Shaun Harbinger: Wildfire: Destruction of the Dead

Tanya took the loose end of the cord to the window and threw it out. It wasn’t long enough to reach the flagstones below so we would have to drop the last few feet, but that was better than jumping out of the window.

“I’ll go last,” I said.

Sam and Tanya looked at me with quizzical expressions, but Lucy knew why I had volunteered not to leave until everyone else was safe. She knew I was thinking of the lighthouse and Elena.

“Alex, it’s not your fault she died,” she said softly.

“I jumped before she did,” I said. “If I had just waited…”

“Then you’d both be dead,” she said.

“We don’t have time for this,” Tanya said, climbing up onto the windowsill and taking the cord in her hands. “I’ll go first and make sure the yard stays zombie-free. Follow me down in whatever order you like.” She leaned back out of the window and began abseiling down to the ground.

When she had dropped the last few feet and was standing in the yard, she called up, “Next.”

Sam looked at Lucy and gestured to the cord. “Ladies first.”

Lucy looked into my eyes and said, “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened to Elena.” But I think she knew that I would always carry some pang of guilt.

She went out through the window like a professional rock climber, not a trace of fear on her face as she leaned back and lowered herself to the yard below.

The banging on the door to the pub was now accompanied by the sound of splintering wood.

“You sure you want to go last, Alex?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Just hurry.”

Slapping me on the shoulder, he nodded and took the cord. “See you on the other side, man.” Then he was gone, climbing outside and dropping out of sight.

A few seconds later, he called, “Okay, Alex.”

I picked up the cord, noticing for the first time that my hands were sweating.

I heard a loud bang but it sounded much closer than the door downstairs.

It came again, and this time I saw the armoire doors shudder, then burst open. I jumped back in surprise, my back colliding painfully with the wall.

When I saw what was coming out of the armoire, my mind kept repeating, Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck!

The zombie was a child, a girl of maybe ten or twelve. She wore a long nightgown that had once been white but was now stained with blood and dirt. Her long hair was matted and oily, her yellow eyes wild. Her mouth and wrists were bound with strips of cloth that had probably also once been white but were now as dirty and bloody as her nightgown.

She reached out for me with her bound hands. Her voice was silenced by the gag but her wild eyes telegraphed her intentions. She glared at me with such malevolence that she might be a demon right out of a horror movie.

The shock of her sudden appearance put me off my guard. I swung the M16 at her but by the time the barrel was pointing in her direction, she swatted it away with her arms and jumped forward at me.

I dropped the gun and used my hands to keep her away. With her mouth bound, she couldn’t bite me, but her mouth worked beneath the cloth, instinctively seeking my flesh.

Her stench made me gag as I tried to hold her at bay. I wondered how long she had been festering in the armoire, rotting slowly among the clothes and shoes.

She lashed at me with her hands. As I fought her, I heard the door downstairs break open. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, along with low moans as the zombies staggered up to this level.

Outside, beyond the window, Sam called, “Alex, you coming down, man?”

They didn’t even know that I was fighting a zombie in here.

I pushed the girl away with as much strength as I could. She fell to the floor, leaving a dirty stain on the carpet as she struggled to get back up.

Grabbing the Walther PPK from its holster, I thumbed the safety off and shot the girl in the head. Blood and brains sprayed from the back of her skull and over the dressing table. Her body collapsed to the carpet and lay there.

“Alex!” Lucy called, panic rising in her voice.

I went to the window and clambered up onto the sill, breathing heavily. The first of the villagers crashed through the bedroom door. They barged into the room, snarling and gnashing their teeth.

I had no time to be worried about the distance to the yard below. I slung the M16 over my shoulder, slid across the windowsill, and tried to grip the paracord tightly enough to stop my descent.

I realized too late that my technique was all wrong. Instead of leaning back, letting the cord take my weight, and walking down the wall, I was hanging helplessly, my feet dangling in mid-air.

Through the window above me, I heard the zombies crossing the carpet, their stench adding to the already-foul air.

I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. My hands weren’t strong enough to support my entire body weight. I felt myself slipping, the cord burning into the palms of my hands.

Three zombies, a man and two women, appeared at the window, reaching down for me with their rotting hands.

One of the women caught my wrist and tried to pull me up. I fought her, holding onto the rope with all the strength I had left and kicking my feel wildly to make myself more difficult to hold on to. That made me swing from side to side, the rough stone wall scraping against my arms and legs. I managed to get the soles of my boots against the wall, giving me leverage to pull against the zombie’s grip.

I heard a shot from below and then the woman’s rotting head jerked back in a spray of black blood. She released my wrist suddenly. Because I had been pulling against her, the sudden lack of resistance sent me swinging backward before I crashed into the wall again. All the air in my lungs exploded out of me as my chest hit the hard stone.

“Alex, drop down, man.”

I looked down to see Sam standing there, arms outstretched as if he were going to catch me. He must have seen that I didn’t have the strength to hold on to the cord any longer. Tanya was crouched in the firing position, her M16 braced against her shoulder. I assumed she was the one who had shot the zombie so accurately.

“I’ve got you,” Sam said with a confidence that made me believe he could actually catch my weight and stay upright, like a father catching his daughter as she dropped lightly into his arms from a jungle gym at the playground.

I let go of the cord and went hurtling down toward him. Sam caught me in his arms, but my weight sent us both crashing to the flagstones. I lay on the cool stone for a moment, still winded and trying to catch my breath.

Sam staggered to his feet, looking as groggy as a drunk who had just fallen into the gutter and was trying to regain his feet. “Jesus, Alex,” he said. “You need to stop eating all those steak dinners, man.”

That made us all laugh. Our diet mainly consisted of canned food and frozen meat when we could get it, but none of us was eating heartily. I had lost a lot of weight recently but obviously not enough to make myself light enough to be caught from a high window.

“Hey, I’m big-boned,” I said.

That made us all laugh again. At the window, more zombies had appeared, reaching for us and moaning despite the fact they couldn’t reach us.

“Let’s get out of here before they figure out how to get around here,” Tanya said, picking up a couple of boxes and moving to the rear fence.

There was a trampoline in the yard. I wondered if it had belonged to the girl I had shot upstairs, the girl who had been shut away in the armoire.

“You should have dropped onto that,” Sam said. “You’d go bouncing over the fence in no time.”

“What happened up there?” Lucy asked me as she picked up a box of syringes.