The Long Way To Reno

by Mix, Michelle

  Man, it sucks to be single.

  I frowned, and shifted away from the door. My fingers were clenched into fists, and I started to cry – but then I remembered – those heroic video game chicks all had one thing in common; they grabbed a weapon and decided to survive. They didn’t stand around and blubber like how I was right now. Wiping my tears away, I was able to think about these characters more clearly. How they discovered obstacles and worked around them, searching for answers and pushing for survival. In one way, it was unrealistic to think I could be like them, considering their actions were controlled by the gamer, but this was all I had right now. Once I was able to focus myself away from my building blind panic, I decided I needed a weapon. A gun preferably – daddy made me shoot a few at the range, so I had the basics down – but I hadn’t come across any such things here in the warehouse.

  A jolt of remembrance hit me. I didn’t come across any guns, but I did come across knives. Survival gear. Inspired, knowing exactly where to go, I resolved to get it together. There had to be another way out of this warehouse. And there were enough weapons for me to use to do so. I removed my brightly colored safety vest and dropped it onto the floor. Then made myself walk toward the other end of the warehouse, where the items I had in mind were commonly found.

  : :

  I made it to Red section with no trouble – but by the time I made it up to the third level, which was dark and foreboding, I started to doubt myself and my intentions. Once I had myself armed, I mean – really, what was I going to do? Knife a biter to its death? Everyone knows you need to eliminate the bastard’s head to completely kill it. So how was I going to do that? I suppose I could use an axe or hammer, but would I even have the strength or coordination to do that?

  Observing the darkness of the third level I knew pretty well, I hesitated upon stepping fully onto the floor. I swallowed hard, realizing that I was pretty thirsty. But would one of my fave zombie killing heroines stop for water when they were in the middle of a mission? Probably not.

  I took a deep breath, then ventured onto the floor. Just hours earlier, I remember coming across a bin that was stacked with tactical vests. I could probably use one of those to stack my supplies in. After a couple of minutes of cautious walking, I found the bin. I took extreme care in unwrapping the cardboard and plastic from the vest, frowning at the size. After some minutes of pulling tight all straps, I resolved on leaving it as it was, and proceeded to search for batteries, the flashlights I remember seeing the day before, and a few other things. I found this awesome Stanley Max Fubar II – an awesome prying and destroying tool that was about eight pounds and vicious looking - but I didn’t know where to put it on me. So I tucked it into one of my belt loops, where it banged against my thigh and hip with discomforting movement. It was a bit awkward to hang my arm naturally on that side, but I figured anything would help.

  I got a jolt of excitement as I loaded my vest with supplies. I found a reliable flashlight that could double as a weapon, just in case I couldn’t find the knife sets. A small first aid kit that had the very basics. I tucked it all into my pockets, and then went in search of a knife. I found it at the very end of the aisle, and carefully unwrapped it from its case. Other goodies spilled out from it, and it came with a very convenient holster. I awkwardly wrapped that to one thigh and straightened from my crouch. Looking down at myself made me smile crazy – I must look so bad-ass. A zombie killing machine.

  I was so busy preening over my appearance that I didn’t realize it at first – but then I became aware of it once the lights flickered on. The fire alarm was shut down. The silence was unexpected, and it made my heart leap into my throat. I reacted so stupidly, this ‘bad-ass killing machine’ immediately crouched and crammed herself into the bottom bin, obviously visible but desperate to hide. The position prevented me from breathing very well, and a human body cramming itself into something metal and small wasn’t meant to be, no matter how desperate she was.

  Struggling with myself, I listened hard to what was going on around me. Lights were still on, machinery creaking noisily – at the warning blare of an alarm that signaled the conveyors were about to become operational, I nearly had a heart attack. I heard the belts starting up, and from the corner of my eye, saw one of them start to move. Previously filled totes began to shift, disappearing and reappearing as the conveyor took them to the packaging department. I wondered what it all meant. Was there still someone in here? Or did the alarm have a timer of sorts? I blinked and realized that this position wasn’t helping any, but I didn’t want to be exposed. I flopped out from the bin, crouched low and shuffled carefully to the end of the aisle. Once there, I touched the knife I’d found. Its handle was unfamiliar in my grasp, and I really really had no idea how to weld a knife – other than for cutting up food, price tags from clothes. Stuff like that.

  I had to focus on being a video game character, again, just to compose myself. Damn, I was so sweaty, that when drops dangled and fell from my jaw, I didn’t even bother to wipe it away. I exhaled quietly and realized that I was hearing human voices. Men. I was too startled to stand up and cry out in relief, crouched as I was. It felt like it had been so long since I had heard something normal, that I didn’t know what to do.

  “ – surrounded us from all sides! There’s no way we can leave without them picking us off!” one of them said gruffly, and I winced. Those things could hear him. They could get him. Them. I didn’t want to move, now, I didn’t want those things to get to me, too. “We have all we need in here. To survive. Until something else happens.”

  “You’re crazy, we have to leave!”

  “They’re out there, too!” the first one shouted, and I cringed. I waited to hear those things shriek of discovery, like on the game. But nothing. Just them and some whimpering, female protests.

  “What are we going to do? Just sit here, then? I’ve got my family to get to!” one of them cried out. She sounded hysterical. Just like how I felt.

  “We aren’t leaving,” the first insisted, and his voice took on this threatening quality. I scrunched my face, trying to picture the man this voice belonged to. “We aren’t leaving! We’ll shack up here. We have a better chance at survival in here than we do out there!”

  “It’s a better option than going out there,” another man said, almost too low for me to hear. I imagined him assuring the lady that had just spoken. “We’ll turn off most of the lights. Live quietly for awhile. Until those things outside go away.”

  “They can still get in if they want. Have you seen them?” another guy exclaimed. He sounded young. “Those things from the sky? They’re not like the ones on the ground.”

  “What’s out there?” another woman cried. “What’s out there?”

  “Whatever they are, they aren’t friendly. Radio, cell service is down. They came in fast.”

  “Who did? Korea?”

  “Idiot!” the first one exclaimed, and I heard the women exclaim something, the men muttering. Jesus, who was this guy? “They came from the sky! Aliens, or something!”

  ‘Aliens’? Aliens? Aliens and…zombies? God, it sounded like overkill. My face scrunched, trying to picture the big-headed things with big eyes. Or Ripley’s pets.

  “They came, and then those things – they happened,” he continued. They were moving briskly. On the ground floor, they passed the row I happened to be hiding on. Something was happening, something was alerting me to trouble – in the same way I was alerted to trouble during a new video game, when a Boss was waiting for me around some dark corner. I happened to like that instinct, so I listened to it now. Staying crouched, my fingers absently appreciating the knife I’d found. “That’s why we locked the place down. To keep them out. But those things – “

  “They’re zombies,” another guy said helpfully.

  “Right. They…somehow…happened right in here.”

  “The sick people,” the young guy said. “I remember it, because this guy started coughing like crazy when we wer
e waiting to go outside. Remember, Bill? Then he started tearing into this lady like she was…meat, or something. That’s when it happened.”

  “They did,” another guy, I presume to be Bill, answered solemnly. They were getting further away. I remembered a set of offices on Red’s other side, alongside the furthest wall, by the restrooms. I couldn’t imagine why they were headed there. I suddenly looked around myself. While not wanting to be grouped with them, I remembered that this place was loaded with cameras. I saw a couple overhead – I remembered the security offices located on the other side of the warehouse. What if they already had people there? Monitoring me?

  Massive amounts of doubt and consideration hit me then. If there were people in the security office monitoring me, I might as well as show myself. But the thing was…I didn’t want to. Something was telling me something wasn’t right. I swallowed tightly, and couldn’t hear the rest of what they were saying as a door was opened. It was a tight squeal of sound, nothing like the Exit door. I decided to chance the maybes of people monitoring the security cameras and quietly made my way towards the nearest staircase. I figured, in the scheme of things, that if these people were walking around freely, talking loudly and making all sorts of noise, that the zombies were gone.

  It took a few minutes to get from Red to the other half of the warehouse. This side was extremely still, quiet. No machinery working here. It was also very dark, very…ugh. I hesitated as the glow of light from the 1st section illuminated at least ten feet in front of me. What if those things were out there, amongst the shelves? Waiting to be reanimated, or something?

  Jesus, I only have this knife and Fubar. I don’t know how to kill things, other than spiders. I trembled, my hands shaking as they clutched onto the hem of my shirt. I looked over my shoulder, back to the bright illumination of the 1st section. To where I knew the living was lingering. I looked back at the point where I’d tried to go earlier, where the security doors would lead me to the main entrance of this section. Intrigued by the possibility of an open door, I withdrew my flashlight. I ventured away from the doorway, noticing that the large steel doors that had always been open between the sections were now shut tight. When did that happen? With how massive they were, considering that they were steel, I should have heard them closing.

  No matter. There were other things to think about. I carefully made my way through the darkness, grateful for the flashlight. It helped me see the green-taped path that had been marked for pedestrians, to warn away big equipment vehicles. It helped me maneuver through support beams and large cardboard boxes that we pickers used to toss the surrounding confines of content we had to throw into totes. More blood stains, gore, and I walked around most of it carefully, not wanting to leave foot prints.

  I had my jaw clenched the entire time, so when I finally made it to the security point, I felt it relax as I pushed through the swinging door, out into the cold hallway leading to the massive break room we used for our lunch, breaks. It was so dark. So cold. I hesitated to go any further – in the break room, there was broken windows and tossed tables. Chairs scattered everywhere. Jackets lying on the floor. Blood everywhere. Splattered on the walls, the floor, glass surfaces.

  I eyed the windows nervously. I could see the outside world, and I could already see my breath with every exhale. My skin broke out in goosebumps. I could escape from there. But their conversation caused me to stall.

  ‘Aliens’?

  I didn’t believe in zombies outside of fantasyland, but look what happened. How hard was it to accept that there were these things, too? I swallowed hard. My flashlight seemed so bright, so I cupped it with one hand. I couldn’t move any further. The darkness and infinite possibilities of other dangers kept me rooted to just outside the swinging door.

  I could see the lights from the home improvement store next door. Those from Walmart around the corner. It was like – things were telling me it was okay out there, that things were somewhat normal. But I knew there wasn’t. I kept seeing the guy look up – and it bothered me, because, really - ?

  An alien invasion in Fernley? Hah! Fernley is such a hick-town, used mainly as a truck stop area with all its gas stations and fast food places. It doesn’t even have a mall, or clothing stores. So it would be laughable to think it was something of interest to freakin’ aliens from another planet. Twenty or so minutes away is a Naval Air Base. I wonder if that was slammed. Hawthorne, Carson City have bases of some sort – I wish I paid attention as to what. Marines? Air Guard? Something. God, my life was spent on comics and video games, with makeup and fashion tying for third place. Absolutely useless. No wonder my parents were so fed-up with me.

  As I stood there, staring out those broken windows, I became aware of shuffling movement outside. From the parking lot, outside of view. It was a large sound, something that made me think of the thing in Silent Hill 2’s prison. A creature with heavy footsteps and a low breathy sound, and I swear my entire body seized. My heart thumped hard. My mind compared the noise and experience to James Sunderland’s unseen tormentor and this one. The shift from pavement to dirt told me I could be exposed to whatever it was that made the sound. Slowly, I stepped back through that swinging door. I could still hear it.

  But the footsteps faded. What was it…?

  My mind couldn’t even conjure a picture of a thing that came from the sky, and I decided I wasn’t ready to face it, yet.

  Once I couldn’t hear anything more, my eyes fell onto the darkness of the 2nd section of the warehouse. It was so thick and still that fear pounded on me from a different angle. But then inspiration hit – I could look for my keys. My keys to my car, which will take me to Reno, where I would go home and be okay. Once I found my parents, I would be okay. If I happened to be killed with them, it’ll be okay. Because I’ll be with them.

  It hurt to breathe, because the thought of them hurt or dead made it difficult to continue on. My mom, with her cackling laugh and sarcastic comments on my uselessness; my dad, with his thin optimism in that I’d actually be successful in life. Both of them hard on me for good reasons. Tears came to my eyes, because I wanted to be with them so much; I wish I called in. Just handled Dad’s irritation with my laziness and just stayed home. Slaughtered in our beds together, rather than – than me being stuck forty-five minutes away in stupid Fern-tucky.

  Then I didn’t want to think of them being slaughtered in their bed – they were alive, somehow, because Dad would make sure of it. He was a fighter. He was always fighting with somebody. Short man complex, mom always said. My confidence in them being alive was restored with just the knowledge of my dad’s stubbornness and determination, and I knew I had to make it back to Reno. Uncovering my flashlight, keeping alert to any noises or movements made in the darkness, I started to retrace my frantic footsteps. The conveyer belts I’d crawled under to avoid the zombies were in front of me. I crouched, shined the flashlight around, and saw no present danger.

  With another deep breath, I knew I had to go in deeper into the darkness, towards the Gold and Green sections to go find my keys. With one shaking hand, I withdrew the knife – held it in my right, and the left holding tightly onto the flashlight. It was so still, growing cold, that I found it hard to control my breathing. I knew I had to – I was about hyperventilating. I wanted to look everywhere and anywhere, and found the darkness incredibly frustrating. I was sweaty and shaky, and every step I took sounded so freaking loud. The light bounced around as my hand shook, so I lowered my arm and pinned the Mag-Light to my side, where it was better controlled. I clung awkwardly to my knife.

  I searched the pathways I’d taken in my frantic rush for safety and saw nothing. Just bloodstains. Fallen totes. A pair of shoes. Someone’s work glove. What looked like a wig hanging from one of the conveyors. I hope it was just a wig.

  I came across a body – it didn’t look real at first. It looked like someone had just dropped to the ground in exhaustion. Knife shaking dangerously, I hesitated to venture forward. I kept thinking t
he body would just explode upward with a scream. At the same time, I was morbidly curious as to why it was still there. The others reanimated and took off. Was this one just…in sleep mode? Or something?

  It was a guy, and I recognized him instantly. He often stocked the totes we pickers needed near the conveyer belts, and I had never said anything to him – just acknowledged him with a nod whenever I saw him. My flashlight crept over him, over his awkwardly sprawled legs and tossed arms. My heart was thudding hard against my ribcage. I held my breath, unsure if I actually wanted to see this.

  My knife shook and my wrist grew weak. I was sweating so badly that my shirt clung to me, and the tactical vest was making it worse. When I spotted no obvious injury on his body, I ventured forward. Lifted the light up towards his head.

  Well…where should have been his head. There was nothing there. Just a mess where the neck would have been.

  I turned and vomited. Not much came up, so it stung as I tried to stop myself. It went up my nose. I coughed and gagged and tripped over my own feet. My flashlight fell out of my hand, and I hit the concrete with a pained cry. Panic overwhelmed me, told me the guy was getting up. So I clawed the cold floor for my dropped flashlight, picked myself up, and went running from him, further into the darkness.