Blood 4 Life

by M. Lorrox

  He started to say something, but stopped. He took a breath, then acted like he was going to speak again, but he didn’t.

  She looked away and waited.

  He turned his body toward her and cleared his throat. “You’ll just have to trust me that I know we’ll be okay. I can’t say why I know, but…I just know.”

  She didn’t respond. She instead tilted her head back and looked up at the stars. They were bright and easy to see that night. They looked calm.

  June sighs as her thoughts shift to Eddy today—off hunting zombies somewhere. Now that she’s seen zombies, and now that she’s seen friends mourn for infected loved ones, and now that she has said good-bye to friends whose families were moving away—after all that has happened, now she understands what she actually felt before. It wasn’t a feeling of fear.

  I was apprehensive then, but now? Now, I’m scared.

  It takes Charlie and Skip a solid half hour to install the window film. There’s just a scrap of the material left, and Skip holds it up. “Do you want this leftover for anything? Should I throw it out?”

  Charlie waves it away with his hand. “Yeah, chuck it. I’m glad I had enough left over for your truck.”

  “Thanks again for thinking of me.”

  “Of course.” Charlie smiles at Skip. Someday, buddy, you’ll get it. Maybe not today, but someday. His smile fades. “Well, I should get going. Hopefully Eddy is back.”

  Skip isn’t sure how much support Charlie needs—or wants—but he decides to take the chance. “Let me know if I can help, or if you want to talk or something. I’m just hanging out here tonight.”

  His smile returns, strong as ever. “Thanks, bud, and after I see Eddy later—” he winks at Skip, “—if he’s still breathing, I’ll suggest he calls June.”

  Skip laughs. “That sounds good. Have a good night, Charlie.”

  Nodding, Charlie heads out the gate to his car, and Skip walks into his house.

  Bill loads one of the special wax slugs into the 12-gauge and then leans out the window of the backseat on the passenger’s side. “Whoo-hoo! Come and get it!” He takes aim at the closest zombie, which is about ten yards behind the truck.

  -BOOM!-

  The zombie falls to the ground. Part of the skull is all that sits on the stump of its neck, its jaw and most of the cranial cavity having exploded outward into the air and onto nearby zombies.

  Bill pulls his body back through the side window. “Shit! These wax shells are awesome, dude! Did you see that?”

  Craig laughs. “No, of course not! I’m watching the road, you idiot!”

  Tomas saw it in the side mirror. His stomach churns over to a newly discovered and uncomfortable position. He looks back out the windshield and takes a deep breath. Navigate. Just keep tabs of where we are and where we’re going. I can do this.

  Bill leans forward into the front of the truck. “Well trust me, they blow up just like the melons we shot that one time. Nothing can survive a headshot of one of these bad boys!”

  Craig smiles. “Sweet! I’ll have to pop a couple later. Save me a dozen or so!”

  Bill laughs and grabs a few more shells.

  Eddy is leaning out of the other window in the backseat. He has the Browning 30-06 rifle, the same one he used up on the ridge the day before. When he first picked it up today, he couldn’t help thinking about the girl he killed in that dress. Then he remembered that it wasn’t a girl. It was a zombie. He killed zombies yesterday, and he’s killing more today.

  While the group collects zombies from the outskirts of town, Eddy’s job is simple. With his proven skill at shooting, his task is to snipe off any zombies that don’t keep up with the pack following the truck. Roger relayed the order over the radio, saying, “No zombies get away. We’re not trying to relocate them; we’re executing them.”

  If any zombie loses interest in the chase, or if any stumble or fall and will get left behind, it’s Eddy’s job to take them out. About twenty zombies follow the truck right now, and Eddy has shot five stragglers so far. He’s confident that the shots were lethal, although it’s hard to tell—a couple of the zombies had fallen and were on the ground when he shot them. He aimed to shoot through the tops of their heads, but because they were already on the ground, he didn’t get to see them drop from a deadly shot.

  He hopes he’s doing a good job.

  Bill, armed with the 12-gauge, is tasked with keeping any especially fast zombies away from the truck and to thin out the herd if need be. He’s already blasted four—as he says, “for the hell of it.” He’s dropped every one of them, and each time he does, he hoots and hollers out at the others to coax them to keep chasing the truck.

  Besides his yelling, the noise from the guns is definitely working to draw out the zombies, just as expected. So far, everything is going according to plan. If they use all the ammo—and aim well—they’ll have helped the town kill off over four hundred zombies. Eddy smiles as he lets himself lose track of the task at hand. We’ll be heroes.

  “Team One to Team Two, come in. Over.”

  Tomas picks up the walkie. “Team Two here. Over.”

  “What’s your twenty? Over.”

  Tomas looks at Craig. “‘What’s your twenty’ means where are you, right?”

  Craig nods.

  “We’re on schedule, headed down route fifteen-thirteen. Over.”

  “Copy that… Team One counts eight down, twenty-four behind. Over”

  Tomas turns to the backseat. “How many zombies are down, and how many are behind us?”

  Eddy looks blankly at Tomas. “Oh, umm—”

  Bill pulls his head in the truck just long enough to say, “Nine down; twenty behind.” He’s immediately back out the window with the shotgun.

  Tomas nods and relays the information.

  Craig yells into the back of the truck, “We’ve got a stretch of rough road ahead. Hang on.”

  “Very good. Over and out.”

  Eddy leans back out the window. The truck starts to bounce around on the road; it has been “under construction” for the past few months. Resources just aren’t being dedicated to lower-priority projects anymore, like the upkeep of side roads. Not when there’s bigger, uglier, stinkier, and deadlier problems at hand—problems that almost have you in their grabby arms’ reach.

  -Thud, thud- Bill bangs on the roof of the truck. “Pick it up, bro. They’re closing in!”

  Craig steers to straddle some potholes. “’Kay, hold on!”

  The truck swerves and bounces around even more. Tomas still feels queasy, but he’s taking deep breaths. Eddy smiles like he’s riding a roller coaster, until he sees a zombie literally bite it on a hole: it tripped in a pothole and fell, smashing its teeth on the edge of another hole.

  Eddy takes aim and fires as the zombie starts to pick itself back up, but Craig just swerved, and Eddy missed the zombie he was aiming for. Instead, the bullet blows a bunch of meat off of another one’s thigh. “Shit.”

  From across the back of the truck Bill yells, “Eddy needs to hit two. Slow down for a sec!”

  Craig yells, “’Kay, keep them off our ass!” He slows down, driving as smoothly as possible between the holes.

  Eddy takes aim at the first zombie, who is now at least fifty yards behind the truck. Its jaw is smashed wide open and hanging low from its head. -BANG!- He again misses a head shot. He did manage to put a round of copper-jacketed lead through its neck, though, and the zombie drops to the ground, paralyzed. It might still be alive, for now, but at least it shouldn’t pose a threat to anyone.

  The zombie whose leg got blasted open is still hobbling toward the group, but it’s falling behind.

  With a deafening blast, Bill shoots a faster zombie that was getting close to the truck.

  Eddy takes aim at his target and hits it dead in the nose. The bullet slices right through—missing all the structural bones in the front of the skull, but even so, the zombie drops to the ground, spasming while flailing its limbs
in the air.

  -BOOM!- Another zombie loses its head to Bill’s shotgun. -Thud, thud- “Pick it up again, brother!”

  Tomas feels like he’s going to barf. He’s not watching the mirror anymore. He doesn’t want to see the throng of zombies behind them with the subtitle, “OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR,” nor does he want to see the carnage that Eddy and Bill are dishing out to them. Nonetheless, the bumps, the yelling, and the loud gunshots are getting to him.

  He rubs his head with his hands. God, this is awful. We can’t pull over, but… He opens his eyes and stretches his arms out, pressing them firmly against the door and the center console. “Guys, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  When Charlie gets back home from Skip’s, Sadie and Minnie are waiting for him in the living room. A coloring book and colored pencils are scattered on the floor beside them.

  “Can I see what you two are working on?”

  Minnie looks up, quite pleased with herself. “It’s an elephant.”

  Charlie kneels down between her and Sadie, opposite from Valentine, to inspect the elephant. “Ah, I see. What’s he doing?”

  Minnie’s little finger points at the elephant’s trunk. “He’s playing a…drumpet.”

  Sadie laughs. “Almost, dear. It’s a trumpet, with a T. Say that, TRUM-pet.”

  “Oh. TRUM-pet.”

  Charlie nods. “Good girl. And it looks like you’re just about done—” he points at the page, “—just this spot over there. What color are you going to use for that?”

  “Green. It’s a bush, Daddy; they’re green.”

  “Oh, I see.” Charlie reaches his arm around her. “Yes, green would be a good choice then.”

  Sadie stands up and stretches. “Minnie, you finish up. I want Daddy to help me in the kitchen, okay?”

  Minnie hunts for the correct green. “Okay, Mommy.”

  Charlie follows Sadie into the kitchen. She gets two glasses out and fills them with water. “Can we have that talk with Minnie?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” She hands him a glass.

  “Thanks. Is Eddy around?”

  Sadie shakes her head and takes a drink. “I don’t want to wait for him any longer.”

  Charlie nods and sips from his glass. “Alright, let me go wash up, and I’ll be back down.” He turns out of the kitchen to head upstairs, then pauses. He pulls out his phone and realizes he should respond to Eddy’s earlier text.

  When will you be home?

  He plugs in his phone in and sets it on the table in the hallway.

  When Charlie returns downstairs after a few minutes, he checks his phone. No response. He must be in the theater. He walks into the living room where Sadie and Minnie are sitting on the couch, smiling and laughing. Charlie grins. I wish we could be like this all the time.

  As he sits down next to Minnie, Sadie says, “Alright, Minnie, Daddy and I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Friday, after we got ice cream, you asked me a question. Do you remember what you asked?”

  Minnie grows quiet. She hugs Valentine tighter.

  Charlie frowns at seeing his daughter feel upset. “I wasn’t there, sweetie. Can you remember for me?”

  Minnie looks at him. “I asked why we have special questions that other people can’t hear.”

  “Oh, you mean the special questions that we don’t ask around other people, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Sadie leans over Minnie. “We talked a little bit about it in the car. Do you remember how I told you that you’re so special that others wouldn’t understand?”

  Minnie acts like a shrunken doll of blond hair with her eyes just poking out from behind Valentine. She nods her head. “You said they’d hurt me.”

  Charlie puffs out his chest. “Whoa, wait! Who’d hurt you?”

  Minnie looks up at the intimidating Charlie. He’s squinting his eyes and growling in a menacing kind of way. “Other people would, if they…knew I was special?”

  Charlie relaxes. “I see. So you want to protect the other people then, huh?”

  Minnie releases Valentine, confused. She tilts her head.

  Sadie smiles at Charlie. My husband is a fucking genius.

  Minnie shakes her head. “No…that’s not… Umm, I don’t understand.”

  Sadie plays along. “Daddy, what do you mean, protect the other people? Minnie protects Valentine, but how would she protect the other people?”

  Charlie smiles at his wife. Nice tie-in! My wife is a fucking genius. “It’s the same thing, really.” He looks down at his daughter. “Minnie, why do you protect Valentine?”

  Minnie smiles and squeezes the guts out of her stuffed toy. “Because she needs me!”

  “Yes, she does, and how do you protect her?”

  “Well, I keep her out of the sun, and I make sure she takes her medicine, and I play with her and make sure she doesn’t get lost.”

  Charlie smiles. “She sure is lucky to have you. Without you, who knows what kind of trouble she’d get into. I mean, you don’t see unicorns every day, do you? Especially such majestic ones, like Valentine.”

  “She’s my special baby!” Minnie squeals and squeezes the animal tighter.

  Sadie notices the unicorn’s head bulging under the stress of the stuffing being forced out of its center. She laughs to herself. You’re going to need some reinforced stitches and new stuffing very soon, won’t you?

  Charlie hugs Minnie. “And you’re our special baby.”

  Sadie has a thought. “Minnie, do you remember that woman we drove home yesterday?”

  Minnie releases her devastating grip on Valentine and looks up. “Her name was Karen.”

  Sadie nods. “That’s right! You have such a good memory. Well, I couldn’t tell Karen that I was special, because if I did, she wouldn’t have let me help her. You see, other people can be very afraid sometimes, but we’re different. We don’t get as scared as they do.”

  “That’s how we’re different?”

  Sadie nods. “It’s one of the ways, yes. Karen really needed our help yesterday, and we saved her. But we couldn’t help her at all if she knew we were different.”

  “We couldn’t? But why? She needed help, right?”

  Charlie squeezes Minnie just a little to get her attention. “Other people might not understand that we just want to help them. They might be scared that we’d hurt them.”

  Minnie gasps. “I’d never hurt anyone!”

  Sadie laughs.

  Charlie nods. “I know you wouldn’t! But they don’t know you like Mommy, or Eddy, or like I do, so they might be afraid. And that’s why we can’t tell them.”

  Minnie looks at Valentine. She’s not afraid of me, but she knows me… “Valentine knows me, right?”

  Sadie bends down close to Valentine and Minnie. “Of course, she does! She’d never be afraid, not as long as you’re protecting her.”

  Minnie hugs Valentine again. After a moment, she relaxes and looks at Sadie. “Mommy?”

  She was looking at Charlie, smiling. Now she glances at Minnie. “Yes, dear?”

  “If they did find out we are special, would they try and hurt us?”

  Sadie’s smile crumbles, and she glances quickly at Charlie. He’s taking a deep breath. “Well, we don’t know what they’d do.”

  Charlie clears his throat. “Minnie, did you know that I’m afraid of something?”

  She turns to look at him, scowling. “Daddy, no, you’re not.”

  Charlie can’t help but laugh. “Yes, I am afraid of something. I’ll tell you what it is as long as you keep it a secret. Promise?”

  Instantly, Minnie is nodding.

  “I’m afraid of what other people might do if they found out that we are different. I like to help people, just like Mommy does, and just like you help Valentine. And so…” Charlie sighs dramatically. “I guess I have a really big request for you, and I hope you’ll consider it.”

  M
innie leans her little head an inch toward Charlie and half-whispers, “What is it?”

  Charlie looks around and over his shoulders, pretending to check if there are other people around. “Alright, the coast is clear. Nobody else is listening. Here it is. Minnie, will you keep my secret? You can’t tell anyone about how you, or me, or Mommy, or Eddy is different, because otherwise I’d be scared. Can you do that?”

  Minnie scrunches her lip. That doesn’t sound that hard. “Okay. But on one condition.”

  Sadie bursts out laughing and slaps her leg. Charlie and Minnie both look at her.

  Sadie tries to collect herself, but she is still chuckling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please go on.”

  Minnie looks back up at Charlie.

  He’s waiting for her to find him again, and when her eyes meet his, he nods.

  “Tell me what it is that makes us different.”

  Sadie is back in control of herself, and she’s smiling. When Charlie looks over to her, she shakes her head and mouths the words, She’s so smart.

  Charlie looks back at Minnie and squints. Yes, you are… It’s not fair. He sighs. “Okay, deal.”

  He sticks out his large, thick hand for her to shake. Her tiny, soft fingers grip around a portion of his hand, and they shake on it.

  Charlie smiles. Then he reaches his arms far over his head and feigns a yawn while he stretches backward. “Ahhh! I’m so tired. I think it’s time for bed.”

  Minnie slaps his belly before his arms come back down.

  It catches Charlie off guard. Ugh! Ha! She’s getting fast!

  “No, Daddy, you need to tell me now!”

  Charlie shrugs. “Okay, okay, but let me get a glass of…uh, a drink, and I’ll be right back, I promise.”

  Minnie reluctantly nods.

  Sadie clears her throat. “Get me one too, please. Thanks.”

  Minnie glances at her mom, then she looks back at her dad. “Me too! Thanks!”

  Charlie chuckles and walks into the kitchen.

  Jess sits down into her seat, behind Roger, who is now driving them all in his “donor” Land Cruiser. Joe’s disappointment didn’t last long; the action started shortly after they switched vehicles. Sophia grips the .223 rifle as she peers out the rear window, watching for zombies that can’t keep up. She sees one.