Least Likely To Survive

by Lisa Biesiada

  While the numbers on the screen rose steadily, I joined Jack in the vigilant watch of the lot. So far, we had encountered and taken out the clerk and the trucker, but those two vacant cars were troubling. Had they been eaten by the others, or were they just not out yet? My question was answered as five more zombies came running at us. We didn’t waste any time saddling up to meet them halfway.

  Jack hefted the shotgun to his shoulder, and took a shot at what appeared to be a teenage girl who was snarling through the blood dripping off her chin. He got her in the chest, blowing a hole straight through, and down she went.

  I turned to my left, and noticed a man and a woman fast approaching me. Leaving Jack to handle the other two, I turned my attention to the couple who wanted me for lunch. They looked like your average, run of the mill Middle American couple. I noticed they were both wearing khakis; she had a light blue polo t-shirt, and gladiator sandals on, and he was sporting a fetching yellow button down. Who the fuck would pair gladiator sandals with khaki Capri’s? No wonder she was now an infected cannibal set on an Angie Appetizer; anyone with fashion sense that bad just didn’t have what it takes to survive the apocalypse.

  I shook my head at the tragedy of her ensemble while I palmed one of my Wessons and fired a shot into her belly. She screamed out her rage at me as she collapsed to the pavement. I directed my attention to her husband, and fired another shot, which clipped his shoulder. He didn’t go down, and the bullet only pissed him off more.

  “Fuck,” I groaned out as he got closer. I went to pull the trigger, and the gun only clicked. “FUCK!” I couldn’t believe I had forgotten to check the clip before getting out of the car I clearly remember checking that each gun was loaded, but it became clear that my fear had made me sloppy. I really had to start paying closer attention to what I was doing.

  I threw the empty weapon onto the pavement, and reached into my other waist holster and grabbed the other Wesson. Clicking the safety off, I aimed and got a shot off just as the guy was closing in on me. I had nailed him in the cheek, and he definitely went down this time. “Note to self: Never exit vehicle without paying attention while checking ammo.” I shook my head at myself, amazed at my own misjudgment as I turned to see how Jack was faring.

  Obviously better than I, as he was just standing there, staring at me with a look of sheer amusement plastered over his face. “Have a little trouble there?” He smirked at me as he pulled the hose from the tank, and placed it back onto the pump.

  I didn’t have a witty comeback, so I just sneered at him, and headed over to the passenger side to get in. I opened the door, and climbed back in, when it occurred to me we didn’t fill the reserve tanks.

  “Jack, we need to fill up the gas cans on the back. I completely forgot,” This as I was starting to climb back out of the car.

  “Seriously? You couldn’t remember that before we stopped the pump?” He mumbled something indiscernible under his breath as he too, climbed back out.

  We both rounded the back, and unlatched the cans from the rear, and carried them over to the pump. Luckily whatever switch he had flipped inside had turned on all the pumps, so we were able to tag team and fill the cans at the same time.

  As the can was filling, I happened to glance over at the three girls he had killed. They seemed to be about twenty-something and were probably pretty cute, when they hadn’t been somewhat green and covered in blood. I noticed that their skin had taken on a weird blotchy look, and it almost looked like their veins were bloated and about the burst under their skin. This was the first chance I had really had to study the body of an infected without them trying to eat me.

  “Jack, look.” I pointed to the blonde I had been examining. “Look at her skin, and tell me that’s not some fucked up shit. Her veins look like a tick does when it’s done eating; bloated and nasty.”

  He had walked over to me, and was staring at the girl as well. He cocked his head to the side, and rubbed his beard with one hand, thoughtfully. “Hmm. That’s odd. Too bad; those girls were cute, too.” He turned away and pulled the hose from the can, once again returning it to the cradle on the pump.

  I looked back at him, completely astonished. Okay, so I was the only one who thought dead bodies turning colors and looking as if their veins would explode and shower us all with infected zombie blood at any moment was alarming. Awesome.

  I shook my head at his back, and returned my now full gas can to the back of the Hummer, and made sure it was snug next to the other one. I glanced once more at the bodies of the girls, not just a little worried at the physical changes in the dead, as I once again climbed back into the car. I unholstered, unstrapped my sword, and buckled my seatbelt as he revved up the engine and pulled out of the parking lot back onto the highway.

  Once we had cleared the intersection, and were back on 84 headed towards Abilene, I started thinking out loud.

  “Don’t you think it was weird that the bodies looked like that?” I looked over at him with concern.

  “Not really,” he shrugged. “They’re dead, how else are they supposed to look?” He looked back at me, expression blank.

  “I’ve seen dead people before Jack, and they never looked like that.” I decided not to add that the only body I had ever seen was my great aunt at a viewing before her funeral. “It just seems weird that their veins would be puffed up like that, and the skin turning colors.” I sat back to ponder this phenomena.

  “It’s probably the virus. It might just mutate the cells and cause clotting.” He frowned as he turned back to the road.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. What if he was wrong? What if the infected were mutating and becoming something else? Something much scarier, and harder to kill? Fucking fantastic. Like we didn’t already have enough to worry about. Now the possibility of Super Zombies loomed on the horizon. The end of the world just kept getting better and better.

  We continued down 84, and soon we reached Abilene. It was bigger than I had expected. It reminded me of what the Springs had looked like when I had driven through the day before. All around I could see the signs of life, or at least what used to be life. The road was soon congested with other cars to the point we were creeping down the interstate, and the whole city seemed to be on fire.

  How is it that every city was burning? We weren’t at war for crying out loud. Maybe the mayhem of zombies eating everyone brings out the pyro in people and they get the insatiable urge to light shit on fire. I could relate; I had wanted to light many a thing on fire in my day.

  There were so many cars blocking the interstate, we made the decision to exit onto Old U.S. 80, thinking we could cut through town, and pick the interstate back up on the other side. We made it to 1st Street, and navigated our way slowly through the heart of town.

  The devastation was massive. It had been less than a month since the virus had gone mainstream, and already the population was decimated. It was gruesome; like the town had literally been painted red. Everywhere you looked was more blood, and more body parts. Outside my window I could see bloody handprints on the doors of the cars smashed into each other, blood on walls; blood on the ground… There was just so much blood. It was like being on the set of a horror film, where the director has just gone batshit crazy and soaked everything in corn syrup. Except this was real. Very, very real and it fucking smelled terrible.

  The sun was high, and it being April… well let’s just say things bake in Texas. I was pretty sure the whole state was just one big rotting corpse at the moment.

  That thought in mind, I reached into the console and grabbed a stick of gum. Unwrapping it and popping it into my mouth, I offered Jack a piece. “Want one?”

  “Sure, thanks,” as he reached over and accepted the stick. He shoved it into his mouth and through the chewing; “Now I smell minty rotting flesh.”

  “That’s exactly why I thought of the gum in the first place,” I laughed at our shared thought.
>
  We were both still busy rubbernecking when Jack spoke. “Look at this place. It’s a fucking war zone, and we’re not even in a major city yet. I’ve never seen so much blood outside of a set.”

  “My thoughts exactly. I was just thinking how it looks like a director went mad with corn syrup.” I reached over to the stereo and started flipping through the dials, thinking there might be an emergency channel or something.

  “They don’t actually use corn syrup anymore. It’s just a synthetic fake blood. Looks more realistic, but tastes like shit.” He looked over at me, and then looked at the radio I was playing with. “Do you think they have something on now?”

  “That’s what I was hoping for.” All the channels were still playing the soothing sounds of static. I had to turn the stereo back off before the fucking white noise drove me nuts.

  We had passed the heart of Abilene, and were almost to the edge of town when something caught my attention a ways off the road. It was a Taco Bell, which I’ll admit isn’t unusual to see, but it had a giant white sheet of what appeared to be paper towels hanging off the front, with giant black letters spelling out ‘HELP ALIVE INSIDE’. Damn. Now we were gonna have to stop.

  “Angie, look at the Taco Bell.” Jack pointed in the direction I had been looking. “We have to stop and see if they’re still alive.” He began steering towards the next exit, speeding up as he went.

  “Okay, I understand that we are capable, but do we really have to stop to help? I mean, fuck, look at the crowd of zombies milling about. What are the chances those people are still alive anyway?” I couldn’t keep the whine out of my tone. I was hungry and tired, and I had to pee.

  He looked at me sharply, and I could hear the humanitarian in his tone. “Yes we have to. Fuck Angie, they could be alive still, and who the fuck else is going to come through here?” Jack’s voice got even darker and took on that tone teachers and great parents do when you’ve done something completely awful and you should be terribly ashamed of yourself. “You’re fucking unbelievable. I thought you were better than that. Guess I was wrong.”

  Okay, that had gone into my marrow. I wasn’t about to let Jack Jones: International Film Star, think I didn’t give a shit about people; I just didn’t want to get killed, was all. I swallowed the sigh I wanted to heave out, and instead said “That’s not what I meant, I was just pointing out you can’t tell if they’re still alive, and that’s a big crowd. I’m not really in the mood to die at the moment.”

  He peered at me from behind his sunglasses and pulled the car over, still a good distance from the restaurant so as to not catch the crowd’s attention. After stopping, he paused, brows furrowed in thought. After a moment, he reached into the backseat and grabbed his jacket. He pulled his phone out of the pocket, tapped the screen a few times and held it up.

  “Are you taking pictures of this?!” I was shocked that he would stop in the middle of the state of affairs to document the occasion.

  Still looking at his phone, “Of course not. I’m using the zoom on the camera to get a better look.”

  Color me embarrassed. I mentally chided myself for having not thought of that. “What do you see?”

  Gruffly he answered, “About fifteen, maybe twenty.” He was silent for a few moments. “Oh fuck. People on the roof.”

  “Zombies?”

  He squinted at the screen, and zoomed in a bit more. “No, they’re alive! And they can see us! Let’s go.” He put down the phone and started to shift the Hummer forward.

  “Wait!” I grabbed his arm to halt our progression. “We can’t just drive in there, guns blazing. We need a plan.”

  Jack looked at me impatiently, “What do you suggest? There’s people trapped on the roof, and a crowd of zombies surrounding the building. I can’t think of a better way than ‘guns blazing’.”

  My face wrinkled up in thought. How would we get them? If we drove through the building, we’d be letting the zombies in, and taking out the whole crowd seemed a bit lofty. I stared at the building for a minute thinking about the roof. There must be some sort of ladder, right? But then again, if there were, those people would not still be alive, as surely the infected could climb.

  “Do you think there’s a ladder to the roof? I mean, from the outside? Maybe we could pull up to it, and they could drop down through the sunroof.” I looked at him questioningly.

  He looked back at me in concern for a minute before answering. “Do you think they can climb?”

  “I was wondering that myself. But can’t think of anything better.”

  Turning forward again, I could almost see the wheels in his head turning. Fuck, this guy really knew how to ‘pensively contemplate’ something. No wonder he was so well paid.

  We were silent for several minutes more, before he finally spoke again. “I think you’re right. We should try for roof access, but as soon as we pull up, we’re going to have their attention.”

  I thought about that for a moment. We didn’t really have any way to distract them during our rescue, so we would just have to fire at will and hope we didn’t run out of ammo. By this point whoever was on the roof had taken notice of us and I could see them shouting and waving frantically, which caused the crowd to stir into a frothy frenzy. This was gonna suck.

  “Okay, just get us there, and I’ll keep the crowd at bay.” With my jaw set in determination, or perhaps blind fear, I started making sure all the guns were fully loaded and ready to go. I didn’t know if this was going to work, but we were here; so what the hell, right?

  As Jack started to drive slowly towards the restaurant again, I unbuckled my seatbelt, and opened the sunroof. Luckily it took up a good size portion of the roof, so it was large enough for me to stand up in. I carefully hoisted myself up onto the seat, and shimmied my way through the open window. Once standing, and sure I wasn’t going to slip, I reached to my waist and pulled out my guns. We drove around the side of the building to the back, where a ladder would likely be. Unfortunately to accomplish this, we had to drive very near to the building, and the crowd caught sight of us.

  The first of the zombies started to run in our direction, screaming their outrage and their hunger as I opened fire. So as to not waste bullets, I tried to aim as best as I could from a moving vehicle; but action hero I was not. As I missed the first few, it occurred to me that maybe I should be driving and Jack should be attempting this daredevil stunt, but it was too late now. I finally got my bearings and started hitting a few, but I was but one girl, and it wasn’t long before they were closing in.

  Jack had pulled to a stop around the back, and quickly spotted the ladder we were hoping for. It was one of those ‘pull down during emergency’ deals, so it didn’t reach the ground, and was currently pulled up to the top of the building. We got near enough I could see the people on the roof run over to where we had stopped.

  “Holy shit! Thanks for stopping for us!” One of them shouted down. I was too far away yet to determine how many there were or ages, but this sounded an awful lot like a teenage boy.

  Jack had put the car in park right underneath the ladder, and joined me in the sun roof. He opened fire on a few zombies attempting to climb up the side to us and yelled up, “How many up there?”

  The kid yelled back down, “Me, my little sister, and our dog.”

  “Okay, climb down the ladder, and jump on top of the Hummer, into the sunroof,” Jack yelled back at the boy. He turned to me, “Get back in, and get into the driver seat, I’ll help the kids.”

  I nodded my agreement, while getting off one last shot at a particularly portly gentleman who was trying to get up the hood. I was more concerned for the car than I was of him actually making it, as he had to be about three hundred pounds, so I made sure to land the bullet straight into his face. This of course caused a horrible splatter over the windshield. Damn, I hoped we weren’t low on wiper fluid. I had started to make my way to the driver side when I heard the boy yell back down again.

  “She’s scared, and sh
e won’t go without the dog.”

  I looked up at Jack, and thought about how difficult this had just become. “Jack, tell them to leave the dog; we can’t possibly get a dog through the roof with the kids before we all get eaten.”

  He ignored me and instead shouted “Okay, throw me the dog first. Then have the girl climb down.” This was between firing openly at the crowd of hungry Taco Bell patrons. We had taken out about half at that point, but that still meant there were about eight or nine left, and we really couldn’t afford to use all our bullets now.

  I heaved a sigh of resignation; he was going to do this, and I wasn’t left with any other choice but to join this kamikaze mission. I started to haul myself back up onto the seat and prop myself up through the roof. “Jack, get up onto the roof to catch them. I’m going to climb out and fend off as many as I can.”

  He looked at me like I was nuts as I started to climb back out of the roof. “Have you lost your fucking mind?!”

  I shrugged my shoulders and stared blankly at him. “More than likely, but you can’t catch a dog and kids and fight off the crowd at the same time.” I climbed up onto the roof of the Hummer, and pulling my sword from its sheath, started hacking away at our audience.

  He looked at me one more time, as if assessing my overall mental health, and I thought he was going to interject but instead of arguing, he turned his attention back to the roof, where the boy was holding a giant black and white pit bull like a baby, and preparing to hand it down to him. Jack stretched out, and standing half on the Hummer, half on the ladder, grabbed hold of the dog and pulled him back to the car. He leaned down and dropped the dog into the backseat, which as it was squirming, was no easy feat.

  After the dog was in, he climbed back onto the ladder where the girl was climbing down to meet him. “Come on honey, just hang onto my neck, I promise I won’t drop you.” He cooed to her as gently and as nonthreatening as possible. He held out his arms towards her and as she jumped off the ladder, Jack caught her. She wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and he gently eased her back down into the car. The boy had jumped off the ladder and followed them down through the roof and everyone got settled in.