The kid wiped his nose and took a step back from fright. Dustin said, “It’s okay! I’m okay. You all alone, man?”
“Yeah. They got my mom two days ago. She was . . . she tried to get food for us.” Lip trembling, he added in a small voice, “Do you have any food, sir?”
“Yeah, I got food!” Dustin passed out a stick of gum. After a moment of hesitation, the boy took it. The kid wasn’t too skinny yet. Some people came to Plantation starved away to sticks.
Gum wasn’t food, even though the package said it had some calories. “I got Num-Nums and soda in the back. You want to climb in? You can dig it out of the trunk.”
“Okay.”
Dustin unlocked the doors and the kid climbed into the back. He was hungry enough to start digging through the stuff in the trunk without delay. A bunch of nasty-looking stuff was in the tread of his sneakers. It wasn’t Dustin’s car though, so he didn’t care if that got smeared anywhere. Bridger could clean it out.
“Make sure to lock the doors,” the kid called. Dustin jumped at how he hadn’t thought about that. It was four o’clock now. He’d found a kid! That was how most of the people had gotten to Plantation, discovered by the squads during raids. It was how he’d gotten there, too.
“Are there more people out here?” Dustin asked eagerly. He was thinking about women looking out the windows of these houses, seeing a car and their hearts jumping in their breasts. A real person! They’d run outside and into the road to flag him down, shouting take us with you! That would have been better than a boy.
“I haven’t seen anyone other than my mom until you. No one except . . .” The boy scored a soda and a box of Num-Nums. Settling into the seat, his fingers dug frantically on the cardboard flap. “ . . . those freaks. The ones who eat people.”
“The deadheads.”
“Yeah. Their skin is all messed up, like it’s rotting off their bones. But they don’t die. It’s like Halloween but real. I saw one who wasn’t messed up at all. She was with the deadheads. Their clothes were filthy and falling off but she was dressed normal. And she was hanging out with them. They were friends. She was calling in the streets for anyone like me to come out, that it was safe. She said she had food and stuff. But I didn’t go. I watched first. Then the deadheads appeared behind her. They ran off after a cat.”
“That was a ringer. She was hoping you’d come out so she could feed you to the deadheads. You were smart to wait.” The others at Plantation had told Dustin about ringers. He hadn’t listened too well, since a zombie was a zombie like a flower was a flower.
The boy crammed candy into his mouth. Fisher didn’t belong to Scarlett by blood, yet the girl was always around and wanting to do things for her. Dustin could have this boy to do the same, grateful to his savior. When Dustin got assigned to the kitchen or the garden, he’d pass that along to the kid. “What’s your name?”
“Baylen. Baylen Rousset.”
That was as bad as Fisher and Bridger! “Baylen Rousset? Never heard that before.” It sounded totally gay.
“I’m French.”
Oh God. Well, if that was the best Dustin could do, then that was the best he could do. “You want to come along? I’ve got a place.” It wasn’t his, but it felt good to say it. “A farm. A big farm.”
“Where is it?”
“Just down the freeway in Kryton. You’ll love it. We got food growing everywhere, more than we can eat. And sleeping bags.”
“You grow sleeping bags?”
Dustin looked in the rearview mirror. The kid had a smile, teasing Dustin a little and they’d only just met. They were getting comfortable fast. “Yeah, a sleeping bag tree. You can pick out your favorite color.” Dustin laughed. “My name is Dustin. We have kids there. Some are around your age.”
“Are you in charge?”
He’d been there for two months and that should give him some seniority. “Yeah, me and some other people. So, you want to come along?”
“That sounds wonderful.” The boy upended the box and spoke with his mouth full. Dustin didn’t say anything about manners. He wasn’t going to be like that with Baylen, who added, “I used to live in Kryton when I was little, but I don’t remember a farm.”
He was still little. That was cute how the boy thought he was a big old grown-up when he was too young for pubes. “It’s real out of the way. You take D Street straight out of the main part of town. The road goes through the middle of nowhere, past a bunch of farms and Plantation all the way at the end. Fruit trees around the wall, and behind the wall is this fancy house. It makes you feel like king of the castle.”
“Cool.”
“Isn’t it? I’ll need your help to get there. Where’s the freeway? I got turned around in this place.”
The soda opened with a crack and hiss. “Turn left at the stop sign.” The boy tipped the can to his lips and Dustin pulled out into the road. Damn, it was late in the day. They still had to drive back to Kryton, then through the ghost town to D Street and past all those farms . . . But now he had the kid to guide them to the freeway fast, and they’d be home in no time. Let Scarlett look at the contents of the trunk and say NO to that! She’d take him more seriously from now on, and the triumvirate. Add him on as the fourth member with what he’d done for them. A four-umvirate.
The boy gave directions from one empty street to another. Z-Day had found Dustin in Valencia, the streets transforming from happy people headed to the big amusement park there into deadheads. All of them hunting for a meal, people, dogs, cats, birds, they weren’t picky. They even ate fish out of a koi pond. Maybe it wasn’t so bad this far north, since he wasn’t seeing a soul. That was also something good to pass along to the triumvirate. They were so anal about the high noon raid time and it wasn’t necessary. There weren’t even that many skeletons.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Dustin asked at another turn to a residential road with no freeway in sight.
“I’m sure,” Baylen said with total confidence. “I went this way to school every single day. Back then. What did you do?”
“Bit of this, bit of that. What grade were you in?”
Silence. “Second.”
“Second? You look too old for second.”
“Fifth, I meant to say.”
How could a kid not know what grade he was in? He’d almost said fifth like a guess, checking with Dustin to see if that was correct. That was trauma. Everything had gone from normal to crazy in no time. Dustin asked, “When is your birthday?”
“Christmas Day.”
“I’m a December man, too!” It was amazing, like fate had brought them together in this nowhere place. “Where do I turn here?”
“Right. Ignore that sign that says DEAD END. They built a new on-ramp down there years and years ago but never took down the sign. Isn’t that dumb?”
That was indeed dumb. This road held more quiet homes, Frisbees on roofs and plants dying from the heat. One driveway had a nice motorcycle stationed inside the open garage. Dustin was coming back here for the bank and that bike.
At a whirring sound, he glanced in the mirror. “Not safe to have the window down, buddy.”
“I’ll put it up in a second. I’ve got to hock a loogie.” The boy made a horrific gargling sound. The rattle was deep and loud, and followed by a baritone barking.
“Hey,” Dustin said, startled to see the road ending in a cul-de-sac ahead. The kid was so mixed up that he’d given out the wrong turn. What he needed when they got to Plantation was an appointment with Bridger.
The tire popped.
The minivan swerved to the right. Dustin jerked on the steering wheel to keep from striking the parked car there. The car spun around, a shriek tearing from his throat and his foot slamming down on the brake. Squealing ripped apart the silence that had settled over the closed loop of houses.
“What the fuck? What the fuck?” Dustin screamed when the minivan came to a halt. He put it in park and sat there shaking.
The kid, God
bless him, was still trying to hock the loogie. Dustin had never heard such a weird sound in his life. The chuckle was so low that it was nearly off the register of the human ear. “Huh-huh, HUH-huh, huh-huh. HUH-HUH.” That loogie was good and stuck in his throat.
Dustin got out of the minivan to take a look at the tire. The left front was flat. That had to be changed fast. Then he noticed something worse. The left back tire was also flat. Shit! How had he flattened not one but two tires? The minivan didn’t carry two spares. He’d change one and have to drive on the other.
“Huh-huh, HUH-huh, huh-huh. HUH-HUH.”
The sun glinted off something in the road. It was a spike strip that cops put down to catch fleeing criminals. The same color as the road, Dustin hadn’t seen it. Why the fuck was there a spike strip just lying out there in a cul-de-sac? He swung around the other side of the minivan. Those tires were flat, too.
Oh God. Oh God! No cell phones, no phones of any kind, so he couldn’t call Plantation to have someone come and pick them up. Scarlett was such a bitch that she’d say no in revenge for Dustin sneaking out with the minivan. So Dustin would play up the boy. Scarlett might be ready to let Dustin die, but she wouldn’t do that to an innocent kid. Women had maternal instincts, even the bitchy ones.
“Huh-huh HUH-huh huh-huh. HUH-HUH.”
That weird-ass chuckling was getting on his nerves. “Spit it out, kid.”
The boy finished with a gargle and pounded on his chest. “Went down the other way. Are we okay?”
They were anything but okay. Dustin couldn’t say that to a child. “Uh . . . yeah.” The houses. Tonight they’d lock themselves in one of these houses, and tomorrow in the safe hours hop on that motorcycle or find a car. A car was better so they could take the stuff from Yard Wizards along. Whatever vehicle around here had fuel in the tank, they’d ride it back to Plantation and get themselves behind that wall. It wasn’t going to be hard to find a car, not when there were some here in the driveways. No, he couldn’t take these ones. Their tires were flat. That was bizarre.
Baylen rolled up the window dutifully. He had no idea of the danger they were in. Dustin did. Going to the door, he reached for the handle.
Snap.
It was the kid. He had locked the doors. Settling back into the seat, he smiled at Dustin like a naughty toddler. He was too old to think this was fun and games time. Rapping on the glass, Dustin said, “Open up.”
Baylen shook his head. Dustin rapped harder and said angrily, “Open the damn door! We gotta get out of here!” No response. The only sound in the world was a scratching. Dustin whirled around.
Deadheads.
They were coming around the sides of the houses, out the front doors and the windows of the houses themselves, out of the cars with flat tires. Dozens of them, legions of them, and every single one had their dull gray gazes fixed on Dustin. Their hair hung in oily tatters from months of being unwashed. Ragged clothes were askew, those who still wore them, holey and stained with blood and muck. Their skin was black in places. One guy had lost his dick to the rot and a woman was staring at Dustin out of half a face. Some had taken bullets, looking like big round pockmarks in their skin. But bullets didn’t kill them, not unless they went through the brain.
The gun. He’d stolen Dakota’s gun at breakfast and slipped it under the driver’s seat, forgetting all about it until now. But the kid had locked the car, picking the worst time of the worst to be silly. Dustin shouted and banged on the glass. “Open up! Open up!” He’d drive over the zombies just like frog-popping, ruining the rims with the flat tires but getting the hell out of this place!
Baylen had noticed the zombies. He stared at them with an expression of sheer terror. Too scared to open the doors now, the stupid French kid looked out in fear to the deadheads closing in over the yards and the road. One more time, Dustin yelled, “Open up!”
He had to think of something to do. Fast. They were blocking him in, their circle contracting with the minivan at its center. But it wasn’t the minivan they wanted. Zombies didn’t eat metal.
Dustin searched for a break in the circle. Under the car and they’d drag him out. Break through the window and they’d yank him right back through it, so once he got in the car, he had to floor it so no one had a chance to get hold. He punched the glass and yowled from pain.
The deadheads in the yards drifted to the sidewalks. Those in the road were cutting off the way the minivan had come. Dustin punched the window a second time. It hurt like hell. Turning, he swung his arm forward over his chest, locked it, and then threw his elbow back with all his strength.
It was agony. He thought he might have broken his arm with that blow, and still the window hadn’t broken. It wasn’t even cracked. Those on the sidewalks stepped down into the street. The woman with half a face was less than ten feet away. Dustin scrambled up onto the hood and then the roof of the minivan.
He’d wait until they were at the minivan and take a running leap over their heads. He would land outside the circle and dash off, leaving a streak of dust in his wake. Dash all the way back to Plantation and never tell them about the kid he left behind to die. That was what he was going to do.
The zombies crept in, step by step and Dustin almost pissing his pants. This was Scarlett’s fault. Bridger and Elena’s too. If they had just given him a squad, some support, at least some respect, then this wouldn’t have happened. When he got back there, he was going to give them a piece of his mind.
They were all in the road now. Men and women and kids, black and white and everything else, two hundred of them. The reek of decay and shit was strong in the air. The woman with the half-face also had a rotted breast. The skin had split along it. The other breast was pink and normal. It was also plump and high from obvious implants.
In the rotting breast, part of the implant was exposed. The clear sack of gel was streaked with blood and dirt, even some grass. Dustin stared at that for one heart-pounding moment, his stomach twisting with revulsion. And in that moment, they got to the minivan.
They’d try to get the kid, who was right at their eye level. Dustin prepared to jump, expecting them to look for a way to get to Baylen first. While they did that, Dustin was going to run like the wind to that motorcycle and hope the keys were around. If not, he’d just keep running.
A hand felt along the roof. He jerked away from it and gauged his leap. Three running steps along the roof, a jump down onto the hood and Dustin would levitate over them. Except that one was climbing onto the hood now. More hands were grasping along the edges of the roof. They weren’t bothering with the kid at all, not pounding on the windows or trying to open the doors. Dustin backed up over the trunk and crouched a little to start his run.
As his right foot lifted to commence the charge, a hand seized his ankle and he fell. He pushed back up but another hand snagged his wrist. A third hand was coming over the other side to get his left ankle. He kicked out and knocked it away, triumphant in this battle for a shining second. But more hands came along his shirt, the back of his jeans, and he was taken off the roof like a doll.
“No! No!” Dustin screamed. He body-surfed atop them, hands coming up all around to seize some portion of his person. His hands, his legs, his ass, his neck, he was borne along. Although he flailed, too many were holding on for his struggles to make any difference. They brought him down to the road. It was hot from baking in the sun all afternoon.
You fucking bitch! Dustin thought in hysterics to Scarlett. He twisted and turned beneath the gray gazes and curling lips, his skin scorching along his back. The zombies had his arms pinned out to the sides, and his legs were also being held down. The teeth coming into focus were gray and brown and black and sharp.
When the heads lowered, Dustin refused to believe it. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening! Teeth sank in all over him, piercing through his clothes to his body and tearing painfully.
They began to feast.
Dustin’s screams rang out for a long time,
his flesh taken away in chunks by many hungry mouths. In his last moment of life, with teeth digging into his windpipe and more in the little that remained of his crotch, a small opening appeared between the zombies. He looked through his remaining eye into the minivan, where Baylen was watching.
And smiling.
Chapter One
At night when Scarlett collapsed into bed, she held up her driver’s license to the candlelight to capture a piece of the ordinary world in which she’d once lived. She never could call it up and lose herself in it for a minute. Not even a second. The license belonged to someone else, the person she stopped being on March 24th after dropping two orders of gluten-free pecan waffles with salted caramel sauce and scrambled eggs on the side to a pair of tourists who had been driving her crazy.
The busboy had spilled a little water by accident on the man’s pants when they were first seated, and ever since then the man had been agitating Scarlett for a free meal in a joking yet not-joking way. His wife was ignoring it, but irritating Scarlett in her own way. How many inches across were the waffles? How thick? How much sugar did Scarlett estimate was in the caramel sauce? Did she know the grams of saturated fat? The woman was entering her meal into one of those diet apps on her phone. Scarlett had one of those herself, but didn’t make a group project out of it.
The obnoxious party at Table Four was shooting over the evil eye for refusing to break up their check into five separate ones, even though it said on every page of the menu that Yum-Yum didn’t do that. The nicer party at Table Two needed refills on their water and Rogelio was nowhere to be found, since he lived his life in a waking coma. Table Six had just been seated and the couple was looking around, not reading the menus since they came to Yum-Yum every week and ordered the same things. Table Eight had two out-of-control children throwing food and a father hiding behind a newspaper. The party at Table Ten had left five minutes ago and their dirty plates were still on the table.
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 2