Paul’s eyes dilated and his heart skipped a beat. He leaned in closer to the screen and squinted. His brow furrowed and his heart rate quickened. “What the...”
“Just watch!”
The shadow smoothly slid across the white tiles in front of them on the screen, while Sophia stood there scanning the seemingly empty store. Paul’s breathing became rapid as he watched her shadow reach up and grab a long skinny shadow of an electrical cord dropping down from the ceiling. Or was it a rope? Paul gasped. On the video, other than slightly shifting in her stance, Sophia still hadn’t moved. Her shadow grabbed a looped end of the shaded cord and stuck its head inside. Things went into slow motion inside Paul’s head. He couldn’t catch his breath. The shadow cinched the loop around its neck and hanged itself, listlessly swinging back and forth across the white tiled floor as the girls went off into the women’s department and Dan and Paul headed into the men’s.
Paul’s mouth hung open, frozen. He could hear his heart pumping in his ears and his palms became slicked with a greasy sweat. “How... how is that possible?” he sputtered, incredulously staring at the monitor with a face lit up in gray horror. “How is this possible?” he asked again, turning to Dan. But Dan was gone. Paul looked over to Sophia and Wendy sitting against the wall. They were gone too. His breath clutched. He jumped back in the tiny chair and knocked over the desk. The computer smashed to the ground with a deafening echo. A decaying dentist burst through the security room’s door. His white smock had small, bloody handprints across it and there was a stainless steel pick in his peeling hand. Paul screamed.
“Man!” Dan said, jumping. “You okay?” he asked, staring at Paul through a new pair of brown sunglasses.
Paul squinted and held a hand out to block the sun. A sheen of perspiration glistened across his forehead.
Sophia leaned up to the cage from the back seat. “What’s wrong, Paul?”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and let out a deep breath. “I just had the craziest nightmare.”
“Must’ve been some dream, you scared the hell out of us,” Wendy said, next to Sophia in the backseat.
“What was the dream about?” Dan asked, returning his attention back to the desolate road. “Was Michael Jackson still releasing albums or something?”
Wendy laughed in the back seat. “Now that would be scary!”
Paul looked down to his new black Adidas then turned to Sophia. She flashed him a wide smile in her new red jacket. Suddenly, he wanted to hold her and make sure she was okay. “Where are we?” he asked, shivering and turning up the heater.
“We went between Tulsa and Oklahoma City about an hour ago. Next town coming up is Ada,” Dan said, drumming his fingers on the wheel.
Paul took off his new sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “How long was I out?”
“Couple of hours.”
“Wow,” he said, cleaning the sleep from the corners of his eyes.
“Oh look, a miniature golf course!” Sophia said, pointing off to the right side of the road.
They turned to see a large fabricated volcano sitting in the middle of an empty green course, surrounded by tiki huts with brown grass roofs and bridges constructed from bamboo and wood. An impressive cement go-cart track, outlined with black tires, snaked through a brown grassy area off to the side with a row of batting cages behind it. A mammoth sign reading Volcano Falls loomed over the adventure park.
“Can we stop and play? Please?” Wendy begged with puppy dog eyes.
Dan took one look at those eyes in the rear view mirror and pulled off the road without thinking twice.
“We should keep going,” Paul said, sitting up in his seat and trying to clear his head.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Paul!” Wendy said.
“Yeah, Paul, let’s have some fun for a change,” Sophia campaigned.
“Seriously, what’s the hurry, dude?” Dan asked. “We’ll be in Texas by tonight or tomorrow morning. As long as we’re out of that freezing cold, we can slow down a little.”
Paul’s face turned sour. “I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up on your current events or not, but this isn’t exactly the best time in the world to be playing miniature golf!”
“And when is going to be a good time?” Sophia shot back, folding her manicured eyebrows down. “When all of this blows over in a couple of weeks?”
Paul opened his mouth to argue and exhaled instead.
Chapter Fifteen
Two lonely cars sat out in the open of the parking lot, which was perfect because there was nothing for any day walkers to hide behind. The Cadillac Escalade made the most since to check for gas first because it had a much larger tank than the Ford Taurus did. They still had half a tank in the patrol car but decided to top it off while the gettin was good. After clearing the interior of both vehicles, Paul kept an eye out while Dan went to work with the siphon. Wendy and Sophia jumped around the sun-splashed parking lot, feeling like they could fly in their new running shoes and lighter coats.
“I’m gonna kick your butt out there, Dan!” Wendy said, strapping her holster tighter around her right leg.
“I doubt that,” he replied, twisting the cop car’s gas cap back on. “Went to state back in ’95.”
She tilted her blond head at him. “What?”
“Yeah, back in high school.”
“For what? Miniature-golf?” she asked.
Dan nodded. “I was the team captain.”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s just being stupid,” Sophia said, making sure her clip was full and slamming it back into her pink gun.
“Won the whole tournament and ended up getting Prom King later that year too.”
“What?” Wendy said, busting up laughing. “Where did you go to high school? Hog Warts?”
Dan stopped and stared dreamily at her. “Do you like Harry Potter movies?”
She shrugged. “They’re okay.”
“Wow,” he said.
Paul rolled his eyes and smiled at Sophia while Dan put the siphon-kit back into the trunk.
“Don’t get gas on any of our new stuff!” Sophia yelled to him.
Dan rose back up from the trunk holding up a plastic Kohl’s bag for her to see, and carefully stuffed the kit into it with a wide eyed grin.
“Thank you,” she said, flashing him a smile.
“Can we go now?” Wendy asked, antsy with anticipation.
They double checked their weapons and shoe strings and cautiously approached the entrance to the mini-golf course. They weren’t surprised to find the front door to the course “club house” - designed to look like an island grass hut - locked. They tried kicking it open but the metal door wouldn’t budge.
“Man!” Dan said limping after one last kick. “The place looks like the wind could blow it over too.”
“Forget this. Let’s get out of here,” Paul whispered.
“Let’s just shoot it open,” Dan said.
“Yeah right, and have it ricochet off the metal and hit one of us?”
“It won’t. I’ll do it,” Dan volunteered. “You guys go around the corner.”
Paul cocked his head. “Really? You want to play miniature golf that bad?”
“It’s not that big a deal, dude.”
“That’s what we thought about the Kohl’s store.”
“Listen, if we don’t have some kind of fun once in a while we are all going to go crazy,” Dan said sternly, unsheathing his black handgun.
Paul continued staring at him in utter amazement. He looked down to Dan’s gun and grudgingly led the girls around the corner of the office hut.
When they were safely out of range, the gun blast hit the door knob dead on, sending metal fragments flying. Dan screamed out in pain and hunched over, clutching his face.
Wendy threw her hands over her mouth in horror while Paul and Sophia sprinted to Dan’s side.
Dan flailed an arm out in agony, grasping his face. “Get away from me!”
> “Let me see!” Paul said, trying to pry Dan’s hand from his wounded face.
Dan’s cries were loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood. “Why me?” he screamed. “Why me?”
Sophia grabbed an arm with Paul. “Dan, stop moving and let us see!” she said.
“Just kidding,” Dan said lightly, pulling his hands away to reveal a big fat uninjured smile.
The three of them hit him with cold stares.
“That is not funny, Dan!” Wendy said.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist!” he said, cracking up.
“You are such an idiot. You know that?” Sophia said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, but at least the door is unlocked now,” he said, swinging the metal door wide open and peering inside a small room full of putters, balls and tiny pencils.
They carefully poked their heads around the corner of the doorway, the quiet buzzing in Paul’s ears. Nothing was out of place. The cash register sat upon a glass counter top and the hut looked ready for business at a moment’s notice. In this world though, it looked haunted. Images of dead mini-golfers dragging their putters around the greens flashed through Paul’s mind.
“This is a bad idea,” he said in a grave tone.
“Oh, don’t be such a party-pooper, Paul!” Wendy said, bravely entering the hut.
“Please,” Sophia begged, puckering her lips at him.
“Oh, forgive me if I’m not exactly in the mood for a round of miniature golf right now! I guess I’m just a little too busy trying to stay off the friggin lunch menu!” he said, still standing outside the doorway. “Therefore, I am not playing miniature golf and that is final!”
Dan turned to him, shrugged and followed Wendy inside.
“Whew!” Paul screamed, throwing his arms into the air when his red golf ball found the cup on his first shot. “Touchdown, baby!” he yelled, grinning from ear to ear. Then he started singing Toby Keith’s How Do You Like Me Now? The others watched him and shook their heads.
“Show off,” Wendy muttered, hitting her purple ball less than seven feet.
“Oops, not enough breakfast,” Paul snickered.
She gave him a sarcastic smile and hit the ball again, this time too hard.
They spent the next two hours laughing, yelling and screaming as they played eighteen holes and then found the keys to the go-carts. They zipped around the figure eight track, bumping each other’s cars with their own and then speeding ahead. Around and around they went in the bright sunshine, briefly forgetting about what was waiting for them outside the course gates.
That evening, they found the smallest house with the least amount of entrances and neighbors they could find to spend the night in. They hadn’t make much distance today and weren’t even to the Texas border yet.
“That was so much fun today,” Sophia said softly, lying on a sun-bleached picnic table in the dark backyard and staring at the stars above.
“Yeah, that was pretty cool,” Paul said, gazing at the bright white stars with her.
Pots and pans began clanging around inside the house where Dan and Wendy were.
“See? Aren’t you glad we did that?”
A quick laugh escaped him. “You were right.”
“I can’t believe you ran me into those tires like that though,” she said rubbing her neck.
“Hey, rubbin is racin.”
She snorted, as they held each other’s hand, perfectly content to just be in one another’s company. It almost seemed like old times.
She exhaled. “I still can’t get over these stars.”
“I know.”
“You remember that one time when we went camping?”
He looked over to her. “You mean, the one time we went camping?”
She laughed. “Yeah.”
“I could never get you to go again.”
“Well, I didn’t think there would be that many bugs.”
He chuckled and massaged his face. “That’ll happen in nature. You were so funny though.”
“Well those toilets weren’t funny.”
He laughed.
“I thought the stars were bright that night, but this... this is amazing,” she said.
“It really is,” he said, just as a shooting star streaked across the black sky, leaving a glittering trail behind that quickly faded back into the night.
She inhaled sharply. “Did you see that?”
“That was awesome,” he said, smiling and turning towards her again. “Now we have to make a wish.”
She met his eyes through the darkness. “Really?”
“Really.”
Silence descended upon them from above, like the shooting star had sprinkled fairy-dust on them.
“What did you wish for?” she whispered.
“I can’t tell or it won’t come true.”
“Oh come on, you can tell me,” she said, puckering.
“Well, I wished that we’d be together forever and ever,” he said softly.
She inhaled again, like another star had just whizzed by. “Hey, that’s what I wished for.”
Her dark eyes seemed to twinkle brighter than any of the stars above as she smiled at him.
He smiled back and gently kissed her. Their lips tenderly met and parted and met again like a young couple slow dancing at a Founder’s Ball in the seventeenth century. They pulled apart and stared into each other’s eyes. She sighed again.
“I also wished for a helicopter.”
Her smile dropped. “You what?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She stared at him. “A helicopter?”
“Yep.”
“And... why do you want a helicopter?”
“So we can fly anywhere in the world we want together.”
She held her stare. “But you can’t fly a helicopter,” she said slowly.
“I’m gonna get some books.”
She frowned. “You’re gonna get some books?”
“Right.”
“That will teach you how to fly a helicopter?”
“Correct.”
She turned back to the stars and let out a deep sigh. “Can you ever just be serious?”
“I’m totally serious.”
“Yeah, serious about ruining the moment,” she said, trying not to laugh.
She looked more beautiful than ever. Gently, he turned her chin with two fingers and kissed her again, beneath a blanket of a million far off dazzling planets that no helicopter could ever reach.
“I love you” he said softly.
“I love you too, more than anything in the world.”
The corners of her lips rose into her cheeks as she got lost in his eyes again.
“Hey, you guys know where the Leatherman is?” Dan yelled out the back door, spoiling what was left of the moment.
They both smiled and shook their heads.
“It’s in my duffel bag!” Paul said to him, not taking his eyes from Sophia’s.
“Gotcha!” he said, letting the screen door noisily bang shut as he went back inside.
“Darn near the last people on Earth and we still can’t get a moment’s peace around here,” he said, grinning.
She smiled back.
“We have got to hit a grocery store today,” Dan said, yawning and stretching his arms out after a well deserved good night’s sleep. “Especially now that we found this stove.”
“I still don’t get why they didn’t take that with them,” Paul said, staring at the two-burner camping stove while he tied his shoes.
Dan had found it the night before, tucked away with a compact set of pots and pans and two small canisters of propane inside a Rubbermaid ActionPacker in the hall closet.
“They were probably too busy trying to get the hell out of here,” Wendy said, her blonde hair in a real rat’s nest this morning.
“All I know is, that hot soup last night was the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Sophia said, putting her hair back into a long pony tail.
“Yeah, t
oo bad there were only two cans left in the pantry,” Dan said, opening the living room drapes and letting the morning light creep into the room. His eyes scrunched together with the glare. It was bright gray and rainy outside.
“Beef vegetable too,” Wendy said, wrinkling her nose. “No wonder they left em behind!”
“Let’s finish off these breakfast bars and donuts. We’ll stop somewhere later on this afternoon after we get around Dallas,” Paul said, getting up from the mattress he had dragged in from one of the bedrooms the night before.
“I can’t believe we’ll be in Texas today,” Sophia said, grinning from ear to ear as she folded up her favorite black hoodie, opting to go with one of her new coats instead. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“I went one time in high school to visit my aunt in San Antonio,” Wendy said, brushing her hair in rapid sweeps. “It was awesome. Hot too. You are going to love it.”
“I can’t wait,” Sophia said, stuffing her gear into Paul’s duffel bag.
“Was that your mom’s sister?” Dan asked.
Wendy nodded. “Older sister.”
Dan blinked. “Where’s your mom at now?”
Wendy looked down to her hands and began fiddling with a large ring in the shape of a midnight blue flower with gold trim. “She ran off with some loser to southern California a few years ago.”
Paul glanced to Wendy, who was too busy messing with her ring to notice.
“I haven’t talked to her for a couple years now,” she said. “Get a Christmas card from her every year, but that’s about it.”
“And your dad?” Dan pried further.
She lifted her blue eyes to him. “He died two years ago in a car accident, which was pretty much the last time I talked to my mom.”
Dan zipped his bag shut. “I’m sorry.”
“That is awful,” Sophia said.
“Yeah, he was a great guy. My mom and Hank couldn’t stand him, but he really was awesome.”
Awkward silence filled the room. Paul could tell Wendy was close to tears.
“After I dropped out of college and started dancing, he was so disappointed in me. He never said so, but I could tell. He never stopped being my dad though,” she said, back to twisting the ring around her finger. “Not like my mom did.”
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 9