I sat there in that eerie house, suddenly reminded of that same feeling of being the last kid hiding, and hoping that they would never find my hiding spot.
The problem was that the game always came to an end. Always.
I looked at Kyle just after a zombie passed by the front of the house.
“I don’t think it’s gonna be long before they discover us in here,” I whispered.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I think we need a distraction of sorts. Those things love noise, and we have that chainsaw in the back of the house.”
“That thing is pretty loud. We could hear it all the way from the siren,” I agreed.
“The only thing is, those two ass fucking cops are still chained up out back, and I’m sure they have been turned by now.” He motioned toward the back door with his head.
He was right; it was too risky. They would certainly alert the rest of the horde to our presence. The only way out was through the front.
Michael crept up behind us, holding his wounded hand to his shoulder, his good hand protecting his gut.
“I saw a key hook by the garage,” he said in a small voice.
“So?” Kyle scowled, his mind already working on possibilities.
“Well, if there is a spare set of keys for that Porsche out there, maybe we can set off the car alarm again, giving us enough time to make it to the Hummer.”
We didn’t have a chance to reply; a gunshot from across the street grabbed our attention. A man with blue jeans and a trench coat had climbed up into an oak tree. He was hanging over a branch. The gunshot attracted six or seven of the creatures, who were all climbing on top of each other trying to get to their quarry.
The guy had the right idea and was just out of arm reach, except for his coat which hung just a few feet lower than the branch. A zombie that looked like she was dressed in a black and white nun outfit caught hold of the jacket, and pulled him backward. He was able to squeeze off two more rounds before hitting the ground, the vile undead instantly tearing into his flesh.
We all stopped for a moment, exchanging glances.
“So…I think that key idea is worth a look,” Kyle finally said.
Nodding in agreement, the three of us, still crouching, moved quickly through the kitchen, and down the hall to the garage. The hook held three sets of keys.
Kyle cautiously opened the garage door. There were two other vehicles in the three-car garage. Both of them were smaller cars, with what looked like extension cords attached to nearby electrical outlets.
“Fucking hippies,” Kyle spat.
“Yeah, a lot of good an electric car will do us in a world without electricity,” Michael shrugged. Of the three sets, I took the one that had the familiar Porsche emblem on it. When we got back to the front door, we all looked outside, weighing our options. The zombies were still out there, meticulously searching.
“You ready for this?” I whispered, lifting the key chain up so we could all see it. I noticed my hands were sweaty, but took in a deep, steadying breath. Kyle opened his mouth to answer when, in that instant, just before I could push the key chain’s button, the grandfather clock chimed on the hour.
DONG! DONG! The noise was ungodly loud in the silence.
DONG! DONG! DONG!
Michael jerked violently as if shot. I could hardly blame him, nearly having shit my pants as well.
“Are you kidding me?” Kyle screamed over the noise.
Looking outside, it was clear that the zombies could hear it, too. They were all convening on the front porch.
“Hit it!” Michael screamed suddenly.
DONG! DONG! DONG!
I fumbled it for a second, and then pushed the button to the alarm on the Porsche. Nothing. I smashed it down again. Still nothing.
“We’re not close enough!” I yelled.
Kyle kicked open the front door, and drove his metal weapon down across the closest zombie’s head.
“Come on!” he commanded channeling his inner drill sergeant.
The three of us burst from the house. I was still jamming my finger on the button as I brought my hammer down into the eye of the creature dressed like a nun.
Swinging the metal, Kyle cleared a path for us.
Kyle and I were getting closer and closer to the Porsche, when I realized Michael was not with us. I looked back and could see that he had not left the front porch.
“Come on!” I yelled at him.
He was paralyzed with terror. Two creatures were heading right for him.
“Shit!” I yelled as I pulled the pistol out, targeted the sight right on the first zombie’s head and fired.
“Fuck!” Total miss. I was damn lucky not to hit the man I was trying to save.
Drawn by the noise of the shot, the two creatures turned around, and started towards me.
I leveled the gun again, paused, took a deep breath, and exhaled as I pulled the trigger. Another miss.
“Fuck me!” I howled in sheer frustration.
The movies make it look so easy. The reality is that the head is a pretty small target. Add the complicating factor of moving targets, and you can bet your ass that making it out to the shooting range a few times a year, won’t make you the Rambo of the Zombie Apocalypse.
I holstered the gun, and raised the hammer, my trusty hammer. As Kyle would have said, I’d have to go with hand to hand combat. I finished off the zombies with straining arms.
I took another five steps toward the Porsche, and hit the alarm button with all the strength my thumb could muster.
The most beautiful sound in the world erupted from the middle of the street.
I saw the three dead polishing off what was left of Sophia. They were quickly joined by the accumulating crowd, clearing the front yard just enough for us to navigate towards the safety of the Hummer.
Running over to Michael, Kyle grabbed him by his shirt collar, dragging him along the side of the house. The three of us crawled up into the Hummer, and I hit the ignition. Throwing it into gear as the car seat moved up, and the seat heaters turned on, I accelerated past the pack of zombies crawling all over the Porsche, and sped off down the street. Blowing through the blinking stoplight by the pharmacy, I watched the glow of the neighborhood lampposts through the rearview as we drove away.
Even now, I remember them vividly. They were the last ones that I’d see working.
We spent the night parked on the side of the road near an overpass. It gave us some shelter, yet left us with a three hundred and sixty degree view in case of a hasty escape.
As we hunkered down to catch some sleep, Michael popped a couple more pills and downed them with our diminishing supply of bottled water. I didn’t say anything. After all, he had drawn the shortest straw for the first watch.
We knew we’d have to find more gas and supplies in the morning. It was inevitable.
I was drifting off to sleep, my face turned into the corner between the seat and the locked door, when I could feel a light shine on my face. I opened my eyes to the glow coming from the sky. As the grogginess started to subside, it became clear that something was falling out of orbit.
My initial reaction was that it was a comet of some sort due to its long tail, like you’d see in pictures or the movies. It wasn’t heading straight down so much as it was shooting across the sky.
“It’s a satellite or a space station,” Michael said wearily. “Either way, it’s some sort of man made space junk.”
“How do you know?” I asked curiously.
“Well, you see how it’s breaking apart, pieces falling all around it? That is the metal burning off. A meteor would be more rounded in the front. There are over twenty thousand pieces of man made space junk floating around up there. Some bigger than others, obviously.” He was quite knowledgeable about it, telling me about the differences between how comets, meteors, and space debris fell through the atmosphere.
“How do you know about all that?” I asked.
“My son was really int
o it. We’d go up to our building’s rooftop to watch the stars. Well, watch ‘em as much as we could through all the smog in the city. Hell, with the right telescope you can still see plenty.” Michael paused. “He wanted to see a comet so badly…,” he finally said, drifting off into thought.
He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, but I knew his son wouldn’t be seeing a comet.
We sat there for a while, watching the glowing projectile. If it was, in fact, a space station, I wondered if there was anybody still alive in there, or in any space station for that matter. Good luck with the re-supply.
Looking across the front seat, I saw that Kyle was fast asleep.
I also caught a small movement out of the corner of my eye. The glow from the falling object had lit up a small field with tall grass to our right. There were three zombies out there.
They simply stood there, with faces pointed upward, gazing at the sky. They were completely drawn towards the light.
“Look over there,” I whispered. “With the moon gone, especially after being near full for a number of nights, we may never have known they were out there.”
We watched them from the safety of the Hummer. Each of them rocking in place, trying as hard as their stiff bodies would allow them to look up at the light show.
Following their gaze, I thought back to before Jenn and I had been married. We were out camping with some friends, and she and I had snuck away from the group, lying in the bed of an old rusted pickup truck. A shooting star flew across the night sky. It was the first that I’d ever seen. We kissed for the first time under that spectacle. Her lips were soft as silk, and I remember feeling the warmth of her body against mine. Call it what you like, but I knew right then and there that she would be my wife.
“Looks like it’s landing southeast. The same direction we’re heading.” Michael interrupted my memory.
That observation was a little unsettling to me. Neither of us said anything for a few moments. Drawn towards the light as much as the zombies outside. Michael seemed to feel my discomfort.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see it. It will probably burn to bits in the atmosphere before it ever hits the ground. Probably,” Michael added. I snorted in amused relief.
I woke Kyle then, to let him know that we were moving down the street a ways to find a better place to sleep for the night. He gave a sleepy nod but his attention was on the light. Still mesmerized, the zombies didn’t even budge when we started the car or drove away. I parked in another spot, having used the headlights and alleged falling debris light to scout an area free of zombies.
I fell asleep wondering if Jenn was watching the show from wherever she was.
Chapter 16
You’ve saved my life countless times. You have my word.
The morning hours were spent scavenging other cars on the highway. We tried to stay away from groups of cars, as they proved to be the most dangerous, and likely had crawlers or grabbers.
Crawlers were the dead that crawled across the ground, usually with some sort of physical deformity that would not allow them to walk. Grabbers were what we called the zombies that were still buckled into the cars. They would grab at us when we walked by an open window.
Both would scare the shit out of us, especially because we usually couldn’t see them coming as easily as the ambulatory creatures, who we eventually coined as just plain old Zs, based on what the people back at the neighborhood had called them.
I was on the hunt for some new clothing. I had noticed that morning, aside from my suit being covered in blood and torn, that I was continually pulling up my pants. I had definitely lost weight. A steady diet of snack bars and bottled water will do that to a man, especially one who lives on burgers and fast food.
We had a pretty good routine going around siphoning gas from abandoned cars. Two of us would watch on either side of the car, while one would be on siphon duty. The Hummer took an enormous amount of fuel.
The three of us discussed ditching the Hummer for a car that was more economic. Pros being that we could get further on less gas, meaning that we’d spend less time sitting out in the open siphoning fuel. Cons being that a smaller car would mean less protection from the Zs, and less ability to go off road in a pinch.
We even talked about finding motorcycles. They would clearly be the easiest way to maneuver through all the debris and abandoned cars on the roads. They also used the least amount of gas. In addition, we could hide them much easier than we could hide the giant yellow Hummer we were cruising around in. However, they provided no protection at all.
In the end, we decided that the siphoning stops were worth the extra security and protection. The Hummer had gotten us this far. Besides, at this point, we knew it was reliable. We could easily pick another vehicle, and it could break down on us a few miles down the road.
While we were scavenging, we came across a brown Range Rover. It had already been looted thoroughly.
“Looks like we were not the only ones to come up with this trick,” Kyle said, as we picked through what was left of the SUV.
It had been T-boned by a small Kia, and nearly torn in half. The owner had obviously turned into a Z at some point, but with a bloody gaping hole in his head, we could see that whoever took his shit had made sure he wouldn’t be putting up a fight.
The good news was that I was able to dig through his clothing to find a suitable pair of blue jeans, a new black shirt and a green coat that was clearly made to look like a military jacket. Kyle was quick to point out it was a fake. I didn’t care. At least it provided protection from the elements.
I was also able to pull a new pair of boots from the wreckage. They were still in the box, and close enough to my size. What was ironic, was that there were bunches of boxes strewn around the Range Rover.
Michael looked down at the wreckage and said, “Look at this stuff, a package for a thousand dollar GPS unit, a tag for a fifteen hundred dollar rifle...”
“Sad really. He was prepared with all this stuff. The best in gear, an eighty thousand dollar SUV, but he never got to use it, and it certainly didn’t save him,” I commented.
“Maybe he looted a Wal-Mart or a sporting goods store.”
“Or maybe he was just some rich guy who had the money to buy survival shit, but never learned to use it,” Kyle interjected as he sneered over at Michael.
Eyes connected, they both paused for a few seconds, and then Michael looked away. He clearly didn’t want to get into an argument with Kyle.
“Either way, he’s dead now. You gotta be smart to survive out here. Not rich,” Kyle added.
The conversation ended. One thing was for sure, Kyle clearly didn’t mind letting Michael know that his wealth didn’t mean jack-shit out here.
As I surveyed the area, I made a mental note that the ravaged Rover was actually the first sign of survival on the roads that I’d seen. Sure, there had been those holed up in houses like at Sofia’s. This was the first real proof that other living people had the same idea we did. As we moved further along, we began seeing dead Zs, really dead, on the side of the road. Each of them had punctures or bullet holes in their heads.
Whoever these survivors were, they were heading in the same direction as us. We were just fine leaving them to clear the path.
In the afternoon, we made great progress towards West Virginia. Although we had to backtrack a few times to dodge large swarms of zombies or roads that were completely blocked, we had actually made it out of New Jersey. We passed through a small sliver of Maryland before we came to the Virginia state line.
We slowed down to a crawl, rolling closer to a blue sign with a red bird on it that said “Welcome to Virginia.” As we got closer, we could see that someone had used red spray paint to add a single word: “AVALON.”
Kyle looked back at Michael, the scowl deepening.
“How did you learn about Avalon?” he asked in an odd tone of voice.
“What do you mean?” Michael responded being put on the defen
se.
“Well, it seems strange that we heard about this magical haven called Avalon from you, a self-proclaimed rich guy who crash lands his helicopter in our lap. Then the following day, we hear the same thing from a psychotic marauder who’s got a thing for cutting off people’s fingers. Now we’re seeing it spray painted here across this sign.”
Michael lifted his head, and moved uneasily, shifting his eyes from one side to the other.
“I mean, seriously,” Kyle went on, “as I sit here, I’m wondering how the hell a place like this just popped up out of nowhere. How is it that everybody we have come across knows about it except for us?” He wiggled his thumb between him and me.
The thought had crossed my mind as well. Kyle was just acting on the question. I found myself twisting my wedding ring.
Michael hesitated. There was an uneasy tension in the car.
“This isn’t the kind of place you get a brochure from,” Michael started slowly.
Kyle didn’t flinch, remaining silent. His expression remained guarded though his eyes shot daggers at the man.
“You know, it’s the kind of place you have to be referred to, and hear about through a friend of a friend...through the grapevine, if you will,” Michael explained patiently.
“But how does everybody know about it?”
“How does news travel in the apocalypse? I’m assuming word of mouth. A few people with tickets are trying to get there. They tell a few people, and then they tell a few people and so on. It’s got to be the only thing people are talking about when they run into trouble. Where can I go where it’s safe?”
Now I joined in on the conversation.
“So how do you know it really exists? How do you know we can get in?”
“You’re going to have to trust me,” Michael said firmly. “I have connections, and these are connections I trust. Avalon is real. I also have enough money to get you and your friends and family in. This may be the end of the world, but green is still green. I have a lot of green. Right now, I have four tickets. I had to buy those right off the bat for my two pilots and assistant.”
900 Miles: A Zombie Novel Page 11