When The Light Goes Out (2 page)

It was unfortunate however, that the shirt gave him the opportunity to yank me off my feet.

I was dragged across the floor by him, to where, I didn't know. I tried to brace my feet against the carpet, but all it did was give me rug burn. I screamed. I swung the lamp as hard as I could over my shoulder. I felt it hit, something, I wasn't sure what but he let out a horrible groan, and let go of me. I took the moment to scramble forward as quickly as possible, before I rolled over, and threw the lamp. Blue ceramic shattered on contact with his face, cleaving chunks of flesh clear off of him. I felt this pang of guilt as he fell down backwards, but took the moment to shove my feet in a pair of sneakers, and run out the door. I did however, pause to rest my eyes on him.

Now, he looked like a zombie, for sure.

Bloody teeth seemed to have bitten through his top lip somewhere during the fall. Part of his cheek was hanging open, showing what I assumed to be bone. I felt horrible. That was my brother laying down in there, bleeding if one could call it that. I'd put him there. But I managed to look past this, slam the door shut and lock in when red, and brown eyes snapped open, and he started to get up snarling at me as he did so. I didn't wait to see if he could take down the front door, as easily as he'd taken down mine. Instead, I ran as quickly as I could down seven flights of stairs, towards the exit, to the bike rack, to get the bike.

You thought I meant motorcycle when I said bike?

No, I'm not quite that lucky. Indeed, I was lucky to have more then a tricycle, but I'd never been very good on the Full Suspension Mountain bike anyway. Really, it was my brothers, and he'd given up on teaching me to ride it after I broke my ankle, falling off of it some years before. I didn't mind, I hadn't wanted to learn anyway. I was okay with walking.

If only I'd known that my life just may depend on that damn bike.

I spent the next five minutes trying every damned key, to undo the pad lock, holding the bike in place at the rack. It had been held there with a chain, and as I got the lock off, I was struck with an idea. The wonderful idea to keep the chain, because it just may be useful. So I went about wrapping it around my hand as best I could, before throwing a leg over the bike, and toppling over.

Damn bad luck, with the chance of flesh eating creatures traveling about the city.

I got up, dusted off my arms, and picked up the bike. I placed it upright, before throwing my leg over it again, this time keeping the other foot on the floor as I settled down. A genius idea really. It kept me upright long enough to get one foot on the pedal, and begin movement. Part of me was proud when I started moving, still upright. I was trying to remember the tips that my brother had given me way back when. As a beginner I'd probably be better off not going over lumps and bumps. Maybe there was a better bike to ride in the city, but I didn't care, it was all I had.

Where to go?

I didn't know. There were too many question to ask. Too many questions to answer. I couldn't answer them, that was for sure. I didn't know anything. I'd always prided myself as a well learned person, but I felt like an idiot. A child. I felt extremely useless as I swerved around a woman, walking toward me from the side.

Murphy's law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.

Given that, the swerving of the bike didn't work in my favor. I crashed, painfully so, into a light post. The bike went in one direction, I went in the other, and tasted blood. I'd bitten my lip, my tongue, something. I didn't know but I tasted blood in my mouth, and my face hurt. A lot. I'd probably scraped it. Come to think of it, I'd probably scraped my arms too. They were burning like a fire. But it hurt to sit up. I didn't want to. I wanted to lay there, open my eyes in an hour, and realize that this horror in the twilight of eight PM was a terrible dream.

A nightmare.

Until a groan broke the silence, and a broken ankle came within my line of sight. Broken, I knew, because people just didn't normally rest their entire weight on the side of their foot. Even if they could, ankles didn't naturally sound crunchy. I glanced up in time to see blue and red eyes, bloody teeth, and an esophagus open to casual view. The sight was enough to make me lose my lunch. But the thought of the lady standing there eating me made my want for survival just a bit stronger. So I swung my arm back, and let go of part of the chain to hit her with it. It made her go back, but didn't do too much damage, I was sure.

Zombies, you shoot in the head, not smack in the chest. Smacking them probably just pissed them off even more. Indeed, it seemed to do so for the lady. After stumbling back, she lunged at me, and I couldn't help but think that she must have been very pretty when she was alive. One may find the thought morbid, disturbing, stupid but even with her throat ripped apart, blood on her face, and eyes not so normal she was very pretty.

Distantly, I recognized her. Maybe, she'd gone to school with me. A senior perhaps. Maybe a student teacher. But I definitely recognized her from somewhere. So few people had blue eyes anymore, that color blue was the prettiest. A sort of gray color that barely touched on green when she looked directly into the light. She was in physics with me. Two rows forward, one to the left. What was her name?

It didn't matter, I realized, when her fists wrapped in my sleeves. Pulling me toward her, herself toward me. Her mouth opened wide, and the scent that escaped was equivalent to that of milk past its expiration date. Meat gone bad. I knew her, I didn't want to hit her, but I didn't want the stinking hole anywhere near me either.

I forced my arm out with more strength then I should have had, given the fall I'd just taken. As my right arm, with the chain, finished extending fully, I heard a sickening snap. I felt no pain, but figured that the adrenaline pumping through my system would have prevented my acknowledging it anyway. I stared into a sea of bloody blue, as I put my whole body into the movement of the chain, swinging it at whatever it may hit with all my might as dripping teeth grew closer to me.

A second disgusting crack was apparent as I sealed my eyes, hoping to protect myself somehow. From blood getting in my eyes. From the sight of (hopefully) twice dead beauty. I didn't know. I didn't care. All that mattered was the form quickly weighing me down. However there was no pain. No teeth ripping into flesh. No blood pouring from newly torn flesh. No cannibalism. Just fear, and discomfort.

Why wasn't she biting me?

Why wasn't she trying to kill me? Why was there no pain?

I took a chance, opening my eyes. For all I knew she realized my eyes were closed, and was merely waiting for me to open them, so she could enjoy the notion that I was completely aware of her devouring my flesh while she feasted. But she was laying there. Head hanging over my shoulder, forehead probably resting on the cement walkway. It was disconcerting.

Was she dead? Re-dead, as the truth stood. Was she playing a trick on me? Could zombies play tricks? I didn't know, and really needed to stop asking questions. Laying there under one of the coffin stuffers would probably end up drawing attention real soon. I didn't think that was a very good idea, at all. At all. I didn't want to be eaten. I really didn't.

When she didn't move, I shifted a little, eventually pushing her off of me as far as I was physically capable of pushing her. Which, considering, was only about enough to get my arms free. I forced my hands under her, pushing every dirty remark my brother would have pulled up from my mind, as I pushed her up from her chest, rolling her over. It was the offered sight there, that finally sent the nausea to a climax. My stomach to my ankles. My half digested food to the ground.

I'd broken her neck with the chain. Cracked the esophagus, that was now not only visible, but sticking out of her throat. I doubted it was that, that killed her though. The chain had probably screwed with the brain stem at least I was hoping. That way I'd have proof of how to kill zombies. At least the movies had that much truth.

"But this isn't the movies.." I choked the words out around bile. Clawing coagulated blood, that definitely wasn't mine, from my face as my eyes watered. I reasoned that it was acid from my stomach, burning at my throat, that was kicking the tear ducts into action. I wasn't upset that I'd killed someone who was about to eat me. That I'd killed a zombie. Who cries over a zombie?

With that in mind, I pushed the body farther back, with my foot. Essentially kicking the twice dead corpse, but effectively getting her the hell away from me. I had semisolid blood on me, and it was her fault. Her fault. It was her blood. I didn't have a choice but to kill her. I didn't want to, under other circumstances I
wouldn't
have. But I didn't have a choice. It was her or me, and I chose me.

Who wouldn't have? I reasoned. Trying to prove to myself, to my conscience, that I wasn't a terrible person. That I wasn't a murderer. Does killing a zombie make you a murderer? A killer? Does it put the proverbial blood on your hands? Would it put you in jail? I hoped not. It was self defense, right? Yeah. It was self defense, and no one could tell me that it wasn't.

God, I was getting hysterical. Clawing at my face, crying. I'd tried so hard not to cry. There wasn't anything to cry about boy, isn't that a lie? I killed my classmate, mutilated my brother, and more or less destroyed his bike. I was a terrible person, and probably going to die sometime during the quickly darkening night. I didn't want to die, but it was a fate I was willing to resign myself to.

Everyone dies someday. Everyone.

No exceptions.

As much as the thought of death, and whatever came next made my stomach do somersaults, I knew that it just might be my day. I wasn't a fighter. I didn't have inhuman strength. I didn't even have a good weapon. I was sitting there with a blood coated chain wrapped around my hand, trying to hide the tears running down my face. I didn't want anyone to see me crying. I didn't want to look weak. It was not a time to look weak. So I struggled to my feet. Forcing myself to stand up straight, and assess the damage done to me during the fall.

I winced as the sight of two skinned forearms brought the pain of them to the front of my mind. My jeans, I realized, had a hole ripped in the left knee, where I'd apparently fallen on it. Skidded. Stopped. That leg, too, had a minute amount of blood oozing from it. If I didn't look just like a smorgasbord for the undead, I wasn't sure what would.

Almost as if the monsters were psychic, ghastly moaning started picking up the moment I thought it. A fist closed around either of my shoulders.

So I closed my eyes, preparing to die.

CHAPTER TWO

I could nearly feel the cold fingers of death wrap around my heart. It felt like an eternity, with the lifeless moaning getting louder, as if they could smell my blood. Maybe they could. I didn't know. I didn't know anything. They probably knew just knew there was a bleeding human being, waiting to be eaten.

Waiting. Waiting.

The fingers tightening on my shoulders weren't helping matters much. They were making me nervous. Making me tremble. For a second time, I closed my eyes and prayed the whole situation was a dream. But upon opening them, the sight of a body, barren of eyes and a lower jaw shuffling in my direction was available. The creatures were getting closer. More, and more of them. They were advancing like I never would have expected.

Finally, my knees gave out, sending my entire body to the floor. However I didn't go crashing, painfully, to the ground as I'd expected to. Instead the hands on my shoulders snapped down to support me, giving me the momentary thought that perhaps it was a living person behind me. Not someone about to practice cannibalism. A living person trying to help me. Trying to comfort me.

"Are you okay, kid?"

Oh yes, it most definitely was a human being, slowly lowering me to the ground. He, it had to be a he, was trying to help me. Knowing this, I was able to get past the insult of being called a kid. Maybe I looked like one, standing there in clothes far too big for me. Who knew? I didn't. I didn't care either, as the man moved around to the front of me.

His eyes, I noticed with refreshing relief, were white and green with little black pupils in the center. I felt I could have kissed him, just for having normal eyes. For a minute there, I swore I was going to as he pushed a little hair from my face. Him, I didn't recognize surprising as it was a rather small community. But I was very happy he was there stranger or not pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. At first I didn't know what he was doing, but he started to wipe the blood on my face.

"Are you okay?" He asked the question again, his voice deep, and accented. The words came in surprising rhythm, from behind perfectly straight teeth, embedded in a long face, slightly covered with stubble. He, I decided, had to be at least thirty, and English. He certainly wasn't young, but he didn't quite look old either. He had this sort of vitality behind those wonderfully normal eyes.