All Our Tomorrows (2 page)

People are yelling, some of them are screaming in pain. Zombie hands reach between the balustrades, trying to grab us as we walk past. Young kids are crying. Most people are wearing nightgowns or nightshirts. A few of the marauders are dressed, but they only have handguns. The rifles are in the armory next to the barn.

I am numb. I stumble along with Jane, feeling as cold as winter.

The smell of smoke drifts through the air.

Someone yells, “Fire!”

Zee must have knocked over one of the candleholders.

We climb the stairs to the attic, but a sense of dread descends over me. We’re not going to make it out of here alive.

Inside the attic, a couple of men are hacking at the roof from beneath. They’re using hammers to break up the roof tiles, making a hole large enough for us to climb out, but where can we go from there? It’s the end of the road.

I look around. Boxes lay stacked to one side. There are a few sheets of aging plywood, warping with the years. A spare door leans against one of the rafters. Paint cans and an old fashioned sewing machine sit on wooden shelves. Cobwebs hang from the rafters.

“This way,” David says, ushering us out through the hole in the roof.

Ferguson yells at a couple of men, saying, “Get that wood. We need to seal this hole once everyone’s out.”

Zee stumbles around below us, bumping into things. I think he’s made it to the second floor.

The smoke in the air is already quite pungent. We’re not going to last long enough to worry about being eaten by zombies, but I can’t stop thinking about Steve. I can still see the horror on his face as he was dragged into the horde. There was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do.

Jane helps me climb out through the hole in the roof and directs me to one side. She’s always had a big heart. I can see her standing on the tiles reaching in and helping each of the survivors climb through the jagged hole.

It’s been raining and the roof is slippery. The pitch of the roof feels steeper than it probably is and I struggle with my footing. Being so used to standing on flat ground, I can’t help but feel like I’m about to tumble over the edge and into the mass of zombies crowding around the house. I creep away from the hole, crouching and touching the tiles with one hand as I waddle to one side, trying not to lose my balance.

I sit down near a group of survivors huddled together, hoping my dad has made it this far. I want to look for him, but I can’t. The pain of losing Steve feels as real as a knife thrust into my chest. I can’t lose both of them, not in one night. I cannot bring myself to look for my dad. I can only hope.

Zee sees us. He roars from below. Arms reach out for us. Moans drown out the voice of the young girl next to me.

“—to die,” is all I catch. I don’t need to know how that sentence started. I understand her fear, and she’s right. We’re going to die. Either from the flames, from the fall, or from being torn apart by zombies. There’s not much choice.

Clouds billow overhead, and the moonlight fades. A torrential downpour would be nice, I think. But there’s nothing more than a wispy mist in the air.

Windows break on the far side of the house, but this is a different sound from that of zombies smashing glass in a rage. The crackle of fire burning and the smell of smoke adds to our fear. The flickering yellow glow of flames within the house lights up the dark faces staring at us from the ground.

We’re trapped.

I look around for David and Jane.

David’s working with a couple of the marauders to pull the spare wooden panels out of the attic. They lay them on the tiles. As the last of the survivors clamber out onto the roof, one of the soldiers starts nailing a sheet of wood over the hole. He can’t nail the wood to the tiles, so there’s invariably a gap left around the edge of the exposed rafters. His efforts won’t matter. Zee might not get us, but the flames will.

Jane spots me.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asks, walking over and standing behind me, and suddenly I feel stupid cowering on the tiles. I’m fine. I’ve got a few scratches and I’m a bit shaken up, but I’m okay, I decide. I’ve been in a dreamlike daze, but Jane’s voice helps to snap me out of it.

I’m afraid. We all are, but death comes sooner or later to everyone. We’d all prefer later, but we don’t always have a choice. Steve didn’t. At least I can choose to stand beside her. If death is coming, I won’t cower. I want to look that thieving bastard in the eye.

Getting up, I feel a tinge of vertigo, which is crazy, really, as I’m not right on the edge of the gutter. There are four or five rows of tiles between me and the drop, but self-preservation kicks in and I find myself moving cautiously. Jane is much more relaxed.

I don’t think anyone’s really afraid of heights, not in the classic sense of fear. It’s a survival instinct. Although I know this sensation is nothing more than self-preservation, I feel as though I could tumble off the roof at any moment. The soles of my feet tingle.

“How are you doing?” Jane asks.

“Fine, I guess.”

It’s a lie. Jane sees straight through those few words. She hugs me, which is nice, but I’d much rather we hugged further up the sloping roof so I barely respond.

“Have you seen my father?” I ask, wondering if this is a question I really want answered.

Jane points.

“He’s over with Marge and Ferguson. They’re trying to figure out how to get us off this damn roof.”

“What about the barn?”

“It’s too far away,” Jane says. She leads me up the sloping tiles, around the survivors huddling together against the cold, and over toward my dad. “The barn looks close, but it’s easily fifteen feet away. It might as well be over the next hill.”

“But if we can get there,” I say.

“Unless you can sprout wings and fly,” Jane replies, “we’re going to have to come up with some other option.”

Jane leads me around the side of the roof. The alley between the house and the barn is teeming with zombies. They see us and a sea of arms reaches out of the darkness. A haunting wail resounds through the night, calling for our blood. Snarling and moaning, the zombies track our every step, willing us to slip and fall.

“Hazel!” Dad cries as we approach. He raises his one good arm and I hug him. He’s warm. He feels hot. He’s sweating. I hope it’s from the exertion of the last few minutes and not an infection, although at this point, it doesn’t really matter.

Ferguson and Marge are talking.

“Can we get in contact with the other houses?”

“No,” Ferguson replies.

“I don’t like this,” Dad says. “This is all wrong.”

“What are you thinking, Abraham?” Marge asks. Even under the immense pressure of the moment, Marge has the presence of mind to realize my dad may have a unique insight into what’s happening. When my dad said, “This is all wrong,” my first thought was, “Duh, and what’s right about being attacked by zombies?” but like Marge, I know my dad well enough to keep my mouth shut and listen. If he sees something out of the ordinary, it’s with good reason.

“They haven’t attacked the other houses. Why?”

He’s right. We’ve been so focused on surviving for the next few minutes we haven’t noticed the obvious. Zee has crowded around the old homestead, leaving the farmhouse and the dormitory largely alone. There are a few stragglers wandering around those homes, but they’re not being inundated like we are. There’s easily a thousand zombies packed around our house.

“Like flies on shit,” Ferguson notes. That’s not quite the analogy I would use, but he’s right.

Gunshots ring out through the night. Those in the other houses are shooting at the zombies. Zee should swarm toward the sound, but he doesn’t, leaving them free to pick off any zombie that strays too close.

Dozens of dark figures stream away from the dormitory and the other homes, running up the hill away from the commune.

“They’re evacuating,” Dad says.

“Good,” Marge replies. And we stand there for a moment watching them flee as our home burns beneath us. Shock does strange things to people. Seeing others herd their families over to the corral, it’s strangely comforting to know they’re going to survive. Somehow, it makes up for our coming loss.

I know roughly what they’ll do. At the back of the corral there’s a fenced area. It’s an old gravel dump, from the days when we had a government and someone cared about maintaining roads. The chain link fence is in good condition and stands about ten feet high. Technically, it’s not part of this property, but no one cares about stuff like that anymore. They’ll be safe there.

“What do they want?” Marge asks, snapping me back to the moment. And that’s when it strikes me. Zee wants something.

I look Marge in the eye and say, “Me!”

“What?” Dad asks in surprise.

“Explain,” Marge says, as cold and calculating as ever.

“Steve,” I begin, struggling to say his name but glad some good can come from his death. “He saw them, back in the camps outside of Chicago. They’re not mindless.”

“Now wait a minute—” Ferguson says, but Marge holds her hand up, cutting him off.

“Go on.”

“Steve told us about how the old ones watched as zombies attacked his camp. We didn’t believe him. But down in the city, I saw one of them for myself.”

“One of the old zombies?” Marge asks, with a surprising amount of calm considering fire is breaking through one side of the roof. Flames leap into the sky. Our lives are measured in minutes rather than hours, and yet I think this is important for her to understand. Even with the house burning beneath us, I think this information holds the key to our escape.

I nod, saying, “She watched me. She was in charge. She directed the others.”

“But they have no reasoning capacity,” my dad says. “They’re driven by instinct. They’re no smarter than ants.”

“Even ants have a queen,” I say.

I turn back to Marge, adding, “She stood in front of us. She stood as calmly as you are right now, watching our every move. Steve was there. He saw her too.”

“And what did you do?” Dad asks.

My blood runs cold.

“I put a bullet between her eyes.”

“You killed their queen,” Ferguson says.

“Don’t you see,” I say to Dad. “They came for us. For Steve and me.”

Marge is quiet. Ferguson looks over at the ravenous horde. Dad is lost in thought.

“There’s only one way to end this,” I say.

Marge cuts me off, saying, “You can’t give them what they want. We don’t even know if that will work.”

“We all die anyway,” I say, looking at the flames consuming the building. The roof above the kitchen collapses. Sparks and embers fly into the night. The radiant heat is on the verge of being overwhelming.

“Hazel, no,” Dad says.

I kiss him on the cheek and say, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Hazel,” Marge says with the sternness only an ex-school teacher can muster. “I won’t hear any more of this talk of sacrifice. For now, what we need to focus on is getting off this roof. We’ve got to get to that barn.”

And I think I know how, seeing David wrestling with the solid oak door. He’s turning the door around, getting it in position to nail over the plywood and seal the hole.

I leave Dad, Marge and Ferguson and jog around the roof, surprising myself with how nimble I can be when I’m not thinking about myself. That’s the key, I think. Focus on yourself and you cannot help but be afraid. Focus on what you can do for others, and the fear fades like the night giving way to dawn.

“Wait!” I yell above the call of zombies and the crackle of the fire.

David looks up. He has nails between his lips, held between his teeth.

“I need that door,” I say.

“For what?” he asks through gritted teeth.

“To get to the barn.”

“But it won’t reach.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I reply, reaching out and taking the door from him.

The door is stupidly heavy, and I struggle to hold it against my right side. This isn’t going to work. I’ve got my left hand beneath the leading edge of the door and my right hand up high, trying to balance the weight. I bend my knees slightly, leaning the door against my upper chest, trying to compensate for the shift in my center of gravity.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” David asks.

“Hazel,” Jane says, coming up beside us. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“Me?” I reply with innocence in my voice. I must look idiotic standing there holding a door weighing almost half as much as I do.

David looks confused. I think he’s surprised I can even take the weight of the door and looks ready to grab it if I slip.

I look him in the eye and say, “Take good care of her.”

“Uh,” he begins, but I’m off.

I drop my shoulder slightly, shifting the weight of the door forward, and start to run. Most people would call my pace a light jog, but for me, while balancing a heavy wooden door, it’s a sprint.

I run up the incline of the roof and across the ridge. My chest heaves. My heart races. My lungs are burning, but from here, it’s all downhill. I can see Dad standing to one side. The barn looms before me on the far side of the alley. In the darkness, Zee calls for me.

Jane and David yell, “No!” But I doubt they know what I’m about to do. If they did, they’d think I was crazy, and maybe I am. But Steve’s gone. I’m past caring. Zee is after me, not them. I can’t stand by and not try something to help my friends. Nothing else matters any more.

I can hear David’s feet pounding on the tiles behind me.

I run hard, hoping, praying I don’t slip. Tiles disappear beneath my feet, followed by the gutter and suddenly I’m in midair, soaring above hundreds of zombies clamoring for my blood. I shift my weight, pulling the door under me, holding onto it like a surfboard. I was never going to make it across the gap, but I don’t need to. I only need to make it halfway. From there, I either make it to the barn or I’m taken by Zee. Either way, this is the only chance my friends have.

I hang there in midair for what feels like an eternity but must only be a fraction of a second, and then I plummet, plunging into the horde of zombies.

The flat door slaps against dozens of outstretched arms. My head collides with the wood and I split my lip.