by Raymond Lee
“Time to get inside,” Cruz said just as Hal slid the second body out of the garage.
They quickly ran through the side door, pulling it closed behind them and sliding the bolt into place.
Hal and Cruz maneuvered the garage door, managing to lower it completely.
“Ouch! Sonofabitch!” Damian muttered after running into something. “How the hell did you see good enough to kill those zombies?”
“Moonlight,” Cruz answered, referring to the streams of pale blue light cascading from the block-shaped windows lining the top of the garage walls, cutting strips out of the darkness enveloping them. “It was easier with the door open. All the light reflecting off the snow helped.”
Another small crash sounded, followed by another curse from Damian.
“Just stay still for a moment,” Raven said as she swung her backpack off her back and lowered it to the floor. She rooted around inside until her hand wrapped around the column of a flashlight. Turning it on after fumbling a bit due to numb fingers, she directed the beam toward where she’d heard Damian’s voice. “Get your flashlight out of your backpack. We need to see if we can find a candle.”
“We need to find a way to generate heat too,” Hal said. He stood in a beam of moonlight, turning his head to take in his surroundings.
Once they all had their flashlights out, combined with the natural light coming through the windows, they were able to properly check out their new shelter. A truck took up the left side of the garage. Shelves and cabinets lined the right. Boxes were stacked four feet high along the back.
“I’ll check the truck,” Raven offered, climbing into the back despite the protest of her half frozen limbs.
“I’ll check the boxes,” Hal said. “Damian, you, Carlos and Elijah help me. Pimjai and Janjai, you can help Cruz check the shelves and cabinets. We need to find something we can burn for heat. That metal trashcan over there will hold whatever we find.”
“Looks like we warming up hobo style,” Damian muttered.
“You have a problem with that?” Hal raised an eyebrow.
“Man, I don’t care what we do as long as I can thaw my nuts out. They’re clacking together like cymbals.”
“You talk about your testicles a lot.”
“They’re highly valuable.”
“German roasted nuts are awesome,” Raven called over, grinning. “Did we bring any cinnamon?”
“You crazy as hell.” Damian opened a box. “I already told you to stay away from my balls. I don’t want your girl cooties all over them.”
“I don’t want to hear about anyone else’s balls,” Cruz chimed in as a zombie rammed into the garage door with a heavy thud. Three more thuds followed in quick succession.
“Well, no sleep tonight,” Damian muttered.
“Will they break through?” Carlos asked.
“That door is strong,” Hal answered. “It’ll hold.”
“For how long?”
“It’ll hold,” Hal repeated, then returned to checking boxes.
“Look!” Janjai pulled back a tarp to reveal a large stack of firewood in the corner.
“How’s that for something to start a fire?” Cruz laughed with relief.
Hal smiled. “The Lord provides. Is there an ax in here?”
“Yeah, I saw one.” Cruz removed an ax from a peg on the wall. “The wood is already chopped.”
Hal simply smiled as he pulled the metal garbage can into the center of the garage and methodically placed logs inside. He grabbed one of the thicker logs and set it on the floor before taking the ax from Cruz’s hand. “If you cut a criss cross pattern into the wood, you can make it burn longer. We have a limited supply and we don’t know how long we’ll be here. We need to make what we have count.”
Raven straightened from where she’d been searching the truck bed. “I found six sleeping bags back here, some pillows, and a bunch of blankets. There’s also a battery operated lantern and a couple of citronella candles.”
“Light and warmth. Good find.” Cruz walked over to help her unload what she’d found.
“There’s eight of us and six sleeping bags,” Damian pointed out.
“So six of us sleep in the sleeping bags on the floor, one sleeps in the back seat of the truck and the other makes the truck bed into a, well, a bed. Those in the sleeping bags don’t need blankets.”
“Who sleeps where?” Elijah asked.
“I’ll take the truck bed,” Cruz offered.
“Pimjai should get the backseat. It looks pretty comfortable.” Raven passed another sleeping bag to Cruz as the fire roared to life.
“Everyone should take off their gloves,” Hal advised as he removed his. “If you got snow in your shoes, take those off too, and your socks. The fire will keep us warm now and dry out our wet clothing.”
Raven removed her gloves and massaged her hands. Pinpricks of pain shot through them.
“I don’t know about you people but I hurt everywhere,” Damian said, holding his bare hands over the fire. “I’m not taking my shoes off until those things quit banging up against the door though.”
“That makes two of us,” Carlos said.
“It’s your choice if you want to lose your feet or not.” Hal shrugged his shoulders before removing his coat.
Damian and Carlos exchanged a scared look.
“Say what now?”
“The weather is as much our enemy as those monsters outside,” Hal explained. “Everyone needs to get out of their cold, wet clothes and shoes. The windows are too high up for the zombies to really notice the light of the fire in here. Once we settle in and quiet down they should wander off somewhere, or they might just freeze. You can take your wet things off and settle in.”
“You really think they’ll freeze?” Raven asked.
“I don’t see how they won’t.”
Another zombie hit the door, or maybe one of the previous. All Raven knew was it hit hard and she wasn’t entirely sure she believed Hal’s assumption that the door would hold, but they would surely die if they tried to venture out into the cold again. Every limb of her body felt heavy and sore. How Cruz managed to maneuver well enough to kill two zombies was a miracle in itself.
“Everyone shush,” she whispered just loud enough for them to hear. “No one make a peep until they leave. We can’t afford to lose this shelter right now and we are not in any condition to take on a herd, even a small one.”
The others looked at each other then nodded their agreement as they huddled around the fire as quietly as they could.
Afraid she’d make too much noise if she attempted to get down from the truck, Raven removed her wet coat, laying it out to dry over the roof of the truck before she hunkered down with her knees drawn to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and lowered her head, hoping if she turned herself into a tight little ball, she’d stay warm enough to avoid losing any fingers or toes before the zombies outside finally left them alone.
A halo of warmth fell over her and she looked up to see Cruz leaning his tall upper half across the truck bed to drape a blanket he’d warmed by the fire over her.
She mouthed a “thank you” as she gripped the edges of fabric and pulled them snug around her until only her face peeked out.
He nodded and turned back toward the hobo fire the others were squeezed around.
The blanket, similar to the five dollar ones she routinely saw at Wal-Mart, was surprisingly warm. It seemed to reflect her own body heat as she curled up inside and rested her head against the window at the back of the cab. The thuds against the door eventually stopped and still no one moved. They remained where they were, soaking in warmth and making sure they didn’t do anything to draw unwanted attention back to them.
Raven watched out the windows lining the top of the garage, noting the snow had remained constant since their arrival. She tried to do the math on how long the firewood they had would last if the snow kept falling at the same rate over night but soon remembered she’d fai
led every math class she’d ever taken and had to take correspondence courses her senior year so she could graduate. If she couldn’t figure out simple algebraic equations with a calculator and scratch paper she sure as hell couldn’t figure them out now. She laughed a little as the realization she actually found a real life situation requiring the use of algebra hit her.
Cruz looked over at her, eyebrows raised in question.
“I owe my algebra teacher an apology,” she whispered, biting her lip not to laugh again at the confused look on his face she received in response.
“Are they gone now?” Pimjai asked, her small voice muffled as she stood wrapped in a blanket with her sister, like a Siamese twin burrito.
“I think it is safe to move now,” Hal said, “but we should stay as quiet as possible just in case. I don’t think any of us want to lose this spot tonight now that we’ve thawed out.”
There was a low mumble of agreement as they slowly backed away from the fire and started removing what they’d been scared to remove before, mainly shoes but some had kept their coats on as well. Hal stepped on a cinder block and stretched his frame until he could reach the latch on one of the windows.
“Why are you opening a window?” Elijah asked.
“We can’t burn a fire inside an enclosed space,” he answered. “There’s a reason why fireplaces have chimneys. The windows are high up and I’m only cracking it. We’ll still get enough heat from the fire and stay safe.”
Cruz climbed into the truck bed with a sleeping bag. “This is yours.”
“Thanks.” Raven took the sleeping bag, missing the warmth of the blanket the moment she opened it wide enough to stick her arms out.
“There isn’t much space on the floor for everyone’s bags,” he advised. “I think you’d be more comfortable here in the truck bed. It’s wide enough for two.”
She stilled, the sleeping bag in her hands. He was right. Once they were all stretched out on the garage floor in their sleeping bags, there wouldn’t be enough room for all of them, but she didn’t think it wise to sleep in the back of the truck with Cruz. It was far too intimate to share the truck bed with a man she knew had feelings for her.
“I’m bunking with you two,” Damian said, tossing his sleeping bag into the back of the truck.
Raven mouthed a “thank you” to him as she physically felt Cruz’s frustration radiating from where he stood behind her.
“Don’t get any ideas now, Cruzie,” Damian teased him as he climbed up. “My mama didn’t raise no ho so keep your hands to yourself.”
“It won’t be a problem,” Cruz muttered, arranging his blankets and pillow on the left side of the truck bed.
Raven suppressed the urge to laugh as she shook her head at Damian and situated her sleeping bag in the middle, thinking it best if she created a buffer between the two men who seemed to irritate each other the more time they spent together.
Not close enough to the fire to reap the full benefit, she wasted no time sliding into her sleeping bag and zipping it around her.
“Warm enough?” Cruz asked, pulling a blanket up to his chest as he settled in next to her, the only one in the truck bed without a sleeping bag. He’d laid out a blanket beneath as the only barrier between himself and the hard surface of the vehicle.
“Enough,” she answered. “My jeans are still damp but once they’re dry I should be good. These sleeping bags are surprisingly warm. Are you comfortable?”
“Anything is better than outside,” he answered. “I’m just thankful we found a place the snow can’t get to us, and that you were smart enough to have these coats and supplies ready.”
“I second that,” Damian commented, zipping himself into his sleeping bag next to her. “To think … I was walking around that store in house shoes and pajama pants. I wouldn’t have survived this trip if you hadn’t set me straight on that, and just in the nick of time.”
“We were all too relaxed,” Hal said, poking around the fire as the rest of the group settled in for the night. “I know a couple of us have been tucked away all this time but those of us who have been out in this zombie infested world should have known better. No matter how much we want to relax and find ways to entertain ourselves, to pretend what’s happening out here isn’t real, we can’t do that. Kurt reminded us that there are a lot of bad people we have to be on guard from, and those zombies breaking into the superstore were a wakeup call. We are never safe. Safe doesn’t exist in this world unless we create it ourselves and even then, it can be snatched away in a blink.”
Carlos muttered to himself as he sank lower into his sleeping bag, hiding away from the group he would probably go to his deathbed blaming for losing the shelter he’d planned on living the rest of his life in.
“Where do we go from here?” Damian asked. “If this truck even works, what use is it if the snow falls all night? Can we even drive out of here?”
“We need to get to that base in Nebraska,” Hal answered. “This garage is a pit stop. We’ll go through all these boxes and shelves tomorrow, scavenge what we can, and we’ll head out for Lincoln as soon as the weather allows. We take shelter as we find it. We ration our food and water. We stay vigilant. We’ve been hiding in that superstore for too long without access to the outside world. We have no idea what has happened during that time.”
Dread seeped into Raven’s stomach. “You think there’s something worse than the zombies and snow out there, don’t you?”
“Why did all this start?” Hal asked.
“Russia wanted to kill us,” Damian answered.
“Do you think they’ve changed their minds?” Hal looked at them all pointedly. “Do you think they did this for kicks? Was the plan for them to watch us die and get nothing out of it?”
“This is a war,” Raven said, catching on to Hal’s train of thought. “They don’t want to just wipe out our country, they want to claim it for their own.”
“You think they’re here?” Cruz asked. “The people they infected were just the frontline of their attack?”
“I think they set these monsters loose to take out as many of us as possible,” Hal answered, “and if they aren’t here yet they will be in time. They won’t play nice with any stragglers the infection didn’t wipe out for them. The zombie virus was their first wave. When they come for us they’ll come armed to the teeth, and they will kill everyone they see.”
“Why didn’t they just drop a bomb on us if they wanted to wipe us out?” Damian asked. “Wouldn’t that have worked the same but faster than waiting for an infection to spread?”
“They pretty much did drop a bomb on us,” Raven advised. “A slow, painful bomb that was a hell of a lot easier to sneak past us than something nuclear. They knew we’d be watching for that, but this infection is something no one saw coming.”
“We probably gave them the damn idea,” Cruz said. “Look how many zombie shows and movies were released the past few years. We’ve been creating these stories, making money off this idea and the whole time they were using our entertainment ideas to actually create real walking dead and kill us.”
“And using the insecurities and arrogance of straight white men,” Damian added.
“What?” Cruz asked.
“Your people are as much to blame as them. Who the hell you think bought and paid for them women to come over here? Straight, insecure white dudes who had to have a young woman on their arm to make them feel better about themselves. If white men weren’t so gullible to begin with, this shit wouldn’t have been so easy. We paid the damn shipping on their bomb!”
“First of all,” Cruz began, “I don’t know what this ‘your people’ shit is. I’m only half white. Second of all, I’m sure it wasn’t just white men marrying those women.”
“Half white, all white, your ass looks white and that’s what matters. Rich white dudes are always buying women.”
“I’ve never bought a woman in my life.”
“Every time you brought a fan back to your cri
b you bought her. You think you had millions of women hanging on your junk because of your intellect? Your thought provoking work? You’re an action hero with a couple of sappy rom-coms thrown in for variety. Trust me, you bought every woman you been with since you hit Hollywood. They might have slept with you but they was dating your bank account, and it never crossed your mind once that a lot of them were out of your —”
“Enough!” Raven snapped, her hands over her ears doing nothing to shield her from the argument. “I am not sitting in the middle of two bickering toddlers, and why are you fighting with each other anyway? No one in this garage caused what happened.”
“Raven’s right,” Hal scolded them. “The two of you have had friction since the day we met. I don’t know what has happened between you but this stops now. We all work together to survive or we all die one by one. Understand?”
Both men grumbled their agreement. Damian sank down into his sleeping bag and turned onto his side, clearly put out about being reprimanded.
“I’m taking first watch tonight,” Hal announced. “From now on, someone is on guard at all times. If anyone wants to eat, eat something, but remember to ration because we don’t know when or where we’ll find more supplies. Otherwise, get some sleep. Who wants to take second watch?”
“I’ll do it,” Elijah offered as he sat up in his sleeping bag staring at the fire. “I’m not tired.”
“Try to sleep anyway until I wake you for second watch. We need to get all the rest we can get when the opportunity presents itself. We never know what the next day or night is going to bring.”
Heeding his advice, the worn out survivors turned off their flashlights and got as comfortable as they could although Raven suspected sleep wouldn’t come quickly for them. Their bodies might be exhausted, but Hal’s words had given their minds a hell of a lot to process.
She tried to relax but the wet jeans clinging to the bottom of her legs chilled her. She remembered the red cowboy boots she had at home and wished she’d worn them on vacation. Of course there was no way she could have known her trip to Hollywood would turn into a trip to hell. She’d been busy remembering to pack sunblock and an extra swimsuit, not weapons and shoes that would protect her shins from the damp snow. She’d expected to be home curled up under a blanket in sweats this time of year, drinking hot cocoa with Sky.