Concluding that everyone was asleep at two o’clock, Isaac raised the garage door and turned the key in the ignition. The roar of the engine made Corey wince. He was sure as the camper edged out into the driveway that Mr. Wisquin was going to explode out the front door, a belt in his hand to thrash both of them. “Go faster!”
“Got to let her warm up,” Isaac said, continuing his creep to the road and pressing the button on his key chain to lower the garage door. “He won’t wake up. He hits the pillow and he’s out cold.”
“Yeah, but your sisters could-”
“Tilda sleeps just like he does, and Mindy won’t say a thing. She’ll just look forward to my beating. Are you always such a worrywart?” Isaac chugged the last of his soda and bent the can. Then he rolled down the window and chucked the flattened can out through the bars. The only window that didn’t have any bars over it was the windshield.
Once they were on the road, Corey wasn’t worried any longer. They put on music and bounced around to the beat as they rumbled through the quiet streets. At the outskirts of the reclaimed grounds, a guard rose from a chair and held up his hand to stop them. Isaac stopped and said, “Good evening.” Corey turned down the music.
“More like morning,” the guard said. “ID, please.”
Corey’s heart fell. He’d forgotten that only people eighteen and older were let out of Lincoln. He was weeks away from his birthday and Isaac just days, but they were still seventeen all the same. They’d just gotten underway and now they had to return, back the camper into the garage, and be at school by quarter to eight. Nodding casually to the guard, Isaac said, “Sure. Would you grab it for me, Corey? Just flip down the visor. I always tuck it in there.”
As Corey turned down the visor, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing up there, Isaac stomped on the gas. The camper lurched forward and the guard jumped back with a shout. Isaac laughed as Corey exclaimed, “Oh my God! I can’t believe you did that!”
“Freedom!” Isaac bellowed, banging his huge hands on the steering wheel. “Freedom, you feel so good!”
They roared down the highway, comparing stories of traffic in olden days. Sitting in rush hour was a distant memory. There wasn’t a soul around, or any light that wasn’t coming from the camper’s headlights or the moon and stars. It was the first time Corey had been out of Lincoln in over three years, and damn it felt fine. Isaac yelled, “Look at that, Dad! You don’t fall off the face of the earth when you leave Lincoln! It’s incredible!” They sang along with a stupid, sappy love song, both in falsetto to match the female singer. Then they sang along with another one and blew kisses out the windows.
A weird scraping sound was coming from behind them. Corey started to get spooked. For several minutes there would be nothing and he’d forget about it, and then he’d hear it again between pulses of the music. No one could be back there. He’d hung around in the camper for hours and even slept in the bed, for fuck’s sake.
But he and Isaac had gotten out briefly to investigate the noise in the house. And then they’d just sat in the front and drank soda. If someone had climbed in . . . but it wasn’t like Mr. Wisquin would be lurking back there, and Mindy had gone up to bed as they’d watched. It could have been one of their hired hands, hiding in the bathroom and trying to hold on every time Isaac swerved around the lanes for potholes or no reason at all. But why would a hired hand be in the camper? They had their own housing, and it wasn’t on Wisquin property.
“Dude, look at that,” Isaac said. There were bones strewn along the shoulder. Corey caught a glimpse of them as the headlights passed over, and then they were lost to blackness. Human bones, deer, or otherwise, the camper had gone past too quickly for him to tell. Thrilled to have seen something new, Isaac yelled and swerved again.
Scrape.
Corey turned down the music and looked over his shoulder. It was too dark to see anything. “Hey, did your dad put a flashlight in here?”
“Are you kidding?” Isaac exclaimed. “They’re everywhere. There’s even one by the crapper so you can admire your handiwork when you’re done taking a shit if the overhead light has burned out. Open the glove compartment. There should be one in there, too.”
Fumbling in the darkness, Corey opened the glove compartment. A tiny light went on inside to reveal a neat collection of objects: a first aid kit, the owner’s manual, matches attached by a rubber band to three candles, a handgun, and the desired flashlight. He whipped it out and felt along the handle for the switch.
“What do you want that for?” Isaac asked.
“I keep hearing something from the back.” Corey depressed the rubber button on the bottom of the flashlight and turned in his seat to illuminate the camper. The table, the seats, the kitchenette and hallway . . . no one was there. What was he thinking would be? It was being outside reclaimed space that was freaking him out a little. It was extremely farfetched that a Type 3 had sneaked into Lincoln and just happened to climb into the camper while the boys were looking through the living room windows at Mindy. That was ridiculous.
But they hadn’t locked the doors when they were out. Anything could have crawled in during their brief absence.
“Pothole,” Isaac said. The camper lurched from side to side as he went around it. The beam wavered as Corey held on to his seat.
Scrape.
Something had moved in the bedroom. It was a flicker of movement across the floor, gone a split second after Corey spotted it. Fear seized him. “Someone’s back there!”
“In the camper?” Isaac said incredulously. He threw a glance over his shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
Corey undid the latch of his seatbelt and stood up, holding tightly onto the back of the seat as Isaac steered around another pothole. Scrape. It was a smaller sound. Nothing appeared at the doorway. “Keep it steady, would you?”
“Tell it to the potholes,” Isaac said. Corey moved unsteadily to the table and trailed the beam over the seats. Empty. The boxes were being held in place by two bungee cords. Packed up to the underside of the table, there wasn’t room even for a small child to squash in there. He pressed on past the kitchenette, holding onto the counter. Isaac yelled about a pothole and jerked the camper over. Reeling, Corey smacked into the closet door and fell forward. The flashlight slipped from his fingers. He caught himself on the door handle to the bathroom. It slid open and he staggered with it.
Scrape.
The flashlight rolled into the bathroom. Isaac yelled, “Sorry!” Then GOOD TIMES moved more gracefully and Corey staggered into the bathroom to retrieve the flashlight. The beam was shining upon the tiny shower. Something dark was behind the curtain. He dove for the light and jerked back to the doorway.
Boxes. The shower had been stacked with boxes. Like the ones under the table, they were pinned in by cords and went over Corey’s head. He didn’t know how far Mr. Wisquin was planning to drive if zombies overran Lincoln, but he had supplies to last. The camper swerved and he heard the scraping sound again.
Bracing himself, both on the inside and outside, he turned the light to the bedroom. The top blanket was mussed. The light reflected off the foil of the granola bar wrappers, one of which had fallen to the floor. That wasn’t heavy enough to make a noticeable scrape. Isaac yelled, “You know what? It could just be one of the barn cats. They get into everything. Is that you, Kitty 1? Kitty 2? Kitty 4?”
Corey didn’t see a cat, or anyone or anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. There was the bed, and the cabinet beside it. He bet there were boxes in there, too. Curtains fluttered over the windows. So the scrape was just a normal sound of the camper. Corey should have suspected that from the start. He’d never ridden around in GOOD TIMES, so he didn’t know its noises.
“What happened to Kitty 3?” Corey called, his voice more jovial than he felt. “Did a tractor run over it?”
“There never was one,” Isaac said. “I just named them that so people would ask exactly what you just did . . . pothole!” he yelled cheerf
ully. The camper lurched and something rolled right over Corey’s foot. He screamed like a little boy.
It was only Isaac’s backpack.
A couple of minutes later, Corey was back in his seat. Isaac was rubbing his shoulder from the punch and laughing at him. The backpack was now in the center of the bed and under the top blanket so it couldn’t roll around anymore. Corey had tried to put it in the cabinet, but as predicted, it was stuffed. And the shower was stuffed, and under the table was stuffed, and the closet was stuffed when he checked. The kitchen cabinets had to be stuffed, too, so he hadn’t bothered undoing the latches to peek.
The drive to Nebraska City was uneventful. All they passed was empty road and occasional bones on the side. Everyone called this the wild, but it didn’t look very wild to Corey. It had been wild right after the change, he and his dad locking themselves up tight and only going out for food until . . . well, until. Corey hadn’t seen too much. The 3s had closed in so fast and Dad screamed at him to run. Then he just screamed. Corey hadn’t realized anyone was still normal until a woman mistook him for a 3 and almost shot him when he tried to break into her house to search for edibles. He’d stayed with Leeanne until a bus drove down the street full of people going to Lincoln. They went along.
And you know what? Leeanne was female, and she would have restrained Holly, too.
He was tired and the landscape was boring, so he closed his eyes and relaxed into his seat. Isaac kept him updated on what they were passing. That was basically just a lot of darkness, signs for places and speed limits. Corey slept for a little while. He dreamed of the scraping and went back to investigate. A cat jumped out screaming in his face, claws out and gut hanging open with the grooves of Holly’s teeth in the muscle.
The original Nebraska City had been greatly damaged in its reclamation. Lights flickered over roads full of smashed buildings and standing ones. A guard stood in one street and made note of their passage, although he didn’t try to stop them. It went without saying that 3s couldn’t operate a car; nor could anyone caught in the throes of an episode. The most complicated bit of equipment anyone in an episode could handle was usually something that needed little by way of brain cells. A doorknob. A knife. Not a car or a computer. And some couldn’t even manage the doorknob or knife. One had been in the news for shooting someone, but he could only pull the trigger, not load the gun.
They parked in the lot of a school. It was whole, and there was a fence encompassing the buildings to keep the kids safe during school hours. Isaac yawned about the bed, just one but they’d have to share it and he didn’t want to wake up to find Corey trying a reach around on him. It was understandable, Isaac added. He knew how irresistible he was. Corey promised not to give in to temptation. Too tired to pry himself out of the passenger seat, he reclined it the whole way. Isaac went to the bedroom while slapping his own ass and making sizzle sounds.
In the morning, Corey opened his eyes. He was confused to find himself at school. Then his brain woke up the whole way. Kids were being dropped off at the curb, from the back of tandem bikes and seats attached to the back of single-rider bikes. Or they were just walking, and almost always with an adult. Only on rare occasions did a car swing by to unload children. An armed adult stood there on the sidewalk to watch for problems. Hearing sounds from the bedroom, Corey said, “We went to school after all.”
“Aw, fuck,” said Isaac. “I’ve got a paper due.”
They were trapped by the train of parents and kids and bicycles flowing past the parking lot to the gate. Each of them took a turn in the bathroom and then had some breakfast as they waited. Checking the time, Isaac said, “He’ll know I’m gone by now. But he’ll think I just skipped out of morning chores to go to school. So he’ll be planning out his yells for later, maybe a whack or two, and be even angrier because his boot lace snapped. That’ll make it three for me.”
“When will he discover the camper?” Corey asked.
“Oh, that won’t be until this afternoon likely. He’ll go into the garage for a tool, something or other and then his brain will explode.” Isaac made a whiplash sound. “When we get back, I’ll buy some fuel, hang around until night, and put the camper back just perfect. There won’t be a thing out of place except what we’ve eaten. That’ll piss him off even more that I didn’t destroy something.”
“It’s already destroyed. Look at the hood. And you can’t afford fuel!” The price was ten times what it had been before. People walked or biked if their destination was any less than three miles. And they carpooled like mad, passengers jammed in trunks and on each other’s laps. Some of the guys came to the high school riding atop a minivan, all of them strapped down to the roof and waving at passerby like they were riding a float in a parade.
A group of preteen girls walked past the camper, all of them looking over to read GOOD TIMES and to giggle about it. Isaac checked them out. “Hot. Hot. Not hot.”
“Dude, they’re twelve,” Corey protested.
“Dude, then you should know I mean hot in five years, not hot today. I’m not a pervert.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“That one is a total ugly duckling.” Isaac nodded to the gawky girl rushing to catch up with the others. “All knobby and pointy now, but she’ll get curves and every guy in her grade is going to be like who the hell are you? Where have you been all this time?”
“That’s just gross, man. They’re kids.”
“What? Do you want me to look at their moms instead? I can do that. Hot. Not hot. Not hot. Sort of hot. Oh God, NOT HOT. I like flesh, and she’s just bones with a bit of skin stretched over them. Ugh. No cushion. Those hips are sharp enough to grate cheese on.”
“Well, there’s a fat one for you.” Corey pointed to a woman coming along in a motorized wheelchair, her bulges spilling over the seat.
“Yeah, thanks, no. Some guys get off on that, you know? Having sex with the fat rolls. But then, some guys get off on cows.”
“The truth comes out.”
“I like dangly teats. What can I say?” Isaac milked imaginary teats hanging below the steering wheel. Playing Hot-Not Hot with the moms was better than with fairly flat-chested sixth graders in pink unicorn shirts, so Corey joined in until the bell rang and everyone vanished, including the armed guard. Then Isaac started up the camper and pulled out into the road.
Now it felt like a real trip, the high school starting up for the day back in Lincoln and Corey not there to be a part of it. Mia would be hitching her overstuffed backpack and scurrying along, complaining to girls that she hadn’t gotten as much study time as she’d wanted to put in over the weekend. Anna would have her arm around some guy’s waist as he walked her to class. Locker doors slamming and teachers yelling to shut up, he didn’t have to be there to know what was going on. This assignment is due. Stop talking. Open your book to page forty-nine. Put your phones away. This means you.
It was a two-hour, straight shot south drive from Nebraska City to Topeka, or it had been before. The roads hadn’t been maintained all that much in three years. Nebraska City was a sneeze of a place, and they were out of it in no time. Then there wasn’t much more to see by day than there had been at night. Corey looked up to the big blue sky and listened to tunes until they passed the sneeze of Auburn. Everything looked like sneezes after all of those Disneyland vacations in southern California, where clear space was an anomaly that compelled the people there to eradicate it with buildings. The population of Auburn had been just under four thousand at the time of the change, and now it looked like it could be counted on no hands. Corey didn’t see a single person on the roads or in the yards, or anywhere. It was a ghost town.
Isaac weaved around the streets so they could look at everything. They had time to kill anyway. A big antique store had collapsed to a fire, as had most of the buildings on the rest of that block. The marquee at a school was still advertising sports and a dance. Some roads were impassable, downed streetlights and trees spilled across the lanes. Aband
oned cars were everywhere, too. The virus had moved through the world so damn quickly that no one had had time to do anything.
On another block, a brick post office had been reduced to rubble, but the newspaper stand was untouched before it. There was even a paper left inside. Isaac braked and passed Corey change.
When he got out of the camper, he was nervous. This felt wild, a city full of homes and stores and schools and no one in them. Suddenly, it seemed stupid to be out here. He slid the change into the slot and opened the lid. Snapping out the paper, he set the lid down quietly and hightailed it back to the camper.
“Time warp!” Isaac enthused about the paper. He put the camper in park and opened the paper up to read as Corey checked out the windows for 3s. In his head, his father said Corey. His mother just looked at him.
But there were no 3s here. He and Isaac were the only ones around. Turning the page, Isaac read, “Authorities warn about a new virus sweeping the nation and encourage everyone to wear masks and gloves when outside-”
“And no one did,” Corey said, remembering a reporter on the news advising everyone to do that. Corey had scoffed at the time. He wasn’t going to school wearing a paper mask over his mouth and nose, and gloves. Everyone would have laughed at him, and asked if he had OCD.
“Not hot,” Isaac said about a diagram beneath the article. An outline of a woman was wearing a mask and gloves. “Are people really so stupid that they need a diagram of where to put masks and gloves on their bodies? Apparently, they were here. Valuable advertising revenue was lost due to this diagram.” His voice became bewildered. “Where do these go? My ass? My ass and feet? They have to cover my ass and feet or I’ll get the virus? Oh, okay. Oh, look! Oh, thank God, there’s a diagram in the paper here. I get it now!” He sighed gustily in relief and giggled at himself.
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 13
