He eases off of her unsecured leg, his excitement building. The back of his neck tingles with tension he can’t wait to release, again and again. The possibilities of their situation are boundless, and he doubts he’ll ever return to base now that he has Vida as his new toy.
Vida feels the weight lift off of her leg. She has but a moment to snatch it back. With speed and flexibility that surprises them both, she reclaims her limb and rears it back. Lunging for the headboard, she grabs on to it for support and kicks out at the naked soldier with all the adrenaline fueled might she can muster.
Brad lands hard on the floor after catching his back on the recliner. Vida slides off the bed as fast as she can before he can regain his control. Not having enough time to work the knots, she simply slips out of her shoe and runs blindly from the dim room.
Sunlight sears her eyes, and she’s instantly blinded in her desperate escape from the rapist. She doesn’t let that stop her, however. Vida guides herself along the stair railing by memory and is on the ground floor by the time her vision fully recovers.
She runs full speed, despite her lopsided, one-shoe gait. She heads around the building to where the jeep is parked. Thankfully she needn’t be concerned with keys since she saw Brad start it with just a push of a button.
The quick pace makes it hard to stop, but Vida manages to do so when she hears the roar of a large engine on the street. She almost made it to the corner that would take her to the back of the motel, but instead she must drop down below tall hedges. Bare feet plod after her, making her torn between which is the greater threat: her would-be captor or the large black truck she sees through the shrubs.
Gunshots ring out as the person driving the truck fires on some zombies. Vida had been so distressed and hell-bent on escaping, she had forgotten all about the walking dead. The sound makes Brad take cover as well, for she doesn’t hear his shoeless strides on the concrete walk anymore. She hopes this will buy her some time.
The black truck slowly cruises the street like a trolling fishing boat, and as soon as its taillights are out of sight she moves. Vida squeezes through the hedges, heading toward the street since Larsen is nearly to her hiding spot. Cautiously side-stepping left, she comes to a short brick wall that separates the motel’s frontage from the parking lot of a neighboring pawn shop. She follows the divider to the street while a second truck joins the black one as it takes a right down another street.
She emerges from her location and dashes down the sidewalk, taking a left into a residential area. The path she has chosen to get away from the human menaces is slightly pitched. Striding uphill, Vida tries the doors of the cars parked in front of each home. She has no luck until she crests the incline, finds one unlocked, and slides behind the wheel of an old Charger.
The Dodge’s black paintjob is sullied by thick road dirt and grit. Some well-meaning, or ill-mannered, passerby had scrawled ‘wash me’ on the hood. Wishful thinking has her looking for a spare key, but to no avail. So she ducks below the dash, keeping an eye out for Brad while worrying he saw where she went and will come running up the hill to claim her.
###
“Where the hell did she go?” Brad growls while standing behind the motel’s sign, completely naked. He blames her for his current situation. He was right on her heels when the shots were fired. Fear paralyzed him a second too long and she slipped out of sight. Had she gone for the jeep, he could have seized her once more.
He feels vulnerable as he cowers, unsure where the trucks are. All he wants now are his clothes. It takes a bit for him to build the courage to head back up the stairs for his uniform.
Staying low like a person approaching a helicopter, he feels ridiculous and embarrassed, though no eyes are on him. The wrought iron railing that connects the concrete risers doesn’t give him much cover. He takes the series of hard slabs two at a time, hoping to make the trip back to 202 as short as possible. He needs to get dressed and find that girl. Brad is unwilling to abandon his initial plans for her, and he can’t let her reach Eagle Rock, should he need to go there himself. It would be bad enough returning to that life, but even worse if he arrives only to get tossed in the stockade.
The rough stucco exterior to his left becomes pock marked by bullets as the large truck returns. Standing partially out of the vehicle, a black haired man shoots a semi-automatic assault rifle. Brad scrambles up the rest of the way in a crawl as the plaster explodes during his journey to the second floor.
Brad throws himself into Room 202 and slams the door shut. He bolts every lock and even flips the security latch. A safeguard he’s never held much confidence in but at the moment seems rather important to use. He leans against the door and listens for more gunfire, or feet on the stairs, before grabbing his clothes and his own assault rifle.
###
“You get one, Marko?” Jessie pulls up in the smaller red truck. The fat elbow he hangs out of his window resembles a raw ham hock. “I thought we got all the zombies yesterday.”
Biff pipes in from the passenger seat, “Either we missed a few or it came from somewhere else.”
“Ya think?” Marko says sarcastically. “I think it was a zombie. The way he moved, though, he might be alive.”
“You shot at a survivor?” Jessie asks with dismay.
“The freak’s running around naked!” Marko says, negating to mention he had continued to fire even after his target took evasive actions.
“What now?” Biff asks.
“Keep looting. There’s a pawn shop over there. I’m heading to the gun shop.”
“We got plenty of guns, Marko,” Biff says. “We ain’t got but two hands to use ‘em.”
“I want it all!” Marko snaps. “We need ammo, right? Might as well have the hardware to use it too.”
###
Brad Larsen spies from his window, now fully clothed and more confident. The man that had shot at him appears to be giving orders to someone in a second truck that is pointed away from the motel. This leader has indicated for the red truck to turn around and head in the direction Brad traveled. Then the black vehicle speeds away in the opposite direction.
Are they trying to flush me out? he panics. Brad assumes the red truck is going to lie in wait and the black truck’s departure is merely a decoy. He needs another way out and remembers that the bathroom has a small window that faces the back alley.
Brad pushes out the frosted pane of glass, but it only swings part way due to a pair of thin chains on either side. He forces it open, breaking the links so he can squeeze himself through. He carries out the first part of his plan and now dangles from the sill. “Now what?”
From this vantage he can see his jeep, but the height makes it look like a child’s electric powered car. Brad is vulnerable as well. Not only are his hands preoccupied with the duty of keeping him swinging in the air, but his rifle is also slung across his back and would be no help to him should the men in the trucks enter the alley. He tries to think of a way down yet is unable to achieve inspiration. His fingertips are losing their purchase on the sill.
For a split second, he is weightless before he falls to earth. He lands hard on the asphalt, feet first. One of his ankles rolls beneath him, and he must subdue his reaction to the intense pain. He clenches his jaw and his eyes water. He doesn’t dare scream, though every fiber of his being wants to. Instead he shifts his weight to his good leg and hobbles to his ride.
Brad lays his M-16 across his lap before hitting the ignition button. The intruders may have him outnumbered, but he knows he has them outgunned. The .50 caliber machine gun on the back of the jeep should be more than adequate in taking on these men.
As much as he’d love to have a medic tend to his ankle, he isn’t looking forward to joining the ranks of enlisted. Brad ponders other courses of action. Perhaps Canada, he brainstorms. Grab Vida and hide out together in America’s attic. First things first. He has to make it out of this town alive.
7
Having woken up in the jeep
yesterday, already in the middle of town, Vida has no way of getting her bearings so she can find the highway. Sitting in silence within a stranger’s car, with nothing to do but think about how lost she is, drives her mad. She opens the glove compartment in hopes of locating a map. Releasing the small hatch results in a cascade of napkins and papers, along with a slim pair of leather gloves. Gloves in a glove compartment. She can’t help but snicker. I’ve never actually seen that.
The papers strewn on the floor among the stacks of disposable towels are useless to her. They’re mostly old registration forms and take-out menus.
She leaves the mess she has made and glances down the hill once more, still expecting to see Brad come charging up at any moment. For the span of several breaths, there is no movement ahead of her. She almost wishes he was on his way. It might jumpstart her brain.
All she can do is sit and wait, without the benefit of even knowing what it is she is waiting for. Vida looks around at the residences, begging for some sign of life--the movement of a curtain or someone shouting at her to get out of their car. Nothing.
Hopelessness builds within her enough to make her give up. It almost makes her return to Brad and let him have his way with her, if only for a ride to Eagle Rock. She places her forehead on the steering wheel. Her eyes are open but she sees nothing. Her mind is a blank slate. Try as she may to formulate a course of action, she has nothing.
Vida lets out a groan just to hear something other than her own breathing. Her eyes dart from object to object within the cramped confines just to create the illusion of action. She longs for stimuli other than the taste of her morning mouth, the feel of the steering wheel, and the smell of this old Charger.
The smell is the worst: old cigarette smoke and spilled food. It nauseates her and makes her not want to breathe.
As her eyes continue their game, they settle on the center of the dash. Below the heater and the stock radio is a shelf jammed full of cassette tapes and a pack of cigarettes. Vida pulls out the ashtray below this and locates the source of the infernal smell--a brimming bowl of butts and ash. She is tempted to open her door and dump the tray, but instead she takes the pack of smokes. Within the cellophane is a book of matches.
Stamped on the yellow cover of the book, in red lettering, is a location she saw yesterday: Gary’s Gas and Go. It’s the store Brad got gas at and the liquor he drank last night. What really gets her attention is the endorsement below the name of the establishment: Several locations.
Inside the flap, behind the rows of matches, Vida learns that the place is a small chain. She finds the one she and Larsen had stopped at on a rudimentary map. There is another one down by Waterloo, and another, the original and largest, in a small neighboring town called Poland Creek. After focusing on the Gary’s in Worchester on the miniscule atlas, she studies the other businesses it maps out. She finds the motel she had spent the night at and the pawn shop next door. Just enough to give her an idea of where to go from here. I have a where. All I need is a how.
###
Hoping to get the drop on the red truck, Brad cruises slowly around the block and finds it parked in front of the pawn shop. Two large men in bright orange vests are at the doors of the establishment trying to gain entry. He laughs at the men, not sure why they’d mess around with the lock rather than just shatter the panes of glass to get in. He’s about to aid them by spraying the area with heavy machine gun fire from where he has coasted to a stop just a street away. Before he can, tires roll toward him from the right.
Brad ducks behind the front seats, expecting to see the black truck bearing down on him. Instead he sees a dirty Charger rolling lazily past his location.
It’s her! he realizes.
Before he can turn his attention back to the pair of bungling burglars, he loses the element of surprise. Vida’s car has coasted into a telephone pole with a modest but audible crash. The obese men turn just in time to dive out of Brad’s line of fire.
The throaty roar of Brad’s salvo overpowers the shattering glass of the pawn shop and the rattle of falling shell casings. He eases off of the trigger and waits for the men to pop up from where they hide, allowing his barrel to cool lest it warp from the intense heat of the weapon’s high rate of fire.
The day-glow garments the men wear as a preventative measure against getting shot while hunting actually works to their detriment now. Brad sights one of the men where he’s pinned behind a bus stop bench, then he releases a small burst that devours the wooden planks shielding the portly man. Before Brad can find just the right spot between the boards to hit the cowering thief’s vulnerable flesh, he starts taking fire himself. A round whizzes past his face, then a second plants itself in his left thigh.
He ignores an impulse to turn his weapon on the new arrival and retreats instead. He knows it’s the guy with the AK-47 by its distinct noise. Brad jumps back into jeep, vaulting the seats and consequently exacerbating the pain in his leg. He grits through the agony and reverses his vehicle, driving two streets away before darting left around a corner.
Limping out of the jeep with his assault rifle and a few other items, he makes it to the building. With his back against the wall, he pulls the pin on several smoke canisters and begins lobbing them towards the intersections that stand between him and his opponents. Both he and his enemies will lose visibility, but he’s been trained for it. Brad crouches before entering the rising haze and silently stalks closer to his quarry. The men curse and scream at one another, which only gives up their positions. Brad readies a handful of pebbles to trick them into firing where he tosses the stones. All he needs is to see their muzzles flash.
They aren’t taking the bait, however. The man to Brad’s left orders his boys not to shoot. So Brad holds a hand against the hole in his leg, which burns and bleeds profusely, and waits. He wants to drop these men soon so he can dress his wound and stop the hemorrhaging. His thoughts also go to Vida, since he didn’t see her get out of the Charger and he needs to know if she is still around or if she slipped away in the chaos.
The thick smoke grows patchy, dissipating in spots due to a slight breeze. Brad’s prey have grown silent. He looks from side to side, into each pocket of clarity, and knows they are doing the same. Just a glimpse, he thinks. Should he wait much longer, he will be a sitting duck.
A flash of red precedes the smaller truck flying at him through the smoke, and it narrowly misses him. Luckily, he hears the black behemoth barreling down and rolls out of its way, but the act causes his bullet wound to stretch and tear.
In a haze, Brad turns to where the trucks have gone, and he watches the swirls left in their wake then awaits their return pass. He listens for their engines but hears nothing. They’re gone.
Able to catch a breath, he relaxes. He is out of danger and very grateful, but the gratitude is fleeting when he hears what drove off the raiders. The sound of feet, lots of feet, grows close.
Zombies plod down the hill faster than they can control with their unsteady limbs. Brad can’t see them through the thinning cloud but he hears them moan eagerly. Their quickened pace makes the sound reverberate as it leaves their gullets. Brad heard the dead might be drawn to the scent of blood, and he reeks of it.
As fast as his pain will allow, he gets to his feet. The smoke screen is still too thick to see the zombies until they are right on top of him. The dead veer towards the promise of food, unwittingly using the momentum bestowed upon them by nature. All they know is that they are very hungry.
Brad takes out the ghouls as fast as he can. He must keep his rifle moving from side to side as he backs away, firing into each slack face that presents itself in his scramble to get to his jeep. He hobbles on his nearly useless leg, finding it difficult to move faster than them, though their pace slows the longer they pursue him on level ground. He has lost count of how many rounds he has spent already and knows he must conserve ammo. The revelation regarding his ammunition comes too late, for the M-16 is empty.
8
/> Vida never learned to drive a stick shift, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to push start one without the key. She could get the Charger to coast down the hill, only she wouldn’t be in it. After opening the door to every unlocked home to release whatever may lurk inside, all she had to do was speak softly into the shadowy domiciles to gather her reinforcements. The dead hit the hill, following the departing car while she slipped away down another street, safe in the knowledge that the things wouldn’t be able to pursue her once they got going fast enough. They would instead continue down the road to greet whoever was in the Charger’s vicinity when it came to a stop.
She skirted the war being waged in the quiet town and made it to one of the points on her tiny map, Ted’s Used Car Lot. Ted’s is a small place, and the word ‘lot’ seems a bit of an overstatement as she looks for a new ride. She isn’t planning on being a choosy shopper. She’s willing to take anything she can get a key to. While the boys duke it out, she strikes north in a Taurus. Though her mini-map may not be to scale, the directions are spot on. Before she knows it she is speeding up the highway as fast as she can. She isn’t sure who will win the Battle of Worchester, but oddly she finds herself rooting for the zombies.
###
The speedometer’s needle passes 90 miles per hour once more after she slows to negotiate tight turns within a canyon of rock she wasn’t expecting, located in a region known for its vast wind farms and cornfields. She also wasn’t expecting to see much traffic.
Focusing on the open road, her eyes peeled for signs indicating the location of Fort Eagle Rock, she has neglected her rearview mirror. She gives it a glance now as she slows, fearing she may have missed her turn. What she sees reflected is like something out of a horror movie. The jeep follows her.
Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory Page 8
