DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (26 page)

He pulled up the driveway of the house that had the massive treehouse castle (for lack of a better description of the colossal structure) and came to a stop. His head snapped around. A gu
nshot…and then another…and then…silence. He felt his heart sink. Worse than the sadness he was trying his best to stave off was the sense of relief. He knew that such a feeling was not okay. He should not take comfort in being spared the fate that he had been certain would befall Mel and Kyle.

Parking the bike beside the tree, Glenn started up when Cynthia called down. “Glenn, where are the others? Where is Mel…my brother?”

He looked up at her and his mouth opened, but he could not force himself to say the words. He wanted every second that he could have where his wife did not think of him as a failure…a coward. He made his way up in silence and pulled the rope ladder with him once he was on the balcony.

“Glenn?” he heard a tremor already starting in his wife’s voice. He knew that she would break as soon as he gave her the news. And it did not help at all that he had just heard those gu
nshots.

“Get inside, Cynthia,” Glenn said, although he could barely hear himself over the voice in his head that continued to berate him for his
decision.

“Where is my brother? Where is Mel
,” she insisted.

“Please just get inside.” Glenn placed his hands on her shoulders and tried to look into her eyes, but he quickly disco
vered that he could not hold her gaze.

“No,” Cynthia sobbed. Although it was more of a denial at what Glenn was implying as opposed to her stance on remaining outside. She let him turn her and then she began to hobble i
nside.

As soon as they were
within the circular room painted to look as if the walls were made of stone blocks, Cynthia turned back to face her husband. Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks now just as they were his.

Taking a deep breath, Glenn did his best to explain in full detail the events of the day all the way up to his getting on his bicycle and returning alone. When he finished, he braced himself for the onslaught of anger that he was certain would come his way. He had run from conflict. Not only had he abandoned the baby who, to be honest, they could not even be sure was still alive; but he had also left her brother and his wife to face death alone. He had taken the easy way…the coward’s way out.

After a moment of silence where Cynthia continued to stare at the floor as opposed to making eye contact with him, Glenn continued. “I could not leave you alone in this world. I could not go willingly to what I know was certain death. I realize that you probably hate me now…but—”

“Hate you?” Cynthia’s head snapped up and she scrubbed the tears from her face. “You idiot! I love you more than an
ything in the world. I know what you did could not have been easy…I don’t hate you. I just wish that my brother and Mel had the sense not to get themselves killed like that. How could they have been so stupid!”

Glenn’s face scrunched up in confusion. Cynthia was not acting at all like he had expected. Of course, he should have known better. She was always the pragmatic one; even
more so than him. In fact, it dawned on him that it was Kyle who was the emotional one…matched only by Mel in that department. However, none of that did anything to ease his mind at the guilt he felt over having deserted them at the last moment.

“We have to get out of here,” Cynthia said, snapping him o
ut of the guilt that was threatening to overwhelm him once again.

“How?” Glenn pointed to her leg.

“Huh?” Cynthia looked down as if just noticing the injury. “Oh…you think I meant that we had to hit the road and get out of this town? No…that is not at all what I meant.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t think that I am just going to leave here…leave my brother behind—”

“He’s dead!” Glenn reiterated a bit more forcefully than he would have liked. He was suddenly
rethinking his appraisal of his wife’s pragmatism. “There is nothing to stay for.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Cynthia corrected. “We do have to leave this place…although I hate to do so considering how safe it is against the walking dead. We need to find som
eplace else to stay. And that will have to serve us well for a while, so find someplace close to running water.”

“I don’t understand.”

Cynthia leaned in close and took her husband’s face in her hands. He had a flash of a memory where those same hands felt so soft and silky. Now…they were rough and calloused with all of the hard work each of them had done over the past year to stay alive.

“We are not leaving until one of two things…either we know for certain, and that means visual proof, that my brother is dead…or we send that woman and whoever is involved with her straight to Hell where they belong.”

Glenn looked into his wife’s eyes and saw that strength and fire that he had fallen in love with all those years back when they had first met. Yes, she was a very sensible person…and yes, she would not throw her life away at a whim. However, she was fiercely loyal to those she loved. She would never be able to rest if she was not a hundred percent certain of her brother’s fate. She would mourn his loss if that were the case…but she would never be able to live with herself if she did not know for certain.

“On the far side of that golf course, I thought I saw what might have been a creek…” Glenn began as Cynthia
started packing all that they could carry into their bags.

***

“…
well the movie never ends, it goes on and on and
—” Chad’s mouth hung open, but the sound simply ceased.

He was surrounded! And as more drifted from the shadows, he almost had the feeling that it was intentional.
But that is silly
, he thought,
zombies don’t plan…they certainly don’t set traps
.

The mob that he had been luring away from Ronni was co
ntinuing to close, but he had put a good fifty feet between himself and the leading edge. However, these zombie children had him surrounded, and they were all now just a little beyond arm’s length.

He was looking for his best escape route, but he noticed that they were all simply standing there. He turned slowly, partially to find his way out of this little bind, but also because he was struck by how they were all seemingly studying him. Instead of a simple attack, they were cocking their heads one way and then the other. But not one of them was approaching him.

He decided that, whatever was going on, he did not want or need to know. Chad lunged to his right, throwing out a stiff-arm that sent a little girl of eight or nine flying backwards. Chad ran as hard as he could on his injured leg. Adrenaline or not, he still felt the aching throb from where that piece of glass had gone deep into his muscle.

He heard
hisses, cries, and moans from behind him, but he was sufficiently creeped out and just wanted to get away from those children. As he continued to limp through the woods, he was trying to decide if there was anything creepier than zombie children.

“Zombie clowns,” he muttered. He decided that maybe zombie clowns and zombie ex-wives
might be the only thing to knock zombie children from the top spot of most frightening.

He was so pre-occupied with his thoughts that it took him a few seconds to realize that he had emerged from the woods and was now on a long, straight, empty road. Looking around, he spied an abandoned house just up the road a ways. He glanced over his shoulder and decided to make his way over to it.

As he approached, he could see shadows moving about inside. The smears of blood and who knows what that coated the inside of the windows quickly informed him that the residents were not among the living.

Making his way to the side of the house, he used the electric meter to aid in his climb as he pulled himself up onto the roof. From there, he had a clear view back up the road as the first of the undead emerged. He was a little surprised when none of those emerging were the children.

With what felt like an almost unbearable slowness, the parade of zombies did what zombies always do; they limped and stumbled on in the same direction they had been. Chad made certain to stay as still as possible. He did not want to attract the attention of the zombies in the house. That would most definitely have them all pounding on the windows, which would, in turn, bring the attention of that horde he had just ditched.

The one thing that continued to nag at him were the chi
ldren and their odd reaction. They had not moved in for the kill like zombies tend to do. It was almost like they were checking him out and deciding how to respond. As he watched, he was puzzled as to why they had not followed. This was definitely something to keep in mind for later.

As he sat on the roof, he began to feel his anxiety rise. He had left his daughter alone. Granted, she was in a relatively safe spot…but she was still alone. That made every single moment stretch on for an eternity. His fear was that she might wake and find herself
abandoned. She would see the corpses scattered about. But she would not know if he had gone down under them and maybe eventually wandered off with the crowd.

As it began to grow dark, he decided that he must act. Sli
pping down off the roof, he had to grab onto something—it turned out to be a child’s plastic slide—to keep his leg from buckling beneath his weight. Fighting back the pain, he swallowed the saliva that had rushed to his mouth when he almost threw up.

Making his way to a small metal shed, he found a shovel and used that as a walking stick. Creeping up to the corner of the house, he could still see a few dark figures making their way across the road and into the open field that might have been a park at one time, but was now nothing
more than an overgrown meadow with a swing, a wooden climbing structure, and what was probably a merry-go-round that would soon completely vanish from sight after a few more inches of growth.

Crossing the road as quickly and as quietly as possible, Chad gave one final glance over his shoulder before ducking i
nto the woods. He knew the general direction that the big rock would be and oriented himself in what he hoped would bring him back to his daughter.

Time continued to torment him as he crept along as silent as he was able. The darkness was now making things worse. Before long, he would be in that perfect darkness that made it almost impossible to see two steps ahead.

Every so often, he would stop completely and listen. Something in his mind told him that there was a presence nearby. He actually found himself hoping that it was a wild animal. At this point, he would prefer a bear to a pack of zombies.

Just ahead he spied an open clearing. A silvery shaft of light from the moon above seemed almost as bright as the noon day sun. He reached the edge of the clearing, but something made him hesitate.

In his mind, he heard the narrator of every wildlife documentary speaking—complete with British accent.

“
The tiger waits in the grass for the approach of the gazelle
…”

He was certain that he was not alone in watching this clea
ring. There was something else there. He could not explain it…he simply knew it to be true.

“When did you get so damn paranoid?” he whispered to himself.

At last he could wait no longer. The night was now fully upon his little part of the world. He scanned the edge of the clearing and listened for even the slightest rustling of the branches. He guessed this particular patch of open ground to be about twenty or thirty feet across. It was almost perfect in its oval shape.

Testing his leg to see how it held up, Chad gave a few pra
ctice jabs with the shovel. He knew it would be awkward, but at least he had something in which to defend himself.

He was only four or five steps across when the bushes on the far side directly opposite him began to move. There was an explosion of movement and a deer bounded from the greenery. It paused to consider him for a moment; then it looked over its shoulder and bolted…directly towards him!

Chad barely had the time or the agility to dodge the obviously terrified animal and ended up falling on his back. He covered his head just as the animal leapt over him and vanished into the woods almost exactly where he had emerged.

Head on a swivel, Chad scanned the shadows and was not at all surprised when a child no older than six or seven emerged. It was a little boy wearing the remains of a football jersey. The front was a tattered mess as the child’s belly had been ripped open
. It had long since dried into what was almost a black crust.

Seconds later five more children emerged. They clustered together. To Chad, it almost looked as if they were seeking co
mfort from one another.

He considered staying still and hoping that they would leave, but then three more j
oined the group. One of them almost seemed to be staring directly at him. Of course it was impossible to tell since the child’s face was a mask of shadow, but when the group pivoted as one to orient on his position, he knew he had been spotted.