by R. M. Smith
Rainey was swimming with me, kicking her legs. She was so scared.
How did we get knocked into the water? Did the ship hit so hard it knocked people in? We swam around bobbing shipping containers.
“They’re catching up to me,” Rainey cried, swimming as fast as she could.
“Hurry, climb up onto this container,” I said. I climbed up the side on a ladder. Rainey climbed up next to me, her breath fast.
She wore a bathing suit, the same one she had been wearing on the beach. Her legs were covered in old scars and deep welts.
She asked, “Can they get us up here, Jon?”
“We should be safe. They can’t climb. Here, follow me.” We ran along the top of the shipping crates jumping over gaps between them. “Climb higher,” I yelled, mounting more ladders. The shipping containers were stacked high in the water.
“Wait, Jon, my legs are getting tired,” Rainey cried. A zombie reached for her, its hand scaly, covered in seaweed.
I bent down to grab her hand but I couldn’t reach far enough!
She was ripped away from me down under the dark water. Bubbles surfaced.
Uncle Kent’s booming voice, “She won’t be able to get out of there. She’s weak.”
Then, dark laughter.
The truck hit a drift. The frame jostled jerking me awake. “Sorry kid,” Doc said. “The road’s pretty rough. Drifts are deep.”
“It’s alright,” I said, sitting up in the seat. Just a dream! Damn! Jesus! I asked, “Where are we?”
“About thirty minutes further than we were last time you asked. This is taking a long time. The roads are crowded.”
I blinked my eyes, pushing my dream thoughts away.
Churning through the snow, the 4x4 roared past stalled cars. Each car was neatly buried under the snow, drifts forming around each one individually like whipped topping. In spots, bare highway showed where the winds had blown the snow completely off. In other spots, the 4x4 fought to get through.
“This is going to take a long time,” Wendy said from the back. “Doc, you think we’ll have enough gas?”
“We’re at three quarters of a tank. In good weather, we should get there just fine. In this weather? I don’t know.”
“Take the Battle Lake exit when you see it,” Wendy said.
“Will do.”
I asked, “Doc?”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t want to ask because I knew he had told me to leave it alone, but I had to know. “Why did you leave your wife out there?”
“What? Your wife?” Wendy asked.
Doc shot me an annoyed look. “I told you to leave it alone.”
“But I need to know,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Wendy asked.
I turned in my seat to face her. I told her about Doc, Ben and I getting stuck in the hardware store and the woman shooting a gun to get the zombie’s attention. “Doc said that woman was his wife.”
“Yes,” Doc nodded, the truck plodding along through the drifts. “Her name was Gretchen.”
“How could you let her die?” Wendy asked, putting her hand on his shoulder.
He looked at her in the rearview mirror for a long time. I thought he was going to drive off the road he looked at her for so long. Finally, with a gruff of a laugh he said, “She was a world traveler. She’d go to Italy, France, Germany, all paid for by yours truly. She’d go alone. Never wanted me to come. Never invited me. Never said there was room for me. She had special hotel rooms she’d rent, her rental cars, all the good stuff. I found an itinerary once. She left it open on our bed. I came home early from work because I was coming down with the flu. Boss didn’t want me around giving out flu shots if I was sick.” He sighed with a rejected laugh. “I had ideas…well, let’s say I was aware something was going on. An affair. A secret meeting. I don’t know, but in her itinerary she had written ‘meet Frank by the fountains.’
“Oh no,” Wendy said quietly.
“It gets worse,” Doc said with a reproachful smile. He shook his head. “She left her itinerary out on purpose. She meant for me to find it. It was her ‘out.’ She wanted out of our marriage and planted the book right where I could see it because she knew, like always, I would go to bed after working at the pharmacy. I worked long hours. I confronted her about it. She told me all about Frank and the wonderful times she had with him on my dime. She went into some steamy details that I won’t go into here. So, I slapped her. Right across the face. She fell onto the bed crying calling me an abusive son of a bitch. Honestly, I could have easily killed her with my bare hands right there on the spot; but, I was a good husband to her, providing shelter and food for 22 years. She used me. She used me and my money to cheat behind my back. It had been going on for 12 years.”
“Wow,” I said quietly. “That’s messed up.”
“You haven’t heard the worst of it kid. She made me pay for Frank’s airline ticket to the states. She told him I had found out about their little secret. I said, no problem. I’ll get him here. So I set up his flights making sure that every single layover he had lasted as long as possible. The last layover was in Fargo, North Dakota. Gretchen was pissed at me for the long layovers and the final flight which landed in Fargo instead of Minneapolis, so she forced me to drive her to Fargo to meet him. I told her she was insane. I wasn’t going to take her to her lover. ‘It’s the last you’ll see of me, Dick,’ she told me. ‘I’m leaving you, and I’ll use this if you don’t take me.’ She was holding a pistol. So I drove her. Our car is out there on the highway a few miles on the other side of St. Cloud. We got stuck in the blizzard. She cussed me up and down blaming me for getting stuck telling me I did it on purpose. Of course I hadn’t. I got out to push the car but it was stuck. I thought I had a shovel or something in the trunk, you know, something to dig us out. The only thing in there was my crowbar.
‘What’s a crowbar going to do?’ she yelled at me. ‘You big dummy.’
“We went to Doyle’s. She yelled at me up and down calling me a loser, a fat slob who can’t even drive in the snow. She told me she was leaving. She’d find a car and drive herself to Fargo. She told me not to follow her. She was done with me.” Doc wiped his eyes. “So I let her leave. I watched her disappear into the blizzard.”
Wendy and I were quiet.
Doc cleared his throat. “That’s why I didn’t look for her. Sad thing is, she saved my life without even knowing it. She couldn’t have known it was us when we were surrounded by the zombies in the hardware store. She saved our lives…and I let hers go.”
“It’s not your fault, Doc,” Wendy said, patting his shoulder. “She made the choice to leave.”
“Yea,” he nodded looking at her in the rearview mirror. “And she used the pistol she threatened me with to later save my life.”
The truck pushed steadily through the deep snow. “Get some sleep you two,” Doc said. “I’m fine. I’ll holler if there’s trouble.”
I settled back down in my seat. “I’m sorry, Doc.”
“Me too,” he said.
Wendy laid down in the back.
We didn’t talk about Gretchen anymore.
A few hours later Doc woke us up. “Battle Lake exit two miles ahead.”
“Oh wow. We’re almost there,” Wendy said, a sleepy cheer in her voice.
“Finally,” I added sitting up.
Eight miles later we drove into the small town of Battle Lake. It was a simple town having several souvenir/bait shops, a bakery, a laundromat, a small grocery store, and a Dairy Queen.
The town was quiet and dark, buried deep under the snow. No streetlights were on. No light came from any building. The snow was unbroken on the main road leading into town.
We were quiet, expecting at any second for a mass of zombies to come running at us from any direction.
“Place looks dead,” Doc said.
“And empty,” I added.
Wendy asked, “Didn’t zombies make it here yet?”
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br /> “Maybe not,” Doc said. “It’s remote here, like you said. Maybe people were warned ahead of time and got out.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but wouldn’t there be tire tracks in the snow?”
“They’re covered up. It’s been snowing ever since we left St Cloud.”
Passing through town the highway dipped down toward the lake the town had been named after. We couldn’t see the other side of the lake in the darkness.
“So dark,” I said staring out at the blackness. The dashboard lights reflected in my window.
“Wait a second,” Wendy said suddenly. “I think I just saw a flash out there.”
“What? Where?” I asked.
“In the distance. A quick bright flash of light.”
“Maybe a transformer blew,” Doc said leaning over closer to me looking out my window. His eyes squinted. “What was it?”
Wendy said quietly, “Didn’t look like a transformer to me.”
We crashed into the back of a parked car.
Doc’s airbag deployed knocking him out. When we hit I was shoved forward on my seat. My seatbelt slashed my neck cutting me but not deep. Wendy bumped into the back of my seat cricking her neck.
The truck died.
“Shit! What the hell!” I yelled. “Doc you alright?”
He didn’t answer. He leaned back in his seat unconscious.
“Fuck. Doc? Come on man! Wake up.” I shook him. His head rolled to the side.
“We need to wake him up,” Wendy said. “Can you start the truck?”
I released my seat belt and leaned over to start the truck. It didn’t do anything. “It’s dead,” I said. “Doc! Wake up!”
Out in the darkness a familiar sound came to our ears: the chattering of hundreds of teeth. Zombies.
“Oh this isn’t good,” I said shoving my door open. The biting cold sunk its sharp teeth into my warm body again. God, it was cold. So damn cold. Snow flurries were falling.
I pulled myself through the knee high snow around the back of the truck over to Doc’s side. His door had jammed shut. Wendy got out and came around to Doc’s side too. “We got to drag him out,” I said.
“We won’t have time! Zombies are coming down the hill!”
“No!” I whispered. Turning around quickly, looking for any kind of shelter, I saw a dark outline of a building 30 yards away. “Go shut my door! Hurry.”
“Why?” she asked trotting back to my side.
“We have to leave Doc in the truck.”
“But he’ll freeze out here.”
“We’ll freeze too,” I said. “Come on. We won’t be able to drag him. His door is jammed. I’m sorry, Wendy, but we don’t have a choice. Hurry!”
I followed her around to the passenger side, leaned in, and grabbed my shotgun shells. Wendy snatched her pistol too.
Slamming the door, I pulled her with me toward the dark building. “Jesus!”
“What!”
“We don’t have a flashlight! We’re not going to be able to see a god damn thing!”
The zombies were getting closer.
The door to the building stood open. Snow had blown in. Wendy followed me inside. Quietly she said, “Hold on, I know this place. Follow me.”
In nearly complete darkness, she led me past tables and chairs. The room smelled of cooking grease, onions, and long gone cigarettes. This was a restaurant. Walking across the tile it sounded weird and felt strange especially after pounding through the snow to get in here.
We went into a tight hallway. She pushed through another door. The smell of sewage hit my nose.
The hell?
“It’s the ladies bathroom,” she whispered. “Toilets must be backed up. Here. Sit over here.” She pushed me in the darkness. My shins knocked against a low bench. “Sit down,” she said quietly.
Outside, the snow started coming down harder. A small window set high on the wall in the bathroom allowed enough light to make out shadows. “I hope zombies can’t see in the dark,” she said with a shiver.
“Me too. Wait. Can they?”
“I don’t know. Shh, just be quiet.”
I asked, “Where did they all come from?”
She didn’t answer.
We waited, my gun sitting in my lap pointing toward the restroom door.
The zombies didn’t come in. Evidently, they couldn’t see in the dark…or they had gone after Doc.
Did he wake up confused? Did he thrash around inside the truck getting their attention? If they noticed him and trapped him inside the truck he wouldn’t be able to get out. Eventually they would break the windshield or some of the windows, reach in with their long scabby arms and get him.
We needed to help him.
A loud clack echoed out in the dining room.
“Oh shit,” she whispered. “They can smell us.”
“Be quiet,” I whispered.
We sat silent in the darkness. It was so cold. I could hear Wendy breathing. Shivering, she took in a quick breath and held it then slowly let it out.
I could see my breath in the dark.
Out in the other room, something bumped into a chair. It went screeching across the floor. Things were knocked off a table. Something thumped against a wall.
“They’re coming,” she whispered again.
I swallowed, imagining hundreds of zombies slowly pouring into the building, their eyes wild, their hunger ravenous. Would they be able to see us, or were they simply tracking our scent?
“I’m scared Jon”, she whispered.
“Me too.” I grabbed her hand. “Where can we go?”
She pulled her hand away. “Nowhere. This is a dead end.”
Another loud crash out in the other room. Had someone broken a window?
Wendy still breathed the same.
Quick breath in.
Hold.
Slowly let out.
The door to the restroom creaked open.
Her body stiffened. I closed my eyes.
Something clanged slightly against metal.
Metal against metal.
Is that Doc’s crowbar?
Loudly I whispered “Doc?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“It’s Doc,” I said to Wendy. We stumbled to the door in the dark. Doc’s large height blocked the door.
“You’re ok?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just blacked out for a second. I followed your tracks to the front of this place.”
Wendy asked, “Are the zombies gone?”
He said, “There weren’t any zombies out there.”
I asked, “What?”
“I woke up in the truck,” he said. “You guys were gone. I followed your tracks over here.”
“Are you ok?” Wendy asked.
“Yeah,” he laughed hollowly. “I think I broke a pie case. Cut my hand.”
Wendy asked, “Oh how bad?”
“Not too bad. Bleeding a little.”
“We should fix that up,” she said. “Whittridge had some bandages in his truck.”
“Ok,” Doc said. “Watch the glass on the way back out.”
We walked through the dark restaurant back out into the dark night. Snow was falling heavily now. We followed our own tracks back to the truck. Doc yanked on his door to get in but it didn’t open. He pulled his crowbar out, worked it between the door and the frame and jimmied the door open. He got in and started the truck right away.
He had ripped out the deployed airbag when he got out of the truck to look for us.
“That cut on your hand looks pretty deep,” I told him. “What’s in the toolbox for a cut?”
Wendy looked inside. She located several syringes, cotton swabs, some flex wrap tape and a box of large bandages. She said, “Here Doc take one of these big bandages.” She handed it over the seat to him.
“Thanks.” He ripped it open and applied it directly to the cut on the side of his hand. Readjusting himself in his seat, he said, “You guys ready?”
“Yes,�
�� I said.
We headed for Wendy’s cabin.
Nine miles later we arrived. The road getting there wasn’t very easy. We nearly got stuck on the side of the highway leading up a hill out of Battle Lake. Doc had been adjusting his bandage and not paying attention to the road. Luckily he swerved just in time before sliding down into the ditch. A few miles later the highway cut through a heavily wooded area. Tall trees stretched up to the sky. I watched for deer tracks but the snow was totally unbroken. We didn’t see any zombies either thankfully. I kept expecting them to come pouring out of the woods, much like they had back in town after we crashed.
Wendy directed Doc off the main highway down another road which led into another wooded area. Her parent’s cabin was in these woods in a resort of sorts. Several other cabins sitting on the side of a frozen lake lined a curving road through the trees. “This is Branch Lake,” Wendy told us. “I’ve been coming up here since I was a little girl.”
Winding through the trees, we finally arrived at her parent’s cabin. A fish house had been added onto the rear of the cabin. Wendy told us this was where her Dad took the fish he caught and fileted them. A red and white Suburban sat near the door of the cabin which was on the side of the house.
“That’s my Dad’s truck,” Wendy said stunned. “Are my parents here?”
Doc took the keys out of the 4x4’s ignition, leaned back and handed them to Wendy. “Your house, your keys,” he said.
She took them with an anxious smile, got out, and walked through the deep snow to the side door of the cabin. Doc and I followed. She wiggled the key in the lock and opened the door. It opened with a frozen creak. “It smells in here,” she said stepping in.
“Be careful,” Doc whispered.
“No, it smells like cooked food. It’s warm in here.”
We entered a large open room shadowed in dim fire light. A kitchenette lined the wall to our left. A long sofa sleeper sat on the other side of a small dining room table in front of us. To its left a large picture window had been covered in blankets. To our right, a recliner leaned back next to a fireplace with embers burning in it. Someone sat in the recliner, their feet propped up on a hassock.
