Here's a little excerpt just for fun, and because I like this story. One of my favorite reviews said:
"Not another zombie rip-off, this would make a kick-ass movie! Sequel, please."
©Ann Swann
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| http://tinyurl.com/cj64sd8 |
I found him in our shed. His silvery-blue skin was mottled with healing burns, and a few strips of charred flesh still hung in tatters from his elbows and forearms. He was curled up like a comma in a pile of old feed sacks. I was raising chickens for my 4-H project, and those old sacks came in handy for cleaning the bottoms of my shoes each morning before school.
The year was 1974 and I was in the
eighth grade. I was in a hurry, running
late as usual, and I had just opened the hen house to let my flock out for the
day when I looked across the packed-earth yard and noticed the toolshed door wasn’t
completely closed. I was the one
responsible for shutting things up in the evening, so I knew that door was
closed and latched the night before.
I tiptoed up and tried to see inside
through the crack—had my eye pressed to it just like that Tell-Tale Heart guy we’d read about in English—but I couldn’t see
anything except that pile of old sacks.
Then they moved.
My heart stuttered. Just an
animal, that’s all. A ‘possum or ‘coon
after the scent of feed—I must not have latched it after all. I squared my shoulders and opened the door
wide. My eyes took a moment to adjust to
the gloom, but right away I could see that the thing wasn’t a ‘possum or a
‘coon—nor even a skunk. In fact, it
wasn’t any kind of animal, it was . . . well, it looked like a zombie.
And it was blue.
“The light,” it rasped, one
hand shading its eyes.
I pulled the door partially shut. The shed sported one dusty, flyblown window
half-hidden behind a rack of hanging tools.
My gaze flickered to the garden hoe.
Could I reach it without getting
too close?
“Water?”
The ratchety voice cracked on the second syllable.
Behind the shed was a faucet with a
short length of hose that dripped continuously into the chicken’s water
trough. Reaching into the cobwebbed
corner above my head, my hand found the old dipper that had hung there since Adam
was still clay. I held it up so the
thing (he?) could see what I was doing.
When his eyes slid past the dipper
toward mine, I shivered inside my windbreaker and backed out the way I’d come
in. My better instincts kept telling me
to drop the dipper and run, but he must have sensed something for all of a
sudden the rough voice coughed:
“Hurry. Please.”
Glancing toward the house to make
sure my father wasn’t coming, I yanked the hose out of the metal watering
trough and filled the bowl of the dipper as full as possible. I made sure to put the hose back into its
guiding clamp to keep it from crimping, then I walked quickly back to the shed.
Squeezing though the gap again, I
glanced into the corner.
It was empty.
“Hey . . .” My voice chirped like
one of the chicks on its first day out of the nest.
A hand shot out of the gloom behind
me and clutched the dipper greedily, spilling half the water onto the
hard-packed dirt floor. Slurping sounds
belied his position in the opposite corner of the dark shed.
Now
what?
“More.” He sounded a little better, not quite as
raspy.
I took the dipper by its handle, and
for a second I saw his hand. The fingers
were burnt and blistered.
“What happened to you?” Once again, my curiosity outweighed my good
sense.
He cleared his throat painfully, as
if the tissue inside was as raw as the skin outside. “Fire.”
I backed out of the shed and filled
the dipper at the trough again. This
time, when I reentered, I leaned right into the corner and handed it to
him. “I have to go to school,” I said. He didn’t spill it this time. “But the water faucet is around back, you
can’t miss it. Just be sure to put the
hose back into the holder so it drips into the trough—” I felt like a fool
telling him all this, as if he were a guest or something. “My Dad will leave for the factory in a few
minutes, and my mom will go to work, too.
She’s a hairdresser in town.
After that you can get your own water without being se—”
Was
that the bus?
I
willed myself to stop talking and start walking. “Umm, hey, mister . . . sir, whatever you
are, please, no matter how hungry you get, please don’t eat my chickens!” I dashed to the front of the house, grabbed
my lunch off the porch, and made it just as the bus came to a screeching stop.
I’d barely crashed into my seat when
I saw my dad exit the house. He waved
once from the front porch as he adjusted his windbreaker and picked up his
lunch box. I thought I saw the kitchen
curtain twitch as if Mom might be waving, but I wasn’t positive. I kept watching though, even after we’d
passed the next house and the next and the next. And I kept right on watching until I could
see nothing more than the flash of sunlight reflecting off the tin roof of the old
toolshed.
*
As soon as I got there, I couldn’t
wait for school to be over. I think I
aced the math test; I almost always did.
But I couldn’t tell you what Mom had packed in my lunch. I just remember being surprised when I looked
up and all that was left was a half-gnawed apple core.
“S’wrong with you, man?” Kenny Coruth sat across from me in the
cafeteria. Usually we were cuttin’ up and creatin’ havoc, but that day all I
could think about was what might or might not be waiting for me in the shed
when I got home. I guess I’m a bit slow
because it wasn’t until we were done eating that the thought hit me like a
sledge hammer to the temple: zombies eat
people! Here I’d been worried about it
(him) getting after my chickens when what I should have been worried about was
how I’d given him water and then left him alone with my mom. I’d seen Dad come out on
the porch, so I was pretty sure he’d gotten out safely. But Mom . . . what had I done? I’d even told the thing she was in there
alone.
continued ...
Afterthought: If you like the beginning, I'm pretty sure you will like the middle, and the ending. It's available on Amazon for 99 cents. Or FREE if you're a member of Kindle Prime.
UK: http://tinyurl.com/c8g7h28
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