The rotting trooper did irregular circles in the parking lot. He was alone.
“Well, at least we know which car is his,” Paul whispered to Dan.
“This could be a lot easier than we thought.”
The cannibal cop stopped and began sniffing at the air, like a bloodhound who had just caught a whiff of an escaped fugitive.
“Oh crap,” Paul whispered just as the cop slowly turned to Paul and Dan. Paul’s heart started racing almost as fast as his mind.
Dan held up a hand to the others behind him to be still.
The former cop grunted and started walking right towards them much faster than he had been doing his circles in. Its mirrored shades were slightly askew and his peeled away lips left him sporting an infinite bloody grin. He reached for them.
Dan stepped out from around the corner and raised his shotgun. The cop stopped in his shambling tracks. Everyone froze as it studied Dan with great interest, like it was still a cop. Like it knew Dan was up to something.
Dan stared back, his finger curled around the trigger.
The corpse grunted again but didn’t move.
Paul couldn’t believe his eyes.
Dan’s breathing became deep. He shifted in his stance and got a better grip on the gun.
A silver rope of saliva oozed out the corner of the dead cop’s mouth and stretched all the way to the ground. When it hit the snow, the thing sucked it back up into its mouth like it was a string of spaghetti.
Dan’s mouth dropped. “What are you?” he screamed, his echo quickly fading into the wind.
The cop just grinned and started walking towards them again.
Dan sent him flying backwards with one shot, prompting a gray haired old lady to burst out a bathroom door on the side of the building. She tackled Matt to the ground and Carla fell with them. Her gun went off, striking the building just above Paul’s head. He flinched downward as the ravenous senior citizen dug into Matt’s throat. Carla screamed in a wide-eyed panic. The old lady raised her head to swallow Matt’s flesh like a crocodile. Paul unleashed the shotgun, sending her toppling through the snowy lot with a booming blast.
Carla got to her feet and pushed Mike out of the way, sliding to her boy on the ground where a crimson pool was growing in the snow around his head. She shook Matt in her arms, screaming things that were mostly unintelligible. Paul bet if there were any more of those things around they could understand what she was saying. She was saying, Hey, we’re over here! Come and eat us!
“Dan, get the cop’s car keys!” he yelled over Carla’s wailing.
Mike stood there staring in absolute horror at his little brother lying in the snow. Dan stared at Matt with the same horror-struck expression covering his face that Mike wore.
“Dan!” Paul yelled again.
Dan jerked his eyes to him. “What?”
“Get the cop’s keys already!”
Dan glanced to Matt again, then ran to the fallen trooper and began rifling through his uniformed pants while Paul covered him. Sophia took her place at Paul’s back with her pink gun pointing to the sky.
“My baby, my baby, my baby!” Carla shrieked, rocking Matt’s limp body in her blood stained arms, tears freezing on her cheeks.
“Carla, we gotta go!” Sophia yelled.
She didn’t hear.
“Carla!” Paul screamed.
Nothing.
“Mike!” he said this time.
Mike slowly turned and looked at Paul through terror filled eyes.
“Mike, come on, buddy! We’re getting out of here!”
Mike’s glare slipped from Paul’s eyes to over his shoulder, and just when Paul thought the kid’s eyes couldn’t possibly get any bigger...they did.
“They’re all over the place!” Sophia shouted, swinging her pink 9-mm from stiff to stiff, not sure where to start shooting first.
Paul turned around to see twenty-five or thirty of the rotting corpses coming from the McDonald’s across the street.
“Got em!” Dan said, holding the car keys up in the air like they were a golden ticket hidden inside a Wonka bar.
“Get the car, we’ll cover you!” Paul said.
Sophia aimed at a fat redneck in a blue Kansas J-Hawks coat and yanked the gun to an old man who was getting closer.
“Don’t hit the pumps!” Dan yelled, sprinting towards the cruiser and blasting a hole through the fat redneck along the way. The neck flew backwards into a pump and gracefully slid down to the ground. He got right back up, like he was Superman, showing off the huge shredded hole in the middle of his blue coat.
Sophia put him back down with two shots and this time he stayed down.
Paul took out three more of the things closing in on the cop car, clearing a path for Dan, who unlocked the patrol car with the key-chain and hopped in. Four seconds later, the squad car’s massive engine roared to life, sending white smoke hurtling out the tailpipes.
Paul turned back around to Carla. “Carla! We – are - leav...” he trailed off, seeing two men in dark blue jumpsuits drag Carla from Matt’s lifeless body. They sunk their teeth through the collar and sleeves of her down coat like vampires. Paul fired his shotgun, jerking one of the fiends like a tennis ball had just bounced off it. It went right back to work on Carla. She screamed. Mike just stood there.
“Mike, get over here!” Sophia screamed.
Tires screeched to a halt behind her and Paul.
“Get in!” Dan yelled.
Sophia dropped two more of the bastards nearing the squad car and whipped open the back door. “Mike! Come on!” she said, sliding across the vinyl seat, ejecting a spent clip and slamming a new one in. “Come on, Paul!”
Paul’s next shot sent one of the grease monkeys back to Hell where it came from. He pumped in another shell and took aim on the other one as a teenager in a tattered McDonald’s uniform seized him from behind. Instinctively, he gritted his teeth and swung the butt of the gun back around into the girl’s rancid face, producing a crunch and knocking her to the snow. She took the shotgun with her. He unleashed his Beretta from its black canvas holster beneath his husky ski coat and popped her twice in the grill and whirled back around to Mike but it was too late. Carla stopped screaming and the mechanic Paul missed had already snatched Mike up.
“Paul, get in the car!” Sophia cried, rolling her electric rear window down and plugging four more of the things on the driver’s side. Then five. Then six. Some stayed down and some didn’t.
Paul screamed Mike’s name. It echoed inside his head as the thing continued feeding on Mike, uninterested in anything else. Tears trailed down Paul’s cheeks as he screamed and unloaded the rest of his clip into the vulture. It crumpled over Mike’s limp body.
Seven walking corpses began banging on the driver’s side of the cop car with more of the flesh eaters just steps behind. Dan and Sophia screamed Paul’s name at the same time. Sophia quickly rolled up the window, trapping a mangled arm inside the vehicle. It thrashed wildly, trying to grab her by the hair. She stuck her gun out the three inch gap and pulled the trigger. The arm snapped back out, following its owner to the snow covered parking lot.
“Get in!” Dan said, revving the massive engine block and honking on the horn, which ended another experiment: car horns don’t scare zips. They kept coming.
Paul stood staring at the dreadful scene on the side of the service station, discombobulated by the reality of it with guns firing behind him. The loud reports seemed like they were coming from a million miles away. He stared at Mike’s lifeless body, covered in blood. He should do the kid a favor and put a bullet in his head to stop him from turning into one of those things like Paul’s mom had.
“Paul!” Dan and Sophia screamed at the same time.
He aimed the gun at Mike’s head. The gun shook in his hand as shots rang out behind him. He took a deep breath and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Snot poured out his nose.
“Paul!” Sophia screamed again, firing her pink gun.
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He dropped the gun to his side with a grunt. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he whispered, turning from his failure and hopping into the back seat.
“Hang on!” Dan said, punching the high performance engine and sending four of the monsters hurtling to the ground as they sped through the parking lot, sliding Dukes of Hazzard style through the snow, out onto the main road. He barreled towards the interstate as Paul took one last look back. It looked like a warzone back there, the fresh white powder ruined. Paul wasn’t even sure Mike had screamed.
Chapter Eight
They rode in silence for the next few miles with the heater turned up and a black metal cage separating Sophia and Paul from Dan up front. The car’s police radio was lit up but just as quiet as they were. Not even static.
Paul looked over at Sophia again to reassure himself she was actually in the car and all in one piece. It could have just as easily been her lying back there in the snow. He felt awful for being so glad it wasn’t.
Wiping snot away with the back of her hand, Sophia quietly reloaded her clips with bullets from one of the boxes they had taken from the Jeep. Tears rolled down her face. She shook her head like she had just lost a stupidly placed bet.
Paul didn’t dare attempt a pep talk now. He knew better than that. She would rip his head off if he opened his mouth right now, he didn’t have it in him anyway. Not after what just happened. Maybe never. But they would need one and soon. He stared back up front, hoping one of the cop’s keys would unlock the shotgun mounted on the dash to replace the one he just lost.
Intrusive thoughts pushed and shoved their way inside his mind. Why didn’t they check that side door? How could he have been so stupid? His words telling Mike and Matt there would be another Christmas rattled around his head, now a bald-faced lie.
“How’s the gas?” he asked.
“Full,” Dan said, staring back at Paul in the rearview mirror with a dejected face even though it was a miracle the tank was full. It just as easily could have been empty.
Paul imagined the cop pulling the gas nozzle out of the patrol car, returning it to the pump just before a throng of things attacked him from behind. Luckily, the cop had filled the tank before they ambushed him. The thought left Paul feeling guilty, but they were going to need some breaks like that along the way if they were ever going to get out of this mess.
Occasionally, Dan glanced back at them in the mirror but didn’t speak. He looked so alone up there, like the driver of a horse drawn carriage traveling through darkened woods on a cool fall night. The thought of whether or not Dan would become the eternal “third-wheel” randomly slipped through Paul’s mind. How would Dan ever meet someone now? He could barely talk to a pretty girl before all of this. Were there even any pretty girls left? The image of the old lady popping out of the gas station restroom knocked those trivial thoughts to the ground, just like she had done to Matt and Carla. They should’ve checked that door. Stupid!
“Hello? Is anyone out there?” Dan said into the squad car’s radio. “Can anyone hear me?”
He released the button and waited. Paul leaned up and looked at the radio.
Not even static.
“I repeat, is anyone out there?”
They waited, and hoped.
No response.
Dan swore and gave up, jamming the black handset back into its cradle but leaving the radio on just the same. Its lights were somewhat reassuring to Paul. At least something still worked, even if it was just those tiny little lights.
A somber silence filled the car while the sun began its long descent into the western horizon, lighting up the sides of the few bright clouds up there. Normally, it would have been a beautiful winter day. The kind of day where the sky is so amazingly blue and your car seats are already warm before you get inside. Normally, it would have been beautiful. But they would have to clear another house soon and there was nothing normal about it.
Paul shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind of the revolting calamity that had just kicked their butts. He needed to concentrate on what they needed to do next, but all he could see was Mike’s terrified little face. All he could hear was Carla’s screams. Why didn’t they check that side door? Because they weren’t that good after all is why. With great focus, he pushed it all to the back of his mind and tried to see their next move. There was no time to sit around feeling guilty, a luxury they couldn’t yet afford.
“I’ve gotta go,” Dan said, looking back at Paul and Sophia in the mirror.
Paul’s brow dropped. “Go where?”
“Number two.”
Paul rolled his eyes, then remembered Mike asking Sophia if she had to go number two back on the exit ramp. One of the last questions he would ever ask again.
“Find someplace out in the open,” Paul told him.
Sophia stared at her black gloves.
He put a hand on her leg.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she mumbled.
Paul’s gut wrenched. He almost told her that she could do this. She would do this. But it would’ve been a waste of breath right now. She wouldn’t hear it. He was too tired anyway.
“I just can’t,” she said, sobbing and shaking her head. Clear snot ran freely from her nose and dripped onto her gloves.
Chapter Nine
Paul stood look out while Dan did his business behind the car, and Dan wasn’t kidding either, he really had to go. The smell was nauseating and this was no time to be caught with your pants down, literally. The car was so out in the open that Paul probably didn’t need to be freezing his butt off right now but after that last train wreck, better safe than sorry. Occasionally, Sophia checked on them from the back seat. It was good to see her look up.
“Awe, this really sucks!” Dan said, squatting in the snow.
“I bet.”
“Where did you go at anyway?”
“The master bathroom’s broken toilet back at the house,” Paul said, surveying the white fields around them.
“You’re lucky. I couldn’t go this morning.”
“You should’ve eaten breakfast, works every time.”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
Paul stretched his back out, producing a loud crack. “Remember when you got stuck with a super bad stomach ache out on the boat that one time?”
Dan snorted. “Yeah.”
“And you ended up having to go in the water.”
Dan grunted. “But at least that water was warm!”
“Yeah, and I never went swimming in it again.”
“Yeah you did, wake-boarding too.”
“Don’t remind me. You about done or what?”
“This is so disgusting!”
With the aid of some Burger King napkins he found in the glove box, Dan was back in a flash. They got back into the car and Paul made a mental note to pick up some hand sanitizer somewhere along the line.
Sophia still wasn’t talking but at least she was looking out the windows.
“Here, found these in the console,” Dan said, slipping a Mounds Bar and a Milky Way through the metal cage.
Paul offered Sophia the Mounds Bar and she shook her head. He handed her the Milky Way and she shook her head again.
“You need to eat, baby,” he said softly.
She hit him with a cold stare that made him sigh. He unwrapped the Mounds Bar and watched Dan start tossing M&Ms into his mouth, one after the other. Paul guessed the cop must’ve got whacked coming out of the dated gas station with some munchies, not before. Probably got back out of his patrol car to see what was wrong with someone approaching with a terrible limp.
The tree’s long shadows whizzed by and the three lapsed back into an uncomfortable silence. Dan kept it at an even thirty miles an hour. The squad car didn’t handle near as well as the Jeep, but the snow was already starting to fade. Soon they would take back roads around Kansas City and pick up I-35 well after they were past the city’s south suburbs, which is where Paul’s younger brother, Curtis, lived with his wife and tw
o daughters, one eight and the other four.
Mike and Matt slipped through Paul’s fatigued mind again. He suppressed them and toyed with the idea of his brother’s rescue instead, like they had done with his mom. Except her condo was less than four miles from he and Sophia’s house and things had just started going to hell in a hand basket when they made it to her place. Now, things had festered and KC was a much larger city. If they attempted a rescue there now, they would be dead before getting within twenty miles of his baby bro’s house. Too much population.
He wondered if his brother was still alive, holed up in the house and surrounded. Down to three cans of tuna, a bottle of Gatorade and five shotgun shells. Paul would never know. No phones, no e-mail, no nothing. Not even a single tweet.
“Pull over,” he said.
Dan glanced in the mirror. “Why?”
“We should’ve checked the trunk and I’m going to need that shotgun before we get too close to KC.”
Dan eased the state patrol car to a stop in the middle of the interstate again, left it running and got out. Trudging through the thick snow with their heads down, the two men went to the back of the car.
“You going to be okay to clear this next house?” Paul asked him, deciding his pep talk needed to be a little more personalized. “Because it’s gonna be dark here soon.”
Dan nodded. “I got it.”
Paul squinted at him.
“I got it,” Dan repeated.
“Look,” Paul said, exhaling a long steam of white smoke out his mouth. “I know it sounds cold, but this kind of stuff is going to happen. And unfortunately, probably happen a lot. I mean, dead people are actually walking around out there and I still can’t believe it.”
“I can’t either,” Dan mumbled, fumbling with the keys.
“And no one is going to come and help us right now except for us. We are on our own here and we’ve got to be able to bounce back from these terrible tragedies, and bounce back in a hurry or we’re going to be next.”
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 4