by Rich Baker
“What the fuck?” she asks aloud as she attempts to go back into the street, but must crash through a split rail fence because her path behind the long piece of aluminum is blocked by a giant piece of steel, torn and shredded with ragged shards poking out along the edges. She drives through the next yard and gets the Explorer back on the street, but she hears something dragging underneath it. She has no choice but to keep going or get overrun by the never-ending supply of zombies coming from in between houses and out of the side streets. She rounds a corner and sees the wreckage of a gas station in front of a Safeway. There's a huge crater where the gas station was, and the structure that covered the pumps is gone, torn into a thousand pieces in the explosion. She guesses this is where the debris she just passed came from.
She drives around the burned-out shells of several cars that lay on their roofs or their sides. Swarms of crows and other birds pick at bones that have been all but stripped bare by fire and carrion hunters. There’s a ribcage in the middle of the road, a skull in the gutter, a leg hanging from a fence with ligaments and tendons holding the bloody bones together. A coyote wanders through the wreckage of the gas station. It stops to watch Danielle, then spies the horde of zombies rounding the corner behind her. It sprints across the street and disappears into the apartment complex, several buildings of which have burned down. At the corner, the pole holding the stop sign is listing to the right, but still, has the street sign attached. 17th Avenue. Danielle remembers 17th Avenue from their trip in from Fort Collins. This must be the same Safeway they passed, but they were on the other side of it. A couple of blocks to the west, halfway up the hill, she sees the overturned Escalade they passed that morning.
“Yes!” she exclaims, but looking at the distance between her and the landmark that can get her out of town, the road is jammed with cars and debris from the explosion, blocking her way. She looks east and sees the road again blocked with crashed cars and more pieces of the gas station. Across the street, she sees the partially destroyed sign for the complex. The name has been obliterated, but across the bottom, it says “A golf course community.” She remembers the golf course they drove through to get there, so she crosses the street, weaves through the cars and debris from both the gas station and the burned down buildings.
On the far side of the maze of buildings and parking lots, she finds the cart path that leads onto the course. She follows it past the seventh green, where it goes under Price Road. The underpass, plenty wide for a golf cart, is just wide enough for the SUV, but she still manages to scrape both sides of the Explorer on the concrete walls, this time losing the side mirror on the driver’s side in the process. She shrugs, not caring about the damage to the vehicle, and once through, she stays on the path until she comes to a street crossing, and from there she makes her way back into the Meadow Lark Neighborhood. She's impressed with herself for making it this far with no map, going only from memory.
The side street is almost deserted, a welcome change from the zombie hordes and mazes of debris she left behind her. She sighs, relaxing her grip on the wheel, feeling her shoulders release their tension. She just might make it out of here!
The next intersection is Alpen View. “Fuck yeah!” she cries out, recognizing this as the street that brought them into town. A few blocks north should get her back to the main highway and then she’s putting this town in her rearview. She makes the right turn and hits the gas.
Her elation is quickly dampened. Alpen View is clogged with cars and zombies. Should have guessed, she thinks, the main road out would be clogged with idiots.
“You all deserve this!” she screams at the windshield. “You assholes couldn’t make it two miles without crashing! God, I hate people.”
She zigs around an old Volkswagen Beetle as a crawling zombie pulls itself toward her. She grimaces and presses the accelerator, feeling the double thump of the tires smashing the creature under two tons of SUV.
Something is wrong. The Explorer starts pulling hard to the left and lists that direction as well. She presses the accelerator, but the vehicle doesn’t speed up. She cracks the door and leans out. The rear tire is flat.
“Shit!” she says. She looks around the neighborhood and makes a quick decision. Zombies are closing in on her, and she’s NOT going to end up like the saps who are seat-belted in their cars, turned into monsters, and trapped forever.
She grabs the knife, tucks it in the small of her back, and the rifle, and climbs out. She takes another look at the tire and sees part of a femur sticking out of the sidewall. She leaves the engine running, hoping that once she’s out of sight, the dead will be drawn to it and not her. She heads toward the nearest house and checks the door. Locked. She sprints to the second one, and it’s unlocked. She goes inside and shuts and locks the door behind her. It’s a bi-level floorplan, with a set of stairs going up and a set going down. She chooses down.
There are no signs of life as she heads to the rear of the house. There’s a laundry room with no windows and a bedroom with a garden level window. She can hear the dead pounding away at the front door, and more worrisome, splintering wood. She closes and locks the bedroom door, not that a hollow core door will hold any of the dead for long if they’re already breaking the front door down. She climbs over what was a young girl’s bed and slides the window open, then pulls the tabs at the bottom of the screen to pull it out. She throws it aside, the corner hitting and ripping a One Direction poster that hangs on the wall over the bed. Sorry, she thinks, more from habit than actual regret.
She takes a quick look out the window before climbing out, and she’s glad she did because the little girl is in the yard. Rather, what used to be the little girl. The ragged, blood covered creature limping toward the open window is no longer a girl.
Shit shit shit shit, she thinks, trying to remember the instructions Robert ran through with them all. Scope on. She flips the power switch on the holographic sight. Safety off. She presses the button, so the red stripe is showing. Put the dot on the thing you want to hit. She raises the rifle and looks through the electronic sight.
She sees a bright green circle with a green dot in the middle of it. She moves it over to the pathetic undead creature heading toward her. It steps and lurches, steps and lurches. Danielle tries to get the circle and dot settled on the thing’s head, but it’s hard. She pulls the trigger and misses completely. Again, another miss. Again, and again.
Breathe, and squeeze. Don’t pull.
She exhales and softens her finger on the trigger. She doesn’t grasp the difference between a squeeze and a pull, but she pulls slower than before. A hole opens in the thing’s neck. She waits until the creature pauses between the step and the lurch and squeezes the trigger again. Fluid sprays out of its head, and it collapses on the edge of the lawn, ten feet from the window.
“Well, that’s not so fucking hard,” she says aloud.
The splintering sound of the front door collapsing gets her moving again, and she climbs through the window, taking the time to close it behind her. She scurries through the yard and climbs over the chain-link fence that separates this house from the one in front of which she abandoned the Explorer. It’s another bi-level, with stairs leading up to the back door. She scans the yard and doesn’t see anything amiss, so she sprints to the stairs and takes them two at a time. The door is locked, so she takes the knife from its sheath and smacks the glass pane closest to the knob with the pommel. A second whack breaks it. She reaches inside and unlocks the door, slipping quickly inside, and locking the door behind her, for all the good it will do.
She does a search of the house and finds no one home. She goes back to the kitchen to see if there’s any food in the house and she finds a note on the counter.
Greg, I’m taking Nicole to my parent’s cabin. I’ve been trying to call you, but the phones have been down. I packed some of your things. Please leave as soon as you can. It’s not safe here. Love, Gloria
Danielle wonders if Gloria made to the cabin,
wherever it is, and if Greg made it home to get her note. Somehow, she doubts it. She makes the mistake of opening the refrigerator and almost vomits from the smell. She slams it shut and leaves the kitchen to escape the odor.
Since she’s in the living room, she goes over to the front window and peeks through the blinds. Out on the street, she sees dozens of zombies prowling around the Explorer. She wonders how she made it this far in that thing. There’s a piece of the split-rail fence sticking out of the grill, a growing pool of some fluid draining toward the gutter and something dangling from the undercarriage below the rear seats.
Well, I beat the shit out of that thing, and it’s still running. Built Ford tough, indeed.
She can’t see what’s happening in the house next door, but she can see zombies wandering away from it so they must have lost interest in the empty house. None of them has so much as looked her way, so she feels mostly secure. She needs food though, and then she needs to figure out her next move.
She finds a can of beef stew in the kitchen, and after digging through the drawers for a while, she finds a can opener. After eating the stew cold, she rummages through the bedrooms. She finds a backpack, which she loads with other canned foods, the can opener and a couple of sets of silverware, and a box of .22 ammunition. It says five hundred rounds, but it’s maybe half full. She ejects the magazine from the Ruger and reloads it. Since that was one of her duties at the Puckett’s, she’s adept at it. Now that she’s ‘in the wild’ she wishes she had put some more thought into her escape, like bringing more magazines for the Ruger or packing some clothes. The bag she had packed at the Puckett compound sits securely next to her bed, and the woman who lived here was way smaller than Danielle, so nothing she left behind will fit.
She double checks that the front door us locked, and takes one of the kitchen chairs and wedges it under the knob. It’s not Fort Knox, but it will have to do. The smoky air has tinted the afternoon light an eerie red, which means it will be dark soon. Danielle takes another chair and barricades herself in the master bedroom. She’ll stay the night, and figure out her next steps in the morning.
Twelve
The Puckett/Harris Compound
“Here it comes,” Annie says. She’s walking several feet behind Amanda in the alley. Both are wearing the ponchos painted with the fluid they’ve drained from the zombie. An undead woman sees them and lopes their way. Both girls are armed with the suppressed .22 pistols from the armory, as they’re calling Danny’s shop now.
The rest of the group are in the upstairs windows of the houses on either side of Danny’s, either watching the test through binoculars or rifle scopes.
“I’ve got a good angle on this one,” Robert says into his mic. “If it makes a move, I’ll take it out. Just don’t move to your left.”
Amanda gives a discreet thumbs-up to let him know she heard him. The creature, which was idling a few minutes ago, is drawn by their movement. As it draws closer, it loses the purposeful stagger it possessed moments before, looking like an old woman who has entered a room and forgotten why she needed to go there. Amanda keeps walking forward at a slow but steady pace.
The zombie slows down and watches Amanda pass. Its gaze now switches between Amanda and Annie.
“Ho-ly shit!” Keith exclaims into his walkie-talkie. “She just walked right past it!”
The zombie’s head tilts back slightly, and it turns back toward Amanda, this time with its arms raising. It opens its mouth and starts to make the trademark shriek they make, and its head rocks to the left as a bullet from Robert’s gun strikes it on the side of the head. It staggers another step, then falls over. Annie puts another bullet in its head as she walks past it.
“Something tipped it off after she passed it,” Robert says. “But it bought her time.”
“Another one is coming,” Annie says. “Can you see it? It’s coming from the cross street.”
“Nope, not yet.”
Moments later another zombie lurches toward them through the vacant lots. It heads for Amanda but hesitates when it sees Annie.
“Annie, try going in a different direction,” Kyle suggests. “Since they have herd-like behavior, if you’re on a different path, maybe it will think you’re more zed-like. Just a thought.”
She veers toward the alley that intersects with theirs, slowing her pace a little. The zombie slows down, looking between her and Amanda, who veers into a driveway and turns around when she reaches the garage door.
The zombie watches her but doesn’t react. It keeps walking on the path it was on originally, bisecting the routes the two girls were following. It passes between them and keeps going to the end of the alley and into the field beyond.
“That was interesting,” Kyle says. “Come on back. I think that’s enough for today.”
“Got it,” Annie says. They head back toward the house, randomizing the patterns they walk. Several more zombies from the big open field see them and start heading their way.
“You’ve picked up a couple of runners,” Robert says. “You may want to pick up the pace.”
“Well, then shoot them!” she says as they quick-step toward the garage.
“I have a better idea,” he says. “I’ll be right down.”
The two women open the gate to the yard and go through the side door rather than slide up the main door. Robert greets them inside.
“I’m going to lead those two runners in here. You guys be ready to shoot them.”
“What? Why?” Amanda asks.
“We need more of their juice to make ponchos for the rest of us. They were out in front by a ways. This should be safe. Ish.”
“Well get out there and let’s get this over with,” Annie says.
Robert steps out of the side door and sees the two runners coming through the vacant lots. He whistles and they change their course, turning toward him. He waits until they reach the driveway before he darts inside the garage where his sister and the newcomer wait.
“They’re right behind me,” he says as he runs out of the line of fire.
Seconds later the first creature runs through the gate, pauses and turns toward the open door. The slides on their pistols clack as the women fire at it, several shots missing, some hitting the neck and shoulders, and finally the head. It collapses just inside the doorway as the second one appears. They fire another volley, and it collapses on top of the first one.
Robert runs over to the door, steps around the two bodies, hops into the yard and shuts the gate just as the next set of zombies comes into view. He hears two suppressed shots as Amanda puts another bullet in each of the zombie’s heads, then she and Annie each grab an arm and drag the top one into the garage. Robert grabs the other one and pulls it inside, and Annie shuts the side door and locks it.
Robert looks up and finds Annie and Amanda glaring at him.
“What?”
“You know what!” Annie says. “You could have gotten us killed! That plan was half-assed! What if we ran out of ammo?”
“I had a shovel back here. I had your backs.”
“Next time, we need more than thirty seconds to come up with a plan.”
“Hey, we needed more bodies, and we got them. We may not always have the luxury of time to come up with the perfect plan. This one was good enough.”
“Fine,” she says. “But you’re draining them and painting the ponchos.” She grabs the jar of menthol gel off of the workbench and tosses it to him. “Have fun.”
Annie and Amanda take their ponchos off and set them on the workbench and disappear into the house.
Thirteen
Amanda Williams’ House
Robert smooths the dirt over the last grave. Amanda watches him, tears running down her face, trying to hide her sobs in her sweatshirt.
Their walk from the Harris compound to Amanda’s house was pretty easy. They only ran across a few zombies that didn’t fall for their camouflage, and Robert shot them before they could get too close.
O
nce they got to Amanda’s house, they found the front door hanging open, and several zombies inside, which they again shot without any trouble. They shut the front door and wedged a chair under the knob, which should keep zombies and all but the most determined scavengers out.
Keith and Stephenie went into the back yard and started digging the graves while Robert, Annie, Amanda, and Ben got bed sheets to wrap the bodies in, and they brought Amanda’s family out to the back yard.
This neighborhood, unlike the one where the Puckett’s and Harris’ live, has the traditional front-load garages and larger backyards with six-foot privacy fences separating them. This affords them plenty of time to dig the holes, place the bodies in them, and fill them in.
For a long time, Amanda just stares at the three patches of dirt and sobs. Annie hugs her and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, rubbing it lightly. Amanda clings to her for a few minutes, then composes herself.
“I never, in my wildest imagination, thought something like this could happen, that I’d be burying them, not because they died from the outbreak, but because of the sick bastards who survived. What do I do now? How do I go on?”
No one knows what to say, so there’s a long pause, which is interrupted by a thump at the front of the house.
“What was that?” she asks.
“Dunno,” Robert says. Another thump vibrates through the yard. “I think I can hear voices though.” He goes over to the gate on the side of the house, and through the gaps in the fence boards, he sees two people walking toward him.
He turns and sprints the other way as a man says “Hey, you, stop!”
“Two people are coming!” he shouts as he rounds the corner of the house. Everyone scrambles for their weapons.
“Who is it?” Ben whispers. “What do they want?”
“I have no idea,” Robert says. “One of them called out to me, but I didn’t stick around to ask what they wanted.”
