by M. D. Massey
She grabbed as much ammunition as her shopping basket could carry and then came to the knife section. A long machete caught her eye, so she grabbed it and slung that around her waist too. She was so loaded down with weapons that she felt like a video game character.
Back in the car, she unloaded everything except the pistol in the holster around her waist that she hadn't tried yet. She’d grabbed all the instruction manuals for the weapon she'd stolen and would read them at night instead of the boring magazines she’d read last night.
She kept her trusty hunting knife in a holster on her hip and started the car as the horde of zombies caught up with her truck. She groaned and rolled her eyes as she backed out of the parking lot and started down the street to the grocery store. She could outrun the ghouls if she kept moving, but the minute she stopped, they caught up with her.
At the grocery store, she shot several ghouls with the pistol she’d learned to load in the car. Inside, she looked around the store for zombies. The clerk behind that counter already had its head bashed in. Many of the shelves had been looted, but there was plenty of junk food left for the taking. She grabbed a basket and started dropping bags of chips in to the cart. Candy bars, water bottles, and energy drinks. She rounded the corner to the canned food section and filled the cart with the remaining contents of the shelves.
Then she heard shuffling on the next aisle over and left her cart, pulling the pistol out of the holster. She expected to find a zombie, but instead she found a cowering young man in the middle of the snack aisle with an open can of peanuts and a bottle of water in his hand. He shot his hands into the air and gaped at her. A bloodied pipe sat on the ground behind him, and she assumed he'd been the one to take out the store clerk.
Their eyes met, and she lowered her gun.
"You're alive," she said.
"Yes.”
"I'm Sasha. Who are you?"
"I'm Carlos." He looked around nervously.
"You're only the second person I've met alive," she said.
"I didn't know anyone else had survived. I wasn’t even sure this was real,” he muttered.
"What's that?" she said, not catching his last statement.
"I thought I was hallucinating," he said more clearly.
"Afraid not, buddy. It's the apocalypse. Looks like a nightmare but this ain't no dream." Perusing the snacks, she grabbed the bottles of honey roasted peanuts and threw them into her basket as well.
"I've been seeing them for so long, I didn't know if it was real this time around."
"You've been seeing what for so long?" she said, lifting an eyebrow. This kid was a trip.
"The zombies," he said, cocking his head back at the dead clerk slumped over the counter.
Sasha was beginning to think that there was something not quite right about Carlos, but he was another living human, so she was willing to give him a chance.
"I just walked out of the Peaceful Brook Mental Institution yesterday. My zombie visions started years ago five years ago. For all I knew, I was back in my room at the institution."
"Well, I'm pretty sure I'm real," she said.
"How can I be sure?" he asked.
"I could slap you across the face if you want," she suggested, throwing more snacks into basket.
"Would you?" he asked sincerely.
"Sure, why not," she said, shrugging.
He stepped closer and squeezed his eyes closed, presenting her with his cheek. She looked at him skeptically and then took a deep breath, cocking back her hand as she let it fly and slapped him hard across the face. He shrieked and pulled back, cupping his cheek in his hand.
"Ow!" he wailed. "That hurt."
"Well, you asked me to do it," she said. "Did it help?"
"Well, I didn't wake up, and I definitely felt the pain."
"Is that proof enough for you?” she asked.
"That’s what they always say in the movies."
"And as everyone knows, everything they say in the movies is one hundred percent true."
"I don't know any other tests to determine if I’m dreaming or not. Do you?"
"If this was a dream, what would I be doing right now?" she teased.
"Showing me your boobs?" he suggested hopefully.
"See, there. That ain’t going to happen, so you can be pretty sure that this is not a dream."
He considered that for a moment, scratching his chin, and then smiled.
"Great. That means that a zombie apocalypse really is happening, and I'm not hallucinating,"
"See. There's always a silver lining," Sasha said.
20
Neville left his playmate strapped in the basement and left the house with his new rifle. He peppered his neighbors with bullets, slicing through the ghouls with thrilled abandon. He laughed gleefully as he watched their heads explode with a pop. Fragments of skull and brain flew in the air and sprayed across the sidewalk as they fell to the ground. He’d counted his kills but got bored with counting at about fifty-seven. He had more important things to do than count zombies.
He needed a new vehicle if he was going to do the apocalypse right. He couldn't drive around in his nondescript sedan. He needed an armored car. But where would he find something like that? The only armored cars he knew of were either tanks or bank vans. Either one would do.
He knew his city had recently acquired some used military equipment to contain protesters, so he made his way to the police station with hopes of finding what he needed there. The streets were crowded with the undead who gorged on the bodies of the barely living. He watched a man chomping into the meaty flesh of a rotund woman's breasts as she screamed and struggled on the ground. He honked his horn and waved as he drove by, laughing mercilessly at the carnage.
This was, hands down, the best thing that had ever happened to him. It was glorious and moving beyond measure. In some ways, he felt a kinship to the zombies. Though he wouldn't want to be one of the mindless, brain eating ghouls, he did appreciate their motivations.
When he made it to the police station, he climbed out of his sedan and shot half a dozen zombies in the face before moving to the station itself. He opened the door and opened fire at the same time, taking out the cop zombies as they groped toward him. Seeing the pigs fall to their knees under his reign of fire was truly a sight to behold. It was beautiful. So much cop blood spilled on the white tile floor.
He walked through the station, and into the parking lots where they kept the military equipment. His city had riots the year before and they’d brought in half a dozen tanks to disperse the crowds of hippies and minorities. The people of his city had been up in arms about the fact, but he couldn't appreciate it more. He walked around the parking lot, shooting a zombie here and there. Finally, after walking through the police cruisers and SUVs, he came to what he was looking for. A vehicle that looked like a cross between a Jeep and a tank.
He rapped his knuckles against the thick, bulletproof glass on the windshield and smiled. It had huge knobbly tires that would crunch the bodies of zombies in its wake. When he climbed inside, he found the key in the ignition and turned on the motor. It hummed to life and he chuckled with glee.
Neville stepped on the gas and plowed through the chain-link fence. Now that he had his armored vehicle, he was unstoppable. Instead of driving around the zombies as he had on the way over, he plowed right over them, squishing them beneath his thick tires. Crunch, crunch, crack. The most satisfying sound known to man.
Neville couldn't stop laughing. His laughter grew hysterical after he plowed through a horde of a dozen zombies shambling aimlessly down the street. He had his palm on the steering wheel, hooting and hollering. He couldn't wait to take his little ginger for a ride. Oh, what fun they would have! He didn't even feel the need to torture her anymore. Just having her by his side would be satisfying enough as he crunched over the bodies of the dead and the living.
He parked on the lawn outside his suburban home and began to transfer his supplies to the truck. H
e could live anywhere he wanted. A mansion by the beach. The White House. Why the hell not? He could take over the world. Seemed like a damn good plan to him.
After he transferred his supplies to the armored truck, he went down to the basement and found his ginger slumbering on the gurney. Her eyes fluttered open, and she began to scream under her gag when she saw him. He caressed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, smiling at her delicate pale face.
"Don't be afraid, dear," he said. “I'm not going to hurt you. I’m going to take you on a little road trip.”
She squirmed and screamed as he took her out of the restraints and yanked her to her feet. He pulled her up the stairs, her hands still strapped behind her back and her legs barely working from disuse. Seeing her clumsily tripping about, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. He was impatient to get out there and kill him some zombies. Her round bottom was right in his face, and he couldn't resist the urge to smack it. It gave the most satisfying cracking sound, so he did it several more times as he walked her up the stairs, using more force with each slap.
By the time he got her to the top of the stairs, her bottom, skirted by her frilly white dress, was rather red with handprints. He was so hard from the sight of it, he could barely resist the urge to have a little fun with her right there. His favorite game usually happened after they were dead, but he wasn’t ready to kill her quite yet. He took her outside, shooting zombies with the pistol tucked in his belt before pushing her into the tank and strapping her in the passenger seat.
"We're going to have so much fun together," he whispered in her ear with a smile.
All she did was weep and shake. He was getting tired of her behavior, so he pulled open the neck of her dress, revealing her shapely breasts underneath. With his knife, he cut open her bra and let her big, beautiful breasts hang out.
"That's better," he said, patting her knee. "You going to be the most wonderful traveling companion."
He walked around the other side of the vehicle and climbed in, glancing over at his ginger’s round breasts and pert rose-colored nipples. His dick was so hard he could barely sit but he decided he would wait until later to satisfy his urges. He had more important things to do now.
Using his intense arousal as his motivation, he turned around on his neighbor’s lawn. Flipping on the radio, he looked for music but found nothing. Instead, he turned his cellphone on loud, playing his favorite band. He sang at the top of his lungs as he crunched over every zombie he could find. His ginger screamed under her duct tape gag beside him, her breasts jiggling every time he hit another walking corpse. This was literally the best day of his life.
"Twenty points," he said as he crunched over a zombie child.
The girl wept, tears streaming out of her big blue eyes.
“Aren’t you having fun?" he asked.
He pulled the gag off her mouth.
"Just let me go," she begged. “Please. You don't have to do this.”
"I don't have to do anything I don't want to anymore, dear," he said. “The world is mine. And if you play your cards right, I won't kill you."
"Why are you doing this?" she sobbed.
"Because I can.”
"Please…" she whispered, and then went silent. Her voice was raw from screaming and he was glad to finally stop hearing it. It was never fun when they screamed when he didn't want them to. He liked to look at her pretty little mouth and he imagined what use he might make of it as he crunched over the zombies in the road.
"Where would you like to go?" he asked her, heading onto the freeway. “Should we head to the beach, the desert, or the mountains?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Come on, you must have some preference,” he said, rubbing her thigh.
"I've always wanted to see the ocean," she said.
"That's a good girl," he said. “If you keep this up. I might make you my special girl."
She looked at him with hope in her eyes, and he gave her a big toothy grin. She may be more fun alive than dead, after all. Especially if she did what she was told.
He took the freeway west, heading to the ocean. The traffic was locked up on the freeway, and he had to plow through vehicles and the bodies of the dead as he drove. During the long drive, he stole glances at his redhead’s bouncing breasts and despondent face.
"My name is Neville," he said, deciding to introduce himself. He might as well fill the silence and get to know this girl a little better. If he decided to keep her alive, it would be useful to understand what made her tick. "What's your name?"
"Melanie," she said. "Melanie Parker."
21
Tucker threw his fishing line into the water and slowly reeled it back between sips of whiskey as he sat on the dock behind his cabin. The early morning sun shone on his face, glinting off his sunglasses and warming his blood. The mountain air was fresh and cool. He took a deep breath as he reeled in his line and cast again.
"Nothing like an early morning fishing session during the apocalypse," he said to himself with a smile.
Things were turning up, and he couldn't be happier with his decision to head to Lake Tahoe. He'd always wanted to stay in one of these cabins, like one of those rich bastards. Now that everyone in the world was dead, he had the opportunity to live his dreams. His hook plopped in the aqua blue waters of Lake Tahoe. Overhead, an expansive sky was dotted with big puffy clouds. A flock of geese flew past, squawking and seemingly unaware that the world had ended. The place was so idyllic, he had to remind himself he was in the middle of the apocalypse.
In all his years, he couldn't remember a more pleasant morning. He reeled his line and felt the familiar tug on the hook. He gave a satisfied ‘ah’ and continued to reel, fighting against the mountain lake trout as he drew back on the reel. He brought it to the dock and scooped it up with the net he found in the cabin.
The fish was a good twelve inches. Distinct rainbow-colored scales glinted in the morning sunshine. He pulled the hook from its mouth and threw the fish in a bucket of water. He sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He cast again, hoping to add three more fish to his haul this morning before he took them all back to the little cabin to gut and cook.
As he felt the telltale sign of a fish on his hook, he heard the sound of a motor rolling up the gravel driveway. He tugged on the reel, glancing over his shoulder at the vehicle approaching his cabin, his cigarette clenched between his teeth. He was not prepared for company, nor did he want any. His attention was caught between the yellow Jeep parking in front of his cabin and the fish on his line.
"God dammit," Tucker muttered around the cigarette in his mouth.
He pulled the fish out of the lake and pulled off the hook from its cheek, plopping it in the water with the other two. He grabbed the handle of the white bucket and started up the dock to confront whoever had come to interrupt his peace, his pistol holstered at his hip. When he'd crossed around in front of the cabin, he saw the driver emerge from the vehicle and did a double take.
The driver was a shapely thirtysomething with long brown hair, a pouty mouth, a round behind, and eyes hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses. She slammed her car door and motioned for whoever was in the passenger seat stay put. Tucker peered through the reflection in the glass, seeing a little girl who was the spitting image of the woman.
The woman wore skinny jeans and black tank top under a flannel shirt that did nothing to disguise her extremely appealing curves. She gripped the handle of a machete at her waist and put her other hand on her hip, cocking her head to the side. She did not seem happy to see him. He wanted to think the feeling was mutual, but looking up and down her shapely body, he would have been lying.
"Hello," he said, setting down the bucket of fish. "What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"This is my cabin," she said. "It belonged to my parents."
"I didn't see your name written on it. What is your name, anyway?" he asked.
"None of your business, asshole. What
are you doing in my parents’ cabin?"
"Considering it's a zombie apocalypse. I didn't think anybody would be coming back," he said, growing irritated with her spit and vinegar. He liked them feisty. No matter how off-putting and foul mouthed she might be, he had to admit that he liked her already. "My name's Tucker Cross," he said, reaching out to take her hand to shake. "I think we got off on the wrong foot."
She didn't take his hand, but crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him instead. He snatched his hand back and rested it on his hip.
"I got a bucket of fish if you'd like some," he said.
"Who is that, Mommy?" the little girl said, peering out of the other side of the car.
"Get back inside, Niah," her mother snapped.
"I've got enough for everyone," he said.
The woman looked him up and down and pursed her lips. Then she let out a long sigh of resignation.
"My name is Jada Sinclair, and this is my daughter, Niah. We drove all the way from San Jose to get here. I haven’t seen another living soul the whole way."
"We’ve got that in common. I came in from Reno."
"If you wouldn’t mind sharing your fish," Jada finally said, "we would appreciate it."
"Great. Come on inside.”
Jada nodded and went back to her Jeep, grabbing her supplies from the back seat as the little girl climbed out of the car and trotted over to look in the bucket.
"There really are fish in there," she said to her mother. “Can we go fishing later, Mommy?"
"Can't see why not. But now we need a rest."
She carried her duffle bag over her shoulder, and followed Tucker into the cabin. He sure did like the look of her, and her sassy attitude didn't hurt either. Not that he was interested in taking on a woman and a kid in the middle of the apocalypse. Seemed like a lot of baggage for him. It would be nice to have somebody living around, though. He’d been feeling a little lonesome since he’d had to kill Amy.
