(Book 2)What Remains Read online

  The creaks from the wooden ladder had never seemed louder than they did at that moment. Beyond the complaints of the wooded rungs, the wailing of the engine outside was punctuated by shotgun blasts and angry shouts. Once I eased the ladder back to its concealed position the stiff nylon cord snaked upwards until it was out of sight entirely. I glided heel-toe swiftly through the hall past the plush feline guards.

  I pressed my body against the boarded window as if I could somehow become one with the wall if only to know what was on the other side without revealing our position. My heart thundered within my chest joining the vibrations from the fierce battle on the other side. The last time I had felt anxiety like this I was climbing the stairs of the parking deck in the first days of the outbreak. Having my family so close to this unknown danger was like reliving the collapse of life all over again. Coarseness around the peephole bit into my eyebrow as I pressed against the barricade to see as much as possible.

  Everything visible was dark and blurry, and my anxious panting wasn’t helping things in the least. I took a deep breath through my mouth, slowly released it through my nostrils, then repeated the exercise. My brain played tricks on me using the darkness to form shadows into enemies that shouldn’t exist. Then I realized that those enemies did exist... and they were everywhere.

  The dead clogged the entrance to the cul-de-sac even more than they had when I barreled through them on the pilfered police bicycle. Random bursts of light lit them up from different angles making their numbers difficult to determine. In one of the flashes I saw three fall at once; then, not even a second later, I felt the vibration of the weapon that brought them down.

  Another flash of light came but it was more constant and directed. The headlamp of the dirt bike rolled across the wall of excited undead and around the perimeter towards the rest of the neighborhood. The biker was screaming at the top of his lungs and then two more infected bodies collapsed. From my limited view it looked as if he was taking strafing runs at the group with a shotgun and used a blade of some kind for a more personal touch when he was close to them.

  A sinking pit in my stomach told me that something wasn’t right about this most recent escapade. This was different from what I could gather on the tactics of the neighborhood vigilante before that night. In the times before I never heard yelling, and the engine of his bike never sounded pushed to the level it was now. Something had changed with the man, something had made him reckless. Before, he was defending his territory with brazen flare; on this night he moved like a man beckoning the end.

  Our yard was suddenly clear of any zombies. All of them had shambled closer to the excitement of a stark-raving mad meal that kept trolling by on the street. Easily two-dozen shapes congregated together where the man was strafing. I imagined there to be a dozen more motionless beyond them but it was hard to tell with the limited light.

  Should I go out there and help him?

  My mind raced through possible outcomes from helping the crazy stranger.

  Before I could make any choices, another scream came without any accompanying gunfire. I squinted as hard as I could in an attempt to get a better view through the tiny hole. The beam of light flew down the street on the same path I had taken to reach the house. Three bursts of light lit the surrounding area quickly followed by shaking from the sound of their fury. His consecutive shots told me that he was using a twelve gauge with some reloadable flexibility for shells. Assuming he reloaded before making another pass I guessed he had two or three more shells left.

  This isn’t right. Something is wrong this time.

  I was frozen to do anything but gawk at the scene that unfolded. The headlight didn’t veer off; it stayed on the direct course. Three more quick flashes came and the walls shook. A whole section of the infected were shredded by the blaze of pellets. He had actually cleared a path that led to the cul-de-sac. I couldn’t believe how proficient this lunatic had become in this insane attack. Then the lone headlight on the bike turned into a strobe as the treads found traction, climbing up and down over fallen corpses. A roar of the tiny engine joined each up-and-down motion when the man pumped the throttle with each rotting speed bump.

  The biker had made it just past the entrance to the cul-de-sac, his wake littered with chunks of fallen frights. From my vantage point, the scene was all shadows and lightning but I felt like I could see every inch of the carnage after having lived in his position almost exactly during my flight home. I held my breath knowing that with his speed and reckless ferocity he was close enough for our house to turn into a backdrop for stray bullets. I turned away to warn Sarah and the kids that they needed to hide behind boxes that could absorb anything that strayed towards us. Then he screamed again, just as he had done whenever turning around for another pass, and I was instantly pulled back to the peephole.

  When the headlight shined over the reflective letters of the black Cannondale police bike, it made them flash into a clear view. The fury of his attack, I’m sure combined with his heart pounding in utter disregard, more than likely prevented him from seeing the tragic circumstance that brought his mission to an end. I saw it so briefly from my point of view that a blink would have left his demise a mystery. My recovered bike was still in the middle of the street, right where it fell when I was thrown from it. There were so many corpses in the area that it was hidden like a landmine in an un-mowed field. His front wheel wobbled when it first made contact, causing his bike to do a quick jackknife motion. Misfortune’s pieces aligned in just the right way so that the pedal of my discarded bike caught the spokes of his front wheel.

  His collision was so sudden that it was almost as if a tripwire had stopped the bike in its tracks. Momentum sent him over the handlebars, slamming him into the concrete like a rag doll. The motorized bike vertically rotated back to front with my bike still anchored. At the climax of the twirling wind-up the police bike dislodged like a fastball, sending it launching across the concrete and into the neighbor’s mailbox with a metallic clap that rained sparks upon impact. Not even a second behind it was the dirt bike flipping erratically end over end directly towards our house.

  I leaped towards the couch, shielding my head from the somersaulting wreckage hurtling headlong at me. A deafening roar shook the walls, highlighted by a symphony of shattering glass. All I could think was how I had to get the kids. I had to get my wife. We had to leave right now because our fortress had fallen. My right arm had unconsciously removed the Kukri for the imminent bloodshed that would follow a break in our defenses. Ringing permeated my ears after the impact sound; beyond the ringing was a muted car alarm blasting on and off. While I lifted myself off the couch with my left arm I imagined the debris I would have to sift through to reach the ladder.

  When my eyes regained their focus I was astonished to see that everything was in its right place. I turned towards the hallway hoping the breach wasn’t there. Colonel Meows-a-lot had fallen over but Van Gough remained at his post. There was no fire, no intruding zombies, and no wreckage. The bike collided with something but it certainly wasn’t our house.

  “Then where in the hell did it hit?!” I said out loud in total disbelief.

  I returned to the peephole to figure out what happened. The front yard was brighter now, however inconsistently. Flaming embers traced a flickering path like tiny candles wherever the bike crashed through. The honking was coming from our car, fully loaded for our escape, in the driveway. Each trumpet of the alarm was joined with a distressful flash of both the headlights and taillights that bathed the street in bursts of red. It was so easy to focus on the car alarm that the cause of the alarm didn’t register at first.

  My ignorance came crashing down when I noticed the car’s shape had been altered. The dirt bike’s upside-down rear wheel jutted out from the gray tarp that covered all the gear on the roof rack. The rest of the bike was thrust through the hatchback door. Calise’s pink butterfly car seat was thrown so far up that it blocked half of the windshield. I collapsed against th
e wall in shock.

  “What are we going to do? How am I supposed to save them now?” I muttered almost incoherently to the empty room. For a moment I was paralyzed by what had just happened.

  With each passing second the ringing in my ears faded and the honking outside grew louder. It hit me all at once.

  “Oh shit! The alarm!” I dropped the Kukri by the window and stomped into the kitchen. My footsteps were so heavy that Van Gough fell over and joined his plush comrade on the floor. I fumbled around in the darkness at the wall just inside the kitchen until I felt the rectangular key box. Not a second later I pointed the key fob towards the door, hitting the button as furiously as I would pull a trigger. When the alarm stopped I allowed myself to breathe at last.

  I recovered my bent blade from the carpet feeling like I’d insulted an old friend by tossing it down the way I had. The Kukri was returned to its home at my side then I wiped a mixture of sweat and tears out of my eyes. Although I knew the resting place of the bike, its rider’s fate was another story. I didn’t want to look but I had to know. The only reason why our walls weren’t being bombarded with rotting fists was because the dead had something more appetizing to focus on. I peered through the space in the boards again. Even with the strobe light of our car alarm removed from the equation I was still granted minor visibility from the glowing embers remaining from the crash.

  Shadow puppets of the infected danced around the fallen man like a pack of rabid hyenas. Flickers emanating from random bits of smoldering wreckage ensured that the horror of their feast would not be concealed by total darkness. I didn’t want to see yet I couldn’t pull myself away. Their swarming fury was a shocking reminder of how animated their ghoulish hunger could cause them to be. If there was any semblance of a higher power left in this world then the horde would consume him so completely that he wouldn’t be cursed to rise up and join their ranks.

  Two of them fell back from the group. Squinting, I pushed up against the wood to get a better view. The pair of creatures swatted at each other like bickering siblings. It wasn’t until they wobbled a few feet past the feast that I knew what would cause them to behave in such a way: they were fighting over food. All that kept them moving in unison was the poor man’s leg, torn away from his body. This ungodly game of tug-o-war was enough to pull me away from the peephole.

  I solemnly walked through the hallway, stopping to upright the cat guards. My body urged me to collapse right there and give it all up.

  How can I face them? How can I tell them what just happened?

  Desperate thoughts ran wild through my mind. I’m sure Sarah and the kids were terrified upstairs but I had to pull myself together before having to appear strong again. Past the point of the drop down ladder I decided to go into Maddox’s darkened room instead of my own. At the far end was an old cushioned chair that seemed like a good enough place to gather my thoughts.

  I trudged along as a soldier would in the minutes after battle; weighted by tragedies past, present and future. In spite of the darkness, my foot swept in front before each step in effort to clear any random toys that were a permanent fixture in my son’s territory. The familiar action brought about a moment of déjà vu. It felt like I’d gone back in time and I was trying to give the boy a kiss before running off to the police station for my shift.

  “Zombie... heh. I thought I knew what a zombie was back then,” I muttered. A smirk snaked through my sorrow thanks to the irony of it all.

  Habit assured me that the chair was in reach. I swiveled around, ready to collapse on the familiar resting spot until pain shot through my foot on the final step. I lost my balance, thumping down to the deep seat. Random toy-related injuries were equally familiar in Maddox’s room; oddly, the practice of grinning and bearing through the pain of a die-cast car under your foot to keep from disturbing a sleeping child also had its uses when the undead were at your doorstep. Arthritis, inflamed from the tight grip I had around the Kukri moments before, yelled in my knuckles while my aching digits massaged under the sock where the toy had pressed.

  “What the fuck did I step on?” I grumbled, feeling around in front of the chair. My hand met an awkwardly shaped block with wheels; I knew that this was the culprit. “Goddamned Hot Wheels...”

  Naturally, all of the flashlights where in the attic so I pawed through my pocket until I found the tiny Bic lighter that had been used to light the candles around our Thanksgiving table. Such a tiny flame seemed blinding at first then my eyes focused on the throbbing spot. The lack of blood was a relief because a limp from stepping on a toy didn’t seem like a suitable injury to cause the demise of any zombie fighter.

  I looked at the spiky suspect vehicle parked on the arm of my seat. It was a mail truck, a shrunken version of the perpetually tardy box on wheels that flew through our street six days of the week. I couldn’t look away from it; something about it caused sparks of an idea to tear down the walls of dread that brought me in the room to begin with. The lighter was hot, burning long enough to sear my thumb tip. My recoil snuffed the light and sent it to the floor. Darkness washed over me again but things were different now because I had a plan.

  Under the ladder I whispered, “MADDOX!” and shuffling feet responded on the floor above. “It’s okay. It’s just me. Let the cord fall back down so I can pull the ladder.”

  He inched it through its drilled hole in the ceiling plank. I couldn’t see more than six inches in front of my face yet I knew that my hand would find it dangling within reach. I had barely cleared the opening before getting knocked over by three sets of loving arms.

  They held onto me for several minutes before I could wiggle free. Sarah kissed my cheek then whispered in my ear. “Is the guy on the dirt bike...?”

  I shook my head. She tried to keep the conversation between us even though the kids were attached. The biker’s demise was so loud, though, that hiding the truth would be a futile effort. What I witnessed downstairs was a nightmare. I had no desire to share any of it with them but they needed to know why things had changed.

  Over the uneasy quiet Maddox said, “I heard the car alarm. Did you set the car alarm off to scare the motorcycle man away?”

  “No, Monkey, I wish that’s all it was.” He looked confused. “Listen, guys.... the man on the dirt bike crashed. He fell off and the monsters got him.”

  “Did he die, Daddy?” Calise whispered like she was telling a secret.

  “Yes, baby girl. The man died. But, even though the monsters got him, I’m pretty sure they won’t be able to make him into a monster too.” Sarah frowned. She was able to read between the lines enough to know this meant the man’s death was bad enough to keep him down. “There’s something else though...”

  “Why don’t we finish dinner?” Sarah said. “I’m sure we can talk about this tomorrow. We should talk about happy things during Thanksgiving dinner.”

  As much as I agreed with her assessment, I had to tell them the truth. “No.” Surprise from my uncharacteristic defiance overcame the smile she tried to show. “When the man lost control of his bike he fell off but his bike kept going... it crashed into our car. We’re not going to be able to use it to get to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

  They were frozen for a long moment. Maddox spoke up first, “If we can’t stay here then how are we going to get there?”

  “I have a plan that starts with us filling our bellies right now then us getting some sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m going to get up early and head out to find us a car; we can leave the day after that. Regardless, we’re getting out of here and everything will be alright.”

  Chapter 10 – Plan B

  Day Five - November 27th

  0530 hours:

  Soon after dinner we went to bed. I was grateful for the deep sleep granted to me that night. When my adrenaline stopped pumping, it joined forces with a full belly to ensure I was down for the count. The beeping of a watch alarm was likely all that stood between me and a day spent gloriously less-than-conscious.
r />   Then the dread sank in seconds after I opened my eyes. There weren’t many days when you could wake up knowing that by the end of that day you’d either save your family or get yourself, and vicariously them, killed. Sarah heard the alarm and silently rose with me. She reached behind a nearby box, pulling out my trusty green backpack. I smiled at the faded green pack with its American flag stapled to the front pocket. It had seen better days; rust colored stains from blood, almost certainly my own, dotted random spots like Rorschach ink blots.

  “Why a mail truck?” she asked quietly with a glance over her shoulder to the mass of blankets covering our comatose children. “Wouldn’t it be easier to check some of the other houses for keys to another car?”

  “I thought about that, but it would be too risky. We don’t know where people would keep the keys so who knows how long, or how many houses, it would take before we found something worthwhile?”

  “But the post office?”

  “It’s around the corner so it should be easy to reach. More importantly - it should be empty. What if we break into a random house and it’s filled with an infected family?”

  She shrugged. “True. I doubt we’d be able to get into any houses without drawing the wanderers to us either.”

  “Exactly. The post office has a vehicle bay in the back with a tall fence around it and one side is wooded. If, and I do mean if, I can get in, the keys shouldn’t be too hard to find. Also, think about how good a mail truck would be to drive to my parents’ house. I imagine they are decent on gas mileage, they usually aren’t all that loud, there is an enclosed area in the back for passengers and supplies while the front is more protected around the driver than the average car.”