Chapter Thirty-Four
DAY ONE
The patio door exploded into the kitchen and a woman wearing an unzipped winter parka and brown boots entered the dining room, tracking snow across the carpet. With the hood up, it was hard to see her face. Her hands, however, told a different story. Bloody and torn, her bony fingers reached for Paul and Sophia from across the dining room table. They backed into a yellow wall and pressed up against it. A wet moan rolled from the woman’s gaping mouth, sending a chill down Paul’s spine. Her left boot caught on a table leg and she stumbled. Paul didn’t squander the advantage and shot her in the crown of her head.
First kill.
Her forehead smacked against the table on the way to the floor, turning the carpet red. Paul pressed Sophia up against the wall and peeked through the curtains covering a bay window. His hope sank. There were at least nine of them out there now, probably more he couldn’t see.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Sophia bent around him for a look he shouldn’t have let her take. She gasped and flattened herself against the wall, eyes wide and jumpy. “What’re we going to do?”
Paul pulled his coat from a dining chair and slipped into it. “We’re leaving.”
“What about Dan?”
“He’ll be here,” he said, carefully stepping over the woman’s lifeless body to reach his hat and gloves. “Everything we need is in the Jeep and the tank is full.”
“Be careful, Paul!”
He froze and looked down at the unmoving corpse, expecting her to grab his leg at any second. But she didn’t. He bent closer, unable to recognize her. His eyelids flipped back when he saw her Iowa State sweatshirt.
“What’s wrong?”
Slowly, he turned to Sophia. “She’s pregnant.”
Sophia covered her mouth with both hands and burst into tears. “No!”
Paul threw a wooden chair into the kitchen, denting the dishwasher. The wind howled through the broken patio door. “Okay, okay,” he panted, pacing the room and trying not to look at the pregnant woman he just killed. “We have to go.” He jumped when a gunshot went off behind him. Spinning, he saw a dead man kiss the table. Smoke trailed from the pink gun clutched in his wife’s hands.
Her lower lip quivered as badly as her hands. “I had to.”
“I know you did and that’s my girl. You keep shooting if you have to and we’re going to…” His words died with a horn honking out front. Paul yanked the curtains back to see Dan’s Ford Fusion jump the curb and mow down the stiffs in the front yard like bowling pins.
“Come on,” Paul said, taking Sophia’s hand and towing her to the front door. “Just remember what the guy at the range said – slow and steady breaths. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.”
She nodded, her entire body shaking with fear.
He almost opened the front door but stopped short. “And aim for the head.”
“Okay,” she whispered, brushing away a tear.
“Let’s go!” Dan hollered from out front.
Gunshots followed.
Paul took a few quick breaths, pulled the door back and stepped outside. A man hiding off to the left grabbed Paul’s shooting arm and pulled the warm meat to his teeth. Paul shot him through the eye and the man in a cheap suit and tie fell back but his hand refused to let go. Paul shook the bloody claw but it wouldn’t release so he laid the man down on the front porch and tried peeling the hand away finger by finger. He flinched with Dan’s shotgun blast that decapitated a small woman lunging for Paul. Over his shoulder, he watched Sophia take aim on a fat man rushing through the falling snow like a pissed off linebacker. “Shoot him,” Paul shouted, wrestling with the dead man’s hand.
Sophia spread her legs, the shirtless man closing the distance in a hurry.
Paul switched the handgun to his non-shooting hand. “Shoot him, baby!”
She squeezed the trigger. The man’s tennis shoes slipped out from under him and he landed on his ass in the front yard. Bounding to his feet like a ninja, he resumed his charge, kicking up snow while Dan took out the ones closing in on the vehicles. Sophia’s next two shots missed and Paul fired with his left hand. The man took the porch stairs two at a time and Sophia’s fourth round found his forehead. Head snapping back, the large man’s momentum sent him crashing into Sophia at full speed. She smashed against the siding with a loud grunt bursting from her lips and fell to the porch, her gun disappearing into the deep snow.
Paul put three rounds into the cheap suit and tie guy’s wrist and stomped on the arm with his boot. A loud crack pierced the frigid air and suddenly Paul was free. With the man’s hand still clinging to his wrist, Paul helped Sophia to her feet before following her gun’s trail through the snow and retrieving it. Shooting as a team, they carved a path to the Jeep where Dan covered them until they were all inside.
“Holy shit!” Dan panted from the backseat, drawing his Glock and taking aim at the people shuffling closer to the car. “Go!”
“Buckle up!” Paul yelled, shifting into drive and swerving around a young girl with pigtails blocking the end of the driveway. They slid sideways into the street and Paul gunned it, leaving their house and worldly possessions behind. He slammed on the brakes. A woman in curlers and a robe threw herself on the hood. She stared at them through the front windshield, the untied robe exposing her droopy breasts.
“Please,” she cried out. “Help me!”
Paul rolled his window down a crack, letting in the snow. “Get in!”
She followed his nod to the backdoor and came around the front end, screaming when a man tackled her against the SUV. The car shook and Paul watched in horror as the short man wrestled her to the ground and bit into her cheek before tearing away a chunk of sinewy flesh.
The woman screamed like hell, flopping wildly beneath the man’s weight.
“Jesus Christ!” Paul said, trying to find his sidearm buried beneath his heavy coat.
Dan rolled down the window. “Should I shoot him?”
“Shoot him!”
He shot and missed. The man turned to them with malice in his eyes and blood dripping from his chin, the woman weakly beating against his chest.
“Go Paul,” Sophia yelled, mashing an invisible gas pedal to the floor on her side of the car.
The short man got up and Paul pulled away, watching the woman’s flailing arms go limp in his side mirror. He pounded his fist against the wheel, the dead hand flopping around his wrist like some messed up tribal bracelet. “What the fuck!”
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” Dan cried, waving his Glock around in the backseat.
Paul white-knuckled the wheel. “Don’t you shoot me, Dan!”
“Dude!” Dan pointed, the color draining from his face. “There’s a hand on you!”
Sophia screamed, pressing up against her door.
Paul blew a red light, power-sliding onto Hickman Road with the tires spitting out snow.
Dan pointed out the front window. “Over there! Look!”
Paul slowed down and came to a stop. Up ahead on the left, two men in bright ski coats ran like hell across a shuttered Kmart parking lot, madly waving their arms over their heads. Paul’s eyes thinned. Barely visible through the falling snow behind them, a dozen shadowy figures gradually emerged.
“Make room!” Paul said, giving it some gas.
“What if they have it?” Sophia asked, gripping her nine millimeter in both hands.
Paul pulled over and watched the men dart into the street, sweet relief clearly visible on their red faces. “They look normal.”
Dan popped the back door open and scooted over. “Get in!”
The taller of the two men offered a grateful wave just as a red pickup came barreling out of nowhere with zombies hanging on in the truck bed, trying to get inside the cab. Sheer panic contorted the driver’s face as she fought off the hands clawing at her hair.
Sophia hit her imaginary brakes again and let out a guttural scream.
; The two men crossing the street never saw it coming. The pickup steamrolled them and disappeared back into the snowfall like nothing happened. Paul stared at the crumpled bodies in the road and ran a hand down his horror-stricken face, the severed hand dripping blood into his lap.
And this was just the beginning.
Chapter Thirty-Five
DAY FOURTEEN
The next morning was overcast and cool. The American flag waved with a brisk breeze rushing across the front yard, still standing tall and proud in the face of defeat. The day looked like Paul felt – turbulent, dismal, empty. Dan manually opened the double garage door and hopped in behind the wheel of Shelly1, revving the beefy engine hard enough to vibrate the tools hanging from the unfinished walls. Paul took one last look at the picture of the balding man leaning against the car, wondering where the rest of his family went. Wondering if he killed them before sneaking back into his own house like a thief in the night.
“Paul?”
His head snapped around to Wendy.
She tried flashing him one of her pretty smiles but fell short. “You ready?”
He studied her for a few seconds, not anywhere close to being ready, wanting to run somewhere that didn’t exist. His blank gaze swung out the garage door and got lost in the gray, exhaust fumes making his breakfast churn in his stomach.
Those things were out there.
Hiding.
Waiting.
And now they were going out there.
“Ready,” he replied, sliding in back while Wendy climbed up front with Dan.
The car’s exhaust rattled when Dan pulled out and Paul couldn’t help but feel bad for the car show guy. He had a good thing going here and didn’t deserve to lose it all like this.
“Are you going to sit here all day or what?” Wendy said, buckling her lap belt.
“Gotta let her warm up for a minute,” Dan replied, giving her some gas. “She’s a classic.”
“Is she? I must’ve missed that the last twenty times you said it,” Wendy replied, tying her hair back in a black scrunchie.
“I treat my cars like I treat my women,” Dan said, petting the dash.
“Oh, so you’re going to take the car to KFC for dinner?”
“Ha-ha.”
Wendy leaned back and laughed. “At least take her to Popeye’s.”
Paul swallowed thickly. He felt like everyone had already forgotten about Sophia.
“Hang on bitches,” Dan said, burying the gas pedal.
The golf clubs and fishing rods shifted in the trunk as the car left trails of burnt rubber down the driveway. He fishtailed out onto the road, pelting the ditches with gravel. They didn’t bother shutting the garage door and headed south on two-lane highways that would, eventually, take them between San Antonio and Houston. There would be some unavoidable population centers along the way, but if all went well they might smell the ocean by tomorrow afternoon. It was a new beginning. To what, Paul could only laugh at inside.
They rode in silence, always on the nervous lookout, especially when siphoning gas or moving vehicles blocking the road. Barely two weeks in and their daily chores were already taking a toll. And it wasn’t just the physical exertion of doing everything by hand, but the mental drain as well. Always thinking you saw something move in the bushes, always feeling like somebody was watching. Paul thought he’d be more used to it by now but, if anything, it was getting harder. He just wanted to sleep. Sleep and never wake up.
“Fucking zombies,” Dan uttered, turning the wipers on intermittent as a cold drizzle began to fall.
Dan started spitting this phrase out during long moments of uncomfortable silence and Paul wished he’d come up with a different tick. It was a crutch for when he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Wendy’s new tick of listing off foods she would absolutely die for was getting on Paul’s nerves as well. It would take an entire farm with the ability to produce fresh cheese, sausage and mushrooms to make a pizza these days and talking about the impossible made absolutely no sense. Paul wanted to bring Sophia back to life but they didn’t hear him going on and on about combining electricity with human hearts because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. No, he bit his tongue even though that’s exactly what was rattling around in his head.
Bringing her back to life. Somehow.
“Who do you think looked more like a zombie before this crap began, Mickey Rourke or Janice Dickinson?”
Wendy laughed. “Probably Mickey Rourke. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”
She looked over at him. “Hamlet? Wow,” she purred. “If I didn’t know any better, Dan Kippler, I might think you’re trying to impress me.”
Dan grinned and stepped on the gas, flying down the winding road with reckless abandon. Dan and Wendy were lucky. They’d already left the Jacobsen house behind and he was still there, holding his wife’s rigid body on that L-shaped couch. He could see them hooking up and why not? Everyone else was either dead or almost dead. He snorted, fogging his window. What a kick in the ass the whole thing was. Now he would become the eternal third wheel, always in the way, always spoiling the moment.
The thought of his wife up on that hill, alone in the rain, disrupted his moment of feeling sorry for himself. If disemboweled, his insides would look like the dark skies above. His distant gaze zoomed in on a UPS guy sauntering along the left side of the road up ahead. The skinny man heard the Chevelle’s approaching rumble and immediately stumbled into the car’s path, his brown pants and coat ragged and torn.
“Hang on!” Dan jerked the wheel to the right.
Shelly1 swerved, wide tires angrily screeching against wet pavement. The front end bumped the man with a dull thud and Wendy screamed. Dan laid on the horn and blew past, spinning the corpse in the car’s dust. Despite the muscle car’s speed, the UPS driver got up and hobbled after them. No longer delivering packages, now he was taking them.
Dan turned to Wendy with a drawn face. “If that guy scratched this car, I’m going to be so pissed.”
Three miles later, they passed a big brown UPS truck that had t-boned a blue pickup with someone slumped over the steering wheel inside.
“Slow down!” Wendy said. “You’re going way too fast.”
“No, I’m not.”
“When do I get to drive?”
“When you’re ready to handle the power.”
Paul blew out a heated breath, studying a bank sign that normally would’ve told him the time and temp. Now, however, the dark sign told him that money was just as useless as everything else. Paul swallowed dryly. They were on their own.
Dan slowed way down. “Damn, this is getting hairy,” he said, carefully squeezing between a new Camaro with a crumpled front end and a yellow Hummer.
Paul kept his eyes on the nearby houses, searching for signs of life. A loose dog ran from one yard to another. Raindrops fell on a framed garage that would never see its finish. A non-digital billboard for a country radio station came into view. The morning show’s smiling faces made him shift in the backseat. Those people weren’t smiling now. No, now they were probably dead and Paul considered them lucky if they were.
He rested his head against the glass and shut his eyes. Why did he leave Sophia there like that? A deep-seeded cringe tore through him. It was so stupid. Dan and Wendy would’ve been fine on their own. If anything, he would just slow them down. Look at what happened with the camper. He could’ve killed them. It would’ve been easy to stay behind with his wife. Peaceful. Just the two of them sharing sunsets and long talks up on the hill.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he pulled his gun.
Wendy’s face soured. “Relax, it’s just me.”
Paul slowly holstered the weapon, wondering why Wendy was looking at him like he was a wild animal, like he might…hurt her.
“Are you alright?”
He blinked blankly and she passed him a bottle of warm
water.
“Drink.”
He obeyed and took a long drink before passing it back.
“Keep it.”
Tires hummed and the engine purred at seventy miles an hour.
Wendy stared out the front windshield, watching another small town slide past. She cleared her throat. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now and I won’t pretend to,” she said without looking back. “Sophia was so nice to me and didn’t talk down to me because of where I worked and…” Her voice quivered. “And I just wish I could’ve gotten to know her better.”
Paul fought back the tears, wishing she would just shut the fuck up already. She didn’t know shit.
Wendy twisted around like she’d heard him say that out loud. “Where did you two meet anyway?”
He looked down to his hands and shook with a bump in the road.
“At the gym,” Dan replied, glancing at him in the mirror.
“That really happens? I thought only creeps hit on people at the gym.”
Paul ignored her ill-fated attempt at humor.
“How did you approach her at the gym?”
“He didn’t,” Dan said, taking a curve too fast, tires squealing. “She approached him when he got pinned under a hundred and five pound barbell on his chest.”
A bitter laugh shot from Paul’s lips. “Try two hundred and five pound barbell on my chest, asshole.”
Wendy’s eyes bounced between them. “Did that really happen or are you guys messing with me?”
“Oh, it happened.” Dan eased up on the gas pedal. “Luckily for him, no one else saw it.”
The car’s spinning tires filled the dead air between them. Seconds ticked off like minutes. It seemed like just yesterday Sophia had stolen his breath for the first time and now she was dead and never coming back and it was all his fault. Paul twisted his fingers in his lap. He should’ve never left her alone back there like that. He promised he wouldn’t. Silence gripped the car as they grew closer to the ocean, Paul second-guessing their big plan with each mile that passed. He leaned his head back and shut his eyes, the road vibrating the seat. There was no future at the beach because there was no future without her.
A Little More Dead Page 16