by R. M. Smith
“Oh I gotta protect these, too,” he asked with a crooked smile.
She smiled shivering.
Handing me the large plastic trash can full of food Ben said, “We’ll take turns carrying this. Let’s get to their Dad’s place before it gets dark.”
Another strong blast of wind blew past. Snowflakes stung my skin.
Wendy quickly turned in the direction of the shop. “I sure hope Dad’s there.”
“We’ll see soon enough,” Ben said.
Trudging through the deep snow, Lisa led us, snowflakes dancing across the top of the snow in streams, waving back and forth in the wind. Ben grunted with each step. Wendy and I followed his footprints through the deep snow. He followed Lisa’s.
I had never walked in deep snow before. I had no idea how hard it was. Keeping balance, careful not to slip, careful to put my foot down in another footprint instead of trying to break through the snow myself. I stumbled quite a bit, not to mention how cold I was. My cheeks were chapped. My skin was frozen. I should have grabbed a ski mask or some kind of head protection at the farm because my ears felt like they were going to fall off. I could feel my nose hairs. They were frozen.
Ben looked back over his shoulder at me. “Doing alright back there Jon?”
“Great,” I managed to say over the howling wind. It was hard to move my mouth. The bag of food felt like blocks of ice in a knapsack.
Ahead of us through the darkening gray blowing sky, a sign came into view:
Doyle’s Pilot Travel Center.
“Almost there guys,” Lisa shouted. “It’s on the other side of Doyle’s.”
Snow drifts had stacked chest high against the gas pumps at Doyle’s.
Wendy asked, “Is anyone inside?”
“Don’t know,” Ben said, “But I’m fucking freezing. Let’s go in.”
We plodded through the snow to the front door. Using both hands, Lisa and Ben fought the wind pulling it open.
Inside, the store was dark. We caught our breath. The wind howled outside. A large man wearing a heavy parka stepped out of the darkness. Ben quickly pulled out his flashlight and flashed it into his face. His face was covered in a thick black beard. He wore glasses, a dark blue stocking cap and coveralls. A crowbar swung from one of his belt loops.
In the cold stillness of the store, Ben said, “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to,” the man answered clearing his throat. “Just trying to get out of the cold.”
“Getting out of the cold,” Ben repeated with a chuckle and a shiver in his voice. He shoved his flashlight back into his backpack. “Good idea. Any zombies in here?”
“No,” the man answered. When he spoke, his eyes didn’t shift from person to person. He only looked at the person he was talking to directly. The man asked, “You?”
Ben answered, “Back down the road a ways, saw some frozen ones. None moving around, though.”
The man asked, “You from here?”
“Yeah from around here,” Ben said. “I’m Ben Crossman.”
The man reached out to shake hands. “Dick Cooper, but most people call me Doc.”
Ben shook it. “You a doctor?”
“No.”
I said, “I’m Jon Hutchens. These girls are Wendy and Lisa Lewis.”
Lisa said, “I’m Lisa.”
Suddenly the door leading outside threw open. A man and a woman came stumbling in. The man had an unshaven face. His eyes were dark. He wore a stocking cap and a leather coat. The woman with him wore a long tan fur lined coat, white gloves and a white stocking cap. She wore rubber boots with white fur on the top.
Out of breath, the man from outside yelled, “Zombies! They’re coming!”
Out in the parking lot, hundreds of zombies came into view. They had been chasing the couple.
Doc yelled, “Run!”
Ben grabbed Lisa’s hand. Doc ran toward the back of the store. The rest of us immediately followed.
“Go to my Dad’s shop,” Lisa shouted. “It’s the garage right across the alley back here! We can make it!”
We ran back out into the snow.
CHAPTER TWO
Bad Blood
Ducking into the shop through a half-open garage door, one of the zombie’s chasing from Doyle’s grabbed Lisa’s ankle. She screamed, lost her footing on the slippery snowy cement and fell hard onto her ass. Crying for help, begging to be let go, she tried to pry off the long rotted fingers which dug into her lower leg and pulled her back toward the garage door.
When we first entered the garage, Lisa started tugging on a chain to pull the door down but the door was frozen, cock-eyed in place.
The zombie pulled Lisa across the floor. Its fingernails, long and sharp, dug into her calf. She pawed the ground, trying to reach or grab anything to hold herself in place.
Lisa yelled, “Help! Shoot them! Stop them!” She reached for her switchblade.
Ben and I dropped our backpacks and started shooting the door hoping one of us would hit the zombie. The sounds of our gunshots were loud in the small room.
Crying, Wendy covered her ears. Ben unloaded his shotgun at the door yelling, “No! No! No!”
Outside the door the chattering of rotted teeth started again. It got louder and louder, filling the air, drowning out Lisa’s screams and our gunshots.
Again the chattering reminded me of locusts…and Rainey.
One bullet hit the zombie’s arm. Blood flew back out into the snow. Another zombie showed up behind the door. More of them were coming. The chattering got louder and louder.
The zombie holding Lisa pulled her closer to its snapping razor sharp teeth. The zombie’s long dirty hair brushed on the snow as it leaned down and reached further into the garage with its long arms.
Bullets hit the door, the floor and the zombie’s arm but it didn’t stop pulling her.
The man from outside Doyle’s holstered a pistol he had been shooting, ran over to Lisa and started pulling her arm trying to release her from the zombie’s grip, but the zombie’s strength was too strong. Lisa was yanked out of his grip. Her head and shoulders slammed against the bottom of the door when the zombie pulled her under. Her switchblade went spinning across the floor to our feet. On the other side of the door, zombies started shredding the flesh on her leg. She squealed in pain and terror.
With a final tug, Lisa was pulled under the door screaming. She fought to get away from the biting teeth and the scratching fingernails but couldn’t. Her screams faded off.
Sounds of chattering teeth rose into the air. The zombies devoured her.
“God damn,” the man from outside Doyle’s yelled. He yanked his dirty stocking cap off his head, wiped sweat from his dirty forehead. “She’s fucking gone. We got to get outta here!” He pulled his stocking cap back on, turned on his heel, grabbed his wife’s hand and ran away from the overhead door.
Wendy slowly leaned down, picked up Lisa’s switchblade, and pocketed it.
We ran to the back of the garage to a door leading into a small convenience store. The door was padlocked. Doc told us to back up. He used his crowbar to break it off.
The man from Doyle’s shouted, “Now what’re we going to do? We’re going to get trapped in here!”
Wendy’s eyes scanned the dark room. “Dad are you here? Dad? Mom?”
Trying to hide his grief over losing Lisa, Ben ran through the store acting like he was helping look for Wendy’s parents.
Doc pulled his crowbar out. He smashed out the glass in the locked front door of the store. Glass shattered. Snow blew in. He said calmly, “We need to keep moving.”
The man from Doyle’s screamed, “But the zombies are right out back! They’re right around the fucking corner!”
Doc demanded, “Go.”
The man from Doyle’s and his wife jumped through the smashed glass.
“Go guys,” I said loudly. “Come on, Wendy, we got to get out of here.”
Shaking her head,
hesitant, Wendy said, “No. I don’t want to leave Lisa’s corpse behind! I don’t want to leave without first finding out about my parents.”
“We got to go,” I said grabbing her arm. “We don’t have any time!”
She finally gave in letting me lead her back out into the snow.
Doc stepped to the side. We ran by. Sliding his crowbar back down through the loop in his belt, he followed. “Let’s go over to that church.”
On the other side of the street, catty-corner from Wendy and Lisa’s Dad’s shop, a steeple became visible through the churning blizzard beyond a line of trees.
Chattering hemmed us in, rose with the wind, carried around buildings and swept down the height of them, raced along the empty streets and covered everything like a static blanket.
We stumbled over the curbs under the snow on the street and broke into the church. The only light in the building came from a rack of different colored candles. Ben pulled his flashlight back out. Doc and the man from Doyle’s struggled while barricading the doors with a heavy wooden bookshelf. Ben and I helped too but mostly got in the way.
Following Ben’s flashlight, we ran past rows of empty pews in the dark down into the basement. We all huddled together sitting at the end of a metal cart filled with fold up chairs. Several cardboard boxes full of old clothing, some with canned food leftover from a food drive were stacked against a wall next to us. Wendy sat in front of me facing me. Ben sat at my side. We opened our back packs. Pulling out several blankets we covered ourselves. We were quiet other than Wendy’s whimpering over her missing parents; and the loss of her sister.
Ben asked, “Where’s our food?” He wiped tears from his cheeks.
“I dropped it when we started shooting,” I said. “It’s still back there.”
“What the fuck,” Ben yelled. “Man we need that shit! What are we going to do for food now?”
“Keep it down,” Doc said digging into his own backpack. He pulled out a can opener. Pawing through one of the cardboard boxes he passed some cans around after opening them. He said, “Eat this for now.”
Ben leaned his back against the wall with his knees bent, his elbows resting on his kneecaps. His head was down. He started crying. His can of soup sat untouched.
This has to be killing him inside, I thought. Now with Lisa gone, too. He’s losing it.
Suddenly, the man from Doyle’s said, “She’s bleeding all over the place.”
Her eyes closed, his wife rested her head on his shoulder. All of her makeup had rubbed off except for clots of it stuck in her tear ducts and some that had run down her cheeks. An earring dangled from her ear.
She pulled her coat sleeve back to reveal a deep cut on her arm. Blood bubbled out of it.
Wendy gasped, “Did she get bit?”
“No. It’s just a scrape,” the man from Doyle’s said giving Wendy a dirty look. “She cut it on a bus fender.”
Doc asked, “A bus fender?”
“It hurts Max,” his wife cried quietly.
“Just hold on, Angie,” Max said, trying to console her.
Doc said plainly, “Wrap it up until we can find something to clean it out with.”
“It needs stitched, man, it’s deep,” Max said to us. “We got to sew her up, man. She’s going to bleed to death.”
Doc said louder, “Wrap it up!” He held his can of soup by his mouth without moving. He kept his gaze constantly on Angie.
“Ok baby, hold on,” Max told her getting up on his knees. He laid her on her back.
Doc said, “Tie it tight.”
Max grabbed a blanket he had been sitting on, ripped a section off, and wrapped it around Angie’s arm. She didn’t move. “It’s alright honey,” Max said. He pulled the blanket tight. She cried out. “You got to deal with the pain for a bit, babe.” He sat back down beside her, lifted her head onto his lap and whispered, “Just give it a few minutes baby.”
We sat in the darkness. Outside the wind slipped through window panes causing high pitched sounds like lost wailing ghosts.
Ben stood his flashlight up on the floor. The beam hit the ceiling illuminating the room around us.
“It’s so cold in here,” Wendy whimpered.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Better than being outside,” Doc said. When he talked I heard phlegm in the back of his throat.
Leaning my head back I closed my eyes. Inside, Rainey was waiting for me, smiling right behind my eyelids.
“Hi Jon,” she said, her dimples diving into her cheeks.
I shook my head no. Fighting back tears, I told myself, I can’t let this happen to me. I need to put her out of my mind even though I don’t want to. She’s dead, damn it. She’ll never come back.
Instead, I envisioned the two of us on the beach in California. Rainey lying on the sand on a beach towel in a skimpy two piece swimming suit. Me running up and down the beach, waves crashing on the shore collecting seashells, bringing them back to her, laying them on the towel next to her hip. Her skin smooth. I fell down next to her, laughing, the sand soft underneath. Rainey got up on an elbow, a smile on her face. Her pretty hair blowing.
Blowing in the…
The snow?
“The snow,” Ben asked in a quiet voice. “You think it’ll slow the zombies down?”
“I don’t know,” Doc muttered. “You seen their arms, right? They’re longer. I think they grow after they die. Their legs, too. It gives them an advantage over us. They’ll be able to reach farther and run faster than any of us!”
I mumbled, “Yeah, I know.”
The warm thoughts of Rainey on the beach quickly washed away, quickly undone by memories of her crawling up the dusty driveway, her long paralyzed legs dragging behind her, her hands digging in the dirt pulling herself along.
Sniffling, Wendy asked, “What are we going to do? They’ll find us in here! I don’t want to die. Please.”
Max nervously rubbed the tops of his legs trying to keep warm. He asked, “Is there a shelter here? Me and Angie aren’t from here, ok. Our 4x4 got stuck out on the highway on the way in from Fargo. A greyhound bus got stuck out there on the bridge. That’s where she cut her arm. We couldn’t drive around it. We had to walk. It was the only way to get past. What town is this?”
“St. Cloud,” Wendy said softly.
Max asked, “What are we, 30 minutes from the twin cities?”
“No about 45.”
Max said, “Well we need to get somewhere safe. This basement isn’t good and Angie needs some medical attention.”
Wendy said quietly, “I’m from here. I teach third grade at the school outside. There’s a tornado shelter in it.”
Ben interrupted, “We were only stopping here for gas, remember? We need to keep moving.”
With a turn of his head Max asked, “Where were you headed?”
Doc kept his eyes fixed on Angie. She hadn’t moved since Max tied the blanket around her arm.
Doc asked, “How’s your wife?”
“She’s good. Why?” Max wiggled Angie’s shoulder. “Babe, you ok?”
Loudly Doc asked, “Lady, can you hear me?”
Angie whispered, “Meds, Max. Give me some of those strong ones…in the tackle box. In the back seat of your truck, you know, where you put your truck keys... I need those.”
“Baby?” Max shook her shoulder harder. “Baby, come back to me. Don’t worry we’ll get you better, babe.”
Angie’s head slipped off Max’s leg and lopped to the side.
“She’s infected,” Doc said standing up grabbing his crowbar.
“No she’s not,” Max said. He lifted her head back up onto his leg. “It’s just a cut. She’s a heavy sleeper! She passed out!”
Doc said, “I’ve seen enough of this to know what it is. She’s infected.”
Standing up I asked, “Seen enough of it? How long has this been going on?”
Max interrupted. He asked Doc, “What are you, a doctor?”
“A kind of
physician, yes,” Doc answered.
Excited, Max asked, “Hey listen. You can help her then, right? You know how to turn it around, right, take the zombie out of her?”
Doc’s eyes narrowed. “Zombie? I thought you said it was just a cut.”
“Ok yeah, well, yeah she got bit,” Max said scoffing. “Out on the highway. They snuck up on us on the other side of the bus.”
Wendy cringed against my leg. She whimpered, “I don’t want to get bit.”
Excited, Max said, “Come on Doc, you can fix her. Come on. Help us out, man.”
“No, I can’t do that. I don’t think it’s even possible to reverse the infection.”
Max gently laid Angie’s head down on the blanket. He stood up. “W-w-what do you we need then to change her back?”
Doc shook his head. “I don’t…”
Max leaned down and grabbed Wendy by the shoulders. “Is there a hospital around here? Maybe we can do a blood transfusion or something. Yeah, we can reverse the blood, you know, get the bad out and put new blood in.”
“It would take a great deal of blood,” Doc started.
Max pulled his pistol out. He pointed it at Doc, his hand shaking. “Doc, y-you’re going to give her a blood transfusion, ok?” His breath was fast. He pointed the gun at Wendy. “You; whatever your name is, honey…take us to the hospital.” He pointed the gun at me and Ben. “You two carry her.”
“Now hold on,” Doc said, slipping his crowbar up out of the loop. “We don’t want any trouble here. I told you there isn’t a cure for this. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
Max quickly pointed the gun back at Doc. “No, I don’t know that. I don’t think there’s ever been tests to prove it, right? When has there ever been a zombie to test it on? Never, right? No, you’re going to give her a blood transfusion, understand? You don’t want me to use this gun, Doc, because I will, ok? I’m not afraid to use it. You put that crowbar back down in your pants, Doc. Slide her right on down.”
Doc hesitated then lowered the crowbar.
Max continued: “Now this can be easy, ok? Let’s not make it any harder than it needs to be. Darling, take us to the hospital.”