Short Story Time: “In A Heartbeat”
Happy Friday and good morning from my side of the world (SoCal to be somewhat exact)!
Mercurial is in retrofit so things are a bit wacky (internet at my home is out, power is out…very peculiar), but I’ve been feeling…hopeful. Strangely enough. Slowly, creativity is starting to seep back into my veins little by little, my youngest is starting to get a bit more “independent” meaning he can go run around so I can do a little more, and my oldest is trying to be independent but he’s going to take a bit more work.
All of that being said, I’ve been working on my third book again (HURRAY! FINALLY!), and I’m really looking forward to getting back in the world I created with Makaela and her special events taking place. However, I’m letting it breathe just a bit more before I actually start adding to ‘The Sorceress’ because it’s been a work in progress for a long time, some years now. I want to make sure I do the story right, or the way I would like for it to be done.
While I let that rest, I’m going to share a story I wrote earlier this year and I thought, “This is actually pretty good.” I wrote it when I didn’t think I had anything really left in me, but I was wrong! It takes place just before and in the event of an undead outbreak that changes the main characters’ lives. With my love for all things undead, I found it fitting to create this story from the inspiration the genre gives me, and then share it with you all.
I hope you enjoy it!
‘In A Heartbeat’
“Melvin…Melvin…”
“What, Darla?” Melvin whispered as they both leaned against the door of the house. They could hear nails scratching, fists pounding, and moans growing outside of the door, trying to get to them. Trying to get to their flesh.
“I’m hurt.” Darla answered back in a whisper.
“We’ll deal with it when we can get these damn things off of our backs.”
“No, Melvin…I’m hurt hurt.”
Melvin turned his head to look at his wife, questioning with his eyes. She met his eyes and answered. She tried not to cry but she could feel them threatening to come to the surface. She looked away and stared hard at the wall ahead of them in this house they ran into for shelter. A lopsided photo hanging on the wall held her gaze. She concentrated on that photo of a family of five—a mother, a father, two boys, and a girl. They all smiled. No one looked unhappy, unloved, uncared for. No one’s eyes were dead or gave anything away to unhappiness. She wondered if they were holding onto each other when the world went to shit. She wondered if they all died together, died all together in one another’s arms. She looked over at her husband and wondered if she was going to die in his arms or if he wouldn’t be able to do it, grant her that final act of mercy. Or would he die in her arms with her teeth at his throat? She didn’t want to know.
“Darla, listen. We need to barricade this door. You stay here, brace it, and I’ll move that couch over here so we can hold up here. Night is coming and we can’t be outside,” Melvin advised.
Darla nodded and held a wider stance so she could take it on. They had broken the lock in their attempt to bust in to get away, leaving them a little vulnerable. When she gave Melvin the go-ahead, he rushed to the couch, moving it with his body to the door. Inch by inch, he got it in Darla’s place as she helped secure the couch in front of the door. They searched for more heavy objects to put on top of the couch to make it harder to move. They quickly learned that these things outside—the dead things—were hell to deal with in a large group. Once they piled up together, they could do damage. Darla and Melvin learned this quickly and not without plenty of casualties.
30 Days Ago
“Guess who got the partnership,” Darla called Melvin on her way out of her office.
“Was it Gil?” Melvin guessed.
“Very funny, Mel, but no.” Darla smiled, hearing Melvin’s smirk on the other end of her cell phone.
“Congratulations, baby. I knew they wouldn’t go with someone else, plus you’ve been with that firm for years! I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Darla accepted as she got to the parking garage of the building. “I was really thinking they were going to go with Gil though, I really did.”
“Yeah, but those last few cases? You really killed those. Back-to-back wins,” Melvin grunted.
“Are you in the middle of work, babe? I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, I’m just wrapping up some piping here, that’s all. I’m glad you called me and told me.”
“I know, but I should’ve known you were busy.”
“Baby, it’s fine,” Melvin chuckled. “Listen, I’m glad you called. Let’s celebrate tonight, okay? I’ll be leaving here in about 30 minutes. I can meet you at the house and we can freshen up, get in some fine dining tonight…maybe a little sha-boing-boing later on if you catch my drift.”
“Yeah, yeah, I catch your drift, nasty,” Darla blushed. “I’m in the car right now, I’m heading home and I’ll see you when you get there.”
“I love you, congratulations again. I can’t say it enough.”
“Thank you, baby. See you in a bit.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Their celebration lasted into the late hours of the night, Darla nearly missing the alarm for work the next morning. She cussed herself out for not leaving the celebration for when they would both be off of work for the weekend. A ping sounded from her phone, a notification from the local news, and then national news showed across the screen. Cases of a mysterious illness claiming lives woke her up quickly. She went into the national news notification to get a better read. What she read worried her, but she wasn’t sure if it was real. She confirmed by doing more reading, doing a search for the keywords. More news articles from a few hours before confirmed what she read. People were getting sick, people were dying, then people were reanimating and killing. It sounded like a page from a novel or a still from a movie, but it was neither. It was happening in real-time.
She blindly reached for Melvin, trying to shake him awake. He barely budged until she pushed him some more. “Melvin, you gotta wake up right now!”
A text from her associate at work came up:
“Judy, Mark, and Gil are out sick. Please come in,
this meeting can’t be postponed to another day.”
“Baby, wake up. Something bad is happening,” Darla warned Melvin as he finally turned over in their bed.
“What’s wrong?” Sleep was still thick in his voice.
“Look at this, read this!” Darla handed her phone over to Melvin, leaving it on the news article she had read just a few moments before.
She watched him as he palmed her phone and his eyes scanned the article. When his brows reacted, she knew he was reading exactly what she had read and thinking the same thing she was.
“This is real?” He asked her.
Darla nodded. “It’s not the only article saying that either. There are many articles around the same time saying the same thing.”
“This is serious shit then. I mean, it’s serious but it’s surreal.”
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here, Mel. We can’t stay here in the city. It’s only going to get worse if we know anything about dead people coming back from movies we’ve watched.”
“Let’s go then!” Melvin rushed out of their bed and went straight to their closet. They both dressed quickly and immediately set to work gathering water, sleeping bags (they had them saved for camping but never got around to it), and non-perishable foods. They put them all into Darla’s car. Melvin made sure to grab weapons and ammo.
“Gas is going to be hard to come by. How are we on gas?” Darla asked.
“Since we’re taking your car, and it’s more compact, it looks like we’ll be okay for a while. We’re just trying to get the hell out of here. My work truck is heavy duty but isn’t too nice on gas.”
“I can’t believe we’re this calm right now…we shouldn’t be this calm. I can’t even respond to my work! I can’t believe this is real,” Darla finally let it all hit her. “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, Melvin. We leave and then what?”
“We leave. That’s the first step,” Melvin hugged his wife. “We leave. Fuck our jobs. They can’t save us. We gotta survive now.”
“Survive? In a world like this? Survive for what?” Darla began to cry, holding onto Melvin.
“I…I don’t know. Survive for each other,” Melvin told Darla, holding her tighter.
# # # # # # # # # # #
A month later, two cars later, five people they were in a group with dying later, Darla and Melvin fought their way through a hellish scene of decaying beings clawing at them. Teeth gnashed and yawned at them as Melvin and Darla crushed weakened skulls, thick matter oozing from the impacted area. Darla had mastered the use of a claw hammer they recovered from a body that wasn’t going to be getting up. Melvin used a sledgehammer most of the way but ended up sticking with a machete he foraged from a local hardware store. It did the job. He sliced through mushed muscles more easily and split craniums a little better. They both fought back to back, keeping their eyes open for anywhere they could escape to. Darla was so scared in the beginning, concerned she’d only drag Melvin down, but he made her stronger. He got her to believe she could really survive.
When the dead in their path began to thin out, Darla’s eyes caught the house they needed to get to, a possible safe haven for at least a night. She tried to get Melvin’s attention, nudging him with her shoulder. Instead, she left herself open. Two of the dead dove right for her, piling up against her. One of them grabbed her arm and its grip was unmoving. It held onto her arm for dear life—or death—and she couldn’t shake it. She felt teeth bite down onto her calf as she screamed, stomping on the dead thing she hadn’t noticed before at her feet. She managed to squash the head of that one and finally take out the handsy dead woman with two hits to the skull before it finally went down.
“Darla, what happened?” Melvin asked her but no answer came as another shambling corpse shuffled its way toward him.
“There’s a house ahead of us, we need to head there,” Darla managed to alert Melvin.
“Let’s take out these few and then make a run for it,” Melvin told her.
Darla did her best to ignore the searing pain in her leg and fought on until they made a path for themselves. Creatures dragged their way to them but they ran, Darla falling behind. Melvin reached back for his wife, wrapping his arm around her waist and getting her to wrap her arm around his shoulder as he supported her to that house. It felt like a football field away, but they made it. Melvin tried the knob but the door was locked. He hurriedly used the machete to break the lock on the door, Darla keeping alert. When he got the door open, they hurried inside, huffing and puffing with a few of the things closely behind them. They braced the door and tried to catch their breaths.
“Melvin…Melvin…”
“What Darla?”
“I’m hurt.”
“We’ll deal with it when we can get these damn things off of our backs.”
“No, Melvin…I’m hurt hurt.”
Melvin had moved them to the second level of the house, barricading the hallway with items from the two kids’ rooms, taking the parents’ room for their shelter for the night. They couldn’t hear the dead as closely anymore, the downstairs door seeming to hold. Melvin laid out their sleeping bags, helping Darla lay down on the bed that they placed against the door. She didn’t have a fever like they detailed in the articles when this whole thing started. No sweats, nothing. Her leg still hurt but had stopped bleeding. Melvin sanitized it and patched her up, noting that her leg appeared fine.
“Maybe you’re immune,” Melvin smoothed back the thick, curly hair she loosed from her pointy tail.
She took a deep breath, feeling sleep tugging at her. “If it were only that simple. We didn’t read anything like that on the news.”
“We’ve seen it in action, how quickly people can turn into one of those things. You’re not even burning up.”
Darla thought it was odd, too, but didn’t want to get his hopes up, or hers. She knew the bite was a death sentence. She saw what it could do with her own eyes.
“Darla…if you do turn…”
“You know what to do. Don’t try to be my hero. Be my executioner. I won’t hate you for it.”
“Would you do the same for me?”
Darla sat with his question. She grabbed his hand, laying a tender kiss on it. “In a heartbeat.”
