A scream escaped me as I raised my hands to cover my mouth. One of the attackers in the huddled group snapped its head in the air, cocked it to one side, and appeared to be listening. It angled its neck back, and lifted its nose in the sky. A short scream sounded further down the street and the head snapped to the left like a bird seeking prey. The zombie—I couldn’t think of them as anything else—lumbered awkwardly to its feet, and began moving in the direction of the new noise.
The radio squawked from the police car, pulling us all from our rubbernecking trance, and I turned back to Officer Donnelly.
“Watch out!” I screamed.
Four figures had crested the embankment behind him. They were close enough to him that they would be on him in seconds. The first—a female—looked as if she had lost a battle with a wild animal. She wore nothing but, what once had been, a pink negligee. Her lower jaw had been torn from her face. Blood dripped down her neck, staining the negligee, and her tongue, now black, was stuck to the side of her neck, protruding from the place where he lower jaw used to be. She emitted a dry rasping moan as she reached for Donnelly. He managed to get one shot off, taking her down, before the other three were on him.
He turned sharply only to trip and land on the hood of his car. He pled for help as he attempted to scratch his way over the hood to safety. His grip on the gun failed. It fell to the hood like a brick and slid off the front of the car into the mud. One of the monsters managed to get hold of his kicking legs and dragged him back. Jake and I ran toward him, but it was already too late. Officer Donnelly let out a howl of pain as teeth sunk into the meaty skin of his calf. I saw his eyes then, staring straight into mine, begging with an unspoken appeal for help. Jake tried to maneuver toward him, but froze when Donnelly’s nails dug into the paint of the hood, and he disappeared from view as they yanked him to the ground and began to feast.
I stumbled and nearly fell over Jake as I backed away from the grisly scene. My head moved side to side like a yo-yo, and I heard the splash of feet in a puddle to my right. Coming around the house was another one; it was leaning on the house, dragging itself along the stucco, as it walked toward me. One of its arms had been torn off at the elbow and its face was so mangled that I couldn’t decipher gender.
I grabbed Jake’s hand and ran to the front door. I practically dragged him inside before slamming it hard and locking the dead bolt. I slid down to the ground with my back to the door. I was hyperventilating. My vision was blurry and I saw spots. I realized I was sobbing, and Jake had his arms around me, making soft cooing noises to calm me down. He held me close and told me everything would be okay.
I shoved him away, fueled by a panicked rage. “Nothing is okay, Jake. A man just got eaten on our front lawn. There are zombies running around eating people. So tell me, how the fuck will this be okay?”
Pushing him aside, I stood up and looked through the peephole. “Oh, God, no,” I whispered. A pack of them were heading straight for the door, trailed by a reanimated Officer Donnelly. The lower half of his leg had been ripped off, and the bone looked like someone had picked it clean. He dragged himself across the lawn. Daphne started to bark again, only this time she focused on the back of the house. I picked her up and turned to see a man standing at the sliding glass door. He didn’t try to open it with the handle. He just kept hitting the glass with his head, leaving smears of blood across the clean glass.
Spider web cracks appeared in the glass and spread with each impact. At the same time, the group at the front door was causing the door frame to bow with the sheer force of their weight.
“The doors won’t hold. We need to get to the garage!” As Jake said it, he grabbed me and looked me in the eyes. “Emma, we need to get out of here.”
We ran toward the garage and made it to the kitchen before the glass door shattered. The zombie was in the house. Mere feet away, I could smell its decaying flesh as we ran for our lives. Blood oozed from a neck wound and it let out a wet gurgle.
“Jake! The Keys!”
“Go,” Jake said. “Get in the car. I’m right behind you.” He shoved me through the door and closed it behind me.
“JAKE!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I could hear muffled struggles from the other side of the door as I panicked from the thought of losing him. At once, I knew what I needed to do. I ran to the car and opened the door. Dropping Daphne on the driver’s seat, I reached under it and groped around for the crowbar I always kept handy. My father grew up on the outskirts of Boston, and it had been ingrained into me at an early age to always be able to defend myself in a carjacking.
Finding my prize, I yanked it out and hefted the weight in my hands. I closed Daphne in the car and ran back to the garage door. Flinging it open, I saw Jake pinned to the kitchen floor by the zombie. He had his hands up under its throat and was using the leverage to keep it from biting him.
Like a banshee, I raced into the kitchen, crowbar held over my head and brought it down on the zombie’s head. Again and again I struck it until it slumped over to one side and lay still. Jake lay on his back panting. Rivulets of sweat beaded off his forehead, and blood splatter stained the front of his shirt and face. “My legs are pinned. Help me roll him off.”
We got him out from under the dead thing, and I helped him to his feet, clutching him in a tight embrace as I cried into his chest. “Don’t ever—” I sucked in a wheezing gasp, stricken with terror. “—leave me again.” I panted.
“I won’t, baby,” he mumbled into my hair. He held up his hand, keys dangling. “Let’s get out of here. The front door is about…” I’m quite certain his next words would have been to give… because that’s exactly what happened. The door splintered inward and through the doorway stumbled in one disgusting vision after another. We hauled ass back to the garage. No way did I need to be told twice.
Chapter 06
Out of the Frying Pan…
If this had been some B-rated horror movie, our SUV would have sputtered and died. Thankfully this wasn’t a movie, and we had always been diligent about keeping our vehicles in good shape.
I started squeezing my way around the front of the car as Jake got behind the wheel, and the back of my shirt snagged on something.
“Get in the car,” Jake yelled through the windshield. “Emma, get in the car, NOW!”
“I can’t get free,” I cried. I was unsuccessfully yanking my shirt as the first zombie entered the garage through the flimsy door. Tears streamed down my face as I worked to free myself. Jake began frantically yelling to get their attention and beeped the horn. Contrary to popular belief, while the horn may be activated from within the vehicle, the actual sound comes from the hood, which was exactly where I was currently located.
First one, then another zombie turned and began shambling toward me. My sheer panic increased to near intolerable levels as I saw them approach. As the first one reached out for me, I recoiled in disgust and became wild with fear.
You know what they say about mothers being able to lift entire cars to free a trapped child? That’s what I felt like as I made one final tug to free myself. Then a stack of boxes filled with my old textbooks fell from the shelves. One of the boxes caught me in the back of my head and I face planted into the hood of the SUV.
White sparks of light clouded my vision and I was felt a searing pain in my nose. Blood started to flow like a dam had burst. My vision hazy, and stunned by pain, I could hear Daphne barking and Jake screaming for me as everything came back into focus. I could also hear movement and the moans of the dead coming from the other side of the boxes as they attempted to reach me.