by Kirk Allmond
He grabbed the key and the can and checked the fuel in the quad, which was thankfully full. Karma paying me back for making me run that far, he thought. He dug round in the shed again and found some bungee cords to secure the can to the rear rack. The four-wheeler started right up, and he raced off down the road. It wasn't as fast as he wanted to go, but he wasn't running anymore.
He figured he had about sixty miles to go and three hours to do it, meaning he had to make about twenty miles an hour here. He hadn't ever driven that far on a quad, but one time he and Marshall rode their father's quads over thirty miles and didn't have to refuel. The speedometer on the four-wheeler said its top speed was fifty-eight, but it was unstable at that speed and hard to keep on the road. In addition, he knew it would burn fuel too fast, so he slowed it down to around thirty miles per hour.
About two hours up the road, he ran across the first zombie. It was a man in a business suit, the tie still firmly attached to his neck, although the coat and shirt were shredded. The thing was exceptionally tall. Even standing up on the quad Victor couldn't get a good angle to crush its skull as he rode by, so he risked a bullet and put it down.
He straightened out the quad and rode the last hour up to the train, which was waiting for him in the fading light. John was sitting on top of the train and waved to Victor as he rode up.
Chapter 11
Super 8
Renee headed north out of the city, moving slowly up I-85. She weaved in and out of traffic jams, often having to cross the median to the southbound side of the highway. She only wanted to make it to Greensboro, North Carolina, where she could get onto Route 29. Once she was on 29, there would be far fewer cars and fewer traffic jams to navigate.
For what seemed like the twentieth time, she pulled up to a wreck. This time it was a four-car pileup. It looked like a red Chevrolet Camaro hit the side of an old Buick, which caused it to spin into two other cars. The nose of the Camaro was under the tailgate of a late-model Ford pickup truck, both of them sideways on the road. The driver of the pickup truck was dead inside the cab, but the driver of the Camaro was a zombie who started beating its head and fists against the glass as Renee drove by. There was a guardrail on the right side of the road and a significant ditch on the left, blocking any ability to go around the accident scene.
Renee nosed her truck up between the Camaro and the pickup truck and applied pressure to the gas pedal. Her truck easily pushed the two vehicles apart, skidding the nose of the Camaro sideways enough that she could push it past the pickup. She backed up, got behind the Camaro, and slowly inched up to the bumper of the sports car, intending to push it into the ditch. When she bumped the car, the driver’s side door popped open.
The zombie that spilled out was a mess. It had been stuck in that car all summer long; its skin was a horrid shade of blue green. Its face was puffy enough that the nose looked sunken in, and its eyes were almost swollen shut. It generally looked like a fat tick off a hound dog, ready to pop. One of its legs was mangled beyond recognition. The bad leg dragged behind it as it used its good leg to propel itself forward. It then balanced itself on the bad leg and hopped forward. It drag-hopped its way towards Renee and the girls, its bloated arms outstretched.
Renee said, "Close your eyes!" as she backed up off the Camaro, giving herself about twenty feet of room between her truck and the zombie shambling towards her. It was moving very slowly.
"I'll be right back," Renee said, opening her door, leaving the truck running.
She strode towards the bloated pus bag, thinking about how to handle this. He's going to explode when I stab him, she thought. She closed the distance very quickly. The thing reached for her, as they all did. She dodged under its grasp, planted her foot, and spun around to her left, forcing the thing to pivot on its bad leg. The zombie tried to turn, but its leg gave out from under it, and it fell to the ground. When the zombie hit the ground, the skin of its face split and spilled runny pus-looking goo out onto the pavement, like an over-ripe peach. The skin peeled back, exposing blackish muscle under the skin.
Renee drove her knife down into the back of the pitiful creature's skull, silencing it for the last time.
"I hope it’s cooler where you are now than it was in that car all summer. Rest now, and find your loved ones," she said over the corpse before dragging it over to the ditch.
She got back in the truck, pushed the Camaro off into the ditch on top of the corpse of its owner, and drove down the road.
The entire first day she made ninety miles, and she was down to an eighth of a tank of gasoline. "Maya, tomorrow we're going to have to stop for gas,” she said as she pulled off at an exit just south of Greensboro, North Carolina. "But for now, we're going to find a nice room with beds to sleep in! How exciting!"
"Can Holly and I sleep with you?" Maya asked.
"Of course, Mymy. We'll all sleep together in a big safe, warm bed."
Renee pulled the SUV into the parking lot of a Super 8 motel. She pulled right under the parking area, where she turned around to Maya. "You stay here and keep Baby Holly safe. Can you do that for me? I'm going to lock the doors to the truck. If you see anyone but me, honk the horn. Remember how I showed you to do that?"
"Yes, Mommy."
"You're a good big sister, Mymy. I'll be right back."
After Renee left the truck with the giant kitchen knife, she watched Maya climb up into the driver’s seat to wait.
Renee quietly opened the door to the office, expecting it to be full of zombies. The doors themselves had dried blood streaks on the glass. Just inside and to the left near the coffee pots, were two corpses with most of their heads blown off. The wall above the coffee station was covered in chunky gore, which had run down onto the counter in a congealed mass of bone and soft tissue.
Behind the counter was the owner of the motel's corpse. He had been eaten all the way through the middle. Only the spine itself connected the top of the torso to its lower body. The bony ridges of its backbone had scrape marks, leading down to the hips, which still had some bits of flesh attached. There was no flesh left along the spine. It was licked clean, almost bleached out, like the corpse of a cow in the desert. The poor innkeeper's wide leather belt had teeth marks on it, but apparently, the zombie that ate the man wasn't able to tear through it to continue its meal.
The corpse's little finger moved slightly, causing its arm to wobble. It was that movement that caught her attention. She looked up from the creature's waist and saw its eyes open, staring hungrily at her, following her movement. She jumped back a step in fright and let out a small squeal. The zombie was unable to move. All of the muscles had been ripped off its back and arms, but its eyes were wide open. It disturbed her that it looked at her with that same hunger-lust that she would give a juicy bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato. It disturbed her even more that she was still hungry, even looking at this poor soul's desecrated corpse.
Renee stepped up to the former innkeeper, put her foot on the remnants of its neck, and drove the kitchen knife down through its skull. The creature's eyes closed for the final time.
"I hope you can find peace now,” she said, wiping the knife blade on the carpet.
Behind the counter, she found three glorious items: a short double-barrel shotgun laying on the floor, a green and yellow box of Remington 00 Buck-Shot shells, and a key ring with twenty or thirty keys on it—including a Ford key.
"Maybe it's a truck," she said out loud. "And maybe it has a full tank."
The box of shells felt light when she grabbed it. To her dismay, it only had two bullets left in it. She put the two green plastic shells in the pocket of her hoodie and walked back outside to Maya and Holly. Holly was crying, and Maya was sitting beside her talking to her, trying to calm her and keep her quiet. Renee's eyes welled up, but she wouldn't let herself cry, not yet. Not until they were all safe and secure.
She unlocked the door to her SUV, climbed in, and drove to a parking space, where she paused before putti
ng the truck into park. This side of the building had a lot of cars parked in the lot, which would mean most of the rooms were full. She didn't want to risk the kids if there were zombies around, so she put the truck in reverse and backed out of the parking spot.
The other side of the hotel was practically deserted. She parked in a spot at the bottom of the stairs and turned to Maya and Holly, who was still softly crying.
"We're almost done for the night. I need to go make sure the room is safe before I come get you two. Can you wait here for another minute?"
Both kids nodded. Renee got out of the truck and ran up the stairs with the shotgun in one hand and the keys in the other. The first door at the top of the stairs was marked 201. She put her ear to the door and heard nothing.
It took her a full two minutes to find the right key to open the door in the late evening light. Now well into October, the sun was setting, even though it was only around six o’clock. She didn't have any food with her, but hopefully she'd be able to find something in a vending machine.
She'd made a fair amount of noise at the door trying various keys, so she put her ear to the door one more time. Hearing nothing again, she turned the handle. The smell hit her first. Before she could close the door, a zombie was at her. Its hands grabbed her shoulders, pulling her into the room, the thing's mouth moving towards her neck. She brought the shotgun up, shoving it under the thing's jaw. She squeezed the trigger, and her heart sank. All she heard was a faint snick sound as the hammer closed on a dead shell. She pulled the second trigger with the same result.
The creature dodged around to the side of the shotgun. It had been a small man in his mid-thirties, wearing a button-up shirt and dress slacks. On its shirt was a "Hi, My Name Is" sticker that said her attacker was Albert.
Renee dropped to the floor in an attempt to get out of Al's arms and away from his mouth. The saving grace of these things was that they were slow to react. Once on the floor, Renee kicked Al in the knee as hard as she could and then swung the shotgun like a bat at its head from her seated position when his head came into range. She was swinging from the stock, which gave her blow very little impact, but it was enough to knock Al away from her and shatter a few of his teeth.
She got to her feet, reversed the shotgun, and swung it like a golf club, smashing Al's temple in.
"Sorry, Al. At least you can rest now,” she said as she closed the door behind her.
She repeated the same procedure with room 203, the next one. This time, this one was vacant. The bed was made. She went immediately to the sink and checked the water. Cold but good pressure.
"Thank you, God," she said.
She washed her face and arms off, dried them off on a towel that didn't smell terrible, and went out to get the kids.
When she got to the truck, she grabbed the backpack, a few toys out of the back seat, and the two kids and ran up the stairs with them. Inside the room, she put the kids down on the bed, dead-bolted the door, slid a chair under the light switches, and set her backpack down on it.
She pulled out a tea light candle from her pack, lit it, and set it on the table beside the big king-sized bed. She once again dove into her backpack, this time pulling out a can of Sterno she'd gotten at the Chinese buffet, which she lit and set on the counter. She filled the small coffee pot, set it on the lid of the burning can of Sterno, and waited for it to heat up. Her kids were getting a warm water scrubbing tonight. All of them were going to climb into a clean bed, with clean sheets, feeling fresh and clean.
While the water heated, Renee took a moment to go scavenge Al's room. Inside the room, she found his shaving kit, with soap and shampoo, a razor, a pair of scissors, and deodorant. There wasn’t much in his suitcase, just some clothes that wouldn't fit her, but she did grab a sport coat out of the hanging bag and a pair of folded socks from the suitcase. The problem here was that TSA restricted so much of what one could take on a plane; she was unlikely to find anything useful in the room.
She stripped the batteries out of the remote control, grabbed his coffee pot and the coffee, sugar, and creamer, and headed back to the room next door. Inside the room, the water was boiling on the can of Sterno. Renee filled the sink with cold water and poured about half the coffee pot in to warm it up. She refilled the coffee pot and set it back on the can.
Holly was first; Renee removed her clothes and washed her off with soap and a washcloth. She put Holly into her cleanest pair of PJ's, which wasn't saying much after five months of living in an office building, and then repeated the process with Maya.
She packed both kids into the bed, kissed them goodnight, and said, "We'll find some food in the morning. I know we're all hungry. Maybe I can find some pancakes!"
Renee took the candle into the area outside the bathroom where the sink was and washed her hair and face by the light from the candle. She used the scissors to cut her hair short, leaving only about an inch of hair hanging down below her ears in the back, with short bangs and over her ears. If Albert had gotten a handful of her hair, she would be a zombie. She intended to make that as hard as possible.
Once her hair was cut, she washed off, enjoying every moment of the warm water. She washed her clothes out in the sink in the last of the warm soapy water, rinsed them off, and hung them over the shower rod to dry. She put on the tank top and shorts she'd been wearing that first day and slid in between the cool sheets between her two daughters, snuggled them up close to her, and fell asleep.
That night, Renee had a dream that she was working at a construction site, where they were driving pylons for a new building. All night long, she worked the logistics, as she'd done for her whole career, making sure delivery routes for wide loads were open, remembering permits and minor details that everyone else forgot. She awoke with the morning sunlight flickering across her face. When she looked up at the window, she saw the source of her dream. A zombie was banging its head against the window. Every time it reared back, the sunlight played across Renee's face.
She rolled the kids towards her so they couldn't see the window. "Maya, wake up," she whispered. "There's a bad guy outside. I want you to go sit in the tub. Don't look this way, just get up and go sit in the tub."
Maya did as she was instructed. Renee carried Holly, who was still asleep, and laid her on a towel at the other end of the tub before covering both of them up with the last clean towel they had. "I'll be right back," Renee said.
She left the door cracked open, because she didn't want to put Maya into pitch-blackness. It was dark enough in there already; the only light in the room was what came in the window. Renee picked up the shotgun and worked for a minute to figure out how to open the breech. She finally found the lever, broke the barrel, and dumped out two spent shells. She put the two new shells in and closed the breech.
She put her hoodie on and crept to the door. She quietly slid the lock open. She formulated a plan as she slowly turned the knob. When she pulled the door open, she used the knob as one support, her hand on the jamb as another, and kicked as hard as she could. The zombie had moved over in front of the door and took both feet just below the neck. The force of her kick pushed the zombie back against the railing, and the placement of the kick was perfect to knock it over. It flipped twice in the air before smashing head first into the asphalt below, two parking spaces away from her SUV.
"I guess I'm grateful Albert was in that room," she said to herself. "I hope you can rest now."
Renee went inside and retrieved the girls from the tub. Holly was still asleep. Maya walked out with Renee.
"Mommy, why are there so many bad guys?"
Chapter 12
Convergence
Victor woke up early that morning and watched the sunrise while drinking a bottle of water and eating a corn muffin out of his backpack for breakfast. He thought about the old days, when a corn muffin would have been a snack before he stopped at McDonalds for a sausage biscuit, two hash browns, and a thirty-ounce coffee. It’s amazing how the body changes to fit yo
ur lifestyle, Victor thought. These days a palm-sized corn muffin was enough to keep him energized for several hours. It had been weeks since he last had anything with caffeine in it. Back in the old world, he couldn't think straight without half a pot of coffee in him.
He was brought out of his morning revelry by Max's hand on his shoulder. "Daddy, we need to go. Renee is going to need us today. She's at a hotel with a big 8."
"Do you know where she is? Is she still in Charlotte? Is she okay?"
"She left the place she was. She drove towards Gramma's yesterday. That's all I know."
"Can you talk to her?" he asked.
"No, she's busy with bad guys right now. I was just watching. That's why we need to go."
Victor stood up and yelled into the back of the train. "Wake up! Time to go. Renee's in trouble!" He lifted Max up into the back.
He sprinted around to the locomotive and began the start-up routine. He had the generators running and was watching the ammeter when Marshall stepped up in the engine compartment.
"What's this about, Renee?"
"Max was watching her last night. She's in a motel somewhere north of Charlotte, surrounded by zombies," Vic said.
"Leo, John, I want everyone up in the locomotive. Be ready to fight," he sent to them.
A few seconds later, Leo lifted Max up into the locomotive and followed herself. John climbed the ladder to sit up on the top of the engine with his duffel bag full of magazines.
"Here we go!" he yelled. "Hold on!" he sent to each of them.