Howard's End

Howard's End

Howard crouched on the edge of his roof, watching them. They milled around, bumping into his lawn statuary, moaning. One tangled its feet in his coiled hose and tripped, splitting its head open on the spigot with a moist thunk. Deflated gray matter oozed out onto the crisp, yellow grass as it paddled its arms and legs, still trying to walk.

“You bastards have no idea how much I enjoyed that,” Howard said, chuckling as he wiped his brow. They didn’t respond. He quieted, eyes unfocused as he scanned his ruined front yard.

The sun sapped what energy he had left. Howard had spent most of his adrenaline getting up here a few hours ago. Nothing to drink, no cover from the desert sun. He didn’t even have shoes on, but he considered himself luckier than his neighbors. He’d heard their screams all afternoon, as the creatures broke through windows, rushed unsuspecting neighbors gardening in the summer sun. He could smell the stench of spilled gore cooking into the cement.

When he first heard them that morning, he was drinking coffee, reading the paper in his tattered robe. Moans, he heard, and a chorus of them.

# # #

“What the--?”

He peeked out his front window, and outside his gate they stood. Empty eyes, slack jaws, fumbling hands. They tried to flip the latch, but their hands had lost their fine motor skills. But the wooden gate shook, slats bending under the combined pressure of several hundred pounds of walking meat. He had only a few minutes.

Howard dropped the paper and ran to his back door, lifting the edge of his window curtain aside. Nothing. Still clear. Outside, he climbed up on his AC unit, jumped to the rain gutter, and pulled himself up. He hoped they wouldn’t be able to follow.

Shortly after, the screaming began up and down his street. He didn’t believe he was the only survivor here, but hadn’t yet seen anyone else. He sat down to wait for whatever martial response might occur.

# # #

Howard shielded his eyes with his arm, checking one direction and then another. No one. He didn’t know if these things were going to move on, but he couldn’t stay up here too much longer. Without water and shelter, he’d be dead in days. The bleached sky reminded him of desiccated bone. No chance of rain. The problem was, even though they didn’t seem to be trying to climb up to him, he’d watched more of them gather in his yard. Each hour, more stumbled in. Unofficial head count had them at over twenty. Where’d they come from? Eventually, Howard would have to make a move. The longer he waited, the weaker he’d become. Shit.Barefoot, no weapon, no plan.

Just then, he heard a metallic thump from the other side of his house. He turned from the front and crawled toward the back, keeping as low as possible. He heard it again. Oh, shit. He edged closer on his stomach, and his fear was confirmed. He saw two of them standing on his AC unit, reaching for the rain gutter. He scanned his yard, and noticed the trampled hedge. They’d come in there, and figured his path. They were smarter than the others, fresher. He watched them communicate with each other, gesturing and grunting. Then, sweat spidered over Howard’s body in a cold rush, soaking through his thin robe. His mouth dried to cotton. One of them boosted the other. Its arms popped out of their sockets from the force, but its friend managed to grab the edge of the roof. As he watched it pull itself up, Howard gasped a quick sob. It raised its head and looked at him, hunger in its eyes. Nowhere to run.