"Get 'im off me," Lou screeched, his normallydeep voice cracking with panic. Clara pulled with all her might, yanking thechild off of Lou, though it took all her strength to do so. She spun, using thechild's hair for leverage and tossed his body on the bed. His swollen gutjiggled grotesquely, and then Lou was there swinging the machete as the monstersat up on the bed. Lou's swing landed with so much force, that it cracked thechild's skull in half, embedding the blade in his brain. The white sheets werecovered instantly in red as blood poured from the massive head wound. The boy'shands clawed at the air one last time, and then fell still, just as his mothergot to her legs.
Intestines dangled from her shredded abdomen, slidingacross the floor like the blood-soaked tentacles of an unidentifiable seacreature. She came towards them, and Clara grabbed her rifle from the floor,aiming at the woman's head. She fired instinctually, remembering the feeling ofgetting it right in the Walgreens parking lot, and the woman slumped to theground, blood pouring from the exit wound in the back of her head.
"Jesus Christ," said a voice behind them.
They spun around to find Mort and Joan standing in thedoorway.
"What happened?" Joan asked.
"I don't think that boy was immune," Lou said.
The realization washed over them, and though they shouldhave known better than to get their hopes up, the death of the boy still hitthem, still drained the last vestiges of hope that they had been clinging to.
"Let's go find Katie," Lou said.
"We better do it quick. There are a bunch of thosethings trying to get into this place," Mort said.
Lou grabbed Rick's rifle, and then they left. Joan wasthe last one out of the room. She took one last glance at the lifeless body ofthe boy on the bed and then shook her head.
****
Katie knew what the man wanted, as soon as they were leftalone. She didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. He wantedwhat every man wanted. To be completely honest, she had wanted it too.
He said he had been sent to watch over her, just in casethe bite on her arm and the missing fingers were actually wounds caused by thedead. They didn't want her turning when they weren't looking.
She could see that the man wasn't scared of her. Hewanted to be close to her. When she took her shirt off, he did get close toher. Their coupling was quick, unsatisfying, but she felt better when it wasover. As men did, he rolled over, and was softly snoring in no time.
She stood in the fancy bedroom looking at her naked formin the mirror. Was it swelling? She couldn't be sure. Maybe it was just all ofthe crappy canned food she had been eating. When she tired of looking atherself, she walked into an adjoining sitting room, her bare feet movingsoundlessly across the wooden floor, and unplugged a lamp. She tugged on thecord, ripping it free from the base of the lamp. It was almost a shame shethought, about the lamp, not the man.
The man was nothing to her. She wrapped the cord aroundher fists, making sure that her grip was as tight as possible, and then shewalked back into the bedroom. He was laying prone on the bed, his pale ass pointingskyward. She straddled his back and looped the cord over the man's head,bringing it tight against his neck in one smooth motion.
When the act was done, she had new scratches on her arm,and her jaw and teeth hurt from gritting them as she strangled the life out ofthe man. She laid on the bed for a while looking at his face. It was hideous.His eyes were red with burst blood vessels, and his tongue lolled out the sideof his mouth, his curly brown hair shone with grease in the faint daylight thatcame in from the windows of the second-floor room.
When the lights flickered and went out, she got up anddressed. As she tied her shoes, she noticed the man struggling to get out ofthe bed, and that's when the first gunshots were fired. Her first thought wasto grab the man's gun and put a bullet through his head, but it looked morecomplicated than the revolver she had been using, so she walked into the otherroom and picked up the now-cordless lamp. It was a heavy thing, slightly gaudy.It looked as if it had been the height of fashion some thirty years ago, butnow it was just a bulky piece of junk that was solid enough to cave in a man'sskull... she hoped.
She held back a giggle as the naked man came at her, hiseyes blood-red and his unimpressive penis bouncing from side to side. Shedanced around him, and swung the lamp at the back of his head, just above wherethe neck met the skull. It was a good swing, and it stunned the man, but itdidn't put him down. They went on like that for some time, her dodging hisclumsy attacks, and him, stumbling every time she belted him across the skullwith the lamp. She knew when he was dead, as there was an audible crunch fromhis skull, and he fell to the ground jittering like a fish that had jumped outof a lake and landed in a boat of all places. His hands and feet hammered theground, and then he was dead, for good this time.
How long had she been in this room? She didn't have aclue. It had seemed like only a few minutes, but the angle of the sun was allwrong. Perhaps she had dozed off next to the man for a while. Things were...fuzzy recently, and she didn't much care for it. She picked up the man's rifleand looked out the window.
From her vantage point, she could see them coming... thedead, walking
