She glared at me for a moment until she realized that I was right. If I had waited till three to tug on the sleeve, the anticipation of knowing pain was coming would have magnified two or three times over. But by tugging when I hit two, she wasn’t ready for the pain and had no time for the anticipation to blossom before pain coursed through her. “Yeah, and you probably enjoyed every bit of that,” she said snidely.
“I did what I had to do to help you,” I added.
“I know you did,” she said and slid the knife back into its sheath.
“We gotta get moving,” I told her.
The sound of more footsteps climbing the stairs pushed both of us down the hallway to the last room on the left. The door was shut and I was about to leave nothing to chance, as Morris could easily have been hiding on the other side of the door just waiting for us to enter. He was armed now, so I had to be on my game or suffer the consequences.
I motioned for her to stay back and I kicked the door open hard, swung into the room and cleared it. Once I was inside and Rachel was with me, we could both see the far window had been opened. I approached with my short rifle ready to fire if Morris was still in the yard somewhere. At the window I could see what I already knew and lowered the weapon, turning to Rachel. “He got away.”
“You’re kidding me,” Rachel said as she crossed the floor and stopped at the window beside me. She shook her head as her anger sprouted. “You know that bastard is going to go find his men and come back here looking for us.”
“Good, let him,” I told her. “Because we won’t be here when they arrive.”
“Have you lost your mind? There are over a few dozen of those things out there, plus they are in the house with us,” she stated.
“Morris got out this window and got away, which means we can also,” I added.
“We don’t know for sure that he got away,” Rachel said. “He could very easily be out there in the yard somewhere dead, right now.”
I looked at her with a stern glare. “They are coming up the stairs, we have nowhere left to run too and we’re running out of time arguing about this shit! We don’t have a choice anymore, Rachel. We try and escape or we die, right here, right now!”
Footsteps called to us from out in the hallway. The undead had made their way up the stairs and we closing in on us. I ran to the door and made sure it was locked, but it had been damaged when I kicked the door in, so we weren’t shutting that door and adding it as another obstacle for them to overcome. “The door’s busted, so we can’t lock it,” I said and began scanning the small room for something we could use to barricade the door. “That dresser, help me move it in front of the door,” I said and she hurried over and grabbed one side.
The both of us were unable to pick it up; apparently the owners were storing rocks in it. So we both got on the same side and pushed with all our might until the dresser was securely in front of the door.
“It won’t hold for long, but it will give us enough time to get out this window and drop to the ground below,” I said.
“That looks like a fairly high jump and there’s a good possibility we could get injured leaping out of it. Are you sure you want to risk that, now?”
As if on cue, the undead began banging on the door we had just barricaded. I looked to Rachel. “We could always stay here and fight them until we are out of ammo and the backyard is full of them?”
“Point taken,” she replied and took another glance out the window at the green grass below.
“It had been raining pretty hard, so there’s a good chance the grass will be soft,” I told her.
“I hope you’re right,” she answered.
I moved to the window and glanced out myself. The backyard was nothing special. There was a large privacy fence encircling the property, a small grove of trees in the far left corner, a shed, but most importantly, there wasn’t a single sign of the undead or runners anywhere.
“We can climb up on that shed over there and exit into the next yard, and since there are no guests out there waiting to greet us, I’d say going right now would be our best bet,” I made my case.
“My arm is pretty badly banged up. A fall from too high could make it worse,” she procrastinated with me.
“And staying here getting mauled to death won’t make that arm feel any better,” I countered. Once again she saw my point and moved to the window.
“All you have to do is crawl out onto the ledge, work your way down into a comfortable position and just let go. Gravity will do the rest.” I told her.
She looked hard at me holding her wounded shoulder. “That’s what scares me.”
“It’s no more than ten or so feet to the soft grass,” I told her, yet still she sat there in the window debating if this was a good idea or not.
The banging on the door was increasing and I could see that the dresser had moved a few inches.
“Look, Rachel. That dresser isn’t going to hold for much longer, now you need to get all of that worthless shit out of your head and make a conscious decision right now to either jump or die! That’s the only choices we have left.”
She looked at the green grass below her dangling feet a few moments.
“You either jump or we’re both going to die. It’s that simple!” My pep talks were going flat; I was running out of things to tell her and the motivation was anything but that. I had drawn an imaginary line and would let nothing cross it. If she couldn’t find the strength to jump on her own, then I’d be forced to jump without her. I didn’t need someone slowing me down. I needed someone that was willing to do whatever it took to survive.
The dresser moved some more and the banging was now louder. A runner or two were among the undead and they were using their limited brainpower to figure out how to get in the room. There was no more time for talk, as out situation was precarious.
I grabbed her by the shoulder. “You want to stay, then be my guest. I’m out of here,” I told her, although before I could get her to move she launched herself forward and disappeared from sight. I waited for a horrific scream to tell me she had landed on her shoulder or maybe broken her leg. There came no such scream.
“You were right, the grass is soft,” she said and I looked out to see her standing off to the right. She scanned the yard, found no threats, and then focused back upon me. “C’mon, let’s get moving.”
I jumped and for some strange reason began to count as I fell through the air, reaching the number seven as I hit the ground, bent my knees to soak up the collision and rolled forward like some gung ho ninja.
We made our way across the yard to the shed, where I helped Rachel up onto an almost flat roof. The trees blocked her view directly behind the shed, but to the left and right she could see several silent houses with their own backyards of green grass. She searched from left to right slowly, looking for anything that she could consider out of place. She found nothing and saw Morris nowhere in sight.
As I crawled onto the roof she told me what she knew so far. “I don’t see him anywhere. That sneaky bastard is nowhere in any of these backyards,” she said as her tone increased. She wanted to find him almost as badly as I did, although she didn’t plan on killing him once that was established. Not right off anyway.
I pointed toward the faint red roof of the school complex to my right. “That’s ultimately where he’s headed, there’s no doubt about that. The only question I have, is what’s his first move? Is he going to try and find the rest of his men first and return with them or go directly to the, then return here?”
“Does it really matter?” Rachel asked me.
“Yeah, it really matters!” I bombarded her. “That worthless son of a bitch is going to pay for what he did to those poor people… I’ll make damn sure of that!”
“You’re blinded by hate, do you know that?” Rachel told me.
I looked at her with the stupidest look I could form. “Excuse me?”
“That’s all you have thought about for how many days now?” She asked. “It has consumed your every thought until you can see nothing more than killing him. Welcome to the world where innocent people have been dying for centuries, brought on by some stupid vendetta from one person to another.” She crouched down and continued to look at me. “You want him dead, fine, then that’s your prerogative. But when you kill him, then what? Do you honestly think you’ll be able to sleep better at night or that life will get back to the way it was? Wrong! There’ll be another asshole, even meaner than Morris, to take his place. Are you going to kill everyone just to be safe and if so, when and who will it end with?”
I looked at her dumbfounded.
“You have a daughter and a son to think about and while you are out here putting yourself in unnecessary situations, they could be in danger. Maybe it’s time you just found a vehicle and went after them?” Her words calmed as she spoke this time and made perfect sense.
I chewed on those words for only a few seconds. “I do this because my kids are not safe with that asshole still breathing. I know they need me, but leaving him alone and letting him live could prove disastrous for them in the future,” I explained.
Rachel lowered her head into one of her hands and shook it several times. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Yes, I get it,” I replied.
She raised her head and looked at me. “Your children should come first! If you want to kill him after you have them somewhere safe, then that’s up to you… so no, you don’t get it.” She looked away and studied the layout of the yard to the right. I watched her, feeling the meaning of her words sink into my thick skull. She was right weather I wanted to admit it or not. My children should be with me where I could protect them and if Morris came around looking for trouble, then that’s exactly what I would give him. But until they were safe, they should be the only thing in my thoughts and actions.
Until I saw my son’s body, I would consider him to be alive. Kember was with Johnny, but I had no idea where they had gotten off too and deep down I had been worrying about that since my fall.
“You’re right,” I said to Rachel. “My kids should come first… so I’m going to find them and if Morris gets in my way, I’ll deal with that bridge when I,
we
, get to it.”
Rachel slowly turned to face me. “I really didn’t know what they were doing in there, I swear to god I didn’t,” she said softly.
“That was then… this is now,” I said.
Chapter Eleven
We cut through a backyard, crouching low to the earth as we moved to lower the chances of being heard or seen by anyone, dead or alive. At the rear of a house, we peered to see the street populated by only a few undead and thought that our best chance of crossing would be in this location.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” I said to Rachel, who instantly hung on every word I had to say. “I’ll lead with you behind me. If any of those things get to close, I’ll pop them, but they shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Whatever happens, I don’t care how close they get or any of that… do
not
use your weapon. There are runners out there and if you shoot, then they’ll come running and we’ll be screwed.”
She nodded her head and I quickly slipped around the corner of the house, made my way up through the open car port and abruptly stopped and crouched. Rachel was my exact shadow and did everything as such.
“What’s wrong,” she whispered into my right ear.
I wasn’t sure how to answer her question, as the very thing that had halted me was my gut. How do you explain to a person about a gut feeling that is so overwhelming you can feel the danger in every inch of your body? “Something isn’t right,” I whispered.
“Did you see something?” She asked.
I shook my head, but continued to scan the street for any possible threats I had missed at first. The undead, who simply shuffled around with no real direction, were invisible to me almost. My eyes were searching for what I knew would be close by, in plain sight, yet blending perfectly in to the backdrop. “Not yet,” I replied.
“We need to move, we are too exposed here,” Rachel whispered to me.
“Not until I see them,” I told her.
Rachel studied the street a few quick seconds, seeing only the shuffling undead, thinking that maybe since I was further ahead of her I could see something she could not. She leaned around me and continued to search. “See who, there’s nobody out there but those things.”
I detected movement directly across the street in a small patch of trees encircled by waist high shrubs. I pointed with my right hand and answered her question. “There… right there in those shrubs and three trees. Do you see them?”
Rachel strained to see what I was pointing at and at first she saw only the lazy sway of the shrubs and a few low hanging branches. She was about to whisper that she could see nothing and that I was possibly imagining it all, when suddenly she was able to see what had snatched my interest. There, perfectly concealed between the far right shrub and a hint of an opening before the tree trunk took effect, she was able to see a human figure squatted on its haunches searching the street as we were. “I see it,” she whispered.
“They know we aren’t in the house anymore and are looking for us,” I told her.
“Are you suggesting those things can think and act like us?” She asked me.