He pulled over and over at it in desperation and finally released it to tug at the bars. He’d rip them off and smash the window, wriggle inside and figure out something from there. But the bars had been fastened strongly, and they were around all of the windows of the camper. Only the windshield didn’t have bars. He looked around crazily for something to smash the glass. Nothing! There was junk everywhere but nothing to break the window, let him in for a crash course on how to hotwire . . .
“Uhhhhhhhh.”
I am going to die.
He was going to die holding a teddy bear. Sliding it between the bars and window, he gripped his gun and waited for Isaac to round the hood. His finger trembled on the trigger. The footsteps stopped and silence came down over the street. In the fright of it, Corey realized he should have smashed the glass with the gun. Or shot it through the bars, weakened it around the hole and beat it in. Then he could have lifted the tab and unlocked the door.
Something seized his ankle.
Corey screamed and wrenched away from GOOD TIMES. The slithering one had come under the camper and had his ankle tight in its fists. It was a shrunken, twisted thing, with bits of long hair hanging in its eyes and the rest of its scalp picked clean. Corey tumbled onto the sidewalk. The flashlight was knocked out of his grip. He fired the gun at its head. The boom was explosive. The hands around his ankle slackened and he kicked the thing off in revulsion.
They had all responded to the sound of the shot earlier. They were going to respond again. The first to respond was Isaac, who had resumed his steady, heavy treads. Corey snapped the gun to him and got back up, begging, “Don’t make me shoot, man! Isaac. It’s me, Corey. We’re friends. Get out the keys and I’ll drive us home.”
Isaac growled. His hand didn’t slide to his pocket; the words had made no impact on his brain. Coming up the dip in the driveway to the sidewalk, his hulking shape was aimed for Corey. A sound came from the house behind them, the creak of a door opening.
Forgive me. Corey pulled the trigger. Isaac took another two steps and Corey fired again. Then he spun around and fired at the figure in the doorway. As Isaac fell to his knees, Corey jumped for him. The night was filling with thuds and thumps, rattling voices raised in groans. This was a fucking nest of zombies and he needed those keys!
He sank his fingers into Isaac’s pocket, snaked his index around the ring and saw stars as Isaac head-butted him. Corey flew over the sidewalk and smacked into the door of the camper. Hot blood slicked down the side of his face as he lay there, too stunned to move.
“Uhhhhh . . . whuu . . .” Isaac whispered. It sounded like he was trying to get out a word. “Whuuu . . . korrr . . .” Blood rolled thickly down his shirt in two places.
Another door opened. “Uhhhhhhhh.” The debris was snapping and scratching under feet on the other side of the camper. Corey’s senses came back in full just as Isaac’s smidgen of sense quit the scene. The key ring was in Corey’s hand. Feeling for the one to GOOD TIMES, he threw himself at the door and jammed it in.
The lock gave. He pried open the door, and then he was jerked bodily away from the camper. Tossed through the air like a rag doll, he held onto the gun as he sprawled in the grass. Isaac stood over him, tall and powerful and empty, and reached down to claim his prize.
“I’m sorry,” Corey said, and fired through Isaac’s head.
Isaac fell, first to his knees, and then onto his back. Corey jumped over him and climbed into the camper, slamming the door shut and elbowing the lock just as the door handle began to jiggle on the driver’s side. He pushed the key into the ignition and shouted as the camper roared and shuddered. The headlights illuminated a dozen figures on the lawns and in the road of Mazer Street. More were coming from Cobb. He pressed on the gas and pulled the steering wheel into a U-turn. It was too tight of a turn and he bumped up onto the sidewalk. Running over a mailbox, he yanked on the wheel and brought the camper down to the road. The jolt shook the whole of GOOD TIMES. The lock on a cabinet came loose and everything packed onto the shelves crashed to the counter and floor.
A fist came down on the windshield. One of the 3s was holding onto the bars over Corey’s window and swinging at the only uncovered glass. Corey stomped on the brakes and the zombie lost its hold. It fell to the pavement and the back tires of the camper ran over it. GOOD TIMES lurched, a symphony of scrapes coming from the back as kitchen goods tumbled over each other.
The teddy bear shook and shivered, its fur flattened against the passenger side window. Another zombie was attached to those bars and was tugging at it. The bear was so big that it blocked out a view of the zombie itself. That was okay. Corey didn’t need to see the face of Hair Dress or One Sock, or a new zombie come to play. He swerved the camper to shake it loose, but the teddy bear was still jerking. Let the zombie hang on then! It couldn’t do that forever, and it couldn’t get in.
He struck another one in the street and flew away from Mazer, taking the turn at such a sharp angle that he thought for a moment the camper was going to flip. In his panic, the roundabout way they had taken to get to Cobb Street was crystal clear in his mind. Shooting from one road to another, he reached the destroyed downtown and drove over another zombie who ran out of an alley and right in front of the wheels. As the camper lurched up and down, the teddy bear suddenly went still.
Plates scraped around wildly in the back. The cups caught air at each turn and ricocheted off the closet door and lower kitchen cabinets. Corey swung onto the highway and zoomed away from Abanoxie, blood and tears spilling down his cheeks. It was so wrong to be alone in the Wisquins’ camper. Isaac should have been sitting in the other seat, picking at his butt crunch and bitching about his crazy father, planning to draw a picture of naked students holding hands with naked zombies.
The one thing Corey liked about this new world, the one lousy thing, he had lost. He had killed.
They could be eating Isaac now, taking test bites and then sinking in for a meal. Or having sex with his corpse. He was going to be another forgotten pile of bones in that graveyard city. Every turn of the wheels was taking Corey farther away from him.
They never should have left Lincoln. But they had. Blood soaked his cheek and shirt, rained down warm into his jeans. The cut on his head hurt horribly, and so did the one on his hand. It was leaving blood on the steering wheel. He wasn’t going to pull over and get towels from the bathroom to hold to his injuries, or explore what was in the first aid kit. There wasn’t anything on the planet that was going to make this camper stop except lack of fuel.
Oh my God, I killed Isaac. I just killed my best friend.
In his head, his mother and father stared at him speechlessly.
Chapter Five
She had only gone into the girls’ bedroom when necessary after tying Holly down, to change her diaper and feed her, and to wipe the snot off her nose and cheeks. Holly was so congested that she had to breathe out of her mouth if she wanted to breathe at all. Yellow snot, remnants of the bright pink blush, oily hair, she was a mess. There was a bump blossoming on her forehead from banging it into the door. She looked neglected and abused, just crying out for social services to take her away to a better home.
The bathroom had been so covered in powder that Janice had had to vacuum it up. Then she’d mopped to get the last of it, and ended up on all fours cleaning even more from the grout with an old toothbrush. Her stomach tweaked in pain the whole time.
During the morning visit to the bedroom, she had to redo the right wrist cuff. In the nearly non-stop struggling through the night, or due to Janice not putting it on sufficiently, Holly had prized her hand free. Only by the grace of some divine power had she not figured out how to undo the cuff on her other wrist and the ones around her ankles. The girl had pulled the wrist cuff off while Janice was fast asleep in her bed, music playing to drown out the groans and jerking. She could have woken to a finger jammed in her eye socket, her nose being bitten off, or a blade in her gut if Holly had retrieved the one s
till behind the refrigerator.
Holly growled and flailed as the cuff was put back on. They might want to think about investing in heavier-duty restraints. That was depressing. Or one of those emergency restraint chairs so she could be sitting up when she was sick. Copious amounts of mucus were caked in her hair. When Janice had a stuffed up nose, she wanted to be sitting up to let it drain, not laying flat on her back. That was added to her mental list of things to discuss with Daniel once he arrived home. Holly was only going to get bigger, and Janice wasn’t going to be able to overpower her for long. And she was too smart for anyone’s good when she was having an episode.
Judy had gotten roast beef slices after school the day before, but Holly had only swallowed a little in disinterest. She didn’t like it being cooked. Janice had given up and sent Judy over to Alice’s to request raw hamburger meat. Alice always kept an emergency supply in her freezer. After thawing it, chunk after chunk was poked into Holly’s mouth. Janice did it again this morning, Holly chewing with her mouth open so she could breathe. Once she tried to snap down on Janice’s fingers.
Janice would have screamed to see her own children eating raw hamburger meat. Flown across the kitchen, grabbed it out of their hands, given them a lecture, and shuddered when telling one of her friends what she’d caught her kids up to this time. And here she was now, feeding globs of it to Holly for dinner and now breakfast. The girl stared at the ceiling. Her jaw worked and bits of meat came out to slip down her cheeks on rivers of saliva. But most of it went down.
When the girl was fed and tended, Janice closed the door and went to the bathroom to wash her hands and face, twice with scalding water and soap. She didn’t want to catch this illness and have an episode herself, although in a dark, secret place in her soul, it tempted her. She would just check out of her head for a few days, and sometimes that was preferable. Let Daniel take care of everything, which he would. He didn’t make her heart race with his underwhelming looks, but his competence did.
He would be home in the evening. Mason and Marquis remained in Alice’s care and she didn’t mind having them for days at a stretch; she had a huge basement tricked out into a rec room and just sent all the kids down there to play when they were driving her nuts upstairs.
Corey was still gone, and so was the minivan. Judy was such a non-entity in the laundry room that Janice neither heard her arrive home yesterday nor leave today for school. So she basically had the house to herself and Snuggle Butt, who she released only when the door to Holly’s room was closed. He would be returned to confinement if Janice had to go back in there for anything.
She puttered around from room to room, feeling like she should be arranging some fun things for the two of them to do once the episode ended. An arts-and-crafts project, a shopping trip, but all she saw in her head was a tiny monster at her side. A marker slack in her hand, dull eyes watching coins shoot out of the machine . . .
This was Janice’s life, and it wasn’t the one she had signed up for. Peel back one rotten layer and there was just another one underneath it. She couldn’t bring herself to arrange anything. All she did was the basic chores to keep the house running, and flop down on the sofa to watch television. It was early afternoon, something clicking with every revolution of the dryer and the cat happily settled behind her to groom.
She should have picked farming. If she survived being a foster parent to these five, she was done. Have her do whatever needed to be done to corn; she’d bend her back and wipe sweat from her brow in the gardens. Be able to feel like she had accomplished something rather than just treading water. She wasn’t cut out for this life she had now. But no one had been cut out for the world after the change, except perhaps for the rovers who enjoyed risking their lives as they drove around the country in search of survivors and goods.
She’d be a pilot. She’d run for government. She’d do anything but this.
A game show rerun ended on the television and she muted it as the cheery music of its replacement got underway. It always came on too loudly. In the sudden silence, she heard the repeated rasps of the cat’s tongue and faint struggling from the girls’ bedroom. Reluctantly, she got up to check it out. Finding Holly’s hand loose had unnerved her entirely.
The cat. She turned around and picked up the cat, who sagged in her hands with an air of resignation. Summarily dropped off in the laundry room, Snuggle Butt made a sad sound as Janice closed and locked the door.
It’s for your own good, Janice thought. Then she went down the hallway and opened the door. The strap kept Holly from turning her head much. Jerking her arms the little distance they could go, she sneezed. A cloud of droplets billowed up into the air and fell back directly onto her.
Holly whimpered and tried to turn her head to keep the contents of her sneeze off her face. The strap held her fast. Realizing there was presence within the girl that hadn’t been there earlier, Janice hurried to the bed to gauge the situation. Holly saw her and struggled frantically, her eyes filled with fear and tears.
She was back. The episode had ended. Janice’s hands flew to the cuff around the girl’s left wrist and she said, “Baby, baby, baby, I’m here.”
Miserable from her cold, Holly sat up and immediately slumped over to rub between her eyes. Janice got her into the shower to steam out her head, the girl giving her a questioning look at the lack of curtain. None of that she remembered, and it was a small mercy for a young and gentle soul. Turning the showerhead so the streams wouldn’t splatter so much on the floor, Janice said, “It got a tear and I had to throw it out. Do you want to buy a new one with me? A trip to the store?”
Holly shook her head. The look in her eyes was a tad suspicious about the shower curtain rip. She suspected that she had done something to it, that Janice was protecting her from the truth. For a moment, Holly looked as old and tired and defeated as Janice felt.
“Are you too sick for an errand?” Janice asked.
Holly nodded. That was fine. They didn’t have the minivan anyway and it would be a long walk. Holly shouldn’t be spreading her germs around the store. Janice spread their ragged old towels on the floor to soak up what splattered. Then she gave Holly some privacy to wash off and made a plate of food in the kitchen.
They ended up back on the sofa to watch television and eat, the girl in a fresh nightgown and having put her princess cape over it. She snuggled up at Janice’s side, both of them under a blanket, and they ate every last cracker in the house. The wheel spun on the screen, cheering winners clapped their hands and jumped up and down, and the cat yowled from the laundry room. Janice opened the door and grooming resumed on the back of the sofa, punctuated by indignant feline grumbles at the interruption. The right thing to do was call Alice, have her send the boys back, but Janice told herself that the germs in the house needed time to die.
The show ended and Janice asked, “Another one?” Holly shook her head and Janice snapped off the television. The girl leaned into her and sighed heavily. Then the lock snapped in the front door. Daniel was back early. But the door opened to admit Corey, and Janice forgot her irritation at his theft of the minivan. A river of blood had dried down his head and seeped into his clothes, which were filthy and torn. His hand was cut up, too. Tucked under his arm was something brown and hairy. “What happened to you?” Janice asked in alarm.
Brokenly, he said, “I fucked up.”
They all fucked up. This was a fucked-up world. Janice’s mother would have been shocked at the vulgarity, but she hadn’t lived a vulgar existence like this one. “Do you need the hospital? Your head . . .”
“No. It’s just a cut. It looks worse than it is.” Corey pulled out the object from under his arm and held it out in both hands like a child, the child he still was. But it was the man he was growing into that would admit to fucking up rather than waiting to be caught.
Holly’s eyes had widened on what he was offering to her, which was the most sorry looking teddy bear on the face of the earth. One of its arms was mis
sing and fluff was pushing out of the gap. An ear was trailing down the side of its head, hanging by a single thread. The felt patch on the left foot was half-ripped off, and a glob of fluff was protruding. A bow straggled at its throat and there was a hole blasted dead center into the bear’s head just above its eyes.
“Brown Bear!” Holly shouted at the top of her lungs. Janice jumped, both from the volume and from hearing that hidden voice so unexpectedly. The girl leaped off the sofa, used tissues and the blanket and cracker crumbs all raining down to the floor. She seized the tattered bear from Corey and exclaimed, “Brown Bear!”
There was time to ask Corey what had happened later. Right now, the two of them just watched as Holly hugged the ragged stuffed animal. A little more fluff squeezed out of the arm when she compressed its belly. Beaming, she held it out to look the bear over. “Brown Bear.”
She hadn’t ever shown such passion for any of the multitude of stuffed animals and dolls in her bedroom. Something about this one was special. Repeating, “Brown Bear. Brown Bear,” Holly offered it to Janice. “Brown Bear.”
She was trying to convey some want or need. Spots of color were in her cheeks. They weren’t from her cold but excitement. When Janice took the bear, Holly pushed the stuffing back into the hole left by the missing arm and said, “Brown Bear?”
Push her.
Janice hated doing that. It felt so unkind, so disrespectful of what the girl had suffered. But she said, “What do you want me to do, Holly?”
Holly didn’t answer. She pushed the last of the stuffing back into the torso and sat beside Janice to do the same with the foot. It was obvious what she wanted, for Janice to sew the bear back together, stick a purple heart patch over the hole in the front of the head, and as Janice checked, the back of the head, too. Corey sat down on the floor and leaned against the sofa, choosing a spot much closer to Janice than he normally did. He wrung his hands. Whatever he had done, they’d fix it, and if it couldn’t be fixed, they’d just cope with it.
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 20