Eve

Chapter 21

I climbed the remaining steps so slowly I almost went down instead of up. The grunting had stopped, but I thought I could hear a soft clicking sound now – kind of like someone trying to lick a Taser. Only for a second, then silence.

(It was nothing like the sound of someone trying to lick a Taser. How would I even know what that sounds like? Jesus Christ I'm awful at describing things.)

Swallowing dry, I reached the last step to the living room and I looked around.

There was no one there.

"Mom?" I whispered. Nothing.

I kept going, stepping as lightly as I could across the living room. I crossed past the counter into the kitchen.

No one.

"Aunt Meredith? Edgar?"

I turned back. My eyes rested on the TV cabinet by the stairs. To the side of the stereo, I saw the modem wasn't blinking with its usual green lights. Following the power cord, I noticed it was disconnected from the wall. Someone must have tripped over it.

Thank God. There's still internet in the world.

I sighed and smiled, relieved that the situation wasn't so bad that Google wasn't a thing anymore.

Then I saw who tripped over the modem cord. Just by the side of the cabinet, crouched like Gollum nursing the ring, a gray-skinned, rotten teethed woman was feasting on a piece of what I hoped to God wasn't a dead dog, but was definitely a dead dog.

I brought my hand to my mouth to stop me from screaming. It worked, but I knocked the blender from the counter to the floor with the movement, and that made a noise.

The woman turned red eyes at me.

That's a zombie if I've ever seen one.

"Grrrrr!" she said, dropping the dog carcass to the ground and rising. She put one feet forward, then the other. Dragging herself towards me.

Breathing fast and deep, I fumbled for the drawer next to me. I pulled the first metal thing I could wrap my hands around.

A tea spoon.

Excellent.

"Grrr!"
I dropped the spoon and fished again blindly in the drawer, too afraid to take my eyes off of the zombie-woman.

A butter knife this time.

Oh, come on!

The zombie-woman reached the edge of the counter separating kitchen from living room, and made way around. She was face to face with me now, a few feet separating us.

And I remembered – hey, I can scream now!

"MOM! AUNT MEREDITH! EDGAR! THERE'S A FUCKING ZOMBIE IN OUR LIVING ROOM!"

The zombie tripped another step closer to me, and I fished again.

A lemon squeezer.

Fuck it, this will have to do.

The woman raised wound-riddled arms in my direction. In a fast movement, I opened the squeezer wide with both hands and caught two of her fingers with it.

Then I squeezed hard.

"GRRRR!"

The zombie recoiled, and I took the chance to push her against the fridge and step out back to the living room, uncornering (is that a word?) myself.

The zombie turned to face me, two of its fingers turned to a mush of flesh. I didn't know what to do.

Look, the whole thing wasn't exactly life threatening, as you noticed. The zombie woman was really slow. But it was freaking weird, man. You feel like it's just bashing their heads in, but you try and do that. The first time, having never bashed anything larger than a cockroach's head in. I know it's a zombie, I know, it's attacking me, life or death, blah, blah, blah. Still. You don't just bring yourself to grab a paper weight and mash a person's head in until they're dead. It's not an easy thing to do.

"Grrrr!" The zombie woman kept dragging herself towards me.

"Eve? Why are you –" Aunt Meredith stopped by the last steps, looking from me to the zombie woman. In a fast movement, she pulled me back by the shoulders, grabbed a paper weight and mashed the zombie's head in until it was dead.

The lights went on in the living room. "What's going on here?" Edgar reached us from the stairs. "Oh my God!"

Aunt Meredith got up, cleaning her forehead and dropping the paper weight on the floor by the zombie's body. We heard screams, and the three of us turned to look out the window.

Then the sound of a shotgun, and a burst of yellow light from the house next to us.

Aunt Meredith turned a serious gaze our way. "They're here."

I lowered my eyes to the almost-headless zombie on the floor and threw up.