by Mark Clodi
“He came along knowing what could happen Max, he died trying to save a kid, not many people can say that and it is better than being eaten or becoming one of them. This is Sarah?”
“Yes, this is Sarah. Sarah this is Officer Jane Stewart, we all call her 'Stewart'. I think Sarah is okay…but one of them, I think, might have bit her.”
Stewart stiffened visibly at this news, which Sarah noticed, “What? It isn't anything fatal, I mean it hurts, but it is not that bad.”
“I poured a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on it.” Max began only to be interrupted by Amelia.
Addressing Max's children she said, “You must be Max's kids, what are your names?”
“Nick.”
“Jessica.”
“Well Nick and Jessica this is Cory, his about your age, huh Nick? Do you think you might have some extra cloths he could use? His are all dirty and both of you should get dressed, we might be leaving today. Why don't we all go upstairs and you can show me your rooms while your mom and dad talk with Stewart and Tom.”
The children were reluctant, but Sarah pushed them off, telling them to brush their teeth and comb their hair too. Amelia herded them upstairs and soon the other adults were able to hear the sounds of quiet laughter and running water as the kids cleaned up.
“Now what? It is the bite isn't it. It's like infected or something, isn't it?”
Max stood stoically, for a moment, then hugged her close and said, “It is how they kill us and make more zombies. The bite infects you, then you die. Then you come back as one of them.”
Sarah's eyes puffed up and a tear welled out of one of them. “Are you sure? Have you seen it happen? Who told you this?”
“Blake, on the radio and a lot of people called him to say so too. And it happened at work, but when we were there the zombies actually killed the people, so I don't know anything for certain. Maybe you will be okay.”
“How much time do I have?” Sarah asked.
“I don't know, how do you feel? Maybe the hydrogen peroxide disinfected it?” Stewart wouldn't meet his eyes, Tom shook his head slowly.
“Max we don't know, we won't maybe we can call the dj and see if anyone knows?” said Tom, “We should try and secure this place a little better, Stewart says the back door is all busted out. Lets take care of safety first, then make some calls.”
Stewart and Max were the most wounded of the four of them, Sarah's bite hurt, but Max had torn open his wound again and was bleeding pretty badly. They took a moment to pull Stewart's Kevlar vest off and then bind up Max's ribs again. The bruise under Stewart's vest was terrible; it a was deep blue circle as big around as an orange with a small dot of red in the middle of it that was weeping blood. Pressing her hands against the wound Stewart said, “They might not be broke.” To which the others just shook their heads. Tom and Sarah pulled some lumber out of Max's garage, most of it would not work, but Max did have some plywood and old table tops that he had taken from his father in law with the intention of refinishing a long time ago. The two more able bodied adults, who were soon assisted by Amelia, propped the various bits against the opening where the glass patio doors had been, making a sizable barricade. At the very least they would hear anything trying to get through it.
Sarah, with the help of Amelia, then made them all a halfway decent breakfast and they sat down to try and call Blake at the radio station and make plans for what they were going to do next.
After breakfast Tom went into the backyard from the garage, which had a regular door to pass through and pulled Steve's body to the side of the house. He also pulled the other corpses to the side and covered them with sheets from the house. When he came in he called out, “Stewart? Hey yeah I checked out the yard trying to find the shotgun, but no go, it is gone. But I found this.” Tom walked into view carrying a plastic Target bag. The rest of the adults were sitting in the living room. Max's kids were upstairs, trying to decide what to pack. Cory had fallen asleep on the couch head resting against Max.
“What is in the bag Tom?” asked Stewart.
“Check it out.” He handed the bag to Stewart, she opened it and gave him a puzzled look.
“What the fuck is this shit? This yours Max?” Stewart asked, thinking maybe it was a gift for his kids that somehow ended up outside.
Max looked at Cory sleeping beside him, then at and into the bag and shook his head, “You’re gonna have to change the way you speak, no swearing around little kids. And no I don’t know anything about that stuff. Is there a receipt in the bag? Receipts have dates on them.” He said to Tom’s puzzled look. Max also knew that Sarah kept the receipts in every bag, especially with gifts, if there was not a receipt the bag was not from their house.
“Nope, nothing. Look at this stuff, hand held games, one, no, two different systems, the new PSP and the DS, expensive stuff too. Where’d this come from?”
They sat and stared at each other for awhile before Max said, “Maybe Cory picked it up?”
Amelia shook her head, “Not when he was with me, we passed a Target, but we didn't go inside and we didn't get anything like this stuff.”
“Yeah and Cory tried to show me his game in the back yard, it got busted or something. I don't think he would have cared if he had a bag of the stuff.” said Max.
Chapter 51
“Why the fuck are you way over here?” Jimbo asked Bobby, when he finally caught up with him.
Bobby glared at Jimbo and said, “He wasn’t so bad. Cory, wasn’t so bad, I could have like him a lot.”
“I know, but how did you get here?” Jimbo shifted his eyes and looked at the ragged quiet girl that Bobby gripped tightly with one hand, she was probably eight or nine and scared speechless.
“Well I liked Cory, only he didn’t have a PSP and we couldn’t play together head to head with just one. So I figured we would go get one, now that they are free. You didn’t tell me not to!” Bobby said defiantly.
Sighing, Jimbo said, “Alright, it is water under the bridge, okay? No big deal you wanted to get your friend a video game, is that it there?” Pointing at the sack the Bobby held.
“Yeah I went and got it anyway, I figured you would catch Cory.”
“Well no, we didn’t, I never saw him.”
“He is probably at the house, can we go and get him?” asked Bobby.
“Wh-what? Are fucking nuts? Bobby those guys practically killed me! And I think they killed everyone else!”
A third voice joined the conversation, “No. They didn’t.”
Turning they all looked at Veronica as she stood in the doorway of the convenience store where they had taken refuge. “They almost did, no thanks to you Jimbo. Who is this?”
“Veronica, Jesus, you look beat! What the hell happened? This is Bobby and his little, scrumptious friend.” said Jimbo, thinking to himself, ‘This bitch steps outta line and I will kill her, she is so torn up I could do it.’
As if reading his thoughts she said, “Relax Jimbo, truce okay? Like I heard you say a moment ago, water under the bridge, I need your help and I ain’t Nancy.”
“Okay, truce, but what do you want?”
“There is strength in numbers Jimbo, me, you, Bobby and the girl, that is a start. Lets do it again, only this time we are going to find some guns, no more of this hand to hand shit. We recover our strength and go after a few more people, get a group together, find a car and get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah, I think so, that sounds good.” turning to Bobby he said, “We need her Bobby, I am weak, Veronica is worse off than me. Sorry, but we gotta have her.”
Bobby looked at them, “Yeah, okay, she is a girl anyway, I want another boy. I am gonna go find Cory and give him this.” he said, lifting the sack in one hand.
“Don’t be stupid Bobby, save it for the next boy we find, okay?”
“No! You get the girl I go drop this off.” he let the girl go and she scrambled away into the back of the store to hide in the shadows, Bobby moved in the other direction,
towards the front of the store, where he quickly ducked under a pane of broken glass and out into the morning.
Veronica gave a start and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Aw let him go, the kid is stupid and stubborn, but I like him. Reminds me of me at that age. I have the feeling we are going to be making another trip to Target for another DSP when we find another boy close to his age. God I hate killing the little ones.”
“DSP? It is PSP Jimbo, aren't you with it enough to know what is ‘in’? I hate offing the kids too. Do you think we could just bleed her a bit and find someone still alive to take her? I am tired of killing.”
Jimbo thought about it for a second, then nodded, “Yeah that would ease my conscious a bit. We'll have to be careful.”
Together they turned back towards the girl cowering in the shadows.
Bobby found his way back to the backyard of the house behind Max’s and cautiously peered over the fence. Nothing, no Cory, but his eyes spotted the shotgun on the grass. He climbed over the fence, picked up the shotgun and sat the bag down. As he was getting ready to climb back over the fence he spotted a shotgun shell in the grass, he bent to pick it up and spotted another one, he retrieved that one and noticed it was heavier than the first one, looking at the first one he saw that it has a hole in the front end, not like the second one, which was snub nosed and folded closed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which one of them had already been fired. He tossed the empty down and looked around for more shells, he only found more empties and decided one was better than nothing. Someone started moving around in the kitchen near the broken glass doors, not sure who it was Bobby leaped up and jumped for the back fence. He cleared it in a single bound. When he got back to the convenience store he only saw Jimbo.
“Where is Veronica and Erin?” his voice took on an accusing tone, “You didn’t bring her back did you? I don’t want a little girl zombie!”
“Whoa! Whoa! No way, she ain’t a zombie, we only bled her enough to heal ourselves up a bit, we didn’t even finish the job, Veronica is going to give her to Max. Let him deal with the kid. Where’d you find the gun?” asked Jimbo, amazed.
“I picked it up in Max’s back yard and I found this.” Bobby held up an unspent shell.
“Well I’ll be damned! Good job Bobby!” shaking his head in disbelief, “We can’t find any guns and you find one laying in the yard. Un-fucking-believable.”
Bobby beamed over the praise and together they waited for Veronica to return. It was a short wait.
“I left her in the Cadillac. She’ll live. There is a gas station down the street with a car out front, like they were filling up. Lets go see if we can find the keys.”
The keys were on the body of a man lying in front of the counter, he was missing his head. The car was already full of fuel and soon enough they were headed north towards Boulder, leaving Arvada behind.
Chapter 52
A few hours had passed. Cory had woken up and was busy playing video games with Nick. Max normally would not have allowed Nick anywhere near a video game, but playing outside was simply too dangerous, with headphones on the boys were quiet as church mice. When Max had suggested moving one or both cars into the garage, Stewart had said to move the cruiser in. When she went out to move it she found a girl in the front seat, a very scared, bloody girl. The girl wouldn't talk to her, but Amelia had coaxed her name, Erin, out of her using food as a bribe. Erin's arm had been cut open in a ragged manner and she would not say what had happened to her. Amelia cleaned her up and put her with the other children, who were confined to the second story of the house.
After moving the cruiser in Tom and Stewart looked it over as best they could. Neither of them were mechanics, so they went slow and looked for obvious damage. After ten minutes of looking and not finding any problems they came to the conclusion that the cruiser had come through in remarkable shape. They pulled it out and drove the Cadillac into the garage to check it over, it was completely unscratched and ready to roll.
With all the other adults busy Max and Sarah were left to talk. At first they just held each other, then Sarah started crying. Over breakfast she had spoken with Amelia and learned what had happened to Diane. By noon Sarah no longer felt good, she described it as having a case of the flu. Her stomach felt like it was being tied in knots. When she and Max checked her wound in their master bedroom it was red, swollen and filled with a foul smelling green and yellow pus. They both cried then as they cleaned it up as much as possible. At dinner time Sarah did not help out with preparing the food, a thick sheen of sweat covered her face and plastered her hair to her head. She didn't eat dinner. As night came on the group took heavy winter blankets and sleeping bags out of the closets and garage and hung them over all of the upstairs windows, to keep light from getting out and giving away their location.
Sarah went into her bedroom and called Max and their kids in and shut the door.
Amelia spoke quietly with Stewart and Tom downstairs. “She looks like Diane did, before she turned.”
“So she isn't going to make it? How much longer did Diane last after she got to this point?” asked Stewart.
“About half the night, maybe six hours.”
“Shit, what are we going to do? We can't kill Max's wife!” said Tom.
“I don't know, I don't know. We'll think of something.” replied Stewart.
They went on to discuss piling furniture on the stairway and hiding out up there for the night, looking around they didn't have much left to move, most of the furniture in the living room had been moved in front of the door or pulled into the kitchen to barricade the patio doorway.
Inside Max's bedroom Sarah told the kids how much she loved them and would always love them, then had Max bring them to Nick's room. Max went back into his bedroom alone and shut and locked the door behind him.
“You have to Max. I won't become one of them.” Sarah pleaded.
“Don't ask me to do that, you can't and I won't. What if someone comes up with a way to reverse it? Then you would be gone forever.”
“Max I am going to be gone forever. I can feel it, it hurts. It hurts so bad. Just do it, please?”
“I can't.”
“Stewart then, send her to do it. I don't want to run around like one of them, I can't do that, killing and…and eating other people. Becoming one of them! They were evil! That won't be me.”
“No, no one is going to do anything…final. We will figure something out.”
“Max this isn't a mountain you can climb, this isn't a game you can win by putting more effort into it. This is it. I got bit. I got infected and I am going to die. Tonight. You cannot sit there and say you are going to figure something out.”
Max bowed his head into his hands and sobbed. Sarah continued, “You have to do it. I want you to do it.”
Max raised his tear stained face and looked at her. Giving her a curt nod.
“Good, should we go into the back yard, away from the kids?”
Horrified Max said, “I'm not doing it now! You are still alive!”
She smiled at him, “Better now before…I turn. At least we could get away from the kids and they wouldn't have to see. If you wait until I change we could be out there all night, plus if I stay here it would be a mess to clean up.”
Max just stared at her, then with some anger in his voice he said, “You are going to die and you are worried about the mess it would make in our bedroom?”
Sarah shrugged, “I am being realistic. If you wait until I change you would have to shoot me here, then drag me out past the other bedrooms, maybe the kids would see, maybe not. Then you would have to deal with the blood and stuff. It is better to just go do it now and get it over with, before the pain gets worse.”
“No, I think I can do it after you turn, but no way, no way can you ask me to do this before that happens. I would always think maybe we were too soon, maybe you would fight it off, maybe you wouldn't turn out like the others.”
It was Sara
h's turn to nod, “I won't make a murderer of you, any more than I would commit suicide. When I am gone you have to do it, it won't be murder then, so don't think it will be.”
Of the two of them Sarah was the more religious. Max was always the one who attended church 'just in case', he felt he that an hour of fellowship was not as important as a week of treating people right, but went with Sarah at her insistence. Sarah was far more apt to obey the commandments to the letter than Max and had very strong feelings on things like abortion, suicide and murder. During their college years she had even been arrested protesting at a candle light vigil the night Colorado put one of it's murderers to death. The two of them had gone around several times about raising the children in the church, Sarah did not approve of Max's casual attitude regarding their religious education. It was for this reason alone, Max surmised, that Sarah would not put a gun to her own head and pull the trigger right now. Suicide was still a mortal sin and she fully expected to be waiting for her family in Heaven when they joined her.
“Max you have to promise me to take care of the kids when I am gone.”
“What the hell kind of a thing to say? I'm their father, I am not going to run off just because you are not around.”
“Oh I know you will be there for them, but I know how you are too. I want you to promise to make sure they continue, you know, in the church, if it is possible. It is what I want.”
“The church? What church? We will be lucky if the kids live to have kids, the way things are going.”
“I know but promise you will, if you can?” Sarah's face was pale and still sweaty.