Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗

Annie heard two things: her own heartbeat in her ears and the heavy breathing of four panicked people. One tiny window at head level let only a small amount of heavy gray light in, but she didn’t dare stand anywhere near it. Neither did Kyle, Parker, or Frank.

Kyle sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub with his face in his hands. Frank sat splayed out, stunned, on the floor. Parker stood near the sink and flexed his fingers like he wanted to strangle the infected to death in the street. She leaned with her ear against the door leading into the hallway, straining to hear even the tiniest sound.

“I can’t believe it,” Kyle said. She felt a fresh rush of panic. Be quiet already.

“If you don’t shut up right now,” Parker whispered in a voice that sounded like hissing, “I’m going to beat you to death.”

Annie placed her hand on Parker’s shoulder.

“What do we do?” Frank whispered.

Nobody said anything for a few moments. Finally, Parker said quietly, “Let them pass. They obviously don’t know we’re here.”

“And then what?” Frank said.

Nobody replied.

Annie heard faint footsteps outside on the street, but they weren’t normal footsteps. They sounded like limping and scraping. She looked at the window. It was too small for a person to fit through, so the infected couldn’t get in. They’d have to come in through the door. But that also meant she couldn’t get out through that window. She and the others were trapped with only one exit.

The bathroom was a good place to be at the moment because they were invisible, but it would be the worst place to be if the house came under attack.

The window faced the side of the next house, not the street, and she thought about peeking out ever so carefully. She might be able to see some of the street and get an idea what was going on out there. But if she could see the street, the street could see her.

She took a few steps toward it, not intending to stand right in front of it, but to get close enough that she might be able to hear what’s going on out there. Parker grabbed her arm and shook his head.

“I just want to listen,” she whispered. “They won’t see me.”

The living-room floor was made of creaky old hardwood. The bathroom floor was tiled in white marble, so her steps made no sound.

She reached the window, ducked underneath it, cocked her head sideways so her right ear pointed upward, and heard a cough. Not a normal cough as if from a person with a seasonal cold, but a sickening wet rasp as if one of the infected was coughing up its own throat.

“Jesus,” Parker whispered.

Frank shushed him.

Everyone started when they heard a light tap on the door. Hughes.

“Come in,” Annie whispered and unlocked the door.

“Can’t,” Hughes whispered from somewhere near the floor. “They might see the door open. It’s visible from the street at just the right angle.”

Hughes must have crawled. He was awfully quiet about it because Annie didn’t hear him even though the hallway floor creaked. Hughes was good. It must have taken him a good couple of minutes.

“At least three or four dozen of them out there,” Hughes said. “Everybody just stay put and stay quiet and we’ll head back to the boat once they’ve moved on.”

Annie sat next to Kyle on the lip of the tub. Parker and Frank sat on the floor, Parker as far away from Kyle as he could get. The two wouldn’t look at each other.

Minutes passed. Annie exchanged concerned looks with everyone, but after a few more minutes she felt better. Feelings of terror gave way to fear, which gave way to dread. Then even the dread faded into boredom and torpor. The infected were still out there, but they had no idea anyone was inside the house.

Her body and mind could only sustain the feeling of fear for so long. Eventually, the human brain’s pharmacy ran out of adrenaline.

The infected were still out there. They were not moving on. She could hear them. It was as if on some basic level they knew they’d find more food in town than out on the road or in the forest. Or maybe, on another dim level, they recognized Eastsound as home and felt like they had nowhere to go.

The others had no idea what the infected were thinking, but Annie knew the answer was, not a lot. They don’t reason anything through. They just hunt down food and react to stimuli. When she was infected, she didn’t know her own name. She might have recognized her apartment, but she wasn’t even sure of that much.

She tried to imagine what she would have done in their place when the virus still had control of her body and mind, but with each day that passed she had a harder time remembering what it was like to be sick. At best, her memories of those events were like the memories of a dream that would dissipate like wisps of steam if she didn’t consciously try to hold onto them.

Another hour passed. Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Nobody was relaxed—that was for sure—but they all had an easier time keeping calm. They were safe for now as long as they didn’t make any noise or try to go anywhere.

“What if,” Kyle finally said, “we try to imitate their movements and behavior? Pretend like we’re part of the pack?”

“That,” Parker said, “is the stupidest idea you’ve come up with yet. And that’s saying something.”

“We don’t look anything like them,” Hughes said.

“Only because they’re filthy,” Kyle said. “But they aren’t filthy when they first turn. The freshly turned ones don’t get attacked.”

“Man has a point,” Frank said.

“Think about it,” Kyle said. “Let’s say we took one of those things, somehow managed to give it a bath and put some fresh clothes on it, then took a picture of it while it was just standing there inert, when it wasn’t biting somebody’s face. If we showed that photograph to someone who didn’t know any better, would they be able to tell that they were looking at one of the infected?”

Hughes