Not long from now in a town not so far away...
Lisa didn't know what she'd expected, but walking into Kaveh's sister's mansion, she was blown away. A large flowing staircase came down into the entryway. The stucco white walls at odd angles made the place feel like it went on forever. Through the room's half dozen doorways, she saw Kooning in a gaudy gilded frame, antique furniture and a giant TV. If it weren't for the zombies, she might be very comfortable here.
Farah dropped her sword in the umbrella holder, speaking with the practice of an experienced hostess, "There's food in the fridge, and the bathroom's back there." She clicked the deadbolt and crossed the room's intricate Persian carpet to the main staircase.
Lisa could already visualize the zombies breaking down the door. She looked around, walking along the edge of the rug. The sprawling house would be difficult to defend. There were at least ten ways into this room alone, and the bright lights and large windows would serve as a beacon to wandering zombies.
Farah made her way up the stairs, and Speedy disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Helen and Lisa alone by the door.
Helen's arms clutched her bulging purse. "Are we gonna be okay?" she asked.
Lisa wanted to believe they would. "It's possible." Her forehead wrinkled.
Helen mirrored the frown. "You don't believe it?"
"She said we'd be safe here, didn't she?" Lisa looked up the staircase, but Farah was out of sight. The reassurance didn't sound convincing to her own ears, and her coworker seemed even less satisfied.
"But," said Helen, "Speedy said the last place would be safe, and in the bank, my Logan--" Helen shivered and covered her mouth. It had been only hours since they'd seen her boyfriend eaten by the zombies. "What if those things come here?" she said through her fingers.
Lisa relaxed her hand, allowing the tip of the baseball bat to tap the marble of the floor. The hollow sound echoed through the house. "We'll see," she said. Lisa had spent years watching zombie movies, imagining what she would do if they attacked. Now she just wanted this night to be over.
"You're the one whose been warning us." Helen locked eyes with her. "What should we do?" Helen had always asked for advice at work, over and over about everything, but never with this intensity.
Lisa looked around again, seeing potential danger from every side. She didn't even know where to start. She wasn't sure she could be relied on. What if she missed something? "This isn't my house," said Lisa, "and I don't think Farah wants to hear it."
Helen insisted, "I don't want them to get me, Lisa. I don't feel safe here." The look in her eyes was dangerously close to panic, but for the first time since the attack on the bank, Helen was the one making sense.
Lisa took a deep breath. "I'll try." She went to the staircase and started to climb.
Kaveh dragged a suitcase up the mountain. Its tiny wheels caught every pebble on the dirt road, rattling his arm with every step as the melting ice inside created a thin trail of mud behind him. The ice was to preserve his collection of human heads, but they wouldn't stay fresh forever.
The bend in the road behind him meant he was close. Two diverging driveways came down to meet him. Which way? Kaveh'd lived with his sister when he'd first arrived in America. He'd travelled this road hundreds of times but never on foot in the middle of the night. One driveway curved off into the trees, masking his view. The other house was familiar, but something about it wasn't right.
There were still a hundred zombies behind him, not as many as he wanted. The rest had wandered off into the woods along the way. Kaveh moaned at the top of his lungs to convince the remaining group that there was food ahead. The people of this town had always ignored him unless he was serving their meals, and now they changed direction to climb the driveway towards the house.
The one zombie he didn't have trouble luring forward was Mister Shankly. From the man who'd stood in the way of his loan, the bank manager had become like a stray dog following him home, the closest thing Kaveh had to a friend anymore. Kaveh forced his throat to speak, to ask the manager if he could see the numbers on the house, but Mister Shankly kept staggering blindly up the driveway with the others, every member of the group following everyone else.
Kaveh went closer to the house, and it looked more and more right. The angle of the roof, the brown of the door and the white trim against the blue paint all brought back memories. He remembered the view from every window, remembered growing up under that roof.
Kaveh stopped. That wasn't right. He remembered his childhood in Iran just as clearly. Where were these new memories from? He tried to remember more, but all he had were fragments.
The crowd of zombies lumbered past him towards the house, and he was tempted to go inside. The childhood in that house seemed so peaceful. He wanted to remember more of it, but he had other things on his mind. The other driveway had to be the one he wanted. He went back to the road and called the other zombies to follow him up to his sister's house.
Lisa stopped at the top of the staircase. The second story of the mansion was a maze of doors. "We're not ready," she called out, her mind already getting ahead of itself. "We should turn off the lights before they find the house."
Farah's voice came from somewhere nearby. "You two worry too much."
Lisa followed the voice to a bedroom where Farah was sitting on the foot of a long bed with an old man. Lisa saw how close they were sitting, saw the tenderness in Farah's eyes as she looked at the man. She stopped in the doorway, afraid to interrupt their private moment.
It was Farah who broke the silence. "Come on, honey. We have guests." She stood and kissed the man's forehead, contrasting the olive of her complexion with his pale expression. When they separated, Lisa saw the old man's eyes staring blankly, frozen with fear.
Lisa stepped forward. "Is he okay?" she asked, but then she saw the portable radio in his hand. Had he listened to the news? Was that what'd made him like this? Maybe he knew something the rest of them didn't. Lisa pushed the phrase "zombie apocalypse" from her mind, but pushing it out only focused her attention, made it so she couldn't think of anything else.
"This is my husband," said Farah proudly, "Doctor Neil Halsey."
And that did it. "You're a doctor?" said Lisa, her prescriptions filling her mind. He might have what she needed, but this wasn't the time to ask. She would talk to him alone, appeal to his doctor-patient confidentiality. The zombies were their first priority.
"Set the alarm?" Doctor Neil whispered to his wife.
Farah nodded. "Not yet, honey."
Helen appeared at the doorway. "Did you tell her?"
"About the lights?" said Farah. "Don't worry."
"Don't worry?" said Helen, working herself towards hysteria. "Have you seen those things? They tear you apart. Bullets don't stop them. They just keep coming. They keep coming." Lisa went over to calm her down, but she heard a noise outside and found herself at the window.
"Hey zombie girl," Farah raised her eyebrows at Lisa. "What's wrong with Buffy over there?"
"I'm Helen!" said the frantic blonde.
"Of course you are," said Farah.
Lisa looked at her coworker teetering on the verge of panic, facing the calm and bitter woman she barely knew. "She's had a hard day," Lisa said to Farah.
Farah got up and came towards Lisa. "And you think I've--" She heard the noise outside. "What the hell?"
"What?" Helen yelled across the room.
Farah and Lisa looked out the window, but it was too dark to see anything.
Doctor Neil droned from the bed, "The alarm."
Farah rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll go turn it on."
She started out of the bedroom, but Speedy came in and blocked the door. "Where did you go?" he asked.
"Right here," said Farah.
"You didn't wait for me downstairs," he said with a lost look in his eyes. "We should stick together."
The noise outside was getting louder. Lisa leaned out the window to listen, hoping it was the wind through the trees.
Kaveh saw a shadow at the far end of the driveway. In the warm glow of the bedroom light was a human silhouette. It drew him forward. This was the place he wanted. The zombies travelled vaguely in the direction of the house on Kaveh's promise of food ahead. The rustling of their rotted limbs and draping clothes made the sound of blowing leaves.
Mister Shankly followed Kaveh's rolling suitcase. If there was any glimmer of intelligence in him, it wasn't enough. Kaveh needed someone else like himself, but the zombies were all so stupid. It didn't seem fair. They could live forever without a thought in their heads, but he couldn't. He had to share what he'd discovered. Figuring out how to speak had been easy compared to finding someone worth talking to.
His sister would help. In Farah's kitchen, he could prepare a feast, something the others couldn't resist. Once they had the taste for brains, they'd share his intelligence, and they could be a community. He could fix this. He would give the zombies new life.
He looked up again to find the figure in the window gone.
"They're not human!" shouted Helen, pacing the bedroom. "We have to stop them before they get us." Doctor Neil whimpered at the thought.
"Helen. Calm down." Lisa tried to get her coworker under control by shouting. It didn't work.
"I'm telling you," said Farah with a chuckle, "they won't come up here. We're too far out of town." She was the voice of calm, if not reason.
Speedy got into the center of the room and raised his hands in the air. "We shouldn't be fighting," he said. "We have to stick together." Lisa nodded, but the others didn't listen. Speedy continued, "We have to find my family."
"Go outside?" shouted Helen. Lisa's head dropped into her hands. They were arguing when they should have been preparing, and there was nothing she could do. She'd seen this situation before in zombie films, usually right before the zombies ate the humans.
"Fidel," Farah said to Speedy. Lisa was surprised to hear the chef's legal name and waited to see where it would lead. "Chillax, okay. It'll be alright."
Speedy lost his nerve and sat down, but Farah had done nothing to appease Helen. "Stop saying it's gonna be alright!" said Helen. "We need to... We should be..." Her mouth hung open. She turned to Lisa. "What do you think?"
The room was quiet except for the growing rustle outside. Lisa was the only one who really knew what to do, and in this moment, for just a second, everyone was listening. She got nervous. The baseball bat felt flimsy in her hand, and she turned to Doctor Neil. "Do you have a gun?" The words almost caught in her throat.
Farah started up again. "No, not in my house. Look, the alarm's downstairs. I'll turn that on." She started to leave the room.
Lisa spoke louder. "Does your alarm reinforce the windows? Will it barricade the door?" Her hand started to shake, and she gripped the bat tighter.
Farah stopped and looked back. "Why would it?"
"Well, that's what it's going to take," said Lisa. She took a step forward. The shakes had moved up her arm. If she wasn't careful, she could go into a seizure, but this was too important. "I'm sorry, saying we're safe doesn't make it true. We need to defend this place if we're going to stay here. We can't relax and wait for them to show up."
"See?" said Helen, still frantic. "She knows. Listen."
Lisa turned to her coworker. "Stop it, Helen. Panic won't help either. We have to stay focused. We can't drop our guards for a second." The others didn't know what it was like to be nervous every minute of every day, afraid that one mistake could end your life, but Lisa had done it for years because of her epilepsy.
When people saw a seizure, they would always think the worst. They would be afraid of catching the disease. They'd think an epileptic couldn't hold a job, couldn't drive a car, couldn't be trusted with anything. Lisa had finally been living a normal life, keeping her disease a secret but always knowing that everything she'd built could be gone with one seizure. Now it was all slipping away, even without that. Her boss was dead, her bank filled with bodies. Even if all this blew over, she couldn't put things back the way they were.
By now they could all hear the noise outside. Lisa went back to the window, but the room was still too bright. "Turn the lights off," she said. Someone did, and her eyes slowly adjusted to the moonlight. Sure enough, there was movement down there, but it took a second for her to realize what she was looking at. The shifting ground became a cloud of zombies shuffling towards the house. Her heart rate sped up, but her arm had stopped shaking. "Speedy," she said slowly, to keep the others from panic. "Could you hand me the gun?" She was glad Helen was furthest from the window and would be the last to see what was down there.
Nobody said anything as Speedy walked over and gave Lisa the pistol. If she had told them about her epilepsy, he would never have trusted her with it, but she'd kept the secret. She traded him for the bat.
The zombies crowded around the two cars and a truck that were parked in front of the house. "We can get out the back, right?" said Lisa slowly.
Farah started arguing again. "This is my house, okay? We're going to stay right here." The zombie horde came within range of the porch light motion sensor. The light came on, and Farah's mouth dropped open.
Down below, Kaveh's eyes squinted in the light. The zombies all around him took it as a sign of life and began to moan. The chorus of identical voices got louder and louder.
Terror gripped Lisa's heart. They all heard the noise. There was no hiding it anymore. Out the window, the flesh-eating monsters had no visible end, like some vast open air concert. Her mind raced. "We need food and weapons, and we need to get out of here."
Farah backed away from the window. "There's food in the fridge," she repeated with the same air of an experienced hostess. "This way." She wrapped an arm around her husband and led him out of the room. Helen and Speedy followed, and Lisa brought up the rear.
The five of them ran down the stairs, the flowing staircase bringing them uncontrollably towards the front door. Lisa heard the zombies beating it down as a group with a steady rhythm, but that wasn't something zombies did. They couldn't. "Keep going," she told the others, but she went closer to investigate. There was something strange about whoever was outside that door.
The rhythm of the pounding on the door brought back the feeling from when she'd stared Farah down in Speedy's kitchen, the focus of having an enemy you could see, the exhilaration of taking your life in your hands. The adrenaline pumped in her veins. It made her hands shake, but it also heightened her reflexes and sharpened her aim. It felt like the beginning of a seizure, but it was different. The moment had finally come, and she was calm.
She raised the 9mm semi-auto which had once belonged to Vince, the security guard of her bank. He was the one who'd introduced Lisa to the firing range during a misguided attempt at office romance. As she aimed the gun at the cracking door and thought about his rotting corpse on the floor of the bank, she regretted not giving him more of a chance.
The door burst open. The first zombie climbed inside, and Lisa recognized her boss, Mister Shankly, back from the dead.
Without hesitation, she fired a bullet through his skull. His brains smeared across the remains of the door. He collapsed. Lisa had just shot her boss and killed her first zombie, realizing two long-held fantasies in a single moment.
Someone screamed, distracting her from the door. Helen was standing on the Persian rug, staring wide eyed at their former boss.
"Why are you still here?" Lisa shouted. "Run!" Helen spun a dazed half circle and jogged toward the back of the house. Then Lisa saw Speedy staring at the door with the same look of horror. Lisa turned back to see what had shocked him and found a zombie staring into her eyes through the hole in the door.
Kaveh hadn't expected to find Lisa here. It was a fantastic surprise. He opened his mouth to greet her, but all he could do was moan.
Lisa took aim with the gun. Her heartbeat was like a hummingbird's. The blood rushed into her face. It was strange, there was an almost human look in Kaveh's eyes, like recognition, but everything Lisa knew about zombies said that could never happen. She fired the gun.
Find out what happens to our heroes in Chapter Seven - Love Will Chew Us Apart
Or see what should happen next.
