Zombieboy

Chapter 11

Kyle led the way, not by choice, Chuck gestured with the gun for him to go first. Sneaking back along the way he had just come, Kyle was followed closely by Katie and Chuck. Chuck whispered, "Are there a lot of these things running around?"

"Not many, I saw a couple on our street before I came back."

"What took you so long? You were gone for hours."

Kyle stopped and turned to look at Chuck, "Can we just get to your house?"

Chuck wa a bit taken back, Kyle was normally a pretty timid boy, he didn't talk back and did what he was told, usually this meant answering questions when he was asked. 'Still', Chuck thought, 'the kid is probably right, the time to talk is later.' Chuck nodded at Kyle, who was still stopped and looking at him with an unflinching stare. Kyle turned and headed up the block to Katie's house.

From Kyle's point of view, things were a little different. 'Why was Chuck pointing a gun at him? Why did he want to talk when there were other zombies running around?' While looking at Chuck's face, Kyle could not help but see the slight pulsing swirls of blood going through Chuck's neck, it was a delicious swirl of color. Katie, she was, if anything more vibrant than her dad, Kyle could not bring himself to look her in the eye. Had he looked at her he would have noticed she too was avoiding his gaze.

The trio skirted the houses as they made their way the block and a half to Chuck's front door. Kyle and Katie quickly swept into the house, Chuck paused, his eyes lingering upon the white blazer that sat in the middle of the street, then he too ducked into the marginal safety of his home.

Once in Chuck saw Katie and Kyle standing awkwardly in the dining room, on opposite sides of the hand-me-down kitchen table Chuck had been meaning to replace for years.

"What dad?", Katie asked.

"The table, I guess I won't ever get a new one now, huh?", he replied. Turning to the door he found that it jad been forced open, the lock was ripped out of the frame. "This is what I was relying on to keep us safe at night?", he said disgustedly. Sighing he grabbed an end table from the living room and approach the entry way. His home had been built in the late seventies and was a typical 'little box' of that era of massed produced housing, the entry way was large enough for the front door to open and faced a closet for hanging your coat. To the left the entry way opened into a wide living room that branched into a dining room, a hallway to the bedrooms and a doorway into the kitchen. When Chuck brought the end table to the entryway it was an almost perfect fit with the door closed, trying to open the door Chuck could only get it open the barest of slivers. 'Perfect!', he thought, 'I should have been putting this table there before bed every night, no one could get through that without a lot of noise.'

Chuck went back into the living room and stopped and glanced at the kids. "Now Kyle, is the rest of the house empty?"

"Ye-yes, I think so, I didn't really look around, but I didn't see anyone."

"Okay, before we have our little pow-wow we better check the place out."

The group proceeded to check the house thoroughly, with Kyle searching under beds and in places Chuck wouldn't have considered. Katie hung by her father's arm, just keeping her eyes peeled for any trouble. Eventually they wound up back in the living room, sitting at Chuck's crappy dining room table.

'I really should have replaced this damned thing, it is showing its age. Christ! I got man eating zombies trying to kill us, my best friend's wife's car is sitting empty on the street and his boy is hitting for the brain eating side and I am worried about a Goddamn table?', Chuck winced at his thought process, then said out loud "Okay Kyle the place is clear, now tell us what happened."

...back ..home.. next...