Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel

by Jay Wilburn

  “How can you smoke and still expect to have a pallet for cooking?” Chef called after him.

  It made me nervous that they were yelling so much outside after everything we had seen today.

  Short called back, “I’ve given up salmon, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, and central heat … again. I’m going to give myself this.”

  “Happy birthday, me, hope you like cancer,” Doc said.

  “I thought you smelled like tobacco,” Chef called again. “I thought you hadn’t bathed or I was going crazy.”

  “Well, I bathed, so that just leaves you being crazy,” Short called as he and Doc moved on looking at the cars.

  They checked several doors as they looked in on deteriorated seats, broken glass, and disintegrating clothing. Engines had fallen through the bottom of a couple vehicles, but Short shook his head after looking at the rusted hoods. Doc reached in one car and pulled out plastic box with dials on it.

  He said, “What do you think this used to be, Short? A weather radio maybe? Hello out there. It looks like it is crappy with a strong chance of being eaten by your long dead relatives.”

  Doc set it on top of the roof of the ruined, muscle car.

  Short said, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how those worked, Doc.”

  Doc said, “Would be better if it was.”

  Short stopped at the next Ford. The trunk was wedged slightly open and askew from the bent fenders over the flat and rotten tires. Piss on Free Soil was painted on the side in black. The Ford’s trunk was gritty on top, but wasn’t rusted. He tapped it with his knuckle and nodded.

  He snuffed his cigarette out on the roof of the Ford and then stamped it in the grass a couple times under his foot.

  They went after the exposed bolts on the bent hinges behind the Ford’s intact back window. At first it looked like it was hopeless. They used a file to grind down the corrosion around the edges and then managed to get them loose. One snapped into three pieces and fell into the trunk. That was fine since they didn’t plan to put it back.

  They pulled twice and got it loose from the body of the car. As they lifted it off the open trunk space, two heads lashed out and struck at their hands. The teeth missed them by inches and they dropped the trunk lid in fear. It hit the bumper and tore it off the car as it fell to the grass.

  Doc picked up his aluminum shaft and tool bag screaming. Chef and I could see them and hear them. We came running. Chef had the rifle and I was carrying a pipe.

  Short screamed too and grabbed up the machete. He hacked away at the trunk cutting through their necks and into the brittle lining and the deflated rubber of the spare tire. A few fell out on to the ground and Doc ran back stamping on their skulls. A couple slithered away under the other cars.

  They were done by the time we got there.

  “My God, how many were there?” Doc yelled dropping his bag and pole and rubbing his hands over his shirt even though he had no blood on them.

  “There had to be twenty,” Short said staring into the trunk as he flipped the trunk lid over to look at the underside. “Yes, this will work perfectly.”

  Doc wasn’t ready to move on to another subject. “Holy Moses, I wished it had been a trunk load of zombies instead.”

  “Were those coral snakes?” Chef asked looking at the bodies.

  There were multi-colored rings down their skin.

  Short answered, “No, these are king snakes or milk snakes. I don’t know my snakes very well. Red doesn’t touch yellow. Scarlet snakes?”

  Chef said, “I didn’t know they would make a pit like that in a car.”

  “Neither did I. I thought they ate each other in groups actually,” Short said as he piled the snake bodies on the overturned lid.

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Chef said.

  “What are you doing?” Doc asked.

  Short stood up and looked at us. “Looks like our Kermit challenge just became … I don’t know any famous snake names. The Devil, I guess.”

  “Really?” Chef asked. “We are cooking snake on a Ford trunk lid?”

  Doc ran his hands back through his hair.

  Doc said, “I’ve had snake before, Chef. I don’t think it’s been this fresh, but it’s good if you can cook it where it’s not rubbery. I would have been fine with a trunk full of frogs.”

  It turns out Chef didn’t pack light either. He had loaded down the cargo area with bottles, spices, utensils, and other ingredients.

  I went with Doc into the woods to gather wood. We didn’t go far and he kept looking around the ground as he picked up pieces. I think he was more concerned with snakes than zombies.

  The trunk heated well once we gathered wood and got a fire going. The chunks and strips of snake sizzled in the oil and basted in the sauces and spices that each cook added. It was different.

  Doc mumbled, “Protect me, Lord, from the false and fallen. Keep me safe from the serpent’s touch. Bring me safe to Abraham’s bosom. Let my dish taste better than theirs on the other shore.”

  I wasn’t familiar with the song, but I was pretty sure that’s not how it was originally written.

  We didn’t cook all of them. What they did cook was good. I tried cooking some too, but mine just tasted like soy sauce. The cooks were polite about it. Chef suggested that I add it more slowly and taste as I cook. Mine was rubbery.

  Short tried something with mint that wasn’t bad. Doc and Chef both went tangy. I couldn’t tell the difference and they got mildly irritated when Short and I wouldn’t pick a winner.

  We cleaned up the gear and kicked dirt into the fire under the hot trunk lid even though it was getting colder as the sun set.

  Short stepped away from the group and sat on the trunk of a rusted out Corvette and enjoyed one last cigarette as he stared at the sunset.

  Doc turned his back on the colorful sky as he fussed over repacking gear in the cargo section.

  Chef used the last light of the sun to get out the small bag he had packed in the back. He took out a flip open, straight razor and a leather strap. He looped belt over a broken side mirror on one of the cars. He grazed the razor up and down the strap several times with the same fervor and skill he used with sharpening the kitchen knives.

  He tested the edge with his fingertip, but didn’t draw blood. He then took out a mirror that he propped up in a door jam. He dry shaved his face and neck. I watched nervously, but he finished and put everything away without a nick.

  His face almost shined in the twilight and he looked like his old self again. As he put his bag away, Doc was unrolling his sleeping bag by the open truck door.

  “Do you think they’ll get in the truck?” Doc asked, “I heard snakes are attracted to body heat. They could crawl through the window grills.”

  Short Order asked, “What do you guys make of this?”

  He was kneeling down next to the outside fender of the Corvette that was facing away from us.

  Chef walked over and cursed.

  Doc walked over next.

  He said, “Snakes, and then this … we should go somewhere else.”

  Chef said, “It’s too late. If we leave now, we’ll be driving in the dark and we don’t want that. I’m sure they are long gone even if it is them.”

  I came around where they were standing. In black paint across the side of the car was written, Shy is a lie. Believe and you die!

  We stayed for the night anyway.

  We were cramped in the floor of the truck around each other and the seat bases, but we managed to all four get into sleeping bags without killing each other.

  ***

  I woke up in the darkness after getting kicked in the head. I tried to cover up, but then I got stepped on and kicked again. There was yelling and the ground was shaking. I didn’t know where I was.

  “Get it started while we still can,” Doc yelled.

  The truck pitched up and dropped again on the noisy shocks. Gear in the back clanked and rattled with the impact. I crawled out of m
y sleeping bag and bumped my head on the underside of a jump seat. The truck tilted again and I fell against the door. I tried to grab hold of something and nearly pulled the handle to open the door by accident. The plastic popped out behind me and I heard the groans from their throats and the thrum of their fingers pulling on the metal grating. I let go of the door handle.

  “I need light,” Chef grumbled from the front.

  “That might be bad,” Doc said.

  My eyes were adjusting and I didn’t like what I saw all around us.

  “Not as bad as it will be, if I don’t get this damn thing started,” Chef growled over the growls all around us.

  “I got it,” Short said.

  A flashlight blazed on in front and I was blinded. The roars rose up around us and the truck rocked harder as the engine roared into life. I found my seat and belted myself into the seat harness. Doc had turned his swivel seat and was holding on to the fuel canisters with both hands.

  “We need to go before they flip us,” Doc yelled.

  As if he gave them the idea, the truck tilted to the side and kept going. I heard gear sliding over to my side in the cargo section. Chef pressed the accelerator, but the wheels just spun in the air and against the ground without moving the truck. I had seen this happen before from the outside more than once. We were going to be upside down and trapped at any moment.

  “Doc, grab a gun and get them off the side,” Short Order screamed.

  “I can’t let go of the fuel,” he yelled back as his jump seat swiveled out from under him and he fell.

  Chef continued to rev the engine and spin the wheels against the bodies of the zombies lifting us up from one side.

  We were surrounded.

  The fear stabbed at my memory. My mother had placed me under the bed when I was five. I could almost remember her face in that moment as I was tilting over in the truck. She had backed away as she told me to not say a word until she came back. I was afraid, but I felt safe as long as I did what she said. The zombies had found me under the bed and tilted it over as they lifted it off of me. I remembered their faces clearly as they stood around me. They were all freshly killed and bloodied. My next memory of that night was running from the house with them behind me. I had no memory of how I escaped.

  The wheels tore the torsos of the zombies and the truck began to tilt back down. It twisted toward the right and fell back on all four wheels again. Doc scrambled to get off the floor, but slipped on a sleeping bag and fell again. The truck lurched forward once, but halted again against the wall of bodies in front of us.

  Short Order was turning the flashlight back and forth at different angles as he grabbed hold of different parts of the interior. The beam passed over hideous faces exciting them outside the windows. I saw the Pluck My Clover, Baby tee shirt with shriveled intestines hanging down from where it was torn open at the bottom. The beam waved back and rested on the grey face and single eye of a zombie with more pine straw and twigs in his hair. The buttons of his shirt had been popped off and it was spread open to reveal blackened gashes and pitted flesh from his recent road rash. I looked for a zombie in a trench coat or one in overalls, but they hadn’t made it yet.

  Chef shifted into reverse and spun the wheels pulling the truck back a few labored feet. He shifted forward again and we bucked forward in three harsh jerks. As he shifted back again, he yelled at Short Order.

  He said, “Turn that damn light off. You’re killing me, man.”

  Short Order turned it off plunging us back into darkness. I heard Doc fall hard in the floor again and curse.

  Short flipped on the headlights under their protective grill for Chef. The light was dampened by the bodies pressed on the front of the hood.

  Short yelled, “Guns, Doc!”

  Doc screamed muffled in the floor. “The fuel is turned over. You’ll blow us up.”

  Chef was going forward again spinning on the torn ground and the mangled bodies underneath us. The truck was pivoting around in a circle and was being rocked again. The wheels caught something and we tore through the crowd pressed on our sides. Their hands shuddered against the window caging as they clawed to keep hold and failed. The ones in front leaned over the crash bars and rode forward with us.

  We almost T-boned the Ford we had used to cook our snakes. They felt like they were trying to crawl back out of my stomach. Chef slammed on the brakes and pitched the zombies off the front into the side of the Ford. He didn’t have room to turn, so he reversed again just as the dead hands started slapping against the back. The soft slapping was followed by deep thumps and the bounding of the wheels over the bodies.

  He turned and shifted forward again. At first, we spun in place, but we finally roared through the circle of dead cars and dead bodies. We bounced a couple more of the moving bodies into the unmoving cars as we scrapped through a gap between the fender of a Chevy and the trunk of a Plymouth.

  We dove down the slope sharply spraying light into the tall grass. Equipment in the back clattered and banged. Doc slid forward on the floor and caught himself with his feet on each base of the front jump seats. It felt again like the truck was going to flip.

  Chef turned and power slid along the grass as we moved off the slope on to flat ground. He moved us through the wave of bodies hitting as few as possible. He turned and accelerated again as he swerved away from the trees toward the gap of trail leading to the paved road. He hit several bodies from the side jarring the truck as he forced his way through the mob to reconnect to the road.

  The shocks smashed against the undercarriage as we bounded up on to the cracked pavement over the low shoulder. We coasted for a moment as Chef wheeled us to the left and then back to the right.

  He mumbled, “Which … which side of the …”

  Doc and Short screamed over the top of each other.

  Doc yelled, “Right, right, go to the right … mostly north to the right. Go!”

  Doc couldn’t see from the floor, but he seemed sure.

  Short yelled, “Away from the zombies. Go to the right before they pin us in again. Go to the damn right, David, please!”

  Chef wheeled us right and drove away just as the fingers of the late arrivals began scratching at our abused fender.

  The lights cast shallow beams on the dark road as we sped along with wind rushing through the grating of open windows in at least two places where the plastic had fallen away in the cab somewhere. Short Order slunk down inside his coat to protect his ears from the cold. Chef gripped the top of the stirring wheel with both hands as he stared forward. The lights would get lost in the trees as the remains of the road turned sharply one way or the other. Chef and my heart barely slowed down as we slid through the curves in the blind darkness.

  This seemed like the time we would go off the road and have to start walking.

  Doc stumbled back up into his seat and strapped in this time. He fumbled with the tanks and gear in the back.

  “How bad is it, Doc?” Chef asked.

  “You talking about the gear or whether I shit my pants?” Doc called back.

  “John, please,” Chef yelled.

  Doc answered, “The fuel didn’t spill. Stuff is thrown around and dumped out. I don’t see anything broken, but we won’t be able to tell until we stop or its morning.”

  Chef kept driving.

  Doc said more quietly to me just over the wind, “Mutt, did you see the one in the ‘Kiss My Clover’ shirt. That looked just like the one Donny Gordon used to wear all the time. I didn’t know they made two of them. If that zombie was fatter, I would have sworn it was him.”

  It had said Pluck My Clover, they probably didn’t have many of them, and that zombie had been fatter before we busted his gut open back near the Complex. I didn’t say anything and Donny was probably slowly dragging his guts back to the road to slowly follow us again.

  Chef kept driving.

  As my heart finally began to give up and slow down again, I wondered if I had been that scared the night I
lost my mother or any night since then. If I knew what was going to happen in one week, I wouldn’t have even wondered. Most likely I would have begged Chef to take us back mostly south through the zombies again. After the dead rose, we just survived and figured we knew what scared us most as we ran from them, but then we opened a trunk and found a den of snakes or something much worse.

  As the zombies dropped back behind us, we kept driving into the dark road ahead. They were slower, but they would keep coming as we ate or slept. It didn’t matter how far we drove unless we found somewhere to go.

  Chef kept driving.

  Chapter 4: The Week We Worked on Our Recipes

  We fell into a routine of sorts over the next few days.

  We slept less in the truck. Buildings were tough to find in any livable condition. Nature had proven to be a tough landlord once people had moved out and the dead had moved into the neighborhoods. We found what we could and stayed inside at night until we got to the park and the deadly standoff.

  We also took three hour shifts through the night standing guard while the others slept or tried to sleep. Each of us had an off night every fourth night. That was the plan anyway. We usually had two or more people up at a time and got less than six hours sleep a night. We napped during the day after a mid day meal with someone sitting up on guard in the truck.

  We tried to find houses with working fireplaces or patios where we could cook dinner before sundown. The problem was that houses with chimneys tended to start rotting around the flashing as the tar or glues began to give way and allowed rain to seep under the shingles. If there was a hole in the roof, the walls and floors were done. Most buildings were like walking on wet cardboard inside and it was almost worse than just being outside in the woods.

  Almost worse.

  Walking into the dark ruins I always tried to turn on a light switch out of reflex. I was used to generator power in the buildings at the Complex. The others had the opposite problem. They had walked through the Complex forgetting that the light switches worked from all their years of being outside without power.