I had, at most, five minutes to live before the zombies made their way into the car and began to feed on me. Surprising even myself, I laughed and said what was quickly growing to be my favorite movie quote of all time.
“Hold on to your butts.”
THREE
There are moments in everyone’s life where they know they are very close to dying. This has happened to me a few times over the course of my life, granted that most have taken place within that first week of the dead hanging around. During such an event you can expect to feel the rush of heightened senses as adrenaline consumes your system. Everything is brighter and clearer. Smells are stronger. And time seems to move so much slower. As I set in the back seat of the car each second that ticked by seemed more like a full minute. For instance, I had plenty of time to look out the front window and see it breaking away from the metal frame at the top. It was sagging further and further into the car. I looked to where the shattered window was and saw what looked to be a biker guy staggering forward to be the next zombie to try and play bobbing for brains in this metal apple barrel of a car. I looked to the passenger’s side window as it blew inward and saw that a woman had fallen halfway into the car as the window gave way. I began to point the gun at her head as I looked to my left and saw a pair of hands begin to pound on the back window beside my head. I raised the gun and pulled the trigger feeling the metal jump in my hand and heard the deafening roar of the explosion. I watched as the front of the woman’s face exploded and most of the back of her head was instantly splashed across the crumbling windshield.
I began to pull the gun across the car sighting the biker that was almost to the driver side window. I watched as my aim locked onto his forehead and I readied myself to pull the trigger, but before I could, the back driver’s side window blew inward and the glass exploded across my face. My eyes closed, and in the adrenaline fueled state that I was in, the two to three second protective blink to keep my eyes safe from the flying glass seemed like an eternity of blindness. When my eyes opened once again the biker was almost inside the car. His full black mutton chop sideburns were streaked with the blood of his past victims. His nasty seventies mustache was crusted with blood and snot and gore of quite possibly every kind imaginable. I cursed the zombie who had shattered the window. His distraction had allowed the biker zombie to get much too close to me. I leveled the gun at him wishing I knew the words to Hail Mary.
FOUR
As trying as the previous night had been for me, I believe it was just as hard, if not harder, on two other people. One would be Veronica. We were only supposed to be gone a couple of hours. Find a car, set off the alarm, get back and hold tight as the zombies dispersed and we regained our nice little buffer zone between us and the dead. Now it was dark, and we had been gone at least ten hours. I can imagine she was fearing the worse. Amanda wouldn’t have been much better. She would be beating herself up for letting us go without her. She would be feeling the guilt of us getting killed while she sat up on the roof in perfect safety. She would want to leave and go find us, but Jack would keep her in check saying things like, “You have to trust them. They are smart boys. They know how to take care of themselves. They will be back tomorrow you just wait and see.”
I imagine by the time Big Lou arrived and got somebody’s attention Veronica was busy crying herself to sleep in my tent and Amanda was checking her pack for the hundredth time quickly losing patience and edging further and further towards tracking us down.
Then Louie starts barking at the lift. Amanda tells Jack what he can do with his words of wisdom and over the side of the building she goes. She begins to track us down trying to take her time as she searches for the tell, tell signs of movement. She doesn’t want to hurry and miss something. She ends up being sidetracked at the church for much longer than she thought she should have been. That’s when she starts to hear the moaning of a rather large assembly of the dead. She comes out of the rubble of the church and through her binoculars she can see Jane and Shawn running down Browns Mill Road. She fades back and is able to see a wave of the dead descending upon a lone car parked at the side of the road. She finds herself a safe elevated platform where she can clearly draw a bead on the dead targets in front of her, but during that time she hears glass breaking and two gunshots go off. She figures hell with safety and begins to walk towards the car aiming and dropping zombies left and right as she gets closer and closer to the scene before her.
Inside the car I am taking aim at the biker guys mutton chops and suddenly, without me pulling the trigger, his head explodes and he is thrown sideways onto the road. Then one by one the heads of all the other zombies surrounding the car start to explode. For a moment I think I must be a telepath who just learned how to make heads go all explodey, but that isn’t the case. What’s really happening is my guardian angel has arrived and, boy, is she not in a good mood.
At Wal-Mart Veronica is hearing the news that Big Lou showed back up in the middle of the night and that Amanda disappeared. Jack thinks Amanda has gone after us. Veronica hates that Amanda can do what she can’t, which in this case is protect me from the dangers of the world at large, but she also says a little prayer that Amanda is able to find me, and save me. I imagine Jane and Shawn show up about the time they start hearing the gun shots. Two widely spaced at first then a whole barrage of gunfire that nobody could mistake to be coming from me. It comes in controlled bursts, one or two, then a pause for two or three seconds, then one or two more. It is a trained killer doing her job and doing it well. Everybody on the roof knows that whatever is going down, it involves Amanda and me, and we are most likely fighting for our lives.
After what seems forever the gunfire slows down, and I hear the metal of some certain person’s gun knocking against the metal roof of the car. I look out the back window and see Amanda’s face glaring at me with anger surrounded by a tinge of happiness.
“What are you doing?”
“Ah, the lovely Miss Asare drops by for a visit. Your timing is as impeccable as always.”
“Charlie why are you locked in this car as Jane and Shawn run away?”
“I turned my ankle; I can’t walk on it at all. The zombies were catching up to us, so I ordered them to stash me away in here while they go get help.”
“You can’t walk?”
“I can if I have somebody on each side helping me. But I move very slowly. I can’t put any weight on my right ankle.”
“There will come a time when I am going to ask you what led to all of this, but that time isn’t now. There are still too many zombies in the area to linger any longer than we have to. Please safety your gun and I will get us out of here.”
As I figured out how to put the safety on my gun Amanda ripped the windshield out of the car and threw it onto the ground. Then she sat down in the driver’s seat and pulled out a knife which she jammed into the ignition. She twisted the knife and the car roared to life. And then we were moving down the road.
“Remind me to teach you how to do this sometime. It would have uncomplicated matters today had you known.”
“Yes mam.” I said half afraid to say anything else.
“I watched as you killed your first two zombies with a gun. How did it feel?”
I thought about it; the gun bucking in my hand, the visuals of the blood and brain and bone flying out from the people heads. “It felt violent and nauseating.”
Amanda laughed at me as she drove us back to Wal-Mart. “The nauseating feeling will pass in time.” She said. I watched the wind from the missing windows blowing her hair around her face. She was beautiful, my guardian angel.
That episode was almost four months ago and I can still see her as clearly now as then, her hair flowing around her face as she smiled and laughed at me. By the time I got back to the roof, Shawn had already sworn off ever going back down to the ground again and Veronica had begun her campaign to never let me put myself at risk again.
Now Jane was telling me that she had decid
ed the relationship had run its course. She was accepting that she couldn’t live with me being who I am and she had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to change, or maybe that I couldn’t change. This is who I am and like I had told her, if she couldn’t live with that then maybe it was time to end this thing we had. She knew I was leaving when she told Jane to give me that message. She knew that as soon as he left the roof it would be over. I smiled to myself and felt a wave of relief wash over me. I know I should be ashamed of that, but I’m not. I knew this thing we had was not built to last the morning Amanda drove me back to Wal-Mart. Veronica had changed while I had been away. I had always had my suspicions about what was going on with her, but it wasn’t until months later that I was allowed to find out for sure.
I pulled myself out of these memories and looked at Jane. He was still standing there watching me with an almost worried look on his face.
“You haven’t been looking too good lately. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I said.
“You still not sleeping?”
I frowned. “No. And keep that on the low. There are some things Amanda doesn’t need to know. And about the whole break up thing, trust me; you didn’t have anything to do with that. Veronica and I have just made too many mistakes to keep going I guess.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to work it out once we get back.” Jane said.
“Yeah maybe, but I doubt it.”
Amanda walked over to me and in a whisper of a voice said, “We really need to get moving. I know it’s risky with it still being dark, but if we’re going, we need to go.”
She was right, but we were facing the problem of having a destination with absolutely no idea what route to take to get there. Fred said that the Head Hunters lay between us and the Med Center so we couldn’t just go straight down State of Franklin. I don’t know Johnson City at all. I knew Amanda and Jane didn’t know it either. Marky Mark had been in town visiting his sister when all of this happened, so he didn’t have a clue where anything was either. That left Sass and Fred. Sass might know the town, but I thought if he did then it would just be where the shops were on the main roads. Would that be enough to get us to where we needed to go? I didn’t relish the idea of wandering around the city aimlessly hoping the path we were taking led to where we wanted to go. This would be risky due to the fact that we didn’t know what other dangerous settlements had sprung up within the last few months and we also didn’t know how many zombies would be out there watching us as we played a mixture of follow the leader and the blind leading the blind. The percentage chance of us dying seemed too high for comfort.
This left us with Fred. I didn’t like that option either. Fred and his daughter had showed up a little over a month ago and I had thought that they were both good people and that I could trust them. That was something that was becoming more and more of a rare commodity these days. Now I find that the trust I had in at least him may have been seriously misplaced. And why was that exactly? Why did I feel I couldn't trust him?
The kidnappers made it up onto our roof. I just kept coming back to that. There was no way they could have been on our roof. Not without help. Was there somebody in our group that was here undercover from the Med Center? Somebody sent in advance before all of this ever went down. Or did Fred let them up onto the roof for some reason? Did he not realize that they were here for the kid and he let them up in secret? Had he done that, they could have easily overpowered him and taken the kid before he could do much more than start screaming Samantha’s name into the night.
I wasn’t sure if he had been played like that or not, but I knew if something like that had happened to him there was no way he would tell us. Shame leads to secrets and secrets kill trust. I had a hard time letting a man I couldn’t trust take the lead on this. Who could say where he would take us?
NOW
DAY 123 OF THE INFECTION
SEVEN
“Why are we still standing here?” Fred asked. I closed my eyes. Here was another decision I may not live to regret.
“Fred, I’m trying to figure out how we should proceed. You were quick to tell me how little I knew about the world just down the road and taking that into account I am at a loss as to what route we should take on our adventure to save your bouncing baby girl.”
“I can show you. I know the way.” Fred said in a tone that was almost pleading.
I looked back to Amanda and Jane. I gave them a look that said, “I don’t think we can trust him.” They both gave me a look back that said, “Do we really have a choice?” I hated to admit it but, no, we really didn’t have much of a choice. If this half-baked rescue mission was going to have a slim chance of success we would have to put our lives into Fred’s hands.
“Fine Baker, I am going to have to trust you on this. We will follow you, but if you screw us over…”
“Why would I want to screw you guys over? You’re putting everything on the line to try and get my daughter back.” Fred said.
He made a good point, why was I so ready to slap the cuffs on this guy? Was it because of my theory of how the kidnappers had gotten Samantha or was there something more? Wasn’t there a look in his eyes? Wasn’t there a little something more than normal in his posture? Even if there was something there for me to see couldn’t it just be unease or worry about his daughter’s abduction? I couldn’t waste time chasing ghosts on this. I had to be decisive. I had said we were going after Samantha and I had to quit worrying about any of these maybe dangers and focus on the dangers I knew to exist. We still had five kidnapers at large and moving through the dark towards the Med Center. I had no illusions that we would be able to catch them. There was no need to rush, they were gone. All we needed to do was make sure that we made it to the Med Center in one piece, so we could take our stab at doing the rescue. If we hurried and got infected Samantha would be lost.
“How should we start? Should we just go over the bank here at the gas pumps like they did?” Sass asked.
I guess Fred was still a bit mad at my untrusting ways. He didn’t say a word; he simply walked over to the edge of the hill and disappeared into the night. I looked back to Amanda and Jane and they shrugged, their body language saying, “Your call boss. We going or not?” I gave a long, loud, sigh and walked over to the edge of the hill. Looking down I could see Fred just then coming in for a landing onto the road below. It seemed the way down this steep hillside was more of a lay on your butt and slide method than the more popular stay on your feet and try to keep your balance method.
This was my last chance to stop this insanity. This was my last chance to turn us around and march us back to the safety of Wal-Mart. This was it, do or die, to be or not to be, or even the always popular, shit or get off the pot. I closed my eyes and slid down the hill. Screwed or not, we were locked in now, and there could be no more debate. We were racing the bad guys to the Med Center.
From the top of the hill I could hear Marky Mark complain to the night, “You gotta be freak’n kid’n me here. We slid’n down this thing?” I heard quiet laughter coming from one or two of the people from behind me and I have to admit that I felt a smile spreading across my face. Fred had waited at the bottom and once I landed he turned his back to me and began to walk towards Browns Mill Road.
“Fred. Wait.” I said. He spun around and looked at me.
“This attitude is going to disappear or you going to look around and find that we are no longer behind you.”
Fred glared at me. “Where do you get off accusing me of doing all of this just to set you guys up? How dare you think I would risk my daughter in such a way?” There was no attempt to hide the anger in his voice. I felt my own anger rise and then Jim flashed in my head, “Your fault Charlie. Your fault.”
My anger died.
“Fred, if you expect me to apologize for thinking that something more is going on, you are going to be disappointed. I am the leader of this group. The well being of everybody on that roof is my responsibility a
nd that is a job I don’t take lightly. I will not take my accusations back because I’m not sure that I’m wrong about you.”
“Charlie. You just told me that it is your responsibility to keep everybody on the roof safe. What about Samantha? Why is everybody more important than my daughter? Do you think she’s safe now?”
Did I think that she was safe? That was a really good question.
“I don’t know if she is safe or not Fred. If these are agents of her mother and she’s as menacing as you have said, then I think she is as safe as she could be. I can’t imagine that any of those kidnapers would want to return empty handed. Even worse would be returning with her dead body.” I felt an arm lay across my shoulder as I finished speaking.
“Nobody here knows for sure how safe she is.” Jane said.
“Now, let’s go find out for ourselves.” Sass added.
There was a moment of silence then Fred simply nodded his head, turned around to face Browns Mill Road, and began to walk away from us. I looked around to Jane who smiled at me.
“Why do you always have to pick on the new guys?” Jane asked.
EIGHT
Browns Mill Road runs straight down the hill to the awaiting arms of State of Franklin. As we began our descent to the four lane corridor which was once nothing more than a dog track with car after car chasing their own pretty white rabbit, I could see, now it was more like the fabled elephant graveyard. Dead or dying metal husks lay strewn about the road below us. Here was the true tombstone of America. All of the cars and trucks that we were so proud of now sat wrecked and abandoned on the road before me. This for me, more than anything else, was evidence that America no longer existed. The country we lived in now would be better off called the United Lands of Zombie Resistance, or something equally as stupid.
A Good Distance From Dying_Book 2_Samantha's Song Page 7