by Guy James
There was another moan, and Jane looked down the row of pumps, behind her, and at all the visible angles she could see behind the car. She took a quick glance back at the empty field. There was no one—no zombies, no Sven, and no Lorie—at least not that she could see.
Then the moan came again, along with a dragging sound, and it was unmistakable then, whatever it was had gotten closer. Jane put the pin on the pump handle in place so that she didn’t have to hold it while it pumped. That way she could walk around the car and assess the situation. If the thing was dragging along the ground somewhere, she might have enough time to fuel up, or maybe there was something she could distract it with and keep it away while the pump was working.
She took her hand off the handle and began to tiptoe up the driver’s side of the car, looking under it and around the front as much as she could. She had gotten as far as the front tire when she heard the click. She stopped, thinking that this couldn’t be happening, not on this day of all days. But then she turned to the base of the pump and saw that it was.
The numbers had stopped ticking away at 1.84 gallons. The pin had popped loose.
There was another moan, closer still, but Jane still didn’t see anything, and 1.84 gallons wasn’t going to cut it. She took a quick look back at the field—still no one.
She dashed to the nozzle—no use being stealthy at this point, she realized, the thing was clearly after her—squeezed the handle, and popped the pin back in place with a clack. She fixed it there with her thumb, willing the pin to stay this time.
Jane backed up from the nozzle and listened.
Nothing.
“They’re dead. You’re dead. We’re all dead.”
No, no, stop it, she thought, trying to stifle the panic. She was trying to listen for the thing.
“They die. You die. We all die—”
There was another click. Jane turned to the base of the pump. This time, the numbers had stopped ticking away at 3.27 gallons. Progress, but not good enough. Sven’s SUV held at least 15 gallons, and probably more.
She turned back to the field—still empty.
She reached a hand out for the nozzle, stepping forward to reach it. She squeezed the handle, put the pin back in place, and let go.
The pin clicked right away.
Jane replaced it.
It clicked again.
Cursing to herself, she knew she would have to squeeze the nozzle and hold it.
She did, watching the ticking numbers crawl by as the gas pumped. Why did it have to be so slow? Were the other pumps there faster? Had she picked the slowest one of all?
The ticking numbers were at 6.46 gallons.
“Dead but not. Rotting and walking. Just like Vicky. Remember Vicky?”
Jane fought to keep the image out of her mind.
She glanced back at the field and around her.
Still nothing.
She tried to focus in on the fence, to see behind it, but it was too far.
As she was turning back to the nozzle, a moan sounded with unmistakable finality. She thought she heard an echo come after it, and then she felt something grab her foot.
Chapter 70
Lorie had already planned for something like this. In fact, she was expecting it. She expected everything to go wrong now, and there was sense in planning for every disaster.
She was glad she had the surgical mask on, because she didn’t want Sven to know, to see, that she was smiling. Not only had she been prepared for this, but she had hoped for it.
Sven was backing up toward her and holding his arm out to shield her from the zombies, but she was too quick, and she ran around the big man.
“No!” Sven yelled, but she had already flung the skillet with all of her strength. The skillet spun through the air and hit the side of a zombie’s face with a dull thud. The zombie began to stumble, but before the skillet had even fallen to the ground, Lorie was airborne. She was in full flight, with the butcher knife held in both of her hands behind her head, ready to be brought down to slice the zombies into eternity. Her knees were bent and her feet were tucked behind her as she flew. She was gritting her teeth.
Lorie brought the butcher knife down, splitting a zombie’s face down the middle, lodging the butcher knife—she was sure—in the thing’s brain. It felt incredible, a rush better than any rollercoaster.
She fell on top of the destroyed zombie, and backpedaled to Sven before the other zombies could grab her. One down, she thought, as she bumped into one of Sven’s bare legs.
The big man seemed to be stammering something.
Lorie was transfixed by the blade of the butcher knife and the way it disappeared into the zombie’s face. But it was only for a moment, she knew the other three had to be taken care of, then she could have another look. She needed to have another look.
“Come on Svensky,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
The three zombies were through the door now, fully in the kitchen. They were beginning to raise their arms to grab at Sven, like those stupid zombies in the movies always did, and that gave Lorie an awfully wonderful idea.
“Lorie, we can just herd them in this way and run around the island to get out. We don’t have to fight them, we need to get out of here.”
She was rummaging through the knives, looking for something big, preferably bigger than the butcher knife she had just used. Not finding anything that fit the bill, she sighed, and took a butcher knife in each hand.
“Lorie! Come on, we have to go.”
Lorie couldn’t go, Lorie needed to do something first.
“Fine, yeah,” Lorie lied. “Let’s do that, let’s get them in on this side and then run around.”
She came over to join Sven, who was leading the zombies in, on a direct path from the door toward the swinging doors that led into the restaurant’s dining area.
A few more shambling steps and there would be enough room behind the three zombies for Lorie and Sven to make their escape.
Lorie locked her eyes on an undead elbow and bit her lip, once again glad that she was wearing a mask. Sven was already looking at her funny, and she thought her expressions under the mask might be a dead giveaway—or rather, an undead giveaway…
When there was enough room behind the zombies to get out, Lorie darted forward and chopped with both of the butcher knives. The butcher knife in her left hand cut through a zombie’s elbow with a crunch, and the butcher knife in her right hand came down into the same zombie’s shoulder, sticking in it.
She released her grip on the butcher knife that had lodged in the zombie’s shoulder and darted back, intending to take another swipe with her remaining butcher knife. She had liked the cutting crunch through the elbow, like the zombie’s bones and flesh were baked dry. It wasn’t like cutting through butter, or meat for that matter. No, not at all.
That was when Sven grabbed her, pulled her through the open door, and maneuvered her through a smattering of zombies to the gate.
He set her down and she stopped flailing with her knife arm, beginning to regain her composure.
Then she looked through the gate, and her heart sank, although not all that much, because she was expecting all kinds of disasters now, and what she saw, or rather, what she didn’t see behind the gate, was one of them.
Lorie looked up at Sven, who had slowed as he was pulling up the locking bar and was now looking into the field. He had spotted it too.
Jane and the car were gone.
Sven opened the gate, and she and the big man solemnly stepped through the opening before Sven closed it behind them. They walked a few steps into the field and then stood there together, in silence.
Lorie took her mask off and spoke first. “The air’s a lot better out here.” Sven didn’t react, so Lorie went on. “Do you think she’ll come back? You guys know each other right?”
He was looking into the distance, eyes searching. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “She’ll come back.” Then his gaze fell on Lorie. Sven too
k his mask off and glared. “What happened to the shy little girl from before?” he asked accusingly. “The one that wouldn’t even get into the car with me and Jane…and Ivan?”
She had to think about that for a moment, and stomped around Sven, setting dandelion seeds in flight as she went. Lorie didn’t know the answer to that question. She felt different, that was all—different from before, but like herself—like how she should feel.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “We need to get you a new hammer.”
Sven shrugged, and Lorie hoped that he would give up on this line of questioning, it was making her a little uncomfortable. So what if she wanted to hurt some zombies? Was that really wrong? They were trying to hurt her, after all. They had already taken her mom, and…
“No,” Sven said, “I’m gonna need something a little more practical.”
Lorie nodded. “Okay. Hey, listen…I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“There’s, uh.”
Sven looked at her.
Lorie pointed. “The, uh.”
“Holy crap!” Sven said, and skipped backward in a most un-Sven-like manner, away from Lorie, but of course that did nothing to get the zombie hand off his ankle.
So he can be light on his feet when he wants to be, Lorie thought, and had to suppress a giggle when she noted how much like a ballet dancer he had just looked.
She had ignored the hand before, pretending that it wasn’t there and that it would fall off on its own. But it hadn’t fallen off, and apparently Sven hadn’t noticed it, so she felt like she had to bring it up. She wondered if she should have brought it up earlier, but quickly dismissed the notion.
Lorie’s mask hung down around her neck, and she wished she still had it on, because she couldn’t help grinning, and Sven saw it. She got the sense that he was judging her, so she said, “Here, I’ll help get it off,” and kneeled down to pry the fingers off.
It was harder than she thought it would be, and when she looked up at Sven watching her, she could see that he was enjoying her frustration. She could pull one finger loose, but then whenever she pulled on another finger, the first finger would grip again, so she could never pry off more than one finger at the same time. She tried to use each of her hands on one finger and pull at the same time, but that seemed to just make the whole hand tighten, like one of those Chinese finger traps. The fingers were cold and crumbly, and not exactly pleasant to touch.
“Hey!” Lorie said. “They should call this a zombie finger trap!”
Sven looked down at her, clearly not amused anymore.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s try this. You get the pointer out.”
Lorie pulled on the pointer, sticking it out with a crackle. That made the thumb that Lorie had just been pulling on retract and re-grip Sven’s ankle.
Then Sven reached down, put his massive hand around the zombie hand’s pointer, and pulled it backward. There was a tearing sound, and the pointer ripped off the hand, pulling up strands of flesh from the back of the hand with it. Sven gave it one more tug, snapping the threads, and threw the pointer into a patch of dandelions.
“I get it,” Lorie said, and pried another finger up, the middle finger this time. Sven tore that one off too, and tossed it into the dandelions as he’d done with the first. They did the pinky next, and after that, the hand came loose. Lorie took it and tossed it into a different dandelion patch than the pointer and middle finger and pinky had gone—just in case the thing could reassemble…not that she thought it would, but just in case.
“Thanks,” Sven said.
“Any time.” Lorie thought for a moment. “Do you think we’re gonna make it through this?”
“I think so.”
“Do you think there’ll be more zombies?”
He gave her a strange look, but didn’t answer. That was answer enough. Lorie bit her lip and tried not to smile. Her hand was giving the butcher knife handle a good coating of sweat.
Sven and Lorie stood in the spot in the open field where the car had been. Lorie could make out tire tracks in the grass. Jane had driven off, alright, and who could blame her?
When there were zombies, it was every man and woman for him or herself. True as that was, Lorie was glad Sven was still there, looking ridiculous as ever, pants-less and bending over to rub his ankle where the zombie hand had been.
Then Lorie looked up, and saw that the sky was darkening.
Chapter 71
The first thing Jane did when she felt the hand on her foot wasn’t to look down. She knew what it was, and the voice in her head confirmed what she was thinking.
“Here it comes, dead, dead, dead. Just like in the movies. You’ll be famous. What a treat!”
No, she didn’t look down, and she didn’t loosen her hold on the nozzle, if anything, she was squeezing harder than ever.
The first thing she did was to look back at the base of the pump.
The ticking number read 8.12 gallons. That was better, but still not good enough. She was not going to fail at this task, she was not. The voice was wrong.
Then Jane looked down at her foot. She tried not to focus on the hand itself, but it was hard not to look at it in wonder—in horrified wonder. How could this be happening?
The flesh of the hand was ripped and torn, and there was dry blood caked across it. The fingers looked too thin to be those of a person, like the fingers of a skeleton that had been crudely wrapped with flesh-covered pieces of paper. The bone of the forefinger peeked through, the flesh that should’ve surrounded it scraped off. The jutting piece of bone winked at Jane, and she shuddered with revulsion.
There was another moan, possibly one of triumph.
“No,” Jane said, “you’re not gonna get me.” She didn’t understand how the thing had snuck up on her like that, but it must have come from the next row of pumps, and gotten under the car after she stopped. But she had been so careful, so discerning, that she couldn’t help but get angry at herself for not checking just around the next pump—not that she could know that was where it came from, but it seemed the most likely possibility.
Jane braced herself against the car with her free arm and pulled her foot back. It inched back, revealing some of the zombie’s wrist and forearm from under the car. But the zombie didn’t let go.
She looked back at the ticking numbers. 10.19 gallons. 10.23 gallons. 10.27 gallons. 10.31 gallons.
She looked back down at the grotesque hand. Its fingers were gripping the toe of her foot more tightly, and it hurt, like the sides of the front of her foot were being squeezed together and there wasn’t much give left.
Jane looked back at the ticking numbers. 10.91.
That would have to be enough.
In pain and overcome with a sudden surge of fury, Jane jerked the nozzle, gas still flowing out of it, from the car. She bared her teeth and thrust the nozzle down, stabbing the monster’s forearm above the wrist.
There was a moan that Jane interpreted as a whimper, and the torn fingers around her foot released their disgusting, excruciating grip. Jane pulled her foot back at once, and watched for a few seconds as the gas seeped from the thing’s forearm and hand, through small ruptures in its skin. Its flesh really was like paper, like ruffled paper, and in the moment that Jane watched the forearm with the nozzle sticking out of it fill with gas, she thought she could see the texture of the zombie’s skin change. Then the back of the hand and a spot above the wrist burst, churning out gas and small bits of crusty flesh.
Trembling, Jane opened the door and jumped back into the driver’s seat. She looked over to see Ivan curled up on the passenger seat, resting his head on his paws. On hearing Jane approach, Ivan picked his head up, meowed, then let out a resigned hiss aimed at the back of the car. He then put his head back down on his paws and closed his eyes.
A slight moan came from the back of the car.
Jane spun around, straining her neck a little, and saw that Evan was looking a little
better.
He blinked his eyes and said, “Where’s Lorie?”
Filled with a renewed resolve, Jane turned back around, started the car, and pulled out of the gas station. She was sure she could feel the crunch as she drove over the nozzle-stabbed zombie.
It was a day for stabbing, she thought, and it had gone from fork-stabbing to nozzle-stabbing. She cringed, then remembered Evan’s question.
“We’re going to get her,” Jane said. She turned the car around, and hoped that the words she had spoken would come true.
Chapter 72
“It looks like it’s about to rain,” Lorie said. “Let’s get this lit up while we still can.”
Sven watched as the girl took the firework out of her pocket and fiddled with it, propping it up on its built-in stand. She set it up so that the front part of the rocket peeped through the fence, pointing a direct course to the hibachi restaurant’s open back door.
“It’s nice this fence is here, huh?” Sven asked dumbly. He didn’t know what else to say, he felt a little scared of Lorie after what she had done back in the restaurant. It was a good thing she was on his side—was she on his side? He hoped so.
Sven’s ankle hurt, and his foot was numb. The zombie hand’s grip must have cut off all blood flow to his foot and toes. He was surprised that he hadn’t noticed it before, probably on account of all the adrenalin, and not having a moment to stop and do a self pat-down.
He wiggled his toes in his shoes and felt some movement, but it hurt to walk on the foot, like it was asleep. Sven put a tentative finger on his chest and pressed. It was getting worse, as was his strained neck, and the way things were going, he wouldn’t be surprised if the benching accident had popped some important blood vessels. He was racking up injuries that day, and that didn’t bode well for him as the day wore on.
Lorie looked up from her task. “Yeah, so what are we gonna do if Jane doesn’t come back?”
Sven didn’t know what to say. She had to come back. Why had she left in the first place? She wouldn’t just abandon him and Lorie like that, would she?