It All Comes Down To Zombies: Sarah by Rayne Millaray Page A

the night? Get in.”
     
    Sarah looked around. Death and destruction were everywhere. She had no idea if anyone had survived. She had no way out. The little house she shared with her husband had been reduced to rubble. Her gaze found its way back to the man in the truck.
     
    “I don’t know, Jimmy. Maybe I’m safer with the monsters.”
     
    Jimmy sighed. “Sarah, I won’t touch you. I’m clean. Haven’t even had a drink in over a year. Not even since this…thing started. I don’t have any weapons. You can search the whole truck, if you want, just be quick about it. I saw some of those things a couple turns back. They’re moving pretty slowly, but they’ll be here soon. And when they get here, all those dead bodies? Well, they won’t be dead for long.”
     
    “W-what do you mean?” Sarah stammered. She silently cursed herself for showing this man her fear.
     
    “They come back to life. Only they’re more like those things than they are like us. A little smarter. A little faster. But something’s missing. Are you gonna get in the truck, or what?”
     
    “They killed my neighbors and changed my cat. I don’t know where they went.”
     
    “Changed your cat?”
     
    “Yeah. I don’t know. Tom fought one of them, and he started acting weird. He’s in the house. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him.”
     
    Sarah looked at Jimmy for what was probably way too long, weighing her options. She produced a pistol from behind her back, flicked the safety off, and aimed the gun up the street. Then she made a big show of checking the clip and loading the chamber.
     
    “Doesn’t matter if you have weapons. I have my own, this time. I always was a better shot than you.” She dropped her arms to her sides, and faced Jimmy again, her gaze unflinching as she found the courage she’d always wished she had. “Get this stuff in the truck, and I’ll go grab a couple shotguns and some more ammo. ”
     
    Jimmy climbed out of the truck. “Okay. Hurry.”
     
    ———————
     
    Sarah climbed the front steps to her house, and took a second to prepare herself. She hadn’t seen any of those things for hours, but there was no telling what was inside.
     
    She fished under her bed for the gun cases. Quickly, she changed the combinations on each to Tom’s birthday because it was a number Jimmy couldn’t guess. She checked to be sure the guns were there, and that they were loaded. Then she went to the closet where she had spent the night with Max and Sylvester to stuff as much ammo as she could into a couple lock boxes. Sarah changed those combinations, too, using the day she picked Sylvester up at the shelter this time.
     
    Sarah slipped the straps on the gun cases over her head, grabbed a lock box in each hand, and headed toward the last place she’d seen her cat.
     
    Tom hadn’t moved from where she’d found him that morning. For the first few hours after he bit that thing, he’d made this bizarre noise she’d never heard come from a cat before…and then he just stopped. The only reason she could tell he was still alive, if you could call it that, was the twitch in his tail; an odd, jerking movement that reminded her of stop motion films. At first, she thought it was just muscle spasms, but it was now approaching twenty-four hours later, and he was still doing it.
     
    “Here, kitty,” she whispered as she approached the animal. “Here, Tom. Pretty boy. Come to mama.”
     
    Tom didn’t react. He didn’t look up. His ears didn’t twitch. He just crouched there, in that impossible position, twitching his tail.
     
    Sarah reached out to the animal, wanting to pet him one last time. When her hand got within scratching distance, Tom lashed out viciously, all teeth and claws. Sarah snatched her hand away just in time, and the cat resumed his position.
     
    Tom started making that noise again.
     
    “Uh, Sarah?” Jimmy said, just barely loud enough for Sarah to hear him. “I don’t mean to rush