“Run!” she pleaded.
I sprinted up the stairs and allowed my new human companion to slam the barrier behind me.
“Thanks,” I panted.
“What the hell are you doing here?!?” she bellowed at me.
“Huh?” I blurted.
The four original zombies were falling over one another, trying to navigate and having very little success after so much damage had been done to their heads. Three zombies had come out of the office. The one I tagged in the face was turning circles but the other two were crawling up the staircase.
“Why are you here?!?” she demanded.
Outside, my pursuers were still pounding upon the door. By the sounds of it, all of them had made it, slow and fast zombies alike.
“Me?!?” I yelled, losing my patience after surviving such a close call. “I was running for my life, as I’m sure you must have noticed! I slid into your shop, trying to find a place to escape to, but finding your collection instead.”
And she slapped me. Hard. With unfettered passion. There was a rage I was not prepared to find. She screamed at me and went to hit me again. I scrambled to my feet and backpedaled away from her.
“What are you doing?!?” I cried.
“Why are you here?!?” she roared back.
“I told you!” I answered. “I was running, and I needed a place to hide.”
“You killed them!” she bellowed, descending into sobs. “You killed them!”
“What?” I sputtered. “Who?”
The woman fell to her knees and hid her face in her hands. She shook her head and quivered with the flood of emotion that had taken her.
As this point, I was completely lost.
“Lady?” I ventured. “What just happened?”
She raised her head from her palms and gave me a cold stare. The look was as dead as anything a zombie could have given. She then pulled herself across the loft to the fencing overlooking the floor below. She rested her forehead against the cyclone and began to weep.
“Lady,” I repeated, “I’m not sure what your problem is. I mean, I’m grateful and all that you saved me, but the mood swing is giving me serious fuckin’ whiplash. Mind telling me what the hell is happening here?”
She didn’t reply. Not a word. The woman just sat there, crumpled against the fence, fingers hooked in the wire, crying at the scene below.
“Lady?” I pressed.
“They were my family,” she huffed.
“Ah shit,” I whispered as the truth hit. Her whole family had turned and I just smashed them into submission. “I’m… I’m sorry,” I offered weakly. It occurred to me that she might have not been saving my life, as much as she had been preventing my ending theirs. “I didn’t know they were… I’m sorry.”
She didn’t turn to look at me. She didn’t respond at all. I was talking to a catatonic for all anyone could tell.
I looked around and a new thought occurred to me. The loft was nothing more than a storage space. There were windows to the front and rear, but no plumbing. In fact, it didn’t look like anyone had spent much time up here at all.
“Listen, ma’am,” I began. “It’s been months. You can’t have been up here the whole time. You would have needed food and supplies. Fresh clothes. Water. What were you doing up here?”
She didn’t answer. Still, the woman just sat there, watching those who used to be people pull and climb one over the other in a driven attempt to mount the stairs. One zombie had made it to the top and was pressing against the gate. A padlock was fastened tight and it appeared that the zombie couldn’t get through.
“Settle down, kid,” she said. The woman was watching me with a disappointed look. “They can’t get through.”
“Famous last words,” I mumbled loud enough that she could hear me. “I just came from a lab at the university and the professors there said the same thing.” I kicked the fence so it bounced off the zombie’s head. “They’re all dead now.” The zombie beyond the fence growled pushed his face into the cyclone again.
“His name’s Glenn,” she said, eyes focused on the grey face. “He was the first employee my husband ever hired, and the last to become a zombie.” She pushed herself up off the ground and walked to join me at the gate. “He kept me alive all this time,” she continued, “after everyone else had gone.” Her eyes bounced from one face to the next. “My cousin. My sister. Ruth and Todd. James. My husband.” The last word came out sideways.
I tried to guess which was which, but they all looked like a mangled mess to me at this point. Honestly it was hard to tell male from female in some of them.
“Glenn showed me how to find food. How to stay away from the zombies. How to stay protected but still have an escape route. And now…”
I looked about the space again and spied a ladder by one of the back windows. I walked over and took a peek through the glass.
Dozens of zombies had gathered in the yard below.
“They’ll be gone after dark,” she promised.
“How can you know that?” I asked.
She turned and again gave me a look of dissatisfaction. “Because,” she said with a small bit of attitude, “it happens every night.” She came and stood at my elbow, looking down upon the group below. “Come dark, that whole group will have wandered off.”
“Where?” I asked. “Where do they all go?”
“Don’t know,” she said simply, “and frankly I don’t care. All I know is that by midday, they will all have gathered at the window again. Shit,” she growled, “I never look at them much.” While she didn’t take her eyes off the crowd it was clear that it was difficult to keep looking. She continued, as though punishing herself for some unsaid offence. “I can’t help it. I see the men they were. The women that used to come here. My old friends and neighbors and strangers that I never knew but now known
