And Hell Followed: A Horror Novel Read online

  Once the zombies moved far enough away and found somewhere new to prowl, the night fell silent. Hordes tended to stick to a spot where they thought humans were hiding. They would stake it out until distracted or drawn to a new chance at a meal. Loners like Mustache could show up anywhere though, no matter how quiet the humans were.

  Thinking of how I would explain my mistake to Daddy, I hoped if I found the right words he wouldn’t be angry or disappointed. Except when he and Paul found us, I knew Daddy wasn’t angry or disappointed. He was heartbroken. A single moment of disbelief and denial then he hurried to where we were huddled. Falling to his knees, he reached for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and no other words were necessary.

  Leo gave me to my father but didn’t leave his spot right away. Even though he must have been sore from sitting there so long, Leo just watched me. No matter how much I wanted to find the right words to thank Leo, I could do no more than console Daddy.

  “What happened?” he asked Leo.

  “A single zombie got in. I don’t know how, but…” Leo stopped speaking when he saw how my wound had soaked through the makeshift bandage.

  Pushing his shaggy blond hair out of his blue eyes, Daddy smiled at me as if everything would be okay.

  “Does it hurt, Sami?” he asked while wrapping another shirt around the festering wound.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Good. Once you get some rest, you’ll feel better.”

  Nodding, I cuddled against him. Paul pulled his son up then sighed. “Where is everyone else?”

  “Barricaded in the safe room,” Leo said with his gaze on me.

  Nodding, Paul looked down at his best friend and me. “It’s not safe here anymore.”

  “It was never safe here,” Daddy said.

  “They’ll come back. When they don’t find anything at the store, they’re bound to head back here.”

  “I killed the one who attacked Sami,” Leo said. “The others came because of the noise. They never saw us.”

  “Won’t matter. We should head out and find somewhere safer.”

  Daddy glared up at Paul who stepped back.

  “I need to protect my family, Evan. We’ll head to site four, and you can catch up with us after it’s over.”

  Daddy was a gentle father, having yelled at me only four times since I was old enough to remember. He was a good friend and an easygoing man, but he held grudges. Even in a wasteland with predators everywhere, a slight from his best friend set off the fury in my dad.

  “Fine. Go and good luck.”

  “Evan, you know what’s going to happen next. We’d stay, but she’ll get loud once the infection kicks in. I’ve got to save my family. You’d do the same.”

  “Screw off, Paul.”

  Daddy didn’t throw fits often. Once a fit got started though, there was no talking to him for a while. Paul had been his best friend since sixth grade and knew Daddy better than probably anyone, so he didn’t waste time smoothing things over.

  “Site four,” Paul said, and Daddy cuddled me tighter.

  Leo watched us, looking uneasy. “Maybe we should wait, Dad?”

  “It’s okay,” Daddy told Leo, reaching out to take his hand. “Thank you for saving my baby.”

  Leo nodded, but he suddenly looked like a little boy. He hadn’t saved me in his mind. He was too late, and now I would die. Paul patted Leo on the back and then glanced out of the windows.

  “We’ll go while it’s dark to prevent drawing attention to the school. We’ll also leave supplies in the safe room, so you can move Sami there once we’re gone.”

  Nodding, Daddy didn’t look at Paul. While I wished they wouldn’t leave things angry, I knew they’d probably fought plenty over three decades of friendship. I still wished they would make up before the group moved on.

  Once I died, and he destroyed me, Daddy would mourn. Maybe he would take his life or maybe his stubborn streak would take over and he’d refuse to give up. If this happened, he would catch up to Paul and the others. Without me, they’d be the only family he had left.

  Paul didn’t say anything else before leaving the room. Leo followed his father, pausing at the door then disappearing into the dark hall.

  Daddy was silent for a long time. Just holding me against him and caressing my blonde hair. I had his hair color, but Mom’s waves. Daddy loved those waves, even if his fingers often got tangled in them.

  When his fingers got twisted in my dirty hair again, Daddy had to tug them free. Smiling, he looked at me like he always did – like I was the most special thing in the world for him.

  When I apologized to Daddy for not being more careful, he again brushed off my worries. He promised I would be all right and today would be no more than a bad memory. He said the words with enough resolve for me to believe he truly meant them.

  People visited, but I had trouble focusing on them. My body felt bloated, numb in certain areas, tender in others. A shock of pain tore through me occasionally, and I struggled to keep quiet. Other times, my body felt fuzzy, almost tranquil, and I slept.

  At one point, Daddy’s other best friend Nick entered the room. They spoke so quietly that I couldn’t hear them, even though I was in my father’s arms. I did hear the pain in their voices. Later when Sherry visited along with Nick’s girlfriend Molly, I heard the women crying.

  I remembered how Molly and Nick tiptoed around the idea of becoming a couple. They’d both lost lovers in the plague and Daddy said they felt guilty for wanting each other. Love won out, and their happiness always gave me hope, feeding into my fantasies about the world still being beautiful.

  Some of the kids visited, but I was barely conscious for most of it. I did wake at the sound of Leo’s voice. I heard him apologizing to Daddy. Forcing myself awake, I reached for Leo’s hand and told him how he was my hero.

  At least I hope this was what I said. Those were the last words I had said to him before he and the others disappeared into the night.

  Once the group left the school, Daddy carried me to the safe room. He left a few times to grab supplies then locked us in the classroom. When Paul first chose this room for our fallback position, I had found the lack of windows creepy. There were no exits besides the one door. If zombies broke into the room, we would be slaughtered.

  Now I was happy to be in the room because the openness of the other rooms left me exposed. This room was quiet and isolated inside the school so the zombies would have to work hard to find us. Also, unless they were down the hall, I could probably scream pretty loudly without drawing their attention. The room I would die in felt as safe as life was going to afford us.

  Daddy used a rug to cover the opening under the door then turned on a nightlight in the corner. One reason the group remained in the hundred miles of country between the two enclaves was that the power was still on most days. Running water wasn’t as common, though.

  Resting my body on a makeshift bed, Daddy joined me, pulling blankets over us. Somewhere in the room was a car freshener, probably a dozen of them. The scent of cinnamon hid the stench of our dirty bodies and my rotting flesh. Listening to my father’s breathing in the mostly dark room, I fell asleep.

  A few months after we fled the suburbs, the group began traveling back and forth between the two enclaves. There were hordes traveling back and forth between the enclaves too. Daddy said they weren’t following us, but just returning to the last place they remembered finding food. When one enclave provided no meals, the hordes turned and headed back to the other enclave. In between, they ate anyone not quiet or careful enough. People like me.

  I always wanted to move north or south, anywhere outside the path of the hordes. Daddy said there were hordes everywhere. Grant also told the group how the North was run by militias who would steal our females and kill the males. He said the south was a no man’s land, just a free-for-all and too violent for nice folks like us. Grant might have been truly crazy. Everyone said he was, but they also didn’t head south o
r north.

  One time while we moved through the woods near a small town in the path of a horde, the group camped outdoors. We found the dead piled in the same way the military once dumped them when they were still in control of the country. This pile had been fresh, meaning scavengers from the enclaves or some other group had passed through. No matter who created the pile, we camped near it.

  The smell was awful, but it hid our scents from the hordes. I fell to sleep, inhaling the stench with every breath. I awoke to the stench too. I also awoke to a face staring out at me. While I had nearly screamed, my training held. Swallowing the horror, I finally understood what I was looking at.

  The pile had shifted overnight, and a body tipped, so the rotting face now rested a foot from mine. I stared into a man’s bug infested eyes and remembered how this monster was once a person like me.

  As I slept fitfully in the safe room, I smelled the same rot. Waking several times ready to find a rotting face looking back at me, I only found my father sleeping. Eventually, I realized the stench was me, and it was growing stronger.

  I was proud of how long I went without screaming. At first, the infection felt like the flu except for the bite wound which hurt as if someone was digging around in the flesh. A few times I woke to the sensation of something chewing on the wound, but it was just my mind playing tricks on me. More and more my mind saw, heard, and felt things that weren’t real. Crawling around the room to escape imaginary threats, I heard Daddy coaxing me back to reality.

  During one of those episodes, I gnawed at the wound, trying to bite off my infected arm. When Daddy pointed his gun at me, I wasn’t sure if it was real. The tears in his eyes looked real as did the pain in his voice as he said my name. He didn’t fire, though. Not then or later when I begged to die. While Daddy loved me too much to watch me suffer, he also loved me too much to pull the trigger.

  The sensation of being gnawed on soon spread from the bite mark to every inch of my body. The pain was so bad that I didn’t care about making Daddy proud or Leo or fantasies or the soul eater. I didn’t even care about my poor daddy holding me while I screamed. I just wanted to die so the pain would stop.

  And I got my wish.

  Gasping for air, I struggled to tell Daddy one last time how much I loved him, but it was too late. Dying in his arms, I worried he wouldn’t let me go, and I would tear him apart before he could get away. We had seen videos on the Internet of people who died of the infection and how quickly they awoke and turned violent.

  Taking my last breath, I twitched, fighting to breathe again, to live for a while longer, and to stay with Daddy. I looked at him and saw the shock in his eyes as we both realized I was leaving him. His blue eyes were so wide and desperate for a miracle that wouldn’t come. The pain had been so awful that I begged for death, but now I wanted more time.

  My last thought before my sight faded was how good Daddy’s throat looked, just an inch from my mouth.

  Opening my eyes, I saw Daddy’s throat again. I also heard him crying, quieter now as tears dripped onto my face.

  At first, I couldn’t move, but I wanted to tell Daddy I was okay. I also wanted to taste his flesh. Was this what all zombies felt? Did they understand what they hungered for was wrong, yet did it anyway? I’d always thought of them as soulless and incapable of love, but I did love Daddy as I struggled to move my body.

  When I twitched, Daddy became very still, and I expected him to check me. Maybe he thought I made it through the infection like Grant said people sometimes did. Or maybe he thought the twitching was a natural part of death. No matter what he thought was happening, Daddy should have been worried I’d attack him.

  Daddy knew to be afraid. I could feel his heart racing, but he didn’t move away or check me. He just left his throat where I could tear it open.

  Opening my mouth, I didn’t have any spit, and my tongue was stuck to the bottom of my mouth. Working my jaws, I finally created enough saliva to dislodge my tongue and form a word.

  “Daddy,” I gurgled.

  Daddy pulled away, just enough to look down at me. Instantly, I knew he hadn’t believed Grant or thought the twitching was a normal part of death. Thinking I had changed, he was waiting for me to kill him.

  “Sami,” he said, resting me on my back.

  Still working my jaws, I was so thirsty and tired. Daddy must have been a mind reader because he lifted me into a sitting position and helped me sip water. He mostly splashed tiny amounts into my mouth, and I just tried to swallow.

  Once I was sitting up and drinking easier, I could see how startled Daddy was by the turn of events. Long after I finished my first bottle of water, he was still waiting to die.

  “Grant was right,” I finally said.

  “Wasn’t so crazy after all, I guess. My baby came back to me.”

  Looking half-crazed, Daddy was laughing and crying. In a few days, he would be back to the man I’d always admired. For the next few hours though, I saw something in him that made me grow up in a way the bite and death hadn’t.

  Sixteen or not, I was responsible for another person’s survival, so no more mistakes.

  Chapter Two

  We left the school three days later. While I wasn’t at a hundred percent, I was the reason we left. When I wasn’t sleeping, I needed to eat. Anything would do from stale chips to melted candy bars. We hadn’t eaten anything fresh since arriving at the school weeks earlier. Everything was scavenged from convenience stores. The big box and grocery stores tended to be emptied out by early looters and were often full of zombies roaming the aisles.

  Normally I ate only enough food to suppress my hunger, though never so much to feel full. We learned to live on less, but now all I wanted to do was eat. No, this was an exaggeration. However, when I was hungry, I was starving.

  On day two, we left the safe room.

  Removing the barricades was always the most unnerving time. Anything could be right outside the door or down the hall or around the corner. The quiet meant nothing because zombies could be soundless like Mustache had been.

  As Daddy prepared to open the door, I held an ax in my shaking hands and thought to the gun on my hip. Slowly he eased open the door then poked his covered arm into the hallway. Daddy waved his hand around, tempting anything which needed tempting. Nothing happened, and he stepped into the hallway.

  Soon we were in the room where Leo had held me for hours. We found a bit more food and my hunger quieted, but we needed to leave soon. Daddy didn’t say he was worried about heading out when I was so weak. Instead, he said leaving was a great idea and he felt good about it. I saw the truth in his eyes, and I figured he saw the truth in mine when I agreed leaving would be a relief.

  The next morning, we spotted only a few zombies shuffling near the playground. One was even trying to swing. Daddy teased me about that one, betting me a cookie the former teenager could get a good rhythm going. I bet him two cookies the zombie would fall on his butt. We both lost when the zombie fell on his face.

  Daddy put off leaving for as long as he could. He examined every possible exit, looking for the clearest path away from the school. He even considered creating a diversion to prevent the zombies from noticing us at all.

  “It’s getting late,” I told him, and he finally gave up stalling.

  I wasn’t scared to leave, even if it meant walking into the open. While I worried about slowing down Daddy, I mostly wanted to find Paul and the others. Leo needed to know I survived and Daddy could make up with Paul. I also wanted to have more than just Daddy and me around to watch our backs. Once we reached site four, we could relax a little.

  Only two zombies followed us. The one from the swing would have followed too, but he became tangled in the chains. Daddy and I just kept walking. Not fast enough to make any mistakes, but fast enough to stay ahead of the zombies.

  Zombies were usually quiet. Most of their screaming and moaning was when they were fighting for food. Like animal predators, zombies tended to be nearly silen
t when in pursuit of their prey. This habit was great when you didn’t want them alerting more zombies to your presence. The habit wasn’t so great when they were hiding in a closet, waiting to jump out.

  We lost the two zombies by getting far enough ahead of them then crouching behind overgrown shrubs. The male and female zombies kept heading the direction they had last seen us.

  Zombies weren’t stupid. Some were savvy, yet most were like small children. They formed enough thoughts to get by with, but they couldn’t outwit a human as smart as Daddy.

  Hiding in the bushes, we heard movement inside the house at our backs. Even crouched away from the windows, I noticed a woman walk past. Then a man. Then the woman walked back. Then the man. I wondered how many times in a day the elderly couple turned zombies traipsed back and forth in the house? Hearing them turning the front doorknob, I realized they were trapped inside the house.

  Humans could be selfish and corrupt, but they could also be generous. Knowing they were dying and unable to take their own lives in a way preventing their return, the couple had locked themselves into their house. The doors were barricaded, not to keep people out, but to keep their zombie selves in. The window above me was thick, and I doubted they could shatter it. They had probably tried and given up. Now they just walked back and forth, hoping to find a different result at the doors.

  Daddy and I crawled through the bushes and away from the window. Even if those zombies were truly trapped, with enough incentive, they’d find a way to reach us. Or at the very least, they’d make enough noise to alert other zombies.

  Walking again, we moved block by block. Slow, quiet, and careful. Any noise caused us to stop. When we traveled with the group, our pace was quicker, but Daddy was worried now.

  Unable to run, I couldn’t even speed walk. He wanted us to get somewhere safe and settled in before the sun set. If I collapsed in an hour or two, we’d take weeks, maybe longer to reach site four. By then, the group could have moved on.