There was another explosion in the stands, but no one in the huddle looked up. They didn’t even flinch as the flash of fire reflected off their helmets.
The ref blew the whistle.
Burke clapped his hands together. “Let’s get this fucking thing over with.”
The huddle broke.
The silence broke.
They cringed with the force of the noise as it pounded against their skulls, pummeled at their guts. Nothing mattered anymore except crossing the end zone with the ball.
The undead shuffled inches beyond the line of scrimmage, their fingers wriggling, waiting to tear into flesh, their mouths gnashing at air, eager to taste that which lived.
The living took position at the line. They set themselves, bending, squatting, then freezing that way. The grunts of the dead increased. Their thick foul slobber splatted on the helmets of the living.
Burke wiped the sweat from his hands on the rag hanging from the center’s hip. He paused. Looked out at the crowd. How were the living any better than the dead? The dead in their giant cage, climbing the metal rungs, falling backward onto their brethren below. The living standing, jumping up and down, pumping their fists in the air, screaming for blood.
He wondered where Sherry sat. He didn’t see her among the other player’s wives. He wondered if she was watching or if she was looking at her hands, nervously balled into tight fists, rocking back and forth the way she did in times of crises.
He closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the gentle breeze that wisped over his skin and through his hair. That was a gift, he thought. The best part of this whole damn day. That breeze. That simple breeze. He took a deep breath. Tapped the center on the small of his back.
“Ready! Set!” His words were lost in the cacophony. “Now!”
The center snapped the ball.
Burke took it and stepped back.
The noise in the stadium exploded.
Burke faked a hand-off to Carter. Watched for Bishop down field, but Bishop was trying to claw his way out of a duo of undead. Burke looked for Monroe, but saw a flash of ragged flesh charging toward him. He ducked, shoved the football up so that it caught the bastard under the chin. He heard a crack as its neck snapped, felt the thing fall in a heap behind him.
He spotted Monroe outrunning two undead toward the end zone. Monroe stopped abruptly and turned, tearing his own helmet from his head and using it as a weapon as the first zombie fell upon him, followed quickly by the second.
Monroe flailed at them, smashing their skulls in a blur of swinging arms. Then he was open.
He dropped his helmet, waved both hands in the air signaling Burke to throw as three undead noticed him and began to charge. Two more were honing in on Burke as his linemen crumbled. With a quick glance, he noticed his tackles Leo and Busby down, each with a corpse kneeling over them, digging through the skin of their necks and lapping at the blood that spouted upwards in a thick geyser.
Monroe continued to wave, only ten yards from the end zone. Burke cocked his arm back, then with one big exhale let the ball fly. Watched it sail through the air in a long graceful arc. Without taking his eyes from the ball, he sidestepped another attacker, dropping his elbow on the thing’s back as it sailed by, the satisfactory crunch taking a backseat to the view of the ball dropping into Monroe’s arms.
As Monroe hugged the ball tight against his chest at the ten yard line, as his muscular thighs pumped toward the goal line, he failed to see the remnants of a skull sticking up from the sod. The 240-pound receiver stumbled. Yet still he dove toward the end zone, his arms outstretched, his entire body now prone in the air.
It was going to be close.
He landed.
The whistle blew.
The ref had to run to where the ball lay, it was that close.
Burke held his breath. The whole team held it’s breath. Even the crowd was silent.
The ref shook his head. Waved his arms back and forth across each other.
It was no good.
The crowd erupted. The game was over. The undead had won.
Burke kneeled to the ground. Thought of his wife up there in the stands, wished he could tell her how sorry he was. He looked frantically in the stands for her.
The refs cattle-prodded the undead players back into the giant cage with the rest of their kind, howling and screaming, their rotting vocal chords flying from their mouths in shiny wet shards.
Then he saw her. She was escorted through the stands as people yelled at her, spit on her, tore at her clothing. She was with the other players’ wives. All of them in a solemn huddle being led by large men in black hats armed with cattle prods.
Burke couldn’t watch. He turned away. He heard the wrought iron doors of the undead’s cage being opened. He only turned to look at the last minute, but already his wife, the other players’ wives had disappeared beneath the bodies of the zombie horde. Burke waited for the men in the black hats to come for him. He hoped that once he was up there, it would be his wife that devoured him.
The Child Gate
The night the intruder entered our home, Davey was almost three years old, brown hair, hazel eyes, and as sweet as a boy can be. Yet, he still hadn’t said his first words. No “mama.” No “dada.” A giggle here and there, a scream or a cry when upset, but no words. His pediatrician told us he was a late bloomer; boys tend to develop a bit slower, he’d said. Nothing to worry about. But soon, even he changed his tune. The words would not come.
The thing that stopped the intruder from coming up the steps and into our bedroom was the child gate installed when Davey was learning how to walk. He was fearless, and when he fell, got right back up and tried again. To keep him from toppling down the stairs to the white tile floor below, we kept the gate closed whenever he was upstairs.
The night the intruder came, we’d left our windows open to take advantage of the cool autumn breeze, and it was through one of these that the intruder entered at two in the morning. Alone and quiet, he used a small knife to slice through the screen.
Jenny and I slept in the master bedroom, and Davey snored quietly in his bedroom down the hall. The tentative rattle of hinges woke Jenny first.
The gate opens with a simple latching mechanism that requires a squeeze to be released, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, and stealthily sneaking up someone’s steps at two in the morning, it poses a potential problem.
Jenny shook my shoulder, her breath warm and urgent in my ear. “John. Wake up. Someone’s on the stairs.”
“Davey?” I asked, shaking off the restraints of sleep.
“No, not Davey. Someone—” She stopped as we heard the child gate rattle again, louder this time. Jenny’s fingernails dug painfully into my bicep.
I sat up. “Who’s there?”
An adult male voice grunted, “Fuck,” followed by the heavy staccato of thuds — something heavy tumbling down the steps and banging against the wall. There was an awful crack, followed by a sharp cry of pain.
Jenny tore out of bed. “Davey!” she gasped.
“
I first learned about autism many years before Davey was born through the movie
