by M. Van
The attendant, who by now had started shouting profanities, had followed me inside the room. He stopped as I pulled open the blinds and caught a first glimpse at what was happening outside.
“Oh, shit,” fell from my mouth, and I heard the words echoed back to me by the attendant.
What looked like a fifty-yard-wide wall of bodies tightly pressed together shuffled toward us. Nothing seemed to stop them. Not a single object presented an obstacle. They lumbered on across the field parallel to the road Ash and I had used to get here, and it wouldn't be long before they reached the gas station. Hands clawed into nothingness. Noses frantically sniffed the air as if they hadn’t already known what they would find here.
A patrol car flashing lights passed by the window and stopped between the building and the oncoming horde of zombies. Two officers stepped out carrying shotguns. They took a stand behind the car while others arrived in a similar manner. Four more cars joined, forming a wall of their own—anything to stop the zombies from reaching the station.
“What’s wrong?” Ash said. I turned to the door where she had maneuvered her chair—a grim expression on her face. I shook my head, which I knew to be enough to assert it wasn’t good, as the first shotgun burst made me flinch.
It must have freaked out the attendant, because he screamed and then bolted for the door, nearly knocking Ash off her wheels. Ash released the doorpost she had clung to, not even calling names after the attendant who’d rushed past her. The screams of the attendant added to the panic that had ensued inside the shop. Distraught shouts and screams, along with stuff crashing to the ground, served as background noise to the gunshots outside.
“What do we do?” Ash asked as I returned my gaze to the window. I took a moment to watch the officers lose their claim on the makeshift fence of cars. The zombies already started to squeeze past the vehicles or clamber over them. The officers retreated, still firing their weapons. Among them, I saw the elderly officer who had talked to us before. He had taken a position in the back of a pickup truck that gave him a high-ground advantage over the zombies edging closer. Even from this distance, I recognized his fear from the way he frantically tried to reload his shotgun and dropped a couple of shells, but he quickly composed himself and fired his weapon with accuracy, like the seasoned officer he exuded to be.
“Mags,” Ash said. Her voice brought me back into the tiny room, and I faced her.
“We do what we always do,” I replied.
“Lay low, take what we can,” Ash said. I nodded in agreement.
| 6
Ash stayed behind me as I made my way from the small lounge to the attendant’s desk inside the shop area of the gas station. The doors to the shop stood wide open, and the sounds of terror in the form of screams, weapons fire, and accelerating car engines wafted inside. The shop itself looked deserted as I spotted a sales rack for bags.
“Stay here,” I told Ash and, without further explanation, rushed to the rack. Most bags were too small and useless for what I needed, but a shoulder bag looked up for the job. I swung it over my head and rejoined Ash at the counter.
Ash casted a dark gaze out the window where the zombies had breached the perimeter set by the officers. Everything seemed to have turned to shit in just a few minutes.
I jumped at the crash outside the shop as an old, beat-up truck slammed into the station wagon of a man who was still filling his vehicle with gas despite the threat of zombies. The driver’s side door to the truck swung open, and a man dressed from head to toe in denim tumbled out of the truck. The owner of the station wagon still held on to the hose of the pump, and he looked as if he wanted to scold the man in denim, but when a woman in a brightly colored dress dropped down from the truck, sinking her teeth into denim man’s throat, he dropped the hose and ran for his life. Highly flammable liquid poured from the hose as the woman’s head flung up, her jaw stretching as if her life depended on it. Blood ran down her dress while the denim man gurgled for his last breath.
The station wagon man ran for the shop. His screaming attracted the attention of some other zombies, and they started lumbering after him. Sneakers squeaked on the tiled floor as station wagon man stopped in search of a place to hide.
Ash tapped me on the arm as I watched the man decide whether to hide behind an empty rack that once seemed to hold potato chips or a refrigerator box.
“Get the door,” Ash said with enough urgency in her voice to get me moving. I hurried behind the counter. There had to be a switch or a button to close the automatic doors and lock them. I searched the desk but found nothing until my eye fell on a key sticking in a panel that sat mounted to the side below the register. As I turned the keys, the doors started to slide close.
“Are they locked?” Ash shouted, pointing out the obvious. “They’re motion detected.”
The zombies’ jaws had already dropped, noses flaring in expectation of sinking their teeth into station wagon man’s flesh. With the doors closed, I gave the key another turn, and I felt it click into place.
The first zombie slammed its face into the glass door. The black oily substance that had replaced its blood splashed and spread onto the glass. Loud thuds followed as the remaining zombies plowed against the doors. I could hear the glass crack and knew those doors wouldn’t hold them for long.
“Check him,” I said to Ash as I made my way to the canned goods.
As far as food was concerned, Ash and I were in good shape. Because the zombies ignored us in most cases, we didn’t have much trouble loading up on supplies in overrun shops that weren’t accessible for regular people. The back of our Knight piled over with mostly nonperishables, but these days I didn’t take any chances and took whatever opportunity I had to stock up on food.
The shoulder bag was already starting to get heavy when a hand grabbed my ankle. I screamed in a panicked reaction and jerked back. My heart pounded in my chest as I pulled my handgun from its holster.
“Please don’t,” a frightened voice came from under the lowest shelve.
“What’s wrong?” Ash shouted from the other side of the shop. Gun raised, I stepped back to get a better glimpse of the person hiding under the shelve. Ash repeated her question, and I heard the tires of her wheelchair squeak on the tiles as she drew closer.
“I’m fine,” I answered but kept the gun aimed in the direction of the voice.
“Please,” that same frightened voice said as I watched the middle-aged woman who came with the voice crawl out from underneath the shelf. I made room for her without lowering the gun. Ash’s chair stopped by my side, and we exchanged a glance while the woman climbed to her feet.
“Suzanne!” a man’s voice exclaimed. Ash and I both turned to see station wagon man rush around a couple of racks right into the woman’s arms.
It took the man and woman a moment to notice we were still watching them. Not to mention the zombies pounding on the doors. It took them long enough that I decided to holster my weapon—I didn’t think they’d be turning into zombies after all that time.
I noticed the open-toed slippers on the woman’s feet, along with the pink tracksuit she wore. The station wagon man wore a dark-blue tracksuit along with matching sneakers, and I wondered if they had even realized the world had gained a zombie problem.
“Mags,” Ash said, “this is the guy hiding behind the refrigerator box.”
The man composed himself, taking deep breaths while he took the woman’s hand before he turned to me.
“Richard Shaffer, but call me Dick,” he said, stretching out a hand. Ash made a noise that came close to mocking the man. As I raised my hand to shake Dick’s, I smacked Ash in the head. Not hard, but enough for her to notice. Dick eagerly shook my hand before he pointed at the woman.
“This is my wife, Suzanne,” he said, clinging to the woman.
I nodded and then pointed at the zombies knocking on the doors. These two wouldn’t stand a chance if we didn’t get out of here.
“We need to get them into t
he Knight,” I told Ash and moved around her wheelchair. The front of the shop didn’t provide another way out, so I returned to the small lounge. Through the window, I noticed the row of patrol cars that now stood abandoned. The zombies, along with the officers who had survived the first onslaught, had moved on. A single figure stood waving its arms as it tried to free itself from where it had gotten stuck between two cars.
A side door caught my attention, and I went to it. I tested the handle, and the lock clicked open. Easing the door open to a crack, I peeked out. The brewing dusty air hit me like a brick. Hanging out in an air-conditioned gas station made the outside air hard to breathe.
I stuck my head out the door and could just catch a glimpse of the Knight. The sight of it made me sink to my knees, the task of getting to the truck overwhelming me. Two or three police officers had barricaded themselves inside a different truck parked on a strip of grass between us and the Knight. They fired rounds out the window. The truck itself stood surrounded by zombies two rows thick. A couple of zombies stood clawing at the door of a restroom building that stood apart from the main gas station.
Shots were fired from high above, and it seemed as if someone had taken refuge on the roof of the station and was attempting to take out as much as they could. The zombies besieging the truck holding the officers took most of the hits.
Other folks tried to flee as they sped away in various vehicles.
“Mags,” Ash said as she rolled her chair into the lounge. As I glanced at her, the corners of her mouth instantly dropped. She knew me too well. Rolling closer, she removed the sunglasses and narrowed her eyes at me.
“They won’t be able to get out,” I said, lowering my voice when I noticed the couple had followed Ash inside the room. At the sound of a loud crack, Suzanne screamed and Dick slammed the door to the lounge behind him. As if it would help, he shoved the table in front of the door.
Ash glanced at them over her shoulder before turning back to me and holding my gaze. She knew what I was thinking. There would be only one way to get them inside the Knight, and that was to get the Knight to them.
“Can we get out that way?” Suzanne said. The fear hadn’t left her voice, but she seemed to be in control of it. Dick came closer, leaning over Ash and peeking out through the door I still held at a crack.
“My God,” he said in an exasperated voice. “We’re trapped.”
“Oh God,” Suzanne added while her eyes filled with tears.
Ignoring them, I removed the shoulder bag and hung it over the back of Ash’s wheelchair. Then, I pulled my spare weapon, a smaller caliber automatic and handed it to Ash. She already had her nine-millimeter automatic attached to her leg with a piece of Velcro, but I wanted her to have the a backup weapon.
“What are you planning?” Dick asked. Ash glanced at him over her shoulder. The man had turned to hold his wife.
“Mags is gettin’ the truck,” Ash said, sounding more confident than I felt.
“You can’t go out there,” Dick replied. “It’s suicide.”
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “Those zombies out there have caught your smell and they won’t stop trying to get in here. Once there is nothing left to eat outside, they’ll surround the building.”
The man and woman looked at me as if I had something stuck up my nose. For a second I thought they had caught the stupidity of my remark about the zombies having caught their smell, but then Dick just started shaking his head.
“This is suicide,” he repeated.
“Don’t worry. She’s good at this,” Ash said as her gaze returned to me, “right.” Her last word came out as a mere whisper. I leaned in to hug her and kissed the top of her head.
“Zombie-killing badasses, remember,” I whispered near her ear so the others wouldn’t hear. I caught the briefest of smiles on her face but knew I hadn’t eased her worry.
Pulling the nine-millimeter from my holster, I readied myself at the door, taking deep breaths.
“Wait,” Dick called out, “give me one of those guns.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. I didn’t have more guns on me, and I wanted Ash to have every advantage she could get if she needed to defend herself against the zombies. I didn’t mean any harm to these people, but if forced to choose, one person would come out of this building, and she wouldn’t be walking.
“You gave the kid a gun,” Dick said, annoyed.
I glared at him. Dick shifted uncomfortably. His wife mimicked his movement.
“Her name is Ash,” I said authoritatively, “and if you call her kid again, I’ll leave you and your wife behind.” The man noticeably swallowed, and his eyes widened. A look at Ash told me she had trouble restraining a grin.
“Be safe, okay,” I said as I took the sunglasses from her hand and placed them on her nose, and then I turned to the door and slid out.
“Don’t get shot,” I heard her say before I closed the door behind me.
What was I thinking? The words kept rolling inside in my head as I crept to a pallet stocked with barbecue coals. A serious amount of bullets hammered down on the zombies assaulting the truck carrying the three officers. From this vantage point, I had a clear view of them fighting for their lives. Bodies unmoving or just unable to stand covered the ground around the truck.
The shooter up on the roof kept his aim low, mainly crippling the zombies, probably so he wouldn’t hit anyone inside the truck. The pile of bodies helped to keep the still-standing zombies from reaching the men through the windows of the truck. The men inside the truck emptying their weapons into the shriveled-up faces of the undead also helped.
I glanced around. Most of the cars that had been waiting for their turn at the gas pump had taken off. Whoever had survived was long gone except for the person on the roof and the officers inside the truck. A handful of zombies stood clawing at the door of the restroom, so I assumed someone was in there. Others feasted on their prizes, slumped over bodies, tearing or chewing on flesh and insides.
In the blazing heat, the mix of smells wafting on the wind became nauseating. A bead of sweat trickled down my back as I gathered up the nerve to make a run for the Knight. In a similar situation, I would usually just stroll at a leisurely pace and take my time. The goal would be to mimic the zombies so they would leave me alone. The shooter on the roof deprived me of that option. I was afraid the person up there would shoot me, thinking I was a zombie.
I decided to take a little detour. My best bet would be to run up to the restrooms, go around the small building, and from there cross the lot to where the Knight stood parked.
It seemed like a good idea as I started my sprint. Except a few steps into my run, dirt sprang up as the bullets hit the ground near my feet. Another shot pinged off an abandoned vehicle while I fell to my knees and ducked behind the car. My heart hammered inside my chest, and my breathing came so fast it hurt to force air inside my lungs.
“Hold your fire, you dumb f—” Ash’s last word drowned under a barrage of bullets, but soon after, the gunfire stopped. I stuck my head around the edge of the car for the briefest of moments. When it no longer seemed anyone would take a shot at me, I peeked out again and searched the roof of the gas station for the shooter.
Ash’s head poked out through the half-opened door where I had left her. She had followed my progress. I waved and shouted, “Thanks,” as she waved back.
“No problem,” she shouted.
Up on the roof, I could see two figures—one in plain clothes, jeans, and a T-shirt, and a young police officer. The guy in the T-shirt seemed unaware of what had just happened as he fired his rifle at the zombies trying to get at the truck. The young officer stood frozen on the edge of the roof, his rifle pointed at the sky.
“Not a zombie,” I shouted and waved at him so he could see I wasn't one of the undead. He lifted a hesitant hand. It wasn’t the reassurance I had hoped for, but it would have to do. I got to my feet. I glanced around to check my surroundings, but none of the zombies se
emed to have taken an interest in me. With the gas station on my right and the little restroom building on my left, the truck carrying the officers stood dead center in the middle of the lot. Just within my sight of vision, I could see parts of the Knight’s massive grill as it peaked out from behind the restroom building. I figured my best bet would be to go around the building and make a run for the parking area.
The young officers still stood frozen on the edge as I left my hiding spot. My heart still raced, and the thought of getting shot by a nerve-racked police officer who literally stood on the edge didn’t help. Finally, the man in the T-shirt called out to him. This drew his attention, and I used the opportunity to sprint for the restroom building.
| 7
Sweat trickled down my face as I climbed behind the wheel of the Knight and slammed the door shut. The noise made a couple of the zombies attacking the truck look up, sending their noses up in the air. Nostrils flared, but I knew they wouldn’t find the scent zombies craved. Noise would have to do.
After I started the truck, I rolled down the windows on both sides and cranked up the stereo. Ash had my phone hooked up to the system, and I pressed play without even checking the playlist. A heavy bass line almost blew out the speakers immediately after I hit the button. I jumped but kept Jay Z’s fast-paced rhymes, heavy beats, and guitar riff playing at high volume.
The zombies went berserk. Jaws stretched and snapped shut. Heads bobbed from left to right as they searched for their new snack. I stuck my head out the window and waved at them.
A bunch of them snarled, leaving the truck and its occupants behind to find a new and bigger truck with me behind the wheel. As fast as they could with their decrepit bodies, feet shuffled across the dirt. A few of the zombies dropped before they made it halfway to me. The men on the roof and from inside the other truck still fired their guns, taking out as many as they could.
