Zombie Road Trip

by Miller, T. Alex

  No, the best way to deal with the squealer squads was to stay out of their sight. They also had to hope that all the squealers weren’t aligning themselves like this. If there weren’t some more small, scared groups or even individuals out there, they’d starve. Tim was already starting to feel himself changing from peckish to ravenous, and he knew Marilyn was likely in the same boat.

  But she was OK for now, lying back there with her blanket over her – including her face. He knew she was under there with her eyes wide open, staring into the fabric and waiting for the next time Tim would kick her into action. He got down on the floor himself and pulled a corner of the blanket over himself and tried to rest. When it stopped raining, he figured, he’d give the car thing another try.

  Plus, he had another idea.

  A few hours passed and Tim felt the light changing. The rain had stopped and a weak sun was peeking out of the clouds. It took some doing, but he managed to get back in the driver’s seat again. Still nothing was moving out there, and the road was mostly clear in front of him – at least for a ways. With Marilyn still on pause in the back, Tim turned the key and the quiet engine came to life.

  One thing he’d learned was that it wasn’t a good idea to have your foot all the way down on the go pedal. He was still unsure what the other pedal did, assuming his first assumption that it did “nothing” was incorrect. It wouldn’t be there if it did nothing. This vehicle had the shifter level in the middle, next to the wheel, and Tim slipped it down one position. The van started slowly rolling backwards. He slipped it down one more position and it rolled to a halt, the engine still running.

  OK, progress. Stupid zombie learns to drive a car. Take 3.

  Tim was about to slip the thing down into the next position when he heard something outside.

  Squealers, walking toward him, waving their arms and shouting.

  Tim froze, his hand still on the shift lever about to move it down a click. Why were they doing this? This was no squealer squad; it was just two people — looked like another couple, a man and a woman maybe a little younger than lunch at the house. Yet they continued to walk toward the van, waving, yelling.

  Believing we’re squealers ourselves because Zees don’t drive cars.

  The sudden realization sent something resembling a thrill through Tim’s body. More rusty gears started turning again: He put the thing in drive, mashed the accelerator down and ran over the two squealers — nailing them both dead center, bumping over their bodies and continuing on quite a ways at high speed before he ran the van into a rock wall along the highway.

  This time, airbags deployed and Tim didn’t have to take another steering column to the chest. Marilyn, however, was still lying in the back, and her body came flying forward and right through the windshield, hitting the rock wall like a missile and landing on the crumpled hood of the car.

  The car was making a lot of strange noises, steam was coming out of the front of it and there was a cloud of fine, white dust in the air when Tim heard himself speak again, a new phrase:

  “You OK?”

  Pushing the airbag out of the way, he looked at Marilyn draped across the hood of the car, her arms over her head and her eyes wide open – still wrapped in the bright yellow blanket. Tim struggled out of the hole left by the windshield, clambered over Marilyn, grabbed onto her ankles and pulled her onto the ground. Remarkably, she stood, her yellow blanket falling to her feet. She looked no worse for wear, even if her face was rather cut up.

  Tim was all about the double-squealer meal he’d just prepared for them, and he gestured to Marilyn to hurry as he spazzed his way back from where they came. Marilyn was moving at her usual glacial pace — slowed down even more by the blanket she was now holding onto and which was dragging in the dirt behind her. But as soon as she got a whiff of the fresh kill, she grunted and started shimmying forward at an accelerated pace.

  One of them, the young woman, was still alive — her eyes darting, scared and her breath coming in gulps. When Tim’s ghastly face appeared above her, she screwed up her face to scream, but he clapped his filthy hand over her mouth. Tim put her out of her misery quickly with that first, savory bite to the neck and reeled as her hot blood gushed and pumped into his mouth. Marilyn was performing the same maneuver on the man, and for the next hour they hovered over the bodies, sating themselves with their favorite parts and occasionally making eye contact with each other. Tim wanted to believe Marilyn was somehow saying “thanks” with her looks, but mostly he figured she was making sure he was sticking to his corpse and not wanting to horn in on hers.

  It was odd, Tim thought, that given a choice they went for the opposite sex. If he had to think about it, though, as he sat there chewing yet another fresh (if somewhat smallish) breast, he’d much rather eat a female. Seemed, somehow, more natural.

  In a world like this, finding things that at least appeared natural was, he guessed, a good thing.

  Chapter 12. Luxury

  Covered in blood and gore and feeling quite content after their meal, Tim and Marilyn stood almost simultaneously and looked up the road. They started walking, and Tim knew she had the same idea as him: This car thing was a good deal; they needed to find another.

  It didn’t take long. The next key-equipped and unlocked vehicle they found was a big, black station wagon — obviously some kind of a luxury vehicle. It had softer seats than the minivan, lots of room in the back for Marilyn to stretch out and a great many more buttons and other doo-dads for Tim to confront than any of the other cars.

  When the car loomed out of the haze, Tim turned and waved Marilyn on. Although her hunger was sated, she was still hobbling from the car crash, and Tim wondered how much longer she could go. Her bad hip looked like it was acting up again, and her gait was that of a drunken ape. Amazingly, however, she’d ascertained that her blanket was of a style that could be worn — with a hole for the head and long sleeves. Marilyn had, all on her own, worked it over her broken body, and she now had all but her hideous mask of a fucked-up face covered by the bright yellow fleece with the word “WEEZER” emblazoned on the front. Getting into the back seat of the car, she gave what sounded like a satisfied sigh and went into pause mode while Tim sat in the driver’s seat and contemplated the dizzying array of controls in front of him.

  They could go another couple of days without eating after that feast, but “south” was still on Tim’s agenda. So far as he could tell, they were still pointing in that direction. But how far could he make it as a driver? Up until now, a couple hundred yards was about the limit of his range before crashing. He had to figure this car thing out a little better if it killed him. And maybe it would. How much blunt-force trauma can a Zee withstand before it just can’t be sentient or ambulatory any more?

  If Marilyn was any indication, quite a lot.

  She takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.

  Tim frowned at the useless tidbit of human memory. He needed something more substantial, like who he was, where he was going. Why … why anything.

  “It’s quiet” he said in an angry snarl, grabbing the key and turning it. The engine in this thing was so quiet he wasn’t sure it had even turned on, but it made a terrible sound when he tried the key again, and things were lit up and moving on the display in front of him. Once again, he clicked the main lever down one position and noted that made it roll backwards. The next position seemed to be some sort of “pause” mode, which he immediately dubbed in his mind the “Marilyn position.” It was the third click that made the thing go forward, and even without touching the foot thing Tim observed that the vehicle moved — if ever so slowly.

  Maybe this was it: Forget all about the foot pedal for speed (unless there’s game out there) and just creep along. He wanted to move quickly, but maybe going slow and not crashing every car would be a better plan. He gripped the wheel with his hands and moseyed down the road, making long, deliberate curves with the wheel and successfully negotiating the vehicle around an overturned truck. He
discovered he could apply very light pressure on the go pedal to move it a bit faster, but he kept it at little more than a walking pace.

  Another one of those “south” signs appeared, so he kept it moving, ever so slowly. Tim found it took every ounce of his concentration and limited brain power to pilot the wagon down the road at 3 mph. He knew they weren’t going much faster than they could walk, but to him it felt like he was in a high-speed race. Even enormous obstacles like jack-knifed 18-wheelers, which he could see coming a mile away, presented themselves as sudden obstacles he had to negotiate with split-second timing. Still, he wound up bumping and scraping the beautiful black car against things as they went by.

  But they kept moving. They saw nothing else that day on the road other than one big, fat cracker of a squealer who trundled out of the woods and slapped against the windshield so suddenly that Tim let out a girlish scream. He didn’t know what to do, so he just let the fat Zee hang on the windshield wipers for a couple of miles until, finally, he slithered off onto the ground. Tim thought about circling back and running him over for good measure, but thought better of it.

  He didn’t want to fuck up his nice Mercedes.

  When night came, Tim pulled the car onto the shoulder and turned it off. He’d found the switch for the headlights, but thought driving at night would present too many difficulties. It also occurred to him that they’d be easier to spot that way, and he was keenly aware that there simply had to be some more squealer squads out there. The one from the playground couldn’t be that far away, and it stood to reason that other groups had formed, banded together.

  But where the hell was everyone? He knew lots of people had died. Some had risen to join the Zees, others were still fighting to remain human and plenty more had been simply eaten entirely. But still, that left a lot unaccounted for. They were driving past a lot of open, uninhabited and heavily forested land, but every now and again they’d come across a town — a place more or less identical to the last. First would come the signs for McDonald’s, Best Western, Taco Bell and Conoco, then the outlying exits. Then Tim would watch as a microcosm of civilization floated by at low speed outside the windows: houses, schools, churches, office buildings. Each town bore the signs of the Zee plague, and each seemed entirely stripped of life — zombie or otherwise.

  The towns — and they’d passed three of them that day — made for some tricky driving, and there’d been several times when Tim thought they might have to abandon the Mercedes and switch cars. But each time he’d been able to navigate his way past the obstruction of junked cars, burned bodies or, in one case, a pile of boxed television sets that had been ejected from an overturned semi. Whenever he started bumping into things and using the gas pedal to blast through, Marilyn would stir from the back and get up to see what was going on.

  And when they parked for the night and Tim shifted over to the passenger seat for some rest, Marilyn got all perky, opened the door (she’d learned to do that) and scuttled slowly into the woods. There’d been a time not too long ago that Tim would’ve followed her to make sure she was staying safe, but he’d come to think she more or less knew what she was doing. There was also the fact that, no matter what happened, Marilyn’s time had to be coming close to an end. So accident prone, for starters, it was only a matter of time before she had her head chopped off or caught fire or stopped a bullet or something. And how long could they go without eating if the supply of fresh human flesh dried up?

  He didn’t know for sure, but it wasn’t long. They’d already seen their share of starved Zees. Sad cases, sitting or lying there unable to move, their eyes wide open and staring skyward. You couldn’t tell if they were fully dead or still in suspended Zee mode unless you gave them a little kick. They’d either topple over silently or with a groan; either way more part of another world than this one anymore — and better off, Tim couldn’t help but think.

  He tried to sleep, knowing he wouldn’t, and then did. Sitting there staring at the backs of his eyelids, Tim slid down into something greatly resembling a nap. He woke after a few minutes, startled but also aware of having rested completely for the first time as a Zee. It was still dark out, Marilyn still gone, and the area around the car utterly quiet on a moonless night. Tim closed his eyes again, wondering if he could re-create the nap.

  He slept until dawn. And he dreamed, dreamed of things he used to know but couldn’t place in any context. There were the same recurring faces: a pretty woman with dark hair, a pair of children who came up to his knees; guys in white coats in some other place, hovering over computers, glass vials of liquid and machines that displayed different colored bars and lines. It was as if they were floating just beyond reach under the surface of a clear and still pond: fuzzy and indistinct at first, but then growing in shape and definition and with words starting to cling to the images, like snowflakes gathering on a leaf:

  Wife, Kids … followed by

  Janet, Madison, Monroe … and, finally

  Meridian.

  What the hell was meridian? The answer was just over the horizon in his dream, and he was driving toward it in the black station wagon — very, very slowly. Marilyn was on the hood, clinging to the windshield wipers, staring at him with those eyes. Maybe he was going slowly so she wouldn’t fall off, but he burned to stamp down on the gas pedal and make it over the rise to meridian.

  This was a good dream.

  The first bullet penetrated the windshield and struck the headrest about an inch from his left ear. Tim’s eyes shot open, the dream vanished in a puff and there was Marilyn, on the hood, clinging to the windshield wipers as a small group of men in black approached with weapons at the ready. One of them took another shot and hit Marilyn in the back; the bullet passed right through her and the windshield and landed, spent, on the dashboard.

  These guys have no idea there’s a driving zombie in this car.

  Tim slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, pulled the gear lever into the “D” position and hit the gas.

  Chapter 13. The city

  The guys in the squealer squad scattered, jumping out of the way as Tim roared past in the wagon. He saw them run fruitlessly behind for a short time, then start trotting off in another direction — probably to get their own vehicle. Tim stopped the car and got Marilyn back inside, where she huddled down in the back seat with the Snuggie over her head.

  Yeah, I’d like to do that too, sister.

  Tim knew they had very little time. He had to drive somewhere where they could get out and hide before those guys showed up — probably in another big pickup, racing engine, yelling, gunshots. It wouldn’t last long, and then he and Marilyn would just be another two whacked Zees — another mini triumph for the squad. Maybe they’d have gasoline poured on them, a match thrown and everything they ever were would be reduced to a charred smudge on the frozen ground.

  “Fuck that!” Tim managed to say aloud, although it came out sounding like “fuhghaaa.” Still, only Marilyn was available for critique, and she didn’t weigh in from her position in back.

  Tim pushed the black wagon as fast as he felt possible without crashing it. He was still heading south, and abandoned and wrecked cars and trucks were becoming more plentiful on the road. He’d have to slow down to thread the wagon among them, and he noticed some of them looked more “fresh.” Steam still issued from some of the hoods, and some of the gore on the ground looked like it was from more recent kills. There was something else as well, something off in the distance just beginning to resolve itself out of the morning haze:

  A city.

  Tim felt something akin to panic hit him in the midsection (wow, more real feelings) as he quickly calculated what a city meant. More people both human and Zee, more places to hide, possibly more targets to feed upon but certainly more squealer squads or whatever their urban equivalent was. There was probably some organized squealer resistance, a crude government that oversaw things like shelter, food gathering and, yeah, Zee whacking.

  Probably.
From this distance, the city looked quiet if not abandoned. But Tim was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. And maybe this explained why the countryside had looked so deserted: Everyone was making their way here, to the city. Like they always did, historically: the urban center, land of opportunity — or a meaty squealer, if nothing else.

  As they drew closer to the larger buildings, the going got slower and slower until finally Tim had to stop — bumping the front of the black wagon gently into the overturned carcass of a cement truck. The cessation of movement caused Marilyn to pop up from the back seat like an expectant Labrador. Seen in the rear-view mirror, her just-up-from-a-nap visage presented a particularly frightening picture, and she came close to making Tim scream again.

  He opened his door and, with a grunt and a gesture, got Marilyn to join him. Together, they looked at the city, growing more distinct as the sun slowly appeared and the mist began to clear. Tim pointed at it and grunted again, then started shuffling toward the conglomeration of buildings as Marilyn huffed behind him.

  That last shot had apparently penetrated one of her lungs, so now Marilyn issued a peculiar whistling sound when she moved. To keep his increasingly busy mind occupied, Tim thought about trying to list all of his and her wounds since they’d met, but behind them he heard the squealer squad they’d just encountered hurrying through the wreckage to their abandoned black wagon. One of them tried a ranging shot that struck a billboard 10 feet from them.

  Although hurrying wasn’t generally in Marilyn’s nature, she got the idea and started shuffling faster. She looked ludicrous, in her yellow Snuggie with her arms, hips and legs gyrating wildly underneath, like puppies wrapped in a blanket. They’d managed to put some more vehicles between themselves and the Zee hunters, and then Tim saw an exit off the road and followed it. He figured they had, at best, half a minute to find a safe place before the hunters came in range, and he looked around frantically as they descended the ramp, which culminated in a traffic light hanging upside down from a mess of wires.