by Siara Brandt
“They’re looking at us,” Gun was scared now. He didn’t know what to do.
Patchwork shot up out of his chair. “Quick. Close the curtains.”
They carefully peeked out of the corners of the closed curtains. Then they looked at each other. “It’s real,” “It’s happening,” they said at the same time.
“Do you think they can get in here?” Gun asked.
“I don’t know.” Patchwork replied. “On Zombie Takeover they can break right through the windows.”
Patchwork knew about zombies all right. Zombie Takeover was his favorite game, his latest obsession. He wore zombie T-shirts. He had zombie posters on his bedroom wall. And he had probably watched every zombie movie ever made.
“Did you see that?” Patch exclaimed. “Right through the roses.”
If there was one thing worse than a zombie apocalypse, it was his mother’s wrath when anyone messed with her roses. You only had to throw a football in there once to know that.
“Do you think there are a lot of them out there?”
“I don’t know, Gun. I see two of them. But it’s dark. And we can’t see the other side of the house.”
Gun was so frightened, he was shaking now. “Do you think they know we’re in here and they’ll try to get to us?” he asked.
In the games they certainly did. And they kept coming.
“I wish I knew where Mom was.” Patch was clearly getting worried about his mother now. “Maybe we should go look for her.”
Gun had a different idea. “Maybe we should just stay here and wait for her. Where would we even look? And how?” Neither Patch nor Gun had a driver’s license. Let alone a car.
“The TV’s are out. And probably everything else,” Patch was thinking it through. “I think we’re on our own here, Gun.”
Patchwork and Gunhawk knew what they had to do. They felt that their games had prepared them for this very thing happening. They filled their old school backpacks with soda cans and chips. In case they had to survive out there for days.
“We need to get to your house, Gun. Your uncle will know what to do. He has guns. And he has a truck. Maybe Mom is there waiting for us. Maybe they need our help.”
Gun had a sudden idea. “The bikes are still in the shed.”
“The bikes. I forget about them.”
They hadn’t ridden their bikes in years. But the bikes were all they had.
“We need some kind of weapons, don’t we?” Gun asked. “What if a bunch of them surround us? What would we do then?”
Patch had his own idea. “Let’s take the Ninja swords.”
They opened the glass cabinet and took the swords out.
“We need bite proof suits,” Gun told Patch.
They thought hard for a few moments, then looked at each other. “The Knights of the Red Death,” they said in unison.
Their childhood toys, including the old plastic armor pieces were still stored in the toy box in the back of Patchwork’s closet.
“I didn’t realize how much I had grown,” Patchwork said as he looked down.
The armor pieces didn’t fit like they used to. But they were better than nothing. They had to use almost a whole roll of duct tape to attach the armor to their bodies. They put the snug-fitting plastic helmets on their heads and picked up their backpacks.
“Ready, Gun?”
“Ready, Patch.”
They cautiously opened the kitchen door. “Stop, look and listen,” Patchwork said soberly, reminding them both of the wisdom from their childhood.
“What do you see out there?” Gun whispered over his shoulder.
“Nothing so far,” Patch answered quietly. And then Gun heard, “It’s now or never” as Patch bolted into the darkness.
The both ran for the shed across the yard.
“They saw us,” Gun cried out as he looked back over his shoulder.
That’s when they heard glass breaking. And snarls. And terrifying growls.
A zombie lurched out of the shadows near the lilac bushes. Without thinking, with adrenaline alone driving him, Patchwork did a roundhouse kick. The zombie crashed back into the bushes and flailed around like a fish out of water. Trapped by the thick network of branches, it was having trouble getting back up again.
“That was awesome,” Gun breathed next to Patch. “The tae kwon do really does work.”
Patchwork was good at it. He had practiced roundhouse kicks hundreds of times. His mom had had made him take tae kwon do classes last year for a few months to get him out of the house for a while. He had even gotten his green belt. But the zombie didn’t stay down.
“He’s getting up, Patch. Run!”
Both Patchwork and Gunhawk were gasping for breath by the time they reached the shed.
“Shut the door, Gun,” Patchwork almost screamed.
The door slammed shut. The two cousins waited in total darkness. They didn’t dare open the door. Or make a sound. They just waited.
Used to relying on Mom for their basic needs, they realized that they were now on their own. It was a sobering thought. They were quickly learning that life wasn’t a game. But right now it looked like it should be.
Chapter 9
Jake dove behind a tombstone and slid down with his back against it. “I guess this is as good a place as any to make a last stand,” he muttered to himself. “They know I’m here.”
He was surrounded and badly outnumbered. He could hear them snarling around him. He could hear the rustling of the bushes. He didn’t have much ammo left. And the sun was going down. He tried not to think about being out here unarmed and in the dark with those things all round him. If something happened to him, what would happen to his family? Would they have to watch him die? He could not accept that they had survived all that time in the basement and their flight from Springfield just to die here.
Wanting to make the most of the remaining daylight, he ran, shooting at zombies, hitting one or two. He saw one slump over a tombstone. It took three shots to kill another one of them.
He flopped heavily behind a tall tombstone near the caretaker’s shed to reload and looked up at the sound that was growing louder. “What- ” he breathed, startled.
He saw something he never expected to see. Gabe and Ana Bishop were on a scooter. They were driving on the blacktop like the gates of hell had opened up and a horde of demons were after them. Ana’s long hair was blowing in the wind behind her.
They stopped the scooter to look back at him. Then they turned the scooter around and drove right into the cemetery. They began shooting, too.
Jake was so relieved, he could have shouted out loud. Or got down on his knees. Or wept. Or maybe done all three.
When the zombies were thinned out, they drove the scooter right over to him. They looked to the bridge that they, too, must have been planning to cross. There were distant screams from people on the bridge. But they were far away and even if they decided to help them, they couldn’t have gotten there in time, no matter how hard they tried.
Gabe’s attention remained on the bridge. He wanted to help the people but he realized that there were no more screams. He turned his face to the side, struggling with his emotions. He bowed his head for a few moments while the muscle in his jaw jumped. It was a hard thing for him to accept, seeing people die like that.
“We saw some other people trying to get across the river earlier,” Jake told him. “They must not have made it, either. That’s why we stayed here. We were trying to decide what to do.”
“Where- ” Gabe asked.
“They’re safe,” Jake answered him, nodding toward the caretaker’s shed.
Gabe looked at the bridge again.
“There nothing we can do now,” Jake told him.
Even from this distance they saw snarlers moving around. There were a lot of them.
“We won’t get across either,” Jake said, breaking into Gabe’s thoughts. “Not with the cars and the snarlers blocking the way. I’m damned glad to see you t
wo alive. We got overrun. We had no choice but to leave the city.”
“I decided it was getting too dangerous to stay, too. We couldn’t get a car down our street so we took the scooter.”
Jake frowned as he stared at the bridge and the river. “There are a lot of snarlers here. I figure it’s because they get stopped by the river.”
“Can they swim?” Gabe asked.
“I haven’t seen one swim. I have seen some bodies in the water floating face down.”
Gabe shook his head and agreed with Jake. “We’re not going to get across that way.”
“There’s another bridge not far from here,” Jake told him. “It’s the old bridge. They were supposed to start tearing it down this summer, but they never got to it. It’s in bad shape, but hopefully it’s still passable. We might be able to get the car across it.”
Gabe looked around at the woman who had just come out of the small caretaker’s shed. It was Jake’s wife, Amanda, and their two small children.
“You have a car?” Gabe asked.
Jake nodded.
“Does it have gas?”
“Almost a full tank.”
Everyone turned to see a man and woman walking out of the woods. They weren’t snarlers. The man was wearing a dress shirt and tie that had been loosened. The woman was young, maybe in her early twenties. Her chin length hair was dyed coal black. She was wearing a long narrow skirt, also black. A long-sleeved top with stars and moons printed on it bared her midriff. She was staring at Ana and Gabe, and the others, but she didn’t say a word.
The man, however, greeted them right away. “We ran out of gas up the road,” he said. “We heard the shooting.”
“I’m Gabriel Bishop. This is my wife, Ana. We’ve come from Springfield. My father has a farm about eighty miles west of here. We were headed there. We figured it would be the best place to go.”
The others made hasty introductions.
“I’m Jake and this is Amanda, and our children.”
“I’m Nygel Sterling. And this is Catra. Have you had any communication with your father?”
Gabe shook his head. “No. Not since the phones stopped working. But my Dad always believed in being prepared for a disaster. I think this qualifies as a disaster.”
“You two won’t get far on foot,” Jake said to the newcomers. “You’re welcome to come with us. If we stay together, maybe we can fight those things off better.”
Gabe agreed. “We stand a better chance if we work together rather than if it’s every man for himself.” At least he hoped that was true.
“Maybe.” Nygel was thinking it over. He looked at Catra as if for confirmation.
“Whatever we do,” Jake broke in. “We need to make a decision. Fast.”
Both Gabe and Ana made a quick decision to leave the scooter behind. “You’re right,” Ana agreed with Gabe. “We’ll be safer in the car.”
With Jake driving, they drove up the overgrown dirt road that led to the old bridge. The bridge was in bad shape, but they had no choice but to try and get across it.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Ana asked as she rose up in her seat and stared anxiously out over the bridge.
“It’s going to have to be,” Gabe said grimly. “We don’t have time to check it out.” He had seen snarlers in the rearview mirror. There were a lot of them. And they were getting close.
“I don’t- ” Ana still seemed uncertain.
The boards didn’t look very stable, and it looked like a few might even be missing.
“We can’t stay here,” Jake said as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. He looked at Gabe who said, “We go fast and we don’t stop.”
Gabe glanced in his side view mirror. “Go now!”
A loud thump hit the back of the car. Amanda clutched her two children who cried out, terrified.
The tires spun in the mud. The car didn’t move.
“Back up. Back up,” Gabe urged. “There’s a little gravel patch behind us.”
Jake put the car in reverse. Something thumped, harder this time. Bloody hands hit one of the side windows. A hideous face pressed up against another one. The tires spun again, throwing gravel. But then they finally caught and the car lurched forward heading straight for the bridge.
“I absolutely will not sit in something where a corpse has been rotting.”
Grey ran a hand over his smoothly-shaven chin as he scanned the car lot. “I have to admit, I don’t find it all that appealing myself.”
They were parked on the street. There were a few staggers moving around the car lot, but it seemed they were having trouble maneuvering the sea of parked cars.
“Tell me what you like,” Grey said beside her.
“What about that Jeep Cherokee over there? We definitely need something with four-wheel drive.”
He nodded, agreeing.
“How about that red one? Or do you want the black one?”
She looked at him. “Does it matter what color it is?”
“I like the black one myself.”
Typical, she thought. Dangle a vehicle in front of a man, and it was like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.
“I’ll go inside and see if I can find the keys. I can always hotwire it if I have to, but keys will be a lot handier if we have to leave some place in a hurry. Or if you have to drive.”
Grey got out of the station wagon they had hotwired to get here and began making his way through the obstacle course of a car lot.
Fifteen minutes later, the engine was purring on the new black Jeep.
“This is nice,” Grey said, checking out all the options. “Isn’t it? Roomy. It’s even got a heated steering wheel. I always wanted one of those. Keeps your hands warm in the winter.”
She looked over at him and he shrugged. “All right. Let’s see about siphoning some gas or we won’t be going anywhere.”
Grey looked up, peering through the windshield. “You hear that? Military planes.”
“What does that mean?” Hanna asked.
“It means government forces still have control somewhere.”
“Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?”
He shook his head. “Hard to say.”
It was hard to say. Nothing was certain in the world anymore.
On the road out of town there were signs up everywhere and all kinds of graffiti on the buildings. People leaving the city had left messages behind saying that they were OK or that they were heading somewhere. Other messages told where they could be found or that they would be waiting.
When everything had started, people didn’t have time to plan. They only had time to run. Or to hide. And the few people that had planned couldn’t have planned for anything like this. It was sad, Hanna thought as she read the messages, to think of all the families that were separated and missing loved ones. She settled back in the seat. They had a long ride ahead of them, but she was glad to finally be leaving the city.
“Go ahead and get some sleep in the back,” Gray told her later when they had stopped for the night.
“Aren’t you going to rest, too?” she asked.
“I’ll rest here. I want to be able to start the car fast if something happens.”
Sometime in the middle of the night, Hanna was awakened by Grey stretching out in the back of the vehicle next to her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily.
“It’s dead out there.” He paused for a moment, realizing what he had just said. “Nothing has happened for three hours. I thought I would get some rest for a couple of hours before heading out again. That seat had me cramping up. I’m a light sleeper so- “ His voice trailed off.
She muttered something he couldn’t catch, rolled over and went back to sleep.
About an hour later, she was again awakened by Grey’s deep voice calling out what sounded like orders. He jerked awake and half sat up.
“Sorry,” he apologized, still trying to slow his rapid breathing. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I was having
a nightmare.”
After a little while, he heard her ask, “What were you dreaming about?”
The truth was that part of his dream had been about her. But there was no way he was going to let her know that. He could just imagine her reaction.
“I don’t remember,” Grey said as he lifted his hand to rake his dark hair back. “Whatever it is that He Men dream about, I guess.” He turned his face to look at her and apologized again for waking her. “Can’t get back to sleep?”
“No. I guess I don’t feel as safe sleeping in a vehicle as I do in a house.”
Grey lay back down. Hanna stared at his profile in the darkness. She had never seen Grey without his iron self-control in place. She had had her own nightmares. Who didn’t these days? Mostly her nightmares were about escaping from what Grey called staggers.
“I know what you mean,” Grey said. “You feel kind of exposed out here, especially in the dark. Keeping alert gets to be a habit. And it’s a hard one to break.”
Hanna did feel more exposed, but she also realized, to her surprise, how much safer she felt with Grey beside her. Maybe being alone hadn’t been all she’d tried to tell herself it was. She didn’t want him to know that, of course, and she didn’t want to get too used to relying on him. The world had become an uncertain place at best. It would be foolish to even begin to make any kind of plans for the future. You could only survive for today and hope there’d actually be a tomorrow.
After a silence, Grey heard Hanna ask in the darkness. “Did you ever wonder that if we’re left, maybe there’s a reason for that? That maybe there’s something important we’re supposed to do?”
“You mean like fate?”
“Something like that.”
“I guess I never thought of it that way.” Grey yawned beside her. “Society has always been able to rebuild, even after the worst catastrophes,” he said. “People have shown a remarkable ability to survive throughout history. But this- “ He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wasn’t at all certain that the human race wasn’t facing extinction. But he didn’t want to tell her that.
“It’s easy to forget the important things when you’re living each day just to stay alive,” Hanna said. “But I still believe there is a difference between right and wrong.”
