by Mark Tufo
Three children had died by the time they’d gotten to the New Hampshire border, two by natural causes as exhaustion and exposure took their toll. The third the vampires had shared, drinking hungrily in front of the other remaining ones. The lone woman had sobbed.
Sophia looked up. “It will be over soon,” she said in a sing-song voice almost tenderly. “I will save you for last, though, so you can watch each of the young die first.” The woman sobbed harder, clutching one of the younger children tight to her breast.
“You’re worse than an animal!” she shrieked.
Sophia laughed. “You are food. What do you know?”
“Animals don’t torment their food!”
“Well, what fun is that?” Sophia asked.
“What you do not know, human, and what Sophia may only know on a subconscious level, is that fear produces subtle changes within your physiology which make you taste even better. Why would we not want to eat the finest?” Payne scratched a long nail down the side of the woman’s face. “That is why we are saving you for last. You will have seen so much that the fear will have worked itself deep into your marrow. We are aging you like a fine wine, and when the time is right, we will drink deeply.”
“I’ll kill myself first!”
“No, you won’t.” Payne smiled. “The boy you hold before you reeks of your scent. He is your offspring, and you will do all in your power to protect him. It will be for nothing, of course, but that will not prevent you from trying.” Payne plunged back down into the rapidly cooling body of the twelve-year-old they’d been feasting on.
Sophia tossed the husk into the woods like it was a used up juice box before they resumed their walk. By the time they’d reached the Maine border, they were down to five children and the woman.
“Something is coming.” Charity had turned first.
They turned to the approaching sound. A large motor coach began to shimmer into sight a few miles in the distance and then took on more substance as it moved closer.
“A lunchbox!” Sophia clapped her hands and twirled twice.
Pat Everfree had been touring the highways and byways ever since his wife of forty years had died of pancreatic cancer. He’d been in a sparsely populated town in Kansas when the zombie outbreak had started. For two months, he had stayed in the trailer park until he’d awoken to realize he was the only one still there.
“You’re seventy-three, Pat, you can’t live forever,” he’d said to himself in the small bathroom mirror. He and his wife, Patricia, (they were known as the Pats) had talked about touring the United States for more than half their marriage. Work, kids, more work, and then grandkids had kept them fairly rooted to their hometown in Kansas. It was three years to the day that his wife had come home from the doctor and told her husband that they should buy that Coachmen motor home they’d been looking at for the past six months. He knew without her saying another word she was dying. They signed the papers the next day. Patricia’s first and only ride in the behemoth was to the hospital as she began to cough up blood. Pat had begged to call an ambulance. Patricia had told him she wanted at least one go-around in their dream. How could he deny her that?
It took him another week before he built up enough courage to leave the campground. He had a difficult time reconciling the world he was seeing now with the world he’d known his entire life. The dead littered the streets. Buildings were reduced to ashes. Society had crumbled as had his desire to live. That all changed the day he saw her by the side of the road. She had on a yellow dress and scant else. Her feet were bare and bloody; her face was bruised and battered. She did not look over to him when he approached. Tears flowed down her face and fell to the roadway in front of her.
“Honey, are you all right?” Pat had asked, looking down at her from his window. She didn’t stir. “Would you like a ride?” Without looking at him or saying a word, she stood and came around to the passenger door. Pat hit a release button, and it swung open. She climbed in past the passenger seat into one of the beds in back and was fast asleep before he got the door shut.
When she awoke later that night, Pat had told her how to work the shower. He apologized that all he had for clothes was his wife’s, and though she was a beautiful woman, his wife was slightly curvier than her. He’d smiled at that last. For the first couple of days, Pat tried to get her to talk, or at the very least, to tell him her name. When he realized that was not in the cards, he’d stopped trying.
She’d completely exhausted Pat’s water tanks before removing herself from the shower. She’d dressed in Patricia’s faded blue jeans, which were eight sizes too large, and a sweater that she could have swam in. She’d sat in the passenger seat, rolled down her window, and threw the dress out on to the roadway.
“If you want to sit up here, you need to put on your seatbelt.”
She did so without hesitation. Every so often, she would look over in Pat’s direction. If he turned to look at her, she would immediately stare straight ahead.
“You look about eighteen. I have a couple of grandkids, boys though, that are your age. I don’t exactly know where though. I always thought it was foolish when my oldest son, Reggie, talked about survival prepping, and then they went and blew their entire savings on a bomb shelter. I was so angry at him, sacrificing their future like that. Who knew? When he tried to show me where it was, I told him I wanted nothing to do with his foolishness. Who’s the fool now?”
For a week, they’d fallen into a routine. He’d drive most of the morning, staying away from major cities. For lunch, she would make them macaroni and cheese, apparently her favorite. Pat didn’t have the heart to tell her he couldn’t stand it. He’d only bought it because it was Patricia’s favorite. Then, when she was done cleaning up, she would sit next to him while he drove. The difference this day happened right before he was about to pull over for the night.
“I’m glad you’re a fool,” she said. It had taken him a moment to put that into context.
“Me too, honey. Me too.” He’d smiled.
“My name is Tiffany.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Tiffany.” Pat smiled, extending his hand; she hugged him instead. “Patricia would have loved you: the granddaughter we never had.”
Pat had the uncanny ability to avoid trouble, and they’d stayed mostly unscathed right up until the Maine border. Tiffany had soon after learned that mac and cheese was not on Pat’s preferred list of edibles and moved to his much more eating-friendly beef stew. She was preparing it when she felt the large vehicle slow down. She went up to the front to see why. A couple of hundred yards away was a small group of children and four women. The woman by the children looked scared. She was dirty and had dried blood over most of her while the other women looked like they were out for a nice stroll.
“Something’s wrong here, Pappy.” Tiffany had started to call him what she’d called her own grandfather years ago before he’d died in a construction accident.
“They need help, like you did, is all.”
“They need help.” Tiffany was pointing to the woman and children. “Those others do not.”
“Nonsense, they’re just women.”
“Lizzie Borden was a woman.”
“Good point. There is something strange going on here.” Pat put the RV in reverse. He looked at the small backup screen and kept going until he could no longer see the strangers.
“What are you doing?”
“You need to get out.”
“What?”
“You’re right, something is wrong up there, and I would not feel right if something were to happen to you.”
“Let’s just leave.”
“I need to see if I can help them. What if I had not helped you?”
“It’s me and you Pappy, please don’t make me get out.”
“It’s just for a few minutes. I’ll go up there and see what I can do, and then I’ll come right back here for you.”
Tears began to form in her eyes. “We should go back to you
r house in Kansas. Maybe your son left a message; you said so yourself. We could go find them, and you could be with your kids.”
“I’m with one of my kids now,” he said affectionately.
“Please, Pappy. There’s something wrong with those women. I can feel it; just looking at them makes my stomach hurt.”
“Probably just that last batch of stew you made. I think it was expired.” He tried to make light of the situation, but it wasn’t working. Tiffany was trembling and tears were falling.
She started heading for the door.
“Grab the rifle and some food and water first.”
She turned. “You don’t think you’re coming back either, do you?”
“Nonsense, it just might take longer than expected, and I don’t want you out here without protection. And I know teenagers; they eat and drink constantly.”
“I’m barely a teenager anymore.”
“Nineteen is still not twenty.”
She kissed him tenderly on the cheek before departing with the bolt-action .308, forty rounds, a canteen of water, and two MRE packets. She got to the side of the road and ran as quickly as she could so that she could watch.
Pat closed the door and reluctantly pressed on the gas. He could not remember being overly altruistic in the past, and he was still fumbling around with these new feelings as he once again approached the original point he had been before backing up. As he rolled closer, the small pit of unease that Tiffany had put into him had flowered and began to bloom into a full-fledged bout of apprehension and nervousness. Two of the women on his right watched his approach with a mild look of curiosity. One looked genuinely pleased. On the left, there was a slender woman holding an even smaller child. She looked beaten and defeated until something flickered across her face. Hope, maybe?
Pat could not fathom what was happening here. For the fifth time, he looked down to his lap and the .357 Magnum revolver he’d placed there. When he looked back up, he saw the woman with the child running toward him. None of the other women made a move to stop her. She was screaming though, he could not make out her words over the loud drone of the diesel engine and his own failing hearing. When his wife died, he’d not seen the reason to go through with the hearing aid appointment he’d scheduled. Without her to talk to, there was hardly anyone he wanted to hear. Selfish … he knew it then, and he knew it now. Her death had killed something inside of him as well, at least until Tiffany had reawakened it. How he wished she were here now. Tiffany or Patricia, both, either.
“Help me; help us!”
“Well, that was as clear as day.” Pat said.
Pat pulled up alongside the woman.
“They’re…” She had to pause to catch her breath. “…insane! They’re killing everyone!”
“Them?” He was about to point far up the road to where they had been not a moment before. His heart jumped in his chest. The trio was not more than ten feet from the front of his RV, motionless except for a small breeze that was making their garb stir. None seemed to be out of breath from exertion.
Tiffany had been watching through her scope and still could not believe what she’d seen. She thought that possibly it had been her mind playing a trick on her or maybe something was wrong with the optics or maybe the shimmer on the road had given the illusion of unnatural speed. Her instincts were demanding action, most were telling her to run far away and never look back. Another was telling her to line up a shot and keep shooting until those things stopped moving. Pappy had taught her how to shoot. She was decent, but she knew her limits. She’d never hit them from this distance. More than likely, she’d put one into the side of the RV.
“Leave, Pappy. Please leave.” Even from her spot, she knew the woman with the child was begging for help. What kind of monsters were those women? She’d been personal witness to the brutality of man, and they did not hold a candle to what she figured those things were capable of. She scanned over the children with her scope, and all of them had checked out. There was no hope in any of those dead, flat eyes. They’d seen things that had stripped away who they were. Parts that could never be replaced. There were long moments where nothing happened. She couldn’t see him from her angle, but she could see the brightness of the brake lights he depressed, and she could imagine him behind the impossibly large steering wheel. Everything happened in a flash as the woman and her child headed for the passenger door. She jumped when she heard the explosion of his revolver.
Pat’s heart was working harder than he could ever remember. Pain began to shoot down his left arm, exploding into bursts of pain along his fingertips.
“A fucking heart attack? As crazy as this world is right now, I’m going to die from a heart attack?”
He could feel the constriction as the muscle began to seize into a spasm. He didn’t know if the change in his expression got the woman moving or not, but she had circled around the RV and was coming up to the passenger side. The trio in front of him seemed almost bored with the whole encounter. Two of them, anyway. The one in the middle with the red hair, she seemed fixated on him. Concentrating hard. Then it dawned, he wasn’t having a natural heart attack. She had somehow psychically reached in and was crushing his heart with her mind as effectively as if she were using a sledgehammer.
“Eat lead.” He used his right hand to pick up the revolver, which seemed nearly ten times its normal weight. He pulled the trigger, blowing out the windshield. The red-haired woman, who had been smiling, ducked to the side as the round scraped against her scalp. He’d not hit his target, but it had the desired effect as she’d released her death grip on his ticker. He whipped his head back and forth, looking for them. When an incredibly cold hand reached up and grabbed his shoulder, he knew it was the end. She pulled his arm out of his socket. His seatbelt performing its job admirably. He undid the restraint before she removed his arm completely. He hit the ground hard when she effortlessly pulled him through the open window. He was certain his shoulder was broken along with a couple of ribs. None of that mattered as long as Tiffany got away. He hoped with all his being that she had left when she heard his gun go off. He was sure she hadn’t, but he truly wished she had.
“Hello,” Sophia said, staring down at him. “Do you come here often?” Then she laughed.
He coughed. “It’s poor form to laugh at your own jokes.” He was trying to gauge exactly what he was dealing with here. He knew his life was forfeit. He would just have liked to know what had done him in. “What are you?” He thought to go for the direct approach.
Payne heard his question and came forward. “The devil once said that there were great and terrible things that needed to be done on earth. He asked who would go forward and accomplish these deeds. I raised my hand and told him I am here.”
“You’re a demon?”
“Of sorts, I suppose. Though demons cannot roam freely in this realm.” Payne implanted in him what he needed to know to understand what had befallen him.
“Please, that’s all I have left to me.”
“I have not let a soul escape in centuries. Why would I start now?”
Pat grinned. “I’ll tell you why.” He placed his gun up against his head and pulled the trigger.
Payne screamed in rage. Tiffany shuddered from her hiding spot.
“That was my soul to collect!” She moved closer, reared back, and kicked, sending Pat airborne for ten feet. He landed in a broken heap.
“His soul will still be lost, Payne,” Charity offered.
Payne spun. “It was mine to collect, not his to lose. And the all-merciful God may still allow his passage if he but asks for forgiveness!” She sneered.
Tiffany watched in horror as Payne bent down and lifted Pat by his head. With one hand around his neck and the other under his jaw, she tore them apart and threw both halves away.
“Oh, Pappy,” Tiffany cried, letting her forehead rest against the ground.
“Round up the meat. We will take the vehicle.” Payne strode inside.
�
�There appears to have been another here,” Charity said once they were all onboard. “Should we go and look?”
“I am not in the mood. Bring me something to eat.” The screams were muted within the confines of the RV, but Tiffany could still hear the pleas from her location. She did the only thing she could think to do when the vehicle pulled away. She stood and followed. She didn’t know exactly what she was going to do when and if she ever caught up to them, but Pappy had been nice to her, and he deserved her effort at least. She didn’t look down when she passed the shell that had housed him. She kept repeating that what was there was not him. “It’s not him. It’s not him.” She was a mile away before she let the tears fall in earnest. She left the highway and went into Portsmouth in search of a car to either head to the West Coast, where she might try and find a way to drive to Hawaii, or continue north and catch back up.
Tiffany had never thought much on religion. Her parents were good people, but they weren’t religious. The topic rarely came up in the circles she lived in. But as she walked into Portsmouth, she would have sworn there was something, some unseen force at work. A guiding hand. Something or someone that had seen the evil and sought to right the wrongs. She cleared her thoughts, focusing her white-hot anger on those who had taken Pappy’s life. She took lefts and rights, not looking at street names or even knowing where she was. She heard sounds all around her, some human, some zombie, though she never encountered anything. She found herself standing in front of a house at 777 Highgate Drive. The gray Victorian looked slightly out of place in a neighborhood dominated by ranch style homes, but it wasn’t garish.
Tiffany walked up to the detached two-door garage. The side door was unlocked. When she entered, there was a vehicle covered in a large off-white canvas covering. She pulled it off, raising thick plumes of dust and exposing a 1969 white Shelby fastback Mustang.
“Is this thing going to work?” she asked the thick ribbons of swirling dust. “This is insane.” She looked inside, and the keys were sitting on the driver’s seat. She got in, took notice that she did not need to adjust the seat, placed the key in the ignition, and turned. The loud thrum of the high performance engine was nearly deafening in the small garage. “This isn’t an escape vehicle; this is for pursuit.” She knew what she had to do. Now, she made up her mind to do it. “Lead the way,” she said once she got out onto the road. “I’m not going to lie and say I understand what’s happening here, but if you’ve chosen me for this, then who am I to argue?”