by Brown, TW
One by one, he went through the few abandoned vehicles scattered about the rest area. Not so much as a half-empty bottle of water. Crossing the open lot, he made his way to the faded, paint-peeling-away-in-patches, concrete Visitor’s Center. Perhaps he’d have some luck there. He paused as he reached the curb, his eyes drawn to an empty bottle: peppermint schnapps. The brand—Chalet—was Mike’s usual.
A surge of excitement and adrenaline dumped into Cary’s gut. Maybe…just maybe he was on their trail. A few moments later, he was tearing open a small bag of barbecue flavored potato chips. It seemed that his luck was definitely turning.
2
A Geek with a Plan
Mike ducked under the outstretched hand of the business suit-clad zombie. Throwing his shoulder into its side, he knocked the thing off its feet. Raising the aluminum bat over his head with both hands, he planted a boot in the thing’s chest and brought the bat down hard. It took a few swings—Mike never ceased to be amazed at the strength of the human skull…it always looked so easy in the movies—and the thing’s head finally burst open, spilling its jelly-like contents. His hands buzzed, feeling like he was holding onto an electric fence that he couldn’t release.
He glanced over at where Kevin was finishing off what might’ve once been a pretty girl of about sixteen. It was becoming more difficult to tell. She’d been tall, thin, and long-legged with straight brown hair that went halfway down her back. Her left arm was gone from just above the elbow, and there was a nasty rip at the base of her neck. Kevin drove his Buck knife into the temple and then pushed the body away as it slid off the blade.
Heather stood a few feet from Kevin with her hands over her eyes. Mike scowled. That was going to get her killed. He got that she was young and scared. Still, closing your eyes when they were out in the open and exposed like this was a really bad idea.
“Heather,” Mike whispered.
“Huh?” The girl jumped. She lowered her hands, revealing her tear-filled eyes.
Crap, Mike thought. “You knew her?”
Heather nodded and walked up beside Kevin. Now that the killing was over, she could look down on the body. She knelt down and, with her leather glove-clad hand, closed the white-filmed, black-bloodshot eyes.
“Her name was September Richards,” Heather said, her voice trembling slightly. “I saw her get attacked. One of those things had her around the waist…standing behind her. She screamed so loud. I couldn’t see too good, but I knew it had its face buried in her hair at the back of her neck. She managed to break free and get to her car. She got in, but the window was rolled down. Two more were at her car…reaching in, and I could hear her screaming. She pushed one out, but the other one grabbed her arm. It bit down and I heard September scream.”
“Okay.” Kevin placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. He cursed himself silently for feeling so uncertain and awkward. Part of him wanted to give the girl a hug and offer comfort, but his mind went back to the night they’d rescued her from a pervert that had a room full of zombie schoolgirls.
Heather had been in that room. Tied up just like the others. Only, she wasn’t one of them. Yes, she’d been bitten, but for some inexplicable reason she hadn’t turned. He and Mike had freed the girl. Then, they’d dealt with the sick bastard that had been holding her captive.
That night, after Mike had fallen asleep and Kevin had taken over on watch, Heather had come up to him. At first it was just quiet conversation. She’d thanked him for about what seemed like the hundredth time for rescuing her. There had been a hug. Then…she had slid down his body and began unzipping his pants! Normally he was all for such things. Only…there were two problems: first, he did not want or need that sort of thank you; second—and this was the real issue for Kevin—Heather was not yet even close to eighteen. The Old World might be dead, but the taboos weren’t. At least not for Kevin.
“We need to get out of the open.” Mike finished wiping the gore off of his bat. They were in a residential area. Several of the houses had black X’s sprayed on them. They’d learned that this was an indication that the house had been completely looted. Most likely at the hands of Shaw and his goons.
They’d seen a couple of convoys rumble down some of the roads nearby. Usually there was enough noise to warn them and prevent them from being spotted. However, there had been one time when they were so busy trying to give the slip to a pack of over a hundred zombies. They had cut across a grocery store parking lot and, just as they were halfway across, they’d spied six makeshift armored vehicles parked a block away in front of a Home Depot. They had actually been forced to angle back towards the approaching mob. Fortunately they were able to duck around a corner. A moment later, gunshots sounded and the zombies changed direction.
It had been a slaughter. The undead were mowed down with machine guns or lit on fire with homemade Molotov cocktails. That raiding party made several slow passes through the area. It was likely that they suspected live humans were the cause of a pack of zombies coming together. Shaw had made it very clear that he and his men considered this area theirs. Intruders were not welcome. Well…unless you were a female. That’s how they had lost Angela Bergman and her three daughters, one of which just happened to be the music pop star, Shari.
“That open field,” Kevin panted. “The house at the top of that ridge is a great place to catch our breath. We can see anything coming with plenty of advance warning.”
The trio set off across the road and, one by one, climbed through the fence that separated an overgrown field that had once been used to grow corn. The long, neat rows were now a tangle of all sorts of weeds, some practically thigh-high.
Heather stopped suddenly, pointing towards the house. Mike shaded his eyes with his hands to get a better look. At first he thought that the girl was hallucinating. Then he saw something move past a window on the second floor. If whatever was inside that house was living…they were no doubt already aware that three strangers were approaching.
“How the hell did you see anything?” Mike asked in a whisper.
“I just saw the curtains move and figured since it isn’t windy and the windows looked shut, something inside musta caused it,” Heather replied with a shrug.
“Good work.” Kevin patted her on the arm and moved past her to take the lead. Mike noticed the girl’s cheeks flush slightly.
“What do we do?” Mike asked.
“No way we haven’t been spotted if the occupants are alive. I say we keep our hands off our weapons, but be ready to either dive if shooting starts or bash heads if it’s zombies,” Kevin said.
They went from single-file to spread out in a line with about five or six feet of space between each person. Kevin walked with his back to the house but a step ahead of the group so he could watch their faces. Their expressions would tell him if the situation changed. Meanwhile, he kept an eye back the way they’d come. He didn’t want anybody or anything sneaking up on them from behind. Mike’s eyes—shortly followed by Heather’s—widened.
“Zombies,” Mike said and drew his bat.
“Inside or outside?” Kevin asked as he drew a hand-axe and his large knife.
“Inside,” Mike answered.
“Heather, can you do this?” Kevin asked.
“I’ll try.” She drew a machete from the leather sheath on her hip.
“If it gets too hairy, just hang back and watch for anything coming our direction,” Kevin said.
They reached the stairs leading up to the porch. Kevin glanced at Mike, who nodded, and they crept up to the front door. Kevin tried the knob…it was unlocked. Turning it slowly, wincing at every click, he took a deep breath and pushed inward. The stench of death rolled out, coating everyone’s mouths and nostrils with its decayed, sickly sweetness.
“Recent,” Mike hissed.
Kevin peeked into the entry hall. Stairs to his right went up to a landing then turned a dogleg left, disappearing. To the left was a living room. Furniture was smashed and broken, mixed in with ga
rbage and…
“Is that an arm?” Heather rose on her tiptoes to see over the shoulders of the two men who stood blocking the doorway.
A low moan drifted down from upstairs as if in answer. Kevin stepped inside first, followed by Mike. Heather took two steps back, shaking her head slowly from side to side. She seemed to reach out and try to grab onto Mike just before he slipped inside the open doorway. Her hand floated there for a moment, then slowly dropped to her side.
Kevin waded into the cluttered living room. Through an archway he saw a formal dining room that was just as trashed as the living room. It seemed that everywhere he looked, he saw blood splattered on walls, curtains, and even the ceiling in a couple of places. Past the dining room was a kitchen…and a pair of zombies.
The first had been a policeman. He’d been dead for quite a while. His skin was almost completely grey in color with a texture that reminded Kevin of beef jerky. The uniform pants were in tatters, the shirt entirely gone. A bulletproof vest hung loosely on a fairly emaciated frame. The right arm was hideous and had been broken off halfway down the forearm. Bone stuck out, coated in gore.
“Gutted like a fish,” Mike mumbled, stepping up beside Kevin.
Kevin looked at the other ghoul and nodded. This one hadn’t been dead nearly as long. Its mid-section had been brutally ripped open. But even more disturbing was the fact that so much of the face had been ripped away that only the dangling genitals confirmed that this child had been a boy.
“I don’t even want to think about what led to this,” Kevin sighed.
Together, the two men advanced into the dining room. Both zombies did the same…revealing a third and even more horrible sight. Like a doll’s head that had been cast aside, a small round head sat tilted to one side by the few inches of spinal column jutting from what remained of its neck. White-filmed eyes with tiny traces of black stared at Mike and Kevin. A toothless mouth opened and closed soundlessly. (It would make wet smacking sounds in the nightmares that would plague them both for the rest of their lives.) The infant’s terrible eyes followed their every movement as they made short work of the policeman and child-zombie. Tears in his eyes, Mike rose a booted foot high and stomped the tiny head, choking back a sob as it burst underfoot.
Then…Heather screamed.
Mike and Kevin spun in unison. Both could see through the partially open curtains to the front porch where a shock of blood-matted, sandy blonde hair passed by…then another. A large family portrait hanging slightly askew above the fireplace caused Mike to pause while Kevin ran past. In the picture was a young boy, perhaps the size of the one without a face, a large dark-haired man in a charcoal-gray suit, obviously the father, a slightly plump but still beautiful woman with waist-length blonde hair, a pair of twin boys that had unruly sandy-blonde hair and mischievous grins on their six-year-old faces…and on an imitation Grecian pillar was an infant wrapped in an Ohio State University blanket.
Kevin reached the front door to discover Heather wrestling with a zombie-child whose mouth was smeared with dried blood. A second zombie that looked like a carbon copy of her assailant was struggling back to its feet at the bottom of the stairs.
Raising his axe, Kevin grabbed the arm of the one trying to take a bite out of Heather’s hand and spun it around. It hissed up at him just as he buried the weapon in its forehead. The blade caught, and the axe pulled from his grip with the collapsing body as a hand clutched his shoulder. Kevin found himself face to face with what had once been a middle-aged woman with long, blonde hair. Her teeth snapped together an inch from his chin as both her hands now had a firm grip on his upper arms.
Pushing away, Kevin felt his back slam into Heather who then tumbled down the stairs. She collided hard with the child-zombie that was just reaching the top step, and the two fell into a heap with the zombie on top. He didn’t have time to worry about her, though, as he wrestled his left arm free while dodging the she-zombie’s attempt to take a chunk out of his face or throat.
Mike rounded the corner, bat raised. He couldn’t see a way to take a good swing at the zombie trying to bite Kevin without possibly hitting his friend. More terrifying was seeing Heather flat on her back keeping the child-zombie on top of her at bay by holding a handful of hair. In short, he was useless.
Kevin grunted as he gave the zombie a shove. It staggered back just enough for him to get his left arm up. With a snarl of anger—and just a little fear—he drove his knife into its temple. The creature slumped onto his chest, and Kevin pushed it away in disgust.
“No more!” Heather screamed. Kevin’s and Mike’s heads whipped around as the girl brought up a large rock that had been part of the walkway leading up to the stairs. She slammed it into the side of the child-zombie’s head. In a flurry of movement, she was suddenly on top. Again and again she brought the rock down. The face began to disfigure. After the fifth blow, there was a sickening concave and dark gobbets of jelly-like matter began oozing and squirting from tears in the face and scalp. Both men hurried down, grabbing her arms.
“It’s done, Heather,” Kevin whispered.
“You can stop now.” Mike pried the rock from her hands, trying to ignore the clumps of hair and flesh that clung to it. He tossed it aside and helped the now shivering girl to her feet.
She backed away from the body, then looked down and seemed to notice for the first time the dark splotches of blood and brain matter that had splattered all over her shirt, pants, arms and even face. Without a word she pulled away from the two men and walked up and into the house.
***
Darkness had fallen almost three hours ago and Kevin still couldn’t sleep. Twice he’d gotten up and made a walk-through of the house. Clouds had rolled in making it particularly dark. Still, when he reached the kitchen, he knew what lay hidden by the blankets spread out on the floor. One area in particular gave him the shivers.
They’d decided to stay the night in this house. Mostly due to the rows of Mason jars full of pickles, stewed tomatoes, and a really tasty corn, garlic, and tomato salsa they’d found in a pantry in the basement. There was quite a feast that evening. But Heather had hardly touched a thing, and she hadn’t spoken a word.
After they’d gone through to ensure there were no further surprises to be found, Kevin had announced that this would be a good place to camp for a couple of days. They were just north of the town of Heath and in a good place to watch Highway 13 which was easily visible from the master bedroom on the second floor.
Adding to their fortune was a small creek that cut the expansive and overgrown cornfield down the middle. They could all wash up. Mike had been hopeful that his discovery of a lady’s razor and an array of creams and oils would cheer Heather up. She’d simply accepted the bundle and trudged silently to the water. He and Kevin had stood watch with one on either side of the creek, both keeping their backs turned to give as much privacy as possible.
By the time everybody was cleaned up and in some newly scavenged clothing, it was almost sunset. They’d eaten in uncomfortable silence. The two cast glances at the girl periodically, but neither knew quite what to do. After the meal, Heather had wrapped herself up in some blankets. Within moments, they heard her soft snores.
Kevin walked out to the hallway, motioning for Mike to follow. “If she doesn’t snap out of it, we could be in trouble.”
“Dude, she beat a child’s skull in!” Mike exclaimed. He caught himself before his voice grew too loud halfway through his retort.
“That wasn’t a child,” Kevin said. “You cannot think of those things as people in any way, shape, or form, and you know that.”
“Still…it was the first time—”
“And it won’t be the last time,” snapped Kevin.
“We can’t expect her to be some sort of crazed warrior chick.” Mike held up his hands, motioning for Kevin to keep the volume down. “She’s a kid…and, in case you’ve forgotten, she’s just been through a nasty ordeal.”
“Her and everybody else
in the world. And she is a lot better off than most. In case you’ve forgotten…she appears to be immune from the bite. Which we now know is only good if she stays alive.” Kevin remembered watching that pervert, Abernathy, as he died a slow painful death. Fed upon by three of the zombie schoolgirls he’d held in the downstairs of the high school in Heath.
Eventually he’d suffered enough injuries to die. Kevin had watched it all, not even wincing when one of the girls had managed to tear open his fat, pale belly. Mr. Abernathy’s eyes had nearly shot out of their sockets. Yep, that had to hurt. Finally the struggles ended. Then the three zombies had turned to him. Of course he’d been ready and put each one down. By the time he’d laid them out, the body tied to the chair had begun to twitch.
Just like Heather, the school teacher, Mister Abernathy, had shown immunity to the bite. He’d had a nasty scar from a bite that tugged at Kevin’s guilt over leaving behind Cary Kolchek, a friend who had set out on this survivalist escapade with Mike and a fourth friend, Darrin Goldburn. Kevin’s childish actions had led—inadvertently or otherwise—to Cary being bitten during a refueling stop. Abernathy had shown that, even if a person is immune from a non-lethal bite, death by zombie still resulted in that person coming back.
That had been a painful revelation for Kevin…more so since he’d left Cary alive. With a disabled car. Surrounded by zombies. And a gun. With one bullet. If Cary was like Heather or Abernathy…Kevin sighed.
“…doesn’t mean she isn’t still just a frightened girl.” Mike had been talking. Kevin couldn’t recall about what.
Mike seemed to take Kevin’s sigh as resignation to or acceptance of whatever point he’d been making. Like a tiny dog that had chased away a cat or squirrel form his yard, Mike walked away with a satisfied swagger of victory. Kevin was still standing in the hallway when he heard the not-so-quiet snoring of his friend begin.
