1
Jenny opens her eyes in the darkness, a cool draft on her face drawing her confused gaze to the open window. She remembers it being only open a crack, maybe an inch wide...
A rustle comes from beneath the bed. Her heartrate increases, and she tightens her fingers on her blanket.
Something is under her bed.
2
"Michael!"
Jenny dives toward Michael and knocks a ghoul away from him with her rock. "Get Tom!"
Michael turns to look at Crazy Tom as the man strides toward them. Michael lashes out with the weed puller and jabs a hole in the man's neck. It doesn't even bleed. Crazy Tom growls and lunges with his knife, and Michael defends with his weed puller as he backs up, retreating from him.
Jenny has to look away from the fight as another body approaches her with bad breath and reaching hands. She hops out of reach and fights two women off, trying to get a chance to kill one without getting killed by the other. Finally, she smashes one's head in, then the other's. She looks back over her shoulder for Michael and Crazy Tom, but they're out of sight. She runs toward the nearest escape route: the alley beside Henry's house.
She doesn't see anyone inhabiting the dirt lane. She turns in a circle, searching for them and listening, but they're gone and she doesn't know where to look. More people are coming from the left, so she runs down the street to the right and turns the corner.
She hears an engine; a car is coming. She runs out to flag it down, but the pale, frightened face she sees through the glass a split second before the car swerves and hits her is not in the frame of mind to pick anyone up.
Jenny is knocked out instantly as her head hits the pavement, saving her from having to suffer through being eaten by the nearby ghouls that immediately congregate to feast on her.
She rises several minutes later as one of them.
3
Jenny runs forward and swings her rock at Tracy. Tracy puts up her hands and the rock bashes her fingers away.
"Ow!" Tracy screams. "What are you doing? I'm not one of them!"
Jenny's eyes widen in horror at her mistake. She stutters out an apology as she turns to face her other attacker, but Mindy is already there, and leaps on her.
Tracy runs to the motorcycle parked on the side of the street, jamming her keys in and gingerly holding the bars with her broken hand. She blasts away with her loud motor, while Mindy bites her baby teeth into Jenny's neck and tears away.
Jenny's blood spritzes out like a fountain in rhythmic sprays. She passes out, then opens her eyes and looks around for something to eat. She sees Michael, halfway across the street, fighting off Crazy Tom, and gets up and heads for them.
While Michael is distracted with parrying Crazy Tom's knife with his weed puller, she leaps onto his back and bites into the nape of his neck, tearing salty flesh away and chewing.
Once Michael bleeds out and is dead, he stands up. He and Jenny wander off their separate ways until the army comes through and puts them down with bullets to their brains.
4
Michael is the only person besides Jenny that's acting normal. Jenny runs out the front door in a desperate attempt to get to him.
One of the figures hears her and turns. It's Janet, with her short blonde curls and round face, dressed in a moo moo. She ambles toward Jenny.
Jenny grabs a decorative rock from the flower bed by her steps to defend herself, but Janet is limping, so Jenny manages to run around her and get close to Michael. She thumps Henry in the back of the head, and the old man goes down. Free to concentrate on one attacker, Michael takes out Hailee with a jab to the face with the sharp end of the weed puller. The wet, sucking sound as she falls and the tool pulls free from her eye makes nasuea roil in Jenny's stomach.
"Watch out," Michael says and stabs Henry in the head.
With those two dispatched, Jenny turns to face the rest that are approaching.
Three of them are close, about to be within striking distance. Michael attacks Dave, Janet's husband, which leaves Jenny with the choice of striking out at Tracy, the teenage goth girl, or Mindy, the six-year-old. They both look like they're going to arrive at the same time, so Jenny will need to run at one of them to get to them first, so she doesn't get sandwiched.
5
Jenny shoves open her car door and runs to the garage door. She inclines her head to it and listens for a tiny moment, but the moaning and shaking from the interior door mask anything that might be coming from the other side of the garage door. The huge door isn't shaking, so nothing is pounding on it at least.
She bends down, grabs the handle, and heaves upward, lifting it above her head. Cool air rushes inside and she gets a glimpse of the driveway and the street, dark and empty. She turns back to her car, but the chair under the doorknob topples with a clatter, the door flying open, and she falters. Crazy Tom steps in and shoulders the door closed again behind him, replacing the chair, the others pounding on it again for entry.
Several moans come from behind her, and Jenny turns her head to look over her shoulder. She sees Janet and her husband, Dave, moaning and reaching and coming up the driveway. A teenager she doesn't recognize and a man that looks familiar, but she doesn't know, join the couple and head toward her.
She grabs a hammer from the corner of the garage and runs for the car. Crazy Tom rushes to meet her. She swings the hammer at him, but he deflects it with his knife and then slices her arm open.
She grabs the wound, the pain burning, and warm blood seeping out between her fingers. Crazy Tom shoves the car door shut and pushes her to the ground, slicing her thigh and bleeding her again. Then he leaves her there crying in pain and goes to the door, pushing Janet and Dave out and slamming the door down, flipping the lock. They moan and pound on the door; the sounds of all of them is deafening, echoing in the large space and off of the cement floor.
Crazy Tom stoops over Jenny and takes her hand against her will. She reaches out with her other hand to stop him, and he stabs her in the shoulder. She screams and squeezes her eyes shut, then struggles more, with less success. He takes his time, biting her fingers off, one by one. She cries, losing her will to fight, until she passes out from blood loss five long minutes later and rises as a ghoul, no longer any fun for him. He opens the garage door and walks away.
Jenny wanders out of the open garage and follows her new hunger to the sounds and smells of humans.
6
She needs to deal with one of them fast before she's clobbered by both of them, and the little girl is an easier target. Jenny runs to meet Mindy and smashes the rock down on the little girl's head. The crunch is sickening, and Jenny feels a pang in her stomach for killing the tiny child, but she doesn't have time to dwell on that. She spins to meet her other attacker and finds the teenager's back to her, running away. Tracy has run straight past. She hops onto a motorcycle parked on the street and fires it up, then speeds away, not even offering the second spot on the back.
Jenny hears a growl that sounds like Crazy Tom, and she spins. He slices his knife at her, and she leans backward, making him miss. She retreats, but he's following her. She can't reach him with her rock without getting within slicing distance of his knife.
7
Jenny reaches over and clicks on the lamp by her bedside, throwing a yellow glow over the room that makes her squint.
A deranged keen comes from outside the window and sends a chill down her spine. Then arms throw out from under her bed and army crawl out. A shaggy brown head turns and looks up at her. She stares down at Crazy Tom, the creepy guy from across the street who she once saw crack the head off of a squirrel with his bare hands, and the chill becomes a painful fear that locks up her body.
Crazy Tom grins up at her, and there's blood in the cracks between his teeth. His eyes are completely white except for the pupil, and his skin has grayed and dried up and is peeling is places. There's a sharp-looking knife in his hand.
There's a thunk from the window, and Peggy and Maggie from next door are there. Peggy bangs her head on the window frame again before managing to push her head through and falls onto the floor. They both grunt and moan and bare their teeth as they're clambering up. More come behind them, including six-year-old Mindy and her father, both glass-eyed and baring their teeth. Crazy Tom scrambles up and dives at Jenny.
Jenny twists and leaps off of her bed, running out of the room. She screams down the hall to the living room, glancing around for an escape in the dark as she skids across the laminate floor in her socks.
Through the largest window of the room, she sees old Henry in the streetlight, the senior that could be seen most mornings out watering or weeding his lawn and flowers. He and Hailee, the postwoman, are attacking Michael, the man that Jenny considers her "hot" neighbor, as he fights them off with a weed puller. More dark figures of her neighbors are heading for him, drawn toward the fray, and the way they are walking and holding their hands out, they're clearly not there to help him, but to get a piece of him.
8
Jenny throws the car into drive and hits the gas. The wheels spin in place for a second, then the car charges forward and smashes into the door, crumpling the hood and throwing Jenny against the wheel.
She blinks and pants for breath, dazed from the jolt. She presses her foot on the gas pedal, but the car is caught on the door. Smoke starts to rise from the spinning tires, and her neighbors are closing in on the front of the car, reaching and smearing her window with blood.
She changes gear into reverse and backs up. A hand grabs the handle of her door and yanks. Tom's face is on the other side of the window. She screams at the sight of him, but the door doesn't budge, locked. She hits the gas and charges forward again, several bodies bouncing off the metal of the car as she blows through the crowding ghouls, bounces over the bottom rail of the doorframe, and she turns the wheel to speed down the street.
She doesn't stop, not after she passes the city limit sign, and not when the army trucks and ambulances drive by her going the other way.
The authorities shoot down ghouls for a week and the whole area is quarantined. All in all, over two thousand people die in the event, but Jenny isn't one of them. She hears that a Satanic book outlining spells requiring human sacrifice, including one to raise the dead, was found in one of her neighbor's houses, and she knows in her gut that it was Crazy Tom's house.
She sells her home to get away from the neighborhood and nightmares. When she moves her bed out of the room, she finds a pentagram on the floor, drawn in chalk.
She lives the rest of her life paranoid and is never really the same again.
9
Jenny throws her rock as hard as she can at Crazy Tom's face. He automatically raises his dominant hand and blocks it, and the knife is knocked from his hand.
Jenny dives for the knife on reflex and scrambles away with it, holding it out in defense before Crazy Tom can even bend over to try for it. He bares his teeth in anger and lunges at her, uncaring as his arms get sliced up with her swings.
Jenny screams as he attacks her, kicking at him and cutting him in desperation, fighting to keep him away. He tries to get a hold of the knife and pull it away from her, but she's faster. He leans in to grab at her throat, and she stabs at his face. She feels the resistance and sickening softness of his flesh pushing against it when the knife stakes a claim in his eye.
Crazy Tom goes still. He sinks to the ground and lays with the knife in his face, dead.
Jenny turns toward grunting and scuffling noises to find Michael struggling with a large, gray-skinned man. She grabs the knife out of Crazy Tom and sticks it into the man's neck at an upward slant. He loses his strength like his power was cut, and he falls to the ground.
She pants and put her hands on her knees, looking around. More shuffling footsteps and moans warn her that more neighbors are coming.
"Thanks," Michael says, panting just as hard as she is. "I thought that one was going to be the one to get me."
"My car," Jenny says, pointing to her garage, then runs toward it.
Michael looks at the people gathering with their strange gait and gray skins, and then he follows her quickly. He helps her lift the garage door and Jenny unlocks the car. They both hop in, and she drives them away, leaving a crowd of ghouls behind.
"Whew!" Michael says, when they pass the city limit sign. He leans over and gives her a loud kiss on the cheek as they celebrate, high from relief and gladness to be away from the zombies.
The authorities quarantine the suburbs. Within a week, it's all over.
Michael and Jenny forged a bond in the midst of high emotions and danger, and they get married after an intense couple of months of dating. They move into a house on a hill with distant neighbors and security bars on all of the windows, but they never see another ghoul.
10
Jenny flings herself through the basement door and slams it shut. Unfortunately, the lock is on the other side of the door, but it opens inward and is solid, so she grabs a stray board and jams it between the door and a stud on the unfinished wall. Tom breaks the doorknob and pushes on the door, but the board holds. He can't budge it. She lets out a breath of relief and pushes her hair back, trying to think of what to do now.
The sound of glass shattering brings Jenny's attention to the small windows set high on the wall. Arms reach through, giving her a jolt of fear, but the security bars that the last owner of the house had installed keep their bodies out.
Tom screams in anger. Jenny covers her ears.
Tom goes quiet, then chuckles. It sends fear down Jenny's spine, and she looks at the hole where the knob used to be, for a glimpse of him. His hands comes through with a newspaper with a flame on the end quickly spreading downward, and he tosses it.
Jenny rushes over, but it's already caught on and is spreading. She coughs as the room quickly fills up with smoke. She looks around, but there's nothing to put out the fire. She drops and stays low to the ground, but the smoke can't escape through the small windows fast enough, especially covered with the bodies of her neighbors pressed there. Her lungs burn, and she can't stop coughing.
Jenny dies of smoke inhalation.
11
Jenny darts up the stairs, pulling herself up by the handrail and taking three steps at a time. She arrives at the top in three jumps and runs into the storage room, turning and slamming the door shut with a bang. She turns the pathetic knob lock with a small click that isn't reassuring. She slaps the light on, scanning the junk for something to help her. Heavy footsteps thump methodically up the staircase, unhurried. A raspy chuckle wafts up from under the door.
She starts grabbing boxes and stacking them in front of the door. There's a clank and the doorknob rattles, then a loud crack, and the knob sags, broken apart from its counterpart.
Jenny shakes, staring for a horrified moment, then throws another box on top of the p8ile, covering up the sight of it. The door pushes inward, moving the pile of boxes and Jenny leans in and pushes back. Crazy Tom's arm comes through the open crack and swings his knife at her. She screams and leans out of the way. The boxes burst outward, the door swinging wide open.
Jenny grabs a sturdy bronze lamp. He steps forward with the knife and she swings at his arm. He moves the knife out of the way so that she doesn't knock it out of his hand, but she catches his head on the back swing and knocks him back through the door again.
Moans come up the stairway, more of the neighbors on their way up.
Jenny turns, looks at the window, and runs for it.
She flings it open and the narrow bit of lawn between her house and the next down below seems vacant. She scans rapidly and find a drainpipe. With footsteps behind her giving her a jolt of panic, she grabs on and swings herself out in desperation to get away.
She moves a hand down to start lowering herself, but the drainpipe is wet, and she slips. Her pant leg catches and she gets flipped upside-down, but it tears with her body weight and drops her on her head.
Her head explodes with pain and her neck crooks to the side. The rest of her body, she suddenly can't feel. She tries to move and can't!
The moans are coming closer.
Her neighbors huddle around her and take bites out of her arms and legs, tearing away her flesh and getting her blood everywhere, but she can't feel it, despite her terror.
She eventually blacks out and returns with a hunger that she can do nothing to satiate, doomed to lie on the ground next to her house forever... until a soldier shoots her in the head three days later.
12
Jenny swallows and gathers up her blanket with shaking hands, the shushing sound of the fabric dragging against the bed sounding too loud, but she gets it all gathered up. Then she flings the balled-up comforter down on the floor in front of the space under her bed as a barrier and leaps over it. She runs out the door and down the hallway. Her back cramps up in dread at the sensation of something following. She hears movement and then footsteps. She looks back and sees a dark figure following her and she yelps.
She flips on a switch on the wall in the living room, revealing the room, but turning the windows to black mirrors. A face smacks to the glass of the large window, and she screams at the sight of little six-year-old Mindy, pale and snarling and blind-looking, pressing against it like she could bite her way through it. Another face and two hands slap to the glass of the kitchen window, and there's a thud on the front door, as if someone slammed it with their whole body.
The footsteps from behind her are almost on her, and she looks back to see Crazy Tom coming at her in the light. But he's not just a creepy guy from across the street that kills squirrels with his bare hands anymore. His skin has grayed and is coming off, and his irises have turned white. He's holding a knife up, the sharp blade pointing down.
Unwilling to go outside with those things that look like her neighbors, Jenny has a split second to decide between the door that leads to the basement or the narrow stairs that leads to the attic storage space.
13
Jenny darts to the side door that leads into the garage, yanking it open and swinging herself inside then slamming it closed behind her. She slaps on the light to find the chair by the tool table and jams it up under the knob. She's not a second too soon, as the door begins to rattle and then vibrate as Crazy Tom pounds on it and shakes it, trying to get it open.
Jenny runs to her car, punching in the code on the driver's handle to open it, then hops in and slams the door shut, pounding the lock down. She grabs the keys from the sun visor and twists them in the ignition, the engine rumbling to life. Then she grabs the garage door remote from the center console and jabs the button. The light blinks, but the door doesn't move or make a sound. She hits it again, then again, but still nothing happens. She looks up through the windshield at the door motor. Frayed wires are splitting and sticking out, and she freezes at the sight. Someone has sabotaged it.
The door is still rattling, and the chair has been knocked out a few inches. The door cracked open now, Tom's gray fingers wrap around the edge of the door.