Generation Dead - 07

Chapter 1

“They’re right outside the door.”

“What?”

“They’re right outside the door.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.  What?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re a pain in the ass. “

“That’s not nice.”

“Oh, so you
can
hear me, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I shook my head as I chuckled softly to myself.  It was the same old story with my older brother Jake.  He never took the dead seriously, never felt like they were any real danger, and as a result, managed to put us into some serious situations time and time again.

“Where’s Julia?”  Jake asked.

“
She’s probably
somewhere
safe where she doesn’t have
to worry about the zombies
that
you
managed to alert.” We had been through this before, and I
had
never seen anyone with so little concern for their own safety when it came to becoming infected.

“
Whatever,
” Jake said. 
“May as well get this over with.”
  He walked over to the bedroom door and hefted his weapon.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a mace.  It had a twenty-inch handle, topped with a hunk of metal shaped into four pyramids.  The pyramids were barely two inches high, but they were devastating on zombie skulls.  The best part was they rarely broke open the skull.  They just crushed it inward. 

“Wait!” I whispered, but it was too late.  Jake had already opened the door.

Before the door was even open, Jake was swinging his weapon, crushing the skull of the nearest zombie and cracking the head of another before the zombies even knew what was happening.  Jake took a step back and let the two
of them
fall, making the rest of the zombies come to him through the narrow doorway.  As the next ones tripped and fell, Jake killed them with silent efficiency.  All I had to do was watch.  My own weapon was out, but I had a feeling Jake wasn’t going to need my help. 

Suddenly, I heard a noise.  At
first,
I wasn’t sure what it was, but then I heard the distinct sound of someone yelling for help.  That can’t be Julia, I thought.  She was way too good at what we do to get
herself
into any trouble. 
She
certainly wouldn’t be yelling, especially considering where we were.

I heard it again, and this time it was louder and much clearer. “Aaron!
Help!”
  Yep, it was Julia, and yep, she was in trouble.  Problem was
,
Jake was blocking my exit, cheerfully killing zombies as they kept trying to get at the meal that just wouldn’t
lie
down quietly and be eaten.

I looked out the window, made some mental calculations, and cursed. “Fuck it.”  I opened the side bedroom window, and climbed out, bracing my feet on the windowsill of the building we were in and the one next door.  Barely three feet separated the buildings in this part of Chicago, so it wasn’t difficult to do.  I braced my foot on a spot two feet higher,
and then
pushed hard, bringing my other foot up
and to a higher
place
on the other building.    I tried to ignore the zombies on the ground below me, which from my perspective, looked
as if
they were reaching up for my crotch.  That sight will moti
vate you more than anything
you
c
ould imagine.

I reached the next floor up and thankfully got my feet on the sills.  I took a breath,
and then
looked in the window at the situation.  There were six zombies in the bedroom, and they were gathered around what looked to be a closet.  I had a feeling I knew where Julia was. 

That was the good news.  The bad news was
that,
since I was on the ledge right next to them, they couldn’t help but see me.  The ones closest to me almost seemed surprised that another idiot was so close, just for the taking.  They came over to the window and began scratching and beating at it with dead, skeletal hands.  Two of them pressed their dark grey faces to the window, smearing it with foul fluids and biting at it with
rotton
teeth. 

Since I had to break the window anyway, I figured I
might
as well make it productive.  I took out my hand axe, the one with a pointed spike opposite the axe head, and took careful aim.  It wasn’t easy to swing something with any degree of accuracy
while being
spread-eagled between two buildings,
and
forty feet in the air. 

The spike
crashed
through the window and punched through the forehead of the zombie nearest me. 
Its
eyes rolled up into
its
head and I jerked the spike free as it fell.  I killed the next one that stuck
its
head out the window, and barely managed to get my leg out of the way of a shorter one that came reaching for a snack.  I spiked his head,
and then
looked full in the face of a zombie that came charging through the window.  I could do nothing to stop him, but I did watch him fall down between the buildings and land on another zombie with a wet, splattering sound.

I had both feet on the ledge of the opposite building, and held myself away from the broken window with my axe.  Another zombie came charging out and fell the same way with a disappointed splat at the end.  The next two followed suit, and there was a pile of
arms, legs
and writhing zombies underneath me that looked really disgusting.  I couldn’t help myself.  “Get a room!” I called down to the zombies.  I think one answered me.

I looked through the window and saw the coast was
clear.
I carefully climbed through, trying not to cut myself on the smeared glass.  The room was identical to the one I had
just
left, except this one was decorated in a much more subdued style.  The dresser was open, and clothing lay on the floor, signs of a hurried exit.  The bed was unmade, and
judging
by the thin layer of dust, no one had been
there
in
over
twenty years. 

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I often wondered if I looked like my dad when he was my age.  There
weren’t
any pictures of him from that time, and it was hard to imagine Dad’s face
as
younger, unlined, and free from worry or troubles.  I had my mother’s eyes, according to my
dad
, but everything else was his.  At twenty years old, I was a couple of inches over six feet, and weighed a good two hundred pounds.  Physically, I was a match for my father.  That was what Mom had said.  I took her at her word, since Dad always seemed much bigger.

The closet doorknob twisted slowly and I called out to Julia.

“All clear!”

Julia opened the closet door and stepped out.  She was a petite woman,
blonde
and blue eyed, with a quick laugh and bright smile.  She was the object of attention wherever we went, and there were some times I think she might have started fights on purpose. 
Nevertheless,
Julia was about as good a zombie fighter as you could hope for, and she had a knack for always finding what we were sent out for.

Julia looked around and seemed surprised
that
the room was clear of zombies.  She stepped over to the
window,
looked out,
and whistled
softly.

“Nice work.  Where did you come from, the stairwell?” She looked back at me.

“Nope.
Came up from the floor below.
 
Through the
window.”
  At her quizzical
look,
I shrugged.  “Jake was blocking the door.”

“Figures.”
Julia tossed her hair back and retied her ponytail.  She went over to the corner and retrieved her weapon, a short handled spear with a long blade on one end and a metal knob on the other.  When she started spinning with that thing, zombies tended to lose a lot of
themselves
.

“What happened?” I asked.  I was
rather
put out that Julia hadn’t actually thanked me for saving her butt, but maybe she would later.

“Got surprised, that’s all.  I thought there were some on the other side of the pocket door, but didn’t figure they
could
get out.”  Julia shouldered her backpack and picked up a small duffle bag from the closet.

“Did you get what we needed?”  I tried one more time to see if I might get a thank you, but I had a
feeling,
it was a lost cause.

Julia looked at me in an irritated manner. 
“Of course.”
  She looked at the window.  “You want to use the stairs or head out the way you came?”

I was starting to get
angry
, so I just said, “After you.”

Chapter 2

Julia went to the back of the building where the stairs were.  The kitchen was cluttered and in disarray, but had nothing we could use.  Besides, any foodstuffs would likely kill us quicker than the
zombies, just
in a more painful manner.  I wasn’t a big fan of trying to crap myself to death.

At the stairwell, another zombie decided to make an appearance.  This one was older,
and had
probably been in the house for a long time.  It was a woman, and her threadbare clothing hung off her thin frame like a towel draped over a broomstick.  Julia didn’t even bother to slow down.  She kicked the zombie down the
stairs.
I could hear the ghoul’s bones cracking as it bounced and clattered down the steps.

We followed along, turning in time to see Jake rapping the zombie on the head with his mace.

“Here you
are,
” Jake said to me.  He looked at Julia.  “You got what we need?”

“Right here, as
usual,” Julia
said, lifting the duffle bag.  She gave Jake a little smile and I was starting to feel a bit put out.

“All right.
  Let’s get back.  I want to be in the water by
dark,
” Jake
said, moving down the stairs.

I followed behind Julia, and to put it mildly, I was feeling a trifle angry. 
However,
as usual, I bit down the thing I wanted to say and just stayed quiet.  We moved to the first floor, and there were about fifty zombies milling about outside on the street. 
They
were the ones that had followed us from the lakefront, and while we had reduced their numbers somewhat in the beginning, they were back up to
full
strength quickly.  That wasn’t hard to do, since the city had about a million or so zombies still walking around from the first days of the world’s end.

Jake looked out the window and sized up the situation.  “We can bust out of here pretty
quickly
, but we’re going to have to distract them again.  Aaron, why don’t you make some noise out back?”

I looked at Jake for a second before I answered. “Why don’t
you
make noise and
I’ll
lead the way.”  I hadn’t crossed Jake before on his leadership, so I surprised him with my response.  To tell the truth, I surprised myself even more.

Jake
slowly
turned to face me.  His brown eyes tended to look black when he was angry, and they were getting there right now.  “I hate repeating myself, little brother.  Go back to the rear of the goddamn house and make some noise.”