by Josh Vasquez
Lexx watched as the beast died. His own eyes opened and shut, he felt himself drifting in and out of consciousness. He mind went to Tori. He knew Jeremy would get her out. He’s a good guy. She’d be safe with him.
Man, she was a good kisser.
What he’d give for a kiss from her right now. To feel those soft lips one last time. To run his hands across her curves. If it wasn’t the end of the world, he would have gone the full shebang and taken her to a nice dinner at the Red Lobster.
Oh, man. Cheese biscuits…
And with that, everything went black.
***
Jeremy put his head in his hands.
“God, I know we don’t talk much. I don’t even know if I’m doing this right but you knew my mom, right? Well, she said she knew you. Look, I’m still not very happy with you, with what happened to my parents and then what happened to my mom. But, if you could just help me out here. I know it would mean lot to her. Uh, thanks. I mean, amen.”
He lifted his head and for a moment pictured there being a vision of what he should do scrolling across the wall. Except there was nothing. No vision. No sign. Nothing. Thanks God.
Tori was out of her catatonic state and was looking around the room. Maybe she’d be easier to move now. Out of everyone in the group, she was the one he least expected to shut down like that. She had been so assertive before. Almost to a fault. She could have easily been the leader of the group. Except no, that all had to fall on Jeremy. The nineteen year old was the only adult in the group. Typical.
“Radio,” Tori said.
Great, now she’s saying random words, he thought.
“A radio,” she said again a little louder.
“That’s great Tori, maybe we can find a radio station that’s playing a great song to die to!”
Jeremy begins to hum the tune of a song about it being “the end of the world as we know it”. He finds this amusing. Tori does not.
“No, fuck-tard. A CB radio!”
Jeremy looked at her. She had snapped out of it.
“You’re back!” he said as he went over and hugged her.
“Yeah, I’m back. Sorry about that. Now let go!”
She pushed him aside and scrambled over to the CB radio that was sitting on the bottom shelf of a lone bookshelf. She turned it on and started fiddling with the knobs and switches.
“It still has power! My dad was friends with a lot of truckers when I was younger. I think I remember the main chatter channel. Give me a sec,” she said.
“I am so glad you are back,” said a relived Jeremy.
She ignored him and sat the radio down on the table. She held up the handheld microphone.
“Here goes nothing,” she said, taking a deep breath. Jeremy crossed his fingers. She clicked the mic’s button on.
“Hello? Hello? If there’s anyone nearby, we’re off of I-95 between Highway 80 and the airport exit. We are in need of assistance. Hello? Anybody read me?”
She let go of the button and they waited for a response. One minute passed. Another minute. She tried again and got nothing. Jeremy started to realize that they would most likely not leave this building. They were going to die here. He was about to suggest that they make a try for the truck when the radio clicked on.
“Hello?” a voice said.
Chapter Thirty
“Hello! Hello! Who is this?” Tori screamed into the microphone.
There was some static for a moment.
“My name is Josh. I’m a truck driver and I’m going to be passing you shortly. What’s your twenty? Over.”
“We’re trapped in the construction building. It’s me, another man, and maybe one more. Our truck is surrounded and we can’t get out. Over.”
There was silence.
“He thinking it over,” Tori said. “He’s just thinking it over.”
Jeremy wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself.
Maybe both, he thought.
The radio clicked back on.
“Can you get out of the building and to the interstate?”
She looked at Jeremy. He shook his head. With the mass group of zombies out front, that would be a near impossible task. Possibly even suicidal.
“I don’t think so Tori,” he said.
She held the mic back up to her mouth and paused before turning it back on.
“That’s gonna be really hard for us. We’re surrounded. Over.”
“Sounds like you don’t have many options then,” Josh said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. If you can make it to the interstate, I can pick you up. Over.”
Jeremy’s mind began to problem solve. If they could just elude the zombies, they might be able to make it to 95. They still had the rifle and almost a full clip in the last pistol. It’s not impossible. Technically.
“Let’s do it,” he said. She nodded.
“Josh? That is affirmative for pick up. Over.”
“Good. Ten minutes. Be there. Over and out.”
Tori sat the mic down on the table.
“Alright, what’s the plan?” she asked. She saw the wheels turning in Jeremy’s head. And she was right, he did have a plan.
“Ok, plan’s this: We make a run for the front door and make our away across the field to the interstate. We have enough ammo to only shoot when necessary. We need to conserve it the best as possible. But that’s it. We run like hell.”
“That’s a great plan,” she said. He didn’t catch any sarcasm in that. She really meant it. It was simple and it was efficient. They could get out of here. They were going to get out of here.
Jeremy took a deep breath and then opened the door. He peered out into the hallway. Nothing was out there. No zombies. No monster. He motioned for Tori to follow him. She does and they make their way towards the front of the building. So far so good.
When they entered back into the foyer, there was no sign of Lexx or the monster. There were, however, several zombies in the room. Jeremy looked back at Tori.
“Only shoot if you have to,” he whispered.
She nodded and they began to snake through the living dead. The first two were slow and did not even realize they had been passed. The third one did notice however. It reached out, but missed grabbing Tori by the arm. The rest of the group became increasingly aware of the two humans moving through their midst. They began to moan.
Jeremy wondered if they had the ability to communicate, because the moans drew in more dead from the surrounding hallways. Or maybe they were just attracted to the noise, like the alarm from yesterday. Either way, more were coming.
“C’mon! Almost to the door!” He yelled, giving up on being quiet. It was pointless t that point. The dead knew they were there. They broke out into a sprint towards the door. One zombie got too close for comfort so Jeremy fired a round point-blank into the thing’s skull. Grayish brain matter covered one of its buddies but it did’t seem to mind too much. It just kept on coming.
Tori passed Jeremy while he was dispatching the zombie and was holding the door open, waiting for him to reach her. He ran through the door and she slammed it shut behind them.
“Thanks,” he said, turning in her direction.
“Look out!” She yelled.
She pushed him aside and rammed the barrel of the rifle into a z's throat who was about to grab Jeremy. She pulled the trigger and the bullet traveled out the back of the zombie's head, through the shoulder of another and finally grazed across the back of one's neck, severing the spinal cord. It fell to its knees and then over. The one who took it in the shoulder stumbled backwards, never got its footing back, and tripped over his fallen comrade.
“Nice shot!” Jeremy yelled. He gave her the thumbs up. She smiled and pointed towards the interstate. A white Ford F-350 with a stake body bed was pulling up and they were still a good fifty yards away.
Please don’t leave us, please don’t leave us, Jeremy began to chant in his head, as he ran as fast as he could in the direction of the truck.
>
***
Lexx opened his eyes. He looked around and was confused on where he was.
What happened? He thought as he sat up straight.
He then noticed the dead monster with a wrench stuck in its head. Blood had stopped from oozing, but a thick puddle of goo covered the floor.
Oh, yeah...
There was a crash off to his left. His head rolled to the left. A small group of zombies were knocking tools off a workbench. Lexx stood up and reached for the wrench. It was stuck.
“Wow, I really got that in there,” he muttered.
He gave it another tug. Nothing. Taking a deep breath first, he then yanked on the giant wrench and it pulled free with a sickening slosh. The zombies took notice of the commotion.
“Uh-oh. Hey guys...”
Lexx turned and ran for the door. Maybe Jeremy and Tori had not left yet. Maybe they were waiting in the truck. He hoped so, as he ran for the back loading dock. Turning to head in that direction, he stopped suddenly when he heard a rifle fire from the front of the building.
Tori!
He about-faced for the front. There were several zombies still in the main room, but there was a trail of extra-dead ones leading to the door.
Jeremy and Tori must have come through this way.
He brought the wrench down on the head of a dead elderly woman. She crumpled like a rag doll. He had to take out the rest of them, because they had swarmed around the front door. Several zombies later and he was good to go.
But when the path was finally cleared and he looked through the glass front door, he could see Jeremy and Tori running towards the interstate. They were booking it. He ran outside.
“Hey guys! Tori!” He yelled, waving his hands in the air. Zombies were taking notice of him and beginning to moan and shamble towards him, but he didn’t care.
“Guys!”
They couldn’t hear him. He yelled as he ran, swinging the wrench wildly. Zombies left and right fell, as Lexx plowed his way through the crowd. Like a machine, he moved steadily through the mob of the dead. He watched as a truck pulled up and they both climbed in.
“No!” He yelled.
The truck drove away.
He watched as the truck took off down the interstate.
This couldn’t be happening. This cannot be happening.
The dead were closing in all around him. He stopped, breathing heavily. His mind began to tail spin. He looked at the interstate, then back at the building, and then finally to all the zombies that were quickly crowding around him.
“Fuck.”
Chapter Thirty One
“I saw him! I swear I saw him!”
Tori was yelling hysterically that she saw Lexx outside of the building as they drove away.
“He was trying to flag us down! He’s alive! He’s alive! We have to go back,” she screamed.
“No way.”
The truck driver never took his eyes off the road. He was young, maybe mid-twenties. He wore one of those reflective yellow vests that construction workers wear. His clothes were dirty and tattered. It looked like he had been in a few skirmishes with the dead himself. His calmly-spoken words caused the truck to fall painfully silent. It did not take long for Tori to break that silence.
“What do you mean, ‘no way’?” she asked.
“I mean, no way. It’s not safe. Too many zombies,” he responded, just as calm as before.
Jeremy watched as the man’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. He must have been anticipating what was about to happen next.
Tori flipped her lid.
“You bastard! Turn this truck around right now or let us out! That’s our friend back there! We can’t just leave him behind! Stop this truck!”
“Yeah, I’m gonna go with a ‘no’ on that one,” he said, breaking eye contact with the road and looking Tori dead in the eye. Jeremy was sure this only infuriated her more. She reached for the pistol that Jeremy set on the dashboard.
“Tori, no!” He yelled.
But it was too late.
She had the gun pressed against the driver’s head.
“You are going to turn this truck around. And we will get our friend,” she said, each word as firm and calm as he had spoken earlier.
It was almost scary how calm she was.
“You know what lady? On second thought, I really want to turn this truck around and go get your friend. Yeah, let’s do that,” the driver said.
He spun the truck around in the middle of the highway, crossing over the grassy median and began to travel back towards the building. Tori put the gun down on her lap. The driver would eye it cautiously every now and then. Jeremy felt kind of bad for her behavior. The guy did pick them up and all. He wanted to find Lexx too though.
Best to just let the woman handle it, he thought.
The truck came back up to the spot where he picked them up from. Most of the zombies that were on the highway were now roaming the area in front of the building. There was still a large number of them and no sign of Lexx. There must have been at least a couple hundred zombies out there. The front doors to the building were closed and a group of dead were banging on the glass. He must have retreated back inside and secured the doors somehow.
“Alright lady, you got a plan?” he asked.
“Yeah, let’s go get him.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, shaking his head. “Look over there. You see all those zombies? We don’t have the weapons to take on all of them. You probably don’t have any ammo, do you? The pistol you just held to my head probably doesn’t even have any bullets in it does it?”
“Three.”
“Okay, well that may have blown my head clean off but it ain’t gonna help you get to that building and your lover boy.”
She began to respond to that but he held his finger to his mouth and shushed her.
“Luckily for you, I have a plan. I always have a plan.”
With that he opened his door, stepped out and reached into the toolbox hanging from under the bed of the truck. He pulled out what looked like a large megaphone. There was a round, flat magnet on the bottom and he took it and stuck it to the roof of the cab. A lone wire hung down from the device and he cracked open the window to pull the wire through.
“I wired up this little puppy to drive the guys in the field nuts. They love it when I come to the jobsites blaring music. I like to let ‘em know I’m coming.”
He unplugs a mp3 player from the audio jack in the stereo and plugs it into the megaphone wire. He hums to himself as he scrolls through his play lists.
“Oh yeah, this is it. Okay, listen up.”
He looked up at Jeremy and Tori.
“We are going to drive over there. And by we, I mean mostly me. I will be blasting some sweet tunes through this here megaphone. Once we get close enough, the nice gun-lady here will jump out, and retrieve the aforementioned lover boy. You, my friend,” he motioned at Jeremy. “You will get into the back of the truck. Don’t worry, the gates may rattle, but they ain’t poppin’ out. You are gonna be the catcher.”
“The catcher?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes. The catcher. That is what I said. You see, while you and I are going to be causing a very, noisy distraction, your lady friend here is going to be getting your other buddy and booking it to the second floor.”
“Why the second floor?” Tori asked.
“Because you are going to jump into the back of the truck when we drive by and then we are gonna vámanos on out of here.”
Both Tori and Jeremy just stared at the man.
Was he serious? Did he really expect them to just jump from the second floor onto a moving truck?
This had to be the craziest thing that Jeremy had ever heard.
“So, you ready?” the driver asked.
“Man, are you serious? We can’t do that!” Jeremy yelled.
“Well, it doesn’t look like you have many options here. Look, I know it sounds a little crazy but-”
&nbs
p; “A little crazy?” Tori chimed in.
“Ok, it’s crazy. But it’s gonna work. I swears.”
Jeremy thought it over. The guy was right. They did not have many options and time was running short. If they were going to do something, they had to do it quick. He shook his head and looked at Tori. He could see that she was starting to come around to it as well. What other choice did they have?
“Hey man,” Jeremy started. “What’s your name again?"
“Josh.”
“What did you do before all this, Josh?” Tori asked.
“I worked for a local plumbing and mechanical company. I delivered material to the jobsites.”
Jeremy and Tori looked at each other.
“So, you’re a plumber?”
“No. I drive trucks basically.”
This was fantastic, Jeremy thought.
“Ok, let’s do this,” Josh said as he pushed play on his mp3 player. A familiar bass line blared through the megaphone. Jeremy couldn’t remember the name of the song until the first line came through the speaker.
“I CAN’T STAND IT, I KNOW YOU PLANNED IT…”
“Beastie Boys? Really?” Tori asked.
“Heck yeah! I love this song!” Jeremy said.
Josh pointed his finger at Jeremy.
“I knew I liked you man. Now let’s go get your friend.”
***
Lexx could not believe they left him. He could, but he couldn’t. They didn’t even look for him. They just left. And drove off into the motherfucking sunset.
Well, you did tell him to get her out of here, he thought to himself. Yeah, but they could have at least looked for me.
He took his frustration out on the zombies that wandered in from the hallways. When he came back inside he used his wrench to hold the doors together, so the dead were just piling up in front of the doors. They beat on the glass, but that was some damn solid glass. It would hold up.
