“We would have all gotten it anyway no matter what we covered,” Corey said. It had been that virulent. A sound outside made him jump. It was just a dog running down the street. “Hey, let’s go.”
“You see something?” Isaac lowered the paper and craned his neck.
Corey was getting more nervous by the second. “Only a dog. But let’s just go.”
Feeling no anxiety whatsoever at this creepy ghost town, Isaac swung the camper through another half dozen streets to look at the silent homes. A few windows were broken on some of them, but others appeared whole. There were even cars parked in the driveways. The camper slowed by a big, beautiful house and Isaac said, “I bet everything is a time warp in there, too. Breakfast on the tables. Clothes all mildewed in the washing machines. Let’s go in one of these places and look.”
Corey really didn’t think that was a good idea. “Didn’t we have a mission here?”
“It won’t take long. God, there could be boxes of Sugar Boogars cereal in some of those pantries! I haven’t had a bowl of those in years.”
“To-pe-ka,” Corey reminded him. “That was the mission.”
“Aw,” Isaac said in disappointment, and pressed on the accelerator. Then his spirits brightened. He never could stay down for long. “When we check out those addresses in Topeka and Abanoxie, I’ll peek in the pantries. Look under the beds, in the closets, everywhere. No one needs that shit anymore.”
“Unless Holly’s parents are still living in one of them.”
“Of course I won’t take anything then. But if not, it’s free for the taking. Who needs it? This is so cool! It’s like hunting for treasure.”
Corey scanned for 3s and still didn’t see any. That helped him to relax a little, as did pulling away from the abandoned city. A lot of 3s died in colder regions because they didn’t have the sense to light a fire and stay warm. Southern California had had to be abandoned entirely because of its weather not helping to kill off 3s. There wasn’t a single reclaimed city south of the San Bernardino mountains, only one in central California, and a scattered handful in northern. Generally, the warmer a place stayed year-round, the bigger a problem it had in zombies. Corey wasn’t going to be returning to Disneyland any time soon. He wondered if the 3s who roamed there ever rode the rides, were they still being powered. The pictures being snapped over the roller coaster drops would be bizarre, a bunch of blank-eyed stares and gaping mouths as they hurtled down the track.
“What are you thinking about?” Isaac asked.
“Zombies on roller coasters. What are you thinking about?”
“Zombie sex.”
“You with them, or them with each other?”
“Them with each other. My heart belongs to Bessie. All I have to do is buy her a brand new bell and she can’t wait to put out.”
They were going south again, but not very fast. The next city wasn’t even a sneeze but a squeak, and the tornados last year had tossed shit everywhere. Isaac slowed and went around things very carefully as Corey checked the northbound lanes to see what kind of trip they’d have returning. It was going to be slow as well. Houses had been reduced to planks and bricks at a distance, bits of fabric waving in the breeze like flags of surrender. Then there wasn’t anything to look at but the natural terrain.
“What do they do, I mean?” Isaac asked. “Just pull each other down to the ground and get it on? They can’t talk. The guy isn’t going to bring her flowers. The chick isn’t going to take a shower. They don’t have any brains. There can’t be any technique. How do they stop from literally eating each other if they’re hungry? Are there gay zombies, too? Bisexual ones? Do fetishes survive? Like, is there a zombie guy out there somewhere staring at some zombie chick’s dirty feet and getting a boner? If they caught us and they’d had enough to eat for the day, would they think we were looking pretty fine?”
Revolted, Corey said, “You think about this way too much.”
“Hey, our world ended because of these people. If not for our genetic superiority or whatever, we’d be just like them. It’s fair to be curious how they live. It’s so animal sounding. But even then, doesn’t a male peacock show off his feathers to impress the lady peacocks? What does a zombie guy show off? Does he groan the loudest?”
“Maybe he drags home a kill and gives her the meat. It’s their version of a nice restaurant dinner.” Corey thought of his father and winced.
“But that takes a degree of forethought. Desire. Do they even have that? Someone said the virus inflames their brains permanently and that’s why they function on such a base level. But they’re still having sex obviously, since some of the zombie chicks get pregnant, so how does it work? Do they pair bond? Or will they fuck any hole or shaft that happens their way? People, animals, tailpipes . . . There could be big zombie orgies every night all over the world. Grab anyone and go for it. And eat one of your lovers afterwards when you get the munchies and can’t find a normal person to snack on.”
“This conversation is gross and destroying my dick.”
“Hey, you weren’t using it anyway.”
And that was the plain truth. Corey didn’t want a junk drawer girlfriend to go with his junk drawer life. He wanted to feel that fire he had had with Gray. There were a couple hundred girls at their high school, but everyone just looked shell-shocked even three years later. They had friends, they had enemies, but it still wasn’t right.
They crossed over the border to Kansas, as evidenced by a partial sign left standing. Still there was nothing to see, just roads leading away to the east and west and few structures. Isaac pulled off in an abandoned city and parked outside a casino. He retreated to the bathroom with the newspaper and threw a dare over his shoulder for Corey to go in and play some slots. Before he closed the door, he said, “But be careful. My backpack might be sliding around in there.”
Insulted, Corey took the flashlight and got out. This place didn’t even have a dog running down the road. It was empty. The front doors of the building were closed. Wrapping his fingers around the handle, he pulled and expected the door to be locked. He wanted it to be locked, so he could go back to the camper and tell Isaac that. But it opened easily and he looked warily into a foyer. A restaurant was to the right and the casino to the left. A binder was open on the foyer’s counter, a collection of pens in a flower pot and a computer beside it, everything waiting patiently for people to return.
He slipped inside and headed for the restaurant, which had light spilling in through the big windows over the booths. Everything was wood, or painted the same color as the wood. It could seat a lot of visitors, designed for travelers going through who wanted a meal and to gamble. Pacing down the aisle by the window booths, he snagged a menu and skimmed it. He hadn’t seen a lot of these items in so long. Lincoln only had three restaurants open, and his foster family never went to them. When Daniel returned from his flights to other reclaimed cities, he rhapsodized about the restaurants he had eaten at without a clue that other people in the house might like to go out to eat, too. He was an aide to an aide, the grunt only there to take notes and order hotel workers to be careful with the Lincoln representative’s luggage.
Leaving the light-filled dining room, Corey went to the darker kitchen and turned on the flashlight. Everything had been cleaned out, and bones were on the floor by the double sinks. The skull was unmistakably human. Joke is on you, Isaac. It was another thing he’d missed. Someone had gotten eaten here and Corey was seeing the remains while Isaac sat on the crapper and read a three-year-old newspaper.
The bones didn’t make Corey want to stay in the kitchen. He pushed through the swinging doors to the dining room, wandered through five smaller rooms full of tables, and doubled back to the foyer. He crossed over to the casino side and stood in the doorway to shine his light around.
Behind a curtain were a variety of switches. By force of habit, he ran his hands over them. The room came to life, colored lights going on above and turning the ceiling mellow shades of
pink, blue, yellow, and purple. The flashlight wasn’t needed. He turned it off and stuck it in his pocket.
Like the restaurant, the room was huge. It stretched out of sight in a maze of slot machines, each one with a chair propped before it. Unlike the restaurant, there were no windows. There also weren’t any clocks. It must have given a visitor a weird feeling back when this place had been up and running. Day and night didn’t exist since you couldn’t tell which one it was outside. The passage of time stopped and you just pumped more coins into the machine.
Rock music had started to play when the lights came on. It was faint, a good song but easy to tune out. The carpet was louder than the music, a jarring pattern of triangles and swirls in bold colors. A car was propped up on a platform far beyond the slots, and he weaved his way over for a closer look. The restrooms were so far away that one had to cross the entire sea of the room to get there.
It was weird how the casino was set up. There was a pool of slot machines by the door to get in, and then another pool absolutely identical to it past the tables. Yet another pool was by the restrooms. The machines were tall and the ceiling low; the walls had almost nothing on them. If he had had too many beers and tried to cut through this casino, he’d be lost in a heartbeat.
The car was yellow, sleek and perfect as he caught snatches of it through the machines. What he’d make farming wasn’t going to cover much fuel, but just to own a car would be incredible. He’d take it out driving in Lincoln once a week, spin the wheels and let everyone admire it. No one checked out the dingy family minivan, which was used only for errands located too far away to walk.
Just as he got to the platform, smelling a sour scent, something moved under a table at his side. It wasn’t a backpack. Covered in filth and her clothes tattered, her lips chewed to raggedness and her chin brown beneath them, the woman slid out and got to her feet. The smell was from her unwashed skin. Her eyes had nothing in them, but they were looking at one thing. Him.
Oh God oh God oh God. Whirling around, he dashed back the way he had come. All of the old terrors from the change took root in his mind. So stupid, he had been so stupid to leave Lincoln! A terrified glance confirmed that the Type 3 woman was coming after him. Her hair was like Gray’s had been but even worse, straggling and filthy, with all sorts of shit tangled in it. There could be 3s hidden all over the casino and he never would see them in time in the rat maze of machines!
She was fast. But he was faster. What he wasn’t doing was going the right way. The door wasn’t coming up beyond the next bank of slot machines. Running down one aisle and another, he still didn’t see them. There was only one thing to do. He clambered up on a chair and turned in a frantic circle. There. There was the door!
And another zombie was standing in the doorway.
That one was male. Pair bond, Isaac mused thoughtfully in Corey’s memory.
Corey was going to be the kill that the man or the woman brought over to the other one in the hopes of winning some sexy time. Or they’d pin him down and eat him alive, one on each side and oblivious to his screams. He jumped off the chair as the man turned to stare at him. The woman rounded a machine and spied Corey in the aisle. Picking up the chair, he charged her. Too brainless to recognize it as a weapon, she just ran for him. He ploughed her down with the legs and leaped over her body as she was falling. Then he dropped the chair and sprinted away. The woman moaned as she hit the floor and he rolled over a game table to get to the next pool of slots.
There were guns in the camper. They weren’t doing Corey a lick of good in there. He never would have made such stupid errors right after the change. Living in reclaimed Lincoln had dulled his sense of danger.
An answering moan was coming from beyond the slots. The guy had come into the casino. The carpet was muffling his steps, but the moan gave away his position. Corey slowed and tried to quiet his breathing.
Be quiet be quiet BE QUIET.
Thanks, Holly. It was better advice than Isaac’s pair bonding. Corey slid along the machines, checking between them for the man. When he finally spied him, going to the right two rows down, Corey went left. He’d circle around the bank and get the fuck to the camper. If there were more zombies in the foyer, he was screwed. And in the least sexy way of all.
When he got to the end of the aisle, he tiptoed around the machines and peeked into the next row. The man was right there. Right there in Corey’s face.
“Fuck!” Corey screamed, leaping back and returning to the other aisle as the man lunged for him. The woman was at the far end. Oh God, oh dear God, he was boxed in. He almost pissed himself. Both started closing in.
Dying had never seemed more real than it did at that moment. The world was about to offload him, spin on its axis minus one.
He put his hands around a chair, intending to swing it in circles and knock them down. Then a better idea came to him. He let go and climbed up the chair, the machine rocking gently as he scrambled onto the top. Metal creaked loudly under his feet. From there, he stepped onto the machine behind it. The man started up after him, and the woman rushed out of the aisle to come down the one that Corey needed to cross. She’d get to him long before he could climb up the chair on the other side and get over the machines there.
He gathered himself and leaped across the aisle. His head hit the low ceiling. Slamming into the slot machine with a huge crash, he tried to climb up as it rocked back and struck the machine on its other side. They went down, Corey and the two slot machines, and hit the carpet. He somersaulted and was up in less than a second, banging his shoulder on the frame of the doorway in his mad dash through.
No time to close and bar it with something. Flying to the front doors, he jerked one open. There was GOOD TIMES, squatting there in all its shitty glory. He ran to the driver’s side door and it was locked. Of course it was locked.
The pair of 3s was coming out the front doors. Corey swallowed a scream and ran around the dented hood, praying no zombie was on the other side of the camper, or had gone into it. His fingers were sweaty, and slipped on the handle. Gripping it painfully, he opened the door and climbed inside. Then he slammed it shut and locked it.
The 3s were following to the camper. Corey climbed over to the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. GOOD TIMES rumbled around him and Isaac shouted, “Hey, still working on the last of a payload back here!”
“Holy fuck!” The scream erupted from Corey’s throat as he hit the gas. The camper roared forward and clipped the male 3, who had almost gotten to the hood. The guy spun out of control and knocked down the female, who was only inches behind him. Corey accelerated out of the parking lot and hit the road, the camper bouncing up and down violently. Isaac yelled, the door to the bathroom sliding open and the newspaper tumbling out in sections.
Corey wanted to return to Lincoln. They could even get back for sixth period if they went fast enough. But the first on ramp he came across was going south. He got onto it, needing to get away from that casino by any means possible. “Fuck! Fuck! Oh fuck! There were 3s in there! Fuck you for daring me to go in!”
Isaac staggered out the bathroom. He had hauled up his pants, but not done the zipper or button. “There were? Are you just fucking with me?”
“No!”
Isaac fought his way up to the front seat and sat down. His head turned to look out the window for the zombies. Corey swerved around a pothole and checked the mirrors, almost believing the 3s would be chasing after GOOD TIMES with superhuman speed.
It wasn’t until several miles had peeled away under the tires that he could slow down and catch his breath. Isaac squirmed in his seat and dug his hand into his jeans to scratch his ass. Corey exploded at him. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t get a chance to wipe?”
“Just some butt crunch. It’s cool, man. You’re okay.”
“I’m not okay!”
“All right! You’re not okay. But it’s still cool. No one’s coming after us. So, what were they like?”
“You’re ju
st sorry you weren’t there, you asshole!”
“Of course I’m sorry, you asshole! It’s the story of my life! I’m never there when anything happens.”
In half an hour, it had stopped being so scary. Corey detailed his mighty leap over the aisle of slot machines to Isaac’s roaring laughter. The camper trundled on through the empty lanes, peopled only by potholes, crashed or abandoned cars, trash and bones. The new American heartland. They stopped on the side of the road for a snack, opening up every box that had food and taking the best of it to gobble. Stretched out lengthwise in the seats, they didn’t bother keeping much of a watch for 3s. The doors were locked and the windows closed and barred. In the sporadic moments one boy or the other lifted a curtain, there was nothing to report. The zombies were off having orgies, riding roller coasters, or chasing people around somewhere else.
“Beats math,” Isaac said, raising his soda in a toast. Corey clinked with him. Since he’d lived, then yes, it was better than math. He had a great story to tell at school tomorrow, surfing slot machines in Kansas while those poor saps had been sitting there in a cosine stupor. Mia was going to call them stupid and everyone else would be listening raptly. But the best part of it for Corey would be adding that Isaac had missed the whole thing to take a crap. Good times indeed.
They got underway, Isaac behind the wheel, and were forced off the highway by a crater where the lanes had once been. It looked like a bomb had gone off here, and two blackened semis were twisted around one another in the wreckage. The camper had a nice little detour down roads through the middle of nowhere, and eventually they were able to swing back to the highway and continue on there. Corey’s heart had stopped hammering. He chomped on cookies even though he was full and spied a sign for Topeka. Pulling out his phone, he reviewed the directions for when they got off.
“I’ve never been here,” said Isaac when it was time to exit.
“You’ve never been anywhere,” Corey said between giving directions.
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 14
