Zombie Waltz (Book 2)

by Lynn E. Main

  “What is it?” Chris asks.

  “Look at that.” The trees are so thick and pressed together they look like a privacyfence.And theyare moving. Movingmaybe thewrong word for it, but they are definitely not still. It looks like a single huge creature…like a great wooden snake, writhing. When we arrive at the entrance roadwe can see across anemptylot that had been mostlycleared. The wave had arrived. The woods, it seems have done more to slow their forward motion than the buildings downtown. The wave continues north past the school squishing thousands of its own against the trees. Ahead of us on the road, a few dozen fight through the underbrush and advance about a hundred yards away. I look over at Chris. He looks back at me and his eyes are wide. “We need to go. Now.” I say as I turn to sprint. Chris doesn’t even flinch.

  I stop and turn around. “Come on man! We don’t have time for this!”

  “ This road…this road here…it was our only way out. We should have left before now. School Avenue is blocked up with all those crashed buses. We have nowhere to go.”

  “We have to fucking go somewhere!” I shout.

  Chris seems to snap out of a trance and his eyes focus on me. He starts talking fast and walking fast at the same time, “But maybe not. We could be okay. There is a dirt jogging trail on the north end of the school. It goes all the way to a park on the south side of Fruitville. It should be wide enough. Thatcould be our wayout.” Ifollow him, hopinghe is right. They’re Here

  We only make it a few feet before we hear a terrible crunching noise. It is familiar to me because I watched the men come and clear a lot of treesfor a tennis court bymyhouse with Lind when Iwasten. It sounds the same when one tree falls or a hundred, but this is much louder. A huge crowd of zombies spills out of the breach where a section of at least 20 trees have been uprooted and pushedinto the ditch across School Avenue. They pour out of the woods like water from a pitcher. Chris and I waste no words.

  We run as fast as we can to the Caddy. I dig in my pockets, panicking until I grasp Levi’s keys. “Chris, pull the caddy over between the gym and the history hall by that covered walkway. I will meet you there in 2 minutes with everyone.”

  Itoss him the keys and sprint for the bus doors. Bythe time Imake it across the quad and up the stairs, taking two at a time, I have a stitch in my side but refuse to slow. Nick opens the door to our holdout when he hears my loud footfalls coming up the hallway. He shouts down to me, “Everything okay?”

  Iwant to shout back ‘No’ but Idon’t. Itake the 20 yards remaining between us in huge strides and then screech to a stop in front of him, bent over and gasping for breath. “No time. Get Kim and Jason and head for the gym now!” I shout it as a command and Nick snaps to attention and turns into the room without reply.

  He shouts for Kim and Jason to get their stuff as I stand again and push past him. Faith is standing over by Kevin now, who is wrapped completely in fresh sheets. They already have stains in the same places but they are smaller and look wetter. “We have to go now. No time for a funeral. Come on!” I demand. She turns to grab up one of the duffel bags. Irun across the room to grab the otherand take her hand, pulling her away from Kevin.

  She doesn’t protest and the five of us are in the hallway, starting for the stairs when Ian and Phillip come out of an adjacent classroom. “You guys sure getting out in a hurry.” Phillip says smiling.

  “You better, too!” I command. I turn and mean to lead my people away. I hope for the best for these kids but can’t hold onto it tightly with them refusing to come with us.

  Gretchen shouts from behind the boys and theyclear the doorway, “Wait!” She pushes on her tracks and wheels herself into the hallway and turns her chair to face me. I pause and turn back to her and the others follow my lead. I don’t know why. I don’t owe her anything. “Are you really going to just take off and leave his body here? You are pathetic.” She says, the worst look of hatred in her eyes as she stares me down.

  “Look we don’t have time to do anything about it. They’re here!” I say. I am starting to get angryand would like to throw a few more words in her face but there is a terrible crashing sound below us that makes us all jump. I turn to my friends, “Run for the gym! Chris is there with the Caddy. Run! Jason…everybody…full speed…don’t stop!” They don’t hesitate, not even the little boy. All my friends turn and start running the second I say to and I follow. I soon catch and then pass them all. We hit the stairs and make almost as much noise coming down them as the zombies do spilling into the bus doors.

  At the bottom of the stairs I stop and wave Jason, Kim, Nick, and Faith past me in that order. Just behind us, Phillip and Ian traverse the stairs a bit slower, carrying Gretchen between them. I smile at them. I am glad they are coming. I want them to live at least long enough to say ‘I told you so.’

  I sprint after the others towards the History Hall but Phillip and Ian veer off to the other side of the locker bank. “Where the hell are you going?” I screech to a halt and shout after them.

  Ian cocks his head to the side and shouts in reply, “The bus!” Then Iturn and chase the others down the HistoryHall. The zombiesare getting louder behind us. We won’t be able to get any of their food stash, which makes it even more ironic that they didn’t want to share it with us. We bust out of the doors at the north end of the History Hall just as the zombies hit the south end of it. Ilook backto see movingcorpses eclipsing all behind them as theyfollow.Chris has the trunk popped and is grabbing bags from Nick and Kim and Faith as they each run by him. They all pile into the car.

  Chris looks back at me stalled bythe door. He shouts, “Dead Boy, come on! Watch out!” He is lookingpast me. I only stopped for a moment after slamming the door shut and leaned here to catch one or two breaths and here they are. A head bursts through the small rectangular window and turns toward me, snapping its jaws. It is skinned so there is no way of knowing if it was a man or a woman, but it gets me moving either way.

  I run for the car. After getting in the back, Chris has left the front door open and the driver’s seat unoccupied. Everyone is shouting as I sprint towards them. I jump in and jam my foot on the brake, jam the shifter into drive and punch the accelerator. I frantically turn the wheel to avoid hitting the corner of the gym as we rocket forward. I steer around the gym and in the parking lot, I see the full effects of the wave.

  All the trees at the south end of School Avenue are knocked over now and there are literallythousands of zombies moving towards us. That half of the school is already swarmed. A few more minutes and they would have had us. I turn the wheel to the back side of the driver’s ed. range and Chris points out the sign announcing the hiking trail. I push the accelerator harder and we scream towards it. The trees are thick on both sides of the trail but it is clear.

  There is a sign on a square brown post buried in concrete at the edge of the driving range, right in the middle of the trail. The trail is only wide enough for a single car anyways so there is no way to avoid hitting the sign. I plow right over it and we are in the woods. I drive as fast as I can down the trail but must slow down on the hairpin curves that were never meant to be taken at anything faster than a jog. Twice, I have to hit the brakes and feel the ass end sliding away, despite the trail being dry.

  It seems like an hour before we finally emerge from the woods on Fruitville. It was probably more like 3 minutes. I stop in the middle of the wide road and we all turn our heads back. I never even saw the bus. Jason thought he did once we were alreadyin the woods, but he was looking out the side window and could have seen the buses in the huge collision jamming up School Avenue’s north end.

  I saw some of those as I turned corners. We wait for a few moments in silence. I have the car turned so I can look back down the trail out of the driver’s window, but we see no sign of them. Faith touches my shoulder and finally says, “Les. We need to go. They were in the woods already. I saw a bunch while we were driving through.”

  I did too. I even almost hit one that had wandered
onto the path. I onlyavoided him out of instinctand almost hit a tree in doingso. Myheart is still racing from that. It would have been terrible to crash avoiding a zombie. “Did anyone see them get out?” I ask, not expecting a reply. I wait in silence a moment longer and then start rolling again. I turn north onto Tamiami after weaving through the same pile up on Coconut we came through going south.

  The northbound lanes on Tamiami are totally impassable but the southbound ones –the ones into the city- are clear and we take them quickly. We are back to Martin Luther King Blvd. soon, rolling to a stop. This is where Faith had first been attacked. The gas station has burned down and all the recognizable cars in the parking lot look the same; black. Still, I wonder which one was hers.

  It takes us a few moments of looking but Nick sees a way through if wehop thecurb and drive through the corner ofthe gas station’s parking lot. Soon we are cruising north again, out of Sarasota and into the unknown.

  Hasta Lasagna Pasta

  Rodney sits on his bike which leans under the over-pass, looking over at fat-assed Shaun Titus nearly engulfing his. God if that kid couldn’t ride, I would have left or wasted him a thousand times by now.

  Shaun had been a used car salesman. The kid was a close friend of RJ’s and Rodney never understood why. Rodney and RJ both worked at Joe’s garage in Lakeland behind the Auto Mart where Shaun eventually oozed his way into a sales job. Of course, Joe’s isn’t there in Lakeland anymore or that Auto Mart car lot either; hell, Lakeland isn’t even there anymore. What’s left of it is lying on the concrete in smoldering rubble. Rodney grins, reminiscing about putting Joe underneath the hydraulic lift and dropping it on him. A fitting end for that asshole.

  Lakeland had been a holdout for the first week of the chaos, and no one can deny that Rodney played a big part in protecting the town. Sitting in the kitchen in his doublewide drinking coffee out of a porcelain cup and watchingthe small black and whitetelevision on his kitchen table, he saw the first report. Most people in the trailer court were dismissing it all as a hoax that day. Rodney, however, saw something on the footage from NBC’s TV-3 in Lakeland that made him believe it was all real.

  A man covered with bleeding wounds on his face, chest and arms was being filmed, lying dead in the street. Whythe news would show this footage without some type of mature audiences warning was beyond Rodney. The man’s hand had been severed and a large pool of blood already spread outward from his body.

  The reporter was just saying that the man, the victim of a bizarre cannibal attack, had only been pronounced dead moments earlier. He had been lying in the street dead for a good fifteen seconds of footage. Not breathing, not even twitching, when the fucker just started to get up. At first, Rodney thought it had to be a gag show.

  The reporter didn’t realize what was happening behind him, even though the camera panned overto the bodyright in the middle of shooting. The tape kept rolling while the reporter, now off camera to the left, kept going on about how the man had burst out from an alley between 1stStreet and Terrace Dr. in Sarasota and collapsed in the street.

  He had to be dead. Even if they weren’t already saying it on the news, Rodney could see it with his own eyes. The man was dead…clear as day. He had to beforall the blood he hadlost. But the fuckerjust started to get up anyway like he was going to go get the Sunday paper. Then shit got really weird.

  Normally the news cast would cut away when something this violent was airingbut the feed didn’t get cut for about 5 moreseconds and Rodney saw enough to know for sure by then. A police officer walked up to the man in full riot gear with an AR-15 and capped off 4 or 5 rounds into the guy. He fell, of course, but then started to get up as if he had only been shot with a Nerf gun. Damn, he must have gotten ahold of some killer smack!

  At this point, even the riot cop was stunned for a second. The man’s torso was almost completely disconnected from his legs and he kept trying to stand, both legs still pumping and arms clawing at the ground. Even heroin couldn’t have let him do that.

  It looked for a second like that thing was going to attack the cop again. The officer sighted up on the thing’s head and it was all over. Hasta Lasagna Pasta.

  The live feed cut immediately after. Rodney knew then. He knew what was coming and he knew what he would have to do. He shut off the TV and picked up his cordless phone from the receiver hitch. Speed dial 1: Thad.

  It was Rodney who convinced the people of Lakeland to block the highways and move everyone who hadn’t left town to a central location. They fortified. They had been strong at first, but too many people kept leaving. Too many of those things kept coming and eventually the fortifications were overrun.

  Rodney continues to daydream until that fucking blue Cadillac comes rolling up Tamiami. Rodney grins.

  Surrender

  We are making good time, pacing ourselves to avoid collisions with the multitude of obstacles in theroadway. We aredoingabout 30mph when we come up on the intersection with Campus Drive. If we turn west towards the water, we will eventually come to New College. To the east is the longroadthatwinds out to the Airport, cleverlytitled: AirportRoad. There is another huge pileup on Tamiami. Still unwilling to leave it, I slowly weave the car through.

  Everything is looking clear on the other side and as soon as I am past the debris, I hit the accelerator. There is an overpass just ahead that was used by me on more than one occasion as a toilet late at night when I partied at New College. It is common for foot traffic to cross the bridge over Tamiami from there. Even though the only thing on the east side is a hill with a fence at the top, it is a nice place for picnics. There are trees all around and since the edge of one of the airport’s runways is just beyond there, sometimes we would watch planes take off and land. The hill is covered with gore. The bridge looks quiet but as I pass under it, I hear thunderous sounds.

  Irealize that it is the sound of motorcycles and immediately cringe. I pass under the bridge and see five of them swarm out behind us. I push the accelerator harderbut theygain anywayand soon are besideus. “Fuck.” I say to no one.

  Faith has her hand on my leg and starts to squeeze. “What now?” She asks.

  I am not sure if she expects any kind of response. She keeps looking from one side of the car to the other. The bikers are running alongside us now. They would have us boxed in but they better know that if they try to cut me off I will run them over without hesitation. I swerve at the one closingin on the driver’s side and he backs off. A moment later, he is next to us again. He points a big shiny revolver into the car. I hit the brakes, holding up both hands as if to surrender. He slows beside me all the way until I stop. We are all silent in the car now.

  The motorcycles circle up and the last one to stop pulls into the circle so close, his front tire touches the caddy’s bumper. He is wearing black plastic rimmed sunglasses and a leather vest with patches on it as well as a huge grin.

  “Where you going in such a hurry?” He shouts over the roaring motors of the idling bikes. The men are revving as they laugh and taunt us. He starts laughing. I do not reply to him and no one in the car moves. He waves his arm over his head and the othermen kill the engines on their bikes.

  He kills his too and rolls it backward a few feet. He stands, kicks down the stand, and hops off. He is wearing a belt with a holster for the revolver he waves at me through the windshield. It is a polished chrome gun with a white handle. He walks around the back of his bike. “I know you know why we stopped you. You know what you did. So, why don’t you do everyone in that car a favor and come on out? We can have a little chat, just you and me.”

  I am certain this is a mistake, but my mind is set. It is too late for backing out now. There is no way that this isn’t going to turn out bloody anyway. I turn to Faith. Her eyes are wide and her face gone pale. “I’m going to get out.”

  “No…” She whispers, breathless.

  The biker saunters around the door, his face flushed red and his eyes glazed and yellowed. I am sure he has bee
n drinking. Holding onto the top of the door at arm’s length he leans down and looks in.“Whydon’t you all get out of that car so we can get a little look at you?”

  I turn around and motion to Faith and the others to do as he says but while I am staring in her eyes I mouth the word “shotgun” and look down at the barrel sticking out between our seats. I turn back to the surly fellow and he steps back and takes his hand off the door.

  “We don’t want any trouble, mister.” I say as I open the driver’s side door and set my foot on the ground.

  Chapter 5: The Sunshine Skyway Blues School Ave.

  Jill looks out the side window of the big white van from her vantage, sprawled on the back bench next to Rose. They have been weaving through the city for hours, searching. Zombies are everywhere. A huge mass of dead people is marching through Sarasota destroying everything. The big tough white van hits many of them. It is not a normal church bus. The dead just bounce off of it, no matter how many stand in their way. Patrick mows through them likeso many weeds. Thevan seems to take no shock from it at all, except maybe the paint job.

  Jill’s eyes squint as they pass every road and she tries in vain to find any sign of life in all this death. The other passengers in the van, all women, have complained several times that they need to get away from the city. But Jill hasn’t. She won’t. She knows Mr. Petrova is searching. She knows that he will not give up until he finds the one he is looking for. at least she hopes he won’t. Mr. Petrova believes the boy that had been bitten from the mortuary is still alive. She needs him to be right.

  A huge line of buses is smashed together down School Avenue. On the south side, a massive wall of zombies is trying to push through them. Patrick swings a wide U turn there and starts back north. On the north side of the buses, Jill squints down the street again and sees nothing but a quiet sidewalk. Until it isn’t nothing. A miniature bus that at first appears to be one of the smashed ones is driving right down the sidewalk next to the rows of pile ups.