His finger squeezed the trigger and just before the hammer fell, he saw her face. Clear as day. She was smiling at him from across a table at some dimly lit restaurant, where a lone candle flickered against her soft features. Her face sparkled in the cozy light and his finger relaxed on the trigger. Her silky, warm hand took his and squeezed. The air began to return. She mouthed the words, I love you, Paul. She was so beautiful. “I love you too, baby,” he said back. “I’m so sorry.”
She smiled, squeezed his hand again and shook her head. Then slowly, she floated backwards into an undefined vapor and disappeared altogether. His eyes grew large and focused in on the towels again. He swung his head around the room and back to the towels. She was gone. He could still see her face as a river of air flowed back into his lungs. He could see her face. He dropped his head and the gun and cried.
He wanted to be with her again, but knew it wouldn’t happen like this. Not if he pulled that trigger. They would miss each other and she would watch him go down from above. Blood mixed with saliva oozed down his chin onto the tiled floor between his new Adidas. He holstered the gun and blew his nose into a pirate towel.
Chapter Twenty
Paul slept the next two days away, tormented by haunting dreams that were no worse than his current reality. He tried not to wake up.
Chapter Twenty-One
Before they pulled out of the long asphalt driveway that following morning, Paul circled the house’s location on a map of Texas that Dan had found inside a desk sitting in a room plastered with Dallas Cowboys memorabilia. Not that Paul would ever forget where the house was.
With the morning sun slowly entering the living room, Paul spent the last hour seated in the same leather armchair, staring at Sophia’s dried blood on the mint colored sectional while Wendy and Dan took up some target practice on the back deck and then packed up their gear. Paul had forced Wendy to take Sophia’s gun because that’s what his wife had wanted. Wendy had taken it without knowing what to say while tears rolled down her pale cheeks.
He vowed to come back and visit his wife up there on that hill, no matter how many of those things stood between them. That much was for sure. But the thought of just leaving her here alone was what hurt the most. She had never even been to Texas before. She didn’t know anyone here. She would be left alone in the cold darkness without a single connection to anyone or anything for hundreds of miles around. No one would come visit her and lay flowers upon her grave. Not her mom, her sister, her brothers, aunts, uncles and friends. No one. She had loved getting flowers too.
How could he break his promise?
He had just about talked himself out of the whole thing, when Dan had grudgingly come back into the sunny living room and finally got the something off his chest he had wanted to say earlier. Something about how sorry he was, and how things will get better and something about something else. Paul could tell it was almost as hard for Dan to say it as it was for him to hear it.
Paul didn’t hear half of it. His mind was long gone. An awkward lull had taken over where he should’ve told Dan thanks or that he was right. But he didn’t. Then Dan said it was time to go. Paul had taken one last look at the soiled couch before getting up and leaving the room while there was still time to leave it. He’d never last two weeks here alone and he knew it. Every night he’d be hearing things go bump in the night just outside the back door. Day after day, up on that hill, sitting with her grave, curled up with a shotgun. Might as well just let them feed. Let them have their fill. Maybe he should.
Seated next to Gary in the back seat of the cop car, Paul turned around one last time and watched the large white house until it disappeared behind a gradual hill. And just like that... she was gone. It was so surreal, it numbed some of the pain some of the time. She didn’t deserve this.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The trees and seemingly normal looking houses whipped by in a dizzying blur. Dan glanced into the rearview mirror at Gary sitting in Sophia’s seat. Dan had wanted to leave Gary behind but Paul was sure that Gary, out of sheer contempt and a twisted mind in general, would desecrate Sophia’s grave.
Paul hated the trade. Since he couldn’t bring himself to kill him, they had no choice but to tie Gary’s wrists and bring him with. When Dan stuffed him into the back seat, Gary had claimed it was tantamount to kidnapping just before Paul slammed the car door shut in his face.
Paul watched the foreign land unfold around him. This was a mistake. He should go back. Deep down he knew the memories there would only haunt him forever. Dan and Wendy and the little voice in the back of his head had all made sure he knew it too. If time really could heal all wounds, the Jacobson house wasn’t the place to spend any. Plus they needed him. If he bailed out on Dan and Wendy now, he would be sentencing them to a slow and certain death. Dan had angrily given him the same snap out of it speech he had given to Dan after losing Carla, Matt and Mike. Paul could still the terror in Dan’s eyes as he began shouting. He was scared with Paul and even more afraid without him. He promised Paul he would come back with him to visit her someday, no matter how many of those things stood in their way. Tears ran down both their cheeks and bombarded the island counter-top below, exploding into microscopic balls.
Dan pushed against the steering-wheel and cracked his back.
“You want me to drive?” Wendy asked.
He looked over to her in the front seat next to him. “Maybe in a little while.”
They passed a newer looking brown RV that had smashed head first into a telephone pole, which was now leaning at an awkward angle. The side door was hanging by a single hinge, like something had ripped it open.
They didn’t speak for several miles.
“Soooo, what happens once we get to the ocean anyway?” Wendy finally asked, staring out over the empty roadway ahead.
“Ooh, we goin to the ocean? I love the ocean!” Gary grinned, revealing two large gaps in his row of yellow teeth. “They got seagulls and brown pelicans and loons and...”
Paul elbowed him in the side of the head.
“Okay, okay!” Gary shrieked, hunching his shoulder and turning to the door.
“Say another word, I dare you,” Paul said heavily. “We will tie you to a tree in the next town and sit there and lay on the horn until those things come crawling around!”
Dan stared at Paul’s wild eyes in the mirror.
“Okay,” Gary said softly. “Okay.”
Silence ensued as the landscape continued to change around them. Stationary oil rigs, long horns and brown grass sprinkled the terrain.
“I’m not sure,” Dan finally said, looking over to Wendy then back to the road. “Find a beach house, gather some supplies, wait and see what happens next with the ocean protecting our backs.”
Wendy snorted. “Or trapping us.”
The sound of the wheels turning on the asphalt road below filled their ears as the show car gobbled up white lines like they were candy.
Paul’s tired mind drifted back to Carla, Mike and Matt. He could still hear Sophia telling Matt and Mike they’d be playing volleyball on the beach in no time. Could still see their scared faces. They should’ve been here too. All of them. Not this idiot. Deep down, he knew it was his fault. They had trusted him. Trusted him with their lives. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so brave or confident anymore. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like “rescuing” anyone anymore, including himself.
He second guessed the “plan”. Second guessed God’s plan. Was there even a God to begin with? Sophia had been the most selfless, caring person he had ever met in the world and for what? To end up turning into one of those things? If this was his reward for keeping in faith, then He could stick it. This wasn’t part of the deal.
They quietly took in the sun-splashed countryside. Herds of Longhorns seemed to look longingly to them for help from within their fenced in enclosures as the state patrol car passed them by.
Paul wrinkled his nose at the smell of Gary and rolled down the window. Just the
sight of him made him sick, let alone the smell. They were going to have to be extra cautious around any strangers from here on out. No one was to be trusted anymore.
Dan brought the car to a stop in a gas station’s dirt parking lot out in the middle of nowhere.
The termination of the car’s soothing momentum woke Paul from his tormenting slumber. The realization that Sophia being dead wasn’t just some bad dream crushed his lungs again as soon as he opened his eyes and saw Gary.
“Where are we?” Paul asked, poking his nappy head up and peering through the cage.
“Probably a few hours from the Gulf,” Dan said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
“How long was I out?” he asked, squinting through dark circles and pounding a bottle of warm water.
“An hour or so.”
Wendy twisted around in her seat. “How are you feeling?”
“Fantastic,” he said dully, his head rotating elongated claps of thundering pain inside. There was a storm brewing in there. A bad one.
“We need gas,” Dan said, nodding towards a light blue mini-van parked next to an old pay phone thirty feet in front of them.
The van had a rusty dent in the back bumper from where someone had carelessly backed it into a pole long ago. Back when things like that actually mattered.
Paul looked at the pay phone. They were in the same boat as the pay phone now. A dying breed.
Dan eased up to the van and stopped.
“I need to use the restroom,” Gary said.
“Shut up!” Dan and Wendy yelled at the same time.
Paul’s head throbbed with the stereophonic outburst. “You stay here,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.
Gary farted and smiled.
“Ewe!” Wendy screeched.
They racked em and stacked em and discreetly exited the vehicle. Dan accidentally hit the car’s sirens in the process. The alarm rang out with an ear piercing rapid rhythm as if they were in hot pursuit of a stolen vehicle at ninety miles an hour.
Paul hunched over and tried covering his ears while holding a shotgun at the same time.
Dan leaped back into the car and fumbled with the buttons.
The siren bounced off the gas station walls and spun around them. Paul’s head felt like it would spontaneously combust at any moment with the pulsating scream.
“I can’t find the switch!” Dan screamed.
Paul’s vision blurred and snot ran out his nose. Wendy yelled something and then it stopped. The screech of a nearby Blue-Jay cut through siren’s wake.
Dan’s head popped up over the roof of the car again. “Sorry about that.”
Wendy narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you trying to wake up the whole neighborhood?”
Dan shrugged and gently closed his door.
Paul stood back up and sneered at Dan. Then he bent over and threw up into the dirt below, splashing his new sneakers. He dry-heaved two more times and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, catching a glimpse of Gary smiling at him on the way back up.
Dan and Wendy looked at each other, then back to Paul.
“You okay, dude?” Dan asked.
“I’m fine. Let’s do this,” he said, looking back to Gary who wiggled his stubby little fingers at him from behind the car window.
Dan began hooking the siphon up to the minivan’s gas tank and turned back to see how his cover was looking. Wendy stood ready with her gun drawn and pointed at the ground. Zero kills. Paul had sunglasses on and could barely stand.
“Maybe we should clear the van first,” Dan said.
“Go for it,” Paul replied, leaning against the other side of the cop car and spitting.
He stared at Paul. “Alone?”
Paul released an annoyed sigh, spit into the dirt again and stepped around to the van, bringing the butt of the gun into his shoulder as he went. Maybe blowing the head off of something would make him feel better.
Dan pulled on the large double doors on the van’s side. They were locked. All of them were so they stuck their faces to the glass for a better look, but couldn’t see anything inside. Cupping their hands around their faces to block the sunlight, they could make out some kind of tinting or drapes or some...
“Oh no!” Wendy said behind them.
They peeled themselves off the van and sprinted back around it, ready for unwanted company. Paul saw three maggots leisurely slumbering out from inside a beat up camper parked next to the inoperable pumps. A man, a woman and a fourteen or fifteen year old boy wearing tattered board shorts stumbled down the camper’s short flight of rickety steps, now on the eternal family vacation. Missing ears and fingers, they growled at Paul with decaying lips that exposed yellow teeth nesting in wet black gums. Paul took aim. His shot missed.
“Paul!” Dan said, looking from Paul to the old rusty camper.
Paul unleashed two more booming reports, blowing out the camper’s front windshield and missing the things again.
“Paul!” Dan yelled again, running over and forcing Paul’s shotgun down. “What are you doing?”
Paul stopped firing and blinked. He removed his shades and wiped the sweat from his dirty face and looked up. The family was gone. He gazed at the small camper in utter disbelief.
A scared look stole across Dan’s face. “Why don’t you get back in the car and relax. Wendy and I can get this.”
“No, I got it. Just get the damn gas!” he barked, still staring at the deserted camper.
Dan bowed his head and exhaled.
The side doors to the mini-van burst open with a startling bang as a heavy set Mexican lady rolled out and hit the dirt lot running. Paul snapped his head around, unsure if his mind was playing tricks on him again or not.
Long black hair flew wildly through the air behind her as she charged. Her shredded black skirt and stained red top fluttered with each thundering step. She was barefoot with an angry sneer covering her rotting face. Wendy fired a single shot. It went just over the thing’s head. It didn’t flinch and shrieked instead, hurting Paul’s ears. Massive shaking quads raged towards them like a linebacker. Paul and Dan raised their shotguns at the same time, making Paul realize this was the real deal. Wendy’s second shot drilled through the fat Mexican’s face and out the back of her skull, dropping it like a charging rhino. The super-sized ZIP slid across the dirt lot on its face, stirring up a cloud of dust and coming to a motionless rest at their feet. The cloud lazily floated up and out into nothingness as the Blue Jay overhead flew away. They stood there staring at it with their chests pounding.
Dan looked up to Wendy.
“Did you see that?” she said, like she had just won a stuffed animal at the Iowa State Fair after shooting a fake can at Tin-Pan Alley.
The aroma of spoiled fish and stale beer spilled out of the van and choked the air around them.
Paul slid down the side of the cop car and passed out.
“Why did you yell back there anyway?” Dan asked, looking over a map he had taken from the minivan’s glove box while holding his breath.
Humming wheels on asphalt filled the car again.
“My watch stopped,” Wendy said flatly, steering the cop car down a two-lane highway that was almost as curvy as she was.
Dan pulled his eyes away from the map and folded his brow into creases. “Your watch stopped?”
“Yeah.”
He stared at her with his mouth wide open. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I looked down and noticed it had stopped. My dad gave it to me for my birthday just before he died,” she said, glancing down at the smoked metal timepiece, then back to the road. “It was the last thing he ever gave me.”
Dan hesitated. “Well, you scared the crap out of us, dude!”
“I’m sorry!”
The drumming tires took back over in their ears.
“And don’t call me dude!” she said.
“If you two don’t shut up, I’m going to puke again,” Paul said, lifting his head from the side wi
ndow in the back.
“Mornin sunshine,” Gary said, smiling at him.
Paul was too tired to punch him. He wanted to, but just didn’t have it in him. “Where are we?” he muttered instead, noticing it was near dark.
“Somewhere near Giddings, Texas,” Dan said.
Paul massaged his pulsating temples, wondering how far they were from Sophia now.
“What happened?”
“You passed out,” Wendy said.
“Drink some of that water,” Dan said, nodding towards a half full bottle lying between Paul and Gary.
Gary looked at Paul affectionately. “I saved ya some, sugar pie.”
Wendy stopped the car in the middle of another rural route gravel road surrounded by pastureland with lightly wooded areas sprinkled throughout. Gravel roads were always at the top of their wish list, closely followed by a small square footage and quiet neighbors. The number of bedrooms, bathrooms and garage stalls had no meaning anymore. The same went for central air and walk-in closets.
Up ahead on the left, sat a tiny red brick house on a decent sized expanse of unoccupied land. The sun was just above the western horizon, silhouetting the naked trees in the dwelling’s front yard.
Dan turned to Paul in the back seat. “You gonna be able to do this?”
Gary looked from Dan to Paul and back to Dan again. “Do what?”
“Do a little dance. Clear that house, you idiot! What do you think?” Dan shot back.
“Yeah, I feel better,” Paul lied.
He still couldn’t believe he had passed out. He had never passed out in his life. Not while riding a ski-lift to the top of the Colorado Rockies, not while playing softball on a ninety degree day in the burning afternoon sun, and not while hitting his head on a basement beam that had left a nasty scar just inside his hairline. This was not the time to start either. It scared him.
Dan surveyed the house. “It looks quiet.”
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 13
