He glanced out of the corner of his eye and scowled at Colin.

  Colin snickered and glanced toward the floor, his eyes centered on the big black scuff stripe stretching across the left toe.

  “You can say whatever you want to, asshole.” Dora said. “You’re going down there with her and then we’ll see who has the last laugh.”

  Colin mumbled under his breath and squeezed his crotch. His eyes wide with shock, Jason doubled over and covered his mouth to stifle his own laughter.

  “Why don’t we just start with him?” Timmy said.

  “Do what I say and don’t give me any lip.”

  “It just makes sense to—”

  “Don’t argue with me, boy.” She said.

  Sadness tugged at Timmy’s face, pulling the corners of his mouth into a somber frown. Lowering the tip of the bat away from Jason, he bowed his head and closed his eyes to hide the embarrassment on his face. This hadn’t been the only time she’d insulted him in the presence of strangers.

  “I’m sorry, honey.” She said. “You know Grandma says things she doesn’t mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Grandma. I should’ve just done what you said.”

  Colin shook his head in disbelief. Just when he thought he’d seen everything.

  The zombie apocalypse had changed people in many ways, but this was too Norman-Bates for him. He’d spent many years advising his clients to seek the love and support of other family members in hopes that it would guide them to the road to recovery. This was just plain crazy.

  “It’s okay, honey. I forgive you.” She said.

  She patted the back of Timmy’s left hand with demented grandmotherly love and flicked her gaze back to Stacey.

  “Start walking or I’ll blow your boyfriend’s head off.”

  The overhead light glinting off the chamber, she aimed the pistol in Colin’s face. Timmy strolled up behind him, pressed the tip of the bat against the middle of his back and pushed him away from the countertop.

  Stacey sobbed, her thin pale fingers curled into tiny fists that were either waiting to punch the old lady dead in the mouth or snatch Rosie out of her lap. Jason peered down at the floor and, tears brimming in his eyes, felt the hope depleting from his body. Colin glanced across the room then flicked his gaze from the gun-toting grandma and back toward the photos hanging across the wall above the doorway.

  Dora aimed the gun at Jason. “Sit and wait for your fuckin’ turn.”

  He recognized both of them from the photos hanging above the kitchen doorway: Timmy knelt down on one knee in the middle of a football field wearing a purple and white jersey; a sturdy-looking dark haired man (who he’d pegged as Timmy’s grandfather) in a button down shirt and jeans sitting on a cream-plaid couch next to a young blonde-haired Dora (like the cartoon); an amateur photo of the whole family taken in front of a cheap grayish-blue background, all of them dressed in their Sunday’s best. Life was never to be taken for granted before the cemeteries decided to open for business.

  Jason stacked his arms across his chest, crossed the room and sat down at the opposite end of the table where Stacey had once sat. A thin wicked smile stretched across Timmy’s face. Stacey leaned in behind Colin and, her cheeks flushed, peered into the living room.

  Thin shafts of sunlight streamed through the boarded-up windows and grasped at the drab lime-green furniture. Tiny dust motes danced across the soft yellow light and then out of sight. The gauzy red curtains slumped against the double-paned windows were coated with a thin film of dust.

  Dora’s wheelchair rolled across the kitchen floor and parked beside of him. The right corner of her mouth twitched into a half-smirk, she buried the gun barrel into his stomach and thumbed back the hammer for emphasis.

  They stopped in front of a green wooden door pocked with scuff marks and pimples of dark liquid Colin had thought was blood. A chill crept down his spine and bristled across his skin.

  Stacey gazed into the living room when Timmy leaned in and pressed his tongue against her right cheek. He dragged it upward, spreading a thin coat of saliva across her skin. Her body flooded with disgust, Timmy chuckled and stretched his left arm across her left shoulder.

  She glanced over at him and peered into the eyes of a unique young boy with a bright and promising future. Instead, he’d become a shadow of his former self, his actions tamed by a demented old woman.

  He wasn’t the first, nor was he the last. We’re all puppets in someone’s sick and twisted game. She just wished they’d get it the fuck over with.

  A wide mischievous grin spread across Timmy’s face as he flung the door open. A mixed cloud of mildew, mold and blood rolled across the doorway, wafted across their faces and stung their nostrils. The stench must’ve rolled well past them because Colin noticed Jason was waving his hand back and forth across his face to ward off the smell.

  Stacey gagged and clamped her right hand across her mouth. Colin whispered something in her ear and tapped a few reassuring fingers against the back of her left hand.

  Timmy rolled his eyes and sighed. He reared his left arm back, pressed the tip of the bat against the middle of Colin’s back and nudged him forward. Stacey flinched, reared her left foot back and bunched her right fist together until her knuckles turned white.

  Colin clenched his teeth together and grunted. A river of pain flooded his back and poured down his legs. He felt something press hard against his left buttock, which he assumed was either a foot or the tip of a baseball bat.

  He stumbled across the doorway and landed sideways along the staircase. His left hip struck first, spreading a new wave of pain across his stomach; his left arm swung over his head, grinding his knuckles against the rough stone wall. He rolled down the stairs, filling his ears with the sound of flesh thudding against a wood surface and rapped the left side of his skull against the third to last step.

  Light whipped across his vision. He rolled over the last step and onto a rough concrete floor. His body unfurled itself, throwing his arms out from his sides.

  Pain throbbed across the crowns of his shoulders and across the front of his chest. A pocket of air burst from his lungs as he sat up and gave a loud cough that left a hot, abrasive aftertaste in the back of his throat.

  Pinpricks of light flooded his vision as he rolled onto his stomach. Footsteps parading toward him, he pressed his hands onto the floor and sat up. His nostrils flaring with the rise and fall of his chest, a chorus of maniacal laughter echoed across the basement before being cut off by the loud sound of a door being slammed shut.

  Darkness flooded the room, save for the shafts of dusty-yellow sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows; odd shadows grasped at the walls and streaked across the floor. Stacey cleared the last step and knelt down next to him. Her face creasing with concern, she swept a lock of hair away from her right cheek and tucked it behind her ear.

  She cradled his face in her hands.

  “Are you okay?” He said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  She was touched by the note of concern in his voice. “No.”

  A sharp bitter voice reverberated down into the basement. Dora was on another one of her tirades, this time about how microwaves turned pretty women into crack addicts. When Colin pointed toward the ceiling, she gnashed her teeth together and pressed a second pair of white-knuckled fists tightly against her thighs.

  “We need to figure out how the hell we’re gonna get out of here.”

  “Who knows what she’s gonna do to him.” Stacey said. “Let’s get you up off the–”

  Something caught the corner of his right eye and cut him off in mid-sentence. He glanced across the floor past Stacey’s left shoulder and snatched a breath. Stacey followed his gaze, her eyes widened with fear.

  Bloody handprints, each one varied in size, streaked across the cold gray floor and stopped at Colin’s left thigh. Tiny fragments of pebbled glass were sprinkled across the puddle, glinting in the sunlight like a church mosaic. Stacey reached down with her left hand and plucked a piece of glass from the floor between her thumb and forefinger.

  She held it up in the light for them to examine. Their faces blank and white with horror, they drew a quick breath.

  “Be careful, Stacey.” He said. “It’s glass. You’ll cut yourself.”

  “It’s not glass.” She said. “It’s a fucking finger–”

  Something clenched the back of her shirt, cinching the collar around her throat. She was jerked backward, her feet sliding across the gritty concrete floor, as soft incoherent pleas burst from her lopsided mouth. She sat down, jarring her senses and snapping her teeth together. The surreal object flew from her grasp, ricocheted off the side of the last step and bounced out of sight.

  His heart racing with fear, Colin planted his hands into the floor and spun around. He ignored the soft squishing sound his hand made when he pressed it into the gritty carpet of blood and reached out with his left arm.

  His heart sank into his stomach as his fingers raked the air two inches from her hand. She threw her arms out in front of her and glanced over her shoulders to check for something she could grab onto. Her face buckling under a mask of terror, a tiny beam of light danced in her eyes.

  It reflected back at him, piercing his resolve like soft flesh. He thought he’d never see that horrified look ever again; it was the same one he’d seen on Alicia’s face five months ago when the world took an unexpected turn and left an indelible mark on the fabric of his soul. It was the kind of look that clung to the darkest corners of your mind, ready to leap out and replay your dark and twisted nightmares.

  Something clicked. A single bare bulb flickered, tossing small snapshots of amber colored light across a large room with a soft dirt floor and dark-brick walls. The light stilled as a hump-backed shadow rose up behind Stacey, shrouding her pale panic-stricken face. Colin glanced above Stacey’s head, drew another cloud of musty stale air permeating around the basement and gasped.

  One minute, she was ready to give her virginity for a free ride to Texas and then the next minute she was chucked into a demented old lady’s basement with a complete stranger and left to die. If he regretted anything up to this point, it was the split-second anger and impatience he’d unleashed on her throughout the whole trip; there was a part of him that made him wish he’d left them back at the boat instead of dragging them through one street after the other.

  At the rate he was going, failure was like a badge he earned in the Scouts. If he wasn’t failing himself, he was failing everyone else around him.

  His chest aching, he drew a slow breath and gasped between loosely clenched teeth. His eyes widened with terror as his mouth slumped into a dry chalky coil.

  A female zombie clutched the back of Stacey’s tee-shirt in her skeletal gray hand and flashed a rotten black rictus lined with crooked yellow teeth. She gazed at him through a tiny slit in the long curtain of dark hair draped over the left side of her face and uttered a deep angry scowl. Her frayed blue dress hung loose over her slender gray body.

  A nest of flies hovered above a pile of bones and half-eaten body parts sitting in the far right corner of the room. He thought he’d seen a headless rat lying somewhere inside the dead woman’s dark hollow prison but it might’ve been the pain in his head playing tricks on him.

  There was no telling how many people they’d fed to this thing that used to be one of their own. This was someone they once loved but yet they were more than willing enough to sacrifice her to those things out there for their own wicked intentions. The bloody trail of broken fingernails and stiff red handprints churned his gut until a bitter aftertaste stung the back of his throat.

  Who could do this to their own family?

  Who in their right mind could do such a thing to the person they loved most?

  Amidst the new system of a dead world, the human mind can resort to its lowest form. In his eyes, Timmy and Dora—

  (like the cartoon)

  had gone even lower.

  After a second glance, he recognized her right away.

  She was in the big family photo, standing on the right side behind Timmy with her long black hair draped over the crown of her shoulders like a shawl. Her right cheek had been peeled back to expose a map of rotten black gums. Large blackened bite marks spread across her left thigh, exposing the sinew and flesh beneath; the skin on the fingers on her right hand had been gnawed down to the bone.

  Stacey let off a loud terrifying scream as the woman tore the right sleeve of her tee-shirt, bowed her head and sunk her crooked black teeth into the crown of her shoulder. Blood sprayed and pumped out from between the dead woman’s lips, spread down the front of Stacey’s tee-shirt in bright sporadic bibs and streaked across the floor. Her body jerked in a spasmodic dance as she sunk into the woman’s lap like a young child seeking refuge from a nightmare.

  The dead woman dug her fingers into Stacey’s right cheek, peeled the skin away like a strand of taffy, stuffed it into her black slobbering mouth and chewed. The color slowly drained from Stacey’s face as a thin curtain of hair fell across her right eye, obscuring her view of the panic-stricken horror etched across his face.

  Colin gnashed his teeth together, hot lucid tears streaming down his face and pressed his hands against the bloody concrete floor. A river of brownish-yellow liquid seeped out from Stacey’s pants legs, traced a jagged wet line down her socks and pooled across the floor. He lowered his face, balled his right hand into a white-knuckled fist and felt the lump of sadness and self-hatred swelling inside his chest.

  The zombie dropped Stacey’s pale motionless body onto the floor of her cell, cast a mad hungry stare at him and scuttled toward him like a crab. A wide playful smirk spread across her face as strands of saliva dripped off the corners of her mouth. Her dress flapping out from her sides, her withered gray hands slapped against the floor.

  He scuttled back across the floor on his hands, his legs wriggling out in front of him in search of proper traction. Her groans vibrated against the network of rafters and old pipes interlaced along the ceiling. Dora continued spewing another one of her crazy conspiracy theories; this time she was blaming Twitter for unplanned pregnancies.

  Fear bristled across his skin, spreading a fresh carpet of gooseflesh down his arms and legs. A slick film of blood coated the zombie’s lips and dripped down the front of her dress. She stood, stretched her shriveled gray arms out in front of her and raked her fingers at his throat.

  He leaned back, pressed his weight onto his left hand and raised himself three inches off the floor. He twisted his right hip, exhaled and whipped his right foot across the back of her legs. A loud guttural moan uttered from the dead woman’s lips as she lurched forward and flew across the room.

  Her tattered dress billowing around her, her head slumped over, resting her chin against her chest. She landed face down onto the floor with a soft hollow thud, her bones cracking like dry kindling. Her head struck the floor and bounced twice before landing on her left jaw.

  Colin swallowed the aforementioned lump and sat up when a loud clicking sound came from the top of the stairs. They must’ve heard Stacey’s screams and came running to see if she’d become another meal for their zombie prisoner. If they realized he was still alive, he didn’t put it past Timmy to come down and finish him off with his trusty bat.

  He rolled onto his stomach, planted his hands into the floor, scrambled to his feet and blotted his hands on his jeans. He grimaced at the stench of blood, hot urine and spent bowels wafting from the other side of the room, hurried across the room and hid under the staircase. Thin strands of cobwebs streaked the staircase’s undercarriage and fluttered in the hot putrid air sweeping toward him from the other side of the room.

  The door was flung open, creaking on unoiled hinges. A tall shadow stretched across the carpet of light spilling down the staircase.

  “Did she get him?”

  “I can’t tell, Grandma.” Timmy said. “It’s too damn dark down there.”

  “Then go down and make sure.” She said. “You know what to do if she gets out of hand.”

  He cursed under his breath and took the stairs one at a time. Dora bellowed at him again, but the boy ignored her and mumbled under his breath again.

  Colin waited for Timmy to reach the ninth step and slipped his arms through. He trapped the boy’s left ankle in both hands and jerked back. Momentum shifted and Timmy lost his balance. His arms pinwheeling out from his sides, he flopped face first onto the staircase.

  The impact snapped his head back. Pain squeezed a burst of air from his lungs. The bat slipped from his grasp, flew over his head and tumbled down the stairs out of reach.

  A river of broken teeth and blood gushed from Timmy’s twisted mouth and splashed across the floor under his right cheek. When the dead woman flicked her gaze from Colin to her brother, a voracious black grin spread across her fleshy pink face.

  Something came alive inside of those milky-blue eyes of hers, something that’d been asleep for some time now, hidden inside of that dark and foreboding prison. The insatiable desires for both anger and revenge as if she’d failed to forget what’d–or who–imprisoned her inside of that dark, hollow cavern.

  Colin’s heart gave an involuntary twitch as he leaped out from under the stairwell. His heart racing with fear, he ran toward the bottom of the staircase. Timmy gave a strangled cry, his face flooded with desperation and terror, and grasped at Colin’s left ankle.

  He kicked the boy’s hand away, bent down and snatched the bat from the floor. He gripped the bat in his left hand and leaped over Timmy and his vengeful sister. His heart racing, he landed onto the staircase and pressed his back against the cold stone wall.

  His face pale and twisted with horror, a scream burst from his lips. She grasped his tee-shirt with both hands, tore it open and sunk her teeth into his left hip; blood sprayed his face and dripped off her fingers, his arms and legs kicking in a spasmodic dance of death.

  Oblivious to her grandson’s death, Dora said, “Hell yeah. Get him baby girl. Grandma’s got another—”