by TJ Forester
“We will find some, I promise—” he pulled her to him “—first we need to find food and…shelter just in case we are stuck here for the night.
She just stood there, about ready to give up.
“Come on—” he prodded “—we can’t stop now. We’ll make it out of this.”
Chapter 15
“One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence." Lewis Mumford
~
They ran from street to street, dodging zombies, while looking for a safe place to hide. At least, long enough so that they could think their way out of the situation. Sherena had been right; the gas station was completely demolished. It was getting dark and they still had no way out of the town.
“Come this way—” Logan pulled her arm “—I have an idea.”
They made their way back to the collapsed parking garage. He peered in through holes in the wreckage. It was as he had hoped there were intact cars—that meant gas.
He moved some of the collapsed block, enough that they could squeeze through and then filled the opening back in.
“Help me cover any openings,” he commanded as he moved to seal up any way for the zombies to get in.
“Do you really want to stay—” she motioned around the collapsed parking garage “—here? Do you think it’s safe?” She looked up at the ceiling and around at the support beams.
“I think it’s safer than out there—” he eyed her seriously “—besides, we might be able to find a car with a gas can in the trunk.”
“Hey—” she motioned for him to come to where she was “—look at these.”
A few vending machines stood, unharmed, standing by the destroyed elevator.
“You didn’t know they were here?” he asked.
“No—” she smirked “—not my usual culinary choice, but at the moment, I’m starved. Do you have any change?”
“Nope—” he shoved her out of the way “—move.”
She was about to complain about his manners when he slung a tire iron at the glass—hard. It shattered. They dined on candy bars and chips. The soda machine was a little harder. He searched until he found a crow bar and managed to break it open.
“I hope you don’t have to pay the owner for that,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “What are we going to—”
“Shhh”— he cut her off —“listen!” The zombies had found them and were circling the parking garage.
“—do you think they can get in?”
He shook his head. “Not unless they’re really smart for dead people.”
“So far”— she pursed her lips —“they seem to be.”
“Look—” he pointed at all the rubble “—I think we can keep them blocked out.”
She knew he was only trying to reassure her but she found it comforting anyway. They tried to reinforce the weakest spots before continuing their search for a gas can. He used the crowbar to pry open the trunk of each accessible car.
“I found one!” He held it up in triumph. It was only a one-gallon can and they had pretty much exhausted trunks to look through.
She stared at it bleakly, “That will get us what, fifteen miles in that van.”
He swallowed hard, trying to hide his fear. “I’ll just have to make repeated trips.” The temperature was dropping fast and they still had nothing with which to siphon gas. “Have you seen anything like a hose?”
“No—” she shook her head and then said “—wait Logan. The engines have hoses don’t they?”
“Yeah—” he felt stupid for not realizing that himself “—great thinking.”
He picked one of the few cars, which had been unlocked and popped the hood. He pulled out his keys and used one to unscrew the hose clamp on the longest thin hose. The radiator hoses would hardly do—they were too big. The best one he could find went to the window washer fluid. It would be slow going, but it would work.
The keys were under the seat. “Look at this, he held up the keys triumphantly.”
“Great—” she gazed over at the soda machine he had ripped apart “—you won’t have to break the lock on the gas cap,” she said sarcastically, not sure why it was such a big deal.
He turned the key and the tank showed full. “Perfect,” he announced and then headed for another car and began forcing the gas tank door open.
“Wait—” she threw up her arms more worried about the zombies circling than what car he siphoned the gas from “—why don’t you just use that one?”
She shivered as much from the zombies as from the freezing air. It was a little warmer in the parking garage, but it would still be sub-zero soon enough.
He cocked his head and raised his eyebrow at her as if it were obvious.
“What?” She didn’t want to play a guessing game.
“We have a key for that car—” he pointed at it “—we can use it to get warm. We can get gas from anyone of them.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She had been too worried about the ever-growing number of zombies circling the garage. “They know we’re in here and they are working together.”
“Try not to think about it—” he reassured her again “—we can keep them out.” He wasn’t certain of that at all, but there was no point in letting her know that he was afraid too.
She pulled her keys from her pocket and pointed at a car with the back end buried. “That’s my car; we can at least get warm in it if the other one runs out of gas during the night.”
Hearing herself say that made it real, they were going to have to stay the night. There was no way to get enough gas in the van, one gallon at a time, with the slow siphon, and still get out of town before morning.
“What about the exhaust—” she pointed at the pipe sticking out the back of the car “—won’t we kill ourselves from carbon monoxide?”
He looked around the large garage. “I think we’ll be okay—the area is pretty large and there are air gaps in the rubble.”
She took a deep breath hoping he was right. He had the first tank full and handed her his tranquilizer gun.
“Why?—” she looked at it blankly “—you need that! I have mine, and…” she drifted off.
“Look—” he unloaded it “—remember, we have to keep the serum.” He hesitated. “If I don’t get back, you are the only hope.”
She handed him her loaded one. “Take it, if you don’t get back I won’t be able to survive anyway. You need it more than I do.”
He wanted to argue. He had grieved more than he would have ever dreamed when he found her dead, he didn’t want to face that again. He took the gun.
He made the smallest hole he could and just before climbing out said, “block this.” He pulled out his cell. “Do you have your phone?”
She nodded.
“I’ll ring you when I’m close enough for you to start clearing the entrance—be ready.”
She agreed.
He leaned down and kissed her softly and she didn’t resist. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
He crawled out the hole and she covered it. It was nearly completely dark and she could hear zombies in several different places trying to get in. She waited for what seemed forever.
Chapter 16
“A woman caught unveiled by a stranger will
raise her skirt to cover her face.” Raymond Mortimer
~
Sherena paced back and forth, covering openings with more rubble each time an opening formed. Now that it was dark, the zombies seemed to be circling the garage, apparently not bothered by the cold. They started making shrieking noises and her head started hurting again, as it had been when they were hiding in the trees. There was more noise in her head. She covered her ears, trying to block it out.
She wanted to scream but that would be a very bad idea. It took her a long time to realize that her phone was ringing through the noise in her head. As soon as she was aware, she ran to the designated spot and pulled the covering back. Logan dove
through the opening.
“What took you so long?” He was panting.
She shook her head. “I don’t know—” she covered her ears and leaned against him “—I’ve got that noise in my head again. I didn’t hear the phone. I’m sorry.”
He pulled her into his arms and made her look at him. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s just like when we were in the trees only louder.”
She had been dead and injected with his experimental drug as well. “It must be a side effect. I’m sorry,” he said guiltily.
“It’s not your fault—” she rubbed her forehead hard “—at least I’m not one of them. It seems to be worse, the more of them there are; almost as if it has to do with their proximity.”
“We’ll be out of here soon enough.” He tried to calm her. He handed her the keys to the first car. “Get warm,” he ordered.
“What about you?”
“Trust me, between my adrenaline, and the running I am doing, keeping warm enough to be safe will not be a problem. Besides—” he opened the door for her “—the car might block the noise. Just keep your phone with you.”
She looked down at it. The battery was nearly dead. “Look—” she pointed to the battery icon “—try to hurry.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Trust me, I am. If you’re phone is going to die, call me and I’ll tell you were I’m at.”
She nodded and turned the car on. With the door shut and the car warming, she felt a little better. He filled the next gallon and then motioned for her to plug the opening behind him. He got out and ran. They repeated the scenario five times, then six, and then seven. They had no idea of how the gas mileage was or how far they would have to go.
“We need at least ten gallons to be safe—” he rubbed his hands together and blew into them “—we have to get to a gas station. It’s not just our lives on the line,” he reminded her.
“Why don’t you take a break and warm up?”
“I think they have a harder time seeing me in the dark—” he pointed at his watch “—we only have a few more hours. One looked right at me on the last trip and either ignored me or couldn’t see me. It just went back to trying to get in here.”
When he was on the ninth gallon, her phone started beeping—warning her, it was going to die. She called him.
“I’m only a few yards away—” he was shaking hard from the cold and the ringing of the phone had drawn the attention of one of the zombies, which was now coming toward him. He didn’t tell her “—I just can’t get close enough. See if you can draw their attention away from the entrance and I will yell when I get there.”
They had it set up so that it could only be unblocked from the inside. She ran to the other side of the garage and began to make noise. It was working. She ran back to the entrance but heard nothing from him. She waited for what seemed an eternity when she finally heard Logan. He practically fell through the opening but he made it. She put the cover back up and helped him to the car.
“What happened,” she asked.
He was shaking so hard that he could barely stand. He couldn’t speak, just held up his gun, panting. Logan looked as if he were going into hypothermia and she demanded he get into, her car to get warm—the other one had run out of gas.
“I need to get this filled up one more time and we can go together.”
“No—” she said flatly “—you warm up first.”
He got into the car with her and she made him take off his coat. She rubbed his arms and held him against her then rubbed his back to share her body heat. The shrieks got louder and louder. Her head hurt more and more. With each shriek, the noise in her head grew.
Finally, he began to warm up and it had taken nearly an hour. It would be dawn soon. He got out of the car, filled the can for the last time, and then came for Sherena. She seemed confused and he had a hard time getting her to understand him.
“It’s time to go.” He nearly had to pull her from the car.
The zombie shrieks grew louder than they had been and she felt as if she would pass out. It wasn’t the fear, or the cold. She couldn’t clear her head. He guided her to the opening and when they pulled the cover away, one of the monsters popped its head in and jumped through. It knocked her down and started biting and gnawing on her.
Logan tried to pull the animal off her. She had blood pouring from a bite to her jugular. He drew the zombies’ attention to himself. He fought as hard as he could to keep it from biting him but with all his strength, he was losing the battle, but managed to pull his gun from his pocket pants. He shot it and it fell limp. He pushed it away. Sherena was sitting on the concrete floor in a pool of blood. It was spurting from her neck with each heartbeat. He got to her as fast as he could and put pressure on the neck wound.
She had lost too much blood, he knew. She was fighting a losing battle, in spite of the fact that he had the bleeding under control. She fell mostly unconscious; he felt for a pulse—it was weakening. She was dying from blood loss. She did not begin to turn; he assumed that she had developed some kind of immunity from the vaccine, or from the previous bite. She was nearly dead.
He sat there wondering why her serum wasn’t helping her. He thought about what she had said about maybe needing a booster and he couldn’t think of anything else. Both guns were empty. He pulled the last two tranquilizers from her pocket; put one of them in his. He injected her with it, needle end—she went completely limp. He felt again for a pulse and it slowly began to strengthen but she was completely out.
The zombie began to move, slowly. They hadn’t waited around to see how long the serum had kept the zombies down but it was clear now that it wasn’t for very long. He opened the escape hole. He shoved the gas can out, and then pushed her through the opening as carefully as he could. He had to enlarge it a little to get himself through and could feel the zombie pulling on his leg. He kicked back and apparently in its drugged state, it wasn’t as strong and it fell back.
Out in the open, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder—thank goodness, she was light. He picked up the tank in the other hand. For the first time the zombies stopped shrieking and circling the garage. Dawn was just breaking and they all turned in unison and began to move toward him.
He ran as fast as he could under the load of her limp body and the last gallon of gas. They were right behind him when he got to the van. He nearly threw her into the van through the sliding door and then slammed it shut. He jumped in the driver’s seat and dropped the gas can onto the passenger seat. He fumbled with the keys in his cold, panicked hands and started the ignition. One of the windows in the back door was broken out—no doubt due to the explosion—a zombie grabbed hold.
He hit the gas but the zombie didn’t lose its grip. Logan drove as fast as he could but the monster managed to climb through the window. It came at Logan and he saw it in the rear view mirror. It tried to grab him but he hit the brakes and it flew forward into the area between the front seats. While the zombie was disoriented, Logan got the passenger door open and then hit the gas. Before the beast could regain its balance, Logan kicked it out the passenger door and drove off as fast as the van would go.
Chapter 17
“Death does not frighten me, but dying obscurely and
above all uselessly does." Isabelle Eberhardt
~
Sherena awoke in a strange looking hospital. For a moment, she thought the whole thing had been a nightmare but then she felt the bandage on her neck. She had IV fluids running into her and all the usual monitors. She seemed to be hooked up to some kind of a dialysis machine. This one was a little different. It appeared to be collecting something from her blood.
She was about to push the call button when Logan walked in, followed by a man she had never met.
“How are you feeling—” Logan leaned down and kissed her on the forehead “—you gave me quite a scare.” He motioned to the other man. “This is Damon Boyd. He’s the director of the CD
C.”
He was a handsome man—younger than she would have expected, with dark hair and a goatee. She wasn’t sure whether she should trust him, after all, he had been Dr. Soranto’s superior—that was an assumption. She would have to reserve judgment on him.
Apparently, she had been out for a while because of the tranquilizers but was recovering well due to the combo—possibly temporary cure, which she and Logan had concocted.
“As soon as you’re up to it—” Damon said “—we need to know all you can remember about your serum. I understand that all the notes were destroyed in the blast.
Clearly, Logan had been debriefed. “What is the status of the…a—” she hesitated, unable to bring herself to say the word in front of the director of the CDC “—victims?”
He turned to Logan, a meaningful look in his eye that said he wanted Logan to answer. He cleared his throat.
“Remember that we talked about what I thought might be done?”
She turned away. She felt responsible. She had let patient zero out—at least that was her assumption. Now the small town had been nuked.
“I assume the situation has hit the news—” she asked “—how are they going to cover that kind of an explosion?”
He turned the television on in her room. The story was on every station. A chemical plant had exploded creating a toxic plume miles into the sky.
“A toxic plume—” she cocked her head at the director “—do you really think people will buy that?”
“We can only hope so—” he met her eyes pointedly “—this kind of information leaking out would cause unimaginable panic.”
So, she was expected to keep her mouth shut. She assumed it was for the best. At least they had been sensible enough to use a small, ground based, tactical nuke.
It wasn’t safe and she worried about the years of cancer the surrounding cities would no doubt be afflicted with—how disconcerting it was that her attempts to cure cancer would ultimately cause more cases. The people would never be told. She was certain of that much.
