Our Undead (5 page)

He lets out a low growl and
tries one more of his forced, thrusting steps, but his leg fails to
escape the veiny grasp of the tangled bushes below. Then he
violently shakes his whole body, trying with ferocious intent for a
few seconds to break the hold that the forest now has on him, but
again, he fails. His body then relaxes into the leaves, and for a
moment it looks as though he is going to give up and just hang
there like the rest of the underachievers that failed behind him,
but he can't. He explodes into a sudden fury, letting out a mighty
roar that echoes through the night air.

It travels a long way, his
roar, floating high above and throughout the trees, carried by the
wind on a highway of invisible current to many different
destinations. The most interesting of these destinations is a
simple, lonely cabin about a half a mile deeper into the woods. The
inside of this cabin is badly lit. In fact, the only sources of
light are a turned on flashlight, a couple of oil lamps, and a
shaded plug-in lamp. All of these poor excuses for light are
scattered around the floor of one of the cabin's back rooms, where
there are three people settled on the floor; a young girl with long
blonde hair, an older brunette woman with beautiful tear filled
blues, and an older man with wavy blonde locks pasted to his
forehead. He looks to be injured and very sick.

It is in the brightest
corner of this room that the older woman sits beside him, he who is
stretched out upon blankets that have been laid out on the floor.
They don't look very comfortable, but they do him much better than
the bare hardwood floor would. The woman tries to make the man feel
more comfortable in any way she can, wringing a washcloth into a
bucket of water set nearby and rubbing his forehead gently with it.
She looks worriedly at the shoddily bandaged bloody gash on the
man's right forearm, closer to his wrist.

The blonde teenager stands
by the room's window, looking out into the blackness of the night.
She hears an echoing bellow coming from somewhere outside and tells
herself it is only the wind, but in her heart she knows it could be
anything. The howling makes her soul shudder, and she shakes her
head, disgusted by the new world she lives in. She turns to the
older couple and makes her way over to the corner where they rest.
The older woman is so focused on the fevered man that she doesn't
even notice when the young girl is standing right beside
them.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
How is he doing?

The older woman doesn't
respond. She continues to wipe the man's forehead, and we hear her
begin to weep and sniffle.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Mom?… How is he doing?

The young girl waits for a
response. It takes a few seconds to arrive, but eventually does.
The young girl's mother turns her head reluctantly away from the
man to look up at her wondering daughter. The tears are flowing
down her dirt stained cheeks. The three of them have obviously been
through a tumultuous journey, travelling from wherever they came
from to get to this point. They are
all
dirty; not only the older woman,
and their clothes are all shagged out and raped. Her mother tries
to answer, but is unable to speak any words. She can only muster up
enough will to shake her head sorrowfully back and
forth.

The young girl can't stand
to see her mother and father in such a condition and is unable to
control her own tears. She tries her best to be tough for her
mother, but the tears break through like Niagara Falls, and her
body follows soon after. Her knees give out, and she collapses down
beside her mom. They both stay knelt beside their man, weeping in
each other's arms. The mother kisses her daughter gently on the
forehead before easing away. She takes a look at the washcloth that
she holds in her hand. It is quite filthy.

TheMother:
(sniffing)
I'm just going to go
and change his water. Stay with him. I'll be right
back.

The Mother dips the rag
into the bucket of water one last time, wrings it out and hands it
to her daughter. She wearily gets to her feet and picks up the
bucket, as well as one of the two oil lamps that have been keeping
the corner relatively well lit. She takes one more look at her
sickly husband before turning to leave the room. Her daughter
watches her as she walks away.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Be careful.

The mother turns and looks
back to her daughter.

TheMother:
I will. Just… stay with him.

She continues on and into
the next room. The young girl eases herself into the place her
mother was knelt in, closer to her father's head. She places the
damp rag on to his forehead and stares up and down the length of
the man that used to be her mighty father. This man, who used to
beat up bad guys and chase away bad boyfriends, is now on his
deathbed because of a silly little graze, a nothing of a
scratch.

She had one time seen her
father take a knife to the side of his gut, beat the guy up who did
it and drive her
and
himself to the hospital. It was a couple years ago when she
was fifteen, and she made the stupid decision to date a twenty-one
year old gang-banger type. Her father had got them both through
that, but he couldn't seem to get through this scratch on his
forearm. The thought of it brings her to tears, and she places her
head down on her dad's barely breathing chest. Just her and her
dying father, alone in a dimly lit room of a lost cabin.

<><><>

Back in the immensely thick
black brush of the deep forest, the branches that surround our
frustrated zombie shake with a fierceness that flings leaves every
which way. He struggles frantically for many seconds, and it seems
like a lost cause until one last, good strive for escape frees
him.

With a great thrust and
what almost sounds like a howl of victory, our zombie is plunged
down the side of a hidden cliff. It seems he got stuck in the
outskirts of a thick brush that lines the edge of a large bluff.
The drop falls for about one hundred feet, and his half naked body
falls the entire way, sliding down the steep hillside in the dark,
and rolling over any object to get in it's way. He tumbles into and
out of bushes, ricochets off of large rocks, boulders, stumps and
trucks, until he finally cascades across the forest floor to a
graceful rest.

He lies there for a moment
on his back, on top of the dirt, twigs and leaves. The darkness
surrounds him, and his chest is still. No breath leaves his dead
lips, if zombies have breath to breathe. Even his eyes are
unblinking. But then, clarity. His chest begins to rise and lower
as his breath again, regulates it's offbeat flow in and out of his
body, half alive. And then his eyes, once again, begin to blink. He
let's go a low, tired groan and starts to slowly get to his feet.
The moment he does, he simply walks. What else is he to do? His
pace is slower, but more so because of the absence of nutrition
than the effect of the fall. As a matter of fact, he hasn't
sustained any injuries whatsoever, at least, none that are
handicapping. If anything, he can thank the hidden precipice for a
few extra grazes, but no broken bones.

The greenery he walks
through now is not nearly as thick as it had been back atop the
brink of the cliff, and our zombie is able to traverse with
relative ease. A light rain begins to fall as he walks on,
sightless through the maze of trees. It is eerily silent. The only
thing that can be heard is the pitter-patter of the rain on the
leaves, the heavy breathing coming out of his throat and his
ruffling through the trees. The very faint rumble of thunder can be
heard approaching in the distance. He walks, and then comes to a
sudden stop, staring blankly ahead. Or perhaps, not so blankly.
Looking through his perspective, we can see what he sees.
Unfocused, but clearly visible, is a moving light , flickering in
the distance about one hundred yards away. They hold our zombie's
attention for a moment, and then he starts toward them.

<><><>

Inside of the cabin, the
pretty young girl with long blond hair and baby blues is still
sobbing. Her head is laid on top of her father's chest, cupped by
her arms. She sniffles as his breathing lifts her head up and down
ever so slightly, and then hears a low murmuring that startles her.
She quickly brings her head up and around to look behind
herself.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
(harshly whispers)
…
Mom?!

The weak murmur continues,
and the young girl realizes that the sound is coming from her
father. Her head shoots back around, and she continues to dab the
wet cloth across his forehead.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
… Dad?

He turns his head towards
her, his eyes still closed, and tries to speak.

The Father:
… M-.. Mari-…am?

The suffering man struggles
to speak, but his daughter can clearly make out that he is calling
out for his wife.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
No.. Daddy, it's me. Mom when to get you some
water. She'll be right back.

The Father:
(labored breathing)
…Oh…

His head returns to its
original position, his half open glossy eyes now staring directly
in front of him, up to the ceiling.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
… Dad,.. how are you feeling?

It hurts to ask him such a
question when he is in such a way. It hurts to say anything at all,
but she feels like she has to say something, even if it is a
pointless empty question like the one she just spouted off. Her
father, being the indestructible man he is, slowly brings his head
to its side to look into his daughter's eyes and answer
it.

The Father:
(breathes in)
I'm…
(breathes in deeper)
I'll.. be fine.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Okay, okay… You.. just rest up.

She continues to gently rub
the washcloth over her father's head as he brings it back to its
centered straight-ahead "staring at the ceiling" position. It was
once cool, the cloth, but the heat from the fever had warmed the
soaked material pretty much as soon as her mother had left the
room. She looks at it with a slight disdain.

Mariam:
…
Gary?!

The teenager looks back to
see her mother's astounded face standing in the doorway. Her hands
are still full with the oil lamp in one, and a fresh bucket of
water in the other. She scurries over to her husband and daughter
as fast as she can without dropping her wares, places them down and
takes her place beside her husband once again. Her daughter
accommodates by moving over and handing the washcloth back to
her.

Mariam:
What happened? Is he okay? Gary, are you
okay?

The tears begin to well in
her eyes again. Her husband brings his head around to the sound of
her voice, to look at his wife and tries to express himself, but
instead of words, a trembling leaves his body. He shudders and
tries to speak again.

Gary:
I'm…
c-c-c.. c-cold.

His wife feels his
forehead. It's burning up. Outside, the rain has become heavier,
and the downpour can be heard on the cabin's roof. The thunder's
rumble becomes deeper with every passing moment, and the lightning
begins to make itself known as well, teasing the cabin's occupants
with brief winks of visibility.

Mariam:
(chuckles w/ a bit of hysteria)
How can you be so cold when you're burning
up?!

She wrings the cold water
off of the rag into the bucket and tries to put it back on her
husband's forehead, but as soon as it touches him, he pulls away
dramatically.

Gary:
(hisses)
.. No.. too
cold..

Mariam:
(gasp)
Gary, I'm
sorry.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
He's cold, mom. I'll get some
blankets.

Their daughter walks over
to the blankets, placed not far away from them in the same room,
and picks one up. She looks back at her suffering parents, and the
pain turns her face into a scowl. She walks back over to them and
places the blanket gently over her father's shivering body, then
returns to her place knelt down beside her mother, who is now
caressing the side of her husband's face.

Gary:
(through his shivers) Ma-… Mariam…

Mariam:
Yes, baby? What is it?

Gary:
…I…
I want t- … I want….

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
He told me he was going to be fine, but he's
having trouble speaking. (more tears begin to well up) … and now,…
he's getting these shivers. (sniffs) I don't know what to
do…

Mariam:
I
don't know what to do either, sweetie. We just have to make things
as comfortable for your father as possible, okay?