My fingers were shaking as I dialed her cell number. The call went straight to voicemail.
“Hello, this is Jenn. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Have a nice day.”
“Damn,” I said aloud. What did I really expect? I decided to leave a message.
“Jenn, I’m okay. We’re held up in a house in Jersey. Still a long way away I know, but I’m traveling with a few people who I trust, and we’ll be there soon. There is supposed to be a place in West Virginia that’s safe. One of the guys I’m with says he can get us all in. Don’t have time to explain here, but I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. I don’t know how long the phones will work. If you can get to a CB radio, turn it to channel 14 and make sure it’s on at noon every day. We’ll be able to talk when I’m in range. I love you so much. I will find you.” Beep.
I dropped my head and paused for a moment.
I dialed my home number. The phone rang, then again, and a third time. Voicemail.
“John. If this is you, I’m okay. I don’t have much time with this message, so listen carefully. Sue’s dead, John. She came back as one of those things. Joe was able to push her out of the car. We made it to a nearby cabin. It’s not Joe’s, but nobody has claimed it. The baby has not come yet, but I’m just weeks away. The address is 127 Brown Bear Rd., Blue Ridge, GA. It doesn’t have a phone, but I left this message from a working landline at a small gas station down the street. Get here as soon as possible. I’ll check this voicemail every day. Please let me know if you’re all right! I love you, John!”
Shaking and sweating like hell, I left the same message for her that I had on her cellphone, adding the phone number inscribed on the inside of the phone I was using, asking her to call me back, should she get this message before we left.
Hanging up the phone, I wiped the tears from my eyes. She was alive, and I had not missed the birth of my child.
There has not been many times where I felt true joy in my adult life. It seemed like we grow out of joy a little more with each year of age. However for that moment, it’s the only way I can possibly describe how I felt. The relief was so overwhelming, like a weight had lifted from my chest, my heart. To hear my Jenn’s voice…
I heard Kyle, Michael and Sophia laughing from the kitchen. We were in a wasteland, surrounded by the walking dead, and somehow they still found a way to laugh. It seemed like all was not lost.
Rubbing the final tears from my eyes, I looked up at a picture hanging on the wall.
It was a painting of a woman and a man. She was in a yellow dress with a white flowered hat, and he, in a gray suit with a watch chain hanging from his front pocket. Neither of them were Sophia or Richard.
I looked around at the other framed photos; there were two kids playing on the grass with a ball and a large cocker spaniel.
I noticed a bathroom door open down the hall. Realizing that I had not taken a piss in a real toilet in days, I stepped toward the bathroom. Unzipping my pants, I sighed with relief as I did my business. Once finished, I turned around to wash my blood and filth covered hands.
Taking a look at myself, for the first time in almost five days, I was almost as disgusting as the zombies I had killed. I looked like hell. My white shirt was covered in dried chunks of black and red blood. My pants were torn in multiple areas. My hair was a mess and thick with sweat, to the point of being gummy. I had clearly lost a number of pounds already, which I wasn’t actually complaining about. Although losing it from near starvation was clearly not a good weight loss option.
I was admiring how much I looked like shit when I noticed a tiny drop of blood streak down the mirror. My eyes followed it up to its origin, and there was a circular bloodstain in the ceiling above.
My heart was racing for the millionth time. Was there a zombie in the house? Had someone died upstairs?
I moved into the kitchen, and stepped casually towards the sink, and around the island. I stood looking at Michael’s bandages for a moment, acting as if I cared about how good of a job Sophia had done. Standing next to the shotgun at this point, I reached down and snatched it up. Without making any quick moves, I looked over at Sophia.
“What’s upstairs?” I asked, eyeing her carefully.
The room fell silent except for a grandfather clock ticking away in the front hall of the house.
“More specifically, what is bleeding all over the place upstairs?” I demanded.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She smiled sweetly, while slowly moving around the island in the middle of the room. I lifted the shotgun to point it in her direction.
“There’s blood dripping from the ceiling in the bathroom. None of the pictures in this place has you or your husband in them. Who is up there?”
“This is our home. This is my home. Get out!” She screamed, and then darted from the kitchen down a hallway. Kyle and Michael stared at the empty doorway, stunned.
“What the fuck was that?” Michael ventured.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s blood in the bathroom. We all just saw her reaction to it,” I replied.
I showed them the bathroom. The leak was even bigger now. Kyle pointed over toward a staircase leading upstairs just past the grandfather clock in the front hallway. No need for words, I knew what he was doing. In the brief time that I’d known him, I had learned how to read his subtle clues.
“We’re coming upstairs, and we’re armed. We don’t want to hurt anybody!” Kyle called out as we ascended.
No answer. Just the methodical ticking of the clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
When we got to the top step, Michael flipped on the light. I handed the shotgun to Kyle.
“You’re probably better with this thing than I am,” I said, while pulling out the pistol that he had given me earlier.
Glancing back down the stairs, I saw Sophia standing there, my stomach lurching as I spun around. She had a crazed look of hatred in her eyes.
“Don’t go in there. This is my house! You need to leave now!” she screamed.
“Shut up, you crazy bitch,” Michael said shaking his head in bewilderment.
Betrayal emerged in her expression, and she disappeared once again down the hallway. I heard a door slam shut, and then silence.
We looked at the door located above the bathroom that was downstairs, building the nerve to see what lay beyond. Finally, Kyle turned the knob quietly but shoved it open.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
The room was dark, but I could see some movement in the corner. I trained the pistol on it, then reached in and flicked on the light switch, revealing a horrific scene that I was not actually prepared for. Both people were badly beaten. The unconscious man was missing nine of his ten fingers, and the woman had horrible bruising across her face and arms. They were both alive, not zombies.
Despite the wounds, I recognized them from the pictures down stairs. The woman looked up at us, terror written all over her face. A weak and hoarse whisper for help was all that she could muster.
We were loosening the ropes that they were bound by when we heard a car alarm going off outside.
Michael stayed to finish untying the ropes, while Kyle and I raced downstairs. We checked the back door, scaring the shit out of the cops who were still trying to figure out how to stop looking as if they were butt fucking each other. The sound was coming from the front.
We darted through the house, pushing open the front door cautiously. We saw Sophia beating the shit out of what looked like a red Porsche. It wasn’t there when we had pulled up, so I figure she had pulled it out of the garage, leaving it in the middle of the street. Kyle and I watched as some of the neighbors walked toward her. Sofia had a kitchen knife in her hand and was wildly swinging it at anybody who approached her. They were all screaming at her to turn off the alarm. It was chaos, until we heard a single shot fired. Sophia dropped lifelessly to the ground.