by Brian Keene
He patted his pocket and felt the letter he had written to Danny after Jason had killed his father and then himself. Knowing that the letter was safe brought him a strange sense of reassurance. Things would turn out all right yet.
As he plodded along however, his body began to rebel against him. The pain began in his feet and rocketed up his legs; great stabbing spasms that threatened to drop him in his tracks. Refusing to stop, Jim halted only long enough to drain the last few mouthfuls of tepid water from his bottle. Then he cast it aside with the rest of the litter along the road and stumbled on.
He didn't hear the motor until it was almost upon him. The HumVee crept purring up behind him, and Jim whirled, twisting his ankle as he did so.
He tumbled to the ground, and lay there sprawled out while the vehicle pulled alongside him.
"No! You're not going to stop me now!" He raised the M-16 and pointed it at the HumVee.
"Jim! Is that really you? Thank the Lord!"
Martin leaned out the passenger window, hands triumphantly upraised in thanks.
"Martin?" Jim exclaimed, and despite the exhaustion in his bones and the pain in his ankle, he sprang to his feet and ran toward the old man. "Martin! I thought you were dead!"
They clasped hands, and both of them were crying.
"It would seem that the Lord still wants me to help you, Jim."
They laughed, and Martin stepped out of the vehicle and hugged him.
"Come on, let's go find your boy."
"Amen, my friend. Amen."
Jim ducked inside the HumVee and a beautiful but tired looking black woman smiled curtly at him from behind the wheel. Jim nodded at her, puzzled.
"This is Frankie," Martin introduced her. "She was kind enough to give me a ride."
"Give you a ride, hell. I saved your sorry ass and you know it."
Martin laughed. "Yes, you did, and I thank you for it. You should have seen it, Jim! A group of them had me surrounded, and Frankie here just crashed right into them, driving over them all."
"Thanks for watching out for him."
"No problem."
They rolled forward and Frankie turned her attention to the road. Jim studied her, wondering who she was and what her story had been before all of this. She'd definitely seen some hard times. The echoes of it showed in the lines of her face and the very air around her. Jim had never believed in auras, but Frankie definitely had one. Despite the rough edges, she was beautiful, and Jim had the feeling that her true beauty had only recently begun to shine.
"So where are we going? You guys have any ideas?"
"Bloomington, New Jersey," Jim told her. "About an hour away."
"Bloomington?" Frankie stared over her shoulder. "That's all suburbs, isn't it? It'll be knee-deep in undead. Forget about it."
"Then you'll have to let us out here," Jim said, "because that is where we're going."
Frankie turned to Martin in disbelief, but the preacher only nodded his head.
"We have reason to believe that Jim's son is alive in Bloomington.
That's where we have to go."
Frankie whistled. "Jesus. How do you know he's alive?"
"Farther south," Jim began, "the power is still on in some places. My cell phone was working up until a few days ago, and my son, Danny, called me on it. His stepfather had been turned into one of them, and Danny and my ex-wife were hiding in the attic of their home."
Frankie shook her head. "The power was still on in some parts of Baltimore too, but still-I mean, think about it. How do you know he's still alive?"
"Faith," Martin answered for him. "We have faith. God has seen us this far."
Jim was quiet for a few minutes. Then he spoke up again.
"At this point, I can't be sure he's alive, Frankie. I hope and pray that he is, and somewhere deep down inside I feel it. But I've got to know either way. If I don't, I'll drive myself crazy."
"Fair enough, but can I ask you something? Have you thought about what you'll do if we get there and Danny's one of them?"
Jim looked out the window.
"I don't know."
Frankie didn't respond. She shifted gears and they drove on in silence.
Monuments of their former civilization sat just off each exit they passed; houses and apartment buildings, churches, synagogues, and mosques, shopping centers and strip malls. The golden arches of a fast food restaurant hung askew. A bowling alley had burned to the ground. A pet store had provided a captive smorgasbord for the zombies, while a supermarket sat gutted and empty. They spotted a motel sign promising vacancy and cable television, and a movie theatre offering thirty different blank screens.
Frankie stirred. "What's going to happen to all of this?"
Martin shook his head. "I don't know."
"It's over, isn't it? If they don't have the numbers by now, they will soon. They'll start hunting us down, finding the survivors. Or maybe just waiting for us to die."
"I'm not ready to die yet," Jim said from the back, "and something tells me you're not ready to die yet either."
They drove on.
Martin began to quietly hum "Rock of Ages" while Jim fiddled with his weapons. Frankie sat brooding, lost in thoughts of Aimee, and of her own baby.
My baby...
What kind of life would it have had, had she not been a junkie and a whore? Obviously, it probably wouldn't have lasted long in this new world, but maybe they could have had some time together, even if just for a day. Instead, it had been ripped away from her, dead before it even got a chance to experience life, even for a second.
Her fault. She'd failed as a mother, just as she had failed at everything else in her miserable life up until she kicked the junk and was reborn.
She made up her mind that she would not fail again.
About twenty minutes later, they passed a sign for the
Garden State Parkway
.
"You can let us off at the entrance ramp," Jim sighed. "We appreciate your help."
"Bullshit!" Frankie said. "I'm taking you the whole way."
"You don't have to do that," Jim told her, "Like you said, it's going to be dangerous."
"I want to help you," Frankie insisted, "I need to help you. For me, and for my own child." She turned to him and her eyes were wet.
Her voice cracked. "I lost my own. I want to help you find yours."
Swallowing hard, Jim nodded.
"Take this ramp then."
He checked the pistol, then handed it up to Martin.
"We'll be there in a little bit."
They rolled onto the ramp, and Frankie accelerated, heading towards the line of tollbooths.
"Anybody have any change?" Martin quipped.
Frankie gunned the engine and pointed. "Look at that!"
Ahead of them, zombies were forming a blockade. Concrete construction barriers had been stretched out across most of the entrances beyond the tollgates. In the others, the creatures themselves formed a wall, standing shoulder to shoulder and several bodies thick.
"They must have seen us coming from the bridge."
Jim scrambled up into the turret while Frankie sped towards the cluster of zombies.
"Jim," she warned, "the fifty caliber doesn't have any ammo!"
His response was lost in the burst from his M-16. Zombies dropped in front of them, their heads exploding. Martin leaned out the window and carefully picked his targets with the pistol. He squeezed off two shots, then yelped and ducked back inside.
They're shooting at us!"
"Hang on!" Frankie shouted and mashed the accelerator to the floor.
They crashed headlong into the knot of zombies, scattering the creatures and crushing them beneath the wheels. Jim ducked back down inside the vehicle just as the front grille clipped a zombie. The impact sent it careening over the hood and through the windshield. Its head and most of its shoulders poked through the shattered glass, halfway between Frankie and Martin.
"Shit!" Frankie brushed bit
s of broken glass from her lap and leaned forward, trying to see through the cracks spider-webbing through the windshield.
The zombie struggled, gnashing its teeth together as it snapped at Martin.
"Say folks, I appreciate the ride, but don't you know it's not smart to pick up hitchhikers?"
"I've noticed something about your kind," Martin told it calmly. "You all have that same black humor. I think you do it because you are afraid. You're afraid of being sent back to wherever it is you come from, and you try to cover it up."
The creature jerked itself forward another inch, cracking more of the glass on both sides.
"Do something!" Frankie urged.
"I'm not afraid of you, Preacher," it snarled. "Your time is over. We are the rulers now. The dead shall inherit the earth!"
Martin shoved the pistol into its mouth in mid-snarl.
"Well the meek aren't done just yet, so you'll have to wait your turn."
He pulled the trigger and the windshield turned red.
With the shot still echoing, Jim turned and looked for pursuit. A bullet pinged off the roof, and then they roared onto the Parkway, leaving the tollbooths behind.
"Where are we?" Frankie panted, craning her head out the window so that they wouldn't crash.
"Near West Orange," Jim told her. "I think we lost them for now. Pull over and we'll get rid of that thing quickly."
Frankie pulled onto the median strip and stopped. All three of them jumped out, and Martin and Frankie stood guard while Jim grabbed the zombie by its feet and pulled. He grunted with the effort, but the body was lodged tightly into the windshield.
"Martin, give me a hand."
The old man didn't reply.
"Martin?"
Jim looked up to find both Martin and Frankie staring off into the distance. Along both sides of the Parkway, a cemetery stretched as far as the eye could see, and the highway cut right through its center. Surrounded by tenements and overgrown vacant lots, thousands of tombstones thrust upward to the sky. The horizon was littered with them. A few tombs and crypts dotted the landscape, but the sheer number of gravestones almost blocked them out.
"Yeah," Jim said, "I remember this place. It used to freak me out every time I drove up here to pick up Danny or drop him off. Creepy, isn't it?"
"It's something," Frankie whispered in awe. "I've never seen so many tombstones in one place. It's huge!"
Martin whispered something beneath his breath.
"What'd you say, Martin?"
He stared across the sea of marble and granite.
"This is our world now. Surrounded on all sides by the dead."
Frankie nodded in agreement. "As far as the eye can see."
"How long after all these building crumble, will these tombstones remain standing? How long after we're gone will the dead remain?"
He shook his head sadly, then turned to help Jim. With effort, they managed to free the mangled body from the windshield. Then they continued on their way.
As the sun began to set, its last, faint rays shone upon the sign in front of them.
BLOOMINGTON-NEXT EXIT
Jim began to hyperventilate.
"Take that exit."
Martin turned around in concern.
"Are you okay? What is it?"
Jim clenched the seat, gasping for air. He felt nauseous. His pulse pounded rapidly in his chest, and his
skin grew cold.
"I'm so scared," he whispered. "Martin, I'm just so scared. I don't know what's going to happen."
Frankie turned down the exit ramp, and flicked on the headlights. This time, the tollbooths stood empty.
"Which way?"
Jim didn't answer, and Martin was unsure if he'd even heard her. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he'd begun to tremble.
"Hey!" Frankie shouted from the front seat. "You want to see your kid again? Snap the fuck out of it! Now which way?"
Jim opened his eyes. "Sorry, you're right. Go to the bottom of the ramp and make a left at the red light. Go up three blocks and then you're going to make a right onto Chestnut. There's a big church and a video store on the corner."
He exhaled, long and deep, and began to move again. He sat the rifles aside and double-checked the pistol, shoving it back into the holster after he was satisfied. He pressed himself into the seat and waited, while his son's neighborhood flashed by outside.
"There's one," Martin mumbled, and rolled down the window enough to squeeze off a shot.
"No," Frankie stopped him, "don't shoot at them unless they directly threaten us or look like they're following."
"But that one will tell others," he protested. "The last thing we need to do is attract more!"
"Which is exactly why you don't need to be shooting at it! By the time it tells its rotten little friends that the lunch wagon is here, we can grab his boy and get the fuck out. You start shooting and every zombie in this town is gonna know we're here and where to come find us!"
"You're right," Martin nodded, and rolled the window backup. "Good thinking."
An obese zombie waddled by, dressed in a kimono and pulling a child's red wagon behind her. Another
zombie sat perched in the wagon, its lower half missing and its few remaining entrails spilling out around it. Both creatures grew agitated as they sped by, and the fat zombie loped along behind them, fists raised in anger.
Frankie slammed on the brake, slipped the HumVee into reverse, and backed up, crushing both the zombies and the wagon under the wheels.
"See," she grinned at Martin, "now wasn't that much quieter than a gunshot?"
Martin shuddered, but Jim barely noticed. His pulse continued to race, but the nausea was gone.
How many times had he driven down this same suburban street, either to pick Danny up or to take him home? Dozens, but never suspecting that he'd do so in this fashion one day. He remembered the first time, right after his first complete summer with Danny. Danny had started crying when Jim turned onto Chestnut, not wanting his father to leave. The big tears had continued to roll down his little face when they'd pulled into Tammy and Rick's driveway, and they were still flowing when Jim had finally, reluctantly driven away. He'd watched Danny through the rear-view mirror, and had waited until he was out of sight before he pulled over and broke down himself.
He thought of when Danny had been born and the doctor placed him in his arms for the first time. He'd been so small and tiny, his pink skin still wet and his head still slightly misshapen from the birth. His infant son crying then too, and when Jim cooed to him, Danny had opened his eyes and smiled. The doctors and Tammy insisted it wasn't a smile, that babies couldn't smile; but deep down inside, Jim had known better.
He thought of Danny and Carrie and himself playing Uno and of both of them catching him cheating, hiding 'Draw Four' cards under the table in his lap. They'd wrestled him to the floor, tickling him till he'd admitted the deception. Later, they'd sat on the couch together, eating popcorn and watching Godzilla trash Tokyo and Mecha-Godzilla.
He remembered telling Danny on the phone that he was going to be a big brother, right after Carrie's pregnancy had been confirmed.
He shuddered, recalling his escape from the shelter and the house, and what that joyous pregnancy had become. He thought of Carrie and the baby. He'd shot them both.
Danny's phone call echoed through his mind as Frankie turned down Chestnut.
"Daddy, I'm scared. I'm in the attic. I..." That burst of static and then "I 'membered your phone number but I couldn't make Rick's cell phone work right. Mommy was asleep for a long time but then she woke up and made it work for me. Now she's asleep again. She's been sleeping since... since they got Rick."
"I'm on Chestnut," Frankie reported from the front, "now what?"
"I'm scared Daddy. I know we shouldn't leave the attic, but Mommy's sick and I don't know how to make her better. I hear things outside the house. Sometimes they just go by and other times I think they're trying to get in. I think Rick is with
them."
"Jim? JIM!"
Jim's voice was quiet and far away. "Past O'Rourke and Fischer, then make a left onto
Platt Street
. It's the last house on the left."
In his head, Danny was crying.
"Daddy, you promised to call me! I'm scared and I don't know what to do.
