by Elle Klass
My first instinct, I ran to the storeroom in the back, thinking that a zombie was hidden somewhere and popped out taking a bite of someone’s flesh. Bryce and Jack were still working on the cart and intact. No surprise zombie attack.
“Did you guys hear that?” I asked with no response. I stepped closer and cleared my throat. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” asked Bryce as he turned a screw for a fresh shiny new wheel into the wooden bottom of the cart. A dribble of sweat trailed between his eyes and down his nose then over his lips. My mind flashed to his kissable lips on mine. I shook it from my head.
“I heard a scream. Neither of you heard it?” As the words left my lips, more screams followed. Our glances shifted from one to the next, then I charged into the store, stopping behind a tall structure used to hold fruit which, by the smell, was going rotten.
A hand touched my shoulder. “Right behind you,” responded Bryce.
I turned my head, our widened eyes met but not in a passionate moment, instead a moment of premonition recognition and red-eyed monkeys.
“What?” asked Jack.
Our eyes shifted, our locked gaze moved towards him. “Mon-keys,” answered Bryce, pronouncing it one syllable at a time.
“Well, heck, monkeys don’t kill people. By the looks on your faces you’d think an army of something worse than zombies was out there. I don’t get it.” Jack said, scratching his bald head.
“When’s the last time you saw a red-eyed monkey?” I questioned, my eyes staring straight into his.
The intensity of my gaze seemed to make him nervous as he shuffled his feet. “I guess I’ve never seen a monkey other than at the zoo and, well, they didn’t have red eyes.”
Another shrill scream broke through the air around us, so high-pitched it rang for several seconds in my ears. As an automatic response against the pain, I clutched my hands over my ears.
Chapter Ten
Meanwhile on Earnest Earl…
Maddie’s mom, Angie, checked her husband’s pulse; no change. She recorded it and looked longingly at the man she loved. She’d given him the last bit of muscle relaxers they had that morning. Now she waited for him to wake up and wondered whether he’d be her husband or… something else. She noted his cheeks had more color and touched her hand to them; still cool.
“Angie!” called Sarah with urgency as her steps pounded against the boat deck and down the steps.
Angie lifted herself off the bed and met Sarah at the opening to the bedroom as she drew the curtain back. “What is it, honey?” Sarah had almost been a second daughter to her and the tone and rush in the girl’s voice worried her, but the look on her face said something else -- her brown eyes wide and her face smiling.
“A ship, a big ship, like a military carrier or something. Come!” She grabbed Angie’s hand and dragged her onto the top deck, stuffing the binoculars in her chest. “Over there.” She pointed.
Sure enough, Angie put the binoculars on and found the ship easily. It was huge but the writing was too small; she couldn’t make out what was written on it or what country, only that it did indeed look like a military ship. She dropped the binoculars.
“I don’t think they see us. Should we shoot off a flare…?” Sarah suggested, her voice trailing off as she realized they couldn’t do that. If it was a military carrier with soldiers they’d discover Mr. Whyte and that wouldn’t be good. She quickly followed up with, “I know we can’t do that. I’m sorry. I was so excited to know that we aren’t alone. There are other people alive. Maybe the ship is filled with uninfected people they’re talking to a safe place.”
Angie gazed into Sarah’s hopeful brown eyes. She watched the sparkle leave as she understood they couldn’t let the ship know they were there, but it wasn’t only because of her husband. They didn’t know what was on that ship. They could be carrying infected. It could be a run-away ship. She took another look, then got an idea.
“It’s better for us they don’t know we’re here, but we can keep track of them, watch where they’re heading, and I can figure out where we are in the meantime.” The ship was following a path vertical to where they sat, not north or south. West, it was going west. The wheels in her mind ticked as she set to using her minimal navigation skills and rusty geography to determine where they were.
They spent the afternoon noting the ship’s location every hour and using rudimental --- the sun sets in the west and rises in the east -- skills to mark their location on a map. So involved with their task, they nearly forgot to check on Mr. Whyte until they heard a thump and commotion from below deck.
Sarah jumped and stumbled backwards. Angie caught her arm before she fell and together they rushed downstairs. As soon as they opened the cabin door the cat Sarah affectionately named ‘Cat’ stood at the base of the stairs, his fur standing on edge as if he’d been electrocuted. His back poised as he hissed at something. The bedroom curtain was still open and Bill Whyte lay still on the floor, his chin cocked against the wall and neck stretched.
Sarah, behind Angie, took one cautious step at a time as they walked towards the bedroom.
Sarah grabbed Angie’s arm. “Wait!” She grabbed the broom because it was close. “OK.”
Angie eyed the broom and continued pacing toward the bedroom. They stood in the doorway staring at Mr. Whyte’s motionless body. Angie put her hand over her heart when she realized the pantyhose were still tight around his ankles and wrists. “Honey,” she said cautiously as they stepped closer to the bed.
Sarah stood behind her with the handle of the broom raised.
There was no answer.
Angie blinked back her tears as she turned towards Sarah. “What do you think?”
Sarah shook her head. “I think he rolled off the bed.” She rested the hair of the broom on the floor and poised her chin on the rounded top of the handle as she stared at him.
Angie twisted her lips. “I guess we should pick him up and lay him back down.”
Sarah lowered her brows. “I agree.” They stood silently for a few seconds before Sarah suggested, “How should we do this?”
“I guess I’ll take his arms and you can take his legs?” suggested Angie as she blew a loose strand of hair from her eye.
“OK,” she said, leaning the broom against the wall and stepping into the room behind Angie who walked up behind her husband and peered at his face plastered against the wall. “His eyes are closed.”
“That’s good. That means he’s still unconscious.”
Angie nodded in agreement then asked, “Can you pull his legs so we can turn him over?”
Sarah tugged at his legs. “He’s heavy,” she whined, dropping his legs onto the floor.
Angie took one of his legs and together they pulled him until his face was no longer pasted against the wall. It hit the floor with a dull thud. The women walked around behind him, Sarah tugged at his chest while Angie tugged at his legs. An odor of rotten eggs hung in the air followed by a whooshing sound. “Oh,” Sarah moaned, crinkling her nose. “I think he crapped.”
Angie wrinkled her nose and nodded in agreement as they worked to roll him onto his back. “I’ll clean that up in a minute.”
In order to get a good grip on him, Sarah leaned over and grabbed the underside of his chest then rolled backwards. As she did, his head snapped to the side and he caught her bare arm in his mouth. “Ouch!” she wailed, hitting his face to free her arm from his tooth hold. Blood dribbled down her arm.
“Oh my god!” yelled Angie as she hit her husband, his eyes wide and staring at her. “Let go! What are you doing?!” She continued yelling and beating on him until he let go of Sarah’s arm. Sarah fell backward and hit the wall, then crawled towards Angie.
“What the heck?!” she screamed holding her arm.
“Let go and let me look,” demanded Angie as blood dribbled from beneath Sarah’s hand. Don’t panic, she told herself. “I got this,” she told Sarah, forgetting about her husband and taking Sarah’s hand,
gently guiding her to the kitchen table where she spread out a towel.
Reality hit Sarah as Angie was cleaning and rubbing in copious amounts of antibiotics. “He bit me. I’m going to turn, to change into a dead thing,” she said in a shaky voice, tears pooling in her eyes.
“We don’t know that,” Angie said calmly. “All we know is he bit you, not how the illness spreads.”
“I watch the movies and TV shows; once you’re bitten that’s it. You might as well kill me now!”
Angie narrowed her eyes. “That’s a little melodramatic. TV isn’t real and neither are the movies. We’ll keep an eye on the wound,” she said in her mother voice.
Angie turned her head towards her husband who lay on the floor wriggling like a worm towards them.
Chapter Eleven
Back in Spain…
Early morning sunlight streamed in from the top of the window. The area we hadn’t blocked off the night before. It was Jack who was unnerved by the monkeys and suggested, since it was almost night, we stay inside the store and leave in the morning. He figured the monkeys would be gone and we’d be able to go straight to the boat. We took precautions and moved all the shelving in front on the windows and doors so nothing could sneak in during the night.
I stretched my legs then noted the firm lap beneath me. Shooting my eyes upwards I watched Bryce’s chest heave in and out, his head hung against it. Carefully, trying not to wake him, I lifted myself up.
“Hey,” said Bryce.
“Hey, good morning,” I responded, dusting my pants off and offering him a hand. He took it and rose to his feet, stretching his long, thin body. My mouth watered a little as I checked out his abs when his shirt rose above his waistline.
I peered towards the shelving, unable to see if the coast was clear. Bryce caught my gaze shift. “Let’s check.”
We walked toward the windows and peered over a shelf. Beady red-eyed monster monkeys stared straight at me. “Ughh.” I let out a large breath, my back sinking against the shelving. “They’re still there. What are we going to do?”
“Eat breakfast, then worry about it,” Bryce said with a smile as he plucked a pastry off the shelf.
We ate and soon Jack woke up and the three of us ran through various scenarios that included taking our chances, emptying the rifle on the little beasts, only there wasn’t enough ammo to kill every monkey. I counted fifteen red-eyed beasts. They discussed taking care of them the same way they did zombies, only the monkeys were much smaller, smarter and faster.
“Maybe we can just make some noise and bring the zombies back,” suggested Jack, shrugging.
Bryce stuffed a hand in his pocket as he leaned against a shelf. “That’s not a bad idea. In the dream, they wouldn’t head onto the beach where the zombies were.”
My eyes wide, “How come I hadn’t thought of that? That’s it!”
Jack glanced at us, a puzzled look on his face as he scratched at his bald head. “I missed something.”
“We’ll fill you in later. Right now we need to figure out how to attract more zombies from in here,” Bryce stated.
“We make noise,” I said. “Loud noise.”
“The monkeys were loud, but that didn’t attract any zombies,” said Jack, stuffing the last of his pastry in his mouth.
Why was he the voice of questioning and reason? I thought about it. The monkeys screamed shrilly and piercingly, so maybe it was a frequency that zombies couldn't hear. It made perfect sense to me since I'd already determined they had brain damage. “He’s right. We need to make noise, loud noise, but not high pitched.”
We knocked down the shelves and beat on them with our weapons, making all sorts of racket. The monkeys started leaping about and cooing at each other in a shrill scream. We continued our noise assault until the monkeys leaped away, replaced by flesh-eating zombies. I smelled them from inside the building, rotting flesh and bones, missing body parts, and their bodies ate up with human bites. Chunks of flesh hung from their mouths. They shuffled towards us and, in the lead, a dark-haired woman running for her life.
The lady’s long brown tresses bounced against her back as she sprinted away from the zombies in a purple bikini. Her long legs, dark and muscled, her chest jiggled with each step she took. Bryce was already out the door and slashing zombies as my mouth was still gaping at the sight of the woman. I rushed out behind him and hit my ax into the neck of one deader and then another. Together we spun, kicked, and clobbered each disgusting bag of rotting flesh.
I took a deep breath and held up my hand for Bryce who slapped it, then we walked inside the store where the woman sat drinking bottled water. While we were zombie slashing Jack must have snuck her in. He ogled her perfect model-like body.
She stood. “I was almost past that mob of flesh-eaters when you started making that entire racket. What were you doing? Trying to get me killed?” she huffed with one hand on her hip. Her accent, I figured, would be Spanish but it wasn`t. It had an English ring to it, making her even sexier.
Bryce spoke up, a look of hurt in his eyes, “We saved your life.”
“Because you had to make up for attempting to get me killed!” She sighed. “It’s good, I guess, to know there are other lifers out there like me. I haven’t seen one in days; not since everyone turned into flesh-eaters and started dining on human flesh and guts. I’m Heather.”
“We’re sorry we nearly got you killed. We didn’t know you were out there, but we need to hurry and get these supplies to our boat before another wave of flesh-eaters comes and finds us.” I thought for a minute about her choice of words. She called the uninfected lifers and the zombies flesh-eaters. I like her choice of words but didn’t like the way I spied Bryce checking her out.
“Why don’t you come with us?” suggested Jack. He was just as bad. Are all men pervs?
Oh, great. Let’s bring this woman who was every teenage boy’s dream. It wasn’t her fault, and she was far too old to be interested in Bryce, but the green-eyed monster still stuck its ugly rear in my head, giving me jealous thoughts.
I walked out of the store first, hoping for a stray zombie or two to take my mind off Ms. Gorgeous Heather who I kept seeing Bryce sneaking quick glances at. But the area was empty; no flesh-eaters or monkeys. Behind me were Bryce and Jack as they pulled the loaded cart, followed by Heather. Bryce had given her his shovel and taken my knife.
We ran as fast as possible towards the boat, when Farmacia caught my eye -- a pharmacy. “Go on ahead. I’m going in here to get some real drugs, antibiotics and such. With flesh-eating creepers around they might come in handy.”
Jack looked at me, puzzled, as if he didn’t believe my intentions but Bryce simply nodded and they continued forward.
The pharmacy appeared empty, so I went behind the counter and loaded up on everything. I stuffed a shopping bag to the gills with drugs then was about to slip back over the counter when a whiff of rotten trash made me wrinkle my nose and something grabbed my shirt. I jolted forward and my shirt ripped. Cloth still in the zombie’s mouth but, luckily, no flesh. I dropped the bag and swiped my ax towards the zombie. It reeled unsteadily from my quick actions and the ax missed it so I jumped back over the counter, feet first, swinging in the zombie’s direction. It knocked him off balance and I smashed the ax into the side of his head just below his ear. Blood spurted everywhere when I pulled my ax out. I guessed I hit the carotid artery.
I left the zombie bleeding out and grabbed my bag, then spotted adult diapers and more feminine products. I stuffed another bag full and exited the store. Ahead I saw them loading the life boat and in the other direction I saw, heard, and smelled a hoard of zombies. They were slow and clumsy so I picked my feet up, clutched the bag, and waved for them to push the boat into the water. Within a couple minutes I was running through the water. It splashed up my legs and soaked my shoes. Heather grabbed the bags and tossed them into the boat while Jack grabbed my hands and pulled me into the boat as the first zombie splashed into the water.
Chapter Twelve
Once the zombies hit water they didn’t know what to do. They halted like their legs had sandbags tied to them and snarled at us as we paddled off towards Earnest Earl. Jack then asked, “So what did I miss? The dream thing?”
He had to remember… I glanced at Bryce who gave me a go-ahead nod. “Before the world started turning into zombies, Bryce and I shared a dream that I’m convinced was a premonition. In the dream we were the only two people alive and we took my father’s boat after killing a dozen or so zombies. We set sail and ended up on an island we thought was empty but we were wrong, there were red-eyed monkeys who chased us into a pack of zombies. The monkeys wouldn’t go near the zombies; that’s how we got away.”
“Red-eyed monkeys?” said Heather.
I nodded.
“Interesting.” Heather smoothed her hands over her legs. “I’m more perplexed by how none of us are infected.”
Our eyes shifted from one to the next. That was the question we all wanted an answer to. I tucked the bag of adult diapers beneath me so neither Jack or Heather had a reason to ask about them.
Once onboard Earnest Earl we worked as a team hauling everything onto the boat and finding places to store it. Bryce and Jack handed up supplies as my mom, me, Heather, and Sarah grabbed and stacked everything on the deck. Once everything was stacked we worked on finding homes – food in the kitchen, medicine in the bathroom, and toilet paper and other toiletries in the narrow storage cabinet alongside the wall by the bathroom. We kept the cart too, thinking it may come in handy again.
My mom pulled me aside and into our bedroom once the supplies were put away. “Your dad is awake,” she said, pointing towards my father who sat up in bed, fully alert, blinking at us. He made garbled sounds, as a sock was stuffed into his mouth.