The Reaper Virus Read online

  A less than calculated dive took my midsection into the window frame. Pain surged throughout my body and nearly broke my focus. The pain faded and warmth overtook my midsection. With a quick pat I checked for visible bleeding. My hand returned clean and I knew that the bleeding was going on inside my chest cavity. The drumming on the bedroom door reminded me that there wasn’t time to consider the gravity of my personal plight.

  I pulled the gas soaked gloves from my shoulder and located the stick lighter, astonished that I was able to connect the volatile pair through my trembling hands. An immediate flash of combustion singed the hair off my knuckles. I lobbed the flaming fuse as far as possible back into my bedroom. The room flickered from the meteoric trail of fire. Vapors burst to life before the gloves landed about three feet from the door. I had to quickly close the trap planking before the fumes included me in their equalizing judgment.

  I heard the muffled crashing from the failed bedroom door when I was barely five feet from the house. I allowed myself a psychotic smirk from the vindictive thought of ghouls crashing into a room filled with fire. My recent experiences with the undead had taught me that fire was no deterrent to their hunger. It was even more comforting knowing that flames should quickly spread to the rest of the house. When the propane tank heated enough to burst, the house should be filled to the brim with zombies following the pack. Over the past few days I obsessively fought through horrors to get here. Now I was burning the source of my obsession down so that I could escape.

  They turned my city into Hell. I’d remind them what Hell really was.

  My feet found the ladder’s metal rungs. A symphony of popping wood and flesh played out behind me. At the top of the fence I looked back at the house. Smoke blacked out a dismal sky. Rapidly advancing flames already danced outside the walls. The roar of destruction blissfully drowned out the clatter of evil. It was time to go.

  I set my sights on a pile of leaves just past the fence. Grace wasn’t an option as I dismounted the privacy fence. All I could do was hope that the powers that be hadn’t forsaken me entirely. When my boots landed on the leaves I realized that my pleas for leniency went unheard. My fall continued past the level of the ground, and I finally impacted when I’d fallen all the way into the two foot deep hole excavated by the neighbor kids. I barely felt the snap of my femur, but it was so loud I heard it above everything else.

  “God damn kids had to fill the hole with leaves?” I said through painfully gritted teeth.

  Light from my burning home started a visible dance over the fence. In the light I saw my smiling family. Thoughts of Sarah, Maddox, and Calise soothed the ire I felt over such a pointless downfall. I closed my eyes. As the world grew numb I waited for the flame to claim me too. I desperately sought sleep so that I could finally wake from this nightmare.