Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (5 page)

At
ground level, he peers around the corner of a storage container and out towards
the ambulances that are parked along the unloading area. On the other side of
the fence that surrounds the rear of the hospital, only a few straggling bodies
wander past.

He turns
the child toward him as he crouches down to her level. “Okay,” he whispers, “we
have to stay
really
quiet so those people over there don't see us.”

Her
whisper is hoarse, “I can be quiet.”

Bill
smiles at her, “Good girl. Now stay right behind me.”

Oblivious,
the dead shamble past the partially open gate as Bill crouches down low, making
his way around the containers. He keeps his arm extended behind himself to make
sure the child doesn't bump into him and moves to the side of the nearest
ambulance. At the door, he slowly pulls the handle, opening the door a crack.

With a
glance, he notices the keys in the ignition. “Move to the back so I can get in
behind you,” he whispers while guiding the child into the vehicle.

As soon
as he clicks over the ignition, he throws the vehicle into drive and hits the
throttle. The ambulance roars to life, sending a trail of skid marks along the
asphalt as it gains traction and crashes through the gate.

 “Hold
on!” He exclaims as he wrenches the steering wheel to the right, accelerating
onto the street that leads out to the main avenue in front of the hospital.

The
child tumbles in the back like a doll, hitting the left portion of the
ambulance as Bill maneuvers past a mass of cadavers that pepper the road in
front of the vehicle. A body glances off the side of the front quarter panel,
sending a spray of gore up against the driver’s side window. Gore smears its
way along the glass as the ambulance accelerates, creating jagged trails like
translucent pop art.

Bodies
are being sucked up under the ambulance, causing it to jerk as the dead become
mulched under the tires. He tries his best to swerve between the corpses, but
with the sheer number of bodies, that task is all but impossible. The steering
wheel jerks out of his hand as a cadaver gets lodged under the passenger side
wheel well, sending the ambulance out of control over the curb line. As the
rear tire makes contact with the concrete, it buckles and blows, causing sparks
to rain out from under the vehicle. With the weight of the ambulance suddenly
shifting, the vehicle leans and begins to topple.

Outside,
the world blurs and twists as the ambulance rolls uncontrollably. Cargo
dislodges from the shelves, tossed around like clothes in a dryer. Smacking
hard against the roof of the vehicle, the child becomes buried by medical
equipment, only an arm remains visible from the mass of debris that covers her
prone body as the ambulance shakes violently.

Slamming
hard against the windshield, Bill is knocked unconscious as the glass
spider-webs from the force of the impact. Droplets of blood form at a gash on
his forehead, trickling downward across his scalp and onto the roof of the
ambulance.

A
growing mass of bodies hover around the wreck and encroach upon the still
idling ambulance. They begin to crouch down through broken glass once the
vehicle has settled. Deep, resounding moans drown out the sound of the engine
as it knocks and finally stalls out.

Bill
awakens to the smell of gasoline leaking into the cargo compartment. He glances
around through blurry eyes at the mayhem that surrounds him. All that he can
see through the spider web of broken glass are dozens of unsteady legs, drawing
nearer.

He can
feel something touch his arm. A small hand pokes up through the debris of
medical equipment and grazes him. The child’s face shows fear as she looks at
him questioningly.

“Are you
hurt?” he asks the girl.

“I don’t
think so,” she replies.

“We’ve
got to get out of here.” He motions toward the passenger side window at a small
space between the vehicle and the outer wall of the hospital. “Do you think you
can squeeze through?”

“I’ll
try,” the girl says as she dislodges herself from the mound of medical gear
stacked on top of her.

“You’ve
got to get the rest of the way out and run away as fast as you can. Don’t stop
for anything,” he instructs her.

“But
what about you?” she asks.

Bill
looks down at his leg, wedged between the ground and the collapsed roof of the
vehicle, “I’m not going anywhere.” The dead reach through the driver’s window
and clasp at Bill’s shirt with bloody hands. “Hurry, you have to get out!” his
voice is filled with panic.

The girl
whimpers, “I can’t leave you.”

“Go
now!” he screams as a morbid mouth twists in over through the broken out window
and rips a scrap of flesh from his neck.

He
thinks of his son and his wife. Their images play in his mind and keep the pain
away. He grits his teeth and prays for Billy to be all right, prays that
somehow his wife was able to get him to safety.

The
child cries out in horror and turns, scurrying off through the crevice between
the ambulance and the wall. She scrambles on hands and knees through the thick
grass, and emerges at the front of the vehicle before getting to her feet.

“Run!”
Bill screams again.

The girl
hears his yelping cries as she runs along the driveway and into the parking
lot. Panting, she keeps up
her
pace as she passes a crowd of the undead that have completely engulfed a
wrecked car wrapped around a light pole. She can see them pulling someone apart
inside; body parts, undistinguishable from one another are removed through a
broken out window as the dead fight over the scraps.

Her
stomach lurches and she turns away. The nauseous feeling begins to fade as she
runs toward a cropping of trees alongside a park across from the hospital. She
glances behind her to see the massacre underway.

Someone
shouts, “Little girl, wait!” But Sarah keeps running across the street, too
afraid to stop.

Shambling
corpses are everywhere, sifting through the remains of wreckage as the hospital
burns in the background. She can hear people screaming for help, pleading for
their lives as she hides in the underbrush at the edge of the park, quivering
and sobbing from fear. She watches as a car passes, veering through wreckage.
The car slows for a moment and the woman who is driving searches along the
street, scanning the bushes where Sarah is concealed.

As she
steadies herself, she remembers her sister; she remembers how to get to her
house from here. It is only a few blocks away, across the park and through the
housing tract. She gets to her feet and begins to run again. Her heart is
racing as her surgical gown whips behind her, creating tiny white flags at the ties
that hold it together.

She
narrows the gap, taking strides through panic. She is driven in fear, released
into the nightmare. The sounds of tearing flesh and the screams of the weak
fill her ears. She runs faster as the tears come, streaming along her face. Not
much further now.

·4

In a dark corner of the
basement, Billy curls up, keeping his back tight against the wall. The pounding
from upstairs gets louder as he cries out for help. He pulls the laundry table
closer just in case the man and his mother manage to get through the door at
the top of the stairs. Their hands scrape against the frame and the knob
rattles as they try to get through.

He fastened the beam over the
basement door and kept as quiet as he could.
Stumbling back, he held to the railing as he
watched it bulge and moan from stress. The memory of what he’d seen still rose
to the surface. The look on the man’s face… He saw him smash his mother to the
floor with a loud howl and…

He can’t let those memories back
in.
The stretching sneer, the blank, staring eyes… it was more than his
young mind could process. The strips of bloody meat looped across his face as
Billy’s mother screamed in pain and terror with a voice he had never heard
before.

If only his father had come home
from work, he might have been able to stop the man from coming in. He might
have been able to save them both. They could have gotten away.

But now they thrash against the
door together; this evil, bloody thing and his mother. They scrape and claw as
they howl out in ragged voices trying to pound their way through. He hopes the
door will hold. He won’t know what to do if it doesn’t.

Through the slit of a window
above, he can hear others. Their voices are as broken and scraping as the
people upstairs. They scream and run, throwing shadows through the window in
long, thin lines that curve on the basement floor and across to the far wall.
Like the tales from a diorama, the images tell stories of chasing, of catching,
and of feeding on those who are caught. Every scene is complete with sound,
with shouts of pain and pleas for help. Every image is a nightmare; every sound
is an assault.

The window is the only way out,
but he can’t bring himself to escape. With the screams and shouts and fearsome
moans that rip through the streets beyond, he can’t manage to get up the nerve
to move. He trembles as he pulls the table closer with a dry scrape, hoping
that it will block them if they should get through.

There is gunfire, rapid and
loud. He can see men in military uniforms pass by, shouting orders and taking
aim at the crazy people.
Crazy people
, that’s all that is out there now.
Everyone has gone crazy. Some of them shoot while others chase and kill and eat
those that they catch. Every new image is more terrifying than the last and
Billy curls up tightly as he tries to sob away pain.

He can’t get himself to move
even when he needs to relieve himself. He cries and waits for the warmth to
soak his pants and run along the floor to the drain that takes it away in the
center of the basement. He watches the yellow trickle from his pant leg into a
tiny stream and shudders as it flows away.

His mother and the man have gone
quiet. The door is silent and the clawing subsides. Outside has become calm
too. If he listens carefully, he can hear the birds calling from somewhere far
off. Their tiny voices assure him that it is safe. He whimpers softly as he
stands, careful not to move the table and make the sound again.

He climbs up onto the table and
watches his step as he peeks through the window on his tiptoes. Tufts of grass
block most of what he’s able to see, but beyond, through a dead patch, he can
make out the Robertson’s house. He can see the smoke rising and flames licking
at the windows. There are bodies in the streets, too many to count. Every one
of them is covered in blood and torn clothing. Tiny flecks of light litter the
street, gleaming gold in the sun. Peppered along the road, shell casings
refract in the sunlight like loose change thrown to the fallen; a simple
offering to the massacre that ensued.

Brittle flakes of paint crack as
he unfastens the latch and stares out past the lawn, letting his gaze rest on
the bodies that lay in the street. His neighbors are there, lying still on the
asphalt like children sleeping after play. He pushes the window outward as slowly
as he can, careful not to let the hinges squeak. There’s a noise upstairs, the
clatter of something being dropped to the floor. He pushes himself up and
squeezes through the opening and finally kicks free.

He lays on the grass for a
moment, afraid to move. The stale smell of aging, sun blistered meat hangs in
the air, garnished with sulfur and damp earth. He pushes himself up to his
knees and opens his eyes wide with shock. Kicking, he scoots along the lawn and
away from the body of an old woman wearing a stained nightgown. A single hole
dots her forehead between two smoke white eyes. She glares upward as if
searching for some elusive answer.

Firm against the house, Billy
gasps in small breathes. He clenches wads of grass in his hand and presses
firmly into the lawn with the heels of his shoes as he backs away to the side
of the house. His mouth is drawn open, but no sound emerges. No voice can
escape. In his terror, he recognizes the woman. She’s his neighbor, Mrs.
Ericson. She lives three doors down in the little pink house surrounded by rose
bushes. She’s still staring at the sky in questioning reserve as Billy whimpers
her name.

“Billy…” There’s a faraway
voice, rasping and cold.

The child looks around, but
can’t see anyone.

“Billy…” The voice is stronger
as if building the nerve to be heard. “Here, in the bushes.”

He turns his head slowly, afraid
of what he’ll find. After a moment, he gains courage and parts the branches to
the bush. A face appears, cut badly across the cheek. The gash extends around
the man’s mouth and down toward his neck. Through the cuts, Billy can tell who
it is, he can recognize the eyes, and he can almost mouth the man’s name.

Gary coughs small splatters of
blood and wheezes through the rasp. “You have to get out of here,” he says,
pushing the words out. “You have to run. You can’t stop until…” His eyes roll
to the back of his head and his eyelids flutter. “Get somewhere safe,” his
breath reveals.