I looked down at the foot in my hand, taking my eyes off the zombie. It was mine. Why did he want it back?
When I looked up again his face was only inches from mine. I gave the foot back to him. He looked down at it in his hands and then looked at me again. He opened his hand and let the foot drop to the floor with a thud. Then he reached for me, mouth open wide. I closed my eyes, waiting to be eaten.
That’s when I woke up with a start. Dammit.
I looked around the darkening living room. Barrett was asleep in one of the kitchen chairs, head down, chin resting on his chest. I would guess he was going to be majorly uncomfortable when he woke up. Fannie Mae was sprawled out next to me on the couch. Her head was resting on my thigh. I was lucky my waking up hadn’t jerked her awake, too.
I had no idea why we were all asleep. Last I remembered we were sitting around listening to the zombies and wondering how long it was going to take before we were all dead. Or not-dead. You know.
That was when somebody rapped on the door with a tap tap tap.
I shot to my feet like a bat out of hell. Fannie Mae rolled to the floor with a grunt and Barrett fell out of the chair.
“Johnson’s,” somebody whispered. “Mryna? Bobby? Duke? Anyone in there.” Off to the side, “I told you no one was here.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I was too surprised, awe-struck, flabbergasted, pick your adjective. I finally found my voice, “Wait!”
I moved the couch out of the way of the door and opened it a crack to see who was there. In the fading sunlight I could see that it was Mr. Thompson. He lived a few trailers down from Fannie Mae and wasn’t really a very nice guy.
“Oh, thank God,” I heard someone else whisper. I peeked out the door and saw that it was Herbert Jennings. He was another neighbor and a pal of my dad’s. I was actually surprised that he wasn’t wherever my dad was.
Thompson shone a flashlight in my face, blinding me. “You okay in there, Duke? Anyone else in there with you?”
I opened the door wider and looked behind me. Fannie Mae stood only a step or two behind me and Barrett stood on the other side of the room. He had the shotgun cradled in his arms and had it pointed in the general direction of the front door. Thankfully it was pointed mostly at the floor. Thompson shone the flashlight on the both of them and then sighed.
“Just the three of you, Duke?”
“Yes, sir.” I briefly debated on what to tell him and then settled with, “I don’t know where my parents are. Mom wasn’t here when we got in last night and I haven’t seen Dad since Thursday.”
That would probably come back and burn me later but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.
He nodded at me and then looked pointedly at the shotgun that Barrett was holding. “I take it you saw what happened here earlier?”
“Yes, sir. And the,” I paused, “zombies have been scratching at the back of the trailer. We haven’t heard them for a while, though.”
He grimaced. “Zombies, huh? Yeah, I guess that’s what we have to call them.” He shone the flashlight around the outside of the trailer. “We’re rounding up everyone we can and heading over to the House. It’s the only place that can fit all of us.”
Let me stop for a minute and explain about the House. Horace House was the only piece of real estate in the Acres that actually had a foundation. I suppose in some places it would be called a community center or a meeting house or some such. We used it here for any kind of community meetings that required voting or celebrations or things like that. In the summer there was a wedding or reception there almost every weekend. As the only place of stone in this place of tin it held some kind of hold over the rest of us. Not to mention that, like Thompson said, it was large enough to fit most of the park.
He nodded at Fannie Mae and then looked at Barrett again. “Who’s that, Duke?”
I bristled at his tone but said evenly, “That’s my friend, Barrett Inman. He lives in town.”
He grunted and I don’t know what he would have said, but Herbert – Mr. Jennings – behind him whispered, “Who gives a shit, Thompson? We need to stay on the move.”
I don’t know what we did to set him off, but Thompson was giving all of us the stink eye. He finally just nodded and said, “Come on, kids. Let’s go.”
I shut the trailer door firmly behind us as the three of us followed the two men. They were looking around warily as they began to lead us through the Acres. Fannie Mae and Barrett stayed close behind me. They were practically tripping on my heels. It felt like there were a million eyes on us.
Every ten feet or so Thompson would have us all stop and shine the flashlight in a circle around us. The sun had gone down enough that there were shadows everywhere. At the second stop he shone the light on the three of us and said, “Maybe you should give me that shotgun, boy.”
Barrett looked at me and shook his head. I spoke for him. “That’s ours, Mr. Thompson. I’m not giving it up.”
He eyed me and said, “You’ll give it up if I say you’ll give it up, Johnson.”
I grinned at him and reached behind me to take the shotgun from Barrett. Fannie Mae shuffled uneasily from foot to foot, gripping the straps of the bag carrying the shotgun shells tightly. I pointed the shotgun at the ground between our feet. “This is ours, Mr. Thompson.”
He just grunted at me. “We’ll talk about that later, Johnson.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, sir. I won’t give up our protection.”
Fannie Mae broke in then, trying to break the tension. “Mr. Thompson? What happened after Donny and the others were killed? That was the last thing we saw.”
He didn’t answer her for a few seconds, eyeballing me. I didn’t take my eyes off him as I stood there in an offensive stance. After everything we’d gone through to get that gun I’d be damned before I let anyone take it from me.
He finally looked away from me dismissively. I could tell this wasn’t over yet. “The zombies attacked a handful of other people who were outside. I don’t know how many. About 20 of us barricaded ourselves in the House and then when things died down we decided to go see if there were any other survivors that we could bring back. Plus we wanted to go get us some weapons.” He lifted his shirt, showing us the gun he had in the waistband of his pants.
Mr. Jennings waved the shotgun he held in his hand at me, to show me his gun, too. At least they weren’t complete morons.
“Did you find any other survivors?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. We split up into pairs and went knocking on doors. Last time I took a group back there were about 50 or 60 people in the House. Your trailer was the last one on our watch, so we don’t need to check anymore. We can just go back to safety now.”
Barrett asked, “Are the police coming? Has anyone called them?”
Thompson shook his head. “No one can get reception on their cell phones. You know that service out here is spotty, anyway. And none of the regular phones have worked since the power went out.”