Fortunes & Failures - 03

by T. W. Brown

  “Is there such a thing as a militant hippie?” Thad quipped barely above a whisper. Mackenzie put her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  Juan glared at everybody, then tapped JoJo on the arm, “I’ll go out, you cover me.”

  “Not by yourself!” Mackenzie grabbed him. “If we go together, it might seem less threatening to have a woman with you.”

  “Good point,” Thad agreed.

  If it were at all possible, Juan scowled even deeper. He stared down at Mackenzie who returned his look with wide eyes and a hint of a smile. She knows she’s pushing my buttons, Juan thought. There was no way she wasn’t coming with him. That was clear in her expression.

  “Fine,” Juan said, his shoulders dropping just a bit. “But you stay back a few steps once we get close. If I gotta box, I don’t want you in the way.”

  “Yes, my big, brave man,” Mackenzie cooed.

  With a huff, Juan turned and stalked out onto the beach. He was halfway across the wide open space before the couple actually noticed. The guy fumbled for his gun, but the girl beat him.

  “Don’t let that thing come out of the holster,” Juan warned, holding his empty hands out in front of him.

  The girl ignored the warning and drew, bringing her shaky hands up and aiming at Juan’s chest. Juan stopped, making a point to wiggle the fingers on both hands. The man had his partially drawn, but slid it back. He did however rest a hand on the nearby shotgun. Juan’s eyes flicked angrily between the two.

  “You realize that if we meant to hurt you, we’d of already shot you.” Mackenzie stepped forward, hands planted on her hips.

  “We ain’t lookin’ for any problems.” The man reached over and eased the gun down that the girl beside him still held with a frighteningly visible tremor.

  Mackenzie looked them both over. The guy had shaggy brown hair, and very dark eyes. His skin was coffee-with-extra-crème-brown, and he had a brace on his left leg. That was a concern if he was bitten. The woman was much darker and younger. She placed the man in his thirties or forties. The woman was barely twenty…if that. She had a bandana tied to her head, but a fluffy, black ball of hair stuck out the back.

  “Where are the rest of your group?” Juan growled.

  The couple looked at each other as if trying to send signals with their eyes on how to answer. Mackenzie decided to play her first card. “Look, my mother is at the house and all I want to know is if I should be worried about your little group stumbling across her and doing something.”

  “Your mom?” the woman asked hesitantly.

  “Yeah,” Juan reasserted himself in the conversation. “We got a few people here, been tryin’ to get this place set up for a while now.”

  “That was you guys who blew up the bridge?” the man said.

  “Yep,” Juan nodded. “Figure them deaders don’t care much for water, so we took out their only way across. Now all we gotta worry ‘bout is the living.”

  “Had some bad experiences?” the man asked, sounding sincerely sympathetic.

  “And given a couple back in return,” Juan said with as much ice in his voice as he could muster. He was done playing. Either these two were gonna chill, or it was time to thrown down. If only Mackenzie would’ve stayed out of the way, he didn’t like her out in the open. “So if the girl wants to keep her gun drawn, I’m fixin’ to even the odds.”

  “Sandra, put it away,” the man said, not taking his eyes off of Juan. “We can go if you like. Soon as our friends get back, but…”

  “You’d rather stay,” Mackenzie finished.

  “That’s sorta up to y’all,” the man nodded. “But, yes, it’d be great.”

  “What’s up with the leg?” Juan pointed to the wrapped up limb with the makeshift brace.

  “One of those damned things—”

  “You been bit?” Juan’s hand fumbled for his weapon which had Sandra reaching for hers again, but Mackenzie and the man both kept still.

  “Let me explain!” The man held up his hands.

  “Let’s just go, Lavon,” Sandra pleaded, pointing her pistol at Juan, but not looking at the big man.

  “Juan,” Mackenzie touched his shoulder, “put it away.”

  “Let me tell ‘em,” Lavon kissed the woman gently on the forehead. He turned back to Juan, “How long you seen people last after they got bit?”

  “Day or two.” Juan shrugged, lowering his weapon, but refusing to holster it.

  “Yep,” Lavon agreed. “That seems to be ‘bout it. Only this bite is five weeks old.” He made a point of showing his hands, then sitting down and carefully unwrapping the leg.

  Juan was unable to help himself and moved close. By the time Lavon finished, he was standing directly over the man. Sure enough, there was an ugly chunk of calf muscle missing. But it was scabbed over.

  “Had ‘em tie me up real good that night,” Lavon said. “By the second day, other than the pain and the headache…nothing. I’d seen folks turn. It’s ugly, and they get this smell. And then there’s the eyes…the capillaries get black by the end of the first day. So when the second day came and nothing had happened…you start to hope, ya know?”

  “Never seen somebody heal from a deader.” Juan knelt down to look closer at the almost healed wound. “That’s tight.”

  “Yes, well… the group we were with didn’t think so,” Lavon sighed. “At first it was understandable, everybody thought I’d turn. Only, when I didn’t…well…people acted freaky. If I drank from a cup, nobody would touch it. If I used a fork or anything for that matter, people acted weird. And pretty soon, it was like I had an invisible fence with about a twenty foot radius.”

  “They left us in the middle of the night,” Sandra sobbed. “A few folks stayed…one of ‘em had a brother get AIDS in the late Eighties…said it was a lot like that.”

  “Anyways, our little group was tryin’ for Sauvie’s Island. We were up on a ridge the day the bridge blew up,” Lavon said, taking Sandra’s hand. “Thought it was our old group tryin’ to keep us away, then we saw three people we didn’t recognize—”

  “That was Juan and my mom and I,” Mackenzie said. She stepped up to the woman. “My name is Mackenzie. My mom’s name is Margaret. The two guy’s hiding in the bushes we’re fixin’ to give the ‘all clear’ sign to are Thad and JoJo. Also, we got one guy injured…his name is Keith.”

  “And I’m Lavon Green, this is my wife Sandra.” Lavon looked up at the big man towering over him. “There are four others…and we’d love to stay. We’d work hard anddo our share—”

  A distant gunshot sounded, cutting off the introductions. Everybody turned, trying to tell which direction it came from. Then…a noise like a strand of firecrackers followed.

  “That’s from towards the house!” JoJo burst from the trees and onto the beach.

  “Mom!” Mackenzie cried, and sprinted across the sand.

  

  Scott leaned out the window, “Looks clear,” he whispered.

  “Let’s go, people,” Chad said as loud as he dared. The parking lot of Riverbank High School was mostly empty. A few zombies were staggering around the far side of the fenced tennis courts, and they’d had to put down a few as they’d cut across the baseball field, but for the most part, the area seemed clear.

  “What is the deal with high schools?” Brett grumbled as he boosted Ronni through.

  “Common area, most folks know where it is,” Chad shrugged.

  They’d seen all the military constructed fencing around the football field. That’s why the initil thought was to bypass the place. The sight of so many birds circling overhead made them decide to check things out. It was more out of curiosity. They’d all been at the Modesto High FEMA center. The possibility of other survivors, especially ones that might need help, had been the catalyst.

  It had been a slaughter. There was zero sign of any lingering military presence. But, likewise, there could be no doubt that they’d been in charge at the high school. Towers still stood
at regular intervals around the fenced perimeter. Mounds of brass casings glittered in the sun around the bases of those towers. Bodies, the remnants of tents, and all sorts of debris littered the football field. Men, women, and children lie dead; bloated and rotting in the late summer sun. Swarms of birds circled, swooped, and pecked. Not a single sign of a living soul could be seen.

  Once everybody was safely inside the classroom, everyone broke into small groups. Ronni was in a corner with her two friends, Tammi and Krystal. Chad sat down under the window they’d climbed through and opened his pack. Brett came over and slid down beside him.

  “Not much of a group, are we?” the man mumbled as he dug out a bag of shelled, unsalted peanuts and a bottle of water.

  “More like a half-dozen little groups,” Chad agreed.

  “What’s the deal with Ronni?”

  “You mean why is she hanging with other teenage girls instead of sitting with her dad?” Chad sighed. “Probably because even in an apocalypse, teenage girls are exactly that…teenage girls.”

  “Seems to be takin’ losing her mom pretty well.”

  “Yeah, Donna was telling me, before all this crap, that Ronni is a real loner. Used to spend days in her room not talkin’ to anybody. She’d make an appearance for a little while, then vanish again.”

  “Still, you’d think after all the stuff that’s gone down these past few months, she’d stick to you like glue.”

  The two men ate in silence like most everybody else. The only noise was the occasional giggle from the three girls. After a while, Scott and a couple others slipped out after breaking the doorknob. Great, Chad thought, so much for safety. Now somebody would have to keep watch. And where were these guys going? They’d been lucky enough to find an open window so they didn’t have to break in. The room had been locked. They had a safe place to sleep. Well, he positioned his pack so he could get a nap, it wasn’t like anybody was in charge. And he wasn’t anybody’s boss. Apparently that included his daughter. His eyes just began to close when the sound of running feet startled him back to wide awake. Immediately he scanned the darkening room for his daughter. He relaxed when he spied her in the corner just to his left, curled up with the other two girls in a spot farthest from the door that opened to the hallway beyond. A murmur of alarm and confusion was already rising in the room.

  “Get a few people out here!” Scott panted. His bat was dripping a dark thick fluid and what looked like a clump of hair was hanging fom the middle of the barrel.

  Chad grabbed his hand axe and glimpsed Brett pull out his katana. He was gonna have to ask where he’d found that thing. It was very effective, expecially in close quarters. Two men he didn’t know along with that big gal, Penny Doucet, rushed out to follow Scott, who was already jogging back up the gloomy and frighteningly dark hall to a big four-way intersection where two bodies were already sprawled on the tile floor in dark pools that formed black looking halos around their crushed heads.

  “Found the cafeteria,” Scott whispered when the group caught up. “Only problem was that I guess ten or so folks tried to hide there. It looks like at least one of them had to be infected. They got Junior.” Chad didn’t know who ‘Junior’ was, but figured it was one of the three guys—

  “Hey!” Chad stopped everybody. “That’s one, but didn’t you leave with three?”

  “Yeah, that’s why I came back for you and the others,” Scott explained. “That little pack in the kitchen is just one group. Another handful came in from behind when we were fighting the first group. Got that Thatcher kid and Old George Farmer.

  Once again, Chad couldn’t match a name with a face. Still, people were dead, and they might need every available hand if a real fight happened, and he wasn’t just thinking about zombies. There could be more assholes like Sheriff Kollars out there. They would have to talk about this later.

  “So how many are wandering around here?” Penny demanded.

  “Couple dozen…I think,” Scott replied.

  “That you know of,” Brett snapped.

  “But all the food,” Scott insisted. “If we can just deal with that little problem—”

  “Three people are dead!” Penny cut him off, stepping up into his face. I’d sized the two up and decided that if a fight broke out…it was even money. “You’re runnin’ around like nothing is wrong, but three people are dead.”

  Scott mumbled something under his breath, his eyes dropping to the floor for a second, then his head snapped up and his expression was one of anger and defiance.

  “I’m tryin’ to do something while everybody just lays around, content to sleep.”

  “Listen,” Chad finally spoke. He didn’t want to alienate one of the people who had stood beside him against Kimberly, Sheriff Kollars, and that idiot Duane Bowers, but things were starting to crumble. “I get that you are trying to be proactive, but we had a closed, locked door. You took it upon yourself to break it and go wandering around. You didn’t say anything to anybody—”

  “I don’t gotta ask permission from nobody to do a damned thing,” Scott snapped. “I’m a grown man.”

  “Sure,” Chad agreed. “But if we’re gonna be a group, then we need to make group decisions.”

  There was a long pause and an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Slowly, Scott’s angry look softened. He nodded. “Yeah…I guess you got a point.”

  “Uh…Chad?” Brett elbowed the man in the ribs.

  “What?”

  “Look.”

  The entire group turned, following Brett’s outstretched arm and pointing finger. A group of zombies were rounding the corner. The slightly ajar door to the class room they’d left behind was only a few shambling steps away. Chad and the others raised their weapons and sprinted, but everybody could see that the zombies would get to the door first.

  

  “I’m tellin’ ya,” Glenn whispered to the others, “I remember something in that movie about them hiding out in a shopping mall.”

  “But look how many of those things are wandering around out front,” Duane argued.

  Kimberly peeked over the top of the Dumpster. They were on the side of a burned out husk of what she was pretty sure had been a Mickey Dees. A big explosion had leveled most of the place, and a large pole looked as if it had been snapped like a pencil. Across from there, she could see the huge, mostly open parking lot of the Modesto Pleasant Valley Mall.

  “If we can get to that tan door just left of the main entrance,” Glenn pointed, “then I can pop it open with one shot to the lock.”

  “How we gonna keep them things out if you shoot the lock?” Sid Wells, normally Glenn’s biggest ‘yes’ man, asked scratching his oversized head with a grimy hand.

  “We’ll use something inside to block the door,” Glenn scoffed. “I swear, Sid…you’re a bit thick sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” Duane snorted. “Geez, Sid…psshh!”

  Kimberly rolled her eyes. The very sound of Duane’s voice was beginning to make her skin crawl. She tried to count all the bodies between where they stood and that tan door…she lost track after sixty. These guys were crazy. For the thousandth time in the past few days, she wished she’d just shut her mouth and gone with Chad’s group. Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her at first, but in time…she would start looking better. After all, his choices were a fat chick who looked like a truck driver, a butt-ugly chick with a terrible combination of zits and freckles, an old lady who looked like she should be power-walking at the mall, and three teenaged girls. And, despite the claims she used to get him thrown in prison, she knew Chad wasn’t a pedophile. No, he would’ve come around—

  “Kimberly!” Duane hissed. “C’mon!”

  The men were all jogging across the road towards the mall. Already, dozens of those things were turning their way. She didn’t see any way they would make it without those monsters getting ahold of them. By the time they were halfway across the huge mall parking lot, Kimberly was almost forty feet behind the men
. So much for…what was that word? Oh yeah…chivalry. Then one of the men, Eugene Jasiks, tripped over a concrete parking space divider.

  A cluster of those things were on him before he could shake his head clear. Eugene made it to his knees when the first one, a child of about ten years old fell on his leg. Eugene had no problem grabbing the undead youth by the back of the head with a handful of hair and tossing it away. It landed hard and awkwardly on the blacktop, its arm giving way between wrist and elbow in an audible snap. He turned back…and right into what used to be a policeman. The rotund figure caught Eugene’s head in both hands and bit down, catching the knot of flesh just under the left eye.

  Eugene screamed and pushed back, a long strip of skin momentarily keeping him connected to the Policeman-zombie before ripping and snapping back…a little for each. Three more figures fell on the man as Kimberly sprinted past. She heard the scream change, becoming more frantic as if his breathing had changed to panting, and each pant was its own agonizing shriek. Kimberly couldn’t look.

  She saw Glenn pull his weapon and fire at the door. Then, she saw a writhing mass of undead arms reach out and grab the stunned sheriff. She veered sharply to the left, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were everywhere. Tears blurring her vision, Kimberly ran. She ran as hands reached out and swiped at her. She ran as screams erupted behind her from one man then another. When Duane screamed her name…Kimberly ran faster.

  * * * * *

  7

  Ménage a Geek

  “Whatcha makin’?” Aleah sat down on the couch next to Kevin. After dinner, he’d taken a box into the living room and started tinkering. There were wire snips, pliers, and tweezers laid out neatly with a variety of odds and ends that all seemed to be placed in some sort of order.