DeadBorn Read online

  “We have to call 911,” I say stupidly, but it's only stupid because I have no idea what's going on. It's all I've been trained to do in a crisis. I don't even know how to perform CPR.

  “No,” Holly says and her face is white. She drags a decorative table in front of the door and starts up the stairs, presumably to get her parents. I stand there in my flannel pj pants and nearly lose my mind when the first crash hits the door. Without looking behind me, I bolt up the stairs after Holly, terrified but certain that this is a dream. It has to be. How the fuck else can I explain what I've just seen? My brain keeps trying to convince me that what's happening isn't real. It continues to do just that until I round the corner and find Holly panting in her parents' doorway. There's sticky stuff on the floor by her feet, like strawberry jam, and there's a strange smell in the air, like old dirt and copper. I come up behind Holly and find myself face to face with a skeleton.

  It's standing in the middle of the room, white bones stained with dirt and blood. It's standing there even though it shouldn't be. It has no muscles, no ligaments or tendons, or even skin to hold it together. Yet it clacks its teeth and moves towards us, boney fingers reaching for Holly. It even manages to grab hold of her robe before she snaps out of the trance she's gone into. I don't blame her because I've just gone into one, too. On her parents' bed is a mess of bloody things that are moaning and writhing, rising up from the blankets with fluids leaking everywhere. They're reaching for us, for Holly, for me. Bart and Kelsie are nowhere to be seen.

  Holly reacts before I do, reaching for a vase on her parents' armoire. She cracks it over the skull of the boney creature and grabs it by the ribcage.

  “Galen!” she screams as its jaws clack and it gnaws at the air over Holly's shoulder like it's reaching for me. “Get my bat!” I hesitate too long and Holly loses her ground, stumbling back into me with her fingers still wrapped around bones. The three of us fall to the floor in a heap and the skeleton grabs a mouthful of my hair with its teeth and pulls. I scream as I try to push it way, but it's of no use. The thing is monstrously strong. Like a pit bull, it has its jaw locked on my hair and I can't free myself. Holly wriggles out from between us. “Hold on, Galen,” she cries as she stands up and pauses. The bloody, messy things are coming for the door, shuffling across the wooden floor between the bed and the hallway. Holly reaches out, grabs the doorknob and closes it in their runny faces. Before I can let out another scream, she's running towards her bedroom and disappearing. I can't think through the pain, so I live in the moment, certain that Holly will come back.

  One of my hands is wrapped around the spine of the skeleton and the other is pushing at its jaw, but I'm careful to keep my fingers out of reach of those snapping teeth. Better my hair gets ground between them than my flesh. Holly comes back a hundred times quicker than I expected and raises one baseball bat above her head as a second one crashes to the floor. “Close your eyes,” she tells me and she's eerily calm. The wooden bat comes down and smashes into the spine of the skeleton, cracking it in two. The worst thing is though that both parts keep moving. The creature's boney knees are digging into my crotch and drawing the breath from my lungs while its fingers scratch at the skin on my arms. Only Holly's sweatshirt is keeping the pain bearable. “Galen,” she shouts and my name ends in a sob. “Close your eyes!” I follow my girlfriend's instructions and seconds later, a rush of air whispers across my skin, and a crack, like a shotgun blast sounds. Powder showers my face and the pressure on my scalp lets up a bit.

  I open my eyes and find that Holly's knocked most of the skull away. The creature is still moving, but luckily, the only part that's still attached to my hair is a bit of jaw. Holly and I are able to push the rest of the bones off of me and I stand up just as her parents' bedroom door opens.

  “Come with me,” Holly says and she grabs my arm and pulls me along the upstairs hallway. I try to look back at the monsters, but she won't let me. “Please don't,” she says and I can tell that Holly knows a lot more about what's going than I do.

  “Is this a dream?” I ask her as I pound down the stairs behind her pink robe. The windows are broken and people are climbing in, strange people, people with injuries that should see them in the emergency room, not in Holly's house.

  “No, Galen,” she sobs as we turn left and sprint away from the rotting stench and the screams from outside and the front door that even now is being cleared by the creatures. They seem kind of mindless yet they're moving the table and unlocking the door. It's a strange sight, one that blends in with the rest of the weirdness around me and makes me sweat like a pig. We move down the hallway at a sprint, past pictures of Holly's family and even some of me that hang crooked over the old wallpaper. At the end of the burgundy carpeting and the dark wood paneling, there's a white door that doesn't seem to fit. I've been in here before: it's where Mr. Arget keeps his comic books. “Inside,” Holly instructs me and even though I can tell she's afraid, she sounds strong, unbeatable. She's determined to save us both from whoever – whatever – the things outside are.

  “Can you help me?” I ask as I reach up and try to pry the teeth from my hair. Even though there's no longer a head attached, they're still closed tight. Holly doesn't answer and locks the door behind me. She moves past me in the crowded space, bumping the computer chair out of the way with her hip. This room is strange, with a low ceiling and shelves that take up most of the floor. There are books from every genre in here, all ratty and torn, all read and loved a hundred times each. I shake my head and run a hand through my hair.

  Holly is on her knees and in the process of opening a safe.

  “The combination is my birthday,” she says as tears fill her eyes and overwhelm her to the point where she stops moving, where her fingers freeze and curl around the edge of the safe like she's bound to it. I hear movement in the hallway and try not to cringe as Holly finally starts moving again and continues twisting the lock.

  Then a fist smashes through the door, slices right through the wood like a warm knife through butter. I stumble back and trip over Holly, go down hard, and hit my head on the safe. I'm seeing stars as Holly pushes me out of the way and opens it, grabs a gun and turns it on the doorway.

  Her father's face is tilted sideways, gazing in at us blankly. At first, I think he's drunk; his eyes are glassy, face pale, movements sloppy. Then I realize, he's dead. His neck has been split like a smiley face. It gapes open when he moves and spills fluid down his front. I wouldn't call it blood. It's crimson, but it's too runny, like soup.

  “What the hell?” I ask, but my voice barely comes out of my throat. It's trapped there in fear, frozen behind my tongue like a row of untried soldiers facing their first combat. My head spins at the idea of a dead man walking, kicking the door, clawing at it. The skeleton thing, the bloody monsters, now Holly's dad. It's too much. I scream.

  “Zombie,” Holly sobs as she clutches the gun between her shaking hands then fires. Her father's head explodes in a spray of black blood that splatters the wall behind him, obscuring skewed family portraits and dripping like wet paint.

  “There's no such thing as zombies,” I whisper automatically, still lying on the floor and watching Holly's arms drop to her sides. Her eyes are blank now, kind of glassy, like she's seeing something that isn't here. “There's no such thing,” I repeat as silver-black light leaks under the door and teases my bare feet. I stare at it for a long moment before my attention is forced to more pressing things.

  A groan resounds from the hallway. It's hollow and gurgling, like a boiling pot with a crooked lid. Scratching sounds precede an arm, then two, that slip inside the hole in the door and reach for us. Holly's dad, Bart Arget, is standing up with only half a head, like a busted watermelon. He's making keening noises and glowing like a damned sparkler. Only this isn't Fourth of July. Right now, we're in Hell.

  “Holly!” I call, but she isn't listening. There isn't much of her left in her own face. It's gone blank and slack. I slap her though I don't know w
hy. She wakes up, blinks blue eyes at me and fires again at the door. It goes right through the wood and hits her father's chest with a slurping sound that I know I'll replay again and again in my confused mind. He doesn't stop though; he's still reaching, fingers beckoning us. He gurgles again and half his mouth plays a sound that mimics Holly's name. She sobs, wails, and throws her hands up, fires four more shots into the wood.

  Mr. Arget finally stumbles back and I can hear a scraping noise as he slides to the floor.

  Holly is whimpering and sobbing and shaking as she digs boxes of ammunition out of the safe and reloads the revolver. She then raises a finger and points at a bag that's slung over her father's chair. Without a word, I dump the comic books out of it and toss it to her. There is more moaning and shuffling outside the door now, like the howling of the wind in the trees. Only the wind doesn't gurgle. Or smell. I start gagging and I don't stop until I throw up all over the carpet. Holly ignores it all.

  “Pick up the baseball bats,” she tells me as she stands and opens one of the desk drawers. Inside of it are bags of chips, candy, sunflower seeds, and pretzels. Holly loads these into the sack and turns towards the brown door that blends into the wood paneling around it. It's a garage door that the Argets never use, and I remember suddenly and uselessly that there's a shelf behind it, blocking us in from that side. This doesn't deter Holly. She hands me the bag and our eyes meet. Hers are red rimmed and frightened, full of fear and melancholy but also this desperate need to survive that I both respect and admire. Holly is fucking incredible. “Stand back.”

  My girlfriend unlocks the door and in a move that's motivated by both adrenaline and rage, she slams her shoulder against it and I hear a crash from the other side. The door swings open and I see that the garage is covered in bright lines of blue, red, and yellow paint. “Come on,” Holly instructs as she pauses for just a moment and untangles the teeth from my hair, tossing them to the floor where they bounce and clatter like a windup toy, like a joke. But this is no joke, I realize as I follow Holly down the steps and into the garage, avoiding the paint like it's blood. And it's not a fucking dream either.

  I pause for just a moment to shut the door behind us, cutting off the sounds of growling and sputtering for a short time. For a very, very short time.

  Chapter 3

  Redoubtable

  One Hour After …

  Holly's parents don't believe in cars, so there's nothing for us to hop into and drive away with. I think immediately of my bike, but it's on the front porch with the … My thoughts pause, get stuck on that word: zombie. It's a word for comic books and video games, not for real life.

  “Now what?” I ask, wanting to climb into a closet and hide. Eventually the police will come or the military or something. If we hide out, somebody will save us. But Holly's not the kind of girl that gets saved. Holly's more about saving herself. And me. Even in the turmoil of the moment, I get a surge of feelings for Holly that make it hard to breathe. She's willing to do anything for me. I raise my face and catch her staring at me. She looks bloody and sad and for a split second, hopeless. Then she pulls herself together and puts her hands on her hips.

  “We have to get out of here,” she tells me confidently. Her father is dead and probably her mother, too, and I understand because I went through the same thing. Then again, my father withered away in a hospital bed and when his eyes closed, they never opened again. He never came at me with half a head; I never had to shoot him.

  “Holly,” I begin, reaching out for her.

  “We don't have time for that,” she says, slapping my hands away and dropping her robe to the ground. Underneath it, she's wearing only a thin, white camisole and a pair of pink shorts, but I can see why she ditched it. The robe is soaked in blood, making it heavy and sticky. She's better off without it. I take off the sweatshirt I'm wearing and even though the sleeves are shredded a bit from the skeleton's hands, I put it over Holly's thin shoulders and help her slip her arms inside. Once I have her zipped up, I look around the garage for ideas. There's a door directly in front of me with a small, dirty window. Already, there are zombies outside it. I didn't notice them at first since they've smeared the glass with blood and … other things. It made it difficult to see them. Holly looks over her shoulder and sighs deeply, like the whole world is sitting on her shoulders. And maybe it is? “How fast can you run, Galen?” she asks as she stares me down and tears dribble over her lips. I brush them away with my thumb and try to focus on her blue eyes and not on the rotting faces outside the door. A crash draws my attention back towards the house. The zombies have made it into Bart's room and now only a few inches of cheap wood separates them from us. Holly reaches up, takes my chin and turns my head back to face her. “Seriously Galen,” she says and she tries to smile. It's the fakest smile I've ever seen, but I smile back and try to breathe through my mouth. The smell, even in here, is bad enough that I think I might throw up again. “Tell me your skinny ass can run faster than you did on the field last night.” Holly laughs, but it turns into a sob halfway through. “Because we're going to have to run for our lives and I need to know that you'll be behind me the whole time. Can you do that for me?” I nod although I can't make any promises.

  “If I don't make it,” I tell her, trying to ignore everything around me for just a second, so I can absorb that pretty face and brush back that blonde hair. I kiss Holly's lips hard. “You'll go without me, right?” Holly nods but doesn't promise me either. I guess we're both just big liars.

  “I'm going to open the garage door. As soon as we can, we're going to duck under it.” Holly pauses and puts the revolver in the bag before reaching out a hand for one of the baseball bats. I hand her one and keep the other. “Don't stop for anything, not other people, not cries for help, nothing. Just run.” Holly takes a massive breath and wipes hair off her forehead. Blood smears across her pale skin. It's not hers, thankfully, but it still makes my stomach churn. I lick my finger and wipe some of it away from her pale eyebrow. It tints it pink and smears it, but she hardly looks clean. “Let's go to Dawson's house,” she says, referring to her ex-boyfriend. They only dated for two months and they never kissed, Holly assures me, but I still hate him. The situation though is too dire for me to argue with her or even care. “He has a gun collection that I think might come in handy. Besides, his family has four cars. We're bound to be able to get into at least one of them.” I don't ask what Dawson and his family will do when we come storming into their house at six something in the morning, but I hope they're angry and well and that they lock us in a bedroom and call the police. That's better than the alternative. I don't know how widespread this zombie thing is, but if it's anything like the movies, then I could be facing an apocalypse. “Ready?” Holly asks and I nod.

  Seconds later, the garage door is groaning and sliding up the metal rails to the ceiling. When there's three feet of space, Holly grabs my hand and pulls me under. My head hits the door, reminding me that I bumped it on the safe and it hurts like hell. Combined with the strain from the skeleton monster we encountered, I'm seeing stars again. I stumble after Holly surprised to find myself surrounded by a crowd of rotting, stinking monsters. They're everywhere now, covering the neighborhood like a disease. People are screaming and dying and there's a lot of blood, some of it human and some of it from the zombies. Holly drags me right through, past reaching fingers and snapping jaws. Whatever animates these things makes them fast and they take off after us.

  “Come on, Galen,” Holly cries as my breath sucks into my lungs like a vacuum and bursts out again. I can't seem to get enough air and wish I'd been on a sports team like Holly. Hands reach for me and try to grab me, but they don't grab Holly. In fact, unless I'm seeing things, the zombies seem to be moving for Holly, spreading apart like a rotten sea. When Holly slows a bit for me, things get even better. When she grabs my hand, the creatures stop biting at me, stop grabbing at my clothes.

  Holly and I explode out of the crowd and turn the corner onto a f
airly empty street. People are standing outside in huddling groups and whispering. I can see lights in the distance and the sound of sirens is echoing around the neighborhood. The police have no idea what they're in for. I wish I could warn them, but there's no time. Holly and I cut down an alley and sprint across gravel that digs painfully into our bare feet before we come out the other side and onto Dawson's street. When I look over my shoulder, I see that there's a stream of monsters coming for us, jogging like an undead SWAT team. They don't seem like they're actually trying to touch us, more like they're just following.

  Holly keeps me going by tugging my hand and leading me to a house with white siding and an American flag painted on the front door. We don't go up the steps to the porch and instead, Holly takes us around the back and through a gate that's well disguised by some hedges. This makes me wonder how she knows this and I get jealous. Then I feel disgusted with myself. With all that's happened, how can I even dream of having that emotion? Jealously is a luxury, something you can feel when there's nothing else to feel. Right now, there's so much more.

  Holly takes us to a sliding glass door and opens it with a gentle push. An alarm system goes off, but she doesn't care. She takes us straight to a door next to the kitchen and opens it. Holly's ex-boyfriend, Dawson Isaac, is sitting up in bed and yawning. When he sees us, he screams and then snaps his mouth closed when he recognizes Holly.