The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (31 page)

Kera flinched backwards from her hand. “One
of those crazies, like what’s outside, attacked me.”

The old woman looked up at me curiously.
“Didn’t even occur to us that you was his pa. We was expecting to
see a man and a woman, not a man and a girl,” she stated
matter-of-factly.

The old man ‘harrumphed’ behind her.

“Oh, this here is Hubert,” she said, turning
toward the old man who still sat grumpily on the sofa. “Get up ol’
man and greet our guests.”

“And I’m Margaret Stoufer,” she said.

“Margaret, they pointed guns at us, broke
into our home and brought them crazy people here!” He rattled off
each of our offenses with a bony finger, then stood up from the
sofa with a creak from the springs.

“Don’t be an ol’ grouch, Hubert. Shake the
man’s hand and welcome him.”

He scowled at his wife then his hunched
figure approached me and he held out a well-worn, long-fingered
hand for me to shake. I took it gingerly and was surprised by his
strong grip when his fingers wrapped around mine. He looked me in
the eye and I was surprised again by the sincerity I saw hidden
there when he said, “Welcome to our home.”

The Loonies on the porch must have heard our
voices through the thin walls. Several started pounding on the
doors and windows. We all jumped when it started.

Strength started to flow back into my legs
with the hope that I had finally caught up with Jeremy.

“Where is he, where’s my son?” I asked
impatiently.

The couple looked at each other than back at
me.

“He said he couldn’t stay,” Margaret said
sadly. “We begged him to, but he would have none of it. Said he had
to get to his farm where he was meeting you and his ma. Speaking of
which, where is she?”

I shook my head, a brief look of despair on
my face. “She didn’t make it,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Margaret apologized
sincerely.

Something banged hard on the front door,
shaking it on its hinges.

“Guys, I think we better go someplace else,”
Kera said in a hushed voice, her shotgun aimed at the door.

I motioned them out to the kitchen and
hopefully far enough away from the front porch that our voices
couldn’t be heard by the Loonies congregating there.

My heart was in my throat. I had missed him
again although now I knew he was alive and I would find him.

“When did he leave? Which way did he go? Did
he say anything?” I cornered Margaret and asked the questions with
machine gun quickness.

“Slow down, sonny,” she smiled at me. “You
got a fine young-un there.” She shuffled over to one of the bench
seats at the kitchen table and tiredly sat onto it.

“We filled him with a hot breakfast, we
insisted on it before we would let him leave. He left outta here
about ten in the morning. We stuffed some extra food in that big
ol’ pack he was hauling around. He headed south down the Parkway,”
she indicated the road out in front of the farm. “He was well
armed, I’ll attest to that!”

She slid one of the plates of food over to
herself and shoved a forkful into her narrow mouth. “Said he was
supposed to meet y’all today somewheres else, and if we were to see
y’all to tell you he was real sorry and couldn’t stay there cause
it was too dangerous. He was heading to the farm and would find
y’all there.” She scooped another forkful of food off the plate on
the table in front of her into her mouth, chewing silently.

Hubert, who had been staring out the kitchen
window, let out a loud angry “Damn it!”

He turned to us, eyes ablaze with fury. “Them
damn things are eating our chickens!” he spat out through clenched
teeth.

I tried to shush him but he continued
unabated. “How we gonna eat if they kill all our yard birds?”

“There’s nothing you can do!” I admonished
him. “If you go out there they will eat you!”

He looked at me as if I had lost my mind,
then shut his mouth.

“You’re kidding right?” Margaret asked after
she swallowed her last bite of food. “Them people are
cannibals?”

“Opportunists,” I replied. “They’ll eat
whatever they can get their hands on.”

They both stood looking at me with their
mouths agape. They really had been secluded here since this had all
began.

“We have to be quiet,” I told them. “If they
know we’re up here, they will be coming through those windows for
us faster than a cat with its tail on fire.”

They nodded in unison, mouths still hanging
open.

“Are y’all hungr—” Margaret started.

She was cut off by a loud crashing noise
below us from what I assumed was the cellar door caving in from the
mass of bodies assaulting it.

“They’re inside!” Kera hissed in terror.

Glass jars crashed to the ground and
shattered below our feet. It wouldn’t take them long to be on the
stairs and at the kitchen door.

“Help me move the table in front of the
door!” I ordered, quickly rounding the table and grabbing an
edge.

The four of us scooted the heavy wooden table
across the floor and jammed it against the flimsy door. It would
stall them although it wouldn’t stop them.

I fished in my pocket for the two shells and
handed them to Hubert. “I hope you have more of these,” I said as
his hands closed around them. “Go get your shotgun, and be quick!”
I could hear the Loonies still testing the front door of the
house.

“How do we get upstairs?” I asked
Margaret.

“Through the living room and around to the
hall.”

“Let’s go!” The sound of footsteps coming up
the stairs from the cellar could be heard over the ruckus of those
rampaging through the cellar’s contents.

I grabbed Holly’s rifle on the way through
the living room and followed Margaret as she slowly climbed the
steep, narrow staircase up to the second floor.

If that was the only way up to the house’s
second story, we could keep those things from coming up the stairs
until they were all dead or our ammo ran out. The second option
worried me.

Hubert came up last clutching his old
double-barrel in one hand and an equally old box of shells in the
other.

“All I got,” he muttered as he squeezed by
me.

We crowded into the first door off of the
hallway at the top of the stairs. It was the house’s master
bedroom. I rushed over to the window that looked out to the side
yard of the house where the cellar doors were located. A handful of
Loonies were still lingering outside the entrance while more were
exploring the barns and sheds. One sat naked in the middle of the
grass, gnawing flesh from a freshly killed rooster. The rooster’s
blood coated its face and chest like war paint. I ran to another
window that was situated above the roof of the front porch. I
couldn’t see any more of the infected coming down the county road
toward the farm. That meant we only had to deal with those that
were here.

I had to get out of here soon. With each
passing minute my son moved further from my reach. I didn’t know
how long he could last by himself out in this new, horrible world.
He needed my help, and I needed him. He was my last link to
Holly.

We could hear banging emanating from the
doorway that led to the cellar from the kitchen. With each blow, a
splintering crack resounded through the house. The door was
succumbing to the incessant pounding from the enraged Loonies.

Kera closed the wooden door of the bedroom,
deadening the sound from below.

“Should we block the door?” she asked.

“Now I ain’t going to become no prisoner in
my own bedroom!” Hubert growled. I realized that he was more bark
than bite.

“We need to get down there and toss them
things out on their dad-burn asses!” he continued with his
(hopefully fake) bravado.

“I don’t think that is such a good idea,
Hubert,” Margaret said. She was sitting on the bed with a
distressed look on her wrinkled face.

Below us, the cellar door caved in with a
crash and we heard the heavy table tossed aside with a thud as the
infected poured onto the main floor of the home.

Decision time again, I thought. “Let’s get
some furniture in front of the door.” I made the snap decision to
try and escape. Shooting them as they came up the stairway was just
too risky without knowing their total numbers. I also was worried
that too much gunfire would lure more of them from the surrounding
countryside.

“And then what?” Hubert asked in his rough,
ancient voice.

“Then make as much noise as we can to draw
them in the house and upstairs. While they’re busy trying to break
through that door we slip out the front window onto the porch roof
and then drop down onto the driveway and get as far from here as we
can!” I said, laying out my improvised plan to my three
companions.

“Mister McQuinn,” Margaret said, getting
laboriously to her feet, “I can barely stand to get out of bed.
There will be no sliding out windows and jumping off roofs for
me.”

Of course Hubert had to offer his two cents.
“I told y’all before, this is my home and I ain’t leaving it.”

“I’m open to suggestions, but we can’t stay
here,” I said sharply over the clamor of the infected raging
through the house below us.

Time was getting very short.

Margaret went to her husband and put her arms
around him. She hugged his frail body tight to her even frailer
body. She whispered something into his ear and he in turn took her
face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead.

She turned to me and Kera. “Mister McQuinn,”
she said in a soft voice, “me and my Hubert here, we’re too old to
be running away from anything. This is our home. We can’t leave it.
You kids go on and escape like you said. We’ll keep those crazy
people here long enough for you to git away.” She smiled pleasantly
at us, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Kera grabbed my arm tightly. “We can’t leave
them here to die!” she hissed.

There were sounds on the stairway outside the
bedroom.

I looked at her helplessly then turned to the
old couple “You don’t understand what those things are capable of.
You have to try and get out of here,” I pleaded.

Hubert shook his head. “Young fella, you have
a lil’ boy out there by hisself. Don’t you worry a stitch about us.
You go on and git outta here.” He actually managed a smile. Old
Hubert wasn’t the tough piece of rawhide he made himself out to be
after all.

“We can’t leave you!” Kera cried, her voice
nearly hysterical. “Everyone else in this world has gone crazy!”
She ran up to the old woman and grabbed her hand in hers. “Come
with us, please.”

Before Margaret could answer, the bedroom’s
doorknob jiggled wildly. Then something banged heavily into the
door, shaking it on its frame.

Margaret smiled down at Kera. “Young missus,
we’ve already lived a long life. If we gotta die, it’s going to be
in our own bed in our own home.”

Margaret backed away from her and sat back
down on her bed with her husband.

Kera whirled on me, desperation in her voice
and tears dripping down her cheeks. “Steve, we have to stay and
fight! We can’t just leave them here!”

The bedroom door was shaking on its frame
with each blow from the fists hitting it on the other side. Small
cracks appeared in its thin paneling.

“Kera, we have to go. We’re out of time!” I
said quietly.

She looked down at the couple sitting on the
bed. The old lady just sat there smiling up at us while the man had
his shotgun up and locked on the door, a resolute expression on his
leathery face.

“Honey, you gotta go. Anything else is
folly!” Margaret admonished Kera with a shooing motion from her
hand.

Kera looked at me and grimaced, then nodded
her head resignedly.

The assault began on the bedroom door in
earnest. It seemed like thin, weak doors was the status quo in this
old house, and like the others, I knew this one wouldn’t last long
either.

Hubert balanced his shotgun across his knees,
pointed steadily at the door, sitting on the bed with his wife. He
looked at us with an ornery expression. “Now you two git going or
I’ll put a load of buckshot in your asses myself.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and mouthed
‘I’m sorry,’ then ran to the front window. After a few seconds
wrestling with its sticky latch, I threw it open. The porch roof
was a mere foot below the sill. Kera handed me her shotgun and pack
and ran back to the old couple. She threw her arms around their
necks and whispered, “Good luck!”

They shooed her away. She grabbed her gun and
I helped her out onto the roof. I handed out both of our packs and
the two rifles. The bedroom door was splintering down its center
from the fists and legs attacking it from the other side. I held up
a finger to Kera to let her know I would be out in a moment, then
turned and strode to the disintegrating door while I drew the
katana sword from my belt. Without hesitating I repeatedly jammed
the sword through the door panel and felt the reward of it meeting
soft resistance on the other side with each stab. The blade was
soon covered with a thin sheen of red and blood began leaking
across the hardwood floor under the door. The banging on the other
side of the door stopped.

Both old people sat on their bed with their
mouths gaping open in surprise and horror.

I smiled sheepishly at them. “That should
slow them down.”

I walked to the window and wiped the blade
clean on one of the curtains, earning a gasp from Margaret.

Oh well, I thought, she had much more to
worry about then bloodstains on her window treatments. I slid the
blade back into its sheath and crawled out the window.

I stuck my head back inside and said, “You
can still come.” They looked back at me with a kind of awe as they
sat together with their arms around each other on the small
bed.