Cold Faith
The scripture warns that in "the last days" the faith of the great body of believers will have grown cold and maybe that is why there is hardly anyone left now. Maybe that is why, for the first time in his life, Paul Thomas has found himself doubting the power of God after people who aren't people anymore began pounding on his front door.
Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified;
do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
COLD FAITH
by Sean Thomas Fisher
Preface
It had to have been the flu-shots.
He hadn't gotten one. None of them had.
Chapter One
Paul Thomas stared at the large family portrait hanging above the rustic fireplace. The brown haired man, his wife, young boy and girl in the photo were dressed in their Sunday best from the eighties and had eyes that followed you wherever you went in the farmhouse living room. Shuddering, he tore his gaze away and wondered where the family had gone, catching a quick smile from Sophia in the process. A smile she had to work at.
Smiles were like that now. Work. Like putting on the courteous fake face every time you unwrapped a horrible Christmas gift from someone, right in front of said someone.
He tried to smile back as Carla scanned the farmhouse's many windows with wild eyes while clutching her two young boys on the stained carpet. It made Paul paranoid. He knew what she was thinking and wished they were boarded up too, or at least had thicker curtains. Now he couldn't stop looking at the windows. Couldn't stop seeing those things trying to peek inside. His stomach churned.
"Can they get in here?" she whispered, her eyes nearly as wide as her boys.
Dan followed her casing gaze around the room, his breath floating out in white waves. "I hope not."
"They can't," Paul lied.
A silence as deep as the snow outside settled in the room where they sat cross-legged on the worn carpet and tried to eat. They exchanged nervous glances through hollowed out faces that seemed to change expressions in the flickering candlelight. It had been a long six days.
Paul carefully chewed the partially frozen apple pie he had, somewhat, thawed out by the fireplace. He had wanted to keep that fire going all night, but they'd see it for sure. The snow-covered farmhouse was old and drafty, caught in the clutches of Iowa's snowiest winter in ninety-nine years. At least that's what Ed Wilson had said on the local news just a few days before all hell broke loose.
"Mom, are they gonna to eat us?" Mike asked, pulling his stocking cap down over his ears again.
"What? No sweetie, of course they're not," Carla assured him, rubbing the back of his thick coat with her gloved hand. "You are the one who needs to eat."
"I don't wanna die!" Matt suddenly wailed, turning on the water works again and plunking his face into his mom's down coat.
"Peanut, will you stop? You are not going to die!" she insisted, fighting back tears herself.
Paul and Dan traded a brief look. One that said these people were going to be baggage alright.
Carla's mini van had run out of gas four hours ago on a snowy rural route road and couldn't have been any luckier to have Paul's Jeep Grand Cherokee come upon them before the things had. Luckier than winning the lottery. Now, here in the darkness, Paul felt guilty thinking about how much easier this would be without them. Silence was golden in this world. Besides, this place didn't have near as much edible food as the last two and the Jeep was a tight fit already.
"Matt, they have guns," the eleven year old bravely reminded his younger brother.
"That's right, Mikey," his mom responded, flashing him another half-hearted smile.
"Matt, you know we wouldn't let anything happen to you," Sophia said, discreetly brushing a glove against her pink handgun, just to make sure it was still there. "We'll be playing volleyball on the beach in no time," she smiled.
"See? But first you need to eat," Carla coaxed.
Squeamishly, Matt pulled his wet face from his mom and turned to Sophia with an unconvinced expression. His tears slowly turned to sniffles and, grudgingly, he stuffed another graham cracker into his mouth and began crunching.
"Can we build sand castles?" he softly asked, spitting a piece of graham cracker onto the carpet.
"Sure you can, sweetie," Sophia smiled.
"Can we get boogie boards?" Mike asked.
"Of course," Sophia warmly replied.
"Can I have a gun?" Matt whimpered.
"Uh," Sophia began.
One of those things let out a horrific high-pitched scream off in the distance. On cue, they all stopped talking and chewing. Their eyes silently met for confirmation they weren't the only one who had just heard that.
"Did you hear that?" Dan asked anyway, his ears nearly poking through his ski cap.
No one answered him.
It had been two days since one of those ghastly screeches and, so far, it had never been a good omen. Paul had searched for a reason behind the sporadic cries of pain and came up empty. From what he had seen back in town, those things had no feelings. No pain. No remorse. Not a care in the world for anything but themselves. Regardless, the screams were enough to give him goose bumps if the cold hadn't already beaten them to the punch. He went back to his dinner, too tired to do much of anything else.
"I told you I had a bad feeling about this place," Sophia whispered, huddled up next to him on the floor.
Paul grimaced, his mind flashing back to when they had arrived. He had been positive they would be all alone this far out in the middle of nowhere.
"We should have kept going," she sneered.
"Yeah, but you had a bad feeling when that Buffalo Wild Wings opened up down the street from us," he whispered back. "And look how great that turned out."
She shot him a look that was almost as cold as the farmhouse. "I'm serious, Paul. You never listen to me."
"Baby, didn't you hear the kid?" he said, cocking his head. "We have guns."
She narrowed her eyes at him and returned to the stale graham crackers and chocolate frosting they had found in the barren kitchen cupboards.
He opened his mouth to tell her that God would see them through this mess, just like He had seen them through all the other messes. But after five years of marriage, he thought better of it and took another bite of his Hostess apple pie instead. Ghostly plumes rolled out his nostrils as he ate. The pie seemed to be replicating itself when he wasn't looking. He could barely put a dent in it, but they would need their energy and some good rest for tomorrow. In this world, however, even that was difficult.
"Man, I am so stopped up," Dan remarked.
"Great," Paul said flatly.
"I have got to go to the bathroom or I am going to explode."
"Then go," Paul snapped.
"I can't!" Dan returned in a low voice through gritted teeth. "I tried, but sitting on a frozen toilet full of turds is happening for me."
Paul snorted and noticed Matt and Mike had stopped eating and were staring at them with matching disgust.
"Do you mind? This is grown up talk," Dan scoffed at them.
Both kids shrugged and went back to trying to eat.
Paul looked back to the picture again, knowing he'd never get used to hiding out in a different house like this every night, with their rotating smells and furniture and pictures of the people who used to live there. Their lives eternally frozen in time. A continual reminder of the way things were and the way things would always be, accompanied by the perpetual sense of discomfort that comes with unfamiliar surroundings. He could never sleep well in a hotel bed, let alone this. At least in a hotel room nobody came pounding uninvited on your door at three in the morning, unless it was security.
And what he'd give to see some security now. They hadn't seen a single cop, or even a National Guardsmen for that matter, in at least three days, which was numbing. Almost as numbing as the icy nine-millimeter strapped to his right leg. He would have to get them to warmer weather and fast, because if the walking dead didn't get 'em, the freezing temps would.
Sophia shivered inside her puffy red coat and tried to hide it. She was just as cold and terrified as the others but did a better job of disguising it. Paul couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised by how she had courageously stepped up to this new challenge. This madness. Two weeks ago, she had been booking appointments in high heels at a high-end salon, today she walked with a little pink gun strapped to her lower right thigh at all times. Two weeks ago, she blew a gasket if a spider showed its hairy face in the bathroom, today she had four kills. And counting. But if anything happened to her... He quickly pushed the thought from his head and told himself that God would see them through this mess.
Out the corner of his eye, one of the long, sheer curtains briefly ruffled. Paul snapped his head over to it with gaping eyes. No one else saw. He swallowed a dry swallowed and coughed. Pulling a water bottle out from inside his coat, he took a long drink while a chunk of ice loudly rattled around inside the plastic bottle.
He turned back to the curtain. It was still again and the window wasn't open. They had shut and locked everything that could be shut and locked. Even the screen door out back. A deep sigh escaped him and rumbled through the candlelight as he turned his attention to a small rocking chair in the corner of the room. He used to have a wooden one like that when he was a kid.
He stared back into the candles again and let his eyes go out of focus. The dancing flames cast a hypnotic spell over his blurry mind. Before all of this, Sophia had loved her candles, especially Yankee Candles in all different flavors and colors. He wondered if she would ever again enjoy such simple pleasures, like flowers or cooking or a good book.
Another pain bearing scream pierced through the bitter air. This time much closer. Paul leaned over to blow out the candles and just before he did, he saw Matt's and Mike's scared little faces. He hesitated, then blew. In a flash, they were plunged into darkness with the fragrant smell of lilacs filling the room.
"I told you," Sophia whispered extra low, not wanting to scare the boys anymore than they already were. If that was even possible.
"Those things are never even gonna know we were here," he confidently relied.
The moonlight slipping past the curtains lit up one side of her concerned face. "I'm just saying, we have kids with us now to think about, Paul."
He frowned. "I know we have kids to think about."
"Well then, I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to me once in a while. When I say I have a bad feeling about something, I mean it."
He raised his head to the ceiling and released an exhausted sigh. This was the last thing he needed to be arguing about right now. What was done was done and he would be damned if he was going to let a "feeling" dictate their future.
He snapped his head over to the rocking chair. It was moving. Like some small child had just taken a seat in it and began gently rocking back and forth. His mind raced. What now, poltergeists? He'd always thought those ghost trapping TV shows with their night-vision green hue were always a joke. Nothing ever happened, nothing that couldn't be blamed on a small mouse or the creak of old wood resting on a cracked foundation. But if the dead had come back to life out there, anything was possible.
Carla and Dan screamed when the sloppy fist pounded on the front door, scaring the crap out of everyone. Matt and Mike frantically bear hugged their mom, trying to crawl inside her skin like baby kangaroos.
Paul carefully set his pie down on the coffee table and grabbed the icy twelve-gauge lying next to him on the floor. He and Dan coolly rose to their feet, the shotguns gliding into their shoulders in an eerie, choreographed symmetry.
Two weeks ago, a knock like that would've made him drop that apple pie on the dirty old floor like a scared little girl after a grass snake had crossed her path in the park. But now, he had carefully set it down on the coffee table, saving it for later. Confident there would be a later.
The second knock caused them all to jump like they'd just taken the same fifty-volt shock from a car battery. It was a cop-knock from hell and a sure sign their cover was blown. The candles flashed through Paul's mind while the front door rattled with each bruising wallop. It wouldn't hold forever. Unfortunately, there hadn't been any wood conveniently lying around to board up the windows with, let alone a hammer and nails. This was no movie.
The knocks on the door suddenly subsided.
Their heavy breathing made the only sound in the musty, moonlit room.
"Looks like just one, but oh man, he's a big one," Dan whispered, peering out the front door's peephole with one eye open.
"Who is it?" Paul asked, gripping the shotgun as Sophia eased behind him.
"Ted Larson, from up the street," Dan replied.
Paul paused. "Who?"
"How the heck should I know who it is!" Dan blurted, just as another huge blow to the door caused him to flinch so badly, it was almost funny.
"Open it!" Paul ordered, taking aim with the Mossberg.
"On three," Dan agreed, creeping back to the door knob.
Normally, they didn't waste ammo if they didn't have to but this guy would eventually get inside. Plus, it wouldn't be long before he attracted others.
"One, two," Dan began steadily counting as a window broke out in the kitchen behind them.
This time it was Sophia who screamed.
"Open it!" Paul impatiently demanded.
Dan yanked the front door open and the thing glided through the doorway, slobbering and snarling. Its dark blue 'Rick's Heating and Cooling' coat was bloody and torn with bloated hands reaching out the long sleeves, clawing at the frigid air, desperate for purchase. And Dan was right, he was a big one. Had to be over six-feet tall and three hundred pounds, yet moved like he was half that.
Paul unloaded a shell on the thing right away to keep most of the mess out on the front porch. They might still spend the night here.
The thing slid across the porch on its back and went down the front steps head first, leaving its only shoe behind in the doorway. Dan scanned the front porch for more of the ghouls, his gun going first. Carla wrapped an arm around each of her boys on the carpet while Sophia drew her pink nine millimeter to cover whatever was coming in through the kitchen window. To her chagrin, Paul had insisted they start practicing these S.W.A.T. like moves right after they had raided the gun store in Des Moines.
"Look out!" Carla howled.
Sophia sunk a single round into the slight kid creeping into the living room from the kitchen. Paul whirled around so fast his leg bumped the coffee-table and knocked his apple pie onto the filthy carpet. The last one too.
The kid flew backwards onto the kitchen floor and stopped moving. Matt bawled louder than ever. He had reached the boiling point for eight year-olds. His brother Mike just sat there, looking like he had just seen a ghost. And he had.
"Matt, it's alright, buddy!" Paul yelled, sliding across the living room as Dan shut and locked the front door.
"I wanna go home!" Matt blubbered.
Carla hugged him tightly and told him everything was going to be okay. A blatant lie.
Paul and Sophia stepped over the dead boy's body on the vinyl floor, careful not to slip in the pooling blood. Paul stared down at the kid's John Deere sweatshirt as an older woman with long gray hair pulled herself through the broken window above the sink, folding her thin limbs through like a poisonous spider. He swung the shotgun up at her and she released a horrific shriek at him, baring her broken teeth and hurting his ears. He winced and pulled the trigger, blasting her back outside into the cold night.
Paul looked back down to the unmoving farm kid again. Matt's cries in the living room seemed to be coming from a hundred miles away. They still might be able to crash here tonight, he thought as a skinny old man with wrinkled fingers casually began climbing through the shattered window. Hiss tattered plaid button down snagged on the broken glass and Sophia popped him one time through his bald spot, jerking the thing back out into the darkness.
Matt stopped crying. They all froze and listened to the wind whistling through the smashed window.
"How we lookin' out there, Dan?" Paul yelled out to the living room.
"We're clear!"
Paul stared out the broken window then dropped his gaze to the poor farm kid lying on the floor. The frizzy gray-haired lady stood back up and reached through the window again, grabbing the edge of the laminate countertop and pulling herself inside. This time Paul took its head off. The thing took a piece of the old countertop with her on the way out and didn't get back up.
Silence followed. Their chests heaved.
Paul and Sophia looked from the broken window to each other.
"I told you I had a bad feeling about this place!" she scowled.
Chapter 2
"Man, that was one big Z.I.P.," Dan said, back at the peephole.
Carla scrunched her face up. "A what?"
"A zombie in pursuit," he answered, without turning around.
"A zom... In pursuit of what?"
"Us."
"But why? Why is this happening?" she asked, turning to Paul.
He shrugged his shoulders in the doorway of the kitchen. "Maybe God was tired of us making Kim Kardashian rich and famous."
She frowned and looked over to Sophia, who didn't seem to notice.
She was busy staring off into the darkened fireplace from a brown recliner, covered in black dog hair. Paul could tell his wife was shaken after shooting the farm boy, who couldn't have been much older than Matt. So far, it was the youngest thing any of them had put down.
Paul turned back to the dead kid on the floor. Probably some neighbor kid who wouldn't have another chore to do, ever again. And his parents, lying outside in the fresh powder, who would never have to give the orders. Paul closed his eyes and rubbed his face. These people didn't deserve this. They had been honest, hard-working individuals their entire lives. And for what? To end up lying dead on some yellowing vinyl floor? Where was God now?
"Should we leave?" Carla anxiously asked, gripping Matt and Mike on the living room's antiquated brown couch.
"I don't know yet," Paul admitted, crossing back over to the front windows and peeling back the dingy white drapes. The bright moon above bathed the snow-encrusted country landscape with an angelic glow . "I don't see anyone else."
"Well, we can't stay here! Not with that... thing in the kitchen," she barked. "Plus the window is broken!"
"It's too dark to clear another place tonight. We're out in the middle of nowhere and these were probably the only ones around," Paul hoped. "If they're not, we'll take off in the Jeep."
Dan turned from the living room window, wildly looking around the room with saucer-sized eyes, unconvinced more of them weren't already inside. He reminded Paul of when they had rented an old ranch styled house near Saylorville Lake just after college. It had been the perfect place to quickly launch their trusty old 1978 Mark Twain ski boat, but it didn't take long for them to figure out why the place was so affordable. Mice. Dan had spotted a couple of the furry little vermin sneaking around the house and had set traps like he was Freddy on Scooby-Doo. Even bought a cat. Soon the mice had, more or less, disappeared. Yet, he had always been on the lookout for them. Always thought he had just seen something dart across the living room. He was like that now.
"What if they heard the gunfire?" Carla nagged. "Let's just get in the car and go!"
"I say we stick around and see what happens," Paul tried to say calmly.
She tilted her soccer-mom do and looked at Paul as if he was speaking in a foreign language. "Excuse me, but I have two young boys here to think about! And I'd rather not leave it up to chance and just see what happens!"
She was getting loud again.
Mike and Matt breathed out of their mouths and slowly swept their big eyes from their mom to Paul. He noticed Dan was looking at him too. They all were.
He stared back, focusing in on Matt and Mike. They were so young and Sophia was right - they may not have had any kids before, but they sure as heck did now and deep down, he already knew he would protect them at all costs like they were his own kids. He would protect all of them. He was the law now. They all were.
"We'll board up the broken window and leave at dawn. We'll be fine. We're not carrying squirt guns here," he said, tapping his black nylon holster. "Now, try to get some rest," he instructed, not up for any further debate and turning his attention to a large, framed picture of two birds.
Carla's jaw dropped. "That's your plan? Board up the window?"
He turned back around, frowning. "Do you really want to drag your two boys out there into the darkness? The cold?"
Other than a huff, she didn't respond.
She reminded Paul of his own mom. When he and Sophia had left their house in Des Moines for the last time to rescue his mom on the way out-of-town, she had been hysterical too. But what mom wouldn't have been? It was understandable.
Then his mom got sick. So sick, she didn't even want her leftover French Silk pie from "Free Pie Wednesday" at Baker's Square, which was not understandable. Shortly before she couldn't even crochet anymore, she weakly told them the only thing she'd done out of the ordinary lately was to get a flu shot at the pharmacy up the street. Three days later she had closed her eyes and stopped breathing in her bed, the cat still hiding beneath it. Hiding like them.
"Now, who wants to watch a scary movie before bed?" Paul asked the room, raising his hand.
"I do! I do!" Matt cried, shooting his hand up into the air.
Dan wrinkled his brow. "Scary movie? Are you nuts, kid?"
"How about... Monster House?" Matt decided.
"I was thinking something a little more along the lines of Sex and the City 2," Paul said quietly.
"Now that is scary," Dan said.
Sophia giggled. Just a little.
Paul glanced from her back to the rocking chair, which was perfectly still now. Maybe it had been the over-sized repairman's heavy footsteps that had brought it to life. But that's what was funny about it, they hadn't heard any footsteps. In fact, it was like the guy had floated up onto the front porch. Like a ghost. Paul rubbed his face again and turned back to the picture of the birds.
He didn't know if some of the prophecies in the Book of Revelations had come to light or if God had just allowed Hell's gates to open because it was full. All he knew was that the resurrection of the dead was definitely taking place out there. Out there, where the full moon cast black shadows of the tree's withered branches upon the pearl white snow. Out there were even the shadows appeared to be reaching for you.
Until just a couple of days ago, the majority of the things they'd encountered had been children or the elderly, which played perfectly into Paul's flu-shot theory. Every time the government and the medical communities had started dishing out H1N1 warnings like white cake at a wedding reception, the young and the old had of course been the first in line and, subsequently, had been the first to turn. But that was changing. Case in point: the repairman. Paul guessed he was around thirty years old and, more than likely, out on a house call to patch up an overworked furnace in the area. Probably holding a screwdriver and attacked from behind. Maybe in the farm kid's house. Maybe in this one.
When they had arrived here two hours ago, the back door had been left wide open and no one was home. Two half-finished cups of coffee sat next to a glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts on the kitchen table. There was also a green shotgun shell lying on the kitchen floor, which Dan had promptly stuffed into his coat pocket before securing the rest of the property.
After clearing the house, the six of them had gone outside together, before it had gotten dark, and siphoned a lucky tank of gas from a rusty old pick-up parked in the snow-covered drive. Paul was smart enough not to take any chances in unfamiliar surroundings. Nobody was going to run into the bushes and take a leak by themselves on his watch. Those rookie moves were for teenagers with big framed glasses and feathered hair in cheesy horror movies.
On the run from Z.I.P.s, and the cold meant a different house every night. Sometimes no one was home and sometimes they were. So far, none of the ones who had been home could speak English anymore, which Paul found difficult to process. Repeatedly, he tripped over the gradual revelation of just how few survivors there really were on their seemingly endless episode of Haunted House Hunters, where this time around, no one cared if the kitchen had granite countertops or not. Outside shelter, they only cared about food, blankets and sleep.
Paul kneeled next to Sophia and placed a hand on her leg. "Hey, you know you had to do that right?" he said softly.
She stared straight ahead. "He was just a little boy," she sniffled, tears making tracks down her red cheeks.
"He used to be, baby. But he was gone before we got here. One of us could've been killed or infected if you hadn't of protected us like that." He chose his words carefully.
She didn't respond.
In truth, Paul had no idea if you could be "infected" by a bite or a scratch from one of those things. They hadn't seen anyone escape with just a bite yet but he had a feeling they would probably find out soon enough.
Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified;
do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
COLD FAITH
by Sean Thomas Fisher
Preface
It had to have been the flu-shots.
He hadn't gotten one. None of them had.
Chapter One
Paul Thomas stared at the large family portrait hanging above the rustic fireplace. The brown haired man, his wife, young boy and girl in the photo were dressed in their Sunday best from the eighties and had eyes that followed you wherever you went in the farmhouse living room. Shuddering, he tore his gaze away and wondered where the family had gone, catching a quick smile from Sophia in the process. A smile she had to work at.
Smiles were like that now. Work. Like putting on the courteous fake face every time you unwrapped a horrible Christmas gift from someone, right in front of said someone.
He tried to smile back as Carla scanned the farmhouse's many windows with wild eyes while clutching her two young boys on the stained carpet. It made Paul paranoid. He knew what she was thinking and wished they were boarded up too, or at least had thicker curtains. Now he couldn't stop looking at the windows. Couldn't stop seeing those things trying to peek inside. His stomach churned.
"Can they get in here?" she whispered, her eyes nearly as wide as her boys.
Dan followed her casing gaze around the room, his breath floating out in white waves. "I hope not."
"They can't," Paul lied.
A silence as deep as the snow outside settled in the room where they sat cross-legged on the worn carpet and tried to eat. They exchanged nervous glances through hollowed out faces that seemed to change expressions in the flickering candlelight. It had been a long six days.
Paul carefully chewed the partially frozen apple pie he had, somewhat, thawed out by the fireplace. He had wanted to keep that fire going all night, but they'd see it for sure. The snow-covered farmhouse was old and drafty, caught in the clutches of Iowa's snowiest winter in ninety-nine years. At least that's what Ed Wilson had said on the local news just a few days before all hell broke loose.
"Mom, are they gonna to eat us?" Mike asked, pulling his stocking cap down over his ears again.
"What? No sweetie, of course they're not," Carla assured him, rubbing the back of his thick coat with her gloved hand. "You are the one who needs to eat."
"I don't wanna die!" Matt suddenly wailed, turning on the water works again and plunking his face into his mom's down coat.
"Peanut, will you stop? You are not going to die!" she insisted, fighting back tears herself.
Paul and Dan traded a brief look. One that said these people were going to be baggage alright.
Carla's mini van had run out of gas four hours ago on a snowy rural route road and couldn't have been any luckier to have Paul's Jeep Grand Cherokee come upon them before the things had. Luckier than winning the lottery. Now, here in the darkness, Paul felt guilty thinking about how much easier this would be without them. Silence was golden in this world. Besides, this place didn't have near as much edible food as the last two and the Jeep was a tight fit already.
"Matt, they have guns," the eleven year old bravely reminded his younger brother.
"That's right, Mikey," his mom responded, flashing him another half-hearted smile.
"Matt, you know we wouldn't let anything happen to you," Sophia said, discreetly brushing a glove against her pink handgun, just to make sure it was still there. "We'll be playing volleyball on the beach in no time," she smiled.
"See? But first you need to eat," Carla coaxed.
Squeamishly, Matt pulled his wet face from his mom and turned to Sophia with an unconvinced expression. His tears slowly turned to sniffles and, grudgingly, he stuffed another graham cracker into his mouth and began crunching.
"Can we build sand castles?" he softly asked, spitting a piece of graham cracker onto the carpet.
"Sure you can, sweetie," Sophia smiled.
"Can we get boogie boards?" Mike asked.
"Of course," Sophia warmly replied.
"Can I have a gun?" Matt whimpered.
"Uh," Sophia began.
One of those things let out a horrific high-pitched scream off in the distance. On cue, they all stopped talking and chewing. Their eyes silently met for confirmation they weren't the only one who had just heard that.
"Did you hear that?" Dan asked anyway, his ears nearly poking through his ski cap.
No one answered him.
It had been two days since one of those ghastly screeches and, so far, it had never been a good omen. Paul had searched for a reason behind the sporadic cries of pain and came up empty. From what he had seen back in town, those things had no feelings. No pain. No remorse. Not a care in the world for anything but themselves. Regardless, the screams were enough to give him goose bumps if the cold hadn't already beaten them to the punch. He went back to his dinner, too tired to do much of anything else.
"I told you I had a bad feeling about this place," Sophia whispered, huddled up next to him on the floor.
Paul grimaced, his mind flashing back to when they had arrived. He had been positive they would be all alone this far out in the middle of nowhere.
"We should have kept going," she sneered.
"Yeah, but you had a bad feeling when that Buffalo Wild Wings opened up down the street from us," he whispered back. "And look how great that turned out."
She shot him a look that was almost as cold as the farmhouse. "I'm serious, Paul. You never listen to me."
"Baby, didn't you hear the kid?" he said, cocking his head. "We have guns."
She narrowed her eyes at him and returned to the stale graham crackers and chocolate frosting they had found in the barren kitchen cupboards.
He opened his mouth to tell her that God would see them through this mess, just like He had seen them through all the other messes. But after five years of marriage, he thought better of it and took another bite of his Hostess apple pie instead. Ghostly plumes rolled out his nostrils as he ate. The pie seemed to be replicating itself when he wasn't looking. He could barely put a dent in it, but they would need their energy and some good rest for tomorrow. In this world, however, even that was difficult.
"Man, I am so stopped up," Dan remarked.
"Great," Paul said flatly.
"I have got to go to the bathroom or I am going to explode."
"Then go," Paul snapped.
"I can't!" Dan returned in a low voice through gritted teeth. "I tried, but sitting on a frozen toilet full of turds is happening for me."
Paul snorted and noticed Matt and Mike had stopped eating and were staring at them with matching disgust.
"Do you mind? This is grown up talk," Dan scoffed at them.
Both kids shrugged and went back to trying to eat.
Paul looked back to the picture again, knowing he'd never get used to hiding out in a different house like this every night, with their rotating smells and furniture and pictures of the people who used to live there. Their lives eternally frozen in time. A continual reminder of the way things were and the way things would always be, accompanied by the perpetual sense of discomfort that comes with unfamiliar surroundings. He could never sleep well in a hotel bed, let alone this. At least in a hotel room nobody came pounding uninvited on your door at three in the morning, unless it was security.
And what he'd give to see some security now. They hadn't seen a single cop, or even a National Guardsmen for that matter, in at least three days, which was numbing. Almost as numbing as the icy nine-millimeter strapped to his right leg. He would have to get them to warmer weather and fast, because if the walking dead didn't get 'em, the freezing temps would.
Sophia shivered inside her puffy red coat and tried to hide it. She was just as cold and terrified as the others but did a better job of disguising it. Paul couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised by how she had courageously stepped up to this new challenge. This madness. Two weeks ago, she had been booking appointments in high heels at a high-end salon, today she walked with a little pink gun strapped to her lower right thigh at all times. Two weeks ago, she blew a gasket if a spider showed its hairy face in the bathroom, today she had four kills. And counting. But if anything happened to her... He quickly pushed the thought from his head and told himself that God would see them through this mess.
Out the corner of his eye, one of the long, sheer curtains briefly ruffled. Paul snapped his head over to it with gaping eyes. No one else saw. He swallowed a dry swallowed and coughed. Pulling a water bottle out from inside his coat, he took a long drink while a chunk of ice loudly rattled around inside the plastic bottle.
He turned back to the curtain. It was still again and the window wasn't open. They had shut and locked everything that could be shut and locked. Even the screen door out back. A deep sigh escaped him and rumbled through the candlelight as he turned his attention to a small rocking chair in the corner of the room. He used to have a wooden one like that when he was a kid.
He stared back into the candles again and let his eyes go out of focus. The dancing flames cast a hypnotic spell over his blurry mind. Before all of this, Sophia had loved her candles, especially Yankee Candles in all different flavors and colors. He wondered if she would ever again enjoy such simple pleasures, like flowers or cooking or a good book.
Another pain bearing scream pierced through the bitter air. This time much closer. Paul leaned over to blow out the candles and just before he did, he saw Matt's and Mike's scared little faces. He hesitated, then blew. In a flash, they were plunged into darkness with the fragrant smell of lilacs filling the room.
"I told you," Sophia whispered extra low, not wanting to scare the boys anymore than they already were. If that was even possible.
"Those things are never even gonna know we were here," he confidently relied.
The moonlight slipping past the curtains lit up one side of her concerned face. "I'm just saying, we have kids with us now to think about, Paul."
He frowned. "I know we have kids to think about."
"Well then, I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to me once in a while. When I say I have a bad feeling about something, I mean it."
He raised his head to the ceiling and released an exhausted sigh. This was the last thing he needed to be arguing about right now. What was done was done and he would be damned if he was going to let a "feeling" dictate their future.
He snapped his head over to the rocking chair. It was moving. Like some small child had just taken a seat in it and began gently rocking back and forth. His mind raced. What now, poltergeists? He'd always thought those ghost trapping TV shows with their night-vision green hue were always a joke. Nothing ever happened, nothing that couldn't be blamed on a small mouse or the creak of old wood resting on a cracked foundation. But if the dead had come back to life out there, anything was possible.
Carla and Dan screamed when the sloppy fist pounded on the front door, scaring the crap out of everyone. Matt and Mike frantically bear hugged their mom, trying to crawl inside her skin like baby kangaroos.
Paul carefully set his pie down on the coffee table and grabbed the icy twelve-gauge lying next to him on the floor. He and Dan coolly rose to their feet, the shotguns gliding into their shoulders in an eerie, choreographed symmetry.
Two weeks ago, a knock like that would've made him drop that apple pie on the dirty old floor like a scared little girl after a grass snake had crossed her path in the park. But now, he had carefully set it down on the coffee table, saving it for later. Confident there would be a later.
The second knock caused them all to jump like they'd just taken the same fifty-volt shock from a car battery. It was a cop-knock from hell and a sure sign their cover was blown. The candles flashed through Paul's mind while the front door rattled with each bruising wallop. It wouldn't hold forever. Unfortunately, there hadn't been any wood conveniently lying around to board up the windows with, let alone a hammer and nails. This was no movie.
The knocks on the door suddenly subsided.
Their heavy breathing made the only sound in the musty, moonlit room.
"Looks like just one, but oh man, he's a big one," Dan whispered, peering out the front door's peephole with one eye open.
"Who is it?" Paul asked, gripping the shotgun as Sophia eased behind him.
"Ted Larson, from up the street," Dan replied.
Paul paused. "Who?"
"How the heck should I know who it is!" Dan blurted, just as another huge blow to the door caused him to flinch so badly, it was almost funny.
"Open it!" Paul ordered, taking aim with the Mossberg.
"On three," Dan agreed, creeping back to the door knob.
Normally, they didn't waste ammo if they didn't have to but this guy would eventually get inside. Plus, it wouldn't be long before he attracted others.
"One, two," Dan began steadily counting as a window broke out in the kitchen behind them.
This time it was Sophia who screamed.
"Open it!" Paul impatiently demanded.
Dan yanked the front door open and the thing glided through the doorway, slobbering and snarling. Its dark blue 'Rick's Heating and Cooling' coat was bloody and torn with bloated hands reaching out the long sleeves, clawing at the frigid air, desperate for purchase. And Dan was right, he was a big one. Had to be over six-feet tall and three hundred pounds, yet moved like he was half that.
Paul unloaded a shell on the thing right away to keep most of the mess out on the front porch. They might still spend the night here.
The thing slid across the porch on its back and went down the front steps head first, leaving its only shoe behind in the doorway. Dan scanned the front porch for more of the ghouls, his gun going first. Carla wrapped an arm around each of her boys on the carpet while Sophia drew her pink nine millimeter to cover whatever was coming in through the kitchen window. To her chagrin, Paul had insisted they start practicing these S.W.A.T. like moves right after they had raided the gun store in Des Moines.
"Look out!" Carla howled.
Sophia sunk a single round into the slight kid creeping into the living room from the kitchen. Paul whirled around so fast his leg bumped the coffee-table and knocked his apple pie onto the filthy carpet. The last one too.
The kid flew backwards onto the kitchen floor and stopped moving. Matt bawled louder than ever. He had reached the boiling point for eight year-olds. His brother Mike just sat there, looking like he had just seen a ghost. And he had.
"Matt, it's alright, buddy!" Paul yelled, sliding across the living room as Dan shut and locked the front door.
"I wanna go home!" Matt blubbered.
Carla hugged him tightly and told him everything was going to be okay. A blatant lie.
Paul and Sophia stepped over the dead boy's body on the vinyl floor, careful not to slip in the pooling blood. Paul stared down at the kid's John Deere sweatshirt as an older woman with long gray hair pulled herself through the broken window above the sink, folding her thin limbs through like a poisonous spider. He swung the shotgun up at her and she released a horrific shriek at him, baring her broken teeth and hurting his ears. He winced and pulled the trigger, blasting her back outside into the cold night.
Paul looked back down to the unmoving farm kid again. Matt's cries in the living room seemed to be coming from a hundred miles away. They still might be able to crash here tonight, he thought as a skinny old man with wrinkled fingers casually began climbing through the shattered window. Hiss tattered plaid button down snagged on the broken glass and Sophia popped him one time through his bald spot, jerking the thing back out into the darkness.
Matt stopped crying. They all froze and listened to the wind whistling through the smashed window.
"How we lookin' out there, Dan?" Paul yelled out to the living room.
"We're clear!"
Paul stared out the broken window then dropped his gaze to the poor farm kid lying on the floor. The frizzy gray-haired lady stood back up and reached through the window again, grabbing the edge of the laminate countertop and pulling herself inside. This time Paul took its head off. The thing took a piece of the old countertop with her on the way out and didn't get back up.
Silence followed. Their chests heaved.
Paul and Sophia looked from the broken window to each other.
"I told you I had a bad feeling about this place!" she scowled.
Chapter 2
"Man, that was one big Z.I.P.," Dan said, back at the peephole.
Carla scrunched her face up. "A what?"
"A zombie in pursuit," he answered, without turning around.
"A zom... In pursuit of what?"
"Us."
"But why? Why is this happening?" she asked, turning to Paul.
He shrugged his shoulders in the doorway of the kitchen. "Maybe God was tired of us making Kim Kardashian rich and famous."
She frowned and looked over to Sophia, who didn't seem to notice.
She was busy staring off into the darkened fireplace from a brown recliner, covered in black dog hair. Paul could tell his wife was shaken after shooting the farm boy, who couldn't have been much older than Matt. So far, it was the youngest thing any of them had put down.
Paul turned back to the dead kid on the floor. Probably some neighbor kid who wouldn't have another chore to do, ever again. And his parents, lying outside in the fresh powder, who would never have to give the orders. Paul closed his eyes and rubbed his face. These people didn't deserve this. They had been honest, hard-working individuals their entire lives. And for what? To end up lying dead on some yellowing vinyl floor? Where was God now?
"Should we leave?" Carla anxiously asked, gripping Matt and Mike on the living room's antiquated brown couch.
"I don't know yet," Paul admitted, crossing back over to the front windows and peeling back the dingy white drapes. The bright moon above bathed the snow-encrusted country landscape with an angelic glow . "I don't see anyone else."
"Well, we can't stay here! Not with that... thing in the kitchen," she barked. "Plus the window is broken!"
"It's too dark to clear another place tonight. We're out in the middle of nowhere and these were probably the only ones around," Paul hoped. "If they're not, we'll take off in the Jeep."
Dan turned from the living room window, wildly looking around the room with saucer-sized eyes, unconvinced more of them weren't already inside. He reminded Paul of when they had rented an old ranch styled house near Saylorville Lake just after college. It had been the perfect place to quickly launch their trusty old 1978 Mark Twain ski boat, but it didn't take long for them to figure out why the place was so affordable. Mice. Dan had spotted a couple of the furry little vermin sneaking around the house and had set traps like he was Freddy on Scooby-Doo. Even bought a cat. Soon the mice had, more or less, disappeared. Yet, he had always been on the lookout for them. Always thought he had just seen something dart across the living room. He was like that now.
"What if they heard the gunfire?" Carla nagged. "Let's just get in the car and go!"
"I say we stick around and see what happens," Paul tried to say calmly.
She tilted her soccer-mom do and looked at Paul as if he was speaking in a foreign language. "Excuse me, but I have two young boys here to think about! And I'd rather not leave it up to chance and just see what happens!"
She was getting loud again.
Mike and Matt breathed out of their mouths and slowly swept their big eyes from their mom to Paul. He noticed Dan was looking at him too. They all were.
He stared back, focusing in on Matt and Mike. They were so young and Sophia was right - they may not have had any kids before, but they sure as heck did now and deep down, he already knew he would protect them at all costs like they were his own kids. He would protect all of them. He was the law now. They all were.
"We'll board up the broken window and leave at dawn. We'll be fine. We're not carrying squirt guns here," he said, tapping his black nylon holster. "Now, try to get some rest," he instructed, not up for any further debate and turning his attention to a large, framed picture of two birds.
Carla's jaw dropped. "That's your plan? Board up the window?"
He turned back around, frowning. "Do you really want to drag your two boys out there into the darkness? The cold?"
Other than a huff, she didn't respond.
She reminded Paul of his own mom. When he and Sophia had left their house in Des Moines for the last time to rescue his mom on the way out-of-town, she had been hysterical too. But what mom wouldn't have been? It was understandable.
Then his mom got sick. So sick, she didn't even want her leftover French Silk pie from "Free Pie Wednesday" at Baker's Square, which was not understandable. Shortly before she couldn't even crochet anymore, she weakly told them the only thing she'd done out of the ordinary lately was to get a flu shot at the pharmacy up the street. Three days later she had closed her eyes and stopped breathing in her bed, the cat still hiding beneath it. Hiding like them.
"Now, who wants to watch a scary movie before bed?" Paul asked the room, raising his hand.
"I do! I do!" Matt cried, shooting his hand up into the air.
Dan wrinkled his brow. "Scary movie? Are you nuts, kid?"
"How about... Monster House?" Matt decided.
"I was thinking something a little more along the lines of Sex and the City 2," Paul said quietly.
"Now that is scary," Dan said.
Sophia giggled. Just a little.
Paul glanced from her back to the rocking chair, which was perfectly still now. Maybe it had been the over-sized repairman's heavy footsteps that had brought it to life. But that's what was funny about it, they hadn't heard any footsteps. In fact, it was like the guy had floated up onto the front porch. Like a ghost. Paul rubbed his face again and turned back to the picture of the birds.
He didn't know if some of the prophecies in the Book of Revelations had come to light or if God had just allowed Hell's gates to open because it was full. All he knew was that the resurrection of the dead was definitely taking place out there. Out there, where the full moon cast black shadows of the tree's withered branches upon the pearl white snow. Out there were even the shadows appeared to be reaching for you.
Until just a couple of days ago, the majority of the things they'd encountered had been children or the elderly, which played perfectly into Paul's flu-shot theory. Every time the government and the medical communities had started dishing out H1N1 warnings like white cake at a wedding reception, the young and the old had of course been the first in line and, subsequently, had been the first to turn. But that was changing. Case in point: the repairman. Paul guessed he was around thirty years old and, more than likely, out on a house call to patch up an overworked furnace in the area. Probably holding a screwdriver and attacked from behind. Maybe in the farm kid's house. Maybe in this one.
When they had arrived here two hours ago, the back door had been left wide open and no one was home. Two half-finished cups of coffee sat next to a glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts on the kitchen table. There was also a green shotgun shell lying on the kitchen floor, which Dan had promptly stuffed into his coat pocket before securing the rest of the property.
After clearing the house, the six of them had gone outside together, before it had gotten dark, and siphoned a lucky tank of gas from a rusty old pick-up parked in the snow-covered drive. Paul was smart enough not to take any chances in unfamiliar surroundings. Nobody was going to run into the bushes and take a leak by themselves on his watch. Those rookie moves were for teenagers with big framed glasses and feathered hair in cheesy horror movies.
On the run from Z.I.P.s, and the cold meant a different house every night. Sometimes no one was home and sometimes they were. So far, none of the ones who had been home could speak English anymore, which Paul found difficult to process. Repeatedly, he tripped over the gradual revelation of just how few survivors there really were on their seemingly endless episode of Haunted House Hunters, where this time around, no one cared if the kitchen had granite countertops or not. Outside shelter, they only cared about food, blankets and sleep.
Paul kneeled next to Sophia and placed a hand on her leg. "Hey, you know you had to do that right?" he said softly.
She stared straight ahead. "He was just a little boy," she sniffled, tears making tracks down her red cheeks.
"He used to be, baby. But he was gone before we got here. One of us could've been killed or infected if you hadn't of protected us like that." He chose his words carefully.
She didn't respond.
In truth, Paul had no idea if you could be "infected" by a bite or a scratch from one of those things. They hadn't seen anyone escape with just a bite yet but he had a feeling they would probably find out soon enough.
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