“Here,” said Brittany.
She handed me a can of Vienna sausages and a box of animal crackers. “Thanks.”
“Hurry, before they come out.”
“All right.”
I started eating. I wished I had something to wash it down with and that was the first time I thought about water. I knew we might not find it here, it’s been two years. I hoped for juices. They can survive in cans like the food.
“Aww! That sucks.”
“What?”
Brittany threw it to the ground. I looked at the small container; it had a straw in it. I couldn’t read the writing, but I knew it was a children’s drink. I wanted to pick it up and check the other side, maybe the writing was clearer. I never got the chance. Thompson stepped through the door carrying a bloody duffel bag, followed by Jones, then Charley.
They walked toward us. I remembered Brittany’s words and shoved a sausage in my mouth. For some reason, I reverted to a little child and thought they might take it from me. I managed to stuff another in my mouth before they were next to us.
Thompson laughed at me. I felt even smaller. He looked at the discarded container and at both of us. Brittany wiped her mouth, wearing an unpleasant frown. He judged her to be the drinker of the foul beverage. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Whatever.”
“It’s not whatever. It’s common sense, something you are evidently lacking.”
“Hey,” I managed to say with a mouthful of sausages.
He turned his gaze on me. “Any liquid in a paper container is no good.” His voice boomed at me. As if I was an idiot, who couldn’t hear or understand basic English. “Besides that, it’s been a long time since you have had that stuff. It will tie your stomach in knots and god knows what else.”
“You could have just said that,” I said in Brittany’s defense, making sure not to spit out my meal.
Thompson glared, “I did.”
“Whatever.” I said it fast and went back to eating.
“What did you guys find?” Brittany asked.
Jones set his bag down and unzipped it. “I didn’t get anything, except this bag and a couple bottles of whiskey. I picked up a shirt we can cut and stuff into them.” When he stopped talking, I looked at him. His face widened into his evil grin.
“What?”
“Molotov cocktails. That is, if I don’t drink them first.” He chuckled.
“And you?”
Thompson was the only one I had seen with a bag. He shook his head. “I thought we needed something more to carry the food.”
“Why is it so bloody?”
“I pulled it from under a rotting zombie.”
I thought he said the last part for my benefit. I was the only one eating. I tried to think happy thoughts, like gutting him with one of my knives. I could draw a smiley face around his belly button.
I dismissed the thought, focusing on the good. He did a good thing. I guess I can give him an ounce of credit, as long as he doesn’t grin. It wouldn’t happen too many times, but I had misjudged him, he could be a team player.
“Don’t let him fool you,” said Charley. He grinned. “We found batons.”
“Oh.” Jerk! I didn’t misjudge him.
Charley turned his attention to Brittany.
“I thought maybe we might eat these on the way,” said Brittany.
“I heard that,” said Charley. He reached into the cart and popped open a can of the sausages. I offered him some of my crackers. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
The others picked a can from the cart and I packed the leftovers in Thompson’s duffel bag. We started on our journey, weighted down with our haul. If not for Jones going toward the overturned army truck, I wouldn’t have given it another thought.
“I saw that truck earlier. It may have weapons we can use.”
Jones debated. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s take a chance,” said Brittany.
“All right, people, let’s be careful.” Jones led the way, we followed. I took my rear position and looked everywhere. No zombies appeared in the parking lot. We had to zigzag around wrecked cars, glancing inside them as we went. I feverishly searched for the walking dead.
It took the longest time to do the simplest things. Zombies could jump out at you from anywhere. Even though the distance between the parking lot and overturned truck was short, it took forever to get there. We moved slowly because of our bags, but made steady progress toward our goal.
Charley broke off. It took a couple of minutes, for me to notice him missing. I looked around for him, it would be better for me to find him than to make a commotion. After all, I was watching our six and he disappeared right in front of me. I dropped back a little and looking to my left, I found him.
Charley sat inside an abandoned car with no front windshield. I was lucky to catch a glimpse of him, his head bobbed up for a split second, then was gone again. I looked up at the others continuing to walk to the truck before sprinting to Charley.
“Hey, what is going on?”
“I can get this to run.”
I looked at him, bent over the car, working on some wires. I looked around and then back at him, he had a piece of wire between his teeth, stripping the plastic cover off it.
“What are you doing?”
He gave me a confused look. “The battery is still good. If I can—” he touched two of the wires and the inside dash lit up. I can’t tell whose grin was bigger, his or mine. “This might be our lucky day.”
I looked at the dash and found the gas gauge, it read half a tank. I didn’t know how far we had to go, but this was a small four cylinder and it could surely take us a hundred miles or more. “Oh my god! If you can get this to work. We can be at the camp in a heartbeat.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“How much longer?”
Confusion spread across his face. “I have no idea. I guessed the thickest red wire was hot and I touched it to ground and it sparked. That let me know the battery had juice. With what I can remember, I think it is best to avoid black, brown, and gray wires. I’m going to touch the others one by one and see what happens, but first, I have to raise the hood and disconnect the horn.”
“Why? Can’t you do everything from down there?”
“The last thing I need is to activate the horn and send a thousand zombies down on us.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, good luck. I will catch up to the others and let them know. If you get it going, you know where we’ll be.” I have no idea why I whispered. It may have been to hide my anxiety.
Charley smiled up at me and then he was back down low, under the dash. I zigzagged through the mess and caught my people as they made it to the truck. I crept up, “anything good?”
Jones looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. I guess I was supposed to really guard our six. I’m sure he thought I slipped back into my old habits, only they took a new form. “Check the cab, Baker. We got this.”
“Yes, sir.” I was wrong, I can’t deny it. I wasn’t going to waste time arguing. I went around the front to search the cab for something useful. I wasn’t choosy, anything would do: a map, a compass from the glove compartment, a nine millimeter, or a good-sized stick. “Oh shit!” I knew it couldn’t last. Zombies saw us and came in mass numbers.
At first they moved slowly as if they had all the time in the world, a pack of them. When I took a step backward to run, that’s when one on the end howled and they all came at us, howling and running.
“Jones! Jones!” I screamed, racing to the back. “Brittany!”
They must have heard them. When I got to them, none of them searched the wreckage like before, all watched the approaching zombies.
“Run!” Jones shouted and we did. We ran back the way we came. Though we clutched our prized possessions, we or at least I, was ready to drop them and run even faster.
Beep, beep, beep. A horn blasted.
We ran in its direction, Charley
barreled down the road. He screeched to a halt and we jumped in. Charley hit the gas, not to mention many of the cars, as he peeled out of the lot. For pure pleasure, I looked from the back seat at the chasing zombies. They howled and kept running, but they would never catch us.
Charley navigated the maze of streets and got us away. We gave him high praise and he ate it up, with a grin to end all grins.
Chapter 11
Charley barreled down the road at a healthy speed. I sat swished in the back, between Jones and Brittany. “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
Charley looked through the rearview mirror to verify what I had said. His eyes went from Brittany to me to Jones. His forehead wrinkled, giving me pause. I wondered if something might be wrong that we didn’t know about, perhaps something with the car. “You sure?”
I saw him looking directly at me. “Yeah, I’m sure. How about you, you okay?”
“Better than you,” his eyes went to Jones. “How far is it?”
Jones leaned forward to look out the absent windshield. It looked strange, to be in a moving car with no windshield. Somehow we were lucky and there were no small pieces of glass to fly at us. All looked normal except for the windshield wipers that stood straight up, impairing the view. Twice Charley knocked them out of his way and they came back.
Jones didn’t consult his map. He looked out the window and read a road sign. “About forty-two miles straight ahead. Do we have enough gas to get there?”
“She’ll get us there with plenty to spare.” Charley talked about his love with pride. I only hoped he was right.
Jones sat back and closed his eyes. The rushing wind felt good. I followed his lead and leaned back. We were nearly there and for the most part in great shape. The ones we lost flashed across my mind and I allowed it. It wasn’t sad like I thought it would be, it was joyous. I can see all of them clapping for us because we made it. Who wouldn’t want someone else to make it if they couldn’t? I closed my eyes tighter and listened to the wind and the car. Sometime later, I fell asleep.
Movement jolted me awake. My body flew forward into the headrest of the seat in front of me. The sudden jarring sent me into a tailspin. I had no idea where I was other than in the car. I couldn’t tell up from down and was in the most unusual position I had ever been in. The chaotic voices around me came roaring into my head and made no sense at all. I put my hands to my head and did my best to drown out the noise and focus.
“Is he dead?” Brittany was saying.
“I don’t know?” Jones replied.
“I hope to hell he is,” shouted Charley. His voice had a quality I couldn’t place. “Did you see that bastard’s eyes?”
“What?” I managed, struggling to right myself.
“I can’t believe it,” said Brittany. “I’ve never seen them like that before. What do you suppose made it happen?”
“Did he leave your sight in the store?” Jones demanded. “Either of you?”
“What?” I tried focusing again. The cobwebs were clearing and I was seeing better now. We were all in the car. I sat up, I was on Jones, and he was bracing me. Brittany’s face looked horror stricken and Charley was up front. Thompson was missing. I straightened to look over his seat and he was not on the floor or hiding. Thompson was not in the car with us.
That is when the full picture came into view. Brittany was trying to open her door while talking but couldn’t. She pounded, pushed, and lifted but the door wouldn’t open. In the front, I saw where we were, or more precisely, where we weren’t— the road was gone.
We were off the road and directly in front of us, through the missing windshield, I saw steam rising from our smashed hood. The next thing I saw was a piece of bark hanging off a giant tree that we had somehow wrapped ourselves around.
Charley turned to me. “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay? Can you even hear me?” Charley waved his hand in front of my face as if I were a blind person.
“I hear you,” that much was true. Now that my hearing was back, I heard them all, I just had no clue what was happening and no one was explaining it to my satisfaction. “What the fuck happened?”
“Your buddy, Thompson,” said Charley, “he’s a fucking zombie. The motherfucker tried biting me. I lost control of the car and we crashed.”
“Charley?” Brittany shouted. “I saw you clear as day.”
Charley put his head down. Whenever Simon got in trouble, that was always his first response. In the beginning it was shame, but as he got older I came to realize it was a secret weapon and he was working me. Charley lifted his head and looked back at me. “Sorry. I kind of steered us into the tree, hoping to take him out. I didn’t have time for anything else.”
Before I could respond to this new information, Jones leaned into me and then kicked our door open. We got out of the car and waited for Charley to hop over the seat and join us. That gave me time to gather my wits and look around.
We were in a field or maybe it was part of a park system. Our wrecked car lay a thousand feet away from the road. I walked to the front to have a better look at the damage, the front left wheel lay flat on the ground. It wasn’t alone, part of the car and I can’t say which parts were lying with it, clearly snapped off at a jagged edge.
“My god, will somebody please explain this and make it make sense.”
Charley pointed in the distance. I looked and saw a crumpled body. It was Thompson. I looked at Charley for verification, he nodded his head. “That’s him.”
“What happened?”
“You and Jones were asleep.” He looked at Brittany, wanting to include her in the number. Her look said she would call him out if he tried. “We were going along all right and then Thompson turned and looked at me. Well, first I saw his hand was twitching. I thought maybe he was having a nightmare or he was reliving what we went through. Then he looked at me and his eyes, they were red.
“He reached for me and I hit him in the head. I lost control and the car went off the road. I don’t know what he was doing. He was grabbing at the steering wheel. We came in this direction and I saw the tree. I thought if I hit it, he would fly into it and the impact would kill him. It was the only weapon I had.
“I hit the tree and he flew out of the car and landed there. That’s it, the whole story.” He wiped his hands on his jeans.
I began walking to Thompson.
“Zee! What are you doing?” asked Brittany.
“I want to see for myself.”
Jones shouted, “What?”
“I need to see for myself.”
I continued walking. I never liked Thompson and if he were a zombie, good riddance. Still, I hated losing anyone to them. There were so few of us, he was one of our original members.
The others followed in silence. I guess they figured trying to talk me out of it was a waste of time, it was. I had to see him for myself. I have questions that I want answers to and this man held those answers.
When I reached him, he was lying face down. My hand slightly shook as I reached for him and gently touched him, he felt human. I gently turned him over and looked into his face. There were scars and gashes and bright-red blood was gently flowing from his wounds. I convinced myself Charley dreamed it all. Thompson’s blood was red, not greenish-black. If not for the blood, he might be sleeping.
Brittany came around the other side and knelt behind me. I wondered if she was thinking as I was. I turned to her warm smile, moral support. It gave me the courage I needed to open his eyes for the proof I needed. I faced the man, reached toward his eyes, and them sensing me, opened on their own.
Thompson’s eyes locked on mine and neither of us moved. His eyes transfixed me and I couldn’t break the stare. I tried, oh god how I tried, it wasn’t happening and never would. His eyes held me and I became his servant. If he had asked it, I have no doubt I would have done it.
I knew it wasn’t right and something was horribly wrong. I t
ried again and the same result occurred. Giving up on escaping, I tried something new, I moved my eyes from the blackness of his eyes to look at the white portion and see if it was red like Charley thought. When I did, I saw only white. Charley was wrong. I couldn’t stand this man, and if I could choose one of our number to fall, it would be him. He was human.
“Zee?” Brittany pushed me.
It did the trick, I was back. “What?”
“You didn’t hear me talking to you just now?” Brittany’s face was a puddle of worry. “I thought I might have to slap you.”
“I’m fine.”
Of course, I was. Thompson was okay. If he were a zombie, he would have eaten me by now. I stood and faced Jones and Charley. “You were wrong; he is as human as we are.”
“Bullshit!” Charley went around me and looked for himself. “I saw them, damn it, I saw them. This fucker had red eyes. Why else would I crash the car?”
“You tell me,” Thompson’s reply was low.
“Oh shit!” Brittany said. She ran for the car and jumped into the back seat. Jones was behind her and then Charley. My reactions were slow. It took time before I saw what they saw. I rubbed my head out of curiosity and there was a lump there. That explains it.
They grabbed our bags. Zombies were coming from the road toward us in large numbers. I scanned the trees and saw a house and a pond. I sprang into action. I got behind Thompson and lifted him. Throwing his arm over my shoulders, I propped him up and we moved toward the house.
The others caught up and ran past us to the house. Somehow I was in this alone. Thompson was fine, I knew it. The others took Charley’s side. They were all wrong and would regret it. I hobbled along as fast as I could. It quickly became crystal clear that we weren’t going to make it to the house. These zombies were fast. There were a lot of them and the ones in the front were like athletes running a race and we were the prize.
“Go to the back,” shouted Jones.
I headed that way, but it was only me, the others stayed. Jones opened his bag and with weapons at the ready, they stood their ground. I kept going with Thompson. We could make it to the back of the house. I stole one last look at my team battling the zombies. So good so far, they were all on their feet.
Zombie Zora Page 9
