by Raymond Lee
“Will the keys be inside them? It seems like they’d be easy to steal that way.”
“No, the keys are more than likely inside the building,” Torres answered as he led her down the ramp. “We’ll have to get inside and find them, but we can pretty much take our pick of what’s out there. However, the fact that there’s still so many left and a bunch of cars in the mall’s lot isn’t a good omen. The outbreak must have hit this area really hard and fast, fast enough that the people shopping that day never left the mall.”
“You think the mall is full of zombies?”
“I can’t see any other reason why so many cars would be left in the lot. People wouldn’t just leave their vehicles like that.”
“What if they left theirs and got something better from the car lots?”
Torres shook his head. “Not in the very early days. Storeowners would have still been guarding their businesses. I think someone, or more than a few someones, attacked people here before the virus was widely reported and did a lot of damage before people could really protect themselves because they were caught unaware. It’s like that gas station in Utah. That one side was untouched, but the other side was infested with infected people. The only explanation I can think of for it is that the neighborhood was attacked and it just happened so fast they were all infected before they knew what the hell was going on.”
Sky scanned the area they were walking into as far as she could see. She noticed a group of shambling figures in between two fast food restaurants and grabbed Torres’s arm, pointing.
“I see them,” he said. “There’s more over off this side of the ramp by that pet store, and shit, there’s a whole mobile home community this way. It’s probably crawling with them. According to the signs there’s an apartment building somewhere on the right side of the mall. This is going to be tricky, but we need a vehicle bad.”
Sky had stopped listening the moment he mentioned a pet store. “There’s a pet store?”
“I know what you’re thinking, and no.”
“Torres, we can’t just leave animals.”
“Honey, it’s been over two months since the outbreak and when it hit it hit the whole damn country. Hopefully the owners let the animals go, but if they didn’t I can tell you with certainty that whatever was left in that building was either eaten or died of thirst if not starvation. Whatever is left in there is nothing you can save and definitely nothing I would allow you to scar yourself forever by seeing.”
Tears filled Sky’s eyes as she tried to imagine how many pet stores, animal shelters, and zoos had been left neglected with animals caged and unable to even attempt to survive on their own.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Torres switched his baseball bat to his left hand and wrapped his right arm around her shoulder, bending to kiss her head as they continued walking down the ramp. “Try not to think about it. It won’t do anything but make you feel horrible.”
“Why did this happen?”
“Because there are some really evil people that are never happy with what they have. They keep wanting more, no matter the cost.”
Sky looked around, taking in the buildings she assumed were either vacant or full of infected people, the abandoned cars, the litter and debris left in the streets and overgrown landscaping after two months of no maintenance. If there was any food left in the fast food restaurants she knew it would be mostly spoiled. She’d grown accustomed to the smells after a few weeks and didn’t notice it as much as she once had. “They wanted this mess?”
“They wanted the power of destroying another country and its people.”
“They didn’t destroy us.”
Torres smiled down at her. “Damn fucking straight, kid.”
They’d reached the bottom of the ramp and could see the entrance to the mall parking lot a few blocks away in the distance. The dealerships were to the left, behind an unmarked building. Torres lowered the water jugs and his backpack to the ground, leaving only Sky’s backpack strapped to his body. He crouched down to untie the rope he’d used to string the water jugs together and handed one to Sky. “Can you carry this?”
Sky took the jug from his hands. “You’re leaving everything else?”
“I hope not. It’s too much to carry and fight if needed. On the interstate I was always able to see if any infected were creeping up on us with plenty enough time to unload. We might not have as clear of a view with all these buildings and side streets they can pop out from. I packed absolute necessities in each backpack and we have canned goods in both, plus whatever we’ve stuffed into our coat pockets. I’m taking one just to make sure we have supplies if these get snatched, and we need to take at least one jug of water for the same reason.” He stood and scanned the area. “I don’t see anyone watching us, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t. There’s lots of places people could be hiding. My hope is that we get a vehicle and can drive back here and pick this stuff back up. If not, we’re going to have to restock, but with a good vehicle and no snafus we could be in Lincoln within a day anyway.”
Torres adjusted the straps of the backpack he still wore, stretched his arms and neck, and tested the weight of the baseball bat. “OK, kid. I can’t leave you here so you’re coming with me. I need you to stick to me and make as little noise as possible. Be ready to run if I say run, and keep your eyes peeled for any dangers I don’t see, all right?”
Sky nodded, unable to say anything as her throat seemed to grow thick and the buildings blurred. Her heart raced and her head spun as a wave of dizziness washed over her.
“Hey, look at me.” Torres lowered himself to his haunches and gripped her shoulder with his free hand. “Baby girl, have I ever let anyone or anything harm you?”
Sky shook her head.
“Do you think I ever would?”
She shook her head again despite the tears burning the back of her eyes.
“If I thought we couldn’t do this we most definitely would not be doing it. We just have to be careful, that’s all. We’re going to stay alert and if for any reason we can’t make it to the dealership we will abort the mission. I will not take chances with you. Understand?”
“Yes,” she said, voice shaky.
Torres pulled her in for a hug and held onto her until she quit shaking. “You are stronger than you know, and you are more than capable of doing this. I promise you that no matter what we will be together tomorrow and we will both be alive.” He released her, kissed her forehead, and stood, holding his free hand out. “Let’s do this, pequenuela.”
Sky slid her hand into his and stepped away from the exit ramp. They moved at an even pace across what would have been a busy intersection before the virus hit, wiping out the majority of the population, both scanning left and right for danger. She was on his left side, leaving his right hand free to hold the baseball bat he would try to use before resorting to the gun at his back or switchblade in his pocket. They passed the first building on their right without incident and were almost past the first on the left when Sky noticed a dark shadow coming from between it and the building behind it. She squeezed Torres’s hand before letting go and pointed to it.
Torres looked over just as an infected person who looked to have once been a nice-looking Latino teenager stumbled out from between the buildings, his mouth snapping as he locked his milky white eyes on them. His Nike shirt was filthy and it looked like he’d used the bathroom in the matching white shorts. Sky covered her mouth and gagged as she saw the brown sludge dripping down his legs into shoes she knew had cost a couple hundred dollars and were now totally ruined.
“I really hate it when they’re young,” Torres said softly before sprinting over to the teen and bashing his head in with the bat. Sky kept watch while Torres finished the teen off, making sure no other zombies got the drop on them.
“Keep watch on that side,” Torres instructed, walking back to her and continuing toward the dealerships. “The mobile home community is that way. There’s probably a bunch of them over there.”
They continued on in silence. Sky kept close watch on the buildings on the left and tried to ignore the blood and gunk dripping off Torres’s bat while Torres focused on the right side. They both scanned from front to back as they walked, careful not to allow themselves to get surrounded.
“The dealerships are right over here,” Torres said, crossing to the left side of the street as they reached the entrance to the mall’s parking lot. They crept along the side of a building, Torres taking lead. He took a quick look around it before stepping forward and motioning for Sky to follow. “We got a clear shot to the dealership in the middle. There are zombies lingering around the one on the left of it and I see some dark shadows moving in the lot of the one on the right.”
Sky gripped the back of Torres’s coat and tugged as her voice caught in her throat. When they’d stepped out from the cover of the building to their left they’d also stepped out of the cover of the large building across the street on their right and were in full view of the zombies loitering in the mall’s parking lot, a dozen or more of which were close enough to see them and had already started shuffling toward them. Torres looked over and cursed.
“Run,” he said.
Sky ran as fast as she could while holding the heavy jug of water. Torres noticed her lagging, looked back, and grabbed the jug. “Come on, baby girl.”
Free of the added weight, she quickened her pace, not fast enough to match Torres if he were running at full speed, but fast enough that they created quite a gap between the zombies in the mall parking and themselves. Unfortunately, the moment they came into view of the zombies loitering in the dealership lot on the left they started moving toward them too.
“Torres!’
“I see them! Keep running!”
Sky followed Torres’s lead, pushing her body harder than she ever had in her life, doing her best to ignore the stitch in her side, never stopping until they reached the doors to the middle dealership. Torres yanked on the handle to find it locked. “Of course,” he growled before backing up and ramming the rounded part of his bat into glass door, next to the lock. The glass cracked and he hit it again, knocking out a portion large enough for him to stick his hand through and unlock the door. The shattering glass alerted stragglers in the parking lot to their presence and to Sky’s horror, it alerted a few inside as well.
“Get in,” Torres said, opening the door.
“There’s zombies in there!”
“Not as many as out here.” He pushed her inside, handed her the water jug he’d set down to get through the door, and closed the door behind them. “Lock it,” he said lunging forward with his bat.
Sky locked the door and turned to see Torres’s bat connect with a portly man’s head. The skull cracked and the man wet down just as a thinner man, also dressed in a white button-down shirt and dark slacks approached. Torres turned toward him and quickly went to work on his head, bringing the bat down repeatedly. Focused on him, he didn’t see the first man reaching for his leg, mouth open, ready to take a bite. Without thinking, Sky ran forward and brought the jug of water down on the man’s head, striking him twice more for good measure. She wasn’t nearly as strong as Torres but since he’d already cracked the skull, the weight of the water in the jug and the force she put behind it was enough to cave in the man’s head. She stepped back when the jug got stuck in the crater that had been created in the man’s face and looked up to see Torres staring down at her, the thin man out of commission on the floor beside him.
“Good job, kid. Now, never do that again. You could have gotten hurt.” He looked down at the damage she’d dealt. “I don’t think we’ll be taking that water with us anymore. There’s a whole lot worse than ding-dong cooties on that jug now.” He chuckled but quickly sobered as he looked past her. “Shit.”
Sky turned to follow his gaze and saw the two groups of zombies that had been following them converge in the car lot. “They know we’re in here.”
“Yeah I know, so let’s hurry and do what we came to do.”
“We’re not going to get to any cars out there,” Sky told him, pointing outside. “We’re not getting through all of them.”
“Yes we are. We’re leaving in that.” Torres pointed to a black Ford F-150 with extended cab parked in the middle of the showroom floor. They ran to it and Torres opened the driver side door. “Damn it. Keys aren’t inside. Get in and I’ll find them.”
“You’re leaving me?”
“No, I’m keeping you safe. Now get in. I already put a hole in the glass. Enough pressure and those damn things will break through like they did at the store.”
Sky glanced back to the front of the building. The doors and walls were all glass and the zombies were pressing against them, trying to get to the food they saw inside. Knowing she and Torres were the food, she did as told and climbed into the truck. By the time she crawled to the passenger seat Torres had slammed the driver’s door closed and run off, out of view. She gripped the plastic bag of food she’d been carrying to her chest, missing her teddy bear more than ever as she watched the zombies press harder against the glass. Men, women, and even children shoved against each other, mouths snapping open and closed as they tried to get through the clear barrier to the prize inside. The glass was already cracked around the hole Torres had made with his bat. Sky’s heart skipped a beat as the break webbed out farther under the pressure of so much weight pushing against it. A small Asian woman with white eyes and half her mouth rotted off shoved her hand through the hole. The crowd pressed against her. A chunk of glass fell to the floor.
“Come on, Torres,” Sky said, squeezing the bag tighter to her chest. She looked around. The truck was one of four vehicles in the showroom. The other three were sports cars. She could see a desk near the front doors and a seating area before it. Due to the angle of the walls she couldn’t see anything else near the back of the dealership and had no idea where Torres had gone. Another chunk of glass fell and she squelched a scream. Her palms started sweating and her heart raced. She was stuck in a vehicle again, about to be surrounded by monsters. Soon they would be pressing in on her and there’d be no way of escape. The only thing scarier than that thought was the knowledge that Torres wouldn’t be stuck in the truck with her when the monsters got through. He’d be in the building with them. All of them. They’d kill him.
Glass shattered and Sky looked to the front to see the Asian woman spill through the large hole the zombies had created from the smaller one Torres had made to get them inside. A larger zombie, a man around his thirties or forties with a thick waist attempted to squeeze through the opening. The other zombies pressed against him, and slowly his body started coming through, the break in the glass webbing out from top to bottom. The Asian woman stood and headed toward her. Sky crawled to the driver’s side, opened the door and screamed for Torres just as he rounded a corner near the back, coming into view.
“Get in the backseat!” he yelled to her as he ran across the showroom.
Sky scrambled over the front seats and into the back. Torres reached the truck, tossed the baseball bat onto the passenger side floorboard, shrugged off the backpack, and tossed it on top of the seat before climbing in and pulling the door closed behind him. “I had to find the key that matched, but there’s more than one labeled for a black Ford F-150.” He pulled a handful of keys out of his coat pocket and started trying them.
The glass break continued to web out, spreading across the entire front of the building. Sky leaned forward and pointed. “Torres, look!”
“I can’t worry about that right this second, honey,” he said, continuing to try the keys he’d found. “Sit back and put on your seatbelt. We’re going to go out of here pretty rough.”
“What if you didn’t get the right key?”
“I’ll figure out how to hotwire the damn thing. Now sit back and put your seatbelt on. Please.”
Sky sat back in the middle of the bench seat and strapped herself in. It took a few attempts because the As
ian woman was outside the truck now with her face pressed against the window to her right, and her hands were shaking.
The man who’d been slowly squeezing through the hole in the glass fell inside the dealership, a trio of infected on top of him. Others behind them started shambling over their bodies to get inside. “Torres!”
“Fuck! Come on,” Torres growled, trying another key. The engine turned over and sputtered to life. Torres let out a whoop and buckled himself in. “Hold on, baby girl!”
“How are we getting out of here?” Sky asked, hearing the panic in her voice and knowing it wasn’t helpful, but she didn’t think she could bring it down while a group of infected people made their way to them. “How’d they even get these vehicles in here? I don’t see a garage door.”
“It’s in back and it’s locked. Hence why I said hold on.” Torres put the truck in drive and floored the gas.
Sky’s eyes widened and her breath caught as they sped across the showroom floor and she saw the webbed glass wall coming closer. The glass was still cracking but hadn’t completely broken yet. She prayed it had cracked enough to easily shatter on impact once the truck hit or they were in big trouble.
“Hold on!” Torres yelled as they hit the glass, crashing through with ease before racing across the lot. He made a few hard turns and ran over a few infected people, but managed to get them out of the lot and back onto the street without major incident.
“You did it!”
“Of course I did it. I’m Torres.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and grinned. “Don’t roll your eyes at me. You know that was awesome.”
“It wouldn’t have been very awesome if you didn’t find the right key right on time like that. They were inside the building.”
“You gotta have faith, Sky. We’re going to be all right.” Torres drove back to the exit ramp and found their supplies where they’d left them. “See. Faith.” He put the truck in park and jumped out to grab the backpack and water jugs.
