by Jay Wilburn
Doc said, “I hope we don’t need something else from that closet.”
We poured out the denatured alcohol and poured in another chemical he had brought out in an unmarked bottle. The flame burst up and threatened to wrap around the burner. With a few awkward grabs, Doc got it down to a reasonably controlled burn and we were prepping water.
We changed clothes and cleaned up. After a little debate, Doc decided to take the stomach tablets. I did too after him. We cleaned and put band aids over our smaller cuts. Doc redressed his calf that had reopened with our running. It hadn’t been a zombie bite after all, but a tiny bit of splatter and it would have the same result. He debated heating a needle and stitching it up, but decided against it. He looked at my wrist. His hands on me made me nervous. He decided it wasn’t broken or fractured as he poked at the yellowing bruise.
Doc used tweezers to dig the bits of wood out of his hand. He was a bloody mess when he was done. Wounds on the hands could be a serious problem in our situation.
Wearing a short sleeve shirt made me nervous. I felt like I was inviting a zombie to dinner. I ended up pulling my mud-stained, long-sleeved shirt back over my head even though it stunk with fear sweat.
Doc rolled out fire blankets for us to sleep on. We ended up going down to the library on the first floor and slept on couches in the teacher work rooms. There was no food in the building that hadn’t been chewed up by rodents years ago. We went to sleep hungry.
***
Doc shook me awake early the next morning.
He whispered, “Don’t make a sound and everything will be fine.”
I shivered as I looked up at the dark ceiling expecting to see the springs and boards under my bed as the zombies lifted them off of me.
Doc said, “We’re going to slip out without them noticing. There aren’t that many yet. I don’t know where they got in, but I saw a way out when I went to take a piss. We have to go now.”
I sat up and rubbed my face. Doc pulled me up to my feet.
He said, “There’s no time, Mutt. We have to go now and quietly.”
We stepped out into the dark library. We looked out through the windows by the checkout desk. Some of them were passing, so we ducked down along the wall. Doc put his finger over his lips and pointed to another door across the room. As we slipped away along the carpet, I started to wonder why Doc felt like there were not very many of them.
He opened the door. It revealed raw, wood shelves with televisions, DVD players, and something that looked like a DVD player, but had VHS printed on the front. We walked down the long room and then he cracked open the next door.
Doc leaned back and whispered, “We are going straight across. The door to the lounge does not lock. We need to go in very quietly though because the door does not lock.”
I nodded. We slid out and went across the empty hall. The door was locked. Doc looked around confused.
He said, “Oh, hell, we’re on the wrong side. Catch the door!”
I leaned back to grab it, but it slammed shut. I pulled, but it was locked.
Doc started running down the hall and I followed. We heard them coming. We turned and ran up the other way. He rounded the corner without looking, but had his new bar ready to swing. We ducked up a short side hall and stood by the wall.
The zombies continued up the hall without turning down the path we had chosen for some reason. We could hear them, but they didn’t come out where we could see them. There was a pause and then a few more went by without turning to come after us.
In the next pause, Doc stepped out and I followed. He went down the hall zigging back and forth pulling the doors. One finally opened and he led me into the classroom.
We walked across to the window. He looked out and then opened it. He helped me step through.
Doc said, “Go.”
I remembered my mother saying the same thing as I climbed out a window as she held the ankle of a zombie trying to get hold of me. I was forgetting something else.
Doc broke the train of thought by snapping. “Go, Mutt, keep moving.”
We crossed the empty parking lot and slipped into the trees across the way.
As we went, Doc said, “Now, we find something to eat and then we find Chef and Short Order.”
We spent three days looking. We went back to the Super Max. From across the tracks, we saw the parking lot was still active and the truck was gone.
The wall of bodies was still stacked in a wash of coagulated blood where we had shot them through the truck window when we escaped days ago.
Doc said, “Maybe they did figure out how to use keys. Be sure to see who is driving before we get in.”
I felt like we were forgetting something important as we slipped away from the place where we had started all the trouble in this town.
After all that trouble, we managed to go through two of the next three days without firing a single shot. On the third day, we fired all of them again.
We were in a Christmas store the last day. There were ceramic villages, trees with ornaments, babies in feeding troughs, and giant Santa Clauses staring down at us with dead, white faces. A baby in a feeding trough was not very funny in a world full of hungry zombies. I’m sure it symbolized something else before the zombies, but I couldn’t figure any explanation.
We heard the engine and looked out the front window. The truck rolled slowly by like it was just an ordinary day. Chef had his arm rested up in the caging of the driver’s side window.
We ran around the back and climbed out the window at the back of the store. As we stepped out in the street, the zombies following the slow moving truck reached for us. We turned and ran after it. The truck turned up another street as our shouts blended with the growls of the dead that were after us now.
Doc pulled out the .45 with the hand not holding his aluminum pole as the zombies closed in on us from behind yet again. We were going to need more than six bullets. He pointed the gun up in the air and fired all six rounds one after another.
As we ran, the truck slowly backed into sight again. They opened the back passenger door for us and waved us forward.
We jumped in and I pulled the door closed. I felt like crying when I locked the door and we started rolling forward. Doc dropped his pole and the .45 into the floorboard and melted into the seat.
I could still smell the gunpowder smoke in the interior of the cab.
Doc said, “Okay, you win. Now let’s go. You wouldn’t believe the shit we’ve been through.”
“Tell me about it, brother,” the voice said from the front.
A man I didn’t recognize turned around in the passenger’s seat and smiled at me through his scraggly beard.
Doc sat up suddenly.
I felt a gun rest against my temple from somewhere in the storage section. I glanced over without moving my head and saw the long barrel of a shotgun pressed into the back of Doc’s mane of white hair.
A hand came forward and rested on Doc’s shoulder. He didn’t move. The hand was holding a purple, plastic toy next to Doc’s ear.
The man holding the shotgun and the toy spoke in a shrill, high voice that made my head and stomach hurt.
He screeched. “Pretty Pony says, keep your hands where she can see them or you’re going to feel a kick to the back of your pretty, white head.”
Chapter 8: The Day We Made the Best Burger of Our Lives
They took our weapons one at a time as we rolled slowly forward. I could hear the zombies behind us. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The man I couldn’t see kept the gun to my head as he pulled the hunting knife out of my sheath and took it back out of my sight. He was wearing black, leather gloves that matched his sleeves. He never said anything.
The one disarming Doc couldn’t stop talking. Once he put down the purple pony toy, he leaned forward to pick up the .45 off the floor. As he did, the shotgun shoved Doc’s head into the side window. The man had long, blond hair in random braids and a handle bar mustache. As he leaned down
, I saw the Riding Dead emblem on the back of his jacket. The patch on his sleeve read, RD New Portown Chapter.
He lifted the .45 up as he kept Doc’s head pressed to the side of the truck with the shotgun. He flipped out the rotator and shook out the empty shells. A couple of them rang off the aluminum bar in the floorboard.
He said, “Empty. You two know how to make an entrance, Shaggy.”
He took the gun into the storage section. He reached in Doc’s belt and pulled out the other weapon.
The blond, shotgun biker said, “You better hope the safety is on or I might take off your pecker.”
He dropped out the clip.
“This one is empty too,” he said.
He reached up and pulled out Doc’s hunting knife. He leaned back and let Doc’s head off the plastic, window cover.
The man said, “Figures you guys would be out of bullets. You’ve been shooting up the town like some wild west something, huh?”
He waved the knife in Doc’s face. Doc flinched.
The man barked, “You should use these more and you wouldn’t have the stinks all worked up like you do.”
Doc said, “We got zombie guts on those knives. Be careful.”
The man held it up next to Doc’s eye. He put his mouth up to Doc’s ear and whispered. His lips were brushing Doc’s skin as he spoke.
“Is that so, boss?” the man hissed. “Maybe I pluck out your eyes with it and we see what happens.”
The man in the front passenger’s seat that had turned the jump seat around smiled again through his black beard. He spoke to me.
Black beard said, “What do you say, kid? Should we pluck his eyes out with the zombie knife for all the trouble you’ve caused?”
I just sat and stared.
Doc said, “He’s mute. He doesn’t speak. He can’t speak.”
“That must be refreshing,” the driver said without turning around.
“Shut up and drive, Hoss,” the beard in the passenger’s seat said. “Don’t go too fast. We still got a job here.”
The bearded man turned back to Doc. “This your son, Chatty Cathy?”
Doc answered, “No.”
The bearded man nodded. The fellow with the blond hair and the knife kept his chin rested on Doc’s shoulder, his shotgun on the back of Doc’s head, and the knife in front of Doc’s face. I felt bad for Doc, but a part of me also hoped he learned his lesson about handling the zombie knife by someone’s face.
The blond man was patting Doc’s pockets with the knife hand and pulled out something. I was afraid to turn my head with the gun pressed above my ear.
The bearded man said, “Is he your special friend? You guys play priest and altar boy in the sleeping bag at night?”
The blond man laughed too loud and high in Doc’s ear. Doc clinched his eyes shut at the noise. The man licked Doc’s ear and laughed some more. His tongue was pink and wet and not white.
Doc said, “No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Oh,” the bearded man said, “So, he’s available. You’re okay with us giving him a ride on the train then. That’s what you’re saying, is it?”
Doc said, “That’s not what I’m saying.”
The blond biker tapped Doc’s forehead twice with the flat of the blade. I shuddered and looked for blood or a scrape. I couldn’t see and I didn’t want to turn my head into the steady gun pressed in my temple.
The blond man chuckled quietly.
He whispered to Doc. “Be careful now. This is a trick.”
“You telling me not to poke your little boy toy here?” the bearded man asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Doc said, “No one tells you what to do. I got the message. We aren’t going to be any more trouble than we already caused.”
“That’s a good answer,” the blond man whispered. “The little girl in these pictures. The ass side of them says, ‘Jenny.’ You into little girls, then? That’s your thing, huh? You have her hidden away in a house somewhere tied up and waiting?”
I shivered when he said that. Doc gritted his teeth and did not answer him. The blond man kissed Doc’s ear and pulled his knife hand back away from Doc’s face.
“What’s your name, poluka?” the bearded guy asked.
“My friends call me, Doc,” he answered.
“Like the dwarf,” the blond man chuckled. “I’m Sleazy and this is Bashful over here.”
“I ain’t your friend, Doc,” the bearded man said. “What does everyone else call you?”
Doc answered, “John Brown.”
The blond guy barked out laughing again making me jump and he reached up with the hand still holding Doc’s hunting knife. He grabbed the top of Doc’s white hair and shook his head with it. Doc didn’t say anything, but gritted his teeth.
The blond man said, “Oh, that’s funny, Coop. Doc Brown, you get it? He looks just like him, don’t he? Do you see it? That’s hilarious. I’m going to call him Doc.”
He let go of Doc’s hair. I didn’t understand any of this. The bearded guy he called Coop shook his head.
Coop said, “Vike, you’ve got to settle down. I’m trying to figure some shit out here. You think you could take a page from the mute kid or Bam back there and shut your trap while I talk?”
Vike giggled a little in response. The hands of the dead pursuing us began pawing at the back door of the truck’s cargo section. I wanted them to tear the truck open and pull us out the doors. I didn’t care what happened in that moment, but I wanted out of the hands of these monsters even if it meant going into the mouths of the ones outside. I couldn’t breathe.
Coop scratched at his beard. He turned to the driver. I looked at the man driving and felt like I was forgetting something important.
Coop said, “Hoss, sped up a touch, but don’t lose them yet.”
“You got it,” Hoss said as we rolled slowly forward and the zombies’ hands scrapped off the back of the truck gradually.
Coop turned his attention back to us.
He said, “Why are you here, Doctor John?”
Doc said, “Things went bad at our last place and we had to run. We’ve been looking for somewhere to land.”
Coop said, “Check their arms.”
Vike lifted both of Doc’s Marthea High School shirt sleeves with the knife in his hand like he was trying to shave Doc’s shoulders with it. Bam tore the seams of the flannel shirt I had picked up at one of the houses we crashed in a couple nights before this interrogation.
Vike said, “Smooth as a baby’s ass, Coop.”
“Where is this magical place you come from, Johnny Rocket?” Coop asked.
Doc said, “Just a building down south. Place got heavy on zombies and light on people. With no one left to cook for, we set out looking for another place to live.”
“Well, this ain’t your place,” Vike said.
“You a cook, Johnson?” Coop asked ignoring Vike.
“I am,” Doc said. “Mutt her is a big help with that sort of work too.”
“Mutt?” Coop said.
“That’s what we call him,” Doc said.
Coop asked, “He likes it doggy style then, Pervey John, is that it?”
Hoss interrupted. “They are flanking us, Coop.”
“Speed up then, Hoss, but we aren’t done yet, now are we?” Coop said rubbing his beard and still facing us.
We continued to roll forward slowly.
“Who is we?” Coop asked.
Doc just sat there silently. Vike shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the back of Doc’s head pushing him forward in the seat.
“Answer the question, Doc Brown,” Vike ordered.
Doc coughed.
He said, “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“How many seagulls are in your flock looking for a soft place to land?” Coop asked. “How many assholes did it take to fill this truck?”
“There were four of us,” Doc said, “counting me and Mutt. We don’t know where the other t
wo are. We got swarmed at the Super Max when we were looking for food. We got separated and had to abandon this truck.”
Vike leaned up to Doc’s ear again as he pulled the shotgun back a little.
“You probably shot your gun up in the air too many times, Wild Bill,” Vike said. “You got your friends killed because of it and disrupted the whole scene. How does that feel, Doc? You like being the last dwarf? I bet that happens to you a lot with that trigger finger of yours. I bet you are the reason the zombies got in your last cottage in the woods.”
“Take a breath, Vike,” Coop said.
Vike slid back into the cargo section. My head was starting to itch and sweat where the gun was pressed to the side. I shook trying to keep my hands at my side. I wanted to pull the door open and run out of the truck. I hoped they would shoot me, but I was afraid they would catch me and do worse.
Coop said, “There was plenty of food in the truck when we found it. Weapons, too. Why would you go looking for more and nearly get yourself killed? Who are you really, Doc Brown? Who are you really scavenging for? You with the farmers? Are you a freedman sympathizer? This truck is built for travel. This isn’t some left over utility vehicle from someone’s garage. This was customized and welded. This is a war machine. It was filled with fuel for distance. It was filled with gear for an extended campaign.”
Vike said, “It had records and a fruity, little pony inside.”
Coop sat silently after his train of thought was interrupted. Hoss jumped in during the lull. The keys jingled against his knee as he turned towards Coop in the silence.
“How much farther you want to roll?” Hoss asked.
Coop said, “Past the canyon and then circle around. Circle around wide so we don’t lead them back. With these assholes out of commission, we may be done with this business soon.”
I didn’t like how that sounded.
Vike whispered, “We had target practice with them records. We used slingshots to avoid sounding the call for the stinks. You should consider shooting less, if you live much longer, John Brown.”
Coop interrupted now, “How about you start telling the truth about who you really are? Are you shy people?”
