The Stairwell
At first, we thought we could defend the house, room by room.
The first window shattered when the man from across the street ran headfirst into it. He bounced, stunned, then slammed into it again and again. By the third impact, the glass gave way, spraying the living room with sound and fragments. Someone drove a fireplace poker into the man’s face, pushing until his body went slack. We dragged him clear and blocked the opening with a chair and a sheet of plywood. Even then, it felt temporary.
The front door failed next.
It did not splinter all at once. The frame bowed inward, inch by inch, as weight leaned and slid against it. Someone fired once through the wood. The sound inside the house was deafening. When the lock finally tore free, the door fell inward and did not stop falling.
We fought in the entryway.
Hands first, then shoulders, then bodies pressing against us. One of the dead stumbled over the threshold and was beaten back with a lamp until it broke. Another followed. Another. The living room filled with movement that did not care about pain.
Someone screamed, “The stairs.”
We fled toward the second floor. The bedrooms, the closets, the fragile safety of upper walls. Behind us, the living room became a river of noise and bodies.
“Get out of the way!”
At the top of the stairs, a dresser sat poised in the hallway. We pressed against the wall as the dresser tipped, slid sideways, and wedged against the stair rail. The top drawer burst open, spilling clothes down the steps. For a moment, the pile held against the horde trying to follow.
We scrambled, gasping, bruised, climbing over one another, to reach the top. From the second floor, we threw down what we could. Small tables, nightstands, lamps, anything heavy enough to block a path. Every thump was a heartbeat of survival. The dead struck the pile from below, hands clutching, dragging, testing the barrier.
Wood groaned. Clothes tumbled. For the first time, the stairs felt like a line we could hold.
We did not plan the barricade. We survived it.
Upstairs became the house.
Bedrooms were storage. Closets were bedrooms. Hallways were throughways, nothing more. We slept in the far bedroom closet, coats piled in front of the door, a mattress leaned against the wall. It was the only place where the sounds were muted enough for us to rest. We slept sitting up, knees tucked, listening to the downstairs breathe.
Food ran low.
The upstairs window over the garage became our exit. One at a time, we climbed out, swung our legs over the edge, and dropped. One of us missed the landing once and limped for weeks. We learned to move fast, to take only what could be carried back up a ladder. We lost the ladder twice. Once to panic, once to a hand reaching from below.
We tried to reclaim the stairs.
We swung over the barricade, stepping across toppled chairs and nightstands, heaving bodies from below with poles, brooms, anything that could knock a hand away. The pile shifted under us. Every grasp threatened to pull someone down. We forced our way to the bottom, fighting for a small strip of landing, only to be pushed back by the sheer weight and pressure of the dead.
One time, we cleared enough to see the landing at the bottom. The carpet was dark and slick. Something grabbed over the furniture. We brought the sledgehammer down until the movement stopped, then we retreated again, shaking.
The stairwell became a line we could not cross, only maintain.
Months passed. The barricade sagged inward, eaten away by pressure and time.
One morning, the sound changed. A crack running deeper than before. We understood what that meant.
We took turns with the sledgehammer. Each strike split wood that had kept us safe until now. Nails screamed as they wrenched free. The stairs gave way in sections, collapsing into the mess below. When the dead surged upward, they fell into the gap, piling up at the edge where the house no longer knew how to continue.
We destroyed the staircase completely. Upstairs was sealed.
The window was still there. But now there was no return. No climbing back into the house once we left it. No higher ground than this.
We stood in the hallway and looked at what remained: doors to empty rooms, walls scored by furniture, a closet that had kept us alive.
Outside, the house was surrounded. Inside, the stairs were gone. Above us, only roof and stars.
Habit lasted longer than hope.
In the morning, one of us would go out the window. There would be no way back.
About Casey Quinn
Casey Quinn has been writing for over 20 years and has been published online and in various print magazines.
He is the author of two chapbooks. He writes about time, quiet, and what remains.
More at https://cqwriting.com
