no’.
Something hit the door hard on the other side and the center panel gave way with a loud crack. A large black arm reached through the splintered section and tore at the remains of the panel. Quicker than I thought the old man could move he swiveled back around, raised the shotgun, and fired off one of the barrels.
I ducked back out and slammed the window closed. My last sight of the couple was of them sitting together on the bed, Margaret still had her arm around Hubert. He pointed the shotgun at the broken door as a mass of infected fought to get through.
I helped Kera down from the roof onto the front lawn, and then dropped down beside her. The area was temporarily clear.
I grabbed her hand and ran down the driveway, feeling the fatigue in my legs with every step. When we reached the road I glanced back, we were in the clear.
A single shot came from inside the house when we turned the corner, and then nothing more.
Kera was crying softly as we jogged down the road. I dropped back beside her, took
her hand again, and slowed to a walk. She looked up at me, tears streaking the dirt coating her bruised face.
“We left them to die. That’s fucked up!”
“I know. The old lady was correct though, they couldn’t escape and we couldn’t stay.” I shook my head and squeezed her hand tightly. “It’s something we’ll have to live with.”
Her tears continued to fall as we walked into the sunset.
We had a long road ahead of us.
EPILOGUE
The days on the road have turned to weeks and still we trudge onward. We make camp in the thick forests or abandoned homes if an opportunity presents itself. We always try to stay as far from centers of what used to be human civilization as we can manage.
Thank God they sleep at night.
Kera has healed well from her wounds, except for a light scar on her forehead and the bridge of her nose. Her beauty has rebounded and blossomed even in these harsh times. She has matured before my eyes and no longer emits that aura of innocence that surrounded her when we first met, so long ago.
We stop for a night in the deep forest near a clear gurgling stream and make our camp. Later, we lay together under the dark pines, looking up at the lights of millions of stars peeking through the swaying boughs, each lost in our own thoughts. We slip into each other’s arms on top of the cool fabric of our sleeping bags. We give each other a lingering kiss goodnight as we snuggle closer to each other. The flesh on flesh contact of our naked bodies in the cool summer evening of the forest reminds us that we are still thinking, feeling, loving humans. She has become something more than a travelling companion now – my lover, my mate. Along with the passage of time, she has helped ease the pain of the loss of Holly and bridged some of the emptiness. The light fades, and suppressed grief still bubbles to the surface. I am haunted by images, like ghosts of a life that can never be reclaimed that sweep into my mind and spotlight all that has been lost.
We haven’t come across any other survivors in our time on the road together. At times it seems that we are the last humans on the planet, except for one other.
