“Come on!” Thomas shouts and slaps a hand on the glass. “Concentrate!”
Dan wrenches his eyes off the girl and turns his attention towards the window. This time, he does it right, and the window opens. Thomas pulls it and lifts it up all the way. “Get out! Quick!”
Dan throws himself out the window. The girl is only a few steps away when he lands on the grass. Thomas lets go of the window, and it slams shut. The girl presses her face up against the glass, instantly covering it in sticky red blood.
Thomas steps back. He can’t lock the window from this side, but the window is quite heavy, and the girl isn’t strong enough to push it open.
He gives off a sigh of relief. “I think we’re good. She can’t get out this way.”
He turns to look at Dan, who has crawled to a safe distance from the window. Now he’s sitting on the grass, looking around in disbelief. “I’m out … I’m out!”
“You all right?” Thomas asks. “Sure Jennie didn’t scratch you?”
Dan checks both his legs. Then he shakes his head. “I’m good. But my ankle—”
He is interrupted by a second scream from the courtyard.
THIRTEEN
Dan looks up at him in alarm. “Who’s that?”
Thomas wastes no time explaining. “Stay here. Keep an eye on the window.” He spins around and runs back around the house. As he gets to the courtyard, he stops. It takes him a moment to understand what’s going on and how it happened.
The dark man must have gotten the front door open somehow, because he’s making his way across the courtyard. The redheaded woman has left the car—probably in order to try and talk to her husband. If that was her reason, though, she seems to have gotten second thoughts, because she’s backing away from him, an expression of pure terror painted on her face, her eyes wide and her lips moving. The whispering words reach Thomas’s ears.
“It’s me, Janjak … It’s me, babe …”
Her late husband is staggering towards her, arms outstretched, eager at the sight of its first, easy meal almost within reach. The woman bumps into the hood of the car. Instead of stepping sideways, she just stops and stares.
“It’s me, Janjak … Don’t you recognize me?”
“He doesn’t understand you!” Thomas roars. “Get out of the fucking way!”
The woman only reacts by blinking fast twice. She doesn’t move and she doesn’t take her eyes off the zombie, which is only a few paces away now.
Thomas has no other choice. He runs straight at the zombie and hits it with a perfect shoulder tackle. The dark man tumbles over and rolls around in the gravel.
The woman is finally able to take her eyes off her husband and instead looks at Thomas like a sleepwalker who just woke up. “He was … he was …”
“That’s right, he was going to fucking eat you! Glad you finally caught on!” Thomas grabs her by the arm and pulls her to the passenger site. “Get in! Hurry! And lock the damn door.”
She follows his order with dreamy movements. Just as she manages to hit the lock, the zombie gets back on its feet. Most of its guts seem to have spilled out of the hole in its stomach as it went sprawling, and are now dragging behind it like a bunch of bloody ropes, the gravel sticking to them.
Thomas feels the nausea rising to his throat, but he manages to force it back down. He backs away from the car. The zombie reaches out its arms, moans, then steps in its own intestines, trips and falls onto the hood of the car.
Inside, the woman screams.
The zombie gracefully slides off the car and dives back down into the gravel.
That gives Thomas a few seconds to think.
Gotta get him back into the house somehow. Can’t risk him getting away.
He goes around the car and positions himself between the front door and the zombie struggling to get back up for the second time. As soon as it succeeds, it sees him and comes at him with a hungry growl.
Thomas backs up towards the house. The zombie follows along.
“That’s right,” he mutters. “Come on.”
His plan is simple. As soon as he’s back inside the house with the zombie, he’ll lure it out into the kitchen. There he can run around the table and get back out to the front door, closing it behind himself and trapping the zombie in the house.
They’re almost at the door now. “Come with me,” Thomas whispers. “There’s a good boy.”
From the car, the woman screams again. She also bangs the windows and waves frantically.
“What?” Thomas yells.
Then he picks up the sound of gravel crunching right behind him. He whirls around and is face to face with the old woman just as she lunges at him. Thomas catches her arms clumsily, stumbles backwards, slips in the gravel and almost falls down. Her nails are clawing the air right above his face. He narrowly avoids her mouth as she snaps at his chin. He regains his balance and shoves her backwards, causing her to fall over, just as another hand grabs his shoulder and someone hisses right into his ear. Thomas turns his head just in time to see the open mouth. Less than a split second before the dark man bites his neck open, Thomas throws himself to the side. But the zombie has a firm grip on his shirt, so it follows along, trips him and lands on top of him. Thomas kicks wildly to get it off, feeling the dark hands groping eagerly all over his shirt, trying to rip through the fabric, searching for the skin.
Thomas goes into blind panic. He kicks, punches and writhes uncontrollably. In a stroke of luck, he manages to throw off the black guy. He crawls backwards, panting, the zombie immediately crawling after, reaching for
