《Eating: The Breakdown of a Family》Chapter Eighteen: Zombie

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Zombie

Dead, alive

Eating your face

Apathetic to undead life

Corpse

Chapter Eighteen

There is silence. I hear the breaths of everyone around me, fast and shallow. No one makes a move, not even our eyes, which are trained solely on Brian. He stands there looking back at us as if we are the crazy ones. Tom is the first to react otherwise. He raises his gun.

“You’re going to shoot me, Tom?” Brian asks, his eyes wide. “You’ve all wanted to do this, and Zoe nearly did.” In my peripheral vision I see Tom lower his eyes to the barrel, ready to take aim.

“Wait!” I shout. “Tom, we can’t just go around killing people. What little of humanity is left we have to maintain.” I hate Brian in this moment, I hate him with a passion, but I can’t sit by and watch as he is blown away no matter what he did. It feels as though someone has grabbed my heart and twisted to yank it out of my chest. I thought I loved this man.

Tom keeps his eyes and gun trained on Brian. “Zoe, he’s insane! I think circumstances have changed, you know what with zombies running around and shit.” I just turn to look at Tom, pleading with my eyes. He glances over to me, and I see the ice in his eyes melt just a little.

It is in that instant that Tom shuts his eyes, that Brian reaches to his side and draws his pistol. He takes aim and fires straight at Tom’s leg. He goes down. I scream, it’s all I can do. He is insane. I grab the shotgun, ready to go from Tom’s lap. I fire.

Brian is bleeding from the stomach, a mass of guts hangs where his abs once were. He has life in his eyes for just an instant, and he uses that light to look at me only before he collapses unceremoniously next to the toilet. Six corpses in a 6 x 9 foot room. I drop the gun and run down the stairs. I have to get away. I have to run.

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I run back into the tree line where we hid all day. I have tears rushing down my face, and I almost don’t see my dad standing by the tree we tied Persistence to. He catches me as I run by. I just stand there in my dad’s arms and cry. Then he starts crying, too. I can’t hear it, but I can feel it. He is shaking and I feel the tiny drops wet my shoulder.

I am lying next to Tom in a ditch bank. We stare up at the stars, as he tells me that after I left Brian rose from the dead. He had a bite wound on his arm. Carl was the one to end him the second time. I am glad not to have been there. I am not sure how I feel at this moment. I am trying not to think about Brian, but at the same time I am trying to picture him before all of this happened. I am trying to visualize his smile, his laugh, our first kiss under the stars on a crisp October night, anything to keep the image of him looking at me as the light drained from his eyes and his blood seeped from his stomach. I curl up next to Tom and turn on my side. I bury my head into his rib cage and keep my eyes open staring into the dark shadows until I can’t tell if my eyes are open or shut anymore. I focus on the throbbing in my shoulder until the pulsing soothes me to sleep.

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