He holds his breath and presses his back as hard as he can against the brick wall, doing his best to merge and become one with the usually comforting warm red brickwork. His Papa always tells him, if there is a bad guy and he doesn’t see you—doesn’t know you’re there—then keep it that way. Be invisible. Be quiet.
Of course, Papa was talking about bad guys, you know, normal bad guys, not what is stumbling around on the other side of the yard.
Dean nearly sprints for the back door, it is only twelve feet away, standing completely ajar, with the inviting safety of the family home right there, just a quick dash, and safety. Dean can slam and bolt the door before the it can react to his movement.
He shouldn’t be out here, because the last thing Papa said when the reports began on TV was that he was to stay in the house and he was not to open the door, not for anyone, unless it was Mama, or Branna, or Wooly. But the power had gone off soon after Papa had screeched away on his motorcycle, gone into town to get Mama and Genie and bring them home.
Dean wanted to know what was happening in the world and there was no TV to watch in the house, no lights, and it was just plain too dark in the house to stay there, and so Dean came out here, intending to stay out here in the fenced backyard, for just a few minutes; only when he came out here it was only a moment or two before the thing came staggering into the backyard—oh boy, his bad brother Wooly had left the gate open…again!
Boy was that punk going to get in trouble!
Now Dean cannot move. This isn’t supposed to be happening, it isn’t supposed to be possible, it is like seeing Santa Clause in the middle of your house in the middle of the night, at first you might react with something like glee, but within an instant that glee would stab bitingly into terror, and you’d know with terrible certainty that the glee and the terror were one thing, the same thing.
Because Santa is not real.
At ten years of age, Dean is practically fearless. As for fear, he has none, not for snakes, spiders, things that go bump in the night and the monsters under the bed. Those kinds of fears were conquered years and years ago back when he was a little boy.
But when something like this thing stumbles into your yard, groaning, grunting, its head twisted to the side and eyes staring sightlessly up at the gray sky, fear becomes something entirely real, something entirely now, livid and present and pressing.
Fear demands flight, running, dashing feet.
Get away, get away, just get away now!
Or, and this is worse, fear demands…fight.
Dean swallows. It feels as if a bird just went down his throat, nearly getting stuck halfway down. And a big bird. A big dead bird.
He peeks through the vines hanging from the bricks and sees the thing standing with its back this way, and it looks pretty much like an old man, a skinny old man, in fact Dean is certain that this thing is Mr. Clotch from about five doors down, the guy who always gives Dean and Wolf and Branna a hard, level look when they Razor past his neat lawn, their scooters whirring dangerously close to his perfect green grass.
Dean feels fairly certain he cannot fight with Mr. Clotch, not even when he was like this, stumbling around blind and moaning. Because this thing is not Mr. Clotch, and fact the thing is hardly a man at all, but something that had once been a man and now was just pretending to be a man and was not very good in its present body.
The boy tenses his legs, ready to run, his hand clutching a bunch of ivy, ready to use the greenery as leverage when he makes his move toward the house.
On your mark, get ready, get set…
He is about twelve feet away from the back door, maybe twenty feet at the most. And the thing is equally about fifteen or so feet away from both Dean and the door.
Dean, the door, and the thing; three points of a deadly triangle.
The boy crouches down slowly, in preparation of launching himself toward safety.
“Huh?” the thing croaks, at least it sounds like it said something, formed a word, though huh isn’t much of a word, not even for slang words it wasn’t much. But Dean’s ears perked up, because it sounded like the thing that might be Mr. Clotch had suddenly stood a little straighter, said something that was almost a word, and now seemed to be turning, slowly, its body twisting unnaturally around, weirdly around as if Mr. Clotch had somehow become part snake.
The thing turns around, its feet stumbling to catch up with its twisting body. It now directly faces Dean. He knows it cannot see him, because for one thing it is staring at the sky, and for another thing Dean cannot be seen behind all this hanging ivy on the brick wall. And for another thing, and this last thing is probably the most convincing, the thing right over there has flat, dead, unseeing eyeballs, so there is absolutely no way it could ever see the boy hiding here in the ivy.
Then the thing jerks its body, as if it was throwing its head at Dean, and the neck audibly cracks and the head swings down, drooping, Dean notices, instantly, that the eyes in the things ghastly face are now looking directly at him. Impossible as it seems, the thing stares at Dean where he hides against the brick wall, in all this covering thick ivy.
“Ahhhhh,” it says.
This noise sounds very different from all its previous moaning and animal noises. This noise makes all the difference in the world.
This is a noise of discovery.
This is a noise of triumph.
This is a noise of incredible hunger.
Yearning. Terrible lust.
Dean bolts, throwing his body toward the welcoming opening of the house.
At this precise moment the thing that might or might not have been Mr. Clotch comes jerking into life, its body shambling and half falling forward directly toward Dean. Its hands are now up and reaching, pale fingertips searching for the boy.
He screams as he feels the things that are supposed to be fingertips brush his shoulder as the momentum of their passing sends them past each other in the center of the triangle. Dean surges and plunges through the doorway into the house and as he spins to slam the door the thing is already there, lurching forward-stumbling after him, just seconds behind. Previously, the thing moved slowly, but it cannot be all that slow if it is here, now, its arm already entering the house. Dean is the fastest boy in his class and even in terror he cannot out-speed this thing at the door.
The boy slams the door closed but it bangs down on the thing’s arm.
“Get out!” Dean shrieks, throwing all his weight into the door. The steel door bangs again and again on the ball of the thing’s elbow. The boy imagines pinching off the arm in the door jamb, but the writhing appendage seems fairly indestructible, and the lustful fingertips scrabble at the back of the boy’s jean jacket.
“Mmmmmmm!” it croons, its leering face peering in the crack. Its eyes flat and lifeless but somehow seeing the boy. Or at least sensing him. Its teeth begin to snap and grind. Something viscous drips down its jaws, something greenish and dark, drool or blood or mucous or a mixture of all of these.
Or perhaps it is a goo much worse.
The thing half pushes the door open. Dean’s sneakers squeal on the tile floor as he is forced back.
“Get out!” Dean shrieks at the top of his lungs as his body surges again up against the door.
The thing is in mid turn as it attempts to get its whole torso into the room but the boy’s frantic surge of strength and weight catches it mid-stumble and the thing that might or might not be or once was Mr. Clotch stumbles backward, not much, but just enough that Dean’s surge slams the door.
With military precision Dean snaps the locks on both the doorknob and the deadbolt, his hands not even shaking.
Blam! The thing slams against the door from the other side. It seems too hard, this shuddering of the door, as if an elephant is attempting to gain access, bashing its big bloated head against the door.
This thing might bear a passing resemblance to old Mr. Clotch from several doors down, but whatever it is, it is much stronger than ever the old man could have been.
Dean turns and runs deeper into the dark house. All the power went off about half an hour ago and now the sun is low in the sky, with darkness approaching very soon. He has to find a place to hide, but as he dashes into the house a part of his mind addresses him too calmly: it saw you behind the ivy, so don’t try and hide from it, because it will find you.
“I didn’t even cry,” he says out loud, in wonder. The thing of it is, he usually bursts into tears over just about anything, for just about any reason. He can never seem to help it. And now it only took this thought, just this simple thought, and Dean bursts into tears.
It isn’t fair, Papa is supposed to be here, and Wooly and Branna. Only Dean is here, all alone, and a thing is just outside the door, slamming like an elephant against the steel door.
He stops.
He listens.
Silence.
The heavy banging has stopped.
Has the thing gone away?
Or is the door already burst open, the thing now in the house, perhaps just a few feet away, approaching swiftly, bizarre pale fingers extending like claws, even now almost here, just about to catch up with him?
He turns and runs again.
Z
Twelve-year-old Branna and her VBFF Jill stand frozen at the top of the stairs, looking down at Jill’s darkened house below. They feel no sense of guilt at their inaction, nor even a sense of impending peril despite what they have witnessed, if only with their ears.
The noises had finally stopped. First there had been the screams, Jill’s mom’s screams, which seemed to go on forever. And then the other noises, which the two girls could never admit the reality of what they had listened to for so many minutes.
Now, at least the sounds of ripping and chewing have ceased.
The two girls grip hands. Each have their free hand over their own mouth. Oddly enough they look like one little girl holding hands with a full-length mirror, or almost like identical twins, not because they look so much alike, but because they stand frozen, locked into the same shocked instance of mortal terror, eyes equally bulging, faces bone pale and ghastly.
They had heard things that little girls in a rational world should never, ever hear.
Occasionally, a small moan is heard from below. The seldom whimper. And it seems there are several different voices making low groaning sounds. Not that Branna and Jill are calculating the number of visitors below, or even thinking at all. They are blank slates, cold, hardly daring to breathe.
Then Branna moves her hand away from her own mouth and extends a numb finger, which she places vertically across her lips.
Jill’s great staring eyes roll at the movement of Branna’s hand and fasten on the finger across her friend’s lips. Jill nods, her entire being swelling behind her eyes, pale and stunned.
Branna, somehow, begins moving, if only a half-hearted walk. She heads down the stairs.
Jill, savagely, yanks her back.
Their faces are close, foreheads almost touching.
“Where are you going?” Jill whispers, and her breath sounds loud enough to be a scream.
“Let’s get out of here!” Branna whispers in return, eyes to the side of her head, intently watching down the stairs for any sign of movement.
“We have to help my mother,” Jill says, half pleading, eyes welling with tears.
“We have to get out of here,” Branna says, strongly pulling on her friend’s hand and arm.
Jill resists and they stand in a silent tug of war, Branna with one foot on the top step of the stairs, and Jill leaning almost comically backward as she yanks Branna toward the bedrooms.
Branna yelps suddenly and in one fluid motion pops up into the air, flies off the top step, and lands catlike two feet behind Jill in the direction of the back of the house, because shapes are even now emerging in the gloom at the bottom of the stairs. Many wobbling shapes.
Without pause Branna hauls her friend down the hallway into the nest of bedrooms at the back of the house. Jill does not struggle but is merely dragged docilely along behind her friend. Both of them had recognized Jill’s mother, or what was left of her, shambling forward toward the stairs at the rear of a pack of the things. What had been Jill’s mother was now barely ambulatory, but still, the thing came forward minus most of its limbs, but hungry like the rest of the crew, making that terrible keening noise that emerges from the hole that had once been her pretty face.
The things shamble and move as if they do not know how to walk or get around things, but as if they are drawn forward by the two breathing bodies above them. Two and three at a time they wedge themselves between the wall and the railing, mindlessly attempting to bull their way up to the second-floor slaughterhouse, tangling themselves up together and bursting out the wooden railing.
It truly seems like another world, just ten to fifteen minutes before, a world where the angst of plastic Barbie and Ken can keep two twelve-year-old girls giggling away the hours.
The terrible groaning and moaning of the things coming up the stairs is almost as horrific as what these things obviously intend to do to the two scrumptious morsels scrambling away from them.
Z
The things won’t go away. They stare up at him and grunt and growl, staggering about, reaching up. Stupid things.
The nine-year-old boy cannot quite decide what to do. When two them nearly caught him, the tree seemed to be the only choice, but now with darkness coming on he does not wish to remain up here surrounded by more and more of the things. The last time he was able to count them, there were twelve monster things, but since then many more had joined the party.
He does not wish to climb any higher, as he is afraid of heights, and he is not the best tree climber in the world, and there is absolutely no way of telling just how much longer this tree is going to be standing here! A whole bunch of times he has nearly slipped and fallen down to the mad monster party below. Oh, if he could only climb the way Dean does. Dean would be swinging from tree to tree making Tarzan yodels, mocking the creatures with his almost supernatural dexterity.
The tree shakes and yet again Wooly almost tumbles down ten feet to his horrific, ripping, tearing, and gnawing doom. The things are slow and clumsy, but they are incredibly strong. When two or more attack the tree at once, they actually make the tree shudder and lurch. Already they have splintered and ripped away all the lower branches.
The lowest branch now is about seven feet above the ground, and Wooly’s feet were on it only a few minutes before. Now he is about eighteen feet above the ground and this is a relatively small tree, only about a foot around at its base, with hardly any higher branches thick enough for his weight.
Looking about himself, the boy notices that a slim branch extends relatively near a second-floor window of the Barnes’ house. Normally Wooly would be too terrified to go out on such a slim limb, but right now his fear of heights ranks distinctly and distantly behind his fear of flesh-eating zombies.
The tree shudders and there is a loud crack of wood. Again Wooly nearly loses his perch as his body lurches violently back and forth. The things below seem to understand that they might be able to shake their chew-toy down.
“Papa!” Wooly shouts, not for the first time. Where in the world was his father? He should have been here hours ago! When he first saw the things, he thought it was a joke, even though he had just heard some scary things on Nick’s TV, which is why he had abruptly headed for home, but when he saw what two of them did to the mailman, he knew it was not a joke, and that what was happening was much worse than any scary movie, and at first he could do no more than stand and stare, but then when the mailman got back up, looking terrible and wet and hardly a human, Wolfy had started screaming: “Papa! Papa! Papa!”
And then they had been after him, and more came wandering up from both sides of the street, and Wolfy, no mean tree climber, had shot up this small tree faster than he had ever scrambled on any set of monkey bars or jungle gym.
Another loud crack of wood and another terrific shuddering of the tree decides him, and Wooly scrambles out along the thin branch toward the second-story window. He holds another thin branch above his head and moves as fast as he can out along the branch, but as he nears the window the whole tree begins dipping toward the house even as all the branches thrash and wave.
The things below have bent the slim tree far enough that they are grasping the lowest branches and many of them will not release their handholds and are being lifted up and off the ground in a merry dance. Their mouths are upturned, moaning, almost crooning for a plump little boy treat.
Wooly screams as he is snapped forward along the branch and hits the side of the house above the second-story window, much like Wile E. Coyote getting face-planted by the Roadrunner.
Then he is falling, and though his fingers and knees and even mouth scramble for some kind of purchase on the side of the house, he knows he is going down, down to them, and it is just too late. Surprisingly, he is suddenly not afraid.
Wooly finds himself alive, uneaten, and dangling by his fingertips. Somehow he has snagged the sill of that second-story window he had been moving toward. Below him, half the things have moved beneath him and are pawing at the wall, and even though they are many feet below reaching his feet, Wooly knows his fingers will not be able to hold out for many moments. Even now, a part of him suggests letting go, and letting God, or something like that. Just get it over with, he thinks.
“Papa!” he shouts but he cannot even hear his own voice because of all the things down there moaning and groaning and drooling.
They want meat. Desperately, for a brief moment, Wooly thinks about it. He is meat. And they want what he is. It is nothing personal. It is as if they believe he was created to be their food. Just like in nature, the carnivores eat the herbivores.
Wooly grits his teeth.
They are not going to eat me. I am not food.
He grunts with effort and swings his free arm up to grab the window ledge. Now at least he is not merely dangling by two fingers. He has both hands firmly on wood, and he is strong, and those things down there are really starting to get on his nerves.
“Shut up!” he shouts down between his dangling feet. He wants to jump down and start punching them. Kick them. He wants to put his big head down and butt them like a ram in their disgusting, growling bellies.
Wooly’s anger fuels his strength and he pulls himself up, straining all his muscles, doing an open-handed pull-up to bring his face up close to the window.
He screams and nearly falls backward. Blurred images rush the glass. Pale white shapes approaching.
Now Wooly is blank, without a direction to turn, because the things are in the house and in just a moment they will be smashing the glass by his face and seizing his body with their oozing hands. He thinks about just letting go, and falling.
Z
Dean peeks out a window just around the corner from where the thing had tried to smash down the door like a head-butting elephant. Immediately, he sees the old-man thing wandering listlessly. It seems harmless, slow, hardly a threat. Just a tired-out old man that must have been in some kind of car crash, or something. It looked like something you should only feel sorry for, not be in fear for your very life, and beyond.
It seems that the zombie—Dean has to face it, “zombie” is the proper word to describe the thing—has forgotten all about its near meal (Dean) of moments before. A few moments of pounding on the door, and then the zombie must have forgotten its purpose and wandered off, just as it had randomly strolled into the yard. When Dean went away from the door, the zombie lost all focus.
Dean goes to the front of the house and looks down the street via the big living room windows. He is careful not to move the blinds, as he does not wish to attract more attention.
He sees a group—a massive herd of zombies, maybe thirty or forty of them—in front of the Barnes’ house, about four doors down. It only takes a moment for Dean to realize that there is a boy at the top of a small tree, and that the tree is surrounded by a frenzied mob of the creatures, and that the boy at the top of the tree is his own little brother, Wooly!
“Wooly!” Dean inadvertently cries.
The things are shaking the tree. It looks too violent to be possible. And Wooly is barely able to remain in the tree. It is amazing he has lasted this long!
Dean punches his fist into his palm. He has to do something. Sure, Wooly is a pain, but he is Dean’s own little brother, and Dean loves him, and there is no way in the world he is going to let zombies eat his little brother.
Dean runs for the garage. He knows he is going to get in big trouble for what he is about to do (and truly, he does not know if he can actually pull it off), but he has to do something.
Z
“I saw my Mom! Oh I saw Mom!” Jill babbles, eyes wide saucers as Branna drags her down the short hall.
Branna knows the Barnes’ house well, as she has spent the night here many times, and she knows that Mrs. Barnes’ bedroom has a massive king-size bed right up near the door. Branna figures that is their best bet.
The group approaching behind them is making a terrible racket on the stairs, snarling and groaning. They sound like a men’s choir from Russia that had visited the school last year.
Branna enters the dark master bedroom and whips Jill past her into the room. She slams the door and moves the handle to locked. Of course this lock is worthless, and although Branna knows nothing about locks she realizes that probably her little brother could break the lock with his head if he tried. At least the door is thick.
Jill is not helping much. She can hardly walk, and in fact is walking in much the same way the horrible people are lurching on the stairs.
Branna has a word in her head, but she does not want to use it. She knows what they are, the horrible people. But there is no such thing as…that word. Up until recently Branna had believed in fairies, but for the past several years it had mostly been for fun. She had known there was no such thing as fairies.
But the things coming up the stairs, the things that had done those terrible things to Mrs. Barnes, there couldn’t be such things as those horrible people. Could there?
“We’re not supposed to be in Mom’s room,” Jill complains.
Branna leaps across the massive bed and hits the big wooden headboard from the opposite side, slamming her shoulder into the bed. The bed only moves half an inch.
“Help me, Jill!” Branna says, returning her body to pushing against the massive bed. She is able to move the bed perhaps another half an inch.
“Branna! Stop it! We’re going to get in so much trouble!” Jill half-screams, crossing her arms over her chest.
Branna struggles, calling up all her might, and she feels the bed move an inch or two. But she drops to her knees, exhausted, utterly spent of all strength. She hears a commotion of babbling and banging just outside the door.
“They’re coming,” Branna says, feeling defeated. There is no way to stop the burglars, or whatever they are. The horrible people.
Jill’s eyes suddenly come alive. She looks at the door and hears the approaching doom just outside the closed door.
“Push Branna! PUSH!” Jill cries, seizing her side of the king-size bed and dragging it toward herself. Before Branna can even react to her friend’s awakening, lend her own strength, Jill has forcefully wrenched the bed a full foot so that the headboard slides over just in front of the doorknob. Jill had always been stronger than Branna, her father said she was built like a fireplug, but this exhibition of strength shocked Branna almost as much as what was outside the door.
At that moment the pounding begins and the lock explodes and the door bursts inward. Thankfully, the door opens only a quarter of an inch before jamming against the headboard.
Jill vaults like a gymnast to the foot of the bed where she kneels and shoves her body against the footboard. The bed booms against the door and slams it.
Branna joins her friend at the foot of the bed and puts her body against the footboard. Just as she begins to push, the horrible people surge against the door and move it open a full two inches. For force of strength and weight, the two little girls do not stand a chance.
“PUSH!” Jill and Branna cry together and shove the bed against the door and manage to close it again.
“We have to get out!” Jill says, now suddenly strangely calm though gasping for breath.
“Let’s jump out the window,” Branna says bravely, though she knows she cannot ever jump out of a second-story window, as she is scared of high places.
“We can’t jump out the window,” Jill says, but just then the door booms open again, now four inches, wide enough for several solitary arms to emerge into the room and wave, fingers grasping and reaching. Faces and mouths appear above and below the waving arms and the door budges open another inch.
The two girls scream in perfect unison, sounding like a glee-club duet.
As one they retreat from the foot of the bed and go to the window. Jill begins to neatly raise the blinds but Branna seizes them and in terror rips the whole set of blinds and curtains from the wall and heaves the bundle back over her head as if it might impede the zombies forcing their way into the room.
There, now she had gone and said it, she had used the word zombie.
Jill, opening the window, screams in terror as a shape on the other side of the glass surges up toward her.
“Outside! They’re outside!” Jill shrieks.
Branna, knowing it is all over, reaches to punch the zombie on the other side of the glass, but then she recognizes him!
“Wooly!” she shouts, smiling. Her little brother has come to save them!
Z
(excerpt from VIRUS Z by Rodolphus)
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