The picture was my favorite, depicting my husband as he really was: a tall and muscular, hardworking construction worker from Queens.
Undying by madeline sheehan driver#
I was the dark to his light, my black hair, dark features, and bronzed skin a carbon copy of the Sicilian parents I’d lost to the whims of a drunk driver when I was only ten years old. Only his profile was visible, his reddish-brown hair, a sliver of his pale, freckled skin, both a testament to his Irish heritage. Taken on our high school graduation day, a friend of mine had captured the exact moment I’d come walking off the stage, my diploma in hand, and had run straight into Brian’s waiting arms. Forget starving to death, the rapidly declining sanitary conditions of my apartment would kill me before I could even think of opening my last can of vegetables.īlinking away the tears that threatened, I looked blurrily across the room, seeking the small framed portrait seated proudly on the bookshelf. Only how could I? I was quickly running out of both food and water, I felt filthy, and as far as bathrooms went, I didn’t have a working one. I should have done a lot of things, except…ĭropping back down on my knees, I leaned my cheek against the cool wall and tried to breathe through the dizziness and nausea that threatened to overtake me. I should have gotten out of town when everyone else started packing up and running. But my sanctuary had quickly become my own personal prison. I’d been grateful that those four flights of stairs I’d once complained about daily were now the only thing separating me from the horrors that lay in wait beneath. Freedom was so close, yet reaching it was near impossible.Īt first I’d been elated by the protection offered by these four solid brick walls.
My once pristine SUV, now covered in gore and surrounded by the infected, sat only a half block down the street.
Anything that could draw them away, and give me the time I needed to get out of this building and to my car. They seemed to be drawn toward sound, but unless the noise continued on, or produced some sort of visual result, they became disinterested and went back to their habitual shuffling. A noise off in the distance, a small animal making a commotion of some sort. She walked and walked on an endless cycle, never sleeping, only ever pausing in her mindless movements when something would catch her attention.Īs if reading from a cue card, when any one of the infected would break their mundane ritual, the entire mass of them would all stop what they were doing to turn in the same direction. Her right foot was also broken, yet seemed to have little impact on her ability to continue walking. Worse, she was missing most of the skin on her left arm, the limp appendage hanging at an awkward angle. Her vacant milky-white eyes, previously lit with the sort of warmth that only comes from living a well-lived life, were now focused on nothing in particular. Her usually perfectly pressed blue summer shift was now wrinkled, caked with dirt and blood. Her white hair, always carefully curled, now hung greasy and limp past her frail, bony shoulders. Havers was outside her shop, mindlessly shuffling the same ten-foot stretch over and over again. Today, like every other day for the past two weeks, the former Mrs. Only today she wasn’t sweeping the sidewalk, wasn’t greeting her customers and passersby with kind words and a smile. Havers, a once kind and elderly woman who’d owned the children’s clothing shop directly across the way, was out front as usual. It was the same horrifying scene that had greeted me every day for two weeks now.
And if the people were still actually people instead of the infection-carrying, cannibalistic, reanimated corpses they now were.
Undying by madeline sheehan windows#
Swallowing hard, I gripped the windowsill and gradually pulled myself up until I could see the world outside my prison.įrom my vantage point within the top floor of my five-story apartment building, I could easily view the row of shops and independent boutiques below, the afternoon summer sun illuminating the street and the several dozen people milling about.įrom far enough away, it could almost be considered picturesque, just another beautiful summer day in Pearl River, New York…if the walls of the buildings weren’t blackened and charred, the doors and windows weren’t busted, and the merchandise that was once for sale wasn’t scattered, broken and shattered, across the sidewalk and street. My heart pounding, I quickly skittered right and then left, much like a crab, until I’d reached the row of windows. Like clockwork, several boards moaned in protest as my weight touched down up on them.
Dropping down on all fours, careful not to settle heavily on any of the creaky floorboards, I crawled slowly across my living room.