by Bowie Ibarra
Jesus turned to Nick. “Hey, Nico, how’s Theresa?”
“Before we left, she was fine.”
“Still at the apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“You should leave the bitch.”
The comment stung, but Nick knew the feelings his brother had for Theresa had always been that way. “Bro, you know I would if I could. But I can’t put Laura Jane through that. Not right now.”
Jesus was frustrated, but understood. “Naw, I know, man,” he said, regretfully.
“I need to get them.”
“Just wait, man. They’ll be fine. Call them. Tell them you’ll head to them tomorrow.”
Nick knew he couldn’t go it alone. He was ready to call in his favor from Sleepy, (the convoy was a massive force and surely there would be volunteers that would assist,) but he was just too tired right now. The morning prison riot and subsequent march of the marauders had left him completely drained. The danger outside was growing moment by moment though, and he needed to at least check in with his wife and see how she and their daughter were holding up. He could rest, form a plan, and put it into action tomorrow.
All around him the liberated criminals celebrated. Many of the convenience stores hit had been liberated of their beers. And the liberated liberators liberated the light libations contained in the various bottles and cans they held in their hands. Several people came up to Nick and hugged him, and thanked him.
He graciously accepted, then found a quieter corner of the garage and called his wife.
* * *
Theresa Lopez quickly picked up the ringing and rattling ground line in her apartment in anxious anticipation of who was calling.
“Nicholas?” she asked.
“Terry, it’s me, baby.”
“Where the fuck are you?” she nagged, as if he was out late on a Friday night without her.
Laura Jane poked her head from her hiding place in her room. “Is that daddy?”
“Yes, baby,” she replied.
Nick answered her initial question. “I’m at Jesus’ place. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I—”
Nick cut her off. “Where’s L.J.?”
“She’s here. She’s—”
“She okay?”
“Yeah. She—”
“Let me talk to her.”
Theresa frowned, then said, “What about me—your wife?”
“Terry, just put her on.”
“Laura Jane, your dad wants to talk to you.”
Laura Jane lit up with a smile and dashed into the living room. But her joy was squashed unexpectedly as her mother threw the cordless phone at her in frustration. Not anticipating the bitter response, the phone hit Laura in the face, then fell to the floor and broke.
Laura looked at the phone on the floor. The battery of the cordless had popped off just nearby. She picked it up.
No dial tone.
No daddy.
She put the battery in, then put the phone up to her ear.
Dial tone.
Still no daddy.
A small bump formed on her forehead where her mother hit her with the phone. She began to whimper.
“Mom,” she said, resonating with the sadness of a Chopin etude. She couldn’t find the words, and was ashamed to ask why her own mother did that to her. She ran back to her room, crying.
Too proud to admit her fault, Theresa just sat on the couch and pouted. She never really had any kind of patience. She knew she shouldn’t have done what she did, but wasn’t going to say she was sorry. Laura Jane should have caught it. She was old enough. And had the phone’s ringer not broken, they would have received several return call attempts from Nick.
Theresa took another deep breath and leaned her head back on the couch, listening to Laura Jane cry in the distant room. Her curly brown hair fell on the cushion like a shawl, covering the pillow in curls.
Her relaxation was broken by something going on outside. It was different from the typical noises of the past couple of days when many tenants were evacuating South Point Apartments. It wasn’t even a fight like when her neighbor, on his way out, stomped a monster in the head until it died. No, the joviality of this ruckus held something dangerous in its song of joy.
She moved to her blinds and peeked out past her partitioned patio.
Two looters in bright orange jumpsuits, armed with shotguns, were kicking down doors and sacking apartments. It was a fearful sight, and when one of the men caught her peeking through her blinds, they advanced to her apartment door.
Fortunately, someone else was also investigating the ruckus and also saw the men:
Officer Mike Runyard.
Watching from his third floor makeshift base, he was not going to allow two thugs to get away with vandalism and assault. Sprained ankles swollen like grapefruit or not, he was going to do something. It was his duty—his promise to the city of Austin. The rules might have changed, but his job did not.
The men arrived at the door and knocked. “Little piggy, little piggy, let me in.”
Theresa ran to the kitchen to grab a knife, yelling, “Laura Jane, hide!” She hoped L.J. heard her. Theresa was not going to take this threat to herself and her daughter lying down.
She grabbed the Ginsu butcher knife she had bought off the Home Shopping Network just three months before, (at a great bargain.) “We don’t need that,” Nick had said, that same night they ordered it, as he flipped through the channels while Lost broke for commercials. “Babe, you never know,” she had retorted. The purchase would be one in a string of overdrafts registered at their bank that would drive a wedge between her and Nick.
But it was about to be the best fifty-five dollars on top of a thirty-one dollar overdraft they ever lost money on.
The orange-clad ex-cons taunted their prey. “Ready or not, we’re going to cum in your mouth!” one yelled as he kicked open the door in a hailstorm of splinters, not actually caring whether the occupants inside were male or female.
“Hey!” Mike yelled, stepping out of the apartment he had holed up in and doing his best to stand straight and look intimidating. “APD! Stop your shit now!”
It was an impotent command, even suicidal considering the firepower of the criminals. However, Mike delivered the words with the same authority he would have if the world had not changed. But as he shifted his weight a bolt of pain shot through his body. He flinched and crumpled to the floor.
Both of the orange-clad ex-convicts looked up at Mike and laughed and pointed.
Dumbyard.
Mike decided to try using his legitimate injury as bait.
“Go bag that shithead. We’ll fuck him, too,” said the first man to the second. The first man advanced into Theresa’s apartment while the second man sprinted up the stairs to get Mike.
Mike scooted and crawled painfully into his apartment and slammed the door. He took a position beside the door in hopes that the man would not expect him to be there.
Dumbyard.
The first man advanced into Theresa’s apartment. She feined fear, hiding her ace behind her back, and leaned against the wall of the kitchen, cut off from escape.
“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,” the man said, baring a mouthful of missing teeth. He raised his shotgun up in the air and extended a hungry hand to her shirt to expose her breasts.
With his eyes on the prize, he never suspected Theresa to attack, much less with a knife.
Outside, the other man made it to Mike’s room, twisted the doorknob and took a step inside.
Mike’s guess was right. He entered straight in and wasn’t ready for the tazer to shock him to the ground outside the apartment. The bolts of mechanized lightning forced the man to drop his shotgun. Mike was able to scoot and pick it up. Mike rose to his feet, not letting off the trigger of the tazer as he moved to the railing overlooking Theresa’s apartment.
Theresa attacked the arm that held her assailant’s shotgun, slicing twice at his hand and wrist, then his arm in
rapid succession. Surprised and screaming, he stumbled backwards. She continued to slice until he stumbled onto her porch, trying to escape, dripping blood everywhere.
Close to following him out, she was repelled back into her apartment by a loud blast that sent the man up against the outside wall, tearing pieces of his orange suit and turning them red. Then another blast sent a large portion of his head against the wall, and the man fell to the ground.
Theresa slammed the door, which was futile considering the doorknob had been knocked off. But she did follow up by throwing the couch up against the broken door. She stood up against the wall breathing heavy. The man’s blood dripped down her bare arms.
She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. She looked down at the Ginsu knife.
We don’t need that, Nick had said.
She listened, probing to try to hear something outside.
A shotgun blast broke the silence.
Then silence returned like a specter.
“Laura Jane?!” she called out, “You all right?!” It was the same question she should have asked before the whole undead holocaust went down.
“Yes, mommy.” Laura Jane had no idea what happened, but was glad she was in her room.
Theresa moved to the windowblinds and looked out.
On the third floor landing stood the cop she had watched climb up the stairs earlier. He saw her and waved back, then turned back around.
Theresa thanked God for sending an angel to her and her daughter.
They were now safe.
And armed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
2:15 PM
North IH-35 near William Cannon
Keri Lawrence had hit the road at around eleven that morning, but the route that used to take her twenty minutes to and fro each way was a postapocalyptic nightmare. Some drivers were trying to remain patient and keep an orderly line, but many were blazing their own trails on access roads and in medians.
On the two hour drive to Slaughter Lane, Keri witnessed gunfights, trucks asserting their automotive power over other vehicles, dead bodies strewn across roads, and monsters eating people on the side of the road, in cars, and even on the highway itself. Most of the time, a driver had the wisdom to run those beasts over if they were exposed and easy to hit. It had been a chaotic two hours, and she was thankful she had gassed up at the Conoco. Despite the line and the chaos around her, things had been surprisingly orderly while she was there. It was a bit jarring at times, though. When the vehicle in front of her pulled up to the gas pump, she was utterly surprised to see the condition of the driver. His shirt was soaked in blood. His hand was covering a wound on his shoulder. It was clearly a bite. She watched him gas up, his back turned to her vehicle, watching the pennies turn to dollars on the pump. When he finished, he reentered his vehicle and drove off. Nobody called an ambulance for him and he certainly hadn’t been gassing up just to drive to a hospital.
Rule change. But Keri couldn’t yet completely wrap her mind around the parameters of these new rules.
She pulled out of the Conoco just in time—just as gunfire erupted. A bullet popped through the trunk of her vehicle, lodging in the spare tire. The gunfight was a result of someone in a vehicle dying from wounds and reanimating. The person was shot dead by a stranger who witnessed the event. The family tried to defend their deceased family member by returning bullets at the stranger, only to set a spark and ignite a massive fireball that consumed all of them.
Keri had just hit the access road when that gas pump blew up, followed in sequence by the rest of the pumps. Conoco was ablaze, as well as most of the people in and around it. Bodies set aflame ran into the streets before collapsing on the pavement, splotches of human campfires.
Keri put in a CD of Celine Dion after tiring of the repeated warnings from FEMA on the radio. Despite the urgency, it was becoming a little too tedious. The blather was just too much for her to deal with.
“Dr. Allison Fischer at the Center for Disease Control has confirmed that the epidemic has spread across the country and has affected every major city in Texas, New York, California, Washington D.C., and Washington state. Every other state in the union, with the exception of Hawaii, has been affected as well.”
She considered herself lucky just to have made it to Slaughter Lane. But as the traffic into Austin slowed down, from slow-and-go to bumper-to-bumper—a typical Austin morning—to a complete stop at William Cannon, she felt her good fortune was about to fade away like a wish made at a secluded fountain.
Her intuition was confirmed when a zombie slammed up against her driver-side window. It stained the tinted glass with blood from a mouth still gnawing on the gristle of some unfortunate Austinite.
Keri screamed and gunned the engine in a panic, turning into the median and ramming into the concrete barrier.
Two men ran up to the vehicle and jumped the zombie, clubbing it to its true death with lead pipes. Though she saw the bright orange outfits, she did not register that they were once incarcerated criminals. She assumed they were actually going to try to help her.
But once the zombie was motionless, the men opened Keri’s door and pulled her out. She tried to find something to grab hold of, but couldn’t.
One of the men forced her down to the grass and held her flat on her back by outstretching her arms and pinning her wrists. The other man fell to his knees in front of her, forcing her legs apart and putting himself between them. His hands hastily probed under her skirt. He grabbed her underwear at the sides and yanked them halfway down her thighs.
Keri flailed in furious defiance. The man smirked.
When he sat up on his knees to unzip his suit, Keri used the opportunity to strike him square on the jaw with an informal upkick. The man clasped his chin and swooned dizzily. The heel of her boot had penetrated the vulnerable skin on the underside of his jaw and blood was pouring from the hole and seeping through his fingers.
Twisting herself in the grip of the man who still held her wrists down on the ground, she smacked him in the face with the full brunt of her forehead. Bone cracked and cartilage shifted in the man’s nose, spitting blood from both his nasal passages.
The two adversaries fell backward, dazed.
Keri was the first to regain her footing. Knowing her vehicle was immobilized and realizing crying out for help was a joke worthy of a good belly laugh, she jumped the concrete barrier and took her chances crossing IH-35 south. An apartment complex was just ahead. She thought she might be able to find some real help there. And with her headbutted assailant now in hot pursuit, she was metaphorically crossing her fingers and toes she was right.
When Keri reached the apartment complex she immediately began screaming for help like a banshee on crack that needed another fix.
Leaning on the third floor landing, having tossed the executed body over the railing, the body he had only moments ago tazed, then blasted, Mike Runyard heard the cry.
“Are you kidding me?” he whispered to himself, regretting his cosmic selection as white knight for a day.
Mike shucked the empty shotgun shell from the rifle, securing a live shell in the chamber. He stood looking over the railing, waiting for the screaming spirit to arrive.
Keri looked over her shoulder. The orange-clad man was fast and was gaining on her, having cut at least a third of the distance on the pursuit.
Keri came into Mike’s view and he cried out to her, “Up here!”
Without hesitation she dashed toward the stairs, only briefly acknowledging the two dead bodies on the sidewalk.
Mike, in an attempt to ambush her pursuer, hobbled painfully back to his room.
Keri took the steps two at a time. As she reached the second floor landing, the aspiring rapist came into view. Her yelp of fear gave away her position before her movement did, and the man followed her as she hit the steps to the third floor.
Keri found the open door and dashed in. She saw the uniformed police officer—Mike Runyard—and demanded, “Kill th
at man!”
Mike hesitated. He thought he could stun him with the tazer, using the same tactic he had used earlier on another escaped convict, surprising him with the bolts of electricity as soon as he entered the apartment. But Mike didn’t want a bloody mess in his hideout.
Sensing his hesitation, Keri asserted herself and snatched the shotgun and went back out the door, leaving Mike standing there with a blank look on his face. Without her even acknowledging it, every ounce of her being had decided she was going to fight back.
The ex-con had just cleared the third floor steps and was negotiating the massive blood blotch on the landing. In doing so, he lost that one crucial moment that might have given him a chance to counter Keri’s swift exit out of Mike’s base. Instead of dodging the assault, the man absorbed the subsequent blasts that tore out his throat and removed a section of his jaw. Round balls of solid lead punched through the brain tissue at the top of the spine, killing the ex-con with a merciless finality.
Keri made one final statement: shucking the empty shell, replacing it with a live one. She pulled the trigger one more time, busting the dead man’s head like a mortar round exploding in the black summer night of a Fourth of July celebration.
Mike, having been witness to the entire scene, muttered, “Holy shit.”
Keri turned, reentered the apartment, slammed the door, and locked it. She leaned up against the door, trembling. The vision of the man’s head exploding began to bruise her soul and kick her conscience. It was stamped into her brain. She tried to close her eyes in a futile effort to erase the image, but her actions were scarring her permanently. Her desperate measures used for survival knocked a large chunk out of her soul, altering her reality. She whispered with guilt, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” before sliding down the door to her bottom and crying uncontrollably.
Seeing the symptoms of shock, Mike shuffled to the bedroom. He pulled the comforter off the twin bed and returned to the living room with it, and placed it on Keri. She quickly pulled it in and snuggled with it, still weeping.