Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5]

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “Maybe I would have liked your class. Did kids ever rate you on that website for teachers?”

  “Yeah.” He’d looked himself up once and was genuinely surprised that any of his students had bothered. After all, it was just seventh grade. “I had three entries. One was a five star rating and no review; one was a four star rating and a one-word review that just said GOOD. Or maybe it was OKAY. I don’t know which.”

  “And the last one?”

  “One star.”

  “Ouch. Was there a review?”

  “Yeah.” He paused to remember it. Those brain cells hadn’t gotten fired in some time. Then it came to him verbatim. “‘Mr. Spencer sucks and is mega-boring and wears green pants all the time.’”

  Selena laughed and Xan said, “I didn’t own any green pants, so that part of the review was for some other teacher.”

  “Did it hurt your feelings?”

  “Well, no one wants to be called boring.”

  “Mega-boring.”

  “Mega-boring especially. But, like I said, I wasn’t the right teacher for every student. You can’t please everyone. My girlfriend Colette never read hers. She knew there would be some bad ones in the mix. Kids either loved P.E. or hated it.”

  “Hated it. Go faster, go faster, go faster . . . I’m just not fast. I never have been. Astor wasn’t either. So we were slow together, always dragging our butts in last around the field. We both did one push-up for . . . some state test and gave each other high fives afterwards, and Coach Thakur said that one push-up . . . wasn’t anything to be so damn proud of. We almost had the same birthdays, me and Astor, not me and Coach Thakur.”

  They played with the memory cards as sunlight faded from the glass ceiling. Then he checked out the restroom window one last time. Eight zombies had become seven, but still . . . He could place Selena on a chair beside the door and have her lock it after he went out to the cars, then unlock it when he came back. But he could conceivably waste all of their ammunition going out for maps that might not even exist. Then it would be for nothing. Fewer zombies and more vehicles would up the odds in his favor, but what he had to work with was a lousy two cars.

  It wasn’t worth it, and neither was a run on the women’s clothing store to get better things for Selena. The zombies could chase him off and that left Selena helpless in the Sinkhole. He pulled the red felt over the glass, which dropped the light in the restroom to near zero. He needed to sleep.

  On the blue mats, he opened the backpack and they made another meal out of soda and candy. She ate a little more than she had earlier and that relaxed him. The temperature in the room was dropping as the sky deepened to full evening.

  He moved the games and cards to a table so Selena could stretch out to rest. Then he did the same, staring up to the glass as the purple dribbled away to black. Without electricity in this area, he could see the stars coming out one by one.

  Twenty-four hours. In his head, Colette was cradling Lucca’s body in the hospital. Alone. And then she was walking home alone, and Lucca was rolled to the morgue to await the next convoy.

  “Don’t die tonight,” he whispered to Lucca, and then realized he had said it out loud.

  Selena turned over and said, “Not tonight. But it would be better if I did. Just slipped away while I was sleeping . . . the way I was supposed to go last night.”

  He wanted to tell her not to talk like that, but her diagnosis sat between them and stuffed the words down his throat. Instead, he said, “I sleep . . .” like the dead, he thought, “really, really heavily. If there’s a problem like you have to go to the bathroom, or someone’s trying to get in, shake me hard. Slap me if you have to, yell my name, pinch my nose, whatever it takes.”

  “Okay. Do you snore?”

  “No.”

  Something squeaked loudly and he sat bolt upright. It was just the hedgehog. She had pressed its midsection hard. “I’ll do that right in your ear,” Selena offered.

  His heart was racing. “Good idea. Is there a problem, or was that just a practice squeak?”

  “Practice. My cat hated these. She hated balls with little bells inside them, too. Can I tell you a bad thing just to get it off my chest?”

  “Sure.”

  “I hate being out here. It’s scary. But I’m still just a little glad to not be in the hospital. I get sick of the nurses coming in . . . to check on me, and people talking in the hallway . . . and waking me up. The machines beep and doors creak. It’s night but it’s still so noisy.” She sighed. “I really hate the hospital.”

  Then all was quiet at Xan’s side. He had placed the rifle in the slide right over his head. That way he wouldn’t roll onto it, and it was still only inches away. Reaching up into the darkness, he felt for it and was reassured.

  There was a knock at the front door, not of a fist but a body smacking into it. After that, everything was still. He crooked his arm beneath his head and fell asleep.

  ****

  When he looked out the window in the morning, he liked what he saw. The road was empty, as was the parking lot. The world was a big place in which for zombies to roam. For now, they were doing it elsewhere. He stayed there for several minutes and never saw anyone pass by.

  They weren’t all asleep, though. Catnaps were all they took, in sporadic places and at sporadic times. He picked through his memories and found nothing in relation to his zombie sleep habits. He had more from Frank Toll, who had served a purpose after all in reading among the tomatoes while everyone else worked. One day he had read the news out of Factory, where the research branch of a post-contagion pharmaceutical company studied how to reverse the effects of the parasite. It was a fool’s mission. The damage to the brain was irreversible, and modern medical science was poorly equipped when it came to those types of injuries.

  The researchers had captured zombies for observation and experimentation, the former of which was far more fruitful than the latter. At most, the zombies under their scrutiny slept for two hours a day. It was broken up into several chunks, none of them lasting over thirty minutes. They did not dream. Xan didn’t know how the researchers had determined that since zombies couldn’t discuss if they dreamed or not. They would have had to be hooked up to scientific equipment that measured their brain waves.

  So traveling by night to Newgreen was little safer than traveling by day. The zombies would be hampered by the lack of daylight, but Xan would be, too. Thank you, Frank Toll.

  It was just after dawn now, the sky a pinkish-gray with ripped clouds cast across it. Not rippled but ripped, like scraps of clothes with straggling seams. And it was windy. Beyond the aquatic store, trees were shaking.

  He didn’t want the smell of his head to carry with that wind. Casting about for some way to cover it, he decided when they got to a house to search for a baseball cap. That would help. For now, he considered using the hair clips in the prize counter to fasten a folded-up paper towel to his head. Then he changed his mind and took down a doll that had once cost three hundred and fifty tickets. Peeling off its little pair of jeans, he tore them until he had a rough rectangle of fabric. He doubled it over into a square and tried to clip it into his hair. Buddy hadn’t whacked him in a place that was very easy to see in the mirror.

  When it was done, he had Selena check his work. Deftly, she undid a clip and put it in again, the metal scraping his scalp as she pushed it along and snapped it. “It’s not still bleeding, Mr. Spencer.”

  “I’ll feel better with something blocking the smell.” The two of them canvassed their bodies for any other injuries. Selena had a scab where her IV had gone in, but as she would be wearing the jacket, it didn’t seem necessary to cover it further. She put it on and had him zip it up all the way.

  They visited the toilets and went to the break room in the back. He put the backpack over her thin shoulders and tightened the straps. She sat at the table, shivering from quiet fright, as he gripped the rifle and undid the lock on the door. Slowly, ever so slowly, he cracked the door a
nd peeked out to the parking lot.

  There was no one. Nor was there anyone coming through the gap in the fence, or hanging around beyond it in the trees and foliage. He wanted to go that way. The shaggy greenery would give them cover, and time for him to figure out which way to go. He didn’t want to take a chance on the two cars. He had to minimize the time they were outside, and search cars that didn’t leave him so open to being observed.

  The air smelled rank. It had to be coming from the zombies he had shot yesterday. Closing the door and latching it just in case, he put down his rifle on the table, squatted beside the chair, and said, “I don’t see anyone out there. Ready to go, team?”

  She climbed onto his back and took hold. “You shoot ’em, I’ll moon ’em,” she said in a trembling voice.

  Then he was stepping outside with a chill going down his spine. Part of him wanted to go straight back inside and lock themselves in. Instead, he entered the parking lot. A breeze gusted past and he restrained himself from clamping a hand over his clipped bandage. His footsteps soft and silent, he crept away from the building. One car was fully exposed to the street; the other was only in part. That one tempted him a little, but kids worked at a Sinkhole, teenagers and early twenties tops. What were the odds that they would have had a glove compartment, center console, or back pocket full of paper maps? Xan had been older than that at the contagion, and he’d just relied on his phone to navigate. There had been a few maps with creased edges in his old car, and he hadn’t touched them in a very long time.

  He steered away from the car. It was probably locked anyway. Selena whispered, “There’s someone under it.”

  Xan looked again. Yes, there was someone under the car, someone who wasn’t moving. A crawler had gone under there and expired, or was simply taking a catnap. Xan wasn’t going to find out which one it was. A chomp out of his ankle while he was rustling around for maps was going to give them a whole new worry, and they had far too many of those already.

  To get to the gap in the fence, he had to pass between the Sinkhole and the women’s clothing store. He did it cautiously, checking out to the street first, and then hustling over. Odd how the zombies would be so attracted to his movement, yet were completely oblivious to each other’s. Olyvyr Gravine had outdone himself. If the zombies had targeted and eaten each other with the same intensity as they did uninfected people, the problem would have largely solved itself by now.

  He made it to the gap in the fence and pushed through. Leaves crinkled under his foot and he looked down sharply for somewhere else to walk. The trees had been shedding here unchecked and made a mat of them over every inch of earth. He selected the places with older, more rotten leaves and slunk along.

  There was a road beyond this strip of wilderness, two lanes, an island of grass, two more lanes, and a housing complex. Some cars were parked at the curbs and in the driveways. It was a modest area, not poor but humble, and the cars were the same way. A body was sprawled on a sidewalk over there. It was definitely that of a zombie, since it had been left alone to decay.

  Xan moved to another vantage point that gave him a wider view of the road. A sign labeled it as Acton Parkway. He couldn’t see the signs on the residential lanes beyond it. There were three, and then Acton curved on either end and disappeared. A sedan was resting half-on and half-off the island, the driver’s door wide open and weeds growing up it.

  The contagion had swept through here but left little damage to the houses. Most people had been at school and work when it happened. The sedan had to belong to someone run off the road while trying to escape. Suitcases were piled in the back seat, and a laundry basket overflowing with clothes was against the window.

  It had been too risky to hunt the cars in the parking lot for maps; it was too risky to take out those suitcases and basket here. They weren’t going to die for jeans and socks, and the chance of a map or handgun. Shelter first. Everything else ranked a very distant second.

  A lone zombie came around the curve. Xan shrank back into the greenery and listened to the scratching of feet on the pavement. Clenching as a breeze blew past, he told himself that he was downwind from the zombie. Ten minutes crept by before it shuffled past the place where Xan and Selena were hiding. The zombie was a woman in a soiled pink bathrobe and one striped sock. The tie around her waist was double-knotted, too hard for a zombie to undo, but the bathrobe was for a woman much bigger than this one. She had lost a considerable amount of weight since her infection. One day, she was going to step right out of the garment and be roaming naked.

  Her arms were slack at her sides, and her fingernails ran all the way down to her knees. Two on her right hand had broken off, but the other three were yellow and long and ghastly. The toenails on her left foot were also long, although not to the same extent. Walking had broken them to ragged stumps, all save one on her pinkie toe that had curled under and pierced her skin. It was swollen and leaking pus. On her right foot, the untended growth of her toenails had led to them spearing through her sock. Roaming had eaten out the bottom of the sock, but the rest of it was trapped around her ankle and pinned to her by those five long nails.

  Selena was getting tired. He could feel it in the weakening of her grip around his neck. But she stayed still and quiet as the woman stopped, staggered on, stopped again. He had an easy shot at her. The sound, though, would attract others. And there weren’t any others for the time being. He wanted to keep it that way.

  Only ten feet separated them. She had drifted closer to the curb and was now standing in the bike lane. She breathed deeply and he stiffened. Then she began to pee. Liquid splashed down to the road from beneath her bathrobe. When it reduced to trickles, she resumed walking. The scratching grew softer and softer, and Xan inched forward to watch her go. Then a second zombie appeared at the curve from where the woman had come.

  They would have to go back to the Sinkhole. Take a break and strike out in a new direction.

  The woman kept going. The new one came a little closer, and then backtracked. Then he reappeared. It was like he was going in circles. Xan watched him do this three times as the woman kept creeping along to the curve that would carry her away. At last she was gone, but the man was visible again. He wasn’t traveling in exact circles. Each one brought him a little farther down Acton Parkway.

  That gave Xan only a little time. His eyes followed the man until he vanished. “Hold on, kiddo,” he whispered.

  Selena tightened her arms, and he ran. Through the foliage to the curb, from the curb to the bike lane, from there to the double lanes. Then he was in the grass, taking high steps and praying there were no gopher holes hidden there to trip him.

  He made it to the second set of lanes. Charged across them like the wind, leaped up to the sidewalk, got around the maggot-ridden body of the zombie. The street sign read Rose. Acton Parkway and Rose. He got to the first house, a squat green box of a home that had no door. How had it lost its door? That was irrelevant. If he couldn’t close them in, the place was no sanctuary.

  The second home was yellow, and it had a door. He turned onto the walkway and dashed up it to the house. A car was sitting in the driveway, giving him reason to think that the door might be unlocked. He rushed up the steps to the porch, yanked open the screen, and turned the knob. Locked.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Selena whispered in panic.

  “We’ll find an open door,” Xan whispered. He got off the porch and went to the driveway, giving the car a wide berth since he couldn’t see under it. The windows along the side of the house were closed. At the end of the driveway was the garage. It was a separate structure and the door was pulled down.

  A metal fence separated the driveway from the backyard. The latch was down on the gate. Zombies hadn’t entered the yard unless they had climbed over the fence. Grass and flowers were growing wild on the half of the backyard that was a lawn; the second half was concrete. There was an open shed full of tricycles and kiddie pools, buckets of toys and an empty kennel.
A tall fence surrounded the whole of the backyard. The only way in or out was the gate.

  He looked at the house. A huge glass door to the living room was rolled shut. Xan lifted the gate latch centimeter by centimeter, worried the metal would squeak after being unused for so long. He pushed open the gate, entered the backyard, and closed it behind him. Then he went to the glass door and pushed at the handle. Locked.

  A window was cracked open past the living room. It was high off the ground and rather small. He noticed that at the same moment he heard a scratching from the street. Going to the window, he leaned the rifle against the wall and dug his fingers under the screen.

  It didn’t want to give, but it did. He pulled it down and shoved the window open the whole way. “I’m going to push you up to it. Go in carefully and let yourself down.”

  “What if there are zombies inside?” Selena whispered.

  “The windows aren’t broken and the doors are locked. I don’t think anyone is in there.” He stood her upon the ground, put his hands on the old wood of the sill, and heaved himself up to look in. It was a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower and cabinet, and a door wide open to an empty hallway. At the far end was a bedroom. He dropped down and said, “All clear. Below the window is a sink and counter. Let me take the backpack so it doesn’t unbalance you.”

  She gave it over and he set it down by the rifle. He picked her up and pushed her toward the window legs first. Then she was crouched over and sitting in the sill. “Give me the backpack, Mr. Spencer. I can drop it down to the floor.”

  He passed it up and heard it strike down. Then she began the laborious process of getting herself down to the counter. He willed her silently to hurry up, but this kid was weeks from death and belonged in a hospital bed being waited on hand and foot. Not out in hell climbing around to dodge zombies.

  She dropped out of sight. Immediately there came an enormous crash and a cry. He heaved himself upright to see what had happened. She’d knocked bottles of perfume off the counter in her descent, but at least she hadn’t fallen after them. She had landed on her ass on the counter and was breathing hard from shock and pain.