The Zombie Show - Excerpt 2
“Mama?” he asked, sudden guilt propelling him back to her door. “Mama, you okay?”
There was a sound, a voice, had to be hers, but it wasn’t right. Cole hadn’t understood and inclined his ear to the door to listen. The voice—Mama’s—said something else, but he just wasn’t getting it.
“Mama, I’m opening the door, okay?” Cole reached and saw he had the butterknife in his hand still, a smear of mayo on the blade ending in a full glop at the tip. He wished he’d left it in the kitchen, she might say something about him leaving her, but he’d look even guiltier if she opened the door and him standing in the kitchen.
The door gave a brief squeak before bumping into something that stopped it. The opening was wide enough for Cole to fit maybe his head through and peer around at Mama in the bed, but he wanted to come all the way in. Sometimes Mama fell out of the bed. Like when he’d given her her shot that one time without her knowing.
He looked, but the twin lumps of Mama’s feet under the covers weren’t there. Neither were the covers. He stepped farther into the room and saw her pillows at the head of the bed and then the door smashed into his shoulder, rolling him back and almost coming down on his neck. He’d turned his wrist by some draw of luck and had managed to pin the knife between the door and the frame. Something heavy on the other side pushed, driving the knife deeper into the wood and Cole let go of it to shove at the door with both hands. He could feel the force on the other side, held temporarily at bay. The sick-stink wafted over him then, not just from the room itself, he’d practically grown immune to it, but another stink. A deeper one that set off the ancient alarm inside his lizard brain. Without knowing why he knew, he knew it was the smell that had been scrubbed and perfumed away before they ever got to the funeral home for his Uncle Matty’s funeral. It was a death-sick stink.
And if Mama was dead and trying to crush him on the other side of the door…
Cole pulled away from the door, banging the rounded section of skull behind his ear on the edge. It stung like hell, but spurred him on even more. He couldn’t turn his head, but could see in the corner of his eye a mass rise from the floor. Then he heard it breathing, but not like a living person would. Like… like… the engine to the last car Mama had had. A big, grey Camaro, that coughed and sputtered as if it were being resurrected with each turn of the ignition. Except, the breathing was the opposite of what the Camaro’s engine had been doing. Mama coughed and sputtered as if her lungs were shutting down for the very last time. What looked like an arm jerked into the air and Cole used the opportunity to give one last desperate shove and the form pitched over into the side of the bed.
He was free!
He had to get to the door and outside. Mama might have been big and slow, but the house was small and he had no doubt his bedroom door couldn’t keep her out. Cole dashed for it and a moment later he was unlocking the bolt. But the front door had two locks. The second one required a key. And the only set was in Mama’s purse. In her bedroom.
Cole turned. He listened to the sound of his breathing. Of the sound of his Mama, sliding over the wall as she pulled herself up again. Of the death rattle still killing the last few living parts of her. He realized he still had the butterknife in his hand.
Could he?
