As he lay there screaming, Chandra didn’t let up. She assaulted him with both fists, her knee in his groin.
All this time, the parents cooed just beyond wide-open french doors that overlooked the backyard. Mimosas filled and refilled as everyone sampled the elegant brunch. Eyes rolled at the commotion outside. But not an adult budged from their conversations.
It took a small boy by the name of Timothy, who crept back inside with a whispery lisp.
“Momma, TH-andra ith killing Brett.”
“Go back outside, and tell your sister to play nicely or we won’t be stopping for ice cream on the way home.”
“But momma…”
“Just one second,” the smiling mother said to another parent. Then she bent over with her hands on her knees. “Now, Timothy, I said you all need to play outside. Be a good listener.”
Timothy nodded and left. His mother resumed her conversation with a toss of her curly blonde hair and a swig of her mimosa.
“Zombies,” Mr. Verry said. “You have to be ready for them. Our country is spiraling closer and closer to some kind of plague epidemic.”
“That’s why I have a smart phone. I get all the updates. There are apps for a zombie apocalypse. I’ll get an alert. Bam! My family and I will high tale it to Debbie’s brother’s place. Dude has an underground bunker. A shit ton of guns.”
“You guys watch too much TV,” Mrs. Verry said, cutting in from across the room. “Why can’t you watch sports like a real grown man?”
The adults awed like the audience of a sitcom.
“You’ll thank us later,” Mr. Verry said. “I’ve been thinking about stockpiling lumber—building supplies. Chain link fences, barbed wire.”
“You can’t eat barbed wire.”
“No, but you can trade it. When it hits, everyone will scramble, raiding sporting goods stores for ammunition and weapons and grocery stores for food. I’m going to hit up Lowes and Home Depot.”
The french doors bounced against the cast iron doorstop that propped them over. A cool breeze signaled ominously that the warmth of summer still lingered far off.
“Kids are awfully quiet,” Timothy’s mother said, scrunching her brow and puckering her lips. She lifted her chin as if the slight adjustment would let her see more of the backyard than was cut off by the deck railing just beyond the french doors.
A sound—inhuman at first hint—a swell of agony and desperation trailed the offsetting and uneven pitter of a limp. Then, the flicker of sunlight through fresh green leaves revealed the bloodied young boy, screaming and limping. His face torn apart. An eyeball bouncing off his exposed molars, speckling blood with every jolted step.
Mr. Verry’s heart jumped in his chest.
Screams infected all the adults. No sound left in the world could penetrate their ears. Not the bubbling moans of the young boy or the children who rushed across the deck behind him.
Mr. Verry snatched up the only thing within reach—initially. He threw a magazine at the young boy. Then he grabbed the entire end table. The drawer slid out, and threatened to throw Mr. Verry off balance, but he was already swinging the end table by its legs. He struck the young boy.
The eyeball rolled free beneath a leaping high-heeled shoe. The landing burst the insides out of the eyeball. A few of the adults ran—for the stairs and the front door. Others armed themselves with the serving utensils. Threw a crystal glass plate of miniature quiches.
“Quick!” Mr. Verry shouted as he kicked a child through the glass door.
Others grabbed the broken windowpanes and stabbed at the howling. One child ran off. Mr. Verry slammed the french doors shut. Resorting to grabbing the cast iron doorstop and bludgeoning the closest child.
The screams became whimpers. The panic subsided into the throbbing thumps of mutilating the dead. Mr. Verry looked up and saw one last child. She clutched and stained her mother’s dress.
“Honey! Kill her!” he yelled.
But Mrs. Very looked down into her daughter’s eyes—saw fear and confusion.
“She’s got blood on her,” Mr. Verry said. “Look, damn it!”
There was blood, on Chandra’s knuckles, splattered across her face, gobbed in her wily hair.
Mr. Verry threw a kitchen knife.
Mrs. Verry caught and reflex did the rest. She stabbed her daughter’s head.
Chandra’s fingers pinched, and then released. The young girl collapsed among the other bodies of children.
Heavy breathing camouflaged any hearts left pounding.
Mr. Verry huffed as he braced himself upon his knees. “Told you, I’d survive a zombie apocalypse. So much for your stupid smartphone app, eh.”
There was a shaking silence as Mrs. Verry locked into a single detail beyond the massacre—a strand of red among the green grass. Her daughter’s ribbon.
Outside, the world did not look as if it was ending. The sun still shone, the flowers were still in bloom, and the temperature easily relieved the beads of sweat upon Mrs. Verry’s brow. But it didn’t ease her mind. She stumbled through the first words of her question, orange juice and champagne still in her breath.
“How…do you know… they were infected?”
THE END.
Keep up with Sara Green via…
http://www.brideofchaos.com/authors/sara-green/
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