I reached across Agnes and pulled her belt across her chest and lap, fastening it securely. I remained in the back seat for convenience sake, and strapped myself in as Gus sped down the street.
“Other way,” I instructed as the dead in my mind became stronger. We were headed toward evil.
“Can you tell which direction?” Gus asked me.
“No, not exactly. Just…ahead.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“Ok.”
Agnes reached over and took hold of my hand. I looked at her. She still faced forward and just started at the back of the seat in front of her. I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Gus made a left hand turn, taking us down another residential street. The first of the dead appeared nearly a mile away in the driveway of the first two-story home that we came upon. The creature was more accurately a bit less than half of a creature. It lay on the uneven pavement of the driveway, near the garage door. It was so emaciated that there was no telling its gender or age pre-death. It consisted of a head, one arm, and half a chest that gaped where the other half had been torn, or eaten, away. It reached its single arm toward our car as we drove by.
I idly rubbed at my hip as a deep ache began. “Gus, they’re getting close.”
I wondered to myself where they had all come from. They hadn’t been near the day before. Gus turned the car to the right, into an older neighborhood that sported run down homes and yards full of older-style toys, campers covered in plastic tarps, and old vehicles that had all been in in some state of being repaired when the world had ended. As we continued straight more dead appeared to each side of us. They were walking slowly and seemingly aimlessly, all Roamers, and all badly decayed. I could feel their intense hunger and desire for our flesh in my mind. It was dizzying and nauseating. Agnes whimpered beside me as three of them got close enough to touch the car. Her hand gripped mine painfully.
Every night when I go out, the monkey's on the table! Take a stick and knock it off! Pop goes the weasel!
The nursery rhyme entered my head like a pound of bricks. They were waiting for us; more of the dead children. There was no giggling this time, just intense anticipation of our driving right into their little laps.
“Gus!” I screamed. “Turn around!”
Without hesitating, he slammed on the breaks. Tires squealed loudly and the car swerved into a semi-circle. Agnes kept her grip on my hand, and with my other I braced against my door. As the vehicle came to a stop, the Roamers were quickly gathering on all sides of us.
“Go, go, go, go go,” I chanted with urgency.
The dead children were angry that we had stopped progressing toward them. They hid in the shadows, suddenly livid that they would be forced into full daylight to pursue us. They thought the light was unsafe. The light hurt. I could feel their pain as it warmed their cold skin. Their hunger winning out, they continued toward us.
As Gus pressed on the gas pedal again, the engine sputtered to a halting stop as the engine died. Gus turned the key and pumped the gas pedal in desperation. The Roamers were pressing against the windows now, their bony fingers leaving streaks of gore behind. Dirtied, broken teeth gnashed toward us, hoping to sink into our flesh. Agnes began screaming and her finger nails dug into my palm.
“Shut up!” yelled Gus. “The noise will agitate them!”
I heard rare panic in his voice. As I stared out the front window, my breath caught in my chest when a little girl fell onto the hood of the car. Had she jumped or fallen from above? I had no clue. Her blonde hair was still in a ponytail, but it was streaked with dirt and blood and clumps were missing from her scalp. She wore a knitted sweater that was hanging in shreds. It might have been red or pink when it was new. Her legs were bare aside from a pair of underpants. She looked right at us as she began crawling toward the windshield. Her eyes were a dull gray and sunken. Her lips curled into an evil smile as she looked directly at me.
“All Around the Mulberry Bush,” she began singing, her smile never fading.
“Gus…”
The engine finally roared to life, albeit with a new knocking noise. As the car lurched forward, the dead girl tried to hang on. She soon rolled off, landing hard on the roadway.
***
As we drove, I uncurled Agnes’ fingers from my hand. She had finally stopped crying and sat quietly again.
“Agnes, I’m sorry I yelled,” sighed Gus from the driver’s seat.
She didn’t reply.
The engine continued to knock and sputtered.
I sensed what Gus was thinking. We’d have to run soon.
“The car’s about to break down. We’ll need to run,” I said to Agnes matter-of-factly and calmly.
“I know,” she said simply.
I turned in my seat to look behind us. The little girl who had fallen off the hood of the car was on all fours, crawling toward us with her body bent unnaturally. Her quick speed was abnormal. The Roamers followed her at a distance, their strides sluggish and uneven. One was knocked over by another and struggled to regain its footing as we drove on.
“What is that thing?” asked Agnes, her voice near hysteria. I knew she was referencing the child that was following us at an alarming speed.
“Evil,” muttered Gus.
The car turned to the left, onto a main street that was littered with strewn garbage. Bodies lay in the middle of the road, nearly decayed to the point of being unrecognizable as once human. Their clothing, saturated from the elements and also decomposing, was the biggest clue as to what they had once been. It was the most we had seen evidence-wise of a population having once been in this small town. The car died two blocks up.
CHAPTER 11
When my father was still alive, he used to have all kinds of kooky sayings. One involved imminent death and seeing both your past and the future flash before your eyes. I had never understood how one could see their future if they were about to die. As we sat in the broken down car though, watching a horde approach, I found myself picturing a future I might have had. A future where I could love both Gus and Boggs equally and without hurting either of them. A future where we were safe from the dead.
“Zoe! C’mon, snap out of it!” yelled Gus harshly.
He was already out of the car, as was Agnes. I scurried out through the back door and gratefully took Gus’ hand. We ran. I could hear Agnes breathing heavily behind us. Gus led us toward an alley to the left. I was dizzy from so many dead minds linked to my own. Clouds were quickly rolling in and wind began to whip from different directions. Things seemed ominous. The dead were closing in from all sides, their snarls and moans unearthly and bone-chilling. Most of them were badly decomposed, making it easier to pick out the frightening children who were capable of speech and torment beyond what we had come to expect. Gus pulled me forward, and instinctively I reached back for Agnes’ hand. Her eyes were full of terror as she fought to catch up. As we rounded the next corner, a gunshot rang out nearby. None of us reacted to it, desperate to outrun the evil that followed.
“C’mon you mutha fuckas!” I heard a male voice shout in the distance. “Over here you goddamn sons of bitches!”
Keep running! I heard Gus in my head.
I gripped Agnes’ hand harder, forcing her to run with us. I had felt a hesitation in her stride when she heard the voice.
A car engine revved nearby, followed by a female voice hooting and hollering. “Come get a piece of this you assholes!” She sounded almost gleeful. “Come get a fucking piece of this!”
I could feel the hunger of the dead thick inside my head. The Roamers were intent on their new targets, while the dead children continued to zero in on the three of us. I could distinctly sense two of them; the girl who had pounced on the hood of the car and a boy. They were friends in a strange dead-sort-of-way; dependent upon one another. We rounded another corner, smack into what appeared to be a death trap. On each side and in front of us was a brick wall, with no way out but to turn around and go back. A
s we turned with hope of escape, the children were blocking our way. The boy clicked in an organized manner while the girl hummed a tune with which I was unfamiliar. To others, it may seem they were making random noises. I knew better. I could sense otherwise. It was their way of communicating with each other. The third child stood back, waiting. She looked as if in her life as a real child she may have had delays and she still wore braces on her legs. I sensed very little from her, just that she was supposed to wait in the background in hopes of leftover scraps. It made me sick; not only her hunger but realizing she was treated by the others as the underdog. I supposed that not everything chAgnes for the dead. Cruelty existed even amongst their own.
Out of instinct, the three of us let go of each other’s hands and spread ourselves out a few feet from each other. The boy continued to click. He was in tougher shape than the dead girl. Flesh barely clung to one cheek and dark sludge dribbled from both corners of his mouth. One of his eyes was sunken and I doubted there was an eyeball in the socket. The girl looked like she had died much more recently. She locked her too-clear blue eyes with mine and I did the only thing I could think of. I began to hum back to her, a tune my mother had sung to me as a small child. Her lips turned up into an indecent smile in response, the sort of smile that was meant to cause fear and terror to rise up. I waited for the attack. We were weaponless aside from our own arms and legs and I knew deep down that we’d be lucky if even one of us survived. Everything surrounding me went quiet aside from the humming the girl and I were doing, and the clicking of the rotting boy.
An image of the three of us dropping to the ground filled my head; I knew it was coming from Gus’ mind. I ignored it, suddenly overwhelmed with a need to go to the little girl. I needed to be near her, to embrace her and to touch her. My own humming changed involuntarily to match hers as I took a step forward. At the moment all that mattered was reaching her. I was vaguely aware of the other noises that surrounded us. Someone yelling for me to get down. Gunfire. Screaming. Something was holding me back. My chest began to hurt in desperation to move forward. It was as if I couldn’t breathe unless I touched her. I had to breathe…had to wrap my arms around her…she was so hungry…so hungry.
My ankle was hurting. Something was holding my ankle and I couldn’t reach her. I had to reach her; every fiber of my being told me so.
“Let me go,” I moaned. “Oh God let me go!”
Someone was shouting my name in the distance. I knew the voice but it was so far away. I was suddenly forced to the ground, a great weight upon my back. The air was knocked from my lungs and all of the sounds around me rushed into my ears at once; it was deafening. A loud ‘crack’ sounded in my right ear and instantly my link to the dead little girl was severed. I wept while someone wrapped their strong arms around me.
“Get her in the car, quick!” said a female voice that was full of command.
“We need to leave, NOW!” boomed an unfamiliar voice. I was unable to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Zoe, can you stand?” It was Gus’ voice.
I was too exhausted by whatever the girl had done to me to answer. Within seconds he lifted me from the ground and I slumped against his chest as he carried me. Soon he cradled me in his lap as we sat, presumably inside a vehicle. I was too tired to open my eyes to look around. I knew Gus had me in his arms, and I trusted that he’d keep me safe.
***
The gentle rocking of the car had lulled me to sleep. It was Gus kissing my forehead that woke me.
“You ok, darlin’?” he asked softly.
“Not really. What happened?”
My eyes flickered open. We were in a dark room with no windows. “Where are we?”
“Underground.” It was Agnes’ voice.
“My throat’s dry,” I said hoarsely.
“Danny, hand me some water,” said an old woman.
“Here, Mimaw.” The voice was that of a young man. I assumed it was ‘Danny.’
“Here, child. Drink.”
A cold, bony hand reached out until it found my own. There was only a single candle lit behind the woman, and I could see very little detail. She had long hair, braided to one side and falling over her shoulder onto her chest. I could tell she was frail. Soon her other hand was slipping a cool bottle into my hands.
“It’s alright, girl. It’s just water. Sip, slowly mind you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered as I held the bottle to my lips and sipped. It tasted stale and just slightly of flowers.
“Where is this place?” I asked once my throat was moistened.
“My grandchildren saved you from the dead. They brought you to our hiding place.”
“It’s ok, Zoe, they’re good people,” said Gus in his deep voice. I found it soothing.
“We’re not far from the hotel,” said Agnes. “But we need to wait until the horde passes to go back out.”
“Ok,” was all I could say.
As my eyes began to adjust to the dark, I could see that the old woman was weathered and looked tired. I suspected she was American Indian.
“You have been marked by the beasts,” she said without warning. “You and your father.”
I looked at her, wide-eyed, not sure what to say.
“I’m not her father,” Gus said simply. “And yes, we have both been marked.”
The woman closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Several of our people were marked. Some turned. The lucky ones lived.”
I felt an immediate sense of relief that she was not judging us, or about to throw us out to the dead.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I can feel it in you both. But not your sister here.”
None of us corrected her about my relation to Agnes. I turned and looked at Gus, who sat directly behind me. We were on woven blankets, and I could tell now that the ground was earth and slightly damp. He reached for my hand and held it lovingly.
“What happened back there?” asked Gus.
“She had me convinced I needed to be…” I paused. “Somehow…with her. I needed to be a part of her as badly as I needed to breathe.”
“A Drawer,” said the young man named Danny. “They draw you in. It’s their trap. Once they get you to look them in the eyes, it’s all over. We’ve lost too many people that way.”
“You’re Danny?” I asked. In the dim light I could see that he was maybe sixteen, had a straight jawline, and dark black hair. His skin was a golden brown.
“Ya, that’s me. This is Mrs. Jones, my Mimaw.”
“Mrs. Jones. A pleasure to meet you,” said Gus. “You’re Makah?”
“Absolutely,” came an older, deeper male voice.
Not realizing there was someone else in the earthen chamber with us, I jumped.
Danny chuckled at my reaction. “That’s Mack, my older brother.”
I could sense Gus getting ready to half-stand behind me in order to shake the newcomer’s hand.
“No, don’t stand,” said Mack. “These hidey-holes aren’t big enough for a hobbit let alone a man.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Gus.
“Likewise. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen any other survivors.”
“When do you think it’ll be safe to go out?” I asked.
“This is Zoe,” said Gus, introducing me. “And Agnes over there.”
“The others in our group lured the dumb ones away,” said Danny. “Mack killed the Drawers.”
“That one almost had you, Missy. Glad I got to it before you did,” said Mack while looking at me.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, feeling a bit awkward.
“We’re all very grateful. We were caught off guard, with no weapons.”
“Anyway we need to hang out and make sure none head this way before we head back out. Damn stragglers can creep up for hours.”
“You need to sleep. Danny, show them to the bedrooms?” suggested the elderly Mrs. Jones.
“Yes, Mimaw.” Danny shuffled until he was crouching
and gestured for us to follow him. “Watch your heads. Mack wasn’t kidding when he said it’s barely big enough in here for a hobbit. The next room is bigger.”
We followed Danny, crawling on all fours. My legs ached, especially my hip where I had been “marked” as Mrs. Jones had put it. After a short distance, the teenager stopped ahead of us.
“It’ll just be a minute while I unlatch the door,” he said.
I heard the shuffling of a piece of wood. Once it was set aside, we were bathed in the soft glow of a lantern coming from the next chamber.
“It’s a short drop to the floor. Just sit on your butt in the opening and hop down.”
Danny demonstrated when he disappeared into the next area of their hiding spot. Gus placed a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“Let me go first,” he whispered.
I nodded, and he contorted himself to work his way around my body in the tight space. I followed him and waited for Agnes to join us.
“Come on down, Aggie,” said Gus softly.
Soon her legs were over the edge and Gus helped her slide down to our level. She winced when her injured hand bumped the edge of the crawlspace. We were able to stand in this section, but Gus’ head threatened to brush the makeshift ceiling at any time. The dirt overhead was seemingly being held up by an intricate pattern of two-by-fours and sheets of plywood.
“How far down are we?” I asked.
“Oh, maybe ten feet? Once we’re through the next hatch we’ll be in the basement of my brother’s house. It’s a lot more comfortable. We sealed off everything above and made the underground entry off in the distance to fool the dead. We have four of these places total, as safe houses of sorts. We use two for living and two for emergencies. Mack and Marnie are working on a fifth farther outside of town.”
The chamber twisted around to the right, where we were again forced to drop to a crouch as we made our way forward. Tiny battery-operated candles had been placed at various places along the path, just barely allowing us to see. Ahead was another doorway, this time comprised of metal bars on a frame. The frame that attached to the hinges was anchored in cement. Danny unlatched the bars and swung the door inward.
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