Project 11: Chest of Drawers

Morrison spent hours under that table, pressed to the door, finger to the trigger of his pocket handgun. He only had one bullet left.

After a time, the groaning outside stopped. The stillness of the world was a deafening cacophony, more torturous even than the hours of endless screams.

Tepidly, he moved his legs, long past falling asleep, out from under his makeshift barricade. Gun at the ready, he made his way slowly up, cringing at every creak of the floor boards.

He stared at the door before him. The windows were boarded up. He only had one way of knowing what was on the outside.

What does a man do when there is nothing left for him here? He must go on. He must go on, he thought. Janice was dead. Elwood was dead. Even Todd Fischer was dead.

He turned the handle slowly, finger on the trigger. His hands were sweating and he feared that should the moment arise, the gun might just slip out of his hands and he would be torn limb from limb.

Finally, he thought of Maria. She wouldn't have wanted him to live like this. That's why she told him to let her go. That's why she handed him the gun and took off her wedding ring. That's why she made him do it. She understood.

He opened the door, and to his surprise, there was no shambling in sight. No moaning. No ripping, tearing, or gnawing to be heard. The zombies were all laying still in the street. From each of their heads there grew a bed of flowers, vibrant and lustrous.

Stiffly, and without a word, he made his way through the house and out the back door. He stood in the yard, overlooking Maria. What had once been a hole in her chest was now a sapling, a great and mighty Redwood, just beginning it's ascent towards the sun.

He laid next to her in the grass. He put her ring back on her finger, and slowly drug her nail against his skin. A single drop of blood was all it took for the infection. All at once he felt it, his cells expanding, his mind awakening. He placed his hand in hers, and felt his chest raise up, as a thousand roots shot from his skin.

And so the Earth was reclaimed, and every love rekindled in the springtime, when the wind blows the wild seeds to new and secret lands.