He no longer believed anything anyone said about a place that was still safe or that anyone was eventually coming to fix this plague. And he didn’t just dismiss pumped-up assholes like the ones sitting across from us now. Even if I mentioned the possibility of such stuff, he cut me off with a wave of his hand and a brusque change of subject.
But I have to tell you, even though I’d seen the same things he’d seen, been through the same shit he’d been through… I still held on to the slender reed of hope he’d managed to kill in himself.
I mean, it was possible They (whoever They were) had built a wall to separate the West from the East, a way to protect half the population from the outbreak, and if They had made the virus, or whatever it was that had started this nightmare, that They could fix it someday.
Right?
“Or maybe the ones who told you about ‘different’ zombies were the same ones who go on and on about cures and scientists?” Dave continued with a humorless laugh.
“I heard there really are some scientists working on the cure,” the medium build of the three guys said, though he sounded less certain than he had when they all sat down. “Maybe even in protected labs right here in the West.”
Dave let his fork hit his plate with a clatter. “Pipe dreams, boys. You should know better by now. What we can trust are the things we can see. Weapons, the camps, a vehicle that still has half a tank of fuel. That shit is real. Everything else…” He waved his hand in the air. “Illusion. Like Santa and the Tooth Fairy.”
The men shifted uncomfortably and Dave returned his attention to my plate.
“Done?” he asked.
I ate the last few bites and nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m beat. Let’s find a tent and call it good.” He grabbed my plate and my hand, gave the now silent and sullen men a quick nod, and we took off toward the exit.
As he set our dishes into an overflowing tray, I gave him a side look. “You know, there may still be some good in the world. I wish you wouldn’t give up on that idea entirely.”
He didn’t answer as we entered the tent city area of the camp. A few hundred tents, scavenged and traded by survivors, were set up in long rows that repeated and repeated out in front of us. There were everything from small child-sized ones with Dora the Explorer’s tattered, stained face on the outside, to orange ones a family probably once took out into the mountains for a weekend, to military-grade outfits that slept ten or twelve people.
Dave paused as he scanned a sign-up sheet by the sleeping area for a tent that had two cots available. Once he had found one and had marked it as taken, he began steering me in that direction.
I figured he wasn’t going to respond to what I’d said, but as we ducked into the tent he’d signed us up for (a four-man sleeper), he turned toward me.
“Look, it’s not that I have no hope. I believe there’s plenty of ‘good’ right here. And we’re doing okay, right? The infected are a lot less active toward us now, and we’ve got a pretty fucking good system for killing them. We’re together and that’s what matters to me.”
He hesitated and here came the but.
“But I have no illusions that all that bullshit about a future without these monsters is going to happen. They wiped out the entire West in about two weeks, Sarah. There’s no way they could be stopped. Not by a wall or a scientist toiling in some borderline cartoon lab. I just can’t waste too much energy praying and looking for it.”
I stared at him, uncertain how to respond when he laid out a future for us that held nothing but faint reassurance that we’d survive, but never get back to any kind of normal life.
Luckily, I didn’t have to answer, because at that moment another couple entered the tent to claim the other two cots in the room. I forced a smile because we knew the two of them a little and liked them even more.
Josh and Drea, who had found each other a few weeks after the outbreak (though they were so perfect together that you’d never know they hadn’t been together for ten years). They were about our age and shared a similar and rather snarky sense of humor with us. We had exchanged some zombie-killing stories that had left us sobbing with laughter.
“Hi guys,” Josh said with a broad smile you hardly ever saw on a survivor. But his good humor was somehow still intact even after the hell of infection and death. “We saw your names on the sheet and figured we’d share a tent tonight.”
Dave forced a quick smile, but I thought I saw a little relief in his eyes. Like he didn’t really want to talk to me about the unknown future anymore.
“So you guys hear anything new?” Dave asked as he took off the backpack he’d grabbed from our van and started laying out our blankets and inflatable pillows for the night.
Drea shrugged as she smoothed pieces of her pixie-cut blond hair out of her pretty face. “Naw. Just the usual. Death, maiming, destruction, killing the walking dead. You know. Same old, same old.”
“Well, TGIF, right?” I laughed.
“Is it Friday?” Josh asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I lost track months ago.”
We all grinned, even Dave, and then Drea asked, “Did you see you have a message on the board?”
I looked at Dave. Normally we checked the big tack board in the center of the camp as soon as we got in, but tonight we’d both been distracted.
“A call for an exterminator?” Dave asked as he flopped down on his cot with an exhausted sigh.
Drea shrugged. “I don’t know. It didn’t say specifically.”
I tilted my head in surpise. Normally messages for us were pretty fucking clear. Like, “get the fuck over here, there are zombies” kind of clear.
“Do you want to go look?” I asked Dave.
He shook his head. “Not now. We’ll do it tomorrow.”
We talked for a little while. These two had the best stories… and not just zombie ones. I mean ones that made us all forget zombies even for a little bit. I don’t know what Josh did before the outbreak, but Drea had owned a restaurant in L.A. that had attracted all kinds of celebrities. She had stories about famous people… well, they were pretty entertaining.
But eventually exhaustion took over and we blew out the Coleman lantern.
With the end of electricity, people had quickly returned to the schedules of the farm days, rising at dawn, working during the light, and returning “home” at dusk to turn in. Within minutes of the light going out, the other three exhaled deep, heavy breaths.
But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about bionic zombies and the Midwest Wall and a thousand other thoughts Dave wanted me to forget so I could live in the now. But the now sucked big time. I couldn’t just forget that and go to sleep like he could.
With a sigh, I pushed out of the sleeping bag and put on my boots. I grabbed a flashlight and finally slipped out of the tent into the night air.
Be proactive… and ready to run if proactive backfires.
Phoenix may be warm during the day in November, but it’s brisk at night and I immediately regretted not grabbing my jacket as I used a sputtering, blinking flashlight to guide me out of the sleeping area. Pretty soon the battery would be dead and we’d have to use another precious one in our dwindling supply. With a frown, I turned off the light and headed toward the center of camp by the light of the full moon overhead instead.
It was weird how much little things changed after an apocalypse. Big things, yeah, you expected those, but the tiny shit still took me off guard. For instance, six months ago if you’d taken a stroll around the campus here at night you would have heard cars on the streets, the yells of frat boys screaming drunken boasts and making general asses of themselves, even planes flying in and out of the airport, which wasn’t too far away. Basically lots of background noise that indicated a certain kind of life.
But now other sounds were clearer. Outside the walls of the camp, coyotes moaned and howled as they retook their territory and crickets chirped in the stillness. Humans still had a place though. In the
distance I heard the light strum of guitars and the faint sounds of singing that made my heart stutter a little.
The van only had an eight track that was long dead, so we hardly ever got to hear music. I came to a stop as I left the tent area and just listened to the tones of “Come as You Are” by Nirvana, with a faint female voice singing the lyrics softly.
I shook my head with nostalgia as I strode forward again toward the big board in the middle of the camp. I found it by the campfire lights and the moon, but reading the little notes and requests was too hard without additional light, so I reluctantly turned my flashlight back on.
In the stark light of the bare bulb, the messages on the board seemed even sadder, just as they had in the church. There were plenty of faded ones looking for people who were missing. Some had been there for over a month (at least as long as we’d been coming here) and were obviously pleas for people who would never be found or at least not found alive. Undead maybe, but that wasn’t a good end for anyone involved.
Finally, through the mass of notes asking for specific food items and one particularly disturbing request for a sex doll and some lube (um, ew, people. Just… ew), I found a note addressed to Zombiebusters Exterminators, Inc (the whole name, no less). I pulled it from the board and examined it closely.
It was written on heavy paper, something far more expensive than the back of newspapers or cheap notebook sheets most people used. The author had neat, even handwriting and the pen he or she used was red.
Blood red words on a stark white sheet. Gee, obvious horror music playing in the background, anyone?
Still, a job was a job and this one was intriguing:
“I am in need of your assistance for a unique task. If you can accommodate me, please meet with me. Sincerely, A Friend.”
An address followed, one I didn’t instantly recognize even after all our exploration of the dead city and its surrounding areas. Looked like the old GPS was going to get some use.
Oh yeah, GPS satellites? Turns out they don’t go down, even when most of the people on earth (or at least this part of earth) get eaten by a shambling horde of monsters. Just an FYI.
I stuffed the note into my pocket and headed back toward our tent, but my mind was still clouded with thoughts. Most of the time our “services” got repeat offenders. People we knew asked us to clear out a shed or wipe out an apartment building filled with the living dead.
But this… this was a whole new person (or people) with a “unique” task, whatever that meant. It could be dangerous. And not just “zombie dangerous,” but like… “don’t go down there!” dangerous.
Sadly, as I stepped back into our tent and climbed into my sleeping bag, the concept of a whole new kind of dangerous gave me a thrill I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“So you just went out into the night all by yourself?” Dave snapped as he practically ripped the passenger door of the van off before he got inside.
“Yes,” I grunted as I slammed the driver’s side door of the van and started the engine a bit more loudly than was probably necessary. “As I have mentioned to you about thirty times since we woke up this morning, that is correct.”
“It was a stupid thing to do, Sarah.”
With a shake of his head, he pulled out a GPS unit from the glove compartment (kept right beside a nice collection of 9mm handguns and ammo—yup, we were pretty much right out of Bonnie and Clyde now… minus the bank robberies and the Faye Dunaway hair). He jammed the plug into our ancient cigarette lighter and waited for the satellite to link up.
“I don’t get what you’re freaking out about,” I said with a heavy, put-upon sigh. “I got up, in camp.”
“How silly of me,” Dave said, his voice laced with the same blunt sarcasm he’d used last night with the idiots who’d been talking about bionics. “There’s just nothing dangerous lurking around in camp.”
I shook my head. “Okay, I know it isn’t perfectly safe. But shit, it’s not like I put on some flip-flops and headed out into the desert to do some zombie skeet shooting. Chill.”
He folded his arms and flopped back against the seat without further comment. Ah, pouting. Still hot in the living dead universe. Or not.
I ignored the silent treatment as I snatched the GPS from the dash and entered the address from the note we’d been left in camp. After a couple more seconds of load time it started a “route to” sequence. I put the van in gear and eased it into the line of vehicles heading out of the camp and into the new day. We were a ragtag little group, too, consisting of everything from fancy, high-end sports cars to beaters.
Both of these extremes were totally useless, by the way. A sporty car looked cool and all, but it did nothing unless you intended to keep it on the highway and scream along like a bat out of hell.
The beaters were useless, too—always breaking down, needing special parts and attention. And they were weird, honestly. After all, one of the coolest things in an apocalypse was that you could have any ride you want—and trust me, David and I had tested that theory multiple times (oh, the Jag, don’t get me started on the Jag—heaven!) before settling on our awesome van. So why anyone would choose to ride in a Gremlin with a window taped shut or a lopsided pickup whose floorboards were rotted through was beyond me.
Eventually we got out of the camp and after about twenty minutes of driving down the highway, Dave seemed to perk up. He sat up and clicked the GPS off its stand. Flipping buttons, he looked at the turn-by-turn route info while I drove.
“Take next exit, then turn left” the bland, computerized female voice ordered.
I stifled a laugh. The whole GPS unit thing had never been a perfect system, even before the world went to hell. I mean, we’d been led astray by them a few times on vacations and ended up God knew where (once, I swear it took us to a cult compound when we wanted to go to Olive Garden).
But in a zombie reality, it was even worse. The unit now gave directions to places which no longer existed on roads that had been riddled with bombs or still had asphalt streaked with blood or ooze. Sometimes there wasn’t a “right turn” to be made thanks to a sinkhole or zombie hive.
Or in this case, the exit in question had experienced some “unreported technical difficulties.”
Namely that a truck with ridiculously oversized rims was turned broadside at the top of the ramp to block it off. By the rusted, bloody, sludgy look of the vehicle, this had been done months ago, maybe even at the beginning of the outbreak, perhaps in some lame attempt to keep the zombie horde from swarming into the area.
“Apparently they thought the infected would come in buses?” Dave asked with his own chuckle as we stared at the makeshift barricade.
“Right, like the oldsters during winter,” I said with a nod as I brought the van to a stop at the top of the exit. “Zombie Airways flew them down on a $99-each-way special and brought them all down to the resorts and condos for a break. Zombie life is hard up North.”
When Dave looked at me with that little twinkle in his eye at my comment, I knew he wasn’t pissed at me anymore for going off by myself last night.
“I’ll see if I can move her,” he said with a sigh.
I turned off our engine and got out with a rifle in hand. I kept an eye out for stragglers while Dave tried the door on the truck. When he pulled the handle, the entire door came off in his hand. He staggered under the unexpected weight and went down on one knee as he tossed the broken piece of metal aside. It shrieked as it skidded across the asphalt and onto the shoulder.
“What the fuck?” he snapped to no one in particular as he got back up and rubbed his wrist absently.
“You okay?” I asked, doing another perimeter check through the scope on the .357.
He grunted. “I guess, but what in the world would make the door come off like that?”
He leaned down and looked at the door hinges and then stood back up. “Only thing I see is sludge. Since when does sludge cut through metal enough to rot a door off?”
Caut
iously, I moved to the big truck and looked at the evidence myself. Sure enough, the metal hinges that had held the door in place seemed to have been sheared off, eroded by some kind of chemical.
“It can’t just be the sludge,” I said with a shake of my head, because that was the only thing I saw on the broken metal, too. “I mean, maybe the door was already damaged or they did this as a weird booby trap or something.”
Dave looked at the vehicle absently. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Be careful when you try to move it, though,” I added with a look at the truck from front to back. “If somebody did something to jimmy the door, maybe they did something else, too.”
Of course there were no keys. Would it really be that easy? So instead of starting the truck and pulling it off the ramp, Dave put it in neutral and with a bunch of effort we managed to shove the hunk of rusting metal into motion, despite two deflated tires we hadn’t noticed on first inspection.
With a lot of grunting and swearing, we guided it toward the side edge of the ramp. The big, heavy body hit the guard rail with a scrape of metal on metal and then an ominous creak and crash as the badly maintained rail gave under the strain. The truck teetered on the edge of the embankment for a long moment, and then it rolled clear down the dusty hill onto a service road below where it landed, crushed nose down, in the middle of the street.
We stared down at it for a long moment and then we exchanged a rather evil little grin. Yeah, even after all these months it was still pretty fun to destroy property without fear of the consequences. I think in another life David and I had been anarchists.
Sort of like zombies, I guess…
But for now I stared at the broken, busted truck with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Especially when I noticed that the mud flaps had those cheesy silhouettes of naked girls.
Nice.
“Onward,” I proclaimed as we hopped back in the van and followed the GPS system’s insistent directions that we take the next exit, then turn left.
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