“Where is he anyway? We need him to help us keep the walls and joists wet in case the fire tries to jump through the masonry to us,” Kurt asked and they each looked at one another, the truth dawning.
“Oh my god!” Sarah shrieked and ran for the ladder, reaching the attic in three huge steps.
“Sarah, come back!” Kurt screamed after her, he could see the vast clouds of blackened smoke swirling above them. “Fuck!”
He ascended and was blinded immediately. The air caused his eyes to sting and tears coursed down his face. He kept low and followed the coughing as Sarah made her way to find Braiden. Using his hands to guide the way, he felt his wife’s boot as she backed towards him out of the hole.
“I’ve got him!” she wheezed, close to collapse as well.
“Get downstairs, get some air!” Kurt choked, pulling her back and grabbed the boy’s leg she had left.
He tugged and the light body of Braiden slid across the floor, pulling dust along with him. Backing away, he found John reaching frantically and with one final heave he had the boy at the hatch.
“Take him,” Kurt’s voice was barely a croak, but John heard and pulled the lifeless figure down onto his shoulder and carefully climbed down.
Kurt stayed in the attic. He dropped his head through the hatch and gulped down cleaner air, the burning in his throat would be causing him discomfort for a while.
“I need to block the hole or we all die,” he gasped. Sam nodded and followed the rest of them into the bedroom where they had taken Braiden.
Kurt took a deep breath and moved one block at a time before hurrying back to the hatch for a clean intake. The one minute task took more than five and was made even more difficult by the fact he had to work with his eyes closed. The ever growing heat from the neighbouring house reminded him of the impending danger. The final concrete block was added to the barricade and the smoke was finally cut off, filtering through the gaping hole in the other roof instead. Kurt rushed back down, desperate for news on their surrogate son.
“He’s not breathing, no pulse. Get back!” Sarah pushed them all away and they could only watch, helpless.
She tilted his head and administered two breaths, watching for the chest to inflate with the life giving air.
“One, two, three, four…” Sarah counted all the way to fifteen, and then gave two more puffs.
Kurt had entered the room and the tears on his cheeks were not only due to the burning, acrid smoke. Everyone was crying and comforting each other while Sarah desperately tried to bring Braiden back. She checked his pulse again and listened for signs of breathing, but all was quiet. She turned to Kurt and the look of desolation and loss on her face caused his chest to ache.
“Oh baby, come here,” Sarah stood and flew into Kurt’s arms, sobbing at their loss.
Only Paige and Honey seemed undaunted at the events, the dog was going from person to person, licking their hands. The young lady knelt by the dead boy and lifted his head onto her lap.
“Now then, we need you to come back. Do you hear me, stop all this silliness.” Paige stroked his filthy forehead, straightening the hair out of his face.
“Sweetie, he is gone,” Gloria tried to tell her.
“No he’s not,” she answered matter-of-factly. “He just needs to wake up.”
The other members of the family didn’t want to press the issue. It wasn’t helping with her own psychological problems, but they would not push, they were too distraught.
“See how upset you are making everyone, come on now. You have saved us all and now we must save you, ok?” Paige asked Braiden.
Honey had lain by the side of the boy and nuzzled his neck, licking the face and leaving clean patches where her tongue had been. She started whining gently, trying to pull at him with her paw.
“You can’t go. I can’t live if you leave me too.” Paige was beginning to break.
Honey stood and furiously licked Braiden all over the face and then barked incessantly until Paige stroked her head. The dog cocked her head and looked quizzically at the boy, whose arm had started to twitch, clenching his fist. Gloria stepped forward and raised the gun.
“Stand back sweetie, he has turned,” Gloria said.
“But he hasn’t been bitten,” Sam protested.
“NO, LOOK!” Sarah shrieked, pulling the gun away from the boy’s head. The chest was rising and falling, weakly. “Let me see.”
She dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse, it was weak but steady. Braiden’s chest was rising and falling with greater urgency and Sarah turned him on his side just in time. He retched and vomited on the floor. His chest heaved, great wracking coughs issuing forth and more bile trickled from his mouth, his stomach already empty.
“Oh baby, you are ok. Take deep breaths, that’s it,” Sarah advised and rubbed his back as he lay on his side, wheezing.
Paige had her hands to her cheeks and the tears were running freely, she was shaking with a mixture of emotions. John and Kurt embraced and pulled Sam in with them, three generations of the Taylor men crying like babies. Gloria remained resolute, her eyes were full of tears but she would cry quietly later, until then she had to keep them safe. To this end, she continued the watch from the windows, but the only activity was a few zombies who had come to investigate the glowing night sky.
“The attic is clear of most of the smoke, we need to get up there and soak the rafters or the fire will spread from next door before we can get out of here,” John told them from the hallway.
Braiden had been lifted and laid on the bed, still struggling to breathe. The miracle was that he was alive at all; only the open roof prevented the concentration of smoke to build to a degree that would have stopped Kurt and Sarah affecting a rescue. The bedroom floor squelched with each step, the water soaking their feet. Kurt grabbed the buckets and filled them from the bath with difficulty. There were only a couple of inches left at the bottom. It was covered in floating ash and assorted dust from the fire fighting, no longer suitable for drinking. They would need to stock up from the neighbouring house that wasn’t ablaze, or use their provisions that were in the bug out bags and suitcases in the van.
“How long do you think we have?” Kurt asked as he climbed into the loft.
“An hour, tops. See the fire trying to get though the blocks you laid out?” John pointed and small flames were curling through the cracks. “The fire is already at the roof, splash the rafters now, get as much as you can on them.”
They soaked the roof timbers and it was already warm enough that the water quickly evaporated. A lot was wasted as they tried to cover every nook and cranny and John ceased their efforts, seeing it was pointless.
“We are wasting time now, let’s just get out of here,” John told Kurt and they headed down to the others.
“Grab everything you can. We are going to head across to Sonya’s house, that one there,” Kurt showed them their destination. If they hadn’t been so lucky with the pendulum, they would be navigating a swarm of the dead, but luck was on their side.
“Want me to check downstairs, Dad? Make sure the way is clear?” Sam offered.
“Gloria would you go too? Cover Sam so he can kill them quietly,” Kurt requested and she nodded, locking the shotgun. She aimed down through the gap as Sam climbed down, being careful to keep him out of line of fire. He then took the gun from her as she joined him and was happy to pass it back, it was heavy and loud. He preferred the steel silence of the slingshot.
They gathered anything of value, including some extra water and stored it in the fire blackened kitchen, ready for a quick run across the unprotected gardens and in through the back door. Their hearts were heavy as they made to leave the safety of their home, where they had lived, laughed and loved both before, and after their world was engulfed by the plague of the undead. Gloria poked her head through the smouldering doorway and could only see three of the walking corpses. They stood only feet from the burning building, transfixed by the fire in much the same way that the family of survivors had taken solace in the warming fireplace in the bedroom. The bodies were steaming, the moisture of the flesh rising in waves as the flesh bubbled and blistered. The first of the three ignited. The clothing and fats were no longer able to resist the proximity of the heat and blazed into a swaying pyre. Gloria thought back to images she had seen of spontaneous combustion, where poor souls had been burned to ash after seemingly inexplicable scorching consumed them. The zombie showed no signs of pain, standing there like a candle wick as the fire rendered down the body in a dripping pile of bodily juices. The other two were so close, the added sparks of their fellow cadaver was enough to cause them to burst into incandescence. The smell was beyond imagining, the scent of burning flesh that was deep into degeneration. Boiling vomit would have been more pleasant.
“Ok, go,” said Gloria, and she stepped out with Sam close behind.
The others began racing across the short distance. Kurt swung the sledgehammer into the lock section of the wooden door, which ripped the latch free. As the door hit the wall and the echo reached the others, the zombies turned towards them. The first to catch fire was too far gone, nothing remained in the joints and how the brain was still even functioning was terrifying. It collapsed into a pile and laid still. The remaining two had some movement and their arms raised at the survivors as they approached, eager for a searing embrace. They left a trail of body pieces behind them as they got nearer. Sam wasted no time, loading the slingshot and firing two shots at the hellish creatures, which fell to the parched grass and made their own outlines with fire, like burning crime scene tape. With the most imminent threat gone they carefully searched their new sanctuary. They went room by room to make sure there were no zombies present, then finished loading it with their scavenged belongings. Braiden was supported by Paige and they limped over, Honey keeping them under guard and watching the night carefully.
“I’m going to move the van. Get inside, I’ll be right there,” Kurt told them. He turned over the engine which started at first try. He was grateful to have such a reliable vehicle and moved it away from their house, which would soon be on fire too. Parking close to the door, he made sure the cut out in the roof was positioned near an upstairs window.
“Thank god they didn’t notice what we had done to the van, it would have been easy to throw a Molotov at it and destroy our means of escape,” John said, watching Kurt enter the home.
“I don’t even want to think about what could have happened, let’s get upstairs,” Sarah suggested and they were only too happy to follow.
The broken door was closed and blocked as much as possible, but they would use the crowbar to take out the stairs once again. It was the only way they could ensure they would have time to react in the event of another attack.
The home smelled musty, although underlying it was a floral scent. Sonya had loved to put potpourri in glass dishes around the house. It was such a change from the awful smells they had been used to, that they savoured it, inhaling deeply through their noses. The smell of their smoke damaged clothing and skin quickly diluted the sweetness, and the moment was gone.
“Let’s all sleep in the same room tonight. I want to know we are all together. We will move out in the morning at first light. I know we will be more visible but I don’t want to be out there in the dark with them until we learn more about how they act,” John said.
Sam collected the mattress from Tori’s room, Sonya’s four year old daughter. The wall paper was Walt Disney, with Bella, Snow White and assorted other cartoon beauties smiling angelically at him. The toys were still strewn over the floor from the last play they would ever likely see; dust would claim them in time. He shuddered at the fates of these wonderful people and prayed that they had been reunited and were safe somewhere right now. The sickly sweet, but dark and brooding room, told him otherwise.
“Fucking bastards!” he whispered to himself in the darkness, aware that he would be told off if caught by his parents, but feeling it summed the bad guys up. Thinking of the likely deaths of Sonya and Tori made him realise how close they had all come to dying in the most awful ways imaginable, either burned alive or eaten alive. Now they had to escape and find new sanctuary, or fail and join the ranks of the damned.
They gave Braiden the most comfortable bed and Honey joined him, a yellow furred guardian. It was unclear to them if he would suffer any lasting damage to the lungs, but it was a moot point as none of them possessed any medical skills to help either way. The family watched in awe and sadness as the fire jumped from one house to the next, raging through the floors until the flames leaped from breaks in the roof tiles. The loss of their home hit harder than they had imagined it would, they wept quietly as it was destroyed. Family pictures and fond memories that had taken years to accumulate were incinerated in less than an hour.
Sam stood at the back, alternating between checking his brother and watching their last links to their old life disappear. It was a sad time in some ways, also strangely exciting. He felt as if he was being reborn, like a butterfly that was emerging from a chrysalis, ready to explore the wider world. Braiden was injured, but he had shown such guts and bravery over the past few weeks that Sam had grown to love and admire him. The situation had thrust them together and their animosity had blossomed into a strong brotherly bond, each finding something from the other that completed them. Deep down, he knew that Braiden would give his life for their family, and Sam hoped that he would be able to make the same sacrifice if the need ever arose. Braiden coughed violently again and Sam took the glass of fresh, cool water and held the straw by his mouth. Braiden took several long swallows and smiled at Sam, talking was agony and he would avoid it for now.