CNN had been providing background noise throughout the day, feeding Tim with vital information on the latest statistics. One hundred and twenty-eight people in Spring Valley were confirmed dead. Over four hundred corpses had picked themselves up from various churchyards and cemeteries and lurched forth on a mission from whatever it was Gordon had conjured up. Several hundred people had been hospitalized for related injuries; car accidents caused by distracted motorists who’d never seen a zombie before; shock-induced strokes or heart attacks; various injuries caused from fleeing the walking dead. A handful of hospitalizations resulted from the brief spate of lawlessness that sprang up in Lancaster’s inner city, mostly from the youth.
Among the vital stats Tim Gaines learned was that Gordon Smith had been killed by a single shot to the chest by Chelsea’s father. He was later put out of his final misery by the forty-seventh battalion out of Fort Detrick when he was found walking down Main Street. It was only within the past few hours that Tim learned that Chelsea’s father had been killed, presumably by Gordon, and been put down a second time by military officials. Chelsea was listed as missing.
Tim glanced at Chelsea. It had taken all of the tie-downs they had in the family camping equipment to secure Chelsea to the living room table, which was constructed of solid oak and weighed a ton. He’d used the coil of rope that was in the camping kit to truss his parents up. They were now tied together, connected by their backs, facing apart from each other. The few times they’d tried to get up, they’d fallen on Mom’s left side. With Mom’s left arm now gone, they couldn’t get up. The best they’d been able to do was maneuver themselves into a position that put his dad face-down on the kitchen floor. If Dad had been alive, he would have suffocated.
But they weren’t alive. And neither was Chelsea, for that matter.
And none of that mattered.
Tim stood in front of Chelsea. She looked up at him. Despite her present condition something still lived within her, something that was not entirely evil or corrupt. He was convinced of it. She did not strain at her bonds in an attempt to break free and attack him. While his parents strained and pulled at their bonds, he believed they weren’t trying to attack him, either. The few times he’d stood in the kitchen and watched them, Mom had made noises that suggested she was crying. Dad, too, bore an expression of agony, like he was aware that he was caught in some kind of limbo between the living and dead, like he realized his body was dead but couldn’t quite understand why he wasn’t in total control of his faculties.
Did this mean their spirits, the part that made them so unique as human beings, had not entirely died?
Tim had knelt down by his parents and Chelsea a few times, always standing a safe five feet or so away in case they truly were dangerous. Neither of them made any attempt at aggression. Indeed, their expressions were more of longing, of love.
An outsider would no doubt look at this scene and immediately conclude that they weren’t dead at all. Just severely injured and emotionally traumatized.
The only thing that blew that theory out of the water was their smell.
Tim had been barricaded in the house with them for a day now. He’d made no attempt at turning on the air conditioning. Outside, it was a sweltering ninety-five degrees. With all the windows in the house closed, and the doors shut and the drapes pulled back to allow him to see outside, the conditions inside the house resembled a boxcar left out in the sun. Late last night they’d been stiff, had moved with great difficulty, but starting this morning they’d been more normal in their movements. Rigor mortis was probably over now. What followed rigor mortis was the next step: decomposition.
From outside, Officer Clapton’s amplified voice cut through the din. “Tim! It’s Officer Clapton again. Tim… please…come out. Let us handle your parents. Please…for your sake…for theirs…”
The problem was, he couldn’t let them handle his parents. He had to do it. But he couldn’t.
And he couldn’t let them touch Chelsea.
Tim stood over Chelsea, her image shimmering in his blurred vision brought on by tears. She looked up at him, and now there was something in her demeanor that was different. He sighed, wiped the tears from his eyes. He didn’t think she’d possessed the dead blank look of the other zombies; even his parents seemed to have an awareness about them. He’d tried telling himself that it was simple wish-fullfillment on his part. But it wasn’t. Scott Bradfield, who he studied at length from across the room and was still animated, possessed the look of the other zombies. Dead stare, vacant gaze, a simple-minded purpose. But his parents and Chelsea? While that dead stare and simple-minded purpose were there, Tim detected a bit of what made them human beneath the surface. It was this spirit that seemed to be at constant war inside them while their shell, their bodies, went through the process of decay.
“Tim, please, if you’re listening I’m going to make one more call to you. Please answer it.”
Tim knelt down closer to Chelsea as the phone began to ring.
Chelsea looked at him and Tim read the look in her eyes clearly now. Despite the dead stare something else swam to the surface.
Tim reached for her, his own eyes swimming with tears now. He couldn’t leave her. Not like this.
The phone continued to ring.
Behind him, his mother’s tortured voice rose in a heart-wrenching whine of loss.
“I can’t leave you,” he said to Chelsea, his voice choked up as he sobbed. “I can’t leave you here, I can’t let them — “
Tim reached out, his hands drifting past and around Chelsea to the hooks that secured the tie-downs in place to keep her immobile. He was within hugging distance of her now, her stench enveloping him. The phone brayed endlessly as he worked at unfastening the tie-downs that held Chelsea to the dining room table.
As her bonds fell away Tim felt the dam break. The ringing phone wasn’t even registering now, nor was the police presence outside. Chelsea’s eyes remained on his as something like love passed through her features.
Her hand touched his arm, her fingers rubbing his skin. Tim reached out to her, his heart filling with such an intense love for her that he let a sob break loose. Nothing could keep them apart.
“Honey,” Chelsea croaked through dead lips.
And when he went into her embrace finally, all other sensations were eclipsed by the simple fact of enfolding himself completely with the woman he loved, even as the police finally stormed up the back deck and began the process of shattering the glass door to gain entry.
About The Author
J. F. Gonzalez is the author of fifteen previous novels of terror and dark suspense including
