Free Sven the Zombie Slayer by Guy James

refrigerator sat in front of the kitchen door, its own smaller door ajar. Jane looked at it, but decided she wasn’t going back over there to close it. It was unplugged now anyway.
    Abruptly, the scratching grew louder.
    Jane set her knife, fork, and bottle down on the counter. She opened a cupboard, stood up on the tips of her toes, and reached in. She took out a large, long-stemmed wine glass, and set it down next to the bottle. Then she looked around the kitchen, trying to remember what came next.
    She remembered. She opened a drawer and took out her favorite foil cutter and a corkscrew. The foil cutter was built into a skunk figurine. The corkscrew was an ordinary corkscrew. Jane used the skunk to cut the foil off the top of the bottle, then uncorked the bottle with the corkscrew. The scratching stopped in time with the pulling of the cork.
    Jane looked at the skunk and sighed. It had been a gift from Vicky. She was going to help Vicky and everything was going to be alright. She just needed a drink first.
    After filling her glass to the brim, Jane took two large gulps and sighed. Then she looked at the bottle. It was a semi-dry Viognier from a local vineyard. Jane thought it was a bit too sweet for semi-dry, but she was sometimes wrong about these things. At that moment, the wine tasted like the most wonderful thing in the world, despite any possible inaccuracies in its avowed sugar content.
    Jane picked up her glass again and brought it to her mouth. She took another big gulp, and just as she was in mid-swallow, there was a loud bang on the kitchen door, and then another, along with a tearing, splintering sound. Jane choked, spluttering wine out of her mouth. Some of it went on the floor, some went back in the glass, and some went on her hand, which she had brought up by reflex.
    Jane’s mouth dropped open in astonishment when she saw it.
    Vicky’s hand was sticking through door, boring its way through a mess of jagged splinters. There were splinters sticking in Vicky’s hand and arm, but that didn’t stop the arm from thrusting in and out of the hole it had made, from turning and twisting and digging out a wider opening for itself.
    Then the arm retreated back through the hole, and was gone. It left just a little bit of blood around the splintered wood. Jane was surprised there wasn’t more blood, because it looked like the splinters had cut Vicky up pretty good.
    Hyperventilating, Jane picked up the bottle of semi-dry Viognier and began to pour herself a fresh glass. Then she stopped herself. What was the point of that? This was a serious enough occasion to obviate the need for all formalities. Jane brought the bottle to her lips and took a few healthy swigs. Some of the wine dribbled down her lip, and she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.
    Then there came more banging, and two sets of Vicky’s fingers were through the hole in the door, pulling at the splinters and rough wood, trying to make the hole bigger.
    I have to do something, Jane thought, feeling trapped and hopeless. She looked at the wine bottle for answers and took another swig.
    Then she took up the knife and fork again, and took a step toward the door, careful to stay away from Vicky’s probing, excavating hands.
    “Stop it Vicky,” Jane said. “Vicky? Do you hear me? You’re very sick, and you have to stop it. Okay? Can you hear me? Are you listening?”
    A low, angry moan came through the hole in the door. Or was it a hungry moan?
    “Seriously Vicky, I mean it. Stop it, or I’m gonna have to defend myself. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me.”
    There was another moan.
    “Really, don’t make me. Please?”
    Vicky tore a large piece from the middle part of the door. It wasn’t big enough to get through, but at the rate Vicky was tearing through the door, it wouldn’t be long until it was.
    Jane knew she had to stop that from happening.
    She was feeling the effects of the wine now, and slurred her words. “That’s it