“I fuckin’ trusted you, man. And now, you’re gonna pay. That’s my blood oath, little man.”
At the top of the stairs the door swung open and the dead clamored over one another as they pushed their way through the opening. They swarmed down the steps and Tanny’s eyes darted from their tattered clothing to Owen’s hatchet.
“See, I’m the violent kind, Tanny….”
Behind Owen, the steps gave way with a crash. A cluster of rotters fell through the air with the remnants of the staircase and smacked flatly against the floor. Undaunted, they staggered to their feet and stepped through broken scraps of wood and railing while the companions overhead simply stepped into the void where stairs had once been and plummeted to the ground.
Owen’s head had snapped around at the sudden cacophony and his promise of revenge seemed to be wiped from his mind. The initial crowd of zombies were between him and the picture with more closing in.
“Get away from her, you fucks!”
He charged forward with the hatchet raised above his head.
“I’m coming, baby!”
The undead surged forward and Tanny saw Owen’s weapon swing through the air. It’s edge bit into the skull of the zombie closest to him and the man shoved it’s body back with his free hand even as he prepared for another swing.
“Tiffany!”
Tanny, however, wasn’t sticking around for the massacre. He scrambled up the mountain of refuse below the window, kicked over boxes, and sent jars careening to the ground where they shattered and spilled their dark fluids over the floor. The pain is his ankle was like bolts of lightning, but he clenched his teeth and fought through it until he’d reached the very top of the pile.
The window was now right before him and stealing a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the dead had formed a loose ring around Owen. Their hands snatched and grabbed as the man spun in circles, swinging the hatchet wildly at his attackers.
“Tiff!”
But then Tanny was pushing the window with both hands, forcing the rusted hinges to swing it outward. It was a tight fit, even for his diminutive body, but he was able to wiggle and squirm until he was crawling across the grass of the backyard. He picked himself up and took a deep breath.
Maybe he’d head back into the woods for a while, see if he could find his way back to their campsite. With food and safety, he could rest for a few days, give his ankle a chance to heal before moving on. He took one final look at the window he’d just forced himself through before beginning to edge his way back toward the road.
“So long, fanboy.”
Tanny had barely reached reached the front of the house by the time the wordless screams of pain from the basement came to an abrupt end. He peeked around the corner to ensure the coast was clear and made for the line of trees on the other side of the road. A bitter smile broke through the grimace of pain that contorted his face.
Owen and his starlet were together again.
And they would be for a long, long time….
Hips
It was dark when she awoke. For a moment she laid in the sleeping bag with her eyes closed and listened to the shuffle of footsteps out in the hall. She could hear the heavy doors of the other cells being opened, one of the new girls sobbing softly, the murmur of conversation as her captors made their rounds… just like always. Every day the same sequence of events played out as if she were nothing more than a character in some macabre loop film. Judging by how muffled the sounds were, she knew she would hear seven other cell doors swing open before they made it to hers; and as the squeaking of hinges grew louder, so would the terse commands of their keepers. The same set of orders repeated in voices that sounded emotionless and bored. Day in. Day out.
Her bladder felt as if a heavy stone had grown in it overnight. The stone had sharp edges that raked against the soft, unprotected lining of the organ, flaring with pain as she struggled to hold it in. A little wooden bucket sat in one corner of her cell but even with the sleeping bag pulled up over her face she could still smell it: the stench of stale piss and caked-on shit, so thick that it seemed to lodge itself in little chunks in the back of her throat. A steady stream of urine would only make matters worse, churning yesterday’s waste into a frothy, brown sludge and releasing even more of the noxious vapors. No, it was better to wait. Before they left her cell, they would empty it into the drum which sat across the hall. If not clean, at least it would be cleaner.
All part of the routine.
She finally opened her eyes and pulled the sleeping bag down to her shoulders. The view that greeted her was the usual brick walls that glistened with condensation, the concrete floor with its Rorschach stains of various bodily fluids; her cell was no larger than a broom closet and the only light came through the small, barred window on the wooden door… and even then only when torches had been lit in the hall. The wall opposite the door also had one of these windows, but beyond it was only a darkness so complete that she could only hear the things that shuffled on the other side..
That would change soon, however. It was also part of the daily routine; the moment her door opened, they would be at the window, grasping through the bars with hands that looked shriveled and mummified in the dim light of the cell. With fingernails worn down to ragged splinters, they would reach through and claw at the air, scratching at the bricks as if they could somehow erode the rough mortar through persistence alone. The creatures had deteriorated to the point that they no longer had an odor but anytime a freshie was added to the group there would be weeks where the stench of decay overpowered even the toilet bucket. Somehow, that was the worst part of the ordeaclass="underline" smelling the greasy, sweet reek of rotting meat and knowing that once it had been someone just like her. Someone who had learned to cope with life in the cells as best as she could. Someone whom she’d spoken with, perhaps, through the bars on their doors. Someone who was no longer useful….
“Assume the position, Mole.”
The voice was closer now. Maybe only four doors down or so.
“I said, assume the position, Mole!”
More annoyed than angry. But if the unseen woman continued to resist, things could turn bad quickly. She’d heard (and felt) the beatings before: the dull thud and smack of sawed-off broomsticks against thighs; the cries of pain, the tears and sobbing and pleading apologies.
“Just do, it.” she muttered. “Make it easy on yourself, Mole.”
She felt her face grow warm and her stomach churned in a nauseous mixture of disgust and shame. Mole. She’d actually called the woman that. Like their captors, she’d stripped away every fiber of personality from her fellow prisoner with a single word. A word that reduced a living, breathing, thinking person into nothing more than a single characteristic. A word that left her mouth feeling so dirty that she would rather drink her bucket of waste than utter it again.
She, too, had a name once; but now she was simply Hips. Like her mother and boyfriend, it had disappeared into the mists of time and memory. Sometimes, while the darkened hallway beyond her cell echoed with snores, she would lay in the gloom and whisper that name over and over. As if it were some sort of mantra that could magically teleport her from this dank dungeon to some distant place where she would feel the warmth of sun on her skin and hear birds chirping overhead. Without fail, though, it always took her mind back to that last day of freedom. To the day she lost everything….
They were hunkered down in a burned out storefront, hidden behind the charred remains of the front counter; the sun had set several hours earlier and a darkness had fallen across the town that made it seem as if they had been plunged into the void of space. The days of street lamps and the soft glow of curtained windows were over; no headlights splayed across the soot stained walls, no winking neon or stop lights cycling through their array of colors. And on that particular night there wasn’t even the pale luminescence of moonlight to chase away the shadows.