The furrow deepened. “When my shift ended on Halloween, Harry didn’t show up to relieve me. I couldn’t reach him at home. Or any of the other rangers either. Figured they all had the flu or something, so I just stayed.”
Jill scoffed. “Or something is right.”
His gaze shifted to her, his brow wrinkling even more. Perhaps her nasty vomiting routine had him rethinking the situation.
“Didn’t you find that odd? That you couldn’t reach anyone?”
He looked at me again, the flashlight and gun sinking a few inches. “Well, yeah. I mean, I even drove over to the ranger station in Meadville, but it was empty.”
George, perhaps sensing the change in the air, asked, “Didn’t you think to listen to the radio there?”
He gulped. “Um, no. I had campers to check on and other work to do, so I just went back to my post.”
“What about your family?” George pressed. “Did you try to call them, too?”
The ranger frowned, likely uncomfortable with such personal inquiries—especially since he should’ve been the one asking the questions.
“I got no family. My folks are dead. So’s my older brother… And I never married.”
What a shocker that was.
Jill, likely too sick to care about the conversation’s shift in focus, opened her mouth—and once again made the situation worse. “Oh, why don’t you just shoot him already so we can all get outta here?”
I wasn’t sure if she’d intended that remark for the ranger or her son-in-law. Since my gun presently lay out of reach, I had a pretty good guess.
“Jesus, Jill,” I implored, “please shut the hell up.”
When no one seconded my plea, I glanced at Clare, expecting to catch a scornful pout directed at yours truly.
But instead, she leaned around me, fixing a disapproving stare at her mother. “Mom, please stop making things worse.”
I fixed my own gaze on the quivering gun now targeting my crotch. “Ranger Roberts, I swear we aren’t lying to you. The virus that spread around the country—actually, around the world—is bringing people back as zombies. Millions, maybe even billions of people have been killed. That’s why we’re fleeing the cities, heading north.”
In a nanosecond, the ranger’s facial expression morphed from one of apprehension and confusion to one of anger, fear, and determination, and the blinding flashlight beam swung back in my face. Along with the deadly end of his Glock.
So much for our fleeting chance to convince Ranger Birdbrain that we weren’t a diabolical threat. Apparently, the z-word was simply too much for him to swallow.
“That’s it! All y’all, move slowly to my car.” Without lowering his trembling weapon, he nodded backward toward the gravel driveway, where he’d parked his SUV.
I glanced at Clare and considered, for an instant, rushing the guy and ending the inconvenient charade. Though armed, he was even more out of shape than I was.
But a subtle shake of her head convinced me to stand down. She’d likely noticed the ranger’s tremulous hands and feared that, if we tried to ambush him, one of us would end up dead. Probably me.
Chapter
9
“’Cause if anything happens to her, I mean, anything… I’ll kill your waxy ass.” – Gus Elizalde, The Strain (2014)
With an audible groan, I cautiously advanced toward the official-looking vehicle, and the ladies followed suit. Ranger Dipshit, meanwhile, walked backwards toward the gravel path, leading the way and keeping his gun trained on me.
Is it too much to hope that he trips over the beer cans and accidentally shoots himself?
Perhaps reading my mind, he glanced backward just long enough to step over the makeshift tripwire and then, with his gaze fixated on my face, unlocked and opened the back door. As he retreated a few paces to give us a wide berth, I spotted the U.S. Forest Service insignia on the open door, along with the words LAW ENFORCEMENT.
I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. How the hell had Ranger Dumbass landed such a tough-guy job? Had the pickings been that slim in southern Mississippi?
Then again, he had managed to prod three zombie-slaying adults and one snarky old lady toward his vehicle without an exchange of gunfire, so perhaps I’d underestimated his abilities—or my own reluctance to get myself or my companions shot.
Near the open door, I hesitated and turned to beckon the three women ahead of me. The longer I lingered outside, the more chance I had to wrestle the ranger’s gun from his shaky hands.
But once again, I’d underestimated the fool.
“No way, mister,” he barked. “You get in first.”
George grimaced, likely suspecting my plan. “Chivalry really is dead.”
“Mom, why don’t you get in first,” Clare suggested. “You know, in case you have to throw up again.” She shot a pointed look at the ranger. “Might want to open the windows, too. Unless you’d like your vehicle to get messy.”
Flustered, the ranger mumbled his assent, and Jill slowly inched her way across the seat, followed by a concerned Clare and a seething George. Before I climbed aboard, I gave serious consideration to kicking the ranger in his useless gonads, but he stepped out of reach. Perhaps he really could read my mind.
With a heavy sigh, I ventured toward the backseat, but before I slipped inside, the ranger halted me with a question.
“Anyone else in the campsite?”
George’s face appeared in my peripheral vision. She’d turned toward me, as if silently willing me not to mention her son, whom we’d left high above and out of sight. Perhaps she didn’t know me well enough yet, but I had no intention of ratting him out. I liked the kid too much to jeopardize his safety (well, beyond urging him to climb a hundred-foot-tall pine tree).
Besides, if he stayed out of custody, he’d be the only one able to spring the rest of us.
I shook my head. “No, sir. This is it.” Then, I squeezed beside George, muttering a curse.
I felt like such a fucking dolt. If any of us got hurt or killed because of one ignorant jackass, I would really regret my lack of action.
With a smug grin, the ranger slammed the back door shut and returned to our campsite to collect the weapons I’d piled on the floor of the van.
“What a mess,” Clare lamented.
“No kidding,” George replied, turning toward me. “Thanks for not saying anything about Casey.”
“No problem.”
She grimaced. “But I really wish one of us had jumped the jackass. I sure wanted to.”
“So did I. And I think he knew it.”
Smiling halfheartedly, Clare reached across George’s lap and patted my thigh. “It’s OK, honey. I wanted to brain the guy myself. But his hands were shaking so much, I was afraid he’d accidentally shoot one of us.”
I nodded glumly, grateful for her support but still mentally kicking myself for getting us stuck in our current predicament.
“I know one thing,” George said. “This seat wasn’t built for four adults. My ass is already going numb.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Mine, too.”
The four of us were crammed onto an uncomfortable, vinyl-covered bench seat, which was separated from the front by a steel mesh partition. Already sick of the confined space, I tried opening the door beside me and rattling the sturdy cage wall in front of us, but neither budged.
George smirked. “Really thought that was gonna work?”
I shrugged. “Had to try.”
Just then, the ranger unlocked the rear gate and deposited my weapons-filled crate in his spacious trunk—which was, unfortunately, also separated from us by an unyielding partition.
“Hang tight, folks,” Ranger Bob said, as if we were mere passengers and not caged animals. “Be right back.”
Staring through the windshield, I watched as he rounded the vehicle, stepped over the tripwire, and retrieved the rest of our weapons—well, at least those in plain sight.
“Guess I s
hould feel lucky he doesn’t know about all the other guns.”
I reflected on the rest of my weapons—the shotguns, rifles, pistols, grenades, and various blades packed inside the cabinets and beneath the sofa. George’s rifle still lay in her car as well.
“Not that they’re doing us much good way over there,” George replied.
“True,” I muttered.
“And here I thought we had bigger concerns,” Clare said, staring straight ahead. “So much for hordes of zombies invading our campsite.”
I exhaled, but the frustration remained. “Yeah, who would’ve thought a fat, obnoxious ranger would be our downfall?”
After two more round-trip treks between our campsite and his trunk, Ranger Bob had collected all the weapons he’d spotted. Perhaps he suspected we had more stashed away somewhere (maybe even a few homemade bombs), but he was either too lazy to search for them or too anxious to lock up his hapless captives.
He slammed the rear gate shut then headed for his driver’s-side door.
“Told you, Joe,” Jill said, her voice raspy and weary. “You should’ve just shot him when you had the chance.”
I almost snorted. Apparently, she had been talking to me.
But as Ranger Bob slipped into his seat and slammed the door shut, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. Besides, Jill looked so weak and frail, scrunched against the fortified door behind the driver’s seat, I couldn’t summon the will to retort.
As the engine roared to life, I glanced at the back of our captor’s head. I considered trying to reason with him again, but I knew there was no point. He obviously believed he’d prevented four unlikely terrorists from planning an attack in his precious woods, and he staunchly refused to listen to reason.
Ranger Bob reversed up the driveway and backed onto the road. Before he could shift into drive, however, Clare gasped.
“Oh, my god,” she cried. “We left Azazel!”
I traced her pinched gaze to the passenger-side window of the van, where, illuminated by George’s headlights, our little furry wonder leaned against the glass, staring straight at us.
“Christ,” the ranger sputtered, whipping his head around to face my wife. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“And we left the back doors open,” she added, her eyes watering.
“Who the heck is Azazel?” He glared at me. “You said there was no one else in the camp.”
“Azazel is our cat,” I patiently explained.
Yep, I’m sure lots of terrorists run around with their cats in tow, right?
Clare leaned forward, gripping the steel partition. “Please let me go back for my cat. With the doors wide open like that, she could run off and get hurt.”
“Or a zombie could eat her,” Jill said, not sounding displeased by such an outcome.
Clare was so upset that she failed to react to her mother’s uncharitable comment.
Ranger Fucktard, meanwhile, vehemently shook his head. Clearly, he didn’t believe either of us. In his mind, “Azazel” was either a figment of our warped imagination or a last-ditch effort to deceive him and escape. If he’d only turned around, he might’ve seen her confused face watching us from the passenger seat. But instead, he turned the wheel hard to the right and tore off down the paved road, headed away from MS-33.
Clare pleaded and whimpered, but her cries fell upon deaf ears. I couldn’t bear to hear her pain—or consider my own. Particularly since a similar scenario had happened to us before. A few years prior to Azazel’s arrival in our life, we’d had another precious feline, a slender, underweight calico named Pawws.
I’d adopted her—the runt of the litter—in a shelter in Lansing, Michigan, on what could’ve been the last day of her life. According to the sign beside the cage, if no one claimed her and her caterwauling siblings that day, they would all be euthanized the following morning. A college student at the time, I could barely afford one cat, much less a posse of them, so though it saddened me to think of the others’ impending doom, it was the runt, the one resting in the back of the cage, the one resigned to her fate, that I took home.
Everyone I already knew or later befriended adored that little calico—truly the most serene, even-tempered feline I’d ever encountered—and I was her proud papa for a decade before Clare entered my life and fell in love with both of us.
Pawws spent the next seven or so years traveling around the country with us, living with us in places as far afield as Chicago, South Padre Island, and Las Vegas. Clare and I both racked up a slew of funny, tender moments with her. But perhaps the scariest experience of our lives (before the zombie apocalypse, of course) occurred when we were living in a trailer park near Los Angeles.
We’d spent the previous evening watching a marathon of horror flicks—one of our favorite pastimes prior to Zombiegeddon—and gone to bed in the wee hours of the morning. So, when incessant knocking on our back door awakened us a few hours later, Clare and I were both understandably disoriented.
As we soon learned, our troubled neighbor had gone off his antipsychotic meds, a police standoff had promptly ensued, and now, L.A. County sheriff’s deputies were evacuating any nearby residents from their mobilehomes. We barely had time to dress, much less pack anything, including our wallets or our precious cat—who had hidden herself at the sounds of frenzied cops in our backyard—before we were whisked away from the scene.
We spent the entire day hunkered down in the park manager’s home, listening to distant gunfire and explosions, ruminating on the fate of our faithful little calico. Over sixteen hours later, Clare and I were completely stressed out, and our neighbor was dead. Suicide by cop. As tragic as that was, we had no time to mourn; we were still freaking out over what poor Pawws had endured in our absence.
When we returned to our place, we discovered the sliding glass door ajar and bullet casings everywhere. The overeager cops had apparently shot and killed our neighbor from our porch. A pool of his blood even lay at the foot of our front steps, where paramedics had tried in vain to resuscitate him. And naturally, Pawws was nowhere to be found.
For the rest of the night, we searched high and low for her, imagining the worst-possible scenarios. Perhaps she’d gotten caught in the crossfire and slinked off to die under one of the neighboring houses. Maybe the cops had stumbled upon her and decided to transport her to a kill shelter. Maybe she’d simply fled from home in terror, only to be crushed beneath a truck on the busy avenue that fronted the park.
Despite all our fretful thoughts, we eventually found her crouching in a darkened corner of a closet—alive but traumatized—and I vowed then to never put another furbaby in such peril. A hard vow to keep during a zombie apocalypse.
And yet, here I was, doing the same damn thing all over again.
Bile rose from my gut, an invisible vise constricted my chest, and the throbbing in my ever-present headache intensified. All at once, adrenaline superseded exhaustion, and I snapped.
“Come on, asshole, listen to us!” I gripped the steel mesh, my knuckles whitening. “We’re not fucking terrorists! We’re just trying to survive, and we don’t have time for this crap! It’s not our fault you’re such an idiot! Now, turn around and let us get our goddamn cat!”
But it made no difference. No matter how much Clare sobbed, no matter how much I railed and swore against the imbecile putting more miles between us and our feisty girl, we obviously weren’t turning around anytime soon.
Eventually, I turned to my wife. “I’m so sorry, baby. But try not to worry. She’s a tough kitty. She’ll be fine.”
For once, though, even I didn’t believe my bullshit.
An awkward silence fell upon the SUV’s interior. I heard little beyond the hum of the engine, Clare’s occasional sniffles, and George’s murmurs of commiseration. I gazed out the window at the passing trees and hung my head in shame. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to close the doors before allowing the ranger to march us out of the campsite. True, I was exhausted, more tired
than I’d ever been in my life, and despite several bursts of adrenaline over the past couple days, I doubted I had much gas left in the tank.
But, still… I had a responsibility to protect Clare and Azazel at all costs. And even though I’d fought to keep my cat alive through the most challenging of circumstances, I’d utterly failed her in the end. I only hoped that her natural curiosity of the outside world or lifelong concern over being abandoned wouldn’t urge her to leave the comparative safety of the van.
Maybe all our worrying was pointless. For all we knew, Casey had scrambled down from his tree as soon as Ranger Witless drove away. Perhaps he’d already secured the van—and hatched a rescue plan.
“Clare,” Jill said, her voice even weaker than before, “I’m not feeling too good.”
Just the cue my wife needed. In an instant, she straightened up, wiped her nose, and squeezed her mother’s hand. Jill had worsened considerably in the past fifteen minutes, her sickly grimace and involuntary swallowing an indication of what was to come. The infection was slowly rotting her insides, churning her stomach with nasty fluids that wanted out, and the bumpy car ride probably hadn’t helped.
In fact, sitting in a stuffy backseat without water and a dose of Dramamine would’ve normally made Clare puke-prone, too, but she was too concerned about her mom to fret about her own motion sickness.
“Excuse me, Ranger Roberts,” my wife said, her tone snippier than usual. “My mom needs to throw up again. I suggest you either stop the car or roll down the window.”
His gaze darted toward the rear-view mirror. “We’re almost there.”
I caught his eye in the reflection. “Define almost.”
Without reply, he pressed a button beside him, and Jill’s window descended with a whoosh. A cool breeze rushed through the backseat, and my mother-in-law hung her head out the window like a carsick puppy. Perhaps the noticeable change in temperature delayed the inevitable because Jill managed to hold it together for the three minutes it took to reach the ranger station.
Zombie Chaos Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 54
