Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (6 page)

The boy jumps to his feet and
staggers away from his father’s friend. He had just seen the man a couple of
days ago, bright, cheery, and full of life at the barbeque his father held for
his mother’s birthday. All of that is gone. What lies in the bushes is a pale
reflection, a husk of something that once was.

The sting hits his eyes and the
tears begin to well. He turns to run, leaping over bodies as he comes to the side
of the street. His heart races, pummeling through knots of fear that shudder in
his chest. The bodies are everywhere and they all wear the same face, the same
silent reserve. There are so many that Billy can’t register their numbers. But
he knows they are dead, he knows what that face looks like.

The summer before, Billy saw a
man crash into a parked car out in front of his house. His parents had told him
the man was drunk, that he passed out with his foot on the gas pedal. He hadn’t
been wearing his seatbelt and when he crashed, his body flew through the front
windshield. Billy’s father tried to give the man CPR, but he was already gone;
his body too badly injured to bring him back. The man lay on the street until
the police arrived. They put a white sheet over his body and took him away when
the ambulance arrived.

Billy’s father went to work
early that night at the hospital. He blamed himself for not being able to help
the man. He said he should have been able to do more.

Face up at the edge of the
sidewalk, his friend is laying there, tiny holes with black edges grace is
chest. A single indentation rests in the child’s forehead between blank,
staring eyes. Billy looks at his friend and mouths his name, but the word is
lost in the dry afternoon air. As he turns around in place, he can see the others,
take in their numbers. People he’s known his whole life; neighbors and friends
are lying dead in the street. Bullet holes riddle their bodies. Blank stares
grace their faces.

His lips tighten as the tears
come again. Through the blur in his eyes, he walks away through the death. A
helicopter flies low overhead and whizzes off through the sky. A gunshot can be
heard in the distance.

He cries for his father.

“Daddy,” he says through the
lump in his throat. “Daddy,” he repeats with a trembling voice and walks in
circles, confused and alone.

The helicopter returns, diving
down in a wide arch and points toward Billy. The child stands there, unable to
move. The whooping of the blades thump out as it descends, knocking out
vibrations in the boy’s chest. He stares at the chopper as it tilts and
redirects itself into a sideways descent.

Billy can see the gun glistening
as it aims toward him. A soldier guides the weapon, pivoting it as he begins to
fire. The child’s mouth hangs in fright as he begins to run. Bullets devour the
asphalt behind him, breaking loose large chunks of road in their wake.

Closer now, the soldier aims,
spraying fire from the barrel of the gun, peppering the lawn Billy escapes to.
Inches from his heels, Billy can feel the dirt and rock that is blown up from where
the bullets hit the ground. He dives and skids under a length of bushes against
the Anderson’s house. He scurries on his hands and knees, feeling the dead
leaves crunch beneath his palms. He stands and flees along the side of the
house that leads into the backyard and backs up against the inside wall.

The chopper flies low and winds
around. An elm tree blocks the view from the helicopter that hovers in the air some
fifty feet away. The blades are thundering, slapping out as they wait for the
child to reappear. Only the tail is visible from behind the tree, making the
branches bend from the wind it stirs, sending leaves scurrying into the air as
it shifts and adjust to get a better view of the side of the house.

Billy doesn’t dare move. He
stands still, trembling and shaking, pressing tightly against the siding. The
dry paste in his mouth keeps him from screaming. He holds still as the warmth
runs along his leg again. He shivers from the feeling, praying the soldiers
will just go away.

As quickly as it had arrived,
the chopper flies off, taking to the air and back from where it came. The child
convulses in sobs, his lips tremble in fright as the helicopter veers out of
sight; the deafening slap of the blades receding into the distance like a
storm.

His fingers course along the
rough siding and he stares out in shock, almost not believing what had just
happened. He can still feel the sting against his face from the wind that had
battered it. He makes his way into the backyard to hide from the soldiers and
the people. He wants to curl up into a ball and hug himself until it all goes
away.

Billy hides behind a storage
shed. He’s too frightened to move, afraid the soldiers will return. He can hear
screaming from the street and explosions in the distance. From behind him,
there comes a scraping sound of nails being dragged across wood. He shudders
and turns slowly to see a face poking through a gap in the fence from the
adjoining yard.

The corpse howls when Billy
faces it. The child stands and backs away as the corpse thrashes against the
fence, knocking a strip of wood away from the supports. A scratched and bruised
arm reaches out and claws as the creature starts to squeeze itself through.

Milky eyes glare from the
opening and fixate on the child. A large portion of its neck is torn open and
smears of blood grace its shirt. A deafening scream escapes the ghoul’s mouth,
snapping Billy back into reality.

He backs away and turns to run,
but his path is blocked by two more creatures approaching from the side of the
house. The dead call to him through bending moans that seem to come from their
very core. The child turns again and crosses the yard to a long planter that
extends from each side of the fence line. He pulls himself up onto the planter
and jumps up, snagging the top of the fence that leads to the alley behind the
house. The dead are quick to follow, struggling with the wall as they try to
clutch onto the child.

With a whimper, Billy kicks out
behind him and uses the force of his flailing feet to connect with one of the
corpses. His foot slams hard against the creature, giving him enough push to
scale the rest of the way over the fence.

He lands hard on the concrete,
knocking the wind from his lungs. The dead are slamming against the fence as
Billy gets to his feet and starts to sprint, ignoring the pain in his back and
chest.

As twilight approaches, Billy
runs. His legs cramp as he flees along the road. From behind, the dead take
chase and howl out, calling others to the hunt. Bullet riddled bodies swarm out
from everywhere as he sprints through his neighborhood and passes the park that
is across from the hospital where his father works.

He glances back at the horde
that follows, breathing heavy and ready to fall. He hears squealing tires and
the rev of an engine. A black blur swerves along the street, coming straight
for him.

·5

The sign in the front of the
hospital reads: Our Lady of Grace, but the screaming and bloodshed is anything
but. Scarlet veers through car wrecks and around the mayhem. There is a child
running from an overturned ambulance that lies against the front of the
hospital.

She slows the car and waits for
the child to near. The girl’s hairless head darts from one direction to the
next as her hospital gown flaps behind her. The look of fear and terror that
graces her face reminds Scarlet of photographs she has seen of third world
disasters. The panic the child wears is much too real, too close to home.

“Little girl, wait!” Scarlet
yells, trying to grab her attention.

The girl looks back for a split
second and runs down into the ditch at the other side of the road and vanishes
into the underbrush.

Scarlet stops the car and tries
to scan the foliage for any sign of the child. She checks around the trees and
as far along the ditch as she can see, but the girl is gone.

“What are you doing?” Greg asks
with concern in his voice. “Don’t stop, they’re coming.”

From the hospital grounds, a mob
of bodies converge, spotting the car and stumble toward it. Stiff bodies mount
the roadway, collecting and quickening their pace.

“Go!” Greg shouts.

Scarlet turns her attention from
the ditch to the growing mass of bodies and back again, unsure of what to do.
“There …” she begins, pointing to where the child disappeared.

“Just go!” Greg shouts again.

She clenches her jaw and stomps
on the gas pedal as the bodies close in and begin to slap at the car as it
speeds away. An explosion rocks the hospital and a section of wall crumbles
away, exposing the inferno within. In the rearview, Scarlet can see the dead
divert their attention back toward the hospital and shamble off. People flee
from the emergency exits as several groups of corpses converge and surround
them. More of the dead home in on the unsuspecting escapees and tackle them as they
make their way toward freedom. Gasping howls fill the air like predators
enraptured by a kill. Raping mouths gnash as more victims evacuate the
hospital.

“There was a little girl …”
Scarlet says, but her voice trails off and her eyes begin to swell. “She’s only
a little girl.” She turns her attention to the road and away from those that
cry behind distorted faces.

“There’s nothing we can do,”
Greg replies, as he jerks his attention away from the roadside. “There’re too
many of them.”

“What the hell is going on?”
Scarlet says, slamming her hands on the steering wheel.

“I don’t know,” Greg replies as
his voice shakes. “But we’ve got to get out of here.”

Greg stares off at a group of
corpses surrounding a car that has crashed into a light pole. As Scarlet speeds
by, the cries in the car are too much and Greg flinches away as bile rises in
his throat.

“We have to get away from the
city,” he says, blankly gazing through the front window and swallowing down the
sick in his throat.

“Point the way and I’ll drive
wherever you tell me to,” Scarlet replies as she swerves around an abandoned passenger
car and corrects the steering wheel to return to her own lane.

“We’ll have to take the
freeway,” he says. “It’s the only way out of the city. Make a left up here at
16
^th
street.” He points out the directions as the street comes into
view.

Once Scarlet makes the left, a
child can be seen ahead, sprinting down the middle of the street. The boy’s
face is deformed by terror as his mouth hangs open, panting with exhaustion. He
looks over his shoulder to see the dead still following, their freshly
reanimated bodies barely able to keep up with him.

A scowl intensifies across
Scarlet’s face and her mouth becomes a mere slit when she finds her resolve.
She positions her hands tightly on the steering wheel and veers across the lane
to opposing traffic. She negotiates around the boy and swings the wheel back,
aiming for the horde of bodies.

“What are you…” Greg’s question is
cut off by a sudden jerk of the car.

“Hold on!” she shouts as the
tires squeal when she redirects the car into the mob.

 Bodies glance off the car and
are thrown along the asphalt as others are sucked below. The car bounces over
limbs, cracking bone and splitting meat through the frail fabric of skin torn
by the tread of the tires. Mangled moans issue from under the car as Scarlet
stomps on the gas, sending up sprays of bloody waste in her wake. She hits the
brakes and twists the wheel, making the car slide on the pulverized flesh that
drips from the undercarriage.

The vehicle rests, pointing the
opposite direction. Scraps of filth hang loosely from the grill, baking with
the heat of the engine. Scarlet grits her teeth as she glares ahead, intent on
the broken mass of bodies.

“Don’t …” Greg says, holding on
to the dashboard.

The front end of the car lights
up and it slides momentarily before gaining traction and launching forward. A
few mobile corpses remain and Scarlet is dead set on relieving them of their
curse. She barrels down on the bodies, centering the front end of the car on
their putrid forms. One of the bodies glances off the front quarter panel,
taking most of the headlight with it while another disappears beneath the
bumper and gets caught up on the muffler. The body grinds under the car as
Scarlet swerves to the curb line, scraping spine and skull to a smooth finish
as it’s planed away by the road.

Frightened and shaking, the
child stands, looking on at the mayhem. His brow arches upward as he watches
the woman take out the few remaining corpses and veer to the side of the road
toward him. In shock, he stands motionless as the car barrels down.

“Get in!”

The boy nods his head and hops
into the back seat as an arm reaches out from under the car, missing the
child’s leg by inches.

“What are you doing out there
all by yourself?” Scarlet asks, her voice still energized from the assault.