by T. W. Brown
Jason stuffed several boxes of ammo into his pack. That had prompted a question by Juanita as to why he was taking so much.
“If we get separated and I am on my own, I want to be able to feel like I can take care of myself for a while.”
Once everybody was happy with what they had which also included a hand-to-hand weapon (machetes for Jason and Ken, a hand axe for Juanita), as well as a few bottles of water, they piled into the truck and started off towards Portland.
“What about the bodies that are still burning?” Juanita asked as Jason was hopping out of the truck to open the gate.
“They are far enough away from anything. Hopefully that fire will have burnt out while we are gone and the wind will have blown most of that smell away,” Ken answered.
Jason had to agree with that sentiment. He’d never had the misfortune of smelling a body as it burned. It could not help the unpleasantness any with the bodies all being zombies that already had their own stomach-churning stench.
Once the truck was through the gate, Jason shut it and hooked the latch. The truck turned up the road and had gone less than a mile when it slowed and came to a stop. Jason glanced over at Ken and saw the way that the man was white-knuckling the steering wheel. He turned back to the front and saw a single zombie standing in the road.
It was a little boy.
He was about to ask Ken why he had stopped, after all, while it was unfortunate to see a child all torn up and covered with dried blood from where a large chunk of his left arm had been ripped away, this was not the first child zombie that they had seen. However, when Juanita began to utter a murmured prayer and he shot a look her way only to find tears streaming down her face, he kept his mouth shut. This was something personal between the two.
“Stay here,” Ken whispered as he stepped out of the car.
***
Ken closed the door to the truck and drew his Glock. He knew full well that conserving ammunition was important; however, this needed to be quick. Certainly the boy deserved that much.
“Evan,” Ken whispered as he drew near.
Once again, he was struck by how the child zombie reacted in a manner so very different from the “regular” zombie. Of course, as soon as that thought struck him, he actually chuckled in one sharp snort.
The zombie child…Evan, Ken reminded himself. This child had a name. It was Evan.
Evan tilted his head at the sound of Ken’s amused snort. He had not taken a step towards the man and actually seemed wary. That was in direct contrast to the other zombie now getting up from the other side of the car that was nose down in a ditch.
Evan’s mother.
“Damn,” Ken whispered.
Unlike Evan, his mother came right for him, hands reaching and clutching, mouth open. A hair-raising moan that seemed much too deep in tone escaped her and drifted on the near perfect silence of the late-morning air. The woman had a nasty rip down her throat that gave an almost clinical view of the exposed esophagus. In addition to that horrific wound, her right arm had chunks missing from the forearm. Ken knew defensive wounds when he saw them.
There was one zombie on the ground at the side of the road. If he had to guess, he would say that the head had been slammed repeatedly into the rear quarter-panel of the car where the nasty smear and chunk of scalp with hair had dried in place.
Looking even closer, he could see that the majority of the struggle took place around the still-open front passenger’s side door. There were dark stains on the normally gray sand and gravel in that area. He could not see clearly, but there was definitely a figure still behind the wheel of the car. Evan’s father no doubt. If Ken had to guess, he would say that the woman and her child had returned and tried to free the father. At some time during that attempt, zombies arrived and took down Evan’s mom. Despite trying to shove it away, his mind concluded that Evan probably witnessed the entire ordeal.
Ken had heard the screams. He had little difficulty putting the pieces together now that he was standing here.
Cold hands brushed his own as Ken gently pushed the zombie that had been Evan’s mother back and away. The next time she lurched forward, Ken stuck the barrel of his gun up under her chin and squeezed the trigger. The sound was only slightly muffled.
A hiss and a moan came from Evan. The boy transformed almost instantly. It was actually a relief to Ken as the boy became nothing more than a regular zombie. Before anything could change, Ken closed the last few steps and pressed the gun against Evan’s forehead.
The shot seemed to ring for an eternity in Ken’s ears.
***
“I can’t believe it,” Juanita whispered as they turned off of Interstate 205.
“Jesus,” Jason breathed as they drove past a few dozen zombies that all began to bounce off each other as they turned to follow the truck.
On both sides, bodies littered the ground. Some had been torn apart to the point where there was not enough left to actually come back. In many cases, bodies that had been savaged to the point of losing one or both legs, simply crawled on their bellies. In one instance that Jason saw and had to use the side view mirror to look back at to be sure that he had indeed seen what he thought he’d seen, he was able to confirm that the person was seemingly ripped in half and was missing everything below the waist.
Fires were burning out of control, and despite there not being any that they could readily spot, smoke wafted on the air and ash fell like snow or at least a fine sleet. There were at least a dozen massive columns of black or gray smoke that had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of feet high. One in particular was turning into an ominous mushroom shape, giving even further credence to the apocalypse feel that now hung over Portland.
Another thing that all three of them noticed and began pointing out to one another were the mad dashes of the living. Whether solitary, as was more often the case, or in small groups, the living were scampering across the roads, yards, and parking lots. Some were carrying things, as in the most peculiar case they all spied which was a woman running like she was an Olympic sprinter with a massive decorative lamp in her hands. Many were empty-handed and had the look of a wild animal being hunted. Then there were the others.
That was the only way that Jason could classify them. These were the people that gave even him, an ex-con, a case of the heebie-jeebies. Some slunk back into the shadows as they passed, but many simply stood and watched them go by, often making it a point to establish some very uncomfortable eye contact. A few went so far as to wave or even beckon for them to stop.
“This is not going to play out well,” Jason said after they had driven past a man who was standing in the street completely naked.
“I don’t understand,” was all that Juanita could manage.
“Nobody is holding people in check. All those awful things that you saw on the news,” Ken posed as they shot past the naked man, coming within inches of actually hitting him. “That was just the surface. And now, with there being no real presence of law and order, a few have crawled out from under their rocks.”
“Those are the types that make even the hardcore convicts nervous,” Jason added, giving Ken a nod in understanding. “The ones that, when they did get caught, it made people wonder how they had existed for so long without being caught. Guys like that freak that killed those two teenaged girls and buried one under his brand new back porch concrete slab.”
Juanita shuddered involuntarily. She suddenly felt a ripple of guilt. She was probably in one of the safest places that any woman could ask to be in at this exact moment. Smack dab between an ex-con who wanted to turn his life around and a hard-assed cop who didn’t seem to like or trust a single soul.
At last they turned into the massive parking lot. Other businesses shared the lot with the colossal Home Depot, including an electronics store that still had wisps of smoke trickling from where the front doors used to be.
“Funny how short-sighted folks can be in a crisis,” Jason sighed. “If this holds out and is
the real-deal zombie apocalypse, the power grid is not long for this world. So, all those big screens and video game machines are gonna be little more than unwieldy weapons. Kind of like that joke about whatever you have on your left being your weapon for when the zombies come.”
“Wait!” Juanita turned, giving him a raised eyebrow. “How would you know about something like that? You were in prison the past few years.”
“Yeah,” Jason agreed with a nod. “But I still had friends on the outside. You’d be surprised at the off-the-wall crap you talk about when you have thirty minutes on the phone to kill.”
“Actually…” Juanita’s voice trailed off.
Jason waited for a moment and then cleared his throat to see if she would continue, then he recalled that she had a cousin named Juan who had been in and out of trouble. Fortunately, Ken pulled up to the entrance of the Home Depot. He turned in the seat to face them both.
“Okay, the good news is that somebody left on the lights.” Ken pointed and Jason realized that he hadn’t even given that any thought. “I have a flashlight, but I suggest that you grab one as soon as you can and load it.”
“What about me?” Juanita asked.
“Yeah, you aren’t coming in. I want you to stay in the truck. Turn it around so that we can just bring stuff out and toss it in the back. Any sign that somebody is taking an interest to you and you haul ass. For no reason are you to shut off the engine. Are we clear?”
Jason was actually impressed. He hadn’t really given this much thought beyond the idea of going in, grabbing stuff, and then getting out of town. Also, to her credit, Juanita did not argue. She gave a nod and as he and Ken exited the truck, she drew her pistol and laid it on the dashboard.
“Okay, kid,” Ken grunted as he and Jason walked up to the doors. “Keep your head on a swivel. And make sure you know what you are shooting at.”
“I’ve held a gun before,” Jason said coolly.
“Yeah…that’s what I figured. But this is different.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, this time I’d rather you not take shots at the cop.”
“Oh…you got jokes now?”
“Who says that I was joking,” Ken replied with a straight face. And with that, he pushed the busted door open and walked inside. While it was clear that few had thought to hit this place, it was also apparent that some had. The doors were shattered and the safety glass ground into powder where the wheels of large carts had rolled back and forth a few times.
Jason was not surprised when he spotted a few people running up and down aisles with carts, many of them brimming with all sorts of things. He and Ken had actually planned out this shopping spree on the drive in. Jason had been in construction during those lulls when he was not locked up. He knew what tools to get. Ken had nodded as Jason gave him some of the top priority items that they would require and even asked a few questions about some of the specifics, which let Jason know that the man was not simply nodding and tuning him out.
Twice, Jason paused to help somebody pull something down off a shelf or pick the proper tool. It started to become a nuisance as apparently word spread that some guy in gray sweats was helping people.
At last, Jason had everything that he’d wanted to make sure that they got no matter what. Granted, this was only set to be the first haul, but things had been prioritized. If they had to bug out now, he would be okay. Pushing through the doors, he passed two men on their way in. One of them eyed him and set off Jason’s internal alarms. He unloaded the cart and then waited for Ken to show up. When the man finally arrived, Jason filled him in including a description of what the man was wearing. Before heading back into the store, he paused at the driver’s side and told Juanita as well.
“If anybody fitting that description comes out the door, you just go,” he told the woman, all the while, his eyes darting back to the entrance of the store.
He was just about finished with his second cart when he heard the sounds of screaming from somewhere in the store. He thought about it for a second before tossing a few more items onto the huge pushcart he had snagged for this particular haul and then headed for the doors. The sounds of screaming had turned to begging and pleading that were now being punctuated by meaty smacks.
Jason was almost unloaded when Ken arrived. His trip had been into the garden department just as Jason had suggested. Boxes of seeds and bags of garden soil were piled high.
“You hear that shit going on?” Ken asked quietly.
“Yeah.” Jason gave a curt nod as he tossed another bag of the garden soil into the bed of the pickup.
“Don’t imagine you want to do anything about it?”
Jason eyed the man. If he were being honest, he had wanted to find whoever was doing the beating and give them a dose of their own medicine. The one thing that he struggled with was the idea that they couldn’t save everybody. Right now, their top priority needed to be taking care of themselves. Still, if they were just going to look the other way when things like that were going down, then what did that say about them as human beings?
“Actually…” Jason let that word hang in the air.
“Then let’s go.” Ken tossed the last of some sort of liquid plant food into the truck and headed for the door.
12
Discoveries
Ken moved down the aisle and felt the surge of adrenaline dump into his body like an old friend. Not for the first time, he equated it to the high felt by a junkie. While he was not the type to do something insane like parachute or climb mountains, he did accept the fact long ago that he was addicted to the rush.
He had sent Jason down one aisle over. He felt certain that the kid could handle himself in this case.
The sounds of laughter could be heard just beyond a massive display of soon-to-be useless appliances. Just barely audible, almost as an undercurrent, came the sounds of weeping. Ken had to stifle the feeling of embarrassment as he heard a man sobbing. That was just not something that his “generation” was comfortable with doing. Nowadays, it seemed like men crying had become some sort of social norm. He blamed Alan Alda.
Pausing at the end of his aisle, Ken ducked low and moved across the open space, taking cover behind a large refrigerator. He glanced to his right and saw Jason hurry across and then vanish behind some shiny washer and dryers that looked like something out of The Jetsons. He was about to come up and see if he could get a bead on the bad guys when he heard a familiar voice.
“Yo, fellas! What’s up!”
Ken cursed quietly at first, but then realized that he’d just been given the perfect diversion. That hadn’t been the plan, but then again, all they had agreed upon was that these creeps needed to be stopped.
“Fuck off, bro!” a voice snarled.
Ken took his time and peered around the corner of his hiding spot. He saw two men standing by a shopping cart. They had picked through it, obviously finding very little that they liked. He doubted that they were here for anything more than to harass and assault others. One of them was currently going through a wallet and making a big show of ripping up photos into tiny pieces. He had no doubt that the man had probably plucked any cash he might’ve found and stuffed it into his pocket despite the fact that it would be good for little more than starting fires before long.
“P-p-please.” The man on the floor lifted his head to reveal a face that reminded Ken of Sylvester Stallone at the end of the Rocky movies.
“Shut up!” one of the two bullies snarled, kicking the man in the ribs for good measure.
“Wow, you guys are pretty hardcore.” Jason’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “That guy has to be…what? A buck fifty? I notice you two punks didn’t say shit to me when we passed in the doorway. Hell, my cart had much better stuff loaded on it.”
Jason waited for a few seconds and then smiled; that smile turned into a chuckle, then actual laughter. Ken was confused, and obviously the two men were just as baffled.
“What’s so funny?” one of the me
n asked, making it a point of puffing his chest out a bit as if that would add emphasis to his challenge.
“You guys.” Jason made a dismissive wave with his hand.
“You got no idea who you’re messin’ with,” the other man snarled, stepping away from the cart.
“I know you ain’t been in the system, and to me, that means that you are a couple of wanna-be tough guys.”
“Oh, and what makes you so sure?” the one closest to Jason snapped, pulling a rather impressive looking knife from his belt.
“Because,” Jason drew his pistol, causing the man to stagger back a step before he could regain his composure, “in the joint, when you call somebody a punk…well…that is pretty much a guaranteed fight. Punks are prison bitches. Nobody accepts being called that.”
Now Ken smiled. He had to give the guy credit, but now it was time to wrap this up and get moving.
“How about you two young men step away from that cart,” Ken ordered as he came out from behind his cover, gun drawn and leveled in a two-handed grip. It wasn’t a request.
“Hey, man!” the one holding the knife said, raising his hands and then, realizing that he was holding a knife, tossed the blade to the floor with a loud clatter. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Is that what that poor guy said to you before you busted him up and ripped through his stuff?” Ken waved his gun to indicate that the two men move away from their victim.
“You guys cops?” the other man challenged.
“Yeah, I’m a cop,” Ken replied.
“Thank God,” the man on the floor managed around swollen, busted lips.
“So now cops are out lootin’ like everybody else?” the one who had tossed his knife said with unmasked derision.
“Which means you might want to worry about how likely he is to use that gun he has pointed at you,” Jason quipped. “He don’t strike me as the sort to care much about the rules.”