by Jason Offutt
Then the door to the Silverado opened behind her.
Damn it.
“What are you doing?” Donnie asked.
Andi had known she probably wasn’t going to get out of the shop without waking Donnie, she just wasn’t happy when it happened. The metal-on-metal screech of the sliding bay door, starting the Subaru, everything was going to wake that creepy little man, but she had sure as heck hoped she could skip out without him. Donnie could survive, or not; Andi really didn’t care, and that wasn’t like her.
“Rescue mission. Something’s gone wrong.” She held her hands out, palms facing the floor. “Just stay here where it’s safe. We’ll all be back sometime tonight.”
Donnie stamped his foot, his greasy hair fell in front of his eyes and he unconsciously brushed it back with his fingertips. “No,” he said, balling his hands into fists. “No, no, no. I’m coming. Two are better than one. Two. We’re two. And we’re better than one.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, his gaze on the floor. “I’m going. Yes, yes ma’am. I’m going. I’m going with you. You can’t leave me behind. You can’t make me.”
Yes, I can, Donnie, but you wouldn’t like it. Andi knew if she left, Donnie would follow her and that would mess up everything. “Look at me, Donnie,” Andi said, her voice low and stern. Donnie slowly lifted his gaze to meet Andi’s. His look was cold, dead. A chill went through Andi’s shoulders. “You can come with me, but you have to do exactly as I say. Can you do that, Donnie?”
Donnie nodded like a child.
“I’m probably going to have to shoot some people.” Polo Man. God help me. “You can’t make any noise if that happens. You can’t cry, you can’t scream. Can you do that, Donnie?”
His head pistoned up and down.
“We’re going to have to walk a long way, so you might get hungry and thirsty. I’m not carrying that for you. You’ll have to do it on your own. Okay?”
Donnie reached into the pockets of his military pants and pulled out bags of Skittles and a dry package of beef ramen. “I have a Pepsi in my back pocket,” he said.
Seriously? Andi took a deep breath and looked at Donnie like he was a kindergartener. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, I am.” He jumped through the still open door to the Silverado and sat in the driver’s seat.
Andi just stared at him. “We can’t take the truck, Donnie. It’s too loud. We have to be quiet. We’re taking the Subaru.”
I know that, doody-head. I just need to get something special. “I’m just grabbing Daddy’s binoculars,” he shouted from inside the cab. The binoculars sat on the seat, he didn’t need them, but he looped them around his neck anyway. Donnie watched as Andi shook her head and walked to the bay door. Donnie reached under the seat; it was still there. His fingers wrapped around the smooth wooden handle of Mother’s knife and he pulled it onto the seat, the sharp blade shone in the dull light of the garage. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Get them alone, Mother said. I’m getting them alone, Mother. The Army woman first, just like I wanted. He slid the knife into the right thigh pocket of the Army pants. It stopped with the handle sticking out. No, no, this won’t do. The Army woman might see the knife and take it away. She was strong, stronger than Donnie, but Donnie knew he was smarter than that dumb old girl from Oklahoma. The garage filled with a squeal as the Army woman pulled open the garage door. Donnie pushed the knife until it cut through the bottom of the pocket and the handle disappeared under the camouflage flap. The blade scraped his leg on the way through; Donnie could feel a trickle of blood, but he didn’t mind. The pain felt good, it made him feel more alive. He knew he just needed the Army woman to turn her back at the right time and the knife would taste more blood.
***
The sun sank just behind the trees when the wooden door to the Corral opened. Doug sat on the grass, his arms tied to a wooden post behind him, Nikki across from him tied to a similar pole, her jaw swollen. Doug still tasted blood. The man threw open the door, the hard man who appeared in Lazarus’ dining room like a storm and beat them onto the verge of unconsciousness as Terry slept and Jenna giggled, the Ophiocordon in their system already taking over. Lazarus lead Terry and Jenna away (Jenna, sweet Jenna) to God knows where and this asshole half dragged them to this wooden cage, this Corral outside the high school. Bleachers and lights surrounded the six-foot-tall wooden fence. A Roman Coliseum for rednecks.
The hard man pulled someone else into the enclosure, a young man in his late 20s maybe. “What’s going on, Ken?” the man asked.
The man he called Ken put a hand on his shoulder. “You remember how you’re fucking Lazarus’ girlfriend?”
A panicked look washed across the young man’s face, his body tensed. “You said you didn’t care. You said you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
The young man winced as Ken applied pressure to the grip on his shoulder. “I don’t care who you’re fucking, Seidel. I really, really don’t. And I’m good to my word. I didn’t say anything about it. It’s just–” He turned Seidel around to face him, “–that fat bastard figured it out on his own. He might be crazy as shit, but he’s not dumb. Besides, it’s a small town, Seidel. There are no secrets.” Ken leveled a blow to Seidel’s midsection; the man’s wind forced out in one sudden rush. He collapsed to his knees. Ken kicked him in the ribs with the heavy work boots he wore. Something cracked. Seidel let out a sharp, high-pitched cry. Doug stared at Ken; that bastard was enjoying this.
“Now,” Ken said, pulling out his butterfly knife and flipping it open. He tugged Seidel’s shirt taut and stuck the blade through, ripping the side open. He pulled the rest off, leaving the man shirtless. “That’s better, Seidel.” He grabbed the man’s arm, dragged him to an empty pole and lashed his hands behind him. “There’s a loyalty rally at sunset.” Ken grabbed Seidel’s chin in his big, meaty hand and pulled it up; their eyes met. “And I’ll make sure that pretty little Lacy is here. It’ll be a lesson for her to keep her legs together.” Ken dropped Seidel’s face and walked out of the arena, shutting the big wooden door behind him.
“We gotta get out of here,” Nikki said, her voice thick through her bruised, puffy face. She pulled at her bonds, but they were lashed tight. “You think Andi’s coming?”
Doug looked at her through his left eye, his right one swollen shut. “She’d better be.”
***
The Subaru fit nicely behind a barn just off the rural highway. Andi did her best to brush the tracks from the overgrown grass with a leafy branch, but the marks remained. If someone were looking hard enough, they’d notice a vehicle had just driven through. That was okay; Andi wasn’t sure either of them was coming back. She tossed the branch into a brush pile that lay against the barn and pointed Donnie across the highway.
“There’s railroad tracks that run parallel to the blacktop,” she said slowly. Andi didn’t know how smart Donnie was; the boy was off, that was for sure, but a lot of times stupid and crazy looked the same. She didn’t want to take any chances with him. “The trees should shield us from the road. We’re going to take that past town and try to get in from the back. Do you understand?”
Donnie nodded. Andi didn’t like the boy’s eyes. They were dead, like a rat’s.
“I just need for you to keep up with me and please keep quiet. Please.”
Donnie nodded again and reached into a pocket and pulled out a bag of Skittles. Oh, my god. This boy’s going to kill me. Andi slipped the backpack over her slim shoulders, tucked the tire iron into her belt and held her weapon at the ready. “Let’s go.”
Nothing moved on the highway. Weeds grew in the cracks on the unkept asphalt like a patchy beard on a high school boy. Andi crossed the road and disappeared into the trees and underbrush on the other side, Donnie followed closely behind. Saplings that would grow to cover the railroad tracks in a tunnel of branches sprouted along the right-of-way. Soon nature would cover the tracks, the ties and rails buried in plants. Andi stepped onto the tracks, military boots crunching on the dark red and gr
ay granite stones scattered along the railroad bed. She stepped off the stones and onto the ties and motioned for Donnie to do the same. The next few hours, she knew, were all about silence. The less noise they made moving and the less she talked with that creepy little man the better.
“It’s really quiet out here. That’s good, right?” Donnie said through a mouthful of candy.
Andi turned to him and whispered. “Donnie. You can’t talk. Say nothing. We have to be quiet, like ninjas. You know what ninjas are, right?”
Donnie smiled, his head bobbed up and down.
Good. “Ninjas are silent and deadly and that’s what we have to be, silent and deadly. Now, if you have to pee, stop to eat, or anything else, tap me on the shoulder. Just don’t say anything. Do you understand?”
Donnie gave a thumbs up. Silent but deadly. Donnie liked the deadly part. Can I be silent but deadly? Yes, stupid Ms. Army woman, I can.
***
“I’m sorry, Nikki.” Doug said, leaning into the pole he was lashed to, a bloody streak on his face now a hard brick-red crust. The early evening sky, dark in the east, the first few stars visible in the blue, was streaked with pastels in the west.
Nikki had worked her way to standing and pulled at the rope that bound her hands, trying to untie it. “What?”
“I’m sorry. This is my fault. Everybody wanted to sit tight. I pushed to find a place with people.” He stopped; a cough racked his chest. Ken had caught him in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Something didn’t feel right in there. He spat on the grass; it lay in a small glistening pool, a streak of crimson stood out like the bloody trace of a chick in a country fresh egg. “Well, I sure found people, all right.”
Nikki’s fingers slipped off the tight knot. She kicked the ground. “Goddamnit.” She looked at Doug, her face starting to show its bruise. “Stop sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, Douglas. I need you here, now. We need to get out of here, now.”
Doug looked up: tears rimmed his swollen eyes. “But Jenna, Terry.”
“Pull your shit together, mister. Stand up and work on those knots. We can’t help them if we’re dead.”
The man Ken called Seidel pushed himself to his feet. “She’s right. I don’t want to die here while that crazy asshole watches.” He started feeling for the knots behind his back. A short laugh escaped his lips. “I was leaving tonight. Me and my girlfriend and a friend. We were getting out of this craziness.”
“We still can,” Nikki said.
Seidel stopped struggling with the knots and looked at Nikki. “Lazarus is insane, you know?”
“We kind of figured that one out on our own.”
Seidel shook his head. “No. I don’t mean crazy; I mean fucking insane. Do you know why you’re here?”
Nikki didn’t know. All she knew was she was eating lunch, then Ken showed up and beat the shit out of her. “No.”
“He’s making an army.” Seidel took a deep breath, the pain in his ribs made him wince. “He takes people in and feeds some of them that zombie anti-depressant.”
“Ophiocordon.”
Doug moaned.
“Then he puts them in the high school gym he’s turned into a hothouse. He chains people up to them and when the fungus grows–”
“Zombies.” Nikki started struggling with the rope that held her to the post. What the fuck? “He’s intentionally making zombies?”
“That’s his army. Once he gets enough he’s going to march across the country, killing everyone who doesn’t join him.”
That idea hit Nikki like Ken Gundy. “And us?”
“We’re part of a loyalty rally. The whole town shows up to see what happens when you don’t support the cause,” Seidel said. “He’s going to let his pet zombies in here and they’re going to eat us alive.”
***
Light filtered through the trees that lined the railroad tracks on both sides. The silence, broken by occasional doves flapping into the underbrush, seemed like Bilbo’s travel in “The Hobbit,” complete with goblins. They were out there and they were just as deadly. Andi walked under a branch where a fat eastern gray squirrel with a bright white belly sat chittering at her. In another time, in another place Andi would have put a bullet through that squirrel, cleaned it with a pocketknife and roasted it over a fire just for Big Andy. But she wasn’t in that place anymore; she missed that place.
About a mile or so down the track, Andi stopped and threw up a hand to Donnie. She had no idea what the little creep was doing, but he walked right into her, almost knocking her to the ground. A zombie stood on the tracks. The tall figure, a farmer probably by the Key bib overalls and once white T-shirt that hung off its decimated frame. It swayed back and forth, oblivious to the world. This wasn’t the same track the Canadian army was traveling on. It couldn’t be. This zombie had been there a while. Morning glory vines had grown over the track and wrapped around its legs. Donnie opened his mouth, but Andi slapped an index finger to her lips and hissed, “Shhh.” Donnie closed his mouth and stepped backward, his eyes dropped to the tracks.
Zombies moved. That’s what they did. They moved and they fed. Why the heck, Andi wondered, did this farmer stay in one spot long enough for weeds to grow around its legs? It didn’t make any sense. Andi’s hand moved to the tire iron and she started to step forward, to end this affront to nature, when something moved in the trees. Another zombie. Oh, no, two. A woman in a business skirt and jacket and a teenager in a skate punk T-shirt and jean shorts, flanked the farmer. One stood on each side of the tracks, softly moaning in the underbrush. They couldn’t pass the farmer zombie without getting too close to the ones in the brush. Andi pulled binoculars from the backpack. The zombies hidden in the brush on the right-of-way were tied to trees, leashes around their necks. The farmer was lashed to a post driven deep between the ties, its face slack, a great wedge had fallen off its jaw revealing a row of solid yellow teeth. Andi lowered the binoculars and slid them into her backpack. The town didn’t need human guards. It had plenty of protection and Andi knew how to deal with them. These monsters had taken her parents, her country, her world. They were the ones who really took the Polo Man.
She drew the tire iron and advanced on the farmer. The thing’s head shifted toward the sudden movement, its milk-white eyes trained on Andi. It moaned; the low plaintive wail, like a sad dog, started to rise. The zombies on the right-of-way joined it. Andi broke into a run; if she didn’t end that now, it would grow into a scream and the whole town would know she was there. This was brilliant. Andi raised the tire iron as the zombie farmer pulled against its rope, its jaws chomping up and down, its arms outstretched. She dodged to the right and brought the tire iron down on the monster’s head, the cast metal crushed through the thing’s skull. It dropped toward the ground and stopped, arms askew, held in a half stance by the rope. A puppet without a master.
Donnie grunted. Andi turned; Donnie knelt on the railroad tracks, a fist in his mouth. What are you doing? Andi snapped her fingers and Donnie looked up, drawing his knuckles from his mouth. Blood trickled down the back of his hand. The look on his face was what? Shock? Pity? No, Donnie was angry. Why would he be angry? I’m the one who should be angry. Andi waved him on. Donnie still knelt on the tracks, staring at the monster dangling from the post, its brains a bloody gray mass oozing from the crack in its skull. Andi grabbed Donnie’s shoulder, forced him to his feet and pulled him into a jog.
The day drew darker the closer they grew to town. Andi knew Mayday was there, just through the trees. She stopped Donnie at a break in the foliage; a blacktop road lifted over the tracks from the main road and disappeared through the trees beyond. A large tin building, a factory of some sort, stood between them and the town. Andi squatted, looking through the binoculars. It was just like Doug had described, the Gate and the high school beyond. There was some movement on bleachers arranged around a wooden enclosure in the front grass of the high school. Something was going to happen tonight, some kind of festival, or game, or de
ath march. She moved the binoculars. A man stood at the Gate, looking inward, not out. Too much was going on in there and too little was going on out here. We’ve got to hurry. Andi started to move, then stopped. The Prius sat next to an old Oldsmobile in front of an abandoned drive-in. She tucked the binoculars away and motioned Donnie to his belly. They crawled in the cinders with their heads down, hidden from the eyes of the town. When they cleared the blacktop road and the darkness of the trees again claimed the tracks, Andi pushed herself to her feet and broke into a run. Something was happening in town and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
***
Jenna woke in semi darkness. What happened? Her panties were wet. Good God, it wasn’t a dream, she thought. I came. I– The day flooded back to her in random splashes. She felt great after lunch. There was something about that sandwich and the potato salad, that made her feel so good, like she was drunk, but drunk and horny. Sex with Doug was, oh God, oh God, oh God. A rush suddenly built deep inside her. Dear God, not again. Heat poured through her face, her torso, her thighs, it built like a pressure inside her and when it went, when it oh God, oh, God, oh God. Her orgasm shook her, a gush of fluid shot from her, soaking the bed beneath her. Bed? What bed? She looked around, her breath coming in spent wheezes. She was in, where? A basketball goal hung over her head. A gymnasium? A high school gymnasium? She tried to roll over, to get out of this bed, but she couldn’t. Jenna’s eyes looked down along her body; she lay on a hospital gurney. Her wrists and ankles were tied down with straps. “Where am I?” stumbled from her mouth; it was no more than a whisper.
