I was always a light sleeper.
The slightest noise can wake me. I guess I have my dad to thank for that.
So when I heard the sound of glass shattering, I shot up from the couch like a frantic wet cat fresh from a bath. "What the hell was that?!"
Ray sat up rubbing his eyes groggily. "What was what?" He asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes."What time is it?"
"I-I don't know." I murmured.
Judging by the light coming from outside the windows, it looked around 7:00 am. We both stared at each other in silence and listened for something. My heart was pounding so hard against my chest that it hurt.
Then we heard it.
The low groan of someone who was coming very close by.
"Oh shit!" Ray shouted as he scrambled up to his feet. "One of them must have broken in from the backyard!"
As I tried to make a dash for his backpack for the gun but I screamed out in agony when my foot stepped down on something sharp. I fell down to my knees, clutching onto my foot and biting my lip to the point of bleeding to stop myself from screaming from how much it hurt.
"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!" I cussed, rocking back and forth to ease the pain. Hot blood dripped onto my trembling fingers from the wound and I looked around to find what caused this.
A shard from the vase Ray broke last night was jabbed in my heel and I closed my eyes in pain. The stupid idiot forgot to clean it up last night! I groaned while carefully trying to tear the porcelain shard out of my foot.
Shit...I was losing a lot of blood. I just couldn't catch a break.
Ray ran up beside me "Oh God! Are you OK?! Shit, I'm so sorry man, I-I didn't mean to leave it there I just-"
"Just shut up." I heaved, pausing to take a short breath. "We need to find a way out now before more start to come in here."
I pressed my arms against the sofa cushions to support myself back up but the minute I was on my feet again, I fell back down in agony.
"Ray..go get the bandages you used to use for your hand. I'll at least be able to wrap it up for now."
He glanced between my foot and the backyard in a worried state of panic.
"C'mon go already! We don't have much time!"
As he turned and ran out of sight, I scooted across the carpet floor and into the kitchen to be out of view for whatever came in. I pressed my back against the cupboard door panting and closed my eyes, pleading to God that Ray would hurry.
There was a blood trail from the white rug leading to the checkered kitchen floor I was on and it looked like a lot. It hurt like hell too. I was feeling defenseless. I hated feeling helpless but I was in such a sorry ass condition and my body ached like hell that I had to rely on my brother.
I held my breath, counting the seconds as one deadhead traveled into the living room. He did slow strides, casually glancing around his environment with heavy staggered breaths, looking nowhere in particular. His brown coat was tattered and barely hung onto his shoulders as he took a sniff at the wine bottle.
The staircase creaked above me and he paused, his breathing no longer audible.
A bead of sweat ran down my forehead.
Shit Ray, please be careful.
I dared not move; there was a bar in front of me all enough where he couldn't see me fully, just my feet if he glanced in my direction.
We sat there in silence, waiting for any noise. "Don't tell me that this guy is actually listening in for him too?" I whispered to myself in disbelief.
Ray's loud footsteps came rushing back down the stairs and I knew that this deadhead was going to go after him. God damn it Ray! You're going to get us both killed! I screamed in my head.
I pulled a cabinet door open and then slammed it shut loudly before crawling underneath the dinner table. The strange creature jerked it's head towards me and I had a sinking feeling in my gut that he knew where I was. Shit, he's coming after me now.
I was cornered here.
As it stumbled towards the kitchen with a menacing growl, my heart beat sped up a mile a minute. I was in no position to be caught. With this deep cut in my foot my only option was to crawl away. Even when I tried that, my palms had so much sweat on them that I was constantly slipping and losing my grip against the tile floor.
It took a few more steps towards me, circling back the way it came from around the glass table. I saw a belt on his coat dangling along behind him and then an idea hit me. I should try to find a way to trip him to buy us time to escape out of here.
Before I had a chance to put my plan into gear, Ray squeaked out, "Sis? Are you alright?"
The monster suddenly turned his gaze back towards the stairs and ran after Ray.
No!
My body moved on it's own as I tried to force myself up to my knees and then I leapt at the zombie, tackling him down around his legs. He fell forward, landing flat on his jaw in front of Ray's shoes.
"HOLY SHIT!" Ray screamed.
"What did I say about swearing in front of me?" I coughed, still keeping my grip around his legs.
"Kick him in the head until he passes out."
"What?!"
"Just do it so we can leave already!"
Ray brought his foot up above the guy's head and then back down. The blind deadhead took the blow but it wasn't enough to stop him from moving.
"Pretend his head is like a football or something."
"That's pretty gruesome."
"Whatever, just do what it takes to make you kick harder. I can hear more of them coming from outside."
"O.K." He took a breath.
Each kick made the guy growl and squirm harder underneath me but it was just making him angrier instead of shutting him up.
"I don't think this is working."
"No kidding." I struggled.
"Oh wait." He dropped his backpack and pulled out the wrench.
I nodded. "Do what you need to."
"Don't you mean do what "we" must?"
I shrugged.
As he raised the wrench above his head I told him, "Pretend it's like whack-a-mole."
"Shut up already." Ray muttered and hit the man square on the head. After the fourth try, the man was motionless.
"Alright, help me to the front door in case we need to book it out of here. Did you find anything to patch my foot up?"
"I found ibuprofen and some more gauze but that's about it." He said while hoisting me up. He basically had to lug me behind the couches and then sat us down by the door mat. He sucked in a breath when he saw my foot.
"Is it bad?" I asked.
He didn't say anything, just nodded while unwrapping the roll of gauze and tried to tend to the wound.
I scarfed down two pills dry as I watched him, my eyes falling to the patchwork around his missing thumb. The gauze was wrapped messily, hanging loosely off his hand like he didn't know what he was doing. The white material was completely soaked to brown now.
We didn't speak until he finished wrapping it. It was almost a little too tight for comfort but I wasn't exactly complaining right now.
"Hey Sasha?" He asked suddenly. "I thought you said last night that all of the doors were locked upstairs? When I got up there, I saw that all of them were open."
My heart dropped. I quickly replied with, "Oh really? That's weird because I couldn't get in then. How strange."
Ray raised a brow. "Don't tell me you opened it."
"No Ray. You must have had more strength than me because there was no way it would have opened for me." I lied.
There was another low growling coming from down the hall and we both held our breaths.
"Ray, you have to learn how to be quiet around these things." I whispered while using the couch arm to push myself up to my feet. Still hurt like hell. "You could have got yourself killed."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I noticed that these things come after you because of how loud you are. I think they're drawn to noise. Remember the horn and the one that cracked my window?"
Ray nodded.
"Well I saw he went berserk yesterday when my horn went off right next to him. So...let's try to be a bit more sneaky around these things okay?"
"Alright, I will."
"Okay, let's get out of here then."
I went over to my shoes and pouted. All I had were these tiny tweety slippers that were made for inside the house, not running for my life. I needed to get home soon, my feet were feeling plump and swollen by the minute the more I was on them.
I slipped them on anyway and went to grab Raymond's backpack but he snatched it away first. "Don't worry Sasha, I got it."
My finger twitched. "That's very noble of you Ray, but I can handle it. I need you to be my hand for me now."
I wanted to be closer to the gun if I ever needed to use it, especially if I'm almost immobile right now.
"I can do both," He insisted.
The zombie that we hit earlier on the floor was starting to stir.
"Now come on, try to get up before that thing does." He said, already swinging the backpack over his shoulder and heading towards the front door.
I growled with my hand still outstretched and then staggered forward with one step, using the couch as leverage to carefully avoid stepping on the tender cut. I was doing fine for a bit, balancing one foot at a time to catch up to Ray but I fell down when I took one wrong step.
I instantly felt the searing pain all over again and gripped onto my foot as tears formed at my eyes. "S-Shit!"
Ray rushed to my side and gently looped my right arm around his shoulder, pulling me back up while allowing me to lean my weight against him.
"Thanks." I mumbled.
"You can thank me later. Where should we go now?" He asked and unlocked the door to lead us outside.
"Let's try to get to my truck for now." I winced when the bright sunlight hit my face and I brought up my other arm to shield it from my eyes.
When I looked around, I was grateful to see that the giant horde from last night had migrated away from the house and was reduced to only a couple. Either way, we were still outnumbered though.
Not to mention, there were still a handful of them wandering around by my truck.
We wobbled ahead slowly and duck behind one of the huge shrubs by the front lawn. I'd imagine that with the amount of money Lily's mom made, she did her best to keep her garden beautifully well kept. However today, it was littered with garbage, some corpses and the reek of rotting flesh still lingered in the air.
"What was it that you said about them being attracted to noise?" Ray asked.
I looked at him dumbfounded. Did he really just forget that quickly? "Noise bad, silence good. How did you forget that already?" I asked sarcastically.
"No dumbass, I mean what if we made a sound somewhere else? Do you think they will follow it, like we did back at the hospital?"
"Yeah maybe, it couldn't hurt to try."
I watched as Ray picked up a red brick and chucked it. It flew pathetically through the air and then dropped point blank on the hood of my car with a loud chalky clunk. I turned to Ray as my rage grew.
"What the fuck dude?! You just hit Lanora!"
Ray looked at me with panicky eyes and pointed forward. "Wait! Look!"
It took every bone in my body to pry my eyes away from him to see.
Surprisingly, a lot of those monstrosities that were around the yard were attracted to the sound and wandered away to surround my car.
"Great, that's one mystery solved. Only problem is that we need them away from the car."
"I know, but what if we can somehow draw all of them away from it without having to run into or fight them?"
That's actually not a bad idea. Definitely could save on bullets and I would even be able to hobble over there safely without having to actually run on my feet.
"Alright so what's the plan?" I asked hopefully.
He stared at me like a deer caught in headlights. "I was hoping you would be the one to come up with the rest."
I rubbed the center of my temple with my eyes closed and thought for a moment. "Well what are our options? Is there anything else in the house we can use?"
"Not unless you want to go back there with those things again."
"Right, damn."
Why didn't we think about this kind of thing beforehand? Being poorly prepared for something always ticked me off since there's always a problem to a solution somehow. What could we use?
I thought about blasting music or audio from the tv to make it loud enough to pull them towards the house, but it dawned on me that we were still out of power.
From Lily's porch, I scanned around the rest of the area for ideas. The houses down here were deserted and there were cars lined up and down in the middle of the street with no one in them. Most of the car doors were open, as if the person driving suddenly took off without it.
I racked my brain for any other possibilities and I came up with one, but felt so silly to even mention it. Still it was better than nothing.
"You want to try throwing more bricks? We can try aiming for other cars or houses, just somewhere away from the truck to give us time to get to it."
Before he could say something, I butt in. "Also, don't you dare hit the car again or I'll skin you alive."
"Calm down, it's not even yours anyway."
I picked up two bricks and dropped one in his hand. "Just shut up and throw."
We took turns peeking up from the bush and toss bricks as far as we could. My first few landed on top of a stalled van and my second one actually smashed into a green car window.
Ray stopped me mid throw and checked out the surroundings. "I don't think we should hit the cars anymore."
"How come?"
He scratched the barely growing patch of hair he called a beard on his chin in thought. "What if some of the cars have alarms in them? Wouldn't that make them go into a rampage like it did with your horn?"
I shrugged, ignoring him and chucking out another few. "Well if they did, it would be fine because they won't be near us and just go after the noise right?"
"I guess you're right.." He trailed off and then glanced back up. "Hey, stop they're-"
One more flew out of my hand in the middle of his sentence and soared across the street and into a neighbor's window. We both froze when a security alarm suddenly went off, alerting everything up and down the block.
I pushed up to my feet, cringing as I did and watched as the insane horde went berserk and ran towards the house. My heart was pounding against my chest as the screaming pack rushed into the house, breaking through the glass in a frantic blood lust and disappearing inside.
I hoped to God that no one was inside that house.
"N-Now's a good time to go Ray."
He was still in a trance at the sight as well and I tapped his shoulder. When he turned around, he looked paralyzed with a distance far off stare and I shook him gently.
"Let's go. Now or never."
"N-Now or never..." He repeated and his movements were almost robotic as he helped lead us down the stone path over to my red Chevy. I had to force myself to drown out the disturbingly growls they were making and I paused, looking around.
"Hang on, let's each grab a brick."
"W-why?" He asked, still tugging us forward to my truck.
"For...self defense. We can use it to escape if we have to also."
I stopped and picked up one of the bricks and tossed one to him while grabbing one for myself. and then We rushed as fast as we could to my truck.
Once it was unlocked and we were both inside, I pulled Ray's bag from him. My keys were inside it but I wanted to check to make sure the gun was too. When my fingers brushed over the cool metal, I let out a sigh of relief, buried it deeper within his bag underneath his sweater and snatched out my keys.
"Are you going to be good at driving with your foot like that?"
The truck spurred to life without a hitch and I nodded. "Yeah, as long as I don't push down on it too hard."
"Maybe you should teach me how to drive."
I rolled my eyes but the minute my big toe pressed onto the gas pedal to reverse, I bit down on my tongue to hide the pain. "Sure, let's just get out of this infested area first."
I carefully maneuver us out of the driveway, turning the wheel to drive us back towards the bridge. A few stragglers tried to make a run for us but we were too fast and got away safely.
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