Isaac rubbed at his ear and said, “Well, I think you got him.” There was a hole just above the bear’s eyes.
“You can’t be too careful,” Corey joked to cover his embarrassment. “Zombie bears are everywhere. I saw it on the news.”
Isaac picked up the bear and jounced it in his arm like a fussy baby. “Who’s a big, bad zombie bear? Who?”
“Give me that,” Corey said. He was taking the bear back, and the picture of Holly’s family, too. She should have those things. To lose everything and everyone at age five or six . . . she wasn’t going to remember much of her parents by the time she was an adult. She needed to have these two things as a touchstone. Corey didn’t have anything from his former life and he would kill for a picture of his parents. Maybe they could extend this trip a little more, to drive to his old house and . . .
“Did you hear that?” Isaac asked.
“No. What?”
“I thought I heard something outside.” He went to the window and lifted the lace curtain. Then he let go, reeling back and saying, “Jesus!” He dropped to the floor and Corey did the same.
“What is it?” Corey whispered.
“There’s a bunch of 3s out there, coming between the apartments and headed to the driveway!” Isaac hissed. “Six of them, seven. We can’t get out!”
They hadn’t locked the front door when they’d come in. The lock wasn’t going to do much when the glass in the door was broken. A shadow passed over Corey on the floor as a 3 walked by the window. When it was gone, he swept away the mess around the bedroom door and closed it. Isaac lifted a chair in the corner and propped it under the knob, both of them moving as silently as they could.
Corey wasn’t going to drive to Iowa for a picture of his parents, walk around their home and mourn the good old days. He’d settle for his memories. The boys returned to their crouch on the floor as another shadow passed by the window. Isaac whispered, “They must have heard the gunshot. We’ll just hide in here until they go away.”
A third shadow came to the window and hovered there. Staying as still as a statue, Corey was dismayed to hear rustling from the living room. It wasn’t the cat. “Uhhhhhhhh.”
“Fuck,” Isaac whispered, although his eyes were excited. After Corey got through telling about the slot machine escape in the casino at school tomorrow, Isaac could tell this part about getting trapped in Holly’s bedroom as 3s hunted for the cause of the noise. The story served them both right. Everyone was going to laugh at how Isaac had been pinching off a loaf, and at Corey blasting a hole through a teddy bear. This was going to be great fun before the bell rang for first in the morning, but right now, Corey wasn’t feeling the fun.
Should have stayed in Lincoln, genius.
“Uhhhhhhhh.”
They had to get all the way to the other street to reach the camper and they couldn’t leave the apartment. The shadow was still there at the window, and something was crashing around in the living room or kitchen. Isaac whispered, “Did you know they won’t eat each other first?”
“What?”
“It’s pheromones or something. They will eat each other, but they aren’t the first choice. One of my teachers was talking about it. They’ll go for an animal, or a 1 or 2 who isn’t having an episode. If they can’t find those things, they’ll make a meal out of their zombie friends. But they don’t smell as good to one another. I mean, would you rather have a nice filet mignon or a slice of cafeteria shoe leather beef? You’ll eat the shoe leather if you have to, if you’re really hungry, but you’d much rather have the filet mignon. And we’re the filet mignon.”
“They can smell us in here? Like bloodhounds?”
“I don’t think so. I’m just saying what the teacher told us.”
“Which teacher was it?”
“Ms. Ko, sophomore year science.”
“I didn’t have her.”
“Bad attitude, shouted a lot, but she had nice, dangling, bovine-like boobs.”
Corey’s mind wasn’t on boobs. It was on how to get out of here. There were at least two zombies in the apartment now, one with a baritone groan. The second had a much higher, feminine pitch. Then a third groaning started, overriding the others and lasting several beats longer each time it rang out.
If the shadow hadn’t been there, Corey would have been tempted to climb out the window and sprint for the camper. Damn, did he want to be locked inside it and looking out to the world through bars, not trapped in a sandwich of zombies on both sides of this room. The zombie with the longest groan was coming down the hallway, every step of his crunching on the detritus. “Uhhhh-uhhhhh-uhhhhhhhhh.” Going into the master bedroom, he staggered on something and hit the wall. Corey felt the vibration in his shoulder.
Isaac’s queries about sex from earlier came to mind. If these zombies had eaten recently, would they think Corey was looking pretty fine? Corey had never wanted to look less fine than he did now.
Oh God, I will never leave Lincoln again if You just get us out of here.
God would hear that plea and think I gave you Lincoln, dipshit. What more do you want from Me?
The shadow moved away from the window. Corey gauged the five steps it would take him to get to the curtain. He couldn’t get there without stepping on something, and that would give them away. When Isaac straightened, his intent clearly the same, Corey shook his head and waved his hand to stop him. The walls were thin, and the zombie in the bedroom would be able to hear everything they did.
The first two zombies were still in the living room and kitchen area, crashing around and moaning. The boys’ heads jerked to the door as a long scratch went down it on the other side. It was silent for a moment, and the scratching began again. “Uhhhhh-uhhhh-uhhhhhh.”
The door rattled in its frame. The zombie had bumped against it. Corey squeezed the gun so tightly that his hand throbbed. If he shot through the door and killed it, stormed through the house or climbed out Holly’s window . . . but there were others. Isaac had seen half a dozen or more of them. Three were in the apartment, but the other ones could be anywhere.
Thump. That one was harder. Thump.
Silence.
There were two crunching steps down the hallway. He was going away.
THUMP.
He had only taken those two steps away in order to take a short run at the door and hurl his weight against it. The boys exchanged a wild look as the door bulged in. Isaac leaned down to pick up some of the mess blocking him from the window. He moved it soundlessly to the bed and picked up another two handfuls, just enough to make space for his foot.
THUMP.
If the zombie broke through the door, Corey had to shoot. That would bring the other two to the hallway. The smart thing would be to stay put and defend this ground rather than leave and risk a zombie popping up behind them. How many could there be out there? A succession of cold winters had no doubt killed off tons of them. This wasn’t southern California. They couldn’t light fires. Also, regular people had moved to reclaimed space, so 3s were living off animals and each other. They couldn’t go hunting deer with bows and arrows or guns, so that left farm animals trapped behind fences and those would be long gone. Eating their zombie friends would reduce their numbers even further.
He was trying to make this less scary than it was. It wasn’t working. There were still six or seven 3s doing just fine in little Abanoxie, Kansas. Plenty more could have seen the camper going by as Isaac and Corey drove through the city. So getting past the zombies here didn’t mean there weren’t a lot more out there, headed this way for munchies or sex or both. The boys could dash to the camper just to find a hundred more zombies surrounding it.
THUMP.
Something jingled in Isaac’s hands. He froze in a hunched over position. It was a red yarn bracelet with silver jingles hanging off, a kindergarten project for the holidays. Corey stared in terror at the door as the jingle died. He put his finger on the trigger and aimed at the wood. If that thing had heard . . . if it h
ad heard . . .
“Uhhhhhh-uhhhh-uhhhhhhh.”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
It was going away. Corey braced himself to hear a rapid succession of footsteps returning to the door, a blow that would blast the door right off its hinges. That 3 had to be a male, and it was likely a big one.
Crunch. Crunch.
The crunches were getting smaller. He had gone around the corner.
“Oh God,” Isaac whispered. “Is he gone?”
“I think so,” Corey whispered. Isaac moved the handfuls to the bed, the bracelet getting off one more jingle as it was laid down. Corey sifted through the junk around his feet to make his own path to the window. When they got to it, they knelt down to peek out the holes in the lace at the bottom of the curtain. The holes were too small to see much of anything. The boys pressed to the wall on either side of the window and edged the curtain aside.
The crashing continued in the living room, but it was diminishing. One of the zombies had left the apartment, or two of them had. Corey looked through the glass. The bushes planted beneath the window hadn’t been tended in three years, and they had sprouted up to the lowest pane. The walkway was just beyond. Then there was a stretch of grass that ran to the next apartment. The backyards were small, and the fence knocked down. Corey could see through the gap into the backyard of another apartment.
A 3 female was clambering over the boards. All she had on was a ripped nightshirt that fell to her mid-thigh. It was so crusted with filth from being worn year after year that Corey couldn’t tell the original color. The woman was caked in dirt. A long brown mat of hair hung to her waist, moving as one piece when the boards rocked. She lurched to the grass, almost falling on her face.
“Not hot,” Isaac whispered.
Two more zombies came through the gap. One was an older man. He was completely naked and as hairy as a grizzly bear. How he saw where he was going was inexplicable, his shaggy brown and gray hair having grown over his face. His bush of pubic hair was so large, or his penis so small, that it was concealed from view. The nudity reminded Corey yet again of zombie sex. He wished Isaac had never put that shit into his head.
The last one was a child, ten or eleven years old, and he was wearing fairly clean clothing. Some 3s, as brain-dead as they were, could still manage to dress themselves if it wasn’t too complicated. The button and fly of the boy’s pants were undone and he didn’t have any underwear on, but he was covered. The T-shirt was on backwards and way too large on his skinny frame. Shoes and socks had fallen under the heading of too complicated. All three of them had ripped up skin on their feet.
Infection would kill off another percentage of Type 3s. But that wasn’t very helpful now. Corey was almost throttling the stuffed bear from fear. The picture of Holly’s family was still wedged into his armpit. “When they go away, we have to run to the camper. Maybe they’ll go to sleep at night and we can get out then. Did Ms. Ko say anything about their sleep habits?”
“No,” Isaac said. “Or maybe she did and my dad pulled me out that day. You were out there among the 3s right after the change. What were they like?”
They had been everywhere, regardless of night or day. Thumping, groaning, chasing, chomping . . . he and Dad had done everything possible just to stay the hell away from those creatures. The two of them once had to hide in the freezer compartment at a grocery store where they had gone to forage. Corey remembered how bad it had smelled from the rotting food. He had breathed it in for ages until Dad whispered to breathe from his mouth. They’d sneaked into the store at night, hoping it would be safer, and it hadn’t been.
Everything about that time came rushing back to him, and he couldn’t believe that he had willingly returned to it. Stupid. It just hadn’t seemed real at the time, a bad dream that wouldn’t quit. Then Dad died and Corey had found Leeanne. They had gotten lucky in their raids of other homes, finding tons of packaged food and no 3s in their way. After that they’d come to Lincoln and Corey had forgotten.
“It doesn’t stop,” Corey whispered. “Some are still going at night. We’ll just have to wait here until they move on.”
There was nothing to do but watch them then. Kneeling for hours at the window, they stared out at 3s going back and forth through the fence. The 3s were searching for them, going behind the other apartments and circling the one that Corey and Isaac were in. Others came into the living room and knocked around in there. Only one came down the hallway. It was a slightly brighter one that jiggled the knob, but when the door caught upon the chair, the 3 just gave up and crunched away.
Corey got bored after a while and cleared a place to sit and lean against the wall. Isaac stayed at the window, watching in fascination and giving them names according to their apparel or lack thereof. There was Nightshirt and No Pants, Big Nudist and Little Nudist, One Sock and Hair Dress, Kid Wonder and Hot Stuff. Hot Stuff was a man wearing women’s underwear. Corey counted up the names and startled to realize there were eight. Isaac provided a soundtrack for them, but in time he wore down and just watched quietly. When it got too boring to sit by the wall, Corey returned to looking out the window.
Hair Dress was a woman only wearing her hair, but it was so long and thick and matted that it had made a dress out of itself. She and One Sock were hanging around by the fallen fence. Corey said, “What happened to the others?” Isaac didn’t answer. How would he know anyway? It had been a stupid question.
Corey took it as a good sign that they were down to two. The other six had either forgotten what they were doing and gone off to do it somewhere else, or they were hunting in a different location. He resolved to wait for night. Some of them wouldn’t quit, but they couldn’t see in the dark any more easily than he could. The night would give Corey and Isaac a shield. It would be easier to get back to the camper if there wasn’t so much shit all over the sidewalks and street, a thirty-second and relatively silent sprint to safety, but there wasn’t any clear space to run. He’d have to use his light and pray the 3s didn’t understand that the beam was attached to a flashlight, and that flashlight was being held in a filet mignon hand.
One Sock went away and Hot Stuff returned. He was a burly guy, possibly the one who had tried to break down the door. The green panties weren’t so funny when you looked at his muscles, and at the brown stains all over his hands and arms. Wherever he was finding food, he ate well. Hair Dress shuffled around in the yards aimlessly, mats swinging from side to side and a gap in them showing off her ass. Isaac stared at her in quiet enjoyment, being a pervert, and Corey memorized every feature of the woman to describe to their friends. Isaac’s zombie valentine. The girls were going to scream.
The rest of the zombies didn’t reappear as the afternoon crept on toward evening. Corey let himself feel hopeful. They were going to get out of here and have the senior class hanging off their every word for the rest of the week. And the next time Isaac or anyone else suggested a field trip out of reclaimed Lincoln, Corey was going to say no. Once was more than enough. If he ever left it again, it would be on one of those twice-yearly commercial flights that only had destinations in other reclaimed locations.
“I wonder if they sleep in some of these apartments,” Corey said. Maybe they just tucked themselves in wherever they were, outside in the grass or a mud puddle, the middle of a road, or maybe they went inside and collapsed on beds or floors.
“Yeah?” Isaac asked after a long pause.
Since he didn’t seem interested, Corey kept his thoughts to himself. When Marquis and Judy were having episodes, neither was choosy about where they slept. They just did it in bed because they had been put there and were too spaced out to move anywhere else. Daniel had restrained Judy even though she was fairly calm because she was giving herself a bald patch with all the hair she was tugging free of her scalp. He’d also restrained Marquis to keep him from flopping out of the bed and hurting himself. And then Mason was obviously restrained as a 2, but Daniel had done it before Corey could make any scientific observ
ations about zombie sleeping habits. Holly had roamed loose during several episodes, leading to the sad demise of Foogles, but Janice kept guiding her back to bed all night long. Corey suspected the answer was anywhere. If they got tired, they just plopped down for a snooze.
Hair Dress bent over and gave them an eyeful. Corey threw a light punch at Isaac’s upper arm and said, “Dude, you’re sick. She’s a zombie chick. Off limits. Stick with Bessie.”
“Uhhh . . . okay,” Isaac said. His voice was reluctant. It served him right that Hair Dress took a dump at that moment, a brown log squeezing out through her cheeks and getting caught in her hair. It had apparently been the cork holding back contents under pressure. Diarrhea followed it in three explosive arcs that went everywhere, her hair, the backs of her legs, and the grass.
If someone gave Corey the choice of Hair Dress or Bessie, he’d pick the cow. The zombie woman continued her aimless shuffling around, and tracked through her own shit several times obliviously. If she got tired, Corey fully expected her to lay down in it.
Unperturbed, Isaac kept staring at her as evening settled over the apartment complex. Then Hair Dress passed through the fence and didn’t return. Now it was just Hot Stuff, who was gone for long periods of time as he circled the buildings. He didn’t really look like he was hunting them, or hunting anything at all. He was circling because he was circling, and that was pretty much the only reason.
It was almost time to go. Corey tensed, his muscles rehearsing the fast jog/walk he would take to the camper, the jumps over piles of garbage and swerves around fallen trees and trashcans. Open the door, climb in, slam the door, hit the lock. Hit the lock before he did anything else, his seatbelt, flipping up the visor, looking into the back just out of nerves. No one could have broken in. He wasn’t going to blink or even breathe until that gray plastic tab had been pushed down to lock the door. He wouldn’t breathe until Isaac’s had gone down, too. Click. Click.
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 18