Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

The zombie woman landed on her face, and her teeth broke out as she made hard contact with the ground. As she rose, Paul noticed white jagged pieces of her shattered incisors poking through her bottom lip like shards of glass used on top of rock walls. She looked in sorry shape, but yet she rose. Paul sat there, watching her in stunned silence as she got to her feet. Her knee-high skirt did little to hide the hideous sight Paul was gazing at. The zombie advanced slowly, her left foot landing normally on her sneaker-clad appendage, her right foot and a full six inches of her lower leg folded away at a ninety degree angle as it came down. Paul could hear the bones in her leg as she cut through her calf muscles and made contact with the pavement. The sound was mind-numbingly sickening. It sounded like a wet fish being slapped down on a marble table, Paul was mesmerized with the horror of it. The zombie cared little for the irreparable damage she was committing as she approached. Blood spurted from the veins and arteries in her leg as she ripped through the tender vessels.

Paul pulled up his rifle, realizing at this distance even he would have a hard time missing. He pulled the trigger, or more correctly “tried” to pull the trigger. He was not even rewarded with the satisfaction of a dry fire. He tried the trigger again, nothing. He turned the rifle over, an expended brass cartridge was lodged half in and half out of his rifle. Paul pulled back repeatedly on his bolt, the piece would not move and Stumpy was gaining.

Paul turned over and used his gun as a makeshift cane to prop himself up. He thought sourly that this would be the time it shot, while it was firmly entrenched in his armpit. How many horror movies have I seen like this? Paul asked himself as he limped away, the injured zombie nearly on his heels. His ankle was swelling. He could feel it testing out the boundaries of the boot he was wearing. If he took it off now, he’d be lucky if he could get a sock to stretch over it.

Paul nearly spilled a second time as he paused to look over his shoulder. Stumpy was losing ground and height as she continually splintered the bone in her calf. A little while longer and she’ll be down to her knee , Paul thought. Would she keep trying to walk with an exaggerated swaying gait? Or would she drop to her knees and come after him that way? Paul really didn’t want to wait, fearful that at any moment, he would run into another zombie, and with no other weapons than an unwieldy club, he wisely decided that confrontation would not be in his best interests.

It was another two hundred yards before Stumpy fell over. Paul heard the thud and possibly a low soft moan, of that he was not sure. The zombie opted for the crawling mode of transportation. Paul was relieved; the savage pain in his ankle was impeding his forward progress. He could slow his pace down now, he was in much less danger from her now than he had been moments earlier, but he was still a long way away from safe.

When Paul pulled his gaze from his traveling companion, he realized that he was on the fringes of a residential area. The house on his immediate left had been abandoned long before the zombies had come. Signs warning of danger and to not trespass were displayed prominently on the front door. It looked to Paul like the only thing holding the house up was force of habit.

The house on the right did not look much better, but as of yet, had not been officially condemned. He thought about going into that house, but it looked eerily similar to a house that a young couple had gotten trapped in, in some zombie movie Mike had made him watch. Paul was under the impression that if a movie didn’t star Charles Bronson, it wasn’t much worth watching. He had suffered through it to appease Mike, but mostly because Tracy had made some unbelievably good queso dipping sauce and he had brought with him a near insatiable case of the munchies.

He limped further down the road. The next house on his left looked like it could stop half the Mexican army. And if they couldn’t get in, what would be his odds?

“I’m going to the next one,” Paul said as he turned to look at his pursuer. Her arms and hands were bloodied, but yet she still came. “It’d be way cooler if you’d stop,” Paul told her, but she paid him no heed.

The next house had some promise, scary promise, but promise all the same. The front door was intact, however, it was wide open. That was not a common sight these days. “Well,” Paul reasoned, “whatever got in at least had a way out.” That reasoning held sway with a zombie, but if humans had ransacked it, little of any value would be left for Paul to use. “At this point all I want is a chair and two aspirins. That would be just about the best thing I could think of right now. Twenty-four Mapledog Lane it is,” Paul said as he made way for the door. Stumpy changed her course to match Paul. “I’ll get us some tea ready,” Paul told her.

The house was pitched in darkness; Paul expected no less. He did a quick scan of the entry room and then immediately opened up the drawn shades to let in some much needed diffused curtain light. Dried blood coated the far wall and even abundantly dotted the ceiling. Bits of matter, the origin of which he cared not to dwell upon, littered the small throw rug and wood floor.

Paul looked out the door. His traveling companion was still making her way towards him, but was still an extremely safe distance off. Paul still felt a powerful urge to shut the door though and try his best to put her out of his mind. But he feared that a much more mobile threat might still be lurking in the household and he wanted to be able to get out as soon as possible. Against his better judgment, he left the front door open.

“You make sure to ring the bell before you come in!” he shouted at the zombie.

She did not either confirm or deny her intention.

Paul kept his rifle out in front of him as he went from room to room. At this point, it was no more than an early detection system as the barrel would strike something first, but as a weapon, it was almost useless. He wouldn’t even be able to get a good full extension on his swing in these tight quarters. The house was a disaster, but from the looks of it, not by looters. A battle had been waged here, but the chunks of fingers and bits of bone scattered around led him to rightly believe that the zombies had come out victorious in this round. Animals had done a fair amount of damage also, getting to anything in a carton or box, Paul laughed a little as he stepped on a small pile of Sugar Smacks.

“I guess even raccoons have enough sense to stay away from that stuff,” he said to the empty room. As he got past the kitchen and further into the house, the smell of disuse became prevalent. It wasn’t the overwhelming stink of the dead or the undead, just stagnant water, mold, mildew and old food. He never thought he would be thankful for those odors. Blood was the dominant color as he entered into the aptly named dining room.

“This must have been the last stand,” he said reverently. A small candelabra was on the ground, with matted bloody hair stuck to the bottom. “About as good a weapon as my own,” he said as he made sure to step around it. The copious amount of blood on the floor was strewn with footprints and animal tracks. Some were hand-like, paw prints of raccoons, but the more disturbing were the various sized prints of dogs. Paul had a healthy fear of dogs since he had been bitten as a youth. But they all looked old, human, zombie and animal alike. The blood had dried long ago and it appeared that nothing currently shared the house with him.

He did one more run-through of the entire first floor of the ranch. Thankful that the small home did not have a second floor. He locked the basement door on the first pass by. He blamed his sprained ankle and the pain it would cause to go downstairs on his decision to lock the door, but mostly he was just afraid of going down there. The basement from his vantage point on the top of the stairs, did not appear to have any ambient lighting coming in and he couldn’t see the point in stumbling around in the dark looking for anything, especially when he didn’t know what was down there, if anything worthwhile.