Zombiekill (9 page)

“Where are they?”

Schafer could see the base of the lamp in her hands was trembling. She was brave, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid as well. “I don’t know. They probably aren’t far away. We should keep moving,” he replied.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy looked around nervously clutching a steak knife in his hand. Lyn and Victoria were the last to join them. Victoria refused to run, worried that if she did so her footsteps would be too loud and bring the nasty people.

“Was ist los?” asked Magda.

“Is something wrong?” asked Lyn, noticing the concern etched across Magda’s face. “What’s she saying? I knew we should’ve—”

“
No
. Everything is fine.” Schafer had only waited for Lyn and Victoria to catch them up, not wanting to leave any kind of gap between them. If they got separated, they would be in trouble. Now they were all together, they could move on. “It’s okay.”

“Where are they?” asked Jeremy. “Where are all the dead people? I thought once we crossed that wall—”

“Does it matter? Let’s just keep going.” Rilla urged her father on, ignoring Jeremy’s questions. She had learnt that he was a narrow-minded and cautious man who needed to know everything about something before doing it. He wouldn’t eat something without knowing what was in it and had refused to agree to the plan to relocate until Schafer had told him everything about the outside world. Jeremy was irritating her already, and a part of her wished he had stayed behind. If he had, then Victoria would’ve stayed, too, and Rilla loved her like a sister. So if putting up with Jeremy’s whining meant Victoria was safe, then so be it.

They left the open street and headed for a smaller road that was flanked by single storey homes. Rilla could tell exactly where her father had been by the dead bodies they skirted past. It was just as he had described it, the houses, the open road, and rotting corpses that cooked slowly in the sun. There were two differences to what he had told her. The obvious one was the lack of zombies. There should be at least a few corpses wandering about. Not that she wanted to face them or deal with the dead, but it was unnerving at just how quiet the streets were. She half expected them to all jump out from behind a wall and yell ‘Surprise!’

The other thing that he hadn’t fully conveyed to her was the smell. It was the stench of death; an almost overwhelming foul stink that made her eyes sting and her throat constrict. It made the air taste warm and sticky, and she wished the corpses would hurry up and rot away to nothing. It was obscene. Every few feet there was another corpse, sometimes undistinguishable from the one she had just passed. Arms and limbs were scattered about the road ,too, as if left by a passing mortician who had decided to throw them out like confetti. As she passed a dead man, she noticed the skin drawn tight around his neck, his hands and fingers curled up as if clawing at the ground. He looked like a waxwork model, adorned with dirty clothes, and thin black hair slapped crudely around a balding head. There was a hole in the side of his skull just above the ear. Somebody had shot this man. As they continued, she saw another body with a bullet hole in the side of the head. At one point, someone had been here with a gun. It didn’t really matter. Once a zombie was put down, it stayed down as long as it was in the head. That was as much as they had learnt before the world went black.

As they rounded an empty hearse, Rilla noticed a wreath tied with brittle string to a lamppost by the curbside. The once crisp, yellow flowers were wilted and pale, the green stalks now a faded gray as if the effort of grieving so publicly was too much. Rilla noticed her mother bow her head as they passed. Strangely, the wreath for the dead was the only thing she saw that reminded her of how alive the place had once been. The silent cars, the overgrown lawns, and the stiff clothes that still hung on the line were symbols of a life long gone, yet there was something poignant about those flowers. They were a symbol for mourning, something they no longer did. Everything was black and white now; everything was a matter of life and death.

“Through here,” said Schafer.

Two buses lay ahead at an intersection, each left as they were on the day the dead rose, abandoned in the road. The cars that had piled up behind them had created a funnel effect, and as they passed between the two buses Rilla found herself imagining that they were passing between two giant metallic statues. It felt like they were entering not just a foreign land but another time, a time when things like cars and electricity didn’t exist, and all that mattered was living through another day; the only way to achieve that was with your own bare hands and the will to live. Rilla knew she and her father had it but wasn’t convinced by Jeremy and Lyn. They kept lagging behind, using Victoria as an excuse.

Rilla looked at them fussing over their daughter who was perfectly capable of running. Jeremy’s eyes kept darting around nervously, whilst Lyn hardly looked at where they were going, so preoccupied was she in molly-coddling Victoria.

“Hey, hurry up,” said Rilla as she paused for them. “We have to keep going.”

Schafer and Magda were just ahead, and Rilla had passed the buses wearily. The heat sapped her energy, and they had not had to run anywhere in a long time. Taking the opportunity to catch her breath, she noticed Jeremy furtively glance behind him. He urged Lyn and Victoria on, but as he reached Rilla, it was obvious something was playing on his mind.

“What?” Rilla really didn’t care what was behind them as long as it stayed there.

“It’s nothing, just a zombie. It’s on its own. I think we left it back by that convertible.”

“Go on.” Rilla made them move on to catch up her parents and stared at the deserted road they had left behind them. She couldn’t see anything. Jeremy may have been mistaken. Still, it would pay to watch their backs. She let them take Victoria ahead, and decided to follow so she could monitor the road for any zombies that may decide to sneak up on them.

“Everything okay”? yelled Schafer.

Rilla smiled and waved. “Okay.”

Alerted by the noise, a corpse from the nearest house suddenly appeared in the doorway. It saw the figures running down the street and then Rilla waving her arms above her head. It opened its mouth, letting an almost silent groan escape its rotten lips.

Rilla began to walk slowly, keeping an eye on the others up ahead, and another on the road behind. She forgot that they could be anywhere and ignored the houses on either side of the road. They seemed empty and posed no threat. It was the vehicles she was more worried about in case anything came at them from the cars. They could be hiding any number of zombies who might appear in a second.

A gurgling noise caught her attention. It sounded in her left ear and grew louder very quickly. Turning around sharply, her eyes widened in shock as the corpse came running at her, its stiff arms reaching for her, its dead mouth impossibly wide.

“No!” Rilla uttered a brief scream and then instinctively dodged to the side as it tried to grab her. It missed her body, but one hand caught hold of her arm, and it whirled around to grab her again.

“Dad!” Rilla raised the heavy lamp base and froze. The dead man leering at her was hideous, but he had been well preserved inside his house for several months. His eyes were white, and his skin had become almost mummified. It felt like she was attacking an old man, and her hesitation allowed the zombie to close in on her.

She tried to use the lamp to defend herself, to hit the zombie around the head as her father had taught her to do, but it was too close, and all she succeeded in doing was dropping it as her wrist bumped against the zombie’s shoulder.

The zombie got both its cold hands on Rilla, and her blue jacket ripped open as the corpse pulled her towards it. Suddenly she was in its embrace and staring into the face of the man about to kill her. Although he was dead, he appeared very much alive, and if it wasn’t for the stench of rotting meat she would’ve been fooled into thinking he was a survivor in need of help. The zombie’s white eyes rolled back in its head, and it brought its face up to hers. Staring into its mouth, Rilla felt revulsion rise in her gut. Shivers broke out over her forearms and neck as it pulled her closer. She saw the dull silvery fillings in the back of its mouth, and the swollen purple tongue that was covered in a moldy growth of some sort. Sores and blisters permeated the thing’s face, yet they had dried up and cracked open making the dead man’s face all the more disgusting. Rilla felt the zombie’s cold hands digging into her arms, and though she tried to repel the corpse, it wouldn’t give up. As its deadly teeth neared her supple skin, she tried to turn her head away, but she succeeded in merely exposing her neck, which spurred it on.

Rilla screwed her eyes shut and tensed up, preparing herself to feel the pain of its teeth ripping through her jugular, when her face was drenched in something wet. It was cold and sticky, and Rilla opened her eyes again as the zombie let go of her. It fell away in slow motion, and she saw Jeremy plunge the knife into its skull again, ripping it out and plunging it back in, twisting it around inside the man’s skull like a corkscrew through a cork. Rilla spat the foul blood from her mouth and watched as her father appeared through the red mist swinging his bat. As Jeremy removed his knife, Schafer made the sure the zombie went down once and for all. The bat cracked the skull into pieces, and the man’s head resembled a bloody broken vase. The corpse lay motionless on the ground, and Rilla felt hands grab her again. This time was different. They were warm and comforting, and they were pulling her toward her father.

Schafer stood in front of her shouting something, but she heard nothing. Her eyes were transfixed on the dead zombie as if she had been hypnotized by it. Blood dripped from her face and filled her ears, and the warm hands on her shoulders began to shake her as Schafer continued shouting something. Rilla could see his mouth opening and closing, but it was as if no sound was coming out. Her eyes were drawn back to the man on the road. He had been going to kill her. He was going to
eat
her. Piece by piece, bite by bite, he would’ve
eaten her alive
. Rilla felt faint, her head swimming with a million thoughts that all ended up with her being eaten alive. The red in her eyes was giving way to a fuzzy gray that devolved into darkness, and it felt like a thousand bright stars were shimmering in her vision.

Schafer slapped his daughter’s face and caught her as she fainted.

“Jeremy, help me,” he said as he dropped his bat. Jeremy helped to carry Rilla to the side of the road as Lyn picked up Schafer’s baseball bat now smeared with brains and hair.

“What do we do now?” asked Jeremy, as they lay Rilla gently on the sidewalk.

“Just give me a minute.” Schafer began to wipe the blood from his daughter’s face. She had been brave, but she had also taken her eye off the ball, and it had almost cost her everything.

“Schafer, we can’t just hang around here. There’ll be more. The screams… They’ll have heard the—”

“Back off, Jeremy. Give me some space,” said Schafer, not trying to hide the venom in his voice. Jeremy had saved his daughter’s life, undoubtedly, but he was still an asshole.

“Rilla?” Magda sank to her knees beside her husband. “Meine Tochter! Is she okay?” she wheezed. “Is she—?”

“She’ll be fine.” Schafer had cleared her face of most of the blood. The corpse had failed to bite her, and Schafer knew it was just the shock. He had protected Rilla from the worst of it back at the motel. She deserved better than that. He should’ve warned her what it would be like. He knew he could’ve done more to prepare her.

“Magda, we need-”

“Here they come. Fuck, here they come.” Jeremy pointed at the buses, at the narrow funnel they had caused in the road. Four zombies appeared, and another two behind them.

Schafer picked Rilla up carefully. “Let’s go. Nothing’s changed. We keep going.”

Ignoring the increasingly frantic Jeremy, Schafer marched down the road away from the zombies. Magda kept by his side, and Schafer heard Jeremy, Lyn and Victoria follow. If they kept moving, he saw no reason why they couldn’t make it to Attwood’s before the zombies caught up with them. Some were faster than others, but the ones behind were slow.

“Which way?” asked Magda. “Welche richtung, Schafer?” They neared another intersection. A gas station lay across the road, and a tanker blocked the road to the left. To the right lay rows of shops and houses with a few distant corpses ambling through the ghost town in their direction.

“Left,” announced Schafer without pausing. “Behind that tanker there’s another road that will take us almost all the way there.”

“Schafer, this is madness.” Jeremy scuttled up beside him. “Victoria is tired, and you can’t possibly hope to carry on all the way carrying Rilla. What if we’re attacked? What if those zombies catch us? What if—”

“Save it, Jeremy.” Schafer approached the tanker and refused to look at his companion. “We can’t go back, so we go forward. Even when you can’t see them, they’re all around us. If you think you’re safe anywhere out here—or back at your home—then you’re an idiot. I’m getting my daughter somewhere safe. You should be focused on doing the same instead of worrying about your own neck.”

Schafer was sweating profusely. The effort of carrying Rilla was taking more out of him than he had expected. The lack of food and the draining heat of the sun made him slow down more than he wanted to.

“Now, hold on, Schafer.” Jeremy grabbed Schafer’s arm forcing him to stop. “You said you knew what you were doing. I put my daughter’s life at risk because of you.”