The plant said nothing in return. Steve picked up his other bowl (the one half-filled with macaroni and cheese) and scooped up a spoon of lunch. The pasta and powdered white cheddar was thick like glue. It had sat on the coffee table for hours now.
“I don’t have to work that shit third shift job at the school anymore, that’s good. I mean, Adrian’s cool, but I need to make a better life for me and you.”
Again, the spider plant kept its counsel.
“I mean, I work hard to maintain this lifestyle, and man, I don’t have shit. I got a car payment on a Diamante that needs a tie rod end and new tires, an apartment I don’t own, school loans I can’t afford, and weed still isn’t legal.”
The plant moved slightly, but that might’ve been Steve’s imagination.
“Hell, even my parents have it better than me, and they drive rusty pickups and buy generic pasta sauce. I don’t have a fucking girlfriend.”
Steve leaned over and grabbed his laptop. He spun up a web browser and looked at the news. The sluggish internet forced him to take another hit from the pipe but when the big news sites loaded… it wasn’t good. The general public was in a spiral of panic. Grocery stores, department stores, hardware stores… any stores. All bad places to be or be near. He watched looting, murder, riots and worse, shaking his head the whole time. No one could take a fair share peacefully and the police couldn’t protect everyone from everyone. The world would end in front of the automatic doors of a retail chain.
An advertisement for the newest model of four door Mercedes Benz slowed the load of a video, and Steve stared at the graceful black car. It took corner after corner, sleek, agile.
It looked like money. Like success. Like freedom.
“Fuck it.”
Steve stood up, and headed to the bedroom to pack his things. He watched the commercial on his laptop screen as he went.
After pinning a handwritten note to his front door Steve got into the Diamante that needed new tires and a tie rod end and headed west towards the city. He had two backpacks filled with clothes, food and water and in the passenger seat next to him sat the silent yet wise spider plant.
He had it buckled in.
“Dude. What the fuck?” Steve asked yet another driver that passed a solid yellow line heading in the other direction. The maniac nearly ran him off the road into the ditch as they screamed away from the city.
Not halfway there he began passing multiple car accidents where the asshole drivers didn’t make it back across the line in time. Three head-on collisions plus eight cars ran off the road into houses or trees showed him two ugly realities.
The first reality was that scared people are stupid. They do stupid things, so stupid that it gets other people who are just as scared killed.
The second reality was that when people died, they really were coming back to life.
Steve slowed his Diamante to a crawl so he could navigate the wreckage of the accidents in the suburbs, and initially he paid attention to the debris littering the streets, but once a bloodied man wearing a torn open dress shirt revealing a steering wheel lodged in his ribs savagely attacked his window he gave up looking at debris. He looked for the roaming and dangerous dead.
Others didn’t look, and he watched many of them perish on his way to the dealership.
“It’s going to be alright,” Steve said to the plant, his hands gripping the steering wheel tight. “This will be under control in no time. A few days of wild, out of control virus-induced violence and disaster, then everything is good.”
Again, the plant failed to confirm or deny Steve’s assertions.
“Let’s get that car. Stay safe here in the car, eyes and ears open. What’s Adrian’s thing? Head on a swivel? You got it, Chubs Mc-used-to-be-in-the-Army. Head on a swivel.”
Steve took the turn at the intersection that would take him around the edge of the city towards the airport, and the mall where the car dealerships were. He was thankful for the wider roads.
Driving the urban bypass that skirted the city took almost 20 minutes longer than the typical 20 minutes it normally did. More accidents and actual traffic slowed him down.
Steve grabbed the exit that led to the strip that had the sprawling mall Gateway Galleria as well as a host of other retail establishments. Beyond the mall, on a road headed away from the downtown direction was Steve’s ultimate destination;
The car dealerships. Specifically, the Mercedes Dealership with its sleek, agile black sedans that looked and felt like freedom.
He putted along doing the speed limit, occasionally passing through an intersection while the light was red. He’d look both ways of course, then drive carefully looking again for crossing traffic. He couldn’t tell if he was giving other people permission to do it, or if he was just another person who decided that traffic laws were the first to get ignored. Either way when people slowed down, and showed a modicum of intelligence and caution, he saw no accidents.
He heard a few in his wake, but he didn’t look in the mirror. Best if he didn’t see.
Steve parked his car in the dead center of the dealership’s open lot.
If it could be described as such, the parking lot of Murdough Mercedes Benz was empty. The only cars left at the business were the ones with price tags in the window. No one who worked at the dealership remained. The hour had reached dinnertime and with the sun setting and city descending into chaos some thoughtful manager had made the generous decision to send everyone home.
“That or everyone said ‘peace out’ and walked,” Steve said as he closed the door to his car.
He took a step back and opened the rear door. Before leaning into the backseat he looked in all directions and gauged how long it’d take someone (a dead someone especially) to cross the open distance.
“Ten seconds. Maybe five if they hustled,” he said to himself.
One arm went into the backseat to the floor and grabbed the aluminum baseball he’d grabbed from the front yard of his building. Despite being an avid snowboarder Steve didn’t do… sports. But the neighbor’s kids sure as shit did. He spun the bat like he knew how to kill someone with it and nearly threw it through the windshield of his own car. It clanged on the warm asphalt and let anyone in a fifty yard radius know he had arrived. He ducked down and searched in every direction for zombies.
None.
He stood, and walked towards the front glass façade of the building. Inside he saw numerous ultra-modern glass desks surrounded by plush leather and velour chairs. Piles of unfinished paperwork turned the transparent tables opaque. He pressed his face against the window to see inside the dark room, leaving an oily smudge where his forehead touched.
“Nobody. What are the odds there’s an armed guard in there? I’m going with zero. No armed guard is going to be protecting some rich asshole’s car dealership today. Doesn’t make sense. He’d be home, taking care of his own business or at the Target, cleaning out the baby formula. And you know no Mercedes dealership keeps guard dogs. No way they’d let Fido piss on these rugs.”
Steve looked around the parking lot one more time, then turned back to the window and swung the bat.
The plush chairs were very comfortable.
Steve took a seat in a chair at the front of the showroom. He pulled it over from one of the glass business desks to a safe, central spot. He made sure he was nowhere near the smashed window, or any other entrance to the room, and he took a seat with the bat in hand. He waited ten minutes—listening to distant gunshots from stores down the road—for any zombies to wander his way, or crawl out of the restroom but nothing came.
Chaos may have raged a few miles away but no one wanted a Benz.
“Gotta say, I’m a little disappointed, people,” Steve said as he got to his feet. “These are high-quality, durable, long lasting and fuel efficient automobiles. They’re perfect for the apocalypse. Or at least, for the post-apocalyptic survivor who wants to travel in style. At the very least, they’re perfect for me.”
He spun his bat again and headed back towards the business office. He passed into the small area at the back of the sales floor that was divided up by chest-high cubicles. He flicked the lights on and searched.
“Keys… Where are the keys kept up in this piece?” He pulled out desk drawer after desk drawer but found nothing. He migrated over to another office and searched it. He then searched a third office, and hit pay dirt. Recessed on the back wall was a locked case covered in steel grate and inside were several dozen virgin Mercedes Benz keys.
“Yeah, bitch, gimme dat,” Steve said. He sat the aluminum bat on the desk and grabbed the handle of the storage case. It refused to budge. He leaned on it hard, and his 160 pounds did nothing to move it. He picked up the bat and swung it at the handle. Other than a loud metallic clang, the hit did nothing to the handle, or the grate. He swung a second time, then a third.
His bat had dented, but the grate and handle were still pristine.
“Cunt.”
Steve looked around the room once more, looking for a key that’d get him inside to the other keys. He searched the desk drawers for the magical key and found paperclips, and a letter opener. He tried to pry the door open with the letter opener and snapped the fragile miniature sword in half.
“Time for a crowbar. Or an impact driver. Where’s the service department?”
Four doors later, Steve found the hallway that led to the mechanic’s inner sanctum.
Down an office hallway and rows of taupe filing cabinets Steve found a door marked with two placards. One said ‘Employees Only,’ and the other said, ‘Heavy Equipment in use.’
After thinking about his dick and chuckling, Steve pulled the handle and walked into the cavernous garage. The lights were turned off save for one round fluorescent overhead. He was greeted by an ear-ringing metal bang off the heavy door he’d just walked through. Something heavy and made of steel hit the concrete floor near his Vans and he ducked.
“What the fuck dude!?” he yelled out.
“Toby is in here! He’s dead! Careful!” a female voice yelled out.
Steve’s blood went to ice and his asshole contracted. He gripped his bat with both hands and looked around the garage. He scanned under the few cars on lifts and over and around the toolboxes and saw nothing. No dead people, no living women.
“Where the fuck are you? Where the fuck is dead Toby?”
“Up over here! Toby’s beneath me but he’s heading towards you,” the female said. “Light switch is on the wall behind you.”
He turned and looked at the wall. He smacked the white plastic square upward and the other lights hanging from the ceiling flared to life. Steve then looked over and up as instructed. Sitting ten feet up on the hood of one of the cars on a hydraulic lift was a female mechanic. She wore coveralls and had grease and blood smeared head to toe. Her hair was tucked up in a bun and was as red as a plum tomato. The slim and short girl waved at Steve, then pointed down at the floor of the garage.
Dead Toby came.
Like plum tomato hair girl, Toby had been a mechanic. He wore the same work clothes she did, and had a bloody nametag that probably said Toby, though Steve couldn’t read it across the room. Toby had one arm left; the other mangled limb hung from his shoulder but could’ve been a sleeve filled with hamburger. The shredded flesh and fabric swung like Paula’s bags, limp and useless. He trailed skids of thick blood where he dragged his feet.
His pale eyes had fixed on Steve, though they looked through his skin to the flesh just as much as at him. It wasn’t until the monster that Toby had become snarled and lifted his one good arm up that Steve knew he was in danger. Toby would try and kill him if Steve let him get close enough.
“Hit ‘em in the head!” she yelled. “That usually works in the movies.”
“I know. I just… I ain’t never hit a person in the head with a bat before,” Steve said, standing straight and adjusting his grip on the bat. “I’m fucking nervous.”
“Have you hit anyone in the head with something else? Do you need a wrench? Or a prybar? Look around. Find something you’re comfortable with,” she suggested.
Steve looked up at her and laughed. Toby continued to cross the center of the garage in his direction. The sound of the girl’s voice did nothing to distract the zombie. All that mattered to it was Steve, and Steve infuriated the dead man. It staggered forward, each step coming a little faster than the last.
“Yell at him,” Steve said to the woman on the elevated car.
“Rawr!” she yelled half heartedly, adding a wave of her hands.
The zombie almost looked back, but did stop its forward progress for a second.
“He can’t see you. Yell louder.”
“RAWR!” she screamed, and added the wave again.
Toby stopped double-dead in his tracks and turned to face the scream. Emboldened, Steve pounced.
Using all the strength he could muster he took three steps forward and swung the bat. His aim was true and he put the barrel of the bat right on the side of poor dead Toby’s ear. Unlike every other time he’d hit something with the bat, this impact sounded wet, and nonmetallic.
Toby staggered several feet to the side and bumped into a red metal tool chest on wheels. His weight pushed the object away on squeaky wheels, but bludgeoned dead Toby didn’t go down. He turned and with great physical effort faced Steve. His lips peeled back reflexively and bared bloody teeth. He moved towards Steve once more.
Steve lifted the bat over his head and smashed it downward on the crown of dead Toby’s head. The blow sent the zombie down to its knees hard onto the oil stained concrete. The sound of kneecaps popping in half echoed in the large room.
Dead Toby looked up at Steve, one eye socket dislodged from its normal location in his skull, sitting lower than the other. A dent was apparent in the top of his head below his bloody nest of brown hair. He didn’t bleed.
Steve swung the bat down again and connected with dead Toby’s head flush in the dent. This time the skull gave way and the bat found the soft brain beneath. Toby let out a strange death rattle from the bowels of his lungs and went the floor beside his cracked kneecaps. Steve had killed him.
“Fuck yeah, man! Nice job, you totally saved my ass,” the woman on top of the car said. She went to the side of the car and began to climb down using the door’s interior for handholds.
Steve went to her, and helped her down.
“You crawled up there to get away from him?”
“Climbed. You crawl under things. Climb on top of them,” she said with a wink.
“Whatever. Nice job. How’d he die?”
“Got his arm sheared off by a lathe. Sleeve got caught, I bet. We put a tourniquet on him but it wasn’t enough. No ambulance came. He came to after he bled out and started chasing us around the garage. The boss locked the door after he thought we were all out, but I wasn’t. I had to climb up top to stay alive. Fuckers left me alone with him. You couldn’t have come at a better time,” she gave him an impulsive hug, then pulled away, blushing red like her hair.
“Hey it’s cool. Doing my part,” Steve said, blushing as well.
“What’re you doing here anyway? No offense, but you don’t look quite like one of our customers. Plus, it’s today,” she said.
“Yeah, I came to steal a car. Seemed like the thing to do with zombies being real and all.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. I saw an ad for one of the new Benz sedans and figured if the world was ending, I should joyride in style.”
“I was no-shitting the zombie thing, but I like the way you think, stranger,” she said. “Plus you swing a mean bat. Poor Toby.”
“Yeah, that’s a bitch. Poor Toby.”
They stood there long enough to make the situation more awkward than it had any right to be. Steve looked around, then at his feet, then flicked some of poor dead Toby off the bat onto the floor. The girl from the top of the car coughed a few times, looked at the ceiling and wiped some of Toby’s
blood off her hands onto her coveralls. She obscured her nametag.
“Um, what’s your name?” Steve asked.
“Gina. I’m Gina,” she stuck a hand out. Steve took it. She had small hands, but a firm handshake.
“I’m Steve. It’s nice to meet you. Can you uh… Do you know what you’re doing? Got family to get to? A, um… boyfriend? Got a plan? You need a ride?”
She laughed. “No, my family is all out of state. I don’t know what to do.”
“A, uh… boyfriend? Or a girlfriend, you know. I’m a modern guy, I can get behind that.”
She laughed again. “No. No boy or girlfriend. Meeting men isn’t something I’m good at. Guys are often intimidated by a girl who can shoot a gun and change her own oil.”
“Dude, I think that’s hot as hell. You’re badass. I’d meet you any day.”
She looked him up and down and grinned. “I accept your date offer.”
“What? I didn’t—oh. I get it. Cool shit. You wanna steal a Benz? I can’t get into the key cage. Fucking thing is locked up tight as hell.”
“Yeah we’d need a tow truck and a chain to get into Don’s key cage. Fuck that. Let’s take the BMW.”
“BMW? Why?” Steve looked around, confused.
“We just took a year old BMW in trade. I did the intake on it. It’s pristine. Fine like wine. Keys are on the service desk right over there. Just as nice as any of our inventory.”
“But I came here for a Benz,” Steve said, disappointed.
“But you’re gonna leave here with a BMW, and a sassy redhead. I’d say you’re ahead.”
“Alright, but we gotta get my spider plant out of my car out front.”
“You brought your plant?” she asked him.
“Yeah. His name is George. He’s been a good friend.”
“You smoke a lot of weed, don’t you?”
“You know… I’ve been told I should cut back. I’m thinking about it.”
“Cut back tomorrow. I hope you got some in your car. It’s been that kind of day.”
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 10): The Last Resort [Adrian's March, Part 2] Page 2