Ashton Memorial (16 page)

“Bedrooms?” Maylee swatted
at the corpse's hands again.

“How should I know?” Dalton
whined.

“Really?” said Maylee,
jabbing the bat at the three corpses. Two more were entering the
head of the hallway. The darkness grew around them and the groans
of the corpses echoed off the walls. “Really, Dalton? You want to
have an argument right now?”

Dalton sighed behind her.
“Fine, sure. Bedrooms.”

“Pick one. We're going to
make a run for it.”

Maylee kept backing up, Dalton behind her.
The corpses followed, groaning and clawing. Maylee jabbed at them
with her bat. The two new corpses reached the group of three she
was already dealing with. Three others appeared at the head of the
hall.

“Um,” said Dalton, “left, I
guess.”

“Which left?” said Maylee.
The three corpses stumbled down the hall. Soon there would be a
total of eight for Maylee to hold off.

“What?”

“Left facing this way or
left facing that way!” Maylee had seen the hall when they first
stumbled down it. She didn't dare take her eyes off the corpses to
look, but she knew they had to be running out of room.

“Umm...” Dalton trailed
off. Maylee heard panic creeping into his voice.

“Fuck it,” said Maylee. The
corpses drew near. “Just run!”

She turned and they both
ran. Maylee made it a few steps, then jerked to a stop as a cold
hand closed on the back of her jacket. “Dalton!” she yelled, almost
involuntarily.

Dalton stopped running and
turned around. His eyes grew wide when he saw. “Maylee!” he
screamed, turning back to help.

Maylee brought her bat up backward over her
shoulder. She slammed down as best she could at the awkward angle.
Her wrists jerked as the bat connected with something. A corpse
grunted behind her and the hand slipped off.

She stumbled forward, almost colliding with
Dalton. Guilt flooded her. She should have let Dalton keep running
to safety. He was just a kid.

“Maylee!” repeated Dalton,
looking up at her with big scared eyes.

“I'm fine now!” she said.
“Get to a room!”

“But Maylee...”

“Just do it!” Maylee
yelled. Groans came from behind her. She cursed under her breath
and spun, bringing the bat up as she turned. The cheek-flap corpse
still headed the group, a thin seeping crack in its forehead
indicating where Maylee struck before.

Screaming, Maylee slammed the bat into the
corpse's temple. The corpse fell sideways against the wall. The
follow-through of the swing cracked the corpse's skull, sending a
sheet of dark gore up the wall.

“Maylee!” yelled Dalton
from behind her.

“I said run!” yelled
Maylee. Another corpse drew close. It was on old man with bony legs
and a large open slit down the entire left side of his body. Red
strips of skin dangled as he jerked toward her. Maylee brought the
bat up over her head and rammed it down on the corpse's head. He
jerked and bucked, one of his red bloated eyes jutting from its
socket, then he slumped downward.

Maylee watched him fall, making sure he was
still. She heard Dalton run away from her, headed for one of the
rooms.

“Hurry Maylee! Follow me!”
he yelled, his voice receding from her. The corpses grew thicker at
the head of the hall. Their groans grew louder, filling the
hallway. Maylee lost track of Dalton's voice. She couldn't tell
which room he had run for.

Satisfied the old man was still, she jerked
her head back up. More corpses pushed toward her. Too many to beat
back. They groaned and reached. She looked back to the end of the
hall. Two doorways, each open. No sign of Dalton. Which door had he
used?

“Dalton?” she yelled.
“Where are you?”

The groaning grew louder behind her. She
heard Dalton somewhere, but couldn't pinpoint the source. She
looked back at the corpses. They were close now, too close.

She picked a doorway at random and bolted
for it.

* * *

Angie stepped backward as corpses poured
into the living room. They came through the door. They crawled
through the window, oblivious to the jagged glass shredding them as
they pulled themselves inside.

With each step she took backward her chest
grew tighter. Her children were farther and farther away. The
corpses grew in number between them. She couldn't do anything. The
chaos was swallowing them.

She heard Maylee and Dalton in the hallway,
screaming to each other. Or were they just screaming? Or dying?

“Maylee!” she yelled.
“Dalton!” She and Park were pushed into the kitchen. Corpses filled
the living room.

“Goddammit all anyway!”
said Park, stepping over to the stove and grabbing a
stainless-steel frying pan.

“How do we get to the
bedrooms from here?” yelled Angie, knowing full well what the
answer was. Knowing full well the only way was through the thick
mob of corpses pressing toward them and her children.

“I have no idea!” yelled
Park. “I wasn't so much with the regular visits.” He flung the pan
at an approaching corpse. A loud “clang” rang out and the corpse's
head snapped back. Thick dark fluid spilled from a crack in the
corpse's head and it fell forward.

Park snorted, unslung the rifle from his
shoulder and leveled it at the nearest corpse.

“Park no!” yelled Angie.
“We need that!”

He cocked an eyebrow at
her. “And what the fuck else would that be for?”

“When we get to Maylee and
Dalton,” she yelled, feeling like she was going insane. The noise
around her was maddening. The stink of corpses stung her nose. “We
may need it to...”

“Be fucking realistic!”
yelled Park back at her. “This is it! Jennifer's dead! My kids are
probably dead! Your kids are...”

“You can go fuck yourself!”
yelled Angie, her cheeks growing hot. Tears were coming. “You go
fuck yourself so hard your asshole bleeds for a fucking week! We're
getting to them!”

Park stared at her as the corpses grew
closer. Finally he shrugged and replaced the rifle strap over his
shoulder. He grabbed a large thick stock pot from the stove and
tossed it to Angie. She caught it as he opened a cabinet above the
stove. He pulled out a cast-iron skillet and nodded to her.

She nodded back. They turned to face the
corpses that poured into the kitchen. They put their backs to the
sink and waited, clutching their weapons and bracing
themselves.

* * *

Dalton ran inside the
bedroom and looked around.
I'm not
running
, he told himself.
I'm making sure the room is
safe
.
I'm
helping.

He whipped his head from side to side,
taking in the room as quickly as he could. It was neat and tidy
with a mix of hunky-guy posters and stuffed animals. A girl’s room.
No corpses to be seen.

“Dalton!” came Maylee's
voice from somewhere in the hall. “Which room?”

“Here!” Dalton yelled,
turning back to the door. He took a step then fell forward as
something caught his foot. His stomach slammed to the floor and the
air rushed from his lungs.

His throat clenched as he heard a groan come
from behind him. From floor level. He felt cold fingers grip his
foot. He screamed and kicked blindly with his free leg. His foot
connected with something, and his other foot slipped free.

He scrambled forward and stood so quickly he
almost fell into the nearest wall. He turned and looked down.

A corpse was on the floor, mostly hidden
under the bed. It was a lanky teenage boy missing an eye and an
ear. Dried blood caked the side of his face and neck. Its head and
one arm jutted out from under the bed. It reached at Dalton and
gnashed its teeth.

“Crap!” yelled Dalton,
backing away from the corpse. He turned and ran to the door, trying
to ignore the groaning corpse behind him. “Maylee!”

A young woman with burnt hair and no lower
jaw grabbed at him from the doorway. Two other corpses stood behind
her, hissing and biting. Dalton screamed and slammed the door. The
corpses outside groaned and dragged their fingernails across the
wood of the door. Dalton fumbled with the handle for a panicked
moment, then found the lock. He pushed it in, his hands
shaking.

Groaning came from behind him. He spun,
chest thudding. The corpse under the bed was pulling itself
out.

The teen boy grabbed the carpet and pulled.
He slid a few feet, then grabbed the carpet and pulled again.
Flakes of dried blood scraped off of the corpse's skin as it
dragged itself along the carpet. The corpse's other arm emerged
from under the bed. It was burnt beyond use. A few more tugs and
Dalton saw the corpse had no legs, just black charred stumps.

Dalton looked frantically
around for a weapon. Something heavy.
Anything
. All he saw were small
knickknacks and stuffed animals. He sighed and braced himself. The
corpse kept pulling. He would have to do something.

Mustering his courage, he ran at the corpse.
He did his best to build up speed in the small space of the
bedroom. As he drew near the corpse, he brought up one foot to
kick. He aimed for the corpse's head, hoping it would be
enough.

The corpse hissed and bit at his foot.
Dalton screamed and stopped mid-kick, almost tripping. He fell
forward onto the mattress.

His heart thudded as he
drew his legs up to safety.
You're not
scared
, he told himself.
You're not a little kid.
It didn't work. The corpse moaned from the floor, scraping
its body across the carpet. The door shook and corpses groaned from
just beyond it. Dalton fought back the urge to shake.

“Mom!” he yelled, hearing
only groans in reply.

* * *

Maylee ran into the bedroom and looked
around. Dalton was nowhere to be seen. Her heart dropped as she
realized she'd picked the wrong room.

“Dalton!” she yelled,
turning to run across the hall to the other room. Two corpses moved
to block her. They grunted and reached for her, rotten teeth
grinding.

“Fuck no!” she yelled at
them, knocking them back with her bat. She shut the door and
slammed her balled fist against it. “Dammit! Dalton!
Mom!”

The corpses outside groaned
and ran their hands along the door. “Shut up!” she yelled at
them.

She fell silent, panting and putting her
forehead against the door. The corpses scraped their fingernails
along the wood. Crashes came from the kitchen. The corpses groaned
outside the door.

“I said shut up,” she
said, quietly. She stepped away from the door and turned to survey
the room. It was a little cluttered, but clean. Movie and music
posters covered the walls. Books were crammed into a small shelf
above the bed. The edge of the shelf had something written on it
with what looked like glitter glue.
Ella
, it said.

“Dalton!” she yelled,
trying again. She heard nothing but groans.

Her eyes settled on a window at the far side
of the room. She saw gray, overcast sky through the slats of the
lowered blind.

Holding her bat ready just in case, she
rushed toward the window. She stopped when her foot struck
something on the floor. The object flew across the floor a few
feet, then stopped. Maylee's back grew tight and she looked down,
gripping the bat.

A cell phone sat on the
floor, a few feet away from where she'd kicked it.
Ella
was painted across
the outer shell of the phone, apparently in the same glitter glue
used on the shelf.

Park'll want this,
she thought, reaching down to grab the phone. She
glanced at it, rubbing her thumb over the raised glue forming the
letters. It lit up when she pressed the button on the side and
seemed to be working. She slipped it into her pocket.

She took another look around, having seen
too much in the last few days to take anything for granted. The
corpses in the hall scraped at the door, but remained outside for
the time being. She was alone. Satisfied, she ran the rest of the
way to the window.

Holding the bat with one hand, she pulled
the blinds up to reveal the side yard of the house. Rain spattered
the window and the sky was gray She looked down at the yard and was
elated to find it clear of corpses. She set the bat down against
the wall and grabbed the window frame. She pushed up but the window
wouldn't give. She frowned and pushed again, harder. Still
nothing.

The groaning from the hallway grew louder.
The scraping of the corpse's fingernails on the door grew
louder.

Maylee felt along the middle of the window
frame, looking for the lock. She found it. It was open. She pushed
a third time. The window gave a little, creaking upward maybe half
an inch.

The corpses outside groaned and started
pounding on the door.

“Well fuck the shit out of
that,” Maylee muttered, picking up the bat. She stepped back and
swung for the window as hard as she could. Glass exploded, bouncing
off the window screen and back into the room. Maylee let out a
little cry and jumped back, feeling stupid.

She stepped back over, her feet crunching
the glass, and ran the bat all along the window frame, clearing out
what was left of the glass. She jabbed at the screen until it
popped free and fell to the yard.