Zombie Ever After

by Carl S. Plumer

  Donovan shoved the car into reverse and started back up the on-ramp again. He roared up the incline at 50 mph, spinning the car 180 degrees when he reached the top. He wasn’t letting any more jerks get behind him and block their escape route. He shifted into drive, but kept his foot on the brake. Both he and Cathren gazed back down at the interstate. The car that passed them was stopped now, motor still running, covered by swarming legions of zombies. They yanked the man out of the car. Instinctively, Cathren and Donovan looked away.

  “My God,” Cathren gasped.

  Donovan stepped on the accelerator, wheels spinning, and released the brake. The pair headed down the lane in a cloud of burning rubber. From then on, they stuck to driving the back roads. They wouldn’t be able to travel as fast as they might on the interstate, but at least they were moving. And staying far away from zombies. The towns they traveled through were almost completely empty. Of living humans, that is. They were, on the other hand, filled with corpses. Corpses too fresh or too torn apart to become zombies. The usual abandoned cars and trucks—even a few motorcycles—littered the roadways. But no zombies, at least as far as they could tell.

  As they drove between the small towns, they detected movement occasionally. Through the windows of some of the houses, they’d spy them: A shadowy figure here, an indistinct entity there. Not dead, not alive. Simply moving out of view, ghostlike, as the two drove by. The weary sun began to set in the drizzly sky. Donovan and Cathren were both tired and hungry. The problem was, Donovan hadn’t seen anywhere yet that felt like a good place to stop. That’s when he heard a ding!

  “What was that?” Donovan said. He checked around the car, trying to find the source of the sound. He looked at Cathren. She shrugged.

  Donovan studied the dashboard. He sighed. Of course: they were almost out of gas.

  In a zombie apocalypse, you never want to run out of gas.

  Chapter 41

  With each town they drove through after his Idiot Light went on, Donovan kept his eyes peeled for a gas station. It didn’t take long to find one—an abandoned BP about fifteen miles or so after they’d started looking.

  Donovan pulled up anxiously, checking the scene for traces of the undead. As was true everywhere, there were plenty chewed-up, bloody dead bodies. None appeared to be reanimated. Not yet, at any rate. Donovan reckoned it was safe to get out and pump some gas. As safe as it was ever going to be.

  He pulled up as close as he could to one of the pumps. To get there, however, he had to bounce over a few cadavers that blocked his way. Squishy speed bumps.

  “Ewww, yuck,” Cathren said.

  For better or worse, Donovan didn’t consider the bodies as former human beings as he drove over them. Just future undeadniks. It was easier not to care if he didn’t see them as human beings. Zombies were flesh-eating scum, and definitely not his kind of people.

  He stepped out of the car, spun the gas cap off, and tossed it on top of the pump. He snatched the hose, inserted it in the tank, and selected high performance gasoline. What the hell, why not? The pump still required money, however, which struck Donovan as odd.

  He took out his wallet and fed his debit card into the slot. The machine welcomed him with a text message asking if he knew they had snacks inside. Donovan did, but appreciated being reminded. The gas started pumping, and he stepped over to the open car door.

  Leaning in, he said, “Hey, I’m going in to grab a snack. Want anything?”

  “Let me come with you.”

  “No, you’re too weak. I don’t want you in jeopardy if any of them, you know, the dead—find us. We can’t assume that you are at full strength. Or, for that matter, that you’ll even change.”

  “Well, the last time we came in contact with them, at ATELIC’s underground headquarters, they seemed afraid of me.”

  “Yeah, but how do we know that wasn’t just a freak occurrence?”

  “I guess you’re right. Plus, we’ll only be here for five minutes. What could possibly happen?”

  “Exactly. So, do you want anything?”

  “I’ll just have some of whatever you’re getting. But please hurry back. Coast looks clear, but you never know.”

  “Okay, be back in a sec. Lock yourself in, just in case. And keep an eye out, Okay?”

  “Sure,” Cathren said.

  Donovan slammed the door shut and heard the lock thump into place. He glanced over at the spinning digits. Around ten dollars’ worth of gas had pumped already. They had a ways to go to a full tank. He went inside.

  Corpses were strewn about. The place reeked of death and rot and all things unnatural. Which reminded him: they had hot dogs. Donovan grabbed some buns out of the warmer and hot dogs of the little rollers. He snatched a couple of sodas and a six pack (for when they rested, if such a moment ever came). He walked back out through the automatic doors.

  Funny that no matter how bad things were, the day had started out so promising. Donovan had warm food, cold drinks, and a full tank.

  Unfortunately, the car with that full tank was currently covered by flesh-craving zombies.

  In seconds, the windows would start breaking. Donovan dropped everything and yelped. It caught their attention, all right. Which was just what he’d intended.

  The undead turned and fixed on him like a pack of scaly hyenas. Some began their relentless shuffle toward him. Others kept on with the business at hand of breaking into the car like seagulls at a clamshell.

  Donovan reached for his wallet and rushed inside. At the cash register, he grabbed a couple of lighters. Back outside again, he ran to the nearest pump. He swiped his card, selected Regular, and started spraying gasoline at the writhing mass of zombies. The gas, which would have stopped most normal people, had no effect on these guys.

  Once Donovan felt the zombies were both sufficiently soaked and in dangerous proximity, he hung the hose back up. Flicking a lighter on and thumb-rolling the flame up high, he tossed it onto a small pool of gas. A loud whoosh ripped an inferno from the puddle, across the lot, and onto the zombies. Clouds of black smoke filled the air. The undead shrieked, and the stench of their burning flesh seared Donovan’s nostrils and throat. He coughed and stepped backward, his hand at his mouth. He watched as they became zombie torches, engulfed in intense flames. But he couldn’t believe his eyes. Astoundingly, they still kept coming at him, fiery arms outstretched.

  “Shit,” he said. He thought the problem would have been handled by setting the undead ablaze. Not so. He dashed around them, hand still on his mouth, giving the zombies and the roaring flames wide berth. He headed back to the car, where he hoped Cathren remained safely locked within.

  The zombie mob on the car pummeled the windows, growling, moaning. Their drool slid down the glass, thick as snot. A couple held squeegees, which they smacked against the windshield like hammers. They looked like nightmare versions of those guys who jump out at red lights in cities for “tips.”

  The undead were too busy to notice Donovan. He turned to see what the other zombies, the ones in flames, were doing. Most had fallen to the ground now, charred and smoking. Others teetered off course, staggering about the gas station in random directions. But others still came for him.

  Nonetheless, Donovan made the determination that the gasoline trick was their best defense right now. He wondered, briefly, if the flames and climbing plumes of smoke signaled other zombies to head their way. He didn’t care. He refocused on the current zombie problem, not some speculative future one.

  Donovan swiped his card yet again. He pulled out the hose and was ready to start praying and spraying when one of the undead hit him hard. Donovan fell next to the small lagoon of gasoline he had managed to create before being struck. He rolled away, knowing he needed to get up—and fast. But he reacted too slowly, stunned by the blow. All around him, the moaning, creeping undead descended, their stink and noises filling the air. They hovered, seconds from feasting on him.

  The circle of zombies tightened like a decaying,
grotesque noose. And Donovan had nowhere to run.

  The crushing, scratching blows landed on him like falling stones. He rolled away from the hits, only to receive more from a new direction. The zombies surrounded him—ten, twenty, thirty. He couldn’t count them all. They moved upon him suddenly, dropping on him like a fishing net of undead. Now the biting would start. The gnawing of flesh, the ripping of skin, the shark-attack frenzy as they tore him apart alive. He closed his eyes to wait for the end. But not before he saw red spurt in the air. Heard the screaming. Felt the death. Only none of this affected him because it was going on around him.

  * * *

  Donovan forced himself to pry an eye open.

  Cathren was ripping the undead apart, tearing off their heads, their arms. Tossing aside their body parts, and then their torsos like throw pillows. She slogged through the wall of undead until she got to him and lifted him off the ground like a little girl snatches her teddy bear off her bed. Hoisting him over her head like an Olympic weightlifter, she took him back to the car. Along the way, she kicked anything that leapt in her path. In seconds they were in, doors locked, and rolling on, bumping like a low rider over the corpses spread across the tarmac.

  “Jeezus!” Donovan yelled. “Holy shit!”

  Cathren swerved and accelerated, and got their asses far from that BP disaster.

  “Where the fuck did the rest of them come from?” Donovan asked after they rode in silence for a stretch. “How did all of them, after the first two or three, find us so fast?” His breath came out in jagged spurts and drops of sweat dotted his forehead. “The smoke, it must have been the smoke,” he mumbled.

  For the next few minutes, Cathren was unable to talk. She morphed back, mile-by-mile, returning to a mostly human state by the time they reached the ten-mile mark.

  “Did you hear me?” Donovan asked.

  “Yes, I did, and no, I don’t know,” she said, sighing. She turned to Donovan. “Look, because I’m similar to them, doesn’t mean I understand their behavior or can explain it.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that—” Donovan stopped. “Hey, wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “They weren’t afraid of you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why didn’t they run off? Like they did at ATELIC?”

  “I don’t know.” Cathren closed her eyes and shook her head as they sped through the night. “Maybe. I don’t know,” she said. “Were the zombies over by ATELIC more evolved or something?”

  “What do you mean, evolved?” Donovan asked.

  “I mean, maybe they’ve been around longer, been living—I mean undead—for a longer time.”

  “What difference would that make?”

  “Perhaps they’ve evolved a kind of sixth sense. Do you get what I’m saying? Like knowledge about me becomes part of their collective consciousness. But only after a period of maturation.”

  “Yeah,” Donovan said, pondering this idea. “Perhaps the zombies at the gas station were newbs, recently undead. You know? Whatever the reason, the advantage we had with them being afraid of you has vanished. It’s become a random occurrence we can’t depend on.”

  “Believe me, I liked it better when they feared me,” Cathren said, staring straight ahead and clutching the wheel too tightly. They drove on into the night, having no choice but to continue to drive, and drive, and drive.

  Chapter 42

  Bugs splatted the windshield like moose snot as the couple cruised along a never-ending stretch of country road. Donovan and Cathren had no notion of their location or in which direction they traveled. After unbroken miles of fields and meadows, they saw an old farmhouse up on a hill. Tired of running and desperate for sleep, they prayed this place would be zombie-free.

  They bumped along the pitted, pothole-filled road, over the ridges and the dips. The suspension got the workout of its life. Eventually, they emerged from the overgrowth on the sides of the lane into a clearing.

  The house rested in the middle of fields of—what? Neither of them knew. Barley? Wheat? Do they even grow that in California? A small grove of trees, possibly elm, waved at them from the left side of the house. Again, they were not experts on the flora of the area, nor arborists. Could be oak. The house was formerly white with what looked to be blue shutters, but it was mostly shades of faded gray now.

  They pulled up. Cathren left the engine idling “just in case.” Donovan rolled down the window and listened.

  “Donovan,” she said.

  “Shhhhh. Wait.” He held his palm up toward Cathren. All he could hear were the sounds of the wind in the willows, or the oaks, or whatever they were. The cry of crows or ravens pierced the night. Crickets tap-danced.

  “Might as well get out and look around,” he said.

  He glanced up through the mist at the waning moon. A sliver of yellowish-brown suspended in a crack between gray clouds. He looked over at Cathren. She sniffed the air like a bloodhound.

  Well, that caps it. She keeps getting weirder. It would never get dull being with a girl like her, that’s for sure.

  He smiled, amused that none of this bothered him. Not the strange behavior. Not the unpredictable transformations. Not even the strange growths and gaps her body occasionally produced, nor the intermittent loss of body parts.

  I’ve dated worse.

  “You okay?” he asked her as they approached the front door.

  “What? I’m good, yeah,” Cathren said, still sniffing the air again, if a bit more discreetly now. “You?”

  “Good. Crazy day, but I’m doing all right.”

  They surveyed the yard from the front steps. The car, the surrounding yard and fields, the slice of the road down below still visible in the delicate moonlight. Midnight descended and brought with it a new chill.

  Donovan grabbed the doorknob and eased the door open, listening for signs of danger. Cathren leaned against him, so close he was practically giving her a ride on his back.

  “Hello?” he called into the void. Donovan had no idea why he did that. Was he trying to warn any human being in there that he was friend, not threat? Of course, if these beings were not human, he’d just announced that dinner had arrived.

  They stepped into the house, which smelled of cat litter, dust, and spoiled apples. The furniture sat in all the right places. None was toppled. No splatters of blood, guts, or other human remains anywhere. In fact, there were no signs of a struggle at all. As they said on Law and Order, “no sign of forced entry.”

  They circled the entire first floor from the entry to the living room, to the kitchen, and back. “All clear,” as they also said on Law and Order.

  Next, they made their way up the stairs. Two pictures hung in the stairwell. One a crude painting of a clown, the other a photograph showing a stern-faced man glaring at the camera. He wore a too-small wool suit, his black skin reflecting the flash. Great, great, great grandpa from the Civil War days. At the second floor landing, Cathren and Donovan split up; she went left, he went right.

  Donovan checked two bedrooms and their associated closets. In the hall bathroom, he checked the small linen closet, glanced under the sink, and moved on. Then they quickly finished checking the rest of the house.

  Now that the house was checked, they did feel a little bit safer.

  “Do you think we’re okay here?” Cathren asked.

  “Safe as houses,” he said. “Well, safe as any house can be during a zombie apocalypse. Let’s get this place locked up tight.”

  They made sure all of the windows and doors were locked. There was nothing in the way of lumber to use to close off the windows so they moved furniture around, piling as much as they could against as many windows as possible.

  “That will have to do,” Donovan said, his back aching and his arms shaking from exertion. “Now let’s see if there’s anything at all to eat here. I’m starving.”

  They strode, hand-in-hand, into the kitchen. Donovan opened the refrigerator door and let go a sigh of relief
. Not only were the shelves well-stocked, but, just as important, the fridge light came on. Meaning, the refrigerator still worked.

  “Hmm. Let me see. Meat loaf?” he asked. “Oh, and sweet potatoes. And no mold on either one!”

  “Sounds perfect,” Cathren whispered. She fell against him, her head against his chest. She hugged him tight. Donovan slowly put his arms around her small body as she cried quietly into his shirt.

  Chapter 43

  The leftovers were from who-knew-when-or-why, but they heated up nicely. Donovan and Cathren could have been at the Four Seasons for all they cared. After they’d eaten a full meal, they were ready for rest.

  The headed upstairs and collapsed, fully dressed, onto the bed in the master bedroom. The bed was soft, but not too soft, and a faint breeze drifted through the open window. The room smelled of lilac soaps and lavender powders.

  “Reminds me of Granma’s house, don’t you think?” Donovan said.

  “One of my grandmothers lived in a small apartment in the city. The other in a nursing home the whole time I was growing up. But, yeah, I get the sentiment,” Cathren said.

  Donovan gazed at her in the dark. The moonlight gave her face an alluring, almost magical, glow.

  “Penny for your thoughts and all that,” Donovan said, resting his head on his arm.

  “Me? I don’t know,” Cathren said. “Just thinking about all that’s happened these last couple of days, I guess.”

  They lay in the darkness in silence for a minute or two.

  “When I was a little girl,” Cathren said. “I wanted to fly away, far from my dumb town. Mom and Dad were always telling me what I should do, what I did wrong. All the small-minded people hated me.” She yawned and curled against Donovan, drawing her arms and knees to her chest. “I wanted to fly across the sky and be a princess on a magical island in the clouds. An angel princess.” She smiled and searched Donovan’s eyes. “Does that sound silly?”