by Chris Lowry
He swung the rifle around on us, then lowered the barrel just as quick.
The woman of the group clung to the two girls, all three of them sobbing quietly.
“You friendly?” the man asked.
“Friendly enough.”
I got off my knee but kept my finger on the trigger.
“We’re sure glad you came along. Thank you.”
“You were lucky we were passing through,” said Jean. “They didn’t look like they had anything good planned.”
The man nodded toward the two girls.
“One of them went to school with my daughters. That one,” he pointed to one of the first ones I shot. Half his head was missing, but the girls didn’t seem that broken up about the loss of their classmate.
One left the clutch of her mom and started gathering the fallen guns.
“Do you have a car?”
I watched his hand tighten on the rifle butt.
“They tried to take it,” he said. “Used nails in a board across the road to blow out the tires.”
Damn, I thought.
I was going to ask for a ride. Or take their car, but now that they said the rednecks ruined it, we’d have to make an alternative.
“Let’s go see what we can find.”
I started walking further up the street, but didn’t bother to see if they followed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The town was empty. Or a better explanation was it had been cleaned out. There were no cars in any of the parking lots that bordered the highway that cut north through town. The used car lots were empty, the windows in most buildings busted out, trash and garbage spread across the roads.
The rednecks had been busy.
I bet they had a huge stash of stuff hidden somewhere. I didn’t have time to go search for it.
The silver haired man’s name was Roger. His wife was Barb, and the two girls were their own. A complete nuclear family in the after-Z world.
Rare.
“Where are you going?”
I asked as I led them through town. I kept my head on a swivel, studying, watching, in case the rednecks had friends. In case I could see something out of the ordinary, like a car. Hopefully one in a parking lot with the keys still in it and a full tank of gas.
Jean trailed after me.
She didn’t grumble, didn’t complain, just kept pace. I could feel her behind me though, a quiet storm of bottled emotion. Either we weren’t moving fast enough or she didn’t like the addition to our party.
I wasn’t too happy with the speed either.
We needed wheels fast.
“There’s a rumor about a place in Louisiana,” said Roger. “Supposed to be safe.”
I didn’t think that was true, but what did I know. America was a big country, and the government had to have safe zones. Communication was down, but when they got it back up again, they could direct survivors to walled compounds while trained people cleaned up the mess.
Although I was trained by practice, I’m not sure if I would help if they asked.
The government probably caused this. Why would I clean it up for them? Once they were back in power, or once I turned power back over to them, they would just put a tax on what I did so they could live safely. Or safer.
I shook my head to rid the thought.
I’m not an anti-government nut, but I couldn’t see an advantage to our former republic that rewarded the rich, punished the poor and worked hard to keep the classes stratified.
It’s always been like that, since people started gathering in cities. It’s been called the haves and the have not’s, the nobility and the serfs, the birth of the middle class so they could feel superior to the serfs.
There was a myth of the self-made man that pervaded our culture before the fall. A thousand new millionaires were created by real estate, then hedge fund managers made billions by sending them all into the poor house. A couple of thousand more people were made paper rich with a tech boom, then the super-rich colluded to make the market crash after walking away with billions of their own.
It made me wonder about the new societies I had encountered. Soldiers ruling by might. Kid’s ruling so adults couldn’t ruin it. The power of the sword replaced by the power of the gun, the power of the pike.
Yes, I was sure the rich were still out there, still alive and hiding behind walls. Using guys like me to clean up their mess.
“That would be nice,” I told Roger.
No need to be rude. No need to bust his bubble. Let him pursue his dream of a safe place.
“There,” he pointed.
It was an old service station with a three-bay garage attached to the side. The windows were covered in dust, but the angle of the sun glinted off glass in one of the bays.
We jogged over to the station. The inside had been gutted, empty food racks thrown on the floor, the glass coolers busted open.
The great thing about open windows was there were no Z inside.
We couldn’t tell with the garage. A door led to the auto bays from the store, but it was closed. The glass was smeared with something, chocolate, blood or feces, or maybe just dirt. It was hard to tell which.
I tried to lift the garage door.
Locked from the inside.
I banged on it to see if we could draw any Z toward the front. Nothing showed.
“Guess I’m going in.”
I lifted the rifle and got it ready. Jean moved to one side so she could get an angle on the door. Roger and his brood spread out. If anything ran through the front door, they would have time to move.
Smart.
I guessed Roger and company hadn’t survived that long by being stupid.
The door knob was crusty, but not sticky. I winced as I turned it and pulled the door open.
The smell inside was dead body, rotting meat, gas and oil. It smelled like Z, or roadkill.
I banged on the inside door too and stood back to wait.
Nothing came.
The light through the front windows was weak, casting a pale glow through the room. I could see the dark shadow of a car up on hydraulics, and another truck further past. If there were two vehicles inside, we were lucky. If they both ran, it would save us a fight.
I ducked my head into the room and out again quick, in case something snapped at me.
Then I stepped inside and shuffled through to the garage. A small bar was the only thing locking it to the tracks. I twisted the lock and threw open the garage.
I guess I was used to the smell.
When it washed out over Roger’s daughters, they both turned green and emptied their stomachs. There wasn’t much too it. They hadn’t eaten in a while, but the dry heaving was going to leave them sore.
Roger stepped up next to me and pointed.
The dead smell wasn’t from a Z. It was a body, a bearded man with a rotund belly and a Pollack painting on the wall behind his head, courtesy of a shotgun at his feet.
Jean slid in and picked up the weapon. She opened the breech to check the chamber and snapped it closed with a snarl.
The garage owner must have used the last one to take his trip to the other side.
Roger moved to the car on the rack.
“Think we can get it down?” I asked.
He nodded and went to the wall.
“No electricity,” he explained, “But there’s a release.”
I watched him reach around behind a machine and move his arm. The car started lowering to the ground with a loud hiss of air. It landed on its tires as the hoist clattered to the concrete floor.
“Worked at a gas station when I was in high school,” he explained.
He went over the car, popping the hood and checking the engine.
“Look for keys on a rack.”
Jean slid in behind the driver’s door and cranked the engine. It turned over with a few clicks but didn’t catch.
Roger rooted around on the back wall and found a battery charger, but no electricity to charge it.
He went to the truck and I almost stopped him. But then he was under the hood and pulling the battery from it. He attached it to the cables in the car.
“Try now,” he called to Jean.
She cranked the key. The engine thought about quitting. The battery was low, it clicked four, then five times. Finally, the engine caught with a cough, and roared to life.
Roger closed the hood.
“Pull it out.”
She did and stopped in front of the garage. Roger walked around checking the tires, but it looked solid.
He motioned Barb and his girls into the car.
“You want to ride with us?”
“I’m going north,” I told him.
He was watching my hand, his finger on his gun too. Maybe he expected me to try and take the car.
“You can go with them.”
“I told you my people are in Little Rock,” Jean answered.
“There’s nothing north,” he told me. “Someone told me Little Rock is all gone.”
I nodded.
“I’ll check on it.”
“We’re going to the safe town in Louisiana. We could use your help.”
Finger still on the gun, but asking for help. Afraid I might take his car, grateful for my help earlier. I could see he was torn.
“We may come look for you after we go there,” said Jean. “Zombies.”
He followed her long finger as it pointed up the street. All the Z weren’t trapped in the fields. Three were lumbering up the road, drawn by the banging and the car engine. One of his daughter’s squealed.
“Get them fed,” I told him. “Get them safe.”
“You have to come with us now.”
I turned and ran back to the truck. Old garages like this had to have more batteries. Tires lined a rack on the back wall, different makes and sizes.
Jean jogged in with me.
“He said he won’t wait.”
Even as she told me I could hear the squeal of tires as he raced away from the garage. The movement might draw the Z after him. Still, I hurried.
“Look for a battery.”
She checked the shelves, shoving stuff aside and hooted in triumph.
“Found one.”
I hefted it into the truck, connected the cables and sent a prayer to the Universe as she slid behind the wheel.
“No key.”
Damn it.
“Check the visor.”
She folded it down, but no luck, and began digging in the console, fingers searching the floorboard.
I ran to the wall and searched for a keyboard, a pegboard, anything that the dead man might have put the key on. It was blank. I went inside to the cash register, checked under the counter and shelves.
Nothing.
I kicked the shelf with my boot and broke it. Business receipts, trays of screws and the detritus that collects under registers spilled onto the floor, adding to the mess.
There was a key on a floating keychain in the middle of it.
I grabbed it, ran it out to the truck and passed it to Jean.
She shoved it in the ignition, cranked it. The engine caught and turned. The truck must have been in for a new muffler because it sputtered and screamed like it didn’t have one.
“That’s going to help us sneak across the country,” Jean smiled.
I didn’t care. We could blow the horn the whole way, crank the radio as loud as it would go.
All that mattered was we had wheels, we were just over an hour away and we could go.
I jumped in beside her, finally letting her drive and used my back seat driving skills to direct her out of town. She weaved through the Z as they filled the street and set our course for Sherwood.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You’re pretty good at killing,” Jean said. “I knew some men, boys really, back before the zombies that were in a gang. They had killed before, but they didn’t take to it like you did.”
Like I did.
It took a zombie apocalypse to discover my special talent, and it was something that would put me behind bars for life in a different world.
I remembered reading about killers in that world, men who took to a life of crime, or authors trying to share something they learned from cops. Most people only killed one person, and it was someone they knew in a crime of passion.
The ones who could murder more than a single person were rare, despite what news would have you think. Those who could kill as many as I had were rarer still, falling into a category called serial in the civilian world.
Soldiers were different.
They were trained to think different, and unless they were snipers, couldn’t normally keep track of their kill ratio.
Which made me wonder what I was?
I wasn’t a soldier.
I wasn’t a serial killer, or at least I didn’t kill for fun.
I just did what had to be done.
And it came too easy, too fast for me to know what was happening, and when I realized it, I tried not to think about it.
If you dwell on the numbers, it gets worse.
Like thinking about the past, and reliving all those moments where something should have been different. I called them ghosts.
Ghosts were real, and they haunted you, but it wasn’t a spook in a sheet with two eyeholes cut out.
They were memories, as real as the feelings they caused. Sometimes hard to banish in the dark, fed by firelight and boogiemen fueled under the stars, or hidden in the shadows.
“I just do it,” I confessed. “I don’t think about it.”
Because thinking about it would drive me crazy.
“It’s probably best you don’t,” Jean advised. “Maybe it’s something you have a natural talent for doing.”
“Maybe.”
“Or you hate people.”
Maybe that too, but I didn’t say it aloud. I didn’t think I hated people though. I had done too much to save some along the way. I guess what I hated were bullies. People who used their strength, their power over others.
Kept them as slaves.
Kept them as objects.
Bullies like my stepdad. That’s what started it, started the rage. Growing up poor, wearing second hand clothes, reeking of cigarette smoke that covered the house in a miasma. Kids at school were cruel. Always.
One pair of jeans to wear every day, new for the school year, and a second pair at Christmas if we were lucky. Growth spurts were the worst. They created highwaters, hems that drifted higher over the ankles. No pants to replace them though, because they still fit in the waist.
And if the waist got tight, half servings for supper so we shrank.
Imagine being punished for growing. Starving until you fit in clothes that were too small, too short.
The kids at school bullying because you brought half a sandwich for lunch, wearing pants too short, because you smelled.
I bottled it up. I bit my quivering lip and sucked it up buttercup, because that’s what you do.
The jeans became shorts for the summer.
That’s what you do, make good of a bad situation.
And now, if the situation turned bad, sometimes it took killing the bullies to make it better.
That’s why I didn’t play with the ghosts. I could have been a psychopath. The expression was, there but for the grace of God go I.
I’d heard about childhood friends who had gone to prison, who had turned to crime, had done their one murder and been behind bars.
I was too stubborn to go down that road. I bottled it up and hid it, and played by all the rules.
That fed the rage too, every time I saw someone breaking the rules. I had to follow them because I feared the consequences. Why shouldn’t they?
“I don’t hate everyone,” I told her. “You’re alright.”
She smiled. White teeth flashing in the sun coming through the window of the antique car as we puttered along the backroad toward Sherwood.
I liked it. The wind. The sm
ile. The miles almost gone, almost home.
That’s the best ghost to find, and worth fighting for. Moments. This moment.
We were ten miles from home and I found myself happy.
Take the moments when they happen. Store them up to fight the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sherwood was empty. Front doors stood open in every other house, debris and things scattered in the front yards. A few were burned to foundation, stone fireplaces all that remained. The fire department was gone, levelled, as were the apartments built around the golf course.
We had to drop the car at a traffic jam on 167 where the road crossed under the highway. Too many people trying to get away, too many autos clogging the arteries, the shoulders blocked, the median blocked.
It looked like Florida.
“Careful,” I whispered as we coasted to a standstill and got out. We both held rifles at the ready. I unbuttoned the holster on my hip.
Zombies liked to hide in wreckage.
“We should have made pikes.”
“What’s a pike?”
“A guy I was with invented them,” I told her. “Long poles with blades on the end. Quiet killing.”
She nodded like she understood.
“They don’t like noise.”
She did understand.
“We’re going to move fast,” I told her. “Try to keep distance between you and the cars. Watch where you step.”
We had a little food in the backpacks, and we should have scavenged as we went. But I ignored my own rules as we rushed in a speed walk past the pile up, past the blocked roadway, the hospital that looked like a war zone. Windows smashed in the fast food restaurants. The sporting goods store.
We stayed on the service road, moving at a quick clip and I pulled up short.
“What?” she lifted her rifle and stared around, searching for danger.
“The RV dealership,” I pointed. “It’s untouched.”
She shrugged.
“So?”
I shook my head. An idea for another time, but it was a good one. If we could find an RV and outfit it, we would always have shelter, always have a place to sleep.
Not now though, and not this place. There was no way we could pull one of the campers onto the road.
