I half ran, half stumbled, to the kitchen table and threw on my sneakers. Not wasting any time lacing them, Jake and I swung our bags over our shoulders and armed ourselves. I beat Jake to the back door and pulled it open, revealing a rotting corpse standing in my path. Not thinking, I lifted the hammer and, with one hard swing, plunged the tool deep into its cranium. My arm reverberated with shock as the head of the hammer struck bone.
As I pulled the hammer back, its eyes rolled and its muscles went slack. It fell to the ground in a heap, and gray matter spilled out onto the concrete pad. I turned back to Jake to ask where to go and my mouth went dry as I spotted several of the undead crawling through the broken window. Daphne barked a protective warning at the approaching horde, darting forward and snapping at them.
The storm had knocked out a twenty-foot section of fence, taking the gate with it. Zombies swarmed the area, and our only option was to jump the fence at the back of the yard and into an empty lot. Oh yeah, and hope there was nothing waiting on the other side to catch and eat me. Jake lifted me and I peered over. “It’s clear.” He shoved me over the top without pause and I toppled to the saturated earth on the other side. My ass struck a rock and I gurgled out a high-pitched screech of pain.
I got up and held my arms up. “Hand me Daphne,” I instructed him. He didn’t say anything, and no dog greeted me at the top of the fence. “Jake, hand me the dog.” I heard her still barking on the other side and saw Jake’s fingers over the top of the fence, no dog in his hands.
I screamed at him, not caring what attention I was calling to us. “Jake, DON’T DO THIS. Please, Jake, no! I need her. She needs me. She won’t survive on her own.” Jake hopped the fence, landing on his feet. I was in shock. I clawed at the fence trying to get back over to my dog, but I was too short to gain leverage. She was going crazy on the other side. I could hear her digging in the dirt to get to me. I knelt and began digging from my side. Her nose stuck through the bottom of the fence, rippling the surface of the pooling rain water with her panicked exhalations. Her cries leaving my soul tortured and twisted, I dug until my fingers bled. There was just enough space that she could see me under the fence.
I spun on Jake and reached for the ax, but he grabbed me and swung me over his shoulders. He began running as I beat my bloody hands on his back and begged for him to stop.
“I’m sorry. Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” he sniveled as he ran.
Daphne howled in anguish and disappeared from the small opening. “NOOOOOOOO,” I sobbed. “Daphne!”
We cleared the empty lot and Jake put me down. Before he could get a word out, I began to run back for Daphne. The opening in the fence swarmed with bodies and I knew I would never get to her without being taken down. My knees went weak and gave out. I found myself on all fours sobbing and blubbering out her name.
The splash of his shoes on the wet ground alerted me to his arrival behind me. “Oh, God. What did I do?” He agonized. “It was only a mistake. I made a mistake.” His voice was hoarse and came out strangled as he pled for forgiveness. He paused for only an instant before he passed by me at a sprint toward the hole in the fence.
Terror held me in place like a vice-grip and the torture of indecision and fear threatened to crush me. On one hand I was crazed by the loss of my dog. On the other hand, my husband was running to certain death in a foolish attempt to right his wrong.
I opened my mouth to scream for Jake to come back, but before I could call out, a bark sounded. Daphne burst through the opening like a bullet and weaved between the arms of the grasping corpses. She shot by Jake and leapt into my outstretched arms. Tears of happiness replaced my tormented sobs.
“Jake Rossi, don’t you ever pull a stupid stunt like that again.” I shoved him backwards with my free hand and waved my finger in his face. “How am I supposed to process what just happened. First you leave Daphne to die then you try to throw your own life away to save her? I don’t know if I should be pissed or proud.”
“My, God. I am so sorry, Em. I wasn’t thinking. By the time I knew what happened, it was too late.” The look of torment on Jake’s face was heartbreaking. “I love you so much. I love Daphne too, I just, I don’t know. The thought of something happening to you made me insane.”
I stepped into him and put my head on his chest. Emotions jumbled around in my head like gum balls. I was angry and confused, but more than that I was terrified. I couldn’t tell him it was okay; not yet at least. Because nothing about this was okay, and I wasn’t ready to deal with it.
We spent the next hour silently searching nearby cars for keys. Neither of us talking. Despite not wanting to think about the morning’s events, my thoughts kept wandering. I knew she was just a dog. But she was my dog, and the thought of losing her, in addition to everything else, was something my already-fragile psyche just couldn’t cope with. I wasn’t even going to let myself think about what could have happened to Jake or I’d lose it.
We were beginning to get discouraged when we found a car with the keys dangling from the ignition. As we dropped our bags into the backseat, Jake handed me the hammer. He must have picked it up back at the fence. Its cold steel served as a tainted memory of his callous actions. A colorful tote bag lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat. I emptied its contents into the backseat and placed Daphne inside, clutching the bag to my chest to keep her close.
I rummaged through my backpack and handed Jake a bottle of water. Looking around the car, I pulled the clean ashtray from the console and filled it with water from my bottle and held it in front of Daphne. All three of us drank our fill as we drove our new car away from our safe house.
After a few miles of maneuvering through roads congested with abandoned vehicles and wandering dead, Jake stopped the car in the middle of the few stretches of empty asphalt. “What are you doing?”
“We have less than a quarter tank of gas and no destination in mind.” He punched the steering wheel and flopped back in his seat. “This situation is fucked.”
The sound of an explosion in the distance pulled us from our wallowing. Somewhere across town a mass of dark plumes filled the sky. The explosion was followed by a barrage of smaller sounds: gunshots. Someone, no scratch that, a lot of someones, were shooting. My surprise was mirrored in Jake’s face.
“People alive and fighting back,” I said. “We need to get to them.”
Jake looked down at the gas gauge. “I don’t think we’ll have enough gas to get us there. We’re running on fumes.”
“Then get us as close as this POS will take us, and we’ll figure something else out when the time comes.” I pointed a finger in the direction of our salvation. “Let’s roll! Destiny awaits!”
Whomever had come up with the roadways in our small town deserved a good bitch-slap. Along the Southwest coast of Florida, Cape Coral had too many waterways. Streets intersecting canals dead-ended and picked up on the other side of the water. This annoyance caused us to turn back and change routes time and time again and used more of our precious fuel. We turned down what we hoped to be a through way, and a green pickup truck sped toward us.
I began jumping in my seat and pointing at the truck. Like somehow if I didn’t call attention to the oncoming vehicle, Jake would miss it. We slowed as the truck approached and stopped alongside its driver’s side window.
“Man,” Jake greeted the driver, “you have no idea how good it is to see another person out here. Haven’t seen another living soul since this thing started.”