I called out to her “What do you mean, we’re in here?”
Crawling to my feet, I rushed to the closet. Using the hammer, I pried the boards from the doorframe, and yanked it open.
Time stopped, as the spotlight shone through the window again. She ran toward me through the light, with an angelic glow, before our lips met. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders. I felt no pain, no sorrow. I only felt the two of us, wrapped in that moment. I slid my hand down the small of her back and around to her stomach, preventing us from a full embrace. I had not missed it. I had not missed the birth of our child.
Everything around us faded. There was no house. There were no zombies. There was no death. I only felt her.
Just as Jenn pulled back from our embrace, her face went deathly pale.
“John!” she shrieked in panic.
Spinning around, I brought my hammer down on a zombie that had burst into the room. It dropped to the ground with a thud. Stepping closer, I brought my foot down onto its skull, making sure that it wasn’t going to hop back up.
“They’re at the house! Get out of there! Abort! Abort!” Kyle bellowed into the microphone.
I grabbed Jenn’s wrist as we started out into the hallway. Looking over the banister facing the room below, I could see the zombies approaching the house through the broken window. The shadows disappeared as the sun peaked over the distant mountaintops. We could hear the blades of the helicopter hovering above. A tiny whimper escaped my wife’s lips as she trembled beside me.
“John! You need to get out here pronto! ” We raced down the stairs, as the helicopter landed in front of the cabin. Kyle jumped out of the helicopter with a Molotov cocktail lit, while we made it to the broken window. Slipping out, I turned to catch Jenn coming right out after me. She might have been nine months pregnant, but she wasn’t letting on.
Jenn’s torn jacket flapped angrily in the wind while we scrambled to the helicopter. Kyle covered us by throwing his cocktail bombs at the horde. Inflamed Zs flooded the gravel driveway, running into the helicopter, the house and each other. The sound of primal panic-stricken screeches was deafening just as much as it was bloodcurdling. The house had caught fire and the brush nearby was going up even swifter.
Pulling open the side door to the helicopter, I helped Jenn up and then dove into the helicopter.
I screamed to Kyle, “Pull up!” Just like that, we lifted off, leaving Hell behind.
Higher and higher we climbed, my pregnant wife sitting safely in my arms.
Chapter 30
After everything, you made it back to us.
Kyle looked back through the door of the cabin at us.
“You going to introduce me or what?” he asked into the microphone headset. After flying several miles, I had regained my bearings enough to help my wife get situated in the cabin. She even giggled when I fumbled with the headset.
“Jenn, this is Kyle. Kyle, this is Jenn. Kyle is the reason I was able to get to you. We owe him our lives,” I said earnestly.
“Aw, come on now,” Kyle replied modestly. “We got here together. Good to meet you, Jenn. I feel like I already know you.”
“Sounds like we owe you everything. Thank you, Kyle.” Jenn squeezed my hand with a grin.
I poured three glasses of water, dropping in ice from the machine. Jenn’s reaction to the cold liquid was the same as ours had been earlier that night.
We sat there for some time, holding each other closely. Massaging my hand across the soft skin of her arm, I once again felt complete. After a while, she looked up at me and told me that she’d spent many nights over the past week looking up at the stars thinking about us.
“One night, there was an amazing spectacle in the sky. I don’t know what it was, maybe a comet, maybe some sort of satellite.” She said putting a hand on my leg. “It reminded me of that night when we were camping, you know the one I’m talking about right… when we first kissed?”
I pulled my arm over and set my hand on top of hers, clutching it firmly. “Yes. Of course I do,” thinking back to the same space junk that I’d seen flying across the night sky days earlier. Knowing that we were connected in a way that I would never fully understand, put a smile across my face.
“I realized I was going to marry you that night,” she told me. “I knew it with all my heart.”
“So did I, Jenn. So did I.”
Holding her tightly in my arms, we sat in a comfortable silence, deep in our own thoughts for a while longer, before she finally spoke up. Jenn had decided to explain what happened at the cabin.
She and Joe had spent the days before her last communication boarding up the windows and doors. They wanted to make sure that they would be able to hold off any zombies if any were to show up. With plenty of food and water, they were confident that they would be okay, even when the first few began stumbling towards the walls of the cabin.
There was no way they could have prepared for the hoard that found them.
Each day, more and more of the Zs surrounded the house. By day three, the place was completely surrounded, and there was no chance of escape. There was uneasiness in her voice as Jenn explained the feeling of being trapped, surrounded by the moans of the dead clawing at what she and Joe soon realized was a temporary safety.
It wasn’t long before the monsters outside had enough force to push down the boarded up windows. Jenn and Joe had put up a good fight, as evidenced by the looks of the place when we had arrived. As they were locking the door to the upstairs room, one overly persistent creature pushed its way through the door, managing to take a chunk out of Joe’s arm before he killed it. They had seen enough to know what that meant.
To try to save Jenn and the child, Joe insisted that he lock them up in the closet, hammering boards across it to make sure he couldn’t get in once he turned. I thought that was mighty admirable of him, though I didn’t voice that as she continued in her soft, weary voice.
At first, Joe was still able to speak. In fact, they held a conversation for some time. He talked about his wife, Sue, and how he’d see her soon. There was one point where they even wondered if he had been infected.
Not long after, he broke into the fever. His speech began to change.
She could hear him kicking and hitting the dead body in the room. He was screaming, “You killed me!” over and over again… until he trailed off. She heard a thump on the floorboards. After calling out for him, there was no longer a response. At that point, she speculated that he had died from the wound.
A low moan shattered the silence in the room. She knew Joe had turned and could hear him pacing around trying to get out. She was locked in that closet, not making a noise for almost twelve hours before she heard the helicopter.
Pausing, Jenn once again pulled herself into my shoulder. She told me that she knew I would get back to her, and never lost hope that I would get there to save her and our child. I held her tight, pulling her close, the heat from our bodies providing a warm comfort, helping us both relax.
Safe and sound in the helicopter, wrapped up in a blanket, Jenn mentioned that her stomach felt a little tight before she fell asleep on the leather seats. With the story still fresh in my mind, I decided to move up to the cockpit to discuss our next move. Kyle was heading toward the Army base in Augusta. He told me that we were low on fuel, and that we’d be running on fumes by the time we got there. They would have doctors, and I agreed with the plan, knowing that Jenn would need medical care as soon as possible.