“Oh…right.”
Sarah led Jimmy through the garage and into the backyard. She headed for the pool shed, as she fumbled with her own key ring. Her fingers settled on the right key, and she slipped it into the doorknob.
“You have a key to your sister’s pool shed, but not her house?”
“Pretty slick, right? This way, if anything happens, and someone tries to get into their house through me, I can honestly say I don’t have a key to their house. They can try all my keys and none of them will work. And who gives their sister a key to their pool shed? Why would you even need to?”
What she didn’t say was that the house key was hidden behind another lock and a false wall that was unseeable to the naked eye. You had to know it was there to find it.
“Why would anyone try to get into their house through you?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Whatever, Sarah.”
Sarah smirked and let herself in the shed. “Wait here. Keep watch. Let me know if you see anything.”
Once inside, Sarah found the reason for the open garage door. Khalid and Sophia had unplugged the solar panels before they left. They hadn’t wanted to go back to the pool shed to plug them in again once everyone was safe in their vehicles, and closing the door manually would have taken too long.
Sarah made her way to her brother-in-law’s secret gun cabinet, to which she also had a key. She was the only one besides Khalid with a key to the gun cabinets. Sarah’s sister, Sophia, never wanted one. She said she’d rather die than shoot someone.
Sophia had never been with someone like Jimmy.
Sarah flipped open the door, hoping to add a couple of Khalid’s more powerful, more automatic guns to their arsenal. She groaned when she saw all the weapons were gone. But there, tacked up inside, was a piece of paper with her name on it.
“Jackpot,” she said under her breath.
She opened the note. It read:
“Fyzn migynbcha zil sio vybchx nby bin xia. Sio ehiq nby wigvi.
1mn mnij: jcwe oj Gig.
2hx mnij: jcwe oj siol julyhnm.
3lx mnij: pcmcn Ohwfy.
Zchuf mnij: ai meccha qcnb Gur.
Myy su nbyly. Xi nls ni wunwb oj. Mijbcu’m fimcha byl gchx. Mylciomfs. Fipy.”
When Sarah was little, Khalid was so patient with her admiration for her big sister. Sarah would whine to be included, and against Sophia’s wishes, he’d sit down with her and teach her the things he’d learned in training. Sarah’s favorite part was the ciphers.
It only took a glance to figure out that Khalid had written the letter in his favorite cipher. Wanting to impress her soon-to-be ‘big brother’ with how clever she was, Sarah had worked hardest on memorizing that one until it had become second nature. She’d kept in practice over the years by sending letters to her nieces and nephews using the cipher their father had taught her. It was the only one she could still figure out without sitting down and writing it out.
“Left something for you behind the hot dog. You know the combo.
1st stop: pick up Mom.
2nd stop: pick up your parents.
3rd stop: visit Uncle.
Final stop: go skiing with Max.
See ya there. Do try to catch up. Sophia’s losing her mind. Seriously. Love.”
And that explained why both cars were gone. Khalid and Sophia had four kids. Even in the minivan, they wouldn’t all fit once they grabbed Mom and Dad, who had both stopped driving after an accident ten years prior.
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. She had no idea how much of a head start Khalid and Sophia had on them. Khalid still had military connections, and New York City and its surrounding areas were the first places in New England to go bad. The phone lines and cell services had been cut shortly before the virus made national news, so Sarah wasn’t able to get in touch with any of her family before the first case appeared in Schenectady. They could have left days before Sarah even knew the virus was a thing.
At least now she knew they’d gotten out alive.
The house was like a fortress. Khalid had hired an architect who was a former Marine with a passion for doomsday shelters reminiscent of the house in Stephen King’s Rose Red. It was easy to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going. With the windows all boarded up, and the house’s insane layout, Sarah and Jimmy would be safe here for the night. They might even be able to get a couple of good meals in them. But then it was off again in the morning.
Sarah folded the note and tucked it in her pocket. Then she reached behind the false back in the gun cabinet and pulled out the little magnetic key holder waiting there.
“Got it,” she told Jimmy as she locked the shed door. “They’re stopping in Philly first to pick up Khalid’s mom, then Aberdeen to grab my folks, then Quantico for some reason. I’ll plug in the solar, and we’ll be in business.”
Sarah intentionally held back Khalid’s mention of Max.
“I don’t think you should.”
“Don’t think I should what? Plug in the solar?”
“Those things seem to be attracted to heat. Lights, cars, animals, people…,” Jimmy looked back at the house. “Looks like they’ve got a fireplace. If we have to, we can start a small fire and cook on that. We’ve got flashlights. Leave the solar panels.”
“Okay, fine. We’ll leave the solar panels. Anything interesting happen while I was in there?”
“Just this weird noise, but it stopped.”
“What kind of noise?”
“I dunno. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
Sarah took a long look at Jimmy. “If there’s somewhere you want to stop, someone you want to check in on, you should speak up.”
“I already found the only person who matters,” Jimmy mumbled, a far off look in his eye.
“Yeah…right,” Sarah replied, assuming Jimmy was talking about her. “It’s getting dark. We’d better grab anything we need from the truck and get inside.”
———————
Sarah dropped the duffle they’d filled onto the couch and fished a flashlight out of her pocket while Jimmy looked around for a hot dog. Jimmy had already checked the refrigerator. Sarah insisted that wasn’t how Khalid worked. Turned out she was right. There were no hot dogs in the fridge.
There wasn’t anything in the fridge, actually. Apparently, Khalid and Sophia were hoping to come home to their home in one piece. So far, it looked like they were gonna get lucky. How that Ferrari was still in the garage was a mystery to Sarah. She and Jimmy carried it, the toolbox, and the car charger inside before locking up for the night.
Sarah made a mental note to put the charger and a few necessary tools in the truck before they left in the morning.
“Sophia would never let Khalid decorate with something so tacky as a hot dog, so what could he be talking about?”
Suddenly, Sarah remembered Yasser’s drawing. Khalid had been so proud that he’d framed it and hung it on the wall in his home office. It was a dog rescuing a cat from a fire. The very tip of the dog’s tail was on fire, and a little boy was running to put it out with a bucket.
When Khalid asked Yasser for an explanation, the boy said, “The cat is the world. The dog is Islam. And the boy is just a boy, like me, keeping Islam alive.”
“What’s the fire, then?” Khalid asked.
“It’s the ones who think people who worship Allah are terrorists.”
Khalid had pretended he had allergies that day. Yasser was none the wiser, but Sarah had known those were tears of pride.
“I think I know where it is.”
Sarah led the way to Khalid’s office. The drawing was the first thing you saw when you entered the room. It wasn’t out of place, by any means. Various pieces of children’s artwork and displays of the kids’ accomplishments were hung around the room. Khalid always was the proud papa. But Yasser’s drawing stood out in a way the other pieces didn’t.
Sarah gently lifted the f
rame from its hook and placed it on the desk. Just as she’d suspected, there was a safe behind the picture.
“Turn around.”
“Huh?”
“You know the rules. They’ve been the same since the day we met. You don’t get to know the combination.”
“Oh, right! The super secret, magic, big-brother-in-law combo! Did he write his note in your special language, too?”
“Turn around!” Sarah snapped.
“He did!” Jimmy laughed as he turned his back. “That always was so creepy. I still think he had a crush on you.”
“That’s because you’re a sick fuck. It’s not a super secret language. It’s a well-known cipher. You could have learned it yourself any time you wanted. You just weren’t gonna learn from me.”
“That’s at least half the reason I hated you being around your family, you know. All the secrets I wasn’t allowed to be in on.”
“I kept the secrets because you took away everything else that was mine. Maybe if you’d just left me something, I’d have let you in.”
“Yeah, I know. Everything was my fault. Blah blah blah. Can we get on with this? I’d like to have dinner, pull up some mattress, and get some shut-eye.”
Sarah dropped her hands to her sides and turned to glare at Jimmy. “What are you even doing here, Jimmy?”
“Uhh, saving you? Helping you get away from your busted up house? Taking you to find your family? What do you think I’m doing here?”
“No, Jimmy. Not right now. Not here in this house. I know how you got here. What are you doing here?” Sarah’s wild gestures indicated a much bigger ‘here’ than her sister’s house. “This side of the country. In New York. On my street. How the fuck is it that I walk outside, and my husband is gone, and just a few hours later, here you come with your busted up pickup all, ‘Howdy do, Miss Sarah. I’m sorry I almost killed you. I can be your savior now?’ Why aren’t you in California gallivanting around town with that rich cunt you took off with after I finally handed you your ass?”
“Hayley? Oh, god, Sarah, that lasted all of ten minutes.”
“Good to know you discovered that the reason I beat your face in was just a fling after you’d been cheating on me with her for a year.”
“You really want to do this now?”
“Why not now? When’s a better time? After I let the zombies eat you?”
Jimmy started laughing.
“What?” Sarah yelled as she turned back to the safe.
Jimmy stifled his laughter. “Nothing. It’s just…” He started giggling again. “You called them zombies.”
“Fuck you, Jimmy. Fuck. You. You can turn back around. It’s open.”
The safe was wide and shallow so it could fit long objects without needing a thick wall to hide it. There were two AK47s and a shitload of ammunition stuffed inside. Sarah unpacked the AKs, laying them on the desk next to her nephew’s drawing. When she reached inside the safe again, she found a .44 Magnum and two night vision headsets.
Jimmy stopped laughing and let out a low whistle. “Holy shit. Big brother-in-law is serious about his toys.”
“You’re even more scared of him now, aren’t you?” Sarah asked with a grin.
“Maybe a little,” Jimmy admitted.
“Good. I hope he shoots your dick off.” Sarah switched on one of the headsets and jammed it onto her head. She flicked off the flashlight and buckled the .44’s belt around her waist. She stuffed the AKs and ammo back in the safe, spun the dial. Then she stomped off toward the basement, leaving a headset for Jimmy on the desk. “You’d better keep up. I’m not coming looking for you if you get lost.”
Jimmy rushed to put the headset on, gingerly replaced the picture, then hurried after Sarah.
———————
When Jimmy caught up to Sarah, she was standing in the center of a neatly organized room full of canned goods and other emergency supplies. There was everything from camping gear to individually wrapped cupcakes.
“We could live in here for a month, at least,” Jimmy said, just barely above a whisper. “All the people in the world starving and your brother-in-law has this in his basement.”
“What can I say? Khalid always was a bit of a boy scout,” Sarah offered, quoting Jimmy. “In his defense, he didn’t take it with him. He left it for whoever happened along and found it.”
“Even if he put the kids and all the luggage in one car, he wouldn’t have enough room for all this food in the other. That’s why he left it.”
“Whatever. The important question is what do you want to eat? There’s just about whatever you could want here.”
Sarah set up the larger of two camping stoves she’d found, and put together a couple mess kits.
“I’m having chicken noodle soup and Ding Dongs. Right after I have a little herbal refreshment. No way am I holding food down right now without it. My stomach’s in knots.”
“You’ve got pot?” Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Care to share with an old enemy?”
“Oh, god. Poor Jimmy, my ‘enemy’. So mistreated and misunderstood. Give me a fucking break.”
“Well, you never cared much for my side.”
“Your side?” Sarah shook her head. “Un-fucking-believable. Your side. Your side goes like this: You fucked me over. You tried to kill me because I found out. You got your ass kicked. You left. End of ‘your side.’”
Jimmy’s face fell, and he scuffed the carpet uncomfortably with the toe of his boot. Despite all he’d done to her, Sarah still felt bad.
“Okay, fine,” Sarah snapped. “If you promise to shut the fuck up, I’ll share my pot with you. But I mean it. Not another fucking word. One word, and I’ll put the joint out in your eye.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Fucking try me, Jimmy.”
“It’s really hard to take you seriously with that thing on your head.”
Sarah drilled her fist into Jimmy’s thigh, then ran upstairs to retrieve the duffle, yelling, “Fuck you, Jimmy,” over her shoulder.
———————
In the morning, Jimmy made breakfast while Sarah began filling boxes with supplies. After they loaded up the back of the pickup with food and other prepackaged essentials, they filled the backseat with tents, sleeping bags, the camp stove they’d been cooking on, extra propane, and the guns and ammo from Khalid’s safe. It took them all morning.
Sarah threw together a quick lunch of granola and canned fruit, so they didn’t have to cook. They ate right out of the packages so there were no dishes.
“So where we headed first?” Jimmy asked. “Philly?”
“Nah. I’ve got no idea where Khalid’s mom lives. We’ll hit the base in Aberdeen first. Khalid would have stopped in there after picking up my parents. If they’re not there, we’ll head to Quantico. If they haven’t made it there yet, we’ll wait a day or two if we can find a safe place.”
“Where to after Quantico?”
“I dunno. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s do one more check inside. See if there’s anything else that can be of use to us.”
“Did you grab the car battery charger?”
“I knew I’d forgotten something. Make some room for it. I’ll bring it out.”
While Jimmy moved things around, Sarah ran inside to give the house a once over. She came out carrying the car battery charger. Jimmy took it from her and slid it into the space he’d created. They both climbed in the cab, and hit the road.
———————
It took them the rest of the afternoon to get halfway to Aberdeen. Since they were unsure of where they’d be laying their heads for the night, Sarah decided to take a nap. This way, they could sleep in shifts and she could take first watch.
“I’m not even sure what happened,” Sarah heard herself whisper into the darkness of Jimmy’s pickup.
“Oh, good,” Jimmy said. “You’re awake. Same dilemma tonight. Either we have to pull over, or you have to drive.”
�
��I still don’t know how to drive, Jimmy.” Sarah stretched and yawned, then watched out the window to try to get some idea of where they were.
“Now’s as good a time as any to learn. Maybe better.”
“Oh yeah? How do you figure?”
“No cops. I bet they ate them first. Bacon is delicious.”
Sarah allowed herself to relax for the first time since she was left behind. “Looks like neither of us has changed much, huh?”
Jimmy looked at Sarah sadly for a long minute.
It All Comes Down To Zombies: Sarah Page 2
