The End: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (35 page)

Bretta is yelling something at Scott, but it’s still too much for him to process. Allen is kicking his feet, and he keeps kicking Nancy in the face and in the chest, and his feet catch on one of her exposed tits and the force knocks her sideways.

Scott looks down at the floor and his feet are bloody, and then he looks at Bretta she’s just standing in the doorway, not screaming, just crying and looking at him with scared, dark eyes. Her hand is over her mouth.

Denise and Cooper are behind Bretta, and then the three of them are holding on to each other. Denise crying into Cooper’s shoulder, and Cooper has an arm around her, but he’s staring at the floor where Allen and Nancy are tangled up. His face is passive, like he’s seeing it all on television. Bretta is looking at Scott like he did the right thing, even though it was a horrible thing. The dead people outside are drumming their lunatic anthem. It’s the only sound getting through.

He walks toward Bretta. He drops the bat and it makes that muted buzz again when it hits the floor. Bretta unwinds herself from Cooper and Denise, and she’s nodding at Scott. She opens her arms to him. He steps into her warmth and she pulls him close, pulls his head down so his face is on her shoulder and her neck so they can share their breath. It’s the warmth and the taste of her breath that finally brings Scott around, finally causes the drumbeat to die away and finally he can hear what Bretta is saying to him. She tells him it’s okay, he’s okay now, and everything is going to be okay.

“You did what you had to do,” she says. “He would have killed us all.”

She leads him away from the blood and the death, and away from Cooper and Denise clinging to each other, Denise sobbing with a snotty nose, her face shiny and wet. Her bleached blonde hair clinging to the tears on her cheeks and to the stubble on Cooper’s face.

Denise keeps saying it’s going to be okay but Scott doesn’t believe her. He knows they’re going to die here. Sooner or later, they’ll all go out like Allen, complaining of headaches and being sad for days on end until he picks up a bat and knocks out his girlfriend’s lights.

Walking down the stairs, back to their room, Scott sees it all and it’s still too much. Everything he’s just done is a pointless waste of time. Survival isn’t extending their lives. It’s living in denial. It’s futility. Drawing breath is futility.

He pulls away from the sanctuary of Bretta’s arms and approaches the window. Bretta tells him to be careful, there’s glass all over the floor.

He looks down. Why so there is. Long, clear fingers with razor-sharp edges. He reaches down and picks one up. So very long. So very sharp.

The first gash across his wrist opens like a puckering fish mouth for a moment before it floods his arm with red. He cuts hard enough to slice his palm and fingers with the glass he’s holding. There’s pain, and then burning where the glass kisses flesh. His legs are spattered with hot and wet. His hand looks like a candy apple that’s melting red caramel all over the floor.

He sits down on the bed, and there’s a moment or two before the screaming starts up again, a moment when Bretta is confused about what just happened, and where all the colour is coming from. It’s a moment of perfect, utter peace.

And then it’s gone.

Living Dead is available from Amazon
here