Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (21 page)

Emma struggles with the thought of having to shoot
the woman and lets the barrel of the gun linger downward until it points at the
floorboards. As quickly as she retrieved the weapon, she lets it fall with an
empty thud and runs off towards the trap door. She crouches down and holds
tightly to the frame of the door, letting her legs dangle freely over the side.

Emma drops down to the second floor where her
grandfather’s body cushions her fall. She rolls to the side, refusing to look
at the body. Quietly, she hurries to the stairs and checks the windows for the
dead before moving off to the kitchen. Her .22 is still leaning against the
door frame where she left it. Grabbing the small rifle, she returns to the
living room and grabs her pack: a military satchel her grandfather had given
her with a parachute and wings embroidered on the front flap. She tosses the
sling of the weapon over her shoulder and begins to fill the satchel a couple
boxes of ammo that her grandfather kept on the bookshelf.

When she was old enough, her
grandfather taught her how to shoot. He fastened a potato to the end of the
rifle to mute its report and showed her how to aim.

“Now it’s not going to be exact, so
you’ll have to allow for the potato,” he said with a smile. “But you’ll get the
idea before long. Just aim a few inches higher than normal.”

Emma spotted a body about a half a
block away and aimed the rifle just above its head.

“When you’re ready to fire, take a deep
breath and pull the trigger on the exhale,” he instructed.

The weapon hardly jumped at all when
Emma fired, but the round hit home, dropping the corpse in a single shot. She
looked up at her grandfather’s smiling face.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

From a shelf above the fireplace, Emma picks up a
small book and looks at its title: Wilderness training guide. She places it
into a compartment in her pack next to the field guide that she has always kept
there and proceeds to the kitchen to gather some food. She takes her bear from
the counter and stuffs him in with her things.

She keeps quiet as she shuffles through the
cupboards and places cans into her bag. She can still hear the dead moving
around the house as the wander away and knock against the walkway. She can
still smell the sour from their bodies.

“If you’re ever out in the wild, the
best way to figure out if something is poisonous is to rub a little on your
lip. If it stings or leaves a rash, don’t eat it,” Jacob warned.

“But why do I need to know that,
grandpa? You’ll be there to help me.”

“Sweetie, I’m not always going to be
there. These are the things you’re going to have to learn if there ever comes a
time when we’re apart.”

“I don’t understand. You said you will
always be with me,” the child inquired.

“Emma, I’m getting old. There will come
a day when you will have to go out on your own. The sooner I prepare you, the
better off you’ll be.”

“But, Grandpa, I don’t want you to
leave me.”

“There
won’t be any choice. Now you need to remember the things I’m telling you, so
pay careful attention.”

She
stuffs a couple sealed packages of dried food in her pack that her grandfather
saved for an emergency if they ever had to flee. As a corpse wanders past the
kitchen window, it sniffs the air and shambles off out of view. Emma stays
still until the creature is gone before stuffing in a few more items.

A hissing moan issues from upstairs and Emma’s eyes
go wide. She knows that she has to go before the thing that was once April
figures out that it isn’t alone in the house. Throwing her scarf around her
face, she grabs her jacket and leaves through one of the windows on the side of
the house and out through the walkway.

She stays quiet as she passes the dead, keeping low
and still if they begin to sniff the air.

Something catches in her throat when she imagines
her grandfather. She looks back to the house as she sneaks through a small
alcove alongside the gate that only someone her size could fit through. She
hesitates for only a moment; just a second to capture the fleeting memories.

Emma looks skyward, catching a glimpse of April
through the attic window. The woman’s face is pale, almost ghostly as her cheek
makes contact with the glass. Her eyes are vacant and void, nursing an emotion
reminiscent of hunger and desperation as she stares downward at the little girl.
Her face smears along the glass and her mouth opens wide as if at the cusp of
an unanswered question. Her eyes are pleading as she silently asks Emma to come
back with an expression of want.

The girl adjusts the bag on her shoulder as she
heads out along the boardwalk, keeping a watchful eye on the dead that wander
in the distance. Her heart stammers with loss, echoing with her weary
footfalls. She can smell the dead burning in the distance and guides her
footsteps in the other direction.

She removes the potato from the end of the barrel
of her rifle and tosses it aside with a frown. There’s no need to remain silent
anymore, no need to be as careful as she had once been when her grandfather was
with her. She knows that she can outrun the dead; she’s faster than they are,
more cunning, and she has so much more to lose.

“If anything should ever happen to me,”
Jacob said, “head east. Get into the wilderness, and trust no one.”

“But, Grandpa, you’ll always be with
me,” she replied, dismissively.

“I’m afraid that there will come a time
when I won’t be able to keep on fighting.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’ll be
there for you, Grandpa, and I’ll never let you go.”

Jacob smiled at the child and patted
her on the head, “Just remember what I said, head east into the wilderness and
trust no one.”

“You’re being silly, Grandpa. You’re
invincible.” She slowly pronounced the last word.

Jacob let out a deep laugh. “All the
same,” he smiled, “you’ll still need to remember.”

The shiny compass gleams in the midday light,
refracting the brilliance of the sun against its stained, brass surface. The
needle points northward and Emma stares off to the northeast, imagining plush
forests, running streams, and scampering wildlife.

She tightens the laces on her
shoes and walks off alone, repeating her grandfather’s words, “
Head east
into the wilderness and trust no one
.”

·15

The
light is blinding as Johnny trudges out onto shore. He squints and tries to make
sense of the scenery. Up the bank, he pulls himself along, tired and weary from
fighting the dead. Another few feet and he collapses into the sand, letting the
fine granules cradle his bruised and battered body.

Overhead,
he can see birds swooping down through the sky, sailing off toward the
shoreline, banking hard as they vanish beneath the dunes. He drags himself a
few more feet and peers out toward the beach. Charred bodies litter the shore,
stiff bent limbs claw out to the sky, burnt in petrifaction.

He
forces himself to stand. His feet sink into the sand and he holds still to
regain his equilibrium. The world spins for a few turns while he waits out the
nausea that threatens to erupt from within.

Amongst
the charred remains, the living dead wander aimlessly, howling as if mourning
the fallen. Black, putrid things wander from the ocean like tar covered
reminders of oil spills from long ago.

Johnny
breathes slowly and stumbles toward the neighborhood beyond the sand. If anyone
were to see him, they might think him to be just another body, wandering in
search of something to quench its thirst. He stumbles, corrects himself and
pauses as he waits for the lightheadedness to subside.

Along a
narrow set of stairs, he notices a few drops of blood and follows them to the
sidewalk above. He can see marks along the concrete where it looks as if
something had been dragged. To his right, he spots a single shoe. He leans down
and his eyes go wide when he realizes it is April’s. With new found strength,
he follows the tracks; the tiny droplets of blood and tire marks that were left
in the mud from the previous storm.

He
silently prays that she’s alright, that he can see her smiling face again. No
matter the severity of the argument, or what tragedy had befallen them, Johnny
would always love her. She was one of the very few things in life worth living
for. And now, as the world crumbled around him, he was reminded of that very
fact.

When the
dead came from the tunnels like a swarm of locust, he managed to escape through
a set of grates and out through a side tunnel, but not until after they had
nearly torn him apart. All he could think about was whether April was all
right. In the face of terror, he had realized what she meant to him. He found
that she was the only thing keeping him alive, the only pinpoint of light in an
otherwise blackened landscape.

His
pulse races as he forces himself forward. The dead are gathering behind him,
following as closely as their stiff and withered legs will allow. As he calls
out her name, the dead moan in return as if answering his tormented pleas.

There
are more of them ahead, clustering in groups around a house, overlooking the
beach.

He
screams her name again, but the answer he receives is the surf and the echoing
call of corpses.

Johnny
hears a tapping, light, almost inaudible at first, but it grows louder as he
turns himself around in a panic, looking for the source of the sound. The
tapping turns to wet scrapes and he looks upward to the attic window of the
house.

“April?”
he mouths the words in faint disbelief. “No, April. No.”

His face
wears a scowl of solemn shock before the tears come. The feelings knot up in
his stomach and force him to lurch forward. As the sadness sways, wrenching at
his guts, he can hear the dead approach. The dragging feet, the wet slap of
dislodged meat slapping against decay. He welcomes their hunger to take him
away, to tear the scraps of pain from his writhing soul.

There is
no life here, only death and pain and the inevitable end.

He prays
for quickness in their gnashing teeth, for the speed of their devouring mouths
to reprieve him of the hurt. On his knees, he can see her now, her eyes tearing
through him, wandering about in his deepest suffering. She laps at the glass,
clenching her jaw and snapping at the obstruction. For a moment, he can hear
her clearly. He can hear the sympathy of her voice, and the reasoning in her
words. She’s telling him to run.

His head
rises and he can see the dead shuffling towards him. He looks up at the window
and April is gone. He rises to his feet and staggers for a few seconds,
watching the sunlight play at the moist wounds on the corpses bodies. Turning,
he scurries away, favoring the pain in his legs and aching that drifts over the
rest of his body. Holding back the urge to cry out, Johnny stumbles, drags his
leg and moves down the boardwalk.

That is
what life had always been about; the need to struggle on, the continuation of
life, to live through the worst that the world has to offer and remain standing
at the end. It made him sick to think of how many had died when they no longer
saw fit to keep on fighting. This is what April would have wanted, she would
have told him so herself if she were able. She would have told him to never
quit. She would have told him that his life was worth so much more, no matter
whether she was with him or not. But he can’t manage to see how he can keep
going on, along and beaten.

As the
dead amble behind, he thinks of getting away, of living for another day, of
what it would be like to be alone. The ache in his body grows as he looks back
one final time, hoping to see April again, but his eyes waver and settle on the
mass of bodies that follow. He feels like them now, beaten, bruised, haggard,
biding his time until the rot finally takes away the man that remains.

Even
stumbling, he is faster than they will ever be. He pulls himself along on weak
limbs that only work through adrenalin and fear, cramping in tight spasms that
nearly make him fall to the ground and give in to the mouths that follow.

He sees
her face as he stumbles along and smiles at the memory. The fair skin, the blue
eyes, the careless features of her face transcending through the worry and
regret - climb slowly into his heart where she will stay forever more.

As he
walks, he looks over his body, at the rising welts and the bruises that are
already beginning to form. He looks for blood, for bites, for any exposed wound
that would indicate that he’s been infected. Through the tears in his clothes,
all he can see is welted skin.

Along
the beachfront, he scours his surroundings, looking for a way to lose the dead.
He can’t give them the satisfaction of his flesh. He turns down a narrow skiff
of street and looks towards a cul-de-sac. There, at the very end of the road is
a block wall. Jutting up from the ground, an electrical box calls out as a step
to the other side. He stumbles along, weary and hurt. His eyelids are heavy as
they trace over his eyes like sandpaper against glass.