One shot, one kill, Matt thought as he depressed the trigger and watched the runner collapse.
He didn’t hear the one that had caught Cole off guard. He did, however, feel his friend fall into him, knocking Matt off balance. This zombie was skinny and had long, matted hair. Matt wrenched hard on the loose tresses to pull the thing off his friend. Arms flailing, the zombie worked to free itself, but Matt had other plans; he pulled its slimy hair back and toward the ground, bringing the thing lumbering to its ass and put a bullet its head.
“Need any help out there?” Mary’s voice came from behind.
Gunfire was the only answer.
Matt put down three more creepers and searched the yard, finding nothing but twitching and motionless corpses. He walked over and inspected each one for a head wound; only having to dispatch one zombie who’d been shot in the neck, ostensibly paralyzed. It gnashed with its teeth, growling. Matt put the barrel against its forehead, turned his head away, and squeezed the trigger.
“You know we’re gonna have to bury them too, right?” Cole said as he walked up.
“Great,” Matt answered, eyeing the woods for any more hostiles. “Did I ever tell you that I absolutely love digging holes?”
“Actually, yeah…”
Hours later, before the sun came up, they had dug a massive makeshift grave on the far eastern side of the backyard. All, save Anna, took turns working with the single shovel, one of many things that would be lamented in their conversations during breakfast.
CHAPTER 8
“I think it would be best if we made some serious decisions today,” Matt started, pushing his empty plate to the side.
“What do you mean?” Anna said between sips of orange juice. She’d calmed down considerably since finding out their house was under siege.
“Well, given this morning’s events, what do you think your best option is? What do all of you think you—or we—should do?” Matt gestured to Cole and Mary. “We’ve only been here for a little over a week now, and I can’t speak for them, but I am starting to have second thoughts about staying here.”
“I think we should stay,” Alex offered after finishing his toast.
“I’m with the kid,” Kristin agreed. She wiped her eyes, stretched her back, and offered Matt a smile.
“I think you two did just fine this morning,” Anna said. “They’re dead, for real this time, and we’re all safe. I doubt we’ll see any more, Matt, it was probably—”
“Look, I don’t do probably, lady,” Matt said, pointing at the widow. “Last time I did that I lost my girlfriend.” He avoided looking at Anna’s newly pursed lips and scornful glare as he continued. “They’re going to find us eventually, and if we all choose to stay here, I think we’ll have to make some improvements.”
“Like what?” Kristin asked. She wrapped her hands around her head and blew a few stray hairs from her face.
“The front door, for one,” Matt answered, pointing to the entry. The wood had several cracks in it, some of which birthed infected, bloody stains.”
“We’ll board off all the windows and doors, but there’s more,” Cole interjected after finishing off his share of bacon. “If we’re going to hold out here,” he leaned forward, “we’ll need to make sure we’re prepared for much more than zombies. Food, water, clothing. Other survivors, possibly.”
“Winter’s right around the corner,” Mary chimed in.
“We’ll need meds and vitamins too. Bruce didn’t leave us with much.” Matt turned to Anna, who was still ruffled, and asked. “Were you planning on having your baby here?”
She didn’t have an immediate answer; it was a problem that she appeared to not want to recognize, at least not yet, but it was a question to which Matt needed an answer.
“I… I guess I don’t really… have a choice.” Her cheeks went red and she covered her mouth, coughing.
Matt nodded. “All right, we’ll need to prepare for that too. Although I’m not sure there’ll be much we can do to help. The hospitals were all shut down, sealed, and guarded by the military and local law enforcement. I saw a report about that hospital in Newport News…”
“I remember that,” Alex said.
“That was when the military first started shooting at non-infected. Bastards.” Kristin grimaced at her last utterance.
“Put yourself in their shoes, Kristin,” Cole said. “Countless people running to you for help with no real rationalization. Some of them were no doubt infected. What would you have done?”
“Run inside and locked the doors, saving whoever I could in that small gap of time.”
“Well, that’s eventually what they did,” Cole replied. “It’s either filled with a bunch of zombies that can’t get out or surrounded by a bunch of zombies trying to get in. And if it’s the latter, I have no doubt that there’ll be a few soldier types in there. And they won’t be happy to see us, I’m betting.”
“So what are we gonna do for Anna?” Mary asked.
The sound the clock ticking in the backdrop flooded the brief silence.
“Well,” Kristin said, “I dealt with the paperwork, medical histories, stuff like that. I learned a great deal extra with my work at Mary Immaculate, which helped with Barry, but I don’t know the first thing about childbirth. Never even wanted a kid before.” She fell back into her seat and said to herself but loud enough for everyone to hear, “Sure as hell don’t want one now.”
“People have been giving birth to children since the dawn of man,” Anna said with a hefty dose of irritation. “I understand that I will be a great burden on you—”
“Anna, that’s not what we meant,” Mary reasoned.
“I understand.” Anna looked around the table. “I realize that this will be a difficult process for me, for all of us, if we choose to stay together, but it is one that I can endure. I’m having this baby. He’s the only thing I have left.” A few tears escaped her eyes, but she held her composure. “Barry would want me to do what I had to do to ensure our boy’s survival. So I’m voting to stay unless something better comes along, and you’ll have my help so long as I can give it. I can only hope that’s enough.”
“That’s all we’d ever ask for, Anna,” Matt said, unsure if the woman’s statement held any validity. He looked over the table, drumming his fingers for a few seconds. “But that’s also what we all need to know. If we’re all shacking up until something better comes along—which it probably won’t, in all honesty—then we’ll each need to make sure we’re on the same page as everyone else.”
Kristin looked at Matt with a glare that said, “Who died and put you in charge?”
Everyone, he answered in thought.
“This morning,” Cole said, “Matt and I were talking. We’re going to need to do more than just board the house up. With those screamers and those runners and God knows what else—”
“Those really big things,” Alex said.
The rest of the group raised their brows.
“Right, well we’ll get to them later,” Cole continued. “There’s no telling what could happen out there while someone’s not looking—which is another subject we’re soon to discuss. But for now, what can we do to keep those zombies off our grounds?”
Again everyone’s eyes cast around the room, searching for a suitable idea.
“A castle!” Alex said.
Kristin’s blank expression molded into a slight grimace. She looked at Alex and said, “What?”
“A castle.” He drew the image with his hands. “Like in the old days. They had that circle of water around their castle, and a bridge too.”
Matt smiled. “A moat.”
“A moat?” Anna echoed.
“Yes. That’s it, Alex,” Cole said fervently. “We could dig a pit around the house, and instead of filling it with water, we could use it as a place to slow the zombies down. We could burn ‘em when they’re dead. Eventually we’ll run out of places to bury them, and that smell would sure as hell kill us after a whi
le.” He turned to the kid. “Good thinking.”
“You guys seem to be forgetting one important thing,” Kristin said.
“And what’s that?” Mary asked.
“There’s only one shovel. You know how long that would take?”
“I bet John’s got a shovel, and he’s sure to have a few supplies that could help us out as well,” Cole answered.
“Well then, why don’t we just go and check every house on the damned street?” Kristin said.
“Too much risk for the possibility of no reward,” Cole answered. “You forget that most of these people fled to the closest safe zone after those few neighborhoods in midtown had been overrun, and they more than likely took everything they had with them. Granted, taking a shovel doesn’t seem to be the first choice of supplies, but if you didn’t have a gun or a better weapon, it would do just fine. It’s either that, or the people likely perished, having what we need inside a locked house we know nothing about. We’re familiar with John’s house, so we shouldn’t be that long.”
“There are probably still hidden treasures around here, much closer than your friends’ house.” Kristin looked to Mary for support.
“We want to leave that treasure where it rests, for now, Kristin,” Matt said. “It could be useful later on. If we wanted it, we’d have already taken it instead of heading out into the deadlands.”
Kristin shook her head. “I’m not following you.”
“There’s more treasure out there.” Alex pointed absentmindedly in the direction of Route Seventeen.
Kristin and Anna gave unsure looks to the others.
“We just wanna get it while the getting’s good,” Matt added.
“Good things don’t last forever, Kristin,” Mary said. “We want to take all that we can before things get worse. And they will. And when that happens, we’ll have what we haven’t taken from here.”
“Soon enough,” Matt picked up, “all those makeshift safe zones will fall, if they haven’t already. We’ve all made the choice to survive on our own. For some of us, it was voluntary; for others, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t matter anymore. We’re here, and we’re going to survive. It’s not going to be easy, but I have to say that I think our odds are better than most.” He nodded toward the front door. “They’re out there depending on soldiers who are probably no more worried about the survivors than the infected are about us. We, however, can learn to depend on each other. Already the youngest has thrown out an idea that most would never have thought of. I wouldn’t have. And yes, there is only one shovel, but there are a limited number of resources in this house as it is. That can mean only one thing: another raid. So what I think you guys should do is take an inventory count today.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Mary said with a nod. “If there were more of those things out there, I’m sure we would have encountered them by now. I say we go for it while we still can.”
Matt noted how her attitude had flipped a one-eighty compared to yesterday. At least today she was thinking with a level head.
Kristin nodded reluctantly, as did Anna.
Alex looked as proud as Matt had ever seen him, even after rescuing Anna and her family. Indeed, the boy’s father was a smart man, and he had trained his son for the condition the world was in now. As the group continued to plot, Matt focused more on the upcoming tasks. It would be risky to head back to John’s just after the morning scuffle, but it was something that would have to be done; the reward vastly outweighing the risk.
CHAPTER 9
“Jesus…” Matt blinked hard as he put the van in park.
Cole tapped on the roof and then dropped down the front windshield and onto the ground. He immediately covered his nose with the sleeve of his jacket and stepped toward John Robinson’s front yard.
Matt opened his door, grabbed the shotgun, and slid out to be met with the oppressive reek of death. He pinched his nose and approached the yard, making careful observation of the corpses. Men, woman, and children lay motionless all over. Though he’d killed his fair share, Matt couldn’t remember any of them. As he stepped into the yard, he found a young girl staring lifelessly into the sky. Her dark face was an amalgam of hunger and pain. If it weren’t for the mass of bloody bits piled beside her head, Matt might have second guessed whether she was alive or not.
He continued to the front door and tried not to focus on any other corpses; sometimes he could lose himself for minutes staring into the dead, wondering about all the little details that led them to where they lay. He entered behind Cole and was in awe at amount of spattered blood on the walls, not to mention all the bodies.
Cole took his first step up the stairs, but immediately stopped, looked up with a furrowed brow, and turned back toward his friend. “You hear that?”
Matt shrugged.
“Stay here,” Cole said, stepping past him and making for the basement, “and watch for any that might try and sneak up, okay?”
Cole maneuvered over the furniture, stopping at the entrance to the basement to take in the sight of the object that had caught his attention. From here, he heard the struggling moans of the zombie as it noticed his presence and greeted him with a show of bloody teeth. Dead eyes strained, rotting arms pulling the thing closer and closer. Cole reeled back at sight of all the snapped bones, blood, and bite marks that corrupted its exposed backside. A squelching noise occurred as the zombie crawled forward. Cole shook his head and reached for his pistol.
“What is it?” Matt whispered from the front door.
Cole couldn’t speak. I’m sorry, John.
In the traumatic commotion of the failed rescue, what should have been done hadn’t been, and now Cole witnessed a man who had only wanted the best for his family, a man who’d sacrificed everything for a young child, come forth inch by fucking inch with only one thing on his mind.
“Oh fuck,” Matt said, making his way down. “John…”
“We’ll never let this happen again.” Cole turned to Matt with rage in his eye and hatred in his voice. Sentiments with which Matt was all too familiar. “Any more of our friends die, they only die once.”
Matt nodded as Cole took aim and fired.
The shot rang throughout the house and, no doubt, through the front door. If there were any stragglers from the previous battles the abrupt noise would serve as a beacon, an undead marker for where there was potential food. But the two had no plans on staying long enough to become dinner.
John’s right leg had been chewed to the bone, Matt saw as he waited for the ringing to fade, save for a few muscles jutting out here and there, flailing in the breeze like the severed tentacles of a fabled beast. His left leg was just gone. The concrete floor was smeared with long tracks, as if the man had dragged himself around for hours in endless circles. There were several footprints in these drag tracks. Something else had been down here.
“Uh, Cole,” Matt said.
Cole turned back.
“Where’s Dana?” Matt lifted the sleeve of his jacket to show that he’d gotten blood on it. “This was on the couch, man.”
Cole cast his eyes in a desperate search, but found nothing.
“Shit!”
Matt turned and peered up the stairwell and out into the opening.
An eerie sensation crept along the back of his neck, like some haunting spirit looming unseen and unheard, yet still felt. “We should probably do our best to get what we need and get the hell out of here. I’m getting a bad vibe from this shit.”
“Use the elevator.” Cole glanced at the various toolboxes, thinking of how the scene must have all played out when this family died. To see death running at you with nothing to do but watch; it must have been horrible. Three shovels and a generator at the far corner pulled him back into the present.
Matt maneuvered the dead postal worker out of the way, trying not to focus on the heap of madness that had once been its head. Minutes later, he was on the first floor doing a quick but detailed sweep of the devastation from last night
. Things had gotten really bad here. John should have contacted them sooner. Maybe then they’d still be alive, waking up from just a bad night. Pride wasn’t always a good thing.
DING!
The first load on the elevator was the generator and shovels, and two sacks of potatoes. Why John had them down there with the tools was a mystery. Matt took the first load out and sent the elevator back down. He looked through the open door front into one of John’s neighbor’s yards across the street. It was one of the houses John had mentioned raiding. In that yard stood hunched one lone figure, prone and staring.
Matt froze, unsure of what to do. The thing was no doubt a zombie, but even from here, he could tell that it wasn’t your average creeper. No, this one was watching the house, scouting it like a trained soldier or a dog hot on the trail. The longer Matt looked, the more it became clear that this one was a soldier, or had at least dressed in the fatigues of one the day it died. Gooseflesh riddled his arms and the back of his neck, threatening to encompass his entire body. He’d had the pleasure of meeting several of these types. You could see them looking right at you if you were unlucky enough, and they just observed, moving with traces of caution—processing thought on a bassist level, maybe. And when it was still, it just shifted its head while its chest mocked breathing.
“This can’t be good,” he muttered as he stared at the screamer.
DING!
Matt’s eyes went wide.
The doors to the elevator opened, bringing Cole, a few garden tools and pieces of lumber into sight, and the screamer let out a roar that pierced the still day.
“Where’d that come from?” Cole dropped the bag in his hand and reached for his pistol.
“Fuck! Get back in the elevator.” Matt stopped Cole on his way out, skirted in, and pressed the DOWN button. The doors closed as a pair of runners entered the front yard.
“This is worse than a damn movie, man.”
“Just let’s worry about taking any dead fuckers out first,” Matt said. “Then we can whine about our shitty luck.”
Downfall Page 7
