“You’re so lucky. I couldn’t go.”
“You should’ve eaten breakfast, works every time.”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
Paul lowered the weapon. “Remember when you got stuck with a bad stomach ache out on the boat one time?”
Dan grunted. “Don’t remind me.”
“And you ended up having to go in the water.”
“At least the water was warm. My balls are tea-bagging the snow right now.”
Paul laughed and it felt wrong after what just happened.
With the aid of some Burger King napkins found in the glove box, Dan was back in a flash. They took the much needed flashlights, ammunition and water from the trunk – another break – and climbed back into the warm cop car while Paul made a mental note to grab some hand sanitizer somewhere along the line.
“Here, found these in the console.” Dan slipped a Mounds Bar and a Milky Way through the metal cage.
Paul offered Sophia the Mounds Bar and she shook her head. He handed her the Milky Way and she shook her head again.
“You have to eat something.”
She hit him with a cold glare that made him look away.
Unwrapping the Mounds Bar, he watched Dan toss M&Ms into his mouth, one after the other. The squad car didn’t handle nearly as well as the Jeep, but it did okay. They took back roads around Kansas City and its sprawling burbs, smoke billowing in the distance and dusk scratching the sky. Paul looked over to Sophia who was leaning against her door sound asleep. His stomach turned when he thought about clearing the next place. They couldn’t even clear a gas station without losing half their crew. Now down to three, how many would it be tomorrow? Or the day after that? Paul checked his guns, Mike’s dead eyes watching him from the far corner of his mind.
Dan pulled off the interstate and rolled through some small town that looked just like the one before it. Paul stared out the side window and yawned. Normally, orange street lights would be flickering across his face, but in this new world shadows ruled the night. Everything looked different in the dark, leaving them trapped in two different worlds – one where they could see and one where they couldn’t, both deadly in their own right.
“Where are we anyway?”
Dan yawned. “Dwight, Kansas.”
A yellow school bus, flipped on its side in the ditch, sailed through the squad car’s headlights. Paul could’ve sworn he saw small heads bobbing around the open emergency door in the back. He shivered and pumped the shotgun. Maybe the earthquakes were warning signs after all. Maybe Ebola and ISIS finally met their match. Maybe this modern day horror story was punishment for having more friends on Facebook than in real life, for texting instead of talking, for shuffling through life with our heads down like a bunch of zombies while our neighbors quietly pleaded for help.
Civility was lucky…it died before any of this hell began.
Dan stopped the cruiser in the middle of a snow covered road, just on the outskirts of small town USA. Up on the left, a large two story bar resembled a log cabin more fitting for The Great North Woods. In large red letters, The Red Stallion adorned a tall sign in the moonlit parking lot. Below that, smaller words reminded everyone that line dancing lessons kicked off Saturday night at seven and Colt Ford would kill the stage on March ninth. Across the street was a single story brick building with a sign of its own across the roof reading Dancers in big curling letters that, undoubtedly, came to life at night when there’d been electricity. The dark neon beer signs covering the blacked out windows made Paul guess they hadn’t been doing line dancing in there.
There were no cars in either parking lot, which didn’t mean squat. Those things didn’t drive, not yet anyway.
“Let’s just sleep in the car,” Sophia said, staring out her window. “I’m not getting out.”
Paul traded an uneasy look with Dan in the mirror and set a tentative hand on her leg. “It’s too dangerous. What if they saw us and surrounded the car?”
“Then we run them over!”
“It’s not that simple. This is just a standard cop car and it could stall or get stuck or I don’t know but it’s too risky.”
“And I really don’t want to wake up to a hand smashing through the window and grabbing my face,” Dan added, eyes bouncing between them.
Sophia looked up as if realizing Dan was still here for the first time in hours. She spoke in a low voice. “I’m not getting out.”
Paul released a heated breath and jerked his chin to Dancers because of its blacked out windows and more manageable size. Dan turned off the headlights and cruised around back, like a real cop on the hunt for an escaped inmate while Sophia pouted. The police radio cast an eerie glow across Dan’s face, turning his eyes into sunken sockets and his mouth into a sullen frown. Shutting off the engine, they waited for their night vision to adjust with the windows up and the doors locked. It was dead quiet. The kind of quiet that now followed them everywhere they went.
Chills ran through Paul as he unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to his wife. “We can do this without any mistakes this time.”
Sophia studied the back of the bar like there was something interesting to see, but Paul knew the green dumpster and litter stuck in a chain link fence were just distractions to keep from meeting his eyes. She blamed him for those boys’ deaths and that was okay because so did he.
He could hear his own heart pounding in his ears. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I missed that bathroom door and that’s on me, no one else. Those kids didn’t deserve that and Carla didn’t deserve that and I fucked up.”
“Oh God, it’s not your fault, Paul!” Dan interrupted, twisting around in the front seat. “Pull your head out because I’m going to need you in there. We’re not cops or the National Guard and it’s only because of you that we’ve made it this far in the first place. We don’t even have time to bury someone, let alone mourn them. We have to keep moving, mentally and physically, or we will be next. So don’t start getting sentimental on me now, goddammit!”
Sophia turned away in disgust. “Oh shut up, Dan!”
He frowned at her. “Why? It’s true, Sophia. So quit laying a guilt trip on him because we all missed that door, and now we have to go and do it all over again and I need both of you in the game!” He turned back around. “Jesus!”
Sophia pulled a zipper on the back of her glove. Back and forth. Back and forth. Paul set a hand on his wife’s hand, stopping the zipper. “I know how messed up this is but if we stick together, we are going to get through it.”
Sophia finally met his gaze, tears magnifying her eyes as she searched his shadowy face. “I don’t blame you for what happened this morning. I’m just scared.”
He cradled her cheeks in his palms and tipped his chin down. “It’s okay to be scared. We’re all scared.”
Her eyes softened. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said, kissing her lips and soaking her in like this might be his last chance.
Dan stared out the window, drumming his fingers against the wheel. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered. “I need a drink.”
☠
The metal back door was locked, and a nearby cellar door had a padlocked chain running through its handles.
“What now?” Dan whispered, swinging his nervous gaze around like he just heard something.
Paul looked up, a light bulb going off in his eyes. “The bolt cutters in the trunk.”
Dan pulled the keys from his jeans. “I’ll get them.”
Paul covered him while Sophia gazed at the night sky.
“It’s so dark.”
Paul looked up to the bright stars above. “It’s crazy how much light pollution a city gives off.” He paused. “Used to give off.”
“Even the sky has changed.”
“Everything’s changed,” he whispered, snapping his head around to a sound that came from a small patch of trees behind them. It sounded like someone, or something, stepped on a stick.
Sophia pressed up against him, her gun hanging limply in one hand, a dark flashlight in the other. “What happens when we run out of batteries in a few years?”
He turned to her, his heart warming. Her confidence that they would still be here in a few years gave him a thin ray of hope in the moonlit darkness. “Solar power is our future now. We’ll figure it out.”
“Without Google or Wikipedia we’ll have to start going to libraries again.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She shrugged. “I like the smell of old books,” she replied, exhaling a forlorn breath. “At least we still have the stars.”
Paul pulled her against him. “At least I still have you.”
She stood on her tippy-toes and gave him a warm peck on the lips. “You will always have me.”
“They had this thing strapped in there so tight,” Dan said, returning with the bolt cutters, “I thought I was going to need bolt cutters to free the bolt cutters.”
Paul’s eyebrows drew together. “Why are you yelling?”
Dan frowned. “I’m not.”
“Okay then, let’s do this.”
Paul stuffed one glove in a coat pocket to free up his trigger finger. The gun felt like it was made of ice and he could already feel his fingers getting stiff. Dan cut the chain and set the bolt cutters aside before pulling the cellar doors back with a rusty squeak. Sophia’s flashlight lit up a wooden staircase leading down into a pool of darkness, a musty waft of stale air releasing into their faces.
“Oh great, another haunted house,” she grumbled.
“You mean haunted strip bar.” Dan spread a toothy grin into his red cheeks and held up a crumpled flyer with a grainy picture of a tall blond named Busty Dusty. “I hope we didn’t miss her show.”
“Alright, we stay together and we check every door this time,” Paul said, tossing an empty beer bottle down the steps.
It shattered at the bottom and they exchanged anxious glances in the quiet settling around their feet. When no one came moaning into the light, Paul took the lead and went down first. Sophia and Dan went next, leaving the doors open in case they needed to make a hasty retreat. Paul grimaced as each step creaked like an old ship. Shadows jumped in Sophia’s jerky light and at the bottom of the staircase, they fanned out and followed her flashlight with their shotguns. The unfinished basement reeked of mothballs and dirt, the cobweb-draped rafters pressing against them. They scanned the dusty stacks of chairs and dented kegs, old glassware and a rusty bicycle with a broken basket leaning in one corner. On the other side of the room, a narrow stairway led up to another door. They swapped knowing glances and cautiously crossed the room. Sophia jerked the light to a woman standing next to a poker table free of dust. Paul aimed for her face and blew out a long breath before lowering his gun.
“Damn, that’s creepy,” Dan whispered, lowering his Browning.
Paul stared at the mannequin’s long black wig and green painted nipples peeking out from a sheer negligee. “We should haul her outside and use her for target practice before we leave in the morning.”
“Forget that, I’m hauling her into bed tonight.”
“You would,” Sophia muttered, moving again. “And we don’t have enough ammo to waste on target practice.”
That single thought scared the hell out of Paul. They would need to find a gun store or sporting goods store and on the now plan. Ammo had to come before food and water. At the bottom of the other staircase, Paul’s breath rushed through the beam of light. He looked back to Sophia and Dan before going up. Each groan of the wooden steps turned him to stone, making the staircase stretch forever. Dan went up backwards, guarding their backs with his shotgun pointed into the darkness swallowing them from behind.
At the top of the stairs, Paul held up a hand. They stopped, their heavy breathing the only sound in the tight space. He put an ear to the wooden door and listened, pulse thudding in the hollow of his throat. Looking back, he shook his head and quietly took turned the icy doorknob. His left eye went first, bravely peeking through the crack in the door while his other eye hid in the dark. “Pitch black,” he whispered.
“Keep going,” Dan replied.
A long screech sang out when he pushed the door open and eased into the bar. Sophia’s flashlight cut through the darkness like a lightsaber, illuminating the tables and chairs surrounding a T-shaped stage with a brass pole mounted at each end. She jerked her gun to their reflections in a mirrored wall and nearly pulled the trigger. Paul gave her a warning look, realizing it was too much too soon. If they were still alive a year from now, they might be more adept at putting such painful tragedies like Matt and Mike behind them in short order.
But this was only day seven.
The pain blinded.
And death closed in.
There were a thousand different ways to die in this world now and, ultimately, inexperience could prove just as lethal as the biters. Paul put a shaky finger to his lips and pressed on while Sophia relaxed her trigger finger and let out a long breath that tumbled through the light. A gunshot rang out, shattering the giant mirrored wall. Glass shards flew through the air as they took cover behind a Valley pool table off to the side. Paul slid the shotgun into his shoulder, ears ringing from the indoor blast.
“Holy shit, those things are shooting at us now!” Dan cried in horror, leaning against the pool table.
“I’m not one of those things!” a female voice called out.
“Neither are we!” Paul quickly replied, not wanting to leave any room for misunderstandings. “We’re human!”
A trigger clicked back. “What do you want?”
“We’re just looking for a safe place to sleep for the night.” Paul looked at Sophia and Dan, heart racing. “We came down from Iowa!” he added, hoping that would give them some kind of clout.
“Good for you!”
He cringed with her frosty tone and started to get up.
Sophia snatched his wrist. “We’re not looking for any trouble,” she yelled out. “We can leave.” She ignored the sour look warping Paul’s face. “Are you hurt?”
It was a moment before the woman replied. “Not yet.”
Paul could feel the weight of her eyes and gun upon them. He figured the place must be secure or she would’ve been stripper-stew by now. Outside of the broken mirror, everything looked in order.
“What’s your name? Mine’s Sophia.”
“You’ve come to the wrong place, Sophia!”
“Listen, if we come out will you promise not to shoot? These two idiots have gotten me into enough trouble for one day and I am too tired to deal with any more.”
The woman laughed sharply. “That’s men for ya, isn’t it?”
A tension-filled silence gripped the room as the mystery woman quietly deliberated their fate. “Alright, come out with your hands up or I will shoot you dead and that is a guarantee.”
“Okay,” Sophia said, trading a hesitant look with her husband. She started getting up and Paul pushed her back down. He rose to his feet, holding his shotgun over his head like he was crossing a muddy river in Vietnam.
The woman hit him with her flashlight, making him squint.
“Can they get in here?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer. The question, however, placed them on the same team. Us against them.
“You think we’d be having this conversation if they could?”
Sophia calmly stood up, her flashlight and pink gun held high. “This is my husband, Paul, and our friend, Dan,” she said, quickly establishing a human connection.
“Sorry we scared you,” Paul added.
“Sorry about the gunshot,” she said, setting the flashlight on the bar. The beam of light rolled off to a darkened Golden Tee in the corner. The woman was gorgeous, with blond hair flowing over her puffy purple coat like streams of honey. She stared at them for a moment before speaking again. “I’m Wendy.”
Dan got up next, his brow folding when he saw the blond bombshell sta
nding behind the bar. “You could’ve killed us.”
“If I wanted to kill you, honey, you’d already be dead.”
Sophia kicked him in the leg. “How long have you been here, Wendy?”
Wendy took a slow drink from a rocks glass with a finger’s worth of amber-colored liquid inside. “Three days.”
“Are you alone?”
She set the glass down and nodded. “I figured someone would’ve shown up by now. My sister and her husband own the place.”
Paul surveyed the bar, his fingers tingling with blood loss. It was the typical hole-in-the-wall strip-bar, hidden out in the middle of nowhere. “So what’s your plan?”
“Plan?” Wendy laughed and traded a .38 snub nose revolver for the bottle of whiskey on the bar. “You’re looking at it,” she replied, pouring another finger.
“Please tell me you have tequila.”
Wendy looked up and stared at Dan for an awkward moment before grabbing a bottle of Cuervo from a shelf above an old fashioned cash register. She slid the bottle down the bar and then a shot glass. “Sorry, we’re all out of limes, sweet pea.”
Dan gestured to the shotgun he was holding above his head. “You mind?”
Wendy studied the wisps of blond hair curling out from Dan’s ski cap. “Set it on the table.”
Dan set the Browning on the marked up green felt and went to the bar.
Wendy took another drink, watching him out the corner of her eye, her right hand a few inches from the gun on the bar. “Don’t tell me your plan was to come here because I can tell you from personal experience it’s not a very good one.”
Paul didn’t wait for permission and laid his shotgun on the table. “We’re heading south to get out of this cold.”
Her eyebrows went up. “To where?”
“The Gulf of Mexico.”
The ghost of a drunken grin played on her red lips. “And do what? Play volleyball on the beach and live happily ever after?”
Dan filled the shot glass. “Pretty much,” he said, knocking the glass back and slamming it on the bar. “We’ll find a beach house and put our backs to the ocean,” he continued, unable to tear his eyes from Wendy.
A Little More Dead Page 6
