We all sat there, me on the floor sobbing silently, bloody hands holding a bloody hatchet, and them on the stairs, awestruck by the carnage and my reaction to it all. I remembered how when I was a kid I couldn't wait for the Zombies to come. Now that they're here, I want them to leave. I always thought about carelessly killing Zombies here and there, I had never seen them as so... human.
These Zombies had once had lives. A business man accidentally coughed on while walking home from work and hazily stumbling home, vomiting blood the whole way, or a woman sitting at home, wondering why her husband hasn't come home yet. Calling the police to report him missing, only to hear a series of beeping on the other line. Having her front door open and running into the warm embrace of her beloved only to feel cold skin, and the retched stench of dead flesh. Expecting a peck on the cheek maybe, but having a piece of her neck bitten off by the one she loved. Dropping onto the floor, convulsing and damaging the baby in her stomach with every tremble, until God had abandoned hope on the child and let it leave this world by means of an umbilical cord wrapping around it's neck. This was all to real to me now.
I took a spare bullet from my pocket, slipped it into a clip and put the clip in the gun. I stood up and, with a blank expression, walked to the body of the Zombie mother. I rolled her over onto her back with my foot and trained my gun onto her stomach. I let loose the one bullet and spared the child's life, if it wasn't already dead. I stumbled to the stairs, stepping around and over bodies, and threw the guns and hatchet on the floor.
"New rule," I wiped some of the drying blood on my hands off on my jeans. "No mercy." I raised my foot and dropped the heel of my Converse onto the female Zombies head, feeling it easily glide through and squish to the ground.. It was like stomping into a pile of slush, the way the mixture of blood, skull, and brain splattered away from my foot and leaving a small oval of bloodless cement around my foot. I shook the small amount of blood off the rubber tip of my shoe and walked up stairs, to get some rest.
I couldn't help but think, about how much I've already changed, while I was getting ready for bed. I tossed my Converse under my bed and slowly drifted into a nightmare-filled sleep.
I was sitting a big black room, wearing white cotton pants and a plain white v-neck. I looked slowly around the room as it started to turn white in a corner. The white slowly bled outwards and room because brighter and brighter as the white expanded. I clenched my eyes shut because the brightness became too much for them to handle. Slowly the red that filling my eyes lessened to pink and then to black and I opened them again. The room had completely changed from a plain black room, to the parlor of the house that I used to live in. It turned to the parlor where my mother died.
I got up and walked around, trailing my hand slowly on the wall. I stepped reluctantly through the arch separating the parlor from the TV room. It was empty, except for the leather couches and 154in projection screen mounted on the wall, that always occupied the room. Was anyone even here? I continued walking around the house, looking for anyone who just might be around. I stalled momentarily in my room to glance out of the window, and what I saw was pure chaos. The once magnificent city of New York was destroyed. The once glorious skyscrapers where destroyed and burning. There's no doubt that the tens of thousands of people that once roamed the streets were all either dead, or undead.
The ordeal was just too much for me to handle so I drew the blinds shut and left my room. I heard the door downstairs rattle and I instantaneously knew what it was. There were Zombies trying to get in. I grabbed the aluminum baseball bat propped up against my door as I made my way downstairs. Just as I reached the the last step my mom came running from the crawlspace under the stair case.
"MOM NO!" I shouted. She was heading straight for the door.
I dropped the bat and sprinted at her, to try push her out of the way before the Zombies could get to her. But it was too little, too late. One of them lunged through the door and wrapped it's arms around her, almost like it was giving her a hug. She squealed but wasn't trying to break free. Did she just give up? Was she going to let it eat her alive? The Zombie dropped her and turned to lock the door. What the fuck? I returned to the stairs, picked the bat up, and slowly approached it. I drew it back, above my head and swung at the beast. I stopped mid-swing and dropped the bat to the ground, it's metal clanged on the hard wood floor echoed in my head. That was no Zombie, he was my dad.
The same dad who left my mother and I when I was born to join the Army. We were told he was dead, but there he was, in the flesh. And the flesh wasn't decayed. I stood by the steps, watching his every move with awe. It wasn't until I followed them into the master bathroom that I realized they were completely silent. They're lips were moving, but there was no sound. I curiously tapped the bat against the door frame and there was no noise. It must have been my imagination earlier, when I had dropped the bat.
"That's weird..." I had said, but there was audio from my mouth either.
Maybe that's why she didn't respond earlier, I thought.
I followed them to the corner of the room where they had sat together, talking. I managed to catch a few phrases by reading their lips.
"Don't you think we should have told We?" My mother mouthed.
"Woah woah woah woah! Told Wes what?!" I demanded, without words coming out. I was jumping around them, waving my hands in their faces. "What does Wes need to know? Wes MUST know! Tell Wes!" I didn't stop trying to gain there attention until my dad started speaking.
"Hindsight 20/20, I think it's best that we kept it a secret. How do you think he would take it? It will already be hard enough for him to deal with Zombies, let alone know that his dead father has actually been around this whole time." He said, a frown playing across his lips.
It had been so long since I've seen him. I would even have remembered what he looked like if I hadn't kept a picture of him on me since the day a military officer had knocked on our door, three thunderous raps that are scarred into my brain, to inform us that my dad was blown up on a routine scout by a land mine, he set my father's dog tags around my neck, they were burnt and scratched but his name was easily eligible. My hand instinctively went to my neck, and there they where, the dog tags that signified a dead Ranger, a father, and a husband. To see him here, in front of me, was unbelievable.
"Should we at least warn him? About the Zombies, I mean." My mom asked, her hand on her palm pixie.
"It wouldn't hurt..." He replied, trailing off.
The rattled as she started typing.
One word.
A Zombie pounded on the door.
One sentence.
The window had shattered. Why was this audible and nothing else?! shouted my inner-voice.
Two sentences.
The door cracked and another window shattered.
Three.
There were Zombies all around us now.
Four sentences.
The door had been ripped off it's hinges.
You know that I'll always love you Wes and don't worry about me, and try to make it through this.
They were coming up the stairs.
The message sent, but she started typing again.
They were outside of the room.
She set down the phone, he cocked two guns.
The door was forced open.
They kissed each other.
The Zombies were surrounding them.
The guns pressed to their temples.
They charged.
They shot.
They ate.
They were dead.
The phone slid to my foot and I picked it up.
Don't try to return home, it's too dangerous. I know you will, no matter what I say. There are guns under my bed and food in the basement. Good luck, Wes.
I woke up again, engulfed in the same darkness, beaded with the same cold sweat. Was that how my mom spent her final seconds, preparing me to fight, and preparing herself to die? It didn't matter at the moment. What mattered was that I get home, with or without my group. And I had to leave soon. Who knows, she might even be alive. Only time will tell.
