He got a crash course in combat weapons training, was given the SKS and plenty of ammunition, and assigned a position on the barricades. The siege lasted eleven days before the undead finally broke through. By then, the survivors’ numbers had dwindled to ten, and their dead companions had wreaked as much havoc inside the facility as the zombies outside.
As the creatures stormed the hospital, Leigh stuffed a sack with vials of antibiotics, a few bottles of water, and some candy from a vending machine. He grabbed his rifle and extra ammunition, and fled through an unguarded fire door. He made it two blocks before being forced to hide inside the dumpster.
And now here he was.
“I’ve got to get home,” he said aloud. “I promised Penny that I’d be back.”
He lay there in the garbage, cold and wet and miserable, until it was dark. Then he crept out of the dumpster and, using the darkness and the rain for cover, walked out of the alley.
The downpour immediately soaked through his clothing, and he was drenched before he’d gone a dozen steps. The rain blinded him, but Leigh hoped that it would lessen the zombie’s visibility as well. Leigh Haig wasn’t a religious man, not after everything he’d seen these last twenty days, but he prayed now.
“Please Lord, if you really are still up there, just let me make it home. Let me get back to Penny without meeting any of those things.”
Thunder rumbled across the sky.
Leigh walked all night, and whether it was the weather, or the darkness, or someone really answering his prayer, he didn’t encounter a single zombie. Shortly before dawn, he reached the estate their home was located in. His legs ached and his feet were blistered from his wet shoes rubbing against them on the long walk home. His nose was running and he’d developed a chronic cough.
Despite his misery, Leigh smiled when he passed by the little park where he and Penny often walked. His smile broke into relieved laughter when he caught sight of their home. The two-story brick house was just as he’d left it, complete with the red X on the door.
“Penny…”
Leigh broke into a run. He fumbled for his keys, slid them into the lock with trembling fingers, and burst inside.
“Penny? I’m home!”
There was no answer. The couch was empty, the blankets tossed onto the floor.
“Penny?” he called out again, his voice cracking.
“Where are you?”
Leigh sat the rifle and sack down on the floor and began to search the house
Please, please, please let her be okay. Just let her be okay.
His spirits soared. She was alive! He ran to the stairs and started up them.
“I came back,” he shouted. “And I brought medicine. Just like I promised.”
Leigh halted halfway up the stairs. Something stank, and he heard flies buzzing.
Leigh glanced back downstairs at his SKS. It seemed to him that the weapon was ten kilometers away, like everything else from his journey.
“Penny…”
The thing that had been his wife stepped into the light.
Leigh Haig’s tired legs gave out beneath him, and he could walk no more.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:51
“Chapter fifteen, verse twelve, tells us; ‘Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?’”
Chris Shackelford rolled his eyes. “God, I’m getting sick of this shit.”
“I thought you two were Christians?” Klinger looked up at the church basement’s ceiling.
“We are Christians,” Dawn Shackelford said, loading more hollow points into her .357 Ruger.
“But what’s going on upstairs isn’t worship. It’s blasphemy.”
Klinger nodded. “Word. Few days ago, I met two guys traveling north, to Jersey. Jim Thurmond and a preacher named Martin. I was never much for church either, but that Martin was cool. Not like Reichart. That guy’s fucking crazy, man.”
“So we agree?” Chris asked. “We’re really going to do this?”
“I’m in,” Klinger said. “But this is your town. Where we gonna go?”
Chris handed Klinger the side-by-side Browning 12 gauge, and double-checked his Sig Sauer P228
9mm. “Basement of an empty house? Grocery store?
Another church?”
Klinger snickered. “I’ve had enough church.”
Lynchburg was home to Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. The famous minister had his hand in everything, dictating all that happened. As a result, the town had more churches than anywhere in America.
“But if there is no resurrection of the dead,”
Reichart’s voice thundered from upstairs, “then is Christ not risen; and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith in vain?”
“They’ll come looking for us soon,” Dawn warned. “We’ve been gone too long.”
Klinger’s face turned pale. “Probably nail us up on one of those crosses, just like the others who dissented.”
“Let’s do this, then.” Chris took his wife’s hand and squeezed. “You okay?”
Dawn shook her head. “No, I’m not. Look at us, Chris. We’ve changed. You were an accountant for Genworth Financial. I taught fifth grade math and history. I played the violin for twenty-six years. Gardening, target shooting —and now…”
“You can really shoot?” Klinger asked.
“She can put a grouping of six tight enough to cover with the bottom of a soda can.” Chris pulled Dawn close and kissed her forehead. “Things have changed, honey. You know that. It’s not the same world out there. We’ve got to worry about us.”
“What about the others. Are we just going to let Reichart and his followers do this?”
“He’s probably killed them already. Right now, they’re turning into zombies.”
“But what if they’re not,” Dawn whispered.
“What if they’re still alive on those crosses?”
“We don’t have a choice. It’s just us now. Mom, Dad, Bryan, your folks, April, even Scotch and Sandy—they’re all gone. We’ve got to live. Me and you.”
“And me,” Klinger added.
Chris grinned. “Yeah, and our new friend Klinger, the ex-pro surfer.”
Weapons drawn, they left the Sunday school rooms and crept up the stairs. Reichart’s mesmerizing voice swelled louder as they entered the narthex.
“See now, brothers and sisters. See how they rise!
Behold the mystery. There were asleep, and now they are changed.”
