“If we can unlock it.”
Connor undid the deadbolt, unhooked the floor latch. “You think the owners will come back if this all ends?”
“If it ends? Yeah. I suppose. Why, do you want to pay for this stuff?”
“No, I’m pretty used to stealing, believe it or not. Nothing big, just batteries and stuff.”
“A real rebel without a cause, huh?”
“Guess I just want to think the world isn’t giving up.”
Olive made her way outside, pat him on the head as she passed him. “I wish I could say, Connor. But hey, at least we have tampons and candy. The world ain’t all that bad, right?”
“Actually…” Connor felt his own eyes going wide. Sprinting down the street was a mob of hissers, heading straight for them. They hadn’t been inconspicuous after all.
“Run!” Olive shouted, racing across the lot to the truck. Connor took off after her, his two bags of supplies in one hand and his rifle in the other. The bags were too cumbersome to let him get off a good shot, so he focused on making it to the truck before the creatures got him. Ahead, Olive whipped out her .45 and fired off two quick rounds. One missed, the other hit a hisser in the jaw, took it clean off. Its tongue swished back and forth across its sternum as it ran. “In the truck in the truck!” she yelled.
Conner threw his supplies in the back of the truck bed, praying that the chips wouldn’t blow away. He threw open the door and climbed in the passenger seat as Olive started the engine.
“Well don’t just sit there, kid, shoot something.”
As Olive tore out of the parking lot, Connor rolled down the window, climbed out and sat in the open frame, looking back over the top of the truck. He steadied his aim as Olive put them back on the road. The hissers came on at speeds matching the vehicle, and two of them managed to get hands on the truck bed, yank themselves up. Connor put a bullet through one’s head, hit the next one in the shoulder. Both fell off but only one got up again, joining its brethren in the chase.
“Slow down,” he said.
“What? No.”
“I can get them.”
“I’m not slowing, they’re too deadly as a group. Pick them off one at a time from a distance.”
“But now they’re too far away.”
“Then good. Get your ass back in here.”
Connor slid back into the seat and rolled up his window. “I got one of them,” he said.
“Then it’s one less fucking useless body in the world. You okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“We lose anything?”
Connor looked back through the window, saw all the bags fluttering in the breeze. “We got the chips. What else was there?”
TUESDAY, 12:33 PM
She lay under the station wagon, watching the military truck burn. The screams had stopped and no one had emerged. They were all dead and she knew it. He mother, her father, the little girl, the old lady. All of them just gone. Tears ran down her cheeks, pooled in between her quivering lips.
Around the truck, dead, burnt hissers smoked with blackened skin. Except one, which crawled on its arms, trying to drag its bisected torso down the street, leaving a snail trail of gore behind it.
“Mom. Dad,” she whispered, her tears blurring her vision. It just wasn’t fair. She’d thought her parents dead at the start of this outbreak only to find them alive and well. And now they were gone again. And she would be too had she not flown out of the back of the truck. “God no. Please no.”
Sssss.
Amanita heard the hissing from somewhere behind her, craned her head under the tuck and looked back down the road beyond her feet. A dozen of the creatures had emerged from nowhere, lurking down the road as they sniffed the air for a meal.
“Shit,” she muttered, remember the last time she’d been trapped under a car with hissers trying to get her. Only this time Connor wasn’t here to run interference for her. “Okay, okay. Get up get up get up.” She knew she had to. Knew she couldn’t stay here waiting and hoping her parents walked out of the wreckage alive. Because that just wasn’t going to happen. And if she stayed here like this, numb and frozen, then her minutes were numbered. I said get up, Am!
She slid closer to the edge of danger, stuck her head out from under the station wagon, gauged the distance to the nearest building, a town library with small stone lions next to the front steps. The hissers were close enough that they’d see her run, probably get to the library just after she did. If the front doors were open she could race in, maybe bar the door from the inside, but she’d have to be fast and she’d have to move now.
She glanced back at the pack of undead. They were staring at her, cocking their heads. Dammit, they saw her.
“No,” she whispered, moving back under the station wagon, realizing it was a bad move, that it would just trap her, and then pulling herself out into the street. The hissers spit out a hungry cry and ran for her. There was no time to scream, just to squirm out from under the car and jump to her feet, peripherally noticing the blood and scrapes on her arms and legs from when the truck had flipped over.
She ran for all she was worth, her ribs blazing in pain, the hissers banking to meet her at the steps. She got there first, took them two at a time, yanked on the doors with all her might.
They were locked.
“No! C’mon!” She beat on them.
The hissers hit the stairs, reaching for her, snarling. Without a thought she leapt off the side into the bushes, rolled up and sprinted down the sidewalk, past a small boutique, past a sunglass store, heading for the end of the block and an alleyway that might hopefully provide some sort of fire escape or fence she could use to get away.
Behind her, the hissers raged, coming on with tremendous speed. She glanced back once and saw them right on her heel. “Go away!”
She hit the alley and turned down it, seeing now it was shut off at the end by a metal, corrugated fence that was too high to jump over. There were no fire escapes, either, just dumpsters and some trash cans that had been knocked over. The fence didn’t budge or fall over when she slammed into it and pushed it with her hands. “No no no no,” she cried.
She turned, placed her back to the fence, saw the hissers coming down the alley. In a strange sort of calm, she almost didn’t care now. They were moving so fast, death would have to be fast too. At least that was something. This new life was just too much running, too much loss, it would be better this way, she thought. She’d be with her parents again. With Nicole and Seth and everyone else. She just didn’t want to die alone. It stung her that she wasn’t going to see a familiar face as death took her. “I love you,” she said. Not knowing if she was talking to her parents or her friends or who? It was just something to say to feel alive.
She took a breath and waited for the teeth to take her.
But instead of pain and torture, a door opened just to the left of her, and a man dressed in black stepped out with a guitar in his hand. He swung the instrument at the nearest creature, caught it in the ear and sent it flying. His came around with a back stroke and caught the next one in the neck. The monster’s spine cracked and its head fell to its chest. As it fell the hissers behind it stumbled over it, snarling and reaching for their meal.
“Inside, darling,” the man said, not bothering to look back at Amanita. “I’d do it now I were you. Ain’t got much left of this Gretsch to swing again.” He held the guitar high above his head. It was all but destroyed, stings dangling like Spanish moss, blood dripping off the shattered body. As another hisser righted itself, the man brought the instrument down on its head. The body of the guitar splintered into a thousand little shards of wood. The neck broke in two, leaving nothing in the man’s hand but a sharp shiv. This he stabbed into the hisser’s eye. Blood spit up and hit the side of the building as the creature went down.
Amanita rushed into the door, turned and waved for the man. “C’mon! Hurry!”
In a whirl of black, the man spun and raced inside, threw
the deadbolt and hoisted up the makeshift katy bar someone had built. Outside, the hissers banged against the door, scratched at it and even bit it by the sounds of it, trying to get in.
“You doing alright,” the man asked. “You get bit?” He wore a black button down, black jeans and sunglasses and had dyed black hair. A pair of blood-covered black cowboy boots rounded out the motif. With a sigh he slumped against the door, slid down until he was sitting on his heels.
“No.” She checked her legs and arms for good measure. ‘Not bit.”
“That was close,”
“Thank you,” Amanita said, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my god my parents are dead. Oh my god.” She cried and shook and fought back the desire to good look through the wreckage of the crash for confirmation. When her sobs became chokes, she finally found the strength to calm down. “Thank you,” she said again, as if trying to erase the momentary breakdown.
“Don’t thank me,” the man said, “thank Johnny Cash.”
Amanita stood still and stared at her savoir. “Why?”
“Because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have had that guitar, and we’d both be dead.”
“Well I’m glad you had it.”
“Me too. That’s how you play the motherfucking boogie, Luther. C’mon, I got some water over here. This door will hold for a few but time is tight. Get yourself hydrated and we gotta go ASAP.” He limped away, shaking off the pain in his limbs no doubt sustained while swinging his instrument. He grabbed a backpack that was resting on a small circular table. Under the pack was a red and white checkered table cloth stained with spaghetti sauce.
“Pizza place,” Amanita said. “It smells good in here.”
“There’re no slices left. I already checked. But here, drink this.” The man withdrew a bottle of water from the backpack, handed it to her.
Amanita drank down a mouthful, handed it back. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
“Over your eye, there. You’re cut?”
“You’re bleeding too. Your arms look like roadkill.”
“Yeah, it’s par for...whatever. I kind of skipped down the road a little bit ago.”
“The Course.”
“The course, the road, same thing.” She wiped blood off her elbow and smeared in on the table top.
“No no,” the man said, taking a drink of water himself, “its ‘par for the course.’ The saying. It’s a golf thing.”
“I hate golf. Miniature golf anyway. I suck at it. A guy had to invent that stupid game.”
“I was pretty good on the links, myself. Shot an eighty-six once.”
“Which means shit to me. Sorry.”
“Well, it’s good. Anyway …Wish I had my clubs now that my guitar is destroyed. Gonna need to find a new weapon. And some bandaids for you.”
“Ribs aren’t so good either. Think I broke them.”
“Nah, maybe bruised ’em it all. They were cracked you’d be wailing. Help me look in the kitchen.”
Amanita followed him to the cooking area, watching his large frame disappear into the small pantry behind the pizza ovens. He’s so big, she thought, a good two hundred and fifty pounds, maybe in his forties. It was hard to tell with the dyed hair and glasses. She hesitated going into the pantry alone with him. What if he was some kind of rapist or murderer?
That’s stupid, she thought. If he wanted to rape you why would he have saved you? She answered herself: because you’re the better catch, idiot, he probably doesn’t want to rape the undead.
“Hey, come grab this,” he yelled from inside.
She took a step, then stopped. Knuckled a dried tear off her cheek that was itching her. “Are you gonna rape me?”
There was silence. Then his head appeared around the door frame. “Darling, I don’t know what kind of kinky stuff you’re into, but I don’t get frisky while I’m trying to survive the Armageddon. Besides, you’re young enough to be my daughter so have some respect for me. What’re you like twelve? Shouldn’t even know about rape?”
“Fourteen. And I knew about rape when I was ten. It’s called the Internet.”
“Well you shouldn’t even know about any of that stuff.”
“What? Rape and sex? I know all about sex.” Even as she said it she realized how idiotic she sounded. It was the old Amanita rearing her head, looking for attention. Stupid, she thought.
“Really. Like what?”
She hesitated. “Okay, I don’t know a whole lot. I’ve kissed a couple boys. I dunno, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Why would it have ever mattered?”
“Because… because people never noticed me until they thought I was into sex.”
“Okay, whoa, knock it off, I don’t want to hear this. Just take my word I’m not interested, little girl.”
“Sorry, it’s just you’re a big guy and I’m…I’m scared.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s drop it. There’re some big ass knives in here. Help me put them in some bags or something. We can make some kind of weapon with them.”
Slowly, she entered the pantry, saw him going through a wooden box filled with bread knives. “I got hit with a sword not long ago. I’m not a big fan of knives. Isn’t there a gun or something around here?”
“’Fraid not. I checked when I first got in. I was gonna bed down here for the night because my truck doors don’t lock and I hoped, you know, small mom and pop place like this, they might have a gun. But they ain’t got shit. They don’t even have leftover dough. And I’m getting hungry, darling. Hey, what’s your name?”
“Am.”
“Strange name. Sounds like a pronoun.”
“Pronouns are You, I, He, We, She…that stuff. Am is a tense of the verb To Be. Totally not the same thing.”
“You’re a smart kid, huh?”
“Not really. Just defense for jokes I got sometimes. Anyway, it’s short for Amanita. What’s yours?”
He stood up, handed her six large bread knives. “Go put these in my pack. Actually, keep one for yourself. If nothing else we can try to take their eyes out.”
She went back to the backpack and placed the knives inside. The man came out of the pantry a second later with a mop handle and a rolling pin. He hefted them both. “Which one do you want?” he asked her.
She took the rolling pin and swung it for good measure. In her other hand she held the bread knife. “Do I look like an angry housewife?”
“I dunno, Do you want to?”
“No, not really.” She sat in the chair and put her head down, started tearing up again. From the back door came a series of bangs. The walls shook as the creatures outside continued to try and beat their way in. “I hate this,” Amanita said. “I hate all of this.”
The man’s hand fell on her shoulder. He squatted next to her and looked in her eyes. “Hey, look at me. Look. Amanita. I don’t know what you just went through out there, other than I heard the explosions and helicopters and gunfire so I know it was tense, and I’m not gonna ask about your parents because I can gather what just happened, and I sympathize with your predicament, being a kid and all, but those things are trying to get in here, and there may be bigger things behind them, and we have to get to my truck outside and get away. So I’m gonna need you to swallow whatever fear and pain you’re feeling right now and pour on some steam for running, okay? Like a train. Or a semi. You know, like a nice Peterbilt. Then we can cry later. You hearing me?”
Amanita lifted her head, looked at the back door, which was shaking from the hissers pounding on it. “Yeah. I don’t know what a Peterbilt is, but I’ll run.”
“Good.” The man grabbed the pack, slung it over his shoulder. “Well, so long for having a place to sleep. We’ll head as far as we can and see if we can find some other place that’s safe. After that, I dunno. I was making my way to the army base I heard about east of here. But judging by the way that copter in the sky was firing at everything, I’m thinking the base might be overrun?”
“It is, I came from there. It’s gone. Everyone’s gone.”
“Ah shit.” He chewed his lip for a second. “Well I’m not gone. And I’m gonna find us a safe place. Name’s Doug, by the way.”
Amanita raised her weapons and stood up. “Okay, Doug, I’m ready.”
The street out front was mostly empty. Amanita stayed close to Doug as he walked through the door. Clouds of black smoke lingered through the streets, and of to her right she could see the blackened transport truck. Instinctively she moved toward it, still looking for her parents.
“Am, no, this way. We have to run, remember.”
She tore her eyes from the transport truck, shook her head and started moving again.
As expected, the hissers heard them, came around the block and gave chase. Her heart raced and she sped up, seeing the black truck Doug was pointing at. There was a hissers standing by its driver side door. Doug used his mop handle to push it back, then rammed his knife down into its head. It crumpled to the ground.
Am rounded the front, waited for Doug to get in and unlock her door. As she flung herself inside she glanced back down the road and saw a collection of charred undead ambling toward her. They’re not dead, she realized. Not everyone died in the transport truck missile attack.
Her father walked down the center line, black and missing an arm. “No,” she said, and began to walk toward him. She didn’t know why. She knew he was dead, that he would try to bite her, but she wanted to talk to him, just to make sure. How could she not make sure he wouldn’t say her name and ask for help?
“Am, get in the damn truck!” Doug was getting out now, stepping over the hisser he’d killed. ‘”Am!”
She ignored his call, moved closer to her father. Saw the hissers racing around him, coming for her. “Dad? Dad are you okay?”
Her father opened his mouth and hissed, reached out with is one good hand and spread his charred fingers as if trying to grab her.
“No,” she cried. There was no denying it now. Her parents were gone forever. “No, Dad.”
Then she was hauled off her feet, Doug’s arm around her waist. He howled as he lifted her, carried her back to the truck and threw her inside. As soon as he slammed the doors the hissers hit the vehicle with swinging fists and claws.
Hissers II: Death March Page 4
