“They always…always seem to go for you.”
“I’m meatier,” he said, grabbing my arm and hauling me out the door.
We sprinted back to the stairs, opening the door as another three of them appeared down the long hallway past his aunt’s apartment. They immediately leaned forward, reminding me of runners at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Although, unlike the races I’d been in, they didn’t wait for an official to pull a trigger.
“Three more back there,” I muttered, my voice oscillating as we ran down the stairs. “Think they can open doors?”
As it turned out, they didn’t need to. The doors had already been opened by everyone who was panicking. A scream, an unmistakably human one, echoed through the stairwell. Both of us angled our heads to locate its source. That is when I caught sight of movement two floors up, where I briefly saw the face of a woman who was about fifty years old, stricken with terror, before she fell back and out of sight. She had made it into the stairwell, but someone caught her.
Instantly, Harrison and I turned.
“Stay here, Kennedy,” he demanded, while rushing back up the flight we’d come down.
I wasn’t sure if it was my footsteps that gave me away, but I figured he realized I hadn’t listened when his mouth twisted down in a frown.
By the time we reached that floor where we’d seen the woman, two of them were bent over, eating through her stomach. She was no longer struggling. Again, the term ‘chowing down’ slipped into my mind, which I erased by raising my gun at them. Neither of them looked up from their meal, even when I planted a bullet in the head of the one closest to us. The one still moving only realized we where there when his partner slumped into his angle of eating.
That was when I noticed it. My ears were ringing. In the narrow corridor, the shot blast tore through my eardrums, telling me with agonizing clarity that those sensitive membranes had been injured. Yet neither the man chowing down on the woman nor Harrison showed any sign of it. They didn’t clap their hands to their ears, move back, or even make a gratuitous shake of their head. In fact, they appeared immune to the throbbing pain I was feeling. In the frenzy of the moment, I didn’t have time to consider it further. Instead, I focused on stopping the man from coming at us. When he went down, Harrison again showed no reaction to the blast, even though my ears were still suffering from the piercing sounds.
Harrison took the two remaining steps to the landing and knelt down in front of the woman, placing his index finger against her neck to check for a pulse. With his back to me, the shake of his head confirmed he felt no sign of life. She was the first one we had come across outside our school showing any evidence of still being human, and her death caused both of us to pause.
It wasn’t as if we knew the woman. We had witnessed her life at the very end – one terrifying, miserable end that lasted less than a minute. But it didn’t keep the remorse from hitting us. To be honest, that reaction was twofold. First, it was hard to see someone lose their life, even a stranger, like a void had opened in the world leaving a sad emptiness behind. Second, there was in me, and I’d guess in Harrison too, a withering hope that we’d find anyone else alive…and not trying to eat others.
Like me, Harrison seemed to be lost in thought, his shoulders hunched and his head down, when suddenly he leaned away from her. “Whoa,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet.
That’s when I heard the grumble, a wet, nonsensical sound that came from where Harrison stood. In complete shock, he stepped back, his body straightening and his muscles stiffening.
“Kennedy?” he quietly called back to me, in a confused daze.
“Yeah?” I replied, unable to keep my eyes from the woman, whose hands were now braced below her shoulders, pushing her torso up.
“Run.”
I raised the gun only to
“I’m meatier,” he said, grabbing my arm and hauling me out the door.
We sprinted back to the stairs, opening the door as another three of them appeared down the long hallway past his aunt’s apartment. They immediately leaned forward, reminding me of runners at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Although, unlike the races I’d been in, they didn’t wait for an official to pull a trigger.
“Three more back there,” I muttered, my voice oscillating as we ran down the stairs. “Think they can open doors?”
As it turned out, they didn’t need to. The doors had already been opened by everyone who was panicking. A scream, an unmistakably human one, echoed through the stairwell. Both of us angled our heads to locate its source. That is when I caught sight of movement two floors up, where I briefly saw the face of a woman who was about fifty years old, stricken with terror, before she fell back and out of sight. She had made it into the stairwell, but someone caught her.
Instantly, Harrison and I turned.
“Stay here, Kennedy,” he demanded, while rushing back up the flight we’d come down.
I wasn’t sure if it was my footsteps that gave me away, but I figured he realized I hadn’t listened when his mouth twisted down in a frown.
By the time we reached that floor where we’d seen the woman, two of them were bent over, eating through her stomach. She was no longer struggling. Again, the term ‘chowing down’ slipped into my mind, which I erased by raising my gun at them. Neither of them looked up from their meal, even when I planted a bullet in the head of the one closest to us. The one still moving only realized we where there when his partner slumped into his angle of eating.
That was when I noticed it. My ears were ringing. In the narrow corridor, the shot blast tore through my eardrums, telling me with agonizing clarity that those sensitive membranes had been injured. Yet neither the man chowing down on the woman nor Harrison showed any sign of it. They didn’t clap their hands to their ears, move back, or even make a gratuitous shake of their head. In fact, they appeared immune to the throbbing pain I was feeling. In the frenzy of the moment, I didn’t have time to consider it further. Instead, I focused on stopping the man from coming at us. When he went down, Harrison again showed no reaction to the blast, even though my ears were still suffering from the piercing sounds.
Harrison took the two remaining steps to the landing and knelt down in front of the woman, placing his index finger against her neck to check for a pulse. With his back to me, the shake of his head confirmed he felt no sign of life. She was the first one we had come across outside our school showing any evidence of still being human, and her death caused both of us to pause.
It wasn’t as if we knew the woman. We had witnessed her life at the very end – one terrifying, miserable end that lasted less than a minute. But it didn’t keep the remorse from hitting us. To be honest, that reaction was twofold. First, it was hard to see someone lose their life, even a stranger, like a void had opened in the world leaving a sad emptiness behind. Second, there was in me, and I’d guess in Harrison too, a withering hope that we’d find anyone else alive…and not trying to eat others.
Like me, Harrison seemed to be lost in thought, his shoulders hunched and his head down, when suddenly he leaned away from her. “Whoa,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet.
That’s when I heard the grumble, a wet, nonsensical sound that came from where Harrison stood. In complete shock, he stepped back, his body straightening and his muscles stiffening.
“Kennedy?” he quietly called back to me, in a confused daze.
“Yeah?” I replied, unable to keep my eyes from the woman, whose hands were now braced below her shoulders, pushing her torso up.
“Run.”
I raised the gun only to
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