by Will Lemen
"Dad, look, there's a truck stop on the other side," Billy shouted.
"Truck stop means fuel, and like Clyde said, supplies," I added.
"They'll probably have first aid kits there," Gin added, still holding Megan close.
"When we get to the bottom of this ramp we bail out. Weapons and ammo are our main concern, we'll come back later if we can for anything that we left behind," I ordered.
We stopped at the bottom of the exit ramp; the Hummer was smoking from the friction of bare metal scrapping the road, and the steam from the almost dry radiator.
"We got here just in time," Jacob said, jumping out of the truck. "This thing is about to catch on fire."
"Grab our stuff and let's get Megan over to that truck stop," Gin urged, helping Megan out of the Hummer.
We had no sooner gathered our belongings and started in the direction of the truck stop, that three zombies appeared in our path.
"Most likely attracted by the noise, I'll take care of them," Mary said, pulling a machete from her backpack.
Billy, with his sickle in hand, added. "I'll help."
As the zombies came nearer, Billy and Mary, approached them head on, and as the lead zombie made an awkward lunge at Billy, Mary swung her machete upward diagonally as hard as she could, like a tennis player might hit the ball with a backhand stroke.
The razor sharp machete sliced through the nose of the zombie and continued into its skull, stopping half way through and sticking in the rotting corpses head, wedged between the sliced bones.
Nodding his approval of Mary's quick reaction, Billy stepped to his left and planted his sickle deep into the brain of the next stinking animated carcass in line, but unlike Mary's kill, when the zombie dropped to its knees, Billy's sickle effortlessly slid out from the crown of its blood gushing head, as Billy had now mastered his technique.
Mary struggled for a moment trying to free her weapon from the skull of her first kill, but with her third and final upward yank, the top the insane monsters cranium snapped off, making a dull popping sound like a muffled firecracker.
Her large brush clearing knife now free, Mary set her sights on the third attacker. She quickly and without hesitation, walked up to the zombie and rammed her machete straight through its right eye socket and into the brain of the last attacker.
She then turned to me and said. "That takes care of that, now let's get to the truck stop!"
The truck stop was close to the freeway; it wasn't more than one hundred yards from our location, so within minutes we had arrived at the gas stop and cleared the building of a few zombies that had taken up residence there. It took some time to extract the now dead, undead bodies we had created, but before long, we were searching for supplies as Billy stood watch at the front door.
"Here's some first-aid kits," Mary said, bringing two of the larger ones to the front of the store.
"Here's some pain killers," Jacob called out, raking several different brands off the shelf and into his arms.
"Find her some water, or something to wash down the pills," Gin shouted.
Billy reached down and pulled a can of soda from a display beside the door.
"Here catch," he said, as he tossed the can under handed to his mother.
Gin gave Megan a couple more pills than the recommended dose stated on the medicine's label, then asked Mary and Jacob to find some sleeping pills.
Most of the aids for sleeping at the truck stop were not to help you sleep, they were to aid you from falling asleep. However, together Mary and Jacob managed to find what Gin had asked for, and delivered it to her.
"Lay on this counter Megan, I need you to be asleep, I can't get the glass out of your eye while you're moving all around," Gin said to her softly, as she helped her onto the counter.
Again, Gin gave Megan more than the recommended dose, and as the pain medicine was beginning to take effect, so too were the sleeping pills, and as Megan drifted off to sleep, Gin looked through the first-aid kits in search of some kind of ointment for Megan's eye, and ordered Jacob to find a tool kit of some kind.
"Here mom, mostly all they have are big tools, except for these needle nose pliers, but you might be able to use this," Jacob said, handing his mother an eye glass repair kit. "It has some really small tweezers in it."
"These are perfect," Gin declared, pulling out the tweezers.
When the sleeping pills took effect and Megan was sound asleep, Gin carefully operated on her, and was able to find and extract all of the glass that was embedded in her eye.
"That should do it, all the glass is out, and I smeared some anti-bacterial ointment on the eye, it should heal up in a couple of weeks, but she's going to be blind in that eye. We're going to have to get her an eye patch too, she's going to have to wear one from now on.
We were far enough away from the prison, and there was no way that the prisoners could know that we were just a few of miles down the road from them, and with Megan in the shape she was in, we decided to stay the night at the truck stop, and look for a new vehicle the next morning.
We made ourselves as comfortable as possible, and settled in for the night. With no electricity, there were no lights, which made it easier to fall asleep.
I had taken the first watch as I always did, and near the end of my watch, I was getting ready to wake up Mary, who had volunteered to take the second watch. I heard someone moving around and assumed it was Mary preparing to relieve me.
"Just in time Mary," I whispered, not wanting to disturb the others.
Mary didn't answer.
"Mary," I whispered again.
Still there was no answer. Seeing some movement several feet behind me, I pulled my pistol, transferred it to my left hand, then pulled my sickle from my belt and grasped it firmly in my right hand.
The faint glow from the moon cast long and almost indiscernible shadows across the dark room, but as one particular shadow moved toward me, I realized that a zombie must have somehow entered the room.
As the shadow moved closer to me, a gurgling sound was emanating from the darkness, and that sound quickly turned into a growl, there was no doubt now, a zombie was present.
I backed up and put my back against the front door. The dim moonlight was just bright enough for me to see a figure within striking distance. I lifted my sickle and brought it down as hard as I could. However, in the pale moonlight my aim was not as accurate as it might have been in full daylight. My sickle sliced down along the side of the zombie's head. Separating the scalp from the bone all along the side of its skull, and peeling off its left ear as it went. My sickle finally stopped at the bottom of the monster's jaw, and left its ear and scalp from the whole left side of its head laying across its shoulder.
After missing the killing blow to the head with my sickle, and with the flesh-eating maniac nearly upon me, I kept my left arm tucked in by my waist, and I tilted my pistol up at a forty-five degree angle and fired two shots at the trespassing zombie's head.
My first shot hit the left collarbone, shattering it and causing the maniac's left shoulder to slump down in front; my second shot hit its mark by way of the nose. My bullet sailed straight up and through the left nostril, and popped a piece of skull out of the top of the zombie's skull, taking a portion of its deranged brain along with it.
The zombie dropped to the floor at my feet, it was no longer a threat. Its bloody but eerily familiar face was illuminated for a split second by a flash of light coming from outside. I turned expecting to see some idiot with a flashlight walking around the parking lot in the middle of the night, attracting zombies, and feral dogs with its beam, but there was nothing.
It was another case of those strangely elusive lights that Frank had spoke of, and I had experienced on the river.
I turned back to the body in front of me, now only visible by the soft moonlight that fell upon the floor of the truck stop.
"What's going on?" I heard Gin ask.
"What's happening?" The sound of Billy's voice
came through the darkness.
"An eater got in," I said.
"Is anybody hurt? Billy, Jacob, are you two all right?" Gin asked them.
"I'm fine," Billy answered.
"Me too," Jacob said.
"Mary how about you, are you all right?" Gin asked.
"I'm fine, did you kill it?" Mary responded.
Nobody had checked on Megan, and I didn't know how Mary was going to handle it, and I didn't know how I was going to handle Mary if things got ugly. But I was going to find out in a matter of moments.
"It's dead," I said, bracing myself for Mary's wrath. Because I knew who the dead zombie once was.
"Where's Megan? Is she still sleeping?" Mary asked.
"She's not on the counter, where is she?" Gin asked, with real concern in her voice.
"Someone look behind the counter, maybe she fell off. Megan where are you?" Mary called softly.
With no answer from Megan, the reality of the situation began to filter into everyone's consciousness. Mary slowly walked over to me, and the body at my feet.
Pulling a small flashlight from her pocket, she illuminated the corpse's face.
"Turn that light off, eaters will see us," I quickly scolded. "It's bad enough that I had to fire my gun."
"Is that Megan?" she gasped. "Did you kill Megan?"
"She turned, she was an eater!" I stressed, still holding my Glock 19 at my side. "It was either her or me, I chose me.
"You killed Megan!" Mary stated, staring down at her friends body.
Let's get one thing straight right now. Eaters get killed, we kill them. I killed Megan because she needed killing (funny how that term keeps popping up). If I die, or get bit and turn into one of those flesh eating killer cannibals, I expect every one of you to do the same for me!" I told them all emphatically.
"She must have died in the middle of the night," Billy said.
"How did she die?" Jacob asked.
Mary turned to Gin as she answered Jacob's question.
"Your mother killed her, she gave her too many sleeping pills, didn't you?" she said, looking at my wife.
"If I did, I didn't mean to, she was in pain, and I had to get that glass out of her eye. I was just trying to help her; I didn't mean to hurt her," Gin, now feeling guilty explained.
To my surprise, and I think to everyone's surprise, Mary shrugged her shoulders, turned, and walked back to where she had been sleeping, and coldly said. "I'm not going to clean up that mess in the dark; it'll have to wait till morning."
With that, Mary curled up in her blanket, closed her eyes, and in a moment was fast asleep again. She had evidently forgotten that she had volunteered to take the second watch.
We had thought that Megan was Mary's best friend, but she showed very little emotion over Megan's death. I wondered if she was just putting on a show for us. Maybe she felt outnumbered at the moment, and wanted to wait for a better opportunity to get even with Gin.
At daybreak, I would try to delve deeper into Mary's psyche in an effort to ascertain if she could be trusted to remain traveling with my family. Only time would tell, but I was going to watch her closely until I was sure she wasn't going to seek retaliation against Gin. So I took the second watch as well.
Everyone was awake at dawn, and Megan's body still laid by the front door. In the daylight, we could see the gruesome results of her termination, and my failed first attempt at that goal. Parts of her decaying yellow-gray brain were scatter on the floor next to her body among pieces of broken cranium and bloody strands of hair, as dark red goo seeped out from the portion of her head that my sickle had skinned, and a two-foot wide puddle of purplish ooze had pooled underneath her skull.
"Why do you think she died," Jacob asked, staring down at Megan's corpse, not directing his question to anyone specific.
Gin chose to answer his question as her eyes welled up with tears.
"She had lost a lot of blood; maybe her body couldn't handle the sleeping pills in her weakened conditioned."
Mary then calmly added.
"Don't forget the pain pills you gave her. Well, she's dead now, and I made a mistake last night. There's no reason to clean up the mess if we're not going to stay here."
This seemed like a good time for me to intervene.
"Mary, I thought Megan was your friend?" I asked.
"She was my friend," Mary answered, showing no emotion.
"You don't seem too broken up that she is dead," I remarked.
Mary moved over to where Megan had fallen asleep, pushed herself up, and sat on the counter.
"It's like this," she said. "It was my grandfather's birthday, he was ninety-four years old and not in very good health. The family didn't think he would last another year, so they decided to celebrate his birthday with a big party at my uncle David's house. The party just happened to be the same day of the outbreak.
On that day, I watched my ninety-four year old grandfather, who had been confined to a wheelchair for the last five years of his life, stand up and walk over to my six-year-old cousin Lucy, and rip her to pieces," Mary continued emotionless. "I was the only one at the party that left that house alive. Half of my relatives turned into zombies that day, and attacked the other half. It came as such a surprise to everyone, that most were killed or bitten before they could fight back. I had to kill my father, and baby brother who was only eleven, with the knife we had used to cut my grandfather's birthday cake. Since that day, I've seen countless people die, and had to kill at least fifty of the undead, and that's not even counting the one's I put down that night with you and Frank.
So, to answer your question, I'll be your friend, I'll watch your back, I'll fight with you, and I'll fight for you, but don't expect me to get emotionally attached to any of you. That's just the way it is, and that's just the way it's going to be, that's just the way it has to be."
It made sense now, Mary's lack of emotion, her cold comments; I probably would do the same, had I seen my whole family killed, not to mention having to kill some of them myself.
However, I thought, now it is my turn to turn off the emotion.
"Well Mary, I'm sorry to hear that you've had it so rough, but everybody's had it rough. We killed our neighbor's in our own kitchen; that was quite a gruesome mess. Then we had to fight our way out of our house, and watch our friends and neighbors battling eaters in their front yard as we left them behind. The list goes on and on, so everyone has had a hard time from the start," I told her.
"I know," she said. "Let's find a ride."
With her last comment, I decided it was a good time to drop the subject and get the hell out of there.
The good news was, there were no feral dogs around, the bad news was, zombies had wondered into the parking lot and were close to the vehicles we needed.
One might think that in an apocalypse like the one that we were enduring, transportation would not be an issue. Just find a car or truck with the keys still in it, and off you go. It wasn't that simple.
It's true that there was a multitude of abandon vehicles, some wrecked, some not. People had jumped from their cars in a panic and ran, or died inside them from starvation, or the elements waiting for help. The problem was, most of those that ran away left their cars running, and at some point the car either ran out of gas, or over heated and rendered the engine useless.
The cars that the people died in had plenty of gas, but they also still had a rotting dead body in them. A rotting dead body that will kill and eat you given half the chance. One that has decomposed enough to make the car stink to high hell and attract a multitude of harassing flies, and who knows what diseases they're carrying after feeding on the zombie hordes, therefore making the vehicle uninhabitable even if you could release the zombie within back into the wild.
We had already had our fill of the smell of death on the river. Maybe in two or three years you could toss out the skeletal remains and the smell might have dissipated, that is unless zombies rot slow enough to still be active after
two or three years, but nobody knew the natural life span of a zombie at that time.
We did know that the undead were slowly rotting, but we had no idea how long it took before they ceased to be a threat in their menacing quest to eat flesh. It had been less than a month since the beginning of the outbreak, and the abandon cars with their windows rolled up and the sun shining in were like convection ovens, and the living corpses inside were too stupid to open the door and escape the vehicles on their own, so they were becoming exceedingly ripe, yet still very dangerous.
We didn't have two or three years to wait for a new vehicle, we had to begin the search immediately, so with our weapons in hand, we stealthily left the safety of the truck stop building to dispatch the zombies walking among the abandon trucks.
I led the way into the parking lot but was quickly overtaken by Mary, who promptly hewed the head off a little girl who looked to have been about ten years old when she was alive. The little girl was the first living corpse in the pack that was within our killing radius, and Mary, without forethought, kicked the still snapping head clear to get to the second zombie in the bunch.
With one eye on Mary, I pursued the rolling head, and as I caught up to it, I stomped down hard on it several times with the heel of my boot, crushing the cranial cavity flat upon the asphalt, and leaving a bloody impression of my boot heel imprinted on the temple of the lifeless girls head.
Mary took care of the second threat as quick as she had the first, however, more efficiently the second time around as she didn't decapitate the zombie, she chose the more traditional method of splitting the skull down the middle, and instantly killing it. Then jerking her machete sideways, she widened the gap in the zombie's head and smoothly slid her weapon out.
Billy and Jacob dealt with a few eaters that were flanking us, and Gin acted as the rear guard.
"Look in the one's that have the big sleeper units first," I ordered. "Knock on the doors before you open them, if there are any eaters inside that should get them riled up."
"Will do," Mary said, as she jumped onto the running board of a red tractor-trailer and tapped on the driver's door with the handle of her machete.