What We Left Behind (23 page)

David fires again and again. Each time, I flinch, as though I must shelter from the deafening boom and somehow dodge each bullet to stay alive. I can’t. At a rational level, I know that, but emotion rules the moment. Each shot tears through the air and strikes its target long before I react. My life is balanced against David’s aim.

“Come on,” one of the marauders yells at me. I’m moving as fast as I can, but seconds feel like hours. My feet feel like lead weights.

Hands reach down from above, grabbing me and pulling me to the safety of the second floor as zombies claw at my legs.

“There’s no time,” someone yells.

I’m thrown to one side as the marauders grab someone else, hauling them to safety.

I find myself staring through the balustrade as dozens of zombies clamber over fallen bodies. Shots ring out in rapid succession like thunder breaking directly overhead, but there are too many zombies.

“Steeeeve!!!” I yell. I can see him between the wooden balusters. He’s halfway up the stairs, pushing past a rabid zombie. Dark hands grab at his ankles, pulling his feet backwards, and he falls on the stairs. David shoots the zombie crouching over him, but there are too many of them. They drag Steve down the stairs into the dark, seething mass of rabid zombies.

“Noooo!” I scream, catching a glimpse of Steve sinking beneath a swarm of arms. “Please, no! Not Steve!”

Two men shove a sideboard down the stairs, trapping Zee below us, but they’ve also blocked our escape from the first floor.

“Wait!” I cry, even though the job is already done.

The men jam another sideboard and a dresser into the staircase, blocking any access around the edges. Zee is angry. He pounds on the wooden furniture. Dozens of fists beat as one. Wooden panels splinter and break.

“Oh, Steve,” I cry with tears streaming from my eyes. I pull feebly at one of the men at the top of the stairs, trying to get past him, wanting to pull the dresser away.

“There are still people down there,” I plead. “Please, you’ve got to give them a chance.”

Marge takes me to one side. She rests her hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye as she speaks. “Hazel. I’m sorry. It’s too late for them.”

“No, please,” I stutter, choking on my words.

“Don’t let their deaths be in vain,” she says. “They bought us time. They raised the alarm. We need to honor their sacrifice. We need to live—to survive.”

I bury my head in her shoulder.

Marge strokes my hair.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Ferguson comes up beside us. “There are hundreds of them.”

“How the hell did they get through the fence?” Marge asks as I try to compose myself and realize we’re still not out of danger. I step away from her, wiping my eyes.

Marge grills Ferguson, which is quite a sight considering she’s wearing an old-fashioned nightgown. “What happened to the night watch? How did those zombies make it to the house undetected?”

“I don’t know,” Ferguson replies, and to be fair to him, no one could know that yet. I’m sure there will be a debriefing later, but for now we need to concentrate on survival.

“Can we hold them?” Marge asks.

“I doubt it,” Ferguson replies. “We have maybe fifty, sixty rounds between us. Without getting to the armory, we don’t stand a chance.”

Zombies tear at the furniture blocking the stairs, breaking through the thin wooden panels and pulling at the wreckage.

Marge says, “We need to get to the attic and out onto the roof. We can buy ourselves time by moving higher.”

“Understood,” Ferguson says, and he’s off.

Jane runs up to me.

“Steve?” she asks, but there’s hesitancy in her voice. His absence from my side must tell her all she needs to know. Her eyes drop.

I shake my head. I can’t bring myself to say the words—Steve’s dead.

“But you made it,” Jane says, grabbing my shoulder. Her voice breaks as she speaks. She’s struggling with what has happened so quickly and so violently in the calm of night. “Steve would have wanted—he would have wanted to know you made it.”

I nod.

I don’t want to nod, but I do. There’s no solace in her words even though she’s right. I want him back. Am I being selfish? Is that all love is? The selfish desire for a companion? But there’s so much left unsaid between us. It’s not the loss of all we could have done together that aches, it’s what we could have been together. All our tomorrows are gone. Decades have been cruelly snatched away in an instant. With each breath, his memory slips further into the past, and I hate that.

My chest heaves as sorrow washes over me.

Jane puts her arm around my shoulder and helps me stumble along the landing toward the stairs leading up to the attic.

People are yelling, some of them are screaming in pain. Zombie hands reach between the balusters, trying to grab us as we walk past. Young kids are crying. Most people are wearing nightgowns or nightshirts. A few of the marauders are dressed, but they only have handguns. The rifles are in the armory next to the barn.

I am numb. I stumble along with Jane, feeling as cold as winter.

The smell of smoke drifts through the air.

Someone yells, “Fire!”

Zee must have knocked over one of the candleholders.

We climb the stairs to the attic, but a sense of dread descends over me. We’re not going to make it out of here alive.

Inside the attic, a couple of men are hacking at the roof from beneath. They’re using hammers to break up the roof tiles, making a hole large enough for us to climb out, but where can we go from there? It’s the end of the road.

I look around. Boxes lay stacked to one side. There are a few sheets of aging plywood, warping with the years. A spare door leans against one of the rafters. Paint cans and an old-fashioned sewing machine sit on wooden shelves. Cobwebs hang from the rafters.

“This way,” David says, ushering us out through the hole in the roof.

Ferguson yells at a couple of men, saying, “Get that wood. We need to seal this hole once everyone’s out.”

Zee stumbles around below us bumping into things. I think he’s made it to the second floor.

The smoke in the air is already quite pungent. We’re not going to last long enough to worry about being eaten by zombies, but I can’t stop thinking about Steve. I can still see the horror on his face as he was dragged into the horde. There was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do.

Jane helps me climb out through the hole in the roof and directs me to one side. She’s always had a big heart. I can see her standing on the tiles, reaching in and helping each of the survivors climb through the jagged hole.

It’s been raining and the roof is slippery. The pitch of the roof feels steeper than it probably is and I struggle with my footing. Being so used to standing on flat ground, I can’t help but feel like I’m about to tumble over the edge and into the mass of zombies crowding around the house. I creep away from the hole, crouching and touching the tiles with one hand as I waddle to one side, trying not to lose my balance.

I sit down near a group of survivors huddled together, hoping my dad has made it this far. I want to look for him, but I can’t. The pain of losing Steve feels as real as a knife thrust into my chest. I can’t lose both of them, not in one night. I cannot bring myself to look for dad. I can only hope.

Zee sees us. He roars from below. Arms reach out for us. Moans drown out the voice of the young girl next to me.

“—to die,” is all I catch. I don’t need to know how that sentence started. I understand her fear, and she’s right. We’re going to die. Either from the flames, from the fall, or from being torn apart by zombies. There’s not much choice.

Clouds billow overhead, and the moonlight fades. A torrential downpour would be nice, I think. But there’s nothing more than a wispy mist in the air.

Windows break on the far side of the house, but this is a different sound from that of zombies smashing glass in a rage. The crackle of fire burning and the smell of smoke adds to our fear. The flickering yellow glow of flames within the house lights up the dark faces staring at us from the ground.

We’re trapped.

I look around for David and Jane.

David’s working with a couple of the marauders to pull the spare wooden panels out of the attic. They lay them on the tiles. As the last of the survivors clamber out onto the roof, one of the soldiers starts nailing a sheet of wood over the hole. He can’t nail the wood to the tiles, so there’s invariably a gap left around the edge of the exposed rafters. His efforts won’t matter. Zee might not get us, but the flames will.

Jane spots me.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asks, walking over and standing behind me, and suddenly I feel stupid cowering on the tiles. I’m fine. I’ve got a few scratches and I’m a bit shaken up, but I’m okay, I decide. I’ve been in a dreamlike daze, but Jane’s voice helps to snap me out of it.

I’m afraid. We all are, but death comes sooner or later to everyone. We’d all prefer later, but we don’t always have a choice. Steve didn’t. At least I can choose to stand beside her. If death is coming, I won’t cower. I want to look that thieving bastard in the eye.

Getting up, I feel a tinge of vertigo, which is crazy, really, as I’m not right on the edge of the gutter. There are four or five rows of tiles between me and the drop, but self-preservation kicks in and I find myself moving cautiously. Jane is much more relaxed.

I don’t think anyone’s really afraid of heights, not in the classic sense of fear. It’s a survival instinct. And yet although I know this sensation is nothing more than self-preservation, I feel as though I could tumble off the roof at any moment. The soles of my feet tingle.

“How are you doing?” Jane asks.

“Fine, I guess.”

It’s a lie. Jane sees straight through those few words. She hugs me, which is nice, but I’d much rather we hugged further up the sloping roof, so I barely respond.

“Have you seen my father?” I ask, wondering if this is a question I really want answered.

Jane points.

“He’s over with Marge and Ferguson. They’re trying to figure out how to get us off this damn roof.”

“What about the barn?”

“It’s too far away,” Jane says. She leads me up the sloping tiles, around the survivors huddling together against the cold, and over toward my dad. “The barn looks close, but it’s easily fifteen feet away. It might as well be over the next hill.”

“But if we can get there,” I say.

“Unless you can sprout wings and fly,” Jane replies. “We’re going to have to come up with some other option.”

Jane leads me around the side of the roof. The alley between the house and the barn is teeming with zombies. They see us and a sea of arms reaches out of the darkness, calling for our blood. Snarling and moaning, the zombies track our every step, willing us to slip and fall.

“Hazel!” dad cries as we approach. He raises his one good arm and I hug him. He’s warm. He feels hot. He’s sweating. I hope it’s from the exertion of the last few minutes and not an infection, although at this point, it doesn’t really matter.

Ferguson and Marge are talking.

“Can we get in contact with the other houses?”

“No,” Ferguson replies.

“I don’t like this,” dad says. “This is all wrong.”

“What are you thinking, Abraham?” Marge asks. Even under the immense pressure of the moment, Marge has the presence of mind to realize my dad may have a unique insight into what’s happening. When dad said, “This is all wrong,” my first thought was, “Duh, and what’s right about being attacked by zombies?” Like Marge, I know my dad well enough to keep my mouth shut and listen. If he sees something out of the ordinary, it’s with good reason.

“They haven’t attacked the other houses. Why?”

He’s right. We’ve been so focused on surviving for the next few minutes we haven’t noticed the obvious. Zee has crowded around the old homestead, leaving the farmhouse and the dormitory largely alone. There are a few stragglers wandering around those homes, but they’re not being inundated like we are. There are easily a thousand zombies packed around our house.

“Like flies on shit,” Ferguson notes. That’s not quite the analogy I would use, but he’s right.

Gunshots ring out through the night. Those in the other houses are shooting at the zombies. Zee should swarm toward the sound, but he doesn’t, leaving them free to pick off any zombie that strays too close.

Dozens of dark figures stream away from the dormitory and the other homes, running up the hill away from the commune.

“They’re evacuating,” Dad says.

“Good,” Marge replies. And we stand there for a moment watching them flee as our home burns beneath us. Shock does strange things to people. Seeing others herd their families over to the corral, it’s strangely comforting to know they’re going to survive. Somehow, it makes up for our coming loss.

I know roughly what they’ll do. At the back of the corral there’s a fenced area. It’s an old gravel dump, from the days when we had a government and someone cared about maintaining roads. The chain-link fence is in good condition and stands about ten feet high. Technically, it’s not part of this property, but no one cares about stuff like that anymore. They’ll be safe there.

“What do they want?” Marge asks, snapping me back to the moment. And that’s when it strikes me. Zee wants something.

I look Marge in the eye and say, “Me!”

“What?” dad asks in surprise.

“Explain,” Marge says, as cold and calculating as ever.

“Steve,” I begin, struggling to say his name but glad some good can come from his death. “He saw them, back in the camps outside of Chicago. They’re not mindless.”

“Now wait a minute—” Ferguson says, but Marge holds her hand up, cutting him off.

“Go on.”

“Steve told us about how the old ones watched as zombies attacked his camp. We didn’t believe him. But down in the city, I saw one of them for myself.”

“One of the old zombies?” Marge asks, with a surprising amount of calm considering fire is breaking through one side of the roof. Flames leap into the sky. Our lives are measured in minutes rather than hours, and yet I think this is important for her to understand. Even with the house burning beneath us, I think this information holds the key to our escape.