by M. D. Massey
"Shh," he said. "Quiet now, dear. And we’ll get along much better."
"Why are you doing this?" she begged.
"A better question is, why not?”
“What’s wrong with you?” she screamed.
"I've waited for this day all my life. And now you get to be here to share it with me. Aren't you a lucky girl?" he said with a smile.
"Please, let me go," she said.
“I intend to have some fun with you. Which would you prefer, this scalpel or this knife?"
Her only reply was a blood curdling scream.
15
Tucker pulled his pistol from his holster and slid out of the front seat of the truck. He found an empty water bottle blowing across the concrete parking lot of the rest stop and picked it up. He walked to the water fountain and pressed the button, relieved that the pressure still spit out the precious liquid.
He put his mouth under the faucet and gulped down as much water as he could hold. After gulping down at least a gallon of water, he stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Maybe leaving the house with three liters of whiskey and no water had been a mistake. But he'd been in a rush.
He filled the water bottle and brought it back to the truck. As he slid behind the wheel, he noticed movement in the bushes out of the corner of his eye. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot just before whatever it was slid out of the shadows and into the light. He saw a black shadow dart across the road in this rear-view mirror.
Tucker shook his head, wondering what it could be. It moved faster than a zombie, even at top speed. Not wanting to stick around to find out, he pushed his foot on the gas and hurried down the road. He was just seeing things, he told himself. He'd been drinking whisky all day and hadn’t had any water.
Putting it out of his mind, the thought about where he would hole up for the night. There were a lot of little cabins up around Lake Tahoe and it would be a good place to do some fishing for a while until he decided what else to do.
The highway up over the mountain was nearly deserted. Only a few stray cars littered the road, here and there. The ones he saw were either abandoned or the drivers were stuck inside, transformed into monsters. His mind mulled over how the infection could have traveled so fast.
One moment, it was just a distant rumor, and the next moment everyone had been infected and transformed. It spread so quickly, no one had time to respond. He started to consider the rumors on the Internet that he had either entertained or completely ignored before the major outbreak.
Tucker liked to make jokes about conspiracy theories. Being a veteran of the Gulf War, he knew a little bit about what Uncle Sam was capable of. But most of the rumors on the Internet were ludicrous claims. Everything from a terrorist attack to blaming the US government itself. He and Amy had joked about the Illuminati and concentration camps.
Their last conversation seemed like such a faraway dream. He missed her already. The sentimentality was a foreign feeling to him; something he hadn't entertained since his first girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend.
His curiosity rolled that to the back of his mind, and part of him wanted — no, needed — to know how the infection had started. How had it transmitted so quickly? The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like an inside job. Of course, he couldn't prove anything. Even if there was anyone left to prove anything to.
He grabbed the half empty bottle of Wild Turkey off the passenger seat and took a long swig, wishing it would drown out these thoughts. What difference did it make who started the plague? Everyone was dead, turned into a zombie. It didn't make any difference to them where it had come from. Why should it make any difference to him?
His truck was starting to run out of gas on the way up the mountain to Lake Tahoe. When he came to the next rest stop, he found a car abandoned in the parking lot. He used the long tube from his duffle bag to siphon gas from the other vehicle into his own. He stood there in the late afternoon sun, drinking whiskey and watching the gas flow from one tank to the other with the acrid taste of gasoline on his mouth, when he saw the black shadow flit through the corner of his vision again.
He snapped his head toward the movements but saw nothing. If it had been a zombie, it would've attacked by now. It gave him a creepy feeling, but he just chalked it up to his eyes playing tricks on him in the glaring sunlight. After the gas tank was full, he climbed back in the truck and decided to lay off the bottle until he found a place to rest for the day.
He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette, driving with one hand. When he began to descend into the Lake Tahoe region, the sun started to tip toward evening and cast an orange haze across the sky. It was so beautiful it brought a tear to his eye. Just imagining that there was still something beautiful left in the world after everything had fallen apart was as disturbing as the strange black shadow just at the corner of his vision. In some ways, it would be easier to stomach if everything was death and ugliness.
A flock of birds flew across the sky, flitting on the cooling evening breeze. The lake came into view through a break in the trees and he let out a long smoke-filled breath at the sight of it.
The closer he got to Lake Tahoe, the more cars were stalled on the road. Some of the trapped zombies had lost their previous energy, slapping against the windows with less vitality than they’d had that morning.
Tucker turned off the highway into a neighborhood he remembered from the last time he’d been up this way. There were a lot of private cabins, circling the lake in this area. It was the kind of place that upper-middle-class assholes from California vacationed, so they could feel like they were roughing it in the outdoors. It would be a perfect place to hole up and drink until he figured out something else to do.
He circled around the block for about a mile and then turned off onto another road where the cabins were more rustic and further apart. The deeper he could get into the woods, the better. He didn't know how long he would have until the creatures found him, but at least it would be a good place to stay for the night.
He pulled up in front of a small cabin at the very end of the road and climbed out of the truck, again noticing the strange black shadow dart through his periphery. He turned toward it, pulling his pistol out of his holster and wishing the damn zombie would just attack him. Maybe they'd grown afraid, he wondered. They seem to be changing, even after less than twenty-four hours. They were losing energy.
But this thing, this thing was faster than lightning. He brushed it off again, thinking he was just losing it, which was just fine with him. He planned to sit here and drink until the zombies eventually got to him. What else could he really do? Save the world? That wasn’t gonna happen.
He climbed the front steps of the cabin and knocked on the door as if polite society still existed. There was no answer, so he tried the knob. The door was locked. He considered kicking open the door, but didn't want to bust the latch in case the zombies found him. He could at least use a good night’s sleep.
He went around the back and found one of the side windows unlocked. Pushing up the glass, he climbed through the window and fell elbows first on the floor. He crawled in and looked around, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. The cabin was musty, and dust filled his nose. No one had been here in quite some time. He pulled himself to his feet and went to open the front door.
Tucker considered lighting a fire in the fireplace, but decided against it, assuming the smoke would draw the zombies right to him. He found some survival heating gear in one of the cabinets and found that the gas burning stove was still working. He used the stove to heat up a can of chili he found in one of the cabinets in a rusty old pot. He settled back in the living room and opened his second bottle of whiskey, resting his boot on the coffee table. With the pot of chili on the couch next to him and his bottle in his hand, he thought to himself, what more could a man want? Maybe the apocalypse wasn't so bad after all.
16
Jada watched the
gas meter ticking lower by the second. She would have to stop eventually and find some. Niah fidgeted uncomfortably in the passenger seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs.
"Mommy, I really have to pee," she said.
"I’ll stop soon, honey, I promise.”
She had to find somewhere to fill up the tank, but she didn't want to let Niah out of her sight for a second. They were approaching the exit for the observatory, and the next gas station wasn't for another thirty miles. Jada pulled off the road and drove up the driveway to the observatory. The sun was high overhead when she pulled into the parking lot. Several abandoned cars were scattered about the place with no signs of the owners. She parked beside an older model vehicle.
“Get out and pee right next to your door. Leave it open.”
"Mommy, I don't want to pee in public. I want to go to the potty!"
"You're going to have to get used to this kind of thing."
"But it's embarrassing!"
"Just do it, Niah.”
Jada looked around, grabbing her machete from the back seat as she slid from the car. Her daughter finally relented and dropped her pants next to her open door, peeing on the gravel with a whimper. Jada handed her some napkins from an old bag of fast food, and the child wiped before grumpily getting back inside, closing the door behind her.
She had found a long rubber tube in her ex’s apartment in with the camping equipment, and had shoved it in her bag before she left. The older Honda she’d parked beside didn't have a locked gas tank, so she was able to push it open without smashing it. She opened her own tank and sucked at the end tube. The gag inducing taste of gasoline filled her mouth and she spit it out as she pushed the tube into her jeep. With a sigh of relief, the gasoline ran from the old truck into her nearly empty tank.
She held her machete in one hand and the tube in the other, emptying the gas tank into her own car. As she closed her tank, she heard something scratch across the gravel behind her. She spun just in time to find a man in a white shirt and a pocket protector lunging toward her. His eyes were white, and his mouth was bloodied and crazed. She swung at the creature, her machete slicing into his shoulder, missing his neck by a few inches. It lunged at her again, its strength overpowering. Niah screamed from the car, pounding her hands against the glass.
"Stay inside," Jada demanded.
"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! No!"
"Stay inside, Niah," Jada said through gritted teeth, pulling her machete out of the creature's neck as it grabbed for her.
She stumbled back and nearly fell as she yanked the machete free of its body. It lunged at her again, and she swung hard, hitting the creature with a loud whack in the side of the head. But it didn't sink deep enough to kill the brain. She screamed and kicked at the monster, pulling her machete loose. She would not die like this, in front of her daughter, leaving her child here alone and trapped in the car.
She backed up, breathing heavily. Dark, clotted blood dripped from her knife. The creature was disoriented and slowed from its wounds, but it kept coming, groaning at her as it swiped its clumsy arms in her direction. With a wild scream, she gripped the machete with both hands and drove the tip straight into the monster's eye socket. It shuddered and fell to its knees, collapsing on its side on the gravel.
Blood flowed from its wounds, coating the gray gravel with thick, black blood. Anxiety rang in her ears and she could barely hear her daughter’s screams as she yanked her machete from the creature's skull. She’d skinned her knee in the fight and had torn her pants. Limping to the car, she climbed inside and threw the machete in the backseat.
"Are you okay?" she asked Niah.
Niah was stunned beyond words. Jada pulled a wet wipe from the glove compartment and wiped the blood from her hands and threw it out the window.
"It almost got you," Niah finally wailed.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to either of us. You understand?"
"Mommy, why is this happening?"
"I don't know, baby. I don't know."
"This isn’t anything like video games," her child whispered.
"Life rarely is. But all that matters now is that we survive."
"I don't think I can, Mom," she said, tears rolling from her eyes as Jada pulled back onto the highway.
"Listen to me, Niah," Jada said, staring her eight-year-old daughter in the eye. "You can survive. And you will. You're my daughter and you’re strong. We’ll get through this together. You understand me?"
"Uh huh," Niah said, nodding her head and biting her lip as the tears flowed down her face.
"Okay then. We have a full tank of gas now, that should get us a couple hundred miles. We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin. When we get there, we’ll figure out what to do next."
“Okay," Niah said.
Niah leaned against the window, and after a few dozen miles, passed out asleep. Jada felt relieved that her daughter could rest and take a break from this hell for just a little while. As she crested the mountain and started to descend into the valley, she wondered how she herself would go on. She hadn't seen another living soul since they’d left San Jose.
What would they do if they were the last ones left alive? But there had to be others. There just had to be. Fear flitted through her mind, and she tried to push it aside, but no matter how hard she tried, the images of death filled her mind. How many people had she killed today?
No, they weren’t even people anymore. They were monsters. She’d only done it to protect her child. And she would do it again, and a hundred times more to keep her daughter safe.
Even if she didn't find anyone else alive, she would do what she had to until the bitter end. If only for her daughter to see and to know, in the last days of their lives, how strong she could be for both of them. She would never stop fighting for her child. That was all that mattered anymore.
Live another day. Be brave, be strong, make the right choices. Together, maybe they would come through this. And if not, at least she would've gone down fighting. Fighting for her love, fighting for the only thing she really believed in: her daughter. As she drove down into the valley, she took the side road north, avoiding the highways and the congestion of stalled traffic along freeway. She was beginning to feel hungry as she hit the Central Valley and rifled in the backseat to get a granola bar out of the duffle bag. Niah woke as the sun beamed through Jada's window and it hit her tired little face. Jada offered her daughter a granola bar and they ate silently as she drove a hundred miles an hour down the narrow flat road.
"How much longer is it?" Niah asked with a hollow voice.
It's another couple hundred miles," Jada admitted.
They would have to stop for gas again. Before she got out of the car again she was going to sharpen her machete. It had taken a beating at the last stop, and she knew that anywhere she stopped for gas, she would have to deal with the creatures.
The Central California sun beat down on the blacktop as they drove toward the Sierras. She could see the mountains in the distance. She passed many small towns on the way and couldn't bring herself to stop. But when the tank started to lean toward empty, she knew she couldn't wait any longer. She pulled off the road in the middle of nowhere into a tiny gas station.
There was no one anywhere around. When she tried the gas pump, she found that it was still on a generator backup. She shoved her credit card into the reader, and it somehow extracted her payment. She filled her tank and told Niah to pee on the pavement next to the car. This time her daughter didn't object to peeing in the open, and they were able to get back on the road without further incident.
She started on the highway headed east, at about eight o'clock in the evening. Her headlights pierced the darkness as she climbed elevation into the mountains. The landscapes turned from dry, open planes into pine forest as they ascended. The air cooled outside as the sun set.
Niah fell asleep at around nine. Jada realized she'd never really fed her daughter anything but granola bars and fruit roll ups.
She shook her head, brushing away the guilt. She couldn't have the same kind of standards she did before this morning. She’d kept her kid alive today. That was the new barometer she would have to use in measuring her success as a parent.
Her heart was heavy as darkness descended. She drove fast up the road, and at about ten o'clock in the evening, she saw a dark shadow dash across the road through her headlights. She turned her head to look, not knowing what could possibly move so fast. She shook her head, deciding that her mind was playing tricks on her.
It was only fifty more miles to her parents’ cabin. Jada knew she was probably losing it. She'd have a place for Niah to rest for the night. In the morning, she would come up with a better plan.
* * *
18
Cody made a bowl of powdered milk for Felix and laid it on the porch. He grabbed his rifle and an extra magazine and shoved a machete through his belt. He'd been alone at the ranch for days and the isolation and boredom were starting to get to him. His parents had never returned, and the radio had stopped playing anything but static. Occasionally, a neighbor wandered down the road. He'd get his hopes up that they were still alive, but inevitably, they were not. He’d tried to busy himself with his online schoolwork, but without a teacher, class, or assignments to keep him motivated, that too had lost its appeal.
Cody climbed behind the wheel of his old farm truck and started down the dirt road into town. He didn't see another living soul on the five-mile drive into town. He didn’t see a single zombie either. In the distance, he spotted movement in a field. He picked up his binoculars, slowing down the car. He peered through the binoculars and spotted a swarm of zombie cattle.
He swore under his breath and put down the binoculars. There were more cattle than people in this part of Wyoming. If they'd all been turned to zombies, it presented a major threat. He pushed his foot on the gas and continued into town with his rifle on the bench seat beside him. He passed the ‘Welcome to Casper’ sign that boasted the population of three-hundred-fifty. The streets were empty and eerily quiet. The hot afternoon sun shone overhead, and a gentle breeze blew down from the planes. He stopped in front of the grocery store and pulled his rifle from the seat of his truck.