I want to thank Regina Wamba of Mae I Design for creating my beautiful covers and modeling for them as well.
“Thank God!” I cried,
standing face to face with my best friend. Although it was obvious that Paige
was relieved to see me, the haunted expression in her eyes spoke volumes. She
collapsed into my arms and sobbed.
“Paige, where’s Allie?” I asked, trying to
look beyond her into the safe-room. Unfortunately, she appeared to be alone.
She shook her head as the
tears streamed down her face. “I…I don’t know!” she cried.
I wanted to shake her but
instead forced myself to remain calm; we’d all been through our own kind of
hell the last few hours. “What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
“I don’t know! Allie and
Kylie ran away. They were going to try and get help,” she cried through her
tears. “I don’t even know where my mom is!”
“Okay, calm down and start
from the beginning. What happened?”
Her light green eyes grew
large. “It was my stepdad, Dan. He turned into some kind of freak! He tried to
fucking bite me. Then my mom…she
whacked him with a frying pan. But he…he kept coming towards me with these…horrible
red eyes. Mom told me to run, so I did! I ran away and have been hiding here
ever since. God, I’m so scared!” she sobbed.
“Paige, I didn’t see
anyone else in the house.”
“Well, where’s my mom? She
just wouldn’t leave me. They’ve just got to be here somewhere!”
“Paige, it’s okay. We’ll
find them, somehow,” I replied softly. “Listen, do you have anything to drink?
I could really use some caffeine.” I’d been up for almost twenty-four hours and
was finally feeling the effects.
She pulled me inside. The hidden
room was larger than my entire bedroom. It held a black leather sectional, an
arsenal of electronic equipment, and a fully-stocked refrigerator. I grabbed a
soda and walked over to the surveillance cameras.
“Do these things work?” I
asked.
“No, I’ve already tried.
They hadn’t finished installing them yet.
I sighed. “Well, at least
you’ve got the generator, and didn’t have to sit in the dark.”
She nodded and then stared
vacantly. “What should we do?”
“Well, do you have any
weapons?” I asked.
“What…what do you mean?”
I pulled out the Beretta I
had tucked behind my back. “Well, I lost my sectional staff when I was
searching your house, but I still have this. You’re going to need something to
defend yourself, too, just in case.”
Her eyes narrowed. “From…Dan?”
Crap.
She didn’t know about the zombies.
~~~
“Paige?” I’d just
recounted my last few hours to her. The expression on her face was unreadable.
“Are you okay?”
“You’ve got to be
kidding,” she finally said. “That’s just plain nuts.”
“Believe me, I wish I was.
Do you really think I’d make something like that up?”
Paige shook her head but I
could tell she was still having major doubts. It was crazy for me to imagine
and I’d lived through it.
I shrugged. “Well, you’ll
find out soon enough. Do you have a baseball bat or something you can hit
zombies with?”
She looked at me like I’d
lost my mind.
“In my room,” she muttered.
We grabbed a second
flashlight and hurried to Paige’s bedroom. She took out a metal baseball bat
and two softball helmets, one pink and one black.
“Great idea!” I said, putting on the black helmet. “Okay, now stay
close to me. I haven’t seen any zombies in your house but there’s a ton of
walking dead on the streets.”
She put on the pink helmet
and I handed her the bat.
“Wow, I love your nails,”
she said suddenly, grabbing my left hand.
I looked down. “Yeah, they
look really sexy when I’m shooting at a zombie,” I replied dryly.
Her jaw dropped. “Oh, my
God…you really had to use the gun?”
My cell phone started to
ring. It was Sara again.
I sighed. “Hi, Sara.”
“It’s Bryce. Where are you
at?” he demanded.
I was racked with so many
emotions that my knees gave out. I sank to the ground. “Oh, thank God!” I
gasped. “I…I didn’t know what happened to you.”
“I’m fine,” he replied
sternly. “Stay where you are and I’ll come get you. Are you still at Paige’s?”
Before I had a chance to respond,
Paige gasped in horror and backed into me.
“What?” I turned and
dropped the phone.
Two zombies stood at the
entrance of her bedroom. The smell emitting from them rose like a wave of
rotting garbage.
“Holy crap,” said Paige in
a strangled voice.
The moon was shining
through her bedroom window, giving us a pretty good view of the zombies. One of
them, a skinny half-naked man with white curly hair, made an ugly gurgling
noise and then curled its lower lip, as if smiling. There was blood dripping
from his rotting face and he held what looked the remains of someone’s arm. He
tossed it to the ground and staggered towards us.
The next thing I knew,
Paige let out some kind of ferocious battle cry, then lifted the metal bat and
swung high, bashing the zombie smack in the middle of its skull. Before I could
react, she raised it again, this time hitting a solid home run on the
creature’s head. It dropped to the ground with a loud, sickening thud.
The other zombie, a muscular
bald guy with skull tattoos all over his head, growled at us.
I raised my gun to shoot him, but the Berretta
jammed. “For the love of God,” I mumbled trying repeatedly to shoot it.
“Hold on!” Paige snapped
as she tried to dislodge the bat from the other zombie.
But skull-head just couldn’t
wait; he staggered eagerly towards me, white froth foaming from his mouth.
Fortunately for me he was terribly slow, with very little coordination. I stepped
out of his line of attack and he fell to the ground. When he finally lifted
himself back up, I jumped into the air and did a hard side kick; my foot
catching him in the throat. He fell backward onto Paige’s jewelry box and that’s
when all hell broke loose.
Paige’s face turned red
and she screamed in fury. “Get your ugly ass off of my grandmother’s jewelry
box, you piece of dead rotting meat!!!” Then she kicked the zombie onto the
floor and stomped the sharp heel of her new Jimmy
Choo boot onto its face until it was just a bloody mass of gore.
I stared at her in shock
as she wiped the perspiration off of her forehead, then grabbed a towel and
began cleaning off her boot.
When I finally found my voice, I said, "So, I guess you believe me now?"?
