“Let me eat first, dude,” Victor replied.
“Eat later, come on,” he said as he grabbed his shotgun.
Victor stood to his feet and grabbed more food. He ate as they walked into the garage. There was a ladder leaning up against a wall and above that, was a hole big enough to fit two people through. Kyle held on to the shotgun as he climbed. Victor followed after Kyle was already on the roof. Victor made it through and was instantly bombarded by questions.
“What did you see? Was the little girl an Existing Dead chained up to a wall?”
“No,” Victor answered. “She’s dead. At first I thought that she was a bunch of blankets, but when I looked closer she had a hole on the top of her head.” Victor motioned to his head where the hole was.
“Fuck,” Kyle muttered. “I knew something was up.”
“What are we going to do?” Victor said.
“We’re going to keep playing along.”
“Play along?” Victor said, scared. “I’m not going to go back in there and pretend that Susie’s daughter is alive and well when I know she’s not.”
“We have no choice. Look,” Kyle said, pointing out onto the streets.
Susie was right. The streets were covered with Existing Dead. Just in Kyle’s field of vision there were a hundred of them. They shambled around without a care, totally ignoring the other dead around them. Every so often, one of them would moan, causing a chain reaction of endless groans.
“We can’t leave right now. We have to stay the night. At least now we know what’s going on, so we have to play along. I don’t want to do it any more than you do, but we have to.”
“No we don’t,” Victor said with a sinister look on his face. “We can kill her.”
“What?”
“We can just kill her and then we don’t have to worry about it.”
“We are
“Fine,” Victor said. “Can we at least sleep up here? I’d feel safer if we did.”
“It’s fucking twenty degrees out here. We’ll freeze, even with a shit load of blankets. Just listen to me, we’ll be fine. I’ll stay up and keep a look out. If Susie begins to go nutty I’ll take care of her. Okay?”
“Fine dude,” Victor said, looking out onto the streets. “But if I die in my sleep, I’m going to come back and bite your ass.”
Kyle smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
Victor and Kyle stayed on the roof for another ten minutes staring at the scene of the dead below. The moonlight shone brightly in the sky, causing an eerie glow.
“Do you see that?” Kyle asked, staring out into the distance.
“Are those airplanes?” Victor said as he gazed up at five lights in the sky flying in a V-shaped formation.
Chapter Seven
“Go call Susie, quick,” Kyle told Victor.
“Fuck that, I’m not talking to the crazy lady. You go get her,” he replied.
“Fine, then scream through the hole and maybe she’ll hear you.”
Victor stuck his head through the hole and began yelling as loud as he could. “Ms. Susie! Come quick.” He repeated himself several times.
Kyle continued staring up at the lights, then quickly glanced at the dead. They were being drawn to the house by Victor’s yells. “That’s enough, Victor. I’m sure she heard you,” he said.
The door opened and Susie popped her head out. “Shhh,” she said. “Angel is still sleeping. You’ll wake her.”
Victor’s stomach cringed. “Come here,” he managed to say.
“What is it?” she replied, but Victor had already stuck his head out of the hole.
“Susie,” Victor cried out. “Something’s going on out here. Come up and look.”
Susie walked up to the ladder and began climbing. Victor walked as far away from the hole as possible. She made it to the top and poked her head out.
“Look at that,” Kyle said, pointing into the sky.
Susie looked puzzled for a moment. “Are those airplanes?”
“I think so,” Kyle answered as he helped Susie onto the roof.
The dead below began banging on the garage door. Their moaning grew louder and more frequent. Many of them began to congregate around the house.
“Are you sure this many can’t get in?” Kyle asked, trying to reassure himself.
“Yes, they can’t get in,” Susie said as she continued to stare up at the lights.
Kyle was still not sure that the doors would be able to withstand this many Existing Dead banging on it. He held on to his shotgun closely. He stared at Victor, who was sitting in the middle of the roof. “Where’s your gun?”
“I don’t know. Last time I remember having it, a body fell on me.”
Kyle turned and carefully walked toward the front of the roof. He peered down to the driveway. In-between a few of them he could see the gun. It was on the ground, only a few inches away from where Victor lay earlier.
“I see it. We won’t be able to get it until the streets clear up,” Kyle said.
“Look,” Susie said, almost yelling. “One of the lights broke off from the others.”
Kyle stared as a light broke loose from the rest and descended toward them. The light began to align itself with the street. Kyle got a strange feeling and said, “We should get inside
Susie was the first one to run to the hole and climb down. Kyle hustled to the hole and yelled to Victor, “Come on, let’s get inside!”
Victor stood up and continued looking at the light, which was now moving at an alarming speed.
“Come on,” Kyle yelled.
“It looks like a missile,” Victor said as he hurried toward the hole. He began climbing down as Kyle glanced behind him.
At first he heard a sonic boom followed by machine-gun fire.
“Get in, hurry!” he yelled at Victor who was halfway down.
Kyle got onto the ladder and climbed down. “It’s a jet!”
The jet flew by at high speed, firing its machine gun at the mass of undead. Their bodies fell into a mangled mess as the hollow points pierced their bodies. Most of them on the street were instantly brought down as bullets tarred through their bodies, immobilizing them. The machine-gun fire continued as the jet flew by and headed up the street.
Kyle ran inside the house and went into the living room. Victor and Susie were both standing there, not saying a word.
“It was a jet,” Kyle said, breaking the silence.
“A jet?” Susie asked. “What the hell was it doing here?”
“It might be the military starting to clean up the mess. But I heard on the radio that the military was on the northeastern part of the U.S.,” Kyle answered.
They heard another jet approaching, then more gun fire. Kyle prayed that the bullets didn’t hit his truck. He needed that vehicle to get out of town and find Jasmine. Not to mention his promise to Victor to take him home.
“Where are we going to go?” Victor asked. “I don’t want to get shot.”
“There’s not much we can do. Does this place have a basement?”
Susie shook her head. “No basement.”
“Damn,” Kyle said. “We’re going to just have to wait and hope nothing hits us. It sounds like they aren’t hitting houses, only the streets.”
“Yeah that makes me feel better,” Victor added. He walked to a corner and curled up into a ball.
“Maybe because there are a hundred of
“Let’s hope you’re right. I’m going to go check on Angel,” Susie said as she walked out of sight.
