Paul hopped inside the Chevelle and fired it up. He was surprised he didn’t drop the keys like some nitwit in the movies.
Brock fired away at an unyielding pack of approaching walkers creeping out from behind the outbuilding.
“Just get in the Chevelle!” he yelled to Cora, realizing there was only time to take one car.
Wendy and Cora quickly slid across the smooth back seat as Brock’s gun ran out of bullets. He turned to see Cora safely inside Shelly1 just as three ghouls grabbed him from behind and violently yanked him to the pavement. Cora screamed and Paul jumped back out. He tried to shoot the goons without hitting Brock and mostly missed all of them. One fiend took a bullet to a leg and it stumbled off into the fog with Brock’s left arm. Brock screamed in pain. Paul whirled just in the nick of time and popped a decomposing naked old man who nearly bit into his arm. The old man jerked backwards and Paul whipped back around and nailed the two things hovering over Brock. They flinched but quickly went back to work. Cora screamed again. Paul finally made a head shot on each but it was too late. Brock lay unmoving in the driveway, his eyes staring unfocused up to the stars above.
“Brooooock!” Cora wailed.
More of the smelly beasts came out of the woodwork, surrounding the car. Paul swore and Cora tried to get out of the car but Wendy stopped her.
Paul slid back in behind the wheel and shut the door just before a shredded postal worker almost snagged him. He locked his door and turned to look for Dan.
Wendy made sure the other three doors were just as locked, her breath coming like a dog’s on a hot summer day.
The things began beating on the car with spongy fists, rocking it as Paul and Wendy searched for Dan out the back window. A heavy set lady in flannel pajamas started pounding huge dents into Shelly1’s dark, shiny hood. Her dents made the others seem like child’s play.
“Come on, Dan!” Paul yelled through the rear glass, revving the engine and laying on the horn.
“Where is he?” Wendy screamed, reloading her gun as the car rocked back and forth.
Cora unlocked her door and Wendy and Paul grabbed her at the same time. Wendy quickly locked it again.
The car suddenly dipped down in the front and Paul spun around to see the pajama lady climbing onto the hood with an evil grin spreading across her large face. She looked like she had just recently turned. Then she barred her teeth and screamed so loud his vision blurred.
“There he is!” Wendy yelled, pointing out the back window.
Paul turned to see Dan finally coming down the driveway. It was hard to see through the fog so Paul hit him with the reverse lights, which trembled with the car. A deep frown slowly traveled across Paul’s ragged face when he saw that Dan was walking.
“Run!” Paul screamed at him through the glass.
The fat lady slammed a huge meaty fist into the front windshield, sending a spider-web of cracks crawling across it.
“What is he doing?” Wendy wailed, looking out the back.
Dan slowly stepped into the car’s taillights and Paul’s heart sank when he saw half of Dan’s face was missing. Dan reached for them. Paul could only stare in abject horror.
Years of fun together flashed through his mind as he incredulously watched his best friend slowly limp towards them.
“What is he doing?” Wendy screamed again, the color draining from her face.
The summertime Cubs games at Wrigley, the sunny rounds of disc-golf, the camping trips, the games of Madden on the couch.
“Dan!” Wendy shrieked.
Paul shifted the car into gear.
The fat thing on the hood smashed its fist into the window again, busting out a jagged hole through the tempered glass.
Paul threw his arms up to block the glass raining down on him. It reached a bloody ham-hock of an arm through the spiked hole and desperately snatched at Paul. He leaned back in the seat as far as he could.
“How can this be happening?” Wendy cried.
Paul took one last look back and wished he hadn’t. Dan’s jaw was hanging by a tendon.
Other dead walkers came out of nowhere, ambling towards the car.
Paul turned around and floored it, sending the thing in oversized pajamas rolling over the hood and landing at Dan’s feet. It got back up and joined Dan in his quest for flesh. Their flesh.
“Nooooo!” Wendy screeched.
“Paul!” Cora bawled.
Other than a couple of thumps, he swerved around most of the rotting corpses in the double drive.
“We have to go back!” Cora wailed.
Paul slid the car sideways out into the street and sped off into the night, the roaring engine drowning out their pleas.
Cora kept looking out the back window, where the heavy fog swirled in tight spirals in the car’s wake.
Large houses began sliding through the car’s headlights.
Wendy and Cora slumped against each other in the back, crying and trembling. They bounced on the springy bench seat with each bump in the deserted road. Outside of their sobs and the motor’s mighty rumble, dead air descended inside the rolling car like shame at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Paul had to keep reminding himself to slow down.
“Will this ever stop?” Wendy said faintly, through tears.
He glanced at her in the mirror and took his eyes back to the road.
If cars ran on tears, they would never have to stop again.
Several miles later, he pulled off into a moonlit clearing and turned the car off. He stuffed the keys into his front pocket while peering through the dense fog around them, expecting something to spring onto the hood at any moment. When nothing did, he got out and took a giant leak, thinking he heard something move behind him every few seconds.
He got back in, locked the door, and released a deep breath. The thought of Brock trading his life for their safety shot through his memory. Dan had done the exact same. They had died so they could live, but the problem was, there wasn’t anything left to live for. It looked like Wendy was right after all. There was no God. Because the God he thought he knew would never put them through this. Never.
The duffel bag with Sophia’s black hoodie slipped through his thick head next. Gone. Everything was gone. He dropped his face into his hands, but no tears came. Maybe he was all out. His head throbbed and he could barely hear the women crying in the seat behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Paul cracked his eyelids and found himself staring at the black leather ceiling of Shelly1. His stomach twisted into knots as soon as his thick head slowly put two and two together, which equaled Sophia still being dead. Reality had a way of doing that. Especially when reality made your nightmares look like a fairy tale.
He rubbed his face and tried to stretch. He sat up and turned his nappy head, squinting through the early morning sunlight to see Wendy stretched across the back seat, sound asleep. A sigh of relief slipped through his chapped lips and he stared out the fogged over windows. They had safely made it through the night, this time in a car, which provided only so much protection. His heart suddenly jumped. He flipped back around in his seat and looked at Wendy. Cora was gone. He scanned every inch of the car, then out every window. No sign of her anywhere. Then he noticed Cora’s door was unlocked. He grimaced, popped his door open and jumped out into the rugged dirt field. Spinning in frantic rotations, the dust swirling with him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled her name.
A crow squawked back at him in the distance.
He whirled in the brown soil and screamed again. And again.
Still nothing. He froze, trying to hold his breath so he could hear better, but in the stillness, the only thing he could hear was the blood pulsating through his temples.
Wendy unlocked the back door and sprang out, bright eyed and bushy tailed. “Where’s Cora?”
“I don’t know,” he said, desperately surveying the surrounding landscape and rapidly grabbing gulps of crisp air. Empty fields and trees surrounded the
m as far as the eye could see.
“Where did she go?” Wendy cried, casing the countryside with him.
“I - don’t - know!” he screamed, his long shadow twirling on the ground below him.
He stopped, inhaling and exhaling like he had just run a forty-yard dash. He threw his hands behind his head. “This cannot be happening,” he said, wondering how many times he had said that recently.
Wendy spun in circles like a top. “She can’t just be gone! We would’ve heard her get out of the car!”
Paul wasn’t so sure. They were pretty knocked out last night. Then he began tracking the ground, looking for footprints.
He and Dan had loved playing disc golf and sometimes at an unfamiliar disc golf course, the sign at the tee box would be missing and they wouldn’t know which way they to go next. But if you looked for that beaten down grass path from all the other discers, you would.
Paul circled the battered Chevelle, his eyes intently focused the ground while Wendy watched him with her mouth open.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for her tracks.”
She threw her arms out into the air and slapped them back down to her side.
“What are you Tonto now?”
The ground was hard and coursed with bumpy mounds. He couldn’t make out anything substantial. He tried to think of what kind of shoes Cora had been wearing and couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter; she would’ve had to have weighed a thousand pounds to have left an imprint in this stuff.
He groaned and kicked the stiff dirt.
Wendy watched him with that terrified look in her eyes again.
It irritated him. Too much pressure.
He released an agitated sigh and rested his hands on his hips. His eyes glazed over as he spaced off into the distance, shaking his head. “Let’s get back in the car.”
Wendy slowly shook her head. “This cannot be happening.”
“Just one thing after another, ain’t it?” he said, taking a squirt before getting back in.
Wendy locked all of the doors and took a big drink of water. Paul placed his hand on the keys in the ignition but didn’t turn them. His mind shuffled like a police chief’s would after a town resident had mysteriously gone missing. When did he see her last? Just before he fell asleep. What was she wearing? The silky red robe. Where would she want to go? Home.
He started the car and began driving a poorly thought out grid pattern around the area for one hour that seemed more like five, getting lost twice before finding their way back to the highway.
Nada.
He backtracked towards Brock’s house for several miles with the wind bustling through the hole in the front window.
Nothing.
Then the gas light came on. He pulled over and turned the Chevelle off. The all too creepy stillness engulfed them again. Outside of birds, the wind and the occasional dog barking, it was completely noiseless. They were out in the middle of nowhere and Paul suddenly realized he could smell the ocean as a large black crow fluttered to a perfect landing and began picking at a dead deer down the road. Probably one of the last deer struck by a car. It looked like it had been there for awhile. Then the deer moved. Paul blinked and rubbed his face. The crow snipped away with its sharp black beak at the deer which wasn’t moving and never had. Chills crawled across his flesh and he felt light headed.
“What’s going on?” Wendy asked, nervously sitting up straighter and following his gaze to the crow.
“We need gas,” he said somberly.
“So get gas.”
He swallowed loudly. “I’m going to start heading south again.”
Her eyes snapped over to him.
He watched the crow ripping the last strips of flesh from the animal carcass.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she’s gone,” he said, meeting her eyes.
Wrinkles carved their way through the wooden horror covering her face. “What, you just wanna give up?” she asked hoarsely.
“Cora is the one who gave up, Wendy. I’m still here.”
Wendy shook her head. “No!”
“We can’t force her to keep trying. Even if we could, we can’t even find her!”
“We’ll keep looking!”
“We don’t even know where the hell we’re at!”
She sighed and pursed her lips as reality hit home. She knew he was right. “We can’t just leave her out here,” she quivered.
His eyes scoured the flattened landscape around them. What could they do? Even if they were somehow able to find Cora, by some miracle, he was sure she would only do something crazy like this again. And the next time they could all die. After all, she had left the car door unlocked. They were lucky they weren’t dead already.
He started the car and slowly pulled up to the deer, scaring the crow away but it didn’t go too far, not ready to give up just yet. It stared at them from the middle of the road, waiting on Paul’s next move.
He felt like cotton balls were stuffed in his mouth and tried to swallow but couldn’t as he got into the gas pedal.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Paul siphoned the tank dry from a cream colored Ford Edge parked in front of a convenience store while Wendy covered him. Its locked doors forced him to break out a window so he could pop the gas cap. No keys were inside or he would have traded out cars. Thanks to the ginormous pajama wearing ZIP, it was difficult to see out the shattered front window of Shelly1.
They didn’t say much while the gas gurgled into Shelly1. Wendy asked where they were and he told they were near Bloomington. When they got back in he fired her up and stared at the store’s three rows of empty gas pumps as the rumbling motor vibrated their seats. He put it in gear and pulled up to the pumps and put it in park, like he was going to get gas the old fashioned way. He sat there and peered out the cracked front windshield with unfocused eyes while the car’s exhaust floated past them like drifting ghosts.
Confusion flickered across Wendy’s dirty face. “What are we doing?”
If he sat there long enough, he could almost catch a whiff of the old world. Could almost see the cars coming and going. Could almost watch people filling their tanks and tires. Could almost hear the gas nozzles clicking off.
Movement in his peripheral vision caused him to snap his head to the left. His heart skipped a beat and his forehead wrinkled.
“Are you kidding me?” Wendy sputtered.
Paul watched a woman nonchalantly walking a Dachshund down the sunny sidewalk ahead of them. His head slowly rotated with her as she shuffled past them, oblivious of their presence. Like someone would have done when the pumps still accepted credit cards.
He and Wendy exchanged dumbfounded glances.
He shut the car off, took the keys with him as he got out and slammed the door shut.
The elderly lady spun around. “Oh my gosh, you scared me!” she said with a short laugh, placing her hand over her heart. “Good morning!” she said warmly.
Paul stared in disbelief and looked around. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Why yes, I’m fine,” she said, smiling and slowly walking towards them. Her wiener dog obediently trotted alongside to keep plenty of slack in the leash.
“Are you okay?” she asked them.
Paul’s eyebrows dipped. “Are you alone out here?”
The woman frowned, increasing the already numerous number of wrinkles in her face. “Me?” she said, nearly insulted by the assumption. “Oh heavens no. I’ve got Lulu here and my husband, Bill, is back at home,”
Paul and Wendy swapped baffled expressions.
“Where’s home?” Wendy asked.
“Just around the way,” she said, sweeping her hand in a very general direction down the street.
Paul looked down the way to a number of streets she could’ve been referring to.
“I’m Wendy and this is Paul.”
‘Well, nice to meet you both. I’m Betty,” she said stopping a few feet away. “You
new to town?”
“Why are you out here by yourself?” he asked, finally calling out the four hundred pound gorilla in the room.
Betty’s warm smile faded. “We’re just out stretching our legs and getting some fresh air,” she said, glancing down to Lulu, who panted and seemed disinterested in the entire meeting.
“That is so dangerous!” Wendy snapped.
Betty looked at her like she was crazy. “Naw!” she said, waving a hand at her. “What’ll be dangerous is if I don’t get home soon and make Bill some lunch!” she said, cackling.
Awkward silence befell the group. Paul had a difficult time processing the information as the lady gawked at them.
“Well, enjoy your stay!” she said with another warm smile, lightly tugging on the leash and resuming her walk.
“Can we come meet Bill?” Paul yelled, taking a step towards her.
Betty stopped but didn’t turn around. “No, he’s not feeling well and I spect he’s not quite up to company,” she said over her shoulder.
Paul watched her begin to walk away again and brushed his hand against his gun, just to make sure it was still there. He nodded at Wendy to follow him.
“Is he hurt?” he asked, trying to catch up to Betty, who hastened her pace and didn’t respond.
“Maybe we can help!” Wendy yelled, picking up her stride as well.
Betty transitioned into a power walk.
“Betty!” Paul hollered, progressing into a slow jog.
Betty whirled around, pointing a handgun at them while Lulu began barking wildly and pulling on her leash. The leash cut into her vocal cords, straining her yelps.
Paul and Wendy froze in their tracks. He threw his hands out for Betty to see they were empty.
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 20