Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (10 page)

“Oh no,” he exhales.

Through the wrought iron gate,
Johnny can see the details of the mass. Hundreds of bodies lace their arms
through the gate, clawing at the air as if they were trying to bridge the gap
between life and death. Blood stained faces peer through the bars, snarling
mouths agape press tightly in between the iron, snapping as they try to squeeze
their way through. Torn clothes hang loosely through the gate, flapping in a
gentle breeze like seaweed swaying in the current beneath the ocean.

A knot forms in Johnny’s throat
and he tries to swallow it down. His skin tingles with fear as he watches the
writhing mass heave and concave through the bars. His heart sinks as he returns
to April.

The look on her face nearly
drops him to his knees. He can see the hope shifting across her illuminated
eyes, radiated by the moonlight through the main door.

“We’re not getting out,” he
says.

“What?” she asks.

“We’re not getting out,” he
repeats. “They’ve surrounded us.”

“What do you mean?” she says in
a panic and rushes past him to the door.

Through the glass, April
witnesses the same thing that had sunk Johnny’s heart. A feeling of
hopelessness overwhelms her as tears streak her face. She returns to Johnny
with a helpless scowl stenciled across her mouth. She clenches her jaw, trying
not to let it out, trying to keep her emotions in check, but she shivers when
she sees the same look of desperation coming from Johnny. She reaches out and
he catches her, pulls her closer and lets her cry.

·8

Jacob watches the child as she
reads through her book. He’s settled in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a
forlorn look on his face. He’s not sure how to explain what has happened to the
girl, can’t quite make the words fit together in a way that she would
understand. It is hard enough for his adult mind to register, let alone that of
a child.

He can’t imagine what she’s
seen. He can’t even begin to imagine what she has been through. Looking at her
now as she pans through the pictures, page by page, he just can’t bring himself
to interrupt her moment of reprieve. She seems so peaceful when she’s awake, so
calm and understanding. But at night, when she awakens, whimpering from her
nightmares, Jacob knows exactly what shadows lurk inside her.

He pushes the mug away from
himself and stands, using his cane to guide the way. Through the kitchen
window, he looks out into the garden. The block wall that surrounds the property
is firm and resolute as it keeps the demons away. They stand so tall that he
can’t even see the withered hands that he knows are there, clawing, reaching ever
upward, trying to get inside.

Sometimes the dead moan and
grate their teeth when they hear something of interest on the other side. When
Jacob tends to the garden, they know he’s there. Every sound he makes sends
them into a fury. But, when he’s quiet and his granddaughter is in the house,
calm and distracted, the dead go away, lingering just beyond the walls, doing
whatever it is that the dead do when they’re not trying to kill. But with even
the slightest sound, they can linger for days, unfazed and resolute to drag
their fingers over the course brick outside until only worn stubs remain.

With the beach so close, he has
thought many times of running to the docks and finding a boat that he and his
granddaughter could escape on. Maybe they could make it out on the ocean,
living off of the sea until whatever it is that has made the dead return to
life finally goes away. He’s even thought of heading east, going into the
mountains and living in solitude, but he’s afraid that his tired legs wouldn’t
make it. He can’t afford to leave the child by herself if anything were to
happen to him.

With tired and cramping hands,
he pulls the snapshot from his pocket. He scribbles on the back of the picture
and tucks it into one of her books, hoping that one day, if he was no longer
around, she would find peace in what he wrote.

With the dead wandering, he
bides his time - only going out to find other survivors that may be able to
help and to bring supplies to the boat. He scavenges the beaches with Emma for
anything of use when the dead wander off. Even with his arthritis, he can
manage to evade them if he has to, and he knows the child can outrun them. But
he rarely takes the chance.

He shuffles into the living room
and stands over Emma, looking over her shoulder at the book she’s reading.

“What are you looking at?” he
asks.

“I’m looking at all the
different plants that you can eat if you’re stuck in the woods,” she replies.
“There sure are a lot of them, grandpa.”

“You’re right, there are,” he
replies. “Maybe, when all the bad people go away, I’ll take you up into the
mountains and we can go fishing. Would you like that?”

“Yep,” she says, placing the
book on her lap. “Can we catch a wild animal and tame it for a pet?” she asks
excitedly.

“I don’t know,” he says with a
smile. “We’ll see.”

“Grandpa?” she asks. “Why are
all those people so mad?”

He’s taken aback by her
question. “They’re not really
mad
,” he says. “They’re hungry and angry because
they can’t find the right thing to eat,” he says, trying his best to answer
her.

“Why don’t they just go to the
store or something?”

“Because,” he laughs, trying to
choose the right words, “they’re dead and they only eat people who are alive.
That’s why I always tell you to be really quiet when we go out onto the beach
when we look for other people like us.”

“Would they eat us?”

“Yes.”

“How long are we going to have
to stay hiding?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies.
“There’s no telling.”

“But when they go away we can go
fishing?”

“We sure can,” he says with a
smile.

As the child returns to her
book, Jacob wanders back into the kitchen and looks through the shelves of
food. He was young during the Great Depression, but his parents instilled in
him the necessity to store and conserve. He always had more than enough food on
hand for emergencies. And now, given the circumstances, he’s glad he does. He
counts through the supplies again and nods to himself in satisfaction. “We’ll
be fine,” he says, “just fine,” he confirms with a nod.

At night, once the child is asleep
and secure in her bedroom upstairs, Jacob watches through the window of his own
room. The darkness outside is all encompassing and only the moonlight is there
to guide his gaze. Bodies shuffle along the walkway and out onto the beach as
if somehow they remember that this is where they used to go when they were
alive. They hobble through the sand, leaving derelict ruts in their wake and
sound out with wet voices as they stagger.

The faces have become
indiscernible, one rotten visage looks like the next as the tale of time eats
them away. When it first began, Jacob could recognize his neighbors and
friends, he could point out those he had seen in passing when they still had a
soul. But now, as more of them gather, he can only make out subtle nuances of
who they might have been. A mechanics uniform, a suit, a ragged construction
worker in an orange vest and soiled boots - those are the only things
recognizable now. Gone are the blank stares, replaced by blackened skin and
rotten scraps of flesh fell by the fateful hands of death.

Time should have reduced them to
bones by now, and it makes him wonder how long it will take before they finally
fall, or if they ever will.

As he sits by the window, he
lifts his legs, working them with the sounds of the moaning dead. When the time
comes, he wants to be ready to leave and refuses to let one bad knee come
between him and seeing his granddaughter to safety. He knows it is only a
matter of time before they will have to run. When the food runs low and the
winter keeps the garden from growing, he wants to know that he has a way out.

He works his legs until the
muscles burn in retaliation and he can no longer stand the pain. He realizes
that he’ll need to make practice runs to the beach and down pass the pier to
the dock. He’ll have to find a boat that can take them away from this place and
maybe sail along the coast until they can find somewhere to survive. Even
though he has told the child to escape to the wilderness, he knows that he
couldn’t make the journey and that he would be safer on the water. But a child
is full of energy and is quicker than the dead. A child would stand a better
chance out there among them than an old, stumbling man. When the time comes, he
can only pray that the girl will be able to go on without him.

The morning brings all the signs
of normal life. The birds are chirping in the trees and dogs are barking from
some far off place, safe from the way things really are. Jacob rises and almost
believes the last few weeks were nothing more than a bad dream. He stretches
his legs, still sore from his exercises and shuffles to the window. His heart
drops as he sees the bodies wandering the beach. There are more of them than
there were the night before, and he rubs his eyes, removing the crust of sleep
that has gathered there to see more clearly.

He works his hands across the
beard on his face, smoothing it out, and walks out of the room and down the
stairs where Emma is playing quietly with her stuffed bear.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning, grandpa.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Really good,” she says. “The
earplugs worked.”

“I thought they would.” He
smiles and wanders into the kitchen to start breakfast. “Would you like to help
me this morning?”

“Sure,” she says in a cheery
voice and grabs her stuffed bear from beside the chair.

“You seem in bright spirits.” He
notices.

“I had a really good dream last
night, grandpa.”

“You did?” he asks. “What was it
about?”

“I was older and living in the
forest in a cottage like the ones in the story books,” she explains with
excitement in her voice. “There weren’t any more dead people either and I had a
garden and a white fence and I could smell the trees and the woods and
everything was like the painting.” She points to the picture framed on the wall
and the woodland scene depicted there.

“Well that
is
wonderful,”
he chuckles.

Her face saddens. “But I
couldn’t find you anywhere,” she pouts.

A sad smile crosses his lips.
“Maybe I was out fishing or something,” he says.

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” she
replies in a brighter tone. “I hope you were there,” she explains, “because we
had everything we could ever need. There was a well where we could get fresh
water and we had more food than we could ever eat in our whole lives.”

“That sounds perfect,” he says.
“Catch.” He throws her a potato and she catches it and places it on the
counter. “Cut that up and be careful of your fingers.”

Emma smiles and begins to peel
the potato.

“We’re going to have to go out
and do a run to the docks today,” he says.

She looks up from the counter
with a worried look. “Why do we have to, grandpa?”

“I need to know if my old legs
can take it,” he says. “We’ll have to do it every other day for a while until
I’m confident that we can get out of here if we need to.”

“But I don’t like them,” she
replies. “Sometimes they get too close when you have to use your cane. And I
don’t like they way they look at us.”

“And that’s exactly why we have
to try,” he explains. “We’ll bring the cart with us and drop off some supplies
in that boat we found last time.”

“It’s scary at the docks,” she
says.

“I know it is, Emma, but we
still have to get ready for when we have to go.”

“I don’t understand why we have
to leave.”

“We could manage better on the
water,” he says. “We wouldn’t have to worry about those things getting in while
we’re asleep.”

“But we have the wall, grandpa.”

“The wall won’t hold forever.”
He heats up a pan on the propane burner. “And if we’re on the ocean, I can
finally teach you to fish.” He smiles and places some oil in the pan.

Emma places the cubed potatoes
onto a plate and brings them over to the stove. A light, earthy smell wafts up
from the plate and makes her mouth water.

“Very good,” he says, looking at
the perfectly cubed vegetable. “You’re going to be a great cook one day.”

The girl smiles and sits at the
island in the middle of the kitchen.

“After we’ve eaten, I need you
to get the spare first aid kit from upstairs,” he says. “We’ll also have to
bring some clothes with us on this trip and some extra food.”

“Okay, grandpa,” she replies. “Should
I bring Benny with?” She fidgets with her bear on the counter next to her.

“No,” Jacob chuckles. “He’d be
better off here guarding the house while we’re gone. We’ll save taking him
until we go for good, I’m sure he’ll come in handy with as good of a shot as he
is.”