Free Sven the Zombie Slayer by Guy James Page B

roommates anyway, Jane thought, and wished there was a man around to help, someone bigger than Vicky.
    Jane gave the empty Viognier bottle a sad look, picked it up, and threw it at Vicky’s head.
    “Take that you beast,” Jane said.
    The bottom of the bottle made a nice thunk against Vicky’s forehead. Jane was proud of the throw. I should’ve kept up with my softball team, she thought, and then wished there was a bat that she could swing at Vicky’s head. She gave a quick thought to retrieving another wine bottle and swinging that, but decided it was better to avoid getting too close to the wine refrigerator, where Vicky was now doggedly stumbling back and forth, intractable in her pursuit of Jane.
    Jane backed yet deeper into the kitchen. She turned to the window, and saw her way out.
     
     

25

     
    Lorie tried to shake off her sudden disorientation. She felt off-balance, like she was about to fall over, like the feeling she got when she stopped too suddenly after a sprint, only worse. She instinctively backed away from the entrance into the living room, bumping into Evan.
    “Hey,” Evan said, “watch it.”
    Lorie felt better at once. “There’s a weird smell in there, like...” but Lorie found that she didn’t know how to describe it. “I wouldn’t breathe in if I were you.” Lorie didn’t want to breathe it either, but she thought her mom might have been hurt, so she had to see what was the matter.
    She pinched her nose, stared at Evan until he rolled his eyes and did the same, and walked into the living room. Two of the lamps by the sofa, one an antique, were smashed to bits on the wood floor.
    Lorie felt a stab of regret on seeing the broken antique lamp. It had been her grandmother’s, and her grandmother had always tried to keep her from playing with the patterned beads that hung from the lampshade. But they had been fun to play with, and made a fun jangling sound when—
    Then Lorie saw her mom, and immediately forgot her grief over the ruined lamp.
     
     

26

     
    But it wasn’t that easy.
    Jane pulled and pushed on it, but the damn window just wouldn’t open far enough for her to get out. It was hard to reach to begin with, being positioned above and behind the sink, and even when Jane climbed into the sink, she couldn’t get enough leverage to budge the old, stubborn thing open wide enough.
    Deciding on an alternate course of action, Jane climbed out of her perch in the sink, and took out a heavy cast iron pan from under one of the counters by the stove. She swung the pan at the glass. The pane cracked and broke, but not completely, so Jane kept swinging at it. As Jane beat on the window with the pan, the wooden cross-hatchings on the window began to crack along with the glass, and Jane knew that given just a little more time to work on the window, she would be able to break out and escape.
    But time wasn’t forthcoming. Jane heard a scrape, and turned to see that Vicky was now in the kitchen, having pushed past the wine refrigerator.
    Jane reached for a knife with her non-pan hand, just as Vicky—much more deftly than before—grabbed for Jane’s reaching hand.
    Vicky’s fingers closed over Jane’s wrist just as Jane’s fingers closed over the knife’s handle. With a strength that startled Jane, Vicky began to pull Jane’s hand up, toward her dry, gaping mouth, toward cracked, broken lips that resembled the lips of a person who had just come crawling out of the desert, lips too dry to bleed.
    “Let go of me!” Jane screamed, struggling against Vicky’s grip.
    Jane’s mind began to flutter off somewhere as she looked into Vicky’s eyes, as she couldn’t help but stare into them, powerless to resist the cold feeling that now washed over her.
    No escape.
    No way out.
    She began to scream, and barely heard her own voice.
     
     

27

     
    Milt took a few puffs of his inhaler, then picked up the empty Coca-Cola bottle and held it in front of his belly like a shield. He gulped