by Dan McMartin
The zombie turned. Pete recognized the thing. It was the owner of the bagel shop, his skin gray and his eyes cloudy. The zombie gnashed his teeth before charging Pete like a bull. He turned and ran, not yet able to act as quickly as he should. Pete returned to the front of the shop, opened the hinged counter and slammed it shut. A moment later, the former owner rammed his midsection into the counter. There it remained, biting the air and grasping desperately for Pete.
He watched in horror mere feet from the creature taking a moment to observe the ghastly thing up close. It wasn’t the owner...not anymore. The zombie’s eyes were lively but vacant. There was no intelligence there, just need and instinct. Pete watched as it searched for a way to get at him, never stopping its desperate flailing. He was disgusted and saddened at the same time. That thing was a person just yesterday. Now it was a mindless husk bent on having him for breakfast.
Pete leveled the shotgun at the zombie and pulled the trigger. Its head split in two as its brains splattered the wall beyond. Then it slumped forward and slid off the counter onto the floor leaving a trail of blood. The person trapped in the cooler was screaming even louder now. Pete hopped over the counter, not wanting to get near that thing again, and ran in back. He opened the cooler door, ready for whatever he might find, his shotgun at the ready.
“Anna!” he exclaimed. She jumped towards Pete as he lowered the shotgun, hugging him desperately. She was freezing.
“Oh my God, Pete!” she sobbed as she hugged him tight. Pete leaned the shotgun against the wall and held Anna as she cried.
“You’re safe now,” he assured her. It was like the whole morning, everything from Julie at his front window to discovering his mom was one of the zombies to leaving Mike behind, was all worth it. Anna was safe. He’d saved someone and somehow it made up for all the losses.
“How did you find me?” Anna asked as she pulled away. He considered telling her everything but there was too much. Pete cut to the chase.
“I was about to leave town and I thought of you. I...I should have asked you out a long time ago. I had to see if you were alive,” he told her. Anna smiled despite herself.
“Yes, you should have,” she said, smiling at Pete.
“We need to go. Tell me what happened on the way,” Pete told her and then remembered Anna’s dead boss. “Let’s go out the back way,” he said after seeing the door that lead to the alley out back. Anna nodded, grabbed her backpack and Pete led her to the door. He had Anna stay back as he cautiously opened the door but the alley was empty. They walked quickly around the building as she explained.
“I came to work at four in the morning as usual. Morty, my boss, said he felt sick and went in back to rest. Next thing I know, he’s all gray and his eyes are all clouded over. He came for me and I tried to get away but he blocked my path. I had no choice but to lock myself in the cooler. Later, I heard something, a banging and I began screaming hoping someone would hear,” she explained.
“I broke the lock,” Pete explained. As they rounded the building, the pair could see the street and the horizon beyond. Columns of smoke rose above Reno. The streets were littered with abandoned cars, the odd dead body and in the distance, some of the zombies shambled aimlessly about.
“Oh my God!” Anna exclaimed as she put her hand over her mouth.
“You don’t know,” Pete said, more a statement than a question, realizing she had missed it all like he had.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Some kind of disease, I think. Some people, like your boss, turned into...zombies,” I said.
“Zombies?” Anna asked incredulously, fresh tears in her eyes.
“I wish I was making it up. Others died and still more were bitten by the zombies and turned into zombies themselves. My neighbor...my mom...and my best friend...almost,” he explained. He could see in Anna’s eyes what he himself had felt a few hours earlier. Shock, disbelief, even amusement at what her mind knew couldn’t be real. Anna began to shiver.
“I...what the...Pete?” she stammered, fainted and fell into Pete’s arms. She was awake a moment later, her eyes fluttering as she looked up at Pete searching for answers.
“You fainted,” he told her. Anna just looked about in disbelief, her mind sure her eyes were lying. “We need to go. We can talk on the road,” Pete urged her. Anna didn’t respond but when Pete put his arm around her shoulders and led her over to the Jeep, she didn’t resist.
Anna stared out the window of the Jeep, turned away from Pete. She needed time and space, he assumed. She didn’t react at all as the carnage unfolded before their eyes. Dead people littered the streets, some whole, others picked over by the zombies and still others actively being devoured. Cars, wrecked or abandoned, made travel difficult. At times, they drove on the sidewalk, over landscaping or through parking lots to make it past the snarls of vehicles, some still running.
Pete didn’t see any living people. All the people he saw were dead or turned but nobody that was still alive was out and about. He wondered if Mike was right. He had said that many people seemed to be immune but Pete wondered if that were true. Then again, would the living be wandering the streets openly? He doubted it and questioned his own determination to leave his home behind.
“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?” Anna asked suddenly as they left Reno behind, heading north on Highway 395.
“I don’t know. I get the feeling it is,” Pete replied. Anna removed her phone from her backpack and began tapping on the screen.
“CNN.com doesn’t say anything,” she said. “MSNBC doesn’t either,” she added a moment later. “Fox News says something about an outbreak of a disease but nothing else,” she said finally.
“I saw the President on TV this morning. It was a recording. He said there was a state of emergency and that he’s declared martial law,” Pete told Anna. She seemed better suddenly. Pete figured that everyone coped differently. Maybe she just needed some time to herself to let it sink in...if this could ever really sink in.
“I had no idea. I saw some police cars this morning on the way to work at three o’clock but I only live a few blocks away. I usually walk if it’s nice but I drove because it was cold out. I went to work and then...well, you know,” she explained.
“I slept through it too. Must have happened quickly. My friend, Mike, he told me some people were immune. A lot, actually. We must be the lucky ones,” he said. Anna glared at him. “You know what I mean,” Pete added understanding what she was clearly thinking. She smiled.
“Yeah, I guess,” she replied.
“I hope you didn’t need anything from home. You didn’t seem in the mood for talking,” he said.
“I wasn’t. I’m fine now...better anyway. I don’t own much. I have the important stuff in here,” she told him indicating her bag. “My laptop, my phone, this,” she said and pulled out a handgun.
“Whoa!” Pete exclaimed.
“I’m from Southern California. My parents were refugees from Vietnam back in the day. They owned a store in a really shitty neighborhood. I learned to shoot when I was young and I pulled the graveyard shift before I went to school in the morning,” she said. He wondered about her parents.
“I see. Where are they now...I mean before all of this?” he asked.
“Dead. Three men came in to rob the store one day. My daddy pulled his gun but they killed him first. Then my mom too. I was at school,” she said. Pete wasn’t sure anything could shock him after what he had experienced that morning. He was wrong.
“I...I’m sorry,” he said, searching for a better reply and failing miserably.
“So am I,” she replied. Maybe that was why Anna seemed to bounce back so quickly after discovering the world had ended. This wasn’t the worst day of her life.
“I think my mom turned into...she’s gone too,” Pete explained. He couldn’t bring himself to call her a zombie.
“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Anna told me. Pete frowned and shrugged.
“I hav
en’t even had time to process it,” he told her and then they both gasped as one at the sight that greeted them as they cleared the hills. On the dry lake bed northwest of Reno near the state line sat a Southwest Airlines plane. The inflatable emergency ramps were deployed and the front landing gear was missing but the pilot had apparently landed the plane safely.
It didn’t appear to matter. The plane was well off the highway but they could plainly see the zombies feeding on the dead while others shambled about aimlessly. Pete looked at Anna. He could tell she wanted to go help.
“We can’t,” he told her. She glanced over at Pete and sighed.
“I know. It’s just so sad. All those people...dead...or turned. I want to cry but it’s just so overwhelming. It’s like a dream,” she told me.
“A nightmare,” Pete corrected her. She nodded but never took her eyes off the airliner until it was out of sight.
“Where are we going?” Anna asked after a while.
“My friend Mike’s cabin. It’s up by Susanville near a lake...Mountain Meadows or something. He said it’s stocked with food and supplies. It’s got solar power, as well. We can stay there until this blows over...if it blows over,” he explained, correcting himself.
“You don’t think things will go back to normal?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look good, does it?” he replied.
“No, it doesn’t. Thanks for coming back for me,” Anna said.
“It’s the least I could do since I was too...chicken to ask you out,” Pete told her. Anna laughed.
“A girl can only flirt so much from behind the counter of a bagel shop,” she said. Pete laughed too.
“So, what do you think of our first date?” he asked her.
“You certainly know how to show a girl a good time,” Anna replied sarcastically. He chuckled again.
“Yeah, I’m a real Romeo,” he told her as they continued down the highway. There wasn’t much to see on the way but the sparse sagebrush, rolling hills and the tall mountains off in the distance. The odd car sat parked alongside the highway, abandoned. Others were wrecked, some with bodies still inside. But they didn’t see any of the zombies. There just wasn’t much in the way of towns along 395 north of Reno.
The ride was surreal. When there were no abandoned cars to see, Pete could almost imagine none of this had happened. He could almost pretend that he had asked Anna out and they were heading off on a weekend getaway. He desperately wanted that to be the case. Pete wanted to go back to work with Mike, visit with his mom or spend an evening eating Domino’s pizza and playing video games. But that life was gone and before he could fully immerse himself in the fantasy, another wrecked or abandoned car came into view and the dream was shattered.
The sadness, the anger, the despair weighed on him without ever boiling to the surface. He kept it in check somehow. Maybe it was shock or possibly just denial. Maybe it was his survival instincts kicking in. Crying about it, and Pete wanted desperately to cry, to scream or to hit something, wasn’t productive. Maybe he was already becoming numb to the gore and carnage, to everything he had lost and everything he was going to lose in the coming days and months.
He wasn’t.
Chapter 4
Anna stared out the window watching the scenery go by. She hadn’t said a word to Pete for nearly half an hour. There wasn’t much to say. Each of them, it seemed, were trying to deal with the reality they found themselves a part of. It wasn’t easy.
Anna was sure it couldn’t get any worse than the day her parents were murdered. She questioned that assessment now. This day felt a lot like that day had. Anna felt the same way too. Helpless, mostly. Events beyond her control were changing Anna’s life in ways she didn’t want just as events did that horrible day her parents were killed. But the scars she earned then helped her face this. She had been to the edge and back and knew she wouldn’t...she couldn’t go there again.
After a while, there were more cars on the side of the road, some in the middle of it, doors open and abandoned. Houses and businesses began to appear as well. Then Anna saw the woman. She was running towards the highway waving her hands. “Pete!” Anna exclaimed.
“I see her,” he said and began to slow. Then the pair saw the zombie dash out of the trees towards her. Then there was another. They were closing quickly on the middle-aged, overweight woman. She never had a chance. They stared as the first zombie caught up to her. She fell to the ground as it leaped onto her, its teeth sinking into the woman’s shoulder.
Anna pulled her gun out of her backpack but Pete hit the gas and they sped past as the other creature joined the first. “What are you doing?” she screamed.
“Getting the hell out of here!” Pete replied.
“We have to help her. There are only two of them,” Anna pleaded.
“She’s gone already,” he said.
“No, we can patch her up, take her with us,” she argued.
“She’s bitten. She’ll become one of them if they don’t eat her first,” Pete told her, glaring meaningfully. Anna didn’t understand. “Mike told me. That’s how he died. One of them got to him. I shot it but I didn’t kill it. It still bit my friend. He begged me to leave and when I did, he blew his head off so he wouldn’t turn into one of those monsters,” Pete said, his voice shaky and full of emotion. Then he slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked, even more confused now.
“I’m not going to let those things eat that woman or turn her,” he told Anna. Suddenly, Pete was seething, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. The pair raced back to the scene and Pete’s car slid to a stop on the gravel shoulder. He grabbed his shotgun and climbed out of the car. Anna watched, horrified as the beasts tore the woman apart. Pete shot the first monster in the head as it was focused on feeding and ignoring him, splaying its skull wide open.
The other creature looked up at Pete but that was the last thing it did. He blew a hole in its head as well. It flopped to the ground, motionless. The woman writhed and reached out towards Pete. Anna climbed out of the car and ran to him, thinking they could help her. When she reached the woman, she realized they couldn’t. The woman’s belly was torn open, her intestines laying everywhere. Her throat was torn open as well. She gasped for breath. Her eyes pleaded with them to help.
Anna turned and threw up, the smell of the zombies and the woman’s insides along with the sight of her ruined body too much. After a moment, she regained her composure, forcing herself to calm down. “Pete?” was all she could say. He aimed the shotgun at the woman and pulled the trigger. Anna turned away as the shot echoed about the trees nearby.
“Why did you kill her?!” Anna screamed. It didn’t make any sense to her.
“I told you, Anna. She was going to become one of them or suffer until she died of her wounds. What should I have done?” Pete explained in his defense, his tone changing from angry to frustrated.
Anna sank to her knees and cried, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed. She thought she had come to terms with all of it but she hadn’t. Pete stood next to her, unmoving, until he screamed and threw his shotgun into the trees. “Fuck!” he yelled and then began to sob himself. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to deal with this,” he said, defeated and broken. He fell to his knees next to Anna. She reached out but Pete pulled away, glaring at her, defensive and afraid. The pair stared at each other, relative strangers thrown into an impossible situation.
But Anna saw in Pete’s eyes what was in her heart as well. He was on the precipice right there with her, each of them flirting with the abyss. Anna had been there before and the darkness was hard to resist. When someone lost everything and the future seemed in doubt, it was easy to consider making the pain all go way. Her gun was in the car. Pete’s shotgun had been discarded and that might have been what saved them in that singular moment.
Pete finally raised his hand and took Anna’s hand in his. He pulled her close and they hugged. Eac
h of them cried, openly and with no shame. Their world was gone. Their lives were changed forever. That poor woman lying dead next to Pete and Anna, not to mention those two innocent souls taken by whatever plague had infected them, had it easy. They didn’t have to face life in this new and terrible world.
“I’m sorry,” Pete told her. She pulled away slowly and looked into his eyes.
“I know. This is all just so...I don’t know. It sucks!” she said. Pete’s eyes smiled slightly at that.
“Understatement of the fucking century,” he replied. They stared at one another for a moment and then Pete kissed her. Anna felt the passion and heat in his kiss, the desperation for something good and right. She shared the same need. Pete squeezed her tight as they kissed. Anna clung to him, letting the kiss heal her as she knew it was healing him too. Then the moment was gone.
Pete broke the kiss and the pair stared at one another again. No words were necessary to explain. It was a kiss, one they both needed. Pete let go of Anna and climbed to his feet. He offered Anna his hand and she took it. Pete helped her to her feet and then left her momentarily to retrieve his shotgun. Pete returned, the shotgun resting on his shoulder.