Dawn and the Dead (3 page)

Her victory was short lived.

“Momma!” screamed Vickie, Dawn
was on her feet and back in the kitchen. She skidded to a stop and
slid a little on the kitchen tiles, but retained her balance and
stopped dead, staring in rage at the scene before her.

Eddie was home.

He had managed to break open the
door and push aside the barricading furniture.

So much for the siege
thought Dawn.

He was a man ablaze in black
feathers, a flock of the birds tore at him and ate greedily, flames
of jet/blue down roared crazily, engulfing him. He walked forward
towards them. It was the birds that gave Dawn the idea.

“Want some tequila, huh Eddie?”
she screamed at him, stepping in front of her daughter and
retreating away from him. He made no noise, simply shambled towards
them slowly.

Circling the kitchen table, Dawn
took every bottle of tequila from the hiding places Eddie had
hidden them. As she passed the cooker, she took the long box of
cooker matches. Having passed through one-hundred-and-eighty
degrees, they were now in opposite positions; Dawn and Vickie at
the smashed-in door, the dead Eddie at the other side of the
room.

“Have a drink on me.” said Dawn,
and then proceeded to throw every bottle at Eddie. The birds
exploded into individuals and retreated outside as the bottles
smashed and soaked his clothes through with tequila.

Dawn lit a match.

Tossed it.

The thing that had been Eddie
Garcia didn’t scream as its body was engulfed in flames. It simply
continued wandering around the table, shuffling and dragging its
feet.

Dawn didn’t stay around to see
what would happen.

Scooping her little Vickie into
her arms, she ran outside to the car, got inside and just drove
away. The tank was full, but that still might not be enough because
she didn’t know where she was going - or going to do.

Ideas spun through her head a
million at a time. She listened to the car radio and discovered
that if the creatures did not eat the living alive, their bite
infected and turned another to their macabre tribe. “A fate worse
than death.” One analyst described it as.

Dawn knew of a fate worse than
death - it was life. Life with Eddie Garcia.

She decided then that she would
kill Vickie and herself before letting them be eaten alive or
turned into one of
them.
She only prayed it would never come
to that.

But what now?
The
constant, nagging question pestered and persisted.

And then it came to her like an
epiphany.

A single, one word answer.

She would have to do what she
did best. Dawn would have to care for Vickie and herself, keep them
safe from harm - and alive.

She had to do the one thing she
had been doing for the last ten years – the same as she had done
during her fight against the hard, fast, punishing hands of Eddie
Garcia.

Yes, she knew what she had to do
now. It was simple.

Survive.