The First 30 Days (PUBLISHED)

Five - Day 4

There were two of them out there.

Two distinct sets of footsteps, two separate voices, two people bumping and thumping their way through the upstairs of the house. I had no idea how a second sick person had gotten in, I was positive that I had locked the door behind Austin when he came over.

But a whisper of a voice in the back of my mind told me that I knew exactly who was out there with Evie. The same whisper that had been telling me for a day now that Evie had died. She had been dead, and then suddenly, she wasn't. And her first act upon getting up was to bite someone.

Evie had died, and then come back as a bloodthirsty monster.

As much as my mind fought making that leap, a part of me couldn't deny what was right in front of my face. And it wasn't just Evie. My frequent peeks outside the tiny bathroom window proved over and over again that my neighborhood had descended into madness. I had no idea how to cope with the thoughts that were whispering through my mind.

An angry rumble from my stomach reminded me that it had been two days since I ate anything. At first, terror and drinking copious amounts of water had kept my mind off of thoughts of food. But nothing was stopping me from wishing for something remotely edible anymore. My stomach cramped painfully. I had developed a headache that pounded mercilessly inside my skull.

It brought into stark reality the fact that I wouldn't be able to wait in this bathroom forever. I was going to have to leave sometime, or would slowly starve to death. But if I had been afraid to leave the dubious safety of the bathroom with Evie roaming the halls, I knew beyond any doubt that I couldn't leave with Evie-plus-one out there.

Caught in that conundrum, I had waited out my second night in the bathtub. Exhaustion finally caught up with me, and I slept a few hours, before jolting awake from nightmares. By the time the sun was fully up in the sky the next morning, I had come up with a plan. It wasn't a good plan, but it was the only one I could come up with.

I took a last look around the small room for anything that may be useful. There wasn't much. I gripped the hair cutting scissors in my hand, but couldn't imagine actually using them on my roommate, even if the whispering in my mind insisted that she was already dead.

I'd stuffed the small bottle of painkillers in one pocket. Other than those two items, the bathroom hadn't yielded anything that I thought would be worth carrying with me. I couldn't see how a bath poufy or nail clippers would help my situation any.

Now that I was about to implement my plan, I felt my heart begin to pick up speed. Everything hinged on the first part going exactly right. If I miscalculated, or if it just plain didn't work, I didn't want to think too hard about the consequences.

Evie had always complained that the heating vents to her bedroom and the bathroom were somehow connected. She insisted that my occasional morning singing in the shower came through the vent like I was in the room with her. I found myself now hoping that she had not been exaggerating. If I could fool the two of them into going into the bedroom, it might buy me enough time to beat them downstairs and out of the house.

Outside, the street appeared abandoned at the moment. My plan actually working also rested on not getting cornered by a hoard as soon as I ran outside. The timing would have to be perfect.

Heart racing like a Thoroughbred, I decided that there wasn't going to be a better time than now. Climbing up onto the toilet so I could press my lips right up to the vent, I began to whisper. The trick would be to attract their attention to the noise in Evie's room without attracting them to the bathroom door.

After a few more seconds of my mumbling, I increased the volume slightly. The pacing footsteps in the hall suddenly stopped. Cringing, hoping that this would work, I kept going. A short yelping scream sounded right outside the bathroom door. I was just about to abandon the plan as idiotic, when whoever was outside the door bolted into Evie's room.

A crash sounded directly on the other side of the wall from where I perched atop the toilet. A guttural growl came through the heat vent, followed by a scrabbling sound against the wall. I kept making noise, trying to decipher if they were both in there. It would do me no good if they weren't both in that room.

A scream blasted through the vent, followed closely by a second. It had sounded like two separate people. I hesitated, panic freezing my limbs, fearful about what I was about to do. More frantic clawing at the wall finally convinced me to climb down off of that toilet. This may be my only chance to escape the room.

Scissors gripped tightly in a hand gone numb, I crept to the door. A last look to the vented wall, and I clicked the lock. As expected, the sound of the lock disengaging was horrifyingly loud. There was not much chance that they hadn't heard. Flinging the door open, I bolted into the hallway and raced for the stairs.

Bounding down the stairs, I was nearly to the bottom when the screaming entered the hallway above me. They knew that I was down there. I hit the tile in the entryway, skidded toward my keys that thankfully still lay on the small stand by the door, and hurled myself upon the lock.

My gasping breath started to sound a lot like strangled sobs as I fumbled with the locked door. A loud banging behind me, cost me precious seconds as I turned to see. Evie, eyes locked on me with frightening intensity, tumbled down the stairs to land in a heap just feet away. Behind her came Austin. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of him.

Covered in blood, his shirt ripped practically all of the way off, he stumbled over a length of his own intestine and landed on top of a just getting to her feet Evie.

Full on sobbing now, the lock finally gave to my trembling hands, and I threw myself out the door, slamming it behind me just in time for one of my pursuers to crash into the other side. Spinning around, I clutched my keys and ran for my car. Furious screams rang from inside the house and I was sure they would attract unwanted attention before long.

Sneakers pounding down the driveway, movement out of the corner of my eye spurred me on. I clicked the unlock button as I ran, opened the door and bolted inside. Slamming my hand down on the door lock, I looked through the window as a pot bellied man with grey hair and lifeless eyes raced across my lawn and slammed his gore smeared face against my window.