The Spaceship Next Door

by Gene Doucette

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Trailer, straight back to my right.”

  “Get yourself there and hold the door, I’ll be right behind you.”

  Just then, a siren sounded. It was an air raid siren, the kind people too young for the Second World War only ever heard in old movies. There was essentially no way this was a good sign.

  “That’s bad, right?” Laura asked.

  “Yep, real bad. Get to that door.”

  Dobbs was little and round, and still woozy from the slap in the head, but he could run pretty well when his life appeared to depend on it, so he beat Laura to the door handily, and then waited for her.

  “Get in,” she said, “and don’t touch anything.”

  She turned around. “We’re clear!”

  The soldier, perhaps unwisely, had begun engaging one of the other soldiers in hand-to-hand. Unwisely, because the other soldier didn’t seem to have any pain receptors, and the rest were closing in. The non-zombie soldier—Laura couldn’t think of any better word than ‘zombie’ for what she was seeing—couldn’t get free. Every time he tried to turn around and get away the larger man opposite him grabbed a wrist or a piece of his clothing and pulled him back in.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out, and the zombie soldier’s head disappeared in a red cloud.

  “Dammit, no!” soldier boy shouted. “Shoot to wound, shoot to wound!”

  “You’re welcome,” Oona said from the roof.

  The soldier scrambled away from his dead compatriot and reached the door just ahead of the throng. Laura let him in and started applying the deadbolts, of which there were several.

  “Don’t… don’t shoot to kill,” the soldier said.

  “I’m Laura. Welcome aboard.”

  “Sam. Thanks for the assist. Tell your friend up top to be careful.”

  “I will, but between you and me she may not care.”

  * * *

  “What are the sirens for?” Annie asked.

  “It’s a lockdown. Containment strategy. They installed sirens all over the perimeter in the event conventional communications went out.”

  “I didn’t know this.”

  “It wasn’t public knowledge. A lot of things weren’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “We have to get to the car.”

  “Not until you answer my question.”

  “Annie! Look around. We have to get to the car.”

  He was right. Main Street was quickly turning into a pedestrian walkway. It was nearly impassible in both directions.

  “Inside,” Annie said. “Through the back.”

  They retreated into the lobby, and nearly ran over Pete.

  “What’s going on out there? Is the Luftwaffe bombing?”

  “What?” Ed asked.

  “The sirens.”

  “You wouldn’t believe us,” Annie said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  Pete opened the door, looked outside for a half second, and closed it again.

  “Okay, I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “We never said anything.”

  “I don’t believe myself, then. What do we do?”

  “You need to stay here,” Ed said. “Lock the doors, keep them out.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good long-term solution.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. As soon as Annie and I get to the car, nobody out there is going to be interested in coming in.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They’re looking for me,” Annie said. “We’re pretty sure.”

  “Now hang on, I can’t—”

  “Pete,” Ed interrupted, “we really don’t have the time to argue. Hold the doors, keep everyone in here safe, and try not to shoot any of the zombies.”

  Ed grabbed Annie’s arm and the two of them sprinted away from a dumbfounded sheriff, past Beth’s room, and down the hall. As she hoped, the doors in the back led to the ambulance bay, and from there the back parking lot.

  It was empty. The zombies weren’t smart enough to surround the building.

  Ed was unlocking the car when they heard the amplified voice of one of the soldiers at the checkpoint.

  “PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. MARTIAL LAW IS IN EFFECT.”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna help,” Ed said.

  There was a loud pop Annie was pretty sure was a gunshot. She climbed into the car.

  “This is going to go badly, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “I think probably. If it’s like this down here I can’t imagine what the base is like.”

  He pulled out of the space and turned the corner, which was when it became clear the only way out of the lot was to run people over.

  “I hate to say this, but can we just go through them?” Annie asked.

  “I’m nearly positive these people aren’t actually dead and I don’t think this car can take more than a couple of direct impacts. Town cars aren’t really designed to plow into traffic and keep going.”

  “What is?”

  “The army has a few war zone vehicles that would do it. Or one of those black SUV’s you talked me out of using.”

  “That was solid advice at the time.”

  She looked through the rear window and thought about where they were.

  “How do you feel about driving through yards?”

  “Surprisingly good.”

  “Excellent. Turn us around.”

  Ed backed up and performed a hairpin in reverse that was actually a little cool. For a half second Annie felt like she was in an action movie.

  She pointed to a spot between two trees.

  “If you can get through there I think it’s pretty flat right to Mrs. Evanov’s yard. She used to have a wood fence but it’s mostly fallen apart so hopefully we’ll be okay. On the other side is Yucca.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Oh, but you’ll have to gun it. There’s a lip along the edge of the lot.”

  What happened next was somewhat less than Hollywood awesome. Ed gunned the engine and aimed for the spot, but the lip of which Annie spoke was eight inches and squared off, so there was no ramping up and over it. There was only a hard bump, which raised the car and its occupants into the air and down again, inelegantly, and awkwardly off-course. Ed was able to wrestle the vehicle sufficiently to maneuver it between the target trees rather than into one of them, but lost enough speed that the wood fence Annie insisted was barely there became a significant obstacle.

  The horizontal support post ended up across the hood. Ed had to stop the car and remove fence parts before continuing through Mrs. Evanov’s yard.

  “The road’s just there,” Annie said, pointing ahead. Ed steered through the yard.

  Halfway around the side of the house, a figure lurched in front of them. Ed swerved, but a soft-but-distinctive thud indicated he failed miss completely.

  “Oh God, what was that?” Annie asked.

  “Just a guess, but that was probably Mrs. Evanov.”

  Past the side of the house, he skidded onto Yucca Way. It wasn’t entirely zombie-free, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Main.

  “Okay, now what?” he asked.

  “Depends. Where are we going? If you want to head for the ship you’re facing the wrong way.”

  “I want to hook up with the end of Main, then the bridge.”

  “That’s not near anything.”

  “That’s the point. I’m getting you out of town before I do anything else.”

  “Ed…”

  “This isn’t open to debate. I promised to look after you, and the best way I know to do that is to get you as far away from here as possible. Now get me to the bridge.”

  * * *

  “Someone said that to me before,” Dobbs said.

  Dobbs, Sam thought. No wonder I couldn’t get it right, what kind of name is that?

  “Who?” Laura asked.

  The three of them were still down in the main cabin of the trailer, while the fourth occupant—
someone named Oona—marched around on the roof with what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. The rifle was probably meant for him or someone like him.

  She was pacing up there, not using the gun. Sam took this to mean the mob resumed their slow stagger down the hill and was leaving them alone. He would have used a side window to verify this, but their windows were all shuttered with steel panels.

  “I don’t know who. He came up to me in the woods.”

  “You were on your poop run?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  Laura laughed.

  “Everyone knows about it, Dobbs. We were all wondering why you stopped.”

  Sam thought Laura had a really pleasant laugh and a nice demeanor, and she looked really cute. He wasn’t sure if he felt that way about her specifically because she and her friend up top just saved his life or not. Then he decided there was no point speculating, because given the trappings of the room, this woman and the other one were romantically engaged.

  Laura was wearing shorts and a basic blue T-shirt, which made her look far more normal than she appeared to actually be, based on what was hanging on the walls. It looked like they owned a small collection of leather armor. They also made their own bullets and rolled their own cigarettes, and collected Penthouse calendars. It looked like they were also keeping urine in jars in the back of the trailer, but he couldn’t be positive.

  “Some creeper walked up and asked me, he was like, ‘are you’, and I got the hell out of there rather than figure out what the answer was. I figured it was just some weird guy.”

  “How long ago was that?” Sam asked.

  “Two, three weeks, probably. Hey, thanks for the save.”

  “No problem. I’m supposed to… I just realized I’ve abandoned my post. I should get back outside.”

  “Your post?” Laura said. “Your position was overrun, you can’t go back out there.”

  “It didn’t look like they were interested in anybody here. They were heading toward Main before he interrupted one of them.”

  “That was Art Shoeman,” Dobbs said. “Not just one of them.”

  “Yeah, well it looks like my entire team is out there with him. More reason to get back, the fence is unguarded.”

  “I think the ship can take care of itself, soldier,” Laura said.

  “It’s Sam. And I have orders.”

  “Well, they’re stupid orders given the current situation, Sam. You don’t want to end up being a zombie like your buddies.”

  “I think I need to fall asleep for that to happen.”

  “Sure, or die.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Don’t answer that,” Oona said from above.

  “What’s going on?” Laura asked.

  “Don’t open the door and don’t let the kid leave. Get up here.”

  There was a second and a third knock, and then it became clear these weren’t knocks in any normal sense. Someone out there was banging on the sides of the camper.

  I guess they haven’t gone anywhere, Sam thought.

  There was an interior ladder to the roof, which was about the best idea Sam had ever seen in terms of camper design given the current reality. These were a couple of survivalists, and they’d planned well. He appreciated that at any other time he’d have used the word paranoid to describe what he was seeing. That word was now practical, and it made him think he was exactly where he should be, regardless of his orders.

  Then he got to the roof. Laura went up first, with Dobbs slow to follow. Sam got up there last and took one look at the arsenal of weaponry hanging on the reinforced low wall surrounding the rooftop, and a new word replaced practical. That word was militia. These ladies were a two-person militia, and this camper was definitely built to withstand an attack from other people with guns.

  The army, in other words.

  Oona was a husky woman in pajamas with kittens on them, still holding a high-powered rifle. The expression on her face made it plain that she was not happy to have him there.

  “Look but don’t touch,” she said, referring to the guns. “Those ain’t for you.”

  “I’m guessing the barrel end is,” he said.

  She smiled. “I don’t think we gamed a single scenario where one of you ended up here with us, so you’re not wrong.”

  “Any zombie scenarios?”

  “Oh sure, a bunch. What did you mean about falling asleep?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Those people down there aren’t dead, they’re sleeping.”

  “So more like they’re possessed.”

  “If that works better for you, yes.”

  “Why don’t we just wake them up?”

  “I dealt with this once before. I’m pretty sure if you do that you’ll kill them.”

  “Huh. Well that leaves us with a hairy problem, soldier.”

  “How so?”

  The camper rocked lightly.

  “That’s how so. Have a look over the side.”

  Because of the high walls, Sam had to walk right to the lip.

  There were at least fifty people out there, and half that number was closing on the camper.

  “I didn’t know there were this many people in Sorrow Falls,” he said. “Where are they coming from?”

  “Farmhouses,” Laura said. “And the base up the hill.”

  Sam remembered the screaming he heard in the background when he called in. At this time of night, probably half the division would have been asleep.

  “It’s too soon,” he said. “Unless the zombies are moving faster when we aren’t looking.”

  “Or they learned how to drive,” Dobbs offered.

  “I’m not saying that’s impossible, but if they could do that they would have driven past us. The ship isn’t their destination. Something downtown is. The guys in fatigues must be from one of the outposts.”

  This piqued Oona’s attention. “Come again?”

  “The… outposts. We have ten or twelve of them set up in the hills. That’s where the sirens you’re hearing are all situated. It’s for the cordon scenario.”

  The trailer rocked again. The people below were trying to knock it over.

  “I don’t understand why they’re doing that,” Dobbs said. “Like you said, they were on their way to Main.”

  “It’s a threat response,” Laura said. “They’re acting like white blood cells.”

  “Because I killed one,” Oona added. “That’s why. What was the cordon scenario?”

  “It’s a containment directive, in the event of a contagion, or… well, or this, I guess. It’s to keep all the weirdness contained within the town. The river’s a natural border to the east, but anyone can walk out through the woods north, south and west. The men at the outposts have orders to fan out and put a soldier at each passable point. It’s not impenetrable, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Bump. The camper rocked again.

  “Nice to know you all had plans to trap us in here.”

  “We would have been trapped right with you. We have no jurisdiction outside the town line, so the perimeter had to be within it.”

  “Well, I disagree with you there, soldier,” Oona said. She stepped up to the edge of the roof and looked down at the crowd. “A man standing at the exit is the only one not trapped in the room. Now are you telling me all these people down there are alive?”

  “I don’t know if they all are. That woman there, for instance. She’d probably not.”

  He pointed out a zombie in a nice dress with no nose and only one eye. The left side of her body was semi-crushed, so she was dragging herself mostly with a working right leg. She was about thirty feet away and heading for the camper, albeit slowly.

  “All right, so we’ll call those original recipe zombies.”

  Oona took aim with the rifle and fired once, a clean headshot that dropped the woman immediately.

  “Dammit, Oona!” Laura yelled. “That’s why they’re attacking!”

  “
They’re already attacking, and we had to know if the same thing that drops the free-range ones also take out the original recipe.”

  “I think you’re mixing your chicken metaphors.”

  “Shut up, Dobbs, the one with the gun does the naming.”

  “They all stopped when you fired,” Sam said. “They learned what a gunshot means.”

  “How could they not know that?” Dobbs asked.

  “I mean whoever is running things down there learned it.”

  The trailer rocked again.

  “Okay, two things,” Laura said. “First off, maybe we need to keep firing guns to get them to stop trying to push us over. Second, we could probably use an escape plan here. I don’t want to know what they’re planning to do to us in a breach, do you?”

  “We can hang the outside ladder off the back and hit the field, head for the woods maybe,” Oona said. “The four of us can carry a lot of provisions and a lot of guns. I mean, as long as Dobbs’ poop zombie isn’t out there still.”

  Dobbs looked over the field side. “They’re circling around now. We’d have to drop and run in the next minute to pull that off.”

  “Not enough time,” Laura said. “We could start wounding them like Sam suggested. They can’t chase us with a bullet in the leg.”

  “Shoot to kill and be done with it,” Oona said. “Us or them.”

  “Guys,” Sam said.

  “Oona, it’s not their fault!” Laura said.

  “I appreciate that, but it’s still us or them, and I like us better.”

  “Guys. Why don’t we just drive away? This thing still runs, doesn’t it?”

  * * *

  The headlights drew attention to the car, but they had little a choice. Ed didn’t know the roads well enough to navigate in the dark, and there were people to avoid besides.

  It was also helpful when they discovered other cars on the road. This happened after they made it out of the tiny side streets and back onto Main, at the far northern end and away from the thickest part of the sleepwalking horde.

  Annie and Ed decided, en route, to stop calling them zombies and start calling them sleepwalkers, since the latter was more accurate and less terrifying, and also self-justified the decision not to run them over without prejudice. Plus, the sleepwalker apocalypse sounded sort of cute.