The Survival Pact

by Christy Sloat

  ****

  The empty parking lot we found looked like the best place to hide-out for the night. The only other car here was one of those Winnebago’s that someone covered in Bible verses; a Jesus-freak. Usually in New York you saw them parked along the streets as the drivers stood on the corners preaching to the crowds who ignored them.

  I hoped that the driver wasn’t anywhere around. I didn’t feel like talking about God or the Devil and what we had just seen. Whoever was controlling this earth now was thoroughly destroying it and its entire splendor. I no longer cared who was fighting with who, I just wanted to survive this and try to make it. I wanted to see tomorrow. I wanted to have kids someday and I didn’t want to wake up scared any longer.

  I jerked the car behind the Walmart, where the big semi’s usually parked to off-load their stuff. We were hidden from sight. I eased down from the car with Snack in my arms and the girls followed. We checked the perimeter, making sure that no one was around and that the lifeless weren’t following us. I changed my dressing and put antibiotic ointment on my wound. I noticed the stitches Lou put in my skin were looking nice and pink and healthy. I wondered where she learned to do such a great job, but then realized it was probably some prepper Youtube video.

  Emma jumped onto the loading dock and began making a fire in a small metal trash can that once held cigarette ashes. Lou pulled out a pack of hotdogs that we grabbed from the school, and some beans to go along with it. I let them do their thing while I stood watch over our new home for the night. I realized then, as the hotdogs and beans boiled behind me, that I would give anything for one of my mom’s horrible dinners. It made me miss the awful dinners she used to make and how she’d make me eat steak almost bloody raw because she refused to cook it all the way. She always said that a raw steak was the truest way to eat it.

  I would sit at the table as a child refusing to eat that and the tomatoes she forced me to choke down. I would do anything for a steak and tomatoes now. My childhood was nothing like Emma and Lou’s; they both had loving parents. I was stuck with a single mother who loved alcohol more than me and a father who never really wanted a girl. He had longed for a son and when I popped out he was disinterested.

  I shook out the old memories and brought myself back to the now.

  “Kami, dinner,” Lou called. I checked the night once more for movement and then turned to meet them. Emma was eating as Lou handed me a plate. I put Snack in the backseat where she lay down, and joined the girls.

  “Yum,” I said, as I took my first bite. I hadn’t realized how hungry I had become in the past two days. Losing most of our food had really hurt us. We had begun portion control and it royally sucked.

  “Have we taken stock of what we have left for food?” Emma asked, as if she read my thoughts.

  Lou shook her head. “I will do that after we finish. I planned on checking out this Walmart after we eat, too. What do you think?”

  “I think that would be unwise,” said a man, who stood ten feet from us. All three of us stood fast holding our weapons out in front of us. Snack went ballistic in the car causing the man to jump back a bit. He held up his hands and said, “I come in peace. I do not want any trouble. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Yeah? The last guy that wanted to talk to us tried to kill us and take our stash,” Emma said, as she jumped down from the platform aiming her rifle right at his head. “Just to warn you, he didn’t live long.”

  His face fell and he shook his head. “I’m sorry that you had to deal with that. I promise you on this Bible right here that I’m not going to hurt you. It looks like I can’t anyway, as I’m unarmed. You can check me yourself.”

  He raised his hands higher in the air as Emma slowly moved toward him, not once taking her hand off her gun or her eyes off of him. She checked him for weapons as I kept my hand on my gun. Lou lowered her weapon and fixed a plate.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “He’s hungry and I want to at least give him some food and send him on his way.”

  I shook my head.

  “We should be conserving our food,” I said, but she ignored me.

  Emma told us he was clear of weapons but as he came closer I became more agitated. I didn’t know this guy and I didn’t trust anyone anymore. The last guy I trusted almost killed us.

  “Here sir,” Lou said, offering him a little plate of food. He took it and thanked her as he ate hungrily. I knew the feeling.

  “So why shouldn’t we go inside?” I asked, pointing to the store.

  “Because, there are about a hundred or so of those demons inside. I trapped them myself,” he said as he practically licked the plate clean.

  No one else had called them demons besides Emma and Lou. Did he suspect the same thing we did?

  “And how did you do that?” Emma asked, as she glared at him.

  I knew what she was thinking; how did this older man, without weapons, get them inside and stay alive?

  “I ran inside and they followed. I’m pretty good about knowing my way around this store; I’m here a lot. So once they came inside I found the exit out back and locked the doors.”

  “You’re here a lot? Why?” Emma said.

  He licked his fingers and said matter-of-factly, “I park here every day to spread the good Lord’s message.”

  Oh great! He’s the owner of the Winnebago. Just our luck. The Jesus-freak found us.

  “Are you here to spread your message now?” I asked leery. “Because you’d be wasting your time.”

  I had seen the tornado and the flood, but I noticed evil was more prevalent now than ever before. God the Almighty had a lot of work to do. Just coming down and wiping out your sheep wasn’t stopping what was happening to our world, and it sure wasn’t giving us hope.

  He shook his head and smiled. “You know what’s going on here don’t you?” He asked me and me alone.

  I shrugged. I wouldn’t say otherwise.

  “I see it in you that you have figured out that those things are not zombies and this is not the apocalypse. You know that this is the handy work of the Devil and the Lord, don’t you?” I said nothing. “Well, you can keep silent all you want but you see it.”

  Emma straightened up and leaned forward.

  “What does she see?” she asked.

  He smiled at her, a trusting smile. “God and the Devil are at war, at our expense. Satan saw the evil that lived on this earth, without his help mind you, and he got bored. You see we humans are so awful now that we never needed his guidance to become evil, we did it ourselves. What once was his playground became boring to him.”

  It made total sense and I thought that before meeting this guy.

  I saw the hurt we caused on a daily basis and the evil that grew in us. I did stories about awful murders and people who hated each other so much it drove them insane. I saw Facebook fights over the simplest things, and people who would say the worst things to people they hardly knew. We had become a society of awful human beings and no one knew how to stop. No one held doors for anyone anymore. No one could detach from their cell phones long enough to say hello to their local grocer. We’ve all become selfish egomaniacs who cared more about how many likes a Facebook post got rather than being kind to our fellow man.

  “Satan knew that the only way to have fun again was to wipe us out and start over,” Jesus-freak said. “So he woke the dead and filled them with the souls of demons, his children, so they could do his handiwork. It’s the easiest way to bring his demons to life. More humans will be born in time and he can start over. And they’re doing a great job I should add, by killing our kind. I’ve seen only minimal humans left alive. They wiped out this town in under twelve hours.”

  “And what is God doing about it, besides sending tornadoes and storms?” I asked.

  He pointed at me, as if saying ‘I knew you knew what’s going o
n here.’

  “Well you see God and the Devil are like good cop and bad cop in this scenario. God is the bad cop, who has to be stern and end it fast. He can’t take his time, so he’s all business. He sends the earthquakes and the floods to get it over with soon. Satan is the good cop. He wants you to trust him and stick around; talk awhile. While he has you preoccupied by eating donuts he sends out his demons to bash your head in.”

  It made me wonder if a demon took you out, where you went. I guess that all depended on how you were as a person; good or bad. Either way dying wasn’t an option.

  Emma laughed and Lou snorted. I stayed quiet. I’m not sure why..

  “It will all end when the Devil’s had his fun and has taken as many humans as he can. He’ll destroy us and God will remake us. It’s the perfect solution.”

  “Where are the military and first responders?” Emma asked. “Did they go to the coast?”

  He shook his head. “Not sure who went where as far as military; we don’t have a base close to here. Maybe on the coast. But as far as our first responders, they came out in full gear trying to stop them. That didn’t happen. They were taken down just like everyone else. Even though they are dead, they are strong. The fires began and the looting, but those who made a lot of noise by looting, were taken out by the demons.”

  “So do we have a chance?” Lou asked, as she cleaned up dinner.

  He nodded. “Keep going like this and you might. Now I’ve taken up enough of your time and I’m sorry. Thank you for the meal.” He rubbed his belly. “Some advice though: don’t make a lot of noise. These demons can communicate with one another and if they hear you inside that store, they’ll notify other demons outside here to kill you.” That was useful information that we didn’t know about. I wondered then how long this guy had been watching the dead and if he would survive all of this with the knowledge he had.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him as he stood up.

  “Doug.”

  I picked through my bug out bag and grabbed an MRE and handed it to him, despite Emma and Lou’s glares.

  “We dumped a bunch of food a while back, so we don’t have much. I hope that this will at least fill you up for a night,” I told him as he took it from me. He grabbed my hand gently and said, “You know more than you’re letting on. You can guide these women to safety. Take them and get there. No more stopping. You know what you have to do.”

  I didn’t know how he knew this about me, but I had suspected what was going on so far. I absolutely didn’t know what I had to do though.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked, with fear in my voice.

  “You will know in time. It will all be played out for you and you will just know.”

  After that, Doug thanked us all and walked out of sight.

  I was glad we met him. Not only did he give us great insight but he made me feel better about our task at hand.

  “What was that dude on?” Lou asked, as she threw the food prep into the car. She grabbed Snack and gave her a piece of hot dog.

  “You don’t believe him?” I asked, turning toward her. “I thought of all people you’d believe him. You believed me.”

  She shook her head at me. I didn’t know what was getting to Lou lately but God was a touchy subject with her since we left Ida. Usually it was the opposite.

  Emma grabbed her gun and silently grabbed me while pulling me slowly away from Lou. I went with her and we quietly walked the strip mall. I had no idea what we were doing.

  “Um… why are we walking around here instead of driving away?”

  She shook her head and pointed toward the Ross store. I looked and saw two lifeless inside the store windows trying to get out. I figured that was Doug’s handiwork.

  “I don’t want them seeing us,” she whispered, as she ducked down and into a small alcove. There was a bathroom, which meant more toilet paper, and I really needed to wash up.

  We silently went inside like we had done before. With Emma being a Marine I felt enormously inept when it came to searching inside buildings. She was badass and I was lameass.

  I had her back as we went in because no one was going to hurt my friends. Emma worked silently, as if I wasn’t there. She opened each stall and looked for Lifeless. When she cleared it, I took the toilet paper.

  “It’s clear.”

  I went to the sink and washed my face first and then wet napkins for my armpits. I would give anything for a hot bath right then.

  “Just jump inside why don’t you!” Emma laughed.

  “Seriously, if I could I totally would.”

  She did as I did and washed herself; even dunking her whole head inside. When I used the bathroom I realized that I had started my period. “Are you freaking kidding me?” I exclaimed.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  I sighed. “I got Mr. Happy.”

  She laughed. Emma knew darn well that I called it that and she never understood my reason for it, but it had become habit anyway. It became something we all called it. The dreaded Mr. Happy was here.

  “What’s so funny? You know I don’t have anything. It’s not like I left the house thinking to grab pads or tampons.”

  “Lou’s got ‘em. But I can help you out.” I heard a loud bang and then something dropped down next to me.

  Emma robbed the dispenser in the bathroom.

  “Thanks, girl. How’d you do that?” I asked, as I left the stall. She did it again—hitting it so hard with the butt of her rifle that a bunch of them fell out. She picked one up and took it with her in the stall.

  “What?”

  “Yep. Got mine, too,” Emma said. “And Lou does as well. Which is why she’s so moody. I came in here to get her something. She told me a while back but I didn’t think it was like national news to share. Ya know?”

  I nodded.

  As we left the bathroom I thought about how fucked up it was that we all got it at the same time. Like some awful cosmic joke that the three of us were going to be hormonal and bitchy at once during the worst time possible. Like demons invading the dead wasn’t bad enough!

  18

  When we caught up with Lou she was packing up the Rover as quietly as she could.

  “Here,” I said, as I handed her a few wet paper towels and the canteens I filled up with fresh water.

  She smiled, but it was fake; she was giving up. I could see the fear on her face as plain as day. And if she gave up, I would too. I looked away from her as tears stung my eyes. Dammit! Stupid emotions were ruining me.

  I leaned against the car and watched the night sky as if an airplane would come flying over. I realized then that I may never see that again.

  “Do you think everyone is dead?” I asked, recalling Doug’s words.

  Emma shook her head and Lou stayed still.

  “There’s no way they took down our whole military. There may be a ton of them but we are prepared for stuff like this. Most likely the bases in California are locked down and they probably sent in the National Guard for the bigger cities like LA. The East Coast has Mount Weather and Washington, DC. Those are the places I would have gone if I didn’t go with you.”

  I swallowed.

  There was a silence between us for a while. I let her words sink in. She would have been safe if it wasn’t for us; but instead she’s been on this road trip toward a place that she never mentioned as one of the safer places.

  “We need to start rationing food,” Lou broke in to my thoughts. “We have enough for the journey but I have no idea what we’re going to run into when we reach Washington. We’re up against some major obstacles and I’d like to make sure we have enough food between us.”

  “What kind of obstacles are we talking about?” I asked.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, we have to take a bridge to get there and I don’t know what that’
s gonna look like.”

  “We might have to go on foot, is what you’re saying?”

  She nodded.

  I didn’t like the idea of doing this on foot. We’d be exposed and weak. Without saying a word I got into the car and curled up next to Snack as she snored lightly. I closed my eyes, refusing to miss out on sleep. I wanted to be ready for tomorrow and whatever it would throw at us.

  ****

  I opened my eyes and looked around. The girls were asleep in the front still. As I sat up I stretched and looked at the dark sky as the sun was coming up just over the trees. I’d never get used to how many of them there were.

  Snack licked my hand and I scooped her up. “Good morning,” I whispered. “Let’s take you to the bathroom, good girl.”

  As I waited on Snack I listened for sounds of any movement. It was pretty quiet still but that didn’t mean there weren’t any lifeless around. They could be anywhere. We had to get out of here before our nice spot turned upside down on us.

  When I made my way back to the car the girls were awake and moving. Emma handed me a Luna bar and I ate it silently as she filled up the tank with our gas can. She gave a hand signal to us, which I think I was supposed to understand, and she got into the driver’s seat. I took the back and we left the safety of our Walmart. As we drove away I wondered how long it would be until we would get to sleep in a safe car again.

  The streets were full of dead bodies and fires raged through the beautiful trees; it was incredibly sad. Lou pulled out a map and read it for a few minutes and then nodded and told Emma to turn the Rover around. Emma took us down the utility road that Lou said was for only emergency vehicles.. I was just along for the ride until we reached the point that we’d have to get out on foot.

  As I stared out at the trees, I thought about Sam. I knew I shouldn’t let my thoughts drift to him, especially after what he did to me, but they did. I also thought about the people at my job who didn’t go home and the friends I had acquired through Sam; the wives of the baseball players. Were they all dead now?

  Did a storm wipe them out? Or did a Lifeless kill them?