Z Fever

by Jay Mouton

  But he knew she was right.

  Justine, who’d also just brushed away fresh tears, agreed with Ariel, adding “we can’t just stay here. We’ve got to check on our parents.”

  The moment she’d mentioned checking on parents, she felt a sharp stab of regret that she’d even mentioned the word, parent. She, along with Gavin and Ariel Kingsley, had seen Kayla Kingsley, their mother, run over by the very school bus that rested in the ditch just down the road from where they now sat.

  She stole a glance at Ariel, to see the little girl’s response to her reference to their parents; Ariel didn’t seem fazed in the least; the little girl seemed, simply, withdrawn.

  Those pale, blue eyes, slightly darker in the shadows of the back room, blinked off a last, errant tear, then darted over to Gavin. If he had some internal reaction to her reference to parents, he wasn’t letting on.

  “I’ve got to go home, Gavin,” she said to her schoolmate and, for the moment, fellow inmate that the prison the back room of Altman’s Grocery store was beginning to seem like. She didn’t bother mentioning that she wanted to check on her own parents; this time. Still, she wanted, rather she needed to find out if her mother, one of the few stay-home moms in the area it seemed anymore, was okay. She wanted to see if, just maybe, her father had made it home, too. He worked in Jacksonville, full-time, but maybe he’d left for home long before any of the madness began to take off and explode all around them. She hoped she was right about both, but she feared most of all for her father.

  Gavin was nodding his head. He knew that both girls were right. He knew that they all wanted to get home. And, he knew, that they had to try to get home, and to get to safety.

  “Okay, Justine,” and then, as an afterthought, since it was his little sister’s idea, he added, Okay, Ariel. You’re right, we’ve all got to get home.”

  “Yeah!” Ariel squealed, but kept her voice down, as she seemed to be learning fast that zonbees could hear you if you were too loud!

  “But first, we’ve got to gather a few things to take with us,” Gavin instructed. Almost the moment that he made the decision for himself that the girls were right about trying to make it home, his mind was churning with ideas about how to do so as quickly and safely as they possibly could.

  Gavin knew that it couldn’t be too late in the day, since it wasn’t much more than an hour or so ago that they’d escaped from the school. Even so, it was still Winter, and the days were not as long as they were during the summer. He had to keep in mind that they had to try to make it before it got dark, and Gavin was unsure about just how far he lived from Altman’s, but he was sure that it had to be at least five or six miles up the highway. Plus, he thought, he would have to make sure the Justine made it to her house safely before he and Ariel finished their journey home.

  “Do you know about how far your house is from here, Justine?” Gavin asked, pretty sure that his guess about distance wouldn’t be too far off.

  “I don’t know, but I know that my mom, usually, only takes about five minutes to drive there from here,” the girl offered.

  “Does four miles or so sound, about right?” Gavin asked her, he was already attempting to do the math in his head to try to determine how long it would take them to walk the distance.

  Justine appeared to be doing her own math in her head, and then she stopped and nodded; yes.

  “It’s got to be pretty close to that, Justine. You live about a mile from us, and we’re about, maybe a little more than five miles from here.” He was, of course, guessing.

  Ariel just smiled, and nodded over at her big brother’s math prowess. She was still learning to add numbers up in her head, but she was getting better at it all the time. And she was more confident than ever that, someday, she’d be better at it than her brother.

  “Yeah, I think that sounds about right,” Ariel said to Gavin, not at all really sure what she was agreeing to, but knowing that Gavin had to be right; he was so smart.

  Gavin was silent for a few moments, making his own estimate concerning how much time they would need, about what time it was, and would it be enough time for them to make it before it got dark outside.

  Gavin nodded to himself, believing that his calculations were, if not exact, probably darn close. He was convinced that they could make it to Justine’s, and then on to his home well before the sun slipped down below the trees that surrounded their property.

  “Okay, now we need to gather up some supplies that we might just need on the way home,” he told them.

  “What are supplies, Gavin,” Ariel said to him, unsure of the meaning of the word, but confident that it was a good word if Gavin had come up with it.

  He glanced over at his kid sister, and he grinned.

  “You know, Ariel,” he said, “like some water, and some more snacks. In case we get hungry, again, on the way home. You know walking five miles is a lot of work,” he said, putting emphasis on five miles so she might better understand the difficulty and importance of what they were going to try to do.

  “Okay, I like supplies,” she said, now happy that she might get some more chips and grape juice.

  “What should we gather up, Gavin?” Justine asked, getting up from the folding chair. She was feeling decidedly better since they were, now, going to do something rather than just sitting there, trapped in the back of Altman’s, in fear of Mr. Stuart and all the unknowns that might be coming.

  “You know, Justine. Maybe some bread and sandwich meat? Maybe a few candy bars? Some bottled water, maybe?”

  “And some chips and grape juice,” Ariel chimed in, adding her own, “maybe?”

  Justine smiled, now.

  It was at that moment, when Gavin saw his friend, Justine, smile at Ariel, that he knew that he had to help make them both just a little more understanding of just how dangerous what they were about to attempt really was. The best way to do make his point, had just occurred to him.

  He would, slowly, walk them out of the storage area, and then have them, even more slowly, take a look at the bodies at the other end of the store. He knew he wasn’t trying to scare them, as he knew they had both witnessed most of everything he’d seen, today. Both girls had proven that they were not only able to withstand such terrible things, but that they both were braver than he’d been giving them credit for. He just wanted them to know that they had more to fear from the monsters that were out there than from any dead bodies.

  He corrected himself for, what seemed like, the hundredth time that day.

  They, indeed, had nothing to fear from dead bodies. That was, just as long as those dead bodies weren’t moving.

  Gavin Kingsley didn’t know what they were going to run into on their way home, nor did he know what they would find when they got there. Still, he wanted his sister, and his friend, to try to be as ready as possible for any encounter that confronted them.

  “I want the two of you to see something before we go any further,” he said. He tried to use his most serious big brother voice, as he was getting in the habit of doing. But even as he spoke, he could hear the slightest of tremble from it. He reminded himself that his daddy would probably tell him to, “buck up, Gavin. You’re a big boy, now, and you’ve got to handle it.”

  His daddy, of course, was right. Gavin had to, buck up.

  Gavin suspected, no, he knew that he would buck up—he didn’t have a choice anymore.

  He whispered, under his breath, “I will, daddy.”

  * * * * *

  The boy, quietly, opened the door. He’d already taken another peek out from the glass partition window, just above the desk in the storage area, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He’d not heard anything more from Mr. Stuart.

  It’s not Mr. Stuart, Gavin! Get that through your skull!

  The zombie!

  “The zombie,” he said, again whispering so that the girls wouldn’t hear him.

  Rather than fear the voice that he’d heard from inside his head, more than a number of times
since they escaped from the glen, he was beginning to trust it.

  Gavin let the door swing wide, and then stood inside the frame for a couple moments. He looked about, trying to take in the whole of the store, and was confident that there were none of the zombies —!

  There, you said it!

  He was sure that no zombies had found a way inside the building.

  Gavin took a deep breath, and then turned back toward his sister and Justine, who’d been standing right off to his left, but still safely inside the storage room. Gavin had instructed Justine to slam the door behind him should anything remotely sounding like one of the monsters they’d encountered make a grab for him.

  He stepped out from the, relative, safety of the storage room, and entered the store, proper, one more time.

  There was nothing but food and sundry items stacked on shelf after shelf down the aisles of Altman’s Grocery.

  Nothing but the bodies of a mother and her little baby, Young Kingsley!

  Okay, he told himself, it’s now or never.

  “Come on, Ariel,” he said, holding out his left hand and clasped her warm, little fingers in his. Funny, he thought, he and his sister rarely held hands anymore, but now it felt just about better than anything he could remember for a long time.

  Ariel, let her big brother lead her back out into the store. Justine followed close behind them both. Slowly, just as he had planned to so, they walked out and stood next to the aisle which held the horrific sight of death.

  “I want you both to look down this aisle,” he instructed.

  “What’s down there, Gavin,” Ariel asked him, halting her plodding forward momentum. Gavin could feel her fingers tense up in his grip, but he held on firm to the little girl.

  “It’s okay, Ariel. It’s nothing that can hurt you, at all. I won’t let anything hurt you—nothing at all,” he said, and then asked her if she trusted him.

  She nodded her head up and down to let him know she did.

  “Justine, this is not at all a sight I would ever wish you to see; either of you,” Gavin told them, “but you both may have to get used to such things; and get used to them faster than ever.”

  Justine moved around both Gavin and Ariel, and with determination, she looked down the aisle, and at the pile of gore laying at the end of it. She felt her stomach heave, and then contract. She knew, almost instantly, that Gavin wanted them to see the dead bodies so that they would have less fear if, no, she thought, when they came across the next ones.

  The brave girl, feeling the queasy contractions of her stomach ease up, straightened her shoulders and marched right down to the end of the aisle and stopped; she was standing above the bodies, now. She looked right down at the bloody mess near the soles of her shoes. She forced herself to stare at the scene, and to stare hard. Every fiber of her body wanted her to turn away, to walk away from what she could no longer deny.

  She struggled with the impulse to turn away, but stood her ground.

  Justine Webb, forced her fear back to the confines of her mind, and then, and only then, was she able to discern that the bodies must have belonged to a mother and her little baby.

  Justine teared up, liked she felt she’d done over and over during the short duration of time since leaving her classroom, earlier that morning, and let a single tear spill for the woman and her child. Then, she turned back toward Gavin Kingsley and told him that they should try to find a flashlight and some batteries; she added, that it was just in case they didn’t make it home before sundown.

  Ariel, too, took a long look at the bodies at the end of the last aisle. Initially, she stood behind Gavin, as if his body would act as a barrier between the girl and the dismembered pile of body parts strewn on the floor. She, as Justine did before, felt tears swelling her eyes; Ariel, as strong willed a child as she already was, broke down and cried for several minutes before Gavin was able to help her collect herself, dry her tears, and make her little girl’s peace with a face-to-face acquaintance with the stillness of death.

  Gavin, once he was able to reassure Ariel that she would come to no such end, as long as he contained a single breath in his body, whispered his own, final, prayer for the mother and child.

  * * * * *

  With the three of them foraging the nooks and crannies of Altman’s, it took less than an hour to outfit themselves for the journey they were soon to embark on.

  Justine Webb, had moved through the ranks of Daisy, Brownie, and was a Junior Girl Scout. Not only had she had several experiences on over-night camping trips with her groups, but her father, an avid woodsman, had taken the girl with him on nearly a dozen camping trips over the span of her childhood. Together, the father and daughter explored numerous, wooded areas in the recesses in the forests of the Osceola National Forest. The girl knew what they would need to get by should they not, for any reason, make it swiftly home.

  Gavin, realizing after only a couple of minutes of talking with Justine about what they should try to fine in the order of supplies, wisely delegated the task to his friend. The lanky girl, already a couple of inches taller than Gavin Kingsley, relished the responsibility she accepted with a broad grin.

  Justine, her bright, red mane of hair flying behind her as she did a quick walk through up and down the aisles of Altman’s, quickly scanned the basics of what the store might offer concerning their, immediate, needs. The girl, somewhat business like, now that she had a definite job to do, seemed annoyed at her long hair swaying, errantly, around her head. Her first acquisition was, and it surprised Gavin, was a rubber band for which to bind her lengthy locks up in a ponytail. Upon a quick visual peek at her, Gavin Kingsley thought her new look quite fetching. Ariel, upon seeing Justine’s hair now under control thanks to a ponytail, insisted that the older girl, “fix my hair just like yours’!”

  Based upon her outdoor experiences with her father, Justine knew for sure that the flashlight she’d already suggested they find, should be near the top on the list; batteries a close second.

  She asked Gavin to look for any kind of battery operated radio. Only by sheer luck would they find one, but it would, probably be worth it. Justine knew, from her own experience, that cell phones, I-phones, and the like, were worthless once they were a few miles north of town on County 125. More times than she could count, she could recall both of her parents upset, from time to time, when trying to make a quick call home to check on something, and they simply were not able to get a signal. People north of the glen, pretty much, just got used to it.

  Justine told Ariel to pick out her favorite snacks, but only ones that did not require any cooking. Both Gavin and Justine figured they might as well not worry at all about what their mothers might say about their choices about what to eat for the next meal. Both of them offered the other a timid smile at the little joke between the two of them, realizing the simple aside invoked some unhappy thoughts. Ariel was, also, instructed to gather up three or four containers of bottled water for each of them. Justine managed another, sincere, smile when she observed the little girl thinking hard to complete the math problem of the total number of bottles she should acquire.

  As they went about their respective tasks of finding what they could, Justine forgot that Mr. Stuart might still be waiting for them outside the door of the store. She had been speaking softly as she laid out her list, but she forgot and raised her voice to shout out to Gavin to try to find some matches, or some lighters.

  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

  The zombie had heard the girl’s voice through the front door of the store, and responded by trying to get to what it must have heard, and again, must have sensed, was the food it so craved.

  They were all startled, they all flinched, but, this time, none of them cried out; they all went about their jobs. Even little Ariel kept gathering her favorite snacks, and even figured out that they needed twelve bottles of water. Gavin’s young sister smiled to herself, and kept busy.

  One thing Gavin was learning was that the attention span
of zombies, at least the one outside of Altman’s, wasn’t that long. Yes, Gavin thought, it’s still out there, but if it knew we were in here, wouldn’t it be constantly trying to break through the door? The only time the monster slammed up against the reinforced glass was, it sure seemed to the boy, when it heard a noise. As far as the zombie staying put out in front of the store, well, Gavin thought, where does a zombie have to go to?

  As he searched for items that Justine suggested they might need, one more item was at the top of his mental list: a weapon!

  As he rummaged along the shelves with Justine and Ariel, he played back images of the various episodes of The Walking Dead that he’d been able to catch. He knew, that all the survivors on the show never went anywhere without a weapon. They all tried to carry something that could, and would, kill a zombie.

  The boy walked over to the store counter, and looked up the wall behind it. There, up against the backboard wall, filled with all sorts of stuff that older people smoked or chewed, he spotted a cardboard display that held dozens of the little, Bic lighters that Justine said they might need.

  Gavin veered to his right, then started to make his way to the back of the counter. As he rounded the end of the counter, he turned in order to make his way to the display rack of lighters.

  For no particular reason, Gavin glanced down at the floor in front of the cash register on the far end of the counter.

  He froze, in place, where he stood—.

  Even though he thought that he had bucked up enough to not fear a dead body, he nearly yelled out when he spied the ghastly sight on the floor in front of him.

  Luckily, no sound escaped from his throat, and he was able to keep the, now, erratic pace of breathing low enough that neither Ariel or Justine could hear him. He stood, still and silent, and got himself back under control.

  Gavin had seen the man on the floor, before, and he remembered the man’s face; now it stared up at Gavin from dead, glazed eyes, still wide open in what had to have been utter terror. The head, that still contained the lifeless eyes, lay off to the side, and just under the register on the counter above it. The nearly shredded torso, that had belonged to the man and had to have been, at least, as large as Mr. Stuart’s huge frame, gaped open and splayed about the surrounding back counter area. Intestines, ribs, parts of arms, one leg, and various other body parts were painted across the tiles of the floor; a sick and demented canvas of horror, and nothing less.