“Rambo knife,” Paul corrected. “And we’ll see what we can find.”
“Hey Paul?”
He looked down to Mike. “Yeah buddy?”
“Will there be a Christmas this year?”
He swallowed hard. “Of course there will.”
“How do you know that Santa didn’t turn into one of those things?”
Paul opened his mouth and paused. “Because his reindeers can fly and they all got away.”
“Even the elves?” Matt asked.
“Even the elves.”
Mike frowned. “What about Mrs. Claus?”
“She got away too,” Paul replied, watching Sophia crack an actual smile that warmed his heart. “Who do you think was driving?”
Mike mulled it all over for a few seconds in his head, high stepping through the snow. “I don’t want Santa coming down my chimney if he’s one of those things.”
Paul smothered a laugh.
“Why? Will Santa eat us instead of the cookies we leave out for him?” Matt asked, catching back up and quickly falling two steps behind.
“Just keep walking boys,” Carla urged, saving Paul the trouble of answering such a morbid question.
“If I have to,” Matt panted, “I’ll take Santa out with my Nerf gun.”
Paul smiled. “Now you’re talking.”
The gas station grew larger while visions of dead Santa danced through Paul’s head. He imagined a bloodstained St. Nick absent-mindedly knocking a plate of cookies to the floor with a clatter before lumbering upstairs to where the children were nestled all snug in their beds. Shaking the grisly thought from his head, he tightened his grip on the Mossberg 500. One way or another, they would have Christmas again.
He refused to let those things win.
Chapter Ten
Dan and Paul peeked around the corner of the gas station, praying the crunching of snow beneath their boots hadn’t given them away. Two empty cars sat parked at the pumps, one of which was a Missouri State Patrol car with the driver’s side door hanging wide open. Three other vehicles sat parked by the station’s glass front doors – one with someone slumped over the steering wheel. The rotting state trooper did irregular circles in the parking lot, alone and aimless, his round hat lying in a patch of red snow by the front doors. The man stole Paul’s breath. It was the first time he had the chance to stop and get a good look without running or pulling the trigger.
“Well, at least we know which car is his,” Dan whispered.
“Hopefully, he filled up before he turned.”
The cannibal cop stopped his black boots and sniffed at the air, like a bloodhound catching a sudden whiff of a fugitive on the lam. Slowly, he lowered his chewed off nose and turned to Paul and Dan, his eyes black holes to death.
“Oh shit,” Paul muttered, holding up a hand for everyone to be perfectly still.
Sophia passed the message to Carla and the boys, her pink gun aimed at the ground.
The trooper stared hard at Paul and Dan for a moment before walking toward them much faster than he’d been doing circles. He reached for them, boots shuffling through the unplowed snow, peeling lips giving him a bloody sneer that made Paul shudder.
He glanced at the others hugging the side of the building behind him and turned back to Dan. “Drop him.”
Dan came out from around the corner and stepped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses in the snow. They cracked beneath his weight and the cop stopped. Dan raised the shotgun and everyone froze while the dead thing studied Dan like it was still a cop, like it knew Dan was up to no good.
Dan stared back, finger curled around the trigger.
The rotting corpse tilted its head to one side and made a soft grunt.
Paul couldn’t believe his eyes. Was this sonofabitch was sizing them up, planning his attack?
“Shoot him,” Sophia whispered.
Carla nodded her agreement, clutching her sidearm in her right hand with her boys pushed behind her.
Paul stepped out from the side of the building, drawing the cop’s empty eyes. Paul couldn’t breathe. It was impossible. This thing staring back at him was dead. But wasn’t. Paul managed a shallow breath, skin crawling. “What are you?” he screamed.
The cop snarled and started coming closer.
Dan sent him jerking backwards with one loud shot, prompting a gray-haired old lady to burst out from a bathroom door on the side of the building. She tackled Matt to the ground, sending Carla tumbling to the snow. The ravenous senior citizen dug her teeth into Matt’s throat and pulled. Carla screamed in a wide-eyed panic, watching the old lady raise her head and swallow a chunk of Matt’s flesh. Paul unleashed his twelve-gauge, sending her toppling through the snowy lot with a booming blast that removed half of her head.
Carla scrambled to her feet and pushed Mike out of the way, sliding to her knees. She stared at her fallen boy, a crimson pool blooming in the snow around his head. After a moment of hesitation, she scooped Matt into her arms and screamed things that were mostly unintelligible. But Paul bet if there were any more of those things around they could understand what she was saying just fine. She was saying, Hey, we’re over here! Come and eat us!
“Dan, get the cop’s keys,” Paul yelled over her screams.
Mike stood there staring at his little brother lying in the snow, a blank expression canvassing his face. Dan had the same dead look in his eyes.
“Dan!”
His gaze slowly rose to Paul.
“Get the goddamn car keys!”
Dan looked back to Matt, indecision flickering in his eyes, and then sprinted to the state trooper. Paul covered him while Dan rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Sophia took her place at Paul’s back, gun gripped tightly in both hands.
“My baby, my baby, my baby!” Carla shrieked, rocking Matt’s limp body in her blood stained arms, tears freezing on her cheeks.
“Carla, we have go!” Sophia yelled.
But Carla didn’t hear. Carla was in another place and time, where words and consequences held no value.
“Carla!” Paul screamed.
“Got em!” Dan held the car keys up like they were a golden ticket hidden inside a chocolate bar.
Paul nodded to the squad car at the pumps. “Get the car, we’ll cover you!”
“Why!” Carla wailed, burying her face in Matt’s bloody neck. “Why! Why! Why!”
Paul knew why. Because he fucked up and this was his fault. He turned to Mike. “Mike!”
Mike slowly turned and stared at Paul through terror filled eyes.
“Come on, buddy, we’re getting out of here!”
Mike’s placid gaze slowly rose over Paul’s shoulder and just when he thought the kid’s eyes couldn’t possibly get any bigger...they did.
“They’re all over the place!” Sophia shouted, swinging the pink 9-mm from stiff to stiff, not sure where to begin shooting first.
Paul spun around to see twenty or thirty of the bastards coming from the McDonald’s across the street. “Oh shit,” he said beneath his breath, readying himself for the shotgun’s powerful kick.
Sophia took aim at a chubby redneck in a Kansas Jayhawks coat running at them like the wind before yanking the gun to an old man getting too close for comfort. She pulled the trigger, shooting him in his face.
“Don’t hit the pumps!” Dan yelled, running to the cruiser and blasting a hole through the redneck’s bloated stomach along the way. The neck flew backwards into a pump and slid to the ground. He got right back up, proudly displaying the shredded hole in the middle of his blue coat, and ran hard at Dan.
Sophia put him down with a head shot and he didn’t get up again. Paul took out three more closing in on the cop car, clearing a path for Dan. A second or two later, the squad car’s beefy engine roared to life, sending white smoke coughing out the back.
Paul turned back to Carla. “Carla! We – are - leav...” he trailed off, watching two men in blue jumpsuits drag Carla from Matt’s lifeless body. They sunk
their teeth through the sleeves of her coat like vampires, draining her life-force with greedy jerks of their heads. Paul fired his shotgun, making one of the mechanics flinch. Unmoved by Paul’s hostility, it went back to work on Carla, whose screams were high-pitched and wet.
Mike stood off to the side, watching them tear his mother apart, expressionless and alone.
“Mike, come on, sweetie!” Sophia pleaded between shots, her eyes bouncing between Mike and the zombies trudging closer.
Paul’s next shot sent one of the grease monkeys back to Hell where it came from. He pumped in another shell and took aim on the other mechanic feeding on Carla. Just before he squeezed the trigger, someone grabbed him from behind, pulling his shot wide. Instinctively, Paul swung the butt of the gun around into a teenage girl’s rancid face, producing a bone shattering crunch and knocking her to the ground. She took the shotgun with her and Paul tried unleashing the Beretta from its holster around his leg but his ski coat and gloves got in the way. The girl grabbed his ankle, her tattered McDonald’s uniform giving him a moment’s pause. This shit wasn’t right but that didn’t stop him from stomping on her face. She squeezed harder, threatening to crush the bones in his ankle with some supernatural strength she didn’t have when she was serving up Big Macs and fries. Paul stomped harder on her head with his boot to no avail, ankle screaming with pain. “You fucker!” he said, finally freeing his handgun and shooting her in the face.
He whirled around to find Carla no longer screaming and Mike missing from the picture. His frantic gaze jerked to a Chevy Impala where Mike sat leaning against the passenger side door. He stared blankly at Paul, his little body wiggling as a mechanic chewed on his shoulder.
Tires slid to a halt in the snow behind Paul.
“Get in!” Dan yelled through the closed window of the cop car.
Sophia dropped two more corpses floating through the rising exhaust before whipping the back door open. “Paul,” she cried, sliding across the vinyl seat and slapping a new clip in.
Paul couldn’t find his breath, paralyzed by the escalating events. It all happened so fast, everything now so red.
“Paul, get in the car!” Sophia rolled her window down and plugged four more corpses.
Then five.
Then six.
Some stayed down.
Some didn’t.
Tears stained Paul’s cheeks. He screamed at the top of his lungs and unloaded a clip into the vulture feeding on Mike. The mechanic crumpled over Mike’s legs while seven or eight of those things banged on the cop car with more coming just steps behind. Dan and Sophia screamed Paul’s name at the same time and went back to shooting. Paul looked back to see Sophia roll up her window and trap a mangled arm inside the car. The hand thrashed wildly, trying to snatch at her long dark hair. She stuck the barrel of her gun through the gap in the window and pulled the trigger. The arm snapped out of the vehicle, following its owner to the parking lot.
“Get in!” Dan revved the massive engine block and laid on the horn, ending another experiment: Car horns don’t scare zombies.
They kept limping. Moaning. Reaching.
Paul stood incapacitated, turning back to the dreadful scene on the side of the service station, the gunfire behind him like fireworks on the other side of town. He stared at Mike’s lifeless body with a dead mechanic slumped over his lap. It all happened so fast.
“Paul!” Sophia screamed.
He turned for the car and stopped. Sophia gestured wildly, yelling things he didn’t hear. Dan shot a woman in the eye. Sophia screamed bloody murder when Paul went back to Mike. Paul stared down at the boy. He was only eleven, his brother, Matt, just eight – both dead because of him. Paul pointed the Beretta at Mike’s face, tears blurring his vision. Mike stared up at him through unseeing eyes, no breath visible on his lips. “I’m so sorry,” Paul whispered. Then everything got quiet. Peaceful. The cold trigger felt good against his skin and when he pulled it the gun barely jumped in his hand.
Gunshots.
Screams.
Blood.
Everything came back in a loud pop, washing over him like an angry wave, sending him back into the chaos going on around him.
“Paul, get in the fucking car!” Sophia ordered, emptying a clip into the decaying fray on the other side of the cop car.
He stared at the hole in Mike’s forehead, doubling over with the guilt squeezing on his lungs. More gunshots and a particular high-pitched scream from Sophia broke Paul from his trance. He ran over and slid into the backseat, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Hang on!” Dan punched it and sent four of the monsters hurtling to the ground as the car sped through the lot. Power sliding through the snow, he steered the cruiser back onto the main road where it had come with another driver sitting behind the wheel. Dan barreled toward Interstate Thirty-Five and Paul made the mistake of looking back. It was a warzone back there. Bodies and blood littered the ground, the smell of gunpowder heavy in the air, engraving another ghastly scene into his mind he would never forget. He turned back around and watched his wife cry, a defeated sigh prying itself from his lips. He was almost certain Mike had never screamed.
Not once.
Chapter Eleven
They rode in silence for the next several miles with the heater turned up and a black metal cage separating Sophia and Paul from Dan up front. Though lit up bright, the police radio was just as quiet as they were. Not even static. Again, Paul looked over to make sure Sophia was in the car and still in one piece. It just as easily could be her lying back there in the snow.
Wiping her nose with the back of her glove, Sophia quietly reloaded her clips with bullets from one of the boxes they took from the Jeep. Her fingers trembled. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head like she’d just lost some stupidly placed bet and Paul didn’t dare attempt a pep talk now. He knew better than that, and didn’t have it in him anyway. They were as good as dead and they all knew it. How could they stand a chance against whatever the hell that was out there?
He stared up front, praying one of the cop’s keys would unlock the shotgun mounted on the dash to replace the one he just lost. It looked easier to handle, shorter. Intrusive thoughts pushed past that small break and barged inside. Why didn’t they check that side door? How could he have been so stupid? There would never be another Christmas, his last words to Matt and Mike a hollow lie. Their frightened faces tormented his thoughts, robbing him of his will. Paul rubbed his eyes, afraid to open them again. Two young boys and their mother just died horrific deaths and it was all because of him and his foolish confidence.
Him!
“How’s the gas?” he asked, determined to focus for Sophia’s sake. She was still here and he would not forget.
Dan glanced at him in the rearview mirror, a dejected look pulling on his face. “It’s full.”
Paul leaned back and released a pent-up breath. It was another break. It just as easily could’ve been empty. He swallowed dryly, imagining the state trooper removing the gas nozzle from the patrol car and returning it to the pump just before all hell broke loose inside the station, drawing him closer.
Occasionally, Dan glanced back at them in the mirror but didn’t speak. He looked so alone up there, like the driver of a horse drawn carriage traveling through the woods on a cool foggy night. Whether or not Dan would become the eternal third-wheel randomly slipped through Paul’s tired mind. How would Dan ever meet someone now? He could barely talk to a pretty girl before all of this. Were there even any pretty girls left? The image of the old lady popping out of the restroom knocked those trivial thoughts to the ground like she did Carla and Matt.
“Fuck!” Paul punched the cage, making Sophia and Dan jump.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?” Dan let up on the radio’s handset button, keeping the car at a smooth thirty miles per hour. “Can anyone hear me?” He released the button and Paul leaned forward. The lights were on but the radio remained quiet.
Not even static.
Sophia stared at her black gloves, flexing her hands like she couldn’t shake the gunfire still ringing in her fingers.
“I repeat, is anybody out there? Hello? We are north of Kansas City. Copy that!”
They waited, hoping for another break, like the gun store and the full tank of gas.
Dan swore and gave up, jamming the handset back into its cradle but leaving the radio on just in case. The bright lights were almost soothing. At least something still worked, even if it was just those tiny little lights. They drove forever, a somber silence filling the car as the miles slipped beneath them, the setting sun brushing the clouds with orange and purple strokes. Normally, it would have been a beautiful winter day, the kind where your car seats are already warm before you get inside, but they would have to clear another house soon and there was nothing normal about it.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Paul met Dan’s eyes in the mirror, crimping his brow. “Go where?”
Dan glanced at Sophia. “You know.”
Paul rolled his eyes and groaned. “Stop someplace out in the open.”
Chapter Twelve
Paul stood look out while Dan did his business on the other side of the car. This was literally no time to get caught with your pants down. They were so out in the open, however, that Paul probably didn’t need to be out here freezing his ass off but after the gas station, better safe than sorry. Occasionally, Sophia checked on them from the backseat and it was good to see her look up.
“This really sucks,” Dan said, squatting in the snow like a yellow lab.
“I bet.”
Dan peeked over the trunk. “Where’d you go?”
“What do you mean?”
“This morning, back at the house.”
Paul snorted, inspecting the short barrel shotgun he’d taken from the dash. According to the etching in the side, it was a Benelli tactical shotgun, flat black with a collapsible buttstock – five in the tube, one in the chamber. “The bathtub in the master bedroom,” he replied, bringing the gun into his shoulder and staring down the barrel, surveying the white fields stretching into the distance around them.
A Little More Dead Page 5