With Anna clinging to his arm, Kyle looked below him at the increasing swarm of creatures and the few crawling their way through the window. Neither option looked favorable so he turned to the tree.
“You need to make a jump for it.” Kyle said trying to pry her vice grip off of his wrist. The blood circulation couldn’t reach his fingers and they started to turn purple.
“You’re crazy. I can’t make that. No.” Anna tugged on Kyle, ripping at shoulder.
A balding man fell out of the window, a huge gash on the side of his head showed his skull underneath. The blood had dried along his cheek. Bits of flesh dangled out of his mouth as he stood up and looked at them. The low guttural growl started in his throat, and soon the dozen of undead joined in a sickening choir hum.
Anna pulled on Kyle, nearly tipping him over.
The man charged directly at Anna, his mouth agape with flesh stuck to his teeth like spinach.
Anna screamed as the man collided with her. Her death grip proved useful as the undead man tumbled off the edge of the roof, his hand grasping madly as he went down.
His hand tangled in Anna’s hair and she let out a howl which set Kyle’s ears on fire. Through the ringing in his ear, the added weight almost threw them all off the roof.
Using Anna’s long hair, the man tried snapping at her leg as he swung toward her.
With his muscles singing, and already exhausted, Kyle was losing his grip on Anna. Her terrified eyes met his for a moment and she started to loosen her hands around his wrist.
Kyle grunted, feeling something give out in his back as a muscle tore, but he managed to keep her from falling. The man hit the edge of the roof, and luckily wasn’t coordinated enough to pull himself up her hair. On his first bite, he missed her bare calf by inches, but he was swinging back toward it again.
Not sure he could manage it, but knowing that it was either this, or the man would get to sink his teeth in, Kyle kicked the man in the face as he swung toward him. The hollow crack as his shoe smashed the man’s skull in sent his stomach for a flip and the world went gray for a moment.
His hold on Anna wavered and he felt her nails clawing into him as he tried to remain conscious. Dead, now, the man released his grip on her hair and fell to the grass with a thump. The rest of the creatures didn’t care and walked over the corpse looking up like starving animals being teased with a fresh meal.
“Kyle, I’m slipping.” Anna pitched backwards, spun on her only foot left and leapt for the tree. She caught hold of the branch and it groaned in the sudden weight.
For a moment, Kyle saw her dark eyes widened with fear. The branch wasn’t going to hold. “Go. Swing over to the bigger one.”
She tried, her legs kicking wildly, but as she did the branch cracked again. He could see the whiteness of the tree as the bark broke apart at the trunk. She had one swing left in her. She used it and leaped across the gap toward the larger, sturdier branch. He watched in slow motion as her fingers wrapped around the tip of the branch for a moment, slipped a second later, but she held on, by the nails.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” She said repeatedly while pulling herself up onto the branch. She brushed her hair out of her face and looked back at Kyle. “Are you going to be able to make this?”
Kyle looked at the distance. He knew he wasn’t an athlete, and the gap was at least ten feet over the now two dozen undead neighbors all staring at them.
A thud behind him as the growl grew louder; another one fell their way out of the window. He spun, looking back at the woman, her arm gnawed off at the elbow, and the same dead gaze locked on him. The triple chin she sported had flesh stuck to it like souvenir pins and he almost lost his dinner right there. Blood and mud caked her flower print dress. She must have been in the garden. He thought for a moment before she growled. Behind her, Anna’s brother’s room continued to fill with undead as they clamored for his flesh. He sighed and knew his answer. “I can’t make that jump.”
He could almost image her face as she pleaded with him. “Come on. You can do it. I know you can. I’ll catch you.”
Kyle loved her for her it, but knew as well as she did that he wouldn’t be able to make the jump and would more than likely be landing in the undead mosh pit that was growing beneath the tree.
The woman charged, like a rabid dog, all teeth and blood. Kyle braced himself as she approached, her footsteps echoing over the noise of the growling pit beneath him.
What should Kyle do?
1.) Tell Anna to leave without him. Save herself?
2.) Try to make the jump despite his reservations about the distance.
3.) Fight off the lady and try to look for another way down?
4.) Jump off the roof and hope that he can make it away from the mosh pit of death?
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