A gun.
It was pistol-like thing with one of those chambers like I had on my Nerf gun. It looked really old. Really, really old. There was a strange thrill as I curled my fingers around the handle and lifted it with both hands. How do you open it? I thought, trying to remember what they did in those cowboy films Dad made me watch. I fiddled with the chamber but couldn’t budge it. Would it still work? Did it have any bullets? Would I be thrown back through the wall if it went off, ’cause I was only a kid, and kids don’t fire guns?
Light beamed up from below as the trapdoor fell open. I scrambled back on my bum, holding Wesley J. Harding’s gun so tight my knuckles went white. I inched back further, never taking my eyes off the entrance, my heart pounding so loud I couldn’t hear anything else. A hand reached over the edge, then another. It was Dad, I knew it. I could see his wedding ring glinting in the dirty light. When his head popped up, I nearly dropped the gun and went to him. My whole body ached to be held. Dad must’ve killed that thing down there; must’ve come to rescue me. But then his head turned toward me and I saw his eyes. They were just like Mum’s—all white and empty. He roared and sprayed spit and slobber everywhere. He started to drag his body through the opening, hissing and growling. My arms were shaking from holding the gun; my head was bursting with tears and fear and sadness and loneliness and-and-and—
Click.
Nothing happened.
I pulled the trigger again. Just another click. Nothing. There were no bullets. There was no magic. I hate you, Wesley J. Harding. I hate you!
I screamed and threw the gun with all my strength. It smacked into Dad’s head and splatted it like a melon. He dropped back through the opening and there was a thud, a crack, and a slosh. I had to see. I had to see what had happened. So I crawled on hands and knees to the opening and peered over the edge. Dad was lying in a sprawled heap on top of a smashed up chair. There was blood all around his head, and his legs were twisted at a horrible angle. Then I was sick, really sick, when I saw the bone poking through his jeans, the chair leg sticking out of his chest, drip, drip, dripping blood. A stream of my yucky brown puke rained down on him and he growled. His head twisted to glare at me with dead eyes, and his fingers scratched at the carpet. He reached a hand up and clawed the air, roaring at me and gnashing his teeth.
I drew back from the edge and stood. I knew he couldn’t get up, not with his legs all broken like that, but I didn’t want to chance it. I took hold of the canvas wardrobe at the top and pulled. It was real heavy, so I tried again, using more of my bodyweight. It rocked and then tipped right over the opening. Clothes fell out and flopped down below. Dad growled some more, but he was muffled now, buried under Mum’s cast-offs. The wardrobe sagged, but covered the opening good enough.
I noticed Wesley J. Harding’s gun up against the wall where it had bounced off of Dad’s head. I narrowed my eyes at it and screwed my nose up. But then I sighed and gave it a nod of respect. It might not have worked, but it had saved me anyway. Maybe Wesley J. Harding was on my side after all.
I decided if I was gonna get out of this alive, I needed to do some rummaging. Maybe there’d be some rope so I could do that rope-trick thing Wesley J. used to do. Dad said the rope would go stiff and Wesley J. would climb right up into the clouds. I started going through some old suitcases that were stacked along the sides, but they were mostly filled with more of Mum’s old clothes. She had so many clothes, my Mum, but most of them didn’t fit anymore. She did lots of silly things, Dad said, like going to Weight Watchers and then ordering Chinese; or telling Dad to hide the scales so she couldn’t weigh herself every day, and then messing up the whole house trying to find them. She’d moan about having all this junk food in the cupboards because she couldn’t stop herself from eating it, even though she was the one who bought it in the first place.
Tears were pouring from my eyes and snot ran over my lips and onto my chin. I missed her, my big silly Mummy. I really missed her. And Daddy, my best friend in the whole world. I needed him now like never before. If he were here, everything would be all right. We could find a way to beat these zombies. I know we could.
“Shut up,” I said to myself. “Ain’t got time to whine. No one’s gonna save you, so stop acting like a baby.”
That reminded me of something Dad used to say to me if I was blubbing for no good reason. “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about,” he’d say. It always sounded mean at the time, but I’d have given anything to hear him say it now.
There was a groan from down below, and this time it was answered by growling from outside. I got closer to the low part of the ceiling and tried to listen. It was still raining, but it had slowed to a steady pitter patter. The thunder had rolled off into the distance; there were just occasional rumbles, and they were getting further apart. I couldn’t hear the policemen shouting anymore; couldn’t hear their gunshots either. Just the horrid wails of the zombies. No one was even screaming now.
I pulled myself together and moved on past Mum’s clothes. I brought down a cardboard box that had been sealed up with tape. As I did, something squeaked, and I heard the trip trap of tiny feet. Ain’t got time to worry about mice, I thought as I ripped the tape from the box and looked inside. It was crammed full of toys. Old toys I’d never seen before. Perhaps they were Dad’s childhood things that he’d kept in case I wanted them. Maybe he was secretly collecting stuff to give me for Christmas. He’d done that last year, when I got all these really cool Cylons, and a phaser from the original Star Trek.
I pulled out an action figure. He had on a red suit and trainers, and he had a see-through eye. I squinted through it and saw things a little bigger. One of his arms had rubber skin over it. It was a bit split and hard in places, but I managed to roll it up. There were colourful pretend electronics underneath, like he had a robot arm or something. Dad had a real robot arm. He got it when his old arm was bit off by a great white shark, he said. Bionic, it was. Looked just the same as a normal one, only it was super strong. If Watson had bit that one, Dad might still be OK. He could’ve used it to clobber down the zombies, no matter how many came at us. With that arm, he’d have picked them up and thrown them so high in the air they’d have hit the moon.
I put the figure on the floor and lifted another box. This one rattled a lot, and when I opened it I saw it was full of Lego bricks. I was about to put it to one side when I remembered building this enormous castle in the living room when I was five or six. Dad helped me, and it took days, it was so big. Mum kept complaining she couldn’t do the Hoovering while it was there, but I think she must’ve liked it because she let us keep it for a week or so.
I took out a block and set it on the floor. I hummed a tune to drown out the groaning from the street, and began to stack brick upon brick. It was odd, ’cause I didn’t really know what I was making. I just kept piling the bricks up, one on top of another, and as I worked I heard words in between my ears, getting louder and louder—songs Dad used to play on the stereo.
Guess who just got back today. It was his voice, all scratchy and kind of silly.
Them wild eyed boys that had been away.
Mum’s voice cut across the singing. It was that screechy way she yelled “Dinner’s ready.” I half stood, started to call back, but there was a lump in my throat that slowly sunk all the way down to my belly.