When They Come (7 page)

“I doubt some people will need whatever they left behind at this point.” Matt spoke to himself at a normal voice since being outside offered him a sort of freedom.

“First, I need food.” Matt’s rumbling stomach agreed with him.

He slowly walked down the creaking fire escape, again, taking a last look into his apartment.

He gathered his courage and tiptoed down the metal structure. To his surprise, a few of the windows were boarded up with small viewing slots. He highly doubted that the people inside would help him in, let alone take down their defenses. Some of the boarded windows, the few that were there, had boards crudely torn off of them, some had half a board taken off and blood smeared on them. Matt heard loud shuffling and items behind dropped.

“No way, how would the monsters get in?” Matt realized that for some of the boarded windows, the people inside had unknowingly trapped themselves with an infected family member or neighbor.

He closed his eyes and lowered his head, trying to imagine their final moments.

Matt thought it was best to not even go near the boarded windows, shuffling or not, surely the people inside would be a little paranoid and rightfully so. Last thing he needed was some sort of sharp object or well intentioned bullet to hit him.

There were just a few floors left to look through. The lower ones didn’t seem to be boarded up for some reason.

Looking through the first clean window, he saw a neat living room everything in place and looking spotless. This made Matt scared. Gathering more of his courage, which he was surprised he had, Matt knocked the window with his hockey stick. The closed window offered protection against any beast that would pop out.

Tap, Tap, Tap.

He waited.

Nothing.

Tap, Tap…

Nothing.

Matt tried to open the window, and with no surprise, it was locked. His stomach rumbled. He needed to take a chance. Matt smashed the hockey stick into the window. It only cracked. The loud noise rattled his skull, but he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and hit it again.

It cracked.

Again.

A small gap.

Again.

A large enough hole to go through.

Matt cleared the glass by running the hockey stick along all the corners, making it much safer for him to pass through. He didn’t hear any shuffling and didn’t see any of the ghouls on the street taking much notice of him. He took a deep breath and went inside.

The living room was immaculate to say the very least. All the couches were perfectly arrange, the place was still decorated and nothing seemed to be out of place. There was a spot of dust here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. Matt walked through the place very carefully. Who knows what could be inside?

The door was chained shut, so no one left and he remembered that the window was still locked.

“No one came in from the outside. But the lock… does that mean no one left?”, He whispered to himself.

“What if they were infected and stood behind?” Matt began to enjoy talking to himself.

He checked every corner, being sure to look behind himself every few seconds. He found nothing. He looked under the couches, behind the TV, and even poked the hockey stick through the closet.

Now for the bathroom.

“Which one of these is the bathroom?”, he whispered.

He carefully knocked on the first door that he walked by.

Silence.

Carefully turning the knob, Matt ventured in slowly. The toilet was clean, the sinks were dry, and the shower curtain was partially drawn. It offered him enough room to see that it was empty.

Matt breathed a sigh of relief. So far, so good.

Only one more room to check…

Walking to the last door in the apartment felt like an eternity. Matt’s heart was racing. He kept reassuring himself that the apartment was quiet, so there would probably be an empty room behind that door.

His palms were sweaty, his knees grew weak, and his arms turned to limp noodles. He could barely hold onto the hockey stick.

He let his hand rest on the door knob for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and turning the knob.

He pushed the door open. It creaked ever so slightly. Inside there was a bed with a netted drape hanging over it. Matt squinted his eyes and barely noticed two figures under the drape.

A breeze that tickled his face startled him. He gasped and picked up the hockey stick.

“Wind. Only the wind.” He muttered to himself.

The figures under the drape were motionless; the wind was the loudest thing in the room.

Matt, never showing his back to the figures, crept over the window and closed it. It shut hard, too hard.

Matt locked up and started at the figures, expecting them to rise.

Nothing.

He went over to them and pushed the drape aside with the hockey stick.

His fear quickly changed, he lowered the stick and moved the drape back with his hands.

“Aw, shit.” He felt a tear welling up in his eye. For a moment, he finally forgot about his hunger.

He fell to his knees and wept for a few minutes.

Under the drape was an older couple, forever asleep and holding hands. Both were dressed in their absolute best. The husband was in a suit and tie. He even had wilted flower in his breast pocket. One hand was laid on his chest and the other held his wife’s hand. She had a small smile on her face and a dried tear on her cheek. She wore a beautiful white dress that was flawless. There was barely any light in the room, yet the dress shone brighter than the sun.

Matt looked at the table. There were two large, empty glasses and a bottle of old wine. Beside the bottle were a prescription bottle of sleeping pills. It was completely empty.

“Couldn’t save any for me, huh?”, Matt said to the old man. His eternal expression was enough for Matt.

“Fine, I’ll let it slide”, Matt said to the corpse.

“You guys got off easy, you know. I don’t have anyone. I gotta deal with this on my own.”

Matt took a last look at the couple and choked back the emotions. His hunger slowly returned and if he didn’t do something about it, he would surely share their fate, albeit, a bit more painful.

Matt closed the drapes and closed the door.

He wiped the last of his tears from his eyes.

“I gotta get out of here before it gets dark.” Matt paused

He heard a cough.

“What was that?” He brought the hockey stick up to his chest.

“These things don’t cough…”

The noise came from directly below him. It went from the single cough to full on crying.

Matt didn’t know what to do.

“Am I going crazy? Aren’t I the only person left?”

It had been a long, long time since Matt heard another voice that wasn’t calling for help.

“Hello, HELLO? Is there anyone up there?!” It was a muffled female voice. Matt knew the sound of desperation when he heard it.

Matt stood there in awe. What should he do? Should he go to her? The sound of her voice would surely attract unwanted attention. He couldn’t hold himself back. He needed human contact. It had been too long.

He left the apartment through the fire escape.

Road Trip

Jason and Dave were still a bit shaken up about what happened in the house. Dave, clutching the bat, looked at what was left of their hometown. The sky seemed to be permanently gray. The sun was out, but it wasn’t there. Maybe it, too, gave up on humanity.

Dave looked at the plumes of smoke rising to the sky and watched the limping forms moving about the roads.

Jason smiled a little bit, “I spy with my little eye…something beginning with the letter Z!”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Zombie?”

“Sounds about right.”

Both friends noticed that there were no cars on the road at all. Not even parked.

“This is kind of freaky, Jay. Where are all the cars?”

Jason stood quiet for a second.

“Well, maybe they all went to the mall, OR, while trying to skip town, they ran into THAT traffic jam…”

Jason motioned to the distant highway that led out of town, it was a bit far off, but they were able to see all the outlines of several cars, all stopped in their place.

Dave was able to make out a corpse that was on it’s knees and half eaten beginning to stir.

“Geez, Jay. Ever think, why is this happening here? Why couldn’t it be somewhere else? Why us?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that we have to get to the evacuation site and get the hell out of here.”

“You’re right. Do you think things will ever go back to the way they were before all of this?”

“America usually sorts all shit like this out, dude. I wish it were somewhere else, but before we think about that, we need to survive.”

“I’d like to think everything will go back to the way they used to be”, Dave replied. He looked out the window and saw a group of the creatures biting into a corpse. He was a bit concerned at how jaded he had become to the sight already. He thought of how it could have been him. He was lucky that he wasn’t alone in the house when the monster got inside, or else…

“Dave! We’re almost here! Look alive, man.”

“Alright.”

A few minutes later, the friends pulled into the mall parking lot. The huge lot was littered with zombies milling around. Some were missing arms, others were staring at the sky, and more were banging on a few of the cars that were in the parking lot.

Dave noticed movement inside of one of the cars.

Jason turned off the car and the sound of the engine going quiet had Dave look at the ignition key out of reflex. They both nodded at each other and stood in the car observing their surroundings.

Looking at the rear window, Dave noticed a silhouette of what appeared to be a young girl locked in a silent scream and moving around the car in a pattern of desperation.

“Oh shit” were the only words Dave could mutter. Jason held him back as Dave tried to leave the car and help the shadow.

“Dude, come on, we can’t take all of those. You know we’re gonna get all their attention if we leave”, Jason painfully said.

Dave nodded. His friend of over ten years always knew what to say.

Dave sat down with a sullen look on his face, thinking of what to do. Just then, the friends both jumped at the noise of glass shattering.

One of the ghouls had broken through the window and reached inside, it was promptly joined by other hungry monsters.

The screaming made both friends wince and close their eyes hard. They heard the woman’s feet kick the metal frame of the car. They couldn’t make out what she was screaming. Her noises only acted to call more of the ghouls over to her.

Dave looked up in time to watch two of the zombies pulling at the woman’s leg. Her screams only grew louder and louder, pulling more of them to her. They began to grab at their next meal. Dave watched as two of the zombies pulled off her lightly tanned leg. He watched her silhouette recoil back in a terrible scream. He watched her try to pull back the severed leg.

Dave heard the door of the car pop open and he felt a hand grab him. He jumped and looked over.

“Come on, now’s our chance!”, Jason said with urgency.

Both friends grabbed their weapons and got ready to make a dash for the mall.

Dave couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene of the now weakening girl still trying to grab at her leg. She was watching it be eaten by the zombies that grabbed it while others tried to get at the rest of her.

They both left the car. Most of the zombies in the area were distracted by their noisy meal. The friends ran by many of them

Keeping their bats ready, they ran through the lot, passing the woman in the car. Jason caught her reaching towards the both of them as they ran by. In that split second, Jason’s heart sank at the futility of her situation, but deep down, he was grateful. Her sacrifice caused them to live for a while longer.

He was glad Dave didn’t see that.

The woman’s screams were getting weaker and her movements were slowing down. They needed to get to the mall. Fast.

“We need to hurry, before we lose our distraction!”, Jason said with urgency.

Dave nodded. They both ran as fast and quietly as they could. Their running would have looked funnier to an outside party, but to them, it was all about staying alive.

The glass doors of their new temporary home grew closer and closer as a few of the walking dead seemed almost oblivious to them. Others hungrily limped towards the screaming car.