Nearafter (D.E.A.T.H. bk. 1)

Chapter Eighteen: [Sam]

For a long while no one moved. No one spoke a word. No one made a noise.

Samantha, John, and Brent each watched, speechless, as the pair of undead pulled themselves up through the window and into John's living room. On the monitors, the two people didn't look dead at all. If you could ignore the missing half of the woman's face and the deep gashes in the man's chest where a hatchet or a machete might have torn through his EZ-Mart T-shirt to rip into his flesh. If you could put those details aside, what they looked like then were just a couple drunks that had stumbled their way into the wrong home. But Samantha and the others knew better. They'd all seen what these things were capable of. And the blood staining the carpet after their every step was one detail that they just could not look beyond.

The pair of undead scoured the house for something living. There was no audio, but Samantha, John, and Brent could hear them bumping around upstairs. John panned the camera to the kitchen where they spied the man with the EZ-Mart shirt tearing the doors from the cabinets and tipping over the fridge. He yanked drawers from the tile counters, scattering silverware and cooking utensils on the linoleum floor. Glass cups and plates and bowls fell from open cabinets and shattered in the sink. The dead man disappeared in the pantry.

The woman had taken an interest in the pictures on the walls in the living room. Samantha hadn't notice them before. The framed photos were mostly of an older woman, John's deceased wife, most likely. The undead woman in the living room smashed her head into the pictures, all of them, cracking the glass and sending them skittering off the wall.

John gritted his teeth and balled his fists. The two dead people were just destroying his home. Eventually the woman moved from the living room into the hallway. She curiously poked her head into the bedroom, explored the small bathroom, and then at the end of the hall, at the door that led down to the basement, the undead woman stopped. She stood in front of the door with her one good ear pressed carefully to the wooden frame.

"Is she... listening?" Brent asked. He was whispering, with disbelief and panic in his voice. John nodded and put a finger to his lips. He took the shotgun and, as quietly as an old man can, he crept into the other room. "Does she know where we are?" Brent whispered next.

Samantha shrugged, holding the handgun closer to her. She started to move in behind John but the old man motioned for her to stay back. She did not argue. John kept the barrel of the shotgun trained on the reinforced gate as he knelt. He fished the keys to his pickup truck from his pocket and held them in one hand.

"Brent," John whispered.

"Yeah?" Brent whispered back. He'd been closely watching the dead woman in the living room. John kept his eyes on the steel gate.

"Be ready to run out of here and start the truck if she gets through."

Brent's face twisted.

"Whoa. What!" he hissed. "I thought you said the gate could stop a friggin bulldozer!"

John shrugged.

"Never tested it. But it's good to be prepared. Catch," he said. He then tossed the keys to Brent. But at about that same time, the other undead appeared suddenly, on the monitor, at the other end of the hallway.

Brent's eyes shifted to the screen, distracting him at just the right time. His missed the catch. The keys hit the floor with a loud jingle. And the dead woman at the door went crazy. In a flurry of fists, and forehead, she furiously banged at the door until blood ran down the wooden frame. The undead man in the torn EZ-Mart shirt sprinted full tilt down the hallway and launched himself into the door, cracking it slightly.