The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  One point off. No one could tell from looking at her.

  That they had a child elevated these two in her mind even more. Other people would have whined that they wanted to get involved but they couldn’t, they just couldn’t when they had a son or daughter depending on them. So that excused them to sit by as other people’s sons and daughters were hunted down and slaughtered. Go back far enough in ancestry and they were all the same blood, the same family, and all deserving of protection. People didn’t look at it like that. Their world was little Bratleigh with her rainbow markers and soccer balls, not Micah or Austin, Corbin or Elania, or Brennan dead in the road.

  Her moms should run a catch. Shalom had Micah’s respect, more or less, for that Sombra C sticker on her door at college. That was Shalom’s fuck you. Those didn’t happen often. When Micah thought of her sister’s hands releasing that Shepherd into the night, she rejoiced that Shalom shared blood. Uma and Tuma should grow a pair, contact Sombra C News, and let them know that they were open to those who had to hide. But Uma didn’t like to look at ugliness, and Tuma wasn’t ever going to make her.

  They were leaving at ten, since Shepherds and their little friends kept watch on oddities. Big Old Blue going around at night could attract eyes. Everyone was used to that van out and about the community by day. It belonged to a local camp for special needs kids. The camp had a bunch of them, Big Old Yellow, Big Old Green, and Big Old Red. There was nothing weird about seeing Big Old Blue with heads in the windows and going down the road.

  She took another shower, though she’d had one yesterday. Austin came in with a grouchy, “How do you like it?” and peed noisily while she was washing her hair. Just to make his point when he was done, he opened the shower door, stuck his ass in, and farted hard. He quickly closed the door to trap the smell in there with her.

  “You fucker!” Micah said, almost gagging on it. He giggled, turned off the fan, and went back to bed. So she’d knock next time. The rancid odor made tears sting in her eyes. Finishing her hair fast, she got out and turned the fan back on. It just circulated the smell around.

  Elania went in just as Micah came out, an involuntary, “God, Micah!” bursting from her with an inhalation. Visible in the boys’ room, Austin buried his face in the pillow. His shoulders were shuddering and he was even happier now that Micah had been blamed for his own acrid ass blast. Sitting down beside him, Micah wrung out the last few drops of water from her hair on his head. He knocked her over and rubbed his head off on her shirt. She loved the rough-and-tumble play of theirs and licked his forehead. He pinned her down and wiped off in disgust.

  “You need a good dominatrix,” Austin said, sitting on her buttocks.

  “I think the male version is called a master,” Micah said.

  “I’m going to get you one for Christmas, tell him to straighten you out and make you fly right.” Scooting down to her thighs, he paddled her ass. “Who’s your daddy?”

  “Sperm donor 4539.” He spanked her harder and she said in a submissive voice, “You’re my daddy, Austin.”

  “You two are so bizarre,” Elania commented from the bathroom.

  Uncle Brad and Aunt Jeanie had the master bedroom. One of them was snoring as Micah went down the hallway. The dogs were conveying a silent message at the back door, so she let them out to pee in the grass. Having a younger friend had rejuvenated the cocker spaniel. Both of them ran around the backyard. Then they wrestled, kicking and tumbling, and panted there side-by-side once Bonnie ran out of steam. When she got up to jog back to the house, Bleu Cheese followed. Micah opened the door and said, “Do you have a girlfriend, Bleu Cheese?”

  The dogs came to the kitchen with her and looked meaningfully at their food bowls. Micah opened the pantry and hauled out a big bag of kibble with a scoop in it. Giving them each a heaping cup, she put the bag away. There was cat food in here, too. Cat treats, dog bones, even birdseed and fish flakes, and the sight made her regret not picking up Harbo to bring along. These guys were prepared for Sombra Cs with babies, pets, anything and everything. Thinking of Harbo alone in the backyard made her mad. Her neighbors didn’t deserve a dog and Micah had left him there to rot.

  When Shalom got home, Micah was going to call and tell her about Harbo. Her sister would never sneak the dog away, but she’d be willing to knock on the neighbors’ door and ask to borrow him for company on a walk or a game of fetch. Shalom had a soft heart, so Micah would play up what a nice dog Harbo was and how no one ever gave him the slightest bit of attention. Shalom would feel guilty every time she looked over to that yard, guilty and responsible for having full knowledge of the situation and doing nothing to alleviate it. It wouldn’t take long before she decided that she had to do something. Even if the neighbors said no, it might embarrass them enough to walk their dog themselves. Either way, Harbo won.

  Dammit, Micah should have zoomed by the house and taken the dog! It wasn’t stealing to take something that another person wasn’t using and didn’t want. She was doing them a favor, whether they saw it that way or not. Her mothers would have a fit about that line of reasoning, but they were wrong and she was right. A dog was a life, not the same as a wallet or sports equipment. It wasn’t yard jewelry. As a living, breathing being, limited in thoughts and emotions yet still possessing both, it was due more.

  As she made pancakes, she said, “I’m a shitty person.”

  Austin was setting the table. “What makes you say that?”

  “I left Harbo.”

  “That’s not why you’re a shitty person!”

  It made her laugh, how his reassurance came out wrong. He said, “Harbo is an old dog, Micah, older than Bonnie. Do you think that this would be good for that hairy geezer? I don’t. Bleu Cheese is in her cross-eyed prime and it’s wearing her out.”

  Micah had poured out pancakes on three pans, each holding two. She flipped them in order from left to right, since that was the order she had poured. Harbo was old. He only had two or three years and change to go. She didn’t want to call her mothers and listen to the honey, how are you and honey, we’re so worried. No, Micah wanted to call Harbo and tell him good boy. The answer would be silence, or a pant of doggy breath. Dogs had memories. When he was bored in the backyard, he could remember her voice. What a shitty life that creature had had. This world was too much for an old dog, but at least he would get attention. That was better.

  It wasn’t so bad for her either. If she hadn’t gotten Sombra C, she would never have met this new aunt and uncle, or learned the story of Boomslang. So she was where she was supposed to be, not sitting in a classroom at Cloudy Valley High. Out here in Charbot, she didn’t have to pretend that the world was any nicer than it actually was.

  She made mounds of pancakes and discovered a lap table in a cupboard full of cookie sheets. Dumping liberal amounts of butter and syrup on two plates of pancakes, she added two glasses of juice and carried the loaded table down the hallway to tap politely on the door of the master bedroom. One bid her to come in. They were bleary-eyed in their surprise as she settled the table over Uncle Brad’s lap and said, “Thank you for all that you’re doing for us.”

  As she left the room, she realized that she had made the meal without any consideration to her Sombra C. Forks were clinking inside, so they didn’t care. Elania was in the kitchen when she returned, pouring out more pancakes with three plates set up on the counter. Two more were stacked for Corbin and Zaley. The television was on in the living room, Austin watching it from the floor with the dogs sitting at his sides. Their bowls were licked clean. He called, “The president is speaking to the nation in five minutes.”

  “The real one or the fake one?” Micah asked.

  “The real one.”

  They settled on the sofa with their pancakes just before it began. The screen blackened temporarily and reappeared with the president standing at a podium. The real president, whose last name was Pitch, not Drake. Dressed in a pantsuit, new gray showed in her sandy brown hair. Her expression
was somber. Someone off-screen must have motioned that they were live. Her eyes subtly moved from the side of the screen to the camera. Micah pitied her, signing on for the doofus role of vice president to a healthy and relatively young man in Wu. Pitch had had no reason to suspect she’d one day replace him.

  “My fellow citizens,” she said in a voice as unyielding as ice, “a sad state of affairs has brought us here today. Our country is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. Despite what some think, that crisis is not Sombra C. It is the actions of a rogue few-”

  Rogue many, Micah corrected in her head.

  “-who have taken it upon themselves to act as the judges, juries, prison wardens, and executioners for the ill among us. Because of them our economy has weakened, our power has faltered, our family members and neighbors have been murdered, and we face a very present risk of losing everything that has made our country a force to be reckoned with in this world. And though they hope that this conflict will end in their triumph, let me say with every assurance that it will not. The United States of America will not bend, will not yield, will not submit to these terrorists on our soil. We will bring our enemies low and restore our country to sanity.

  “These are dark hours, possibly the darkest ones we have ever faced. Right now you are looking out your window to a country stormed with chaos, and you are afraid. You want to know what you can do to help. And it is this: denounce those in your community who are destroying it piece by piece. Do not allow your streets to be braced. Speak out and speak strongly. Anyone with Sombra C should find a way to a harbor at once. This fight will be hard, and only there can we offer a measure of safety. So I say to you: run.”

  The three of them were still on the sofa. Aunt Jeanie was behind them, calling to Uncle Brad to quiet as he banged around in the kitchen. The president continued her speech. “Harbors are going up all over the nation, each one equipped with the best military-grade shields in existence. Temporary housing, medicine, weapons, and supplies are being delivered. Wherever you are today, find the nearest or most accessible harbor and make arrangements to get there. Do not tarry. Take only what is most important to you. If you fear that you are newly infected with Sombra C, do not report for your stamp. Get to a harbor immediately, and by any means necessary.”

  The country had spiraled out of all control, if that was the correct undercurrent to the speech. President Pitch went on with a lot of mentions of courage and bravery and kindness, but what Micah heard was what seethed beneath the surface. Any means necessary, not allowing one’s street to be braced . . . that was subtly encouraging acts of violence, a rebellion among the citizenry against Prime. The country would only be taken back by guerilla warfare.

  After the speech, pancakes were taken down to Corbin and Zaley. The kitchen was cleaned up, Uncle Brad and Aunt Jeanie thanked profusely, and Bonnie patted within an inch of her life. They loaded into Big Old Blue with Zaley in the back, her head covered but her hands left free. Aunt Jeanie asked as they drove if they wanted to change their plans to a harbor, but Sable Heights was on the path to a harbor anyway and getting over the Golden Gate Bridge was almost impossible.

  Once the van was blocks from the house, Zaley was allowed to take off the sack and sit up. She was wearing that old bracelet that Corbin had made for her, and Micah took it to mean that they were back together even though they couldn’t possibly be. If Corbin gave his Sombra C to Zaley, then Micah was going to fucking kill both of them to spare the Zyllevir.

  A book of maps was in the back pocket of the passenger seat. Micah pulled it out and flicked through it. Ramel Road was easy to find, a major thoroughfare that linked many of the neighborhoods in southern San Francisco. “Why is this one rotational, Aunt Jeanie?”

  “Shepherds don’t have the numbers to make braces permanent on this road, and they need several due to its length. So they pick different places to set up a brace for certain hours and days in the week.” He turned and noticed the book of maps on her lap. “See how it goes north and then crooks west? Today the brace is scheduled to be all the way at the western end. Tomorrow it reverts back to the southernmost point of the road that we just passed. They mix it up from week to week so not to establish a pattern.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Just because a man or woman wears a Shepherd patch doesn’t mean he or she is a Shepherd at heart. Information gets passed along to Sombra C News and the railroad community.”

  Moles. It served the Shepherds right to have their information ratted out. She braced the mile marker at the corner of the page with her fingers and held them very still as she moved back to Ramel. Charbot was nine miles from Sable Heights and they had traveled approximately a mile and a half of it.

  Traffic was light, the worst of the morning crunch over. The gas stations had long lines, and a Comanico was closed with a sign up above reading NO FUEL. Beside it was an Asian minimart with dark windows. A sign on the door said NO FOOD. Austin read that out loud and exclaimed, “Shit!”

  “When we pull in, guys,” Uncle Brad said, “no pauses for goodbyes. Get out fast and get inside. The building has electricity and water. Use the toilet but don’t turn on the lights, don’t use your phones, and don’t explore the front of the building. People will be able to look through the windows straight to you. There’s only one store in that whole complex still being used, and only in the afternoons and evenings. It’s a weight loss place so you’ll hear clapping from their meetings. If you can hear them, they can hear you. Keep your voices down. Just lay low until your ride gets there.”

  “Goodbye early then,” Corbin said. “I’m glad you do this, and that you’re not afraid of us.”

  “You know what separates us from you?” Uncle Brad turned into the parking lot of a rundown strip mall. “A holiday party. That’s all. Tomorrow we could need a catch, rather than provide one.”

  How little it was, a drop of fluid past the boundary of flesh. Stupid people became Shepherds, the ones who thought a line as porous as this one was as solid as a rock. Smart ones ran catches. If Micah didn’t have a stamp, she’d run one herself.

  Big Old Blue circled the worn building to the back and rumbled to a stop in front of Store 43. Austin slid open the door and jumped out. Elania took the dog. Waiting for Corbin to help Zaley down, Micah squeezed Uncle Brad and Aunt Jeanie’s shoulders. Then they hurried into the store. Inside was a storage room full of empty shelving units. Micah closed the door and stood there, listening to Big Old Blue drive away.

  “Those are good men,” Austin said quietly. Everyone else had gone deeper into the room. “My mamma would hate them, but they’re still good.”

  “Gay people aren’t any different from straight ones,” Micah said. “Some are good; some are bad.”

  “She thinks they all dance on floats in ass-less pants and have sex with anything not nailed down.”

  “So what if some of them do?” Micah said. “That doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It doesn’t hurt anyone to dance on a float at Pride Day with your ass hanging out. What they do in bed isn’t any of my business.” People got too mixed up about sex and she had no idea why.

  It was dim in the room, lit only by a thin strip of windows running just under the ceiling along one wall. They were opaque, and one was cracked. Micah walked the aisles and looked inside the bathroom, which had a toilet and sink. The paper roll and towel dispenser were empty.

  A desk was just outside the bathroom. Old and battered, with a squeaky wreck of a chair, it was clear why it had been left behind. Elania winced when the chair protested loudly beneath her butt. She shifted more slowly and the chair made another awful squeak. Shaking her head, she got to the floor and leaned on the desk. It scratched on the concrete and she moved to the wall in exasperation. Corbin and Zaley sat down with her. Austin and the dog paced the aisles.

  “Micah, we’re not supposed to-” Zaley started as Micah opened the door to the front part of the building.

  She’d only cracked it. “I�
�m just peeking, not going out there.”

  There wasn’t anything to explore, just a large room whose only features were blue carpet and a wall of windows to the front parking lot. A man was going by, and he looked through the glass with boredom. Micah stayed still until he passed out of view. She closed the door and Austin said, “It’s not only you. Don’t risk us like that.”

  She wasn’t that much of an adrenaline junkie idiot. “Are all of the phones charged up?”

  “Yeah, I took care of it at the house,” Elania said.

  There wasn’t anything to do but wait. Playing with her switchblade, Micah said, “You got that book still, Zaley?”

  Austin unzipped his backpack. The book had gotten shuffled into his somehow. He pulled out clean clothes and food, other supplies and the carved stag. It rolled away and Elania stopped it with her foot. “This is so pretty.”

  “I know you think it’s dumb to carry the weight,” Austin said pointedly to Micah, “but I want to give it back to Brennan’s mom.”

  “I don’t know where on earth you think you’re ever going to just run into his mom,” Micah said. She liked her stolen blade. It had a real wood handle, and there was a point to bringing it along with them. Literally a point.

  “Maybe I won’t run into her,” Austin said. “That’s not the point.”

  She didn’t know what the point was then. They took turns reading the robot book out loud, everyone except Corbin. Having been dunked in the reservoir, the book was water-damaged. It wasn’t an interesting story, but it was all they had for entertainment. The pages turned and Micah thought about the negligible distance separating them from Sable Heights. Her V-6 on the freeway could have chewed up those miles in a matter of minutes.