Trouble Comes Knocking

Even before the outbreak, my roommate Brian and I had kept to ourselves. I guess we were typical city dwellers, we knew our neighbors on sight, but we didn't know a thing about them; their names, where they were from, where they worked.

Even the family that lived right on the other side of our duplex, all we knew about them was that they had a son of about seven named Thomas. The only reason why we even knew the kid's name was because from time to time we would hear his parents calling him in to dinner.

When people started dying all around us, it made it easier not knowing who they really were. Still, in the end our detachment saved us little grief.

It had been a quiet past few days in which we passed the time with books and card games and what ever else we had to stave off the insanity of cabin fever. But then we started hearing voices.

I thought I had finally gone crazy, but Brian insisted he heard them too. Someone was next door, in the other half of the house.

We strained and pressed our ears to the wall in order to make out a word, maybe two, but a shuffling, scraping noise drowned out any valuable consonants.

What sounded like two sets of footsteps pounded up the stairs. A door slammed.

"Do you think it's looters?" I asked.

"It must be," said Brian, "they don't have conversations with each other."

"Or run upstairs."

We sat and listened as a series of thuds bumped their way through the adjacent apartment and a loud scraping, like dry scales rubbing together, mingled with a few muffled cries.

"My God it sounds like they're on the roof!" I hissed. On tiptoes and barely breathing, we followed the noises into the upstairs bedroom and froze as the scraping stopped right outside the window. My limbs felt as if they were filled with sand and for a moment I dared not move.

"They must be on the ledge out there," said Brian with barely a whisper.

When we had barricaded the house, we used most of the lumber for the outer doors and the downstairs windows, securing our greatest weaknesses. The window Brian and I both stared at now was only partially covered by a piece of particle board. If that pane of glass were to break, whoever was on the other side would surly be able to crawl through.

What do we do? What do we do? spun through my head, so loud and dizzying I could barely think. I could see the words flashing behind my eyes but my mouth, gaping, made no sound.

I could feel the tension vibrating off of Brian like the hot buzzing of power lines and I knew he was just as scared as I was. At least he had the presence of mind to grab the baseball bat he kept beside his bed and raise it, waiting.

A knock on the window, light and urgent, took us both off guard.