She cleaned herself up as much as she could, and kept on her guard just in case her recent ruckus drew out any more hungry beasties. Who was she kidding? They were always hungry. They would remain so until someone fed them a piece of steel, gave them a piece of mind, and then took it away. So to speak.
Then there was that noise. The very same noise she heard before entering the town. It was easy to pick out as the rest of the place so deathly quiet. That low hum, although it was a higher pitch now that she was apparently closer to it.
It could be a sign of civilization, Charlie, ole gal. She contemplated driving up to the source with ‘Lady’, but shot herself down. She had no clue what she would be driving up on. The roads just ahead seemed more congested from where she stood. She was going to have a rough time getting her car back out if things went south real quick. She decided a more mobile, stealth approach was going to be her best bet. She just prayed the traffic mess would slow down any attempt to chase her down if they were not friendly.
A short walk down the street offered a more scenic view of the town, in more ways than one. Newspapers were strewn all over the place, and for a moment Charlie could not explain that one. What did zombies want to do with newspapers? Her answer came soon enough as she continued down the sidewalk, sword at the ready. She came up upon a newspaper machine, its door open and a man lying across its open door. His chest and abdomen had been torn completely open. His entrails, or what was left of them make circles around him. Some of the newspaper inserts were covering most of the carnage, save for the few that had blown away. Charlie imagined someone had come through and make a haphazard attempt in covering the body up. Perhaps they even performed last rites.
She avoided the body, walking off the sidewalk onto the road. The grass on the side of the road, obviously unkempt, was beginning to get too wild and tall for anyone to want to walk-thru. No telling what else could have been hiding in there. She had no desire to find out.
The noise now was much louder. It sounded much like a two-cycle engine, perhaps even a generator of some sort. As she approached, the noise ceased. She leapt behind a car, knowing the machine was no longer hiding any noise she might have been making on her approach. She waited patiently, crouched down to her haunches. A few moments later, the echoing noise, like a dozen weed whackers roared to life again, only justifying Charlie’s original surmise. He had to refill his gas.
The air full of raucous tones to cover her own once more, she crept ever closer, keeping any vehicle she came across between her and it. She imagined this is what being a ninja felt like. After a few minutes, she had arrived. The noise louder now, enough to drive her bat-shit crazy. She could barely think.
Charlie posted herself up behind a mauve colored park bench and peeked out across the street. She brought the scope to bear on the swaying figure in the adjacent parking lot. He stood sweeping back and forth in wide, assuming steps. She was quick to assume it was a zombie at first just by his gait, but something in her mind’s eye realized that this one was different. The sound of water skimming across the parking lot and the loud motor running led her to see that something else was going on here. The figure turned around and that was when she noticed it. The man was carrying a pressure washer wand in his hand and he was painting the lot with hard cleansing water.
That’s no zombie, she realized. The noise she had been hearing came from the pressure washer that sat perched on the sidewalk entry into the restaurant.
It struck her as beyond strange that anyone would be pressure washing a restaurant in the middle of the frickin’ zombie apocalypse she had found herself in. Perhaps maybe this guy was just trying to bring some normalcy to his universe. Perhaps maybe this guy was making this place home.
Charlie was quick to mentally add this encounter to the list of things she least expected to find on her track through Kansas. Man, Kansas is a strange state. You know, sans the zombies. Still, she did not know who this man was or what he was about. For all she knew, he was a serial-killer-rapist-cannibal and she was the next, only available tempting victim.
She debated in her head whether or not to even approach him at all. Live and let live. She felt safer on her own anyway. Besides, it had been weeks since she had verbalized anything to anyone other than the birds that had attacked her. She wondered if her vocal cords still worked. Yes, she should just avoid him all together. It was hard for her to trust someone she had just met. She learned that lesson dearly when she trained with some of her elders at her martial arts classes. She had fended off many of the men during practice and one or two after hours as well. A narrow escape or two was plenty reason to withhold trust of even the most modest looking man.
Still something in the manner this man was moving stopped her from abandoning her post. She found herself rooted, her eyes fixed on the calculated sway of the water stream erupting from the pressure wand. The water came out in a sharp Japanese fan-like spray. The swing of the fan was fluid, agile, and focused. The man wielded the wand as if it was a paintbrush, with perfect deliberate stoked, painting the parking lot with water, sweeping away all impurities. He never went back to hit spots that were missed. Each stroke was perfect and fueled by intent, leaving the lot clean and renewed.
Before she knew it, she was up and walking toward him, pulled in by her desire to figure out who this man was and what he was about. In moments she had cover the street and entered the yellow flowerbeds that “fenced-in” the lot. She slipped out her Desert Eagle and pulled the slide into place, its click lost in the sounds of the reverberating loudness of the pressure washer. In moments, she was in front of him. His head was down, hidden beneath the bill of his hat. His wand was still focused on the black top. She raised her weapon head high and called out to him.
“Hey, don’t move!”
Startled, he jumped and pulled up his wand to bear and hit Charlie full force in the chest. She involuntarily squeezed off a shot that harmlessly ricocheted off the lot into the adjacent building. The man quickly released the trigger-handle on his wand, but Charlie was already thrown to the ground.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! I am so, sa-sa-sorry Miss!” He had not heard the guns report over the mp3 player’s ear buds he had stuffed into his ears, which he promptly pulled out. He stepped forward to help her up, but stopped himself short and threw his hands up when he saw the gun come up in her hands.
“I said don’t move.” She eyed him from head to toe. His dark complexion shown through, although he was probably mixed. His face seemed just a smidgen too big and puffy for his body. He wore a standard maintenance uniform, and his hat logo matched that of the restaurant. Nothing up front seemed menacing at all. In fact, he was rather child-like.
Charlie wiped the water out of her eyes and down off of her face. “Who are you?” she spat.
The man lowered his hands a bit.
“I’m B-B-B-Byron. I w-w-w-work here.”
“Byron, you say?” she spat out the water that had shot up her nose most indelicately.
Bryon nodded.
“Byron?” Charlie started again.
“Yes?”
Charlie gave him her most severe look.
“Help me up.”
She did not ask him. It reverberated as a militant command.
Byron spasmed as if in seizure, but collected himself to hurry and pull her up. He grabbed her hand then jumped her up to her feet with the strength of a grizzly. Byron looked at her and his eyes felt penetrating as if he was staring through her and beyond to the paved lot below. Charlie stared into his dropped maw.
“What are you –?” she halted her eyes followed his gaze down to her legs and the asphalt behind her, where she had fallen. Bits of chunked off flesh and encrusted blood clung to her bare legs and knees she realized he had knocked her into the very pool of gore he had been trying to sweep away with the wand. She flung out her hands in disgust and looking at Byron with pleading eyes, brimming with tears.
“Please, spray it off. Please. . .” Her face twisted in ago
ny trying to fight back the waters. She squeezed them shut and waited. She choked uncontrollably on her sobs and waited, shaking.
Byron looked at his wand, which still had a soft stream of water coming out, even though the washer itself was shot. He squeezed the trigger and very gently swept away the skin, flesh and blood that was clotting over the pale skin of her legs. He fanned the stream to her backside and rinsed away the bits and pieces, and Charlie kept her eyes screwed shut tight until he finished. He stepped across to face her and waited until she blinked her eyes open again.
“Are you g-g-gonna b-b-be OK miss?” Byron asked cautiously. He eyeballed all of the weapons she had slung all around her. “You kinda look like a water soaked Rambo.”” He gambled on giving her a smile. With the ice broken, she slipped him a quick nodding smirk.
“Yeah. I think so. Do you have a change of clothes I can get into? I need to get these dried before I catch something.”
“Sure. I am sus-sus-sure I got something inside for you.” Byron nodded. “F-follow me.” He thumbed toward the restaurant door.
“Yeah. Come in. It is all right. I got the keys.”
He fished through his pocket, dropping the keys three times before succeeding in finding the right one. He was very disarming. He shook his head to himself, muttering that he had ‘opened the door a million times before” and “what makes this time any different.” Charlie saw that the key ring was packed full of keys and that anyone would be hard-pressed to try to sneak another key on it. She thought that this must be the main set for this store. Byron smiled pushed the door hard. It scraped slowly and harshly against the concrete until it was wide open enough to permit entry.
The lobby was a mesh-mash of 50s style seating and decorations mixed with the high-style and utilitarian décor of a high-class rest home. Memorabilia lined the walls between pictures of family, mostly older couples. Judging by the paper hats in all of the images, Charlie guessed they were of patrons who frequented the restaurant. She shuddered at the thought that perhaps Byron just washed off bits of them off her.
In the back corner of the lobby, a large corner booth was positioned and it looked as if it could sit as many as fifteen people all in a great semi-circle. The walls surrounding it were decorated with trellis painted white laid atop a butter yellow painted wall, scrolling until it met a chair rail half-way down. It gave it a white-picket fence feel to the room. Shabby-chic, Charlie believed it was called. What Charlie noticed most of all, was how immaculate the entire room appeared. Not a shred of dust or sauce stain could be found in the place. The napkin dispensers were all perfectly lined up to the edge of the tables, and the sauce bottles all had their labels facing the exactly same way. Uniformity overshadowed the overall clash of styles in the room. It spoke volumes of this diner’s caretaker.
“So, do you own this place?” she said, not really believing that he did judging from his outfit. Byron wore dark blue maintenance uniform and sported black suspenders. They were not exactly owner-type articles of clothing. She did not wait for his answer, but picked up a menu off the closest table and studied it. The menu was large, included a selection for breakfast, lunch and dinner specials. The name “Nana’s Diner” emblazoned across the cover in a mocking pink-neon font. A picture of an elderly woman framed like a profile on a dollar bill laid center on the front. The woman’s hair was as white as snow, without a hint of gray, and was beset with hundreds of pretty curls. This was the poster face for grandmas everywhere. Definitely a “Nana,” Charlie thought.
Byron cleared his throat as he pulled off his shoes and set them neatly in the entryway. “No, I just work here. I’m…I’m the ma-ma-m-maintenance man.” Charlie turned to face him.
“Are you nervous…I’m not gonna hurt you.” she smiled.
Byron smiled back. “I…I…know. I can tell you’re nice. I just g-g-get nervous around new people. W-wa-wa-when I get to know you better, the st-st-stuttering stops.” He took a breath, steadied himself, and started again slowly, but with increasing confidence.
“I just haven’t seen anyone around here in so long. Weeks. You are the first since I woke up to find all of the streets empty.”
Charlie looked at him questioningly, but knew getting to know him would have to wait. She needed to change and change soon before she caught cold.
“You mind if I get those clothes now?”
“Y-yes, ma’am.” He obediently hopped across the lobby floor and sprinted to the back. A few loud bangs and the scraping of a drawer later, he reappeared with a variety of uniform shirts and pants, all neatly folded, and placed them into Charlie’s hands.
“I wasn’t sure w-what size you were, so I got a few different ones.”
“Thank you, Byron.”
Bryon motioned toward the opposite corner to the direction of the two sets of bathrooms. “You can change in there. I will wait for you here. I promise that you won’t be bothered.” He turned and walked quickly to the back and flicked a couple switches to make sure she had light enough light to change and wash up in.
She walked in and chose the larger handicap stall in the corner to clean herself up in. She really needed the room to stretch out and remove all of her gear without accidentally setting any of them off again. She found the biggest uniform shirt and ran it under the hot water tap to get it soaked. She used it to remove the dirt and grime from her face and tried to get all of the in-between spots that Bryon’s pressure washer could not get reach.
When she finished she found a shirt that was just her size, but the best size pants where two sizes too big. She did not care. She salvaged a piece of rope from her bag, tied off a makeshift belt, and tied it off. It would keep them from falling down well enough and at least the polyester pants weren’t too constricted against her skin. She dragged the rest of her weapons and laid them on the semi-circle table, in a not-so-neat pile. Byron took a step towards the table, thought better of it, and edged his way back toward the front counter.
“We have a washer and dryer at the back-of-the-house. You can wash your clothes there.”
Oh, Charlie thought. It didn’t even dawn on me that this place still had power, even though every other store on this block doesn’t.
“So you still have power here, huh?”
Byron averted his eyes shyly. “Yeah, well N-n-ana invested quite a bit to make her diner solar powered, so, this is the only place in t-t-own with elect-ric-city.
Huh. A solar powered diner. This place really is mix-matched.
He led her to the back down the aisles to the back room and showed her the machine which she quickly made use of. After slamming down the lid to the washer, she put her hand on her belly and turned to Byron. “So, Byron. Ya got anything to eat around this place…””
Byron smiled. “That, I can do. I have to turn some equipment on, so it might be a little while.”
The kitchen was soon filled with the aroma of searing meat, and Charlie’s mouth watered. She had not eaten anything cooked in weeks. Most of what she ate was either out of a box or out of a can. Soon, Byron brought out what looked to be a feast in her eyes. Byron had to pull out a tripod-looking device to sit the tray on. They tray was large enough to hold five plates, all of them piled high with fries, mini-burgers, deep fried steak and gravy, a pitcher of fresh sweet tea, and a half-frozen cake.
“Hope you’re not a v-eg-vegetarian.” Byron offered a sweeping hand over the smorgasbord.
“Byron, if this taste as good as it looks, I am hiring you to be my personal chef.”
Charlie pulled out her survival knife and started spinning it in her hand. After five rotations, she made a stab at the first of many mini-burgers off the huge plate before her and nearly swallowed in whole. Two bites later, she came up for air, attacked the sweet tea, and choked it down. She stopped after killing down half of her glass and looked at it. He had even taken the time to cut a perfect lemon wedge and perch it on the rim of her glass. She raised her glass to him and smiled.
“Byron, I think yo
u are my new best friend.”
Bryon smiled broadly. “Thank you so much! I don’t have any real friends.”
Charlie’s face saddened up a bit. “You mean not anymore, right?”
“No. Not ever.” Byron shook his head.
Realization struck Charlie like a shovel to back of the head.
“You don’t know what happened to everybody do you.”
“No, ma’am.” He gave the lobby a sweeping glance and then looked back down into his French fries. “I keep the place up, waiting for the crew and the customers to return. But it’s been weeks. I used to go home every day, but after a week, it was just easier to move all of my stuff here.” Bryon wiped a lone tear off his face and then pointed to the booth askance to them. In a perfect pile were several blankets, wrinkle-less. “I still even clock in and out, same as always. I work my shift. But the outside has been such a mess. It took a while to find a pressure washer to wash away all of the b-b-b-blood.”
Charlie grabbed another mini-burger and a fist full of fries and threw them to her plate. “So, you weren’t here when all this happened? Where were you at?”
“I was in my house, sleeping. I slept for a very long time. When I woke up, my body was so stiff and numb I could barely move. It took a while for me to get my arms to move, but when I did, I checked my watch and it was set to the wrong date. It had to be.”
“Why do you say that?” Charlie asked in-between mouthfuls.
“It said that I had been asleep for three days. It was like I was in a c-c-coma or s-s-something. But the weird thing is that I-I-I always wake up at the same time every morning. I don’t even need an alarm. I should have been awake.”
Bryon passed over the fried steak. With a few quick swipes, Charlie had divided it up stabbed a piece and sent it swimming in her container of gravy. She kept her attention on Byron though, nodding for him to continue his story.
Zombies Don't Ride Motorcycles Page 10