The Attic Read Free Page B

it in the first place.
    Tears were pouring from my eyes, and snot ran over my lips and onto my chin. I missed her, my big silly Mommy. I really missed her. And Daddy, my best friend in the whole world—I needed him now like never before. If he’d still been with me, everything would have been all right. We would have found a way to beat these zombies. I know we would.
    “Shut up,” I said to myself. “Ain’t got time to whine. No one’s gonna save you, so stop acting like a baby.”
    That reminded me of something Dad used to say to me if I was blubbing for no good reason. “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about,” he’d say. It always sounded mean at the time, but I’d have given anything to hear him say it now.
    There was a groan from down below, and this time it was answered by growling from outside.  
    I got closer to the low part of the ceiling and tried to listen. It was still raining, but it had slowed to a steady pitter patter. The thunder had moved off into the distance; there were just occasional rumbles, and they were getting further apart. I couldn’t hear the policemen shouting anymore; couldn’t hear their gunshots, either. Just the horrid wails of the zombies. No one was even screaming now.
    I pulled myself together and moved on past Mom’s clothes. I lifted down a cardboard box that had been sealed up with tape. As I did, something squeaked, and I heard the trip trap of tiny feet.  
    Ain’t got time to worry about mice , I thought, as I ripped the tape from the box and looked inside. It was crammed full of toys. Old toys I’d never seen before. Perhaps they were Dad’s childhood things that he’d kept in case I wanted them. Maybe he was secretly collecting stuff to give me for Christmas. He’d done that last year, when I got all these really cool Cylons, and a phaser from the original Star Trek.
    I pulled out an action figure. He had on a red suit and trainers, and he had a see-through eye. I squinted through it and saw things a little bigger. One of his arms had rubber skin over it. It was split and hard in places, but I managed to roll it up. There were colourful pretend electronics underneath, like he had a robot arm or something.  
    Dad had a real robot arm. He got it when his old arm was bitten off by a great white shark, he said. Bionic, it was. Looked just the same as a normal one, only it was super strong. If Watson had bitten that one, Dad might have been all right. He could have used it to clobber the zombies, no matter how many came at us. With that arm, he’d have picked them up and thrown them so high in the air, they would have hit the moon.
    I put the figure on the floor and lifted down another box. This one rattled, and when I opened it, I saw it was full of Lego. I was about to put it to one side, when I remembered building this enormous castle in the living room when I was five or six. Dad helped me, and it took days, it was so big. Mom kept complaining she couldn’t do the vacuuming while it was there, but I think she must have liked it, because she let us keep it for a week or so.
    I took out a block and set it on the floor, humming a tune to drown out the groaning from the street. I began to stack brick upon brick. It was odd, because I didn’t really know what I was making. I just kept piling the bricks up, one on top of another, and as I worked, I heard words in between my ears, getting louder and louder—songs Dad used to play on the stereo.
    Guess who just got back today.  
    It was his voice, all scratchy and kind of silly.
    Them wild eyed boys that had been away.
    Mom’s voice cut across the singing. It was that screechy way she yelled “Dinner’s ready.” I half stood, started to call back, but there was a lump in my throat that slowly sunk all the way down to my belly.
    Haven’t changed, haven’t much to say, but man I still think them cats are crazy.
    My hands moved faster and faster, stacking the bricks higher and higher as the song