Dead: Snapshot 01: Portland, Oregon

by T. W. Brown

  “I’m just sayin’ that if I had to run into a random stranger in a parking lot of a hospital being overrun by zombies, I’m glad it is somebody who knows what the hell they are doing.”

  “So, what is the plan?” Jason decided that it was okay to get back into the conversation.

  “I have a place up in the foothills. A few small changes and we are totally off the grid. The reality is that I can’t hold it alone. Cheryl, some friends and I were getting this place ready a long time before reality televisions started painting us as a bunch of conspiracy theory kooks.” Erin looked past Ken and Jason to the nearby street.

  “Okay, so why us?” Ken asked the question that Jason was thinking.

  “Honestly?” the woman asked with a raise eyebrow and the hint of a humorless smile curling her lip up on only one side. “Because you were the first people that I ran into.”

  “And what if we were freaks or some sort of lunatic?” Jason shot back.

  “You had a woman with you that was following of her own free will.” Erin looked over at Ken and shrugged. “And you had a dog.”

  Jason gave a nod and Ken made a sound in his throat that might have been a cough covering a chuckle. Erin tapped her hip and the heavy-duty blade she had hanging at her side. “Besides, if one or both of you acted strange, I would have dropped you on the spot.”

  “You would murder somebody?” Ken was back to sounding every bit like a cop.

  “I got news for you, mister,” Erin stepped right up to Ken without a hint of fear, “the rules are about to change. The center is collapsing, and the edges are going to spiral down the toilet. Things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better. If you don’t change your mindset, you won’t last the week.”

  Jason nodded in approval. For whatever reason, he believed that he had just fallen into a very good situation.

  Bad People

  “Did Jacob bite you, Crystal?” Rose asked as she knelt in front of the girl.

  With tears welling in her tracer-riddled eyes, the little girl nodded. Rose shot a look over her shoulder at the door to her sister’s bedroom. Taking Crystal by the hand, she stood and led the girl to the kitchen and had her sit at the breakfast bar.

  “What would you like to eat, sweetie?” Rose asked. She asked that question mainly because she really had no idea what to fix for the little girl. Besides, if she felt sick, then perhaps she wouldn’t want to eat.

  “Peanut butter?” the girl posed the request as a question.

  “Okay.” Rose spun back to the cupboards and began searching. At last, she discovered a jar with a handmade label. The bread was on a cutting board and when Rose went to cut it, she was surprised to discover that it was still relatively fresh.

  “Who makes their own bread?” Rose scoffed under her breath.

  “Mama does. She even let me help now that I am older.”

  Rose turned to see Crystal still sitting at the counter, but she had laid her head down on her arms. Her breathing was starting to sound weird, like she had something caught in her throat.

  Rose wanted to get the sandwich made fast and then get the girl back to her room. She had a good idea as to what was happening.

  She had just cut the sandwich in half when she heard something behind her that made her heart thud with rib cracking force. In that instant, she realized that she had simply tuned out the girl’s breathing. That meant that she had not noticed when it had ceased.

  Turning slowly, fearing what she would see, Rose staggered back a few steps. Crystal was still sitting at the breakfast bar. She was upright now, and her head was tilted to one side. Those eyes had gone from just the black tracers to being filmed over as well.

  She had become one of them.

  The little girl’s head twitched a few times, and Rose had the feeling that the girl was studying her. Her skin had drained of color to the point where it was a bluish-gray, and when her mouth opened, a low moan escaped.

  “Oh, Crystal.” Rose took another step back.

  Crystal’s head jerked violently towards her and her eyes seemed to lock on to Rose. The girl tottered and then fell to the floor, momentarily disappearing from view. There was a scuffling sound, and then Crystal was back on her feet. Yet, for whatever reason, the girl did not approach; she continued to watch Rose.

  Rose felt her hand moving along the counter just behind her. It found the sink and then clutched something sturdy. She brought the rolling pin around and held it thrust out in front of her.

  “Just stay back, Crystal. I can take you to your mom and brother. Would you like that?”

  Crystal—or whatever that thing was that used to be her niece—took a step closer. Rose edged towards the side exit of the kitchen where she would emerge in the hallway. From there, she hoped to lead the girl to the room with her mother and brother.

  A sudden eruption of noise came from outside. It was the dogs; they were still out in the car. And now, from the sounds of it, something had them riled up. She knew Imp’s bark well enough.

  “Crap,” Rose breathed.

  Crystal’s head slowly peered around the corner. The girl’s mouth opened and let loose with a pathetic mewling sound. One awkward step after another, and then she was in the hallway. Rose glanced over her shoulder and hoped this worked. She realized in that instant that she had effectively cut herself off from any ready escape.

  The muffled roar of a shotgun sounded from outside, causing Rose to start. Crystal’s head twitched once as she turned towards the sound. Then, she turned back to her aunt and came with hands out, fingers clutching at the air like crab claws.

  “Double crap.”

  ***

  “So we aren’t going to one of the FEMA centers?” Juanita asked as Jason shot through an intersection well past the light changing from amber to red.

  “Nope.”

  Jason’s eyes were locked on the bumper of Ken Simpson’s truck. This had not been the first time that the man had gone through an intersection at the tail end of the amber light. If he did not know better, he would swear the man was trying to ditch him. Sure, he wasn’t doing anything too erratic or crazy; but he was not making any effort not to lose Jason.

  The woman, Erin West, had agreed to toss her bike in Ken’s truck and ride with him to this place she knew out in Sandy. She had given Jason a general idea of where it was “just in case.” That was no help. He was not at all familiar with the area. He knew it was out in the sticks, but that was about it. He could find damn near anyplace in the city, but once he hit the rural towns surrounding the Portland metro area, he was a fish out of water.

  “You think this place she told us about is the right choice? I don’t know about this. The radio was talking about martial law being in effect and all sorts of things. And there goes another one of those military trucks.” Juanita pointed as the deuce-and-a-half rolled past.

  Jason glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the faces of men riding in the back. More importantly, he noticed that the men he could actually see all had weapons cradled in their arms or between their knees. He had lost count around twenty.

  “I think this is bad, and it is going to get much worse. I don’t want to be under some military lockdown where I am trapped and have all of my options stripped away,” Jason said.

  “But wouldn’t it be safer to be with more people and have armed guards?”

  “I don’t want you to freak out or think I am crazy.” Jason gave the steering wheel a little jerk to avoid a car that had pulled only partway out of the road. He shot a glance and saw something thrashing about inside. It was too dark to get a good look within, and for that, Jason was actually just a little bit grateful. “But I think that this is…” He could not say it out loud to her. It was just too preposterous.

  “Zombies?” Juanita said at last.

  They had tip-toed around that word up to this point. However, whatever the media wanted to call them, whatever that doctor lady wanted to say, these were right out of the horror movies. Those
people were the undead, and they were feeding upon the living. Those attacked were becoming infected and turning into the same things. He did not see what else he could call it.

  “This might very well be the zombie apocalypse.” Jason let that statement hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing. “I am not saying that the world is going to come to an end. Hell, they might knock this back and get it under control in a few weeks…months maybe. I know they did in Shaun of the Dead.” Juanita chuckled and Jason felt a little better about what was coming out of his mouth.

  “But they might not.” Juanita folded her arms across her chest and seemed to consider an idea, twice she sounded like she was about to say something, but each time she only sighed and made a noise in her throat.

  “We have to be ready for that possibility,” Jason finally said. “And it is because of that, that we need to be on our guard. Sure, there will be looters and that sort early on, but I am worried about what will happen when it is obvious that things have failed and we are on our own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You watch the news at night, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Yeah, well then imagine all those people who have been caught doing the worst things. Now…imagine that there is nothing in place to stop them. No system to bring them to justice.”

  “That’s funny,” Juanita practically snorted.

  “What is?” Jason was seriously confused. He did not see anything even the slightest bit amusing in this scenario that was unspooling in his mind.

  “A guy who just got out of the joint being the one to worry about how the bad guys might take over.”

  “Yeah?” Jason shot her a peculiar look before his eyes returned to the road. “Well I just spent the past several years in there with guys that you absolutely do NOT want out on the streets to do as they please. I have a feeling that there are plenty of people out here who have been walking a tightrope. This will be the thing that sends them plummeting into the abyss.”

  There was a moment of silence. Jason stayed locked on the pickup, driving as close as he dared without actually tailgating. At last Juanita turned his direction.

  “That is some pretty deep stuff.”

  “For an ex-con?” Jason only bit back a little of the sarcasm. He hated being stereo-typed.

  “For anybody,” Juanita said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  Jason was about to say something when the brake lights on the pickup flashed and then came on steady. They’d been doing over sixty in a forty-five mile per hour zone, flashing past houses that were spaced out unlike the urban cramming that took place in the metro area.

  Juanita exclaimed something in Spanish that Jason recognized as an expletive. She had her hands on the dashboard to brace herself, but Jason brought the car to a halt a good few feet from the truck’s bumper. He hit the release on his seatbelt and started to open the door. Before he got out, he turned to Juanita and shook his head.

  “You stay put.” She started to protest, but he held up a finger to stall her. “If things go bad, haul ass. I am serious, don’t get out of this car.”

  With that, Jason climbed out. He looked over his shoulder and motioned with a hand for Juanita to move into the driver’s seat. Once she did, he headed for the truck. The driver’s side door was open and Ken was standing just past it with his hands on his hips.

  “Get up here, convict,” Ken called over his shoulder. Jason bristled, but did as the man requested.

  When he reached Ken’s side, he stumbled, coming to a stop. In the glow of the truck’s headlights was a three-car accident. It had both lanes blocked. The ditches on either side would prevent being able to go around the wreck. However, it was not so much the pile-up that was so disturbing.

  Sitting on the road, legs splayed out in front, was a girl in her late teens. She was a mess. Her clothing was black with blood, but her face was a crimson mask and there looked to be a massive shard of glass jutting from the side of her face. In the girl’s hands, she held an arm that dangled from the shattered window just above her head. The person the arm belonged to did not seem to notice. Something was moving inside the car, but the moans coming from the shadows did not sound like it was from anything living.

  “We gotta move this.” Erin stepped up beside the two men. “The quicker the better.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Ken asked. “My truck is sturdy, but it ain’t just gonna shove three cars out of the way.”

  “We see if any of them are still able to move on their own,” Erin retorted matter-of-factly.

  “You first,” Ken snapped, making a bowing gesture and sweeping his arms wide in an ushering motion.

  With a shrug, Erin drew the machete from her hip and started forward. Jason watched as the girl gnawing on the arm seemed to regard her for the merest of seconds before resuming in her feast of forearm. Erin walked up and swung in an overhand arc, her blade coming down hard on the crown of the zombie girl’s head.

  Jason had to lean to one side, and there was still a lot of shadow keeping his view obscured, but he had to admit that he was more than a little impressed when Erin planted a booted foot on the zombie’s shoulder and yanked her blade free.

  Deciding that he was not going to be seen as a coward (while also coming to the decision that he cared less than nothing when it came to what this prick Ken thought of him), Jason rushed in to help yank the door open enough so that they could pull the body free that had been the source of the zombie’s snack. He was about to ask what they should do when Erin plunged the tip of her machete into the eye socket of the person on the ground. The body twitched a few times and was still.

  “No sense waiting for it to sit up,” Erin answered Jason’s open-mouthed expression.

  Sure enough, there was another body in the car. It was strapped in the passenger’s seat and had craned its head in their direction. Erin silenced it in mid-moan as she thrust her blade forward and then jerked back.

  She climbed in the driver’s seat and tried the key to no avail. “Worth a shot,” she chuckled. She adjusted the lever on the steering column. “Okay, I put it in reverse. Not saying that is gonna mean a thing, but let’s push this one back.” She hopped out of the car and shouldered her way past Jason.

  Hurrying around, Jason put his shoulder into the vehicle and tried to push. There was the screech of protesting metal as the car came clear from under the rear quarter of the big SUV in the middle of the carnage.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a face plastered against the window on the driver’s side of the SUV, mouth working like the zombie thought that it might be able to chew through the glass and get to them. A shadow made him jump, and Jason popped up suddenly, fists clenched and ready to fight off whatever it was that had taken this moment to attack.

  “Easy, breezy,” Juanita said as she put her shoulder in with the other woman to move the car back.

  “Where the hell is that jerk, Ken?” Jason managed through gritted teeth.

  “He got back in his truck.”

  “And why the hell are you out here?” he grunted as they gave the car one last push before the slope stepped in to assist; the car rolled back into the ditch, the nose pointing up, the front tires off the road when it came to rest at the bottom of the ditch.

  “Because of them.” Juanita pointed back the way they had come.

  The problem with being out in the boondocks was the lack of light. However, between the moon and a few of the houses along the way, as well as a small roadside mini-mart and gas station that they had passed just a moment ago, it was easy to see at least a dozen figures headed their direction.

  “Where the hell did they come from?’ Jason snarled.

  “Anywhere…nowhere…does it matter?” Erin grunted as she plunged her blade into the zombie that had tumbled out of the SUV after she’d opened the door during this brief conversation. “We need to get moving.”

  With that, Erin climbed up into the big vehicle that
had shuttled children to soccer, hauled Christmas trees from one of the many local U-cut locations, and had been filled countless times with bags of groceries to feed the family of the woman that now lie sprawled on the road like so much refuse.

  There was a slow chug, and then the blissful sound of the engine turning over. Erin popped the vehicle into gear and mashed the accelerator. The terrific scream of metal and the roar of the engine were a concert of unpleasant noise that seemed all the louder given the circumstances. However, Erin was able to push the third vehicle in this pile-up aside as well as get the SUV out of the way just enough to allow cars to pass single file. She made note that there was blood in the passenger’s seat as well as a huge hole in the windshield on that side.

  Hopping out, she stepped between Jason and Juanita, facing Jason and all but ignoring Juanita. “I know you want to be chivalrous or some such nonsense, but believe me when I tell you, the time for that is gone. It is every man and woman for him or herself. If you can’t handle your load, you ain’t gonna make it. Seems to me that this woman can handle her business…so maybe you should let her.”

  Jason ran his hands over his face in a washing motion. He looked from one woman to the other and then nodded. In his mind, he understood exactly what Erin was saying. However, it was going to be difficult to adhere to the idea that his survival might rely on allowing others to die. But then again, would that be so much more different than in prison? In the joint, you took care of yourself first. There were no such things as real friends.

  “I think I can do that,” Jason nodded. Yet, deep down, he wondered. The past several years, he had been trying to learn how to be a good and decent person; a contributor to society instead of a burden.

  “You gonna stand there all day with your thumb up your ass, convict?” Ken called from the truck.

  Jason looked around and realized that Juanita had already started back for the car and Erin was climbing into the cab of the truck. With a shake of his head, Jason cast one more glance at the zombies approaching from back the way they came and headed for the car.