“My tuckus is damn near frozen off,” the girl lamented, a young voice bouncing off cold tiles and lino.
“At least you’re not on the rag.” Phyllis grinned into the mirror. Cold water was doing her skin some good, but when her moisturizer ran out, there was going to be hell to pay. “Right?”
“Ayuh,” Steph moaned. “Thank God for that.”
“I’ll look for more tampons outside,” Ginny said, distractedly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. She didn’t look in the mirror or even directly at Phyllis, her gaze skipping nervously along flecks in the linoleum. “And first-aid kits.”
“Might as well get some chocolate too.” Phyl grabbed a handful of paper towels. Her fingers ached with the cold. “Sooner or later we’re gonna need it.” Or she could just take the pill all the way through. There was no more hoping a pharmacist wasn’t a religious fanatic, not in today’s world.
Of course, now the only problem was finding pharmacies and looting enough to keep yourself supplied. And what happened when that ran out, as it inevitably would?
“And some Slim Jims,” Steph piped up. “Since we’re here.”
Phyl rolled her eyes. Planning for a future without birth control was tomorrow’s problem, especially when there were none of what her grandmother would have called prospects in a hundred-mile radius, or probably more. “Lord, you shouldn’t feed that dog any more of those. He reeks.”
Steph’s giggle bounced around both of them, a playful kitten looking for fun. “He likes ’em.“
Ginny didn’t say anything. She just stared at the sink, and Phyl’s mouth drew down. Poor girl. What was it like, to know your parents had been…eaten? And to think of their bodies rotting in a basement? Phyl tossed the damp paper towels in an overflowing basket.
Nobody was going to be cleaning that up anytime soon. Or anything else. “Ginny?” She touched the woman’s elbow. “Honey?”
The librarian blinked, her shoulders coming up like she was bracing herself for the catwalk. “Tampons,” she said. “First aid.” A few seconds later she was gone, her baseball bat hitting the swinging door with a hollow boom that made Phyl jump and flick her own flashlight on, its beam refracting off the mirror and melding with the faint glow of Steph’s.
She would probably never get used to how quiet it was without traffic, or the sense of other people breathing nearby even when you were semi-rural. Joyce’s crowded, beloved Dublin might be standing empty now, except for packs of chewing, aimless corpses.
For some reason, that image disturbed her more than the deserted New York skyscrapers, or even Cleveland’s suburbs turned into ghost towns.
“We have enough tampons for the next twenty years,” Steph finally muttered, and there was a rasp of cheap toilet paper on a spindly cardboard roll.
“When we run out, it’s not gonna be pleasant.” Phyllis shuddered at the notion, and grabbed for her own bat. “Meet you outside, sweetie.” The swinging door hit something soft, and for a moment Phyl thought Ginny had paused just outside.
That was when she heard the growling, and realized they weren’t alone.
Peace
Shelves of highly processed road food, overpriced toiletries, and various forms of caffeine sat damp and dispirited. The glass cooler doors holding back a tide of overpriced sodas were etched with condensation and frost, except for the one that shattered as Ginny screamed and swung, her bat clipping the head of a shambling, stinking monstrosity.
Phyl was banging on the inside of the swinging restroom door. Ginny backed up, her hip hitting a wire stand full of postcards, and a gun barked outside.
“God damn it!” one of the guys yelled outside, the sound carrying under more of that grinding, nasty chest-throbbing. “Shoot the motherfucker!”
She hoped they wouldn’t. A bullet coming into the store could do all kinds of damage.
Everything had slowed down. Ginny hopped sideways, postcards scattering in a paper snowdrift. She brought the bat sideways again, and the sound it made as it crunched onto the zombie’s head would have made her lose anything she’d eaten that morning, if she’d bothered.
The zombie wore a flannel shirt over a Heavy Metal T-shirt, jeans wet all the way through and hanging off wasted legs, and a belt with a big, glittering brass buckle. A red baseball cap perched on its now-deformed skull. He had to be relatively fresh; the bone wasn’t spongy yet and his eyes weren’t collapsed, just grey-filmed. Stubble roughened his cheeks, and his mouth hadn’t developed the cracks at the corners yet. He dragged his left foot, and it was that slight scraping sound that had warned her as she crouched in the non-food aisle looking at tampon boxes.
She’d almost fallen over, saved only by a wrenching lunge that burned all the way down her left side. Now she was faced with the prospect of beating a newly turned zombie to death.
Oh, God. “Blessed, praised…” Her lips moved, and she realized what she was reciting as her bat thudded home again and broken glass shivered free of more cooler doors. “Honored, exalted, extolled…” Everything around her darkened, a click like a stapler’s head smacked by an irate coworker echoing inside her head. “Glorified, adored, and lauded be the name…”
I’m saying Kaddish for zombies. The man thudded onto the floor, his feet in high-end, almost brand-new Nikes flopping as nervedeath raced through a corpse.
Phyllis screamed, and the zombie trying to shove through the door to the ladies’ was another male, this one heavyset and in a hardhat, its juicy, decomposing hands splattering against the door as it blunder-heaved. “May there be peace,” Ginny gasped, jagged pieces of the string of words she’d patiently memorized the year leading up to her bat mitzvah falling higgledy-piggledy from her mouth. She skipped ahead, syllables filling her throat. “Zichronam liv’rachah!” Her bat clipped the side of the bright yellow hard-hat, but if she used enough force she could probably snap the cervicals.
More gunshots and yelling outside. She couldn’t worry about that right now. Ginny also couldn’t worry about Phyllis’s screaming or the fact that she couldn’t look everywhere at once and what if one of them was behind her, dear God, all she could do was pull back with the bat while the thing in the yellow hardhat grumble-ground, blindly walking into the door again. It wanted what it could hear behind the obstacle, fixated on the sound of Phyllis switching to a cavalcade of cusswords threatening to scorch the door clean off its hinges.
Ginny gasped in a breath and swung hard, aiming not for the bright yellow hat but right under its side. Seasoned, dripping wood met spongy jaw and splattering flesh—this zombie was older, and she was screaming the Kaddish again, her throat raw and a taste of metal along the back of her tongue.
The words were all a jumble, spilling from the year of instruction before the party and the candles and Flo’s two years later, and her mother’s ill-concealed relief when the lessons stopped. Dad, well, he observed a bit more than Mom did, but Mom was of the opinion that God was a sadist and not fit to be prayed to, though certain social forms had to be observed.
Would God take them both? They wouldn’t like being separated.
Ginny swung again, harder this time. A greenstick snap of cervical vertebrae shearing, and the zombie, its main nerve-cable compromised, dropped like a cut puppet. “Hang on!” Ginny yelled at the door. “Just hold on!”
The hardhat corpse on the floor convulsed, its feet in sensible brogans leaving black streaks on linoleum. Ginny whirled, her gaze roving. How many more? And outside—good God, while they were sitting in the toilet talking about tampons, how many had descended upon the guys?
“Ginny!” Lee, outside, yelling. “Ginny!”
She couldn’t see over some of the aisles. Phyllis yelled something from the other side of the door, and Ginny swung her bat a little, splattering little nasty drops. Two more shots, close together, and Ginny’s heart thundered in her ears, her wrists, her throat, her ankles. All of her was a throbbing, noisy blur, and the corpse on the floor kept twitching like dead branches under a win
ter wind.
What next? Make a plan, get going, do something. Come on, Ginny.
Her lips moved.
She was still reciting what she could remember of Kaddish in both English and Aramaic between great galloping gulps of frigid, reeking air. If she wasn’t kosher and there wasn’t a minyan, would God listen? It was a fine time to be wondering about theology.
A scuffling, a high-pitched squeak, and a third zombie in a housedress and fuzzy pink slippers somehow still clinging to arthritic, rotting feet shuffled out of the candy aisle, high fructose corn syrup and prettily packaged wax falling from shelves with little plopping sounds. Tendons made rusty squeaking sounds as the woman champed, skin splitting along her cheeks as her jaw distended and snapped shut. Muscle glared red and raw; if Ginny had a moment she could remember the exact names for the architecture of the cheeks and chin.
A tight cap of dark, permed curls clung to the woman’s head, and her arms lifted as she shuffled forward, probably not dropping to all fours because the aisles were so narrow.
“May the One who creates harmony on high,” Ginny recited, and stepped forward.
Crunchsplat.
Some Doin'
It looked like a wandering pack—a half-dozen, maybe a few more—and half of them blundered into the Marathon while the faster ones dropped to all fours and ran for Juju and Duncan, both standing guard near the pumps. It was Duncan’s warning yell that brought Lee’s head up, and Kasprak, helping him fuel the RV from the overflow valve, turned the color of Swiss cheese when he realized what was going on.
“Get up there,” Lee said, and shoved him for the ladder to the top of the RV. “Take yo rifle. Don’t take a shot unless you got it.”
The boy scurried away, gasoline splattering as he dropped the hose. Juju had already cleared leather and was picking his own target; Duncan reached for his belt with the speed of a man who had gone through his drills over and over.
There was definitely some Service in that man.
Snow sprayed; Juju took his time as they bore down on him. Duncan squeezed off a shot and one of the critters stumble-staggered, splayed in the snow, and scrabbled back up. Lee got the hose cleared and hooked up his rifle, ticking off the quadrants. Couldn’t afford to let any of the bastards sneak up, now.
It was then he saw the others shoving through the holes in the Marathon station’s front, glass winking dully as they hopped or heaved through. One had a bright yellow hardhat, bobbing merrily.
Oh, shit. The girls had baseball bats, but—
Then, because things were never content to just be shitty, they had to go for broke, he saw another half-dozen black spots lolloping along the highway. Well, that answered one thing he’d been suspectin’—they were being followed. Did the things smell them, or just come along the scrapes in the snow, figuring the trail had to lead to a snack?
It didn’t matter, but it would soon.
Juju’s pistol barked. The closest critter folded, its head a splatter against bright white snow. Duncan swore with astonishing creativity and bagged the one hed’ body-shot before, putting a round right between the fucker’s eyes.
Lee settled his rifle against his shoulder, peered through the scope. Yep. Another half-dozen, coming along their trail. How fast were the assholes? Did they chase until they got tired?
“Sonofabitch,” Juju yelled, and there was a flurry of gunfire. Lee glanced back—oh, yeah, there were some more coming around the side of the building.
This was gonna take some doin’, but there was only one thing on his mind.
The girls are in there. “Ginny!” Lee found himself yelling. He slung his rifle and took off across the snow like a pure-d idiot. “Ginny!”
Kasprak’s rifle spoke. One of the critters coming around the edge of the building spun and folded, landing in fresh feathery snow wind-swept over dirty, broken glass. The boy had himself a steady hand, that was for sure, and Lee heard screaming from inside the station. Juju’s sidearm barked, a good clean bodyshot on another, and Lee hit the gas station’s broken doors at full speed.
It was a good thing they were already jimmied open.
Ginny’s mouth was moving; she tugged ineffectually on a corpse wedged against the swingin’ door to the ladies’. Lee glanced at the aisles as he passed—all empty, God willin’ and sonny Jesus in the crick—before arriving at her side and bending, grabbing one boot. The bones inside jean-clad flesh moved strangely, Ginny firmed her hold on the other foot, and they heaved the critter’s barrel torso free just in time for Phyllis to hit the door again and stagger out, wild-eyed, clutching her flashlight and that damn pink bat. Behind her, Steph Meacham peered through the doorway, her flashlight beam bob-wobbling crazily.
Lee spun, his hand blurring for his own sidearm—better for inside work—and a bullet whined crazily against the outside of the building. The window was full of distorted, moving shadows. “Come on!” he yelled, and Ginny gained her feet in a rush. Her cheeks were dead-white except for high spots of crimson high on each, and curls sprang free of her messy braid. Her lips were moving—looked like she was praying.
He wished her luck with that, and snapped a glance at the register counter. It was just the same as it had been during his own bathroom break, the register itself upended and hacked open, cigarette cartons scattered, cans of energy drinks and pornographic magazines lying where they’d landed.
More fire outside. He wasn’t worried about Juju and only a little about Duncan, but he hoped like hell that Mark Kasprak wasn’t trigger-happy. “Group up,” he yelled at the girls.
Phyllis gave him a deadly little glance, swinging her pink bat for free play, and pushed forward. “Come on!” the woman yelled, and Ginny was hard on her heels. Steph Meacham stumbled after them, leaving Lee to pick up the rear, exactly where he didn’t want to be.
They piled out into grey, icy daylight. Phyllis let out a high, short scream like a hawk diving on a rabbit and swung her bat, splattering a cockeyed teenage male zombie with collapsed grey eyes and that hideous blue veining tattooing his face and flayed, dripping hands. She followed through, too, and Lee was getting the idea that Miss Phyllis Lampke had done quite well by herself before Duncan or anyone else had come along.
Ginny yelled too, the cry shaping itself into a series of words he didn’t have time to listen to because the ones coming around the corner of the building were massing. Juju was at work, picking off ones near the end, and it was a goddamn miracle none of Kasprak’s shots—also picking off trailing ones—didn’t hit anyone living.
Duncan, however, had his thinkin’ cap on. He’d holstered up and grabbed a crowbar from its home in the back of Lee’s truck, the tailgate down and canopy doors opened so they could stack yet more cases of bottled water inside. The stocky black-haired man grimly waded into the fray, swinging like he was aiming for the bleachers. Dark ichor spattered, and the last critter went down in a heap.
Lee’s ribs heaved. Okay. All right. “Fuel up!” he yelled at Juju. “Get Kasprak down!”
“Yessir,” Juju howled back, and took off.
“Close up the truck, Duncan, you ridin with Juju. Phyl, where you ridin?” He knew, but he wanted her thinking about that instead of some-damn-thing else.
“Driving the RV.” She was already heading that direction, swinging the pink bat, scrubbing its end through a handy snowdrift. Her dark curls bounced, and her stride was that of a woman on a mission, praise Jesus and pass the goddamn butter.
“Steph, y’all get on in the RV. Ginny, you in the truck.” Now he could hear Traveller yapping, and he was damn glad the dog had attended to his business first, while the boys did theirs. “Come on, ladies. Get goin.”
“We are,” Phyllis snapped, like a whipcrack. Ginny stood, clutching her bat, her throat working.
“Where’re they all coming from?” Steph whispered. “God, where they all coming from?”
“Who knows?” Some sense came back into Ginny’s dark eyes. She pushed Steph for the vehicles. “Go on,
sweetie. Lee—”
Kasprak shot again. One of the dots down the road staggered and fell. Juju yelled at him to get the fuck down and help with the gasoline.
Lee grabbed Ginny’s arm. His fingers sank into her jacket and he eased up, hoping he wasn’t hurting her. “Truck, darlin. Let’s go.”
Pretty And
“Sonofamotherfuckinbitch,” Miz Phyllis said under her breath. She kept the big ol’ RV steady, its chains slip-slithering as hard sleet began to finger the wide windshield. “Can’t even fuckin piss in peace, the goddamn fucking zombies have to motherfuckin show up and fuckin ruin everything.” She glared at the road, daring it to get even worse, daring the brake lights in front of her, too.
Steph’s mouth was a little open. Sure, Mama could cuss when Daddy wasn’t around, and Daddy himself had been able to string F-bombs with the best of ’em, but Miz Phyllis was not just angry, she was flat-out inspired, and she’d been goin for twenty minutes now with no sign of letup as dark clouds raced in.
Mark, up in the shotgun seat, blinked almost every time Miz Phyllis said fuck. It would have been funny if he hadn’t been so pale. He kept his mouth shut, too, which was probably a blessing.
“And New York is fuckin gone,” Miz Phyllis continued. “Isn’t that just the way? Isn’t that just the fuckin way it always fuckin goes?”
It didn’t sound like she wanted an answer.
Mark twisted in the shotgun seat and glanced back at Steph. Maybe he wanted her to say something, or he thought her ears would burn and fall off hearing what Gramma Meacham had called “strong language.”
At least Steph had stopped shaking. Mostly. And at least the RV had a bathroom, she’d visited it twice. Fear made you have to pee, it looked like. She remembered something about that from middle-school health class, back in the dark ages. Your kidneys got real excited when fun times came around.
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