The des morts-vivants

"I think I'll urinate on myself," she says in almost a whisper. "Gosh, I have already urinated on myself. Can you believe that?"

"Do you think they are them?" she asks him.

"I am not sure. The voices sound strange," he says.

"What should we do?" she asks.

"I'm thinking," Carl says.

"You're thinking when they have intruded to our house? Can you stop thinking and do something?"

"How are you expected to do something without thinking through it?" his voice is marked with irritation. "Do you have an idea what we should?"

'No!"

He shakes his head in despair.

They hear the voices again.

"It appears the voices are emanating from the kitchen," he tells her.

"Stay here. Don't go anywhere till I come back."

"And if you don't?"

"I will come back," he snaps.

He opens the door slowly, looks from right to left, and walks towards the stairs. He prays he won't bump with them, however they are.

At the foot of the stairs, he debates whether he should minimize the distance to the kitchen to ascertain who or what they are.

"They don't sound human" a female voice tells her.

"How sure are you?" he asks her.

"Just listen again."

He listens attentively.

"What do you think? Are they human voices?"

"No!" he says.

Something snaps in his mind. The feminine voice that's speaking to him, isn't that of Susan, his wife? He turns back to face his wife.

"What are you doing here? I told you to remain in the bedroom?"

"Do you expect me to remain there raking my brain whether they'll come after me after they've dealt with you?"

Carl didn't reply. He knew better than engaging her in a war of words.

Seeing the voices were still content staying in the kitchen, he thought what he should do. Take a closer look at the voices or make it out. What if... His thoughts were interrupted by the voices that had gotten louder.

"Stay behind me," he tells her.

"Where are we going?"

"To my office."

She clutches the back of his t-shirt as he walks hurriedly to the office. Carefully, without making a noise, he opens the door and closes it. He hurries to his laptop on the desk.

He sits on a leather armchair and turns the laptop on. He clicks on a program and opens it. The program displays all the rooms in the house.

Jane gasps at what she sees on the screen.

"They're are eating food!"

"That one is drinking a bottle of Pepsi."

"And they don't look human."

She talks rapidly, her sentences punctuated with long pauses.

"Zombies!"

"They're zombies," Carl says.

"Then we're dead," she says.

"Not if we succeed fleeing from the house," he says.

He feels the trembling hands of her wife on his left shoulder. He stands, touches the left part of her face with a palm of his hand. "Don't fear. We have to survive. And we can."

"But don't they drink blood and eat raw flesh and meat?"

"I have an idea," he says.

He sits again on the chair and opens an email messenger.

"Jean, are you well?"

No response. They wait a minute. No reply. Two minutes passes by. Ten minutes.

"Maybe he's not close to his laptop," he says.

"Or, dead," she says.

They look at each other, uncertainty spread on their faces.

They hear a notification sound from the laptop.

"I'm okay," he says. "What about you guys?"

"There are some zombies in our house. In the kitchen," he writes.

"What about you?"

"We're in the office."

"Stay there. I'm coming with a colleague of mine in twenty-five minutes."

"Okay."

They hear the voices drawing to the living room.

Carl jumps to his feet. "We have to hide."

"Where?"

He looks around.

"Let's hide behind the door."

They walk towards the wall facing the interior part of the door that will face against them when it's opened.

He switches off the light.

"What's that?"

"I think they have turned on the television."

"Are they really zombies?"

"Beats me," Carl says.

Silence permeates in the office as they strain their ears to hear what's going on in the living room.

"What are they saying?"

"How am I supposed to know? They aren't even talking. It's like they're grunting."

They hear sound of boots approaching then stop at the door. Wish I had locked the door, he thinks. Boot! he wondered. Zombies wear boots? Are they really zombies?

They hold their breath as the door is opened. Carl feels the anxiousness in his wife as she holds firmly at her shirt.

They are sniffing. Typical of zombies. We're dead meat, he thinks.

Susan screams when the zombies turn their eyes against theirs. The zombies smile, another remarkable thing Carl notices about them.

One of them, perhaps their leader points a hands towards them. Carl puts up a fight but is overpowered. He is dragged alongside his wife to the living room.

A slim zombie whose left face is void of flesh and eye points a gun at them. How is that zombie surviving, he is puzzled.

A heavy-built zombie comes from the kitchen holding a butcher knife.

"Nooooo..." Susan screams.

She is hit with the butt of the gun by the slim zombie.

"What are we going to do," Susan asks in a low voice. They're huddled at the center of the living room. Their hands and legs are tied with ropes.

"Let's hope Jean and his team arrive on time," he tells her. "They didn't close the main door. It'll be easy for them to rescue us."

The big zombie whose face looks like a spongy brain draws closer to them. He leans slightly foward, sniffs at them, and smiles.

The big zombie falls with a thud. Seconds later, the thin one collapses to the floor.

A zombie with the carcass of their cat emerges from their kitchen. Before it reaches where they are, it falls down.

Carl and Susan struggle to break loose from the ropes when they hear the familiar voice of Jean.

One of his men unties them.

"What's going on?"

"Zombie apocalypse."

"How bad is it?" Susan asks.

"They have invaded most parts of the country. The army has ordered all to head to the Plain. There it is safe."

"The zombies...the zombies...they look different?"

"Yes," Jean says. "We don't know what to make of them. It's stated this is the fulfilment of the prophecy. The world will be invaded by zombies. They look different from their ancestors."

"The movies and books depict them as unintelligent, only out to drink a human's blood and eat their flesh."

"That's true. Some of them have been captured by the army to be analyzed so that we can know how to deal with them. They can even call you on the phone, send and reply to a text."

"Sir, we need to move out before time runs out," his junior tells him.

"We have to go. We will talk while enroute to the Plains," Jean says.

Outside, save from the streetlights, the night sky pitch black.

"Are those people serious?" Susan asks, pointing a finger to two lovers kissing each other on a window display of a clothes shop.

"They are the zombies," Jean says.

"Zombies!" both of them utter in astonishment.

They walk for some few minutes along Prairie Street. Ahead is a black armoured army truck.

"What if the humans are wiped off from the face of the earth, and zombie thrive?"

"At this rate, they've come from the dead on a different note," Jean says as they near the truck.