..as I trudged through the tall snow, the wet fire of exhaustion steaming out from my mouth, I knew that I couldn’t stop: the temperature was supposed to top 40 degrees Fahrenheit and some of the snow was already starting to melt. The blizzard had been the only thing slowing the living dead down. They couldn’t move very well through the high drifts with their brittle limbs and stiff muscles. As afraid as I was of them, I had to admit that they were slow and their problem-solving skills were very rudimentary. One could literally stand and watch them flail around in the thick powder, panic blazing in their hell burned eyes like a soul drowning in fire.

This neighborhood had once been very nice. A stately row of elms had been planted on a queue inside an island curb which separated the two way traffic on the snow covered street; when there was still any traffic left to separate that is. It was amazing how hard it was to tell where the roads began and ended once the plows ceased in their routine.

At the end of the tree line one of the living dead had gotten lucky; down on its knees with its ghastly face covered in red snow as it devoured the remains of, what I tried to tell myself was, a large dog. I sighed and tried to force my mind to move on even as my legs were already running.

All the houses looked pretty much the same: upside down Vs with two handsome cupolas jutting out from steep composition roofs. I moved quickly from domicile to domicile, desperately flipping over door mats, feeling along the top ledge of doorways and trying knobs. Like a terrified mail carrier fleeing from a vicious Pitt Bull or a squirrel searching for a hole. Sometimes I would pause briefly to suck in a breath in the hidden conclaves of the entranceways.

Finally, after what seemed like a thousand houses, a golden key winked up at me from the bare concrete which had been covered by the mat. I hadn’t wanted to break in, since I might need fully functional locks or unbroken glass to keep the dead out later.

It was much warmer inside as I quietly unfastened the tennis rackets from my boots and spun the bolt lock behind me. The living room was dark and unperturbed. Someone had done a nice job of removing the window panes and replacing them with small colonial era style sills. I took two steps and that’s when I began to hear the gurgling noises. I tiptoed into the kitchen, pulling a large carving knife from a wooden brace as the noises grew faintly louder. After an interlude through a small laundry room, I came to a heavy wooden door which was painted a Betsy Ross red. The gurgling noises were coming from behind it. Why I didn’t bolt from the house then I can’t say for sure, but something would not let me and I willed myself to twist the knob.

A giant mural of Cinderella greeted me from the opposite wall and there were toys all over the floor: Barbies, stuffed animals and half drunken bottles. It was an L shaped room and I could not see its one remaining corner. I held the knife out in front of me and slowly stepped forward as the source of the noises came into view: above a small pink play pen I saw a women; or what had once been a woman hanging from the ceiling fan. There was a makeshift noose, which had been fashioned from what appeared to be some type of electrical cord, pressing right through her impossibly small broken neck. Her feet were still kicking a few inches above a tipped over ‘Snow White’ child’s stool. There were many nasty bites visible through her torn jogging suit. Evidently, she had chosen to take her own life rather than wait for the change; perhaps not realizing that, if her brain were not destroyed, the change would occur anyway.

When she saw me she began to kick and wave her arms wildly and a vicious snarl replaced the painful sounding gurgle. As I approached her the flailing reached a hurricane pitch and she spun around on the cord like a Satanic pinata. A foul smell permeated the room and I realized that she had defecated into her jumpsuit once her neck had snapped. I grabbed her Reebok covered foot and stopped her from spinning. I then righted the stool and stepped around behind her, being careful tostay out of the reach of her grasp. I fingered the carving knife as I stood up on the tiny bench and wrapped my arm around her waist. I was preparing to hold her steady enough to cut out, or at least cut through, her feverish brain. Her arms were trying to grab me, but she must not have had the brains, or maybe brains is the wrong word to use, she must not have had the intelligence, totry and remove the cord from her warped throat.

But then, just as I prepared to grab her forehead from behind and slide the blade through the soft spot behind her skull, disaster struck: she grabbed my forearm and made a final insane kick; knocking me off balance and causing my feet to lose touch with the stool. The already taxed fixture couldn’t support both our weights and it came out from the ceiling in a rain of plaster. Before I knew that I was falling I was on the carpet. Before I knew that I was on the carpet she was on top of me. She was still pretty fresh and her muscles were working better than most. Her grip was strong and I braced for the lethal and dreaded bite. But when I didn’t come I realized that this was attributed to something odd: her head had been dislodged from its original position: the neck being so severely broken that her noggin now rested up on her shoulder blades, on the opposite side of what had been two very firm breasts. The mouth had no fixed position and consequently she was not able to pull me toward her rotting and stinking yellow teeth.

This gave me the fraction of a second that I needed to push her off of me and scamper to my feet. She also stood, surprisingly lithe, her head hanging upside down and her long hair dangling past her knees. Before she could advance again I picked up the knife. She somehow found the I.Q. to grab her own head, like someone selecting a papaya from a fruit bin, before placing it right side up on her purple shoulders. She then prepared to attack me with the violence of someone who has already seen Hell once.

Just as she organized this however, I struck like a cinematic swash buckler; driving the carving knife through her retina and I suppose through her brain since she slumped like someone shot by a sniper; the blade still sticking through an eye which was spraying yellow liquid like crazy string all over a depiction of the Seven Dwarfs.

As she hit the floor dead for the second and final time, she rubbed up against the play pen. And that’s when I noticed her: a real live baby, lying on her back, staring up at me nonchalantly.

27 December:

The baby and I have retreated down into the cellar. The door has been borrowed from an old meat locker. Which is perfect since it has several strong bolt locks. There is also an outer storm door which is held in place by a large, long wooden plank supported by two stainless steel brackets and one trenched in window with a half oval of vertical culvert pipe dammed into the ground to keep the yard out. I was going to cover the glass over, but for now it’s completely whited out by the abundant snow and I don’t believe that there is anything down here that I could use to cover it over anyway. There is a washer and dryer down here, a small storage room and a square plastic sink with a hole in the bottom so that the water can tilt down into a drain which is located in the middle of the bare concrete floor.

I would liked to have made a more thorough search of the house for food and supplies, but when the pale sun began to ache through the cold silver fog and as the moans in the streets grew louder and more frequent, I knew that it was time to hide. I thought that I heard the storm door rattling earlier, but most of the dead give up on locks fairly easily; since there’s still much easier prey to hunt above the grass. There is a good supply of Enfamil cans stacked up in one corner and before we went down the stairs I did manage to grab a loaf of bread and some sliced ham. With this supply of formula, the baby should have enough nourishment to survive for several weeks, but there isn’t much else in the way of grub down here. Although I must admit that I’m not very hungry right now. After the sights I’ve seen, I don’t care if I ever eat again.

28 December

I can feel the frost seeping through the cool gray cinderblocks. There is a furnace down her but it hasn’t done much rumbling and I fear that the heat may have been shut off. I feel hungrier now as the ham has gone green and the Roman Meal blue, but I have decided that we should perhaps remain down here for another day. At least the baby has formula and once you’re up there and out in the open there’s no way to stop or even pause for longer than a few seconds. It’s certainly no place for a small toddler up there and leaving the youngster to her own helpless devices is now out of the question. She looks to be about ten monthes old as she already has several small serrated teeth jutting out from her soft gums. I’ve carefully searched her body for bites and having found none I have decided to name her Victoria. I did find some diapers underneath the formula cans and I have been able to launder her body suit which is a good thing since she periodically spits up. I was in the process of putting our clothes in the dryer when I heard something sniffing at the outside of the window. At first I thought that it was a snake; but then I noticed that the long trunk had a snout at the end. After that apparatus had cleared the pane for me I found myself staring into the pink eyes of a baby elephant. I quickly realized that this was not some drunken illusion as I’ve never been more sober in my life. With no caretakers left, the animals must have been driven by starvation to escape from the nearby zoo, and are now fending for themselves. I opened the window and patted it on the head as it snorted out its approval, blowing its warm breath in my face, before stomping off slowly through the glittering yard with a majesty that is somehow better than this rank predicament.

I can hear something bustling through the rafters and I have a terrible fear that rats may gnaw on the baby, if I should give into exhaustion and nod off. Keeping her warm down here is another problem but I did find several towels in the dryer and I have wrapped her up in them.

Going to the restroom could also become a problem, I urinated into the plastic drain today, but I don’t even want to think about number two. The baby is beginning to cry louder. It is very unnerving when I can’t quiet her since someone ( or something ) may be listening. At least I have the means to mix her up another bottle. Yet I can feel myself getting weaker, we may have to make a break for it tomorrow. But to where?

29 December

I finally got the baby asleep and lay her down on a towel which I had spread out over the hard floor and this gave me an opportunity to dig through the storage area. I emptied several totes before my efforts paid off and I found an old heart shaped box of Valentine candy which had been pretty well preserved in the cool temperatures of the basement. As I stuffed piece after piece into my mouth the sugar rushed to my head and I became dizzy and later nauseated. I wretched into the sink but when I turned on the faucet to wash away my spew no water come out from the fountainhead. That service must be severed also and I’ve had to wipe the vomit off as best I could with a dry wash rag. Now that the water has permanently ebbed, the washer will no longer function and the baby’s lone jump suit could become very messy. Who can say how long it will be before the electricity also fails? Realizing that I needed the strength, I laid down in a chilly corner of the basement and slowly bit into the final two pieces of candy. My throat was dry and I decided to risk opening the window so I could scoop a batch of snow into a plastic cup. As I crushed the snow and drank it, I could hear the elephant roaring some blocks away and I wished that I could be that free, mighty and beyond challenge.

Once I finally slept I dreamed that I was riding in a new Corvette; leaving the cruel and infested city behind on a clean and open freeway. But then the grand engine begin tapping, I was out of gas and oil. Black figures appeared upon the edge of the shoulder. Where they congealed into a crowd which surrounded my deceased vehicle like the dead sea.

I woke up to a similar tapping noise at three a.m. For several disoriented seconds I didn’t know where it was coming from. Perhaps, my exhausted mind reckoned, it was still part of the hideous dream. Then turning to the window I saw the actual source: a hideous face peering at me through the glass; weakly scratching its stiffened fingers against the pane; looking at the baby like a starving peasant lamenting through a bakery window. I simultaneously swung the window open and stuck the carving knife into its hungry mouth repeatedly. It kicked and writhed for a few seconds before its brains leaked out past its lips and fell onto the floor like raw veal. Now the cadaverous bastard has expired outside our window. The three choices seem to be: dragging the wretched dead bum inside: going outside, pulling him away from the window and risk being spotted from the street or staring at that decaying face for every merciless tick of the clock. The third choice, although probably the safest and easiest, is surely an E ticket to madness. I have had to turn all the lights out since there is no way that I can stop their glow from being seen from the street. Maybe I’ll just leave the body there for tonight, since were going to make a break for it tomorrow.

30 December

I noticed bites on Victoria this morning, which I fear may have come from the treacherous rats. She will no longer accept the bottle, which I carefully prepared from the formula and crushed snow, and she slaps at me violently without reason. After repeated attempts to feed her she bit the plastic nipple uncleanly off. No matter, there are some reserve nipples and I will try again later. Some strange looking blue blotches have developed around her eyes and she claws at the air and grabs at her throat.

Several rats have been staring at me from a beam above the furnace. They seem to have madness and malice in their eyes and I fear and perhaps even sense ( and this is going to sound crazy, ) that they are formulating a plan against Victoria and I.

I heard some kind of disturbance out in the white street and as I peered over the dead body of our disgusting friend, I was treated to the site of several of the living dead feasting on the remains of the elephant. Its once proud head askew and flattened like a blown tire; its sightless eyes as dim as the gray snow. The freezing temperatures must have killed it. I won’t accept as fact that they brought it down.

I’ll have to try and make sure that the baby gets some sleep. I’ll want her to be refreshed if we’re going to get out of here tomorrow.

31 December

Victoria had a pretty rough time last night as she commenced coughing sometime slightly after one. Her fever raged, but there was no way to bath her since the sink is now dry. I tried to scoop some more snow to fill the sink up with, but our decaying friend has been lying on top of it and the brown liquid which seems to be seeping from him has contaminated most of the powder. Eventually, with some ingenuity and effort, I filled the square basin with as much fresh snow I could gather, but that didn’t seem to quell her skyrocketing fever. Pressing a palm against her forehead was the same as touching a hot engine. Sometime around 2AM her lungs locked up and there seemed to be no breath at all coming from her nickel sized mouth. At 3AM she turned as purple as cabbage and all hope seemed abandoned. But just as I had lowered my face into my hands, to see with closed eyes the black edifice of utter despair and grief at my precious Victoria’s death, she rose up like Lazarus and began to walk. Oh, imagine my joy as my precious Victoria survived a debilitating fever and learned to walk in the same night. It appears as if she can communicate with the rats and sometimes she whispers to them softly in a language of babble. I can no longer keep my eyes open. It has taken every ounce of my strength to save the baby’s life. I’m only glad that I succeeded.

New Year’s Day: 1 January

Just another day; staying alive. I can no longer get the baby to eat and I have resorted to eating the dry formula with the plastic scooper myself. The baby ran up into the rafters with the rats and didn’t return for several hours. When she came back she looked pale and dirty: cobwebs smattered in her light, silky hair. I know now that the rats are planning to corner me and strip my bones clean with yellowing overbitten rows of small, sharp teeth. I no longer know which side Victoria is on, but still, I can’t help but love her. She was such a loving and caring baby when I first found her and I wish that those days were back. I tried to wipe her clean with a dry wash rag but she only snarled at me and ran up into the dark beams again. I’m very hungry and thirsty and had resolved to try and slither up and search the kitchen. But as I approached the door the knob was moving slowly as if someone were trying to open it from the outside. It made me wish, not for the first time, that I had a gun. Not so that I could defend myself, but rather, so I could turn the barrel on myself. I can hear the baby moving behind the cinderblock walls with the rats. I wish that I could go with her to search for somewhere darker than the bottom of a coal mine; a place where I could sleep forever. Wherever that place is and if she’s there, I hope that she’s happy.

2 January

All Hades throbbed at the cinderblock walls today. The dead must have heard me pacing around, babbling a senseless cadence on my rosary to ward off the ruthless ennui. First the strong storm door began creaking, as if seventy five people were piled on top of it. Then the dead pushed aside the cadaver; pushed him right through the basement window. He came toppling head first; his skull exploding open on the thankless concrete. There were endless dead behind him and they began to spill through the small window. Almost at the same time the storm door collapsed under the great weight of so many of them and at least a dozen walking corpses began to mull around on the floor and pull themselves together. This left only one remaining chance for escape: the old meat locker door at the top of the stairs. If there were as many dead at this exit also I was surely devoured. When I opened that door I was greeted by a gruesome looking corpse in a gray work suit. There must have been forty of his kind right behind him and I knew that today was my doomsday. I had no chance of defeating all of them or advancing even a foot. But just for the hell of it, I stuck the carving knife through the abomination in the gray suit’s brain. Then I threw myself on top of the crowd; like a saint being lowered down off of a black, burned out stake.

But then something strange happened: so many of them were trying to bite me at once that none could. Then my weight shifted onto the raised arms of a grandmotherly corpse who did not have the strength to hold me up. My body somehow built up momentum as the pile quivered and then toppled; throwing me onto the living room floor without so much as a hickey. I got up quickly and tried to bolt but there were still way too many of them. I was tackled like a running back behind the line of scrimmage as I prepared to go down for the final time in my life; or at least the last time that my body would move with my working brain as its conscious.

That’s when I heard the sound: like an earthquake and a tornado hitting from different angles at the same time and the wall of the house was knocked flat by the tank. It tracked over and shattered the colonial style windows and I felt several lethal hornets buzz past my ear and a dozen zombies were down in the half blink of an eye. The bullets must have been nine or ten inches long and there were explosions too, as several wailing corpses came apart in a puff of fire and toxic smoke like burning dolls or hurled crash test dummies. I was suddenly scared stiff: too shocked to move and too horrified to stand still. Now I could hear them on the bullhorn: “ATTENTION! DO NOT GO OUTSIDE! STAY IN YOUR HOUSES AND YOU WILL BE ASSISTED!” But this was all bullshit. The army now thought that they were the only ones equipped to survive and they made little discrepancy between the living dead and the living. Following the tank through the wall of the house were several soldiers riding atop a camouflage hued Humvie. The speeding vehicle pushed aside an over turned couch with the force of the bump throwing an aloof soldier onto the snow ruined carpet of a living room which was now exposed to the elements. Before he could raise his weapon the dead were on him; they pulled him apart in seconds as if he were a gingerbread men. I knew that it was nothing short of a miracle that I hadn’t suffered the same fate. I watched the Humvie continue to travel at a rapid pace down the icy street as the dead around me began to recover from the tanks initial attack and saunter back to their feet. As I watched the vehicles get a little smaller my eyes were drawn to a soldier who was standing straight up; his head and torso sticking out of a hatch in the roof of the tank. I thought that it was strange in such a situation that he should have a long loaf of French bread perched upon his shoulder and that he should be pointing it at me. Then I blinked again and I saw that it was not a piece of French bread, but rather, it was a bazooka.

Last Entry- Date Unknown

When I awoke I was back in the basement, with my cheek pressed against the cold concrete floor. The dead were lying all around me covered by a slight coat of snow, like guests passed out, hungover from a wild party the night before. Some of them had been blown apart by tank’s artillery and none of them seemed to be moving. Save for one string of flesh which was no more than a brain connected to an arm. It was leaving a trail of sludge on the floor like a snail as it dragged itself to nowhere. I wasn’t much worried about it biting me since its mouth, along with all other discernible features, had long been annihilated.

I wiped the spittle from my cheek and rose up into an Indian style sitting position. A flash of motion caught my eye in the darkened corner of the basement and I squinted into the limited light where different shades of blackness seemed to struggle in the gloaming. For a moment I thought that it was only one of the dead and for the hundrenth time I counted myself as finished.

But the gloom expanded into the well proportioned figure of a man who assembled beyond the tired trickery of my eyes to saunter out from the dim background. The soldier approached me; his dark hair framing a lean and handsome face. His unattended whiskers as sharp as porcupine bristles and shining with the sweat of battle.

I got to my feet and stood before him; I thought that I must look a haggard fright in the rogue clothes I had worn for days: a tight ‘Old Navy’ T-shirt and low cut Levi’s. He had a very serious weapon hanging from a strap around his neck: not really being a gun aficionado I can’t tell you what type that it was; but it was obvious that this tool had been issued for some extreme offense. We just stood there staring at each other as if neither one of us could believe that the other was real. His eyes were as black as limousine paint and as intense as a hypnotist. After a few seconds, he raised the gun and softly placed the end of the barrel in between my D-Cup breasts. He did not smile or make a sound but only tilted his jaw as if indicating that I should remove my T-shirt. Somehow, I was not threatened by this and even felt a twinge of excitement. Relief flooded through me as I noted the possibilities: perhaps I could keep a real live man; an armed soldier to protect me. Without hesitation I raised my shirt over my head. Refraining from lowering his weapon, he took out a huge hunting knife and sliced off my brassiere. Now my ample breasts showed themselves to the morning light which was craning in through the battle ruined basement. He lowered the gun until it was held up by the strap and sheathed the knife. In the same motion he cupped one of my breasts in his calloused hand and kissed me lightly on the mouth. His tongue felt soft and salty and his passion fed me like the nourishing food that I had did without. As our we rubbed each other’s bodies, we writhed together in an oscillating embrace. Sucking at each other’s lips as hungry as the roaming dead. Desire surged through my chest like a geyser of lava and I momentarily forgot how bad I must have smelled and that it had been over a week since I’d showered and a few days since I’d even had a cat bath. He didn’t seem to mind though and I was prepared to let him do whatever it was he will with me.

But even as we kissed deeply, I was somehow compelled to open my eyes and I saw on my far right peripheral a flash of gray. As fast and violent as a pinball the baby leapt out from a hanging over head vent, which had been twisted and exposed by the shell from the bazooka. She locked onto my soldier’s head with what seemed like the suction of a squid. I took a step back in shock as he tried to pull Victoria off of his forehead. But the crazy dead baby’s eyes were purple and wild and she clawed at his skull and bit at his scalp. I heard a noise then like a string of firecrackers going off and a force like a heavy blow on my naked chest knocked me to the ground; my arms and legs tingling with nothingness. I tried to force myself to rise but all feeling was gone and I realized that the soldier’s gun had discharged; the huge bullet ripping through my chest and probably severing my spine. The warrior pulled out his knife and began stabbing at the tiny, deadly, lump of flesh which had attached itself to him. He had to resort to using the gun again and Two more shots nearly tore one of Victoria’s arms off and the man slumped to his knees as she finally released him, his head a ruined, bloody mass of clawed bites and twisted tissue. The baby scurried back into the rafters, swinging like a one handed monkey, I suppose to rejoin the rats that she had became so friendly with. I was now positive that I would never see her again. The soldier dropped to the seat of his pants and pressed his palm against his gushing throat, but the vivid liquid rushed out much too quickly to be ebbed. He must have accidentily stabbed himself in the throat in a futile effort to get the lethal critter off of him.

Several hours have now passed and even though I cannot turn over, I can feel the large pool of blood which is gathering underneath me. I can only hope that I die before the soldier lives again. For I know that when he stirs he will want my flesh inside of him just as I once wanted him inside of me. So is the perverse appetites of the living dead. If I could move my arms to clutch the gun; I would surly deposit a cartridge into my own beleaguered brain, but there is no quarter forthcoming. That is: not until my soldier stands again; his form looming over my shattered body like a shadow across a grave and then, in the next progression, his relentless mouth chewing my flesh like a wild animal. I suppose that in this harsh city; where souls fly up like the millions of flakes of snow in the death bruised sky; in this mad dream where even your worst nightmare can’t match the insane horror of any waking moment; that that is what will pass for mercy.

END.

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Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. His work has appeared in over one hundred publications around the world. Including the Rockford Review, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Journal and Sinister City among many others. He has two poetry chapbooks published. ‘The Rain Draw Bridge’ from ‘Alpha Beat Press’ and ‘The Last Days of My Teeth’ from ‘Budget Press’ His short story ‘The Spider’ is available as an E-book from ‘Curious Volumes Publishing’ Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their three small daughters, Tiffany, Hope and Catalina, he lives in Loves Park IL USA.