by Brown, TW
He stepped inside, his eyes struggling to see in the much darker space. Another scream came from his right, this one had the distinct tone of pain. He saw a half-dozen of those things wandering amongst the cubicles, people running in every direction. Over in his cubicle he saw his daughter backing away, arms out in front of her as if to ward something off. Then, the makeshift wall toppled. Donna was on her back, one of those things was on top of her, pawing at her. His eyes were drawn to Donna’s left arm. A jagged rip down the forearm bled freely.
Bringing up the shotgun, Chad wanted to fire. He lowered it, knowing he’d hit them both. Rushing in, he arrived just as two of Donna’s fingers disappeared into the zombie’s mouth.
Another scream of pain echoed in the tumult of the chaos-filled gym. It was followed by a wail of anguish.
***
Thad, Keith, and JoJo each stared through his own pair of binoculars. They scanned the shore looking for signs of life. Living, breathing people. It didn’t look encouraging. However, there was an abundance of the other type.
“Why are we doing this again?” Thad asked, still scanning.
“Because,” Keith said, “my uncle has a place. It’s an island. I used to go out and pick berries when I was a kid during the summer.”
“And you think he’s still alive?” asked Thad.
“Actually, I could care less,” Keith replied. “I’m thinking more about a defensive set up. It’s an island.”
“There’s plenty of islands that don’t require us to go a couple hundred miles up a river,” JoJo grumbled.
“You want to risk riding out another storm like that one last week?” Keith asked, bringing his binoculars down. He was tired of looking at clusters of walking dead people wander around the town of Astoria.
All of them reflected on their own personal nightmares from that storm. It had almost caused their vessel to capsize. The rain had been brutal and the wind seemed to roar endlessly. None of them thought they would live to see the next day. Each pondered the irony of what they’d survived and how it looked in regard to how they would now die.
The storm blew itself out at some point in the middle of the night. After they’d walked through to check for any serious damage—which they’d miraculously avoided—Keith had mentioned the idea of taking a trip inland to his uncle’s farm. After what they’d just survived, it seemed as good of a choice as any other. Besides, they couldn’t stay at sea forever.
The three went into action. They could make the turn to starboard and begin the journey up the river. The only concern was how far they could go. Fuel would be a real issue in the next day or two. They’d spotted a Coast Guard base, but it was thick with undead. It looked like a lot of the city of Astoria had tried to hold up there. Hopefully upriver they would have better luck. By midday, they were passing under a fairly large bridge. The Columbia River stretched out to the east. If things went well, they’d be at Keith’s uncle’s place before they ran out of fuel. They were using a weighted piece of knotted rope for depth soundings.
8
A Geek’s Bad Luck
Cary sat against the wall enjoying the sounds of the three people sleeping just a few feet away. The moonlight shone through the window of the bedroom shading the room in soft, blue relief. Looking through the open door, he could see out a window facing towards Heath. A dull orange glow came in from that one. Heath continued to burn in places. Also, the fire had jumped one road and found new fuel in an enormous field.
He rubbed his belly, relishing the full feeling that almost threatened to split him open a few hours ago. He hadn’t consumed that much since last Thanksgiving at his aunt’s house. He’d eaten so much that day that he actually got sick. Then the pecan pie had been brought out with homemade vanilla ice cream.
Everybody had been ready for bed before it was even dark, but he’d insisted on first watch. He had been alone for so long, he wanted to truly enjoy the feeling of being with others. He looked at Heather, Kevin, and Mike and smiled.
Heather had it bad for Kevin. And, as usual, Kevin was completely clueless about the people around him. He couldn’t see Mike’s jealousy either. And there was something else in Mike’s eyes that lurked below the surface that Cary couldn’t figure out. Kevin was having a hard time accepting that he, Cary, didn’t hold any ill will towards him for what happened back at that fill-up. He was carrying some serious guilt, and not just about the fact that he’d left him at that truck stop. There’d been a lot going on since they’d split up.
Now they were getting ready to go to war with a gang of thugs. Cary smiled. No matter how many times they told themselves that this wasn’t the movies, things continued to line up exactly like one.
Climbing to his feet, he tiptoed out of the room. He went from one window to the next, gazing outside. There was a warm breeze blowing in, but it was coming from the south, from the direction of Heath. He could smell all the burning. It wasn’t pleasant, like a campfire. This was rubber and fuel and bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.
The moon was full, hanging heavy in the sky. It wasn’t bright, though, more a dull yellow. Scanning the horizon of every single window, he could see them. Some walked alone. Others in pairs or small groups. His eyes came to rest on a lone figure moving down the center of the road. It had that slow, deliberate, jerky step. Sometimes it would stop, the entire body would turn one way or the other, usually seeking the source of a sound made by one of its brethren. It was uncanny how it just seemed to know.
He’d tried a few things when he had been out on his own. Nothing had worked. He’d tried the Shaun of the Dead trick, walking in his best zombie-shuffle. Then he’d tried a trick from his favorite graphic novel series, The Walking Dead. He’d smeared himself in zombie filth. That hadn’t done anything but make him gag and eventually puke. Somehow, they could just tell. He’d hoped that his bite and subsequent survival might “change” him in such a way that zombies would ignore him. That had almost gotten him killed.
The lone zombie continued along the road and was vanishing into the shadows. Not for the first time, Cary considered the strangeness of “hiding” in this very exposed, out-in-the-open house. They hadn’t even boarded up the windows. Kevin said that the noise wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Also, it would be a giveaway that there were living, breathing people inside. That this house was almost a half a football field away from the road out front, uphill at that, and had vast acreage out back seemed good enough. Zombies were like electricity in a lot of ways: it didn’t take much to kill you, and they took the path of least resistance. Okay, Cary thought, zombies are like electricity in at least two ways.
He turned and almost yelped. Heather was standing about three feet away.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, seeing the startled look on Cary’s face even in the gloomy darkness.
“Sheesh!” Cary put his hands to his chest only in partial overreaction. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“I was,” Heather paused and bit her lower lip. “Ummm, I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
“About Kevin?”
“How—” she blurted, then controlled her voice and brought it back to a whisper. “How’d you know?”
“Other than the way you watch him all the time? Or how you make every excuse possible to get close. How about the way you wait till he falls asleep, then nestle in closer than a second skin?”
“Then why?” her question carried a lot of frustration.
“Look,” Cary put his hands on the girl’s shoulders, “I know you’re gonna hate this answer, but you are just a kid.” Heather started to protest, but Cary cut her off, “It doesn’t matter how you feel, or even that there’s nobody around to enforce morality or rules of any sort for that matter. Kevin is not gonna see you as anything more until you’re eighteen, and even then, he might be hung up on age.” If we are lucky enough to live that long, Cary thought.
“That’s like two years away!” Heather leaned against the wall and slid down onto her bu
tt with a thud. “And how old is Kevin?” Heather asked.
“Twenty-four. All of us are.”
“Well I’ll be seventeen in July…whenever that is,” Heather sighed.
“I think it’s around June-ish.” Cary came over and sat next to the girl.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Heather said with a shrug.
“What is it about Kevin?”
“Well…he’s…tall.” Heather rummaged through her mind, “He’s smart. And…”
Cary let her sit for a moment and think. “And he saved you from something horrible in the middle of a nightmare that won’t ever end.”
Heather sat quietly.
“It’s normal, Heather,” Cary said after another long moment of silence. “It’s kinda like Stockholm Syndrome.”
“What’s that?”
“People get kidnapped and fall in love with their captors.”
“But Kevin didn’t kidnap me. He—”
“Rescued you,” Cary interrupted. “He’s your knight in shining armor.”
Heather considered Cary’s words. Maybe he had a point. Still, why didn’t she feel the same way about Mike? He’d rescued her, too. And he was always being super nice. And, Heather thought, he was definitely interested. She knew when guys were checking her out…which brought her back to Kevin. When he spoke to her, he looked her in the eyes. Unlike Mike, who seemed to think her eyes were hidden somewhere on her chest.
“Maybe in time?” Heather hated the way her voice sounded whiny in that moment.
“Maybe,” Cary said. But just not very likely, he kept that thought to himself. No sense in hurting the girl any more than she already was.
The two sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Heather got up and went back to bed. Cary returned to moving from window to window. When his shift was done, he went in to wake Mike. Sure enough, Heather was wrapped around Kevin who’d been forced onto his back. Whether by her doing or his unconscious act in his sleep, he had one arm around the girl as she lay nestled up close, head on his chest.
He climbed into his sleeping bag as Mike was strapping on his holsters. He saw the look on Mike’s face when he glanced back in the room before heading to the hall. There was plenty of ambient light for his expression to be seen clearly: jealousy.
Great, Cary rolled onto his side, this ought to go well.
***
“Push that barrel up against the red pick-up,” Kevin hissed.
“Hurry up, whatever you’re gonna do,” Mike said over his shoulder. “We got too many of those things showing interest. We gotta go!”
“We can’t leave that big drum sitting in the middle of the road,” Mike insisted as he finished twisting the wires around the posts of the car battery. “If Shaw’s men come and see it, they’re gonna figure something is up.”
“Yeah?” Cary huffed as he rocked the big metal drum an inch closer with the hand-truck. “Well next time I’ll wrap wires and you move the fifty-gallon drum of kerosene.”
“Deal,” Kevin said, surprising both Mike and Cary.
“You got this?” Heather looked over the top of the blue drum at Cary. She’d been helping keep it stable when they’d been moving across the uneven ground, but ever since they’d reached the asphalt, she wasn’t really doing much.
“Yep,” Cary hissed through clenched teeth as he strained to get the two-wheeled hand-truck to turn slightly right so he could get his payload between the empty trailer and the cab of the big-rig sitting askew in the middle of the road.
Heather let go and stepped back, drawing the machete on her hip. A short, pudgy man with an ugly bite out of one arm and a chunk of his left cheek gone was closing in. Flexing her hands in anticipation of the sting that would come, she gripped the rubberized handle and aimed for the side of the thing’s head. She’d learned that coming down on the top of the head was a really bad idea. The blade dug in, bursting the orbital socket, sending dark jelly spewing. She let go as the body fell, letting it hit the ground before grabbing the handle and wrenching it free.
Two more were close enough to be a concern. Mike was moving in to jab his iron spike-tipped weapon through the face of a naked woman with a braid that swung at the middle of her back like a dead serpent when he tripped over the outstretched arm of a long-since-dead body that was drying and decaying in the sun. His momentum sent him tumbling into the approaching pair. The three were quickly a flurry of arms and legs flying and flopping about. The other zombie was a recent member of Death’s legions, bits and pieces of his guts were still slightly moist. A particularly nasty and unidentifiable piece of its insides landed on Mike’s forehead with a wet splat.
Heather hopped over the downed body of her recent kill and lined up a shot on the head of the nude, female zombie. Mike struggled at the bottom of the pile, holding the throat of the jeans-and-tee-shirt clad male with the gaping chest cavity away from him with one hand while swatting desperately at the spongy piece of innards on his face. With an overhead swing, heedless of the stinging sensation that would follow, Heather brought her blade down hard, splitting the female’s skull.
Mike reached for one of the blades on his belt and fumbled to free it. Bringing it up, he plunged it into the mewling, dead face that stared vacantly down at him. The instant disconnect dropped the full weight of the corpse down onto him. He shoved the body away, rolling out from under the pile of dead flesh. He looked over to see Heather shaking both hands in vain to rid them of the buzzing sensation. Kevin and Cary had finished their tasks and were wading into a six-pack of walking death. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye, the sudden burn forcing him to rub it furiously.
A pair of elementary school aged children came around the rear of the semi-trailer. Their hands reaching, dead eyes staring, teeth clicking as their mouths snapped in anticipation of his flesh. Scooping up his iron-spiked zombie killer, Mike charged angrily. He plunged it into first one dead face, then the other. A hand clutched his shoulder as he pulled the weapon free, and he spun to face his newest threat.
“Whoa!” Cary threw up his hands. “Easy, dude!”
“Into the fields,” Kevin called, pointing back to the tall, untended rows of corn that would allow them to slip unseen back to the farmhouse.
Mike looked around in confusion. Several bodies lay scattered about. When had all of this happened? he wondered. Everybody was staring at him like he was Satan, or worse, one of those things. He glanced down at the two bodies at his feet. Both had been stabbed repeatedly in the face to the point that no recognizable features remained. His eyes fixated on a single tooth standing out starkly against the black of the asphalt covered road. One of the tiny bodies had nothing more than a nub remaining at the top of its neck.
“C’mon,” Kevin insisted, “before more of those damn things join the party.”
“What about all the bodies?” Heather tore her eyes away from the panting, heaving, crazy-eyed person that only vaguely resembled Mike at the moment.
“Huh?” Kevin paused at the edge of the road, preparing to jump the ditch that ran alongside it and separated the fenced-in refuge of the cornfield.
“If those bad men return,” Heather held out her arms to the widespread carnage at their feet, “won’t they notice this?”
“Shit,” Kevin breathed.
“She’s right.” Cary looked around as if noticing all of the fallen bodies for the first time.
“Into the back of the trailer,” Kevin instructed, and slung his sword over his shoulder into its sheath. “Good catch, Heather.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. Only Cary noticed how her face lit up at the praise and the physical contact.
Scurrying about, they lugged the bodies to the open trailer and tossed them inside. A few new members of the undead joined the ranks of the fallen before they’d finished, but finally, they were done. They jumped the ditch and, one at a time, ducked through the barbed wire fence.
Mike hung back just a little as the foursome wove throu
gh the corn and back to the house that served as an unlikely sanctuary. He was sweating hard, and all the exertion had him feeling short of breath. Coupled with all the sweating and it was no wonder he was a bit nauseous. The last thing he wanted to do was puke in front of Heather. It was bad enough that the girl had bailed his ass out back there. Then, she’d made the obvious observation about not leaving a bunch of bodies strewn about. He’d been thinking the exact same thing, he just couldn’t get his mouth to work as quick as she had.
“Yo, Mikey!” Cary was trotting back to him up the row. There was no sign of Kevin or Heather. How long had he just been standing there like an idiot?
“S’up?” Mike started walking again. He sure didn’t feel well. His feet felt as if they were encased in lead, his eyes burned, and his stomach was seriously trying to turn itself inside out.
“You okay?” Cary slowed, shielded his eyes and looked up at him with an honest look of concern.
“Just a little dehydrated,” Mike said.
“Well let’s get you some water,” Cary turned, leading the way. “you look like old people fuck.”
“Slow and sloppy!” they said in unison.
***
“Where’s Mike?” Heather scooted her chair close to the table where Kevin and Cary were already eating ravenously.
“Mmm…” Cary wiped his mouth. “He’s getting a nap. Said he missed out on lunch because he was working on the rabbit snares. All that exertion, he thinks he’s a little dehydrated.”
“Should I bring him something?” Heather started to stand.
“Nope,” Cary reached over and put a hand on her arm, “I think it’s more than dehydration.”
Kevin stopped eating, spoon of tomato soup halfway to his mouth and looked at Cary with raised eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”