the lights were off, the electric ‘exit’ sign cast it's red shadow beyond where Amelia thought the door they were looking for was.
There were things in the hallway, a lot of rubbish and, it looked like suitcases or maybe bodies, plus there was someone moving three quarters of the way to the end. ‘Shit’, Amelia thought, ‘I was hoping it was just a scared kid, not a scared kid with zombies at his door.’ With as much reluctance as resolve she stepped into the hallway towards the movement.
As she passed the doors she found some of them open, and the smells from within were not comforting, it seemed like every other room staggered on each side, was an open doorway. Some of the doors had been battered open, most had not. Amelia, followed closely by Diane flitted from doorway to doorway, trying not to draw the attention of the thing down the hall. The first open doorway they ducked into had three bodies, a woman perhaps thirty years old, with two kids, one was maybe ten the other looked to be six or seven. Amelia almost vomited her cashews, Diane did. While Diane was retching Amelia watched the doorway and whispered, “Quiet Diane, I know, I know, but you have to stay quiet or whatever it is will hear us. Shh, shh.”
Turning back to the doorway Amelia heard running and was then confronted by woman in her mid thirties who smiled at her wickedly and said, “Oh you have come! Help is here, thank God!” as she rushed forward to embrace Amelia with arms flung open.
“Stop!” shrieked Amelia, after momentary losing her senses and almost, opening her arms to comfort a fellow woman in distress. Instead she stepped back and raised the poker up to the woman’s face.
The woman, who was hard to see in the dim light, smashed the fire poker aside, but Amelia was quicker and somehow had been expecting the blow. She swung the poker back around and struck the woman a sharp blow across the front of her face. The woman screamed in agony, “That was my eye you bitch!” and leaped towards Amelia again. By this time Amelia had stepped back into the room right next to where Diane was trying to get up from vomiting, there was little more room without stepping over Diane or leaping over the bodies, which were on the first of two full sized beds in the room. Amelia yelled, “Get back Diane!” and trusting her to do so Amelia half leaped, half rolled over the bodies to put a bed between herself and demonic woman. The zombie opted to go for Diane, who had just enough time to get her feet under her before being barreled over. Amelia was there in an instant striking the zombie in the back while it tried to maul Diane, whose arms were up in a defensive posture trying to push the thing off her. To make matters worse all around, she had not stopped vomiting and the mess and smell was nauseating. Amelia swung back for another strike when the zombie seemed to realize something was very wrong, it rolled over and tried to move sideways away from the blows Amelia was raining down upon it. Now it's hands were up in a warding posture, however it could not go sideways, there was not enough room, it ended up wedged half under a desk with it's legs sticking, and kicking, out at Amelia.
The zombie started making an injured mewing noise and Amelia switched from swinging to poking the thing, while Diane, who had now rolled back over to her hands and knees crawled towards the window of the room.
Finally Amelia was able to get herself into position and poke the zombie firmly in the throat, which seemed to take a lot of the fight out of it. She followed up with three rapid pokes to it's head and then drug it out from under the desk to finish it off with blows hard enough to bend her fire poker. Diane, meanwhile, had gotten to her feet and was watching Amelia with a look of horror on her face.
Amelia stopped, concerned, “What? What Diane? I had to finish it off.”
“No.” sobbed Diane, “No. That is not it.” She held up her arms, both of which were bleeding fiercely from bite wounds.
“Oh no.” Amelia said softly, “Oh no, oh no! I tried to get there fast enough Diane, I couldn’t get there, she, it, it was so fast! It moved too fast, but I thought I got to it before it did anything to you. I am sorry Diane, I am sorry.”
Amelia moved towards Diane, then stopped herself and said, “Let me get towels!” she moved into the bathroom and grabbed several of the clean towels, casting a glance at the room’s door she moved to stand near the window where Diane was attempting to staunch the flow of her blood from a ghastly looking wrist wound. As Amelia tried to bandage her arms, Diane, whispered, “There is another one behind you, a slow one.”
Amelia pretended not to hear but looked for her fire poker, there! On the bed, next to Diane’s flashlight. Diane fainted and pulled out of Amelia’s grasp, Amelia turned and grabbed the fire poker swinging it around on another soccer mom, this one in really bad shape, missing most of one arm, it's shirt was torn down the center revealing one breast which hung by fatty tissue to her chest. The zombie lurched forward grabbing for Amelia, after the first zombie Amelia was surprised at how incredibly easy it was to dispatch it's slower brethren, one quick, undeflected blow to the head, then several more blows to make sure it was down for good and not just pretending.
“I gotta shut the door, I gotta shut the door!” Amelia said to herself looking for a something to keep it shut as she advanced on the doorway. She kept her poker raised and approached the door quietly, listening for movement in the hallway. There! She heard a footstep, slow, tentative, another slow zombie! Amelia readied herself for a killing shot and when the zombie came through the door she bashed it in the head, only this one was quicker than most and deflected the blow with it's forearm, it was a young one, maybe eleven years old and it went down under Amelia’s assault, she was getting ready to whack it again when her inner voice told her to stop, stop! Her mind lurched forward looking for a logical reason why to go with her instinct to not strike again and she found it when she realized the zombie was screaming and crying! Zombies had not yet cried, so far as Amelia knew, but she veered her shot to land in the carpet beside the body and stepped back. Crying. Crying and sobbing, “Don’t. Please. Plee-ease don't!” then bawling. Amelia still was not sure.
'This is crazy.' she thought, 'I can't even tell humans from zombies now!'
She opted for not bashing the child’s head in and instead grabbed it's ankle and pulled it into the bathroom, slamming the door on it before turning back to the main door of the room, which she slammed shut. There was nothing to block it with and as the door had been forced she could not simply use the deadbolt. Instead she fastened the security chain, thinking it might at least give her warning if someone came into the room after her, then she turned and grabbed the two corpses on the floor and piled them in front of the door, they could be shoved out of the way, but it would take a lot of effort to do so and would make even more noise. The sobbing in the bathroom continued, Amelia turned towards the shut bathroom door and said, “If you are not a zombie kid I am really sorry for hitting you, but I didn’t know. If you are a zombie kid then I am not sorry at all and either way you better stay in the bathroom right now or I will think you are a zombie and brain you. Got it?”
The only answer was the deadbolt on the bathroom door sliding closed with a metallic ‘snick’.
“Good enough, stay in there while I help my friend.” Amelia turned back to Diane, letting her eyes linger once again on the bodies on the bed. Going to Diane she found the woman was still bleeding profusely, Amelia had no medical training, she did not know what a critical amount of blood loss was, but there was a lot of blood everywhere. She pulled Diane up onto the bed closest to the window and pressed a towel to the worst wound, wrapping it tightly around her wrist, before turning to the other hand and doing the same thing. Amelia could not keep the bandages tight and wound up snagging a pair of scissors from what looked like a crafting basket and cutting a bunch of strips out of the sheet on the bed. Once she did this she took the soaked towels off Diane’s arms and bound them with fresh towels fastening them securely with the strips of sheeting. Amelia did have some sense that she was doing something wrong, 'Changing the bandages' she thought, 'maybe that was it, if you changed them it did not allow clots to form? Maybe it was the tightness of the bandages, cutting off circulation to Diane’s fingers?' She checked Diane’s fingers pinching them and feeling them, both hands were cold and white, that didn’t look good.
Diane’s breathing became labored and she abruptly sat up, wheezing, “Amelia!” Diane cried out, “Amelia!”
“I am here Diane, I am here! You’re going to be alright.”
“Amelia, it hurts pretty bad. I want you to know it is not your fault. I should not have been throwing up, I knew what to expect when we broke in here and couldn’t keep from tossing my cookies, if I had been faster I could have got out of the way. It is not your fault, okay?”
“Shh Diane, don’t worry about it, just calm down, okay?”
Diane did calm down, she took a few deep breaths and looked up at the ceiling while trying to stay calm, the problem was she could not feel her hands and her arms were aching terribly. Unlike Amelia, Diane did have first aid training, from a course she had taken after her grandson fell while playing at her daughter’s house and broke
