This air is hurting my lungs. Mom would say that’s due to the smoke and carrying a seventy-two-hour kit while clad head-to-toe in thick plastic. That would make sense, but my labored breathing feels different to that. This hot hand clutching my chest feels like something else. It feels like fear.
We run to Jesse’s room and raise the window. Naked dives right through it and skids to the edge of the roof, but she digs her claws in and stops just before she goes over the edge. Crazy dog. Can’t say I blame her—every one of her animal instincts would tell her to get out of a burning building ASAP. I stick my head out to make sure she’s okay. The smell of charcoal and burnt flesh almost obscures the stench of death…almost. I’m not breathing in the smoke anymore, so why is my chest so tight? Why does my throat feel like it’s closing up? Why is there a buzz in my head? This is all making me feel lightheaded and woozy.
It’s difficult to move in bulky boots, and even more difficult to squeeze my tall frame with a Eurotrash-sized backpack through a window, but somehow I make it on to the roof just under Jesse’s window. That should have been far enough because we were originally going to fire a flare and wait for help. I fire the flare before anyone else joins me on the roof, but the plan’s changed. There’s no way we’re going to hang around and wait to be picked up now, not while sitting on a house on fire. We’re going to have to go with Plan B. Problem is, Plan B doesn’t exist…we’re making this up as we go.
I was hoping for a breath of fresh air, but instead I’m met with a blistering breeze. I think of the stuff that’s burning below us—all the plastics, the varnished furniture and floors, the carpet—our modern comforts are so laced with toxic chemicals it’s turned this house into the world’s most poisonous bong.
The others join me one by one, eyes slitted against the smoke. We do our best to see through a haze that makes our eyes ache and our lungs burn. Where are the dead? Are they out front, feasting on our tormentors? All of them? I should have been reassured that we couldn’t see anything, that maybe we would have a chance to jump down and sneak around the chaos on the other side, but my gut tells me that would be too easy. And what exactly would we be sneaking away to?
“Mom!” I rasp, “Where are we going to go once we get down?”
She points over to the balcony now shrouded in darkness. “We’ll go to the Rasmussens.’ We’ll climb down the tree that touches our balcony and run the ten feet over to their tree. We’ll have to scramble up that one as fast as we can. First we’ll push Jesse up, then give KC a boost, then you can go up. I’ll cover you guys and join you as soon as you’re near the top. Once we’re up there we can climb onto their roof. They must have roof access to their home, and if they don’t…well, at least their home’s not on fire. We’ll set off the rest of the flares from there and wait for help.”
I struggle to speak with a voice hoarse from caustic fumes and acrid air. “I’m not sure the Rasmussens are home. They haven’t been answering phone calls, emails, texts, nothing. Why don’t we go over to Laura’s instead?” I want to add “And how is Naked going to climb that tree?” But I know where her priorities lie right now. Maybe I can carry Naked…all sixty pounds of her.
“Because the looters left Laura’s place open to the undead. Just follow me to the balcony. I’ll go down our tree first and stand guard with my gun while you guys make a run for the Rasmussens’ tree. Make sure you crawl carefully, I don’t know what I’d do if…”
“Mom!” KC interrupts. “The bushes are moving!”
“That’s the wind sweetie, now follow me…”
“Mom! There’s no wind!”
She’s right. We train our flashlights on the bushes. We’re staring hard at them, trying to see what’s making them move, even though we all know what it has to be. So why can’t we see them?
I realize why as they slowly emerge from their hiding places. No wonder we couldn’t see them. They look like they’ve been rolling around in the mud. Not just that, but they’re crawling. We’re used to looking for upright parasites, easy to see when deathly pale and stumbling around on two legs. We’re not used to looking for them soil-brown and crawling commando-style in the dirt. Some of them are not so much crawling as they are dragging their decomposing selves across the ground. I try without luck to adjust to this sight of a moving carpet of corpses. They’re like a slowly advancing flood of stench and filth and they’re steadily making their way towards us.
“We’re faster than them! We can still make it to that tree! Follow me onto the balcony!”
Mom slides down the short drop. We hear her hit the deck, then we hear her scream, then we hear a shot followed by another and another. “Pull me back up!” she cries out in full-fledged panic. I lay on my stomach, dangle my arms over the side of the roof, and grab her by her upstretched wrists. She walks her legs right up that brick wall and heaves herself back onto the roof in impossible time. She would have pulled me off the ledge if it wasn’t for KC holding my legs and leaning back. Oh yeah, KC and a water-heavy pack on my back that anchors me in place.
I lie still while Mom scrambles over my back and the roof’s wood trim crackles and blows sparks around us. I gaze over to where Mom has just come from.
Looks like the dead have not only learned the art of camouflage—they’ve learned how to climb trees.
The last image I remember is the sight of a balcony full of cadavers with more coming up the tree behind them. I feel the heat and smell the smoke, I hear the crying and wince at the screaming, but I don’t cry and I don’t scream—I just curl into a ball and fall into a trouble-free sleep.