Our Undead (8 page)

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
GET AWAY FROM US!!!

He responds with another
roar, this one much more irate, and then begins making his way
through the space he created to claim his prize. The girl watches
his haunting silhouette maneuver through the cavity in the door,
paralyzed with fear. All her brain can think to do is hold on
tightly to her father and never let go; if she holds on to him
forever, there's no way she'll lose him. Gary can do nothing but
wait, ready to defend his daughter.

When he gets completely
through the space, our zombie is met with a flying extinguished oil
lamp, thrown by the frantic teenager. It bounces off the walker's
left shoulder and shatters on the closet floor. It goes pretty much
unnoticed by the hungry zombie, and he continues toward the
quivering pair, moving slowly as if relishing the moment, savoring
the fearful expressions of his feast that can do nothing to escape
him. Then, without warning, the view of her approaching end is
blocked by something large. Her father. He has left her side, and
now stands tall in front of her. He stands so tall it reminds the
girl of the old days when Gary was in good health.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Dad!…

Gary:
Stay
back!

Our zombie gets closer to
the weak defending father, and his daughter grabs on to him from
the back.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
Let's just run!

As she says this, she puts
herself within reach of the monster, who takes his chance and
extends his arm to grab on to her fresh supple flesh. Reacting
instinctively, Gary grabs his daughter by the arm and pushes her
past the groping beast. Her body crashes into the broken closet
door.

Gary:
RUN!!!

Gary's command is stern and
is not that of a weak man.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
But...!

Even with the free meal of
this man right in front of him, our zombie couldn't care less about
Gary's sick stale body. He turns away from the screaming man to go
after the fresher prey that still hasn't left the closet as her
father told her to. There is a great hesitation inside of her, for
she doesn't want to just leave him where he is most likely to be
killed.

Gary:
I
SAID, GO!!!

Gary yells one more time at
his disobedient daughter, and the burly man takes a swing at the
back of our zombie's head. The true extent of the sick man's power
is revealed. The blow to the back of the undead beasts skull does
nothing but annoy it and gain its attention. It turns back and
purrs a low growl of frustration, leering at Gary in
anger.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
DAD!

Gary readies himself for an
attack from the ticked off walker. Heavy thunder and lightning,
strike.

Gary:
********, LISTEN TO YOUR FATHER WHEN HE GIVES YOU
INSTRUCTIONS!!!!

The sound of Gary's voice
puts that all too familiar fear into her, and for a moment, she is
more afraid of her father than his attacker. But she still can't
seem to avert her gaze, or get her legs to move.

Gary:
GO
NOW!!

Gary's booming voice shocks
the sense back into her, and she begins to make her way out through
the broken closet door just as her sick father gets taken hold of.
All Gary's attempts to defend himself fail. He is far too weak to
really give our zombie any type of a fight, or even a damaging
blow.

When she finishes squeezing
herself out of the closet, she takes one more look back through it
to see her father's head in the cold grasp of our zombie's hands.
Seconds later, the monster lowers it's head and takes a ripping
bite out of the man. The girl dare not look, but she knows the
exact moment of teeth penetrating skin by the terrible scream she
hears escape her dad's throat. She has never heard him sound
anything like that before, and for an instant, she finds herself
paralyzed again, but quickly remembers his words, and rather than
disobey her father's last order, rather than letting him die in
vain, she runs away.

She runs wearily out
through the bedroom door and down the hallway, her plan, to leave
through the front of the cabin, but stops at the broken in door of
the living room. It's fracture is much tighter than the one in the
closet and bedroom doors. Even with her smaller size, she has to
struggle a bit to get through. She wriggles around trying to
squeeze herself in, but in her unthinking state scrapes her right
ankle on a broken piece of wood. The sharp pain accelerates the
process and propels her out of the hole into the living space
quicker than she would have made it out otherwise. She lands on the
injured foot and twists the same ankle, falling heavily down to the
cabin floor. She lets out a horrifying scream that travels through
the halls and into the closet, capturing our zombie's attention. He
lifts his head from Gary's open carcass.

In the living room, the
girl writhes about the floor in agony. The pain is like nothing she
has ever felt before. Even worse than the time she broke her arm,
jumping off that swing as a toddler.
"I
can't walk. I can't walk,"
replays itself
over and over in her mind.

She panics. She
must
escape. There is a
zombie in here that just killed her mother and father, and it would
be after her very soon. She uses her arms to try and prop herself
up, but her ankle is too weak to hold her weight, and she tumbles
back down to the ground. Sadly, her assumption is correct, and she
can't help but let out more cries of pain and aggravation, but she
can't give up.

Inspiration comes in the
form of her father's voice in her mind. His tone is from one of his
scarier moments, reminiscent of one of her old baseball practices.
It screams at her, saying,
"No daughter of
mine is gonna give up that easily!! You believe in yourself! You
push!"
It helps her make her next move,
bringing herself up with her arms and using them, along with her
good left foot, to push herself forward. Her right leg drags behind
her, its twisted, slit wound rubbing against the chippy wood floor.
The pain is excruciating, but she doesn't stop. She pulls herself
slowly forward with her tired arms. There is no giving up
until…

She sees her mother… or
what used to be her mother. Mariam's corpse lay, half eaten in a
bloody pool below the broken in window. The sight forces the
forsaken girl to stop in her tracks. Frozen, she stares at the pile
of soggy flesh. Then she thinks to herself,
"Why? Why should I even fight anymore? My mother is gone, and
I'm almost certain my father has suffered the same fate. Why am I
trying? What the hell is the point?"
The
hope washes from her face as she looks at the gruesome scene under
the vandalized window. The rain still pours in and trickles upon
her mother's body, but as gorish as it all looks, the girl can't
look away. Tears begin to well up in her eyes. Even so, there is a
placidness to them, a sort of sad acceptance of the choice she is
about to make.

A loud cracking sound,
accompanied by a wanting growl, startles her out of her little
trance, and she uses her arms to swing quickly around, landing
roughly on her bum. At the door to the hallway, she sees that our
zombie is finished with her father and has now come to have her. It
ogles her through the crack in the door, a bit of savoring before
taking his first step back into the living room.

Initially, the sight of the
approaching ghoul with its unbelievable face, the blood smeared
over and down its front side, is tremendously frightening. She even
backs up a couple of feet using her hands, but it takes less than a
few seconds for her to remember just how hopeless her life has
become. She remembers all of the death and the losses she has
experienced in the last week and eases her bottom gently down to
the cabin floor. Looking down at her twisted ankle, she takes in a
deep breath, then closes her eyes and exhales just as
deeply.

When she re-opens them, she
sees our zombie trying to figure out how to get back through the
door. The broken in space appears to be too tight, and the clumsy
brain-dead vessel can't seem to solve its exhausting puzzle. He
tries to fit an arm and leg through, but no luck. He tries to get a
leg through first, but his hips are too big to follow behind it.
Never before has a door posed such a problem, not that he has run
into many as he is now. He could probably just smash in more of the
wood and make the space bigger, but that thought never crosses his
vacant mind. The space is there. He should be able to get through.
For him, it should be as simple as that.

The girl notices his
struggle from her doomed position on the floor not too far ahead,
but knows it'll only be a matter of time before he breaks through.
Then, she'll be his for the taking. She gives him one last look of
distain and then leans backward, all the way down until the back of
her head is resting uncomfortably on the floor. Then she closes her
eyes and waits, ready for this nightmare that life has become to be
over.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
I'm all yours, asshole...

Our zombie is more than
happy to do her this service, put a quick end to her nightmare, if
he could only get through this suddenly, unbreakable door. Coming
through it the first time had not been easy, but he had not
had
this
much of
a difficult time. Perhaps it is because pushing in on the door the
first time around caused jagged edges of wood to spike out into the
hallway side. When following her father's wishes, the young girl
was smart enough to dodge all the dangerous spikes near the top,
she was just a little too hurried and cut herself on the ones
below. An unthinking zombie is not able to understand this, that he
must be more cautious getting back through, and his frustration
starts to build. He pushes and pounds and tries one more time to
fit half of his body through the large crack. He gets a leg, an arm
and his head part of the way through, but he can get no
further.

Now greatly angered, he
makes a large and frantic attempt to push himself in, but his
endeavor has the reverse effect. In charging forward against the
jagged wooden spikes, he is punctured by several of them. At least
eight pieces of door get lodged into our zombie's front and about
five get hooked into his back and side. The leg he was able to get
through didn't quite make it all the way, so it's foot sits very
unsteadily on the living room floor. It makes for a terrible source
of leverage in his attempts to release himself. He jerks back and
forth, but the more he does, the more the door tightens its
splintering grasp of him.

Lying stretched out across
the floor on her back, the teenager with raggedy golden locks waits
patiently for her demise. But why the long wait? All she can hear
are grunts and growls coming from the hallway door, but no action.
When you're ready to die, all of a sudden there's a big hold up.
She thought she would never have to use them again, but if he is
going to take his time, she might as well. She opens her eyes and
looks straight up at the ceiling staring back at her.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
(sniffs)
Well,
what's taking you so long…?

She brings her head upright
to take a look at what has been keeping her family's killer from
gifting her the same fate it had her parents, and then she sees.
Her zombie attacker is stuck in the tight, ridged space in the
door. Her head instantly drops back down to meet the cabin
floor.

Her exhausted expression
slowly morphs into the tiniest little grin, and her chest convulses
just slightly as the little grin grows into a little smile. And
more, her chest's rate of convulsing rises until she breaks out
into a soft chuckle. The chuckle soon grows into a laugh, and the
laugh into an absolute hysterical fit. Being there to witness it,
one might think she is a loon, arching her back on the floor and
holding on to her tummy tightly, trying to hold in the unruly
cackling.

What are the chances? This
zombie had shattered all the hope and love she had left in her
life. In a world where a fanatical nightmare had become a reality,
her parents were her single source of comfort. Life had become
total shit, but her parents had created a feeling for her that felt
like old times, a piece of her past that she could look to for
comfort and to bring her mind back down to earth. This zombie had
taken it all away in one fell swoop, but now, when she is ready to
give in, the stupid skin-bag of rotting walking crap can't even
make it through a door. What type of luck is this? Hers
alone.

But then, she remembers
what she has lost and reality schmoozes it's way back into her
head. Her hysterical laughter turns into hysterical crying, and she
let's it all out.

LongBlondeHairedGirl:
AARGH!!! I HATE YOU!!! YOU STUPID FUCKING
BASTARD!!! I HATE YOU!!!

She screams her curses
toward the ceiling, pounding her fists into the cabin's dirty
timber flooring like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Our zombie
watches her mental collapse from the door, still wanting to take a
juicy bite out of her brains. He brawls with the thick wooden
bristles just as crazily, but the vice remains steadfast and
skewered.