He stroked her wet hair. “I can’t deny you’re mildly attractive—” He intentionally cut himself off, as if he’d said too much.
“Mildly?” she said with fake concern.
A witty comeback sat on his tongue, but it would take some time to accept dating was even in his vocabulary anymore. This was more like grabbing the first normal person of the opposite sex and refusing to let go for fear of never seeing such a rare creature again. But he could say with certainty it was more than infatuation. They’d shared a bond driving the MRAP all over the apocalypse and the cramped space and high stress didn’t send them screaming to get away from each other. He could have walked off the back deck and gotten on that plane, too, but he stayed with her, and didn’t regret the decision. That all had to count for something.
“Beth, do you like her?” he thought.
Was his dead wife now an invisible angel hovering nearby, watching him fight for his life? Maybe she tipped the scales for him many different times, and not just on that bridge. Imagining her as a helpful angel made her death hurt a little less than it normally did.
He struggled not to think about his daughter, even though she died in the same wreck. The thought of her as an angel would be comforting to a degree, but she was already his angel when she was alive, so he pushed it away.
He hated himself for wondering if they were better off already dead, instead of having to survive in the lawless world of zombies. It was one depressing thought after another if he dwelled on his little girl or his wife. Other than saving grandma Marty, he didn’t have many victories or happy moments since the sirens.
Being with Melissa could be a new happy moment, he insisted to himself.
They stayed on that bench for several hours as the pitched battle played itself out in the stands. The fighting went up into the highest rows as the survivors kept retreating from the zombies on their tails.
“There’s not a damned thing we can do for them,” he said. He sincerely hoped the living were able to escape out of the ball park, but he was also glad he didn’t have to turn people away from the MRAP. The Marines guarding the Ospreys had to use guns when their planes reached capacity, but the one crumpled in the stands didn’t do a good enough job of it.
He shuddered but felt better as soon as she spoke again.
“We could have made a big mess out there if we had rounds for the minigun up top, you know?”
They ran out of ammo getting into the city earlier in the day.
“You like shaking things up, don’t you?” She’d turned his life upside down the moment they met back in front of Liam’s house.
“Do I scare you?” she asked with surprise in her laughter.
“God, yes.” Despite being surrounded by a city’s worth of zombies, he admitted he hadn’t been as nervous around a woman since his first date with Beth.
“I like scaring tough guys.” She gripped his arm while they sat hip to hip.
He tried to think of a witty reply to her, but nothing sounded right. By the time he was ready to talk about something else, she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. Except for the buckets of sweat, and chaos outside, it was what passed for a pleasant afternoon for him.
The day wore on into evening and eventually the gunfire dwindled to almost nothing, at least inside the stadium. The faint rumble of guns and explosions continued in the city of St. Louis beyond the gates of the iconic ball field.
“Mmm, I don’t want to move from this seat,” Melissa cooed when she woke up.
He drifted off a few times as well, but he’d been up for the last hour listening to things settle down around them.
“Me either,” he agreed. “We can survive a long time in this tin can, but things are going to get real once we need a bathroom break.”
“Ewww,” she replied.
“Ha! I’m sure you’ve loved spending the day clearing your pores as much as I did, but when the zombies thin out, we have to move somewhere.”
“I feel totally refreshed, but we can go if you’d like.” She brushed the wet, matted hair from her forehead like it was a delightful new hairstyle. “Maybe we can go back to the Boy Scout park?”
They’d spent a lot of time in a Boy Scout camp deep in the woods south of the city, but zombies ruined most of it before they left to rescue Liam and Grandma. It took a miracle to find Liam in the chaos of downtown and they needed a second one to get him and Marty onto that plane. It was probably an act of God he was still alive to reflect on it. Maybe it was fate he and Melissa were brought together in the truck at that moment, or perhaps Beth did have her cherub wings, so she could interfere at will. Still, he heard no little voice telling him where to go next. It was like his direction had left when Marty and Liam got on the plane.
“That would take us south. The Osprey was going that way. What are the odds?”
“Not good,” she replied. “We can’t count on luck. We have to pick somewhere based on sound military doctrine and find a place with fortified defenses. A prison—”
“No way in hell,” he shot back.
“Oh. Right. I bet you locked up a bunch of the inmates.” She giggled in a playful manner, but they both knew it was true. “Then, how about...” She clicked her tongue several times while she considered where to go. “A shopping mall?”
“Almost as bad as the prison. It’d be a lot like being inside this truck. We’d be safe behind the gates of one of the stores, but once the walking sick found us we’d be stuck there until the food ran out.”
“But they always go there on TV,” she said thoughtfully.
“That’s why we have to avoid them. I bet every shopping mall has been looted and destroyed because people were desperate to get there before everyone else. If it’s something they know from television, you can count on people to ruin it.”
“Wow, you’re a real downer.” She pressed her lips against her tongue and made a silly sound.
“Hey now. I’m a cop. I basically babysit adults for a living. You learn to think the worst of most people.”
She continued. “Okay, copper, you want to shoot down my next idea?”
“Fire away.”
“Okay, give me a minute.” She stood up but had to hunch over a little to avoid scraping her head on the roof. She got in front of him and used both hands to steady herself on the ceiling straps. “You’re going to love this one.”
“I’m waiting.” He smiled broadly, catching her spirit.
Melissa held the straps on the ceiling and he couldn’t help but admire her. She was filthy from the endless sweat and dirt of the last few days, but it didn’t take away from the sweaty glow of her face, the twinkle in her lovely eyes, or the way she bit her lip while she thought. After many seconds of watching her hang there, he caught on.
“You have no idea, do you?”
Her Cheshire Cat grin suited her. “Nope. Not a damned clue. How about you?”
“We should go south,” he said while trying to sound confident.
“Why?”
He shrugged despite himself. “The plane went that way.”
“That’s how we’re playing this? We’re going with luck, after all?” She chuckled, then offered her hand to pull him up. When he took it, she yanked him off his seat, surprising him yet again at how strong she was. As they met in the middle of the confined hold of the armored truck, he appreciated how feminine she was under all the grime.
His weathervane spun wildly as his conflicted feelings about his dead wife lashed against his uncertain future with Melissa. In that moment, however, he accepted the roll of the dice fate had given him.
“My luck has been pretty good on first dates,” he said while looking at her lips before falling into her deep, blue eyes.
“Is that so?” she said as if daring him to kiss her.
Despite the open invitation, he pulled the emergency brake at the last possible moment. Instead of kissing her, he brought her into another hug.
It was a colossal disappointment to him, bu
t she didn’t seem to notice his conflict as she held him tight.
“Yuck. You’re all sweaty,” she said with an ironic laugh because they were both soaked to the bone.
3
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said a moment or two later. No matter how much he wanted to keep his arms around her and work on his dating confidence, the blood-splattered, oven-temperature truck interior wasn’t the right place.
“We are going to continue this, Phil,” she said as if to reassure him.
“I know. Our date’s not over by a long shot, but I like to show a woman a good time, you know? See the town. Burn a few bridges. Stuff like that.”
“I can’t wait,” she said with a final tight squeeze before letting him out of her grasp.
Talk turned serious as they went toward the front of the MRAP. The dark gray shadows of dusk consumed the wreckage of the Osprey and made it difficult to see the zombies in the stands and on the field nearby.
Melissa jumped into the driver’s seat. “So, we’re in agreement. We’ll head out the gate and turn south, correct?”
“Take me home, or lose me forever,” he suggested. He was fairly certain the angry citizens of St. Louis had burned his whole town to the foundation, including his humble block. He had more of a home in the front seat of the military rig than he had back there, but it was just a dumb joke.
“Home it is,” she countered.
Getting into the city to rescue Liam and Marty that morning was a lot of luck mixed with an equal amount of skill. The roads were choked with abandoned vehicles facing south, especially at the bridges, but Melissa figured out how to ram derelict cars aside and make enough room to slip through. They might be able to escape St. Louis by retracing their route.
She started the motor, then glanced over with an expectant eyebrow. “Full air conditioning?”
“You don’t have to ask. Crank it up!”
They both put their faces up against the vents on the dashboard. It wasn’t immediately cool, but the moving air was relief enough.
She leaned back in her seat. “You ready, sheriff?”
It was their little joke. He was no longer an officer and was never a sheriff.
“I’m ready, Melicious,” he snickered as the air continued to bathe his face.
She revved the engine to warm it up. “That better mean I’m sweet and dainty,” she jibed. While he watched, she unbuttoned her shirt and tied it off just under her breasts. She patted her bare tummy. “I needed to cool off.”
“Yeah. Dainty. That’s you, Ms. MRAP.” He laughed, appreciating the irony of the feminine pin-up sitting in the cockpit of the big military truck.
“I like that name better.” She buckled her seatbelt and pulled her ponytail across her shoulder, so it wasn’t behind her. “Let’s do this.”
The nearest zombies moved closer and confirmed what he feared the whole day. The noisy engine alerted them to the potential presence of food.
“What’s up with the headlights?” He’d seen her toggle them, but there was barely any light out in the field.
“Yeah. I think they’re covered with blood or got broken by those we hit before. Mind hopping out and cleaning them?” Their journey through the city earlier in the day could be summed up best by imagining the sound of hundreds of heavy phone books getting tossed onto the outer hull. He didn’t want to remember those, “books,” were once human beings.
“I really shouldn’t. Doctor said to avoid high stress and intense situations.”
“Give me his name. I’m going to let him know what you’ve been doing with me.”
“We haven’t done anything,” he almost stuttered.
She looked over with mirth in her eyes. “I’m talking about the driving. The shooting. Et cetera. What did you think I meant?”
Melissa didn’t wait for a reply. The blonde-haired driver dropped it into gear and spun the steering wheel as she executed a slow turn into the crowd of zombies. It only took about twenty seconds before she hit the first one. They weren’t going fast enough to splatter debris onto the front grill and hood, like they’d done earlier in the day. Instead, the truck rolled over the fallen speedbump with a muffled crunch.
He gave her a pretend frown, which she noticed.
“What? I can’t help that they’re so stupid,” she said with all seriousness.
In that moment she seemed more like any number of teens he’d pulled over in his years of service. He relished the stops he made on young kids that fought the law on wearing seatbelts. They often used the same excuse: “They’re so stupid. I don’t need to wear one.” For those teens, he preferred to use his, “officer unfriendly,” voice, but for Melissa, he only cracked up.
A boyish impulse wanted her to hit every zombie she could, so it would thin the herd, but he knew a body could get wrapped around an axle and take away their best asset. There would be no hot-dogging in the Zombie Apocalypse.
She only hit and crushed three others on the way to the exit, though many loitered in the grass. Most zombies seemed to part for the slow-moving truck as if they were going to open the side doors like good little victims. It was a curiosity as they crossed through center field toward the open gate on the outfield wall where their stadium nightmare began.
“Here we go.” Her voice was calm, which steadied his nerves. His old Mel was back.
The truck hopped over the uneven pavement of the sidewalk and curb, and a moment later she had them pointed south on a wide, empty street, as promised.
“This is going to be easy,” she chirped as she practically bounced in her seat. “Look. The zombies are gone.”
He admired her zest and smiled when she looked over to him, but the zombies had to be somewhere. The entire downtown was practically a solid mass of infected earlier that same day and there was no way they could have all cleared out.
“I hope you’re right,” he replied.
A couple of minutes passed before they saw zombies in the lanes ahead.
Melissa pointed. “There they are. Some of them, at least.”
There were zombies spread out across the four-lane roadway, like stragglers at the end of a marathon. They walked away from the MRAP until it got close, then they surged to it as if it had personally wronged them in their past lives. The inevitable collisions began before they made it a mile from the stadium.
It was a sound he’d never get used to. “Someday you and I are going to take a drive where we don’t run over these things.”
She turned to reply. “I’d like nothing better.” He was reassured by her white teeth in the low illumination of the cockpit. “I know it helps us in the long term, but I’m tired of putting these things out of commission. Sooner or later we’re going to run out of gas, and we need to be clear of them.”
She’d gotten to the heart of the matter. He eyed the gas gauge, finding temporary assurance it wasn’t below the empty line, but it was on the lower half of the dial.
Ahead, there was no end to the stumbling creatures walking their way out of the night.
4
It took five minutes for them to decide they had to change their destination. The zombies moved south in what appeared to be one big pack, and the crowd got thicker as they drove the same way.
“It’s like there’s a dinner bell going off over the horizon,” he reasoned. “What do you think is making them go that way?”
“We’ve seen them move in small groups. If those groups linked up, maybe this whole city is just one big blob of zombie goodness, now?” Her voice trailed off.
He waited for a few moments for her to continue, but the packed roadway took most of her attention. So far, she’d managed to avoid the explosive ramming of earlier in the day, but she came close a few times. She’d been turning left and right on side streets for the past few minutes, seeking a path through the ever-growing crowd of infected.
“I have an idea,” she said matter-of-factly.
Melissa pulled into a small residential alleyway an
d shut off the lights, but left the engine running.
“Wait for it,” she said while holding up her pointer finger.
Hands pounded on the steel doors in the cargo hold a few seconds later.
“There they are,” she said with a heavy exhale.
Fences lined the back yards on both sides of the pavement, so there wasn’t enough room for the zombies to get by them, but that wasn’t enough security for her.
“Now to get rid of that knocking for a few minutes, so we can think,” Melissa said.
She accelerated up the alley with her lights off. At the far end of the block she braked and put it back into park. She’d left a little space before the next street, so they couldn’t easily be seen from ahead. The zombies behind them would probably follow, but it would take time to walk the length of the alleyway.
“That should do it,” she whispered. The glow of the instruments inside the cab lit her up, but her smile was gone.
“We can’t go south,” he said, knowing it was obvious.
“We can’t go east,” she replied. “The bridges over the Mississippi are gone.”
“If they’re all going south,” he said, “maybe we should go north?” It wasn’t his first choice, since he lived to the south, but anywhere they could find less zombies would be worth a try.
She nodded, seemed about to say something, but went rigid. She keyed off the ignition which shut down the engine. She shushed him preemptively as he was about to ask what was happening.
She whispered. “Outside.”
Without the streetlights of a normal city block, the tall trees on the main streets in this part of the city created valleys of darkness between them. The roadway ahead was broad and open but pitch black.
He did see something move for a second as his eyes adjusted.
The compact car-sized disc was jet black and hovered in the middle of the street. There was a faint hum as the floating shape maintained an even height of about ten feet. From the side, it could easily be mistaken for a sleek UFO, though he didn’t believe in them.
“Don’t move,” Melissa croaked in her almost-whisper.
Undead Worlds 2: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Anthology Page 31