by Jack Stewart
Those. Fuckers. Were. Everywhere. Wall to wall dead. Standing room only. From here to fucking judgment day. Yeah, that many.
So I trotted to a stop and waited for one of them to notice me. Behind me the wall of dead were closing the quarter of a mile or so I had managed to put between me and them. Ahead of me the ocean of dead wandered around bumping into each other, the wall, and the surrounding buildings having not noticed me. To the right the wall of dead were still closing in and worse, behind me they were starting to pour around the corners of the side streets.
Fuckty, fuck, fuck, fuck.
In front of me, I watched as a dead little girl in a filthy, torn, and partially chewed through sun dress began to rotate towards me holding a rotten little zombie teddy bear and wearing the tatters of a backpack. She would see me, I thought, let out a big old groan, and the footrace would begin again.
I was wrong.
Turns out a dead cop or maybe an army dude in full body armor and no face spotted me first and raised up the alarm, “Ung mmmugh uungna,” he said and then raised his arm to point for those of the dead who may not have heard him. The entire wall of dead turned in my direction at exactly the same time. Synchronized Cannibal Shuffling you might say. They were really good at that synchronizing shit.
So with no choice in the matter whatsoever, I began the long run west. I started slow and worked my way up to a vigorous run putting more and more distance between me and the crowds snowballing (deadballing?) behind me. I had no idea how far I could go, how long they would follow, or when a sprinter would happen along and end the whole damn show but the animal buried just below the surface of my brain was whipping me on. That and the thought a being slowly (or even quickly as the case was likely to be) eaten to death.
After a good half an hour into eternity, I glanced behind me. I was putting more and more distance between me and the hordes. And even better, up ahead was the police station. It had not been barricaded in and the doors were wide open. Maybe if I could get there, close the doors and hide, I could lose my fan club a few blocks behind me.
For the second time that day, I would be proven wrong in the form of a family from Montana looking to escape the city and their big ass, environmentally unfriendly, 1973 station wagon. However that was exactly three seconds into the future. I started to run with a renewed burst of energy pushing me forward.
Three…two…one.
And that’s when the car hit me. One second I was in a race from my life, the next I am flying ass over tea kettle and crashing to the asphalt street. Here’s what it looked like from my perspective: Police station ahead, then hood of car in my face, then windshield with the faces of two very surprised white people behind it, followed by a clear blue sky, then a glance of dead people, then asphalt. I could only imagine what it must have looked like to the people inside the station wagon or the dead behind me. Somehow, I didn’t care.
As the world swam into darkness, I could hear the doors of the car open up and some woman with a Midwestern accent say, “My Gawd, Dennis you ran a girl down.”
To which Dennis replied, “It was your idea to come to Los Angeles, Myrtle,” as though that justified vehicular manslaughter. Or attempted vehicular…um, teen… slaughter. Whatever. “‘We’ll see the stars,’ you said. I said let’s go see my mother in Fargo. You said ‘We see your mother every year. L.A. will be fun! You mother is not fun. She’s gassy.’ Are you having fun, now Myrtle?”
“Shut up and get the girl, if she’s still alive,” Myrtle responded.
And then the darkness crashed over me.
ɸ
Being hit by a car is not fun but if you’re going to do it, make sure you’re hit by a car moving slowly. Thankfully, the Hollister’s were moving very slowly. Looking for the I-10 onramp they said to me once I came to.
“Dennis always gets lost,” the woman said.
Dennis rolled his eyes and continued to study the folding map he had spreads out on a cheap desk in the hotel room we were in.
“Where are we?” I asked as I tried to sit up.
“Days Inn Hotel,” the woman said dismissively, “I wanted to go to a Holiday Inn Express and live a little, but Dennis said it was too far and there were too many dead roaming the streets. I just think he’s cheap,” she said looking directly at me as though I was responsible for the quantity and quality of the dead clogging up the streets and thus keeping her from the Holiday Inn Express, “Even with the End of the World here, even with Hell overflowing and the dead looking to eat our living flesh, even when it wouldn’t have cost us a single damn dime, Dennis here is still cheap.”
“You sure got the dead all stirred up, missy,” Dennis said as he traced his finger along different map routes ignoring his wife completely, “Did you set out to do that? Maybe one of your crazy teenage friends say ‘see how many dead you can get to follow you.’ Something like that, maybe? Never mind. Do you know how to get to I-10? We hit that and we wave goodbye to Sunny Southern California and head back home where the dead don’t roam.”
I wondered if he was making a pun. My head ached. My arms ached. My legs ached. My ass ached. But as far as I could tell there was nothing broken. Just a few more bruises and a new set of scraps that ran from my knee all the way up to…crap! I pulled up the edge of my skirt and saw the road rash went up the bottom of my ass. Ouch. Apparently I skidded the last few yards of asphalt on my butt before tumbling to a stop.
“The I-10 onramp is about five miles south of here. Just head south on 20th street and it will take you directly to it. Before the TV went off they were showing a huge pile up there though so you might want to consider a different route. The police closed off I-405 and I-5 south all the way down to San Diego at the beginning of the…um…event?” I said sitting up on the bed they had put me in, “Said it was for emergency crews, police, and military use only. Everyone else would be shot. Maybe take head east to I-405, then to I-105, and then over to I-10 after you pass the city center to get out of the L.A. Basin.”
“Shot?! Oh, dear. You folks sure do thing differently out here,” Dennis said. Behind him I heard the toilet flush and started looking for the nearest exit.
“Holy fuck! You want to get us all killed!?” I yelled looking for my pack and axe and waiting for the sound of running feet.
“Language!” Myrtle said as the young man coming out of the bathroom looked at me with a surprise look on his face.
“Flushing a toilet can get you killed?” he asked.
“No! Force of habit can get you killed and those things have bionic hearing!” I said blushing just a bit.
“Don’t worry dear. The entire building is empty,” the woman said pulling my skirt back down as the young man stepped out of the bathroom. I made a note of that for future hide outs. When the Event got rolling most public places were closed down. Restaurants, parks, malls, and hotels were all closed up as the government tried to contain the spread of the disease. That meant there’d be a great many empty hotels, motels, and dives around that I’d be able to hole up in.
“Well, I’m Dennis Hollister,” the older man said while standing and holding out his hand to me. I took it and pumped his hand up and down, “This is my wife Myrtle.”
“Hi,” Myrtle said carefully eyeing her husband’s grip on my hand.
“And this is our son, Patrick,” Dennis said pointing to the young man. He was tall with black hair, wide shoulders, and a narrow waist. And he had pale blue eyes. And he was gorgeous.
“Hi,” I said and was grateful that Myrtle had pulled down my skirt.
“Hi,” he said, “Are you feeling OK?”
“Good, yes, good good,” I stammered, “No broken bones, most of my pieces and parts still intact. Except for this road rash. It goes all the way up to my…” I said and began to show him just how far up the rash went.
Myrtle intercepted my hand and pulled my skirt back down as Patrick blushed, “Good that you are OK, dear,” she said, “No need for a visual display.
; “Yes, yes,” I said happy to see Patrick was disappointed, “I’m Cerra.”
“I’m Patrick. What were you doing out on the street by yourself?” Patrick asked.
“Running mostly,” I replied.
“Yeah, there sure were a whole bunch of those things after you,” Patrick said.
“You could have gotten yourself killed running through the streets like that,” Myrtle said.
“I wasn’t too concerned with looking both ways,” I replied dryly.
“Well you might want to do that in the future,” Myrtle replied.
I decided right there that looking both ways would not make the rule book.
“Let’s give the young lady some privacy,” Dennis said gathering up his map and pencils, “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow if we’re going to make it out of here by sunset,” he said and went into the adjoining hotel room.
“Cerra, we’ll be having some dinner a little later if you’re feeling up to it,” Myrtle said as she followed her husband into the next room.
I looked at Patrick and he looked at me. I could feel the little spark in my belly that let me know there was going to be trouble later tonight. Oh, boy.
Patrick shuffled from one foot to the other then spotted the axe strapped to my pack, “Have you used that?” he said.
“A few times,” I said sitting up on the edge of the bed, “The trick is to not let too many of them gang up on you. And avoid the sprinters,” I said as though I had been battling the undead for years instead of two days.
“Holy crap!” he said sitting much too near to me on the bed, “I haven’t been near one. We’ve been in lockdown at my Aunt’s since the beginning. What are sprinters?”
“Those things that scream and run you down. They sprint so I call them…um...sprinters?”
“Yeah, I get it. My Aunt became one. She got bit during the initial outbreak. We took her to the hospital thinking she had some type of infection or fever. She died and then…well, she came back and started biting the nurses and doctors. We got out of there fast but by then there were a bunch of them running around the streets. Mom and Dad and I jumped into our car and headed back to my Aunt’s place then hid in the basement thinking the government would get things under control soon. They never did though.”
“No, they didn’t and it doesn’t look like they will,” I replied taking his big old hand. It was cold and I thought to myself, big hands cold heart, right? No, that wasn’t it: cold hands warm heart? That was it. What was the other one? Big hands, big dick. Yep, and his hands were huge.
Oh, my.
“How about you? How did you end up on the street and then on the hood of my Dad’s car?”
I told him about our apartment, the break in, the dumpster, and the construction site trying not to think too much about Mom and Dad who, if they were really, really lucky had been so eaten up, there was nothing left of them to come back. Tried not to think that there was plenty enough of them to come back and if I were to go back to my old home, I might find them wandering around half eaten looking to devour someone.
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Patrick said and squeezed my hand. He leaned forward maybe to kiss me when his Mom, sensing carnal thoughts were in the air, called out to him.
“Patrick, leave the poor girl alone for a bit!” she yelled.
Patrick jumped back and though he had just received a few thousand volts of electricity to his butt and dropped my hand like it was red hot.
“Sorry, got to go,” he said and began to make his way to the room’s door.
“Wait! You’ll come back? Later tonight?” I said hoping he’d know just what I had in mind.
“Yes! After my folks are asleep!” he said flushing and blushing then closed the door to my room behind him.
Oh, boy.
I sat on the bed feeling the aches and pains of the last few days, looked at my filthy clothes, and wondered if the showered worked. With the power off it was unlikely, but what they hell. If the Toilet of Death still flushed, maybe there would be some water pressure in the shower as well I thought as I walked gingerly to the bathroom.
The afternoon light poured in through the bathroom window. The towels and washcloths were still all neatly hung, the soaps and shampoos arrange in tidy rows waiting for the next guests that would never arrive. I nearly cried at so normal a looking scene. In the corner were two neatly wrapped toothbrushes, a small tube of toothpaste, and a vial of mouthwash. I slowly peeled off my skirt, followed by my tee shirt, then my bra, and panties. Maybe after I showered, I could wash my things in the tub, I thought as I pulled the wrapper off one of the toothbrushes and squeezed a bit of toothpaste on to it. I turned on the water at the sink happy to see that it still worked, brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth, then stepped over to the shower.
I turned on the water faucet and put my hand in the cold water surprised a few seconds later that it began to warm up. Hot water! Super bonus. It turns out the hotel we were staying in had solar cells on the roof and solar water heaters as well.
I stepped into the luxurious spray of hot water and let the heat soak into my bruised and beaten body. The water stung my new sets of scrapes and road rash but it was worth it. I soaped up all over cleaning every nook and cranny, spending extra time on my hair washing away the filth and grim and blood and sweat and oil of the last two days, then lathered up and washed again until my whole body squeaked. I turned off the water and dried off, wrapping a soft, clean towel around me. Then I filled the tub up with water, poured in some shampoo followed by my filthy clothes. I let them sit for a good thirty minutes soaking while I combed my hair and wrapped it in a towel too, then got down on my knees and scrubbed my clothes until my hands were raw and the water had turned as dirty brown. Yuck. I drained the water and rinsed my clothes again then hung them up in front of the large window cracking it open a bit to let the breeze in and let my clothes dry.
Fresh and clean! I laid down on the bed still wrapped in the towel and planned out my next move. There was no way I’d be going with the Hollisters. Not that they weren’t nice people. And Patrick was probably the most eligible living bachelor within a few mile radius. I just couldn’t imagine they’d make it all the way back to Montana. I didn’t even thing that they would make it out of Los Angeles. But even if they did, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the only place I had ever known. Los Angeles was my home.
And really, Montana? Thank you no.
I think I’d rather spend my days running from the dead than milking cows, shoveling shit, picking corn, or whatever they’d be doing out there to survive. No seventeenth century lifestyle for me, no sir and thank you.
So it was back into the Wreck for me. Certainly not downtown, though. That was a one way ticket to the Dead Buffet. Maybe the mall? Yes! Certainly the mall. Get some new clothes and maybe some survival gear at a nearby sporting goods store. But first, I’d hit the police station I had been heading towards when the Hollisters tried to run me into an early grave. Which, thinking about it, might have been a very easy way to go. I’d figure out what to do after the police station later. Rule Number Five: One day at a time.
I fell asleep with that thought and woke up a few hours later with the sun down and a small candle burning next to my bed. Next to the candle was a can of Dinty Moore stew, some crackers, and, oh thank God, a coke! I gobbled down the little feast and listened to the snoring of the Hollisters next door. I must have been out for longer than I thought. I finished my stew and crackers washing it all down with the delicious sweet bubbling of my coke, then went into the bathroom, and brushed my teeth. I had just gotten back to the bed when I heard a light tap on the door. I hopped out of the bed and cracked it open a bit. Seeing Patrick there, I looked up at him through my dark bangs and said, “Is there something I can help you with sir?”
“Room service,” he said point down to his huge erection. This guy was not one to waste time, “Let’s go a few room down. It might get a bit loud.”
I co
uld feel a bolt of heat ignite in my lower stomach and felt myself beginning to get wet. I followed Patrick down a few doors and into an empty room. No sooner had the door closed than he was on me and my towel was just a memory tossed over a chair. His hands and then his lips were everywhere in places that, quite frankly I had never had hands and/or lips. Then he had me pinned on the bed and stated doing things with his tongue beginning with my neck, moving down stopping at every major landmark, and ending up between my legs.
Now, I had never had oral sex or a full-fledged orgasm before and all I can say it, “OH MY GOD!” as I came the first time. I think I nearly broke his neck as the orgasm shattered my body and I clamped my thighs down on his head. As I spun down, I released him from my death grip. He got up and made a quick stop in the bathroom. I could hear the water running and Patrick brushing his teeth.
I lay there wondering what the next act would feel like and then he was back dropping his boxers and revealing his…holy fuck. How to describe it? Moose-like (not that I’d ever seen a moose though)? Horse-like (those I had seen)? Towering? Massive? Colossal? Mutated? Whatever. He had a giant dick. What kind of monster was he? I didn’t care. I wanted it all and I wanted it now.
He pushed my legs apart and placed the head of his cock just in between my vaginal lips. I was so wet. I pushed up a little letting him slide in. Then he pulled back out just a bit, then back in. He repeated this over and over until I could feel another orgasm building up. His face was flushed and sweaty as he glided in and out of me with just the tip of his cock, pining my arms above my head and pulling back as I tried to force him in deeper. Finally, I was starting to gush as the orgasm took over and I started screaming for him to fuck me.