Benji turned and glared at me. Felicity pulled away. She looked really hurt for a second, then it faded.
“Jackson killed himself last night,” she said at last.
Cold shock ran through me at the news. How could I have said something so stupid and insensitive? I was always saying or doing the wrong thing around her! I am such an idiot, I thought.
“What?” I finally asked. “I’m so sorry. Oh my God. How, I mean, why did he do it?”
She waved a piece of paper in her right hand at me. I realized it was a suicide note.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go today, I thought. I was just hoping to get up, grub down on a portable meal of hot space age blueberry pancakes, and hit the road. This definitely complicates things. It might have sounded cold but the last thing I was looking for at that point was another complication. After what happened in New Lompoc, all I wanted to do was just get to Moto’s base and settle in. The sooner I could put this madness behind me and forget about it, the better.
“He left a note,” she said.
“What does it say?” I asked, feeling lame.
“It says that he knew he wasn’t going to make it anyway and that he just wanted to go out with one last high on his own terms,” she said. “It says that he’s a coward for not trying harder and not saying goodbye but that he’s thrilled he got to spend one last night with his real fans doing what he loved, playing music. It’s beautiful and totally screwed up and I hate him so much right now for doing this, but I miss him too much to be angry.”
She burst into tears again and this time I held her close to me. I glanced over at Benji, who seemed to be just as affected by this tragedy as Felicity was. He looked up at me with the sadness of a lost child.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to both of them. “I know this is hard but the worst is over. You’ll see.”
“Are you still planning on leaving today?” Her words were muffled as she spoke into my shoulder.
“I was, before I heard about Jackson. I just woke up so it all feels like part of my dream right now.”
“I want to go with you.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “That’s a great idea.”
“What are you going to do with Jax?” Benji looked up at us with his big puppy dog eyes swollen from tears he was fighting back. I had been wondering the same thing. Was he propped up in bed? Did he smell already? Was she sure he was even dead?
“I found him in bed,” she said as if she was reading my thoughts. “He was naked. His body was blue. He felt ice cold. His eyes were open. There was no sign of life in him at all. It just didn’t seem real, you know?”
“How long ago was this?”
“About an hour. I was going to put him in the bathtub. I don’t know why. I’m not thinking clearly right now. I just feel so crazy inside.”
“We could bury him in the yard,” I offered sympathetically.
“I thought about that,” she said, “but now I think we should just leave him where he is. After all, this is his house. He was happy here. He died happy, with friends and fans who loved him.”
“I understand,” I said softly. I wasn’t trying to be more insensitive than I already had been, but I was glad we weren’t going to spend a lot of time digging up a grave for him. I wanted to get moving as soon as we could. Plus it seemed crazy to bury him given the condition the world was currently in. There were dead bodies in various states of decay pretty much everywhere you went, some just lying there stinking and others walking around and trying to kill you. Leaving a guy dead in his own bed like he was peacefully sleeping didn’t seem so heartless when you thought about it in those terms.
“Besides,” she said, walking to the patio door and sliding it open. “I’m not sure how much time we have left here.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“See for yourself.”
I walked over to join her and what I saw blew my mind. There on the beach was a huge tanker ship with some kind of foreign writing on the side that looked Russian. Up on top of the ship I could make out twenty or thirty former humans in various states of decay ambling around. One of them fell over the side while I was watching and splashed into the ocean. Looking down, I could see a handful of zombies making their way out of the water and roaming listlessly on the sand in search of food. If the jogger went for his morning run today, he was going to be in for a big surprise!
“When did that thing get here?” I asked in near panic. I had been intending on doing some Tai Chi in the backyard and stretching before we left in the impossible hope of bringing my life back to some sense of normalcy and routine. That’s out for sure now, I thought.
“I don’t know,” she said, a little too casually for what the situation called for. “It was just there when I got up this morning. I didn’t see any zombies until an hour ago, and those were still on the top deck. Must be only a matter of time until they find their way up into the neighborhood.
Why is she being so casual? It’s not like those are fire ants coming to spoil a picnic, I thought. These are undead demons from the depths of hell, devoid of all mercy, coming to rip us to shreds in a horrible, violent death!
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “We left the Escalade at the entrance to the community near the gates. It has some gas left. We’ll figure the rest out as we go.”
“That’s not necessary,” she replied. “Jackson has a fully fueled Lexus SUV hybrid in the garage. It gets like a million miles to the gallon. He loaded it with water and two extra cans of gas after we came out of the panic room. There is even a first aid kit under the passenger seat.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m surprised he planned an escape route. The way he acted last night was like he never planned on leaving this place, no matter what.”
“It wasn’t for him,” she explained. “It was for me. He said he wanted to make sure when the time came I could just grab food and leave. He really was the most thoughtful man I knew.”
“Benji,” I said. He turned and stared up at me again, ungluing his eyes from the floor. “Why don’t you grab some plastic bags and help Felicity pack up all these portable meals? We don’t want to leave anything behind that might be helpful on our trip. Got it?”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping tears off his face and standing up.
“What are you going to do?” Felicity asked.
“I’m going to grab my sword and check out the Lexus. Make sure it’s fired up and ready to roll with no surprises. I want to be out on the road in the next ten minutes. Who knows how long we have?”
“Okay,” she said, sounding aloof as she turned and sauntered into the kitchen. I shook off her attitude, chalking it up to grief over Jackson’s suicide.
I jogged back to the guest room and fetched my sword, then made a pit stop at the bathroom before heading off to the garage. I splashed some cold water on my face to wake myself up. There was a bottle of pills on the counter with the lid off. I picked it up and read the label. Soma. I wasn’t sure what they did but I was certain they were responsible for Felicity’s condition.
Cut her some slack man, I thought. It’s been a very traumatic morning for her by any standards.
I decided not to bring up her apparent relapse, but that didn’t mean I wanted her doped out. We might literally be running for our lives at any moment, fighting these undead monsters. The last thing I needed was a spoiled celebrity with a pill habit slowing us down because she was high and thought they looked pretty. I stuffed the rest of the bottle in my pocket and headed out to the garage.
The Lexus was fully gassed and stocked as promised, and the keys were in the ignition. I fired it up and the engine purred to life. This was a true luxury vehicle, and my heart practically sang with joy. With this car and the supplies we were bringing, there was no reason we couldn’t get to Hueneme and safety at last. I didn’t mean to get my hopes up. If the last few days had proved anything it was that things could turn out horribly different than you expected,
with little or no warning at all. Still it didn’t hurt to be optimistic, did it?
“Wow,” Benji said, setting down a shiny black trash bag full of ready-to-eat gourmet meals. “It even has television screens in the back of the headrests. I wonder what’s in the DVD player?”
“Jackson’s last tour footage,” Felicity said as she popped open the back and set another shiny black bag inside. “The car was a gift from his record label. They thought he’d like seeing himself. They really didn’t know much about him.”
“So he never drove it?”
“Oh he did,” she said, “but mostly to the store and back to get supplies. He used the CD player, but he didn’t have long road trips to take with small children. That’s what the players in the back of the seats are really for. Can you imagine Jackson taking friends on long distance trips and making them watch him play a concert in Prague? He was way too humble to do something so egotistical.”
Yeah, I thought, but he’s still the same guy who played his video version in Guitar Hero and, when he lost, threw an impromptu concert in his living room to prove his expertise. Not really what I’d call humble.
I knew I shouldn’t be so hard on Jax. I had only met him once, but it didn’t take much to see the guy was plagued by the types of demons that traditionally torment all creative types. His inability to conquer them cost him his life at a young age. If we didn’t get moving, we’d be tortured soon by worse.
“Hop in,” I said, sliding into the driver’s side and positioning my katana between my right leg and the center console for easy access.
Benji didn’t hesitate to climb into the back. The idea of watching a free rock concert in a comfy leather luxury vehicle while drinking a Coke didn’t strike him as all that bad. However Felicity seemed to be taking a bit longer to get her act together.
It’s probably the drugs, I thought, tapping my pocket. Here we go.
“I was going to grab something,” she said.
“We really need to get moving,” I told her.
She hesitated for a minute then gave up. “Shouldn’t you open the garage door? We don’t want to get carbon monoxide poisoning in here.”
Benji’s head shot up at the suggestion.
“It’s far too ventilated in here for that,” I said, thinking back on the pile of dead people in the gym from the day before. “Besides we’re only going to be in here a minute. The last thing I want to do is risk opening the door and having an unexpected guest come barging in.”
“The gate didn’t stop you,” she teased.
“Get in,” I repeated. “And put on your seat belt.”
Felicity finally complied. Once she was in and buckled up, I locked the car doors and hit the garage door opener.
The barrier rolled up, blasting us full on in the face with bright sunlight. Luckily there were no signs of zombies, probably owing to the high walls and iron gate. I pulled out of the garage and rolled down the driveway.
“How do I open the gate?” I asked Felicity.
“Just pull up and it will open automatically.”
“Even without electricity?”
“It’s wired to the backup generator,” she informed us, “in case of earthquakes.”
I pulled up and the gate slowly swung open. We drove out onto the asphalt and a loud thump hit the right side of the car. Benji screamed at the top of his lungs. I turned to see a wet, rotting corpse in a sailor’s uniform pounding his fists on the side of the Lexus.
“What are you waiting for?” Felicity yelled, finally shaken from her pill-induced state of relaxation. “Drive!”
I pulled down the street to the main gates. They were already open. The Escalade was where we had left it, but the doors were torn off now and one of the tires was missing. Whoever hit it had left it up on the spare tire jack.
“Glad we didn’t try to make a run for the Escalade,” I said.
“Me too,” Benji chimed in.
I looked over and noticed Felicity was violently shaking.
Poor thing, I thought. She probably hasn’t seen a lot of zombies, being locked away in that prison palace with Jackson this whole time. She doesn’t know how common it is to see these creatures, or what worse horrors await. She’s in for a huge surprise!
We pulled down the Mesa and back toward the highway. Along the way, Felicity gasped as we passed carcasses of people and animals left out for the flies and scavengers. The air was hot outside but we had a nearly unlimited supply of AC thanks to the Lexus, so she didn’t have to smell the scent of rotting death that had settled over most of the world. Surprisingly, we only saw a few zombies on our way to the freeway onramp and they were all a long distance off.
I drove around a stalled car abandoned in the middle of the freeway and took off south toward Ventura. We were driving past Santa Claus lane in Carpenteria when she spoke again.
“I want to go to Ojai,” she said.
“It’s a little out of the way,” I responded. “For now we need to stick to the plan and just drive straight through to the military base.”
“I want to go to Ojai.”
“It’s beautiful out there,” I said, trying not to sound condescending, “but now’s not the time.”
“You don’t understand,” she argued. “My mom lives there. I haven’t seen her since the zombie outbreak.”
“Maybe you can talk some of the soldiers into taking you on a trip out there,” I said.
“They are going to lock us up like prisoners. I don’t want to stay there. Who knows how long we have left? We could die at any moment out here. If I am going to die I’d rather be at home with my mom.”
“It’s not a great idea.”
“Isn’t it? Listening to you talk about your brother all the time made me miss my family. Why should you be the only one who gets to do what he wants? Why are your plans more important than mine?”
I rolled my eyes. She was just trying to guilt trip me into doing what she wanted, and I knew it. Sure she missed her mom, but it just wasn’t safe to go wandering off into the countryside.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “Don’t be passive aggressive.”
“No. There is something going on up ahead.”
We’d reached the point in the road where the freeway veered off along a narrow strip between the ocean, a set of railroad tracks, and high cliffs. It was the final stretch between Santa Barbara and Ventura. Usually cars flew up the five lane road on both sides as fast as they could. Instead, we saw a line of cars stretching the wrong way across the road three deep, effectively creating another road block. Surly looking guys with beards on motorcycles rode up and down the freeway on either side.
“Unity Gang,” I mumbled.
“What?” Felicity asked. “Who the hell is the Unity Gang?”
“It’s a coalition of bikers and gang bangers from all over the state working together to rob, rape, murder, and extort survivors. This is bad.”
“What are we going to do?” Benji asked, looking terrified again.
“I don’t know.”
“Turn around,” Felicity shouted.
“I can’t.”
“Then stop the car and just back up,” she yelled.
“You don’t understand,. They can easily run us down with those bikes. I don’t think it’s a good idea to agitate them.”
“So we’re just going to surrender to them and let them have their way with us?”
I realized that Felicity had a lot more to lose than we did because she was a girl. While we might escape with just being target practice, there was no way they would let her go. She looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Obviously the pills had worn off.
“We’re going to play it cool,” I said, trying to be calm. “When the time comes we will fight, but not until I give you the signal. We’ll bust through those cars, even if we have to push them all out of the way and haul ass to Ventura. We’re not leaving anyone behind. I
promise.”
I put my hand on her arm and looked her in the eyes.
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
Her lip trembled but she nodded.
“What’s the signal?” Benji asked.
“Me pulling out my sword. Don’t make a move until I do. If I have to get out of this car, I’m leaving a trail of bodies for zom food in my path.”
Two motorcycles loudly roared next to us as they pulled up alongside the Lexus to escort us into position. I pulled toward the front of the blockade and let the car idle as I put it in park. The good news was that the hybrid was so quiet it might have sounded like I turned off the ignition, especially with all the ruckus from the bikes.
A greasy looking biker in a leather vest with long black hair walked over to us and tapped on my window. I rolled it down. His name was sewn on his cut. RABBIT. That’s an odd name for a tough biker, I thought.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked.
I could feel Benji’s eyes burning a hole through the back of my head from his seat. We couldn’t tell him that we were in New Lompoc. For all we knew, John might be looking for us. I wouldn’t put it past him to put a bounty on our heads for what happened to Tank.
“Are you retarded?” he asked when I didn’t answer.
“Sorry. We are coming from Santa Barbara, up on the Mesa.”
“How long you been there?”
Why did he want to know? And how was any of this his business? I could feel Felicity starting to squirm in her seat.
“Since the outbreak started,” I said.
“So why did you leave?”
Who does this guy think he is? Mister twenty questions?
“A tanker washed up full of zombies,” I said. “They came ashore and started taking over the neighborhood. I thought we might be safer in Malibu.”
“You’re not gonna have much luck down there,” Rabbit said, sounding more like an overly helpful gas station attendant than a thug. “Whole place is overrun with the walking dead.”
“We still gotta try.”
“Suit yourself,” he snapped.
The words left me feeling kind of relieved. It sounded like they planned on letting us pass. Then I noticed that Rabbit hadn’t taken his hand off the car. He leaned in and looked around past me.
Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 17