At least the zombies trying to get into the houses are a clear sign there are still people alive. That’s about the only positive thing Henrik can think of right now.
He passes a car parked halfway up a driveway. Four dead ones are huddled around it, clawing at the windows.
Henrik slows down and stops at a fair distance—far enough away so that the zombies won’t be drawn to him instead of whoever is in the car. He squints in an attempt to look through the front window.
Who’s in there? And why aren’t they driving away?
Someone is waving at him frantically. He sees a girl’s face framed by a scarf and recognizes Nasira, the young Muslim woman who lives down the street. Her eyes are big and scared, pleading with him.
He drives a little closer and rolls the window down an inch. “Hey! What’s the problem? Why don’t you just drive?”
Nasira leans over to the passenger side and rolls down the window. She shouts to him: “The key! I dropped the key!”
“Oh, fuck,” Henrik mutters. “Where is it?”
One of the zombies is making its way around the car, and Nasira has to roll up the window again. She looks at him, then gestures and points down in front of the car. Henrik stretches his neck and scans the asphalt. And there—right in front of Nasira’s car—is the key. She must have dropped it as she ran around the car.
Henrik nods at her and holds up a hand, trying to tell her to wait while he thinks.
He can’t get out of the car; that would be too risky. But someone needs to, if they want the key.
Or maybe not. Maybe I can get close enough to snatch it without getting out.
He puts the car in drive and rolls carefully forward. He needs to position the car in an awkward angle right up against Nasira’s car in order to reach the key from the door, and he goes back and forth a few times, trying to get it right. It’s not easy, because he can’t see the key once he gets close enough.
I feel like an old lady trying to parallel park, he thinks, almost bursting into shrill laughter, but he manages to choke back the sound. If Nasira—who’s watching him closely from her own car—saw him laughing right now, she’d think he’d lost it.
Just as he manages to get the car in the right position and is about to open the door and reach out, there’s a scream from the other car.
Henrik jolts and looks out the front window, expecting to see zombies crawling into Nasira’s car through a busted window. But all the windows are still intact. Nasira is looking back up the driveway, her hands at her mouth, her eyes terrified.
Henrik follows her gaze and feels a sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh, shit.”
The Ahmads are easy to recognize, as they come staggering down the street, because of the scarf the woman is wearing and the dark-brown skin of the man.
Nasira’s mom is relatively unscathed, except for a nasty crater at her collarbone, the scarf is even still on, only a little crooked.
Her dad, however, looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. His jawline is all chewed up, the skin hanging in ragged threads, revealing the bare, shiny bone underneath. His right shoulder has also been gnawed down to the socket, causing the arm to swing limply at his side. Someone has also done a number on his thigh and calf muscles, turning his leg into a wobbly, bloody stick. And his left eye is gone, apparently dug-out from the socket by eager fingers.
Looking at Mrs. Ahmad’s bloody hands, Henrik finds it reasonable to assume she might be the culprit.
Nausea comes rolling up from his stomach, and he needs to swallow hard to keep down the toast he had for breakfast.
Nasira is still staring at her dead parents, screaming. They aren’t headed for her car, though, but for Henrik’s. It’s too late for him to open the door now, as the dad quickly closes the distance and tries to make his way through the side window, grabbling eagerly at Henrik on the other side.
Henrik locks the door and looks away, his pulse spiking as the car rocks gently.
Don’t worry, he tells himself, they don’t have the skills to break a car window.
Nasira is still screaming, so Henrik honks the horn. The sound makes her jolt and snaps her out of it. She looks to him, and he holds up both hands in a gesture which hopefully signals something along the lines of “stay cool, I got this.”
Apparently, the girl gets the message, because she nods bravely.
Henrik puts the Prius in reverse and backs up. Both zombies take up the pursuit.
“That’s right, follow me,” he whispers, checking the mirrors to make sure he doesn’t hit anything or anyone.
When he’s far enough away, he stops and drives forward again, swerving to the side and speeds past the Ahmads. Approaching Nasira’s car once more, he stops right next to the key, opens the door, reaches out, but is stopped by the seat belt.
“Fuck,” he mutters, unbuckles, leans out once more and grabs the key.
Nasira screams.
Henrik sits upright and lets out a roar of surprise.
The guy came out of nowhere. His bloody fingers reach out and grab Henrik by the shirt before he has time to shut the door. He expects to be pulled from the car or bitten in the neck.
Instead, the guy breathes: “Help me! You got to help me! Get me away from here, man!”
Henrik blinks, realizing the guy isn’t a zombie. Still, he’s soaked in blood and has several deep scratches from nails all over his arms. Henrik vaguely recognizes him as the carpenter from a few streets over. He can’t recall his name, though. The guy’s eyes are wide and terrified.
“They didn’t get me!” he says, his voice shrill with hysteria. “They tried, but I got away! You got to help me, man!”
“I … I can’t …” Henrik manages, but the guy doesn’t listen. He just pushes himself into the car, climbs over Henrik and sits down in the passenger seat.
“Go,” he says, pointing frantically. “Get us out of here! Drive!”
“Look, I can’t help you,” Henrik says, remembering to close his door, as Mr. and Mrs. Ahmad are about to catch up. “You need to get out of my car.”
The carpenter doesn’t even look at him. He just keeps pointing ahead and repeats over and over: “Drive, man! Get us away from here! Just go!”
“Hey!” Henrik shouts. “Listen to me!”
The guy looks at him.
“You’re infected,” Henrik says. “I can’t help you. You need to get out.”
The guy nods. “Yeah, I know. Just get out of here. We’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Just drive, man!”
“No, you don’t get it. I’m not going anywhere until you leave the car.”
The guy looks at him, but his eyes are drifting in and out of focus, and Henrik isn’t sure how much gets through to him.
“I’m not getting out,” he says, shaking his head. “Not with those things out there. They almost got me, man! But I got away.”
Henrik looks at the bleeding scratch marks on the guy’s arms, the blood is running down the seat. He looks down on his own lap, realizing the guy smeared him with blood when he climbed over him. A jolt of fear from his stomach.
What if I’m infected too? What if you get infected from just touching the blood?
Suddenly, the fear turns to rage.
“Get out,” he says, turning towards the guy. “Right now.”
“Just drive, man. Get us out of—”
“Get out of the car!” Henrik bellows. “Get out of the fucking car, right now!”
The guy looks at him, and for a moment, there’s clear comprehension on his face. “You … you don’t want to help me, man?”
“No, I don’t! ’Cause you’re already dead!”
The guy’s face turns from surprise to hurt and then to fear. Henrik can tell the guy finally gets it completely, and he feels bad for him. He starts shaking his head. “No … no, I’ll be fine … just get me out of here … just go, man!” He suddenly lunges for the steering wheel, apparently trying to take over the car.
Henrik leans back, pull
s up his right leg and thrusts it at the guy. The kick sends him back hard, banging him against the door. He gasps for breath, giving Henrik a few seconds to reach over and open the door. He shoves the guy sideways, but he grabs onto Henrik’s arm, and Henrik yanks it back with a roar. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
He uses his leg instead, curling it up again and kicks the guy once more. But this time, the guy is prepared, and he grabs the doorframe, clinging on. Henrik kicks him again, pressing him a little farther out the door, but the guy is determined to fight for his life, his expression a terrible mixture of desperation, anguish and disbelief.
“What are you doing, man? Stop that! Help me!”
Henrik kicks him again, but the guy holds on. Just as Henrik realizes he won’t be able to get the guy out, Mrs. Ahmad appears like a jack-in-the-box right behind him. Her fingers reach around and grab the guy’s face from behind, jerking his head backwards, then she sinks her teeth into his forehead.
The guy screams and finally lets go of the doorframe to fight off the attacker, causing him to fall out onto the asphalt. Nasira’s dad joins the fight before the guy can get up, and he screams in pain as both zombies go to work on him.
Henrik reaches over, grabs the door and yanks it shut, locking all doors. He feels like he’s about to faint, feels like he’s not really there at all. The guy’s last screaming words make their way into the car, but Henrik hardly registers them.
“Help me! Help me! Please, help me!”
Then, the words turn inaudible and a few seconds later, the guy’s voice dies out completely.
Henrik looks over at Nasira’s car, seeing her gesturing to him.
Oh, that’s right, he thinks absentmindedly. I almost forgot what I was doing.
He looks down and sees the key still in his hand. He drives forward, rolling up right next to the other car, so close the side mirrors graze. He uses the bumper to push away the zombie standing outside Nasira’s door. When their side windows align, he rolls down the window, and Nasira does the same.
“Here you go,” Henrik says, handing her the key.
She takes it with a trembling hand. Her mascara has drawn black lines down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispers in her discrete, Arabic accent. “You saved our lives … God bless you.”
Henrik doesn’t know the polite way to return a blessing, so he simply says: “You too.” Then, it hits him. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘our lives’?”
A movement from the backseat of Nasira’s car causes him to stretch his neck and look. He sees a boy, no older than ten, huddle under a jacket, his brown, scared eyes staring up at Henrik.
“Oh,” he says, remembering the Ahmads actually have two kids. He looks at Nasira, feeling his gut sink at the thought of those two kids being on their own now. “Take good care of him.”
She nods, looks at the key, then back at him, hesitantly. “Can you … can you tell me how to do it?”
“How to what? Start the car?”
“How to drive. I don’t have a license.”
Henrik stares at her, then mutters: “That’s right, you’re only seventeen, like Jennie.”
“If you just explain to me how to do it, then I’m sure I can manage,” Nasira says.
“Have you had any practice?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Have you ever been behind the wheel?”
She shakes her head.
Henrik sighs. “It’s no good, Nasira. I can’t teach you how to drive a car in two minutes, and even if I could …”
He glances out at the zombies, eagerly trying to squeeze themselves in between the cars. One of them is lying sprawled out across the hood of his car, flailing its arms like a toddler not old enough to crawl yet.
He thinks about Jennie then, for no apparent reason. He doesn’t want to think about her, not now. He had told himself he wouldn’t until after the funeral. But now there probably won’t be any funeral, and he can’t help but recall her smiling face. A deep sadness pushes down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
He already lost his daughter. And if he leaves Nasira and her baby brother like this, they will both end up dead, too.
“You’re coming with me,” he tells Nasira.
“No, we can’t,” Nasira says, shaking her head. “We don’t want to burden you.”
“You won’t. We’re better off helping each other anyway.”
She’s about to say something else, when her brother shouts something in Arabic. Nasira turns and answers him. They exchange a few words. The boy raises his voice and begins to cry. Nasira bites her lip, then looks at Henrik again.
“What’s he saying?” Henrik asks.
“My brother wants to come with you.”
“Clever boy. Help him over here. You’ll both have to climb through the window.”
Nasira doesn’t look at all comfortable with the idea. More zombies have joined in now, and Henrik counts at least ten around the cars—including the Ahmads—all of them pushing to get to the fresh meat inside. The one on the hood has moved a little closer, and another one has pushed itself in from behind, but neither of them is close enough to reach the open window.
Nasira talks to the boy in Arabic, and he climbs to the front seat, then onto her lap. He looks at Henrik through the windows before glancing nervously to the sides.
“It’s okay,” Henrik assures him, reaching his arms out for the boy. “They won’t hurt you.”
The boy grabs a tentative hold of his sleeves, and Henrik carefully pulls him over. The transition goes smoothly, and then the boy is sitting in the back of Henrik’s car.
“See?” he tells him, turning in his own seat and smiling at the boy. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
The boy smiles back shyly, shaking his head.
“You speak Danish, right?”
The boy nods.
“What’s your name again?”
“Ali.”
“I’m Henrik.”
“I know.”
Henrik tries to look as reassuring as he can. “Don’t look at the windows, okay? Just keep your head low. I’ll help your sister now.”
Ali nods again and shrinks down low.
Henrik turns to Nasira. “Your turn. You’ll have to climb over me.”
Nasira has already pulled her legs up, crouching on the front seat. She reaches one hand across to him, and Henrik takes it, the touch of her smooth skin and slender fingers reminds him painfully of Jennie, and he gulps back a gasp of emotion.
“It’s okay,” he says, more to himself than her. “You can do it.”
But Nasira doesn’t move right away; she’s staring out at the zombies, her face trembling slightly. She whispers a single word in Arabic.
Henrik follows her gaze and sees Mrs. Ahmad, who has shoved herself in front of the other living dead, trying eagerly to force herself in between the cars, scratching at the paint with her long nails, snarling at them.
“Don’t look at her,” Henrik says, making his voice stern. “You listening, Nasira? You can’t look at her, it’ll only make it worse. Hey!”
She doesn’t react to his voice, just keeps muttering in Arabic, tears filling her big, brown eyes.
“Nasira!” the boy calls from the backseat.
Nasira still doesn’t respond or take her eyes off of her mother.
Henrik reaches over and, placing his thumb on her chin, turns her head gently, forcing her to meet his eyes. “She’s dead. That’s not her anymore. I’m very sorry.”
The girl’s face crumbles up, the tears spilling over. She cries for a moment, squeezing Henrik’s hand.
“It’s okay,” he tells her softly. “I know how bad it hurts.”
Nasira gets a hold of herself, wipes her eyes, then takes a deep trembling breath and squeezes through the windows. She climbs over Henrik and sits down in the passenger seat. The boy grabs her from behind and hugs her.
Henrik rolls up the window, and the growls and moans from the zombies grow a little more distan
t. But the car is still rocking gently from them pushing and shoving.
Henrik fastens his seat belt. “Buckle up. And close your eyes.”
Both Nasira and the boy do as he asks.
Henrik bites down hard, squeezing the wheel, as he stares out at the zombies cluttering the front of the car. Just a few days ago, he would have never thought he had it in him to do what he’s about to do. But a lot has happened in the last days—heck, in the last hours. And Henrik is someone new now.
He puts the Prius in drive and hits the accelerator.
The feeling of the bones breaking underneath the tires is incredibly satisfying.
Nasira doesn’t seem to enjoy it as much, as she lets out a whimper, but she keeps her eyes firmly shut.
“It’s over,” Henrik says.
He drives to the end of the street, reaching the intersection. He stops the car and looks to both sides. The sight is about the same in both directions: cars parked haphazardly, things strewn about, a few dead people waddling around.
“Where are we going?” Nasira asks.
“I need to find my son. He left home yesterday, but I’m not sure where he is.”
He pulls out his phone and calls up Dan.
This time, the call goes through.
ELEVEN
Dan must have been sleeping—which is a surprise to him, given the circumstances—because he had a dream about Jennie, and she was alive and well.
As he gradually returns to the awake world, however, he’s brutally reminded that Jennie is neither alive nor well.
He sits up and looks around the tiny, dimly lit room, struggling to recall where he is. There are no windows, and only a few LED spots in the ceiling are providing him with enough light to see. The bed is more of a military bunk than anything. There are three others like it, two of them suspended over the others.
Then he remembers: Holger’s place.
The underground hideout.
He went down here to sleep, because the sound of the zombies clawing at the windows upstairs kept bugging him.
He rubs his eyes, yawns, then gets to his feet. His bad ankle feels noticeably better, which is a relief. He would hate to not be able to move around on his own right now.
Dead Meat (Book 4): Dead Meat [Day 4] Page 6