Free Night of the Living Dead by Christopher Andrews

he stepped away, "I can handle him." He peeked through a few of the windows — all clear, for now. "Probably be a lot more of them as soon as they find out about us." He circled back around, past the girl, checking things out, collecting information about his surroundings. Now that he was over his initial shock from this appalling night, he was back on top of his game.
     
    Which brought him around to the next order of business. "The truck is out of gas," he explained, then gestured toward the side of the house with the tire iron. "This pump out here is locked. Is there a key?"
     
    Nothing from the blonde. Just that stricken, child-like gaze.
     
    Despite his initial relief at finding her, his frustration grew. "We can try to get out of here if we can get some gas. Is there a key ?"
     
    Still nothing.
     
    Great . He turned from her to hide and control his irritation — Lord only knew what she had already been through herself tonight! — and his eyes laid upon a telephone. He knelt before it and dialed the operator, but got nothing .
     
    Movement behind him, but it was just the blonde. "I suppose you’ve tried this," he commented, more to himself than to her. He hung up, collected the tire iron, and followed after her into the hallway.
     
    "Do you live here?" he asked. By now his guess was that she didn’t, but he was still hoping for some  kind of useful information from her.
     
    But this time she didn’t even look at him. She was gazing up the stairs, her hand trembling before her face, her complexion pale and sallow. She began to quietly sob.
     
    Ben peered up the stairs and saw that the girl had not been just staring blankly, but looking at something specific up on the landing. Gripping his tire iron, he climbed the stairs to investigate.
     
    Before he reached the top, he found his breath drifting away. He had to pull himself up the bannister, hand over hand, to make it as far as he did. He gaped at the corpse with the eaten face as it stared back at him.
     
    "Jesus ..." he whispered. After everything he had seen at Beekman’s Diner, he thought he had passed his shock threshold, though that nausea and disgust had been shoved aside by survival instincts. But in spite of what he’d witnessed with the janitor, old man Joe, and the others ... this masticated corpse still got to him in a way for which he was not prepared.
     
    Rushing back down the stairs, he braced himself in the corner of the hallway for a moment, fighting to control both his gag reflex and his sanity. The girl remained slumped against the wall, clutching the kitchen knife to her chest and rocking gently side to side, staring into nothingness; if she had any reaction to Ben’s momentary breakdown, she gave no sign.
     
    "We’ve gotta get out of here," Ben said when he could trust himself to speak. "We have to get to where there’s some other people." He touched her arm, trying to reassure her, before moving away.
     
    Barbra stared after the man in the sweater as he disappeared down the hallway. Her thoughts were still muddy, but she knew she did not want to be alone anymore. She wanted to tell her new companion something about Johnny, but for the moment, she could not remember what it was about her brother that she needed to share.
     
    Following after the man with slow, unsteady steps, she heard him saying from the kitchen, "We’d better take some food. I’ll see if I can find some food ..."
     
    As Barbra inched her way down the hallway, she struggled to regain some equilibrium. She ran her hands along a sideboard, along the wall of the stairs. Real things, normal  things, everyday things that had nothing to do with vicious creatures lurking through her father’s cemetery, wandering around outside the house ...
     
    A dripping sound drew her attention. She looked around, unable to locate the source. Was it coming from the kitchen? Had the man turned on the tap and left it ... but no, the sound was closer than that. It was here, in