Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (49 page)

“I’m going to bash you over the head with this if you don’t stop this instant.”  Kara had always been able to project a great amount of command into her voice, which was why her squabbling cousins always listened to her.  It was lost on this mindless fool.  She sighed and with a speed uncommon for her age group, she stepped into the man’s reach and conked him over the head with the wine bottle.  The bottle didn’t break, but the base was heavy and knocked the man down.  He didn’t stay down though, and rose back onto his feet quickly.  As he did, Kara conked him again, but again he got back up.  She stepped back this time.  The man now had a big dent in his head that would cause most people to writhe in pain.  He seemed completely oblivious.

“What’s wrong with him?”  Alice had walked over and stood next to Kara.  She reached up and grabbed a tiny fist full of Kara’s shirt.

“I don’t know that either,” Kara sighed.  She also didn’t know how to get out of this predicament.  Not without killing the man anyway.  “Alice, do you know what death is?”

“It’s when something’s soul goes to heaven and they don’t come back to their body,” Alice explained.

“That’s right.”  Kara didn’t correct her about there being a hell too.  “Do you know what a cadaver is?”

“Shoes finds them.”  Alice looked at the dog with a happy smile.

“Yes, but do you know what they are?” Kara pressed.

“I think they’re people that got lost and then died,” Alice said very solemnly.  “Shoes would find them so that people would know what happened.”

“Well Shoes seems to think that this man is a cadaver.”  Kara still found that odd, but she was going to use it to make herself not look like a villain for what she was about to do.

“He doesn’t look dead,” Alice frowned.

“Maybe his soul tried to leave but got stuck.  Maybe only the bad part stayed behind.”

Alice scrutinized the man.  “Could be,” she nodded
as if this was very logical.  “What do we do?  We can’t get his soul back.  Daddy told me when my mommy died that you can’t get souls back.”

Kara’s heart squeezed ever so slightly.  She herself had lost her mother when she was a young girl.  Not as young as Alice though.  “And he was right, you can’t bring them back.  I think what we need to do is get the rest of the soul out of him.”

“You mean kill him?”  Alice’s eyes went very wide.  Her voice then dropped to a mere whisper.  “But that’s bad.  That’s the very worst.”

“I know, it’s a sin,” Kara nodded.  “But this man’s soul has been split in two, and that also seems like a very bad thing to me.”

Alice’s face scrunched up in thought.

“And he’s trying to hurt us,” Kara reminded her.  “I was taught that the only time you can do something bad, is if you’re trying to protect yourself from someone hurting you.”

“Like why Daddy carries a gun to work.”

“Just like that.”

“Okay.”  Alice turned to the man in coveralls.  “I’m sorry we have to do this,” she said sincerely.  “But it is for the best.  You’ll like heaven.  I was told it’s a very nice place.  I hope you’re happy again when your soul is put back together.”

When Alice smiled up at Kara, Kara smiled back.  “Very nicely said.  Now I don’t think you should see this.  Go into the corner over there and cover your ears
, all right?  Maybe you could sing a song.”

“Okay.”  Alice headed for the corner.  “Come on Shoes.”  The dog trotted after her and sat at her side.

Once Alice had covered her ears and starting singing the alphabet, Kara turned back to the man at the cage.  She flexed her injured hand a few times.  She was going to have to do this with just her right hand.  The next few moments were a blur of red blood and green glass.

* * *

Kara stood over the man, looking down at his body.  It had finally stopped moving when his forehead had become a crater filled with blood.  The end of the bottle had a large patch of blood and hair sticking to it, but it somehow managed not to break during the ordeal.  The wine may be cheap, but the bottle was good quality.  She placed it on the ground next to the corpse.  A low woof behind her startled Kara.  Shoes appeared next to her, looking at her and wagging his tail.  Did he know what Kara had done and approved?  Of course not, he was just a dumb dog.  She stood back up.

Alice was still sitting in the corner with her hands over her ears.  She was humming something but Kara couldn’t tell what over the sound of the alarm still blaring upstairs.

“Alice?”  Kara took a few steps toward her.  “It’s over.”

Alice turned her head and looked up at her.  Her large blue eyes were glassy with tears but they didn’t spill over.  She carefully got to her feet and walked over to Kara.  She placed her small hand in hers, then placed the other over her eyes.

“I don’t want to see him,” she explained.

“You don’t have to.”  Kara scooped Alice up and carried her over to the cage door.  Even though she hadn’t been thinking at the time and was acting on pure instinct, Kara was damned glad she had remembered to bring the key to the door with her.  The door swung outward though and to open it Kara had to shove it into the body and push hard.  Shoes woofed when she did this.

“Quiet, Shoes,” Alice scolded the dog from her perch, still covering her eyes.  “We know he’s there.  He’s not lost anymore.”

Kara headed through the broken doorway and back toward the stairs.  The dog followed along after her, its leash dragging behind it.  Once they reached the stairs, out of sight of the body, Kara sat Alice down upon them.  She noticed the dog’s leash had dragged through the blood so she distastefully unclipped it and tossed it across the room.  There was nothing she could do about his bloody paws though.

“Will he follow us without his leash?”  Kara turned to Alice and saw that she was still covering her eyes.  “You can look now.”

Alice removed her hands.  “Shoes is a good dog.  We only put the leash on him because it’s the law.”

“Well, just like the dog poop thing, he doesn’t need a leash today either.”  Kara found no harm in lying some more.  This was the most she had ever lied to a child.  “It’s like a doggy freedom day.”

“Shoes
is
free,” Alice frowned, confused.

Kara just smiled and started up the stairs.  “Come along now.”

Alice followed her.

Upstairs, the alarm continued to call out.  It was
headache inducing.  No cops or security showed up though.  Kara went to the front door first.  The other man in the overalls, the one who had attacked Walter, was standing right outside it, pounding his fists against it.  She looked through a window and saw another person in torn clothing climbing over the front wall.  Kara took Alice’s hand and led her to the back of the house.  She was very glad to exit that building.  The alarm was going to drive her mad if she had to spend a minute more listening to it.  She hurried over to the wall to the next house and boosted Alice up to the top of it.  The girl was small enough to sit straddling the top.

“Can you hold him?”  Kara started to lift Shoes up whether Alice said she could or not.  Kara didn’t really like the dog, but she thought his nose would come in handy.  Alice reached down and grabbed the dog by his collar.  She pulled him up, nearly causing herself to topple over, and placed him across her lap.  The dog stayed very still, perhaps sensing its precarious perch.  Or perhaps it was just lazy and liked being draped across the girl’s lap.

Kara hopped and grabbed the top of the wall.  Once again, she was glad she wore her sensible walking shoes today as opposed to her heels.  She pulled herself up onto the wall and swung her legs over it.  As she began to drop down, she noted some movement out of the corner of her eye.  Further along the wall was one of her neighbours trying to climb it the other way.  Kara briefly thought about calling to her, but then she noticed how fervently she was clawing at the wall.  She was one of them, the ones with the broken souls.  She didn’t seem to notice Kara though; she was solely focused on the wall in front of her.

Kara turned back to face Alice and held out her arms.  Alice shoved the dog with his loose skin into them.  Kara quickly plunked him down on the ground and held out her arms again for Alice.  She put Alice on the ground more carefully than Shoes.  The two of them, plus the dog, hurried across the back lawn.  The next wall was just like the last.  Kara turned to
pick up Alice again when the little girl suddenly pointed past her.

“Mister Walter!” she cried with delight.

Kara turned to find Walter coming toward them.  He was mussed up and his shoulder was bleeding, but otherwise, he looked all right.

“Walter?”  Kara took a step towards him but was still being cautious.

“I’m all right.”  Walter held up a hand.  “That guy bit into my shoulder but when that house alarm went off, he ran toward it.  I’m glad to see you’re both all right.  Here.”  Walter held out Kara’s cane.  “I found this on the front lawn.  I guess you dropped it.”

“Thank you, Walter,” Kara allowed a little bit of emotion into her voice.  She
was
glad to see Walter and to hear he was all right.  “Do you need anything for your shoulder?”

“I’ll probably need to use some rubbing alcohol or something on it, but it’s not that deep.”  Walter showed her the wound.  He was right, it wasn’t very deep.  The perfect teeth impressions though were disturbing.

“Mister Walter, we had to help a man whose soul was torn in two!” Alice crowed.

Walter gave Kara a quizzical look.

“I’ll tell you later,” she sighed.  “Let’s just keep going to the house.”

“Shoes was a very good dog,” Alice told Walter as Kara helped her up onto the wall.

“Was he now?” Walter humoured her.  Despite his wounded shoulder, he got up the wall easily.  He was probably running on adrenaline and not really feeling the pain, just like Kara was doing with her hand.  The feeling was most likely new to him though.  With Kara, adrenaline kicks were almost an old friend, the kind where you were unsure if you’d enjoy their visit.

Kara scooped up the pooch and tossed it over the wall.  It let out a yelp when she first tossed it, but didn’t make a sound on the other side.  Walter must have caught it successfully despite having no warning.  Alice frowned at her though.  She did not approve of scaring her ‘puppy
.’  As Kara climbed up, Alice hopped down the other side.

The next yard had a pool and Shoes wandered over to it.  He stood on the shallowest step and drank the water around him.  Kara sighed because he would now probably have a wet dog odour.  On the plus side though, his feet were being cleaned.  Walter knelt next to the pool and splashed a bit of water onto his shoulder, washing the wound.  Kara thought about cleaning her hand, but something inside her told her to wait.  She trusted her instincts; they were her gift from a God that wasn’t watching.  When Alice knelt beside the pool and bent down as if to take a drink, Kara hurried over and stopped her.

“You shouldn’t drink that,” Kara told her.

“Why not?  Shoes is,” Alice objected.

“Well there are things that are okay for dogs, but not for people.”  Kara didn’t think that pool water applied but still, she’d rather not have the girl drink it.

“She’s right,” Walter backed her up.  “Pool water has a chemical in it that can be bad for you if you drink it.  Shoes will be all right though.”

Alice looked from Walter to Kara and back to Walter.  She sighed and got back onto her feet accepting their combined knowledge.  “Come, Shoes!”

The dog hopped out of the pool and trotted over, his saggy skin wobbling from side to side.  Alice looked down at her dog while it looked back up at her.  There was definitely some sort of connection between the two that Kara couldn’t grasp.  She thought that might have been because she had never had a real pet growing up.

They continued through several more backyards, the fences getting higher and harder to scale each time.  Eventually, they came to one that was much too high to reach and had small metal points at the top.

“This wall seemed like such a good idea at the time,” Kara sighed.  On the other side of the wall was her own home.

“It still is good,” Walter commented.  “It should keep others out.  The problem is that we need to be on the other side for it to be useful.”

“I’m tired,” Alice huffed.

“We’re almost there,” Walter offered her a smile.

She didn’t smile back.  “My feet hurt.”

“Maybe it’s safe enough to go around the front.”  Kara started leading the way toward the front yard.  There was nothing separating the front and back yards along the side of the house making it an easy walk to get there.  They stopped before completely entering the front yard and searched the expanse of grass for any threats.  There was no one in sight, so they pressed on toward the gates.

“Maybe we should just stay here,” Walter offered.

“No,” Kara shook her head.  She pointed to the open front gate.  “Anyone could have gotten in.  Besides, I saw Mrs. Walsh when we were separated.  She seems to be one of them.”

Walter said nothing else on the subject as they neared the open gates.  Kara took one last glance toward the house.  She noted the beautifully arranged
flowerbeds in front of them that were Mrs. Walsh’s pride and joy.  Kara often walked by to see her tending to them and would stop for a chat.  Now she was probably still trying to dig through that wall, her most ambitious project yet.  Kara also noticed a curtain upstairs flutter and a shadow move behind it.