Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5]

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Then they could attend to other things, like Isaac driving out of Abanoxie and Corey wobbling around in back to get some bottles of soda and snacks from under the table. They didn’t need to refuel yet. If the gauge dipped too low, they’d fill up the tank in Nebraska City. If they couldn’t get that far, then they’d stop on the road and wait until day. Corey wasn’t going out there at night to fiddle about with fuel. He wanted to know what was around him on all four sides.

  Hot Stuff rounded 112 ½ again. Once he was out of sight, Corey straightened to inspect the lock on the window. Afraid to walk through the house, that he’d find one of them asleep and blocking the front door, or awake and hanging out in the cat shit and trash, he was thinking that out the window was the best option. They’d have to climb over the hedges, but that wouldn’t be too hard. Then the sidewalk would carry them back to the driveway, the driveway to Cobb and Cobb to Mazer and Mazer to GOOD TIMES. It wasn’t that far.

  The window had a latch lock like he had had in his old bedroom growing up. All he had to do was turn it and then he could open the window. And pray it didn’t squeak or wasn’t jammed. If it did either of those things, he’d have to pull it down and they would hide and watch until the coast was clear. When Holly was older, Corey would tell her about the time he spent in her old bedroom. He’d ask if she remembered making the red jingle bracelet. That part didn’t belong in their school story. It was too sad.

  The sky darkened, the sun sinking lower and lower like the blue beneath it had had its plug pulled and was draining out below the horizon. Hot Stuff had been passing the window every ten to fifteen minutes for some time, at Corey’s best estimate. “Do you think we should wait for full night or risk it now?” They could make use of this last light, get to the camper without having to shine around the bright beam of the flashlight.

  Isaac hit him on the upper arm. It was a lot harder than the blow Corey had delivered for him being gross about Hair Dress. All too aware that he had to be quiet, BE QUIET shouted those signs throughout the apartment, he rubbed his arm and whispered in anger, “Hey! What gives?”

  Then he saw Isaac’s face. He knew that look all too well.

  No one home.

  Isaac was having an episode. That was insane! He wasn’t ill. He hadn’t complained once about a sore throat or just feeling crappy; he hadn’t had the sniffles on the drive. He was healthy, like he always was. They didn’t even know if he was a Type 1 or a Type 2. His family never got sick, so none of them had ever been graded. And Isaac had been out of school so much that he’d missed the handful of episodes and chain reaction incidents to happen there. He just worked and worked and worked on the farm, where the Wisquins had little contact with anyone. That was why he’d wanted to go on this field trip in the first place, because the world had changed and his was pretty much the same.

  He had been triggered into a chain reaction. Both of them had seen the possible Type 1 in Topeka, twitching on the ground, but that had only been for as long as it took the camper to pass by. Even Mason and Marquis weren’t likely to have been triggered by the lousy two seconds that man had been in view, and they were so oversensitive that it was nuts. But Isaac had listened to the zombies in the house for a long time, all of their moaning and thumping, and he had been watching them for hours now out the window. He hadn’t ever done that before. He hadn’t ever had the opportunity to stare at zombies to his heart’s content.

  Corey was trapped in the bedroom with someone in an episode. Someone who was taller and outweighed him, had muscles twice his size and ran faster than he did. Someone who could snap his neck or pummel him to pulp if he wanted.

  It wasn’t quite at that stage. Maybe it wouldn’t go that far. If Isaac was just a 1 . . . but the punch hadn’t had much restraint behind it. That was much more of a Type 2 reaction.

  This was a joke. This was all a joke. Isaac was just tweaking Corey like he tweaked everyone, wanting to snatch away the punch line of the tale by fooling Corey. And then he freaked out that I had turned into a zombie and I chased him all the way back to the camper! You should have seen his little legs fly! Wheeeeee!

  Laughter.

  “Stop fooling around!” Corey said.

  Nothing. Isaac looked spacey. If this was a prank, then he was the best actor in the world. His eyes changed between vaguely present and totally blank, and that only went one way to more blank in an episode.

  This was real. Frantically and hopelessly, Corey said, “Come out of it, man!”

  Isaac should have said I’m out of it, man! He didn’t say anything. He just stared at Corey in the dim bedroom.

  Corey would be doing the driving back to Lincoln. He’d shut Isaac up in the bedroom. There weren’t any restraints that he had seen, but he could pull out some of those boxes from the shower and block the door in case Isaac freaked out. The curtains! Those could be fashioned into restraints. That was what Corey would do, get Isaac into the camper, lead him to the bedroom and rip down those curtains while Isaac was still spaced out. The curtains, the cords holding the boxes in place . . . Corey wasn’t without resources. He’d tie Isaac up, tie him to something, block the door, and get the hell to Lincoln. Mr. Wisquin could yell all he wanted, but he’d have to stop to find something better to use for restraints on his overlarge son’s bed.

  Waiting for darkness was no longer a choice. Corey had to move now. Worried that he wouldn’t be able to get Isaac to perform the fine and gross motor movements necessary to climb out the window, Corey abandoned that plan and went to the door. He pulled away the chair from under the knob and set it down by the overturned hamper. Isaac was still staring at the spot where Corey had been standing.

  “Isaac, come on!” Corey whispered. There was no reaction for several seconds, and then Isaac turned and came to the door. He didn’t try to step on the cleared spaces, so every footfall crunched, crackled, or squeaked on something. If one of those 3s was in the master bedroom or the hallway, they’d hear the sound punching right through the tissue paper walls.

  Oh God, save me. Corey had the framed picture and Brown Bear under his left arm, and he held the gun in his right. He didn’t know whether to point it out to the hallway or at Isaac. He chose the hallway. Isaac hadn’t gone that far into his episode yet. There had been the one punch and none had followed. Mason turned into a pinwheel of stiff-armed blows when he got triggered, but the full force craziness took a little time.

  But Corey didn’t know how long Isaac had been sinking into this. Forced to go with the enemy he knew, he shifted the gun to the door and turned the knob awkwardly. He should leave the bear and picture behind, but he couldn’t bring himself to let them fall to the floor and join the junk there.

  “We’re going home, Isaac,” Corey whispered. They were going home and staying there. Some sense might still be in Isaac’s big head, recognizing Corey’s voice and trusting it.

  Opening the door, Corey checked down the hallway. No one was there, and no one was coming. Isaac paused and came after him. They walked past the master bedroom. No one was in there either, but the bones had gotten moved around. Going to the bathroom, Corey looked in. No one. No one but the bones. So he kept on. The sound of their feet was making so much noise. There was nothing to be done for it except pray that Hot Stuff and his friends were too far away to overhear.

  He paused at the corner to the living room, collected his flagging courage, and peeked. It was the same, heaps of trash and everything a little more smashed and torn by the zombies over the afternoon. The smell of cat shit was stronger, either from a fresh dump being taken somewhere or just stirred up by zombie feet.

  Something could be hiding behind the kitchen counter. Yet nothing was responding to the noise, and zombies didn’t tend to hold back. He guided Isaac across the living room and to the front door, which was wide open. The sign was still on the wall. BE QUIET. They couldn’t be quiet.

  Someone had not been quiet back when Holly lived here with her parents. Or all of them had been, and the zomb
ies had beaten down the door anyway and surprised them. Corey pressed his shoulder to the sign and looked around outside, just a step away from the stoop.

  All clear. For now. Darkness was coming down hard and fast. He was going to need the flashlight soon. Isaac couldn’t hold anything, so Corey would have to grip the flashlight in his left hand as he still pinned the bear and frame to his chest. There was no way on earth the handgun was going down the back of his pants. He should have spent all that time in the bedroom searching for a backpack of Holly’s, a bag, anything. It was too late for that now.

  Isaac had had a gun, too. Corey assumed it was down the back of his pants, or left in the bedroom. In any case, it wasn’t in his hands.

  His heart hammering in his chest, Corey slipped onto the stoop. A whispered uuuuuuhhhhhhh came from behind him. Isaac was checking out further by the second, and God only knew when he’d check back in. A chain reaction didn’t just stop immediately because the stimulus was removed. It persisted, for minutes or hours, or even days. It depended entirely on the person.

  Wow, did Corey hope it was minutes, that he’d be tying down Isaac in the camper and hear a lascivious whisper. My safeword is cow, okay? Cow! Careful now, lover, I’ve got a tender tush. And that would be the final laugh they’d get at school over their misadventure. Then the bell would ring and the teacher yell at them to get in their seats and shut their pieholes.

  Corey crept down the walkway. To keep the sound down some, he moved a watering can into the grass to keep Isaac from stepping on it or kicking it. They reached 112 and continued along the wall.

  If the stimulus wasn’t removed, the Type 1 or Type 2 in a chain reaction usually just kept on having it. That was true ninety-five percent of the time. In the last five percent, the person came out of it, had a brief spell of cognizance, saw the stimulus still there, and sank into an episode again. And that was just about all that Corey had in his head concerning zombies, gleaned from home observations, comments at school, and bits of news reports on television. He hadn’t made a study of it. He wished he had.

  When he got to the end of 112, he stopped to listen and watch rather than go straight out to the driveway. Isaac walked into his back, unable to read his body language or understand the situation. Rocking forward, Corey pulled himself upright. Isaac grunted, and then walked into his back a second time.

  So they were going on. There was no reasoning with him. That might get Corey whacked again, standing still and talking when Isaac wanted to move. They walked into the driveway, Corey’s head swiveling right and left to see both ends. Isaac pushed him, an aggressive chest bump to make him go faster. So Corey went faster, leading Isaac around a car seat on the ground that hadn’t been there before. The zombies were decorating, or it had just gotten kicked there over the course of the afternoon.

  They passed the pool. It was too dark to see the nasty water and the lawn chairs at the bottom. Every avenue between pairs of apartments could have 3s in it, panicking Corey as they approached one after another. But each was empty, and he thought hysterically that the zombies had gone to bed. Bath time, tucked in, read a story, nighty-night. Reaching the end of the line of apartments, he wanted to stop and peek into the road. Isaac didn’t give him that chance, so boldly they walked out into the open.

  Corey.

  It was too late for admonishments. Wriggling around, he snagged the flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on. The picture shifted and he gripped down hard. Isaac said, “Uhhhhhhhh.”

  This was so bad. This was so very, very bad. The beam slid over the landfill of a street, the downed trees that had cracked the sidewalks. There could be Type 3s squatting behind the car or the big trunks, lying on their stomachs behind or within the trashcans. Mazer was all the way at the end of the block, and GOOD TIMES was out of sight.

  “Uhhhhhhh.”

  It wasn’t Isaac. One of the 3s was out there in the apartment complex. The sound trailed over and Isaac whispered, “Uhhhhhh.”

  Corey chose to walk on the small patch of the sidewalk that was clear. Trundling along at his heels, Isaac groaned a little more loudly. Corey blurted, “Shhh!” and went faster to make that occupy Isaac’s mind.

  The 3 struck something and it clattered. Echoes of it rang over the quiet homes. Then something came out of a window in a house across the street. Not came, Corey thought. Oozed. A human shape oozed down the wall to the grass below. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female, one of the 3s they had seen before or a new one.

  The grass was so tall that the figure was swallowed up in it. The tops of the grass waved as it moved around the lawn. Corey got to the end of the clear patch and climbed over a fallen tree. The trunk hadn’t snapped altogether, and the tree was stubbornly clinging to life. The branches that weren’t smashed underneath it were full of leaves. The ones on the lowest branch scratched along his arm.

  Isaac didn’t come over after him. Corey was holding too much to take his arm and guide him. “Isaac, we have to get to the camper!” he whispered. The grass across the street waved vigorously. The creature was crawling through it, and coming their way.

  The Type 3 who had made the clattering noise groaned, and that was fixating Isaac. Worried that the flashlight was drawing the one in the grass, Corey clicked it off. There was still the barest streak of light in the sky, making dark hulks out of what blocked them from the camper. He returned the flashlight to his pocket and wrapped his fingers around Isaac’s wrist.

  “Uhhhhhhh,” moaned the 3 still behind one of the apartments.

  Corey had to get Isaac’s attention. Quietly, Corey groaned, “Uhhhhhh.”

  With excruciating slowness, Isaac’s head turned. Corey pulled at his wrist and Isaac took a clumsy step over the trunk. After a pause, he pulled over his other leg. The grass trembled in the yard, no longer creeping to the sidewalk but going in a parallel line to the road. The way it had oozed . . . its jelly limbs finding some strange new way to move that was in no way reminiscent of the human form to which they were attached . . .

  The boys walked unsteadily over the broken chunks of concrete. Then they moved back onto a portion of undamaged sidewalk, but only for a few paces. A car parked haphazardly over it forced them into the yard to go around. Tripping on a kid’s plastic bucket concealed in the grass, Corey let go of Isaac and flailed to keep his balance. The framed picture squirted out from under his arm, hit the bumper of the car, and bounced off. It disappeared into the grass.

  Forget the picture. They were going to die if they didn’t get to that camper. Holly would never know what he had gotten, and then lost on her behalf.

  A higher-pitched groan began in the house only fifteen feet away. Something was moving in there. Corey got Isaac’s wrist and pinned it between his arm and his side. They passed a recycling bin and took the easiest path through the mess by stepping off the curb into the street. Whispering, “Uhhhhhhh,” when Isaac paid more attention to the groaning from that house, Corey pulled at him relentlessly.

  The creature in the grass was cutting through it to the sidewalk. Heedless of noise now, Corey yanked Isaac into a jog. Glass cracked until their shoes and pieces of wood skidded over the cement. Mazer was coming up. Corey could even see the front of the camper, that wonderful, beautiful piece of crap thing.

  As they jogged by the car that had been left in the middle of the street, someone moaned from within it. And Isaac halted. Corey opened his mouth to give another guttural groan, and a stiff-armed backhand blow landed across his cheek. He crashed down, a shard of glass slicing into his hand. Debris crunched and Corey rolled to avoid the foot swinging out to kick him in the face.

  It was too late.

  It was too late to get Isaac into the camper, and Corey would never be able to hold him down to get the restraints on. All that was left was to leave him here. Scrambling up and jerking the glass out of his hand, Corey backed away and said, “Please, Isaac, please . . .” You’re my best friend, and I don’t mean out of the junk drawer. Please snap out
of this. Corey couldn’t leave him behind. He was ashamed to even consider it.

  The 3 in the car moaned.

  “Uhhhhhhhhhh,” Isaac echoed. He was mad that his kick hadn’t made contact. Then he spaced out, the new kick he was swinging back for coming to a halt in mid-air.

  It wasn’t going to last. Leaving him frozen in that cockeyed position, Corey turned and fled. Teddy bear under his arm, gun in one hand, flashlight snapping into the other and lighting the way, he hurdled over trees and trashcans with his breath coming out in short, terrified bursts. He made it to Mazer and leaped like a ballerina over another trashcan. He had to slide the key into the lock, jerk it out and open the door, climb in, slam and lock it. He needed to get out the keys now, have them prepared for when he . . .

  Isaac had the keys.

  Oh fuck. Isaac had the keys in his jeans pocket! Corey was going to die in this shithole zombieland in Nowhere, Midwest, his bones strewn around in the trash all over the road. He would be the gristle stuck in their unwashed teeth, the meat swelling their bellies, the eventual brown crust smeared between their ass cheeks, he was going to be dead, dead, dead because he was the biggest idiot to have survived the zombie apocalypse. The only reason he wasn’t about to become a Darwin Award was his age.

  He ran to GOOD TIMES because he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe he hadn’t locked his door, maybe there was some ladder he hadn’t noticed that would let him climb to the roof and no one would notice him up there in the darkness.

  Isaac was coming after him, his steps steady and menacing. As Corey looked over his shoulder, the figure from the grass slithered onto the sidewalk and scuttled along at gold medal speed.

  Corey dashed to the driver’s side door and jerked on the handle. It was locked. He tried again harder. Unimpressed, the door stayed locked. Sprinting around to the other side, he jerked on that handle and found it also locked. Of course it was locked because he had locked it! He had made damn sure to lock it to keep out zombies, but now that lock was keeping out him.