by Tony Urban
The mutt crawled onto Bol’s lap and licked his face. The man laughed and scratched its ears.
“Mind his leg.”
“Have you seen anyone else alive?” Bolivar asked Aben.
Aben shook his head. “No. You boys are the first, I’m afraid. But I haven’t put on nearly as many miles as you.”
“Why didn’t you boost a ride?” Dash asked.
“I prefer to walk.” He left it at that. Even though these other men were both soldiers and likely had similar tales of their own, his story was one he didn’t care to reminisce upon, let alone share out loud.
Bolivar examined the dog’s leg and gave it the all clear. They would both live. For now.
“There’s room in the car for you and the pooch, if you’re interested,” Bol said.
“I might be. What do you have planned?"
As Bolivar and Dash told Aben about the plan to seek out the bunker, Aben thought the idea to be one of the stupidest he’d ever heard, but he managed to keep his opinion to himself. He was proud of that. Maybe he wasn’t hopeless after all. When the car hit the road, both he and the dog were along for the ride.
24
Juli was doing 50 miles per hour when Jeremy turned. He’d been silent as night turned to morning and Helen had even taken a break from worrying about him to fall asleep. Juli saw the old woman’s head careened back against the seat and her mouth hanging agape as deep, raspy snores rumbled from her throat. Juli smiled a little, remembering how Mark used to snore when he slept, but the smile faded when that memory was swiftly replaced with the one of killing him.
They’d cleared the city some time ago but Juli could still see hints of smoke in the sky behind her as she drove. It was a nice enough day otherwise. The weather was warm and spring-like. If she hadn’t been running for her life, she might be outside planting petunias and impatiens, digging her hands through the soft potting soil and listening to the chickadees sing.
The realization that she’d probably never do any of those things again made the beautiful, blue sky seem pointless. What had Helen said? "The end of days"? Maybe she was right. Maybe the world wasn’t going to end in an ice age or fireballs from the sky after all. Maybe this was it. She’d never been a philosopher, and she had little time to ponder the end of the world because Helen’s snores were replaced with screams.
Juli checked the rearview mirror and saw Jeremy gnawing away at his grandmother’s bony shoulder.
“Stop it, Jeremy! Stop!” Helen flailed with her stick thin arms, pounding her fists into the boy, but he wouldn’t stop eating.
“Get off her!” Julie screamed as she slammed on the brakes. The duo in the back vaulted forward, crashing into the front seats. That broke them apart and Helen scrambled across the seat and away from the boy. His mouth was stained with his grandmother’s blood and he struggled to climb free from the footwell. Juli realized she had to stop that and jumped out of the car.
“Stay away from him, Helen!” Juli threw open the rear passenger side door and grabbed the boy by his hair.
Jeremy snarled and swung at her but Juli refused to let go as she dragged him out of the vehicle. Still holding two fistfuls of hair, she slammed his face against the ground once, then a second time. The boy’s movements slowed but didn’t stop. Juli smashed his face against the roadway a third time and felt a crunch. He went limp.
Juli knelt over his lifeless body, catching her breath. She realized she was still holding onto him and quickly let go. A few wiry, black hairs remained stuck to her sweaty hands. I just killed him, she thought. I killed this boy right in front of his grandmother. She wiped her hands on her nightgown to free herself of his hair. As she was doing so, ninety pounds of force landed on her back and she crumpled forward against Jeremy’s body.
Helen was atop her. The newly undead woman felt like fire on Juli’s back. He clawed and scratched and only Juli’s nightgown prevented her skin from being shredded. The dead woman grabbed Juli’s arm. She was so strong it felt like she could tear it right off her body. I’m going to die, Juli thought.
The realization didn’t upset her. She’d been in a fog since seeing her dead daughter, killing her husband, and discovering her son had become a zombie. That was a three course meal from which she’d never recover. Her life was already over. This was just paying the check.
Pinned between the two people she’d tried to save the night before, Juli waited to die. As Helen’s thick saliva dripped onto the nape of her neck, it dawned on her that she didn’t want to die after all.
Juli threw her head backward and felt a jarring collision as her skull collided with Helen’s face. Tiny stars appeared before her eyes. Helen’s frantic clawing and scratching stopped for a moment and Juli she felt the weight atop her shift. The reprieve was only long enough for Juli to roll onto her side. When she looked up, she saw blood running out of Helen’s broken nose.
When Juli moved, Helen’s focus returned to her. Juli grabbed Helen’s shirt and pushed the zombie backward. Helen swung and flailed at her, her brittle nails drawing blood. Juli caught Helen’s arm and pulled her in close. They were face to face. When Juli stared into Helen’s red, crazed eyes she knew it was now or never.
Juli twisted her head and lunged for the old woman’s neck. She bit down on Helen's throat and felt the flesh give way. Hot blood gushed into Juli’s mouth but she kept biting until her teeth caught what felt like a thick string of gristle. She bit harder and that too gave way. Now the blood was spraying, pumping out of the zombie and into Juli’s face.
Helen grabbed for her throat and Juli rolled which knocked Helen off her and onto the road. Juli darted back to the Audi and dove into the driver’s seat. She’d left the engine running and she threw the SUV into reverse, cranked the wheel hard to the right and watched in the mirror as the rear end of the car slammed into Helen. The back end bucked and bounced as it rolled over her, then the front wheels did a repeat.
Through the windshield, Juli could now see the zombie’s twisted, mangled corpse sprawled on the highway. Then, Helen tried to get up. Juli waited until the zombie was on its knees which put its head right at bumper level. She shifted into drive and slammed the gas.
Juli felt a heavy thud as the vehicle plowed into the woman. She kept driving and didn’t look back.
Juli’s mouth was filled with the taste of blood and she spit twice into the passenger seat to rid herself of the flavor. That only half worked. She caught her reflection in the mirror and saw that Helen's blood drenched her upper body. She felt nauseous, but that was mostly the lingering flavor of the blood in her mouth. She wasn’t horrified at what she’d just done, she felt accomplished. Before this, Juli assumed her life was over. Now, she thought she might have some living to do after all. But first she wanted some actual clothing. And a cigarette.
25
Mead saw the ambulance first. He drove a BMW SUV they’d found shortly after blowing up half the town. Bundy’s explosion trick was a good one and had killed every single zombie that had them trapped. But, as the big man had lamented, it also wiped out their weaponry. All they’d escaped with was Mead’s trusty hockey stick and Bundy’s rifle. That didn’t bother Mead tremendously because he knew he could fend for himself. Bundy, on the other hand, was fucked without his guns. More proof guns are a bad option in a zombie apocalypse, Mead thought.
The big, red bus sat in the middle of the interstate and Mead wasn’t sure it was real at first. It could be a hazy mirage in the heat brought on by tired eyes and the hypnosis that goes along with highway driving. But as they neared it, it became clear the ambulance was very real. The front end faced away from them which prevented Mead from seeing inside, but he assumed that if there were any occupants, they were dead.
A line from an old zombie movie came to mind. “Send more paramedics!” Mead started laughing and couldn’t stop. His shrill giggles woke Bundy, who hadn’t stopped being butt hurt over the stairs fiasco. Mead liked him better when he was sleeping.
; “What’s so damn funny?” Bundy asked.
Bundy had been irritated since the rooftop incident and it was wearing on Mead’s psyche. He kept trying to impress the man, to keep the mood upbeat, but it was growing harder by the hour.
“Nothing. There’s an ambulance ahead,” Mead said.
Bundy sat forward in his seat and rubbed his sleepy eyes. “Pull over.”
Mead did, slowing the BMW to a stop at the back corner of the ambulance. He left the engine running as he jumped out and grabbed his hockey stick. Bundy followed, slowly.
When Mead moved beside the ambulance, he heard something thump against the side wall. He jumped back a step, then hopped onto the side rail and got eye level with the driver’s side window. From there he saw the woman. She was bone skinny and motionless. He thought she might be dead, but he couldn’t see any wounds on her and, so far, he hadn’t seen zombies sleep. It was a quandary.
He glanced back at Bundy. “There’s a woman inside.”
“Dead?”
Mead shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t tell.” He pulled up on the door handle and found it locked. “It’s locked.”
“I assumed as much when it didn’t open.”
That rotten attitude again. Mead didn’t bother responding. He rapped the end of the hockey stick against the window and waited. She gave no response. “Pretty sure she’s dead.”
Another loud thud rocked the ambulance.
“Whatever’s back here sure isn’t,” Bundy said.
“Try the back door.”
Bundy moved to the rear doors. He’d grown to highly dislike the little man who now watched him with the hungry, excited eyes of an animal. Part of it, a big part, was because he blamed Mead for losing his collection of firearms. But it was more than that. The dude annoyed him on general principle. He was anxious and shifty. Mead was exhausting to be around.
Bundy would have dropped him a few hundred miles ago if the kid hadn’t been such a good fighter. In Bundy’s thick, bear paw hands that goofy-looking hockey stick was useless, but Mead handled it like an actual ninja and he’d destroyed a shocking number of zombies without so much as firing a single bullet.
The kid was wired on energy drinks and Bundy slept while Mead drove straight through the night. Bundy had woke up when the morning light penetrated his still closed eyelids and he faked it for a while, hoping to avoid Mead’s incessant chatter. He’d have continued to feign sleep if it hadn’t been for the ambulance.
This is where we’ll split up, Bundy thought. I’ll take the bus; he can have the Beemer. Sayonara, you odd, little man. He kept his finger on the trigger of his sole remaining rifle as he reached for the door handle and eased it open.
The first thing he saw was chaos. It looked as if the entire contents of the ambulance had been knocked to the floor and repeatedly beaten and smashed. Amidst the destruction, he saw the zombie. Bits of glass and shards of debris covered its dark blue paramedic uniform. As his gaze carried up to its face, Bundy saw two syringes jutting from its eye sockets. Red gore had trickled down its cheeks and dried; bloody tears leaking from the black holes where its eyes had once been.
“Son of a bitch.” The words came out in an exhale and when they did, the zombie turned toward him like a weather vane in a strong wind. It stumbled at him, tripping over the wreckage under its feet which suddenly made more sense to Bundy.
He took a few steps back from the ambulance and watched as the zombie climbed back to its feet, fell again, then resorted to crawling on all fours toward him. When it reached the back of the bus, its feeling hands hit the open air and it fell ass over head out the doorway and landed face first on the road. Bundy winced as the fall drove the syringes deeper into its eye sockets.
“What’s going on?” Mead called out.
Bundy didn’t answer. He was enjoying the show. The zombie pushed itself back onto its knees, then got to its feet. Its arms flailed wildly, desperate for a target. Bundy kept backing away, staying just out of reach.
He didn’t see Mead jogging onto the scene until he was just a few feet away with the stick raised. Not this time, slick. This one’s mine.
Bundy hurriedly shouldered the rifle, aimed and fired. The bullet ripped through the blind zombie’s face, smashing out its front teeth then exploding the back of its skull in a spray of red. The spent bullet whizzed just a few feet by Mead and embedded itself in the side of the ambulance.
Mead jumped back and dropped his stick which clattered against the concrete. “What the fuck!”
Bundy lowered the rifle slowly, deliberately. “Didn’t see you.” His voice was not apologetic.
Mead’s eyes blazed, but he didn’t respond. He pushed his greasy hair out of his face and bent to pick up the stick. When he stood, the woman spoke.
“Who are you?”
Both men looked to Mina who stood beside the driver’s door of the ambulance. She stared at them, curious and wary.
“I thought you were dead. You looked it,” Mead said.
“You were wrong. And you didn’t answer me.”
Bundy strode toward her, grinning over her thinly veiled annoyance with Mead. “I’m Bundy.”
“Like the wrestler or the serial killer?”
“Like neither. It’s just a name.”
Mina extended her bony hand and when Bundy took it on his own, he thought it looked like a bird’s foot laying in a catcher’s mitt. “Mina Costell. Is your friend incapable of answering a simple question?”
Mead didn’t bother with a handshake. “Mead.”
Mina looked past them, toward the dead zombie in the road. “I was calling him Ray. As in Charles.”
“Were you the one that blinded it?” Bundy asked.
She nodded. “He’s been with me for a few hundred miles.”
“Why didn’t you kill it?” Mead’s voice was an amalgamation of contempt and confusion.
“He was company, of sorts.”
As Mead stomped back to the BMW, Bundy and Mina exchanged a grin. “He’s an intense one.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Bundy said. “But he’s alive, and that seems pretty rare now.”
He looked her up and down. She looked like a twig he could break in two but he saw dried blood all over her. It was obvious she was no helpless waif. “Want to make our duo a trio?”
Mina looked to Mead who sulked behind the wheel of the Beemer, then back to the mountain that was Bundy. “I won’t ride with two men I only just met, but I’ll follow along a while.”
Bundy liked the sound of that. “Get back in the ambulance and we’ll lead the way.”
Mina nodded and gave his bicep, which was bigger than her waist, a short caress. “Good.”
26
“Der Rattenkönig. I saw a mummified version in a German science museum,” Emory said. “There were upwards of two dozen rats knotted together. It was rather horrifying. If memory serves they were first was discovered just before the bubonic plague in the 1300's wiped out a third of the world’s population.”
Wim thought about that for a good while.
After the incident on the highway, the two men agreed to pack it in for the day. A roadside motel which the sign out front declared “Yellow Hat Motor Court” seemed empty enough. Neither had any qualms about taking a key from the pegboard behind the desk without paying.
“Let’s go with three. It’s my lucky number,” Emory had said. The motel was free of travelers and zombies and that, coupled with twin beds, was all they needed.
Wim had told Emory about the abomination of rats he’d found in the barn in the days preceding the outbreak and as he told the tale, the old man’s eyes brightened. “They called it a Rat King.”
That seemed fitting to Wim. But having a name to put with the thing he’d seen and destroyed did little to allay the unease of Emory’s comments about the plague’s effect on the population. “What percentage of people would you suppose have been killed by this?”
Emory mulled it over. “I’ve bee
n thinking about that a lot the last few days. You’re the only other non-infected person I’ve met and-- Now I don’t mean to alarm you...”
“Be candid. The time for coddling is long past.”
“Well, there is simply no way to know if we are immune or if there’s the equivalent of a ticking time bomb inside us. There's a real possibility that this disease has simply decided to take a few days or weeks longer than the typical incubation period before it explodes.”
Wim watched him a moment, then smirked. “That’s interesting, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, yes. About the mortality rate. Well…” He broke eye contact with Wim and Wim noticed. He also noticed the deep wrinkles that etched the old man’s face were even darker than normal, black gashes across his forehead and under his eyes. “It’s impossible to say. There are too many uncertainties.”
“But you have an idea.”
Emory looked back to him and nodded. “I do. If what I’ve seen, and what you’ve told me, holds true elsewhere… It’s considerably higher than 99 percent.”
He folded his hands, his fingers stiff and the knuckles fat with rheumatism. “Frankly, I’d be shocked if more than one person in 10,000 survived the virus, or whatever it was. And when you factor in the people who were killed by the… zombies, I guess we’re calling them that. Or the people who perished from heart attacks due to the stress like I almost did, or had an asthma attack and couldn’t go to the pharmacy for a new inhaler or small children who have no one to care for them…” His shoulders sagged. “It could very easily be one in a hundred thousand. Maybe even one in a million, Wim.”
Wim sighed heavily. He appreciated Emory’s candor and deep down he’d had the same thoughts, but hearing it said aloud carried a gravitas that felt uncomfortably real. “Like hitting the lottery.”
Emory smiled a bit when Wim said that and some of the darkness and worry fled his face. "I suppose so. That would make us winners, would it not?"
