Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (20 page)

“What
do we do?” April’s voice is dry like she is about to cough out her next breath.

“But,
Grandpa, I
did
lock the gate, I promise,
I did
,” the child urges.

With a crash, shards of glass rain in through the
kitchen window and scatter along the floor like tiny, worthless diamonds. A
pale hand reaches in through the barred windows, grasping air in a vain effort
to get at the living inside. Emma shrieks as her grandfather turns, drawn to
the noise.

“Upstairs!” Jacob yells as another crash splinters
a window in the living room. He grabs his pistol from the side table along the
couch and stuffs it in the holster beneath his jacket.

A series of crashes issue throughout the house as
Jacob leads the way to the second story of the house. From a string hanging in
the center of the upstairs hallway, he pulls down the trap door to the attic.

April
looks at him questioningly. “But we’ll be trapped,” she says, glancing down the
stairs and back up toward the attic hatch.

“Trust
me,” he says, guiding her by the small of her back up the rickety stairs.

Emma
peers down from above, waiving her hand erratically. “Hurry!” she exclaims in a
whisper.

With
a resounding thud, the trap door is brought up and latched with a small clasp.

“If
we stay quiet, they will eventually go away,” Jacob reveals.

“But there were so many of them.” April moves to a
lawn chair positioned at the edge of the hatch.

“We’ll be fine; we just have to wait them out. Just
stay quiet and they’ll go away,” Jacob says, taking a seat on a plank of wood
nailed to the support beams. “They’ve done this before.”

April’s
attention is diverted to Jacob. “They’ve done this before?” she questions.

“When
I first brought Emma here...” he says, “when this all began. The dead
eventually give up if they can’t sense the living. Sometimes it takes hours.
Sometimes it takes days,” he replies.

“Days?!”
she exclaims. “We could starve.”

Jacob
points to the far side of the attic at a stack of boxes. “We’re well supplied.”

April
begins to relax when she sees the crates of canned food and bottled water. “But
won’t they be able to get into the house?”

“Not
unless they carry hacksaws,” he says with a smile.

The dead scrape and pound at the walls and window
jams downstairs, moaning out a violent hymn, gathering numbers. Emma cowers in
the corner of the attic, using the crate of canned food as a back rest. Every
sound makes her jump; every groan sends a shock through her tiny frame. She
remembers when her mother was taken, feels every image as if it were happening
all over again.

She was young, and unable to understand
the horror that was playing out when the dead began to rise. Her mother was
crying, tears streaming down her soft, white face as she listened to the voice
on the other end of the phone. “Daddy won’t be coming home,” she had said. Emma
didn’t understand the consequences of her mother’s words, and never asked why.
She assumed that he was going on another business trip.

Emma and her mother stayed locked away
in their house for eight days before the lack of food prompted them to leave.
The weather was becoming bitter as winter approached and Emma’s mother had
bundled her up in some blankets from the closet. She looked like a vagabond
with so many layers constructed about her tiny frame.

“Mommy, where are we going to go?” Emma
asked.

“We’re going to visit grandpa,” she
spoke hastily. “Now I need you to be very quiet. There are bad people outside
and if they hear us, they will try to hurt us.”

“Why would they do that?” the child
questioned.

“Because that’s what bad people do,”
she replied.

The front door had creaked ever so
slightly as Emma’s mother opened it into the house. A cool blast of air rushed
in, making Emma shiver beneath the blankets. Something hissed and let out a cry
like Emma had never heard before. She remembers being pushed through the house
as her mother whimpered. The sound of her breath made Emma want to cry.

Her mother screamed in pain as Emma was
tossed about the house, the slit in the front of the blankets only allowing a
blur of vision through. She was spun around and knocked to the floor. Dozens of
feet appeared, trampling, rotten. All at once, the blankets began to come off.
Wretched faces appeared. Growling, sneering mouths stained in blood.

Emma escaped through a forest of arms
and gnarled hands and ran when she felt her feet make contact with the floor.
From behind her, she heard her mother gargle and gasp between a series of wet
slaps and tearing sounds.

Through the backyard and out into the
alleyway behind the house, Emma fled. Her little heart raced through the
confusion and panic. Ahead, hungry faces peered through a faint mist in the
alley. She stopped cold.

Crack! The sound shook the child and
she turned away to flee down the other side of the alley.

“Emma!” a voice exclaimed.

She waited for a moment, unsure of the
voice.

“Emma!” again, the voice proclaimed,
excited and frightened.

Emma looked through the backyard,
beyond the bushes and towards the door from which she fled. Her grandfather was
standing there, a pistol held upwards at his side. He ran to her, gnashing
faces at the door behind him, reaching, clawing as he moved away.

Along the other end of the alley, the dead
began to come towards the child, struggling with their movements. Limbs
dragging, voices bellowing through the air. Jacob scooped the child up into his
arms and ran. Emma remembers being jostled around as her grandfather fled.

“Hold on tight,” he instructed.

Wind licked at her hair and numbed her
face. There was pain in her grandfather’s voice as he struggled with her
weight. He tripped, but held firmly to Emma. In an instant, he was back on his
feet, running once more, but with a limp in his step.

Eventually, Jacob was able to slow his
pace. His breath was labored and erratic like the wheezing of a slowly
deflating balloon. Emma held tight to his shoulders, nestling her face into his
neck. She only looked up long enough to watch as they passed a burning car.
Skeletal hands clasped at the window frame as if the bones were trying to
escape the heat. She let out the faintest cry and returned her face to the pit
of Jacob’s neck.

“It’s all right,” he tried to calm her,
“Don’t look at it.”

She whimpered and covered her face with
his shoulder.

“Are you okay,” April asks as she kneels down to
the child.

“They’re so loud,” she replies.

“It’ll be all right. We’re safe up here, they can’t
find us,” April says, trying to comfort her.

“I know,” she meets April’s eyes, “but do they have
to be noisy?”

A snicker escapes through April’s nose. “I think
that’s a part of being the way they are.”

From beside the hatch, Jacob wheezes as he pains
through his breath. His skin has turned an awful shade of white. He closes his
eyes and concentrates on every breath. Numbness begins to settle into his arm,
coursing up in gentle waves before an intense pain surges in his chest. The
attic spins around him like a top; images whirl like a dust devil above his
head.

With a thwack, Jacobs head hits the floor.

“Jacob!” April yells.

“Grandpa?” Emma says, staring at her grandfather.

Jacob’s body lays still as April checks for a
pulse, “Jacob!” she exclaims and beats on his chest. Each beat to his sternum
resounds with a dull thud. Pinching his nose, April leans in and tries to
resuscitate him, blowing air into his lungs before beating on his chest again.
“Come on, Jacob. Don’t do this!”

In shock, Emma hugs her legs into herself. She
can’t bring herself to move. Rocking slightly, back and forth, she sobs nervously
as April continues to pound at her grandfather’s chest.

“Damn it! Breathe!” April commands. She counts down
in her head for every pump of his chest and blows air into his idle lungs. Sweat
dampens her shirt as she continues to assault Jacob’s chest. “Please, don’t do
this,” she begs.

Exhausted, she leans back.

“Grandpa?!” Emma wails and runs toward the body.

April grabs the girl and pulls her into herself
before she can get at the body. Emma struggles, sobbing. The child shakes, restrained
by a single arm and collapses into a ball. Carefully, April brushes the child’s
hair out of her face. “That’s it, let it all out,” she whispers.

The sound of crunching hits April’s ears before she
actually feels the pain. A rush of agony ascends her arm as Jacob’s teeth rip
away a thin string of flesh. The blood doesn’t come, only anguish. She looks
down at the wound in shock as the child flees from her arms, retreating to the
back of the attic. Grabbing the pistol from the side of Jacob’s animated
corpse, April falls backward and pushes herself away, scooting on her backside
across the attic floor.

Terror graces her face as she watches Jacob begin
to rise. His movements are uncoordinated and slow, making his limbs recoil as
if he were in pain. Twisting fingers uncurl; extend outward from his hand,
grasping. Sickening air rises from his throat like the last breath of a
struggling soul awaiting the torment of fire.

April takes aim with the pistol as Jacob wavers on
his knees, trying to stand. He begins to steady his awkward body upon
stiffening knees and wavers in place, staring. The color has already left his
face as April applies pressure to the trigger, steadying her aim.

Snap! The firing pin hits nothing.

She cocks the weapon and loads a round into the
chamber as Jacob leans in and swipes at her. Aiming once again, she centers the
sights and exhales.

With a crack, the weapon fires, sending a round
into Jacob’s chest, and knocks him flat to the floor. The corpse struggles to
stand and turns over to push itself up on all fours. She levels the weapon
again as Emma screams from behind.

The report is deafening in the small space as the
round explodes through Jacob’s ghoulish eye. Shards of skull spray from behind his
head, showering the support beams in gore. His body falls backward and crashes
through the hatch. With a loud thud, he hits the floor below, sending the
sounds of splintering wood back up into the attic.

“No!” Emma screams and runs toward the trap door.

April lets the child look over,
lets her cry out and scream for her grandfather.

The pain in her arm begins to
rise as the blood trickles from the wound.
It’s only a matter of time
,
she thinks with a sigh.

Emma
watches as the woman’s face turns pale, washing out as she writhes on the floor
in pain. Her breath is heavy as her chest rises and falls under her sweat
stained shirt.

It has
been a few hours since the dead began bombarding the house, and they are
beginning to quiet down. Between rasping breath, the attic is silent as the
child sits by April’s side.

“I need
you to do something for me,” April says; her voice soft and hallow.

Emma
peers down at her. “What?” she asks in low, mousy tone.

She scoots the pistol across the floor with a dry
scrape. “Don’t let me turn into one of those things,” she coughs out. “When the
time comes, I want you to take care of me.”

The child scoots back away from her, shaken by the
thought.

“I know you’re young, but you know what it means if
I change. You know what needs to be done.”

Emma shakes her head no. “I can’t.”

“I’ve seen you do it. I’ve seen you kill those
things,” her lungs rattle. “Please, do it for me, Emma.”

Tears stream down the girls eyes. “But that’s
different. I never knew them.”

“You barely know me either,” April confesses. “Promise
you’ll do it when the time comes.”

“I’ll try.” The child looks away.

“Please, just take the gun,” she says.

Emma pulls the weapon closer and glares at it
between her legs. When she looks closer, she can see her grandfather’s
fingerprints curve along the handle like small memories.

From the attic window, Emma watches the dead slowly
filter away along the back of the house. A few stragglers remain, trampling the
garden, and peering in through the broken out window of the kitchen. She counts
each body as they pass out of sight around the corner, a lesson her grandfather
had taught her. He told her to watch the dead, to look for patterns in their
actions, to stay one step ahead of them.

She looks back at April as she sleeps; her chest
rises and falls erratically as if she were at the edge of coughing. A thin film
of sweat covers her face and dampens her hair, pressing it against her brow.
She takes the pistol from the floor and aims it at the woman’s sickly frame. The
weapon is heavy, causing the barrel to sag towards the floor before she clasps
it with both hands.