by Lee Beard
Millie listened, enraptured. She lost track of time as the man spoke; his voice was soothing, and she felt her anger melt away as the broadcast continued.
“I’ve said this before, but in case you’re just now tuning in or you missed it last time, you’re not alone. You are NOT alone. Please hear me when I say that. You mustn’t give up; there is always something to strive for, something to achieve. You have a purpose. You are important. As always, this is Ira at Radio Nowhere in Nowhere, Oklahoma. I broadcast from 8 pm Central time to 10 pm Central time every day. I hope that you have a restful night and a safe day tomorrow; I will talk to you tomorrow, friends.”
Millie grabbed her shoes from the floor and pulled them on, all resentment and hurt from before dissipating instantly. “Zach has got to hear about this.”
The argument he’d had with Millie still burned in Zach’s mind by the time lights’ out rolled around. The more he thought about what she had said, the more he began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Drake’s views were warped, the conversation they’d had proved that, but…
“No,” he muttered, “There is no ‘but.’” He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. Tomorrow he’d talk to Millie about leaving, but for now he needed to sleep. He stood up and crossed to the dresser. As he started to unlatch his belt, there was a knock at the door. He shut the drawer and quickly went to open the door.
“Mil-” he started to say, but stopped. His line of sight dropped down from the empty space directly in front of him. “Oh, Kathryn. Hi.”
“Hello, Zach,” Kathryn said, looking up at him through her eyelashes. The dramatic eye shadow she wore matched her maroon lipstick almost perfectly. “Mind if I come in for a second?” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed past him into the room and dropped her purse on the floor.
“…I guess not.” He said flatly, letting the door shut. “What’s up?” When he turned around, Kathryn was only a foot away from him.
“I just wanted to talk about us,” she said demurely.
“What?” His eyebrow shot up.
“I know, Zach. I know how you really feel about me.” Kathryn moved closer, forcing Zach back against the door. “And it’s okay, because I feel the same.”
Zach stepped around her so that he was facing the door. “Ok, there’s obviously been some miscommunication somewhere.”
Kathryn turned and moved closer to him again, starting a dance around the room. “I know,” she said, voice taking what could only be an attempt at a seductive tone. “That’s why I’m here to clear it up.”
Zach suddenly found himself trapped by the chair in the corner. “Ok, I think you’d better-”
Suddenly, she leapt at Zach, wrapping herself around him and kissing him. He tripped over the footstool and landed halfway on the chair, hitting his bad palm in an attempt to stop them both from ending up on the floor. He jerked his head to one side and leaned away as she planted maroon pockmarks all over his face.
“Let go-” he began, but was interrupted as she again latched onto his mouth. “Mmph!” Finally he was able to steady himself enough to grab hold of her arm and forcibly detach her.
“STOP IT,” he snapped, pushing her away firmly.
She stumbled back, confused. “What?”
He stood up and wiped his mouth. “Kathryn, I’m sorry if I gave you any reason to think that I’m interested in you, because I’m not. At all.”
“Oh...” She crossed her arms and bit her lip, eyes glued to the ground. Suddenly, she wasn’t the confident teen that had marched into the room earlier; in the span of ten seconds she’d turned into an ashamed little girl. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” Her voice cracked, cutting off the last word. She turned her back to Zach. “I thought…I mean Drake said…”
Zach stared, unsure what to do. Suddenly, Kathryn uncrossed her arms, wiped her eyes, and adjusted her posturing. She went straight to the door and spun on her heel to face Zach.
“You’ll regret this one day when Millie turns into a boring nag,” she said with a sniff, grabbing the doorknob behind her. “But until then…have a good life.”
Millie rounded the corner of the hallway, clutching the radio to her chest. Maybe he can figure out how to make this one transmit, she thought excitedly. We can find out exactly where this Ira lives, and see if he has a community. Anything would be better than here, and surely Zach would want to go if he knew there was another option. As she approached Zach’s room, she heard muffled voices coming from inside. She stopped short about ten feet from the door, still hidden in the shadow. Suddenly, the door flew open and Kathryn appeared, shutting the door behind her. Millie’s chest constricted as she took in the girl’s jostled appearance. Kathryn sauntered down the hall, jumping slightly as she suddenly noticed Millie.
“He’s all yours,” she said flatly, wiping the lipstick from her mouth.
Zach’s door opened, bathing them in light. “Kathryn, you forgot your-” he stopped, eyes widening when he saw Millie. He held Kathryn’s purse in one hand, and she took a few steps back to grab it. She spun on her heel and clicked down the hall, leaving Millie and Zach frozen in the light.
“Mil, she just-” Zach began.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” Millie cut him off, her voice tight. “Goodnight.” She turned to leave and Zach moved closer, catching her arm.
“Please don’t-”
“Let. Me. Go,” Millie said, low and steady.
“Just let me expl-”
“Let me go!” Her voice cracked on the last word as she jerked free of his grip. “Stay the hell away from me.”
Zach watched helplessly as she stormed off before he could say anything else. “…shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Louisiana
Louis’s hand slammed into a wall for what seemed to be the thousandth time. He took a step back, making a note on the hazy mental map he’d made of the building. How long had it been? Hours? Days? He’d given up on time when he gave up on finding a flashlight. Louis felt his way along the corridor, hands shakily feeling the walls. His outstretched fingers brushed a doorway. He grasped for a door handle, turning it with ease. Could this be it? Or just another storage closet or bathroom containing a corpse? The door swung inwardly with little resistance. The boy slid his no-slip-socked foot out in front of him and eased forward, feeling for anything that might trip him again. His toes brushed a smooth wall, and he reached out in front of him to run his hands along it. His fingers swiped empty air where the wall should have been. “What?” He carefully raised his foot up, running it along the wall. It leveled off sharply. “Stairs,” he whispered giddily to himself, letting go of the door behind him. It swung shut, closing loudly.
Louis clutched the railing as he carefully climbed the steps, only a little afraid that he’d run into a dead body. Or a psychopathic murderer who killed all the people in the hospital and cut the power, he thought. “Shut up,” he whispered, moving faster up the stairwell. The stairs stopped suddenly, and Louis felt along the wall to see if there was a – “Door!” He yelled. The sudden echo of his voice startled him, and he froze for a moment, listening intently to the silence. He felt for a doorknob, and tried it. Locked. “No,” he moaned, trying the knob again. He pulled at the door, leaning his full weight into it. It didn’t budge. A sudden realization hit, and Louis moved quickly back down the stairs to the other door. He felt for and twisted the doorknob. Nothing. “No!” Louis pulled with all his might, twisting his body every which way to try and pry it open. You’re trapped, his brain hissed, you’re going to die in this stairwell.
*
Sissa jabbed Louis in the back with the end of her rifle, making him lurch forward. “You sure it’s up here?”
“Yes, I’m positive,” Louis replied, hands level with his ears as they walked down the road. He could still hear Hank barking at them from the tree Gunner made Louis tie him to a while back.
“This is gonna be great,” Gunner said,
glancing behind them. “An armored truck! Nobody can touch us with that.”
“Hell yeah!” Sissa said, smirking. “We got a fortress, ain’t no way they’re getting in without us knowing.”
“Only thing left is to dig that moat.”
Sissa jabbed Louis in the back again. “Hey, you any good with a shovel?”
“Um, I think so-” Louis replied, “-I mean, yes! Yes I am.”
“You sure do change your mind a lot,” Gunner said. He leaned in to whisper in Sissa’s ear, unintentionally loud enough for Louis to hear. “He’ll be good a distraction when the zombies come.”
Louis glanced over his shoulder at them. “Zombies?”
“Was I talking to you?” Gunner jabbed Louis in the back once again.
“No…I mean…no.” Louis faced forward again, taking a deep breath. Looking into the distance, he could just make out the shape of the truck a hundred or so yards away. “I just heard you say zombie again, and it made me remember that cemetery I passed a while back.”
“What?” Sissa asked.
Louis paused a moment for dramatic effect. “I mean…the ground sure was torn up…” Sissa nudged him again to speed up his walking. “…and that mausoleum looked almost like it had been broken apart from the inside out…”
Gunner grabbed Louis’s shoulder, spinning him to face them. “What’re you saying?”
“I don’t know, it just got me to thinking, maybe The Hungry Dead wasn’t just a movie after all…”
Gunner and Sissa exchanged a wide-eyed look.
Louis continued, injecting fear into his voice. “…maybe the dead really have risen.”
“Go,” Gunner shoved Louis forward, “Take us to the truck now.”
Louis sprinted ahead, smiling to himself as he heard them close on his heels.
*
He sat in the corner of the top of the stairwell, knees drawn up to his chest. “No way out,” he whispered to himself, “No way out.” He thought of his parents, his dogs, his friends. Never going to see them again, he thought, never going to get out of here. He thought back to the bus. Gina. She’d tried to save him. Louis stood slowly, sliding himself up the wall. I owe it to myself to try again. I owe it to her to try again. Resolved, he turned to descend the steps once more.
*
As they rapidly approached the truck, Louis huffed and puffed to stay ahead of his captors. He slowed, raising an outstretched finger to point at the giant goat’s head painted on the side of the truck. “There,” he wheezed, slowing to catch his breath as Gunner blew past him.
Sissa grabbed Louis by the arm and drug him with her toward the truck. ”Come on, we still need you to dig!”
When they reached the back of the truck, Gunner began to pull frantically at the door handle. “It’s locked,” he said exasperatedly.
“Well duh, it wouldn’t be a good armored truck if it was just open,” Sissa retorted.
“Go see if one of the doors is unlocked or something,” Gunner snapped, tugging at the door handle some more. A branch snapped in the woods nearby. “And hurry!”
Sissa ran around to the front of the truck and tried the passenger’s door. “This one’s locked!”
“So try the other one!”
“I am, Gunner!”
“Just do it, okay?”
Click. The door swung open, dropping the off-balance body of one Billy-Wayne Gruff onto Sissa. She screamed and fell backwards, firing her gun at point-blank range into Billy-Wayne’s shriveled head. Dried innards splattered across her jeans and camouflage shirt, causing her scream to increase in volume.
“Sissa!” Gunner cried, running around to see what the commotion was about.
“IT!” She shrieked, pointing at and stumbling away from the corpse at her feet, “JUMPED ME!”
“Z-zombie?” Gunner frantically stammered, aiming his gun into the truck. No sound came from inside, but Gunner’s shotgun shook violently anyway.
Louis seized the opportunity to poke his head around the side of the truck. “Did you hear that?”
“Shh! Shh!” Gunner hissed at Sissa.
“It sounded like a bunch of moaning coming from the woods,” Louis said, false terror etched into his face.
“Hurry up Gunner!”
Gunner leapt up into the truck and twisted the keys out of the ignition. He jumped back out of the truck and ran around to the back, trying three different keys before finding the correct one. The doors swung open, and both shotguns were trained on the interior to prevent another surprise corpse attack. Inside were three racks of guns of every sort, and Gunner and Sissa leapt eagerly for them, dropping their shotguns outside of the truck.
Louis reacted before he knew what he was doing. He slammed the doors closed and grabbed one of the guns off of the ground, jamming it through the handles and effectively barring the doors.
“Hey!” Came Sissa’s muffled protest from inside the truck.
“Let us out!” Gunner yelled.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry but I can’t,” Louis said, grimacing. “You were going to rob and probably shoot me, so I had to do it,” he continued over that sounds of the pair yelling and banging against the door. The gun started to slide out of the handles, so Louis bumped it back into place. “…sorry,” he said again, before turning and running down the road. That gun won’t keep them contained for long, he told himself, better be as far away as possible by then.
Hank wagged his tail as Louis came wheezing into view and charged over to untie the dog. Louis left Gunner’s rope tied to the tree and stumbled quickly across the road to pick up his bike and supplies, strapping on his helmet with gusto.
“Come on, Hank!” He said breathlessly, pushing off from the pedals. “Let’s get off this road.”
***
Nowhere, OK
Ira slid into his seat in the radio room and studied the Vicodin bottle. Six pills stared up at him, and he hesitated before sighing and popping one. His hip throbbed mercilessly, but he tried to ignore it in the hopes that the opiates would kick in soon. He flipped the notepad he kept by the desk to a new page and jotted down a few thoughts for what to talk about that evening; food and water safety, cleaning wounds, and keeping busy. He set the worn pencil down and leaned against the back of his chair.
Is anyone actually listening to this? He sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. Or am I just senile and trying to keep myself from going off the edge? After a moment, he shook the thought out of his head and switched the microphone on.
“Good evening friends, this is Ira at Radio Nowhere coming to you from Nowhere, Oklahoma, once again. I broadcast from eight PM Central time to ten PM Central time every day,” he paused, glancing at the clock on the wall, “Though tonight it looks like I’m a little behind schedule. Oh, well. To err is human, as they say. Now…tonight, friends, I’d like to share some tips about food and water safety.” He placed his finger on the notebook, running it down the page to review each point. “On the subject of food: I’d primarily like to talk about how you can calculate safe expiration windows, how to check to see if something is spoiled, good ways to get the most out of your meals, thorough cooking techniques, and food storage. When we move on to water safety, I’ll be telling you the best and safest ways to boil your water and make it safe for human use. With animals and livestock, you can afford to be a little more lenient with your water source, but you don’t want to risk yourself getting sick off of bad water. As I’ve said in the past, there are no more doctors, so you must be extra careful. Now, on to food expiration…”
Around nine o’clock, Ira began to feel the mental effects of the painkiller, and his mind began to fog. He fought against it, but soon found himself pausing for very long amounts of time in between sentences or even words.
“I’m sorry for the delay, friends,” he said, “I seem to be a bit more tired than usual.” He blinked rapidly, head feeling very light. “I didn’t follow my own advice; I skipped supper, so I’m feeling the results of that d
ecision pretty strongly right now.” Ira’s vision began to blur slightly, and he felt himself growing very, very tired. “I may have to cut this broadcast short, I’m afraid. But before I do, I want to encourage you all to take my suggestions to heart. I’ve been in many places where I’ve had to use these exact methods to keep myself alive, and I would never suggest them to you if I didn’t know for a fact that they work.”
Ira glanced habitually at his photo of Abigail, and trailed off. Keep going, Papaw, he almost heard her say. Tell them what they need to hear.
Ira cleared his throat, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the fog. “Friends, I’ve said this before, but in case you’re just now tuning in or you missed it last time, you’re not alone. You are NOT alone. Please hear me when I say that. You mustn’t give up; there is always something to strive for, something to achieve. You have a purpose. You are important. You can survive.” Ira studied Abigail’s smiling face, a familiar, painful ache rising in his chest. “If you are lost, or confused, or have no place to call home, know that you are always welcome in Nowhere. My home is open to anyone in need, even if that need is as simple as some company. I can’t offer much, but I can certainly try to assist you if you need it.” Ira’s head began to swim again, and he silently cursed his use of the opiates on an empty stomach. “Anyways. As always, this is Ira at Radio Nowhere in Nowhere, Oklahoma. I broadcast from eight PM Central time to ten PM Central time every day. Or at least,” he added, glancing at the time, “I broadcast from eight PM until my old age catches up with me. I hope that you have a restful night and a safe day; I will talk to you tomorrow, friends.”
***
Alexandria, LA
In a dark trailer surrounded by flashlights, Louis turned off the radio. Hank lay next to him, his head on the boy’s lap, his eyes closed contentedly. Louis scratched the dog’s head absentmindedly, staring off into the darkness. “Hank,” he said, “I think we have a new plan.”