The Last Days (12 page)

Cindy shook her head and held on to him for all she was worth.

As John crawled past the edge of the hole, the grisly voices below began to wail.

He heard Barb cry out. “Be careful. Don’t drop her John!”

John crawled past the hole and quickly made his way to the hole he had made in the roof.

He stopped and turned to watch Barb.

He could tell she was scared to death by the jerking uncertain movements of her body as she crawled.

She started to shake violently as she crawled by the hole and looked down at the bloody faces, groaning loudly as their jaws snapped open and closed, their teeth clicking loudly together as they stared at her with their dead lifeless eyes.

“Don’t look at them!” John called out.

Barb was frozen. She couldn’t turn her head. She stared and trembled unable to move.

John sat Cindy down on the beams under the hole in the roof. “Stay here and don’t move. OK?” He looked into Cindy’s terrified eyes.

“OK.” She whispered.

John crawled a few feet and glanced back. Cindy was sitting where he had left her. Her eyes were shut painfully tight.

His heart broke at the sight, but he turned back and crawled to Barb. He reached out and touched her arm.

Barb screamed and her body jerked around to see John kneeling in front of her.

The terror in her eyes calmed when recognition finally registered in her mind.

“Come on. I’ll help you.” John said as he pulled softly on her arm.

Barb started to move slowly towards him. Her face now focusing on John instead of the ghastly sight below.

John now reached out with his other hand and grabbed on to her other arm.

He pulled lightly.

Barb’s body began to relax and she started to push off towards John.

Suddenly Barb screamed and John felt himself being pulled forward. The side of his head thumped loudly against the beam running across the floor in front of him.

Barb screamed again and John desperately tried to tighten his grip on her arms. He felt himself being pulled forward.

John raised his head off the floor and looked past Barb. A boney gray hand was wrapped around her ankle and was viciously yanking her leg closer to the hole.

Barb was lying on the plasterboard between the beams.

John could feel himself being pulled slowly in short jerks as the thing below struggled to pull her foot closer to its snapping jaws. It felt like he was on the wrong end of a tug of war with a rabid Bull Dog.

John let go of Barb with his left hand. He began to frantically grab at the beams on the floor.

If he didn’t get a hand hold, Barb would soon be pulled down into the hole. He finally got a grip on one of the beams. He strained to firm up his grip as Barb continued to scream. He could not bear to watch Barb meet the same fate as Boots.

He took a chance and swung his body around to get his feet in front of him so he could push with his feet to get more leverage.

These bastards were strong. A lot stronger than they looked.

John braced his feet against the beam in front of him and pulled.

Barb began to slowly slide towards him.

John began to feel a small sense of relief as Barb moved closer towards him. But his eyes widened as he heard the loud cracking sound of the plasterboard under Barb. His heart felt like it was going to stop dead as the plasterboard fell to the floor below, followed by Barb.

The struggle had cracked the plasterboard from the hole in the ceiling, across the room to the outside wall.

The vicious jerking from the creatures below, compounded by John’s extra efforts finally caused the ceiling to let loose. The ten foot section of the ceiling could not hold any longer.

John found himself straddling the rafters as he held onto Barb. She hung down into the room below, only her head and shoulders were still in the attic with John.

John looked down into the room below. Only the height of the ceiling and a half dozen wooden beams was all that was between him and the creatures below that desperately wanted them.

The only bit of luck that saved Barb to this point was that the ceiling crashed down on the creatures out stretched arms, knocking them to the floor.

The creatures that were standing off to the sides began to make their way towards Barb’s legs that were now hanging down into the room, only a few feet above the floor.

The arms from the fallen creatures reached up as they stared at her legs and struggled to get to their feet.

John braced himself and pulled with all his strength.  Barb began to slowly rise up into the attic space, slowly but faster than the awkward creatures below could get up off the floor. John pulled as Barb’s legs searched for a ceiling beam so she could help get her body away from what waited below and back up into the attic space.

Between the two of them, Barb managed to get back up on the ceiling beams as hands once again grabbed at the air a few inches below the beams.

Barb didn’t want to be comforted. She wanted to get out of there. John helped her keep her balance as she stepped from one beam to the next. The dead followed below them and stared up through the now open ceiling. They followed them the entire way across the room.

John and Barb looked down nervously, watching the dead watch them, until they were at the hole in the roof.

When he was at the hole, he looked for Cindy. His heart rose up in his throat as he saw Cindy sitting on the small piece of plasterboard that hadn’t fallen into the room below.

John quickly grabbed her and pulled her close. He shook all over as he realized how close he had just come to losing his entire family.

He turned to Barb. “Crawl out that hole. I’ll hand Cindy up to you.”

With the dead directly below staring up at them as they stood on the ceiling beams, Barb didn’t need any further encouragement. She pulled herself through the hole and onto the roof.

The sun shining down directly on the roof had made the shingles hot and uncomfortable. But it was a discomfort Barb was happy to endure.

John pushed Cindy up into Barbs waiting hands.

When her feet cleared the hole, John pulled himself up.

John fell back on the roof and stared at the sky above.

Barb was holding Cindy against her front as she also laid back. She looked over at John and smiled.

John smiled back. Barb would never realize how much John needed that smile.

John got a strange look on his face as the phone in his pocket beeped twice.

Chapter 12

Barb looked at John. “It sounds like you have a text message.”

John sat up and looked around. The groaning sounds of the dead seemed to be coming from everywhere.

“It’s probably Trac-Fone texting me to let me know that they are having a sale. I can probably buy four hundred minutes for only fifty dollars,” John said sarcastically. “Buying more minutes for my phone isn’t high on my wish list right at the moment.”

The idea wasn’t high on Barb’s list either. She nervously looked back at the hole in the roof where they had just crawled out of the attic, she expected to see a long bloody gray arm reach out to grab them at any second.

“I don’t think they can get at us up here.” John said. But he had also thought they couldn’t get at him in the attic.

John looked over at Barb. “Just stay low for a minute. I’m going to crawl up to the peak and see what things look like around the house.”

He saw the fear in her eyes as she kept looking at the hole in the roof. He could hear the dead inside the house loudly protesting the fact that their prey had gotten away.

John knew the bastards would try their best to follow. The dead had roamed the house all night long searching for them. The house was small. It would take no more than three minutes to walk through the house and see that John and his family were nowhere to be found. But they had persisted hour after hour. They staggered around in the same space for hours never giving up.

John wished that his helpers at the car dealership would have had half of the dead’s determination. That would have made his job a lot easier.

“Either the dead were persistent.” John thought. “Or once they started to do something, the lack of mental activity in their dead brains made them keep doing what they were doing with no other thoughts to distract them.”

In either case it was bad news for John, Barb and Cindy. Once the dead discovered John was on the roof, they would never leave. They would either persist in their efforts to get at John and his family or they would just keep trying to get at him until something else distracted them to move on to something else.

Even if the dead couldn’t get up on the roof, they would stay forever. Without any food or water, John and his family didn’t have the option to sit up here forever.

John needed to find a way to get off the roof and get away from the house.

John crawled on his stomach to the peak of the roof. He moved slowly. He didn’t want to make any sudden moves that would attract the dead. He also moved slowly because he had never been very good with heights. The house was a small one story cottage, but to John and his fear of heights, twenty feet above the ground might have well been a hundred feet. He did his best to put that out of his mind. Fortunately his fear of the dead was greater than his fear of heights.

John rolled on his back to take a break before looking over the top of the roof to see what was in front of the house.

He could see the steep wooded bank behind the house.

His house sat in a wooded area that looked like years ago someone had cut a shelf out of a steep hillside. The steep wooded sixty foot bank angled down at a fifty degree angle. The ground then leveled off creating a two hundred foot shelf. His house was built on the level shelf. At the end of the shelf in front of his house, the yard ended and the bank of the creek started. The creek was about twenty feet wide. On the other side of the creek was where he parked his truck on a small pull off spot next to Route 711.

The only way to get over to his house from the road was a small bridge he had built to cross the creek. Trees shot up along the creek and around his yard.

His house was in a private quiet spot nestled at the bottom of a hill on a wooded lot beside a creek. When the realtor had showed him the house ten years ago, he knew this was where he wanted to live.

Barb fell in love with the place the first time he had brought her here. It had also been a great place to raise Cindy. They didn’t have to worry about her wandering out on the road and into traffic. There was only one problem. Cindy loved the water and her first steps when she had learned to walk were straight into the creek.

John listened to the sounds surrounding the house.

He looked back at the hillside. The hillside was clear of anything staggering around. That was good. Until they went on the hillside they couldn’t see him.

He finally built up his courage, rolled onto his stomach and pushed his head up over the top of the roof.

He quickly dropped back down below the peak.

“Shit!” John sighed. He wouldn’t be able to go that way.

Thousands of the dead staggered past his house following Route 711 on the other side of the creek.

The sounds coming from his house attracted the attention of some of the dead as they passed by.

They staggered off the road and into the creek.

John didn’t know if they were coming towards his house because they were being called to the house by the dead in his house crying out. Did they have the ability to communicate? Or were they just wandering by aimlessly without any thoughts going through their dead brains, just following the ones in front of them. When the cries of the dead at his house registered with the walkers out front, it distracted them and they just started off on a new course because it was different.

He raised his head again for another look.

Dozens of the dead broke off from the marching hoard and started towards his house. They didn’t give any indication that they knew they were walking into a creek. They just staggered along focused on the house.

Some slipped on the muddy creek bank, others waded into the creek, fell and were washed down stream. Some made it across and just continued moving forward.

He didn’t know how many of those things were below trying to get into his house, but he knew how ever many were down there now, there would be a lot more before too long.

John slid down the roof, past the hole and next to Barb.

She looked over at him.

He couldn’t bear to tell her what he had seen out front. He just looked at her and shook his head quietly.

“I’m going to check out the back yard.” He smiled.

She didn’t return his smile, she looked worried.

John continued down to the bottom where the roof ended. The roof wasn’t steep and he moved down easily without too much worry about rolling off the roof.

John looked at the hillside again. It was still clear.

He pushed his head over the edge for a fast look.

In the small back yard area there were about a dozen figures staggering around the corner of the house, following the others that were trying to go in the back door.

The house must have been full because the dead in the back of the house kept walking into the back of the group that were bunched up at the door, unable to get inside no matter how much they struggled.

John pulled his head back and laid on his side.

He didn’t know what he was going to do. With the dead coming across the creek, the house was going to be surrounded and he would be stranded on the roof. With how persistent these bastards were, he knew his family would starve before the dead would wander off. Worse yet, they could get so weak that they would end up rolling off the roof into the waiting dead below.

Two staggering figures caught John’s eye. He watched as they moved past the house and headed towards the hill.

John held his breath. “Shit! They get on the hill and spot us up here, we will never get off this roof.”

John watched feeling frustrated.  He didn’t know what to do. His only hope appeared to be that something would distract the dead and draw them away from the house.

What could do that, he didn’t have the least idea. As single minded as these things seemed to be, his families chances of survival would not be very good.

This could be the end of the line for him and his family.

They would be stranded here, waiting to die.

John watched the dead stagger by. He looked up on the hill to see what had attracted them to the hillside.

Three small rabbits hopped along the hillside.

He wanted to yell at the rabbits. He wished he had something to throw at them to chase them away.

They were only rabbits, but he didn’t want to see any living creature get attacked by the dead. If the attack on Boots was any example, the end would not be very pretty or humane.

He was ready to turn his head and go back to Barb and Cindy. He didn’t want to watch. He didn’t want to see what was going to happen to these rabbits. He didn’t want to be reminded of what his family’s fate would soon be.

John was ready to turn and climb back to his family when the first creature fell on the ground and rolled on the ground.

He stared.

The creature struggled to get up as the second creature fell.

The two creatures climbed to their feet and started again. Again they fell to the ground and rolled backwards.

Again and again they got up, but ended up falling.

John smiled. “The bastards can’t climb!”

What had happened in the attic flashed across John’s mind. The dead had only been a few feet below them, but he hadn’t seen any of them make it up into the attic. “The clumsy awkward bastards can’t climb!”

John had an idea, but he would have to act fast. He saw an opportunity to get his family off the roof and out of reach of the dead, but with the dead coming across the creek, that window would soon close.

He crawled back up to Barb. “I think I see a way to get us off the roof, but I have to go back down in the attic for a few minutes.”

Barbs eyes widened. After Barb’s ordeal in the attic earlier, he could tell what he had said scared her.

“I don’t want to go back down there. Why do we have to go back down there?” Barb pleaded.

“No.” John whispered. “You and Cindy are staying here. I have to go back down and get something. You wait by the hole. I’m going to hand some things out to you. Just put them by the hole on the roof. It shouldn’t take long. When I come back we are getting out of here.”

“I don’t like this John.” Barb pleaded again.

“I’ll be fine.” John replied. “Just don’t let anything I hand out roll off the roof.”

Barb nodded nervously as John stuck his head in the hole to take a look first. He had decided the dead couldn’t climb. He didn’t want to find out the hard way that maybe some of them could. He didn’t want to lower his legs through the hole into the waiting jaws of one of those things.

John smiled at Barb as he crawled above the hole and slid down feet first and disappeared.

The dead began crying out as they saw John come back into the attic above them.

John looked down at all the gross grisly faces staring up at him.

He began to move across the attic beams. The lifeless eyes followed his every move. As he moved across the attic, the mob of the dead drifted as a group under him, waiting for him to fall down into their outstretched arms.

Their jaws worked and the loud snapping sound of their teeth echoed off the inside of the roof around him.

First he retrieved the board he had used to punch the hole through the rotten board.

He moved back over to the hole and pushed it out the hole. He waited until he felt Barb pull the board from his hands.

Next he went to the plasterboard that was still attached to the beams where Cindy had sat waiting for John to come back to her.

John carefully began to pull the pieces loose from the beams. The outstretched hands of the dead grabbed at his hands as he worked, just missing his hands by inches.

John removed three fair sized chunks before starting back towards the hole in the roof. He wanted to get a few more pieces, but the hands of the dead were getting too close and were creeping him out.

He pushed the pieces up through the hole, one by one, and waited for Barb to take the pieces.

After she took the last piece, he pulled himself up through the hole.

He took a deep breath. He was amazed at how good the air up on the roof smelled and felt compared to the air in the attic. The smell of death hung heavy in the air in the attic. He was so focused on getting his family out of the attic before, he hadn’t noticed the stench in the attic.

As he laid on the roof catching his breath, it was all he could do not to throw up.

“Are you OK?” Barb asked holding Cindy tightly. “You look green.”

John took another breath. “I’ll be OK. It’s really gross down there.”

Barb and Cindy looked terrified at the sounds that rose out of the hole next to them.

John sat up. “We are going to get off this roof now.”

Barb glanced around the roof. John could read the question on her face. “How?”

“We are going to slide down to the bottom of the roof.” He said. “I’m going to throw these pieces of plasterboard over and hit the side of the shed. I’m hoping the sound will distract the creatures. After I throw them, we are going to wait a few seconds and then we are going to drop down off the edge of the roof.”