Hope is a Warm Hearth
By Tyler Sherman
The barricade crashed to the floor when they finally got in. The sound was just audible over their constant moaning.
Anymore, Adam didn’t sleep. He laid in uneasy repose next to his wife. He’d told himself that it was out of a sense of duty that he stayed awake. But it was plain terror. He couldn’t have slept if he wanted to, and so it was with knowing dread that he opened his eyes at the sound.
“Lucy.” He hissed, still unmoving. He nudged her sharply and she opened her eyes.
“Hrngh?” The sound of her voice made Adam resign himself to what he would have to do to keep his family alive.
“Get Amy.” He said firmly, slinking from their bed. He was still dressed, his boots were on and smartly laced.
“What?” Lucy said. Her eyes were more open but she was still drowsy and incognizant. Adam grabbed the baseball bat that was leaning against the bedside table and started toward the hallway. Lucy sat up sluggishly.
“Adam?”
“They got in.” Adam said from the hallway.
“They got in?” Lucy said, and she heard it too, a soft clattering and wet sounds she could barely pick out of the din. Her face was cold.
Adam moved through the hall quickly, the sounds growing louder as he went. When he got to the living room they became visceral. He faltered, forgot where furniture was in the dark, and stumbled over things trying to make his way into the kitchen. He looked up quickly to get his bearings and through the dark saw arms flailing through the broken boards that had been covering the window.
Adam had hastily nailed them in place the night they’d realized what was actually happening. At that point neither he nor Lucy had seen any, but they had seen the Zombie reports on the local news before they went off the air. He had only had two of the windows secured when the first of them began to shamble frantically toward their house. They moved slowly. He was nauseated by the thought of them stumbling up behind him. He boarded up two more windows before he couldn’t take it anymore and went back inside. He and Lucy together shut up the rest of the windows as quickly as they could, while Amy cried in her crib in the kitchen. They boards had held up for two weeks so far.
From what he could see through the black in the living room the window was still partially boarded and Adam was confident that he would have enough time to get the bag and back to Amy and Lucy before they actually got in. Adam shook uncontrollably as an errant leg knocked in through the opening. There was a bang as one of them stumbled and was, before it could fall to the ground, knocked into the barricade by the crush of the crowd behind him and held in place.
Adam stumbled over a footstool that he didn’t remember being near the door, and was in the kitchen. Though it was on the far side of the house, the kitchen had a back door. His hands groped around the dark countertop where he knew there was a flashlight and there was a sound of wood tearing from the living room.
“Adam!” Lucy shouted from the bedroom. “Adam!”
“I’m coming.” Adam yelled back. He ran his hands frantically over the entire countertop until he found the flashlight and turned it on. The duffel bag was still sitting on the butcher block in front of the door where it was supposed to be. Adam slung it over one shoulder.
When he got back into the living room the smell of rotting flesh dropped him to his knees. The whole barricade had disappeared, reduced to splinters on the floor. On top of them was a grey corpse torn almost in two at the waist, arms still flailing, gnashing it’s teeth. Others were shambling around and on top of him. There was a slow stream of them moving toward the bedroom looking bored, or angry or despondent, blocking the hallway completely. The flashlight caught the attention of a few who turned away from the others and started after Adam. One of them lifted it’s arms, reaching for him. They hung at awkward angles, obviously broken. One of them was missing an entire foot, but still limped along on the dirty black stump.
Adam went numb and backed up into the kitchen behind him. He let out a sigh that sounded like a quiet Uhm.
“Adam?” Lucy asked quavering.
“Uhm.” Adam stammered quietly. Amy’s whining was now clearly audible over the racket, even across the house. Adam grasped the bat tightly, rubbing his fingers over it like rosary beads.
They hadn’t been doing well, Adam thought. They’d been running low on food. They didn’t have any more formula, or any water to make it with. They emptied the bathtub in just a few days. When no one came they started in on the toilet tanks, but there wasn’t much more there. Lucy tried to get lactating again, but she couldn’t and was starting to feel guilty about it. They still had some canned things left, but Amy was nowhere near able to eat it yet, even if they mashed it up.
The figures closed in on him, blocking the doorway. Lucy shouted again. He raised the bat and started swinging without aim. There was a crunch as the bat made contact with one of them. It staggered away uneasily, hunched to one side and came at Adam again; a bored malice in it’s atrophied face.
“I love you Lucy.” Adam said. Amy had stopped crying or he couldn’t hear her anymore.
He was shaking as he dropped the bat, and backed up a few paces, just out of their reach. He shrugged the duffel off his shoulder and dropped the flashlight.
The kitchen door, which they’d planned as their main escape route, wasn’t boarded. Leading straight outside it already had a deadbolt and the knob-lock. Cold fingers brushed Adam’s neck and he was outside. His head snapped back in delirium. The kitchen was full of them, a grey shifting mass, lit with the harsh moving shapes of the flashlight shining through their legs. His hips swung around and he stumbled forward into the dark brush. Adam moved past figures that had lost limbs somehow, but were still thrashing about, digging their dirty fingers into the cold ground. When he was away from the house he turned back to look at it. It was just a dark smear, barely visible through the mess of bodies. He thought of Amy and Lucy being torn to pieces inside of it. He could have done something; he should have done something, even if it meant his getting torn to pieces too. No, he thought, that would have been heroics. But it wouldn’t have been, it just would have been what people do.
After breaking through a small but dense copse of trees he saw it. Though most of it was hidden by shadow, Adam could see the mangled dull flesh of its back pierced by a broken tire. It was a heap of bicycle and corpse, and moving, wheel spokes splayed out randomly, shivering with each movement. It noticed Adam and tried to climb out of the wreckage with a renewed fervor, but couldn’t manage to get up. There were sounds of tearing flesh.
The road, bending away from him in both directions was empty, but for the few shambling figures, all of which looked up and stared, beginning to come towards him. Adam took a deep breath noticing for the first time since he’d left how cold it was, when something small and furious fell on his leg.
It was a boy, probably no more than seven when it’d been killed. It was scratching furiously at his legs trying to get in. Adam kicked shakingly, and stumbled back to the ground. The mess in the bicycle began clattering and rotating more frantically. The boy tumbled into the shadow under the trees.
Adam’s vision narrowed as he stared into the darkness, but the boy didn’t come back. Adam didn’t wonder if he’d killed it again, he sat transfixed staring at the low hanging boughs thinking about whether or not he would die.
The sun was coming up casting faint rays through the thicker trees on the horizon.
The boy appeared out of nowhere behind him. It latched on biting through his shirt and into the flesh of his shoulder. Adam shrieked and grabbed the boy attempting to throw him free, but they both toppled over. They landed prostrate on the ground. Adam lifted himself to a shaky stand and launched at the boy. He kicked at it with all his might, and his foot buried deep into it’s side with a wet crunch. It lifted off the ground before falling back to it a few feet distant, and laid still. Adam was frigid. They boy was facedown, obviously unable to stand, it’s arms and legs still jerking. He felt akin to it as he moved away.
Topping a ridge Adam saw a small neat house lying nestled in a clearing at the bottom of the hill. To his surprise there didn’t seem to be anything moving around it. There was no driveway coming out of it, no roads anywhere.
copyright 2006