This Dying World: The End Begins (4 page)

Chapter Five

The wind whistled past my ears as we fell, until I came crashing down on top of a more than slightly overweight creature.  The zombie’s bulk shielded me from a solid impact with the ground.  I did not escape unscathed unfortunately.  My right knee slapped against the frozen earth, sending arcs of pain shooting through my leg and up my spine.

My landing pad was still very much alive…ish.  Its bones had been severely crushed.  The undead thing looked like a bloated cork screw flopping around on the ground.  Despite this, it continued to snap its jaws as if nothing was amiss.  Foul frothy spittle dribbled from its lips as it continued to bite at me.  I did not know what the stuff was at the time, but I seriously doubted it was something I wanted to get acquainted with.

It was all I could do to keep its head away from me long enough to find something to clobber it to death.  With one hand firmly wrapped around the thing’s meaty throat, I felt around with my free hand for some kind of weapon.  After a few large sweeps across the snow, my fingers fell upon the table leg that had tumbled down from the roof with me.  Three heavy whacks to the head, and Big Funky was no more.

I heard Abby call out for me.  Since I took the express route into the yard, there was no way I would get back up there.  Several of the dead were at the window, with more following behind.  I shouted for her to leave, and I desperately hoped she did not choose that moment to ignore me.  Those were the most frightening moments for me, watching a herd of killers chasing my family through the window.  I had to get back to them.

I grimaced at the stiffening pain in my knee as I stood.  My shoulder burned, damaged from the fall and subsequent heavy bludgeoning.  As much as I needed to catch my breath, the undead don’t understand the fine tradition of a “Time Out”.

Three more zombies were still in the yard with me.  Two that I know of had joined me in my rooftop swan dive.  The other must have been there already before my flight touched down.  They were closing on me, their feet dragging across the frozen ground.

I had hoped at least one of them had fallen on its head on the way down.  I mean isn’t that what parents tell us all the time growing up?  Don’t play on the stairs or you’ll fall on your head.  Don’t stand on the table or you’ll hit your head when you fall.  Guess what…the top of one’s head is apparently not filled with lead, cause neither one of my pursuers landed on their rotten skulls.  I’m going to have to pencil in a point/counterpoint discussion with my mother.

That is, if I ever see her again.

Without the same benefit I had with my zombie air bag, the two that had belly flopped into the yard didn’t fare as well as I did.  One of them had shattered its ribs on impact, its right chest wall completely flattened.  The other must have landed on its shoulder.  It walked slumped over, as if it was auditioning for the role of Quasimodo.  The arm itself was mangled, broken bone protruding from several spots from its wrist up to its shoulder.

The closer they came, the quicker they moved.  It was as if the promise of food beckoned them forward.  I backed away, nearly tripping over the splattered remains of Big Funky.  My back hit the cold aluminum siding of the house, closing off any chance of escape.

Something inside me snapped and I flew into a rage.  These things came into my house, woke me up, threatened my family, chased me onto a roof in the middle of winter with nothing on my legs but boxers, basically threw me off the very same roof, and worst of all…broke my TV!

With an angry shout, my first swing connected solidly across the temple of the closest zombie.  It stumbled backwards, looking dazed if such a thing is possible.  My back against the building and balancing on my good leg, I planted a foot in the chest of another.  Waves of pain shot through my body as my damaged knee revolted.  The thing fell backwards, splitting its skull open on the corner of an old wooden shed.  Its limp form slid down the shed, bone scraping against wood like fingernails on a very disgusting chalk board.

I guess parents did know what they were talking about after all.

I whirled around, taking full advantage of the momentum of my spin.  I connected with the side of the third creature’s face, its eye dislodging from its skull.  Pressing the attack, I pummeled its head until it hit the ground.  Its body went into spasms, until it stopped moving with a final twitch of its bare foot.

I sidestepped the remaining zombie’s renewed advance.  Before it could spin to face me again, I shoved it face first into the building.  Like a two handed battle axe, the club came down with everything my damaged shoulder would allow me to bring to bear.  Its head flattened, caught between the aluminum sided building and my now cracked club.  Blood splattered around the thing’s head like a gory halo.  It fell to the ground, leaking some kind of thick substance from its mouth.

My breaths came fast and deep.  My lungs burned with each gulp of icy air.  My heartbeat pounded in my chest as the sound of blood pumping through my body filled my ears.  I listened to the throng pushing against the fence in my former yard. It still held, but I did not want to bet my life on how long.  The support beams and pickets were cracking, and once it gave way there would only be one more fence between me and a multitude of hungry dead.

It goes without saying, I needed to move.

I took a quick assessment of the yard.  The area was barren, except for the corpses littering the ground.  There was the skull splitting shed, but that would be a little cumbersome to carry around.  Looking inside seemed the better choice.

I stepped over the remains of my permanently dead sparring partners and opened the shed.  The previous owners had not locked it when they moved away.  I hoped to find something a bit sturdier than a broken table leg.  A machete would have been perfect.  I wouldn’t have complained about a baseball bat or a chainsaw either.  Maybe my previous neighbors were members of a secret underground militia, and the shed was actually a weapons cache.

A bazooka would have been awesome.

Instead, I found a bare floor, an old sand bucket, and an inflatable seahorse pool toy.  Last but not least, something with little red eyes glaring back at me from a dark corner of the shed.  Seeing as I was trying my best not to get bitten by anything man, beast, or otherwise that night, I closed the door and left Beady Eyes to its own devices.

I went to the gate that led to the commons area, cringing at the loud snap of the iron latch popping open.  The gate creaked open a couple inches, giving me a slight view of what lay beyond.  Seeing nothing, I pushed the gate halfway open, and stopped.  Three faces immediately snapped their attention to me, and what I saw was a punch in the solar plexus of my soul.

The little girl looked like my own daughter.  She had longer hair, but to anyone who didn’t know them, they could be sisters.  She held a stuffed rabbit in one hand, leaving a trail in the snow as she dragged it behind her.  She wore a little pink night gown, adorned with princesses on the front.  Her skin still held a rosy hue in her cheeks, and there was still a hint of blue in her whitening eyes.  From the looks of it, it had not been long since she had changed.  Next to her were her parents, their eyes similar to their daughter’s.

Mary and Joe were old friends.  They were the first to welcome us into the neighborhood just moments after the truck had parked in front of our two-story townhome.  It was a cool October day when we arrived.  Rain had been falling for the better part of the morning, turning to a light mist by the time we opened the door for the movers.  They came out in spite of the gloomy day to welcome us with hot coffee and donuts.  That sparked a friendship that would last eight pleasant years.

Joe and I spent many Sundays, throwing back cold ones watching football and debating the merits of offense versus defense.  That was when we were not talking about the hockey powerhouse that is, or was, the Blackhawks.

Our summers were spent on home improvement projects, backyard barbecues, and fishing trips when we could break away.  We spent many nights drinking wine and smoking cigars around the outdoor fireplace behind my house.  That was before the fireplace suffered what Abby liked to call a “Dan moment”.

Abby and Mary became pregnant so close together that Joe and I were never entirely convinced that it wasn’t planned.  We couldn’t prove it, but we decided it had to be voodoo or some sort of black magic.  They chose the same hospital, the same OB/GYN, and if it had been their choice they would have delivered the same day.

Mary went into labor prematurely, delivering two months early.  Abby never left her side until Mary’s baby, Madelyn, was deemed healthy enough to come home.  Not long afterwards, Katherine was born with Mary in the room to greet our daughter.

Katie and Maddy were always together.  It was as if we had one and adopted another.  I wish I could say their first words were the same, but while Maddy said “Daddy,” Katie’s first word let us know we had to curb our language around the house.  I won’t say what it was, as I don’t think she would appreciate a written record of it.  But let’s just say it’s a word that would ensure a phone call from kindergarten one day.

I couldn’t breathe.  I just closed the gate and turned away.  I knew I should have ended their hell right then and there.  But I couldn’t bring myself to kill one of my best friends.  I doubt I will ever know what happened to them.  I hope they are still together.  If not, I hope someone did for them what I was too cowardly to do myself.

Don’t judge me too harshly, you weren’t there.

As I turned away, I saw my escape.  Sitting beside the fence on the opposite side of the yard stood a central air unit.  I wanted to kick myself for not seeing it earlier.  Every home in my association had virtually identical construction, so I should have known it was there.  A step up on the A/C unit, a small climb over the fence and onto the roof of the adjoining shed, followed up by a short hop down would put me safely in the adjacent yard.

I took one last look around the yard with the hopes that I had missed that bazooka the first time.  Sighing when I realized I would have no such luck, I said my silent goodbye to those I knew were still on the other side of the gate and put my escape plan into action.

I would like to say my escape plan went well.  And for the most part it did.  I made it up and over the fence with little effort.  My only damage being a small splinter in my leg from the aging fence.  However, I soon discovered the words “load bearing” never really came into play when designing backyard shed roofs.  I found myself wishing for more pool toys as I crashed through the roof.

It’s been said that in my life, if I didn’t have bad luck, I would have no luck at all.  That night was no exception.  When I needed an escape plan, or a weapon, really anything that could have made the reunion with my family that much simpler, I found a shed full of a big pile of nothing.  I figure out an escape, put my plan into action, and fall through the roof of a shed fully stocked with junk.  The pain in my knee that had recently silenced to a dull ache roared back to life as I lay on the cold concrete floor.  Multiple cuts across my bare legs stung as warm blood oozed across frozen skin.

The new hole in the roof afforded me just enough light to see what I had fallen on.  With all my new aches and pains, I wondered if there was anything I didn’t hit on my way down.  Lawn and garden tools lined the floor and hung from hooks on the walls.  Buckets of old paint were stacked neatly in a corner, propped up by a small red tool box.  A rake and a push broom leaned against the back wall.  Unfortunately their handles were nothing but aluminum tubes.  I couldn’t fight off a pissed off raccoon with them, much less a flock of hungry zombies.

Every joint in my body felt like jelly as I pushed myself upright.  The cramped shed was surprisingly warm though, shielding me from the biting wind.  But it also made me aware of how much the numbing effects of the cold had saved me from the painful onslaught of my injuries.  I needed time to catch my breath and recover enough to move again, but that was time I did not have.

I pushed on the shed door, hoping for a quick escape.  The telltale sound of a padlock bounced on the latch outside the door.  The door popped as I tried to force it open, but apparently the designers who made the roof out of balsa wood decided to make the door indestructible.

“Oh, mother…” That’s where I will end that.  The line of expletives that emanated from that shed is really unfit to be read by child and adult alike.  I can be sure that somewhere a priest’s ears caught fire, two angels lost their wings, and even the devil scratched my name off his list saying something about how that kind of language wouldn’t be allowed down there.  Somewhere in the Pacific, a sailor for reasons unknown to him made the sign of the Holy Trinity.

Climbing out through the hole I made was out of the question.  My shoulder had moved from irritating ache to searing pain.  Kicking the door was out.  My knee had been through enough abuse already.  I looked at the rake, and checked it off my list.  Prying open the door with that rake would only make a bent rake.  I opened the tool box, praying for just one stroke of good luck to befall me.

That prayer was answered.

Glaring back at me from inside its metal tomb was the most beautiful bright orange extended handle three pound dead blow hammer I had ever seen.  If you don’t know what a dead blow hammer is, let me explain.  Think of a small plastic sledge hammer.  Hollow it out and fill it with heavy beads or sand.  Instead of the usual recoil you would get with a traditional hammer bouncing after impact, the material inside allows for the full force of your swing to make impact without the bounce.