Vaccination - 01

by Phillip Tomasso

  “Think it’s flooded,” I said. I wanted to punch the dash. It wouldn’t do a thing to help, except make me feel better.

  “How long until it’s not flooded.”

  Time was always the best way to fix such a problem. “A few more seconds before I try again.”

  “I don’t think we’ve got that. They’re right outside the car.” Allison held her tire iron in two hands. Not like a ball player up to bat. More like a child clutching a blankie after a nightmare.

  “How many you see?” My dad had showed me a way to beat a flooded engine. Thing was, if it didn’t work, then I’d be guaranteed to have flooded it more.

  “Three. No,” she said, “four. I see four. All coming up behind the car.”

  “That it? Just four?” Four was plenty. Too many. But four was better than ten, or even five.

  “It’s all I see. So far. Just them, just four.”

  “I’m going to try something. If the car doesn’t start, you slide over. You get ready to try it again,” I said.

  “And where will you be?”

  “I’m going to get rid of those things. I don’t know how this works. If they smell us, or each other. Know what I mean? All I’ve got is what I’ve seen in movies. How fucked up is that?” The call I’d taken at work, from the scientist, he’d said the things were hungry, and could only be killed for good if the head—the brain—was destroyed. I mean, that was as zombie as you get. Walking Dead shit right here.

  “You’re not getting out of the car,” she said.

  “We don’t have time to argue.”

  “Try it,” she said, “just do it.”

  Cars were all fuel injection. This thing shouldn’t happen. Might not even be flooded. Might just be broken. I pushed the accelerator to the floor. All the way. I didn’t pump the pedal. Just held it all the way down. I turned the key.

  Realized I was holding my breath when nothing happened, and I exhaled. “Shit.”

  I reached for the door handle. I didn’t think it was flooded. Didn’t think it was going to start. Ever. Effectively, Allison and I were trapped.

  “Where are you going?”

  “This car isn’t going to work.” I gripped my tire iron. “Wait here.”

  I looked out the back windshield. Four fucking zombies. One. Two. Three. Four.

  When I opened the door, I climbed out quickly, feet on loose gravel, my balance shot to shit, my right foot slid, leg extended and I went down. I didn’t scream when I banged my elbow on the pavement, but I winced.

  Allison screamed.

  If surprise had been in our favor, maybe I’d of had the upper hand. On my ass outside the car with Allison calling out asking if I’m okay, no, nah. The element of surprise was wasted. Gone.

  One of the things stumbled around toward me. It seemed slow moving. Not fast. I was trying to learn, to figure out what kind of enemy we were up against. It was like anything else. Some were fast, others slow. I’d bet some smart and some dumb as all get out. The only thing in common that I’d noticed across the board, was that they were ugly, horrendously ugly.

  I took a swipe with the iron at the thing’s leg. The thunk against bone felt hollow, and did little to slow the zombie. As it dropped to its knees, and brought its face close to mine, I tried again. Think I screamed as I swung the iron at its head. The way it had me pinned, the open car door, I had no room to angle, no way to gain momentum. I tried punching him with my weapon. It did little.

  He opened his mouth. Did I see flesh wedged and flapping between the small gap in his front teeth?

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to die. It was that I couldn’t. My kids were out there. Scared shitless. Alone. Their fucking mother was trying to eat them. I couldn’t die now, not like this – not just hours into this nightmare. I’ve been fighting against shit all my life, more so since the divorce. I wasn’t giving up here, going to die here, let this drool-faced beast eat me!

  When his head shot forward, I thought it was over. Thought I was wrong, that I was going to die. When I saw the tire iron sticking out of a split skull, I let my eyes look up.

  Allison breathed heavy. She’d let go of her iron, perhaps because it looked wedged in place.

  That was one down, out. Three to go.

  “Behind you,” I said, rolling the dead thing off me.

  I got to my feet told Allison to duck, and swung my iron, full swing. The lug nut end slammed like a piston into the woman’s ear. The zombie cried out, shrieked. It backed up, backed away. Hands covered the ear. Blood poured, spewed from between fingers. I didn’t give it time to rebound.

  “I can’t get mine out of his head,” Allison said. She grunted. I envisioned her foot on the back of its neck as she attempted to dislodge the weapon, as if she was Arthur retrieving her Excalibur.

  I swung again. The woman, already badly injured, didn’t do anything except take it. In the temple. Bone shattered. Flattened. She went down. Hands no longer over her ear, but with arms straight out at her side. If that brain still pumped activity or energy through the body, I’d clunk myself in the fucking head next time.

  Two down.

  I spun around, expecting to have to help Allison. She chopped through the air with her iron. With a large arch that started at the spine of her back, up over her head and finished by smashing down onto the crown of the third zombie.

  Stepping around my woman, I used the pointed end of my iron like a dagger. The man looked young. Early twenties. I saw nothing human in his facial expression. He didn’t come at me. He stayed by the car behind the Chrysler. Like he’d been watching it all. As if he’d just seen three of his friends pummeled to death, but didn’t have the balls to jump in and help. It was almost like if he wasn’t hungry, craving a bite out of me and Allison, that he might be tempted to turn and run.

  I didn’t know how to handle that.

  “Alley,” I said.

  She stood next to me. “What’s it doing?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Kill it?”

  “Let’s back away. See what it does.” I put my arm out. It didn’t do a thing to protect Allison. The gesture made me feel better. I’d used it hundreds of times when driving. Threw my arm out in front of Charlene—even Julie when we were married—whenever I had to stop faster than normal. Of course, they’d worn seat belts. Again, it wouldn’t do a thing to protect either one of them if we’d been involved in a collision. It was about the gesture.

  I think.

  We backed away, around the Chrysler. We were on Lyell Avenue.

  The lack of people out might only be because it was so late. Still felt eerie.

  “It’s not coming after us,” Allison said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t like that answer. Did it imply more than it should? Was there still someone inside? Had Alley and I just murdered three people? “The others attacked. We were justified.”

  “We were,” she said. There was no conviction in her tone. It sounded surer than when she told me she’d bash in a zombie’s brains if it meant saving my life, and she had.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For?”

  “Saving me,” I said.

  “You said you’d do the same for me. Now I’m holding you to it. I do not want to get eaten by one of these things. Got me?”

  We still walked slowly backward away from the lone beast. It just stood where it was, watching us.

  “You kill me first. Okay? Deal?”

  I nodded. I felt the same way. I did not want to get eaten by a zombie. “You think if we get bit, and don’t die, we become one? Like in all the movies?”

  “I don’t want to find out.”

  I shook my head. “No. Me either.”

  “What now?”

  I lived at one end of Greece, my kids further west at the opposite end. “We need more than tire irons. We’re going to run into more of these things. Plenty more. Way everyone was pushing the vaccination shots; I don’t know many people th
at didn’t get them. I mean at work, we were like it.”

  “I know.”

  I didn’t know much about the Avian Flu. I knew it became really popular a while back, caused a lot of deaths. I knew the government started studying each year’s flu, and providing “cures” for expected strains to hit the hardest.

  From what I remember, China was a player in the mess. Their government got caught messing with crops. Spreading the flu through chemicals sprayed onto farms. Crowd control at its finest. Natural Selection and all that.

  “Tire irons are not going to cut it.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Let’s try to get to the mall.” A few stores in there, the sporting goods store, and the pawnshop alone should help us stock up on useful weapons. While guns sounded good, carrying around ammo, reloading and risking gun jams didn’t sound appealing. “I want a sword. Some knives. Follow me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The mall was not close at all. From Lyell Avenue, and on foot, we had a heck of a hike ahead of us. It was dark. Things were out there. We heard them. All Allison and I were armed with were tire irons. Tire irons.

  I checked my phone continually. My daughter, Charlene, had not called back. Without a signal, I was unable to call her. Naturally, my brain went wild with that. Imagining the worst possible scenarios filled my thoughts. I couldn’t stop picturing my ex-wife and her husband feasting on my children. It made my stomach flip-flop, churn and grind.

  Allison stuck her iron through a belt loop. The L-head held it in place. I kept mine gripped in my hand. If more of those things appeared, jumped at us from out of the shadows, I didn’t want to struggle freeing the iron from the loop. Thought about sharing that tidbit of wisdom with Allison, but she looked content. Who was I to mess up her mood?

  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I wasn’t big on cutting through yards, or wandering behind buildings though. Seemed the safest route would still involve following roads, staying to the shoulder, taking advantage of as much of the shadows as possible.

  We had started north down Lee. Industrial area mostly, once we walked the bridge over the canal. Homes to the right were at least a mile away to the east.

  “It’s so quiet now.”

  Allison was right. It turned out to be a good street to walk. Not sure that was what she’d implied. Still, we hadn’t passed a single car on the road, which sucked. Would prefer driving. Walking took too long. If Julie and Donald were sick, and Charlene and Cash were in trouble, the longer it took me to get to their house . . . the more I worried about their safety.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “About?”

  “What if we’re, like it? Like the last few survivors? You said it yourself. Everyone and their mother got that shot. They gave them to people at all the corner drug stores, even. And, you saw how it was tonight at work; whoever didn’t start turning into a zombie creature was getting attacked and eaten by their family and strangers.” Allison stopped walking.

  “We need to keep walking,” I said.

  “Chase, we are in some trouble here,” she said.

  “We need to keep walking. I need to get to my kids.”

  “I know that,” she said. She started to walk, short, slow steps. “We’re going to get them. We’re going to save them from your ex. But then what? That’s what I’m asking. Then what do we do?”

  “We go to Mexico,” I said. I tried to sound confident. She seemed to need that. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “No, I know. Mexico. But…look at our highways. The expressway looks like a parking lot. We can’t just keep going from one vehicle to the next blockage, and then get in another vehicle. . .”

  “Why can’t we?”

  “Why aren’t we now? Why are we walking? You know how far the mall is? I’m already tired. My feet hurt, and I’m already thirsty,” she said. “Do you see what I’m saying, Chase? The mall. We’re what? Like two miles from the mall? We’ve come like, what? Two miles already? Know the last time I walked four miles, Chase?”

  “Allison,” I said.

  “And we’re going to what? We’re going to walk from New York, from Rochester, all the way to Mexico? I’m no geography major, Chase, but I know it’s like twelve hundred miles from here to Orlando. To fucking Disney, Chase. Disney. So if we were headed to Disney, Chase – guess what? We would still have eleven hundred and ninety-eight miles to go. Eleven ninety-eight.” She screamed.

  I grabbed her head, slapped my hand over her mouth. With gritted teeth I whispered, my lips pressed against her ear. “No screaming, Alley. I understand everything you just said. But keep your voice down.”

  There was no threat made. It was there. Hung between us. She had done well on the expressway ramp, saved my life, even. I’d already thanked her for that. “We good?”

  She nodded; eyes open wide, staring at me. I removed my hand.

  “So we’re clear,” she said, voice barely above a whisper, “you ever touch me like that again and I’ll crack your skull.”

  “Good. Then we both understand what’s going on here.”

  She nodded again. I noticed her hand on the L-head of her iron. Didn’t bother me. She needed to toughen up. If she was mad at me, hated me, then fine. It would be good for her. Help her. She could thank me later.

  Silence ensued. Between Ridgeway Avenue and Weiland Road, we were leaving the industrial part of the city, and entering the town of Greece. Residential areas. We could have cut down Weiland to Long Pond Road. Then north on Long Pond to the mall, but what made me say no, to continue toward Holmes Road was the thought of where Weiland hit Long Pond. Directly across the street from there was the hospital. Unity.

  I had no reason to fear the hospital, but something just made me feel like with all the monsters on the street right now, the ones spilling out of the hospital would be worse. They might not be. It could be just irrational fears, but I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t want to go anywhere near the place. Allison didn’t argue. She didn’t ask why I wanted to keep on to Holmes, but she didn’t argue. I was good with that.

  I saw the streetlight at the intersection. I also saw more cars dead in the road. Allison had been right. It would be difficult car jumping. Taking one vehicle as far as we could, and then scrounging around for another. It could be done. Might become annoying, but that was no reason not to at least try.

  “We’ll check these cars up here for . . .”

  “For, what?”

  “Shhhh,” I said. The streetlights worked shining round domes of light onto the roads, but did little to battle the darkness that surrounded us. “I hear people.”

  People had to be a loose term. Sounded more like animals. Grunts and groans. Moaning and yelping. What the hell were we going to do?

  “Now what?” Allison had her Iron out. The belt loop had not infringed the weapon from coming free. Her other hand clutched at my forearm.

  “We need to hide. See what’s going on.”

  “Hide? Where?”

  We were under the I-390 bridge. I backed us up to the stonewall. Slowly we crept forward, bent forward, staying low to the ground. It was difficult to see clearly. Ahead, I saw four, no five zombies. They looked lost, meandering about on a house’s front lawn. A sixth was on the front porch.

  We got closer, on the opposite side of the street, and stopped between a hedge and a parked mini-van.

  “Is he knocking on the door?”

  “Scratching at it, I think,” I said. The guy on the porch mindlessly raked fingernails on the screen mesh. I could hear it.

  I also heard a siren. It wailed, not far off. The sound brought hope. Not all was lost. Felt like it. If responders were still responding, it wasn’t the end.

  “What do we do?”

  I didn’t want to stay here, hidden on our bellies in someone’s driveway. That didn’t really mean we were safe. Just meant we hadn’t been spotted by the small horde gathered across the way. “We can’t m
ove. Not yet. What if they see us?”

  “We can’t just stay here.” Allison raised her head, looking left and right. “We should get closer to this house behind us. Stay low, and close, and keep moving.”

  “What if they hear us?”

  “We run.” She had a point. One that beat the hell out of mine.

  Maybe I was tired too. Walking four miles had been a challenge, despite being focused, despite needing to get to my kids. Like Allison had said, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d walked this far.

  It was nearly midnight. I now had three things on my mind. Getting to the mall for weapons. Saving my kids from being eaten. Finding a cold beer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Allison and I came up on the backside of the mall. From where we crouched in the bushes, we could see the loading dock side of Target. Beyond that, Sears and Penny’s. The sporting goods store sandwiched between them. The mall had front entrances to all the stores. The back also had direct store entrances, as well.

  The lot had parked cars, which was good. We’d need them. They provided cover. The roaming mass of zombies looked a bit overwhelming.

  “There’s a lot of them.” Allison knelt beside me, one hand on my shoulder. “Look at ‘em all.”

  “I can’t shake how it’s just like every stupid zombie movie I’d ever seen. They’re just, just roaming around. Like they are hungry for brains.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said.

  I didn’t need to say it. We’d seen it. Watched as people we worked with, attacked other employees. We’d barely escaped work. A hard fought walk to the mall. These things, although maybe not craving brains, did seem interested in biting non-infected people to death. Bad enough in my book.

  “We need to get to the mall. Can’t imagine the doors are locked,” I said. I looked around the lit lot. There was no visible clear path. If we did a serpentine between vehicles, we stood a chance.

  “Bound to be more inside the mall, too.” Allison merely pointed out the obvious.

  “We get in, and weapons are all to the left.”

  “Just got to get across the parking lot.”