Generation Dead - 07 (21 page)

I heard
a step outside and something
hit the house.  It wasn’t a hard hit, but I was instantly awake.  Julia felt me tense and turned her head.

“What is it?” She asked, bringing her right arm up to stroke my neck.

“Something’s
outside,” I
said, getting up on one elbow.

“Probably a dog. “
She shifted onto her back, which put her directly beneath me and
she
still
lay
on my forearm.  Julia pulled me down for a kiss, which I wasn’t about to refuse, even though there might be a horde of zombies outside.

We kissed for a while, and might have done more, when the noise repeated itself.  I disengaged from Julia and got to my hands and knees.  “No dog does that twice.  Better get upstairs and dressed, we might have to move
fast,
”  I
said.

Julia pouted, but knew better than to argue.  Of the three of us, I had the best instincts for trouble.  Jake just plowed into it, Julia dealt with it, but I had a way of knowing it was coming.  I had that feeling right now.

I stayed on the floor, and got myself ready.  I didn’t want to be seen from the windows, and hoped Jake and Julia wouldn’t make too much noise coming down.  I put my gear on, and crawled over to a window on the side of the house I thought I heard the noises coming form.  I stood up slowly by the window, keeping myself out
of sight.  The good news was
that no one on the outside would
be able to see in very well unless we did something stupid like turn on a light.  The bad news was we couldn’t see very well outside either.

I leaned against the wall and slowly
brought my head away.  I could
see outside, and in the graying dawn, there was definitely something in the yard.  I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it was something, and it was moving slowly.

I backed away from the window and stayed low.  I moved slowly as to keep from attracting attention.  My gut told me there was a zombie in the yard, and my instinct told me there was more than one.  I moved silently towards the stairs and spent a few anxious moments trying to get up the wooden steps without too much creaking.  At the top landing, I ran into Julia, who was much more dressed than she was before.

“Hey, you.”
She smiled at me and gave me a hug. 
“Everything okay?”

“Right here, yes.  Outside,
no,
”  I
said, pulling away.  “There’s a zombie in the yard, and I have a feeling there’s more than one.”  I went over to Jake’s door and tapped softly.  I hoped he was already up, but I didn’t put much faith in that.  I opened the door and saw he was still sleeping.  I couldn’t wake him like I wanted to, by pouring a bucket of cold water on his head.  I had to settle for subtle.

“
Jakey
?
 
Time to wake up.
 
Jaaakey
…” I tried to sound like our mother had when we were younger.  For whatever reason, she never had to raise her voice.  We would jump up a
t
that sound
as if
we had been caught doing something we shouldn’t have.

Jake cracked an eye at me, and then tilted his whole head my way.  “Aaron?  What gives?”  Why are you up here?”

“Zombie in the yard.
 
Might be more.
  Better get dressed.”  I kept it simple for the morning hours.  Anything longer was a waste of time.

Ten minutes
later,
we were at the top of the stairs.  It was the one place in the house we couldn’t be seen from any windows, and being centrally located, our voices wouldn’t carry as far.

“I only saw the one, but I get the feeling there’s
more,
”  I
said.

“Any proof of that?” Jake asked, looking at his magazines and loosening his knives.

“None outside of gut
feeling,
” I replied, taking out my tomahawk and checking the edges. 

“Good enough for
me,
” Jake said.  “What do you want to do?”

Julia spoke up.  “It’s stupid to just go out there when it’s dark.  The sun is coming up.  Why not wait until we can see and then go deal with it, or them?”

“Sounds good to
me,
” I said.  “I just wish we hadn’t parked the truck so far away and left all of our heavy guns in it, along with our spare ammo.”

“Stop being so damn
gloomy,
” Jake admonished.  “We’re in Mayfair. 
Population of about a hundred.
They all came here from other places, and all are survivors.  If this sucker wanders their way, it’ll be dead before it knows it.  Besides, what’s one zombie to us, anyway?”

I had to admit he had a point, so I sat down on the top of the stairs and lay back onto the floor.  Julia sat down with her back to the railing post so we could talk, albeit quietly.  Jake went back to his room and stretched out on the floor, trying to get a few more winks before it became too difficult to sleep.

Julia and I spoke of nothing, and everything. 
A nice conversation
didn’t have to do with anything we did for a living.  We talked about our mothers, our fathers, and
about
what we wanted to do with this life.  Julia managed to put into words something I had been feeling, but couldn’t quite wrap my words around.

“I feel like our dads left us a world that had a pretty good start, but somewhere along the
way,
things got a little confused, and if something isn’t done, we’re not going to like what the world will become.  I mean, they founded a new country, but it seems like
it’s
falling backwards, and not going forwards.  Like we’re wasting our potential and it will take generations to recover, if we ever
do,
”  Julia
said.

I nodded in agreement.  “It’s like the virus that makes the zombies.  It starts out small, like a
bite, but
it spreads and kills and creates something unrecognizable from the original.”

“Exactly.
  Question is
,
what is it and what do we do about it?”  Julia looked at me with her very blue eyes and I wondered if my dad ever felt
weak like
this
when mom looked at him the same way.  It was strange, but it kind of gave me a purpose.  I felt like I needed to do something to make this world a better place for Julia. 

“Not sure entirely for the future, but for right now, we need to get home, get this job done, and then we can focus on what to do about the backward decline we’re
seeing,
”  I said, locking my hands behind my head and closing my eyes.  Julia lay across me, with her head on her hands, looking at my face.  I kept my eyes closed, just enjoying the moment.  I didn’t know what the future held, but I was starting to get an idea and it wasn’t half bad.

Chapter 33

An hour later, I shook Julia and we both got up.  It was much lighter outside and we could see a whole lot more, so we went into the room where Jake was and found him at the window looking out.

“Any sign of our friend?” I asked.

“Which one?”
  Jake replied ominously.

“What do you mean?”  Julia asked.

Jake pulled away from the window with a shake of his head. 
“Didn’t see this coming.”

I looked outside and my stomach did a turn.  There had to be twenty zombies
outside
and those were just the ones I could see. 

“Where in hell did these guys come from?”  I asked rhetorically.

“No
idea,
” Jake said. “Maybe they had an outbreak at Mayfair and the lights of the truck brought them over here last night.  Not finding anything, they’ve just hung out here before something causes them to move.”

“Can we get them to move?” I asked.  I knew it was an impossible question, but you never knew
.
“Unless you have a cat or dog in your pocket that needs to be somewhere else in a hurry, I’d say we’re pretty much screwed if they figure out we’re in
here,
”  Jake
replied.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am we left our heavy weapons in the
truck,
” I said, looking down on the scene.  About fifteen to twenty zombies milled about aimlessly, while in the distance, more were coming.  Just outside our vision, it looked like there were zombies on the ground, hunched over something.  I really didn’t want to know what it was, but I had a sneaking suspicion about what it could be.

“All right.
  So what do we have on us?”  Julia brought us back into focus.  “I have my gun, thirty rounds in my
mags
, and my knives.  Aaron?”

“I’ve got my axe, two knives, my gun, and forty-five rounds on me.”  I said.

“All right.
  That’s better.  Jake?”

“Just my
knives,
” Jake said.

“No gun?”

“In the truck.”

“Ah.  Okay, so we have seventy-five rounds between us,
and
knives and an axe.
Anything else?”
Julia asked.

We turned out our pockets and discovered we had a box of matches, a length of cord, a compass, and a toothbrush.

“Matches.
  This gives me an
idea,
” Jake said.  “This house will go up like a candle, and if we can get the ghouls inside, we can take a good number of them out without a shot.”

“I know there’s a
catch,
” I said.

“Of
course,
there
is,
baby brother, but let me lead on this and educate you.” Jake smiled and I casually tried to hit him, but he easily ducked my punch.

Jake educated the two of us. “I’m going downstairs and get into the
basement to
see what I can set on fire.  I’ll attract the attention of the zombies outside, and get
them to come in for a treat.  Hopefully by that
time,
the floor will be ready to go up and we can get the most burn for our buck.”

“How will we get away without being incinerated?”  Julia asked, voicing my own question
and hers
at the same time.

“We tie the sheets together to use as a rope, and head out a window with the least amount of zombies waiting for us.”  Jake acted
as if
he thought this was a silly question.

“And if you get delayed, or the zombies discover you before you can get back to us?”  I asked.

“Then I might need some
help,” Jake
said, clearly uncomfortable with the question.

“Tell you what,
big brother
.  I’ll go with you and wait at the stairs.  At the very
least,
I can keep them off your back while you run for your
life,
”  I
said, checking my gun.  It was a stainless Beretta 92FS, at least that’s what it said on the side.  My dad gave it to me when I was sixteen, telling me it used to be my uncle’s gun.  It was the only thing I had of the man.

“Oh, that’s kind of you.
Thanks,
” Jake said.  He was trying to be sarcastic, but it wasn’t working through the relief he was obviously feeling.

“Just get moving.  I want to get out of here as soon as I
can,
” I said.  I looked over at Julia.  “You got the sheets part?” I asked.

Julia smiled.  “I got it.  And I’ll cover your butts in case you need help from the stairway.”

“Be right back.” I followed Jake and we made our way carefully down the stairs.  The stairwell led to the living room, and it was a short trip through the kitchen to the basement stairwell.  Trouble was, several windows just to our left looked out onto the porch, and there were at least six zombies on the porch, just milling about and looking confused.  It was our first chance to get a good look at them.  They were all fairly fresh, as far as zombies go, which meant Mayfair or somewhere close just had a bad outbreak.  Their flesh hadn’t turned white yet, and they looked pretty normal.  A few had wounds, but the majority had no marks on them at all that we could see.  For an outbreak, this one was surprisingly clean.  Another thing that was odd was the number of ghouls that had ropes on their wrists.  That made no sense at all.

Jake and I waited, looking for our chance to get away without being seen
.
It wasn’t easy, since we also had to be careful of the windows in the kitchen.  If a zombie happened to see Jake, it was over. 

Quickly,
Jake moved, and in a
flash,
he was gone.  I heard him scramble through the kitchen, and then down the stairs. I had nothing to do but wait, and hope one of the zombies outside hadn’t seen him. So far they weren’t calling out, so we seemed to be lucky so far.