When The Light Goes Out (5 page)

Apparently she saw us too.

"Help me!" There was a terror I'd never seen the likes of in that plead, in those eyes. But I didn't know why. What was wrong? She looked fine. She looked healthy. But she looked so close to tears that I wanted to go over and hug her. She looked no older then sixteen, one of the high school students that I vaguely recognized.

"Why? What's the matter?" I tried to fight the anxiety out of my voice, as I approached her. Stepping out of the way as Ian rushed over. He wrapped his arms around her, scooping the bawling girl into his embrace as gently as he could. He didn't understand the situation anymore then I did. I could tell.

"I.. I don't want to! I don't! I
don't
!" The girl screamed, wrapping shaking fists in Ian's top. Crying hysterically for reasons none of us understood. Something terrible was happening in her head. Something that we just couldn't figure.

"What don't you want to do?"

"I don't want to be one of them!"

"One of" I didn't bother finishing my sentence. Somewhere along the way, the lights had turned back on, revealing rapidly hemorrhaging eyes. Her pupils were shrinking, but I

couldn't bring myself to pull Ian away. She was crying, he was crying. There was nothing I could do.

"Where are you going?!"

I wanted to reassure her. "Where did you go?!"

I wanted to help her. "Help me!"

But I couldn't. "I can't see!"

There was nothing I could do.

"Help me! Help! I don't want to! I don't want to!" There was
nothing
I could do.

"I don no.. no.. gah.."

I, much like Ian, started to cry. I hadn't known it was like this. I wasn't sure that anybody knew. We didn't know that these people would be aware of the changing. My brother.. maybe he had remembered me when he went on the attack. Maybe he knew who I was, distantly, but couldn't do anything to stop himself. The pain, the fear, maybe it overwhelmed the memories. Maybe it was something else.

I cried for him. I cried for her.

I cried for anyone who had to go through what I was witnessing. I cried for myself, and what I was about to do.

I raised the chain up, the moment the girl opened her mouth, eyes won over by the illness, body set on flesh. Sympathy for the child or not, there was no way I'd let her take Ian. No way. So I brought the chain down, as hard as I could, the moment I was sure there was no more human in there crushing the skull, and the gray matter within. I could tell. Blood sprayed on impact just a little, chunks of hair came up with the chain. I tried to convince myself that there was nothing else I could have done.

I stared at the sight before me, choking around a weird mixture of bile, and water. I guess it was water. I didn't know. But it was making breath illusive. The window beside Ian was the broken one. But something about it bothered me. Bothered me down to my gut. There, I noticed with a look, were no visible cuts on the girl. How could she have shattered the glass without getting hurt?

The answer, I thought, was that she hadn't. Something else had broken the window, and she just wound up inside. Somehow. Maybe she'd been inside already. But I doubted that. Doubted that Dustin would have allowed her to be there all alone. Unless he didn't know she was there, of course.

But I could dwell on that later.

Something had broken the window, and we didn't know what or where it was. Damn.

Damn.

"Ian, we need to go. We need to get back to the others." I tried to speak above a whisper, but my voice cracked. I was scared. I felt so terrible. So sick. I wanted, so desperately, to help that girl. That poor girl. She hadn't had the chance yet to live her life. I wished that I could have helped her. But I couldn't. I couldn't. And I couldn't accept it. I found myself incapable of getting over the fact that I was useless.

At least Ian tried to comfort her. I hadn't even been able to do that. I had to kill her, right there in the crying boys arms. A grown man turned into a sobbing mess, as easily as I

raised my arm. It made me feel like a monster. Made me question my mortality just one more time during the dark, dark night. I was beginning to hate my life.

Hate myself.

Part of me wanted to be taken down by the man-eaters. Mutilated. Hurt. Killed. I wanted to die. I wanted to be dead. But at the same time, if that were to happen, I wanted to stay dead. And whatever virus was going around would prevent that. Maybe, just maybe, if I shot myself in the head, it would be better. Maybe then everything would be okay.

And maybe little blue aliens would build a civilization in my nasal cavity.

This, I screamed in my own mind, wasn't like the movies. There was no beautiful heroine, no hero for her to love. We were all the damsels in distress, however lacking our knights in shining armor. There wasn't much chance of survival. Not with the lights going out at random. At least in
Resident Evil
, they knew what caused the zombies. They knew that there was a cure. As far as I knew, our zombies were mother natures way of getting revenge. Karma kicking us all swiftly in our rear ends for whatever we may have done, or neglected to do.

"Ian.." I spoke on a release of breath, not positive I could get the name out any other way. My throat felt like It had closed up completely, though I knew how untrue that was. However tight it felt, it hadn't closed up. I'd know if it had. I'd know. "Ian, come on. Come on, get up. We need to go. We really, really need to"

Hands.

Two of them.

Technically, one and a half.

A glance to the right showed one hand. It was covered (and I use that word loosely) with sickly looking, torn skin. It was obviously missing three fingers, and a fourth one up to the first knuckle. I knew what it meant, though I wished that it didn't. It meant there was a zombie behind me. It meant I was in trouble. It meant my chances of survival plummeted to the negatives.

A terrible groan behind me finally forced me into action. I spun on my heel, breaking the undead mans at least I thought it was a man grip on me. However, the moment I was facing him, he dove at me. Digging fingers into the flesh on my shoulders, as he opened his mouth to take a bite. The smell wafting from it was even worse then that which belonged to the woman earlier.

I resisted the urge to puke, and instead focused my energies on getting him away from me. The farther away he was, the less I could smell, the happier I'd be. So I pushed. I

kicked. I couldn't get my arms out nearly enough to swing the chain. Realizing this, I dropped it, and seemed to finally gain Ian's attention.

"Excel!" His voice was hoarse from crying, but loud all the same. Startling me, while the zombie kept pushing. Trying to get close to me. Trying to take a bite. Have a taste. For a moment, I wondered if the fear made us taste any better. The moment I realized I was thinking it, I was disgusted with myself. "Get away from her!"

The undead man was pushed, violently, away from me. I heard something snap, and figured it was the hand he more or less caught himself with when he fell. It was bent at an awkward angle when he rose, glaring death at us from the depths of hell. No eyes should look like that, dead or alive. Zombie or human. They shouldn't. It just wasn't natural. It was disgusting. Frightening.

I had no more time to contemplate it as Ian took hold of my wrist, ripping me from my spot in the room, out the door. The boy, a rather scrawny looking one while in his normal clothing that aspect of his body was only exemplified by the over-sized jersey didn't look as if he owned so much strength. Maybe it was fueled by fear, but he was pulling me into a run down the hall.

It was with foot stopping horror that I realized the zombie was chasing us. Not hobbling after us.

Not walking after us. Running after us.

I only realized that I'd actually stopped moving when I nearly fell with the force of Ian's tug. He was panicking, and I couldn't blame him. I really couldn't. The moment I snapped out of my mesmerized state, I started to panic too, tried to continue running. However my legs had turned into rubber sometime in the quickly passing seconds, and I fell to the floor. Staring as Ian went down with me.

The zombie was getting closer.

I couldn't shake the thought that we were about to die. But suddenly the sound of gun fire rang out.

Footsteps were obvious from behind us. A careless glance showed Dustin, and Cathy running in our direction. But Cathy didn't have her pistol drawn. That just confused me. It got me to stare at them for a moment, before looking back at our pursuer. There was no way she could have hidden her pistol in her skin tight pants, in the time it took me to look back.

Someone else was there. On the other side.

The zombie went down, to my relief. But I saw no one behind him. No broken glass, so it couldn't have come from outside. I was dying to know where the multiple shots had come from. But instead of being the idiot who went, again, to investigate, I squirmed over to Ian, and grabbed the hand that had lost grip on my own. Squeezing hard enough to crack his knuckles for him.

There was this unexplainable fear. This pain. But.. no. No, I lied. It was explainable. I couldn't get over what I'd just done. I couldn't get over the fact that, just a for a moment back there, with the zombies hands wrapped about my shoulders, I considered not fighting. In the back of my mind, yes. But the thought had been there. I never thought I'd consider

such a thing.

I never figured I'd ever survive a zombie invasion.

Even for the short amount of time the invasion had been going on.

My friends, and I had all entertained the thought of a zombie invasion, while we were growing up. There was always the joke that the brain craving creatures would come and kill us all. The question had always been the same, "What would you do, if zombies suddenly invaded?" The answers to the question varied. It went anywhere from stories of how kick ass we'd be, surviving to the very end only to be taken out in a terrible taco accident, to how we'd be taken out in the first couple minutes of the ordeal.

I'd always said, being completely honest, that I'd probably curl up in a corner, crying for my mommy. Which I really did begin to contemplate. I never thought I'd make it. I'd become the proverbial cry baby that held the group back. With the way things always seemed to work out, if it wasn't the zombies that killed me, it would be my comrades.

Because I'm just that lucky.

"Excel! Ian! Are you all right?!" Dustin shouted it, as he approached us. Falling to his knees maybe two inches from my side to look me over. "Jesus, where'd these bruises come from?" He asked, examining my arms where the zombie had grabbed me so tightly before.

"He grabbed me.." I mumbled, motioning where the zombie had just fallen.

The comment brought a frantic Cathy to my side. She was worried, I could tell. She looked a bit sick, actually. Maybe it was the sight of the zombie chasing us that brought on her pallor. She was sickly pale. Her eyes were wide, shifting from side to side like she was panicked.

She probably
was
panicked.

I couldn't blame her if she was. I really couldn't.

"Well.." Cathy was a bit breathless as she spoke, smiling weakly at me as she pulled my sleeves back down my arms. "He didn't break the skin, so you'll be okay. Unless he grabbed you anywhere else. Bit you. Something like that. He didn't, did he?" She smiled when I shook my head in the negative. "Good."

"How's Ian?"

"He's fine." Dustin grinned, looking up at me from checking Ian over. "Except he's upset." "I know."

"Why?"

I felt my eyes water a bit, and my nose go red from holding in the tears as I shook my head. Telling him I didn't want to talk about it. Saying I didn't care. Telling them it was a mystery to me. It depended on how they translated my head shake.

"Excel?" I glanced up at Dustin when he addressed me. Smiling a bit at his worry. His eyes told all. He was bothered. He couldn't hide it. But he pulled a still tearing Ian to his feet, while he looked at me, being pulled to mine. "Excel, tell me what happened." There was gentle authority in his tone. But I didn't open my mouth, I just shook my head, not wanting to admit what I'd done.

"She was a kid.." Ian spoke, raising a shaking hand to wipe his face. No doubt he was feeling like a child. Like a girl, as I'd heard it put so many times before. He probably felt inferior, being a boy that was so openly crying. "She couldn't have been out of high school. Barely
in
high school. She"

"Was she turned?" Cathy asked, helping to steady me on my quivering legs. "She was.. turning." My mouth worked without the permission of my brain. "Turning? She was in the middle of it?"