Running with the Horde

by Joseph K. Richard

  I was in my bed. The front of my shirt was covered in dried blood and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. There were zombies in my room surrounding my bed. I threw the cover off and got to my feet. I stumbled on my way to the hall. A long dead middle-aged soccer mom in yoga pants caught me before I could fall.

  “Thangs,” I mumbled but I wasn’t sure why.

  I made my way through the hall and down the stairs navigating around zombies that were standing vigil along my route to the living room.

  The house was trashed. It hurt to use my eyes. It tasted like I had a mouthful of dirty assholes.

  I was having a shitty day, literally.

  The door was standing open and the main floor was also full of zombies. I stepped around them onto the porch. A contingent of the dead were entrenched around my property. There was no sign of Rosie, Tegan the asshole, or Daisy and the caravan was gone along with the minivan.

  My once beautiful car was still in the driveway though, all shot to hell. The driver’s side tires were blown out. I walked down to the street and stared stupidly down the block. The only signs of the caravan were several skid marks and hundreds of shell casings.

  A few of the zombies milling around me looked fresh. I called one over to me. His clothes were shredded and he was missing a shoe. There were wicked looking bite marks all over his body. I thought I recognized him from the caravan but I wasn’t sure.

  It wouldn’t have been my favorite way to go out.

  The presence of the fresh zombies meant the caravan had been hit hard and fast. That would explain why they left me and the rest of my supplies. The zombies must have responded en masse to Daisy’s screaming summons and gotten there quickly enough to cut Rosie and her men off from me and the house. They had all they could do just to escape with their lives.

  It must have been a hell of an adventure getting all the vehicles out of the cul-de-sac. I had no fucking idea where they went. Rosie had mentioned something about trading me for passage into a city. Most likely that meant the big city but last I’d seen, it had been closed for business.

  Damn, I missed Daisy already. That saying they have about good things and all that, well, it’s true.

  I sent the zombies away with an angry burst of thought. They sprinted for points unknown as if their undead lives depended on it. I couldn’t decide what to do next.

  The shit in my pants decided that for me.

  The rain barrel was a quarter full. I dumped that into the bath barrel. I had four gallons of drinking water left. Rosie had taken the rest of it earlier in the day. I hoped Daisy drank it all while they slept tonight. I fired up the grill and stood naked in the cold, until the water boiled.

  Four gallons of boiling water on top a quarter barrel full of ice water still equals moderately cold bath water that only comes up to a tall man’s thighs. It was not a fun bath and that water was nasty by the time I finished. I almost needed a bath after my bath but it wasn’t meant to be.

  My head hurt so badly I couldn’t think straight. I toweled off, dressed as warmly as I could and made a blanket bed on the floor in my spare bedroom upstairs.

  My actual bed had seen better days. I wasn’t getting in that ever again.

  I was cold and sore but managed to pass out after two Vicodin with a whiskey chaser. I dreamed of Daisy and a cute little dark-haired baby I would probably never meet.

  The next morning my head still hurt but not as badly. My nose was the worst. My bathroom mirror showed a man in his late twenties that looked more like fifty, who had gone a round with Tyson in his prime. Two black eyes and a great big swollen nose that was clearly off kilter.

  I was a good looking man once. Now I was Frankenstein.

  I grabbed a soda from my secret stash in the garage. I hid it there because Daisy drank a lot of soda. Brooding on my chair, the one Rosie had lounged in, I thought about my next steps. Daisy was going to have my baby. I was going to be a father. It was my job to take care of them both. No one was better equipped to do that than me with zombies being at the top of the food chain, least of all her fucking wing-nut of a sister. My baby girl would be doomed from the start with Rosie as a role model. I’m not sure how I knew she was going to be a girl but I did.

  My plan was stupid yet simple, find a vehicle and drive around until I found them. When I did find them I would kill Rosie and Tegan and maybe some other people. My strategic mind was a thing of beauty.

  The house and my stupid car were done for. I wasn’t planning on ever coming back once I left. It served as reminder of the shallow life I lived before the zombies and the painful loss I just endured the day before. My only good times in the house had been with Daisy and I had been too foolish to appreciate them.

  I thought I should burn it down, maybe burn the whole damn neighborhood down. I probably would have too, if I would have been physically up to it. But in the end I decided it was possible Daisy could escape and she might come back to the house looking for me. It wouldn’t do for her to come back to a burned out hole in the ground, possibly with my daughter in tow.

  So instead I wasted a day and a half cleaning up the house and making it secure again just in case. I grabbed a travel bag and packed a change of clothes, a gun and some emergency supplies. I figured I could get anything else I needed on the road.

  I found a way to shove my big photo album into my bag as well. This was after a fierce internal debate. Part of me knew that keeping it or really even making it in the first place was kind of crazy. But in the end I’m sentimental, I didn’t really want to forget Serendipity Lane.

  According to my mental calendar it was sometime in mid to late December when I left my New Brightown home for the last time. I shut the door behind me and hid the key under the blood-stained welcome mat and didn’t look back.

  Toting my heavy bag on my back I set out walking down the road ignoring the handful of undead I passed along the way.

  December in Minnesota is usually quite cold but on that morning I didn’t mind. Aside from my fucking nose, I was fine for a brisk morning walk, I had made sure Daisy and I were well outfitted for the winter weeks ago.

  My feet were freezing in my silly running shoes before I’d gone very far but I wasn’t concerned. The first item on my to-do list was a acquiring a vehicle.

  It was doubtful any of the cars or trucks I passed along my route would even start. The first three I checked had no keys. The next two had keys but wouldn’t turn over. I finally lucked out on an old Ford pickup.

  It didn’t look like much so I almost skipped it but the keys in the ignition made me try anyway. At first it just turned over without starting but kicked on with a roar when I pumped the gas a few times. I turned the heat on high and blew into my cold hands while I let it warm up. There wasn’t much more than a quarter tank left but it would do to get me where I wanted to go.

  Chapter 29

  “Mark and the Boys & 262”

  The nearest car dealership was Friendly Chevrolet about a mile up the road on Highway 65. I made my way there at a moderately slow pace. The highway was jammed up worse than it had been on my walk home from the hospital.

  As I drove on the shoulder past the wreckages, many cars still contained undead drivers and passengers that couldn’t get out. Just another appalling image to fall asleep to at night. Nearing the dealership, I was pleased to see part of the fence was smashed in but the lot was still loaded with many pristine vehicles. Rioters may care about guns and fences but zombies didn’t give a damn.

  Parking the wheezing old truck in the service road, I went the rest of the way to the fence on foot. Inside the grounds, the floor to ceiling windows to the sales floor had been smashed in and a few zombies lingered in there but I paid them no mind as I headed inside.

  The keys to all the vehicles were in a bin under a desk. I took the whole thing, which was heavy, and headed back outside and made for the long row of SUVs. I settled on a brand new Equinox because it was small enough to navigate tight spaces but still afford
ed me ample storage space and a place to sleep if I needed to. I wanted the four wheel drive as well just in case I had to drive through ditches.

  I tried almost 40 sets of keys before I realized they were labeled. I found the right set after a few more minutes rooting through the bin. She fired up right away. I even had a remote starter to go with it. On top of that the gas tank was full, I was having a good day.

  I decided to let the SUV get nice and toasty while I unloaded my bag in the trunk. When I got out I was immediately assaulted by sound and movement from across the four-lane highway. There was a large group of zombies going nuts in the trailer court beyond the drainage ditch. I had missed them in my haste to find a new car.

  Score one for keeping my head on a swivel.

  A surge of crackling energy like a cloud became visible as I closed my eyes to concentrate. I focused on shutting everything else out of my mind. The energy reached out like lightening and I took a step back in shock as I felt it hit me.

  Just like that I was connected to the horde. This was an experience on an entirely different level from my cheap parlor tricks and square-dancing zombies.

  I knew instantly there were 262 zombies completely surrounding the double-wide trailer and more on the way from all points of the compass drawn by the same energy I now felt coursing through my body. I knew why they were there as well. There were three people hiding inside a barricade of cheap fiberglass and second-hand furniture. Their hearts were pounding like jack hammers.

  Fear pulsed out from the trailer in waves that I could smell, pure unfiltered terror of the zombies outside their door. The cowering people were inadvertently pouring gas on a raging inferno. I strained myself further, fists clenched and brow furrowed in deep concentration. I could hear them, faintly at first then louder like turning up the volume on a radio.

  A little boy was crying. A man sang softly. The third person was snoring deeply. I wondered how anyone keep sleep through that noise. He or she had to be very young or very sick.

  I wished I had a better view.

  A millisecond later I was staring at a flimsy door. No, I was pounding on it like a maniac! A pair of gnarly looking hands were yanking on the door knob next to me while I hammered on it. It was a very counterproductive process but damn we wanted in! I felt the crush of bodies behind me. I looked up to the roof, a few adventurous undead were hopping up and down on it like crazy clowns.

  Panic hit me when I realized what was happening and I stopped hammering on the door. The next moment I was hurled bodily into the door by the crowd. For one panic-filled second I expected to be crushed by zombies. Then, in a heartbeat, it was over. I was breathing hard on my knees on the cold pavement next to my SUV.

  Overcome with dread and confusion, it was difficult to think straight. Yet I had to get myself under control. The memory of the crying child and singing man made my heart hurt. They desperately required my attention and time was short, the zombies were almost in.

  Images of stop signs and red lights fired from my mind like machine gun bullets but the zombies wouldn’t let up. My connection had been severed and I had to get it back.

  Scrambling back into the car, I closed my eyes and gripped the steering wheel for support. In the blink of an eye the connection was back.

  Power vibrated in my mind and rippled throughout my body. I was careful not to accidentally jump to any particular point of view because I wasn’t sure how to get back out without losing the connection again.

  Instead I focused on the energy itself, embracing it, trying to find the source.

  The source was everywhere, humming inside the brain of every zombie.

  The door was starting to buckle in its frame, I was running out of options. The image of a giant light switch popped into my head. The switch was currently in the on position twitching with power.

  I reached up with both hands to turn it off.

  It wouldn’t budge. Energy crackled out of it like a science experiment on steroids. I put my legs and back into it and redoubled my effort, pulling down as hard as I could.

  I let out a raging scream as the switch flipped off. The energy blinked off and all was silent. I opened my eyes surprised to find I had ripped the steering wheel off the drive shaft. The sight across the street was even more surreal. The zombies had dropped in their tracks. They were all dead. For real dead. I knew without even checking.

  I dropped the steering wheel, hopped out of the useless SUV and jogged back through the hole in the fence and across the highway toward the double wide.

  The area around the trailer was covered in bodies which I had to carefully step around. I stepped on some by accident. They were squishy, it was a bummer. I got up to the first step of a little red deck and listened carefully for movement from the inside.

  It was dead silent. Using a voice I hoped sounded cheerful I called out, “Hello?” There was no answer but I thought I could hear movement inside.

  I really didn’t want to get shot so I moved back off the step and backed away from the trailer stumbling over bodies.

  “It’s okay,” I yelled louder, “I was in the neighborhood and saw this crowd out here. I was trying to figure out how to draw them away but then they just dropped to the ground. They’re all dead…I mean, really dead.”

  Sounds of moving furniture could be heard as the man pulled objects away from the door. He was talking under his breath to a child in an anxious voice. The door pulled open with a tired thunk and an arm holding a gun eased its way out.

  The rest of the man’s body stayed hidden inside. I didn’t think it was a very tactically sound position, he wasn’t even pointing the gun at me but I didn’t offer this critique. It didn’t seem like the right time, the man was obviously stressed out.

  “Who are you? I will shoot you,” the man called out in a tired voice.

  “I really hope you don’t. I’m just from the neighborhood. I was car shopping across the street and it looked like you were in a pinch. I was just checking if you needed help. I have food and water and stuff but I can go if you want,” I said.

  “Who you gonna shoot, daddy?” a small voice said. There was movement from further back inside the trailer.

  “Jacob, just sit still! I told you not to move, let daddy talk to the man.”

  It was too late though, Jacob was out of his hiding spot and through the door in two shakes. He was a tiny little boy about four years old with a tangle of curly brown hair. He stood on the little deck, mouth open staring at the bodies on the ground.

  Dad meanwhile was cursing and stumbling out the door behind him, his gun dropped and forgotten in the entryway. He scooped up Jacob and made as if to head back inside the trailer. Then he too was transfixed by the scene around him. His startled gaze finally found me standing fifteen feet in front of him with my hands in the pockets of my coat. He almost dropped the boy.

  “What happened to them?” he stammered.

  “I don’t know, they just…died?” I lied, “One moment they were pounding away at your door and the next they just dropped.”

  “How do you know they’re really dead?”

  “Well I guess I don’t,” poking at a body near my feet with my shoe, “They sure seem dead though.”

  He watched me poke at the body like I was playing footsy with a dozing rattlesnake.

  “Stop that! Are you nuts?” he remembered his gun and was doing a panicked search for it while Jacob struggled in his arms.

  “Its fine,” I said calmly, “I think they’re really dead.” But I stopped poking the dead zombie, it seemed like the guy was pretty close to his breaking point and it wouldn’t do to make things worse for the kids.

  “You think?!” he shouted incredulously, “I’ve been trapped in this tin box for almost a whole day with two little boys. Five minutes ago it sounded like a fucking tornado was trying to rip the walls down to get at us and you think!”

  At the dropping of the F bomb Jacob was scandalized and went very still in his father’s arms. He tur
ned his wide eyes up to his dad.

  “Daddy, you said a naughty,” he said this softly with a degree of awe. Evidently, Daddy never said naughtys.

  “Sorry, Jake,” the man said.

  He looked mortified, like Jacob had caught him kissing a woman who wasn’t his mother instead of swearing. He smiled and ruffled Jacob’s hair. In that moment I knew I would take a bullet for either of them. Managing to preserve little civilities like not swearing when you were trying to feed and shelter two small children during a zombie apocalypse spoke a lot to the strength of the man’s character. I would have been cussing incessantly.

  “Look, sir,” I said sincerely, “I can only imagine what you’ve been through. I’m sure it’s been awful, it’s not been easy for me either. I promise.”

  He and Jacob just watched me warily.

  “I am willing to help if you want. I told you I have food. You can have anything you need but if you’re coming with me it needs to be soon. There could be more of them any minute.”

  “How do I know you’re okay?” he asked.

  He was terrified of going with me. He was terrified not to. I didn’t need him to clarify what he meant by okay. I thought of my ill-fated time with the Flowers and the Swansons with a shudder.

  “You don’t know, there’s nothing I can do about that but you have your gun and I’m unarmed so you have that. Are you coming or not?” I turned to go.

  “Wait! Yes, were coming! But look I’ve got another kid inside, my son, Sam. He’s sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with him but he’s bad and getting worse. Is it still okay we come with you?”

  The pleading in his voice was heartbreaking. I looked at him gravely and then nodded slowly like it was a tough decision. It was no big deal about the second kid, it wasn’t like I didn’t know about him already.

  He disappeared quickly back inside still carrying Jacob. I jogged back to the steps and called out if I could help him. He appeared in the doorway looking haggard.

  “Yeah,” he said, “Come on in.” Then he dashed back in.