by Mark Clodi
"Better than I thought it would be. There are wrecks, but you can see them a long way off. I came down here from Chicago this morning, it took about three hours."
"That is about twice as long as normal, we decided to hike out this morning, a...zombie, it tried to get in last night. One of the smart ones. Rob was a hunter as a kid and inherited his father's guns a few years ago, not to mention he had one of his own. We shot at it, but I don't think we hit it. Today we decided to bug out, before it came back with friends."
"No car?"
Robert shook his head, "We had one, but it was in the shop, we sold the Subaru last year when things got so tight and Kent got laid off."
"Bad timing."
"We headed to the shop first, it was about a mile away. I was hoping to find the minivan in the lot, all repaired and ready to go, but it was still on the lift torn apart. Even if I knew how to put it together again I couldn't have gotten it down without power. So we just kept walking."
Katie didn't say anything, for a few minutes. Kent cleared his throat and asked, "What about you? What were you doing in Chicago?"
'I knew they would ask.' Out loud she answered him, "Shooting zombies."
"Were there a lot of them up there?"
"More than I had bullets for. I got treed on top of a building then artillery shells started coming down on me."
"Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time!" Kent said.
"No."
"No?" asked Kent puzzled.
"I called the artillery strike down on the building."
"You did?"
"I was a sniper, the zombies were coming. I didn't expect to wake up again."
"But...but that means the Army is active! There are people we can go to who will help protect us! We should head north!"
Katie shook her head slowly from side to side, the group had all stopped and were looking at her. "No. No one is going to save us. They all died, the zombies won."
"Are you sure?"
Staring at the fields north of them, Katie nodded curtly, "Yes, I am sure." then she turned and headed towards the houses again.
Chapter 13 - Max
Heading down highway seventy five was a lot less hectic than Max would have imagined. There were a few wrecks but they had seen no one in the first two hours of travel, which is as long as they had planned to go that afternoon.
"About a half an hour before sunset. Let's find a place and hole up for the night." Stewart said.
"In Jellico?" asked Max.
"In the outskirts."
"How far did we get?"
"About seventy five miles."
"Not too bad for two hours."
"At this rate we'll be home for Halloween, yeah."
They drove in silence until they approached the next exit, when Max said, "Sweet a 'Days Inn', that will be perfect. Or do you want to stay at the 'Best Value'?"
"The Days Inn is closer to the highway, we'll stay there." said Steward, "Any zeds for us to worry about?"
Max concentrated, nodded, "Both hotels have some, the ones in the Days Inn look strong, but not quite at the Einstein level, what did Drapers guy call them?"
"The not quite super? A 'Jenner', I think."
"Makes sense they can move as fast as us, but aren't all freaky strong. Yeah a few Jenners in the Days Inn, I think there is an actual Super in the Best Value. So I bet we end up fighting them all before the night is out."
"How many in town?" asked Bill.
Max concentrated for another moment as Stewart pulled into the parking lot in front of the hotel. "Quite a few. Thousands, with a few Jenners and Supers scattered around."
Stewart stopped the truck and then said, "Okay, listen you guys, we need to get some stuff cleared up here, is an Einstein a Super, is a Jenner? And what about the ones that go beyond Einstein, or is Einstein the top? I am all about threat assessment here, but we need to be using the same dictionary for definitions."
"Shambler, Jenner, Einstein, Super." Bill said, "With 'Zed' as a term to describe them all, much like 'zombie'."
"It kinda puts Einstein down, with him not on top like that." said Ruben, "He was the smartest man ever, shouldn't we respect his memory a little more?"
Stewart snorted, "Smartest man ever? Have you read about his personal life? I would say he was the smartest Physicist ever, but Hawking has advanced the field too."
"I am not calling the smart ones 'Hawking'." said Max.
Turning to him Stewart said, "Oh I am not proposing that. Einstein came first he gets to be top dog, as far as I am concerned, but these..." Stewart waved her hands at the hotel, "creatures...the smartest ones, go beyond Einstein. I like Bill's order, it will help us know what you see Max and help us meet the threat better."
"I suppose. They are on the move now. If I had to guess the super in the Best Value is the controller, these Jenners are just following his lead." said Max.
"How much time do we have?" asked Bill.
The windshield cracked as a body landed on it where it met the hood of the truck. Startled, Stewart, let her foot off the gas and the truck jerked forward and stalling the engine before she could recover.
"God damn it!" swore Stewart.
"They're here." Max said belatedly.
"Shit." Javier said, "Which way do we go, Lieutenant?"
"Max?"
"Out the driver's side, there are guys in the building, about ten, uh, Jenners, with two Einsteins coming from the passenger side and they have guns."
Stewart paused, to look at Max, "Your power has gotten better if you can see what they are carrying."
"No, I..." gunfire exploded a second before the windows on the passenger side were shot in. Max tumbled out of the driver's side door, pushing Stewart with him, while the other three scrambled out the back. Composing himself, Max fired at a shambler coming out of one of the windows, then said, "I can't see the guns with my mind, I saw the zombies and they had guns."
"Gotcha." Stewart looked at the front of the truck, there was a body on the hood, it had hit the bottom of the windshield and was twitching slightly. She put a bullet through its head and then popped up to take a shot at the two zombies who were making their way through the parking lot towards them.
"One is inside moving fast down the hall. The others are coming over from the other hotel now too."
"How many?" asked Bill.
"A couple of dozen here, another dozen from the other hotel. Most are shamblers."
Their truck rocked as something hit it, a zombie with a pistol leaned over the edge of a nearby vehicle. Before he could aim and fire, he was hit by the combine fire of Stewart, Ruben and Javier. The things black haired head was thrown back riddled with holes onto the top of the vehicle.
"That is what I call ventilation!" Javier said.
Max looked at Bill and couldn't help but smile. "What?" The older man asked him, frowning.
"Nothing, I was just thinking that this isn't Chicago. These guys don't know what they are dealing with. We'll be okay." Turning Max aimed at a drape filled window and waited, a moment later he fired and the Einstein inside clawed its face and fell back into the room.
"If you say so."
"Quit your jabbering and start shooting!" yelled Stewart.
Max went prone and pointed his shotgun underneath the vehicle, aiming for the leg of one of the remaining zombies with a gun. He fired and the zombie was thrown off balance and out of cover, where he was shot by Javier, who muttered, "Ventilated." before switching to a new target.
"More coming behind us!" Max yelled.
"Fast or slow?"
"Jenners followed by shamblers, I think the super is lagging behind...moving to the back of this place."
"I'll take Javier and we'll watch your asses, if you guys can keep an eye on this?" Ruben said, shifting his shotgun to point behind them, "I don't suppose you can tell if they have guns?"
Max shook his head, "Nope. Don't go too far!"
Ruben shrugged his shoulders and
pointed at Bill, "I follow his orders, but I won't get far, I'm an old man!" Ruben and Javier took off towards the west end of the building. They arrived in time for Ruben to shoot a teenage zombie girl who ran around the side of the building as quiet as the night is black. The girl tumbled head over heels and Max watched her body fade to black before she ever hit the ground.
Javier let loose with a barrage of gunfire that cut the next two runners off at the knees, they skidded to a tumbled heap a few yards in front of Ruben and he fired at one, killing it again before it could scurry behind a nearby car. Both Ruben and Javier ducked for cover when one of the zombies fired a gun back at them. Max couldn't be certain, but it sounded like the sharp retort of a pistol, dangerous but not as bad as facing a shotgun or rifle. Hopefully these zombies would be poor marksmen like the others they had encountered on their journey so far. Max was not accurate either, but he had the advantage of knowing where the enemies were.
He rolled to one side and took cover behind the rear tire of the pickup. He then aimed where he thought the zombie was on the other side of the car and fired. The shotgun didn't have the power to go through the vehicle completely but he was hoping to spook it into raising its head or running for better cover. The one behind this vehicle was too smart for either of those tactics, in fact all of the above average zombies, those that Max could sense with a 'light blue' sort of color, were holding their position. 'What are they waiting for?' thought Max, 'Ah, shamblers and their friends in the hotel.' Out loud he said, "We might have a problem."
"What?" asked Stewart who fired at a shambler coming out from the lobby door. The shambler went down and the entrance door behind it shattered into a million jagged slivers of glass.
"It's not dead."
"Thanks, what's the problem?"
"Some of the faster ones are moving up to the second story of the hotel."
"They probably have guns." Bill guessed.
"That'd be my bet. What do we do?"
So far no gunfire was being directed at them, the only activity was between Ruben and Javier and some zombie out of Max's line of sight around the corner of the hotel.
"We won't have any cover here, we need to move away from the front of the building so they can't fire directly down on top of us."
"Now?" asked Stewart.
"Before they start firing on us, yeah. Unless you wanna get pinned under the truck?"
"I'll go first. I will get to that line of cars and the ditch between here and the road. Once I get into place I will cover you if someone starts firing." said Stewart.
"Perfect. I am going to run over to Ruben then we will join you at the ditch. I sure wish we had been given a case or two of hand grenades, they might've been useful after all." The group had debated the usefulness of the small explosives versus their weight and discarded carrying even a small supply because the shrapnel generally didn't kill the zombies they hit.
"Yeah stupid us." With that Stewart rose from her crouched position and ran across the parking lot towards the ditch.
A moment later Bill ran toward Ruben and Javier, when he was within twenty feet of them he yelled, "Get to the ditch, we got Jenners with guns on the second floor of the hotel!" then he too veered to the ditch that ran between the highway and the parking lot.
Ruben stared at Bill momentarily, then at Max as he broke and ran to the ditch. Gunfire blew out a window on the second floor as a zombie there open fired. Javier took one last shot at the zombie who had been trading fire with them and announced, "Got him sarg! Let's go!"
Ruben, however, didn't move, he mouthed the words, 'What the fuck' while he stared at Max high tailing away from the truck. The truck where their gear was. The truck where the nuclear bomb was sitting, left by everyone as they fled.
Chapter 14 - Katie
'How did they fucking survive so long?' Katie asked herself. The grieving half of the duo, Robert, had wandered into a zombie almost as soon as they made it into the housing development. Kent and Katie were walking ahead of the other three, who were still crying and in shock, when the zombie lurched out of an open garage and surprised the man. When the zombie bit into Robert he decided it was time to fight. By then, however, it was too late, he was already infected. His daughter, Jess, clubbed the zombie in the head, hitting it so hard she bent the barrel of her rifle. That hadn't saved Robert though. The four of them gathered around the sobbing man as his blood spurted out onto the driveway and made a rivulet down to the gutter.
Katie backed off and watched for more activity while the others bandaged the man up and tried to get him to his feet. He ignored them and sobbed. "They took our baby Kent! Our little Sammy!"
Kent bent over and hugged Robert, "I know Rob, I know. But we have other kids to live for, other kids to help, we have to move on, get them safe, we have to. C'mon, get up. We can't stay here."
"I can't go. You know I can't go with you. Not with this!" he held up his bandaged arm, the white gauze was already drenched in bright red blood.
"You are not dead, we'll find someone to take care of you, we'll get it..." Kent's voice trailed off and he too started to sob.
The crying was painful to Katie's ears, she had compartmentalized her grief at losing Randy, put it away in a small little room buried deep within her brain. She had locked the door and turned the painful, numbing grief that threatened to destroy her into a cold anger for revenge. She would go through what Robert was suffering....but later, not now. A single tear appeared at the corner of her eye and she wiped it away angrily, turning before the group behind her could see her weakness.
"What do we do?" Kent's voice asked her, "What do we do?" he repeated when she didn't answer him. "Hey, military woman! I am talking to you! What can we do?"
Katie looked at Kent, then at the blood, which continued to drop out of Robert's arm. She then looked up and down the street, not seeing any activity she crouched down and set her gun on the ground, pointed towards the bleeding man.
"He is bleeding a lot. Maybe he bled out the infection."
"You don't sound very convincing." Kent said.
"You want convincing? What do you expect? He got bit, he is going to die. He is going to come back as one of them, same as Sam. I am not a doctor." she pointed at Robert and shrugged, "He bled a lot, maybe the infection didn't get inside him, like it did with my partner. Maybe he will recover. If he doesn't bleed to death."
"I can feel it in me." Robert said through his sob.
"That's blood loss, I doubt you feel the infection." Katie said. Her voice was doubtful though, she recalled Randy saying the same thing.
"You've seen this before." Kent accused.
Katie nodded.
"What did you try?"
"There wasn't much to try, we washed him up real good, we had antibiotics, we had bandages, and we were in the field. He died." Katie looked away 'What the fuck does he want from me?'
"Shoot me."
"Shut up, Robert, you don't know what you are saying."
"No, you shoot me, Kent. I would do it for you."
"You aren't even dead! You're being unreasonable."
"I can't do it myself. I am not that strong."
"How could you ask me to do that? I wouldn't ask you to do it! Not while there is a chance."
"You heard her!" Robert screamed, "There is no chance!"
"We don't even know who she is, she could be lying."
Katie shrugged, this little gathering reminded her of her own family all too much, the constant bickering, leading to screaming, then someone yelling at someone else to kill them. She smiled bitterly at her dark sense of humor, Randy would have got it. The two men continued to argue until Katie got tired of it, she picked up her shotgun, stood up and walked across the street.
"Where are you going?" Robert yelled when he saw her walking away.
"Over there." Katie said without looking back while as she pointed to the house in front of her. It was a home just like any other on the block, except it was all buttoned up. She ho
ped that meant there was a car in the garage and keys somewhere inside.
"You can't leave us!" Robert said.
Katie half turned and answered over her shoulder, "I'm not. I'm just going into the house. When you get done calling every zombie around us down on our heads, I will come back out." muttering under her breath she continued, "Or I will just drive away in a nice Suburban by myself."
The kids looked embarrassed and torn, half wanting to go with Katie, half wanting their dads to stop bickering. Family loyalty won out and they stayed in the street to watch the two men argue. Katie approached the door and banged on it, calling out, "Anybody alive in there?" She waited a full count of sixty, then banged again, "I am coming in, if you are in there and don't want your door broken down, you have about ten seconds to open up." Nothing. Katie turned sideways and slammed into the door, it only took two tries to break the frame holding it shut.
'Surprising, how easy it is to break into a house if you don't care that other people can see the damage.' Inside the shades were drawn shut, with only a little light seeping into the front room from the kitchen.
A smell of decay wafted passed her as Katie stood in the doorway. In the street the argument was reaching a new height. 'Decay means dead-dead, not living dead.' thinking this to herself she shut the door as well as she could behind her and scanned the room. There weren't any bodies lying around, or moving either. 'Upstairs, in the bedrooms. I bet you five Randy, that is where I find the family, all suicided.'
She took the stairs two at a time as fast as she could, just in case there was a smart zombie lying in wait. The stairway opened into a loft like area that overlooked the main room, there was a bathroom directly in front of her, two open doors down a short hallway to her left and a closed door that screamed 'Master Bedroom' across the loft room to her right. The door was ornate and oak. Not good, hundred year old oak, but the newer faux oak door that was lightweight, yet still cost a few hundred more than standard doors and looked nice.
"I could just leave it. I know what is in there. Dead people. I don't have to go in." Katie said out loud. She put her hand on the doorknob, or latch rather, it looked and felt like some sort of brushed nickel. 'Nice.'