by Brown, TW
“Double crap.”
***
“So we aren’t going to one of the FEMA centers?” Juanita asked as Jason shot through an intersection well past the light changing from amber to red.
“Nope.”
Jason’s eyes were locked on the bumper of Ken Simpson’s truck. This had not been the first time that the man had gone through an intersection at the tail end of the amber light. If he did not know better, he would swear the man was trying to ditch him. Sure, he wasn’t doing anything too erratic or crazy; but he was not making any effort not to lose Jason.
The woman, Erin West, had agreed to toss her bike in Ken’s truck and ride with him to this place she knew out in Sandy. She had given Jason a general idea of where it was “just in case.” That was no help. He was not at all familiar with the area. He knew it was out in the sticks, but that was about it. He could find damn near anyplace in the city, but once he hit the rural towns surrounding the Portland metro area, he was a fish out of water.
“You think this place she told us about is the right choice? I don’t know about this. The radio was talking about martial law being in effect and all sorts of things. And there goes another one of those military trucks.” Juanita pointed as the deuce-and-a-half rolled past.
Jason glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the faces of men riding in the back. More importantly, he noticed that the men he could actually see all had weapons cradled in their arms or between their knees. He had lost count around twenty.
“I think this is bad, and it is going to get much worse. I don’t want to be under some military lockdown where I am trapped and have all of my options stripped away,” Jason said.
“But wouldn’t it be safer to be with more people and have armed guards?”
“I don’t want you to freak out or think I am crazy.” Jason gave the steering wheel a little jerk to avoid a car that had pulled only partway out of the road. He shot a glance and saw something thrashing about inside. It was too dark to get a good look within, and for that, Jason was actually just a little bit grateful. “But I think that this is…” He could not say it out loud to her. It was just too preposterous.
“Zombies?” Juanita said at last.
They had tip-toed around that word up to this point. However, whatever the media wanted to call them, whatever that doctor lady wanted to say, these were right out of the horror movies. Those people were the undead, and they were feeding upon the living. Those attacked were becoming infected and turning into the same things. He did not see what else he could call it.
“This might very well be the zombie apocalypse.” Jason let that statement hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing. “I am not saying that the world is going to come to an end. Hell, they might knock this back and get it under control in a few weeks…months maybe. I know they did in Shaun of the Dead.” Juanita chuckled and Jason felt a little better about what was coming out of his mouth.
“But they might not.” Juanita folded her arms across her chest and seemed to consider an idea, twice she sounded like she was about to say something, but each time she only sighed and made a noise in her throat.
“We have to be ready for that possibility,” Jason finally said. “And it is because of that, that we need to be on our guard. Sure, there will be looters and that sort early on, but I am worried about what will happen when it is obvious that things have failed and we are on our own.”
“What do you mean?”
“You watch the news at night, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, well then imagine all those people who have been caught doing the worst things. Now…imagine that there is nothing in place to stop them. No system to bring them to justice.”
“That’s funny,” Juanita practically snorted.
“What is?” Jason was seriously confused. He did not see anything even the slightest bit amusing in this scenario that was unspooling in his mind.
“A guy who just got out of the joint being the one to worry about how the bad guys might take over.”
“Yeah?” Jason shot her a peculiar look before his eyes returned to the road. “Well I just spent the past several years in there with guys that you absolutely do NOT want out on the streets to do as they please. I have a feeling that there are plenty of people out here who have been walking a tightrope. This will be the thing that sends them plummeting into the abyss.”
There was a moment of silence. Jason stayed locked on the pickup, driving as close as he dared without actually tailgating. At last Juanita turned his direction.
“That is some pretty deep stuff.”
“For an ex-con?” Jason only bit back a little of the sarcasm. He hated being stereo-typed.
“For anybody,” Juanita said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Jason was about to say something when the brake lights on the pickup flashed and then came on steady. They’d been doing over sixty in a forty-five mile per hour zone, flashing past houses that were spaced out unlike the urban cramming that took place in the metro area.
Juanita exclaimed something in Spanish that Jason recognized as an expletive. She had her hands on the dashboard to brace herself, but Jason brought the car to a halt a good few feet from the truck’s bumper. He hit the release on his seatbelt and started to open the door. Before he got out, he turned to Juanita and shook his head.
“You stay put.” She started to protest, but he held up a finger to stall her. “If things go bad, haul ass. I am serious, don’t get out of this car.”
With that, Jason climbed out. He looked over his shoulder and motioned with a hand for Juanita to move into the driver’s seat. Once she did, he headed for the truck. The driver’s side door was open and Ken was standing just past it with his hands on his hips.
“Get up here, convict,” Ken called over his shoulder. Jason bristled, but did as the man requested.
When he reached Ken’s side, he stumbled, coming to a stop. In the glow of the truck’s headlights was a three-car accident. It had both lanes blocked. The ditches on either side would prevent being able to go around the wreck. However, it was not so much the pile-up that was so disturbing.
Sitting on the road, legs splayed out in front, was a girl in her late teens. She was a mess. Her clothing was black with blood, but her face was a crimson mask and there looked to be a massive shard of glass jutting from the side of her face. In the girl’s hands, she held an arm that dangled from the shattered window just above her head. The person the arm belonged to did not seem to notice. Something was moving inside the car, but the moans coming from the shadows did not sound like it was from anything living.
“We gotta move this.” Erin stepped up beside the two men. “The quicker the better.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Ken asked. “My truck is sturdy, but it ain’t just gonna shove three cars out of the way.”
“We see if any of them are still able to move on their own,” Erin retorted matter-of-factly.
“You first,” Ken snapped, making a bowing gesture and sweeping his arms wide in an ushering motion.
With a shrug, Erin drew the machete from her hip and started forward. Jason watched as the girl gnawing on the arm seemed to regard her for the merest of seconds before resuming in her feast of forearm. Erin walked up and swung in an overhand arc, her blade coming down hard on the crown of the zombie girl’s head.
Jason had to lean to one side, and there was still a lot of shadow keeping his view obscured, but he had to admit that he was more than a little impressed when Erin planted a booted foot on the zombie’s shoulder and yanked her blade free.
Deciding that he was not going to be seen as a coward (while also coming to the decision that he cared less than nothing when it came to what this prick Ken thought of him), Jason rushed in to help yank the door open enough so that they could pull the body free that had been the source of the zombie’s snack. He was about to ask what they should do when Erin plunged the tip of her machete into the eye s
ocket of the person on the ground. The body twitched a few times and was still.
“No sense waiting for it to sit up,” Erin answered Jason’s open-mouthed expression.
Sure enough, there was another body in the car. It was strapped in the passenger’s seat and had craned its head in their direction. Erin silenced it in mid-moan as she thrust her blade forward and then jerked back.
She climbed in the driver’s seat and tried the key to no avail. “Worth a shot,” she chuckled. She adjusted the lever on the steering column. “Okay, I put it in reverse. Not saying that is gonna mean a thing, but let’s push this one back.” She hopped out of the car and shouldered her way past Jason.
Hurrying around, Jason put his shoulder into the vehicle and tried to push. There was the screech of protesting metal as the car came clear from under the rear quarter of the big SUV in the middle of the carnage.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a face plastered against the window on the driver’s side of the SUV, mouth working like the zombie thought that it might be able to chew through the glass and get to them. A shadow made him jump, and Jason popped up suddenly, fists clenched and ready to fight off whatever it was that had taken this moment to attack.
“Easy, breezy,” Juanita said as she put her shoulder in with the other woman to move the car back.
“Where the hell is that jerk, Ken?” Jason managed through gritted teeth.
“He got back in his truck.”
“And why the hell are you out here?” he grunted as they gave the car one last push before the slope stepped in to assist; the car rolled back into the ditch, the nose pointing up, the front tires off the road when it came to rest at the bottom of the ditch.
“Because of them.” Juanita pointed back the way they had come.
The problem with being out in the boondocks was the lack of light. However, between the moon and a few of the houses along the way, as well as a small roadside mini-mart and gas station that they had passed just a moment ago, it was easy to see at least a dozen figures headed their direction.
“Where the hell did they come from?’ Jason snarled.
“Anywhere…nowhere…does it matter?” Erin grunted as she plunged her blade into the zombie that had tumbled out of the SUV after she’d opened the door during this brief conversation. “We need to get moving.”
With that, Erin climbed up into the big vehicle that had shuttled children to soccer, hauled Christmas trees from one of the many local U-cut locations, and had been filled countless times with bags of groceries to feed the family of the woman that now lie sprawled on the road like so much refuse.
There was a slow chug, and then the blissful sound of the engine turning over. Erin popped the vehicle into gear and mashed the accelerator. The terrific scream of metal and the roar of the engine were a concert of unpleasant noise that seemed all the louder given the circumstances. However, Erin was able to push the third vehicle in this pile-up aside as well as get the SUV out of the way just enough to allow cars to pass single file. She made note that there was blood in the passenger’s seat as well as a huge hole in the windshield on that side.
Hopping out, she stepped between Jason and Juanita, facing Jason and all but ignoring Juanita. “I know you want to be chivalrous or some such nonsense, but believe me when I tell you, the time for that is gone. It is every man and woman for him or herself. If you can’t handle your load, you ain’t gonna make it. Seems to me that this woman can handle her business…so maybe you should let her.”
Jason ran his hands over his face in a washing motion. He looked from one woman to the other and then nodded. In his mind, he understood exactly what Erin was saying. However, it was going to be difficult to adhere to the idea that his survival might rely on allowing others to die. But then again, would that be so much more different than in prison? In the joint, you took care of yourself first. There were no such things as real friends.
“I think I can do that,” Jason nodded. Yet, deep down, he wondered. The past several years, he had been trying to learn how to be a good and decent person; a contributor to society instead of a burden.
“You gonna stand there all day with your thumb up your ass, convict?” Ken called from the truck.
Jason looked around and realized that Juanita had already started back for the car and Erin was climbing into the cab of the truck. With a shake of his head, Jason cast one more glance at the zombies approaching from back the way they came and headed for the car.
He paused when he reached the truck and shot Ken Simpson a nasty look. “My name is Jason Edwards. Not ‘convict’ or ‘inmate’ or anything else like that. We clear?”
Ken snorted and popped the truck into gear, heading for that single lane gap that he’d had no real part in helping to create, leaving Jason standing on the road. As he climbed in the car, he wondered if all his reading about zombies was going to do him any good in this world. He focused on those thoughts so that he would not fixate on killing Ken Simpson.
***
Ken shot a look at Erin as she climbed in the truck. He was ready for a ration of crap over his not staying out on the road to help them move vehicles in the clear. Honestly, he probably would have been the mouth to lead that charge if the situation were reversed. The truth was that he did not want to give away the fact that his back was screaming at him. Carrying that girl had tweaked something in a bad way. He would not have been able to fight off a toddler at this point.
“How bad is it?” Erin said flatly as he popped the truck into gear and edged around the pile up.
“What do you mean?” Ken asked before he could catch himself. That was ‘Cop 101’ stuff. She knew he was hiding something and had just set him up to lie.
“I saw you wince when you climbed out of the truck and I noticed it again when you bailed. Tell me straight up…are you bit?”
He saw her hand resting on the hilt of the blade she wore at her side. While he doubted that she would take a shot at him while he was driving, he was not as confident about how she might respond the moment the truck came to a halt.
“I am not bit,” Ken stated with icy calm in his voice. “I will strip buck-ass naked when we get to wherever you are taking us if that is what it takes to prove it.”
“Not that I wanna see you naked, but I think that is best.” Erin sat back, making a little demonstration of putting her hands in her lap.
Ken did not try to hide his smile. He liked this gal just fine. The fact that she was not simply ready to take his word was actually a plus in his book. After all, they were basically strangers. He wondered if the convict would see things through the same filter.
They continued along down the highway that took them out of Portland’s more populated suburban area and out to what the city folks referred to as “the sticks.” Places like Estacada, Canby, Molalla, and Sandy all had a town center kind of place, but most of their actual makeup was rural with farms. Of course, those were slowly being displaced by housing communities as developers swooped in and grabbed giant tracts of land where they would squeeze in as many houses as possible.
As they drove with the radio droning the same message on a loop about the locations of FEMA centers and where people should bring the injured, Ken wondered briefly if this might be worse than anybody expected. Well, he shot a glance over at Erin who was now sitting with her head back and her eyes shut, almost everybody.
He was about to ask her exactly where they were headed when she said, “Take the next road on the left. We are about five miles out.”
***
Rose closed the bedroom door behind her. She could hear Crystal scrabbling to her feet, but she did not have time to secure her at the moment. Somebody was outside…with a gun! Her dogs were both going nuts, and she was terrified that whoever it was outside would hurt them. She realized that she needed to be concerned for herself, but those were her babies.
Running for the front door, Rose at least had the sense of mind to peek out the curtain first. Unfortunately, it
was now fully dark outside. She could not see anything that was not in one of the pools of light cast by the multitude of security lights her sister had around the property.
She scanned the area out front and saw two figures limping towards the house and three more sprawled on the ground. She had barely pulled the curtain aside an inch which is why the person who was on the porch suddenly came into view and surprised her. Rose let out a little shriek and stumbled back, falling gracelessly on her butt.
“Hello?” a voice called from right outside the door.
“Please,” another chimed, “let us in! They’re everywhere out here!”
Rose climbed to her feet and made a quick decision; she could not stay inside and leave those people to whatever fate might be in store, but more importantly, she could not leave her babies out in the car any longer.
Turning the knobs, she unlocked the door as fast as she could. She turned the knob and only had the door open a crack when it swung in and sent her flying. She was on her belly and trying to get to her feet when a booted foot slammed into her gut. Rose felt the wind leave her lungs in a sudden and painful rush.
“Stay the fuck down, bitch!” a voice snarled. Rose turned her head and looked up to see a very large woman in jeans, flannel shirt, and a baseball cap scowling down at her.
“Hank, get inside!” the man now standing in the doorway barked.
A younger man, in his late teens by Rose’s best guess, staggered into the room, using the wall beside the door to slide down until he was on the floor. He left a dark smear of blood in doing so and, out of reflex, Rose winced at the idea of how angry her sister would be when she saw the mess.
“Two more of them damn things down,” the younger man, Hank apparently, said as he struggled to catch his breath.
“If one of ‘em was that prick Samuel Riggs, I will kiss your ass,” the woman snorted as she stepped over Rose and knelt in front of Hank.
