The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  And then the others were waving and walking onto the path, which crooked around trees and swallowed them up. Elania looked around the car in fear, the map on her phone blinking furiously in red, and wondered what she was supposed to do now.

  Brennan

  He had tried many times to reach Nevara by phone, but she wasn’t answering. Nor was she responding to his texts. It could not be that Shepherds captured her already. Brennan called over and over from the dreary restroom at Cirrus Park and hung up when it went to voicemail.

  She would pick up. She had to pick up. Still burning on his cheek was her kiss outside Mass yesterday. His ears, his bad ears had captured her whisper that he was sweet and that was burning, too. His bad ears had caught these words and that made them good ears, not missing them altogether, not catching only a nibble and forcing him to cast into the waters a second time, he’d netted these words and they burned on his heart like a brand.

  The restroom was gray and yellow and tan, toilet paper twisted along the tiles and a heavy, unpleasant odor in the musty air. It made his stomach turn, and Zyllevir was turning it enough. Though the smell was fresh, no one was coming out when he arrived, nor had anyone come in while he was inside. He hadn’t known where to go from the Super Sleeper, racing away on his bicycle from a threat yet to materialize. North! South! East! West! Which way? He turned north, away from busy Ketterman where a brace would surely be laid. Through a sea of condominiums, past apartments shaped like beehives, he rode in fear from what he’d heard in Corbin’s voice. North and north and north until an empty park spread out before him, rains having lured emerald strands from the soil to the sun. Untamed, they waved in a breeze and parted for his front tire.

  At the far end of the park was a playground of colorful stairs and slides. The wood bridges suspended between the slides rocked from wind, not little feet, and the bike path leading into the trees beyond the playground was also void of people. It was not a trashed park, yet neither was it well tended. He passed an overflowing trashcan on the way to the restroom, and inside the trashcan was overflowing, too. There were no towels in the dispensers. He parked his bicycle beneath one of those gaping, ridged metal mouths once he searched the stalls and found them absent of life. Then he had just stayed there.

  Mama was also not picking up. She should have been on her way to get him in their rental car. It was a fussy contraption. The only one allotted by the agency for Sombra C passengers, the car resented the long drives between Cloudy Valley and Napa. He hoped that Mama hadn’t broken down out of cell service. They had an appointment to see a house up in Salmon Park. The person moving out had Sombra C, and the landlord did not have to sterilize the place if the person moving in also had Sombra C. Two neighbors also had it, and no one bothered them.

  He wondered if someone was bothering them today.

  Frankie had picked up. He cried out at the news and gave the phone to his father. Brennan repeated what he knew as a laptop rattled. With a gasp, the rattling stopped and the man screamed, “Franklin, get in the car!” The connection cut off.

  His stomach burbled unhappily, and Brennan opened his backpack for a cookie. Debating how long he should wait before calling Nevara again, he nibbled on the cookie to see if his stomach would tolerate it. Corbin had told him not to pack, but Brennan hadn’t been able to stop himself from grabbing a few things. Mama still cried over their lost family pictures and Brennan the contents of his burned room; he hated to lose what little he had left.

  If Mama picked him up at this park, where would they go? Maybe she could rent a room in another hotel and pretend it was only for her. Then he could sneak in from the car and hide until the braces came down. Mama was filling out an application for a Sombra C unit in Sweetwater, Oregon. It was a walled community and very expensive, but ten much cheaper units were being awarded by lottery.

  Brennan did not want to move to Oregon. And what was Mama going to do for work up there? She said it did not matter. Something would turn up, and they had to consider what was safest. There was very little chance their number would be picked anyway, Brennan told himself. Thousands besieged these places for units, and only ten would be pulled from the masses over that wall. She was also considering the harbor that was almost done in Sonoma, but being so close to Papa made her hesitate.

  Mama was bewildered at his reluctance to move. His friends were seniors and graduating in June, so why did he want to stay in this area? Brennan knew they were older, in a solid unit made up of long friendships, but still they extended their hands and let him accompany them for a while. He planned to keep turning up to Welcome Mat in the fall, invite Frankie and anyone who didn’t hate the club for getting infected at its winter party. Mr. Tran could lock them in and Brennan would search garage sales for model kits to work on in there. But he didn’t have to do that. It was Nevara that he did not want to leave, their stolen minutes in the pews he could not relinquish to a wall.

  Shepherds kept a Book of zombies and wrote down a description of their cars within it. They might recognize Mama’s rental car in some new hotel parking lot. Then they would open the room and find Brennan there, watching television or playing on his phone. It wasn’t smart to go to another hotel, or to stay anywhere else in this city. So he would go to Caravel and ditch his bike for a ride out of here.

  Nevara must pick up! He called one last time.

  When it went to voicemail, he tightened his scarf, put his helmet back on, and lifted the kickstand of his bicycle. His stomach grumbled, accepting the cookie but letting him know that it had not done so lightly. It was hard to take a pill on Sunday nights when he knew how it was going to make him feel. That it might always be this way! Being sick every Monday for all of his life!

  Pedaling out, he skirted the restroom and rolled over an island to the bike path. Caravel was west of the park, Mountain north. The bike path was shielded from the road for a quarter mile, and this seemed a wise place to travel. Even now as he rode along, Nevara might be in the hands of Shepherds. It made him as ill as the Zyllevir. Why would these people not leave them alone?

  He always cringed to hear news of someone with Sombra C going feral. That made it harder for the rest of them, especially when the person did it on purpose. The zombie parties were so foolish! The one in the news last night was of a party in some ritzy area of San Diego, fifteen teenagers paying someone with Sombra C to infect them. They had all been wearing zombie costumes when the police broke it up halfway through.

  At the end of the bike path, he wove around poles and braked. A car passed by and he pushed forward into the road. Since the path stopped here, he rode north past wooded areas interspersed with tract homes. Mountain was not that far. It was a longer ride over to the knotted road called Caravel. Currently he was on Taggart, a straight sweep of road going up a gentle grade. The sidewalks ended; the houses aged and sagged with junk beached against their outer walls. A strip mall was coming up on the other side of the road, the stores under dark overhangs and a defunct gas station on the side of the lot.

  The traffic was mild. There was no through path up to Salmon Park from Taggart. This northern tip of Cloudy Valley was a pocket carved from the woods, and from the way the tall trees leaned inward on every side, it looked like the woods wanted to claim its pocket back from humanity.

  He passed the strip mall, which had only a little activity around the stores. A green dirt bike circled around the parked cars and came to the driveway, its motor buzzing. Brennan pulled up to a red light at Mountain and pressed the button to cross. It was a strange name for a road when there was no mountain. A semi rumbled by and turned south, so close to the pole that Brennan backed up in alarm.

  While other cars followed the semi, he pulled out his phone to see if Nevara had written. There was nothing and he whispered in anxiety, “Nevara!” Surely she must sense him, and the danger of which he had to warn her. Cell reception was poor here; only two bars showed on the screen.

  The light changed and he pocketed the phone. H
is bicycle skimmed across the road and he turned left onto Mountain. There was only a slim shoulder, and he rode there over leaf litter and pebbles. Dirty blood. Those rich teenagers wanted what he had, and were willing to pay. They wanted to be driven from their homes in fear of Shepherds! This was beyond his comprehension. It had angered Mama as she worked on the application. Surely some of these people competing at the lottery were parents of foolish children like that. Brennan would be speechless with rage should his son or daughter come to him with Sombra C gained on purpose. Do you wish to be sick every Monday like Papa? Do you wish to sit at handicapped tables at school like Papa did? If they came to him having caught it innocently, he would love them just as much. This he had done himself. But by intent! That would put a knot in their relationship he would not have the strength to undo. Nevara caught hers on a foolish dare. Not deliberation.

  The air buzzed from the green dirt bike, which passed him. It was a woman rider, red hair over her black jacket being tousled by the wind as her head turned from looking into the trees back to the road ahead. Brennan pushed hard at the pedals. This must be a hard road to live on, no stop signs or lights, and having to pull backwards from the driveway right onto the rapid traffic of the street. The houses here were very old and miserable in appearance, widely spaced by swathes of trees.

  He thought of illegal confinement points and was frightened. Some doled out Zyllevir and rations to the captured people, not wanting them dead so much as contained; others starved and sickened everyone to death. They were created faster than the authorities could bring them down. One somewhere in the states was ransoming back its captives to families who could pay! Give a little and you bought Zyllevir for your trapped relative to buy time; give a lot and he or she was released. Then you were given one day to clear out of town, or your infected relative could be captured again.

  To be trapped in a confinement point with feral Sombra Cs . . . Brennan’s legs were tired and his stomach clenching, but he kept going. His teeth buzzed. The dirt bike was coming back in the other lane. Nervously, Brennan looked away from it and increased his pace. Caravel was less than a mile away, lost through the trees and twists of road.

  With a roar, the dirt bike slid over the road and braked directly in front of him. Brennan swerved from the shoulder into the lane, without time to check behind him for oncoming cars. He raced around the bike. The buzz increased as he pulled back onto the shoulder, his heart racing madly from the close call.

  Less than a mile, probably half a mile now. That was all that separated him from safety, two laps around the Cloudy Valley athletic field. It was a very short distance.

  “Would you mind taking off that scarf?” shouted the woman on the bike, which pulled up beside him. Adrenaline coursed through Brennan, who stamped hard on the pedals even though he had no chance of outrunning a dirt bike. The woman curved in to nudge him off the road.

  Expecting this, Brennan jerked off sharply and bumped down the slope of a ravine. At the bottom it was only a short jerk up to flat land. The dirt bike came down the slope two meters away and into a thick, thorny mat of vegetation. It stalled there, the woman cursing as Brennan wove around trees to a house.

  He ditched the bicycle when the foliage became impenetrable and ran. The buzz picked up as the woman freed her dirt bike. The house was his only hope! Skirting around the back, he saw that the garage was open. It was dark inside. Brennan pushed in between rusting cars and took cover.

  His phone rang. He jammed the screen. “Nevara!”

  Irascibly, she said, “You mustn’t call me like this! My father does not like for me to get calls from boys.”

  “Shepherds are coming. Do you hear me? Shepherds are picking up everyone with Sombra C. You must leave your house and hide.” The buzzing grew louder. “I promise that this is no joke. I have to hang up now. One is after me.”

  She spoke but he missed the words. Turning off the ringer, he stilled as a flash of green passed by the open garage. The buzz rattled along the far wall as she turned to circle the house. A door opened and an old man shouted, “Get the hell off my property! I’ll call the police if you don’t-”

  “Sir, you might have a zombie on your land!” the woman replied. The door slammed.

  The buzz was farther away now, and then it was gone. He relaxed and read a text that had come some time ago about meeting at the Nature Path. Half a mile. Brennan could run that, once he was sure the dirt bike . . . a buzzing told him that it was coming back.

  She knew that he was in here. He felt it in his heart when the buzzing increased. This had been a stupid decision, the only place he could see to hide when he couldn’t outrun her bike, but he’d trapped himself. The green bike rolled into view and the buzzing died. A leg swung off and a taunting voice came in. “Here, zombie, zombie, zombie . . .”

  There was little in here but the cars. A long worktable ran along the back of the garage, and the bench was lined with boxes. More boxes were underneath the bench. He hesitated, thinking of the feral creature in the darkness of Nevara’s subway tunnel. Then he crawled between boxes and under the bench to the table. Pressing his face to the cool, dusty concrete, he peered out and watched her feet move slowly from the bike to the entrance. Her voice became more high-pitched, the way one spoke to a very young child or a dog. “Now don’t be scared! Don’t be scared, little zombie! I’m not here to hurt you. I want my hundred. That’s what you’re worth, little fellow, a hundred bucks intact and alive. So come on out! Come on! Come on out to me!”

  A phone rang. Her voice returned to a normal octave. “Yeah, I’ve got one cornered in a garage on Mountain. I’ll Taze it. Send the van.”

  The beam of a flashlight moved between the cars, and she crouched down to peer beneath them. He shifted to move out of her line of vision. His knee knocked against one of the boxes, which scratched on the concrete. The beam jerked toward the back and the babyish voice said, “It’s all right. If you come quietly, little zombie, I won’t even use the Taser.” The light traveled back and forth. She didn’t know exactly where he was.

  A door slammed and feet came at a run. “I got my gun!”

  “No, no!” the woman said hastily. “You’ll contaminate your entire garage, sir. Just go in your house, lock the doors and close the windows. I’ve called my back-up and they’re on the way.”

  Half a mile. Dear God, it was the longest half mile of Brennan’s existence.

  The feet returned to the house in a rush and the woman crooned, “Here, zombie, zombie, zombie . . . don’t you want to stop riding your bike so hard? You aren’t going to a bad place! It’s nice, out in the quiet and trees, even a stream through the dorms. You’ll have a bunk and lots of zombie friends to play with . . .”

  The beam nudged into the space between the boxes. Brennan backed up, his fingers sliding along an empty paper cup. This was all he had for a weapon.

  No.

  He was a weapon. As the beam moved away, his eyes fell upon the green dirt bike. All he had to do was get past this woman. He was a weapon. But he had nothing to cut himself with, to fill that cup with blood and throw it at her.

  He had pee. Unzipping his pants quietly, he pissed into the cup. It was not much, but he did not need much. The woman said, “Aw, come on, little guy! Don’t be afraid, I’m not here to spill you. I don’t even have a gun. Didn’t think there would be any zombies this far north! So you just come out and get in the van.”

  “You promise no gun?” Brennan called, sliding the cup onto the bench.

  She laughed from where she stood between the hoods of the cars. “I promise! Come on out of there and we’ll take you home.”

  He moved aside the boxes and eased out from under the bench. A Taser was in her hand, but she held it up and away. “See? I don’t have a problem if you don’t have a problem. No one has a problem!”

  Nodding and sniffling, he took a step forward and halted. “My foot’s stuck in these boxes.”

  “Aww,” she said with sympathy. He leaned
down to loosen it and wrapped his fingers around the cup. When he straightened, he threw it in her face.

  Her screaming punctured through his bad ears, shrill and desperate. The Taser dropped so she could paw at her eyes. He was still being blocked so he shoved her hard to the concrete and stepped on top of her to get out. She snagged his leg and toppled him, Brennan landing hard on his stomach.

  Half a mile.

  Turning with a roar, he kicked her. She shrieked in pain yet did not let go, so he threw himself back between the cars and bit the arm lashing out at him. Then he did not let go, biting hard and her blood rushing between his teeth, his saliva hopefully sinking into the wounds. The blood in his mouth finally overturned his Zyllevir-tormented stomach, and he vomited on her. The grip on his leg slackened and he jerked away.

  Then he was kick-starting the dirt bike, squeezing the clutch and moving it into first gear. As it rolled, he released the clutch. He had only done this once at Janie’s house and didn’t remember all of the gears and directions. All that mattered was that the bike was moving.

  Racing back to the road, he pulled into the lane. A van was coming from the other direction, Brennan panicking and swerving across the road into the trees there. They were not as crowded as on the other side of the road, and he weaved around them while jouncing into shallow gullies and bumping up little grades.

  Brennan had given that woman Sombra C. He was glad. Twice he spat her blood mixed with his vomit out of his mouth. His throat hurt, although his stomach was feeling better. Now she could go to a confinement point, sad that she wasn’t getting her hundred dollars for Brennan Ciervo Ortega.

  He could not keep the dirt bike long. Her Shepherd friends must know what she was driving. Just as he realized this, he came to a place where the bike could go no further unless he wanted to go back to the road and expose himself. At the base of a steep slope littered with underbrush was a wire fence. In the sudden silence left by the dying engine, he glanced around for anyone following. He was alone.