Chapter 8 - Under Attack

I clutched Kappa to my chest and ran. I blitzed past the bench and the low stone wall, not daring to glance behind me. I could hear the things catching up. I leapt the steps that led up to the deck, and my feet clattered across the boards.

I had to slow down so I wouldn’t crash into the French doors, but it was hard. Panic and frustration piled up every millisecond I wasn’t moving my fastest.

Mrs. Park and Igor were in the kitchen. They both jumped when I burst inside. Mrs. Park let out a small shriek. I slammed the door behind me, threw the lock, and backed up without daring to turn away from it.

“What is it?” Igor asked.

I tried to speak but my voice was gone. I licked my lips and tried again.

“We’re under attack.”

The words were out of my mouth before my brain could check them. Not that it could. It felt like my brain was absent too.

I heard a quiet shhhink.

“By what?” Igor demanded.

Yup. There was no brain left. Only fear.

“I don’t know!” I cried.

The creatures hit the French doors. Several panes of glass burst. I screamed and danced back.

They were human—

No. They were something like humans. The candles could only cast a weak light over their faces, but every feature they showed was distorted. The deep shadows looked grotesque.

There was another crash of shattering glass. Shards flew in from the window to my side. A rock the size of a brick skimmed the air an inch in front of Igor’s face. He grabbed Mrs. Park and pushed her down behind the counter while yelling at me to duck.

I dropped. When I curled my head over Kappa’s shoulder, I heard him whimper, even over the sounds of chaos around me.

I looked up when the tinkling rain of glass stopped. Igor was at the window, using his French chef’s knife to stab, again and again, at the faces of the things reaching through the empty frame. When he struck, they let out muted, hollow screams that were half air.

The rattle of a knob drew my eyes back to the French doors. The small windows were almost all smashed out. A crowd of arms reached through, slicing themselves on any shards that were left in the frames. One of the things was pawing at the door latch.

I stayed low and backed up until I was squatting beside Mrs. Park. Together, with Kappa in my arms, we cowered against the cupboards by the stove.

Igor wasn’t shouting, but he was grumbling at full volume. An attacker managed to get its head and one shoulder through the window. Igor drove the chef’s knife into its eye with a blow that stole the air from my lungs. The blade was buried to the handle.

The thing let out a raspy bellow and jerked back. Then it turned its head to look at Igor. The handle of the knife moved with its eye.

Igor swore, ripped open a drawer, and pulled out his largest meat cleaver. He started chopping. He took off one of the things’ arms. It dropped onto the counter where it continued to writhe, grabbing at the air around its fingers.

I heard a bang from further in the house and turned to see Conrad rushing out of Big Jacky’s study. He was already heading toward the kitchen.

He’d heard the fighting. I didn’t know if I should call for help or scream for him to run.

In my brain-numb state, making a choice was impossible, but I managed to call his name.

Igor heard me.

Without pausing his brutal, rhythmic hacking, he shouted in a voice that thundered over every other sound, “Conrad! Protect Iset!”

Conrad stopped, turned, and ran toward the library.

Watching a fighter run away made my heart curl up in despair, but the reaction felt muted. I’d been drowning in horror for so long that I’d reached a point of near-Zen terror. I wasn’t over my head in water—this was something I could breathe. It was something I could live with. It was something I could think through.

Igor was making choices. He was protecting this part of the house; he couldn’t protect Iset. Conrad could.

The banging of the French doors yanked me from my thoughts. The horde outside had grown. They were shoving against the doors, crushing the ones in front of them. Their combined weight made the doors bend. Cracks appeared in the wood.

I handed Kappa to Mrs. Park. He wailed.

“Take him,” I ordered.

She pulled him to her chest. “What are you going to do?”

What was I going to do? I had no idea! But some vague heroic instinct was driving me to protect them.

“The doors aren’t going to hold,” I said. “We’re getting you out of here.”

I grabbed her arm. As I was standing and pulling her to her feet, the French doors burst open. They flew wide, slamming against the walls while spitting chunks of wood and glass. Our attackers spilled inside.

I unfroze before Mrs. Park did. My hand tightened over her arm. I hauled her around so that she’d be in front of me, then I shoved her toward the door that led to the main hall.

“Go!” I yelled.

She ran.

I was ready to follow, but something grabbed my shirt from behind. My collar crushed into my neck as a heavy arm dragged me back. I heard a moan and smelled the stench of a thousand rotting skunks.

Not for nothing had Conrad spent all that time training me to fight. I turned and used the momentum to drive my fist into the face of the thing that was holding me. It hit right where the nose should have been. The flesh of the thing’s face parted under my fist—like the smearing of too-wet clay—until it reached the bone. Pain shot through my hand.

The thing let go of my shirt. Its head had rocked back with the impact, but it didn’t retreat. It stood there, with my fist sunk into its face, my knuckles against the front of its skull, and its right arm still stretched toward me.

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With the candles near by, I could see it clearly.

Scraps of disintegrating clothing hung off its body. Its hair was matted and, in some places, shiny with an unknown viscous substance. In other places, it was bald. Its pockmarked skin was a diseased yellow-white hue with patches of gray, red, and purple undertones, and it was lined with blue veins so livid they might have been glowing.

I pulled my fist back.

What was left of its face was slack and mindless. Through the faint clouding of its eyes, I saw the rims of its irises surrounding its oversized pupils.

The eyes shifted to my face. Its right hand closed over my shoulder, snapping down with an unexpected strength. A finger with no fingernail gouged into the soft area just above my collar bone. When I tried to pull away, it clenched harder. Liquid dribbled out from the pockmarks in its arm.

There was a flash of metal in the candlelight. I clenched my eyes shut, but I couldn’t shut out the noise. Cool splatters rained on my face.

When I was brave enough to peel one eye open, I saw Igor standing over the headless figure still gripping my shoulder. Igor raised the cleaver.

I couldn’t close my eye fast enough. I saw him hack through the thing’s forearm with one swing.

He kicked the body away, tore the hand from my shoulder, and grabbed my left arm with a crushing, also-unexpected, strength.

“That is a zombie!” He used the blade of the meat cleaver to point to the mess of body parts twitching on the floor. “Are you a zombie?!?”

I wasn’t about to argue with my savior. Or a man yelling at me while holding a dripping fourteen-inch axe-knife.

“No, sir!”

He used his grip on my arm to turn me toward the hall door. “Go! I’m right behind you!”

As I cleared the doorway, I heard a crashing sound coming from the other side of the house. It was loud enough to drowned out the sounds behind me. I couldn’t imagine what it was—I didn’t want to imagine.

Igor, who was still much better at thinking during a crisis than I was, sighed and grumbled, “That’s what I was afraid of.”

My stomach clenched so tight that I was surprised it didn’t turn into a black hole.

“What were you afraid of?” I demanded.

“There’s more of them.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a shove that propelled me down the hall. Had he always been that strong?

“Keep going!” he said. “We have to find somewhere safe!”

Somewhere safe? Well, I knew that here was decidedly not-safe. That meant we had to get away. I ran down the hall. Igor limped after me.

As I passed the opening to the dining room, I saw silhouettes at the windows. I heard pounding. When I reached the front hall, there were more of the things there, beating on the front doors. Without thinking, I slowed and stopped to watch them.

A zombie smashed through the glass of one of the thin windows that flanked our doors. Flaps of shredded skin hung off its arm. A tarry ooze welled up around the wounds. It didn’t care. I had a terrible feeling that it would try to squeeze through that opening, even if it came out the other side in ribbons.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. I screamed and whirled. My fist was raised even though my soul cringed at the thought of my knuckles meeting that kind of flesh again.

Conrad caught my punch and gently lowered my fist. Igor finished limping up to us.

Conrad said in a quiet, fast, no-nonsense voice, “Go upstairs. The others are already there. I’ll guard the staircase. They won’t get by me.”

I didn’t even wait to acknowledge the order before charging up the grand staircase. I could hear Igor thumping up the stairs behind me. I started to slow down, wanting to offer him a hand, but he yelled at me to hurry.

When the time called for it, Igor could limp like a maniac. He was only a step behind me when I reached the second floor. Mrs. Park and Iset were standing by the windows on the other side of the great landing. I could see them by the light of the four candles set along the walls. They turned when they heard us coming.

“Where’s Kappa?” I cried.

Off to my side, a high, welcome voice cried, “Here!”

I looked around. Kappa finished barreling down the dimly lit hall and threw himself into my arms. I staggered back to catch his weight. Iset and Mrs. Park hurried over to us.

“Kappa?” Iset said.

Kappa was agitated. He kept trying to stand up in my arms. I had to wrangle his squirming body as he spoke.

“Everywhere!”

Iset breathed the word out: “Everywhere?”

“All the windows!”

Mrs. Park put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.

“How many?” Igor demanded.

Iset said, “There’s a lot of them, but they’re not endless. The problem is that we seem to be surrounded.”

“How did you get up here?”

“Conrad sent me up the study staircase, but he tore it down after I went up.”

A grim, lopsided smile distorted Igor’s face. “Smart boy.” He regripped his cleaver. “I’ll cover the backstairs. You three, go upstairs and find a place you can stay with your backs to the walls. Stay away from the windows.”

“Surely they can’t climb to the third floor!” Mrs. Park said.

Igor’s larger eye shifted to her. “We don’t know that.” It shifted back to Iset. “You will stay there until someone comes for you. With luck, Conrad and I should be able to handle them.”

“I understand,” Iset said.

“We’ll need candles,” Mrs. Park said. “I didn’t light the third floor.”

She walked over to the wall, pulled two candles from their sconces, and brought them back. She handed one to me and kept one for herself. After shifting her candle to her other hand, she nudged Iset. Together, they hurried toward the grand staircase. I tried to follow, but Igor grabbed my arm and held me back.

I looked at him, but he was watching Iset and Mrs. Park. He didn’t turn to me until they were halfway up the flight of stairs.

“Emerra,” he said, “find a weapon.”

Kappa let out a hum of displeasure. I shushed him.

“Find a weapon,” Igor repeated, “something like a bat or a crowbar. Something you can swing around. Aim for their heads. You’ll have to hit them a lot—”

“You think they’re going to break through?” I’d started trembling at some point. No telling when. My candle flame was quivering.

“No, I don’t.”

Igor, being Igor, didn’t bother trying to sound calm or assuring, but in his voice I heard the grit of stubbornness. I found it strangely comforting.

He went on, “But there will be no mistake about this—you must protect Iset. She doesn’t heal. Anything that happens to her body is permanent, and she’s that much closer to being destroyed. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Igor nodded, then limped toward the back hall. The one-two cadence of his tread could’ve been used for a quick march. I ran for the grand stairs.

Kappa squirmed closer to my chest and burbled my name.

“It’s okay, buddy,” I said.

I did try to sound assuring, but my voice came out strained. My thighs were screaming at me. I needed to add “running upstairs while carrying heavy objects” to my training routine.

I continued, “It’s scary, huh? But we’ve done scary before.” I managed a half-laugh. “You were quite the hero, weren’t you?”

I reached the top of the stairs. Iset and Mrs. Park were in the hall with their backs up against the wall near the half-bath. I ran over to them, put Kappa down, and stayed low. I held the candle between us. Reflections of the flame glittered in his large black eyes.

I was a coward, through and through, so I knew what it took to stand your ground: you had to have a reason to be brave.

“Listen to me, Kappa,” I said. “You’re going to help me protect Mrs. Park and Iset. Can you do that?”

He frowned, but he also jerked his head in a single, firm nod.

I pet his top fin down. “Still a hero.”

I stood up, turned to the nearest sconce, and jammed the candle in the holder.

“Emerra!” Iset cried.

“I’ll be right back!” I yelled from partway down the hall.

A heavy object, you say? Something to swing around? Good thing I’m a certifiable weirdo who loves to explore! I hadn’t been in the house for two weeks before I’d found the storage room with the disassembled bedframe that happened to include a metal bedpost which I thought would make an ideal club. I’d even picked it up and swung it around a few times while letting out a hushed version of a warrior’s roar. (You can’t be a full-volume weirdo until at least the third week in a house.)

The rooms were dark, so I had to pull out my phone to help me find it, but it was close to where I’d left it, and thanks to Mrs. Park’s spring cleaning, it was free of dust. I grabbed it, went back to the others, and took my place in front of them as the last line of defense—

Kappa came and sat beside me.

—as one of the last lines of defense. I felt a little tough and a lot scared.

Behind me, Iset said, “Emerra, do you know anything about what’s going on?”

I did a quick mental check. Lots of bad guys. Surrounded. Probably all my fault for breaking that stupid mirror…

Oh.

Would she know that? I wasn’t sure.

“Igor said they were zombies,” I told her.

No one spoke. I could hear the distant sounds of fighting coming up from the hollow created by the curve of the stairs.

How long could Conrad fight? I knew it was a long time, but would it be long enough? And what about Igor? I didn’t even know he could fight—

My thoughts were interrupted by a quiet sound coming from behind me. Kappa and I both turned to stare at Iset.

One of her thin hands was up by her face. She was looking at the floor in front of her and laughing. It felt so out of place, the hairs on my arms stood up.

Mrs. Park reached out. “Iset?”

Iset waved away our concern. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m all right. No, I am. It’s just—that answers a lot of questions.”