by Jeremy Dyson
“I’m not going back,” I admit. I climb on the counter and exit the building. The back of the strip mall is wide open. There are several cars parked in the back of the stores, and all I can do is hope this is where the employees park. I click the unlock button on the car key and the taillights on a nearby red Honda Civic flash on and off.
I shoulder my pack and walk toward the car. I press another button that pops the trunk. I throw my gear down on top of a couple of rags, half a bottle of motor oil, and a few dirty towels.
“You’re leaving?” pleads Danielle. She runs over and grabs at my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh. I hate apologizing, especially when it’s for something I haven’t even done yet.
“What’s going on?” she demands.
I close the trunk and look back. Fletcher drops out of the window, cursing as he lands on his ankle. He might also be cursing at me. Quentin pokes his head through, sees me standing by the car. Then he tosses out his pack and makes his way out of the building.
“I have to go look for my wife and daughter. I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering if there was more I could do. I know it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Fletcher confirms. “Worst idea ever.”
“Don’t be stupid, man” Quentin urges.
“I’m not asking anyone to come with me,” I explain. “It’s something I have to do.” My hand pulls open the handle on the car door, and I rest the rifle on the passenger seat.
“I’m coming, too,” says Danielle. She is already lifting the trunk open and tossing her pack inside when I turn around. Danielle gives me a look to let me know she won’t take no for an answer as she moves around to the passenger side of the car. Stitch follows along at her heels and climbs in her lap in the passenger seat.
“Fuck it,” mutters Quentin. He leaves Fletcher’s side and ambles over to the car.
Fletcher watches Natalie slowly wander to the car, too.
“Hold on a minute,” he pleads, the desperation in his voice made his words come with more volume than he intended.
The first of the corpses from the parking lot emerge at the end of the alley. The one in the lead stops in the middle of the alley and turns to pursue us. Fletcher looks back at the approaching dead, and then gives me a cold stare as he strides over and tosses his pack in the trunk.
“Let’s go then,” he grunts as he gets into the crowded back seat.
I get behind the wheel and turn the key and listen to the familiar sound of the engine turning over. With the headlights off, I accelerate down the alleyway and out to the intersection and head north through the darkened streets toward home.
Twenty
For what seems like a long while, we ride through the suburbs in silence. The world is a dead place now. Corpses occupy every street, shambling down the middle of roads filled with bodies and trash. To navigate the streets, I have to weave slowly through abandoned cars while avoiding the corpses that grope at our vehicle as we pass. Sometimes they manage to grab on somehow, and I have to drag them several blocks before they eventually fall off. Occasionally, a street is too congested to navigate, so we have to backtrack and try another route.
The road ahead looks congested with dozens of corpses and abandoned cars, so I take a left turn and then go right on the next driveable street. Danielle rolls down the window to let the dog hang his head out, feeling the cool rush of air along its tongue. She strokes the back of his neck as she keeps her eyes open for obstacles in our path.
“You have any idea where you’re going?” Fletcher asks.
“North,” I say.
His soft, disapproving laugh makes me look up at the rearview mirror to try and see his face in the back of the dark car. With the lights off, the dashboard is dark and all I can see is the dark outlines of the passengers in the back. His irritation with the situation is still clear, but I decide to ignore it for now. I didn’t force anyone to come with me.
Danielle turns around in her seat and shoots Fletcher a look with more sting than a whole nest of wasps. Fletcher lets out a deep sigh, and I feel his knee jab into my back as he settles quietly back in his seat.
“Are you doing okay?” Danielle asks Natalie. After a long moment with no response, Danielle asks again. The girl doesn’t acknowledge the question at all.
“Did you kill him?” Natalie asks. Her words sound hard and hollow and tired.
When no one else responds, Fletcher says blandly, “He’s dead.”
“Who was he?” probes Danielle. When the girl doesn’t answer, Danielle tries a different approach. “How did you end up at the pharmacy?”
“My boyfriend was a diabetic,” Natalie begins. She tells us the story of how they left home to search for insulin. Without insulin, the chance of her boyfriend surviving for more than a few days was pretty slim. They were searching the pharmacy when that man appeared with a gun. They begged him to let them go, but he made her tie her boyfriend to a chair. She watched while the man beat him. The guy even cut out one of his eyeballs and threw it at her to watch her scream when it landed in her lap.
The story made me wish I had the chance to shoot the man again.
Then he did things to her. She hesitated and stuttered as though she had buried the horrible event so deep that there was no way to dig down and bring it out again. It’s not a story I want to hear either, but it feels impossible to ask her to quit telling it.
Natalie screams when the car crunches over an object on the road and I clench the steering wheel and pray the tires are not damaged.
“We’re going in circles,” complains Fletcher.
“No, we’re not,” I insist.
“I’m pretty sure we passed that diner a couple times already,” he says.
I glance over at the darkened restaurant on the left. It appears vaguely familiar. It’s possible we passed it before, but it looks like a million other diners, too.
“You don’t know where the hell we are,” Fletcher says.
“I do,” says Natalie. “I know exactly where we are.”
“Do you know how to get to Route 59 from here?” I ask.
“I think so,” she says. She directs me down a side street and right at a gas station on the next corner.
“Hey, man,” Quentin taps my shoulder. “Is there enough gas in this thing to get us there?”
With the lights off, it isn’t so easy to check the gas gauge. I hadn’t even thought about it either. I find the controls for the lights to the left of the steering wheel. I turn a dial to the right, and it lights up the dashboard and running lights for the car. The street is momentarily bright from the headlights, and I check the gauges and quickly shut the lights back off. The gas gauge shows less than an eighth of a tank, not nearly enough to get us all the way to the northwest suburbs.
“It’s running pretty low,” I say.
“How low?” asks Quentin.
The gas light blinks on in the dashboard console.
“Pretty close to empty,” I admit.
“Great,” huffs Fletcher.
“That gas station back there looked pretty empty,” offers Quentin.
“The pumps won’t work without power,” counters Fletcher.
“Maybe we can switch cars,” suggests Quentin. “One of these has to have some gas.”
“You going to volunteer to go find the keys too?” Fletcher asks Quentin. “We’re going to have to hoof it when this thing runs dry.”
The thought of the slow journey on foot causes my jaw to clench. We already spent most of the night making the trip to the pharmacy and finding the car. The blue numbers on the dashboard clock tell me it’s a little after three in the morning. Within an hour, the sky will begin to grow light and the car will be out of gas.
We might need to find a place where we can stop for a few hours and rest, especially if we’re going to be hiking the rest of the way. Maybe we can go looking for another ride, but who knows what we might have to go through to get one.
> I reach another congested dead end and have to reverse and head back to the last street we passed. When I put the car in gear and begin to accelerate, something bangs on the trunk of the car. My first instinct is to push the pedal down more, but when I hear a voice, I press hard on the break.
“Please don’t go,” pleads the voice of a teenage boy. It cracks with desperation.
“Just keep going,” Fletcher urges me.
“He’s just a kid.”
“We don’t have room for anyone else,” he groans. “It’s like a fucking clown car already.”
I put the car in park and roll down my window while resting my other hand on the gun. I hear Fletcher curse and the sharp snapping sound as he reloads his rifle.
“What are you doing out here, kid?” I ask.
“I saw you guys drive by,” he struggles to regain his breath. He must have been chasing after us awhile. His eyes scan the interior of the dark car.
“Are you alone?” I wonder and scan the road for signs of trouble. After the pharmacy, I’m having a hard time trusting anyone. The kid in the filthy Pencey College shirt seems desperate and afraid, but maybe that is exactly what makes him more dangerous than I think.
“I haven’t seen anyone else for days,” he says. “Please take me with you guys.”
“Car’s full, kid,” Fletcher barks.
“Come on,” he pleads. “I’ll ride in the trunk.”
“Trunk’s full too,” Fletcher adds.
Glass shatters in a shop window along the sidewalk. A corpse tumbles out through the window of a thrift shop into the shards on the pavement. We don’t have time to sit around. I jerk my head, and the kid runs around to the passenger side and piles into the crowded backseat next to Natalie.
I press the pedal and get the car moving again, backing around a corner then shifting to drive and accelerating down a cross street.
“What’s your name, kid?” I ask.
“Kyle,” he says. “What are you doing?”
I hear the sound of fabric rustling in the backseat.
“Easy, college boy. Just checking you for weapons,” Quentin explains. “Nothing personal, but we already ran into some trouble this morning, and I’m not in the mood for any more surprises.”
I see a sign for Route 59, and I take a left turn onto the road. This four-lane road leads straight up towards home and my family. It’s the road Amanda would take every day on her way to work, and if we can get far enough, the road winds right passed Abby’s school. I spot a gas station that looks deserted along the right side of the road. I slowly pull the car to a stop between the pumps. For a long moment, I stare at the car dealership across the street, and the rows and rows of new automobiles parked outside.
“The pumps won’t work,” Fletcher reiterates.
I open the door and get out of the car. I slide down the night vision goggles and flip them on to try and see through the darkened windows of the building across the street.
“I don’t think we need gas,” I grin. “I think we need a bigger car.”
Twenty-one
We stare into the open garage door of the service department. Though the sky outside is slowly turning from black to indigo, the inside of the vast building is still immersed in darkness. Quentin slides his night vision goggles over his eyes and takes the lead inside with Danielle behind him. Fletcher and I stay outside and cover Natalie and the teenage boy who bites his nails and rambles nervously. Stitch parks himself beside Natalie and pants and licks at her hand when she pets him.
“Man, I’m so glad these guys picked me up,” he says. “I was trapped in my car since this whole thing started. Thought I was going to die in there.”
He sits down next to Natalie on a bench in front of the building.
“You don’t seem like you belong with them,” he whispers. He glances over to see me keeping an eye on them. “They picked you up too?”
Natalie looks at him a moment, then returns her attention to the dog that is nuzzling her fingers.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
Instead of answering Natalie gets up and crosses her arms and paces back and forth in front of the building. I stay posted at the corner of the building, keeping an eye for trouble coming from either direction. She looks like she wants to tell me something but can’t find the words. Several suppressed rounds echo inside the building. The dealership lot still seems quiet, but unfortunately, there is no fence to the street. If we make too much noise, we could end up in a really bad situation. They could come at us from every direction, and there is nothing to slow them down at all.
“You guys need a hand in there?” I hear Fletcher’s voice through the headset speakers. There is a long silence and then another burst of suppressed rounds echoes inside the garage.
“I think we got them all,” Quentin answers once the gunfire subsides.
“Hurry up and find some keys,” Fletcher urges. “We got company coming.”
I turn around to scan the area around Fletcher, and it doesn’t take me long to see them with the night vision goggles. A large group of corpses is milling around the closest intersection. Luckily, they are moving slowly towards the Honda we abandoned at the gas station. I left the headlights on, thinking it might help draw attention away from us. For now, the dead seem oblivious to our presence at the dealership across the street. I poke my head between the cars to get a look further down the block and notice there are more of them several blocks away, slowly heading in our direction.
I really wish they would hurry up with those keys. This scene could get messy if we stick around much longer. It’s a relief when Quentin’s voice crackles through the headset and reports he has found the office where all the keys are.
“Just grab a bunch and get out here,” I plead.
The radio clicks on, and Quentin announces they are heading out, but then stops abruptly. “I heard something,” he says. The next thing I hear is the sound of Danielle screaming inside and assault rifles firing wildly. Bullets ping off metal, and a car alarm howls in the garage. I don’t hesitate to sprint to the garage entrance.
“Quentin?” I call through the mic on the headset. “Danielle! What’s going on?” I race through the garage trying to trace their location by the sounds of their rifles, but the car alarm is blaring and the sound bounces off the high metal walls.
A door on my left flies open and Danielle nearly knocks me over as she backs out the door and fires wildly into the hallway. She holds down the trigger until her clip is empty then slams the door shut.
“Where’s Quentin?” I ask.
“He’s trapped in there,” she cries. She clutches at my arm and pulls me toward the exit.
I glance back at the door and already the fists of the undead begin to claw at the other side. It won’t be more than a minute or two before the mass of their bodies is enough to knock the door off the hinges. I follow Danielle out of the garage and look around, but I can’t spot anyone. They’re completely gone. The corpses are already making their way through several rows of cars between the street and the dealership. We have to get the hell out of here.
Danielle taps my arm, and I follow the direction she is pointing and see Fletcher already moving away from the building with Natalie and Kyle. They are crouched down and scurrying behind a long row of cars. We take off after them, but once we reach cover behind the cars I stop and turn around and look back at the building. The corpses have entered the garage and are swarming towards the sound of the blaring car alarm. At least, that is drawing most of them away from us, but a couple of corpses notice our exit and move slowly towards our location.
There is no sign of Quentin at all. We wait for a moment behind the cars, listening for the sound of the rifle or anything to indicate he is still alive in there. The car alarm continues to blare, making it impossible to hear anything else. The sound draws more and more corpses to the dealership. There must be hundreds gathering around the lot.
“What happened in there?” I ask
Danielle. Her eyes are watery, and she struggles to catch her breath and speak.
“We thought we got them all,” she says. “But there were so many in the dealership. They were locked inside the office with the keys. They came pouring out as soon as we opened the door. Quentin went down under a pile of them. I tried to shoot them, but there were so many. He told me to get out and tried to lead some of them the other way.”
The blaring alarm finally runs to the end of the sequence of piercing sounds and shuts off. The air fills with the dull moans of hundreds of undead. The sky is slowly becoming the bruised purple shade that precedes the dawn. Within a few minutes, we won’t need to use the night vision goggles to see, and we will lose the cover of darkness.
I spot Fletcher at the end of the lot with Kyle and Natalie. They dart across the road to an alley a block away. Stitch trails behind them, pausing in the middle of the road to look back. Then he breaks into a run back in our direction. A moment later, Fletcher pokes his head around the corner of the building, and he spots us crouched behind the car. He waves an arm emphatically to urge us to hurry. We have to move. If we wait here any longer, the throngs of undead will close in around us.
I take one last look back at the dealership and consider running back inside. There are just too many now, and even if I am willing to risk my life to help Quentin, I’m not willing to get Danielle killed. I sling the rifle over my shoulder, and we make our way through the cars towards the alley. The sick feeling in my stomach begins to set in then when I face the reality that Quentin is gone. The only person responsible for this is me. I hate myself for allowing any of them to risk their lives by staying with me.
The sound of the assault rifle cements my feet to the ground. I look toward the alley but then realize the sound is coming from the other direction. I swing around toward the building and after a moment, I see a figure rounding the rear of the building. Quentin moves backwards, limping slightly and firing into a crowd of corpses trailing behind him. The elation I feel at the sight of him only lasts a moment before the adrenaline takes over, and I raise the rifle and head back towards the building. Stitch brushes passed my leg and weaves through the cars. He barks loudly, drawing the attention of some of the dead as he moves. The things are spread all over the lot now, shambling up and down the aisles of cars.
