by James Gurley
Catalina was a small town flowing along both sides of the highway. One strip mall where Jake had sometimes eaten breakfast was now only blackened ruins in a sea of cracked asphalt and rusting automobiles. Many other buildings had suffered similar fates, as unattended stoves and ovens had ignited gas leaks or other flammable material. Some fires had been deliberately set by vandals or looters. Zombies roamed the parking lot of the Basha’s grocery store where he had once shopped and attempted to pursue the two vehicles, but moved too slowly to present a problem. As one of the creatures rushed down the hill on which the grocery store was situated, it stumbled and rolled head-over-heels to the bottom. It picked itself up, looked around as if searching for whoever had tripped it, and continued toward the highway. Freshly turned zombies or zombies who had just fed, Runners, could move swiftly, but the longer they existed without feeding, the slower and weaker they became, Shamblers. He didn’t know how long they could survive without eating, but so far, he had encountered no zombies dead from natural causes.
In Oro Valley, beyond the pass between the Tortalita and the Catalina mountains, the devastation was less severe, but vehicles filled the parking lots of the Oro Valley Marketplace Mall, including military trucks and police squad cars. Jake frowned at the empty squad cars. He might have known some of the officers that had driven them, not friends but at least acquaintances. The remains of a FEMA medical tent city in the open area between parking lots lay scattered by the wind. The shattered chain link fence that had protected it and the weathered skeletons dotting the asphalt around the tent reminded him of the confusion and misery of those final days when he had still been a cop. He had helped ferry the sick to the FEMA facility after the Oro Valley Hospital had become overwhelmed with patients. Some had gone willingly. Others had gone in handcuffs. None had survived. They had simply died away from home and loved ones. His participation in such acts of forced incarceration had been one of the turning points in his decision to quit the force. His dwindling faith in the government’s ability to solve the problem wasn’t as strong as his faith in himself.
Zombies roamed the empty stores and parking lots in search of food. Many turned their heads in his direction at the sound of the jeep and the truck, but even with their limited mental capacity, they knew the vehicle was too far away to chase after them.
Further south, across from a large shopping center, several corpses littered the CVS parking lot. Jake didn’t bother to check if they had been zombies or victims of zombies. The unmoving dead no longer mattered. As Reed had said, the store had been looted of most food items, narcotics, medical supplies, and oddly enough, cosmetics. The odor of rotten food spilled from open cooler doors. The stringent smell of vinegar rose from a broken case of soured apple juice. As he walked deeper into the store, glass from broken bottles of wine and liquor crunched beneath the sole of his boots. The corpse of a young man lay on the floor between aisles. He had been dead many weeks. His decaying body had almost mummified in the dry heat. From his withered arm protruded a hypodermic syringe.
“Poor bastard couldn’t even wait to get home before shooting up,” Reed observed.
“Small loss,” Jake replied, stepping over the body, instantly dismissing it. He had witnessed many similar scenes as a deputy. To him, drugs were a pipeline to death, and dead junkies didn’t bother him. He had become apathetic to people willing to commit slow suicide. It was their families he felt sorry for, not the junkies.
In the pharmacy section, the shelves been thoroughly ransacked, especially of aspirin, cough syrup, and disinfectants. Some bottles had been deliberately broken in anger, spilling their contents across the floor. Tablets were crushed to a fine powder by the tread of many feet. Reed searched through a pile of rubble and grabbed three boxes of inhalers that looters had missed and stuffed them into a bag he carried. Jake located a large bottle of Torsemide, but only two bottles of Actos, enough for sixty days.
“I can’t find the Millipred,” Reed mumbled, as he tossed aside boxes in his search.
Jake scraped up a large handful of aspirin that had spilled from a broken bottle and shoved them into his pocket. “Try the customer Will Call,” he suggested, as he picked up a box of bandages and antiseptic ointment.
Heeding his advice, Reed checked the packages that had been waiting for customers who would never pick them up. “Yes!” he cried in triumph, holding aloft two vials of Millipred. He read from the package label. “Thank you Mr. Dexter Ellis for your generous donation to the Alton Reed Medical Fund.”
At the sound of broken glass crunching, Jake motioned Reed to silence. Laying his supplies on the counter, he edged toward the noise. He had taken only two steps toward the customer counter, when a zombie thrust its head through the glass, smashing it. Broken shards stuck in the creature’s head, as well as Jake’s arm. He leaped backwards to avoid the zombie’s clutching hands. He plucked the glass from his arm and wiped the blood on his pants. Reed dropped his load of supplies and pointed his rifle at the creature. Fearing the noise would attract more zombies, Jake cautioned him with a wave of his hand to wait.
This zombie was no Shambler. It was a Runner, fresh from a kill, eager for more flesh. Barely dried blood coated its mouth and upper torso. It tilted its head to one side and sniffed the air, keening at the smell of Jake’s blood. He had left his knife in the jeep. Keeping his body away from the zombie’s flailing arms, he picked up a long sliver of broken glass, and wrapped one end in a white pharmacist’s smock hanging on a hook. Leaping forward quickly, he jabbed the glass into the back of the creature’s neck between the third and fourth vertebrae and twisted until the shard snapped in his hands. The zombie groaned and died, the glass severing its spinal column.
“That was close,” Reed said.
Jake took a deep breath and nodded. “Too damn close. It’s time to leave.” He tossed the bloody smock on the floor and took a closer look at the zombie, a middle-aged male whose clothing was surprisingly clean except for the fresh blood stains. He had turned only recently and fed even more recently. “There’s bound to be more around.”
Reed pointed to Jake’s arm. “You had better see to that.”
Jake glanced at the wound. Already, the blood flow was slowing. He dismissed Reed’s concern with, “I’ll be fine,” but he did apply some of the antiseptic ointment to prevent infection. With no doctors, prevention was tantamount to survival.
On the way out, he picked up a collapsible water hose to add to his irrigation system. Reed grinned but said nothing. Satisfied with his haul, Reed was ready to return to his RV, but Jake decided to look around. It had been many weeks since he had last ventured so far from home, and he wanted to discover what was happening in the dead city, and to see if the military had managed to secure the area.
“I’ll be along later,” he told Reed.” Maybe I’ll see you in a day or two.” Having someone to talk with had been more pleasant than he had expected. Having met someone, he was reluctant to sever the relationship, but even more reluctant to commit himself.
Reed replied, “If I have to move, I’ll be in Oracle Park.”
After they had parted company, Jake continued south on Oracle Road. A barricade had been hastily thrown across the road at one intersection in an attempt to block incoming traffic in the mistaken belief that the Staggers was restricted to transmission by contact, rather than airborne through mosquitoes, flies, and other insects. Lines of abandoned vehicles filled all lanes. Several disintegrating corpses lying in and around the vehicles spoke of the determination with which the erecters of the barricade had fought to keep out strangers. In the end, their efforts had been futile. The city had died.
He detoured along several smaller side roads to bypass the barricade, detecting signs of life in a few houses – fresh wash hanging on clotheslines, cars not covered by pollen or fallen leaves, indicating they had been driven recently, and subtle movement behind curtains as he passed. It could have been zombies, but the movements were so furtive that he believed frightene
d survivors lived there.
He saw many zombies, hundreds, in fact. He ran a few down with his jeep when they stepped in front of him, but he didn’t go out of his way to kill those wise enough to remain off the road. Most of the houses had been ransacked or looted. Broken windows, smashed doors, and scattered debris were the calling cards of human scavengers; human skeletons, the leftovers of zombie attacks. Here and there, he saw signs that some people had banded together at schools, churches, or businesses to combat zombies or looters – chain link fences and walls constructed from metal freight containers or overturned vehicles; the bodies of looters hanging from trees and streetlights; piles of cremated zombies in empty lots or washes – but nowhere did he see groups of living people. They had either fled or had fallen victim to marauders both human and inhuman.
Parking atop a ridge south of Canada del Oro Wash, he had a sweeping vista of Tucson with the backdrop of the Santa Rita Mountains towering to the south. The city certainly appeared dead. The streets were deserted of traffic. No smoke rose from chimneys. No sounds stirred the still air. Entire neighborhoods had been razed during riots or brush fires. Perhaps the clearest indications that the city was lost were the flocks of buzzards circling overhead and the packs of wild dogs and coyotes roaming the streets. All three groups of scavengers competed for the same food source, dead bodies. Murders of crows patrolled the parking lots and buildings, their ebony wings glistening in the sun. It was a city of the dead and the dying. Scavengers, winged, four-legged, and two-legged, ruled the city.
He had seen enough. The sight of the dead city depressed and sickened him. Further explorations would prove nothing. If anyone remained alive in Tucson, they were hiding and would soon become victims, or they were predators living off the bloated corpse of the city and the few remaining survivors that crawled through its innards like maggots. He turned away and started home.
3
June 7, 2016 Oro valley, AZ –
Jake was intent on reaching home, so intent that he almost failed to see the woman racing across the road, pursued by three fast zombies, Runners. He slammed on the brakes, sliding to a halt to miss her. One of the creatures focused its attention on him rather than the girl. Jake grabbed his crossbow and leaped from the jeep. His arrow struck the creature in the right side of its temple and passed completely through the skull in a fine spray of blood. The zombie took two faltering steps, teetered, and collapsed beside the road, rolling into a ditch. Before it hit the ground, Jake was in pursuit of the other two creatures.
The woman was fast, but she was clearly tiring. She stumbled, righted herself, and then stumbled again, this time falling and rolling across the ground. She picked herself up and saw that her pursuers were gaining. Changing directions, she raced toward a nearby building, limping slightly.
Jake stopped long enough to eliminate a second zombie with a bolt through its head, but the other Runner was too far away. He raced to catch up. The woman scrambled up on the flat roof of the building using a Palo Verde tree as a convenient ladder. At least she has more sense than to get herself cornered inside a building, he thought. When he got within range, he took steady aim and dropped the last Runner, who was intent on getting at the woman, clawing at the tree in rage. The woman noticed Jake but made no effort to vacate the roof.
“Come down. We have to go before more show up.”
She still didn’t budge. He was on the verge of leaving her, when she began to climb back down. As she did, a branch snapped, and she plunged ten feet to the ground. Jake watched her fall in slow motion, knowing he could never reach her in time. She landed with a sickening thud on her right side and lay there groaning. He rushed to help.
She was young, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, slim and athletic, but looked as though she had missed a meal or two lately. She looked up at him and grimaced, as she tried to sit up.
“I think I sprained my shoulder,” she said.
“Lucky you didn’t break your fool neck,” he replied a little harsher than he had intended, but continued, “What were you doing out here unarmed and baiting zombies?”
“I don’t like guns,” she said.
“Then keep dying a horrible death real high on your list of things to do, ‘cause that’s what’s going to happen to you.” He raised his crossbow into the air. Her eyes followed it. “Either you kill them, or they’ll kill you. Being a pacifist nowadays is a death wish. You can’t always depend on someone who doesn’t share your disdain for self-defense to help.”
“You’re a cop. Isn’t that what you do, save people?”
He didn’t feel like repeating his great-grandfather story about the badge. “I’m not a cop, and I normally don’t save people. Today was your lucky day. Now, why were you running?”
“My friends and I were holed up in a house a couple of miles away. Ben got careless on a food run and zombies followed him back. We didn’t know they were there until they broke the door down. One grabbed Liz.” She paused and closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she continued, “Ben tried to save her. They both died, horribly,” she added, looking up at him with a sneer. “I ran.”
She was angry with herself for deserting her friends. He decided to wise her up. “Smart move. They’re dead. You’re not.”
Some of the anger drained from her face. “I would be if not for you. By the way, my name is Jessica.”
Her sudden shift from disdain to praise caught him off guard and embarrassed him. He helped her to her feet using her good left arm. “You had better come with me, Jessica. I’ll see what I can do about that shoulder. Can you walk?”
She took a few uncertain steps. “I can manage, but my shoulder is numb.”
He noticed her right arm dangling loosely at her side. “You’ve dislocated your shoulder. Here.”
He handed her his crossbow, and then grabbed her right arm. Before she could protest, he pulled it outwards and up. She yelped in pain, as the bones slipped back into place.
“That hurt like hell,” she snapped, drawing back from him.
In the Army, he had become a Jack-of-all-trades. A little medical knowledge went a long way fifty clicks from the nearest medic. He knew how much pain he had caused her. “It will heal,” he replied. He took his crossbow from her. “Let’s go.”
She followed, limping badly. She had run a couple of miles wearing shorts and sandals with hungry zombies in hot pursuit. Her legs were covered with numerous scratches and scrapes. Several prickly pear cactus spines protruded from her flesh. Her t-shirt was ripped in several places, exposing one of her small, naked breasts through the fabric. He tried not to stare at it, but the sight stirred something in him. He fought it down, as he wrapped his arm around her waist to help her walk. She didn’t protest.
Back in the jeep, he offered her water and a protein bar he kept handy in case of an attack of hypoglycemia. She accepted both eagerly, downing the bar in three quick bites.
“Thanks,” she said, still chewing. “What’s your name?”
“Jake Blakely.” He fished another bar from his bag and handed it to her. “You can’t go back home,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, Jake, I can’t.” She glanced around. “I know the area. I’ll find some place safe.”
“And starve?” he asked. She didn’t reply. “Look, it’s not safe here. I’ve got a place north of here that’s secure, and I have plenty of food.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’ve got hot water for a shower, too. I don’t make any promises, but at least you’ll have a meal, a shower, and a place to sleep tonight.”
She looked at him undecided. He guessed at the reason for her caution.
“If I wanted to rape you or kill you, I could easily do it now, and I wouldn’t have had to waste precious protein bars.”
She smiled sheepishly at him. “You’re right. I’m being foolish. I accept.”
“Just as long as you know I’m not adopting you. When your wounds heal, you’re gone.”
“Fair enough. I don’t want to be a bother.
”
“Too late for that,” he replied, as he cranked the jeep, mentally kicking himself for ignoring Jack’s Law #4 – Don’t bring home more problems than you left with. Especially a good looking problem, he added.
* * * *
Later, after a shower, Jessica looked almost human again. Her short red hair hung in wet curls on her scalp. He had given her one of his t-shirts to replace her torn one. It was too big for her small frame, but at least it hid her breasts. While she was showering, he had considered his options. He had broken Jack’s Law #2 twice today already, and his nose was feeling rather tender. He had saved Reed, and now Jessica. He didn’t know what had gotten into him, but now she was here, and he was responsible for her.
“Sit down,” he said.
He broke out his medical kit and tended to her cuts and scrapes. They were numerous but less serious than they had first appeared. He had painfully plucked out the cactus spines with a pair of tweezers before her shower to prevent them from breaking off and becoming infected. A few of the deeper gashes still bled. She winced, as he applied antiseptic spray and covered the wounds with bandages. Her sprained ankle and dislocated shoulder would heal with sufficient rest. Afterwards, as he put away his first aid kit, she smiled at him.
“You have gentle hands, Jake.”
Embarrassed, he ignored her comment. “I’ve got aspirin for pain, if your shoulder is bothering you?”
She moved her right arm experimentally and bit down on her lip. “A little stiff, but I’ll hold off on any pain killers for now. I don’t like drugs. I guess I won’t be doing any yoga for a few days.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Yoga? Are you a health nut?”
“If that’s what you want to call it. I teach, uh, taught yoga and nutrition. I try to maintain a healthy body – no meats, grains, processed or fatty foods.”
He laughed aloud. “Boy, did you choose the wrong time to be picky.”
She stared at him for a moment, finally got his joke, and laughed with him. “Yeah, it hasn’t been easy. I guess I’ll have to alter my diet, but I think my healthy lifestyle is the reason I haven’t gotten the Staggers.”