View from the Top

She hears incessant moaning rising up from below. The sound slowly forcing violent waves of nausea up from the pit of her stomach. Sitting atop the roof of her besieged home hurt and alone. Desperately she fights back an impending deluge of tears. “Gone," She whispers referring to her family. A lost husband, teenage son and a set of preteen twins. Black smoke billows around her like an acrid veil. It trails from her neighbor’s burning house. Wafting across, her face burning, her eyes. The woman rocks back and forth cradling her blooding knee. She had kicked out the attic window to gain access to the roof. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. A coughing fit seizes her. The choking smoke forcing her to lay flat against the roof. What greets her is a clear view of a cloudless sky. The sounds around her do not match the peace and tranquility of the sky above. It’s like seeing a beautiful serene painting while trapped in a nightmare. Sirens blare out from all manner of emergency vehicles. Screams and gunshots meld themselves together. Carrying on the breeze like dead leaves. Over everything, the moaning reigns supreme. The undead surrounds her home. From all sides, they call out for her flesh. On the way home from work she heard the tornado sirens wailing. Paying them no mind and thinking the sirens were just a test, she drove onward. Those precious minutes she had wasted. Had cost her everything she held dear. “Hey, lady you alive up there?” She sits up hearing a man’s voice call out. Cautiously scooting to the edge and peering down. The distant man’s voice is reduced to a muted echo. There below she sees her husband. Nameless among the moaning hungry horde. Stephen had died protecting her and the kids. His beautiful blue eyes clouded over in death. Reduced to vile off white puss colored orbs in their sockets. The right side of his neck torn down to the bone. A tiny helpless sob catches in her throat.

“Yes... Yes, my name is Darlene,” she screams back. The voice comes from a middle-aged man. Perched high up in the cab of a huge rusty red pickup truck. The zombies on the outer ring of the pack. Slowly begin to shamble towards the man in the truck. Which idles growling like a snoring bear at the end the sloped driveway. “Well, Darlene,” He says ducking back into the truck’s cab. “Stay there I’m going to pull up as close as I can.” The rusty red truck sitting on the obnoxiously high muddy tires. Lurches forward slowly gaining momentum as it pushes through the zombies. Darlene leaps to her feet. Attempting in vain to cover her face from the billowing smoke. That dances around her like a malevolent spirit. “Okay,” She answers him. Pain creeping up from her injured knee. A small pool of blood now coats the shingles beneath where she had been sitting. Taking an overly cautious step back, Darlene unwittingly loses her footing. Unable to steady herself, she pitches forward, and gravity does the rest. She falls into the waiting undead arms of her recently deceased husband. The dead man greets her with one final embrace. There amid the coalescing mass of walking corpses. It is not an embrace of love. Like the gentle ones, they had shared together. It is a malevolent embrace fueled by an insatiable hunger. This communal embrace is shared by all within the horde. By any who can clamber close enough to grab a piece of the woman’s body. Darlene is alive when the first teeth break her skin. Her screams drowned out the sound of the big red pickup. Its lone panicked stricken occupant behind the wheel. The man beats a hasty retreat. Crushing meandering zombies as he drives away. All thoughts of chivalry having vanished. Like the unfortunate woman who had fallen from the roof.