Z Poc: Young Brains

by catt dahman

  Mr. Chase continued, “My, oh my, got a girl don’t know she’s a gal.” He looked at Sian and waved her away. “It ain’t right to lie with your own sex says the Good Book.”

  “She’s just standing in the kitchen,” I snapped. “I’m the girl with the funny name: Arisbe. I’m nobody and unimportant. I know I’m

  trash, too.

  I’ll be in the yard with Bev,” Sian said as followed me, looking back at the man.

  “Smart-mouthed one,” Mr. Chase added, ignoring me. “Wetback girl. She gotta a green card? Can she speak English?”

  Ruby muttered something in Mexican and tried to disappear into the wall. “I’m as American as you are.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Have you any news?” Lance asked.

  “We got bits and pieces. Everyone was told to stay home, and then, the officials said to go to the courthouse where the people could gather and have some type of order. Like us, they had seen the cloud that looked as if the town were on fire and then the rolling clouds that looked even worse. But they had no other news.

  “What about the rest? The other houses?”

  At first, Mr. Chase didn’t answer me and looked through me but finally shrugged when I asked the third time. They had knocked on the doors, but no one opened them. Maybe the neighbors did not want to deal with the Chase’s bad manners and rudeness.

  “We’re going on to the next house,” Bev said. “Anyone coming with us?”

  “I am.”

  “Yes,” Marshall said, and Ruby silently moved closer.

  “I guess we’re going to look in the other houses. We’re making our way to town,” Lance said.

  Mr. Chase gave him a stern look, “Now your grandpa would be disturbed at your following after white trash girls and Mexi-trash. What are you on? Can’t you find no nice girls?”

  “I guess all the nice girls are zombies now,” Brandon laughed.

  Don’t you wisecrack at me, Brandon. You boys need to stay here where you are safe and let them go on about their business.”

  “Thanks anyway, but we’re gonna be going.”

  “You can’t just leave us, Brandon?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Chase, but I’m going.”

  “You’re leaving an old man and two women to fend alone. For shame.”

  “You can insult them back to death,” Jerico said as he slipped outside.

  Nick put a hand up and wanted us to wait. Then he said it was clear, and we followed him, Brandon and Jerico coming last.

  “If you go in them houses, I’ll have to tell the police,” Mr. Chase warned.

  “Okay,” I called back softly, “I hope the police show up. Really.”

  “I’ll have to testify you were told not to break in. Lance, Brandon,

  Nick, you boys know better. For shame, Jerico.”

  We kept walking.

  Even if those four were accepted in that house, the comments aggravated everyone and were over the top; the other kids didn’t want to hear the personal rants and raving, either.

  A woman came at us, moaning and clawing to get to flesh.

  Brandon and Jerico hit her until she was finished.

  “Look at this. She was prepared.” Brandon grabbed a rifle from the kitchen counter, and Nick shoved forward to grab a pistol.

  Jerico slammed his hand down on the third pistol and held the Colt M1911 up, showing off the nickel finish. “Brother has a gun, now. We gonna rock.”

  Nick slid the matching pistol into his other hand and gathered extra clips to shove in his pockets. “We need to finish the search.”

  Jerico showed off, moving as if he were an actor on television. He slipped into a bedroom with his head cocked sideways. He slid the safety off his pistol and looked around, his back to us.

  Then, he turned and slid to his knees; his firearm was on the floor as he sat back on his legs. To our surprise, Jerico was sobbing, the first and only time we had seen him cry.

  Brandon kept his rifle raised and walked all the way into the room, wanting to see what had caused that reaction.

  “I got a little baby sister,” Jerico sobbed.

  Nick cleared his throat and moved his shoulder to ask what was going on.

  Brandon stepped back and made a motion with his head toward an object in the room, a baby’s bassinet. Brandon shook his head and held one hand out and said, “Don’t look.”

  We scurried on through the house.

  In a little bit, we heard a gunshot, and then Brandon and Jerico

  joined us in the kitchen area.

  “She was chewed, man,” Jerico said.

  “The rest have been, too. It all has been rough, Jerico. Watching Billy’s arm come off! Patricia! Tom! I have puked my guts up.”

  Marshall frowned.

  “But she’s my little sister’s age and I….”

  “Yes, it’s you finally. Welcome to the real world.” Marshall had no sympathy and was angry that Jerico finally got why we had shed tears.

  He hadn’t given us a bit of compassion.

  “Just shut up.” Jerico raised his pistol.

  Marshall raised his hands a little. Beside me, Nick raised his pistol, too. “Knock it off, Jerico.”

  All of us stared at Brandon. He had the third gun. Well, I had one, but no one knew that, so we just looked at Brandon.

  “Really, Nick? Since when do you and I have a problem?”

  “Just take the gun off Jerico. We’ve lost enough.” Nick watched his brother and thought he saw support.

  Jerico moved his gun down to his side. “Can we go to the other houses? I need something to cheer me up. Let’s just go.”

  “I am gonna stay a while,” Bevvon said. “I know you have the guns, but I want to get my sisters and me as far away as we can go, and it’s time to split up. No hard feelings.” She smiled a little, trying to look like less of a threat.

  “I’m staying with Bev,” I said. I didn’t explain. It was like watching a gunfight or a game of chess while we watched one another’s eyes.

  “I’m staying,” Lance announced. Marshall said he was, too, and Ruby sat down.

  As far as anyone knew, we had no guns on our side, and this could have gotten sticky fast.

  “Me, too,” Sian said.

  It looked as if we just didn’t want to go with those who had guns and who had done the most to protect us. My heart raced.

  “I’m gonna hang with them. I think it’s the best choice,” Nick said.

  I had felt sure he would choose us.

  Brandon looked perplexed. We could see him trying to put things together in his mind but lacked some puzzle pieces. “Well, that’s all of us. Right? We’re a group. And me and Jerico.”

  “You tossing me out? Am I an outcast now?” Jerico asked.

  “There will be no more of just you two leading without our having a say. All of us will decide things together. Okay?” Nick asked. He was trying to negotiate a merge. If Jerico were tossed out, he did have a gun, and he just might leave all that he could, dead.

  Nick looked at Bev, and she shrugged. She had tried to break away, but they wanted to go with us, and we weren’t the type to make people outcasts.

  “Okay, Jerico, let’s go do another house. That baby gives me the creeps now,” Bevvon said. “I keep thinking about the woman’s

  husband finding her and the baby like that. It makes me feel weird. I can’t sleep here, anyway. And this close to Mr. Chase, no way.”

  “He was a rude man,” Ruby said. “He said the N word, too.”

  “I noticed,” Jerico said.

  We jumped as we heard Mr. Chase’s shotgun fire again. Bumping our noses to the front window, we saw several creatures shambling around and one lying on the grass next to Curt’s body. Our activity, noise, and movements somehow must have alerted the Zs that humans were there.

  “Are they following us?”

  “Not exactly, but they are being alerted as we move about, same thing but different,” Lance thought. “Do we
want to go back and help them?”

  “There are only two, and really, am I gonna go back and be called names again? I don’t think so,” Bev said.

  We ran to the back of the house again, some yanked a few things from the pantry, and we slipped outside, using the back door. The yard was clear, and I paused to look at how normal it seemed: a swing set, a sandbox, and a bench under a big oak shade tree. Flowers dotted the edge of the yard along the fence.

  We tapped on the door when we went through the gates and to the back of the next house. Hopefully, that was enough to bring a human to the door if one were there or a zombie as well without alerting the rest.

  The house was clear, but I could have sworn I heard something.

  Bev said she had the creeps again. “It’s like someone were here.”

  I sniffed the air. There was no particular scent but just a different smell that made me feel someone had been here. I didn’t smell the infection or anything else, but I had goose pimples on my arms.

  We didn’t stay there long.

  Going along the back, we went to the last house, and the boys said this was the Tate house. I remembered how John Tate, whom they called Tater, had run and grabbed six children the first day and saved them. We could use another hero like that but another six children? That would be difficult.

  John Tate’s truck was outside along with his mother’s big SUV, both parked in the carport. John’s dad’s truck was on the side of the house, also parked and empty.

  As we went through the house looking for the family, we found bags full of trash, empty bottles, and other litter all arranged to be taken out.

  “It looks as if people were here, looted their own house, and left, just ran away?” Marshall mused. “That’s odd. Where did they go and why?”

  “When Tater got here, they went to the courthouse like we were supposed to do,” Brandon said.

  “Without a car?” Nick laughed. “Try again.”

  This was the last house, but it was still early, so we decided to stay the night and then in the morning take the vehicles and go to town.

  Maybe, we were just putting off the inevitable. We found a canned ham left in the back of the pantry, probably over looked, a can of carrots, and some rice, and when we added some other things, we had a decent dinner.

  “I played with an ashtray, moving it around the table.”

  “You taking up a new habit, ‘Rissy?” Jerico chuckled.

  “Not yet,” I answered, turning the ashtray in circles. “Does John smoke?”

  “No. He’s an athlete,” Brandon said.

  “His parents?”

  “No. You can smell the house, no smoking here at all. Why?”

  I didn’t know what, but something nagged at my brain. At the last house, I had idly picked up a pack of cigarettes. That was what I did: I picked up things all the time. The cigarettes in this ashtray were the same brand as the ones I found at the last house. Why were they

  here?

  “Who lives over there?’

  “The Andersons? A couple, I think,” Lance told me.

  “Their cars are there, too. Cigarettes here. Do they have…I don’t know…a tornado shelter over there?”

  “No,” Lance said. “Oh, they have a basement though, but not many houses around here do. I know that because Tater was earning money to buy his truck by helping them build that basement. I mean they were finishing it out. Last year or the year before.” He kind of trailed off, adding information as he thought of things.

  I felt irritated. “The people here left. They had to go somewhere and didn’t go by car. They aren’t in any of the houses, so far. One of the Andersons smokes and was here; these cigarettes match. They have a basement. Maybe the Tates went over there.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Why do we care?” Brandon asked.

  “Because we are thinking of looting the place and sleeping here and because they may be right over there. What if they come back and think we are common thieves and shoot us?” I took a breath. “I don’t know. It bugs me because I have a mystery I can’t figure out. If they are here, we can’t just take their vehicles.”

  “Then we go look,” Jerico said, standing.

  Sian, Nick, Brandon, Jerico, and I went.

  It was my curiosity that got someone killed.

  Chapter 16

  Mysteries Solved

  The door to the basement was nothing special; in fact, it was a cheap thing set into a space off of the kitchen. We stared at the door for several seconds, unsure why we felt so nervous. We were about to tap and call out quietly when we heard a whining, yelping noise that sent chills down my back. Someone was being hurt.

  Sian yanked on the door, and it swung outward. When building the basement, they hadn’t put a lock on the door since they didn’t see a reason for it: it opened from the outside, so zombies wouldn’t have pulled it open but pushed ineffectually. The camp light that they had below was very dim and hardly gave us any light to see by. I knew I had guessed right; they were down there.

  Sian stepped down the stairs, “Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. John Tate?

  It’s Sian and some others from school. No one said anything, and no doubt they were scared, but one of the little children that Tate had rescued managed to walk up two of the stairs. She must have been curious and gotten away from those watching her. We smiled.

  She was a kindergarten student and had trouble with the big stairs.

  “Here, I’ve got you,” Sian said. “Mrs. Anderson? Mr. Anderson?

  Mr. Tate? John?” She took another step down.

  They answered: a sigh and a groan, but we heard them coming to greet us.

  The little girl took another step and another. Sian went down farther.

  “I’ll get her,” Nick said and was about to go down the stairs, but I grabbed his wrist. Something was wrong.

  “Sian, come back,” I said.

  “What? Why?” She ignored me and then screamed, making us jump. She, like the rest of us, had seen the little girl’s face; it was chewed and torn, her eyes were milky white, and she moaned hungrily.

  At the bottom were two men, two women, John Tate, five other children, and a man we didn’t know; they looked up at us and moaned.

  They had gone to the basement to hide and take cover, but they had gone there with one of the infected, and all had been bitten.

  Sian tried to turn, but her feet got tangled; she fell headlong down the stairs. She must have injured herself because she didn’t leap to her feet, and we could only pull at her feet to get her back up. The little girl, a step away, leaned over and bit Sian on her ear.

  I felt my legs go to jelly and began to sit down.

  Nick yanked me up, but I couldn’t walk.

  The little girl took a bite out of Sian’s cheek, and Sian screamed.

  Brandon shoved us out of his way and used his rifle to shoot the little girl and then Sian.

  “Too many,” he declared.

  Jerico shot down into the horde, but we didn’t know if he hit anyone.

  Slamming the door, we grabbed the table, and set it against the door and then added chairs. The boys maneuvered the refrigerator in the way as well. The door couldn’t be opened.

  Before we left, Brandon grabbed a bottle of whiskey and gave us a hard look that dared us to say a word.

  They said that if I hadn’t figured it out, the zombies could have come out of the basement and attacked us; it could have been a catastrophe. Maybe I had averted one tragedy and had solved my mystery, but I had to deal with the fact that I had accidentally caused Sian’s death.

  We had started with over three hundred students at our school, and now we had ten left that we were sure of. I wasn’t a math whiz by any means, but I understood that ten out of three hundred was really, really bad.

  I slept in Nick’s arms, crying until I fell asleep.

  Everywhere we went, people died.

  Chapter 1 7

  Town

  In
the morning after eating a small breakfast and cleaning up, we packed and got ready to leave. Finally, Bev was designated as one of the best drivers, so she took the SUV with Lance beside her, Nick and me in the backseat with RaVon and Marshall, and Ruby and Nivon in the far back.

  Jerico wanted to drive Tater’s big truck, so he and Brandon got in. Ruby wasn’t speaking again and just stared daggers into their backs.

  If she ever got a hold of the guns, I had no doubt that she would kill both of them.

  Mr. and Mrs. Chase and Donna got into the truck as well; they needed news and didn’t want to be left alone. I was a little surprised that Brandon and Jerico took them along, instead of just labeling them as outcasts and leaving them to fend for themselves.

  At first, there was just an empty road. At the edge of town, we saw shamblers walking around, looking for food; they followed us. A vicious car wreck was at one intersection with bloody, dead bodies locked inside the cars.

  The pharmacy on the corner, standing with its doors flung wide open, had been looted to the bare shelves and stripped of everything anyone might have wanted or needed.

  A little clothing shop was closed next to it, but its big picture window was shattered; the glass spikes were like stalagmites and stalactites. Other shops had trash bins thrown through their windows, broken doors, and plenty of litter. Trash blew gently in the breeze.

  The park was covered with dead, partially eaten bodies, trash, and a car that had run into a huge maple tree, shattering its limbs and scattering them everywhere. The car doors were still flung wide open, and dried blood covered the seats, despite the rain that had come. A van lay on its side.

  The police station smoldered alongside the fire station; the fire trucks were burning heaps in their bays. To the northwest, the entire block of buildings still burned. Smoke drifted up and away in dirty smudges.

  Jerico couldn’t get any farther because of the twisted metal and rubble of buildings that had burned and fallen into the street.

  When we drove northwest, we found huge trash containers and big trucks blocking the streets. Someone had made a barricade to keep the zombies away.

  We drove southwest and saw more of the trash and concrete, burned out cars, and junk. I watched Jerico purposely run over many shamblers, crushing their heads beneath the tires of the big truck. Bev smashed a few but didn’t aim at them.