As soon as his feet touched the plush pile, his legs collapsed. He sat with his back against the wall, staring up at the darkened rafters above. A heavy silence consumed him for the briefest moment while the others staked out their areas for the night. He should find some water, wash his face and hands, see if there was anything to eat since he hadn’t eaten at all that day, but he couldn’t move.
Then came a terrible scream.
His back straightened as he looked around. The others were settling into their places on the floor as if they hadn’t heard a thing, flashlights shining brightly around them for comfort.
Lee forced his body to relax back against the wall again. Surely the wannabe soldier would have been all over it if he had heard someone shouting. He seemed like the type of guy who enjoyed watching heads explode from the pull of his trigger. But whose scream was it? And why had no one else heard it?
It didn’t sound like Jessica. When the zombie’s teeth had sunk into her tender flesh, she had let out a high-pitched piercing cry, similar to that of a small dying animal. And it didn’t sound like any of the cries he had heard while fighting to escape the hospital. Those had been panicked and breathy as everyone ran for their lives or died trying. No, it wasn’t a scream he had heard that day. But then where would he have heard someone screaming so fully and desperately? He couldn’t think of a single moment in his life that called for such a terrible and frightening scream.
Then he remembered the dream he had of his wife the night before—the way her face was permanently frozen in a horrific scream, the mascara running down her cheeks like two black rivers, and nothing coming out of her mouth as she looked at him, her eyes crying out for him to save her, but he didn’t know how…it was the same face she wore in death on her parent’s kitchen floor. The dream had ended with the sound of her screams. Looking back now, he could only assume that was the sound she made while her life drained from her body slowly and painfully.
In some twisted way, he had dreamt of her death before it happened. Then why wasn’t he able to save her? The question burned at him. His balled up hands shook in his lap as he breathed in and out slowly in an attempt to calm himself. Even if he had some premonition of her death and could have stopped it, that didn’t change anything. Anna was still gone and there was nothing that would bring her back.
Another cry interrupted the quiet of the barn. This time the others heard it too and jumped up from their beds of hay.
XVI.
An older woman, Lee guessed by the rasp in her voice, called out for someone to help her. Lonnie grabbed his gun first, as it never really seemed to leave his hands. He charged the front doors and peered out from between the crack.
Rowan grabbed his pistol and followed.
Mitchell slowly grasped his shaking hand around the barrel of his shotgun, but didn’t move any further to pick it up. His eyes were wide as he waited for the inevitable horde of dead to raid the barn and kill them all.
Lee was the only one to remain on the floor, his back relaxed and his head turned upward with his eyes closed as if he had been carried off into a peaceful dream. In reality, he was fighting tooth-and-nail not to see his dead wife’s face, which seemed to burn in his retinas.
The last thing he wanted to do was get up and fight to save someone else only to watch them die at the hands of the dead. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to stay with this group, a group he didn’t particularly care for, because he was too terrified that someone else would die when he could have saved them. Maybe it was best to be alone, and if the dead sunk their teeth into him and ripped him apart with their bare, cold hands, then that was what was meant to be.
Shots fired into the night. Lonnie shouted a slew of curses. Rowan stood just outside the doors, watching in awe as the blonde charged head-first into the darkness. Mitchell stood shaking in fear. He had finally picked up his shotgun and held it close to his chest, ready to fire.
Lee had a fleeting worry that the kid would shoot the first thing that came through the door whether it was dead or alive. He almost stood up to tell Mitchell to calm down, but in the end he stayed put. What did it matter? He would comfort the kid only to see the others mortally wounded from his inaccurate fires. They would bleed to death slowly, the life fading from their brilliant young eyes as Lee looked down on them. It was better to stay hidden in the shadows and walk past the aftermath than see more horror unfold at his feet.
So, that’s exactly what Lee did.
And even when Lonnie saved the woman named Gale Lewis from the horde chasing her and everyone was safe and sound inside the lighted, warm barn, Lee still sat in the back, isolated from every living thing around him. That was the way it had to be if he wanted to survive in this new world. Getting attached meant dealing with heartbreaking loss later. It was best if he avoided it altogether.
All he planned to do from that moment forward was survive.
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Look for Alex Apostol’s new zombie novel,
It’s an Undead Thing
, part of the new horrifyingly hilarious Zooey Zombie series, at the end of October.
And keep your eye out for
Dead Road,
the sequel to the bestseller
Dead Soil
in late November.