A Girl a Dog and Zombies on the Munch

by David Robbins

  The bathroom seemed their best bet. The cabinet was crammed with medicine, both over the counter and prescription. One of the bottles Courtney recognized as being for diabetes. Another was a mood enhancer, the same kind an aunt of hers took for chronic depression. She also found three different kinds of pain relievers.

  Sally Ann hadn’t moved.

  “Which do you want?” Courtney asked, holding them out.

  Sally Ann tapped one.

  “I’ll get water.”

  The kitchen smelled of food gone bad, and worse. A partially eaten cat lay in a corner near a litter box. The back door was ajar a fraction, and Courtney closed it. As she did, she saw body parts strewn about the lawn, an arm here, a leg there, elsewhere the head—a man’s—and part of a neck. The torso was on its belly, what hadn’t been consumed.

  Courtney tried the sink, worried the tap wouldn’t work. The water trickled enough to fill a glass.

  Sally Ann was waiting, a couple of capsules in her hand. She popped them into her mouth, and gulped the water.

  “Better work fast,” she muttered.

  Gar came down the stairs, twirling a key ring on a finger. “Guess what was on a nightstand?”

  “We can get out of here!” Courtney said.

  “When you start that car up,” Sally Ann said through clenched teeth, “you’ll have every zombie within blocks down on us.”

  “We’ll be gone before they can surround us in big enough numbers,” Gar predicted. He went to the front window and looked out. “Damn.”

  Courtney joined him.

  Eaters were shuffling about in the street near the Mustang.

  “I count eight,” Gar said.

  Several more tottering around a house, including a man with only one arm.

  “They heard the ruckus,” Gar said.

  “But they’re not sure where it came from,” Courtney said.

  Gar shrugged. “Can’t be helped. Once I’m in the car, I’ll lead them off. Go a few blocks and circle back. Be ready to run when I show up.”

  “It would be safer to wait until all of them drift elsewhere,” Courtney suggested.

  Gar went to respond but a loud series of thumps caused them both to turn.

  The toad woman wasn’t dead. She was coming down the stairs.

  Half her cheek and part of her jaw was missing, and her hideous bulk shook as if she were having a seizure. Yet for all that, the woman pumped her thick arms and dragged her legs, intent on reaching them so she could sink her yellow teeth into their bodies.

  “What does it take to kill that thing?” Courtney said.

  “Let’s find out,” Gar replied. Darting to the fireplace, he snatched a brass poker from a rack.

  The dead woman reached the bottom of the stairs—and Gar was waiting. Raising the poker in both hands, he speared the tip into the top of her head.

  The woman uttered an inhuman screech, and incredibly, kept crawling toward Courtney and Sansa.

  Gaga fearfully backed away.

  Courtney raised her shotgun but thought better of using it. The blast might draw others.

  Gar, still holding onto the poker, gave it a violent wrench.

  Stiffening, the toad-woman commenced to thrash like a fish on a hook. She flung her arms, she bucked.

  Gar pressed down on the poker with all his weight.

  Abruptly, the thrashing ended and the creature sagged.

  “Damn,” Gar said.

  “Finally!” Sally Ann exclaimed.

  Gar left the poker jutting from the woman’s head and went to the front window and peered out. “As many as before, if not a few more.”

  “We should wait, I tell you,” Courtney insisted.

  “Be ready,” Gar said, and hastened down the hall.

  “He sure isn’t one for taking advice,” Sally Ann said.

  “We have no cause to complain,” Courtney said.

  “Says the girl who thinks he’s hot,” Sally Ann teased.

  Courtney could see the kitchen from where she stood, and saw Gar slip out the back door. Anxious for his safety, she moved to the blinds.

  “He’ll have to draw them away to reach the Mustang,” Sally Ann said.

  The question of how he would do it was answered when loud banging, as of metal on metal, broke out from further down the street. The eaters jerked their heads up and shambled toward the noise. All except one that was staring fixedly at the sky.

  The banging stopped but the zombies didn’t and no sooner were they out of sight than Gar sprinted around the corner of the house and made for the Mustang.

  The zombie staring at the sky went on doing so as if mesmerized.

  Gar flung the Mustang’s door open and slid in. Inserting the key, he twisted, then grinned toward the house when the engine roared to life.

  “He lured most them off so we should go,” Sally Ann said, moving to the front door.

  Courtney hesitated. She recalled Gar saying something about drawing them off in the car. But Sal was right. All of the creatures except that sky-gazer were gone. She grabbed Sansa by the hand and told Gaga to come.

  They were outside and starting across the lawn when the Mustang gave another roar—and shot down the street, swiftly accelerating. At the intersection it turned left, its tires screeching.

  “He didn’t even look our way!” Sally Ann said.

  “Is he leaving us?” Sansa asked.

  “He’d never do that,” Courtney said. Although, given how little she knew about him and how short a time they had been acquainted, how she could be so sure was beyond her.

  The zombie looking at the sky found something new to interest him—them.

  And up the street a ways, two more eaters were tottering in their direction.

  “Back inside,” Sally Ann said.

  Courtney wheeled, and froze.

  Unnoticed, yet another of the walking corpses had come around the far corner of the house and was now between them and the front door.

  “He’s mine,” Sally Ann said, drawing her knife. “We have to do it quietly.”

  The new zombie was a big one. Not obese, like the woman inside, but in life he had stood inches over six feet in height and weighed somewhere close to two hundred and fifty pounds. His thick fingers were caked with blood and gore.

  “I should shoot him,” Courtney cautioned. “He’s too big.”

  “And bring the rest back down on us?” Shaking her head, Sally Ann warily circled.

  To keep the creature distracted, Courtney smacked her hand against her shotgun.

  It worked. Or seemed to. The big brute fixed its dead white eyes on her.

  Quickly sidling closer, Sally Ann raised her knife to strike.

  Two things happened simultaneously.

  The big zombie flicked out an arm and seized Sally Ann by the wrist.

  And a hand that stank to high heaven and was pasty with rotting flesh clamped onto Courtney’s shoulder from behind.

  Sansa screamed.

  Courtney barely heard her. She was whirling toward the zombie that had hold of her. It was the sky gazer. He had reached her faster than she had imagined he could.

  Courtney tried to shove him off but his fingers were dug deep. She slammed the shotgun against his side but it did no good.

  The thing tried to bite her neck.

  Sansa screamed a second time.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Courtney glimpsed Sally Ann on the ground, desperately trying to keep the big zombie from getting at her.

  Courtney drove her knee at the groin of the thing that had hold of her. It, too, had no effect.

  Courtney rammed the shotgun’s muzzle into the creature’s throat. The rotting flesh split and out oozed ugly fluids and an awful stench.

  Courtney squeezed the trigger.

  At the blast, the zombie’s neck and most of the back of its head showered the lawn.

  Courtney had never fired the shotgun one-handed before. The recoil was greater tha
n she anticipated. The barrel whipped up and struck her on the chin, knocking her back and causing fireflies to dance before her eyes.

  Her vision cleared and she saw that two more were almost on top of them. Pumping the shotgun, she shot one in the chest, pumped again, and shot the other one in the face.

  She turned to see how Sally Ann was faring—and a hand like iron seized her by the ankle.

  The big zombie was holding Sally Ann down with one huge hand pressed to her chest, and had now reached over and grabbed Courtney with its other huge hand.

  Courtney pointed the shotgun but didn’t shoot. She might hit Sally Ann.

  Sansa overcome her fear and began kicking the big zombie in the back of its legs, again and again. She might as well have been a flea trying to hurt a gorilla.

  Courtney went to swing the shotgun like a baseball bat but her leg was brutally yanked out from under her. She came down hard on her back, and the zombie pressed his hand to her chest.

  Now both she and Sally Ann were pinned.

  The zombie spread its mouth and bent to bite.

  Twisting her face aside, Courtney saved herself. Wet drops spattered her neck, and she realized the big zombie was drooling. She heaved and kicked, as Sally Ann was doing, but the zombie was stronger than both of them, combined.

  Then Courtney heard the roar of an engine. A horn blared and the zombie looked up as the Mustang slewed to a stop in the middle of the lawn. Out sprang Gar. A flick of his hand and his old Colt was out and pointed. He fired once, from the hip as he usually did, and the big zombie’s forehead sprouted a hole.

  In slow motion, the big eater melted to the ground.

  Pushing out from under its arm, Courtney stood and helped Sally Ann up.

  Gar had turned toward several more eaters coming around the next block. “Get in, ladies!”

  Courtney didn’t need to be told twice. She pulled the passenger front seat forward so Sansa and Sally Ann could climb in, then claimed the front seat for herself. Gaga tried to jump onto her lap but Courtney shifted the dog to the back seat.

  Gar wasted no time in putting the pedal to the metal. On reaching the street he peeled out as if at a stock car race. He took the corner with the tires squealing.

  “Can’t leave you gals alone for a minute, can I?” he joked.

  “Didn’t expect you to take off,” Sally Ann said.

  “Told you I would.” Gar looked over at Courtney. “You okay?”

  Courtney nodded.

  “I’m okay too,” Sally Ann said. “Not that anyone asked.”

  “You’re safe now,” Gar said.

  Sally Ann bent toward them, her eyes brimming with tears. “None of us will ever be safe again. Even at this compound we’re going to.”She added, “If we even reach it.”

  “Don’t let all this get you down,” Courtney said. It was Sally Ann who had bolstered her own spirits right after everything fell apart, and she was returning the favor.

  “It’s wearing on me, Courts,” Sally Ann said softly.

  “You’re the one who said we can’t give up hope.”

  “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Like blazes you were,” Gar interjected. “Hope is all we’ve got. Well, that and each other. We stick together and we’ll make it.”

  Courtney resisted an urge to reach over and squeeze his hand.

  “I’m not saying it will be a piece of cake,” Gar said. “We’re bound to run into more of those things, and who knows what else.”

  “God help us,” Sally Ann said.

  CHAPTER 25

  Courtney was glad to be on the road again. Glad to be shed of the town whose name she still didn’t know, glad to be snug and warm in the Mustang. The purr of the motor was a tonic for her frayed nerves. It reminded her of days past, days not so long ago when the world was peaceful and orderly and the worst thing she had to worry about was which clothes to wear to school. God, she’d had it easy, and had no clue.

  Sansa had fallen asleep, cuddled against Gaga.

  Sally Ann, though, was staring out the window, her face creased in worry.

  “What?” Courtney said.

  “Eh?”

  “You look like that time the Spellman kid asked you out on a date. You were afraid what everyone would think since he was a nerd.”

  “Was I ever that ridiculous?” Sally Ann said, more to herself than to Courtney. “I didn’t have a clue.”

  “OMG. I was just thinking the exact same thing,” Courtney said. She turned to Gar. “How about you?”

  His attention was fixed on the road. “How about me what?”

  “Has the end of the world made you think twice about your life before it all went to hell?”

  “No.”

  “Really?” Courtney found it hard to believe.

  “I’m the same now as I was before the missiles hit,” Gar said. “Only now I don’t have to hold back.”

  “Hold back how?”

  Taking his right hand off the steering wheel, Gar patted his pearl-handled Colt. “This.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “I can kill when I have to. With no worries about the law or anything.”

  Courtney let that sink in. “Wait. You like to kill?”

  “Of course not,” Gar said. “But if I have to, like back when my plane came down and I saved your hash, I can do what needs doing without having to worry about being tossed in jail or going on trial or any of that.”

  “What a strange way to look at it,” Courtney said.

  “Before all this happened,” Gar said, “did anyone ever try to kill you?”

  “Be serious.”

  “Rape you?”

  “God, no.”

  “Beat you up?”

  “I was in a fight once with another girl, in middle school. Not that it was much of a fight. Some slaps. Some name calling. That was all.”

  “So you’ve pretty much lived your whole life in a bubble.”

  “If you mean there wasn’t much violence in my life, then yeah, sure. Thank goodness.”

  “Not everyone is so lucky,” Gar said. “Not everyone lives in a nice, neat world where mommy and daddy look after their every need until they’re old enough to fend for themselves.”

  “Isn’t that how it is with most people? In our country, anyway. Most everyone always has enough food on the table and clothes to wear and no one tries to hurt them or put them under the ground.”

  “Used to be, it was,” Gar said. “But then the politicians screwed things up so badly, we had homeless and addicts all over the place.”

  “I’d see them on the news a lot,” Courtney said, feeling foolish saying it.

  “From the safety of your bubble,” Gar said.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with you being happy you can kill without ending up in prison.”

  “Only when I have to,” Gar said. “Look, before all of this...,” and he gestured at the outside world, “people had no choice but to let themselves be pushed around. If you hit someone, even in self-defense, you could end up in trouble with the law, or sued. You had to be careful to toe the lines of the bubble, or else.” He smiled. “That’s no longer the case.”

  “Who thinks of such a thing?” Courtney said.

  “You better start,” Gar said. “You and your friend, both. Those fellas, those bikers who caught you, from what you’d told me, they would have done you in, eventually. All because you wouldn’t stand up for yourself and do what needed doing before it reached the point it did.”

  In the back seat Sally Ann said, “We tried, sort of.”

  “Keep trying,” Gar said. “And get better at it. Or you won’t survive the Apocalypse.”

  Courtney frowned. “I’m not going to become a killer just because the world has turned into one giant bloodbath.”

  For over an hour they drove in silence. The road remained clear of obstructions. Twice they came on hamlets which Gar skirted, taking side roads. He did the same to avoid De
troit Lakes. Strangely, they didn’t see a single zombie.

  Courtney was beginning to think that the worst might be behind them when they rounded a curve and up ahead, smack in the middle of the road, a giant stake had been imbedded.

  With someone impaled on it.

  Gar slammed on the brakes so hard, Courtney thrust her hand against the dashboard to keep from being flung against it.

  Sally Ann did the same thing with the driver’s seat, while Sansa woke up with a start and glanced fearfully around.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t want to see, little one,” Sally Ann said. “Look away.”

  Courtney wished she could.

  The stake was ten feet high and half as big around as a telephone pole. It had been driven through solid asphalt. The top end was sharpened to a point, and someone had forced a naked woman down onto the pole so that it drove up through her body and came out just below her chin.

  Courtney’s gut churned. In her new life of horrors, this was one of the most horrific. The victim was young, not much older than she was, and judging by the expression of terror and agony on woman’s face, had died a hideous death.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Sally Ann bleated.

  “Is it some kind of warning?” Courtney wondered.

  “The important question,” Gar said, “is are they still around?”

  Past the stake, the road ran through a cluster of houses.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Sally Ann said.

  Neither did Courtney. “Maybe everyone has left.”

  Gar pointed. “There’s one who didn’t.”

  A second stake, similar to the first, had been imbedded toward the middle of the hamlet. This time it was a naked man, middle-aged, his belly sagging, the sharp end of the stake jutting from his open mouth.

  “What an awful way to go,” Sally Ann said.

  “It would have taken four or five men to lift him that high,” Gar said.

  “A sacrifice, you think?” Sally Ann said.

  “In this day and age?” Courtney said.

  “We should go around this place,” Sally Ann suggested.

  “Would that we could,” Gar said. “You see any side roads?”

  There were none, Courtney realized.