A story from the Dying Days universe …

1

George hadn’t really taken the whole zombie apocalypse thing seriously until he’d shot his beloved Sally between the eyes. Sure, he’d had to venture out in the abandoned neighborhood, from time-to-time, looking for some supplies, but it had never struck home. In all the mess after civilization fell, he hadn’t gotten close to a zombie. He’d killed a few living people, but he had never had to put down a dead person, until now. He had hated putting the bullet in her face, destroying the beautiful flower she was in his life, but the infection had begun to strip her of that already.

In the shadows being cast by the three gas lamps placed around the musty basement, he curled up in the corner and sobbed. A pool of her cooling blood began to congeal close to his face. The cool concrete floor felt somewhat comforting against his face. He fought the urge to itch the thick beard growing on his face, so he pressed his face closer to the floor. Sally had never allowed him to even begin to grow a beard; she had never let him go more than a day, or two at the most, without shaving, in their twenty-five years of marriage.

Of course, they had never lied to each other either; he just didn’t tell her everything. The envelope on his desk upstairs, for example, contained the results from his tests. He knew what they said without opening it up. But, he had never wanted her to worry. He had only wanted to help her survive. Seeing her lifeless eyes stare at him killed him inside and part of him wanted so much to join her. She had gone to the grave twice without learning what the letter from the doctor’s office said about his tests. He had failed her.

Now, it didn’t matter. Gently, he dabbed his fingers in the sticky blood and pressed his fingers together. They stuck and he had to pull at them hard to separate them. At first, they refused to pull apart, but he finally forced the glue-like blood to release its hold on the opposite finger. The exercise reminded him of being a kid and playing with his gum. It had left his hands and fingers sticky and every bit of dirt, grass, and leaves would adhere to him. His mother had scolded him each time he had gone in the house, but he never quit until he stopped chewing gum in high school.

George wondered what she’d think about him playing in the blood, but he figured she was dead by now too. He’d been in the basement for so long now, he wondered if anybody was left alive outside. The way it had looked before he locked and barricaded the doors, the world didn’t have long left anyway.

“I love you,” George whispered. He stroked her bloodied, matted hair and tried to hold himself together.

Sally was dead twice-over. First, the bite on her arm from something outside the tiny basement window had become infected and she had finally succumbed to the fever. The second time, she had tried to bite and claw George’s face off. He had watched her chest rise and fall one last time before it didn’t rise again. He sat patiently, with the gun shaking in his trembling hand, waiting for her to come back to him. After a few minutes, her body had jerked and she had hissed loudly. Her corpse had rolled over and begun to reach for him. Her eyes blazed with a new life, but they still were the eyes of the dead. She crawled at him and he gathered himself together long enough to fire. In the closed-in basement, the report was deafening and his ears rang loudly. The bullet struck her and a red dot appeared between her once bright eyes. The back of her head had exploded and showered the white wall in crimson. Chunks stuck to the wall and some fell to the floor. Splashes of the crimson dotted the framed family photos. Blood dripped from them and George forced himself to turn away.

George had tried not to cry. He had tried to be strong for her, but in the end he fell apart and cried.

With nothing left, George closed his eyes and let the blanket of sleep cover and sooth him.

***

A loud banging startled George awake some time later. He rubbed his eyes and wondered how long he’d been out. Sally’s body still remained where he had left it, on the floor before him. The blood had stopped leaking out and he touched it again. It was mostly dried and it didn’t feel like glue or wet candy.

Another pounding sounded from upstairs and George quickly tried to gather his wits back about him. It’d been a long time since he had given life outside his basement fortress any thought. He stood up and grimaced. He’d been on the floor too long and the act of climbing to his feet made his joints ache and his knees hurt.

“Fuck, I hate getting old,” he muttered. He looked down at Sally and wished to be dead instead.

“Hello?” a voice called out from the main floor upstairs. “Anybody home?”

Another few minutes passed and George heard footsteps go to the kitchen and he could hear cabinets being opened and closed. It surprised him it had taken this long for somebody to try to scavenge supplies from his home. Once the reports began to air on the news, he’d moved anything worth using for survival down to the basement. Any canned or boxed food, bottled water, or medication, he had gathered up and they had stashed it with them. He knew the person upstairs was on a fool’s errand, but hopefully they’d find nothing and leave. George didn’t relish killing anyone else.

“Help?” the voice said loudly.

George didn’t hear the rummaging in the kitchen anymore and slowly made his way up the stairs. Carefully, he disengaged the lock, and waited to hear the intruder leave. Instead, the footsteps came closer to the basement door. Sweat beaded on George’s brow and his grip tightened on the pistol’s grip. In his chest, his heart hammered so loudly he hoped it didn’t give away his presence.

The footsteps stopped near the basement door and he heard the two hall closet doors open and close again. His free hand took hold of the door knob and his muscles felt taut, tight like a snake ready to strike. George held his breath and the footsteps stopped in front of the basement door. The knob jiggled and began to turn. George struck out in an attempt to take the intruder by surprise. He pushed out on the door and he felt the person on the other side lose their balance and he heard them fall to the hardwood floor.

George sprang from the darkness of the basement and pointed the gun down at the floor. “What are you doing in my house?” he shouted.

“I’m, I’m sorry! I’m hungry and I was looking for food,” the man answered. He held his hands in the air and George could see the young man was unarmed.

“How’d did you get around outside without a gun,” George asked.

“I’ve been hiding in my parent’s attic since it went to hell and I don’t have a gun,” the man replied.

“How long have you been there,” George asked.

“My count is seven months,” he said. The man began to get up and George put his foot on his balls.

“Don’t move or I’ll really put my foot down.”

“Okay, I’m cool man, really. I lived a few blocks over on Oak Avenue next to Mrs. Martinez and that crazy Carl King guy.”

George let his foot up and let the man sit up. “What’s your name?”

“Harry Motte.”

“I’ve lived here for fifteen years and I’ve never heard of you; how is that possible if you lived that close,” George asked.

“Well, who are you?”

“George Harrison.”

“Cool, like the Beatle’s guy?”

“Yes, like him.”

“Did you have a son named Trent?”

George raised the gun and closed his eyes. “I hope I still do.”

“I played baseball with him in sixth grade down at the rec center,” Harry pleaded.

The words coming from the young man struck George as true. He remembered taking him to the ball field three nights a week for practice and every Saturday for a double-header. Baseball was the thing Trent and he had bonded over. It was never the comic books, the television shows, or the books they read; it was always baseball.

And it was always the Chicago Cubs.

“What was Trent’s favorite team? He always wore their hats to every practice,” George pressed.

Harry sat silent and thought for a moment. He figured he had to have his answer right or he’d be dead. “Chicago.”

“Cubs or Sox?”

“Cubs, he wore a blue hat to each practice, if I remember correctly.”

George raised the gun and held his hand out for Harry. “I had to be sure.”

Harry hesitated and then grabbed George’s hand. “I guess the situation makes us paranoid, huh?”

“Makes me hungry too, we…, I mean I was almost out of food,” George said.

Harry thought his voice sounded sad, but he didn’t want to push the issue. He knew how he felt about putting down his parents after they had turned and he figured George had the same story. He wondered how many people shared the same struggle and told the same tales to each other at night.

“Yeah, your cabinets are pretty bare.”

“We moved everything usable down to the basement when Sally and I decided to head below for safety. I had plenty stocked up, you know in case of hurricanes.”

“One of those survivor types?”

“She made fun of me for it, but it helped us make it this long without leaving the basement. I still had to go out a few times to look for stuff, but I never found a lot or anything that amounted to much.”

“I took a peek in most of the houses between my house and here. There wasn’t shit. I found a few bags of chips and a can of anchovies, but I passed on the little fish,” Harry said and stuck out his tongue in a disgusted gesture.

George thought about their options. They’d been holed up for seven months. He knew, from his trips outside, the town was tapped out. It also meant most places like grocery stores and restaurants, from their neighborhood to Orlando, would’ve been wiped out and the cupboards bare. No electricity also meant anything in the freezers and refrigerator units would’ve spoiled long ago.

“How’s the situation out there? We stuck our heads in the sand and I may have been mistaken to try and stay here for so long,” George asked. He wondered if the kid had seen something he may have missed.

“We?” Harry asked.

“My wife, Sally. A few hours ago I had to send her home to the Lord.”

“Zombie?”

“We were using some old gas lamps I kept from when Trent and I would do some camping. It left some areas of the basement pretty dark and one day she was in one of those dark places and wanted to open the small window to air out the place. She opened it and wanted to touch the grass. All she wanted was to feel anything normal again. Something was hanging around outside the side of the house and when she ran her fingers through the blades of the Bermuda grass I paid to sod the yard with right before the world fell apart something got her. She didn’t know what bit her and it got infected. She started getting a fever and feeling sick within a few hours. It was bad and it didn’t take long for her to pass.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Harry said. He reached out and put his hand on George’s shoulder.

The older man broke down and embraced him. Sobbing on Harry’s shoulder, George let it all out. After a few moments, Harry heard George sniff loudly and he raised his head. It took him a moment to compose himself, but he did; Harry saw he was all business.

“How many guns do you have?” George asked.

“Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada.”

“How’d you get this far without a gun?” George inquired.

“Ha, I hardly ever left the house. If I did, I had a baseball bat.”

“Are there many people or zombies around?”

Harry thought about it carefully. He didn’t really know George, but he wanted to trust him. It was basically the only person he’d seen in over a month and he hadn’t shot him when he burst from the basement door.

“The people are almost all gone. Most have either headed north or they’re part of team zombie now. You’re the first breathing person I’ve seen in over a month,” Harry answered.

“Where is everyone heading? I didn’t have a radio in the basement and, once the cell service stopped, I haven’t heard any new at all. I noticed there’s not a whole lot of activity, living or dead, around lately.”

“There are a few pirate radio stations getting a signal out on ham radios, but the main ones are all just static. Dad had a ham radio and I’ve been able to make it work enough to hear bits and pieces of some people talking back and forth.”

George began to wonder about how the other survivors were faring. “Have they said anything about any government camps or anything?”

“I think the camps were over-run. Last I heard, the one outside of St. Augustine was a total loss. Of course, the radios have all gone silent now. The one thing they all talked about was the way all of the dead were migrating south.”

“St. Augustine?”

“Yeah, it was the main one. The governor wanted to set up the northern camp in Jacksonville, but the military over-ruled him when the president declared martial law.”

“Trent was in St. Augustine,” George whispered.

“You don’t know about him?”

“No, I figured this would pass and he’d come home. Of course, after seven months, I thought he’d have made it back by now. Sally never gave up hope, but I thought practically about it.”

George never thought it would end, but he had always tried his best to put on a brave face for Sally. She had wanted to leave to look for Trent and over and over he had to talk her down from walking about in a dead world.

“How’d you two survive down there so long?” Harry inquired.

George scanned the windows and looked around the house. “Let’s go to my office.”

Harry followed as George walked down the hall and opened the last door on the left. They stepped inside and Harry saw the dust mounded up on every surface. In the light streaming in through the sheer white curtains, he could see bits of it floating in the air and settling down on the desk, a book shelf, or anywhere. He felt like the dust. He felt like he was floating through the world, but he didn’t know when he’d land or how hard it would be when he did.

George took a seat and began to run his finger through the dust. He motioned for Harry to sit and didn’t say a word until Harry sat in the plush and comfortable leather chair.

“You want to know how I survived that long, huh,” George began.

“Did you ever come up from down there?”

“At first, I mean during the first few days I did. Once more and more of those things began to appear in the streets and in the in the yard, I stayed below and told Sally to do the same. We had light from the windows, the camping gear, and all the rations I’d squirreled away in case of an emergency. I always had a year’s worth of supplies down there. Water, canned goods, and medicine were what I thought we would need if a hurricane hit and we were trapped for a long period of time. You’ve seen how slow the National Guard or whoever can be in getting to survivors if the roads are flooded,” George explained.

“I wish mom and dad had their shit together like you did; man I hated scavenging for stuff.”

“Each night, I stood next to the window we had covered up and listened. I lost track of how many days I heard the constant gunfire and held my gun ready to defend my wife and our supplies. Then one day, I didn’t hear the shots anymore. That was when I knew it had gone horribly wrong. Once the guns stopped, I would go out and look for a few hours a week. I never wanted to stay gone long. I never wanted Sally alone and unprotected,” George finished.

“I can’t imagine being down there for so long. I might have gone slightly mad.”

George watched Harry make an odd face when he said he might’ve gone mad. He thought venturing out into the world now made one mad. “We had the windows. Good thing was they were small and nobody noticed.”

“I’m surprised I’m the first person who busted up in here looking for food,” Harry quipped.

“Me, too. I never heard anybody.”

“Maybe they focused on the stores and restaurants first. I went to houses once the fighting slowed and managed to pick up quite a lot of good stuff.”

“I say we head to St. Augustine. If there was a camp there, maybe there is some chance the government will bring more troops in and start cleaning up this mess.”

Harry pondered the plan for a moment. “And find your son?”

“Yes, and find my son.”

George stood up from his chair and his fingers danced to an envelope on the corner. It had sat in the sunlight through the window long enough for it to begin yellowing. He started to pick it up, placed it back down, and tapped his fingers on it again.

“Something important?” Harry asked.

“Oh…no… I mean not really. It’s nothing. Let’s start getting the camping gear together. I have packs, flashlights, supplies, and guns. Some is in the basement and some is up here in the garage. I’ll take the basement if you want to go and start grabbing things out in the garage. Bring in everything you think we might need and we’ll sort it out in the dining room. It’s time to blow out of Polk City,” George said.

With a goal in mind, both men began to prepare for their journey.

###

Check out Dying Days: Death Sentence by Brent Abell now.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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