Then, he heard the gunshots.
The noise made him jerk his head up, and he looked wonderingly at the top of the steps. Was it Tenner? Setting his jaw, he climbed. More shots rang out. Had the undead caught up with the killer?
A killer
! Scott shook his head as he struggled upward. Of all the sick bastards to survive the end of the world.
He heard another barrage of heavy gunfire as he reached the top of the steps. He knelt on the carpet and crawled over to the drape-covered picture window. Hooking a corner of the curtain, he peeked out at a swarm of undead gathering in the street. They walked toward the house next door, and he spotted a van parked in front of it. A man, decked out in leather and wearing a motorcycle helmet, got aboard the battered vehicle. Undead crowded around it like flies to shit.
Anger flooded Scott’s senses. He yanked open a smaller window set in the larger frame and punched the barrel of the shotgun through the screen mesh. Ready to exact revenge, he aimed for the driver’s window, trying to steady himself, but a second later, the van lurched forward. It grill-butted a bunch of zombies and plowed onward, bursting through several more as it sped off down the street. The sounds of walking corpses being hit filled the air. Then the driver did a crazy thing. He turned and crashed through a fence. Even through the glass, Scott heard the impact and the ferocious roar of the engine as it cut through to the road behind the row of houses. The van came back, gaining speed, and Scott knew he would have an almost impossible shot. He shouldn’t even waste the shell, but then he thought of Teddy and Lea hanging in the basement.
Tracking the speeding van as it flashed through the gaps between houses, he saw it appear for a second at the mouth of the street, framed in his mind’s eye, and he squeezed the trigger. The blast knocked him on his back and almost caused him to black out from the pain. He struggled back up to a sitting position and gazed out the window. The van was gone.
The undead remained in the street.
Fright engulfed him as he pulled the window closed and lay flat on his back, breathing rapidly. He thought about closing the curtains entirely, but he was afraid they might see the activity. Then, he remembered the smell from below, and how he had opened the window.
Whump
.
The front door.
He clutched at his shotgun, knowing he had one more shell in the weapon and hoping to fuck he didn’t have to use it. Getting to his knees, he made the painfully slow crawl toward the steps. He couldn’t go down into the basement. Not with
them
down there. He made it to the stairs and headed up.
Whump. Whump-whump.
Shadows against the window. How long before they came through the glass? The door? He pawed his way up the stairs, pushing his shotgun ahead, blood pounding in his ears until he came to the landing. The reading area on his left, the bedroom on his right. The sound of a door opening below made him jerk around in fright, splayed out on the landing like a turtle caught on a narrow beach.
Hissing.
He moved toward the bedroom. Somehow resisting the urge to charge that last room, he crawled to it as quietly as possible. Below, the hissing seemed to multiply.
They were in the house
. Scott got his ass into the bedroom and closed the door with a grimace. He lay on the brown carpet and looked to the right. A bathroom lit by a skylight. He crawled in there. Gasping, he lugged his damaged ankle inside and closed the door as quietly as possible.
They can smell
, his mind told him.
They can smell you
.
He glanced around the bathroom and finally snaked his way toward the gleaming white tub in the back, next to the toilet. He hauled himself up, flipped his legs over, and sat down in the body-length bathtub. Breathing hard from pain and exertion, he faced the closed door. Thumping came from below, and he wasn’t sure exactly where they were, but they were under him. He aimed the shotgun at the door, then thought better of it and reversed it, tucking the barrel against his neck and wedging the shoulder stock between his legs. If they came through, he would have a second, maybe two, before––
More noise beyond the door. Scott’s senses zeroed in on the dark wood, and he wished, prayed,
bargained
that nothing would come up the stairs. He placed the barrel of the gun underneath his chin.
Defcon 1,
he thought blackly, and took care placing his thumb on the trigger guard. The clumping below seemed closer, and he wondered just how many were down there. He had no chance, none at all. The undead flooded a place once they caught the smell of meat.
A crash and a loud moan. More scuffling. Another crash, perhaps a window.
Scott’s thumb drifted towards the trigger until the edge of his fingernail was all that kept him in this world. He squeezed his eyes closed, not wanting to see what might burst through the door. He willed the creatures below to leave. He fought down an urge to moan in terror as his mind played dark movies in his brain, delighting in pointing out how the next few seconds could possibly go down.
A loud rumble came from below, and he opened his eyes. It sounded like…
His mouth parted in horrified realization.
The smell
. They smelled Teddy’s and Lea’s bodies in the basement and one––or more––had fallen down the steps. The sounds of more bodies thumping their way into the basement reached him, and he eased his thumb off the trigger. He had a few more moments of life, thanks to his companions below. He had never thought of Teddy and Lea as friends, having only met them on the road, but they were protecting him, diverting the zombies. He pictured the scene in the basement, the decomposing bodies hung like meat slabs in a freezer, and a throng of undead stumbling upon them. He shook his head, not wanting to think anymore. He didn’t want to think about that first bite, didn’t want to see where the undead would start eating, the abdominal cavity or the pooled guts on the floor. Or even the faces, his traitorous mind suddenly added, thinking of lips and noses.
And above all, he didn’t want to hear the sounds. He clenched his eyes and jaw shut as he turned and pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the shotgun’s barrel.
*
They had left him alone.
The day stretched on. He sat with his sprained ankle balanced on the rim of the tub and tried to make himself as comfortable as possible. After the first hour, he shifted to relive the subtle aches in his body, but he dared not get out, dared not even breathe, for fear of attracting the attention of the guests below. The shotgun stayed in the tub with him, ready to blow his head off if necessary.
Somewhere in the third hour, he
had
to move. He placed the shotgun across the seat of the toilet and, grabbing the tub’s edges, pulled himself up, his triceps burning from the effort. Easing his body out of the tub quietly proved to be difficult with his gunshot wound and bad ankle, but he managed. He grasped the stock of the shotgun and took it off the can. It dragged loudly against the porcelain, and he bared his teeth and froze, listening and picturing the zombies below stopping in mid-chew, their decaying features coated in Teddy’s and Lea’s blood, to gaze up at the ceiling.
Nothing happened, however, and he eventually got the gun onto the floor beside him. There was a mat underneath him, and he got it out, rolled it up, and positioned it behind his head. His attention strayed to the door every so often. He sometimes froze and simply listened, hoping he would hear nothing that would give him nightmares later.
The sun drooped and fell, the skylight marking its descent and eventually draping the bathroom in darkness. The temperature dropped, and he shivered despite wearing a thick coat. In the swelling gloom, against the gleam of black marble tiling and creamy porcelain, Scott waited for that dreaded
thump
against the door. The undead could smell, but could they follow a scent like a dog? Was their sense that strong?
Sometime during the night, the sound of a struggle below jarred Scott from a semi-doze. The coldness of the room made him shiver again. He listened, blinking away sleep. More noise, muffled by the door and carpet, but growing stronger. Getting closer.
It faded, however, and Scott let out his breath as he sensed whatever it was heading into the kitchen.
Maybe looking for a drink
, his mind joked morbidly. Nothing like a beer to wash down a burger, his mind went on, or a greasy slab of pizza. Even a chicken leg. His eyes suddenly teared up at the images his mind was throwing at him. He would not scream out, though he suddenly felt the very real and very strong urge to do so. He hitched a sob, a muted thing, and sniffed wetly. Then, he steeled himself and took another settling breath. He felt the throb of his wounds and the exhaustion of his body. He wanted to sleep, but knowing they were still below him, he couldn’t relax. In the end, he moved to position himself on his belly, taking his rolled mat with him as a pillow, and faced the door. He stopped once, sounds from below making him pause until he thought it was safe to continue. When he got himself around and on his belly, he laid the shotgun at his side. He placed his head against the mat-pillow and hoped he wouldn’t snore if he fell asleep.
During that long torturous night, where squeaks of wood and soft bumps caused him to tense and stare at the door, he eventually drifted off.
And slept.
*
A loud crash woke him, and his fingers scrambled on the black marble tiling before finally locating the shotgun. He heard soft shuffling below, and still on his belly, he placed an ear to the tile and listened. Things moved, bumping into walls. Sometimes the makers of the noise paused, as if sensing something, before moving on.
At the quietest time in the day, in the afternoon, Scott eyed the toilet. He sat up and slowly edged his way to the flush box. He was thirsty, and wondered if there might have been anything in the container. His ankle still bothered him, but he managed to wedge himself into the space between the toilet and the tub and lift the cover. He forced himself up and peeked in.
Dry as a bone.
All of that effort for nothing. Disappointed, he replaced the cover and lay back down. He thought of starving, or dying of thirst. He wouldn’t allow it, however, not while he still had the one shell left. He would risk going to Hell rather than suffer through a slow death from thirst. God would understand.
The day wore on, and he tried to sleep, cat naps that weren’t restful, but more like something in the gray between being awake and death itself. He periodically heard movement below, but it didn’t bother him as much as before.
He opened his eyes and thought that the day had moved on, just from the shadow from the skylight. His stomach rumbled. He got onto the toilet and voided, grateful that the owners of the house had left an almost full roll of toilet paper. He couldn’t flush, and it smelled, but there was nothing he could do about it. Mentally shrugging, he lay back down and waited.
For what, he didn’t know.
*
All the next day, Scott lived in perpetual dread of the undead discovering him. The previous night had been terrible, as he couldn’t completely rest. Every time he was about to fall asleep, a noise from downstairs would hook him back to consciousness, and he would spend the next hour listening, trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from. He didn’t feel the need to pee anymore, and that made him suspect something was wrong. The smell from the toilet didn’t help his situation either, and he wondered how long it would take for his shit to dry up and become odourless. He had no idea about such things. Back in the real world, he had been a baker, and the toilets flushed. If he had known he would later be trapped in an upstairs bathroom with his own shit while the dead walked below and feasted on the last two people he knew in the world… well, he sure as Christ would have watched extra episodes of the Discovery Channel to brush up on the subject.
Sometime in the afternoon, he believed that a long time of quiet had passed. The idea came to him to try to make a run for it. Bleary-eyed, he sat up and tried standing on his ankle. It crackled with pain as he increased the weight on it. At the same time, something moved below and seemed to be coming up the stairs. The noise culminated in a loud crashing, and then silence. The commotion was more than enough to freak him out, and he put a hand on his shotgun, ready to exit the world with one squeeze of the trigger. The noise retreated to another area of the house, and Scott eased off the trigger. His mind teased him with the image of being on a wide piece of wood siding, floating somewhere in the South Pacific, with sharks circling relentlessly, just waiting for an ankle to slip and dip into the warm water. And he knew then, he just
knew
, he was going to die.
His eyes teared up, and he buried his face into his winter coat to weep… for fear of the dead hearing him.
*
Scott heard a zombie on the steps.
He had woken up to a steady
clumping
on the steps, a slow, irregular beat, as if the thing had downed a bottle of booze and really had to concentrate on where to place the next step. Scott counted off four steps before he heard a more sinister noise, like someone leaning against the wall in a coat and dragging its zipper along the surface. And the low whining buzz drew closer. He got into a sitting position, placed the barrel of the weapon underneath his chin, and squeezed his eyes closed. The noise came closer, and something nudged the surface of the bathroom door, testing it. Scott inhaled deeply, knowing it would be the last breath he would take on God’s sunny earth. His thumb found the trigger, and his nail hooked on the guard, just a fraction of metal separating him and the unknown.