by Jason Offutt
“Damn straight.” Jenna squeezed his hand. “It’s the four of us.”
God, three days. He’d been unconscious three days. Doug’s stomach rumbled. “Did I smell hot dogs?”
Terry pulled up a box of something and sat next to Doug. “You smelled that? We all thought you were still out.” He picked an empty can off the culvert floor. “Hell, yes.” The red, white and blue can read, ‘Ye Olde Oak American Style Hot Dogs.’ “It’s European or Canadian, or something. They spelled flavor with a ‘u’.”
“Hot dogs in a can? That’s disgusting.”
Terry grinned. “You want one?”
“More than anything.”
“Whoa, there.” Jenna pushed her hand toward Terry. “You’re going to start with crackers. If you can keep those down, we’ll work ourselves up to rancid meat.” She grabbed an open box of Ritz from behind her and pulled out a sleeve. “Eat two crackers. If you’re a good boy and keep them down, you’ll get Cheez Whiz.”
What? “Where’d you get all this stuff? We’re in a ditch.”
Terry cracked another beer. “But, we’re in a ditch under I-80 that runs from New Jersey to San Francisco. It’s like a fucking Walmart up there.” He started checking off fingers. “There’s a Nebraska Furniture Mart truck right over our heads. There’s a grocery truck to some place called Continental Foods just down the road and there’s a goddamned Anheuser–Busch truck about a quarter mile east. We got the crackers and Cheez Whiz from a Prius. We can just stay here for all I care.”
Nikki punched him in the arm.
Jenna slid the tip of a cracker into Doug’s mouth. He bit down. The taste of butter and salt flooded his senses. He closed his eyes to savor the taste. “Doug, are you okay?” Jenna asked. He grinned as he chewed.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” he said. “And I’ve had Kansas City barbecue.”
“Looks like you’re feeling better,” Jenna said. Doug looked up at her, the flickering firelight danced in her eyes. He never thought she’d looked more pretty.
“Yeah, I am.” He tried to sit up again and she pushed him back down.
“What you need to do is rest,” Jenna said, the look on her face sterner than Doug had seen. He grinned, hoping to see many, many more looks. She held up another Ritz. “You’re going to eat two more of these and drink more water, then you’re going to sleep.”
“But I’ve been asleep for three days,” Doug protested.
“No.” It was Nikki. “You’ve been unconscious. There’s a big difference. Your head hurt?”
Doug tried to nod, but yeah, his head hurt. “Yes.”
She picked up a bottle of generic acetaminophen, shook out two caplets and handed them to Jenna. “It might help him sleep if he doesn’t hurt so much.”
Ten minutes later, Doug was asleep.
***
He woke bathed in sweat. Milky Cataract Man was in his dream, the man at the Community, the only thing Doug had seen that looked like a zombie during the zombie apocalypse. It had screamed behind him, then moved toward him fast, its jaws working like one of those wind-up monkeys banging cymbals. The four of them ran into the nearest Quonset hut and it was filled with people dead from the Piper, their skin covered in a fine gray mold, a fungal stalk growing from their chests. The ends were swollen like an engorged penis, ready to explode and spread their spores to create new zombies. In his dream, the bulbs followed Doug and his friends like they could see them, like those things knew they were there. Did that really happen? Then they ran. They had to run. Run fast or become one of those things foaming at the door. Terry opened the door, the Milky Cataract Zombie Man fell in, Terry bashed in its head with a crutch and they got out. Away. But not safe. Crutch? Maybe my ankle really is broken.
Then he snapped fully awake.
“Doug, are you all right?” The voice was Jenna’s. She let him sit up this time, his breath came in quick, heaving bursts. The pain in his head wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t so bad.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Bad dream. I figure I’m going to be having those for a while.”
“Join the club, boss,” Terry said. “I’ve had a couple about the zombie guy I killed with your crutch.” He reached up and rested a hand on the back of his head, Terry’s eyes went from cheery to tired. “You remember that?”
Yeah, I do.
When Nikki appeared from seemingly out of nowhere, Doug realized he wasn’t quite ready to join the world of the living. His vision swam and she just appeared in a wavering fuzz, kind of like when somebody beamed up on Star Trek. “You’re up early,” Nikki said. “Terry and I were just ready to start breakfast. You hungry?”
Doug felt he’d never been hungrier. “Famished. If it’s okay with Doctor Jenna, I think I’m ready for something more than crackers. Got any of those canned hot dogs?”
“Puke,” Jenna said, sticking an index finger in her open mouth.
“Yeah, we’ve got a crate of those,” Terry said. “But I’m going to fix us something a little bit classier for your first day back to life.”
Canned ham pulled from a rooftop cargo carrier on a Toyota Prius somewhere above them, fried over an open fire, powdered eggs with a dash of onion powder scrambled in a Spam can with reconstituted milk was better than Thanksgiving dinner at Mom’s. He had the best meal of his life in a culvert underneath a highway.
“I’m glad you’re up and running,” Terry said. He’d already cracked open a beer at whatever time of the morning it was. It didn’t matter anymore, ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’ just became law. “But what now?”
What now?
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “But we can’t stay here. It’s too wide open. We have to find someplace secure, someplace that will keep those things out.”
“Tanelorn,” Jenna said. The word cut the culvert to silence. Tanelorn, the city in Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series where the heroes go when they die, retire, or get fed up with saving everyone. It’s what the Marstens named their summer home, a virtual survivalist bunker in Western Nebraska, filled with food, medicine, weapons, its own well, solar power and a twelve-foot high electrified chain-link fence to keep out whatever baddie the apocalypse sent calling. The Marstens might not have expected zombies, but they were ready for them. Just like at home. Doug, Terry, Jenna and Arnold (poor Arnold) found Nikki by accident at the Marstens’ house in the tiny Northwest Missouri town of Barton. Together they discovered its stash of Winchester SX3 shotguns, M4 carbine rifles, several M27 light machine guns and enough beer to keep Terry happy for months. Doug discovered Tanelorn on the Marstens’ computer and printed out a map to this safe haven, electricity still running through the house from solar power.
“Yeah, boss. It was in Western Nebraska, in Western Nebraska.”
A can cracked. Nikki sat on the crate of Spotted Dick and took a drink of warm Pepsi. “That’s where we were going when Herman Munster jumped out of the back of the truck,” she said. Herman, the bloody man that came to the Marstens’ door. The man they left the Marstens’ sanctuary to save. The man who almost got them killed.
Doug slowly shook his head. “Map’s gone. The military took it when they put us to the hospital. I know it was somewhere near Alliance, but that’s it. I couldn’t get us there for anything.” He put his makeshift plate of ham and eggs on the mattress beside him, the eggs churning in his stomach; he’d suddenly remembered how he’d broken his ankle. The bear, its eyes glazed and milky shoved its face against the glass of the truck, slamming the closing door against Doug’s ankle. He remembered screaming and that was it. Then he was in a hospital surrounded by soldiers. “We gotta find someplace new.”
“That asshole Corson’s probably planning on keeping it as a summer house,” Nikki said, then poured the Pepsi onto the dusty concrete floor of the culvert. She didn’t want it anymore.
Doug motioned to Jenna to help him up; she smiled and shook her head. “Anyway, you said there are vehicles up on the highway, right?”
“Yeah, what the hell is Spotted Dick, anyway?”
Nikki reached under her and pulled a can from the box. “It’s kind of like sponge cake with bits of dried fruit. It’s not bad. Want some?”
Doug’s stomach turned again. He pinched his eyes tight and focused on keeping down his breakfast. If he’d been out for three days, he needed to keep it in there. The feeling passed. “No, thanks,” he said, pulling open his eyes. They felt strangely heavy. Is this what a concussion feels like? “Have you tried to start any of them?”
Terry shook his head. “No. The couple in the Prius is dead on the highway. The drivers are still in the Bud truck and the food wagon. The stalk growing out of the Bud man painted the inside of the cab with that yellow spore stuff. The food guy is a friendly fellow. He pawed at the window at us as we walked by; I think he wanted to eat us.”
Zombie. Doug hated to think of that word. What the fuck is this? A movie? But that’s what they were. The military guys told Jenna. The disease was called HG-17, a mutation of the fungal infection brought on by the antidepressant Ophiocordon. The goddamned Piper did this. The infection causes a stem to grow from the infected’s chest, then the stem explodes, sending its spores looking for a host. When the spores find one, the doctor had said, HG-17 ‘shuts down the higher functions of the central nervous system, meaning the thought process and leaves everything else to take care of the body’s last two functions. To feed and to reproduce. It’s highly contagious.’
There really are zombies.
“Have you seen any more?”
“No,” Jenna said. She sat on the mattress next to him and slipped an arm around his shoulders. It felt soft and strong at the same time. Some of that strength seemed to flow into Doug.
“That’s good, but we’re totally defenseless here. We have to find someplace safe.”
Jenna squeezed. “You’re in no condition to travel.”
“I think we should go, too,” Nikki said. “I’m scared here. There’s nothing to keep one of those things from walking right in here and killing us in our sleep.”
Terry popped another beer, the crack unusually loud in the still morning. “Have you all forgotten we’re in the middle of freakin’ Nowhere, Nebraska? We don’t have anything to worry ab–”
Terry froze.
Somewhere in the distance a car alarm wailed.
“Oh, hell.”
***
Doug’s dark place hadn’t been empty; Milky Cataract Man had been there, too. Doug swam in the dead silence of the dark, this world of nothingness, when the snarling thing came to a door. What door, he couldn’t see, but he knew it was the door to the Quonset hut, the hut that held rows of dead bodies, stalks of fungus rising from their chests like they’d been impaled. But he couldn’t see them; he couldn’t see anything. He could just hear the growl of the once-human thing as it got closer, then thumped on the door in slow, methodic slaps. Doug screamed in his dark place, though he knew no one could hear him, no one could help him. He had to face this monster on his own. This monster with foam spewing from its angry, hungry mouth, its eyes grown over with a white film. Doug couldn’t see it in his dark place, but he knew what the thing looked like, because he’d seen it, seen it with his own eyes and it terrified him. The car alarm could only mean one thing; it was coming for him.
“That’s a long way off,” Terry said, his words to Doug sounding like he, too, was a long way off. “Hey, boss. You okay?”
Doug opened his sore eyes and looked up at Terry, Nikki and Jenna. Sweet, sweet Jenna. He had to protect her. He had to protect all of them.
“What’s the closest vehicle that’s the best bet for us to get the hell out of here now, right now?” he said, his voice a whisper.
“The Prius,” Nikki said, standing from the box of Spotted Dick cans. “I’m with Doug. Let’s go.”
Jenna squeezed Doug’s hand. “Let me help you up.”
The crisp crack of a Budweiser can snapping open pulled everyone’s head toward Terry, who leaned against the side of the culvert and took a sip. Hadn’t he just opened a beer? “We don’t even know what set that alarm off. Could be anything.”
Nikki rested her fists on hips. “Like what, Mr. Wizard?”
Terry took another swig of beer and grinned. Doug wondered how many Terry’d had already this morning. “A person. Maybe there’s somebody else out there lost and scared and afraid—”
Nikki interrupted. “Scared and afraid are the same thing.”
“Or maybe a buck saw its reflection in the window and went after it. Some of those alarms are pretty sensitive. Maybe a bird shit on it just right.” Terry drained the can and tossed it down the culvert, the flat tinging of aluminum rattling across concrete made the others wince with each bounce. “I’ll go up there and check.”
Nikki leaned close and kissed his cheek. “I hope you’re right.”
***
Terry’s right boot hit a loose spot of soil and he slipped a foot down the embankment, sending a small cloud of dust into the dry Nebraska air. “Bunch of little girls,” he mumbled, too low for anyone in the culvert to hear. “Scared of every little thing.” Halfway up the incline he grabbed a two-by-four, about three feet long, from a patch of weeds where it had lain since it hit the ground months ago, probably out of the bed of some guy’s pickup. He noticed the board yesterday, the morning after they stumbled out of the darkness, exhausted and dirty, and crawled into the hole under the highway. The board looked solid when Terry nearly stepped on it as he braved the highway that afternoon to get food from the Continental Foods truck, jimmying open the back door with a piece of rebar. He saw it again when he went to the Nebraska Furniture Mart truck looking for something comfortable for unconscious Doug. As he hefted the piece of pine in his hand, he knew he’d been saving the wood for this.
Terry pushed himself up the last few feet and stood on the shoulder of I-80, pausing to rest his hands on his knees. His breaths came too heavily for his taste. He hadn’t carried Doug like Jenna had said; they’d found a long piece of cardboard from a food drop that hit outside the Community fence and they all took turns dragging him. Thought I’d get in shape during the apocalypse. Hell, maybe the next one. He took as deep a breath as he could and rose to full height. On either side of the highway, tall fields of green corn that would become fallow next planting season with no farmers to tend them, stood still in the windless July morning. To his left the furniture truck cast a short shadow onto the road as the sun climbed higher in the empty, azure sky. It was already hot and it was only somedamno’clock in the morning. Sweat pooled under Terry’s arms and he ran his hand through his hair that had already started to mat. Another steamer. If the end of the world showed Terry anything, it was that he really hated the Midwest. A man of his size needed someplace that never got hot, like Canada, or the Colorado Rockies. He stood in the shade cast by the white truck with green lettering that held unassembled furniture made by a company that no longer existed and looked to the west, toward the sound of the car alarm.
The alarm was louder out of the culvert; not much, but a little. Terry wiped the sweat from his forehead with a shirtsleeve and waited. The sound came from beyond the Continental Foods truck. Probably from the pale-yellow Caddie they’d walked by in the dark, full moonlight showing the windows coated with yellow spores that may have matched the interior, but even with the moon it was too dark to tell. The sound couldn’t have come from the driver; he’d been dead for weeks, maybe months. Not undead dead, but dead dead. As Terry leaned against the side of the furniture truck, the two-by-four in his left hand hung by his side, he realized something was wrong with the sky.
A black cloud slowly moved over the westward highway that stretched to the Rocky Mountains and eventually to California. It didn’t just move, it moved towards him. Hell, Terry could see its shadow ripple over the tops
of abandoned cars as far as he could see. Yeah, it was moving and fast, but how? Unless there was a serious undetected gale just over Terry’s head, the only wind this morning was still working its way through his colon. The black cloud seemed to flow like water, rolling over itself, like it was fighting to break free and flood the sky.
“Aw, shit.” Terry stepped forward, just a step, just a little step. But that’s all he needed. The dark spot on the sky wasn’t a cloud; it was birds. A movement dragged his eyes down from the sky. Under that cloud of black birds marched a host of those undead fuckers.
“Zombies,” Terry whispered, the word dying as it left his lips. One stood from behind the piss-yellow Caddie from the spot where it had fallen, bumped the car and set off the alarm. It looked toward Terry and he couldn’t drag his eyes away as his brown ones met the thing’s milky-white ones. It screamed. The two-by-four slid from Terry’s shaky hand and rattled on the pavement. The beast lurched forward. It was close; too close. The mob was at least three quarters of a mile away. Good God, how many were there? And what the fuck’s up with the birds?
The zombie thing, lurching like a ball player with a pulled hamstring, came toward him faster than should be possible. Terry just watched it come; his feet seemed soaked in concrete. It wasn’t because it was a zombie. Hell, he’d bashed the Milky Cataract Man with Doug’s crutch like he’d bashed zombies every day of his life. This was different. This one had a murder of crows coming in hard and on the ground it had backup. Terry swallowed and bent to pick up the board. He knew he didn’t have time to run, time to warn the others before this slathering asshole in a black T-shirt was on him, but he could save them all if he just—
The monster, spittle flying from the corners of its snarling mouth, was suddenly upon him. Terry rose, swinging the board, pushing with his legs like his high school baseball coach had hammered into his head, “your power comes from below your waist. Push and swing, baby. Push and swing.” The two-by-four struck the zombie on the jaw with a dull thud; its head lurched awkwardly to one side, its mouth moving like a kid hitting a PEZ dispenser over and over and over. As it fell against the open trailer of the furniture truck, Terry pulled the board back and struck again, the thing’s skull cracked like a box of something expensive and the zombie fell to the pavement in a splatter of its own blood. It twitched twice and lay still.
