by Rudolph, J.
“Okay by me.” she responded, her voice held a tone of comfort that made Kyle's defensive walls melt away. He looked like he was relieved to know that no one was going to make him try to forget his mom. Kyle wanted to know someone was going to take care of him and care about what he needed. He didn't want his mom to be replaced and Mercedes understood that. He climbed up next to her on the trailer and rested his head on her shoulder.
“Thanks auntie.” he said.
Everyone in the group seemed to be glad that there was someone for all the kids and that everyone was going to have someone to take care and love them. It was a major lift to everyone's spirits. Everybody needed somebody.
And on that note, we needed to get moving.
Truck Stop
After the break was over and everyone was settled into the trailer, Drew and I joined Trent in the cab. Trent fired up the truck. With a quick check of the gauges, Trent declared that fuel was going to be a priority on somewhat short order. We pulled back onto the silent freeway and started driving. The sun was starting to put out the slightest glimmer of light in the east, at last marking an end to the long night we had. Drew dozed off quickly from his spot on the floor between our seats.
"Are we likely to find a station that has diesel fuel?" I asked softly, not wanting to wake Drew.
"Hope so... I'm counting on the fact that the desolation out here has made it important for the gas stations to be multipurpose." Trent replied in the same soft voice I had adopted. "The lighting is what's going to make things hard. Something tells me no one put up solar panels before leaving these stations. With no signs lighting the way it's going to be hard to know the gas station is even there. Sure the sun is starting to come up but it's still going to be a bit before there is enough light to really see by."
I hadn't thought of that.
"Wait, I just had a thought. How do we pump the gas without the electronic pumps?" I asked.
"Never fear. We just have to find the pump vents. We pop those off, drop a hose down it, and start siphoning. Now they are likely locked but the keys are going to be inside. The other thing we need to do is find some fast food joint that fries its food." I must have given him a puzzled look because he went on explaining himself. "The oil they fry in works as fuel. It was part of what had Joey so excited about using this as an escape vehicle. If tank one has regular fuel and fires up the truck, after a bit the engine heat thins the oil in tank two. We can then switch over to tank two and drive on it. As long as we switch back to tank one a while before we stop to clear out the oil we'll be fine. We can't stop on oil because once the engine cools so will the oil and it will be too thick to start it back up again." He looked a bit smug in his geek filled knowledge base. It made me proud to see that look.
Before too long coming out of the predawn shadows was a gas station and a fried chicken place. What a stroke of luck! Trent pulled in the parking lot and got out. Drew woke up when we stopped. I went around to the back with Drew and explained to the group what was going on. Drew climbed in the trailer to hang out with his friends for a little bit. I asked Tyreese and Tanya if they would help. They agreed. We all collected in front of the truck to hash out a game plan. When it was said and done we decided that Trent and I would take on the gas station while Tanya and Tyreese would collect the oil. We made sure that everyone was armed and ready.
When Trent and I got to the door we saw a sign, the paper showing age even in the limited light and the ink of the marker obviously faded that read:
"We got bit. We are quarantining ourselves. Sorry, gas services are suspended pending our quarantine results. Best of luck to you out there."
I heard the patter of feet running from the side of the building and I pulled my gun into a firing position. Before I pulled up on the hinge mechanism I heard a voice call out from the shadow.
"Guys?" Tanya's voice called out, "There's a sign in the door." She turned the corner and we could see her finally. She noted the gun in my hand that was still raised a little.
"Tan? Hey point of suggestion. Don't run up on someone when they can't see you. You scared the ever loving crap out of me." I admonished her, my relief readily apparent, more grateful I hadn't shot her than that it wasn't a zombie.
"Oh my, I'm so sorry! I hadn't even thought of it like that." She looked at the door we were standing at and saw the note we had been looking at. "Oh. You got one too. What are we going to do?"
"Well, I suppose we don't really have a choice. We need the fuel." Trent responded.
"That was Tyreese's take on it all too." Tanya reported.
She took off to get back to her husband. Trent gave me a “what else are we going to do” look. He took the handle on the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. Figures.
Through the glass of the doors we saw a flash of movement. Trent and I looked at each other with incredulous looks. Could that actually be? Nine months of being locked in without food should have killed off anything. Stumbling to the door was this thing that was more mummified skeleton than anything alive looking. He was wearing overalls that were hanging on him, extra-large on an extra-small frame. He must have wasted away a great deal. His movements were stuttering, puppet like. He raised his arms at us desperately. Trent fired at him simultaneously killing the gas station guy and taking care of the locked door problem.
We knew that the sound of the gunshot would attract any undead thing that was still wandering about. We had better get to work. Trent went behind the counter to look for the keys while I made sure everything was clear.
The station was filled with the smell of rotting flesh from the attendant. I had figured that the smell would have been over a long time ago, but I suppose it made sense that if he was still moving then the decomposition process would be continuous. The virus seemed to be an elegant thing that slowed down everything.
“Cali?” Trent called from behind the counter, “I'm not finding what I figured I would. I did locate the keys to the main tank fill cap. I'm going to just use that.” I agreed with that plan. I really didn't want to stick around any longer than we had to. Trent went back to the truck and pulled out the hose we had taken with us from the complex with this purpose in mind.
Erin and Trisha decided that they needed to use the restroom after they found out the gas station had been cleared of the zombie. I went back into the bathroom that I had previously cleared to make sure it was still safe. Both stalls were clear. I waved them in and told them to hurry.
I went out of the mini mart to go see how Trent was doing. He was filling up the tank, a slow process when it's coming through a garden hose, when out of a quiet morning a gunshot rang out.
“Take the hose!” Trent called to me. No sooner did I have it in my hand did he let it go and started to run over to the fried chicken place, gun drawn and ready for action. I listened carefully for any new sounds, moans coming from the shadows, anything that indicated we needed to go fast.
Trent came up behind me, nearly scaring me half to death. “Trent! Damn you can be quiet!”
He laughed at me.
“So what happened out there, anyway?” I asked.
“Pretty much the same thing that happened to us, actually. There was a sign in the window but they hadn't seen anything inside until they went into the back store room looking for more oil in bottles. The door had a tricky latch that had the two zombies confused as all get out. They had been trapped back there all this time. Tyreese took care of it though and now that place is zombie free.”
“Was there oil?”
“Tons of it. Sealed in nice portable boxes. They're on their way right now. There was a shipping dolly that they were starting to load up.”
As he was saying this, Tyreese and Tanya came around the corner, Tanya had the shipping dolly and Tyreese was pushing a large cart. Both were loaded to the gills with oil. They discussed for a moment the most logical course of action. Trent was set to start the bio conversion. Tyreese had a different take on the situation.
“Why don't we put these in the trailer for now. Fill the second tank with regular fuel as well. Run off of tank 2 first. When it's empty we can stop and fill it up with the oil if fuel doesn't fall out of the sky. It would definitely be safer to haul oil than gas.”
He made sense. Finally gas started to pour over the edge of the tank lip. We decided that filling the second tank really was a good idea. Trent took the hose from me. I looked over the parking lot when a sinking feeling hit me, the girls hadn't come out of the bathroom yet. They should have been done ages ago. My eyes grew wide and my jaw fell open. “Shit. They never came out.” I whispered to no one. I took off towards the doors of the mini mart, my heart in my throat, scared that I was going to see them dying or turning on the floor in front of me.
This was not the scene in front of me. What I did see replaced my look of worry with a smile. The girls had gotten a hold of a ton of shopping bags, the reusable burlap style ones, and began to fill them to the brim with all manner of snacks and treats.
“Hey Cali,” Erin said, “How's it going?” She almost had the look of a kid who got caught getting into the cookie jar.
“Just fine, Erin. What on earth are you two doing in here?”
Trisha smiled. “We have been eating nothing but good for you stuff for months and months. We need sugary and salty crap, stat.”
“And soda!” Erin called out, having wandered to the back of the mini mart. “We definitely need soda.”
I laughed. We had been more concerned with survival and keeping ahold of the kind of stuff that was nutritious. We hadn't really given junk food much thought. I missed it too, I had to admit. Chocolate sounded just about perfect right now. I grabbed a bag and started to help.
We filled our sacks and went back to the trailer. Tyreese had loaded up all the oil and we loaded our stuff as well. I went to see how Trent was doing, grateful to hear that we were almost done. Sitting out in the open like this just felt wrong, vulnerable. I went back to the trailer to get Drew, and tell him he could pick out a candy bar, pulling a couple out for Trent and myself.
“We'll make another stop soon guys, okay?” I told everyone. “We want to get a little bit farther, maybe just beyond the pass. Get into a nice open space where nothing can sneak up on us.”
We hit the road. The road was long and quiet. Trent drove slower than normal, not knowing what may pop out of nowhere. It took several hours to get through the pass. We had to carefully drive around the cars that were stopped in the road, and with a very large truck, that was no easy feat. We finally got through and the road opened up again to a multiple lane highway. I sighed a breath of relief; the pass was not known to be kind to big trucks. Wind usually funneled though it tossing trucks around like cardboard boxes. Today it had been relatively still.
Making Camp, Making Out
We drove though Victorville and were excited to see that there was an open space of flat desert. Trent was wiped out. I think we all were. We pulled off the freeway and decided to make camp here until tomorrow.
I went around back to present the camp idea to everyone. I heard a chorus of woo hoo's from everyone. We were all beat. I think the only person who did get any sleep on this trip was DaWayne, and that was from a drug induced stupor, not a true sleep.
It was the middle of the day when we made our stop but one of the perks to having a trailer like this was that running some sort of cover over the vent holes and gun ports would block out a great deal of light.
We all felt grime crusted and hungry, and most of us were coming down from that little sugar rush we had enjoyed after the mini mart, so we set up a wash area and Mercedes set to cooking on one of the camp stoves we had put in the truck.
Wash area probably was too grand a description for what we had set up. It was a bucket with a little bit of water in it, a couple wash cloths and a bar of soap. We were able to take a small layer of filth off of our faces and hands, which was better than nothing but I would have sold a kidney to be able to shower right then. I looked at my shirt for the first time since the night started. My favorite sweatshirt was painted in blood, and I had no idea who the blood belonged to. I’m only a little embarrassed to admit that I freaked out. This shirt could have borne the blood of many friends. I ripped it off of my body in tears. How could I possibly be wearing the blood of my friends? I wanted to fling it into the ditch and bury it, but once I began to settle down, I realized that I didn't want to lose that final connection to them. I didn't want to lose the connection that it had of going out with friends that are long passed by now.
With the sweatshirt off of me, it struck me how cold January in the desert was! I focused on the cold air, clinging to the distraction that the cold offered. If I was thinking about the cold, then I couldn't be thinking about the rest of the stuff that threatened to take over my brain. I climbed up into the trailer, folded up the sweatshirt, put it in a small white plastic grocery sack and put it with the rest of my stuff. I sorted through the piles of sweatshirts in the community property pile and found one that was reasonably clean and in the right size. I took a deep breath and went back out to where everyone was. I saw that DaWayne was walking round, aided by his mom since he was a bit unsteady on his feet between the blood loss and the medications. Jody was holding JJ close to her. It was as though she was shielding him from the world.
Drew saw me watching Jody and the baby. “Mom? I just realized something. All the new babies in the world are never going to know any other kind of life besides this one. They only are going to know that there are monsters that we sometimes have to run away from. This is going to be normal to JJ.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Mom, I've been trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or not, that he thinks the world was always like this. Sure he won't be as scared but he also will never know that the world could be a pretty neat place to be. He won't have the good memories.”
“Well, best I can figure is we'll hold those memories in a safe place in our heads and hearts. Sometimes we'll be able to tell stories about places like movie theaters, or going to theme parks. I think JJ is going to show us a lot of things too since he'll be able to accept the things that can't be changed, like a ton of zombies. We are going to learn how to be brave for him, because even if it is the new normal, those zombies can be freaky. We can teach him about being strong when you'd rather not be. He'll be able to accept it all quicker than we will, but that’s something we can learn from him.”
Drew wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me for a little bit. When he let go he said that he wanted to go play for a bit. I told him to go for it, but to stay close.
I was starving, I had decided, right up until I saw that we were having spaghetti. I get that its easy to grab and cook and fast to make, but I still hate it. I didn't think that there was any way I could have hated it more until the zombies came, looking and sounding like spaghetti but here it is. I am in the minority when it comes to the spaghetti is nasty camp and I've learned to accept that. Trent handed me a dish with the spaghetti on it and I regarded it. I finally decided that food was more important than my psych case hatred and ate it. Every last bit.
With a full belly I was even more tired than I had been. I looked around at the faces of others and it seemed they were all together on this. A cold wind started blowing past us, carrying dark clouds. It really was time to get the sleeping arrangements set up.
When we were building the trailer up I think we had some concept that people could sleep in shifts. It was why we only built two bunk beds. This was not how things played out in the real world. Instead we needed to figure out where to put everyone. There were a lot of kids in our new family. Not counting the baby or the teens there were seven children. We puppy piled them in the top bunk above DaWayne. Mercedes took the other lower bunk bed, knowing that her body would object to the climb up onto the top bunk or to sleeping on the floor. Jody took the top bunk over Mercedes. We created a padded area along the top bunks on the trailer walls
so no one would roll over and hit their heads on the sides.
Tyreese and Tanya opted for sleeping in the cab, mostly as security in case zombies or people with an agenda came up to the truck. I think they wanted some alone time. They had a lot to process themselves.
Everyone else claimed a bit of floor space. We piled pillows and blankets around as padding and we pulled out all those sleeping bags we had gotten when we did our very first supply run. It felt nice to be all together right now.
I wondered if anyone was going to actually get any sleep like this, but it was only moments before we all were out. I remember JJ fussing in the night for a minute but that was very short lived. On demand availability of baby food is a definite perk to breast feeding. I wonder if Jody even really woke up all the way for that. I had set a cell phone up as an alarm (it was all a cell phone was worth now) to wake me up to change out the antibiotics on DaWayne, but other than those two instances, I slept like a rock.
When we all got up it was just before dawn. We still had a lot of ground to cover. We hurried to pack everything up.
Drew had decided that he wanted to ride in the back with his friends. Trent and I agreed that it would be okay.
It didn't take long before everyone was settled and we were on the road. Happily heading down the interstate. I was looking at the abandoned world when suddenly I told Trent to take the off ramp.
“Why? Is there a problem?”
“Nope. Please, though, just pull off.” I grinned a very large grin.
He did this for me, though the confusion was evident across his face. I pointed in the direction I wanted him to go in. As soon as we went under the freeway's overpass it was clear where my brain was heading.
There was a baby supply super store. The lot was abandoned. The gates were still down. We stopped in front of the store. I got out of the cab and ran around the back to the trailer door and ran it up.
“Tyreese?” I called. “Will you come with me?”