“So, how do we want to do this?” Justin asked the group. He was looking around to see if anything was coming from the direction they’d just come from. Kirk looked at the pumps. They were the old kind, the ones that didn’t have a credit card slot in them. He looked back towards the others and said “We’re gonna have to go inside and get the attendant to turn the pumps on for us.” He gestured to the wall near the end of the building, “I see the sign for the bathrooms pointing around the corner of the building, how about Justin comes with me into the station with his weapon ready to re kill any of the dead that could be inside, and we’ll get the pumps on. While we're there, if it’s safe, we’ll grab some cold drinks and snacks for the road and a bowl or something for water for the dog. JC can take Amber to the bathrooms really quick, and Bobby can take Caesar to do his business. Sound good to Y’all?” Everyone agreed, grabbed their weapons and got out of the truck.
Kirk and Justin headed towards the doors in the front of the building. JC motioned to Amber to follow him around the corner of the building, towards the restrooms. He was a few steps ahead of her and decided to check the ladies’ room for predators before she got there. Cautiously, he opened the door and looked around, his metal pipe held high over his head, ready to bash a dead person's skull in if the need arose. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary inside, he lowered his arm as Amber walked up beside him. He moved away from the door, and she quickly went in,
Seeing that the women's bathroom was empty, he let his guard down, assuming the men’s room would be unoccupied as well. When he opened the door however, two figures immediately grabbed him and pulled him inside the bathroom. The door swung shut behind him. He screamed “OH SHIT!” and tried to get away from them. He whacked at them wildly with his pipe, but they were on him. Man, those suckers were strong! He managed to get away from them momentarily, by locking himself into one of the filthy stalls, but one of them were pounding on the stall door, and the other… Where was the other one?!? He heard it drop to the floor and start dragging itself under the stall! He screamed “HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP!” at the top of his lungs. He hoped that Amber would hear him from the other bathroom and get the guys or something, or he was going to die.
Amber had just finished up, when she heard JC yelling from next door. She grabbed her spear from the floor where she’d laid it down and bolted out of the ladies’ room door. Bobby had heard the commotion and yelling as well and was running over to the bathrooms too. As Amber came out the door, they collided and fell to the ground. They both shot to their feet and went to the men’s room, flinging the door open, not knowing what was in there with JC, or how many.
There were two zombies in the room with the large man. One banging on a closed stall door and the other was crawling slowly across the floor, trying to get under the stall. “I got the one standing up,” Amber said quickly. She jabbed the spear into the back of its neck. It turned around as she pulled it out, but she swiftly jabbed it again. This time, the spear went straight into its right eye, effectively putting it down. Bobby still had his 1911 in its holster on his hip, so he pulled it out and shot the crawling monster in the head twice. Both were dead in a matter of a few seconds.
Bobby knocked on the stall door and told JC it was safe to come out now. The danger was over. JC had blood on his shirt but convinced Amber and Bobby that it was the dead people's blood, not his own and that he was perfectly fine, just rattled. He kicked himself for not keeping his guard up. He’d have to do better, or he wasn’t gonna make it. “Damn the luck,” he said. “Had to pee so bad, I pissed myself when the fuckers pulled me in.” Bobby smirked, “At least you were in the bathroom. You might want to change your pants though; I don’t want to ride in the truck with you smelling like piss.” JC nodded and went to the truck, retrieved his laundry bag from the bed and grabbed the extra pair pants he’d brought. He went back to the bathrooms to change. He left his dirty pants on the floor with the twice dead zombies and went back to the truck.
Inside the service station, Kirk and Justin found an old woman lying on the floor with a bullet hole in her forehead. The cash register was open and empty. “Looks like this place got robbed,” Justin exclaimed. “Guess we don’t have to pay for fuel or drinks now. It really is the beginning of the end, isn’t it?” Kirk just nodded his head, “Go check out the back room for something for the dog to eat and drink from.” he said. Justin walked through the curtain separating the back room from the store and disappeared. Kirk looked around the counter for a button or lever to turn the pumps on. He found a red button under the counter, below the register and pushed it. The pump dinged from outside. He hollered to Justin to hurry up, while he grabbed an empty sack and filled it with bottled waters and candy bars. On second thought, he grabbed a case of his favorite beer as well. He stood at the door, waiting for Justin.
Justin materialized a few seconds later with a small grin on his face. He had a candy bar sticking out of his mouth and a metal bowl and a bag of cheap dog food in his hands. Together they headed out the door towards the truck. They met up with JC, Bobby and Amber outside. They quickly told the two men what had transpired in the bathroom. “Aww man, I wanted to kill something,” Justin whined. “All that was inside was a dead woman with a hole in her head. Got some dog food though.” Caesar, who had been forgotten by Bobby when JC screamed, had heard the word food and came up to Justin, sniffing the bag in his hand. “Okay,” Kirk said. “Y’all get in the truck. Me and Justin will fill up the gas tank while Caesar has a drink and a bite to eat. Here, take this bag of water and case of beer. I have a feeling we’re going to want the beer later.”
Amber, Bobby, JC and Caesar got into the truck. Amber handed out bottles of water from the bag Kirk had just handed her and poured one into the metal bowl Justin had found. Caesar lapped greedily at the water. When he’d finished, she opened the bag of food and put some in the bowl for him to snack on. She opened another bottle of water for herself and chugged it down. “Crying makes you thirsty,” she said sadly as she watched Kirk pump gas while Justin stood lookout. The slip tank in the bed of the truck had been empty earlier, but Kirk filled it up as well. When the fueling was complete, Kirk and Justin got back into the truck and they headed down the road in the general direction of Hico. No one noticed that the red spot on JC shirt was getting bigger.
Chapter 32
Star’s house
Richmond VA
With the heater on, the living room had a bright orange glow. Isaac realized that the light would be seen from outside if they didn’t cover the blinds or move to another room in the middle of the house. “We need to move to my bedroom,” he said to his grandparents. “We don’t want anyone to see the light from the heater and know we’re in here.” They agreed and picked up their weapons, blankets, phones and the heater and moved to Isaac’s room.
Isaac’s room was smaller than the living room, had no windows and was next to the bathroom. It also contained a futon he used for playing his video games, a computer desk with comfy chair and his loft bed. Posters and pictures lined his walls and matched the various collectables he had accrued over the years. To him, it was the ideal space to hide out in. He spent a lot of time in his room, especially since the schools had been closed and all his learning had to be virtual. He loved his room.
Charles helped Star to sit down on the futon, her hip was paining her pretty badly from the short walk from the living room. Meanwhile, Isaac plugged the heater in using the flashlight app from his phone to see with. “Smart thinking kiddo,” Charles said. “We shouldn’t be seen in here, as long as we don’t leave the door open for the light from the heater to bleed out.” Having moved everything, they needed into Isaac’s room made them hungry. It was dinnertime after all.
After discussing how to get food from the kitchen without being noticed, they decided that they would need to take the lightbulbs out of the refrigerator and microwave if they wanted to remain unseen while they used the appliances at night. The kitchen had windows on two
sides of the room. One window faced the backyard, but the other looked out at the neighbor’s yard. Their neighbor didn’t have a fence or anything to keep the dead from entering the backyard. The light from the fridge or microwave might be seen from the road and ‘better safe than sorry’ was the new motto these days. The first time opening the appliances would be tricky, but once the bulbs were out, they’d be good to go. Charles elaborated, “Fridge will be easiest. Need two people to do it quickly though. I’ll open the door, and Isaac, you can reach in there real fast and push the button that turns it off when the door shuts. After you’ve done that, I'll unscrew the bulb, and we’ll be golden. “That’ll work,” Isaac replied. “Let’s do the fridge first,” Charles suggested. “Ok Papa let’s do it now, I’m hungry,” Isaac said.
They got to it. It was a relatively easy job. With the refrigerator light bulb gone, they loaded up a basket from the top of the fridge with sodas, bottled waters, ketchup, string cheese, yogurt and finally a pack of hotdogs intended for the microwave. As an afterthought, Charles retrieved a box of granola bars and a pack of hotdog buns from the cabinet next to the refrigerator. Next, came the hard part. The microwave would be trickier. “Let’s do it the same way, this time I’ll open the door and you unscrew the bulb, Papa.” Isaac whispered. Charles nodded. Isaac quickly opened the door and Charles stuck his hand into the microwave to retrieve the bulb. He couldn’t get it unscrewed though. This wasn’t going as well as planned.
Suddenly, a noise came from outside the window facing the neighbor’s house. Both the men jumped at the sound, and Isaac almost screamed, but was able to stop himself. He had been concentrating so hard on what Charles was doing, that he hadn’t been paying attention to anything else. The noise came again followed by a loud smack on the window. A hand was reaching through the bars and was now pounding on the window. A few more slaps came, followed by the sound of cracking glass. A second later, the glass shattered, and a hand came reaching through the curtain. Isaac quickly shut the microwave door and he and Charles grabbed the basket and quickly made their way back to Isaac’s room. Star was waiting for them and once they were in the room, she shut the door. They ate cold hotdogs along with their yogurt and string cheese for dinner, while they tried to stay quiet, hoping the dead outside would go away.
Chapter 33
Amber’s truck
Outside Hamilton TX
The group wasn't too far from Hico now. As the miles went by, they started seeing more signs that the dead were here or had been here. Looking out the window, Justin pointed out some large shapes in a field on the right side of the highway. “What the hell are those?” He asked aloud. “Looks like a herd of sleeping longhorn cattle,” Kirk replied. “I used to rope and wrangle cows back in my heyday. I can spot a heifer from a mile away,” he said proudly. “Those aren’t sleeping cows,” Amber pointed out. She was staring at the lumps. She continued “They look dead and some of them are lumpier than others.” Kirk slammed on the brakes and they all looked around. “By golly, I think she’s right,” Kirk said. He honked the horn, and a few of what resembled cows, moved. They quickly discovered that the lumps in the filled were cows, but they weren’t just cows. Surrounding the cattle were zombies of all shapes and sizes. They were eating them too! The sound of the honking horn alerted the dead cannibals that something was still alive and the virus inside them, pushed them to spread it. About 30 in total left their messy meals in the field and shuffled slowly in the direction of the truck. “Time to get out of her Pawpaw,” Bobby said in a low voice. “Sure thing Hoss,” Kirk replied and got the truck rolling again. “We’ve only got about 20 more miles until we get to my son’s house anyhow.” As they headed down the road, the zombies trailed behind them.
The devastation caused by the virus fueled death was everywhere here. There was an old farmhouse with what looked, from a distance, like a truck had crashed through the front door. There was a wall of undead surrounding the house and from the truck, they could see fire coming from under the wreckage. There was a figure on the roof of the farmhouse. When Kirk saw the person on the roof, he immediately turned onto the long dirt driveway that led to the house. When he got closer, they saw that it was a boy on the roof. He saw them and started waving his hands at them, screaming for help. “We can’t leave that poor boy to die. If the zombies don’t get him, he’ll fall or die of thirst or something,” Amber said, still heartbroken by their little boy's death earlier in the day. Bobby quickly agreed saying, “We have to find a way to rescue him. If it was our son, I’d want strangers to help him. Quick guys, think! What do we do?”
“Run ‘em over!” JC said through gritted teeth. He had noticed that he had been bitten as they were driving away from the gas station back in Gatesville, but since he didn’t feel too bad then, thought maybe he was immune or something and didn’t say anything to any of his fellow passengers. He was feeling it now though. He wanted to cough, but held it in. His brain was flashing images of him biting Caesar, and his mouth watered uncontrollably. His brain longed for steak. Or better yet, meat. Any meat would do. He was starving. He had to actively resist the urge to take a chunk out of the other passengers in the truck.
We don’t have a ladder; how do we get him down from there?” Justin queried. “He had to get up there somehow,” Kirk replied. “Let’s start with the dead folks surrounding the house and then we’ll play it by ear.” He whipped the truck around the back side of the house, plowing through the crowd of zombies, throwing them to the left and right of the truck. One monster landed on the hood of the truck and immediately started slapping the now cracked windshield, trying to get to the meaty bits of flesh inside.
“This isn’t going to work Kirk. They’re gonna tear the truck up and then we’re gonna be surrounded,” Bobby said. Kirk replied, “You gonna let one dead sucker on the truck ruin that boy's chances of survival?” He was surprised that Bobby wasn’t more worried about the poor soul on the roof of the farmhouse. As they continued their drive around the house, they spotted a conveniently placed ladder. The boy must have used the ladder to climb to the roof and the clumsy zombies knocked the ladder down. “So that’s how the kid got stuck!” Kirk gaped. “I’m gonna the ones nearby over with the truck. JC and Justin, Y’all got out there and get that ladder back up. Bobby, you and Amber hop out and run away a bit, yelling. That should get the dead's attention away from JC and Justin long enough for them to get that ladder up and the boy down.” Kirk was the boss of the crew at work and his voice now commanded compliance.
Kirk slammed into the wall of creatures again, knocking them over and running some of the under the tires. As soon as he stopped, everyone exited the truck with their weapons ready. Even Caesar joined the effort. The dog began taunting the undead that were getting back up by running near them and then running away from the arms reaching to grab him. He barked and howled, leading some of the creatures away, into a grove of trees behind the farmhouse. Amber and Bobby quickly retreated from the truck and began screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to get the attention of every zombie they could. When the monsters reached them, they used their weapons. Amber speared the ones following her, when they got close enough. Bobby drew his 1911 and started shooting the ones closest to him in the head, which drew more attention to him and away from the ladder.
JC and Justin had a small window of opportunity to get that ladder up. Kirk hollered to get the boys attention. He yelled for him to be ready once the ladder was up against the house. JC grabbed the ladder and manhandled the thing upright and then Justin helped him push it against the house. The boy was waiting at the edge and as soon as the ladder was positioned, he started down it, taking one rung at a time, being careful not to fall. Justin held the ladder for the boy and urged him to descend faster. “Come on kid, we ain’t got all day! It’s almost dark and we won’t last much longer if the ones we passed on the road are headed this way too. Hurry kid, hurry!”
JC had stood back once they’d gotten the ladder in place. His
mind wasn’t working like it should. Coherent thought was almost impossible now. He was SO hungry! He needed to eat something, MEAT, NOW! His brain once again flashed images of him chewing on flesh and his mouth drooled. Vibrant images of him devouring his friends filled his mind. The virus fueled grey matter in his head led him to the open driver's side door where Kirk was standing. Kirk saw him coming and asked, “What’s up pardner? Get in the truck, yer job is done now.” JC didn’t hear him though. The only word he heard in his head was ‘MEAT’ and she shambled closed. Kirk noticed that his eyes looked funny as he walked towards him and knew something was wrong. He pulled his .38 out of his pocket and aimed it at his friend. “Stop buddy or yer gonna get it right between the eyes!” he yelled. JC just kept coming. His brain had shifted completely and now he was no different than the other undead. Kirk had no choice. Only a few steps from him now, Kirk pulled the trigger.
Justin turned around, surprised to hear Kirk yelling and saw JC walking towards Pawpaw, who had his pistol out, pointing it at him. “JC stop!” Justin screamed, but it was too late. Kirk aimed and shot JC in the face, shattering his cheekbone and left eye socket. The bullet didn’t stop JC though, he just kept coming for Kirk. Justin let go of the ladder the boy was still climbing down and dove for JC’s feet. His impact with JC knocked the man down two steps away from Kirk, who was stunned that this was happening to one of his very best friends. He recovered quickly though and shot his buddy in the back of the head as JC tried to grab at his feet.
Made In Mexico | Book 1 | Day 1 Page 7
