They stop just outside the door, and I see the girl roll her eyes. She catches me watching and attempts a smile, then looks down at my bloody pants.

“Well,” she starts, but I can tell she doesn’t know where to go from there. Still reeling from those screams— and their abrupt end— I feel hollowed out and empty. My eyes feel watery, but reality hasn’t quite settled onto me yet. I try to force everything down before it does– to focus on now and save the rest for later.

The girl wipes her palms awkwardly on her pants, and I realize I’ve been staring at her. With a slight shake of my head, I brace my hands on the desk and carefully shift my left foot onto the floor, careful not to put any weight on my right foot. I know there still could be glass there, though she got all the bigger pieces out while the other two quickly dragged my uncle up the porch steps. I force down that thought too and glance at the door, assuring myself that they’re are out of sight. I lean my hip against the desk and reach for my belt but the girl – Anna – clears her throat and holds out a pair of scissors.

“It’ll be easier,” she explains. I shift my leg and stare down at the several cuts. She’s probably right. I liked these jeans, but I have spares. I take the scissors from her and start snipping through the fabric while she opens a water bottle and sorts through her supplies, giving me a semblance of privacy I guess. I crisscross from one cut to the next, from my right knee down to the hem. With that done, I do pull my belt from the belt loops and snip from the top down, freeing my whole right leg.

Pushing myself back onto the desk, I slip the other pant leg off and let them fall to the floor. A quiet gasp pulls my attention back to Anna, and I see her eyes on my right thigh. She studies the large scar there, her fingers straying to her slightly gaping mouth. It’s easy to forget that scar is there most of the time, but her stunned look brings back a phantom pain. I rub my hand across the damaged skin, uncomfortable with her stare.

“I’m so sorry,” Anna whispers, then glances at the door. I shrug and follow her gaze, but the doorway is still clear. After scooting further back on the desk, I pull one of the towels under my bleeding leg, hoping to get this over with quickly. I reach for one of the water bottles, but Anna snaps her attention back, finally, and takes over.

She slowly pours water over each cut, inspecting and occasionally pulling out bits of glass with a pair of tweezers. With the exception of the largest gash above my knee, the cuts don’t seem very deep, and they’re not bleeding all that much. When she’s rinsed each cut, she switches the water for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. It stings as she dabs it around the cuts, and she softly apologizes. She hands me a washcloth to dry off my skin and pulls out a few butterfly bandages, which she uses to close the cut above my knee before adding a square of gauze and securing it with an elastic wrap.

She cuts the wrap and presses on the end to secure it before grabbing a box of bandaids. “For the smaller ones,” she says, dumping a few onto the desk. In the past I probably wouldn’t have bothered with half of these smaller cuts, even the smallest amount of blood could attract danger. I swallow down the hard lump in my throat, thinking of the trickle of blood on my uncle’s forehead when we left him on the porch. Blinking hard, I focus on the task at hand, and we work together to cover the 7 or 8 smaller cuts on my lower leg and foot. After a quick inspection of the bottom of my foot – and another few pieces of glass pulled free with tweezers – she cleans it and adds a gauze and another wrap there too.

As soon as she’s done she starts packing things up and I lower myself from the desk. My clothes are in a duffle bag on the coffee table. I pluck out some new clothes and perch on the couch to quickly slip on the socks and jeans. My shoes are still by the door where the older boy kicked them earlier, but I decide to leave them there as I cross to the door and into the hallway.

The two boys are standing just outside, one on either side of the door. One of them says something, but I dodge past them and pad down the stairs. The cut on the bottom of my foot stings with every other step, but I ignore it and move quickly as a quiet curse and a set of footsteps follow me down.

I head straight into the living room, walking silently on the balls of my feet. Before I can take more than a few steps, though, a hand latches onto my arm and whirls me around. My socks slip across the bare floor. I steady myself as the older guy, Drew – the one who took my gun, I consider nervously – looks over my shoulder at the front door. I can hear the ghastly noises from the street – wet ripping and throaty growls.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, looking down at me. I attempt to take a step backward, but he doesn’t let go. He pulls me back towards him, and I try to tamp down the panicky feeling in my chest. A creak from outside distracts me, the screech of the worn boards by the top step of the porch. Awkward, dragging footsteps lumber back and forth across the porch. I try to turn toward the door again, but Drew’s grip is still firm.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“It doesn’t open,” I whisper sharply, waving at the door. I’d told them outside that the door was blocked, but he looks at it skeptically. There’s enough light coming down from upstairs that the thick boards nailed across the front door are clearly visible. His grip on my arm loosens after a moment, and I pull free. I back up a few steps but he doesn’t move, so I turn to stalk silently across the room. The window I used earlier, just beside the door, still has a little gap of light where the push pins were pulled free. I tug the fabric to the side and lean forward to peer through the tiny opening.

There he is. I’m surprised to see him on his feet already. It can’t have been more than 10 or 15 minutes since he–

I clench my eyes shut and lean my forehead against the window frame, feeling the sting of tears. I feel my neck flush, thinking of those terrible screams. I should have done something– something different. There must have been a way, before the shots, before I passed right by him, too concerned with getting to bed to pay attention. I didn’t notice, I did nothing, and he paid for it.

The porch creaks and I force myself to look again through blurry eyes. He’s near the middle of the porch, swaying slightly. His shirt hangs in bloody tatters and his head is tilted at an unnatural angle. There’s not much left of his neck, I realize, and I can see the white of his spine through the stringy gore that’s left. I suck in a harsh breath, and suddenly his head snaps toward the door, cloudy eyes staring into mine.

A strangled sound escapes my throat as his jaw gnashes from side to side and a garbled growl exits his bloody mouth. I press my hand to my mouth, trying to stifle any more noise. I’ve always wondered if they retain any memories, especially when they're newly turned, but I can’t tell if it’s that or he’d just caught sight of my movement somehow. Or the cuts, I wonder, glancing down at my leg. When I look out again, I watch as he drags his mangled body across the porch. When he reaches the door and thumps into it, I jerk back with a gasp.

I’d forgotten about Drew until I back up into him, stepping on one of his boots. His hands go to my elbows and he continues backing us both toward the stairs before I get my bearings. When I do, I stumble to a stop but he doesn’t let go. He could easily move me if he wanted to, I know. He picked me up and carried me into the house only a few minutes ago. At another thump against the door, he tugs on my arms, but it's more of a suggestion this time, not enough to make me move. The porch creaks as more sloppy steps cross it— more bodies crossing the worn planks.

There’s a sound from the top of the stairs, a kind of breathy whistle that pulls my attention away from the door. Drew’s so close that I feel it when he takes a breath, and then he lets out two short, soft whistles of his own — one high, the next a lower pitch. I'm still trying to figure out what was just communicated when Drew tightens his grip and backs us both another step away from the door.

“I can’t,” I whisper, yanking my arms forward to make him stop. The thumps against the door are coming more steadily now, and instead of replying he releases one arm and pulls me around to face him. I glare up at him in the dim light.

He opens his mouth, but I beat him to it. “I can’t leave him like that!” I hiss, more harshly than I really meant to. He flinches and glances over my shoulder but doesn’t let go of my arms. I look up the stairs behind him and see that Anna and the younger guy are on the landing. He still has the rifle in his hands— and my holster, I notice. I ignore them and pull down with my arms.

“Stop,” Drew whispers, tightening his grip and glancing at the door again. “For the love of-“ he cuts himself off as the thumps against the door become more intense. There’s definitely more than one at the door now.

“Just stop,” he says more quietly. The harshness of his whisper and the tightening of his fingers into my arm makes me freeze. I feel my pulse pick up and my cheeks burn, both at the reprimand and at how close he is. “You’re going to draw more of them to the door,” he adds.

He’s right, but the ache in my chest won’t let me do nothing. It’s my fault, all of this, and I can’t just turn my back on him– not so many times in one day. I have to fix this, and there’s only one way now. I have to end him. He’s my uncle, the last person I had. For better or worse, he’s the one who’d raised me when no one else wanted to, the only sure thing about my childhood. My lungs burn as I hold my breath, trying to stay composed as I think of just how much I owe him.

An emotional response isn’t going to help right now, I know. So I force it all down again, pack it all away bit by bit, and look back at the fortified door. It would take a lot of them to force it open, wouldn’t it? It took hours to nail those boards over the door. We made it impenetrable, or at least that was the goal. I think about each day and night spent working on the house to calm down, but the door rattles and the growling grows louder.

Finally I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I can do from down here.

“You take one step out there and we’re all dead.” Drew’s sharp tone brings my attention back to him. I can tell by the wary way he watches me, still clutching my arms, that he’s worried— worried I’m going to do something dangerous. And maybe I am, but I’m not suicidal.

I suck in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly before nodding. I don’t want that door to open either, and stepping foot outside is definitely out of the question. But I can’t do nothing.

Drew slowly lets go of my right arm and slides his other hand down to my wrist. He tugs me toward the stairs and doesn’t let go until I start up them in front of him. I hear the boards nailed over the door groan as we reach the landing.