Zed's World (Book 3): No Way Out

by Rich Baker

  Even worse, before exiting the attic through the window, Lucky had lowered the stairs, letting the undead gain entry to the sanctuary that the family had been hiding in for weeks since the Turn. The unconscious family stood no chance against the zombies, and it was a horrible way for them to die. Inhumane, even. Not that it mattered much after what they did to them. “It will buy us some time,” Lucky said as they made their escape. As they slid down the roof, Nicky heard the first steps of the undead stumbling up the stairs. It would take them some time to figure out how to climb them, but the family’s fate is sealed.

  Or is it? he thinks. I need to know.

  Nicky starts sobbing quietly and doesn’t realize Lucky is awake until he speaks.

  “What’s going on, Nick?”

  Nicky jumps a little, surprised by the voice in the darkness. He wipes the tears from his face and rolls away from Lucky, lest he sees him crying.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Just had a bad dream.”

  “And it made you cry? Must have been a hell of a dream, bro.”

  “I’m not crying!” Nicky protests. “I’m just stuffed up or something, you know? Allergies and shit.”

  “You’ve been pouting ever since we left that house. I know what you’re dreaming about. You’re dreaming about that fine young pussy, and you want some more!” Lucky chuckles as he says it, taunting Nicky, who says nothing. After a long few seconds, he continues. “No, that’s not it. You’re worried about those girls, huh? What we did and how we left them? You know we were going to kill them, right? It’s not like they were making it past that day anyway, you know? In this day, Nicky, you don’t let anything go to waste. We were just…being green, you know? Not being wasteful. Think of it like that.”

  “It was wrong, Lucky. I’ve done bad stuff in my life, but never anything like that.”

  “In case you’ve missed it, Nick, the world has changed a bit. What’s right is decided by whoever survives the day. We’re out there getting supplies for the Gimp, risking our lives – OUR lives, Nicky – and when I have the chance to get some payment for my services, I’m taking it. You know the old saying – ass, grass, or cash, no one rides for free. I see a fine piece like the woman in that attic, and I know I’m going to kill her anyway, I’m going to break off a piece first. That’s just how it is, Nick. Better than doing it after, right?”

  Lucky waits for a few seconds, hoping for a response from Nicky. When there is none, he ends the conversation. “Look, we have work to do tomorrow for Max, and I need you to be right in the head about it. So, if you have to pout or cry or whatever, do it now, and get it out of your system. Tomorrow is another day. You get me?”

  “I’ll be ready. Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “Okay, man. I’m just busting your balls. You did good today, bro. How you feel about everything that happened at that house aside, you did good work. We came back with more supplies, we got good intel on possible places the Puckett’s could be, and most importantly, we came back. You got that? We’re still alive, bro. It was a good day. Now go back to sleep, okay? You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Lucky lays his head back on his pillow and is snoring in just a few minutes. Nicky listens to him for an hour, knowing that when he closes his eyes, he’ll see the girl’s face again, zombified this time, with black teeth that sink into his neck and turn him into one of the ravenous horde.

  Eight

  Nicky wakes up to the smell of eggs and bacon. He sits up, grateful that he was finally able to get to sleep and he wasn’t troubled by any more nightmares. He looks at his watch. Ten thirty. They’re getting a late start.

  He rolls out of bed, pulls on a pair of jeans, laces up his boots and heads to the restroom across the hall. In the restroom, he turns on the battery-powered camping lantern and looks in the mirror. The fluorescent light from the lantern makes his face look washed out and pale. He has dark circles under his eyes, which are bloodshot and half-closed. He sighs, empties his bladder, and heads back across the hall.

  When the Turn happened, Lucky and Nicky were caught in Longview, running from the undead, with no plans and nowhere to go. Cell service went down quickly, and the dead-end street that led to their safe-house was overrun. Frankie Four Fingers shouted to them from the roof of the pawn shop, telling them to run around the back of the building and he would buzz them in. He literally saved their lives.

  He knew the pair from the large amount of goods they brought in to pawn. Most of what they brought in was really used to courier drugs or money for the cartels. Larger items, with a lot of hollow space to stash the illicit goods. Old TVs – the kind with the picture tube, which would be filled with contraband – or furniture, tool boxes, stuffed animals, all were ripe for being courier goods. Frankie must have suspected something was up, but he never said anything, and he always made a profit on whatever they brought him, so he had some incentive not to get too inquisitive when someone made an offer on something before he even had a chance to give it a thorough inspection.

  The deal he offered them was a good one. They could use his place as a base of operations, looting the town any way they could, if they gave most of the food to him and his daughter, and ran occasional specific supply runs for him, like going and getting gasoline for the generators in his basement. They’ve done everything they’ve been asked to do, with little complaint, because Frankie and his daughter, Laurie, are always armed and seldom in the same room at the same time, so if they kill one they’ll still have to deal with the other. She’s made it known that she doesn’t care for the two hoods and she opts to stay away from wherever they are. She’s also hinted that she watches them on camera and knows their every move.

  So, when Lucky tells him that Laurie agreed to give them some of the precious remaining eggs and bacon with nothing in return, he’s naturally suspicious.

  “Nick,” he says, “what do you think? Did I rob her at gunpoint? She never goes anywhere without that 1911 on her hip. She even sleeps with her hand on it. Not shitting you about that.”

  “She hates us, Lucky. Why would she do something like this?”

  “Even with the fridges running at thirty-three degrees, this stuff is starting to go bad. I told her we’d take the stuff that’s the most questionable, so it doesn’t go to waste. Relax, she may not like us too much, but she’s not evil or nothing. Also, she gave me a shopping list, some things she needs.”

  “There it is. What’s on it?”

  “You know, basics. Toilet paper. Tampons. Antibiotics. Mostly stuff we can find in houses. I told her we’d get what we could today.”

  Nicky tilts his head like a dog. “I thought we were looking for those Puckett people today?”

  “We are. But we’ll be checking out houses when we do it. Unless we get lucky and find them in the first house, we’ll be able to do some shopping along the way.”

  Nicky shovels some eggs and hash browns into his mouth then talks while he chews, spitting pieces of egg on the table.

  “So where are we going after these people anyway?”

  “Jesus, Nick, either eat or talk, man. You’re fucking gross.”

  Nicky swallows his mouthful of food. “So where are we…”

  “I heard you the first time, man, I just didn’t need the visual.” Lucky pulls a well-used map out of his backpack and unfolds a couple of sections on the table. He takes his fork and taps a spot on the map. “This is us now. According to Frankie’s phone book, there are four people or places with the name Puckett here in town.”

  He taps a spot on the west side of the map.

  “Here’s the first one. Helen Puckett. Since the Puckett’s were last seen here,” he taps a spot off the map to the north and east of their location, opposite from where Helen Puckett is listed as living, “I don’t think they were coming to her place. They’d have been way off course if that’s the case. So, we’ll go there last.”

  He taps another spot, a few blocks to their north and east of their current location.
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  “This is Puckett cleaners. I have no idea if it’s related in any way to these people, but it’s close, and so I say we check it out first. It may yield some clues.”

  He taps two spots on the east end of the map.

  “The other two are here and here. Kyle Puckett and Marcus Puckett. Both are in the general direction that the gang that hit the Nelson’s place was going. If it’s neither of them, I don’t know where to look from there.”

  Nicky stares at the map. The Kyle Puckett location is in the same general location as the house where they – killed – that family. The family from his nightmares.

  Lucky notices Nicky zoning out, staring at the map.

  “What is it, Nick?” He snaps his fingers. “What’s up, buddy? You’re spacing out, bro.”

  “Nothing, man. It’s just – the Kyle Puckett house is in the same neighborhood as…”

  “I know it. We hit houses just around the corner from them, too, early on. That’s when you ghosted that old lady who didn’t want to give up her bran flakes, remember? We would have hit the Puckett house if we hadn’t decided to start hitting the houses closer to the golf course. Funny luck, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s by the house with that family too.”

  “Dammit, Nick! I don’t want to talk about that fucking family no more. It’s over. It’s done. No going back, you get me? You can’t un-poke that pussy.”

  “Fuck off, Lucky, alright? You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Then tell me, Nick, what wisdom was going to pop out of your mouth?”

  “I was going to say after we check these Puckett places, I would like to go to that family’s house and just make sure they’re dead.”

  “What, you hoping they made it so you can go for round two?” Lucky grins at Nicky, taking delight in how uncomfortable it makes him to confront what they’ve done.

  “Fuck you again, man! I just want to make sure they’re dead, and, I mean, I’m betting the zombies got them, but if so I want to put them down for good, you know? I’m having dreams, man, and if I knew they were dead for good, I think it would help.”

  “Jesus Christ on the fucking cross, man. You are unreal, Nicky. I mean, you are like, gone, you know? You never go back. Nothing good comes from that. How many people you know, before the Fall, got caught for something they did because they went back? Don’t be stupid.”

  “I want to go there, Lucky. I’m down for whatever else happens, I’m in the right head about it, and I’ll do whatever we have to do, but once we’re done scouting these places, I want to go there. Look, there were three women, right? So, Laurie’s tampons and shit will probably be there. We can kill two birds, alright?”

  Lucky stares at him for a long moment.

  “All right, Nick. We’ll go there – AFTER we check these other places out. And then, after that, if you mention that family again, I swear to Christ I will cut your balls off so that you got something else to worry about. You get me?”

  “Yeah, Lucky, I get you.”

  They finish their breakfast and take the stairs to the garage where the white electric car is charging. They toss their bags in and Lucky hits the button on the garage door opener.

  “Where did you get that?” Nicky asks. Laurie has kept control over all the entrances to the Pawn King and Check Mate buildings from the start of their arrangement.

  “Laurie is sick of watching out the window, waiting for us to show up. She gave me the controller today along with her shopping list.”

  “Oh,” Nicky says. Lucky can’t tell if Nick believes him, or just doesn’t want to press any further. He knows if he told Nicky the truth, he’d freak out.

  The truth is, he stole the controller from Laurie, and as they drive away, her lifeless body drips blood down the drain of her bathtub, and Frankie’s corpse rests at the bottom of the basement steps with a broken neck. Laurie heard them talking about what they did to the family during the night – she must have bugged their room because of course, she would – and she confronted Lucky the second he got up this morning. She was going to kick them out, so Lucky had no choice but to end her. And when he killed her, that meant he had to deal with Frankie, too, because he would have found her body sooner rather than later, and, gimp or not, Lucky didn’t want to give him the chance to get the drop on them.

  He’ll figure out what to tell Nicky when they get back; for that matter, he’ll figure out what to do ABOUT Nicky when they get back. He’s become what Max would call ‘combat ineffective,’ and that makes him more of a liability than anything. But, for now, he needs to focus on getting through this day alive, getting the intel Max wants, and then he’ll worry about what comes next.

  Nine

  The dry cleaner’s place was a bust. No sign of any people and nothing inside that identified any of the people who owned it. In the office, there was a picture of an old couple on the wall, which made Lucky think they were the owners. Could be the owner’s parents too, so he found that inconclusive. Other than hundreds of shirts and pants and other clothes that no one was ever going to come and claim, there was nothing in the place. The cash register was even empty.

  They circled south around the center of town, where the traffic snarls were the worst, and the undead the thickest, and followed a bike path through to the Fox Ridge Country Club. They took the cart paths through the dying fairways, took the employee’s access road and emerged onto County Line Road. A half mile north and Lucky steered the car onto the sidewalk and over a bridge that was just wide enough for the small electric car. He crept onto the street and started looking at the addresses.

  “Over there,” Nicky had said. “With the red door.”

  Lucky stopped the car, and there they sat, for the last ten minutes. There have been no signs of activity, no indication that anyone is there.

  “Should we go try their door?” Nicky asks.

  “Go try the door of the people who killed Hector and a bunch of the Nelson’s – well armed Nelson’s – in cold blood in the middle of the night? That’s the door you want to try and pry open?”

  “When you put it like that, no. But they haven’t seen us out here yet, or at least they haven’t shot at us. You know zombies will be here soon. How will we know if anyone’s even there if we don’t try to get in?”

  Lucky sighs, and looks around the area outside of the car. Nothing is shuffling their way, yet. He sighs again.

  “Ok, let’s go.”

  They open their doors and push them closed, careful not to slam them shut. With their rifles held low, they scurry across the street and down one house to the one that matches the Kyle Puckett’s address from the phonebook. Lucky looks at the dust covered doorknob. Clearly, no one has used it to go into the house for some time. He grabs it and gives it a turn. To his surprise, it turns and the door inches open.

  He motions to Nicky to step back to the opposite side of the door, then pushes it open. He steps back on his side, expecting gunshots or shouts or something, anything coming from inside the house. Instead, there’s only silence.

  He and Nicky peek around the doorway at the same time, then Nicky goes in, looking ahead and to the left and Lucky follows, looking to the right. They find nothing in the den to the left or the bedroom and bathroom to the right. They advance through the house, clearing the other rooms as they go.

  “They bolted, Lucky,” Nicky says from the kitchen. He opens a cupboard and reveals it to be empty except for a can of olives and a can of red beets.

  “Yeah, it looks that way. There’s no toilet paper; the pillows are gone, hell, even the toothpaste is gone.”

  Nicky is looking in the fridge, holding his breath. He shuts it and breathes out in a hiss.

  “Fridge is empty. Either someone raided this place, or they took everything with them,” he says. He sniffs the air. “And no one’s dead in this place. Either this ain’t the right place, or they ain’t here anymore.”

  “Yeah, I guess we got what we came for. Let’s go.”


  Lucky leads the way back out to the street, where a dozen of the dead are closing in on their car. He runs at the closest one, which picks up its pace and starts to make its ‘I found prey’ noise, and slams the butt of his rifle into its face before it gets so much as a squeak out of its rotten mouth. It crumbles to the ground, but immediately starts trying to get up.

  Nicky is a few steps behind Lucky and puts his rifle butt on the thing’s temple as it tries to get to its feet, sending it tumbling again. Lucky is on the driver’s side of the car, sliding behind the wheel, and Nicky is in the passenger’s seat a second later, and they drive off, running over dead feet and knocking aside rotten bodies.

  Lucky makes a right, then a quick left and heads west on the loop that goes around a large empty field. They pass a sign that says, ‘Future home of a new school’ – a landmark Nicky is familiar with.

  “What are we doing, Lucky?” he asks.

  “Going to that damn house you want to check out.”

  “We still have another Puckett house to check out, though. I said I would go after we were done.”

  “We’re like three blocks away from it. I’m not going to that other house and doubling back to this one. We can check it out, get your brain to shut up about it, and then go to the other place.”

  Nicky sits in silence for a few seconds, looking out the window as a few dozen zombies turn their way. They will have to be fast, which is fine with him. He just wants to make sure they’re dead – really dead – and then he can put this behind him.