Alive! Not Dead!

by R. M. Smith

  “Get in” I whispered.

  She slid off the roof. Her feet hit the pavement hard. One of her shoes skidded on the cement.

  A zombie noticed her. His lower jaw was broken off, hanging by a thread of skin. His eyes widened when he saw us. He lunged for the girl, missing her by bare inches. Another zombie next to him became aware of us. He grabbed for her, too. He got a piece of her shirt. She was trying to pull away, but his grip was tight. I grabbed the girl’s hand. Her palm was sweaty. I yanked her toward me. The zombie lost his grip on her shirt.

  I backed up, sliding down into the van, pulling her with me. She leaned in toward me. Her forehead slammed against my chest. I reached around her, grabbed her around the shoulders, and yanked her into the van with me. When her feet were in, I quickly slammed the door shut.

  The cell phone closed. There was no light.

  The zombies started to pummel the hood and doors of the van.

  We sat next to each other in the dark, breathing hard.

  When it started getting lighter outside, I slid up into the front and started the van. This aroused the zombies again. We were buried in them. I slowly drove through. They beat on the windows of the van, trying to get in. I watched them in the rearview mirror as I drove away, lumbering after us, arms outstretched, wanting to feed on us.

  I decided getting back onto the highway might not be such a good idea. I really didn’t want to go back to the bridge. I knew by now the zombies would have probably found a way up to the highway.

  Staying on the side streets seemed like a better idea. Even so, there was still massive damage and a lot of cars and downed telephone poles blocking the road. I was able to make it through by driving on sidewalks or going through alleys.

  “Where we going?” the girl asked.

  “I’m trying to make it to my parent’s house.”

  She asked “Why?” as she slid up into the passenger seat.

  I looked over at her. She was a short, thin girl wearing cut-off jeans and an oversize blue t-shirt with the number 22 in red on the front. The shoulder fabric had ripped, showing her bare shoulder. Her left knee had a big bruise on it. It didn’t look like the dripping kind like the zombies had. Her dark brown hair was tied up in a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any make-up. I could see a dark mole high on her right cheek. She looked like she was in her early twenties, maybe late teens.

  “I want to see if they’re ok,” I said.

  “Where do they live?”

  “Up by Martha Lake.”

  “It’s underwater. Anything west of Lake Washington is underwater.”

  I couldn’t believe it. My mouth fell open. “How do you know?”

  “I was on Mercer island last night. One of my friends had a wedding rehearsal dinner at Hanuko’s, you know, that Japanese restaurant on 78th?”

  “Yeah,” I’d heard of it.

  “When whatever it was hit us, a tsunami came up Puget Sound. I was driving back home. They were warning about it coming on the radio. I couldn’t believe it. People were speeding past me on the highway, trying to get away. They said the tsunami was coming in fast. People were calling in on the radio, laughing about it, thinking it was a joke. Then the news broke in and said it was true! They were talking about that and a couple planes that crashed.” Her eyes were wide. “Then the sonic wave hit where I was at, and I saw this whole bridge cave in right in front of me. Five more minutes, and I would have been on that bridge! I got off the highway! I got caught in a huge traffic jam - then another one of those sky waves hit and people and cars went flying. My car went airborne and landed on top of another car. This building right next to everyone went to pieces – bricks and stuff went flying. I ran as fast as I could away from there. There were fires and people were screaming. Some guy on a motorcycle drove up to me. He said ‘We gotta get away from the deads!’ so I jumped on the back of his bike and we went flying down the highway. We were gonna get out of town and away from the tsunami flood and all that. We almost got all the way out of town but then his bike got a flat ‘cause of all the glass we’d been running over. We stopped at a gas station. He went in to see if he could find anything to fix the flat but then these deads tore into him. They came after me, too but I ran away. I ran down this alley and hid behind some trash dumpsters. I stayed there a long time. I saw your van come into the parking lot behind me. I watched your van. You never got out so I figured you must be ok and you weren’t a dead. It got dark so fast. I could barely see. I ran over to your van. I think I bumped it pretty hard with my knee,” she said as she rubbed the bruise on her knee. “I climbed up on top of the van so none of the deads would come after me. When you turned on the light for a second, I knew you were still in there, and not one of the freaks who wanted to eat me, so I tapped on the roof of the van and here I am.”

  I said “I didn’t know what to think when you tapped on the roof. You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I was scared too.”

  I told her about the plane crash, the fires and the river of zombies. I told her I still had the tire iron and that she needed to find a weapon as well. She said she had one. She pulled a switchblade out of her pocket.

  “We need to get a gun, too.” I said.

  “What’s your name?” she asked me.

  “Dan Kingsley.”

  “I’m Tara O’Neal.”

  I asked her what she thought caused all of this. She had no idea. She didn’t say anything about a nuke – and why would she? If a nuke had gone off in Seattle, I would’ve thought that the whole place would be gone. There wouldn’t be buildings standing. There wouldn’t be trees or telephone poles with wires still attached. The whole place would be gone. Totally destroyed. To me, it looked like a massive earthquake had hit. I don’t know why Norm told me he had heard something about a nuke. Obviously, his mind wasn’t in the right place. He had been looking for his wife. Maybe he just thought he heard them talking about a nuke on the radio.

  Tara and I needed to find somewhere safe. We needed protection. We needed to hole up and wait until this all passed. Surely FEMA must have had people on it already – but we didn’t know. The radio didn’t work - all we heard was static. Neither one of us had seen any police directing traffic. There was no National Guard patrolling the streets. There weren’t any sirens blowing, no vans driving around with loudspeakers advising people what to do. There weren’t any fire trucks, no helicopters circling. Disaster relief was nonexistent.

  If people had gone to disaster shelters then they would all be full by now.

  I thought that maybe everyone had gone to the Century Link football stadium. Tara reminded me that it had probably been destroyed by the tsunami since it was downtown.

  Other than the stadium, we didn’t know where any other disaster relief centers were. I mean, how often does a person even think about things like that – maybe in passing when you see a sign in a hallway pointing to a disaster shelter? Maybe one in a hospital somewhere? Maybe in a school basement?

  We could have gone to a police station. Tara said she thought there was on 12th street, but she wasn’t sure if it survived the tsunami, either. Honestly, we didn’t know what to do. I think we were just glad to be around someone else who was alive, not dead.

  Tara said she was sorry about my parents. I told her it was ok. I wasn’t very close to them. We had a falling out when I was 18. Ever since then, we rarely talked. I hadn’t seen them in over 3 years.

  We decided to head south on the 405. Tara said she had some friends in Tacoma. Maybe the disaster hadn’t hit them down there.

  Sadly, we were wrong. The floods had gone even further inland than we thought. There were many times where we would come up to a bridge and either find it destroyed or the other side would be completely underwater. We decided that we needed to go further inland; away from the ocean and the constant threat of further tsunamis.

  It was a long way, but we decided Fairchild Air Force base in Spokane might be a safe zone. They would definitely have guns t
here.

  We drove back the way I came: over the zombie bridge. Zombies were still lumbering along down there. Some of them noticed us standing above them. They reached up, trying to get us, but we were way too high. More zombies were coming toward us in the distance. A large river boat lay on its side further to the north, damaged, crushed against the base of another bridge. The sun was glaring on the metal side of the boat.

  We had to abandon the Caravan when we made it back to the collapsed bridge over the Raging River. After we scrambled down into the small river and back up the other side we got back into the Suburban which was still parked where I had left it. I kept an eye out for Norm, even though I knew he was probably gone by now. The hotel I had slept in was nothing but embers as we passed.

  From the hotel eastward the roads got clearer. The surrounding forest was now bent over from west to east – not east to west like it was on the far side of the hotel. I had no idea why though.

  In one spot along the highway there had been a major rockslide. Trees and boulders were thrown all over the highway. Cars and trucks were buried. We were able to creep through the rockslide in the suburban. One of the boulders we passed was easily five times bigger than our vehicle; the road underneath smashed. We both looked up at it in awe as we drove by.

  West of the town of Easton, the eastbound lanes were completely blocked by another rockslide. I stopped the suburban, climbed up to look around. It looked like the landslide covered the road as far as I could see. A cool mountain mist started falling which made seeing very far more difficult. It would also hamper the speed we could travel. I hopped back into the driver’s seat. Driving down into the median, we headed eastbound in the westbound break-down lane of the highway. It was tough traveling, pretty bumpy too, but we made it through.

  In the town of Easton, fires were small but plenty. Many of the gas mains had broken in the city. The smell of natural gas was overwhelming. We didn’t stay in town any longer than we needed to. Who knew how long it would be before the whole place would ignite – or if it ever would.

  On the other side of town, bodies in body bags were lining the highway. Many of the bags had been torn open. The bodies inside had been ravaged, or were missing.

  We didn’t know if something had happened before the pole shift, or maybe rescue teams were trying to clean the disaster up as the second wave hit. Tara and I both shuddered thinking about the body bags being ripped open from the inside as the dead came to life, trying to free themselves from the plastic.

  As we came into the small town of Cle Elum, I glanced at the gas gauge. It showed that we had less than a quarter of a tank of fuel left. Highway signs told of several gas stations at the next exit. We decided to fill up at one of those.

  The town was empty. None of the gas station pumps worked.

  The last gas station was also a food mart and a five and dime slash Western clothing store.

  Another minivan was parked by the fuel island outside. I guessed that the van probably needed fuel, but it turned out to be full. Whoever owned it must have just got done filling it up because the gas cap was still off. Thank goodness they had shut the pump off when they finished fueling.

  We transferred all of our supplies to the minivan. When we were finished, Tara said she needed to use the restroom which was adjacent to the food store somewhere near the back in the Western clothing store. The two shops were separated by an old wooden swinging Saloon bar door.

  While she was doing that, I went into the food store to see if I could find some more food; or maybe a roadmap. There was a map stand near the back by some refrigerated drink coolers. The electricity was now off so the drinks had lost their chill. By the back wall there was a rack of western shirts, jeans and a large section full of junk food. I grabbed a couple bottles of water out of the drink cooler even though they weren’t cold anymore. The junk food really didn’t look very appetizing. What I really could have gone for was a full steak and baked potato dinner with all the trimmings, but I really didn’t think it would happen.

  Tara screamed.

  Dropping everything, I ran through the swinging door.

  She screamed again.

  Ah shit my tire iron, I thought to myself. There was no time to go get it. I dead-headed toward the restrooms.

  She came out of the ladies room, backing up, her hands outstretched toward the restroom door. Her jeans were wet on the seat. She saw me coming toward her. She screamed again. “Dan get her!”

  An old woman zombie came out the door, its hair ragged, its mouth in a drawn sneer. Its back was arched crookedly at the shoulders. Her arms were covered in sores. She had no shirt on. Her breasts were saggy. The nipples were hard and dark as well as covered in sores. A large dripping bruise was on her neck. It ran up behind her ear on the right side of her head.

  I had no weapon. I grabbed Tara by the left hand. I yanked her to me then moved her around, behind me.

  The zombie gargled at both of us.

  I looked around for any type of weapon. There was a fire extinguisher far away on another wall. The only thing next to us was a magazine stand and an empty mop bucket lying sideways on the floor

  I heard Tara flip open her switchblade. I knew it wasn’t a very good weapon for close zombie combat, but before I could stop her, Tara lashed out at the zombie. She cut its arm deeply.

  The zombie didn’t stop coming. It grabbed Tara by the hair pulling Tara toward her. Tara screamed again. Her hair was being ripped out by the root.

  Tara’s head was within inches of the zombies discolored teeth.

  With my free hand I swung out with my fist. I hit the zombie hard in the face. It didn’t stop.

  The zombie’s teeth clamped down. Tara dodged just in the nick of time! The zombie only got a mouthful of hair.

  Suddenly, the men’s bathroom door slammed open. From inside, another zombie shambled out. This one only had one arm. He wore a Conoco gas station uniform. Around his neck bloodied toilet paper hung. In his one hand he held a good size crescent wrench.

  “That’s it!” I shouted.

  I let go of Tara for a split second. This gave me enough time to reach down for the crescent wrench. Grabbing it out of the zombie’s loose grip, I swung it up into his head, breaking his chin. This caused him to stumble backward. Seeing my chance, I swung out with the crescent wrench toward the female. It smacked with a clank on the side of her head, shattering her head into two wedges. One half of her head split on the ground like a dropped watermelon when it hit the floor; the other half lopped to the side as her body went down.

  Tara fell to her knees, holding her head where the zombie had just yanked the hair out by the roots.

  I completed the job on the attendant, crushing his head with the crescent wrench, too.

  “I pissed my pants! Fucking dead scared the piss right out of me,” she said, a hitch of a laugh in her voice.

  “You ok?”

  She put her fingers to her scalp. Some of the hair had ripped out. It left a little blood there. “God that fucking hurts,” she winced.

  “Let’s take care of that.”

  Standing her up, I walked her into the ladies room. I propped the door open for light. I turned on the sink. We were both surprised to see that the water worked. I helped her wash her scalp and gently cleaned the blood out of her hair with some paper towels.

  “Thanks Dan,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Let’s go get in the van and relax a minute. When you feel up to it, there’s a whole bunch of jeans and stuff in the other shop. You can go get a new pair or two if ya want.”

  “Ok,” said with a crooked smile, “but I still gotta go pee.”

  After our short breather, Tara finally got to pee. Afterward, we went back into the shop. Tara took off her shoes, socks and her wet shorts. She balled the shorts up and threw them into a corner. “Won’t need those again,” she said as she flicked her underwear over there, too.

  She stood there, looking through the clothes, naked from the
waist down. My eyes kept trying to look down at her bare thighs. She didn’t try to hide behind the rack of clothes at all.

  Since she wasn’t going to be wearing underwear, she found a pair jeans one size bigger than her normal size. “If I got my regular size, they’d be too tight in the crotch since I like to wear them snug,” she said with a smile as she looped a belt with fake turquoise jewels around her waist.

  Then we went through the shop looking for food. On one shelf we found two loaves of bread. One package had already been open. On another shelf there was a partial tube of squeeze cheese. Some had been squeezed out on the shelf. It looked like someone had tried to write something with the cheese, but we couldn’t make it out. We stood side by side looking at the letters someone had written:

  FEE – FEE

  We had no idea what it meant.

  “What’s a fee-fee?” Tara asked.

  She found a small box of breakfast snack bars, some pop-top cans of fruit, and in one corner of the shop there was a basket of untouched apples. We each ate one as we looked around.

  When we were done looting, I asked Tara if she was tired. She said yeah. I told her that I had seen a hotel on the way into town. I thought we could stay there for the night.

  We backtracked to the hotel. One side of the 3 story building had pancaked completely to the ground. The other side seemed fine. I went into the lobby first, tire iron in one hand, crescent wrench in the other. The main desk was empty other than a clerk who was dead behind the counter. We didn’t need to worry about him coming after us, though. The entire top half of his head was gone.

  There was a creaky stairway off the main lobby. We went up, took the fourth door to the left instead of the first. Inside, the room was clean. It had 2 double beds that were made. I bolted the door behind us. Tara had brought a plastic sack of goodies up from the van. We ate some of the breakfast bars and drank bottled water.

  After, we both lay down in our own separate beds.

  “Where do you think all of the people went?” she asked.