Mechanical Failure, Chap. 2b (zombie apocalypse novel in progress)

~Chapter 2, continued~

Everything happened in a matter of seconds, but it felt like an hour. I started to fall toward the zombie that had my leg, so I jerked away. I pulled my leg free, but I overcorrected and began to lean the other way, teetering toward my front yard. That wasn’t going to be any better. I ended up taking two long, wobbling steps closer to the neighbor’s house, and then I dove toward their yard when I knew that I had no other choice.  My momentum was carrying me by that time, and all I could do was try to steer. My left ankle hit the top of the wall as the rest of my body went over, back first. I’m still not sure exactly how I got twisted around that way, but I hit hard and I lay where I landed, unable to breathe. My ankle screamed in agony, and I was sure that it was broken. My bigger concern was my back, which felt pretty messed up, too. I could picture myself lying there, paralyzed, while the zombies on the other side of the wall slowly made their way over.

I finally sucked in a huge gulp of air and moved my head, looking around to make sure the yard was empty. After a couple of minutes, I managed to push myself into a sitting position. While my back hurt terribly, it didn’t appear to be broken. My ankle was another story. It was scraped up pretty badly, and it hurt like hell when I touched it.

Glancing up at the wall, I could see hands reaching over, and it sent a wave of anger through me. These stupid, dead things had chased me from my home. I sat there thinking about it, telling myself that I could take it back; that I would not be cast out into the streets by a bunch of dead people who couldn’t even talk any more. But I knew it wasn’t true. I let out a long, slow breath and faced reality. Even if I could clear out my house, they had defiled it. I had gotten a glimpse of at least one zombie in the pool, pushing at the sides as it tried to get back out. They’d been stomping through my garden, too, and I couldn’t eat the contaminated food. I didn’t even want to think about what they’d done to the inside of the house. There was probably soughed off, rotted flesh and gore all over the place. No, this was one battle that I was going to walk away from and live to fight another day . . . assuming I could walk.

I used the wall to push myself into a standing position on my good leg. ‘Good’ was just a relative term in this case, since both legs were pretty banged up. I’d scraped my knee raw somewhere on the way over the wall, though I don’t remember doing it. It throbbed with pain along with the rest of my body. Still, it supported my weight, so I was happy. I carefully tried to put weight on my not-so-good leg, and I was met with numbing pain. I wasn’t sure what to do next. In the attic I would have had my bed, coffee, water and a good book as well as a box of crackers or two. There was no chance of getting back up there, so I’d have to find a new sanctuary.

Something caught my attention off to the right and I turned my head, paling when I caught sight of the stile I’d built to go over the wall. It was moving. Even my pain-filled mind was sharp enough at the moment to realize that something was climbing over from the other side. I hobbled over just as one of the creatures managed to get onto the first step. When I had built the stile, I had taken a tall wooden ladder and cut it in half, connecting the two sections with a small piece of plywood and a few bolts with wing nuts, thinking that in an emergency, I could unscrew them and quickly dissemble the whole thing. I could see the problem with my planning now. There was no way I could reach over and undo the wing nuts on that side of the wall without getting my hand bit off. I quickly undid the wing nuts on my side, having to dodge the zombie’s grasping hands the whole time. Once they were loose, I tossed the ladder away and pushed up on the platform, trying to knock it over, zombie and all. No luck. The zombie kept trying to grab me, leaning forward as he did it, and he was heavy. I was running out of options and the big guy had managed to get up another step. He’d be in the yard with me before long and I’m sure that his friends would follow.

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