Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel by Richard M. Cochran Page B

to, and he knows the child can outrun them. But
he rarely takes the chance.
    He shuffles into the living room
and stands over Emma, looking over her shoulder at the book she’s reading.
    “What are you looking at?” he
asks.
    “I’m looking at all the
different plants that you can eat if you’re stuck in the woods,” she replies.
“There sure are a lot of them, grandpa.”
    “You’re right, there are,” he
replies. “Maybe, when all the bad people go away, I’ll take you up into the
mountains and we can go fishing. Would you like that?”
    “Yep,” she says, placing the
book on her lap. “Can we catch a wild animal and tame it for a pet?” she asks
excitedly.
    “I don’t know,” he says with a
smile. “We’ll see.”
    “Grandpa?” she asks. “Why are
all those people so mad?”
    He’s taken aback by her
question. “They’re not really mad ,” he says. “They’re hungry and angry because
they can’t find the right thing to eat,” he says, trying his best to answer
her.
    “Why don’t they just go to the
store or something?”
    “Because,” he laughs, trying to
choose the right words, “they’re dead and they only eat people who are alive.
That’s why I always tell you to be really quiet when we go out onto the beach
when we look for other people like us.”
    “Would they eat us?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long are we going to have
to stay hiding?” she asks.
    “I don’t know,” he replies.
“There’s no telling.”
    “But when they go away we can go
fishing?”
    “We sure can,” he says with a
smile.
    As the child returns to her
book, Jacob wanders back into the kitchen and looks through the shelves of
food. He was young during the Great Depression, but his parents instilled in
him the necessity to store and conserve. He always had more than enough food on
hand for emergencies. And now, given the circumstances, he’s glad he does. He
counts through the supplies again and nods to himself in satisfaction. “We’ll
be fine,” he says, “just fine,” he confirms with a nod.
    At night, once the child is asleep
and secure in her bedroom upstairs, Jacob watches through the window of his own
room. The darkness outside is all encompassing and only the moonlight is there
to guide his gaze. Bodies shuffle along the walkway and out onto the beach as
if somehow they remember that this is where they used to go when they were
alive. They hobble through the sand, leaving derelict ruts in their wake and
sound out with wet voices as they stagger.
    The faces have become
indiscernible, one rotten visage looks like the next as the tale of time eats
them away. When it first began, Jacob could recognize his neighbors and
friends, he could point out those he had seen in passing when they still had a
soul. But now, as more of them gather, he can only make out subtle nuances of
who they might have been. A mechanics uniform, a suit, a ragged construction
worker in an orange vest and soiled boots - those are the only things
recognizable now. Gone are the blank stares, replaced by blackened skin and
rotten scraps of flesh fell by the fateful hands of death.
    Time should have reduced them to
bones by now, and it makes him wonder how long it will take before they finally
fall, or if they ever will.
    As he sits by the window, he
lifts his legs, working them with the sounds of the moaning dead. When the time
comes, he wants to be ready to leave and refuses to let one bad knee come
between him and seeing his granddaughter to safety. He knows it is only a
matter of time before they will have to run. When the food runs low and the
winter keeps the garden from growing, he wants to know that he has a way out.
    He works his legs until the
muscles burn in retaliation and he can no longer stand the pain. He realizes
that he’ll need to make practice runs to the beach and down pass the pier to
the dock. He’ll have to find a boat that can take them away from this place and
maybe sail along the coast until they can