Mickey, Please Come Outside

Part 3: Out of Time

Mickey had survived on the food he had stockpiled, but water was a different issue, he was down to his last bottle. Soon enough, Mickey knew that it wouldn't matter that he had sealed himself away from the dead.  It would be his own metabolic needs which would be the death of him if he didn't come up with something soon.  

"Mickey," Suzie gazed up at him, "I need to leave. I need to come and get you."

"Suzie don't," he instructed her.

"I have to. My phone's going to die, I have no food, and I'm out of water."

"The undead are all over down there, there's no way you'll make it here."

"There's fewer of them outside now than I've seen since since this all started. This is the best chance I'll get."

Mickey was afraid to admit it, but he concurred that this was going to be the best chance she would have.  

"Okay.  Please, be careful," Mickey said, cautiously giving her the go-ahead.  

Suzie started to slide the blinds all the way open, it had been the first time she had opened her blinds since everything had started to happen.  The blinds had prevented him from seeing her despite the fact that she was in her room the whole time. Suzie reached for the window, but paused as some of the dead began to take notice of her activities.

"I see them, they're coming!" she said, backing away from the window, surprised at how fast they were moving towards her.  Mickey watched helplessly as three of the dead began to run at her window.  

They charged at full speed, hurling themselves through the glass. Mickey dropped his phone as the screams echoed once again from the courtyard. He could hear Suzie screaming both through the phone, and from the general proximity to the room itself. He watched as more of the undead climbed through her window.  They were coming to feed on his girlfriend, who he never had thought even survived the first day.She had come back to life for no more than five minutes, only to become counted amongst the dead once again. 

The screaming had finally stopped, but Mickey could hear the audible squelching and chewing of warm flesh through his phone as the dead fed on Suzie.  He turned off his phone, silencing the terrible sounds, and sat down in his chair demoralized.  Tears streamed silently down his cheeks, as he blamed himself for her death.  

It should have been me that went to go get her, Mickey thought to himself.  

 Suzie was the first girl to kiss him, the first girl to make love with him, and she was the first girl that had made him feel anything romantic in his life beyond the pages of a book.But Mickey quickly remembered that of those feelings had come at a cost.  

He sacrificed the person he was to be with her. Suzie was wild, no different than all the others at Lewis Hall. She was the first person Mickey got drunk with, the first person he had gotten high with, and who else knows how she would have changed him as time went on. Mickey had hated himself for what he did, but he loved her, assuming he knew what it meant to love.  Being around so many other people acting as if it what they were doing was normal made him feel the reassurance he needed to do it. This was the cost of being in love with her, betraying the person he was.

Mickey looked out of the window once more, as if he knew there was something to see. One by one the dead crawled out from the broken glass, scrambling onto the courtyard, with their mouths bloodied and their bellies full.  

Then someone else emerged from the darkened room.  She made her way across the broken glass, and got to her feet. Suzie stood upright and looked at him. Her flesh had lost all coloration, and she was now a ghostly white. One of her cheeks had been torn open, the skin flapping quietly in the fall breeze. 

Blood dribbled down her chin, chunks had been taken from her arms and legs, and it looked as though it was a shark that had bitten through the right side of her torso.  Suzie watched Mickey for a second longer, and then she lowered her head before to hobbling across the courtyard.

Mickey tracked her for as long as he could. 

Long enough to see where she was going.  

Long enough to see that she was coming to Carroll Hall.