Zombie Chaos (Book 2): Highway to Hell

by Martone, D. L.

  “And the rest?”

  “Oh, dat’s how ya can git in touch wit’ us, assumin’ ya got a shortwave?”

  “I do, but I don’t know how to use it yet,” I confessed. “I’ll figure it out once I get to Michigan.”

  Ray chuckled. “I’m sure ya will. Ya might go nuts wit’out it.”

  Although I needed to learn how to operate the shortwave radio I’d bought, I didn’t feel the desire to explain that Clare and I would never go mad in isolation. We’d often said that, if we were the last two people on Earth, we’d be totally content. I just never realized we’d actually get the chance to prove it.

  Before leaving, I took care of some overdue tasks. First and foremost, I used some toilet-tank water, hand sanitizer, dry shampoo, deodorant, and mouthwash to make myself a bit more presentable and then changed my clothes for the third time that day, wishing I’d thought to don the Home Depot poncho I’d gotten earlier before bashing and smashing more zombies.

  Then, while stowing my dirty duds in the van, I made sure to remove my wallet and slip it into the back pocket of my fresh jeans (not that credit cards, money, and driver’s licenses meant much anymore). I put some more water in the radiator, sprayed the van with Febreze, and hooked my phone to its charger. Last but not least, I excavated Clare’s ring from the bag of dirty clothes and tucked it back inside her jewelry box – as if I’d never had to traverse a zombie-filled French Quarter to reclaim it from an overweight, over-the-hill porn king.

  The less I reflect on the stupid shit I’ve done today, the better.

  When I was finally ready, I ventured into the den and said “goodbye” and “good luck” to Uma, Eunice, Rick, and Tony. Then, Ray, Sadie, and the kids followed me into the garage for one last round of “fare-thee-wells.”

  Before I had a chance to say anything, Ray thrust a pair of night-vision goggles and some night-vision binoculars into my hands.

  “What the hell,” I said, honestly flabbergasted.

  “Doze’ll come in handy, believe me.”

  “I know, but…” I wanted to give him something in return, but he pretty much had everything he and his children needed, including a stockpile of guns, walkie-talkies, and other equipment any self-reliant, ex-military man might possess.

  “No buts. Jus’ take ’em.” He turned to his kids. “Say bye to Mr. Joe. We flyin’ da coop soon after him.”

  Travis reached out and shook my hand. “Good luck, Mr. Joe.”

  “Take care, Travis. Watch after your father and your sister.”

  The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Frankie, too.” I glanced at the dog, who now wore a leash Travis must’ve swiped from the Hamiltons’ house.

  At the sound of his name, the dog came forward and nudged my hand. I obliged him with a vigorous head rub.

  Then, without waiting for her cue, little Nicole rammed into my legs and hugged my waist. “Bye, Mr. Joe.”

  I leaned down and embraced her in return, the goggles and binoculars dangling from my arm. “Bye, sweetie. You be safe.”

  When she finally retreated, Ray extended his massive hand and shook mine firmly. “You be careful out dere,” he said, his expression earnest.

  “Same to you. And again, thanks for everything, Ray.”

  In a short amount of time, I’d made a solid friend, one I could undoubtedly trust in the future. I hoped he felt the same way about me.

  “Not a problem, man. T’anks for ya help, too.” He turned to Sadie, who’d remained on the steps. “Listen, couldya do me one more favor an’ drop Miss Sadie off by her house? She only a li’l ways away, an’ you gotta head in dat direction anyhow.”

  I smiled. “Sure thing.”

  Though eager to reach Baton Rouge, I figured I’d already delayed for less important reasons. How much harm could one more stop cause? Besides, having accomplished another near-death, adrenaline-draining experience in one long-ass day, my brain and body cried out for rest. So, maybe if I had some company, I wouldn’t end up falling asleep at the wheel and crashing into a tree.

  While Sadie hugged Ray, Travis, Nicole, and Frankie goodbye, I unlocked my passenger-side door, put the night-vision gear in my backpack, and shifted Azazel’s carrier from the passenger seat to the floor beneath the dining table, wedging it between the table leg and one of the benches so my cat wouldn’t slide around while in transit.

  Ray helped Sadie into the van and pulled the door shut. Before I claimed my own seat, I crouched in front of Azazel’s carrier. The damn cat had probably slept during most of the church escapade and aftermath, but at the moment, she was gazing at me with her big, sad green eyes. Feeling guilty for imprisoning her for much of the day, I opened the gate, and she promptly slunk out. A quick yoga stretch, and she hopped onto Sadie’s lap. Then, from there, she jumped onto the dashboard and wedged herself against the windshield. Normally, I didn’t like leaving her there while I drove, but given all the current obstacles on the road, I doubted I’d be going fast enough to endanger her.

  I glanced around the van to ensure everything was secure, then slid behind the wheel, clicked my seatbelt in place, and gave Ray the thumbs-up signal. He gazed toward the side door, where Travis was presumably keeping watch for zombies or other dangers in the driveway. Then he grinned at me, pressed the button to open the garage door, and waved goodbye.

  Waving in return, I reversed the van down the driveway, backed onto the street, and headed off with my latest passenger.

  Chapter

  20

  “You know nothing. Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.” – Dr. Weir, Event Horizon (1997)

  After a few darkened blocks, I turned to my passenger. “Where to, Miss Sadie?”

  “Keep goin’ down dis road ’til it turn to dirt,” she replied. “Den take da first right.”

  She reached across the dashboard and stroked Azazel. The fact that my tiny tiger allowed an unfamiliar woman to touch her astonished me. Normally, she wasn’t very friendly to anyone but me and Clare, and yet there she lay, stretched out on the dash, getting her leopard-spotted belly rubbed by a complete stranger.

  Sadie must’ve felt my stare. She pivoted toward me and winked. “Got a sense aroun’ animals,” she explained. “I like dem an’ dey like me.”

  “That’s a useful gift to have,” I said, turning back to the windshield just in time to clip a sprinting zombie and propel it onto a random front lawn.

  “Nah, I barely got any,” she lamented. “My sister got all da real gifts.”

  A sister? So, I was right. No wonder Sadie had seemed so familiar. I knew exactly where I’d seen her before – or, rather, where I’d seen her likeness. She had the same round figure, the same jovial grin, and the same penetrating brown eyes. She was just a slightly older version.

  “You don’t, by any chance, have a sister named Myriam Beauvoir?”

  A huge smile spread across her face. “Ya know Myriam?”

  “Sure do,” I said. “I lived in the Quarter for a long time. Used to do my laundry at her place.”

  A wave of sadness crashed over me. I’d said I lived in the Quarter. Hard to believe I’d only left my home that morning. Shit, a lot had happened since then.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “we were friends…” I almost laughed at what I’d said, considering how Myriam had always felt about me. “Well, actually, my wife was friends with her.”

  In the glow of my headlights, I spotted a small cluster of zombies traipsing down the steps of a large double shotgun house, sporting a slew of gaping wounds and other disgusting features. One of the undead creatures was even chowing on a severed hand.

  Yet another image I can’t unsee.

  As a few of the zombies stepped into the road, I swerved to the right and knocked two of them into the others, sending them all tumbling down like rotten bowling pins.

  “You should know,” I added, “your sister is still alive. At least she was when I left New Orleans this morning.”

  She gr
inned again. “No way deez creatures ever git Myriam.” Spoken with absolutely no doubt.

  I couldn’t bring myself to mention that the spreading fires were more likely to kill her long before the zombies would.

  “Yeah, Myriam knows how to handle herself.” I turned to Sadie. “You ladies seem to know more about these monsters than the rest of us. Care to fill me in?”

  “Darlin’, doncha know? Deez da end of days,” she said solemnly. “D’Infernal done open up an’ release its badness into da world.”

  “You mean, when there’s no more room in hell…” I started to quip, but then immediately stopped talking at the sight of a four-hundred-pound zombie cook, still dressed in his work duds.

  Quickly, I swerved to the left to avoid him. My zombie-mobile was sturdy, but I feared hitting something with that much heft could do some real damage – or at least slap another foul-smelling coat of goop on my baby.

  “Nah, deez creatures… leas’ some of ’em… come t’ru da veil.”

  I didn’t have a ready response, but she must’ve noticed my quizzical look because she continued her bizarre explanation.

  “Look, child,” she said patiently, as if explaining a basic concept to a simpleton, “dis world we live in, it ain’t da only place. Dere many udders.”

  I took a measured breath. Although I’d always enjoyed reading books (or, more often, watching documentaries) about religious histories and conspiracies, I’d never believed in anything beyond reality.

  But who am I to judge Sadie’s beliefs – or her sister’s? Fucking zombies are walking the planet.

  “So,” I asked, straining to comprehend, “the veil, as you call it, separates different dimensions. And the Infernal is one of them? Is it like another Earth?”

  She pursed her lips, as if trying to form the simplest answer. “Guess ya could say da Infernal is anudder version of here. Where we go when we pass.”

  I squinted in confusion. “So, it’s like hell?”

  She shook her head. “No. No place like dat. Dere normal people in da Infernal… but dere also monsters.”

  My brow furrowed even more.

  “It jus’ anudder place we go, but when we get dere, not all of us is good. Some turn bad. Real bad.” She sighed. “Seems some of da bad ones found dere way back here an’ cause dis mess. Don’t t’ink dey can git back.”

  If I understood Sadie correctly, she’d basically told me that a separate dimension existed from our own. Likely just another facet of the multiverse – a theory that many scientists had long embraced.

  Supposedly, that adjacent dimension – a place she and her sister called the Infernal – contained evil beings, essentially zombies, that had busted a hole in the universe and entered our world.

  Either the stupid I-World Initiative had caused the breach, or else, it was just a coincidence that poor Dibya had detected it when she did.

  That crazy-ass theory might explain the zombies – sort of – but what about those hairy creatures? Like the one that had shredded the six assholes planning to carjack me? Or the one that had freaked my shit out back at the church in Gramercy?

  “Zombies aren’t the only things that came through, right?”

  She shook her head again. “Dere’s monsters way worse.”

  “I don’t know if you saw it back at the church, but there’s something else. Something way smarter than the zombies, but with a wild look in its eyes. Plus tufts of hair, big teeth, and nasty-looking claws. Sort of like a werewolf, for lack of a better term.”

  She nodded vehemently. “Oh, yeah, I saw it. Dey call ’em wildlings on d’udder side. But over here, we call it da rougarou. It’s a mad beast. Crazy. Violent. Ya stay clear of dem, or dey bite cha fool head off.”

  Shit, woman, you don’t have to tell me twice.

  I scanned the trees lining the road, suddenly worried the “rougarou” had followed us from the church. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

  “Turn here,” Sadie abruptly said.

  Slowing down to comply with her instructions, I realized I hadn’t even noticed we’d been bumping along a dirt road for a while, so engrossed had I been in our conversation. Still, the last-minute errand had taken way longer than Ray had suggested it would, when he’d asked me to drive Sadie home. Maybe he didn’t think it really mattered how long it took me to reach Baton Rouge. Perhaps he didn’t believe I had much of a chance of ever seeing my wife alive again.

  Shaking loose the negative thoughts, I focused instead on the road ahead. It narrowed considerably and eventually turned into a single lane. Fewer undead creatures meandered around the wooded area than back in downtown Gramercy, but I still spotted a few here and there. After winding my way along the curvy dirt road and rumbling over several small bridges, I was about to ask Sadie how much longer the drive might take when the road suddenly dead-ended at a modest house, surrounded by a grove of pecan trees.

  “Dis da place,” Sadie announced.

  I’d figured as much – and unfortunately, several zombies milled about on her driveway. They hadn’t reached her house yet, but they perked up when my headlight beams hit them.

  “Shit,” I said.

  I came to a halt several yards from the zombies, unbuckled my seatbelt, and headed to the sofa bed. Hoping to conserve my shotgun shells for more immediate dangers, I opened the hidden storage compartment and removed my AR-15. Besides, I figured a bit more practice with the rifle couldn’t hurt.

  A moment later, I heard an exasperated sigh from the passenger seat. “Whatcha doin’, boy? My sugar can take care of ’em.”

  Once again, I had no idea what the hell Sadie was talking about – and had little time to waste – so I opened one of the rear doors, hopped onto the gravel driveway, and knelt on the ground to take aim.

  The first two zombies (appropriately dressed in jeans and work shirts, given the rustic environment) hit the ground after four shots. Using two bullets to drop each of them wasn’t terrible, considering how exhausted I was, but the third zombie posed a problem. He wore an expensive, black-leather motorcycle outfit and sported a shaded helmet, and while the bullets could technically penetrate the fiberglass, the biker still hadn’t fallen after three shots.

  “Dat’s da idiot who bin rentin’ d’ol’ Smitty place down da road,” I heard Sadie shout from the front of the van. “He race fancy motorbikes.”

  “Great,” I mumbled as I took aim once more.

  Before I could pull the trigger, though, I heard the passenger door slide open and watched Sadie step down onto the driveway, directly into my line of sight.

  As soon as her shoes touched the gravel, she shut the door and started screaming at the top of her lungs, “Sugar! Sugar! Come an’ git it!”

  Then she scurried toward me (much faster than I would’ve expected, given her size), yanked me to my feet, and tugged me toward the rear of my van. After she clambered aboard, I followed suit and closed the door. As I trailed her to the front seats and opened my mouth to ask what the hell was happening, I spotted a fourteen-foot alligator sauntering across the headlight beams. Then, without hesitation, the giant creature latched onto the zombie’s ankle and yanked it to the ground. A scary and thrilling sight to behold.

  “You have a pet gator?”

  “Sugar no one’s pet. He jus’ live here.”

  Shit, she wasn’t kidding. Animals really do like her.

  The gator didn’t simply destroy the zombie; he bit its helmeted head clean off and spit it into the nearby marsh. I only hoped that chomping on zombies wouldn’t someday turn Sugar into a carnivorous, undead alligator. What a nightmarish creature that would be!

  Sadie opened the passenger-side door again and stepped down from the van.

  Instinctively, I scooped up Azazel from the dashboard, in case she had a sudden desire to hop through the open doorway and introduce herself to Sugar – or, more likely, hiss at the gator and lose her own furry head in the marsh.

  Clutching my disgruntled cat against my chest,
I looked down at Sadie. “Sure you’re gonna be alright?”

  She beamed. “Might not got Myriam’s gifts, but I know how to keep da dead away.”

  I glanced through the windshield, and sure enough, my headlights had illuminated several rosemary bushes lining her front porch. They had obviously prevented the zombies from getting too close to the house.

  Man, I wonder if rosemary would grow in northern Michigan. Could it survive the harsh winters?

  “T’anks for da lift,” she said, waving goodbye. “Good luck to you an’ yours.”

  “Same to you.”

  I slid the door closed, but Sadie only took a few steps before I spotted two separate clusters of zombies heading her way. Sugar couldn’t possibly dispatch all of them before they reached her, and unfortunately, Sadie was already halfway between the van and her house. Though feisty for her age, I knew she couldn’t make it to safety in time.

  With a heavy sigh, I set Azazel on her carrier. “Be good, tiny tiger.” Then I picked up the rifle. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She squinted at me, as if tired of hearing me say that – and watching me go. Maybe she worried about my safety – or, more likely, hated being left behind.

  Either way, I didn’t have time to placate her. Instead, I hopped to the ground, secured the door, and rushed toward Sadie.

  Her head pivoted from side to side, and her waddling gait sped up. Apparently, she’d noticed the converging zombies – but not soon enough.

  As I neared her, I fired my rifle at the closest creatures on the left and right. Finding it hard to aim while running, I made no kill shots, but I slowed them down just enough to scoop the old woman up and carry her toward the house. She was no lightweight, but pure adrenaline propelled me forward, and we reached her porch just in time.

  While she hastened to unlock her door, I stood guard, striving to keep the monsters at bay. But the rosemary bushes did the job for me. Just like the plants in front of Myriam’s laundromat, Sadie’s prevented the zombies from climbing the porch.