The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  The whole city had been abandoned. It was creepy to walk through a community set up for living but entirely devoid of life. Corbin guided them, having memorized the directions from Zaley reading them out loud the day before. A door slammed in an apartment building, making them jump, but it was only the wind blowing a screen in and out. The latch was broken, so it never closed all the way.

  When they passed a dead garden, Micah stopped to try a faucet. “No water here. That’s why everyone’s gone.”

  “They couldn’t fix it?” Austin wondered.

  “You need trained people to fix things. You need tools for those people to use. Or maybe the pipes or water treatment plant got burned up or blown up.” So this city had been left to the birds. And the ferals.

  No crazed animal cries were ringing through the air, but once a dark figure moved in the deep tree cover between apartment buildings. God, did Austin want to travel by car! One hundred and fifty miles an hour all the way to Arquin, where he’d throw himself at the gate and plead for Zyllevir and milk. No one could say no to Mars’ sweet little face. He was asleep now, a light and fussy sleep that Micah called baby bitching. Austin tried to walk evenly to make the sleep go deeper. It’d be better if Mars were down on a blanket, or in a crib.

  It took them several tries to find the trail. There weren’t any signs. Between two of the long buildings, a rough fire road wound away into trees. The sun over their heads turned to shade. A few of the trees had gotten fried in a fire and stood there bare, but the rest had full canopies. They walked in total silence, going east and then south. There the trees grew only on one side, Austin’s spirits lightening with the road. It wound to the west and turned south, and once it was west again, the trees were separated by a lot of scrub. Even that petered out after a while, leaving only thatches of bushes and bare earth. Very gradually, the trail switched to north.

  “A car would be best for tonight, if we come across one,” Corbin said. It was only afternoon, but they had to plan. Austin’s back and ass ached preemptively at the thought of their second-best hiding spot: up in a tree. He searched the empty land for a car.

  At a split in the trail, they waited for Zaley to consult the maps. The sign by the road had been knocked down and broken. “I think we want this one going west. If I’m looking at the right place on the map, the one going north loops back to Marin City.” Austin hated how trails didn’t just go the way you needed to go like a normal road.

  Scrub and rocks and nothing to see. This was a much thinner path than the fire road. They hadn’t been on it long when it split into a hairball of trails going every which way. Most of the individual hairs were barely scratches in the dirt, so they stayed on the original one. Trees rose high on the north side, and scrub squatted low on the south.

  “Hey, a cell tower! Hello, blast from the past,” Micah said. It was just standing there like a relic of their former lives.

  The trail eventually ended in a dirt loop. Zaley squinted at her papers and walked off it in a northwest direction. Catching up to her, Austin said, “Are you sure that this is the right way?”

  “No,” Zaley said. “I’m doing what I can with these shitty, outdated maps.”

  “We’ll get lost.”

  “I doubt it. Walk too far west and we’ll hit the ocean. Walk too far east and we’ll hit civilization. I can’t tell you exactly where we are, but we aren’t lost.”

  Without a road, they walked more carefully. The area didn’t know what it wanted to be, trees or scrub, so it did both in patches. Austin grimaced when they had to go under extended tree cover. But soon they burst back into sunlight. They did that a few more times and came to a road. If the baby hadn’t been asleep, Austin would have yelled and kissed Zaley. She checked her maps while Micah kicked rocks around to amuse herself.

  Houses were in the distance. Corbin said, “We could see if one is empty for the night and hole up.”

  Micah checked on the sun. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other at this point.”

  They kept going. Austin was annoyed that the road insisted on going south when they wanted the other way, but the road was going to meet up with a trail that would take them in the right direction in time. Mars had gone to sleep fussy and woke up fussy, so Austin turned him around in the carrier and said, “Okay, Mr. Fussy Pants! You tell that world how you’re feeling.”

  He told it in a series of grumpy sheep baaaas. Then he wanted to tell Micah, so Austin traded the carrier and the baby for lugging along the car seat with blankets and pillows strapped into it. They got to the trailhead. Hills rolled away on all four sides. In the parking lot were dozens of abandoned cars, and that was a good place to quit if any were unlocked.

  “Ummm . . .” Corbin was peering into the vehicles. “You guys notice something about these?”

  Austin looked through the windows. A lot of the cars had envelopes taped to the steering wheels or placed on the dashboards. None of these cars had been set on fire or were broken into except for having their gas taken out, and many of the doors had their latches up.

  There was only one reason for those envelopes. Those were suicide notes. This was a graveyard of cars for bodies and ferals out there in the hills. Austin sought out an unlocked car without a note. He didn’t want to sleep in something that felt like a grave. Opening the door to a little green four-door, he said, “This one. The one without a suicide letter.” The person who had left it here might not have died. If the gas had gotten stolen while he took a hike, he would have had to leave another way.

  “Aussie, we don’t have to all cram into the same car tonight,” Micah said from beside a giant SUV. That one had an envelope hanging from the top curve of the steering wheel. She was lowering the back seats to make space for a bed.

  Zaley was holding the baby on her hip and Corbin was checking the door on another SUV one row over. It also had a note on the steering wheel. He called, “This one okay with you, Zaley?”

  “It’s good,” Zaley said.

  Fine. They could all sleep in dead people’s cars, but Austin was sleeping in this one. He set it up in indignation and slammed the door behind him. Then he sat there alone, eating from the box of cereal he had. There were colorful marshmallows in it. He picked those out and filled his palm with them, missing milk but liking the cheerful colors.

  The others had opened up the trunks and were having a little tailgate party, sitting on their beds and talking across the row. It would have to quit soon. The sun was going down. Mars was fussing, and nothing made him happy. He didn’t want to be up. He didn’t want to be down. He didn’t want to be anything. Micah walked the aisle of cars with him, calling out I think he’s teething. The baby needed one of those frozen blue pretzels to gnaw on, or a tube of gum numbing gel. She gave the baby to Corbin and Zaley for a minute, and went through her backpack for a children’s over the counter pain medication that she’d taken from a house in Sausalito. Mars was too small for pills, so the bottle held liquid. The lid had a dropper that hung down into the fluid.

  The sun was shining hard through the windshield. Austin lowered the visors, which didn’t help, and strung up a sheet to block it. That did the job, but the car had gotten too hot to stand. He opened a door to get the air circulating. How sick that the parking lot looked like a big group had come for a hike, but in truth, no one was ever going to come back.

  When it started to get dark, everyone closed themselves up into the cars and locked the doors. Austin sat everywhere in his car to find the best sleep position. But after he found it, his body didn’t want to sleep. He searched through his backpack for something to do. They had left the books behind and it was too dark to read anyway. Tucked in the pouch were the washcloths the girls used for their periods. If they needed them tonight, that was just too bad. No one was going to walk around in the dark, knocking on windows to figure out who had the washcloths. Austin’s fingers trailed along the Pocket Animal. Mars was probably upset because he wanted to play and all of his toys were gone.


  That did it. Austin packed up his belongings and got out of the car. Knocking on the window of Micah’s SUV, he looked over nervously at an animal call. She let him in right away. Mars was chewing on the star in the back. The bed was made up for two and the baby, not only Micah and Mars. Irritated that his actions had been anticipated, Austin said stiffly, “I just came to give you the washcloths.”

  “Then why did you bring all your stuff?” Micah asked.

  He’d brought it because he was lonely in the other car, and he was an open book to her. Grouchily crawling into the bed, he put his hand on Mars’ belly. “What if you gave him too much of that pain medication?”

  “Then I’ll sign him up for a liver transplant.”

  “He could get an overdose.” The medication was expired on top of it. That could make it more lethal, its compounds breaking down into bad things.

  “I was careful, Aussie,” Micah said. “I followed the directions on the bottle. Read them yourself. But he’s in pain, so I had to give him something.”

  Austin didn’t want the baby to be in pain. That wasn’t fair. He wasn’t even old enough to know that he was getting teeth. “This place is creepy, and haunted. It feels like a jinx to stay here.”

  “It’s safe, as safe as we can be.” She had a bottle ready for Mars, but he was still interested in his badge. The Pocket Animal could keep on being a secret.

  “Did you read the letter?” Austin asked.

  “Of course I did. It isn’t as bad as you think.” He scoffed at that. There wasn’t any way for a suicide note to be joyful. She added, “If you were dying and left your SUV somewhere, would you care after you passed on that some high school kids and a baby hid in your car for a night? Would you haunt them? I read the letter and the woman who wrote it wasn’t so bitchy as to do that.” When Micah said it like that, Austin felt stupid.

  “Did she have kids? This is a big car.” The baby dropped the badge and picked up Austin’s hand.

  “No, she didn’t. She was divorced, no kids. This car belonged to her dad. He had three cars and was trying to sell this one. She hid for months in his house when the Shepherds seized control of their home city. Then she ran out of Zyllevir and there wasn’t any more to be had. So it was either kill herself at home and let her father find her body, surrender to Shepherds, or come out here to her favorite hiking spot. But she didn’t let herself go feral. She wrote in the note that she was going to swallow a couple hundred pills and vodka, and go out there to find a pretty place to die. It was dated several weeks ago.”

  Just because the woman had planned to do that didn’t mean she hadn’t lost her nerve and just gone crazy out there instead. “How much of that story came out of your ass?”

  “One hundred percent truth, ten percent omission.”

  “Yah!” Austin exclaimed. Mars had gone from examining Austin’s fingers to chewing on them. The bite hadn’t hurt. He withdrew his fingers and offered the pacifier. “What did you omit?”

  “How sad she was. She didn’t want to be out here doing this. But she couldn’t let herself go crazy and hurt her dad, and no one ever told her about Arquin. Do you honestly think that woman is going to haunt us tonight? What for? She’s off haunting Shepherds. Give them hell, lady.” Micah popped the pacifier out of Mars’ mouth and gave him the bottle. Austin didn’t tempt fate by reading the note himself. He’d rather think about a legion of angry Sombra C ghosts chasing down Shepherds, Brennan and Elania among them.

  Outside the window, a dark shape moved at the periphery of the lot. Austin swiftly checked the locks. It wasn’t just one shape. Four of them began to weave through the cars, two staring in the windows. Austin could freak out later. Now he had to be like Micah, stay calm when everything was going to pieces. Mars needed him to be calm, too. Snatching up the blanket, he covered all three of them from head to foot. Then he tilted his body to the baby to shield him. The kid’s rifle was close by.

  Mars drank his milk and Micah whispered, “When they go, I’ll cover the windows in sheets.”

  Even if that woman was haunting the car, they couldn’t leave it now. Austin’s heart thumped as scratching sounds of feet grew louder. None of the ferals were vocalizing. Micah sang to the baby and Austin almost hushed her, but her voice was tiny and no one outside would be able to hear it. It just seemed louder when he was less than two feet away.

  “Why don’t you ever get afraid of shit?” Austin asked jealously.

  Micah finished the lullaby and said, “I get afraid.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do, but it gets dunked under by other things. Like bobbing for apples. The fear gets away from me.”

  “What other things?”

  “If I’m mad, that overrides it. Other times, I’m nothing. At the holiday party, the fear got dunked under. I mostly just thought about how to get the hell out of that room. There was time to be scared later.”

  She hadn’t been scared later. By then, it was over and there was no longer anything to be scared about. But mad, she had been furious when the party ended. She had raged and infected that handcuffed Shepherd, beaten the shit out of him and screamed about how the doctor had just been calling home. That was what had happened to her fear. Austin said, “Is that what a sociopath does?”

  “I don’t know. I think they feel less. It’s shallower. I’d say I feel less than most people. Less than you, definitely. But I can’t be another person to make a true comparison. I honestly don’t get why things upset you so much.”

  “You aren’t really a sociopath. They . . .” Kill people. Micah had killed people. That still didn’t make her a sociopath. Austin had killed and he wasn’t anything but normal. Sociopaths lied and connived. They were charming con artists and totally thoughtless about other people’s feelings. He reviewed the sociopaths that he had seen in movies and added impulsive and don’t like laws to his list. They were psychological terrorists who held everyone hostage to their whims. Predators. “You aren’t mean though. You aren’t mean enough to be a sociopath.”

  Micah fit the list and that was a little disturbing, but she also didn’t. That was being one point off instead of five points or ten. Only her toe was dipped in that dangerous water, or maybe one whole foot. The baby drank unceasingly between them and she said, “Sociopaths don’t feel empathy. I do.”

  Her empathy switched on and off, the way she didn’t feel any pity for Boomslang once she found out he had been a Shepherd. Micah was done with him then, and Austin still felt sorry for that scared, idiot kid. He imagined being mad or blank instead of afraid, but his brain didn’t work like that. Surrounded by ferals, he was just fearful.

  They were still shuffling around the lot. Austin squeezed the baby’s foot and said, “If we don’t find Arquin, we have to get away from Zaley and the baby.” When Sombra C chewed up his brain, it would make him dangerous. Austin was a big guy. It wouldn’t be hard for him to hurt or kill them.

  “We’ll ditch them in Petaluma, find them a house and make sure there’s a relief truck that stops nearby,” Micah said. It was dunked under, the upset she should be feeling in favor of cold, rational planning. She’d be upset once they were at that point, which wasn’t yet. But she loved the baby just as much as Austin did. Her hands and voice were always gentle and patient with him, even on the sporadic nights when he forgot that sleep was important. Micah rocked or played with him for hours no matter how tired she became. She was a good mom to Mars. A real sociopath wouldn’t be a good mother.

  “Nnnnn-uhhhhh.” A feral was passing by outside, his voice so quiet that Austin hardly heard it. Mars made an aaaahhh sound and they bent over him, whispering sshh- ssshhh.

  When the shuffling and scratching was gone, they threw off the blanket and breathed deeply. It was fully dark outside. Since the baby was tucked into Micah, on his way to sleep, Austin took care of the sheets. He bumped the horn while stringing them up over the windshield and said, “Fuck.” Someone howled out in the night.

 
Once the sheets were up and their nest was covered, he got into bed. He and Micah were spread out at the far reaches of the back of the SUV by morning. The baby was sleeping in a starfish shape and taking up all the room.

  Austin got out to pee. The sun was stranded, all alone in a corner of a bare blue sky. No ferals were around, but an approaching rumble alerted him to someone on the road. Corbin was just getting out of the other SUV. The boys looked at one another and climbed back inside their cars, closing the doors quietly.

  “What is it?” Micah whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Austin slipped up to the front and sat in the passenger seat. Micah passed over the cosmetics and he covered his stamp in a fresh layer of foundation.

  Lifting the edge of the sheet curtain, he peeked out. A van came at a slow pace down the road. “It’s a bashed Value Eats van. A small one. It has bullet holes in the side. A bunch of guys are in the cab and one’s riding on top.”

  “Of the cab?” Micah asked.

  “Yeah. He’s got a gun.” The person turned to the parking lot. “She’s got a gun, I mean. They don’t look like relief workers or anything.” Ropes came out the open windows of the cab and were wrapped around the woman to make her more secure.

  A second truck came after the first. This one had an open bed crowded with people. They were an unfriendly looking bunch, no kids or elderly mixed in, mostly men and a few women with guns attached to slings. Two motorcycles zoomed past them and caught up to the Value Eats van to travel before it. Then the van sped up some. Austin waited several minutes after they were gone to get out of the SUV. The door to the other one opened and Corbin stepped out cautiously.

  They had to get away from the road. Breakfast could wait, and Micah changed the baby’s diarrhea-filled diaper in a hurry. She blamed the loose stool on all the drool he swallowed, but Austin was worried that the medication was doing something to him. Everything was packed up fast and they skirted through the lot to get to the trailhead.

  The trail led up. Why was it always up? Even with a pretty view coming up all around them, Austin would rather be going down. It would be a horrible place to stop for the night, so they had to get somewhere else over the course of the day. Ferals would crawl all over here and there wasn’t anything for shelter.