by Tracey Ward
We both dive behind registers as bullets fly down the main aisle from the woman’s hiding spot. She’s frugal, though. She only burns two before accepting she can’t hit us. In the silence I can hear the man groaning and cursing about his shoulder.
“Are you alright?” the woman asks him.
“No, you bitch, I’m shot,” he growls.
“You’ll live, though, right?”
“Yeah.”
The boy is crying. I don’t look around the register because I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know what a heartbreaking sight it is for this kid to be weeping over his mother. I’ve been in his shoes too recently. I’ve been curled in a ball almost like I am right now in a room surrounded by madness, mourning the loss of the one person I wanted to save.
“Jordan!”
“What?”
Alissa is one checkout lane ahead of me, closer to the crazies.
“We have to save that kid.”
“You have to save yourselves first,” the guy grumbles. His voice is getting closer.
I look out around the edge of the candy bar display I’m hiding behind. I catch a glimpse of the guy slowly making his way toward us, his gun leveled at my face. I jerk back not even a second before Twix explode beside my ear.
“Kid, you have to run!” Alissa calls out. “We’ll cover you.”
“Who’s gonna cover us?” I mutter.
“I’m not leaving her!” the boy screams miserably. I can hear the tears in his voice.
I lay my head against the candy. “Yeah,” I call to him. “I get that.”
Alissa fires a shot behind me, scaring the hell out of me. I hear the guy crying out again.
“Did she get you?” the woman shouts.
“Clipped my leg!” he yells back angrily. “You want to get out here and help me or what?”
“I’ll take you apart piece by piece,” Alissa tells him calmly, “or you can leave with the bullets you have in you now and call it a day.”
“Not until I see that pretty face of yours, sweetheart,” he says tightly, obviously in pain but too stupid or stubborn to back down.
I frown. I don’t like the fact that the woman hasn’t answered him. Not audibly. Keeping low, I hurry to the end of my checkout lane. Pressing my back against the register stand, I peak around the corner. There she is. She’s creeping slowly up the outside aisle with her bleach blond hair and her gun pointed at the floor. She’s almost to Alissa’s register.
I lift my gun slowly, take a deep breath and say a small prayer to the gods of good aim. Then I fire.
And miss. I hate guns.
The shot has startled the woman, though, and she drops to a crouch behind the register just ahead of Ali.
“Jordan?”
“I’m fine. She’s behind you in the next lane over.”
“The guy is—“
“Right here,” he says deeply.
He has Alissa.
“Put the gun down,” he tells her. “Stand up slowly.”
I see Alissa stand, her hands raised in the air. I can’t see the guy, which means I can’t even try to take a lousy shot at him. And God knows I want to.
“Step out here, baby,” he tells her, his voice low and husky like he’s alone with her. It occurs to me that that might be on his mind. I will not survive this while Alissa might, but to what end? With what purpose? His tone certainly brings one to mind.
I will kill him.
“Now tell your boyfriend to do the same.”
“Alright,” Alissa replies calmly, “but what about my dad?”
There’s a pause. A hesitation.
“Where’s your dad?” he finally asks, his tone becoming hard.
His answer is a shotgun blast.
I hear a body hit the floor. There’s no moaning this time. There’s no complaining about the wounds or yelling at his partner to help him. All I hear is the rapid breathing of the woman hiding in the lane beside Ali and the quiet weeping of the boy over his mother.
“I’ve never killed a woman,” Syd says calmly from the front door, “but it doesn’t mean I won’t. Toss your gun into the aisle and stand up slowly. Walk out the opposite direction of your gun.”
There’s no hesitation. I hear the skitter of the gun flying across the linoleum into the aisle.
“Al, you wanna get that for me? Jordan, stand up and help me show her the door, will you?”
I stand just as the woman does. Her wide eyes stare at me for a moment, full of terror. I don’t feel bad for her. We both make our way slowly out of our lanes then head toward Syd where he stands at the door with his shotgun leveled at the woman’s midsection. I make sure to step to the side of her so I’m not in his line of fire.
Syd flickers his eyes to me briefly. “Which one killed the boy’s mother?”
The woman stiffens, halting in her steps toward him.
“The guy did.”
“Did this one take a shot at Al?”
“Let her go,” Alissa says from beside me.
Her face is pure white. Her eyes are unfocused and full to nearly bursting with unshed tears. I hurriedly holster my gun so I can take her elbows in my hands.
“Ali, are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she replies numbly. Her eyes are looking at me but I can tell she’s seeing through me. She’s checking out.
“Syd,” I say firmly. We need to end this thing with the woman and deal with Alissa. Something’s wrong here.
“Go,” he says darkly to the woman.
I hear her footsteps running clumsily through the store and out the door. It’s only seconds later that the sound of a motorcycle roars in the parking lot. It peels out then begins to fade away into the distance.
“Al?” Syd asks, standing behind me. He must see her face because he swears softly. “Jordan, get her out of here. I’ll talk to the kid.”
“What’s happened? What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s still standing right here,” Alissa mumbles, slurring slightly. Her eyes are still eerily unfixed.
“Yeah, barely,” Syd tells her.
She blinks several times before turning her eyes to him with a weak glare.
Syd grins. “There you are.”
“What’s happening?” I repeat, feeling useless.
“Just get her out of here. Take her to the RV and let her lay down.”
I move to stand beside her, wrapping my arm around her waist. She lets me lead her gently through the store and out the door into the too bright sunlight. She’s silent as we walk to the RV, as I open the door and help her step inside. She doesn’t say a word as she slumps down onto a seat and continues to stare with empty eyes in the middle distance.
I have no clue what to do here. I don’t know if I should try to talk to her, to pull her out of it, to piss her of like Syd did. If she was a guy I might slap her in the face to try to bring her around but I don’t have the stomach to do that to her. I’m also pretty sure all it’d get me is a punch in the gut from her or Syd or both.
“My mo—“ she stops herself abruptly. I look over to see the tears leak from her eyes down her cheeks.
“Ali, it’s alright,” I tell her stupidly.
“The way my mom died,” she whispers. “The way Dee died.”
I frown. “Dee your roommate? The one who was infected?”
“She died in the kitchen.”
I remember. I remember bursting in through the door with my bat. I remember taking that bat to Dee’s head over and over again until she stopped moving. Until she was a mess of tissue, blood and bone at my feet. I remember thinking it’s what I should have done before. When I looked at Alissa lying there silently crying like she is now, I thought I’d finally done something right. That I had a second shot at saving… someone.
There’s a commotion outside. A man is shouting. Crying.
I cast Alissa one last worried look before removing my gun and bursting out of the RV. Syd is there with the boy. He’s pulling him through the
parking lot toward the minivan. He’s fighting and crying, trying to get back inside to his mother. Syd finally gets him to the white van, pushes him up against the side of it and bends down to speak to him face to face. From inside the store I can hear the male shouting that brought me outside. It tapers off, the wailing dying out to a moan that eventually becomes inaudible. I hold back, guarding the door of the RV and scanning the parking lot for infected. It’s clear so far but I’m beginning to wonder how long that will hold true. I’m anxious to get out of here. Mostly I’m anxious to get Alissa out of her because she feels defenseless right now.
Syd stands as the man comes staggering out of the building. He approaches Syd and the boy slowly. They speak for a brief moment, Syd points to the north then the man and the boy pile into the van and it revs to life. Syd begins jogging toward us as the van pulls quickly out of the parking lot, fishtailing as it takes to the empty lane heading north. Tearing down the road toward the south is car after car, completely oblivious to what’s happened in this store and to what they’re rushing into in the south.
“Who was that?” I ask Syd as he approaches.
“The father,” he replies gruffly. “The husband.”
“Where the hell was he while all of this was happening?” I demand angrily.
Syd jumps into the driver’s seat as I do the same on the passenger side. He glances briefly at Alissa in the back, a knot forming between his brows.
“He was in the car with the baby,” he replies quietly.
“What?”
“They had an infant with them. The mother went in with the boy while the husband stayed outside with the infant. He promised her no matter what he heard or saw that he would not leave that baby.” Syd throws the RV angrily into drive. We peel out onto the road much the way the van did. “He kept that promise.”
“Shit,” I whisper.
Syd nods silently in agreement.
Chapter Six
Syd drives us farther north but eventually we cut down a country road and park in a field at my request. The fact that he listens to me is staggering but I can’t waste time being amazed by it. Alissa is coming around but she’s still stressing me out. She’s very quiet, very slow in her movements, but she is talking again. When she looks at you she sees you. It’s a good sign.
“What happened back there?” I ask Syd quietly. “How scared should I be right now because I’m freaking out?”
Alissa has gone to bed in the back with the divider pulled while Syd and I sit up front looking over the map. He scans through the radio stations looking for any broadcasts that might give us a better idea of where to go, of what areas are being swarmed, but there’s nothing. He stops it on a static filled station and turns up the volume slightly.
“Do you know how her mother died?” he asks, his voice barely audible over the static.
“Yeah.”
He looks at me in surprise. This was not the answer he was expecting.
“She told you?”
“Yes. Her mom killed herself with a gun. Ali found her.”
He stares at me for a long moment. I don’t fidget. I don’t flinch.
“Huh,” he mutters. “Yeah, that’s what happened. And what happened back there with the mom…”
I nod in understanding. “It reminded her of her mom.”
“Yup. Sent her into a little tailspin.”
“Little?” I ask incredulously, thinking of Ali’s unseeing eyes and slurred speech. This feels worse than what happened between her and I just yesterday when she put a gun to my face. When I very literally peed myself a little. She was confused but she was lucid. Present. What happened to her today felt vacant and… well, she felt like a zombie.
Syd chuckles darkly. He rests his head back on the seat and shakes it. “You have no idea what she’s been through. Yeah, this was a little spell. She’s already coming around. Her meds are kicking back in slowly but surely. We have to be careful with her while that happens. That’s why I stopped us so early tonight. I want her to sleep.”
I stare into the falling dusk, at the world turning gray and murky around us. I’m so far out of my element with all of this, it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m not great with what I can’t understand and this is something intangible which makes it so much worse. It’s like fighting a friggin’ ghost.
“You can bail,” Syd says suddenly.
I jerk my head over to find him looking at me placidly.
“You could leave,” he offers. “Break out on your own without worrying about any of this. I’ve got her, she’s safe. No guilt, no worry. Just freedom from this.”
I shake my head firmly. “No. I promised her.”
Syd snorts. “That’s sweet but be realistic. Romantics aside, wouldn’t you be better off leaving? Wouldn’t it be easier for you?”
I swallow the urge to say yes. To admit that it would undoubtedly be easier to not deal with any of this. Offensive as it may be, I want to call it what it feels like – crazy. There’s enough crazy out there with zombies and people turned rabid killing each other over nothing. Add this thing that I don’t understand on top of it and it’s almost too much to handle.
Almost.
I inhale deeply. “Romantics aside, I promised her. I gave her my word. Keeping my word doesn’t make me sweet, it makes me honorable. After the social breakdown we’ve all just witnessed, being a man of my word means more now than ever, don’t you think?”
Syd gives me the ghost of a grin, the most endearing and friendly expression he’s bestowed on me yet.
“I guess you’re right,” he agrees quietly.
***
Crossing the river could have been a dream or a nightmare. Dream situation meaning we’re alone and we cruise right across. Hello, hills! Hide us in your dark depths from the monsters that stalk us and drool over our frontal lobes.
Nightmare situation goes more like this; zombies, zombies everywhere. And that’s pretty much what we get. The only upswing is that there are no people. There easily could have been cars piled up across the bridge either in bumper to bumper traffic or sitting abandoned in the center of the road. Luckily, aside from the writhing mass of undead standing shoulder to bloody shoulder, the bridge is clear.
We cross it exactly the way we made it through the tiny, overrun town; slowly. Painfully slowly. It’s packed tighter than the town was and there’s a constant hum groaning from outside. It’s accented by their bumbling bodies banging against the sides the RV. I watch Alissa out of the corner of my eye, wondering what she’s feeling. She woke up this morning acting as though nothing had happened yesterday. She was bright, sarcastic and completely herself. For some reason it bothered me more than if she’d come shambling out of the bedroom silently. These swings, these drastic changes, are giving me whiplash. Syd takes them all in stride but I’m on pins and needles waiting for the next change. It’s nerve-wracking.
I hear a splash outside, making me nearly jump out of my skin. This is isn’t helping. We’re already living in a world full of unexpected sounds (gunshots and groaning being the most common) and it’s wearing on me. Not for the first time, I miss my boat. I miss the lapping of the water against the hull. I miss the sun on my shoulders and the width of the water protecting me like a moving moat. Right now, though, I have to fight the urge to jump up and run to a window to see what made the splash. No sudden movements, I remind myself. Don’t let them know you’re in here.
“What was that?” I ask quietly, fighting for the calm in my voice.
“Infected,” Alissa whispers back. “There are so many on the bridge we’re knocking some into the water.”
I hear another splash, then another. We roll on, pressing through the crowd slowly. I watch with dismay as my hands start shaking. I haven’t slept more than an hour here and there since we left the sporting goods store. It’s becoming a problem.
“Almost there,” Syd mumbles. I think he’s talking to himself more than anything.
“There are so many,” Ali
ssa mutters miserably.
“It’s because of Albany.” I remind her, distracting myself. “On this highway heading east like we are, Albany is directly behind us. It was a ghost town when we came through because most people must have fled before the swarm really hit. They headed south to Corvallis, west to the coast and east on this road to the mountains.”
“And these infected are following them.”
“Yep. Once they get going in a direction they’ll walk that way forever unless something better comes along to distract them.”
“Something like us?” Syd asks, his voice tight.
“No,” I tell him firmly. “Not us. Never us.”
Alissa turns to look back at me. I’m surprised when she manages a small grin. “Because we have you.”
I grin back at her.
There’s a hard bang against the side of the RV. The noise goes off in our quiet space like a gunshot and I watch in shock and horror as Alissa makes a massive mistake.
She screams.
Just like that they know. Every zombie in our vicinity turns toward the noise. They take notice of our vehicle moving among them. They press their mangled, pasty faces against the glass of the windows. Internally I beg Alissa to be still but it isn’t going to happen and I know it. She’s panicking, something I haven’t really seen her do since the first moment I met her when her roommate had her pinned down. After that, she adjusted to the madness we were surrounded by with disturbing ease, ease that I understand better now. I understand this too, this mistake. She’s stressed beyond her limit, still recouping from yesterday, from her lapse in the dark with the lies, and she’s still not fully medicated yet. It was out of her system longer than it’s been back in and even with it, this is all too hard on her. It’s too hard on all of us.
She leaps in her seat, grabbing at her bow even though it won’t do her any good in the confines of the RV.
“Ali,” I say as calmly as I can.
She doesn’t hear me. She’s counting the infected at the windows and talking at full volume.
“We have to go, we have to move. Dad, they know. Go!”
“Al, I am going. Calm down,” he says evenly.
