“We’re doing just fine, but thank you for your concern,” she smirked.
“Betty, we can help,” Wendy said.
Her eyes bulged as she tilted her gray head. “What makes you think we need your help?”
Paul held a hand up to Wendy. Their silent stares sliced through Lulu’s yipping. It was hard to tell if Betty would actually pull the trigger or not but Paul figured the odds were pretty good.
He took a couple steps back, his hands still up.
Wendy mimicked him like a shadow.
“Did you and your husband get flu shots this year?” he asked, unable to come up with anything else with a gun staring him in the face.
The senior citizen’s eyes narrowed, studying them for a moment longer. “Well then,” she smiled again. “Enjoy your day!” She turned and continued down the sidewalk as if she had never heard the question.
Paul and Wendy slowly turned their heads towards each other.
“We can’t just let her go. Can we?” she whispered.
Paul turned back to Betty and watched her turn down a street and disappear behind some brown brick houses.
“I bet he’s one of those things.”
Paul looked to Wendy and squinted. “Who?”
“Her husband, Bill.”
His gaze drifted back to where he had last seen Betty.
“Bet she’s got him chained to the bed or something,” Wendy went on, staring with him.
Paul headed back to the car.
“Maybe we should just get out of here,” she said, following him.
Paul hopped in and fired it up. “You’re probably right,” he said, slipping the car in gear and putting his foot into the gas pedal.
They sped out of the abandoned gas station and turned down the tree-lined street Betty had just walked down, the car’s wide tires screeching in the turn. He hit the brakes and slowly cruised past the nicely kept Tudor houses. Everything looked normal, like nothing had ever happened and you could still go to a Sonic for a chili-dog. At the end of the street he made a U-turn with squealing tires and went down it again. Back at the other end he stopped.
“Where the hell did she go?”
“She’ll probably come out walking Bill next,” Wendy snorted, scanning the area. “From the end of a ten foot pole!”
Paul swallowed and shook his head. “Well, that was weird,” he mumbled.
“For a second there I thought that was Cora,” Wendy said dully. “Cora walking a wiener dog.”
Paul snorted and then burst out laughing. He couldn’t keep it in, the image was too much.
Wendy laughed with him. “Can you imagine?” she howled.
“These days, nothing would surprise me!” he said, cracking up and stomping on the gas pedal.
They drove south, watching the sun set in the west. It was easier not to think about it, let alone talk about it. Cora, Betty, Lulu, all mysteries far more suited for Sherlock Holmes than two worn out strangers from the Midwest.
Town after town passed through the car’s beams while the wind howled through the hole in the windshield. The further they got from Victoria, Texas, the more the reality of it all set in. Everyone was dead. Brock, Dan, Sophia, Paul’s mom, and countless others. He shook his head, leading the black Chevelle south bound and down along the winding two lane highway.
Wendy began to sniffle and occasionally tried to nonchalantly dab an eye without him seeing.
He glanced over at her puffy face. She looked so tired, even though she had spent half of the day’s drive asleep. He opened his mouth to tell her they we’re going to be alright, that they could do this, just the two of them. But he turned his attention back to the road instead, too tired to even lie right now.
Other than Betty, they hadn’t seen any people, normal people anyway. At one point, a man donning a trucker hat had stumbled out from the red cab of an eighteen-wheeler, parked in a rundown truck stop that looked like it probably had some pretty nasty bathrooms. Thanks to some abandoned cars right in the middle of the road, Paul had to slow way down to just squeak through. The delay had given the trucker ample time to shuffle his way within twenty-five feet of them.
“Oh look, there’s a man!” Wendy wishfully announced, sitting up in the white bench seat. “Maybe he needs help!”
But the closer the man came, the more they realized they were the ones who needed the help. “Go,” she had said in a cold whisper, causing Paul to gun it and knock one of the parked cars out of the way as they screeched by and accelerated into the open road ahead. Dan’s comment about the car show guy rolling over in his grave had briefly floated through Paul’s mind.
Fortunately, the Chevelle’s trunk contained the siphon-kit and one of Brock’s duffel bags stuffed with enough guns and ammo to start their own militia, which in a sense, is exactly what they would be doing. And Lord help anyone or anything who got in their way. Paul had moved on from complete sadness, back to total anger. He was on an emotional roller-coaster that just wouldn’t stop, like one of those dumb radio contests for a brand new Camaro. It was all he could do to just hang on.
Trees and small towns whooshed by again in a dizzying blur. Everything was strange. Everything foreign. Suddenly, even Wendy seemed strange and foreign, after all he barely knew her. Yet, here they were. The only ones left.
“You still believe in God?” she suddenly asked.
The dash lights cast an eerie yellow glow across her drawn face. He turned back to the road and didn’t answer.
She frowned. “I mean, how could you? After everything that has happened?”
He drummed his fingers on the wheel.
She folded her arms across her chest. “I think I’m probably already dead and this is my version of Hell.”
He looked over to her. “You’re not dead. Not yet anyway.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring.”
Tiredly, they drove on through the night, too afraid to stop. Too scared to sleep. Almost too discouraged to even keep trying, but until he felt their teeth, he would anyway.
He had always believed that setbacks could make you stronger, if you handled them right and stayed in faith. But this...this was extinction.
The road droned beneath them, issuing a soothing vibration throughout the classic ride. He debated putting in the Jimmy Buffett CD - the only CD in the car - and threw it out the window instead.
“Hey!” Wendy shouted, frowning.
He tried the radio again and nothing. Not even static. When he hit the seek button on the Pioneer car stereo, green digital numbers flipped by without stopping. It was impossible to tell what even used to be a station. The abnormal dead air gave him the chills. Wendy watched the green digits roll like she would a lifeguard giving CPR to someone just pulled from the pool, hoping they would catch a breath. But the numbers just kept rolling.
“We’re going to be alright,” he said.
She slowly turned to him with her hair blowing in the wind.
“How long until we’re next?” she asked, her voice cracking. “I don’t wanna end up like one of those things,” she said with a shiver.
“We’re not gonna be next,” he said gently, turning up the heater.
“How can you be so sure? Look what’s happened to everyone else! As far as we know, we’re the last two people left alive on the entire planet.”
“There are more people somewhere,” he said calmly, adjusting his seat belt again, which kept getting tighter and tighter every few miles. “There’s gotta be.”
Truthfully, he had no idea. For all he knew, she could be right and the fate of mankind could be resting squarely on their shoulders. And if that was the case, mankind was in for some serious trouble.
The car rolled down the road. Neither one spoke. He thought again about pulling over and trading out the show car for one that didn’t have a broken window, but was too tired to even attempt it. Nothing was easy now. Not with just two of them.
“So what now?” she finally asked.
He looked
over to her. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Something like what?” she said flabbergasted.
He didn’t answer.
Right now he just wanted to drive. Not talk. The question of how it had come to this repeatedly clattered around inside the walls of his foggy head. Just he and some stripper in a stranger’s show car with God knows what out there lurking in the darkness, everyone else they knew dead. Everyone. How could this have happened?
It had to be the flu-shots. He hadn’t gotten one. None of them had. Not that it mattered now.
The ghastly image of Dan surfaced to the top of his bone-tired mind and took its turn poking him with grisly sticks, only it wasn’t Dan anymore. It was one of those... those things. And he had turned so fast too. How was that possible? It had taken his mom and Sophia days, but Dan had changed in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Maybe multiple bites could speed up the infection.
With some effort he pushed the image of Dan’s dangling jaw back under and saw him dressed up as a mustard bottle last Halloween instead. Steering the car south, he almost cracked a smile. It had always been Paul’s favorite time of the year with the return of cooler weather, football, pheasant hunting and scary decorations adorning house after house. He remembered going to a seasonal Halloween store with Dan just this past October, a time when their biggest concern was which of the plastic tombstones to purchase. Back at Paul and Sophia’s house, they had firmly planted the four fake headstones in the front yard and added long piles of recently fallen leaves to the foot of each tombstone, making them look like fresh graves.
Then on beggar’s night, Sophia, dressed as a witch, slowly rocked in an old wooden chair on the front porch and handed out candy to the endless stream of trick-or-treaters, all flaunting their different costumes. To add to the tone of the night, scary music combined with thunderstorm sound effects, floated out of a small boom-box behind her chair. The music also masked his presence, while Dan recorded the whole thing with his handheld.
Paul remembered the kids laughing at Dan’s corny costume as they skipped up the driveway, lit by tikki-torches. They traded their redundant jokes to Sophia for their fair share of candy and trotted back down the driveway to continue their grand tour of homes. What they didn’t know was that Paul was waiting for them. As soon as they passed back by the “graves”, he would explode out of the leaves with a convincing roar, dressed - ironically enough - as a decaying spook. He could still hear those kids scream, one group after another, all night long. Could still see them take off running like bats out of hell, while their parents stood laughing on the sidewalk. Even they thought it was funny, until some of the kids started dashing into the middle of the street, terrified beyond all recognition. He laughed just thinking about it.
“What?” Wendy asked.
Paul shook his head.
“Oh no, I have got to know what could possibly be so funny right now?”
He shrugged and told her about the mustard suit.
Her eyebrows dropped. “Wait a minute, you dressed up as a ZIP for Halloween last year?”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
“That is so messed up!”
His chuckles turned to giggles. The kind you don’t want, like in the middle of church service or an important meeting. She caught the infection and began cracking up as well.
“That is so wrong!” she said, howling with laughter.
“And I am not kidding you,” he said through tears. “Some of those kids never came back!”
“I can’t breathe!” she sputtered.
His laughs turned to deep panting.
“Sophia finally made us pull the plug on the entire operation,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Thought we were going to get sued.”
“And you probably would have too! Everybody sues everyone nowadays.”
They grew quiet.
“Well, they used to anyway,” she said.
“Man, that was such a fun night,” he murmured.
They rode in silence for the next mile or two, passing through one ghost town after another.
“Eventually, I’m going back,” he said.
A quizzical look slid across her face. “Back where?”
“Des Moines.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Iowa?”
He nodded. “Back to my house.”
“For what?”
“Some photo albums and that DVD from Halloween. We burned a bunch of copies and handed em out to some friends and family.”
She shook her tangled head. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about going back.”
“Are you nuts?” she screeched.
He turned back to the winding road and didn’t respond.
“How do you even know your house hasn’t burned down or something by now?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t.”
She paused, her mouth still hanging open. “Well, what am I supposed to do? I’m not going back there, it’s a death trap!”
“We’ll find some other people soon.”
“Other people? And what, you’re just going to leave me with complete strangers?”
He looked back over to her. “What’s my last name again?”
She paused. “What?”
“What’s my last name?”
She squinted at him. “I - I don’t know.”
The quiet resumed its place as the car snaked through the curvy road. They passed a bait shop with broken windows.
“We’re not complete strangers and you can’t go back there by yourself!” she said. “You’ll never make it. It’s suicide! You’re not that good. Remember?”
“Oh what do you know?” he roared. “I didn’t bust my ass to graduate from a Big Ten university to end up taking advice from some small town stripper I barely even know!”
Her eyes opened almost as wide as her mouth and she quickly turned back to the road, folding her arms across her chest. Shelly1 hummed along, the headlights cutting through the darkness as they went. He sighed and rubbed his greasy face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just tired.”
“I guess I just don’t get it because the only guys I’ve ever dated were all jerks,” she said, staring blankly at the twisting road ahead. “I’d never risk my life to go back and get one of their pictures, that’s for sure.”
He swallowed and suddenly felt even worse. She had never experienced what he had with Sophia and maybe now, she never would.
“Only pictures they had were mug shots anyway.”
Paul snorted. “I didn’t say I was going back tomorrow, but when it gets warmer. We’ll have found other people by then. Good people like Brock and Cora,” he said, trying to flash a smile at her. “And when I get the pictures, I’ll come back.”
“And then what? Start all over again? Build some utopian compound?”
“Who knows? Maybe start up a paddle-board shop or something.”
The car rolled through the Texas landscape beneath a blanket of a trillion glimmering white stars. He yawned and thought about lying with Sophia on the sun-bleached picnic table just the other night. Just the two of them and the stars above.
“You know what I always wanted to do?” she asked.
“Teach pole-dancing lessons?”
“What? No! I have always wanted to start up my own shoe store.”
Sophia’s massive shoe collection rippled through his mind. She had loved shoes too. So much so, his closet space was in the spare bedroom. He tried to think of what shoes she had been wearing when the pharmacist bit into her. The last shoes she would ever wear. They were some kind of new running shoe with pink lines tracing through them. Maybe Puma’s. She probably wouldn’t be happy about those shoes being the ones she literally ended up getting caught dead in.
He sighed. Every little thing reminded him of her now. Shoes, stars, books, coffee, even wiener dogs. She always wanted one. When the time was right, he would go back. His eyes landed on We
ndy then swept back to the road.
She seemed to sense that she had hit a nerve and grew quiet.
“Hey, people are still going to need new shoes,” he said.
“Yeah but why pay for shoes when you can just break into any Famous Footwear and get a them for free?”
“Good point. The dream’s over.”
She turned to him. “Geez, thanks a lot, Mr. Optimistic.”
Silence returned, applying heavy pressure on his dark eyelids so he pulled off in a spacious clearing and put it in park, deciding to call it a night before he veered off the road and killed them both. He didn’t trust Wendy could do much better and if any of those things came clamoring around while they were busy sleeping, he could have that car started and be out of there before the corpses could break in. It would take them at least sixty seconds to get in. Hopefully. When dawn broke in a few hours they would be on their way and the ocean couldn’t be much further.
Wendy climbed into the back seat while Paul went outside to get two blankets from the trunk. A million different questions, all without answers, bombarded his every step. He shut the trunk, realized he had only grabbed one blanket and opened it again. Simple tasks became struggles. He grabbed the other blanket and shut the trunk, expecting the foul remains of an upright cadaver to be gently swaying on the other side of the car, patiently waiting for him to fish out his precious blankets. The trunk quietly latched as he stared into the burly darkness. Sooner or later, one would be standing there. Waiting for him. It definitely wasn’t a matter of if...
Wendy yawned as Paul got back in Shelly1 and locked the doors. “Where do you think the President is?” she asked, lying on the backseat with her knees in the air.
“Probably flying around in Air Force One somewhere,” he said, stretching out up front.
“You think?”
“If he’s even still alive. That’s what happened on 9/11.”
As his night vision kicked in, he realized he could hear crickets chirping. He wondered what would happen if mosquitoes could be carriers of the infection and pushed the thought from his mind.
“Why do you think, out of all those people out there, that we made it?” she asked. “Why us?”
He looked out the hole in the front window to the stars beyond. “Because I watched Dawn of the Dead and they watched Twilight.”
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 21