Braeden did worry about his parents. The fingers of his left hand brushed across the reddened and tender skin of his chest as he absently reached for his cell phone. Fiery pain lanced through his chest. “Damn,” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Jerry asked without changing pace or looking at Braeden.
“My phone was in my shirt pocket—The shirt that burned and back at the bar.”
Jerry fished his cell phone out of his pocket without breaking his stride. “Here.”
“Thanks, but I don’t actually know the number.” Stupid, he knew. He’d been one of the last groups of kids who had to memorize phone numbers growing up. While he’d gotten his first cell phone later than most of his classmates, he quickly let himself become lazy about memorizing phone numbers and let the phone do that for him. On more than one occasion it cost him a date. Now, he had no way to call his parents, no way for them to get hold of him.
Jerry put the phone away and didn’t say anything for a moment. “Who were you going to call?”
“My parents,” the concern showed in Braeden’s voice.
“Your dad was Army right?” Braeden nodded. “Your dad knows his way around messes like this if he was Army.” Really his dad sat around in his retirement, letting any potentially useful skills his Army career might have given him rust like a car on blocks. With a little too much pessimism, Braeden figured if zombies roamed his hometown, his father probably died. Best case scenario, his parents managed to lock themselves in the house and sat on the sofa simply watching the news. Either way, he was still on the wrong side of town with no car.
They rounded a bend in the road and found themselves in the orange glow of two cars burning with several more piled up behind them. Nothing seemed to move in the flickering light from the eight-foot flames. Braeden and Jerry doubted anyone was alive in either of the two burning cars. The light and heat of the fire kept them from seeing anyone.
“How far to your place?” Braeden asked as they used the shoulder to skirt around the burning wreck.
“Another five mi--”
Braeden looked where Jerry was staring. A half dozen zombies on their knees encircled some poor soul, steadily tearing chunks of flesh away. From where they stood, the pair couldn't tell if the person continued to feebly struggle or had died and the zombies just continued to feed. Braeden wanted to be sick. He wanted to run away, to kill the zombies in front of him. All the tough talk over the years and still his brain simply locked with shock and indecision.
Jerry clamped his hand on Braeden's burned shoulder and started to walk, pushing Braeden ahead of him. Between the fire, the gory feeding frenzy and the sudden pain of a harsh grip on a fresh burn, Braeden turned his head and puked.
“Come on. Not a good time for that,” Jerry said, wrapping his arm around Braeden's good side. “Those things will find you here. And we have to make sure Cynthia and Deanna are safe. Come on.”
***
Mike did the one thing he never thought he'd do. He silently thanked every god he could think of for his time in the Corps—Primarily because the hurry-up-and-wait philosophy incumbent to all military branches kept him from going absolutely stir crazy.
Joseph's idea to camp in Luna Lake's general store proved to be a sound plan. The storm dumped more snow than Mike and Joseph thought possible in the desert. All said and done, nearly ten inches of snow blanketed the ground. That included the roads, and no one seemed to be in any particular hurry to run snow plows. Had they tried to drive much further, the bus would have likely gotten stuck as the tires tried to dig through the layers of snow to find traction on the frozen road, assuming it didn't stall out first from having the air intakes blocked.
Stopping gave them room to spread out some, electricity gave them heat and light. Once the snow stopped though, they couldn't travel with all the snow on the ground, not without snow mobiles. So they waited.
For three days now, they waited for the snow to start melting. Outside the temperature slowly crept upward. Starting the second morning, they heard evidence of snow melting when a chunk of slush slid off the roof. Still the path to the highway remained impassible because each night, the melted snow froze.
At least the land line still worked, and I got hold of Hanse. Poor fucker nearly lost his mind when we missed RP again.
“Earth to dealer. Earth to dealer. The pot's right. Let's see the flop dammit.”
Mike snapped out of it and looked at Joseph. “Right. Family Pot I see.” He dealt the flop. No one reacted. Back in the barracks that might mean no one had a hand. Right now though, he wasn't so sure. Joseph took the chip lead slowly; each hand baiting Mike, Walter and Stacy in, then later by buying the pots. Each time Mike thought he had Joseph, no matter how carefully he'd played, Joseph came out on top or dropped out of the hand before giving up his stack.
Walter checked, followed by Stacy and Joseph. Mike checked his hand, nine of diamonds and Jack of clubs with King, Queen and Ten of Spades on the board. Mike put up a small raise. Everyone called.
Good, maybe I can get back in the game with this hand.
Turn card: Five of Diamonds.
“Poked my head outside earlier today,” Joseph said conversationally as the betting continued. Walter and Stacy checked. “If it warms up again tomorrow, like it did today, we might be able to leave day after tomorrow.” Joseph made a show of looking at his cards then checked.
“Outstanding,” Mike said, then doubled his last bet. Again everyone called.
“Not that I'm not having a blast sitting here doing nothing the last three days, but I'm itchin' to be moving again.” Everyone nodded.
Mike smiled inwardly; the pot would easily get him back in the game, and was as good as his.
“Still it was good to stop. Look how Stacy is recovering. She can sit up on her own now,” Walter said as Mike discarded the top card from the deck.
River card: King of Clubs.
“And even mister hurry-up-and-wait here can't complain that we've had some extra time to war game this little road trip of ours,” Joseph said.
Everyone checked back around to Mike. All but tasting the chips in the pot (stale, off-brand triangular, nacho cheese corn chips—they'd play for cookies tomorrow), he bet half his stack. Losing now would have him out when the blinds came back around. Walter folded, Stacy called. Joseph very calmly raised to put Mike all in.
Mike laughed as he called. Stacy folded realizing that Joseph suckered her in again. Joseph smiled.
“Bad news, Mike.”
“I don't think so. Straight. Booya!”
“Nice,” Joseph turned his cards. “But it doesn't top my boat, Kings and Fives.”
Who the hell taught him to play poker? And where the fuck did he learn to keep a poker face like that? At least it's just chips.
***
Lobster red skin and blisters covered most of Braeden's back and chest. Mostly second degree sunburns from constant exposure to sun and wind, compounded by fluid loss from the heat burns to his chest and right arm when his clothes caught fire from hitting a burning zombie with a bottle of Bacardi 151. Nine days walking in the sun without a shirt or sun screen catches up with you—especially if you are a pasty white, thirty-something who lives and works entirely indoors. Cool days and freezing nights contributed frostbite and additional moderate nerve damage to his chest, back, hands and arms. By the end of the third day walking, Braeden couldn't escape the heat of the sun, even at night, and rubbing his arms if they got cold or even stretching were simply out of the question between the unbearable burning touching his skin caused and the tightness of his skin from the dehydration.
It didn't really matter where he walked. Any town he came to was exactly like his: a real-life horror movie. The dead lurched through the streets. Blood stained concrete, doors, floors, windows and cars. Every house looked the same.
***
Braeden vaguely recalled being dragged, stumbling and vomiting, away from the blazing car accident. A zombie or two bac
k from the main frenzy briefly gave chase to the two of them, but movement in a car window easily distracted them. Jerry was sweating despite the cold when they finally reached his house, mostly from half-carrying Braeden for nearly a mile then walking another four. The moon drifted down and westward partially blocked behind high thin clouds, giving just enough light to see outlines.
Four front porch lights glowed brightly, revealing red brick with white paneling around Jerry's front door. Jerry stopped and went white when he saw the garage door knocked off kilter. The gate to the wooden fence hung partially open and slowly swinging, someone had smashed a head-sized hole in the window over the kitchen sink, and a couple in-attentive corpses stared at the wooden play set in the front yard.
Jerry charged the two zombies near the play set. He swung the wrench overhead and smashed the closer of the two zombie's head in. Blood and gray matter splattered across his arms and chest. The second zombie noticed Jerry when it heard the thunk of the wrench. Jerry swung the wrench like a bat, knocking the approaching zombie away. He hit it between the shoulder blades, knocking it down, then jumped on its back and pounded its head into mush.
Braeden nearly took the wrench to the face when he touched Jerry's shoulder to make him stop pushing bits of bloody mess into the lawn. “We need to check on your family.” Jerry rubbed his blood-slick hands against his gore smeared polo-shirt. After the things he'd seen and done, all Jerry wanted to do was hug his daughter Cynthia, but all the blood, sweat, soot and tear streaks, he could only imagine he looked as much like a monster as the thing he'd just reduced to compost. He could never let his angel see him like this, let alone hold her.
Concern for his demonic appearance vanished when Jerry found the door unlocked and slightly ajar.
“CYNTHIA! DEANNA!”
In the living room, visible from the entry way, the couch and coffee table sat overturned. The only light came from a lamp on its side, about to roll off a small table in the far corner. Something vaguely man-shaped crawled out of sight along the living room floor.
“NO, Cynthia.” Once again Jerry blindly charged, tripping as soon as he cleared the entry way. He landed hard but kept hold of the wrench. Braeden covered the few feet to his friend's side, just in time to watch him brain what looked like the leftovers of a hiker after a bear finished eating him for dinner. Jerry used the wrench to pry his hand out of the thing's mouth, leaving a small chunk behind.
A young girl with dark hair below her shoulders wearing a blue dress with dark smears near shoulders and collar stood in front of a large comfy-looking chair, or it would have been comfy if it weren't for the large blood stain on it. Her pale face had the dull look of profound mental shock. Jerry looked up from where he knelt cradling his injured hand.
“Cynthia. Oh sweetie. You should be in your room, not seeing this. Come here.”
Jerry held his arms open to embrace his darling little girl. He planned to carry her back to her room and leave her under her covers or in the closet so he could clean the house and bar the front door. The girl took a small step forward. “Come here princess. It's OK. I'll clean you up, then clean up, and everything will be fine. Just come here, and let me hold you.”
Braeden backed toward the sliding glass door. Nothing about the last four hours sat well in his mind. He really wanted a hidden place where he could curl into a ball and contemplate sucking his thumb or hiding under a blanket while certain he was well away from everything. Especially the horrors that keep trying to attack him.
Jerry scooped his daughter into his arms. The blood on his arms stained the clean parts of the back of her blue dress. She pushed against his chest. He looked down into the sweet face of his worldly joy. Relief and love kept him from seeing the emptiness in her eyes and the blood on his hands kept him from noticing the blood from the bites in her back. She clung to Jerry from muscle memory and tore out his throat from the hunger her instinct demanded she sate. Jerry couldn't scream, which isn't to say he didn't try; the bite simply crushed and shredded his vocal cords.
On the other hand, Braeden's vocal cords worked just fine, and he screamed for all they were worth. Parts of his brain simply shut down in self defense from the hellish scene playing out in front of him. Jerry's wife, at least Braeden was pretty sure it was her, walked out of the hallway to the bedrooms and knelt beside Cynthia as she took a bite out of Jerry's shoulder. Deanna grabbed the arm Jerry used to hold his daughter as she devoured him and took a bite just below his elbow. Braeden's brain never fully registered the bite marks up and down Deanna's arms or the fingers missing from her left hand. He barely registered the man missing half his face who followed her out of the hallway and joined in eating Jerry. He continued clinging to his daughter with one arm while the zombies ate him.
Braeden flung the back door open and ran out of the house.
***
Somewhere in the afternoon of his ninth day walking along Highway 50, he'd walked some two-hundred miles and lost more than twenty pounds, a side-effect of not eating and walking all day while his body tried to recover from relatively serious burns over half his body. He hadn't eaten since the night at the bar. Even thinking of eating immediately brought back images of that night, killing whatever appetite emerged, often making him vomit bitter tasting bile. Overwhelming thirst and readily available water bottles at various gas stations and in some cars kept him from completely collapsing from dehydration, but only just. More than once he knew he'd been nearly delirious as he chugged water and poured it in its stinging glory over his head and shoulders. Just as often slamming the water had the unfortunate effect of making him immediately throw it back up.
He didn't have a plan. He thought no further ahead than if he was thirsty or not. Thinking had the nasty tendency to replay the living dead attacking Jerry, attacking his parents, attacking him. Nightmares, specifically one nightmare, haunted his sleep, further exhausting him. Of all the things out there, what he still really wanted was a safe spot to curl into the fetal position and wait this nonsense out, and even that thought frequently circled round to him getting attacked.
***
Walking was easy: mechanically put one foot forward then the other, repeat, follow the road. Stupid easy. Nearly impossible was not seeing Jerry hugging the his beloved Cynthia (a zombie) as he was torn apart by three zombies. He walked the rest of the night and straight through to nightfall. Outside of Loogootee, IN, he locked himself in an abandoned truck and slept.
All night his mind looped the living room scene through his dreams. In the nightmare, Jerry could still talk and kept telling his daughter it was OK to eat him because he loved her, and the glass door refused to open or break until finally Jerry turned and led them in a three-course, family-style meal of Braeden Bann, starting with his innards.
His legs and back hurt almost as much as his chest when he woke. Part of the ache came from sleeping oddly positioned on the bench seat. Walking nearly forty miles in about twenty hours without any kind of work up before hand definitely didn't help. Despite the pain moving caused, he knew he couldn't stay at the truck. He expected he would hurt worse the next day, especially considering he was about to start walking again.
Not long after sundown, after covering another thirty miles, he approached a local watering hole near the outskirts of Vincennes, In. The place looked absolutely nothing like Tavrish Tavern: the parking lot was paved, none of the windows had the fancy stained glass look, the windowless door looked like metal, and the place was significantly smaller. Braeden thought of the reassuring and mind numbing burn of whiskey and vodka. Not necessarily in that order, nor one at a time. As soon as his hand touched the worn, wrought iron door handle, he heard screams of someone being attacked. He knew the voice; he was sure of it. The wailing continued with an inhuman capacity to shriek without pausing for breath. He knew the voice alright. If he listened close, he could make out the distinct, ultra-brief pauses where Willeford gasped for air as two zombies gnawed on him where he stood.
H
is hand slid from the bar's door. Screams echoed as Braeden quietly turned and walked away.
***
Braeden's shoes and pants hadn't been bought to walk so far. Blisters formed early the first day. The dozen odd blisters eventually grew into a single, large open wound. At this point his Oxford-styled, casual shoes had rubbed ordinarily unnoticed pressure points all the way to the bone. His khakis left his thighs chafed, raw and bleeding. Still everyday, for nine days, he wandered along Highway 50 at the same, steady, three-miles an hour pace.
He passed through eight towns, only noticing when he found a gas station or restaurant to grab water from. Several times he simply approached a house and drink from the water hose, terrified that any moment one of them would charge through the half open wooden gate before he could continue along Highway 50.
After the third day with no real sleep and more exercise than he'd gotten in the last five years combined, Braeden found it easier to zone out, ignoring the carnage around him and still avoiding thinking about that night at the bar. Walking, even with the constant pain and destruction of his body, became a kind of zen for him.
Twilight settled on the world just as it had every evening since before man left the trees. Braeden passed a sign that once told drivers they were nearing Belleville, Illinois. He didn't care. It still looked a lot like his town. Just maybe bigger. Maybe smaller. In a moment he would pass a bar and hearing screaming as zombies tore someone apart.
His sunburn threw off an offensive heat and felt like someone was trying to split his back every time he tried to stretch his shoulders. Searing agony tore through his burned arm as he shoulder checked something. Braeden whimpered as his arm and shoulder throbbed, but he kept trudging forward. He tripped as his leaden foot caught the edge of a curb. Shapes closed in.
Dead Man's Party Page 17
