Day One (Book 3): Alone (23 page)

I wasn’t holding anything back this time. For so long I had simply existed, conformed to those around me, kept my mouth shut, and tried to blend in and stay under the radar. I was nothing special – I never had been – and I knew that free of any doubt. But now, after the last nine days, I could not stand by and just exist. I mattered weather anyone was willing to accept that or not.

The anger was coming on.

The back door suddenly burst open and halted the anger from erupting. The scamper of dangerous running feet filled the lumbering silence. Rachel spun to see two runners headed straight for her. She yanked her pistol and fired a volley of rounds at them while Morris darted toward and up the stairs to the second floor, never takin g even a split second to look at Rachel or I to make sure we were behind him.

What a coward!
My mind shouted, followed by my own words telling Rachel to retreat to the stairs and follow Morris. She turned and ducked as she spun and saw me coming into her position with the short rifle raring to go. She had managed to get one of the runners in the head, putting it down for good, while the second had taken a few rounds into the right leg, knocking it off balance. It thrashed about on the kitchen floor trying its damndest to get to its feet and continue the attack. A single round from my weapon ceased all of its attempts.

“Go, get moving!” I shouted to Rachel, who had stopped at the base of the stairs to look in my direction. She hadn’t scurried up them like Morris selfishly had; in fact, she had stopped to make sure I was following.

There was a loud jolt at the front door, as the unseen intruder had failed to break through the door in a single strike like the runners at the rear of the house had. I somehow knew that going out the front door, a few seconds prior, would have been a mistake. Now I was more than happy that Morris had made his move and pissed me off, because if he hadn’t and I would have walked out that door. My mind stopped me from thinking any further into what could have been. I had a major problem in front of me to deal with and thinking about shit that didn’t happen held no resolution to my fixed and centered problem.

A large group of undead shuffled into the kitchen, but I didn’t pop any of them. There was no need to, as they were no more a threat to me than a mouse hidden under the couch just to my right. I did, however, put three rounds through the front door as I made my way across the living room toward the stairs. Anything on the opposite side had a bad day quickly.

At the top of the stairs I took up a firing position and crouched to get well placed shots off when the undead or runners came into view. The more I could kill at the bottom of the stairs meant the less we would have to deal with reaching the second floor, and in the tight spaces of the second floor, maneuvering was going to be tricky.

“We’re running out of places to run!” Rachel announced.

“I know that, so if you have an idea, now would be the perfect time to share it with the rest of us,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the stairs below me, as it wouldn’t take a runner long to bound up the flight at me. “Where’s Morris?”

Rachel cleared the first room to the left and moved into the hallway to hear my question. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know!”

“Find him!” I told her, knowing good and well that he was hiding somewhere and given the spiral decline of our safety, I was also sure that he would make a move and try to procure a weapon. I couldn’t let that happen. The outcome to such an event, without a shadow of a doubt, would be disastrous to Rachel and I.

Rachel moved to the second door and kicked it open to find Morris trying to get a stuck window open. He threw his head toward the sound of the door hitting the wall, expecting a dozen or so runners to be on him, but instead found Rachel. “Oh thank god, it’s you,” he blurted in an unconvincing tone that Rachel saw right through.

“Going somewhere?” She asked him.

“I was looking for a way out of this place… for all of us,” he lied.

“Did you find him?” I asked from the top of the stairs.

She took her eyes off of him for a split second, as she backed to the door and looked my way to answer. “Yeah, I got him. He was trying to escape through a window, unfortunately for him though, it was stuck,” her voice poured out to me.

The sound of something large, and very fast, colliding with the walls screamed louder than a gunshot in close proximity and I threw my head in its direction to see Morris holding Rachel against the damaged wall trying to overpower and take her pistol away. There was also the sound of dozens of footsteps below me, loose items on a bookshelf being disturbed and falling to the floor, all of which were funneling toward the stairs. I had only a few seconds to act before Rachel or I was dead.

“Let her go, Morris or I’ll shoot you where you stand!”

Morris thrust Rachel’s pistol in my direction and fired a single round. It hit me high in the chest and since I was still crouching, the energy from the bullet spun me and I tumbled down the stairs toward the shuffling sounds of death. I could feel and see myself rolling down the stairs and tried my best to stop my advance; however, flailing my arms and legs out to stabilize and stop my fall could easily break an arm or a leg and that was not what I needed to have happen now or anytime in the near future. I had to stop myself, yet without actually doing anything to stop; I was at the full mercy of gravity. My head caught the wall and I could feel my body beginning to fade away. I had to stay conscious, and then again, maybe it was best this way. Maybe breaking my neck on the way down was for the best? I’d never feel them rip me apart. I’d probably never get to see them do such a thing to me.

Everything suddenly stopped and became peaceful and quiet.

Rachel screamed at the sight and Morris was able to yank the pistol from her hands, but in that very moment she was able to push him away and ran for the stairs.

Morris stepped out of the room and fired. The bullet hit Rachel from behind and knocked her to the floor, where she came to rest at the top of the stairs. The constant barrage of sound radiating up from the first floor kept him from approaching and finishing her. He knew the undead would do that for him and he turned and made his way down the hallway to the last room on the left, slamming and locking the door behind him. Two large windows were streaked with falling rain and he made his way toward them, flipped the locking latch at the top and pushed the right window upward. It traveled within the track smoothly as a smile raced across Morris’ face.

The backyard was empty of anything other than grass and another privacy fence. Falling rain pounded the roof right outside of the window and whipping wind cut through two small trees near a shed at the back of the yard.

I lay there at the bottom of the stairs afraid to move and find that I had broken a leg or even my back, scared that I would find myself paralyzed from the neck down. That would have been the dinner bell ringing for them to devour me in that instant. I could feel a growing pain in my right side near my abdomen, yet I remained perfectly still. The single gunshot that had followed the one that put me where I now was, told me that Rachel had met a fate much quicker than mine. Morris had gained control of her weapon and used it. By now, if he had made it out, he’d be long gone. The undead shuffled around me, paying absolutely no attention to the fact that I was just feet from them. I still didn’t know why they were not interested in me… let me rephrase that. I didn’t fully understand why they were not interested in me, although since all of this started, I didn’t have a clue what the hell was really going on. So why should I understand anything now?

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted when I felt something touch my leg and turned my eyes to see one of the undead trying to file past me. Even though I was as still as the dead, I tried even harder not to move or even breath, thinking that it would notice me. But if you are already holding your breath and not moving a single muscle, how do you become even more still? I knew that Rachel was upstairs somewhere and if by some miracle Morris had not killed her, the undead strolling past me would.

I didn’t owe her anything and it wasn’t like she had saved my life in any way, so I had no real motive to try and stop them from getting to her. But in that sense I would be no different than Morris, and I really hated that guy. I had to do something to stop them, even if it meant risking my life in the process. It wasn’t about ‘if I should,’ but more of ‘how do I do that?’

I wiggled my toes on both feet and even though I could not see them move, I could however feel them moving which told me my spinal cord was still intact. Next I tried moving my left arm, and then my right arm – all in such a slight manner that none of the undead or hidden runners would notice me moving. The last thing I needed was to get jumped when I wasn’t sure if I could move, let alone fight.

A grunt, like that of a dog before it would growl, flourished from the nothingness and I moved my eyes to see a runner push two undead out of the way and head straight for me. It was sniffing the air, no doubt following the scent back to its origins, which was me. There was about fifteen feet between us and it was closing that gap quickly, so I had to stop it or at least slow it down while I got to my feet. Fighting for your life while lying on your back was not the best of tactics, although I’m sure it was doable, I wasn’t about to push my luck and try it now.

My Beretta, still lying in the middle of the road several blocks away, would have come in handy at this moment in time, yet it wasn’t even an option anymore. I’d have to get my rifle out from under me if I was going to have any real chance of making it through this one.

The runner zeroed in on me and shot across the room in a full sprint. If I was going to do something, now was the time to start. I rolled to my left and pain shot through my body as if I had been shot by an unheard bullet. My eyes shot to the top of the stairs expecting to see Morris firing another bullet at me. There was no one there other than the motionless body of Rachel.

The runner was now even closer.

I rolled once more and sucked the pain up as it throbbed through me. A little pain now meant I’d live much longer, so I worked through the pain. I found the stock of my short rifle and jerked hard on it. The rifle moved out from under me and I pushed hard with my legs to get into a sitting position against the wall, scurrying the weapon to my shoulder as the runner bore down on me.

Shit! This is going to be close!
My mind screamed as I fumbled the safety off and tried to aim. The weapon fired in full auto, dispatching the runner only feet from me, as well as two undead. Suddenly though, every undead in the living room turned toward me and was aware that I was not one of them. The situation went from bad to worse in the course of only ten seconds.

“Time to go,” I said aloud.

I got to my feet in a great deal of pain and began climbing the stairs as the undead filtered in behind me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I could see a blood stain on Rachel’s right shoulder and I grabbed and rolled her over. She was still breathing, which tore a small chunk of anxiety from my shoulders.

I pointed the weapon at the closest room; the one Morris had been trying to flee from and unloaded the remaining rounds in the magazine. Shell casings ejected in quick secession, punching small holes through the wall and hopefully through Morris, if he was still within the confines of the house. The empty mag fell to the carpeted floor and I quickly loaded another, holding the weapon with my right hand while my left hand lightly slapped Rachel’s face. I couldn’t carry her and fight at the same time, so I needed her to wake up and help me to help her.

“Rachel, wake up! I need you to wake up… they’re coming!” I shouted to her, taking a moment to blast two undead as they came up the stairs. Their bodies crumpled and fell, knocking several other undead down the stairs with them. “Get up, dammit!”

Slowly she opened her eyes and cringed in pain, grabbing her wounded shoulder.

“Glad to see you are still with me,” I told her, trying to lighten the mood.

“That son of a bitch shot me,” she stated. “He shot me in the back.”

I got a closer look at her wound as she got to her feet and presented her back to me. From what I could tell – I’m no doctor by any means here – the bullet entered near the rear of her armpit and exited through the front in the same location, which meant she was in no real immediate danger. There was the possibility of her bleeding to death on me, although it didn’t sound that likely to me with further inspection. “You’re gonna have to tie that arm off to stop the bleeding. We are far from out of here and there’s a shitload of those things trying to come up here.”

She grabbed my knife and swiftly started cutting the sleeve of her shirt off. Once she had accomplished that, she wrapped it around the wound and took a few deep breaths, as the pain would careen through her whole body when she tied the make shift tourniquet off.

I sent three undead down the stairs, and then quickly grabbed the material. “On three, okay?” She nodded to me with a look of anticipation alight in her eyes, but it wasn’t something she wanted.

“One… two…” I energetically tugged hard on opposite ends of the sleeve, which closed around her shoulder with vice like grip. She howled loud enough to be heard at least thirty miles away.

“Oh, you bastard!” She spat. “You worthless son of a bitch!”

“Sorry, but I had to do it before three to take your mind off of what was coming,” I told her. “If I’d of waited it would have been worse… trust me on this.”