Time of Death Book 2: Asylum (A Zombie Novel) (23 page)

Jake's hand was still wrapped around the
handle of the knife, and he looked as dumbfounded as I felt. "What
the fuck?" he said, more to himself than the rest of us. The
proximity of his voice caught the attention of the stoic zombie and
its head swiveled in Jake's direction. The knife remained immobile
under Jake's hand, and when the seemingly disembodied, bowling
ball-sized head turned, it spun on the blade, increasing the
effectiveness of the weapon.

We all watched in awe, shocked that the
monster was still animated after so much damage to its brain. The
color drained from Jake's face when the zombie moaned and raised
its hand to grab him. The hand stopped in mid-air, like it had
struck an invisible wall, and in an instant, the zombie dropped
from view. When I say an instant, I mean that literally. It
reminded me of an old-time cartoon, drawn on paper, the ones you
flip through fast to see the animation. Almost like someone had
torn out a few pages and the previous image just disappeared. We
crowded the opening again, peering down at the mess below us.

Feeling the need to state the obvious, I
commented without looking away from the pile of corpses. "That was
the weirdest thing I have ever seen."

Jake still held the knife in the same spot
the zombie's head had just been, and it wasn't lost on me that he
regarded the weapon with sadness, remembering who it really
belonged to.

Chapter 14: We're Not in Kansas
Anymore

"How the heck did they know where we were hiding?"
puzzled Meg as we cleared the rooms on the upper level.

"Have you smelled us lately?" I retorted. I
was confident that the room I'd checked was empty. It's not like
the undead were hiding under the invisible bed. I pulled the door
shut behind me and rejoined the others. We'd brought our meager
possessions down from the attic on the first trip and put them by
the stairs. Then we moved cautiously to ensure that nothing lay in
wait in the hall or lurked on the top step.

"Okay, I'll give you that, but if I smelled
as bad as they did," Meg said. She pointed to the five corpses
Striker had skewered with the broom, "I don't know how I'd be able
to smell anything else."

Jake kicked at the leg of the closest corpse,
more like an aw shucks kind of kick than anything else.

Striker looked nonplussed by our banter and
stood with his arms crossed, waiting for an opening in the
conversation. "You done?"

I looked at him with an exaggerated
expression of what the fuck that would rival any caricature and
shook my head. "Oh, I'm sorry. Are we keeping you from something?
Do you have a hot date? By all means, let's not keep you any
longer." Daphne whined from behind me, still confined in the small
bag. "Just hold it!" I demanded, instantly feeling bad for snapping
at her.

She answered me with a string of barks, and
it struck me as odd. It wasn't like her to bark like that anymore;
in fact the only time's she'd made such a racket lately was when
there were zombies nearby.

"Oh, shit!" I blurted, and spun around,
bringing the crowbar up. There was nothing there but our bags. The
dark mesh made it impossible to see the dog from this far away, but
the bag was moving with her efforts to escape. Ready to scold her,
I walked toward the bag, making it only a few feet before a mottled
hand jutted out from behind the wall and snatched the dog carrier
off the landing. I ran, knowing the others were on my heels, and
rounded on the opening to the staircase. A zombie was ravaging the
bag with its teeth and bony fingers trying to get past the material
and to the prize inside. Daphne yelped as the uncoordinated hands
pushed and pulled the flimsy bag in on her fragile body.

I screamed in sheer terror and reached out
for her, not thinking. Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me
away right before the zombie chomped down on the air where my hand
had been.

"Christ!" A male voice boomed in my ear. I
was crazed, and definitely not thinking clearly enough to identify
the speaker. The zombie went back to the bag with renewed effort
and I heard the tear of fabric. Someone was still screaming—I think
it might have been me—when I wiggled free of the hands holding me
in place and lunged. I had enough foresight to extend my crowbar
before catapulting at the zombie, and I'm pretty sure it was dead
before my tumbling descent to the first floor began.

The shouts of my group were fading the
farther I fell. I couldn't understand a single word uttered during
the entire ordeal, but I definitely remember hitting every stair on
the way down. Eighteen steps; each leaving their own mark on my
bruised body. Nineteen if you count that final smack on the marble
floor at the bottom. The zombie and dog bag took the trip with me,
no doubt enduring the same bludgeoning. I made out vague images as
I lie on the cold floor in pain. Feet running past me, zombies
falling, the dog bag next to me, someone shaking me, someone
crying, blackness.

* * *

It felt like someone was turning the volume
up like a radio dial. At first I heard nothing, but voices soon
came into focus. My head throbbed. No, that's not right. I was
experiencing the worst pain of my life, and that's saying something
considering my lifetime of clumsiness. I likened the ache in my
head to one of those monkeys that clang symbols together over and
over until someone goes insane. There was no way I was opening my
eyes while the evil monkey clattered maniacally.

"She could have brain damage," I heard Meg
say.

"I'm more worried about broken bones,"
countered Jake. "I didn't see anything obvious, but I don't want to
move her in case she's damaged her spine."

Point for Jake, I thought, proud that he'd
had the presence of mind to remember that very important piece of
information. While they droned on, I tuned them out, trying to take
stock of my physical self. I went down a list of my most important
anatomy to see if I had any extreme pain, or worse, an absence of
feeling altogether. Satisfied that I'd broken nothing obvious, I
began to methodically move little bits at a time. A hand squeeze
here. A foot twitch there. I didn't appear to have anything more
than the aches and pains of any idiot who had just taken a nosedive
down the stairs.

That damn monkey continued to play, and I
came to terms with the fact that I was going to have to open my
eyes sooner rather than later. The only thing I knew for sure was
that this was not a Band-Aid moment; I was taking this nice and
slow. My eyelids were heavy and it was a battle of wills, mine and
the eyelids, to open. I managed to open the left eye just a smidge,
and closed it as soon as the intruding sun stabbed my exposed orb
with a thousand tiny shards of light.

I heard moaning, followed by the pressure of
someone at my side. Jake's voice boomed like a loudspeaker next to
my ear. "Emma, its Jake. I'm here, baby. Open your eyes."

Moaning again, louder this time. Why wasn't
anyone killing the zombie making that wretched sound? More moaning,
a long drawn out howl followed by a string of fuck. Hold up! I was
the moaner. Giving it another shot, I opened one eye, fighting
against the stabbing light, and followed it up with another. The
sun was blinding at first, then the pain began to fade and I could
make out Jake's form hovering over me.

"Hey," Jake said, smiling down at me.
"Welcome back. How do you feel?"

I groaned up at him, "Did you get the license
plate of the rhino that hit me?"

He gave a weak laugh, trying to figure out if
I was joking with him or suffering a traumatic brain injury. "Can
you move? Does anything feel broken?"

"Ugh, everything feels broken, but I think
I'll live." I smiled back. The smile fell from my face when I
remembered the dog carrier, and I turned my head in both directions
searching for Daphne, causing the room to distort.

"Relax," urged Jake. "She's alive."

Two of the most beautiful words ever spoken,
and I cried upon hearing them. I heard the whine of my dog and
managed to wipe the tears out of my eyes. She was favoring one of
her hind legs and hobbled over to me using the other three. Rolling
onto my side to greet her, she got close to my face and sniffed me.
She must have decided I was going to make it, because she got as
close as she could manage and curled her body under my neck.

"Hi, baby," I cooed into her fur. "We're
okay."

I waited until the room stopped moving like a
fun-house mirror before trying to sit, and then had to wait again
before standing. I leaned heavily on Jake for support and made it
as far as the kitchen before throwing up. Meg held my hair out of
my face while Jake kept me upright by wrapping his arms around my
waist and interlocking his fingers.

When I was done, I leaned over the counter
and rested my face on the cold granite. Striker bent over me,
inspecting my face.

"You probably have a concussion," he
diagnosed.

"You think?" I retorted, groaning from the
pain my own voice caused.

He shook his head at me, looking annoyed. "Do
you always have to answer questions like an asshole?"

"Yes," I replied. "Yes I do."

To Striker's credit, he let me recuperate
longer than expected. Meg insisted on taking Daphne, and it was a
testament to how lousy I felt that I didn't put up a fight. Not to
mention, a whole thirty minutes to shake off my head injury before
attempting to get back on the bike. I was able to walk on my own,
which was a good sign, but when I swung my leg over the bike the
world went topsy-turvy.

"Nope, not gonna happen," I declared. You're
only as slow as your weakest link, and I was currently holding that
title. It wasn't so bad, actually. The day was cool, but not cold,
and the sun felt like a warm massage on my shoulders. It was a
miracle that my sunglasses hadn't broken in my fall, and I may have
cried a little when I opened my bag to find them still intact.

"Whoa," marveled Meg. We came to the end of
the residential area and crossed through a small courtyard
overgrown with wildflowers. I shared Meg's sentiment, the small
patch of foliage was breathtaking, and completely out of place. A
light gust of wind carried with it the scent of fresh flowers, and
I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply.

The unmistakable grousing of an undead close
by interrupted our brief moment of serenity, and I reopened my eyes
to find two of them approaching from the side. I cocked my head and
tried to make sense of the couple and pulled my sunglasses up on
top of my head.

"Huh," I questioned. "How is it these two are
still together?"

"It's kind of gross and adorable at the same
time," agreed Meg.

The zombies, a man and woman I guessed to be
in their fifties, were dressed in matching clothes. I don't mean
just wearing the same colors, I mean identically dressed. They each
wore a pair of khaki shorts and light green polo shirts complete
with the little alligator emblem on the chest. The shorts had to
have been commercially starched because the crisp creasing down the
front of them was perfectly intact. Both zombies still wore visors
that matched the color of their shorts. The only difference being
that the female zombie's visor hung around her neck and the male's
had managed to turn sideways, reminding me of a rapper for some
reason.

"Golfers," said Striker, as if that one word
explained everything.

"Do you think they maintain any memories?"
asked Jake. "I mean, like, are they still together because they
want to be?"

"Doubtful," Striker replied, striding forward
to greet our suburban friends. "More likely, we've been the only
source of entertainment here in quite some time, and they've just
been standing around waiting for something to stimulate them."

With two quick slices, the undead couple
fell. Compared to those stuck in cars or the bottom of the ocean,
they lucked out in spades with a pretty sweet final resting place.
As time passed, the wildflowers would continue to grow and cover
their bodies.

We remained there for a bit. To the casual
onlooker, it would probably appear as if we were paying our
respects to the dead couple. But really, we were mourning Vinny and
the Daltons. Each of us retreated into our own minds and came to
terms with our loss. Between last night and this morning, there
just hadn't been time, and it snuck up on us. Even Striker seemed
deep inside his own thoughts.

* * *

"We need to cut through that brush and get
over the stone wall," Striker informed us.

"Where will that put us?" Jake asked him.

"On University Parkway."

I felt my blood pressure spike at the memory
of our last visit to University Parkway. We'd killed the Nissan and
ran for the Laundromat, where we spent a very uncomfortable day
stuffed into dryers while the undead stared in at me like I was the
main attraction at the aquarium. I was not looking forward to going
back there.

Jake mirrored my sentiment, except unlike my
inner dialog, he chose to express his disdain vocally. "Fuck me,"
he said pointedly.

Ignoring our grimaces, Striker continued, "We
go left and cross 41and dead end into the estates at Bay Shore
Road." He was in military mode. I didn't need to ask if he'd been
military; it was something I knew from the first moment I'd laid
eyes on him. All he needed now was a stick and some rocks and I
guarantee he would be laying out a map on the ground.

"Hold up, what estates?" I asked.

"The Ringling Estates," he replied, like that
answered my question. I rolled my eyes and huffed loudly to show my
annoyance.

"Does not compute. More data required," I
said, using my best mechanical voice and jerking my arms in front
of me like a robot.