J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

It took awhile, but she was finally put through to Officer Clapton, who sounded exhausted. “Tell Tim that his father and I will be by in an hour or so,” she said. “I’ve got a few calls to make and — ”

“Ms. Gaines, I think you should stay home. Have you seen what’s going on outside?”

“I know what’s going on, Officer Clapton, I’m not stupid!”

“Stay inside!” Officer Clapton was firm on this despite the tinge of exhaustion Naomi detected in his voice. “It’s dangerous out there. Tim is safe here, trust me.”

“I just learned something that I think you need to hear,” Naomi said.

Officer Clapton paused for a moment. Naomi could hear activity in the background; intermingling voices, ringing phones, a scurry of footsteps. When Officer Clapton came back on the line he sounded like he was trying to keep his voice down. “We’re tearing our hair out trying to keep this under control and all we keep hearing is that whatever is happening…is spreading . What have you got for me, Ms. Gaines?”

And then with Jeff riveted to the news, Naomi retreated to the kitchen and began telling Officer Clapton about her phone conversation with William Sawyer.

Time slowed to a crawl when you were confined to a jail cell.

It felt like Tim had been imprisoned for days at Brendan Hall. The more time dragged on, the more his nervousness grew. Every time he asked a guard what time it was he was surprised to learn not much time had passed. He was positive hours had dragged by, not minutes.

Officer Clapton had been absent for the past hour. Tim had spent much of his time pacing his cell, his mind racing. He had to get out of here. Mom and Dad would have called by now. They would have been here. They would not have left him at Brendan Hall to worry like this. It wasn’t in their nature.

Not having a TV to keep track of what was going on was killing him.

Listening to the muffled, frantic voices in the offices outside his cell was even worse.

Tim paced the room. There had to be a way out of here!

And then, suddenly, a possible solution presented itself.

Gordon Smith had made it up to Chelsea’s bedroom and was making quick work with his knife, stabbing and slicing and cutting, and was so into teaching that bitch a lesson that he failed to notice the sound of footsteps tramping up the stairs.

“What the hell?”

Gordon started suddenly, momentarily startled. He turned around quickly.

Chelsea stood at the threshold to her room. She looked stunned and shocked.

Gordon gripped the knife in his fist, still bent over her now slashed-to-ribbons bed and pillow.

Chelsea took a step backward into the hall. “ Dad !”

Panic surged through Gordon. Instead of compelling him to flee, he remained rooted to the spot as Chelsea took off back down the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs for her father.

OhshitohfucknowwhatthehelldoIdo?

Get the hell out of here !

As suddenly as the paralysis hit, it was gone. Gordon leaped for the hallway and headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Gordon hit the living room and bolted for the front door just as Chelsea and her father entered the living room from the den. “ Stop right there !” Chelsea’s dad bellowed.

Gordon turned around quickly, the hand holding the knife raised. He got a quick glimpse of Chelsea’s dad raising his arm, saw the black handgun he was holding, and then he heard a deafening BOOM!

The bullet punched through his chest and knocked him against the front door. Shit, that hurt , he thought, as he felt himself falling to the floor as the darkness overtook him.

Chelsea could not bear to be in the living room with Gordon’s body lying in the foyer of the house.

She remained at her father’s side as he stood in the kitchen, trying to call 911 on the phone.

“Dammnit!” Her father pressed the disconnect button, got another open line, and tried again. “911 is jammed.”

“Everybody in the world is probably calling,” Chelsea said. She felt weird, like she was viewing everything from an out-of-body point of view. As if it wasn’t bad enough that dead people were climbing out of their graves, that people were turning up missing in their homes, that they were being killed by the newly risen dead and, in turn, were rising from the dead themselves, it was even harder to believe her dad had just killed Gordon Smith.

Dad punched numbers into the phone again. “If I can’t get anybody at 911, I’m just going to call the main number for the Spring Valley Police station.”

“Are you even sure he’s dead?”

“I’m sure. I checked his pulse. He’s dead.”

Chelsea nodded. The shriek of police sirens rose from blocks away, heading to different destinations. Maybe if they headed outside, hiked over to Route 501 and waved down a cop car, they could get somebody to the house.

“Still busy.” Dad disconnected again and pulled the phone book out of the cupboard drawer. He began flipping through it. “Don’t worry, honey, everything will be okay.”

Chelsea barely heard him. She was looking out the window into the back yard, hoping somebody in the neighborhood heard the gunshot. She knew her dad wouldn’t get in trouble for killing Gordon — he’d clearly acted in self-defense and had left Gordon’s body the way it had fallen, even left the knife in Gordon’s hand, didn’t even touch the weapon — but she was still afraid for what might happen anyway. It didn’t matter what she or any of her friends did; if Gordon Smith and his crew were involved, they would make it look like she and Tim, and George and Al, were somehow to blame.

And for the first time in her life she didn’t really give a shit.

Realizing this made her feel more confident. It was exhilarating.

Dad found the listing he was looking for. He’d replaced his handgun in the inner pocket of his sport coat and was dialing the number, glancing at the phone book as he did so. Chelsea watched him from her spot at the kitchen table. Her back was facing the living room and the front door.

Neither of them saw or heard Gordon Smith rise to a sitting position in the foyer, then get to his feet.

He was growing weaker by the moment, but Scott Bradfield was determined to reach his destination or die trying.

He was dying anyway.

Scott didn’t even pay attention to the police cars that were whipping this way and that during his drive to the Gaines house. It was hard enough keeping Dave’s vehicle in a more-or-less straight line. His left eye was gone, and blood continued to drip into his swollen right eye from his flayed scalp, making it sting. The flesh of his right cheek had been torn away, revealing tendons and gristle and a hint of jawbone. His breath was coming in rasping gasps, made worse by the deep gouges in his trachea. Likewise, he’d lost muscle mass thanks to Dad’s strong fingernails — who would have thought Dad would have had the strength to tear his biceps to shreds with his bare fingers?

Well, he had, and he’d done a lot worse.

Scott still didn’t know how he didn’t wind up dead like Dave and Steve. The last thing he remembered was his father launching himself at him, knocking him backward down the basement steps. He remembered fighting his father off in the initial few minutes of confusion, and he remembered hitting the back of his head at some point. Before he blacked out he remembered the other zombies coming down the stairs after Dad. He didn’t remember anything after that.

The next thing he remembered was lying on the ground, his vision blurry, pain rocketing from his head and face and arms. Through blurred vision, he caught a glimpse of Dave being torn apart by the guy in the Dr. Chud T-shirt and he was pretty certain one of the other zombies, the short skinny one, was wandering around the basement with a bemused look in its eyes. Scott could tell he was losing blood, that he was seriously injured, but he was alive. And he had to get out of that basement.