by Main, Lynn
I see a flash of my father’s face smiling at me just the day before he died. I shake the image away. I feel my throat tightening and my lungs pushing harder. I have to move or I’ll lock up. I turn and start to walk back towards the house. Shaking so hard I am afraid to stop moving.
“Don’t you think we should take it?” Faith asks.
“Take what?
“The gun.” “I don’t want it.” I never turn around but hear her jerk it out of his hand. The body lifts off the ground as she pulls it free and flops back down with a wet sounding thud.
“It says Ramirez on his name tag.” Faith says.
I do not reply. Faith stops by the van and opens the sliding back door. She pulls out the suitcase and deposits the gun in it. Then she puts the suitcase back and slams the door shut. She looks over at me and nods. I agree silently and we return to our cave. We don’t talk; we just sit on the couch and stare at the walls until it is dark. She rests the shotgun up against the couch and lies down. “Tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow” I agree. In the morning we have to go back out…I doubt I’ll sleep much. I watch Faith sleep for a while. Maybe I could take her home. Who knows if it is abandoned or not, knowing Rollins I’d bet not, but either way my father’s house is a fine house. We could survive there…maybe even live.
Chapter 3: Dead Boy For Luck
I hardly sleep. Instead, I watch Faith for most of the night. Faith sleeps the way I would imagine a truck driver would, which is to say loudly. With her mouth hanging open, she snores. She also thrashes and moans. I fight the urge to laugh when she suddenly shifts and her moan turns into a squeak and then her mouth opens and the snoring starts.
In the night, occasionally, a gunshot or scream or something else equally terrible and frightening jolts me. I’m nervous. Sleep just doesn’t want to come. I don’t fight. I just breathe in my nose and out of my mouth and watch her. As the hour grows truly late the night gets darker. The noises more frightening or maybe just closer and I huddle and shiver. I start to think I won’t sleep at all, but at some point I drift off.
When I open my eyes the orange rays of morning bathe the room. I get up and start bouncing around, making sure there is nothing else we might need to take with us.
“Ready to go?” I ask when Faith wakes. I’m excited and nervous. Faith rises quickly and checks the house as well. “We might as well.” She says , and picks up the green suitcase, her shotgun, and heads to the hole in my bedroom without a backward glance. I start to follow but stall. I couldn’t have imagined I would miss this place. I chuckle at that, shaking my head. I smile at my boarded up living room, tip my cap though I’m not wearing one, turn and follow Faith.
My door is only slightly ajar so I push it open with a single finger and see Faith crouched staring out the hole in the wall. I walk across the barren room, kick a small piece of drywall and then bend over, hands on knees, next to Faith and look out. I don't hear any commotion outside or see anyone, or anything. “How does it look?”
“Quiet.” Faith says with a stern expression , scanning around the yard before looking over at me. Then she smiles and leans in and pecks my cheek, “…for luck!” She practically leaps out of the hole and swiftly slinks around the corner of the house while I reel with my hand pressed to my cheek for a moment. A stupid, I’m sure, smile plastered on my face.
After the shock wears off, I creep out of the hole and stand. I pan from one side of the yard –the driveway, neighbor’s apartment, and empty lot complete with bird pecked corpses- to the other.
The house on the other side of mine has been abandoned for months. There was even caution tape and an official notice on the front door ever since the cops raided the dealer who was operating out of it. I heard he moved two houses down to the corner of Cocoanut and 13th. After a few moments –not quite certain all is quiet and well- I follow Faith to the van.
The corpse of my neighbor lies in the driveway still, but has been there so long now that his skin has worn to leather and his face seems stretched across his skull. I try not to look at him. I creep past, slide open the side door of the van, and crawl in.
“You want to drive?” She looks at me for a long time as if trying to reassure herself that we are going to be okay…or that she is going to.
“No, you should.” I reply. She gets in and sticks the shotgun between the seats. Then she buckles her seatbelt and turns the key.
Roll don’t Rock
Nothing happens.
“Shit!” Faith says. “The battery’s dead. Something I might actually be able to help with. Pop the hood. Pull that lever down there.” I get out and limp around to the front of the van. I hear the clunk of the hood latch release as I watch Faith grab her shotgun. She rolls down the window by the hand crank as I lift the hood.
Under the hood, the engine looks fine. Probably not too heavy on the maintenance, but I can see the belts are usable –if a bit frayed- and the cables look as if they are intact with the exception of some greenishwhite corrosion on the positive battery terminal. I grab the red battery cable, wiggling it and wiping at the corrosion. My heart skips a beat when it pulls loose. As soon as I get some of the build-up off I put the wire back to the terminal and a spark jumps.
“Try it now!” I shout.
She turns the key and the engine roars to life. Taking a breath, I release the hood from its support, slam it shut, and nearly trip jumping back. Coming around the passenger side of the hood is an elderly woman, with rollers in her hair since before she died.
Faith screams. She must have been looking down the driveway towards the street and didn't notice the woman creeping up the other side. I don’t move again until she nearly has ahold of me. A little bit more shock I guess. Faith slides the shotgun out the window, points it across the hood at the woman and fires. The blast takes the woman's head off, and sprays me with her blood and bits of skull and gray matter. It’s hot and sticky and my stomach instantly turns. I double over, gasping and choking, but only a thin trickle of braided saliva comes up.
“Shit, thanks!” I say as I get back into the van, feverishly wiping
my face on the front of my shirt. Faith crawls back in her window and pumps the shotgun. The action throws the spent shell over her shoulder. She looks over at me and pauses, “We really have to be more care…”
Before she can finish, another set of arms reach through her window and grab her around her chest. One hand wrenches onto her breast. The other grabs her wrist and pulls her half out the window.
Faith fights back, gripping the steering wheel with her other hand. I don’t think. I just reach for the gear shifter on the column and drop it into reverse, push her leg on the gas pedal and the van peels out of the driveway backwards. The man loses his hold on her and rolls under the front wheel. The van shudders from side to side.
We hit the edge of the street as more zombies come into view, wandering out of the vacant lot around the corner of my house. It looks like everyone in my neighborhood is in my driveway…all dead.
Faith drops the gear shifter into drive and leaves a little rubber on the asphalt as we shoot down the street headed west. At the intersection she turns south on Cocoanut. She didn’t exactly make the conscious choice to go south. I would have suggested north if she had been asking. A several car pileup has the north side of the intersection blocked off though and she doesn’t have time to turn around with the zombies chasing after us like dogs.
So, she turns south and the road opens up a little and I take a breath. I can’t help but think it is a mistake to go south but I don’t really know why. Cocoanut is a fairly wide road, and that is fortunate, because we dodge several crashed and abandoned vehicles strewn across it. I stare at the houses as the streets pass. Most have burnt to the ground, others look as if they were gutted by some terrible demolition crew, and I don't see a single one intact.
Faith is forced to slow to a crawl at the intersection with 8th street. There is another huge pile up. We see some space between
two of the wrecks that appears to be barely enough. Very carefully, Faith squeezes the van through. After that there are so many cars and downed telephone poles and other types of debris littering Cocoanut that we are only travelling 10 miles per hour at top speed. At the intersection with Fruitville, Faith is forced to stop the van. It is impassible on three sides. We could turn around but that isn’t going to get us very far.
Faith gazes at me and her eyebrows lift as we roll to a stop. I shrug and say, “Back up?” She looks through the mirrors and shifts into reverse and we try it. I’m wrong though. Turning around is not going to be possible either. The wreckage is all too close. We could back up the block to 6th St. but then where? I start to open my mouth to suggest that we ditch the van and strike out on foot when Faith takes her foot off of the brake and starts rolling towards the piled up intersection.
She starts picking up speed and says, “Put on your seat belt!” I barely have time to get the thing to slide in and click when she hits the curb and the fender of an old Pontiac. She banks off of it without doing much damage and we squeeze through the wreckage by the sidewalk and drive on some lawns and over a few overgrown flowery medians.
There are only a few vehicles sitting in the parking lots and driveways. Most of this area is strip mall. For some reason I don’t think a lot of people got around to shopping when all of this started happening. The grocery stores were probably war zones, but I bet more than half the appointments at Dr. Alonso Andragger D.D.O.’s office were missed. Faith is able to maneuver through a parking lot and over another curb and get back to the street clear of the pile up. We start to build speed again as the road clears, but when we come to the intersection with Pineapple we have to screech to a halt.
Pineapple and Cocoanut are both blocked by wreckage. The road is destroyed, and further south on Cocoanut a huge building has collapsed into the street. There will be no driving on the sidewalk to get around that. As far as I can see there is nowhere to get on to Pineapple with all the wrecked police cruisers and an overturned city bus that has burned to a crisp. Faith stops the car.
I can hear ominous sirens shrieking in the distance. There are fires burning and everything around here is covered with the dingy grey of ash. There is nowhere we can continue driving forward except a narrow passage between pileups down the center of 2nd street which branches off of Cocoanut just before the intersection with Pineapple in a Y. I point it out to Faith and she nods. She takes the detour on 2nd reluctantly. There’s no way to see what is on the other side. The shadows of the ruined buildings totally eclipse the much narrower side street.
Now we travel east. Driving into the shadowy hulls of tall buildings with shattered windows and crumbling structures. We hit several holes in 2nd but Faith is able to avoid the worst of it. Two blocks down we have to turn south again because the street is impassible. We turn down Central Ave. and then a block later east again on 1st. We get another half dozen blocks where 1st dead ends at Orange, and we have to roll to a stop. Not because of wrecked cars, blown out buildings, or blown up streets; but I'd rather that was why. As we stop, a wall of heads turns towards us.
In unison they start coming; some are fast, some are slow, some are so destroyed it’s hard to believe they are walking. Some even seem like they could be alive. Faith gulps and says, “Hold on.”
Taking a deep breath, I twist my seat belt strap in my hand and say, “Do it.” The van’s little engine roars and the tires squall just a bit as we rocket forward. We hit the first zombies and they fly across the hood and crunch under the tires in an almost cartoonish fashion. They slow us, but Faith has it in low gear. Spinning tires and shaking, we keep plowing into them. It seems the throng only grows thicker for a while. They never seem to stop coming. There could be thousands, and every one of them seems bent at this moment on getting us. The van won’t hold up. I know it. I start to feel the icy grip of panic rising up my spine as the van starts rocking more than rolling.
The Van Leaning on the balcony rail of the Reinke Brothers Mortuary, Nick and Chris smoke cigarettes as they gaze down at legions of undead freaks roaming Orange St. and the parking lot. Chris is 15 with long blond hair and red rosy cheeks. He puffs on his cigarette, leans over the balcony, and spits at the zombies that wander near the steps below.
He likes it at the funeral home. It’s a safe place. The walls are thick and the windows are all plated glass. Chris takes off his glasses and wipes the lenses off on his black tee shirt and looks over at Nick. They have been holed up for days that are starting to run together.
Nick has a shotgun slung over his shoulder and a cigarette hangs from his mouth, forgotten as he stares from face to face in the crowd as if searching for someone. Chris watches him examine the crowd. He is fairly certain Nick does this every day as often as he can. Nick searches a seemingly endless horde of zombies for whomever. Why? Who Knows?
Chris watches everyone, and truthfully there is nothing creepy about it. He’s always been a shy observer. He’s also ordinary and quiet enough to watch people as much as he wants and never be noticed. Chris likes Nick, and more importantly he respects him. It is easy to look up to Nick. He is one of Mr. Petrova’s most trusted men. Chris had been with Mr. Petrova in the streets being chased to exhaustion, with a whole group of people from the high school, by zombies.
Patrick, a man Mr. Petrova had apparently known already, had found Nick the next day with his girlfriend Kim. Chris had always been a background player. He has never fit in well with a group. In school he was picked on and singled out and bullied. Here he has just tried to stick close to Mr. Petrova without being noticed too much. It is easy for Chris, he isn’t very noticeable.
Mr. Petrova is a pretty scary man, but Chris trusts him. He doesn’t really like him…but trusts him. He likes Nick though. He is one of the few people at the funeral home Chris can relax and be himself around.
“Holy shit, look over there.” Nick says breaking Chris’s concentration. He’s pointing and Chris follows his finger until he sees the van coming down the ruins of 1st Ave.
“Wow they are going the wrong way. They’re never going to get through there.” Chris says. “Yeah , I bet they get stuck. Then the ghouls will rip that van apart to get them out.” Nick replies. There is a slight smirk on his face. Chris stands straight and flicks the burnt out butt of his cigarette over the balcony. He takes a step back –not desiring to watch- and turns to the balcony doors. “You should stay Chris. You can at least learn what not to do if we ever have to go back out there.”
Chris doesn’t ever want to go out there again.
He has not left the funeral home since the day he arrived. In school everything was normal as that day started. He went to class and when the bell rang he walked into the hall with everyone else. Then all these people started coming out of the cafeteria…running. Other people…dead people…came after them, chasing.
At first, Chris just watched. Everyone did. They all stood there, jaws gaping as people were attacked right in front of them. Everyone just stood around in a kind of horrified shock. It was not a quick process, either. It was slow. There were people everywhere. Running everywhere, in every direction. The ghouls were everywhere a moment later.
They grabbed people and bit into them like pit bulls. Girls and boys screamed at the top of their panicked lungs. No one just stood there and took what was coming. They thrashed and tried to escape, cried and pleaded with the things, but the attackers only continued. Friends tried to drag friends away but it changed nothing. Everyone that Chris saw was being eaten slowly.
A dean grabbed his arm and screamed in his face, “Run!” They ran. They ran and they ran and they ran. They ran out of the bus doors with a big crowd of kids, teachers, administrators, coaches, the custodian, and a few of the lunch ladies. They ran together towards the parking lot. Chris was near the front of the pack but kept looking back every time there was a scream.
He couldn’t help but think about how a predator would take a gazelle out of the
back of the herd and the rest would just keep running. He heard all sorts of terrible screams. People began to disperse in the parking lot trying to get to their cars. Chris just kept running with the dean and the rest.
The school sits 15 blocks from the mortuary. The zombies never stopped chasing them. Chris just kept running. At first it seemed like they were getting away but more zombies came out of houses and other businesses into the streets after them. They were coming from everywhere.
By the time Chris reached the funeral home only 3 people were with him. One was the dean but he had been bitten, and was slowing with every step. Another was a pretty young science teacher who would die inside an hour from blood loss. The third was a man Chris had never seen before. He hadn’t been with Chris’s group at the bus doors or in the parking lot, but at some point he joined them.
Chris would have never thought to seek shelter in the funeral home. It was this man, Mr. Petrova that guided the others up the stone steps and when they reached the large wooden doors to the place, produced a key. The dean was attacked again at the doors. He never even made it inside, but Chris ran through the doors uninjured. He had pissed himself and felt as if he was going to pass out from exhaustion by the time he and the stranger had the doors closed, but he was alive and hasn’t been back outside since.
Still, he doesn’t want Nick to think he’s a pussy so he stays to watch. The van makes it down the street and into the intersection in front of the mortuary before the hundreds of walking corpses beating themselves against the front of it bring it to a stop. “See I told you. Now they are fucked. They won’t get moving again.” Nick says laughing.
“Shit , Nick that sucks.” Chris says his cheeks reddening. He knows what’s going to happen as much as Nick does. Still he doesn’t want to watch these people get eaten alive.
“I know man. They almost got here. Not like they were getting in. But they almost made it.” Nick is staring intently at the van as the small engine revs. Chris can’t see anything inside of it because of the blood and gore splattered all over the windshield. Not to mention that the zombies are very thick on the streets today.