I was beginning to hear footfalls, it sounded like wet salmon being slapped across someone’s face. They were getting close. I could only hope they weren’t necessarily hunting me down.
The remnants of the screen door hung by my feet. I eyed the door handle and then my hooked fingers. I didn’t have the hand strength to crush a gnat, so this was going to be interesting, and now I had the added bonus of them being covered in my own gore. I moved closer so that I would not have to stretch my arm, I didn’t think I could deal with another part of my anatomy leaking. My feet tangled up in the aluminum runner from the screen door; I was falling forward, but I could not get my arms up to brace myself. My head struck the door first with a solid thud, I was grateful it was not a hollow sound—my head not the door.
I was falling into the house; I hoped that there wasn’t anything too destructive on the floor, like protruding nails, broken glass or bacteria-encrusted old chicken. I think I’d take the glass over the chicken, not the nails, but definitely the glass. It was none of the above. I fell into a crinkling mass of tin foil. The noise of the foil was a small distraction as my head bounced off the hard tile entry way. My vision was blackening, and now my fucking head ached to go along with the rest of the shit storm I was going through.
Zombies were still coming and I wasn’t much safer than I had been a few moments earlier. I wriggled my body the rest of the way into the house out of sheer necessity. I managed to push the door closed with my left leg, and was able to see strips of tin foil hanging everywhere as I faded to black—pretty much just like the old movies or even the Bugs Bunny cartoons where you see the shrinking black circle go all the way down to a pinprick and wink out. Luckily there was no fat pig telling me ‘Th-th-that’s all folks!’
CHAPTER THREE
Eliza &Tomas
“Your face is priceless, brother,” Eliza exclaimed.
“It is a shame, dear sister, that the only time you show anything remotely similar to a smile is at the expense of others,” Tomas replied sadly.
“Come, brother, share in my happiness…our victory,” she stressed. “With Michael Talbot out of the way, there is now nothing that can stop us. And yet you still pine for him and his family, don’t you? We will meet up with his family soon enough, you can say your good-byes then.”
“What? I thought we were done with the Talbots, let them be, they have lost their father, what more could you possibly do?”
“You cannot be that naïve, Tomas, can you? Michael has left spawn behind. I will not let them walk this world any longer than necessary, he has two boys who could spread their seed far and wide and even now the girl swells with another. No, they are like vermin. I must snuff them out while I have them at their lowest and most vulnerable. But first things first, I believe that some of his traveling party are still in this city. There is time enough that we can stay and watch the festivities.”
“What have you planned, sister?” Tomas asked.
“I am going to wield my full might upon this accursed hovel of humanity.”
“Eliza, have you stopped to think what you will do for sustenance once you have wiped out the humans?”
“Relax, brother, I cannot stand the hairless monkeys, but I respect their ability to adapt and survive. Right now I just want to have some fun.”
“Having fun means laughing, being with the ones you love, go-karts.”
“I do not know about the go-karts, Tomas, but I will laugh as the humans run fruitlessly for their pathetic lives and you at least love me, is that not enough?”
“I think you’re missing the point, Eliza.”
“My zombies will be in place soon. Come, let us find a better vantage point that we can watch from. And I’m starving anyway…this will flush some of them out.”
Tomas paled.
“And I know that you are hungry, you have not eaten in days.”
Tomas could not deny the fact that his gut was twisted in knots as it begged for food. He was repulsed every time he fed, but he could not control himself, the hunger was too great. He could feed off animals in an emergency but it was equivalent to a human sustaining life by eating lettuce.
“I see that you are not disagreeing. Soon, brother, you will be able to drink to your heart’s content.”
“I curse you for what you have done to me, Eliza.”
“You should have stayed home with papa,” she sneered, recalling their days in Germany some five hundred years ago.
“You were all I had, Lizzie,” Tomas said as he bowed his head.
“It appears that is as true today as it was back then.” She laughed, but it had more to do with the irony of her statement than mirth. “This will work,” Eliza said as she stood on a small hill that overlooked a vast portion of the town below.
“Oh God,” Tomas intoned as he saw the black smudge of zombies that dominated the horizon.”
“God, Tomas? Really? You might as well ask for Jesus and that fat man the children seem to worship.”
“Santa?”
“I suppose, I never stop to ask questions as I feed, I find it distracting.”
“Those are people, Eliza, with hopes and dreams.”
“I am a predator, Tomas, I care not for the prey. Does a lion sit in self-doubt about the harm it bestows upon the gazelle?”
“I understand what you are. What we are,” he corrected when Eliza arched an eyebrow at him. “But what you are doing now is not the natural order of things. Lions don’t kill indiscriminately, wiping out everything.”
“Spare me the lesson in morality, brother, I care not. I like to watch the humans suffer, it brings me enjoyment. And stop trying to control my herd, I can feel you trying to send messages to them. They will listen only to me.”
Tomas looked back at his sister, unsure what to do next. He sat on the grass to watch as the first of the zombies entered the town. His vision alternated between looking at the ground and watching as the zombies advanced, he was caught completely unawares as he sensed something. He wasn’t sure what it was, and was fearful to look up at his sister lest he give it away, she was completely fixated on the town below.
Michael? He thought it without transmitting the message, his sister would surely figure out what was going on if he did that, and as of yet he wasn’t sure. It was as if he was ‘seeing’ Michael through the wrong end of a telescope. There wasn’t much to hold on to, it was so faint that he thought it was most likely just residual feelings. But still it nagged around the edges of his mind. It is! he thought excitedly. It’s probably too faint for Eliza to pick up especially with her so focused on controlling the zombies.
Tomas began to emit what he could only describe as waves of white noise, much like televisions without a satellite or cable signal.
“I’ve already told you, brother, you cannot wrest control of the zombies from me. I am in direct communication with them and this static will not disrupt that.”
Tomas began to shiver with the effort to broadcast even louder as the signal from Michael grew from imperceptible to miniscule.
“What are you doing, Tomas? You begin to annoy me.”
“I thought that I might be able to stop them this way,” Tomas lied.