Should he hop out and shoot him, or stay put, stay quiet and hope the Zee moved on? Gunshots most certainly attracted Zee attention, and even just being outside could alert them to his presence. Mark and Linda both believed Zees had a keen sense of smell, specifically tuned for living flesh and blood. They’d queried Tim about it ad nauseum, but he’d simply told them again and again that he’d never had the opportunity to test his sense of smell to identify prey: It’d always just pretty much shown up.
The black dude was the only Zee out there at the moment, but Tim knew one Zee focused on something quickly attracted more. A dead Zee, on the other hand, was just that. He made the decision to whack this one, partly for protection and partly because the idea of whacking a Zee seemed so delightfully ironic.
The moment Tim opened the door and dropped to the ground with the shotgun, the Zee turned and made a lumbering beeline for him. Tim waited until it was a few yards away and blew its head off. Almost before the nearly headless Zee hit the ground, Tim was back inside the truck, locking the door and scrambling back into the bed.
The enormous sound of the shotgun in the quiet woods had startled him, and he cursed himself for giving away his location. How many Zees might have heard that? What about Craig and his thugs?
Too late now. Only a few minutes passed before the next Zee was pounding on the truck, and it was soon joined by several more. Tim lay there in the back of the truck clutching the shotgun and wondering if he stayed completely still … would they go away eventually? It seemed unlikely they could claw their way into the vehicle, but Tim knew the tenacity of Zees, and it might just be a matter of time. They had time on their side, decent strength and that burning hunger that would drive them until they could go no more. What they lacked, at least so far as Tim knew, was the brains to do something like pick up a rock and smash the truck’s windows.
Peering through the curtains, Tim saw at least half a dozen Zees out there — and that was just one side of the truck. He could drive away, but unless he could find a garage or something for protection, he’d just be repeating all this somewhere else in the Barrens.
Inadvertently, he caught the dead eye of a Zee in a track suit. The guy was pristine, hardly looked like a Zee at all save the ghostly pallor. They both froze as their eyes met, and Tim saw the Zee change from that look of bland persistence Zees had most of the time to an expression of savage hunger. He slapped his palms against the window and started gnawing at the glass.
Transfixed, Tim didn’t whip the curtains shut as he should have but looked in amazement at the Zee’s frenzied actions. Then, the guy’s entire face disappeared as a shot rang out. The Zee dropped like a bag of sand, and more followed in quick succession. In under a minute, all the Zees around the truck were lying on the ground, their atrophied brains scattered in the dirt and pine duff.
Tim had to assume it was Craig and his buddies, which meant he needed to get the fuck out of there pronto. He climbed into the front seat and started the truck at about the same time the Wild Man popped out from behind a tree holding his rifle.
“Hello!”
Tim breathed a sigh of relief and turned off the motor. Stepping out of the truck, he called “Hi Stacey! Thanks for the assist!”
Stacey responded by putting a slug in the ground a few inches from Tim’s feet.
“Shut up! Who the fuck are you?”
“Well, do you want me to shut up or tell you who I am?”
“Don’t be a wiseass. Speak up.”
“It’s me, Stacey, Tim. The recovering Zee you dropped off at Caswell a few weeks ago. All better now.” Mostly.
Stacey had warily been getting closer, and now he came within a few feet of Tim. He’d lowered his rifle but was now holding a pistol on him.
“No fucking shit? I thought you were dead meat. So you come through?”
“Yep. What happened was …”
“Stow that shit for now. We’ve gotta get the fuck outta here. This is a major stinker hangout. Believe it or not, there’s a cave just over that rise, and a fuckload a-them live in it, like bats.”
Stacey had Tim drive them out of there in the Meridian truck back to his place in the woods — which was less than a half-mile away.
“Well, shit, I was close,” Tim told him as they rolled to a stop. “I was looking for you.”
“Fuck for?”
Tim explained the plan as best he could, leaving out the part about Dr. Linda that morning.
“Well, you wouldn’t-a found me anyway. That asshole Craig’s been out here. I seen him, drivin’ around, scarin’ off the game and calling my name out of his stupid fucking PA system. I don’t want nothin’ to do with prison guards or cops or anything like.”
So that could mean Craig was still out here — or had he given up for the night? Either way, Tim felt, at least for the moment, that he’d landed in the right camp. With Stacey on his side, he could perhaps get something accomplished without getting a bullet in his brain too soon. It stood to reason, though, that as soon as Stacey was made aware of what had transpired in that cell, Tim would have no friends on the human side. But for now, the Wild Man was demonstrably excited about the potential for a cure. After they got to the place where Tim had seen him uncover his pickup truck weeks before, Stacey took out a bright flashlight and shone it in Tim’s face.
“Just stand still. I wanna look at you real close.”
The visual inspection was accompanied by some heavy sniffing, which almost caused Tim to break out laughing. Satisfied that Tim was no longer any part Zee, Stacey led him to a rock face against a hillside and located a good sized boulder. Putting his shoulder against it, Stacey shoved and the boulder rolled aside. Tim noticed it appeared to be on some kind of track, and it glided out of the way easily.
“See, I live in a cave too,” Stacey said with a laugh. “Like a fucking bat.”
After entering and rolling the boulder back in place, Stacey pointed the flashlight down a short corridor that led to a wider chamber. He located something on the ground and some lights glowed to life.
“Home sweet home.”
Tim looked around as his eyes adjusted. There was the basic stuff of life: a pallet bed, a table with one chair, a battered recliner next to a shelf full of books, and a pantry next to what looked like a fire pit.
“It’s an old mine,” Stacey said. “Zinc they pulled outta this place, especially back around World War II. If you look up, you’ll see there’s a shaft that goes up, all the way to the top. That’s what lets me build fires in her so’s I can cook.”
“This is … great,” Tim said, taking a seat at the table.
“Shut the fuck up. It’s a shithole. Gotta live like a goddamned animal these days cuz of those stupid fucking stinkers everywhere.”
Stacey put up his guns on a rack full of weapons and sat down heavily in the recliner.
“I’m sick of it. Sick to fucking death of it. Which is why I’m gonna help you … if I can.”
He turned his head to look at Tim.
“You really think you guys can cure this shit?”
“We’ve got a decent shot. We think we have it figured out. If we can just get this other piece of the puzzle.”
Stacey snorted and leaned back, closing his eyes.
“Marilyn Monroe the zombie, eh? Wearing a fucking yellow Snuggie. That is truly excellent.”
He opened his eyes. “And weird, too. I ain’t never heard-a no stinker changing clothes, puttin’ anything else on like that. Those fuckers’ll walk around naked or in a goddamned wedding gown or a scuba outfit, complete with flippers. I seen it all.”
“Me too,” Tim said. “Marilyn, I think from being with me, picked up some habits that were pretty non-stinker. I mean, she was still a total zombie — she loved a pair of fresh balls more than anything — but she maybe had, I don’t know, 5 percent of her that was just a little bit human.”
Stacey was quiet for a moment.
“Well, I’m fucking beat. Let’s get some sleep
, an’ we’ll go out in the morning. It’s a fucking needle in a haystack, but if it’s the only shot we got, I guess we better take it.”
Stacey located a couple of blankets and handed them to Tim.
“You can sleep over there,” he said, pointing to a dark corner. “I sleep very lightly and I will have my sidearm under my pillow, so if you come anywhere near me I will shoot you. Just so we understand: You look pretty cured to me, but I don’t trust you 100 percent. I probably never will, seein’s how you was once a stinker. Ain’t nothing personal, but this is how I’ve stayed alive through this whole mess. I pretty much just assume the worst and guard against it. Savvy?”
“Got it,” said Tim. “Got a bathroom?”
Stacey laughed and pointed to an even darker corner while holding out a flashlight.
Chapter 21. Stringtown
It was a long night. Stacey snored like a freight train and talked in his sleep. The ground was hard, the air damp and cold. Tim had no watch or phone, and in the pitch-black cave, there was no way of telling when dawn would arrive. When it finally did — signaled by the thinnest ribbon of light emanating from the air shaft — Stacey sat up abruptly and called out “rise and shine!”
“I’ve been shining all night, Stacey.”
“Really?” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I slept like a fucking rock.”
He looked over at Tim.
“I guess you’re OK. If’n you had any stinker left in you, you probably coulda chewed my whole leg off before I noticed.”
Tim laughed.
“You wouldn’t have been my type anyway. I liked the ladies. A pair of 38-D’s man, that’s a feast.”
“No shit? So you liked to chew off their titties, eh? Did they taste better than the rest or what?”
Tim hadn’t actually considered it much, but he told Stacey it went without saying that breasts were boneless, devoid of other annoying things like tendons or hair and were easily accessible right out front.
“But let’s talk about something else,” he said.
Stacey shrugged.
“Sure. But I’ve spent so much time whacking stinkers, it’s pretty fucking amazing to get to talk to one. Uh, a former one, anyways. Hell, if I can — how do they say it? — ‘get into the mind of my foe’ — I could be the greatest Zee whacker of them all.”
Stacey’s words sent a chill down Tim’s spine. He didn’t often feel scared anymore, having literally been to hell and back, but being mostly human gave one a higher sense of self-preservation. As a Zee, it was all pretty hopeless, and he’d been ready for permanent death whenever it came. Now, thinking about how quickly Stacey would dispatch him if he showed his Zee colors …
“I bet you already are the greatest, Stacey. Shit, the way you knocked out that gang around my truck last night. How many were there, like 10?”
“Thirteen,” Stacey said. “Which brings my lifetime total up to, lessee, nine-hunnert an’ eighty-five.”
“Wow, and never bitten once I guess.”
“Nope. Come close lotsa times, that’s for sure. Especially in the early days before I had it down. Now, I know how Zees move to a T. I know the sounds they make and can hear ’em a mile away. An’ I can smell ’em first. I know just where to put a bullet to stop ’em good. Right here,” he said, pointing to his left temple. “I don’t know why, but any other spot on the head, it’ll still kill ’em but doesn’t drop ’em as fast like one in the side here. An’ that’s the key, you know. You gotta stop ’em as quick as possible, especially when they’s in a gang. Cuz if you don’t, they’ll group up on you quicker’n snot. You gotta be able to shoot ’em from far away, like I done last night, but you also gotta know your close combat when you’re in a pack of ’em. That’s why it’s important to wear your goggles and your filter mask when you’re doin’ close work like that. That stinker blood an’ shit flies everywhere when you’re puttin’ ’em down, and as you know, it only takes one drop in your mouth or even your eye before you’re changin’ teams.”
Stacey stood up and walked back to the lavatory area. He kept up the narrative as he pissed.
“Course, ideally you don’t wanna do any close work at all. There ain’t no honor involved in this kinda warfare, an’ I do 99 percent of my work from 20 yards away or more. Back-a the head’s as good as anything with a good rifle. But shit, I’ve killed nearly a thousand of them fuckers, an’ they still keep comin’, thick as fleas on a hound. When’s it gonna end is what I wanna know. Cuz man, the Wild Man is tired.”
Tim and Mark had spent some time theorizing on just that question. He’d told Mark about the starved and frozen Zees he’d seen, and they’d concluded that any Zees outside of urban areas where fresh meat would be more available shouldn’t be able to survive more than a few months at best. But the plague had been going on for six, almost seven months now, and there were plenty of Zees everywhere.
He told Stacey about all this as they readied to leave.
“It sure as shit don’t make sense for these Barren Stinkers livin’ up in that cave,” he said. “What the hell are they feedin’ off-a?”
“Beats me,” Tim said. “Bats?”
He told Stacey about the goats and wondered aloud of bats might be another non-human food source for Zees.
They were taking Stacey’s truck. Tim had convinced him that, if they wanted to steer clear of guard or police types, they’d best not use the guards’ truck, which was sure to attract attention. His explanation about why he was the only one out looking for Marilyn was that he stood a better chance alone than in a large, heavily armed group. As a former Zee, Tim knew how to avoid them. Once he found Marilyn, he’d just get her tied up and bring her back to Meridian.
They covered up the guard truck with branches in the spot where Stacey’s truck was and set off toward the city. Picking the conversation about the cure back up, Stacey behind the wheel once again brought up something Tim hadn’t spent much time thinking about.
“Well, even if you do find the cure and you figger out a way to give it to all these stinkers, there’s still gonna be some lapse between when they all get it. I mean, they’re still gonna be comin’ after us. An’ shit, there’s a lotta them you need to treat. What’ll you do it with, a shot or something? I tell you what, an’ you know this, Tim: If you’re close enough to give one-a these fuckers a shot in the arm, you’re close enough for him to chew your goddamned face off. Unless you whack ‘em, and then what’s the point in a cure?”
“I honestly don’t know, Stacey. It’s not my area of expertise. In fact, I don’t know that it’s anyone’s area of expertise: weaponizing a vaccine? Maybe it’s some kind of rig like those tranquilizer guns they use for wild animals. Maybe it’s some kind of aerosol you can spread in the air, through the clouds or something. Or you can get it in the water somehow — although Zees drink out of rivers and lakes, not out of the faucet. When they drink, that is — stupid fuckers.”
Once the cure got to them, Tim knew most of the Zees out there would soon thereafter anyway. They almost all had terrible wounds and other health issues being masked by the plague and its odd way of tricking the body into keeping going — even when it should be dead.
“I guess we’ll worry about that later, Stacey. First we have to get another couple of impossible things out of the way.”
Tim described the last place he’d seen Marilyn, and the route they’d taken to get there down the main drag of the city that had turned into a river.
“That ain’t much to go on, but I do maybe know that store, the kid’s furniture store you was in. Bought a few things there myself back when …. Which could mean you floated down Major Boulevard, which is Route 85, and all the way to Stringtown, which is where all the Mexicans live. Or lived. Did you see any Mexican zombies?”
Tim shook his head. “Not that I noticed.”
“Well, for now that sounds like our best bet. You’re Marilyn Monroe zombie chick is holed up in some Mexican’s house. That’s pretty funny, I don’t know why.
”
“Me neither,” said Tim, hoping he wouldn’t hear some right-wing diatribe from Stacey about illegal immigration. A moot problem now, like so many others, it occurred to Tim that Zees were sort of the ultimate in unwanted guests. What they wouldn’t all give for a few million Mexican gardeners and sheet-rockers in their place.
Or would they? Living amid the plague did have its advantages, did it not? Stacey told him it’d take them an hour or so to drive to Stringtown, so he broached the topic.
“Have you ever thought, in some ways, this world is kind of appealing in its simplicity?”
Stacey turned and looked at him.
“Fuck that shit. There’s nothing ‘appealing’ about fightin’ for your life every day against all these stinky, fucked-up motherfuckers. Man, what I’d give to be bored for just one day. To go the supermarket for food. To take a hot shower.”
“I know all that, what I mean is we traded in a shitload of other problems for just this one: the zombies. No more mortgages, credit cards, politicians, cops, rules — all that shit that took up our time in the old life, made us anxious and unhappy.”
Tim leaned back. “I don’t know Stacey, sometimes I think there’s a lot to like about this new Zee-land.”
Stacey was quiet for a moment. They were on a country road of sorts and it was relatively clear of debris. Tim saw the occasional farmhouse or roadside gas station, but not much else. Like so many other things, his memory hadn’t returned many details of his former life, and geography he should have known well (Mark told him he’d lived in this area for over 10 years) was all new territory. At first it’d been frustrating, but as it became clear this information was not going to return, Tim had gotten to rather like it. His almost-blank slate of a mind made every day a series of brand-new experiences and surprises while he still had the context in place (he knew what a gas station was, for instance, he just didn’t remember any particular one. Where had he gassed up his car, he wondered? And what kind of car was it? He had no idea and had never thought to ask Mark. What possible difference could it make?)
Zombie Road Trip Page 13
