by Raymond Lee
Sky spotted the other man’s feet sticking out from an aisle up ahead. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know and we’re not staying here long enough to find out,” Torres answered, grabbing plastic bags from behind the checkout counter and shoving them into Sky’s hands. “Fill these bags with nonperishable food. Do it quick!” He gave her a push and stood at the front of the store in front of the large gaping hole in the glass next to the front doors. A gun poked out of his jeans at the small of his back and both his hands gripped the baseball bat. Displays near the front had been toppled and one of the glass doors had taken some damage as well. “Hurry, honey. I have a bug-out bag packed already but these sonsofbitches had a car. We might as well take more food since we got a ride to carry it in now.”
“What’s a bug-out bag?” Sky asked as she grabbed bags of potato chips.
“It’s a backpack I filled with first aid stuff, emergency food and water, and… shit. Water!” Torres stepped through the man-sized hole in the glass and did a quick scan of the street before he stepped back in, grabbed a large shrink-wrapped case of water bottles and ran it outside. Sky watched him reach inside the driver side of a car that was angle-parked at the curb, pop the trunk, and stuff the water bottles inside before returning for a second case. He continuously scanned the street as he did this. It wasn’t dark enough to be the middle of the night, but it wasn’t light enough to be full morning either. Sky hoped he could see well enough to know if something bad was coming their way.
“We got incoming,” he said, coming back in to grab more plastic bags from the checkout. He switched the empty bags out with the ones she’d filled and instructed her to fill those while he took the others to the car. “I knew the gunshots and all the other noise would draw those zombie things. Thankfully none were real close when everything went down. It gave us a little time to clear out.”
Torres took the bags out to the car, reentered the store, grabbed another bag and went down an aisle in front of her, filling it. “Do you need any sanitary items?”
“Sanitary items?”
He held up his hand and she saw a package of maxi pads like her sister used in it. “I’m only nine.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” He continued down the aisle, his bag rustling as he filled it, and stepped out the other end. “Time to go. This will have to be enough.”
Sky finished dumping candy bars into her last bag and joined him where he stood. He glanced down at her bags and grinned. “We’ll keep the bag of candy bars with us and eat them before they melt.”
He stepped through the hole in the glass first, scanned both ways, and ushered her forward. Sky gasped as she saw a group of shambling people approaching them from both directions. More spilled out from side streets.
“Yeah, I know, there must be three dozen or more of them,” Torres said, taking her bags and tossing them in the backseat, except for the bag of candy bars he let her clutch in her hand. He opened the passenger door and gestured for her to get in.
“You’re sure this car runs?”
“They drove up in it.” He slammed her door shut and ran around the other side to slide behind the steering wheel. He turned the keys that had been left in the ignition and the vehicle started right up just in the nick of time. He backed away from the curb, hitting an infected man with the back bumper before putting the car into drive and leaving the store behind them. He turned on the headlights and glanced at her. “Seatbelt.”
Sky put her seatbelt on and watched the zombies get smaller in her side mirror. She didn’t know much about cars but knew this one was a yellow Mustang and it was taking her away. “We have to look for Raven!”
“We have to lose the zombie parade,” Torres responded, cutting his eyes to the rearview mirror. “How are those jeans?”
“Still kind of damp.”
“I can blast the heat from the floor vents but it’ll probably melt the candy bars.”
“I’ll survive.” Sky reached into the bag and grabbed a chocolate bar. She realized she hadn’t eaten since the morning before. Despite finding the store, she hadn’t even thought about eating. She’d been exhausted from running and the horrible events of the day had wiped the hunger right out of her. Her belly growled, indicating her appetite was back.
“Oh my God. I didn’t even feed you last night.”
“I wasn’t hungry. I would have probably thrown up.” Sky unwrapped the candy bar and took a bite. “You’re going the wrong way. This is farther than the store and you said Raven didn’t come this far up the street.”
Torres glanced in the rearview mirror again before taking a right onto a cross street. He took another right a block later. “What hotel were you staying in?”
“A tall one,” Sky answered, unable to remember the name. “It was shiny and had revolving doors out front and there was a statue of a lady with really long eyelashes and huge boobs.”
Torres grinned. “Was she wearing a long dress with a high slit up the thigh?”
“Yeah.”
“I know the hotel. This street runs parallel to the one the hotel and store are on. We’re going to take it all the way back to the hotel, cross over and retrace your steps. Keep your eyes open for anyone walking normally or running down the side streets. It’s still dark out so if we make it back near the store without seeing her we might pull over and wait until the sun comes up. Odds are she’s inside somewhere sleeping.”
“What if she’s…” Tears filled Sky’s eyes and she went silent, unable to speak what she was thinking.
“Have faith,” Torres said, voice soft. “You’re still alive. I’m still alive and I was shot at. Even if we don’t find her today that doesn’t mean we won’t find her later.”
“You’ll keep looking with me?”
He glanced at her for a moment before returning his focus to the street ahead of them, not that there was any traffic to worry about. The city appeared to still be asleep… or dead. “I’ll help you look for her as long as it is safe to do so. We don’t know what exactly is happening or how long it’s going to last. Maybe the worst has happened, or maybe it’s just beginning. I just learned the hard way that these zombie freaks aren’t the only trouble we have out here. I’ll help you look for Raven but my priority is keeping us safe. No matter what.”
Sky studied him. He was nice to her but he’d left two men on the floor back at the store. He still carried a gun she assumed came from one of them. “What happened at the store? Who were those men? How did the glass get broken?”
“All I know about those men is they were bad guys. I was sleeping when they pulled up outside the store. Their headlights shone right in my face, waking me up, thankfully. They got out and were trying to pick the lock on the front doors when I announced myself and asked what they wanted. I was willing to give them food and water, but they weren’t satisfied with that. They had the same idea I’d had. The store was full of food, not anything actually good for you, but food that would keep you from starvation. It was also a shelter and they wanted it. In my gut I knew they weren’t the type of guys I wanted to be associated with, and I damn sure wasn’t letting them stay there while I had you to take care of. I told them I would give them supplies but they needed to take it and leave. They disagreed, violently, pretty much proving my gut instincts were dead on.”
Torres hung a right and crept along a side street until it connected them back to the street the hotel was on. “When I refused to open the door to the men one of them decided to bust the glass and unlock it. I grabbed him and tried to toss him back out, which is why there’s a man-sized hole in the wall now. Everything kind of blurred together after that. One had a gun and they were both dirty fighters. All I knew was if they got past me they would get to you and I couldn’t let that happen so I did what I had to do.”
“How did you end up in the store?” Sky asked as he took the final right turn to put them back on the street they’d started on.
“I work at the store, or at least I did.
It was my day job in-between gigs. I came out here from Santa Rosa about a year ago to do some stunt work and got into acting. I haven’t been in anything major which is why I have the day job. My shitty boss thought the virus warnings were no more serious than the H1N1 scare and demanded I come in. Against my better judgment, I came in to work even though no one else did. When I started seeing people that looked like the sick people on the news shuffling down the street I locked the doors and holed up there. My car’s been in the garage getting work done and I wasn’t about to walk out in that mess to get home. Phone lines were mostly down at that point, not that I think any cabs were operating anyway. It was four days ago I was ordered to come in to work. Didn’t get many customers that morning and by that afternoon… it got real crazy real fast on the street. There was a stream of cars speeding past that first night. I think I’ve only seen like ten cars total since that night and those were ones I also saw speeding away from all this mess. That the hotel?” he asked as he pulled the car to a stop a block away from the hotel with the statue she’d described in front.
Nausea rose in Sky’s belly as she took in the scene and she took a deep breath through her mouth, expelled it through her nose as she composed herself. The car she’d hidden in was still there as were the others that had been abandoned. Half a man’s body writhed on the sidewalk outside the revolving door as if his torso had been separated from the rest due to the force of others pushing out the door before he could get his full body free. She couldn’t see the dead girl’s body in the street from where they were stopped, but knew it would be there if it hadn’t been completely consumed overnight. “Yeah, that’s it.” She looked across the street to the balconies and had to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
“What?” Torres followed her gaze, looking up to where a body lay slumped on a balcony. A large circle of blood stained the sidewalk below. The balcony doors behind the blonde woman’s body were smashed and a man kneeled over her, still devouring what was left. “Shit. That’s nasty.”
“She helped me,” Sky said, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. “I was stuck in that car right there and two of the sick people were going to get in. She hollered at them and yelled at me to run, drawing them to her so I could get away.”
“That’s not your fault,” Torres said, returning his gaze to her. “That zombie got her from inside her room. That had nothing to do with you so don’t go blaming yourself.”
Sky shook her head as she wiped away her tears. “I heard her scream when I was running away. I didn’t even look back, I was so scared of what I’d see. She screamed. It had to be when that man got her and he got her because she was yelling to help me.”
“Still not your fault.” Torres squeezed her shoulder. “She did a good thing for you and she did it of her own free will because she was a good person and she did the right thing. You can appreciate that and give thanks to her. You can honor her by doing good things for others, but don’t carry the blame of what she did around with you. Had I died going out to grab you yesterday that wouldn’t have been on you either. It was a choice I made. You understand what I’m saying?”
Sky looked away, unable to agree. Had she ran when the woman first yelled, maybe she’d still be alive. Had she actually taken care of the infected woman outside the hotel instead of tossing her sweeper at her, too scared to actually use it as Torres used his baseball bat, she’d be with Raven. Had she never won the stupid contest to meet Emma Whitman she and Raven would be home in Kentucky. Maybe the zombies were there too, but at least they’d be home and they’d be together.
Torres sighed and put the car in motion, slowly creeping up the street. “That’s the girl?” he asked as they passed the front of the hotel.
Sky nodded, spotting what remained of the girl she’d seen getting eaten when she’d exited the revolving doors. She studied what was left of her, tears burning the backs of her eyes. “I guess you’re right. She does kind of look like she could be me.”
“Yeah. Damn it, she really does. She should have turned if she was bitten, but judging by that giant cavity in the back of her neck I think whatever killed her severed her brainstem, or just reached up through there and scooped out her brains. Damn, that’s messed up.” He continued up the street. “Check down each alley and cross street. If you see anyone moving, let me know.
They continued up the street at a crawl, keeping careful watch for anything or anyone moving in a normal manner. Unease grew in Sky’s gut as they slowly made their way up the street. She and Raven had been stunned when they’d arrived in Hollywood. The city never seemed to sleep, there was always a bevy of activity no matter where you looked, no matter the hour. Sidewalks were so jam-packed with people she didn’t even get upset when Raven insisted on holding her hand like a baby. She’s been afraid of getting swept away from her in the sea of people. Now all those people had seemed to vanish, save for a few stragglers that had died and started shambling around a little after. Hollywood had turned into a ghost town, but the ghosts weren’t dead and buried. They were up and searching for something to fill their hungry bellies.
“Are they really dead or just sick?” Sky asked as one of the abominations in question stepped closer to the mouth of the alley she’d been searching.
“It’s hard to say,” Torres answered, a little distracted by his own study of the opposite side of the alley. “From all I’ve heard on the news they supposedly die from the virus before they get back up and start to attack people so I would think they’re dead despite the fact they’re able to walk and grab and eat people. It doesn’t seem to be a reflex so much as an intense hunger that causes them to do it. That would indicate some amount of brain function or at least some sort of animal instinct to me.”
“So you think they know what they’re doing? They want to kill people?”
“No, I wouldn’t go that far. There are reports of mothers eating their own children. I can’t see any virus making a mother do that to her children if she could rationally think. I think it’s more like the brain is working, but in a different way. It’s acting on some sort of survival mode. The only message is eat, and apparently vegetables won’t do the trick. They have to eat people. The Russians who created this virus are some sick bastards.”
“Why did they do it?”
“Because they’re evil. That’s the best reason I can come up with. They could have bombed us if they wanted to start a war, sent in troops. This shit right here is ridiculous, a whole new level of twisted.”
The store loomed a block ahead of them on the left. Torres pulled the Mustang over and parked along the curb on the right, cut the headlights and the engine. They had a clear diagonal view of the store where movement could be seen through the gaping hole, now bigger than it had been when they’d left. The building that had sheltered them the night before was crawling with the infected. “We’re going to take a break,” Torres said. “When the sun comes up fully we’ll canvas the area, kind of like a grid. We’ll go up and down all the side streets between here and the hotel.”
“What if she’s out moving now?”
“We didn’t see her and we can’t waste gas. We’ll look for her when the sun is up and we’ll try really hard to find her, but kid, we can’t stay in this car driving around the same streets all day. We’ll attract those things.” He powered on the radio and turned the knob, searching. “I didn’t have access to a radio at the store and I quit getting anything on my cell yesterday morning. Let’s see if we can catch something.”
Sky crumpled her candy bar wrapper and discarded it on the floor before reaching into her bag for another. She held the bag out to Torres and he took a bar for himself before continuing to turn the dial. Eventually he came upon something.
“…power outages all over the country,” a woman’s voice said from the speaker. “The route to the military rescue site in Modesto has been completely closed off, with no access due to the droves of infected surrounding it. The camp at Fort Huachuca is still up and
running but travelers are urged to use extreme caution. Many roads to Fort Huachuca have been swamped with infected. There are still rescue sites in Lincoln, Boise, and —” The woman’s message cut off abruptly, her words replaced with static. Torres muttered a curse around the chunk of candy bar in his mouth and turned the knob until he caught something else.
“If you can hear this message,” a man’s voice said, “Stay in your homes. Seek shelter. Stay off the street. The virus has been reported in every state. Stay inside until the military clears your area.”
“The military isn’t clearing anything,” another man chimed in. “If you can’t get to the base in Lincoln you’re shit out of luck. The military wasn’t prepared for this. If you wait on them, you’ll die. Get to Lincoln if you want to live!”
The two men argued, their voices elevating with each word. Torres powered off the radio and turned the key in the ignition, killing the battery. “That wasn’t real encouraging.”
Sky finished her candy bar in silence, the chunk of chocolate and nuts dropping down to her stomach like a boulder. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the side view mirror since they’d stopped, hoping to catch a glimpse of Raven running toward them.
“Did your sister have a plan?”
Sky shook her head. “We were told to stay in the hotel room so we did. Raven watched the news but I didn’t. She knew about the virus, but we didn’t know it had hit our hotel until she went out to the vending machines and found out the infected people were all over the hotel. We thought we’d be safe inside until the military came to clear the area.” She frowned. “Shouldn’t they have done that by now? What’s taking them so long?”
“They keep getting eaten,” Torres said before taking the last bite of his candy bar. He balled up the wrapper and tossed it on the floor. “I don’t think they were trained for this. This is cable television stuff. If I wasn’t sitting here watching zombies move around inside that store I’d never believe this shit.”
The candy bars Sky had just finished eating threatened to come back up. She bent over and took deep breaths as sweat broke out along her upper lip.
