two-year-old on top of the two other kids.
It was a miracle they were alive.
Chut . Another gout of acid hit the floor somewhere behind him.
“Guys, we gotta come up with something.” Christopher sounded like he was about to panic.
Ken wanted to join him. Wanted to just start screaming. But he didn’t. He couldn’t afford to do that. He was a father, a daddy , and daddies didn’t have the luxury of giving into panic. Not if they wanted their children to stay alive.
He helped Maggie to her feet. “I don’t have time to explain,” he said.
She looked over his shoulder. Saw the creature that had peeled most of the skin off its face to get in. Saw the other things behind it , clambering to get through the rapidly-deteriorating door. She went pale, and gasped, and he knew her well enough to see the scream in her gaze, the shriek that wanted to come out.
She held her hands in front of her. Cupping them around Liz’s still-unmoving form. And she didn’t scream. Mommies can’t afford the luxury of panic any more than daddies can.
“What do we do?” Maggie said. She helped Hope to her feet. The little girl was listless, confused. A far cry from the bright, perpetually smiling child she had been the last time Ken saw her.
“Daddy, can I help?” said Derek.
Whump .
Ken looked over and saw that Aaron had grabbed one end of the coffee table, Dorcas the other. They battered it into the face of the zombie that was pushing itself through the door like a hideous mockery of birth. The thing screamed and coughed again. The coffee table fell in half almost instantly, the soft wood succumbing to the acid. But underneath the zombie was now writhing and shrieking as the acid it had expelled ate into its own flesh as well.
Smoke filled the room.
The things outside the office were still screaming their mad, enraged scream.
And a shudder rocked the building. It felt like an earthquake.
Only there were no earthquakes in Idaho.
18
“What was that?” shouted Dorcas.
“Hell if I know,” said Aaron. Soft-spoken as usual, though his words seemed a bit more clipped right now. He picked up one of the pieces of the broken coffee table with his good hand. Dipped it in the fizzling pool of acid that was eating a hole in the web-coated floor nearby, then slammed it through the widening slit in the door.
The wood punched right through the chest of the half-melted zombie on the other side of the door. The thing shrieked, but other than that didn’t even seem to register the attack. It kept thrashing wildly, madly, pushing ever farther through the door, ever farther into the room.
Ken looked at his son. Derek was staring at him with that look that was reserved for superheroes and daddies: that look that said, “You’ll save us. I know it.”
Ken tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. Tried to ignore the knowledge that they were doomed.
He ran to the only possible way out. The window. He, Aaron, Dorcas, and Christopher had climbed outside another building to escape zombies.
Of course, that was before they added six more people to their group. Several of them drugged. Three of them children.
Shut up, Ken. Just look .
He looked. Rushed to the window and pressed his face against the glass. He couldn’t see anything but the reflections of the gray woman and her gray son, standing there and staring at him like they were irritated he hadn’t come better equipped to handle the situation. There wasn’t a good angle to see anything on the outside face of the building.
The building shuddered again. More violently this time, fairly rocking on its foundation. Maggie had to lean on the web-covered desk, Derek and Hope fell into their mother for support. Christopher and Dorcas weaved on their feet. The gray mother and son pair went down in a pile, both complaining about the weight of the other on legs and arms.
Only Aaron
Chris A. Jackson, Anne L. McMillen-Jackson