Just another day in the.., p.25
Just Another Day In The Zombie Apocalypse, page 25
Kyle was on his way downstairs to open the door to the building, but they didn’t have time to wait. If they waited, they would be dead. They’d be bitten before they could get inside or they would let the Infected into the building when Kyle opened the door. That meant it would no longer be a safe place to stay, no longer be a safe place to live.
They had to move.
She ran with Mark. They hopped down the stairs in front of the building. The zombies were in the center of the road and were blocking the way back to the library. They couldn’t get to their haven. They couldn’t get to their home. They had to go somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
More and more zombies were coming. Alice couldn’t think straight. Where were they all coming from? Why now? Why all of a sudden? She thought they were safe here. Sure, there had been a few Infected the day before, but that was nothing. She and Mark and Kyle had killed them all, putting the creatures down as quietly as possible. They had slaughtered them.
It shouldn’t have been a problem.
There shouldn’t have been more.
There certainly shouldn’t have been this many more.
“Where are they all coming from?” She let Mark lead her down a side road filled with houses. There were Infected here, too, but not as many. Here it was easy to dodge them, easy to slip around them as the couple ran down the road.
“Who the fuck knows?” He shouted as they ran. Soon she was sweating, breathing hard, struggling to move, but still she managed to lift her feet over and over again.
The zombies were chasing them.
She looked over her shoulder now and again, and she saw them. Some of them walked. Most of them shambled along, but a few of them were moving faster than any zombies she’d ever seen before.
They were jogging, sprinting, chasing.
What the fuck?
“I thought they couldn’t fucking run,” she shouted.
“Apparently, they can.”
Mark sounded out of breath, too, and they turned again. Ran more. Turned. They were in a residential area, but that was going to end soon. Soon the houses would run out and they would be in the countryside. There would be nowhere to hide out there.
Mark and Alice had to make a choice.
There were houses and cars around them. They could try to break into one, but it was a risk. The Infected could see and could break in, too, or maybe the creatures would just wait them out until Mark and Alice starved to death. She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t think.
If they made the wrong choice, they would die.
They would be mauled to death. They would be devoured. She might have a lover now, but she would die with him.
She didn’t want to die, even with Mark by her side. She wanted to live. Alice had spent too much time worrying about things that were stupid and unimportant. She had spent too much time worrying about things in her life that just didn’t matter. She had been ignorant and silly and just ridiculous. It didn’t matter if she had a good job or made enough money. It didn’t matter if her parents were proud of her. It didn’t matter if she was sad about losing her brother.
None of that mattered.
Everyone had pain in their lives. Everyone had something terrible that happened to them as a child or young adult. Everyone had something awful that shaped who they grew into. Everyone had baggage.
You couldn’t dwell on that shit, though. You couldn’t dwell on the bad things. You could either use the bad things that happened to you as an excuse to destroy your life, as a reason you couldn’t get ahead, or you could use it to propel yourself into a better person.
You could use it to push yourself into a better life.
For years, Alice had struggled to find a reason to live. She had floated, focusing on her education and her job and her routine. She had been a flower in the wind. She had been nothing.
That changed after the infection.
That changed after Mark.
Now she had something to live for.
She had someone to live for.
And Alice did not want to die today.
“Let’s hide in a house,” she said. “That one.” She pointed to a brick two-story house that was coming up on their left. He nodded, not bothering to argue with her, and headed toward it. She ran up the porch, but the front door was locked. They didn’t have a lot of time.
She could hear the sounds of the Infected. She thought she might even be able to smell them, but perhaps it was her imagination. The creatures were loud. Their feet were hitting the pavement in record numbers and they were loud. Groaning. Mumbling. Were they trying to talk? Were they simply trying to taunt her?
Alice didn’t know.
Didn’t want to know.
She just wanted to be safe.
“Back door,” Mark said.He was already moving. The two of them hurried around the house, but the back door was locked, too. They didn’t have much of a choice about what to do next. They didn’t have any choice. There was no key beneath the mat and the door didn’t have a window. What kind of back door didn’t have a window? There was a window in the middle of the back of the house, but it wasn’t over the little porch, and it was too high to reach from the ground.
Too high to climb through.
They were fucked.
Alice didn’t want to die.
She wasn’t ready for that, but she also couldn’t breathe. The Infected had reached the front of the house. She could hear them. Some of them were passing by, but some of the creatures knew. Some of them were hitting the front of the house. Some of them were trying to get into the building.
Alice looked frantically around the yard. She needed to stay calm and cool. Mark looked around, too, then grabbed her hand.
“The shed,” he whispered, suddenly dropping his voice, and pulled her toward the back of the yard. There was a chain link fence surrounding the backyard and toward the very back was a small shed. It was the kind of place you’d keep your garden tools and maybe a lawn mower.
It wasn’t the kind of place you’d hide from zombies, but there wasn’t much of a choice.
There wasn’t any choice.
The decision had been made for Alice and she followed Mark quickly to the shed. The door slid open with a creak, and soon they were both inside. He closed the door and they fumbled around, making their way to the back of the shed beneath a little worktable.
“Now we wait,” he whispered. “Don’t speak.”
Alice nodded even though she knew Mark couldn’t see her that well in the dark. Thin slivers of light filtered in through the edges of the door. The shed smelled moldy and dusty. She thought she might sneeze, but tried to swallow it instead. She couldn’t make any noise. Couldn’t make a sound.
The zombies would find them and they would die.
She reached for Mark’s hand in the dark. She was lucky, she knew, to have him by her side. Not everyone had a partner in the apocalypse. Not everyone had someone they could count on, but she could count on Mark.
He would be by her side.
He would be with her until the end, no matter how soon that might be.
Chapter 51
Mark squeezed Alice’s hand. Her heart was racing and she was breathing hard. He needed to get her to calm down. He needed her to relax so she could breathe. If she kept panting the way she was, it wouldn’t be long before the Infected found their hiding spot. It wouldn’t be any time at all.
Even without her heavy breathing, Mark worried the creatures would find them. This was a shitty fucking hiding spot. It was just awful. A shed in the backyard? Really? Was that the best that he, a trained soldier, could do?
Apparently.
He closed his eyes and tried to think. He tried to think of something, anything. Where could they go? What could they do? And why the hell had so many Infected come wandering out at the same time?
They might never get an answer. They probably never would. It had only been days since the infection began, but he hadn’t seen any runners until today. He’d seen zombies move quickly, maybe even what he would describe as “sprightly.”
Running, though?
Never.
These ones were different, smarter.
These ones changed the game.
What the hell had happened?
He tried to think about the strange Infected he’d seen. There had been a couple of them that appeared to be watching them: leering, really. There had been a few Infected here and there that appeared to watch the movements of the humans.
Were they smart?
Were they intelligent?
Shit.
Were the zombies fucking organized?
He wasn’t about to go that far. He wasn’t about to consider that they had rational thinking capabilities. They were dead. They were corpses. They were nothing but rotting flesh. They couldn’t think for themselves. They were like animals, only worse because they were more dangerous, more deadly.
If you were bitten by a dog, you’d be injured, but you weren’t going to turn into a dog from the bite.
That wasn’t true with zombies.
A bite was all it took.
Hell, maybe even saliva was all it took.
Who even knew?
Mark scooted closer to Alice in the darkness. She squeezed his hand, but didn’t say anything. It was a selfish, horrible thing to think, but he was glad she was with him. He was glad he wasn’t sitting in this shed alone.
Then again, if he had been alone, he wouldn’t have stopped at the shed. He would have kept going, kept pushing himself, and it would have been his downfall. He knew that.
Mark had trouble knowing when to give up, when to quit. Hadn’t that been one of the biggest reasons his divorce had been so nasty? He had let things go further than they should have for longer than they should have.
He should have given up when they started having problems. As soon as he realized he and his wife were incompatible, he should have manned up and walked away. He should have been big enough to say, “I love you, but this just isn’t going to work for either of us. It’s not what’s best for either of us.”
Instead, he’d allowed his relationship to spiral into a fucking free-for-all and when he and his wife hit rock bottom, they hit it fucking hard.
They both walked away with nothing.
Now they weren’t even friends, didn’t even talk to each other.
It would be easy to place the blame on her. It would easy to point out her mistakes, easy to say she had broken his heart, had betrayed her, but that wouldn’t be fair. He had made mistakes, too.
He had put his job before her for years. In the military, that happened, but he could have tried harder. He could have been more available when he was home, could have reached out to her more, but he didn’t. At the end of the day, he was tired, and he wanted to play games or read. He didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to work on their relationship.
Soon there wasn’t a relationship at all.
Soon they were strangers living in the same house.
Now he was hiding in a shed and the only reason he was there was Alice. She was the only thing keeping him grounded right now. He felt the slightest bit of gratitude fill his heart. She had saved him, in a way, if they actually survived this.
He wasn’t convinced they would live through the night or even the next hour, but if they did, he would have to remember to thank Alice. She was the reason he stopped. She was the reason he slowed.
He would have kept running until his legs gave out, until the horde overtook him and devoured him. He would have kept running until they started to pull the flesh from his body. He would have kept going.
He never knew when to quit.
Today, though, he had wanted to protect Alice. He’d needed to. He gripped her hand tighter as the sounds increased.The shed was dark, but the thin metal walls meant they could hear everything happening at the house.Mark could feel her shaking. He wanted to whisper that everything would be okay, but he didn’t want to lie to her.
Some of the zombies were attacking the house.
He wondered how many had passed by and how many had stopped. He wondered what would have happened if he and Alice had actually made it inside. It was a good thing they hadn’t. There were only so many places you could hide in a little house and once enough Infected were inside, they’d stay forever.
Even if some of them gave up looking, they’d loiter, and Alice and Mark would have starved to death before the Infected left the little home.
He felt the cool metal of his gun against his skin and wished he had fired a few shots. He hadn’t wanted to waste the ammo and maybe that was best. Still, he felt like he was a little less of a man for not at least trying.
For some reason, he suddenly wanted to prove himself very badly, and that feeling could be dangerous. Alice already liked him, already thought he was fine. He was broken and worn down, but she liked him just the same. She thought he was a good man, a decent man, and he felt the urge to prove that.
Her breathing slowed, and Mark relaxed a little bit. He let go of her hand and kissed her cheek softly in the darkness. He was silently letting her know he was there, but not to move. Would she understand? He hoped so because he was going to peek at the house. The sounds were growing louder. Maybe he and Alice would be better off running again.
The yard had a chain link fence surrounding it. They could scurry over before the zombies could. They could run more. They’d had a little rest. Now, maybe it was time to keep moving. He wasn’t sure, but he needed to find out.
Carefully, Mark adjusted his position on the floor of the shed. Dust floated up as he moved, and he choked back a sneeze. He’d be pissed if he died over a fucking sneeze. Wouldn’t that just be the worst? He made a silent vow to come haunt this fucking town if that happened. He’d give these zombies a taste of their own damn medicine.
He crawled to the front of the shed. Alice didn’t move. Good girl, he thought silently. He was glad she stayed put, glad she trusted him enough not to move yet. He arrived at the door and pressed his eye to the little space between the door and the side of the shed, and he looked at what was happening at the house.
Chapter 52
Kyle heard Torrance’s warning and moved faster. If she was telling Mark and Alice to watch out for something, he knew exactly what it was, and he hated knowing his friends were out there unprepared.
Zombies had found them.
Zombies had come to their building.
Mark would be carrying a gun. He wasn’t sure if Alice had one on her or not. Kyle hadn’t looked that closely when he peeked out the window. He probably should have, but it had been a long fucking day, and he was tired.
He heard Torrance’s footsteps pounding behind him and he ran faster. He had to get to the door, had to let Mark inside.
“Stop!” She yelled before he reached the bottom of the stairs, but he didn’t stop. This was Mark. This was Alice. Kyle had to get to them. He kept running. He was almost to the door, almost to the place where his friends were. He was close to getting them.
Then he hit the floor.
“Fuck,” he groaned. His head hurt. His knees. His damn elbow. “You tackled me.” He couldn’t believe she’d done it, but then Torrance covered his mouth with her hand and Kyle stopped talking.
“There’s a fucking horde out there, Kyle,” she whispered. Her voice was low. Her eyes were on the door. She wasn’t looking at him now, or at all, really. She was watching the door, and Kyle’s eyes followed her.
Through the glass windows beside the front doors, he could see them. Body-to-body, the zombies had come. They were standing on the porch and they were starting to reach for the door. Their hands snaked out like tentacles from their body; their moans reached his ears.
Kyle didn’t say anything. Suddenly, he wished he had on more clothes than just his shoes and boxers. Suddenly, he wished he had a weapon. Suddenly, he wished he was back in the library, back in the comfort of the cozy chair on the first floor. He wished he was reading a damn book.
He didn’t want to be here.
“Move slowly,” Torrance whispered, and took his hand. She helped him to his feet and they backed up slowly. The Infected hadn’t seemed to notice there were humans inside. They hadn’t seemed to notice there was live prey.
Would that give them extra time to escape?
Would that give them a way to get away?
The creatures were pressing their bodies to the windows. They were pushing on the door. Their fists hit the sides of the building and the walls began to shake. The zombies didn’t seem to be in a rush, but they seemed suddenly powerful.
Kyle’s heart was beating so hard he was sure Torrance could hear it.
“I almost let them in,” he realized.
“But you didn’t,” she said, and she squeezed his hand. “Now shut up, Kyle. We have to go.” She took his hand and ran upstairs to the second floor, ran back into the room she’d been living in. She grabbed a black backpack and slung it over her shoulders, picked up two crowbars, then motioned for him to follow her.
He wished he had a shirt to wear. He suddenly felt very vulnerable.
It would only take a scratch.
It would only take one little mistake and that would be it. Torrance would put him down. There would be no waiting. There would be no quarantine, no isolation. She would shoot him the second she realized he’d been compromised. She would be harsh, and unwavering, but she would do it quick.
He could count on that.
She tossed him one of the crowbars and he caught it, held it tight. It wasn’t much, but it would offer him a chance to defend himself. Suddenly, he was glad he’d had so much practice killing the Infected. His earlier murderous spree would pay off if he had to kill something with the crowbar. Kyle pushed the thought from his mind and focused on following Torrance.
Torrance knew her way around the building. She moved swiftly, quietly. Kyle hurried to keep up with her and hoped they had moved fast enough. He could hear the Infected at the doors now. Their moans and banging rang throughout the building.
