by Mark Clodi
“This is everlasting, unending afterlife we are talking about. If I end up in hell…well as the kids say today, that would suck.”
Laughing Bill said, “You’re not dead yet, can’t you repent?”
“I already have.”
“So you should be all set. Are you trying to save me now?”
“No, I sat through enough sermons to know I ain’t a preacher. But Bill, I have to tell you something.”
“Shoot.”
“I prayed a lot over the years and never saw anything come of it, I never got an answer. But lately, Bill, I’ve been getting answers.”
Bill stared at the old man for a minute, “Like, voices in your head answers? Or ‘prayers coming true’ sort of answers?”
The old man looked out into the night, focusing on something that Bill couldn’t see, he cleared his throat before answering, “I’m not crazy, at least I don’t think so. At first I ignored them. It’s like, well you ever been to a baseball game?”
“I’ve been to a few I-Cubs games, but never to a major league game.”
“It’s kind of like that, the crowd just sort of murmurs in the background, making a noise you just overlook to get on with your own talking. But when you are at a game and your own conversation stops, you might pick up on what people nearby are saying. You following me?”
“Yeah, or even at a restaurant.”
“Yes, like that. Well if I kind of stop thinking about anything in particular, I can hear people. I thought it was just people like you and Stewart the other day. But it’s not just them. It’s people I can’t see. People I am pretty sure are dead.”
“And you think it is God?” asked Bill.
“I know. Crazy. Not all God. But yeah, I think he is using them to talk to me, to give me advice. To tell me things I should otherwise have a way of knowing.”
“What kind of things?”
“Where people are, where zombies are, what they are doing. If I can make a difference in any given situation…or not.”
“That’s how you found Stewart. But how did you get over the fence?”
“There was a hole cut through it by the side of the building, it was hard to see from where we were, but they, the voices, told me it was there. They said Stewart would need my help and I had to go to her.” Ruben said.
“They said ‘would need’, so they told you the future?”
“Sort of, maybe they were guessing. With Stewart that isn’t much of a guess, is it? She’s always in the thick of things.”
Bill laughed, “Aren’t we all?”
Javier finally stopped pacing and asked, “All what?”
“In the thick of things. How’s your leg?” Bill asked.
“Good, I think I am okay, but I am still hungry.”
“You better wait at least fifteen or twenty minutes, I don’t know how much more you can hold.”
“The meals aren’t that big. How about I wait ten?” said Javier, eyeing the trunk.
“Your call, I won’t stand between you and food. We’ll have to see what we can pick up locally in the morning to make sure you have enough.”
“Okay.” Javier set off on another loop around the parking lot.
Ruben finished his cigarette, “So Bill, am I crazy?”
“Near as I can tell, yes. You should have stayed in Iowa old man.”
“I couldn’t do that, not when people half my age are running around trying to save the world. Not when I could make a difference.”
“Ruben, just watch what you are doing, okay? I mean if the voices tell you to do anything crazy just think about it before you act. Don’t just give in to them.”
Ruben nodded and tapped another cigarette out of the pack. As he smoked he thought about a pop song he had heard so many years before, one that wailed on about good advice you just couldn’t take.
Chapter 33 – Katie
“Anything?” Katie asked as she frantically rifled through the office on the ground floor.
“No, this isn’t my thing. I was never good with computers.” Randy said.
The two stood in the office surrounded by pulled down books and papers spread over every flat surface. They were looking for an address of the clinic the doctor worked at. Both had thought it would just be a matter of finding the location on some stationary or other paperwork, but so far they had found nothing.
“He’ll send someone for us. How far do you think it is from here?” Randy asked.
“Now how in the hell would I know that?”
“I dunno, how do you know you are looking for him in the first place? How’d you know this was his house?”
Katie slumped into an overstuffed chair, looking defeated in the near darkness. “Fuck if I know, I just do.” She stared up at the portrait hanging behind the desk where Randy was sitting. “Who do you think that is?”
“His father? The founder of modern medicine? His former lover?”
“Thanks, for that last image. I bet he lives about half an hour from where he works. We’ve spent ten minutes at this, so we should have another ten, then we gotta get out of here.”
“Well, I can’t get into his computer.” Randy was staring at the log in screen in front of him. He was able to type in passwords, but noted, with some amusement, the keys didn’t depress when he hit them. So far he had tried a variety of combinations with no luck. The two of them had kept the lights off in the house and the generator was still running in the garage, providing them with power if they needed it. From the bottom desk drawer they had found a notebook scribbled full of numbers and letters and Randy had tried every combination off of the pad as well.
“You know what we haven’t found?”
“What?” asked Randy.
“A safe. Move, would you?” Katie stood and walked over behind the desk to the painting. The wall behind the desk was lined with built-in bookshelves. The painting was hanging on a section of wall built out from the shelves. Katie grabbed the bottom corner of the picture and tried to lift it off the wall. It didn’t want to move.
“Bingo! There is something here.” Katie tugged on the edges of the painting, until the left side pulled free from the wall. The picture acted as a door with a heavy duty magnet keeping it from swinging open. Behind it was a wall safe with two dials. “Gimme the sheet with the numbers.” Katie said.
Randy reached for the pad of paper on the desk, but was unable to move it. “Sorry, that seems to be beyond my ability.”
Katie whirled and picked up the paper, but paused to lay one hand on Randy’s face. He felt solid to her touch. They stared at each other for a moment before Katie turned back to the wall with the pad. She went right to the bottom, skipping the crossed off numbers.
“Fucking idiot. If this works, I mean.” Katie said, “See how the numbers are split here, like these four are in a group and then there is a bit of a space to the next group? I bet this is the combo for the two dials.”
“Do it.”
Katie dialed the numbers on the safe and in a few seconds she heard a click. She pulled the door open and let out a low whistle, “Well, what do you think? Was the guy up to no good or what?” The safe was full cash. Neat stacks of hundred dollar bills wedged tightly into place, to one side of this stack was a manila folder slid in upright. Katie ignored the cash and pulled out the folder.
“Gold! Randy! Check it out! I bet he works here.” Katie held up a couple of checks, embossed with a fancy logo and the address of some sort of medical clinic on the front. Katie took out the first check and was moving to put it into the pocket of her shirt when Randy stopped her.
“Hold up. We don’t want him to know we know where he is.”
Looking around at the mess on the floor Katie turned back to Randy, “I think he might have a clue.”
“No, not for sure. He’ll know we go in here, but we don’t have to be obvious that we got into the safe. Take the last check. Put everything back the way you found it and then stash the note book back in the drawer. Toss it, but make it look like you ov
erlooked it. Then he won’t know for sure we found the safe or where the clinic is.”
“Good. That’s good. I suppose that is why you are the observer and I am the shooter.” Katie said referring to their team roles.
“No, you’re the shooter ‘cause I fucked up on the range and you shot better than me.”
“I am a better shot than you.”
“I’m not bad.”
“But not the best. Admit it. I’ll give you that you were the best observer; you always fed me the data I needed to get the shot.”
“If it shuts you up, you were the better shooter. But no one can observe like me.”
“Standing or lying around was always a strong point for you.” Katie teased as they exited the room.”
“Earning your pay for one trigger pull seemed to suit you too.”
As the two made their way to the back door, headlights flashed onto the front of the house from the street, it looked like more than one vehicle.
Randy looked at Katie, “Go. I’ll try to distract them.”
Stepping onto the back porch Katie eyed the grill and the propane tanks. “Yeah, you do that partner; catch up with me at the jeep. Be careful.”
“I’m dead, I doubt they will even see me.”
Katie paused by the grill, it was a luxury model with an electric battery start and came right on when she tapped the button. Hoisting one of the heavy propane tanks onto the burning grill she turned it sideways and brought the grill cover down on top of it. The cover couldn’t close all the way with the tank in the way and Katie pulled the whole thing sideways until the half open lid was facing the back fence.
She turned and ran towards the fence, carrying her two guns with her as she went. She had just cleared the fence when she heard the angry shouts behind her. Stopping in the woods she braced herself against a tree and watched as several fast moving figures fanned out in the back yard. Gunfire erupted from inside the house and the figures outside crouched down, making smaller targets in the overgrown grass.
Katie smiled smugly, she could have killed any of them from this range, it wasn’t even a hard shot despite the dim light of the moon. She settled the crosshairs on the shadowy head of the figure closest to the back patio. No more gunfire came from within and the zombie she was aiming at pointed at the grill, which was giving off a little flickering light from the open lid. Katie could tell it was a male, and he moved as if he had some sort of training, either police or military, he shied away from the windows of the house, but, of course he wasn’t being watched from inside the house.
‘That’s it, move just a little closer. Stand up a little more, perfect!’ Katie slowly squeezed the trigger and the man’s head burst apart, the bullet lined up perfectly with the propane tank sitting on the hot flames of the grill and the pressurized tank blew open when the bullet struck it. The resulting explosion sent a fireball screaming into the sky and blew down part of the kitchen wall and shattered all of the windows in the house. Katie felt the massive heat wave from the blast from where she was, a good hundred yards away.
The house caught fire and the pile of propane tanks had been scattered all over the patio, with some blown into the kitchen itself. Katie risked waiting a few seconds for the kitchen to really go up, and then took aim at another of the propane tanks. This explosion didn’t seem as fierce to Katie as the first, but its effects were far more devastating; it lifted part of the house up off of its foundation, when it crashed back down fully half the house collapsed.
Katie looked for the figures in the grass, they all still seemed to be there, stunned by the force of the explosions. Most of them were still moving, rolling to their stomachs to crawl away from the fire. ‘Easy pickings.’ She thought, it was tempting to pick a few of them off as they lay in the yard, but she fell back into her role and decided fading away would be a better idea than getting into a firefight.
Moving at a trot she followed her path back to her duffel back, which she picked up and tossed into the jeep. Starting the vehicle she backed onto the beach, which was much smaller now that the tide had come in.
“You happy?” Randy asked.
“It was a great idea.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t. But now it just makes you a larger threat. You can’t kick the anthill without repercussions.”
“Oh, I think there would have been repercussions anyway.”
“Well, maybe you would have been a lower level threat. Now you’ve done pissed him off. I mean you break into his house, kill his woman, ambush his men; twice, and steal his stuff. Then to top it all off you burn the place down.”
“Hey!” protested Katie, “He doesn’t know I stole his stuff now! I was just covering our tracks.”
Randy laughed.
“Let’s find another place to hole up and work on finding him in the morning. I could use some Randy time.” Katie said.
Smiling at her allusion to what that meant when they were alive, Randy replied, “I’m all yours sweet heart.”
Chapter 34 – Max
“So, Max, can you see anything yet?” Stewart asked. She sounded a little irritated to Max, something that made him chose his response a little more carefully.
“Nothing. I mean no beacon in the sky or anything like that, I know we have to head to the south from here and as close to the coast as we can get.”
Bill nodded and pointed on the map he had liberated from a gas station the day before, “Well, you can’t get much closer to the coast than highway 1A, or do you think getting on highway 95 would do it? Both are pretty dang close to the ocean.”
“I don’t know which ones Aubrey said would be clear. Maybe we should go with highway 1?” answered Max.
“Fair enough we don’t want to miss the guy. If we end up in Key West we can double back this way on highway 95 to make up for lost time.” Bill closed the atlas and continued, “Okay this should be an easy trip, we’ll drive east a bit until we hit highway 95, then it crosses over highway 1 just south of Jacksonville, we’ll turn onto that road and keep heading south until Max says otherwise. Everybody clear on that?”
A round of ‘yeses’ and nods answered his question. It was eight fifteen in the morning and the sky was clear to the west, but dark and ominous to the east, there was definitely a storm coming in. The five of them were finishing up breakfast and were planning on doing a weapons and ammunition check before they left.
“So, when Max spots the guy we are going to run in as close as we can get, drop the backpack and bug out fast. That’s the plan?” Ruben asked.
“Yeah, I can’t think of any way to make it simpler. I don’t want any heroics and if we never have to even see him, that’s okay with me.” said Bill.
“Any back up plans?” Ruben was looking closely at Bill again.
“What do you suggest, Ruben?”
“Well, nothing ever goes like we want it to. I think we should at least have a rendezvous, a fall back location that we agree to meet at if everything hits the fan. I think it should be here first, but if we end up driving another hundred miles we should choose another location closer to the target. Just in case.”
“That makes sense, if we get separated we come back to this rest area and wait, say three days? After that we could meet at the campground we were at yesterday, then the airfield they dropped us off at. How about this we scratch our names into the bathroom stall doors along with a date? The last stall in the bathroom should do, then we’ll at least be able to know if anyone was there before us or not.”
“I like that. Three day layovers at each place and even if no one shows, we are all least making our way back to Iowa.” said Stewart.
“Okay, let’s check guns and ammo and get this done. We could be heading home by the end of today, wouldn’t that be something? To have this over with?” Bill asked.
“Yeah, but I won’t be happy until we are back in Iowa with the kids.” Max said.
“I’d drink to that.” said Ruben.
“Guns first, then zombies
, then drinking.” laughed Bill.
They laid their guns out on the hood of the cars and went through their available ammo for each of them. Everyone except Ruben still had military rifles and Ruben’s shotgun was still in good working order too. Again, everyone except Ruben had pistols as backup weapons, Ruben had his combat knife and Stewart was carrying a second back up pistol and the machete she had taken from the state patrol headquarters. Ammunition was still plentiful. They had been given ten magazines with each rifle along with two cases of extra bullets when they had been dropped off by the military. Unfortunately they had burned through most of the extra ammo along the way, they still had eight magazines of military grade ammunition for each gun, plus two loaded with the less accurate .223 ammo they had found. Ruben was drowning in shells for the shotgun, he had well over a hundred left after taking the shells Max had started with. He made sure his gun was fully loaded and he stashed twenty five shells in various pockets in his fatigues before he stowed the rest in his pack. The others divvied up the loose .223 rounds and put them in their packs as well. Stewart and Ruben looked over all the guns and gave them a quick clean up before they were reloaded and handed back to the owners.
“I’ll lead off with Max. You three follow behind us.” Stewart said.
Bill started to say something, but Max glanced at him and shook his head slightly until he just said, “Okay.”
They were all ensconced into their vehicles and driving eastward a few minutes later. Stewart was very quiet, too quiet for Max.
“Stewart? What’s up?”
Max expected her to say “Nothing”, in fact he had his response all lined up and ready to go, to cajole her into telling him what was bothering her.
Instead she said, “I think we’re getting fucked up the ass by these guys.”
“Wh-what?”
“Your friend, Bill and his two soldiers. By Draper, by Aubrey, by everyone involved in this so called mission.”
“Whoa, just whoa, slow down for a minute. Draper, sure. Aubrey, maybe; you weren’t there. But Bill? No way, uh-uh, never in a million years.”