by Tony Urban
It was all too much. He couldn’t do any more killing today. He leaned against the steering wheel, the orange light of the fire turning his face into a Jack-o’-lantern, and sobbed.
34
Bundy had ditched the car half an hour earlier. He needed something with more room, both for his body and for what he hoped to find. He wanted an SUV, the bigger the better but when he came across a bright blue Caravan, he figured it would do.
The driver’s side door hung ajar and the engine idled smoothly. An arc of red blood decorated the interior of the windshield and it was easy to infer that nothing good had happened here. When he climbed inside, he spotted a rear facing child’s car seat in the back. He checked and was relieved it was empty and undisturbed.
Bundy tossed the car seat into the grassy median. The highway was all but abandoned. The few vehicles that traveled the road were forced to go slow to avoid the abandoned cars and the zombies which roamed about seeking a fresh meal. There weren’t many. In the hour Bundy had been driving he’d only seen 15 or 20, but the general emptiness of the interstate made it clear enough that things had gone sour and it happened fast.
Bundy left the keys in the VW but shut off the engine so that there’d be gas for whoever might come along next. He considered writing a note to tell them where he was heading but decided against it. Bundy possessed a trusting disposition, one which landed him in prison, and he figured it might be time to be more cautious.
He drove almost 90 miles toward his pre-prison hometown. He had no interest in going home. His parents were dead and there was no sentimentality when it came to his four room apartment. But there was one important stop to make.
Uneeda Storage Unit stood a few miles outside of town. The squat white garages filled an otherwise vacant industrial desert, their metal roofs blinding in the sunlight. Bundy steered the van into the lot which, as expected, was unlocked (Open 24/7/365!) and didn’t stop until he was in front of unit 317.
When he confirmed the padlock he’d used to protect his storage unit was undisturbed, Bundy gave a low whistle. He’d rented the unit under the name “Colt Springfield” which he found amusing at the time but after his arrest he thought it might have been a little too clever for his own good. But with the lock still in place, it seemed his subterfuge had been a success.
The facility was empty of people which was a relief because Bundy had no key to his locker. He used a four-way lug wrench from the van’s trunk to beat the padlock into submission. The lock itself held but the surrounding metal of the door gave way and it clattered to the ground with a satisfying clack.
Bundy took a moment to catch his breath. He never minded being fat, but it made any kind of physical exertion much more tiring than necessary. After a brief period of recuperation, he bent at the waist, grabbed the handle and raised the garage door. Daylight spilled inside and revealed a cube of neatly stacked cardboard boxes, each labeled things like “Kitchen”, “Clothes”, and “Misc.” in Bundy’s simple printing.
Fortunately, some of the boxes marked as clothes actually did contain clothing because Bundy was eager to shed his fluorescent orange jumpsuit. His days of being Inmate 2089349 were over and, besides, that jumpsuit was too damned hot.
He stripped off everything but his socks, then opened a box. He took out a pair of boxer shorts, a plain black tank top and a pair of jeans so large he could only order them online. Before he could redress, he heard the scraping of feet against the macadam outside.
“Son of a bitch,” Bundy said as he let the clothing fall to the cement floor of the storage unit. He pulled open a cardboard box upon which “Photo albums” was written. Inside, buried amongst a sea of white Styrofoam peanuts was an admirable cache of handguns. He grabbed a pearl handled Colt pistol then moved to a box labeled “knick knacks”. Ammunition packed that box. As he searched for .380 ammo, the scraping sound outside the unit grew louder and nearer.
Bundy found box after box of bullets for .44s, .357s and 9mm but .380s eluded him.
“Screw it,” he said as he traded the pistol for a box of .44s. As he returned to the box of guns, he realized the footsteps had stopped. Bundy stood there, naked as a newborn baby but about 60 times larger, and listened.
Maybe it’s a person, he thought, although he doubted that. A person would have said something. Bundy could feel a presence behind him. He didn’t hear breathing or feel any body heat, but something was there. Something was close.
He felt like his balls had been sucked up into his gut and it took every bit of mental fortitude he possessed to turn around.
The zombie that stood before him appeared to have been an old woman. Her face had been eaten away but wild clumps of bloodied gray hair jutted from her head. She stood no more than five feet tall, well under a foot and a half shorter than Bundy. When she lunged at him, she bounced off his amply padded chest.
Before he could react, he felt her biting him, the slimy wetness of her mouth against his flesh. He grabbed on to her hair and jerked her head back. He held her at arm’s length as he looked down at his skin where he saw blood smeared against his nipple, but he couldn’t see a wound.
He examined the zombie, gazed at her mouth and saw that its withered, old gums held no teeth.
A relieved, almost giddy smile broke out on his broad face. An eternity wandering around as a fat, naked zombie would have been a horrible, final joke in a life where he’d all too frequently been the punch-line.
“Guess you picked the wrong time to run out of Polident, you old hag.”
She hissed and clawed at him but her frail, dead body was easy to hold back. Bundy shoved her away from him and the zombie tumbled over a few of the boxes. While she climbed back to her feet, Bundy moved to the edge of the storage unit and grabbed the lug wrench. No use wasting a bullet. He had a feeling he’d need every last one.
The old woman was up again and coming at him when Bundy swung the lug wrench and connected with her forehead. The metal broke an almost perfect hole in her skull and when she fell to the floor, bits of black blood and gray brain matter trickled from the wound.
Bundy looked outside again, scanning the area for zombies. Once convinced he was alone, he dressed. Then he loaded all the handguns to capacity and placed them in the van. He added two large and heavy boxes labeled “4th of July decorations”. He didn’t know if he’d need the contents, but it couldn’t hurt. Well, it could hurt. Quite a bit if he wasn’t careful.
He longed for the rest of his collection which he kept locked away in heavy duty gun safes at his apartment, but the feds confiscated all of them after his conviction. No guns for felons after all. They were dangerous. He found himself longing for the Hellpup that got him sent away. Whoever said the average American had no need for automatic weapons never had to deal with zombies.
35
After her mother’s police blotter fame had turned them both into local pariahs, Ramey grew to hate the town in which she’d grown up. The town in which she’d elected to stay rather than run away to greener pastures with her father. Still, as she drove the pickup down the streets and saw the destruction taking place, she couldn’t help but feel nostalgic.
The Glow n Bowl bowling alley where she’d had her 13th birthday party was on fire and sent dirty gray clouds into the sky like smoke signals calling for help that wouldn’t come. Several figures, which from their size Ramey judged to be preteens, stumbled about the parking lot. Despite their charred black skin they seemed beyond pain.
When a woman in a housecoat with cartoon kitten print came running down the sidewalk, the burned zombies caught on to her presence and moved in her direction. Ramey drove toward her and as she got closer, she saw the woman was Mrs. Kraft, her third grade teacher.
“Get in!” Ramey yelled.
The teacher glanced at Ramey with feverish, bloodshot eyes and showed no sign of recognizing her former student.
“Mrs. Kraft, get in the truck!”
The woman looked away from Ramey and toward the bur
ned child zombies.
“Zeke?” she called out. “Zeke? It’s mommy.”
Shit, her son must be one of those charbroiled ghouls, Ramey thought. The zombies were now only a few yards away. She shouted again at her teacher. “They’re dead! Can’t you see that? Come with me!”
Mrs. Kraft didn’t move to the truck or flee from the zombies. Instead, she ran toward them. How she could tell which of the crispy critters was her Zeke was a mystery to Ramey, but the woman picked out one in red Pumas and embraced it.
The boy took a heaping mouthful of tit, like a baby well past its feeding time, and bit right through the kitten housecoat. He pulled away a bloody chunk of flesh as Mrs. Kraft screamed and cried. Then the other deep fried zombies joined the party. Ramey didn’t wait, she’d seen enough, and the tires squealed as she sped away.
She tried to focus only on the road as she drove off but her peripheral vision revealed the descent into chaos. When the “Thanks for visiting. Come back real soon!” sign appeared at the border she felt a mixture of relief and regret and she knew without a doubt she’d never see her hometown again. No great loss.
The dilapidated storefronts and warehouses disappeared from her rear-view mirror and the landscape switched to fields and forests. After a few miles of seeing no zombies (no humans either) she began to relax.
For the past year a part of Ramey thought her dreams of running away were only that, dreams. And the voice inside her head said she would end up pregnant to some dimwit like Bobby Mack, waiting tables at the truck stop and spending her tips on scratch off tickets because they’d be her only chance of escape.
Even worse, the voice told her she would end up like her mother. Just another former pretty face wasting her life and a sore back away from a pill addiction. But now she was out, even if the circumstances were unexpected and undesirable.
Ramey did know where to go and her mind flitted between thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. If there would even be a future. The #zombiepresident trending topic she saw just before the internet evaporated kept coming to mind. If that was true, the entire country was in trouble. The whole world. And if the world was screwed where did that leave that was safe?
Safe… The word made her think of her father’s letter.
It’s safe here.
Was it? She had her doubts. She loved her father, but he was a hopeless dreamer, always prattling about what a great world was out there if people could stop chasing money and focus on each other. Peace and love and all that hippy dippy bullshit. The kind of things that sounded great but ignored the fact that deep down most people suck. But still she wondered, could he be somewhere safe?
Her hand went to her pocket, and she felt the folds of the letter through the denim of her jeans. She reached to grab the paper and looked away from the road. In doing so, she didn’t see the jack-knifed big rig ahead of her. And she didn’t see the three zombies milling around the cab.
Ramey extracted the letter and map from her too-skinny skinny jeans then looked up and saw the tractor trailer blocking both lanes of the country road. She was only yards away, and it took a few seconds for the shock to pass before she hit her brakes.
That wasn’t enough time to stop. In the blurry confusion of surprise Ramey couldn’t even tell that the two men and one woman in the roadway were already quite dead, so she jerked the wheel hard to the left.
The lifted pick up swayed and felt almost like it was floating. The feeling you have on a roller coaster when you crest the peak and plunge down the opposite side.
She realized the truck was on the verge of flipping over and she eased the wheel out of the too sharp turn. The pickup stabilized, but in the process she slammed into one of the men standing in the road, hitting him in the back. He flipped in mid-air before flopping onto the pavement.
The woman closest to him was next in Ramey’s path. That one turned toward the truck at the last second and Ramey saw the zombie was missing an eye and half its cheek so she didn’t feel bad when she hit it straight on. That creature performed no gymnastics. It fell straight back and Ramey heard it crunch under the passenger side tires.
The resistance coupled with Ramey braking brought the truck to a halt a few feet before it could smashed into the 18 wheeler.
“Jesus christ!” Ramey said to herself.
She backed up and felt more bones snap under the weight of the beefy mud tires, then surveyed the scene. One zombie remained standing. It had been an elderly, balding man with shocks of white hair popping out from the sides of its head like a geriatric circus clown.
Ramey considered running it over, but she didn’t know how much more the old pickup could take. As she prepared to drive off and let it be, a noise caught her attention. Was that a voice?
She rolled down her window, leaned out, and listened.
“I’m stuck in here!”
Yep, it was a voice and Ramey wasn’t the only one who heard it. Zombie Bozo had too, and the monster staggered toward the cab of the trailer which laid toppled on its side.
“Damn it.” Ramey exited the safety of her own ride, but not before grabbing the lug wrench which laid on the seat.
The old zombie focused only on the voice in the big rig and missed Ramey coming up from behind. She swung the metal rod and the fat end connected with the creature’s skull. There was a light cracking sound like Ramey had stepped on a potato chip. The zombie stopped walking and did a slow motion fall to the roadway. It stayed down.
“You’re a pistol!” the voice inside the big rig called out.
Ramey stepped to the truck and looked through the windshield. Daylight reflected off the glass and made it hard to see inside, but when she leaned in close, she could make out the silhouette of a man behind the wheel.
“How are you stuck?” Ramey asked.
“Damn seatbelt’s all twisted around me and jammed. Been in here for over four hours!”
Ramey returned to the pickup and grabbed a pocket knife that had been laying in a cubby on the dash. She went back to the tractor trailer.
The cab was driver’s side down and stood a few feet taller than Ramey. She didn’t relish the thought of trying to climb on top to reach the passenger side door.
“I’ve got a knife. Now how do I get it to you?”
“Bust out the windshield,” the man said.
Ramey paused. “Are you sure?”
“Hell yes, I’m sure. This big ol’ bitch ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, anyway.”
Ramey got close to the front windshield. She raised the lug wrench, reared back then hesitated.
“Cover your eyes.” She watched the driver hold his hands over his face. Satisfied, she swung. A small divot appeared in the bug splattered glass, but that was all.
“Again!” he said.
She swung again, this time using even more force than she’d used on the zombie. She connected at about the same spot and a dozen thin lines spider-webbed out from the point of impact.
“One more oughta do it!” he said.
Ramey sighed. Each blow sent painful shocks up her arms and her hands felt numb and shaky. She swung again and this time the spider-webs turned into mosaic with a fat hole in the middle. It was big enough to fit her arm through and the safety glass posed little harm as she passed the knife through to the driver.
He cut the seatbelt and Ramey heard a thud as he fell a few inches into the door below him. He grunted and swore then asked for the lug wrench which she was glad to hand over. From the inside, he broke apart the windshield until there was a man-sized opening. He slithered through it head first and Ramey had to fight away a smile when she thought it looked like the cab was giving birth to him.
The man was around 45 or 50 Ramey guessed, and skinny. He wasn’t much taller than she was and she didn’t break five feet three inches unless she wore boots. He had a Patriots cap parked atop his head and a tag on his shirt declared his name to be Stan.
“I’m Stan,” he confirmed.
“I ga
thered as much,” Ramey said, pointing to his shirt.
“Oh. Yeah.” He handed her the knife and the lug wrench. “Thanks for the help, Miss. I was up shit creek that’s for sure.”
“I think we all are.”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Before the C.B. went off, it sure sounded that way.” Stan looked to the dead things on the ground. “They’re zombies, aren’t they?”
Ramey shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what else you’d call them.”
Stan looked up the road toward town then down the road in the direction Ramey had been going before they met.
“Where are you headed?”
She thought about that, about her father and his letter and map. She knew the odds were slim, but what else was out there?
“I was thinking about here.” She handed Stan the map.
He examined it for a moment, then nodded. “What’s there?”
“My dad. Maybe.”
“I’ve been in that general vicinity a few times. It’s a few hundred miles from here. Not the best roads though. Want me to come along with?”
Ramey looked at the wiry little man with his craggy face and wide eyes. He looked harmless, but then again, most people do during the day when the light casts shadows that hide all of their secrets.
“Don’t you have anyone you want to check on?” she asked.
Stan shook his head. “Been divorced going on ten years. No kiddos. My parents are long gone.” He gave a bashful grin. “There’s a girl I see when I’m in Memphis, but that’s only a couple times a year. Besides, I suspect she’s got some other fella friends, if you catch my drift.”
His cheeks turned bright pink and his eyes darted to the ground and she knew then she could trust him. Besides, Stan traveled for a living and she’d never been more than 50 miles away from home and it seemed they’d make a good team.
