“I get it. So we won’t kill her. We’ll… we’ll just leave her like that.”
Neal slightly turned his head towards the crate. Leslie’s black eyes were fixed on us without a single blink.
He made sense. We would get away. And maybe… maybe Leslie would hang in there until she turned again or someone else found her who knew what to do. If we hadn’t lost Lana, she’d know what to do.
Or at least she’d make me think that she did.
“So?” Neal asked.
Poor Leslie. I remembered all the times she’d let me crash here. She’d fed me, hooked me up with weed, even let me use her computer when my laptop was on the fritz. And now I was paying her back by locking her up like her dead dog.
But it seemed like the only solution.
“What about Tom?” I whispered.
Neal sighed.
“I can take him. You’ve seen it. We’ll get him into the car, and then we’ll…”
His voice trailed off. Neal’s plan obviously started and stopped with our grand escape. We’d have to make the rest up as we went along.
For however long that might be.
“Sam?”
Tom would hate me for this. Like really hate me. But I didn’t have any better ideas.
“I guess---”
“I got it!”
Tom charged back into the room. He was clutching a purple teddy bear.
“Sam! Look. It’s JoJo !”
JoJo. He’d won it for Leslie at a county fair after eighteen tries. He was more proud than she was excited, but Leslie hugged the bear tight and Tom tighter, and she kept it on the chair by her bed. I always thought it was a little weird that the bear watched them fool around with its googly eyes, but Tom always said he thought he was teaching the stuffed animal a thing or two. That was even weirder, but not as weird as Tom dropping my bat and crawling towards the crate. He held JoJo before Leslie’s unfeeling eyes.
“Les? Remember. Just remember. I won this for you. Because I wanted to get a prize for my girl. Come on, Les. Remember?”
Leslie was still. Her fingers poked through the bars, and she stroked the bear’s soft ears. She even smiled at the touch.
Whoa!
Had Tom cracked the problem? Did we just have to remind the zombies of who they used to be to bring them back? That was kind of awesome! Of course, we didn’t know most of the zombies well enough to shake them out of the living death. But maybe this was a start.
Tom slowly leaned forward and undid the latch.
“No!”
I pressed my fingers to Neal’s lips.
“Don’t” I said. “Just give him a chance.”
Tom released Leslie. She took JoJo in her arms and started to stroke his synthetic fur. Tom was nodding along, and he rubbed his hand against the bear’s soft back. It was sweet. He was bringing her back!
“Les?”
Their eyes met. Leslie reached for Tom’s face and touched it with the same care that she had shown JoJo. She leaned forward and met his mouth. Tom sank into her kiss and wrapped his arms around her. He laughed under lips and held her closer.
And then he let out a muffled cry that signaled the worst pain possible.
I rushed forward and saw Leslie’s teeth piercing Tom’s mouth. Without thinking twice, I raised the gun and blew her head off her neck. Leslie’s body fell away, but her head, her bite, was still attached to Tom. He fell back and tried to pull the disembodied skull away. Morgan screamed. Someone had to do something.
I couldn’t move.
Neal rolled his sleeves over his hands and took hold a chunk of her red hair. He got the head off Tom and threw it into the wall. It hit with a splatter and slid down to the floor. I watched what used to be Leslie’s eyes flutter and finally close.
Goodbye, Leslie. Thanks for the free room and board. You were awesome.
“Sam!”
I whirled around to see Neal standing over Tom. Tom was frantically wiping his face. The blood was still red, but his skin was already going gray.
There was no way to find a pattern in all of this.
“Shoot him, Sam!” Neal screamed.
I aimed but couldn’t fire. He was still too much Tom for me to end him.
“No. The crate.”
“What?”
“Lock him up!”
Neal shook his head. Despite the risk, I handed him the gun and grabbed Tom by his sleeves. I was careful to keep away from the spit and snot and sweat leaking out of him. I pushed him behind the bars and redid the latch.
“It’s no good, Sam!”
I knew Neal was right as I heard Tom scream and watched him grab his hair. He started to pull it out and slam against the bars in a way that Leslie had only imagined. He was turning faster than the girls.
Neal aimed the gun. I charged towards him and sent him to the floor.
“Sam !”
“Just don’t kill him!”
“He’s already dead.”
We fought for the gun, and we both lost it. Tom kept howling as something crashed into the hardwood. A bullet. We both looked up to see Morgan above us.
She had the gun again.
“We can’t leave him like this,” she said.
I knew she was right. Tom had experimented with Leslie. And now he was… he was…
But I just couldn’t do it.
“Don’t. Don’t make me---”
Morgan fired into the crate. Tom gave a final cry and his brain matter ran down the bars. I fell against the crate and watched him die. My friend. My best friend.
It should have been me.
“Tom?”
He wasn’t moving. I reached through the bars for his hand. I’d let him down.
And then he lifted me up.
Tom sprang back to life within the confines of the cage. He was trying to bite me. I felt hands on my shoulder and turned to see Neal pulling me away from Tom’s rotting teeth. Tom nearly had those teeth on my wrist when Neal tugged me out of harm’s way. We fell to the floor as Tom continued to rise.
“Morgan! Again !”
Morgan fired. Once, twice three times. The bullets didn’t kill Tom, who was already dead. But they stunned him enough to send him and the crate into the wall beside Leslie’s head. Tom glanced at her face and touched the nose. When there was no movement, he became enraged. His fingers obliterated her eye sockets, and he tried to kiss her dead mouth with his dead mouth through the bars.
“Tom! I’m sorry! I’m sorry !”
He looked at me. Now there was no question. I’d be as dead or as zombie as him if he ever broke through the bars.
“We have to get out of here!”
Morgan’s returned hysteria was the most logical thing in the room. Neal had me up, and we flew out of the house towards the car. He was under the hood trying to get the thing back in driving mode. Smart guy. He knew what he was doing.
Tom continued to scream from within. In the air of the night, I realized what I was doing. I was leaving him behind. He’d never done that to me. Not when things were normal. Not when everyone turned. I should go back and just let him devour me.
“Look !
Morgan’s cry sent my head spinning.
They were back in droves.
The zombies were trickling up the driveway. It was dinner time, and we were the special on the menu. Neal got the car going. I lifted the gun from Morgan and pushed her into the passenger’s seat. Then I waved my arm and prepared to face the zombies.
“Sam! Get in!”
I looked from Morgan to Neal. He was beckoning me climb into the backseat. Why? So I could chop off their hands or lead them to certain death of aim the gun at their heads? They were better off without me.
Now I just had to put the point on it.
I quickly reached through the open window and pointed the gun at Morgan’s head.
“Sam! What are you---?”
“Get out of here. Both of you. I’ll kill her if you don’t move.”
Neal
didn’t hit the gas. He just lifted his hands.
“Kid?”
“Go ! I’ll get as many of them as I can.”
“Sam---”
The zombies were already rocking the car. Neal’s better instincts sent his hands back to the wheel.
“Just drive !”
Neal’s face clouded over, and he gunned the car, leaving me in the dust. I was glad he listened. I fired and kept firing. They were still coming. It seemed I was destined to become one of them. But I’d saved my last surviving friends. If… when Neal and Morgan made it to safety, they’d settle down to rebuild civilization. No doubt they’d name their first born after me so my name would live on and---
I tripped over a rock or something and went down the hill, trying to grab the grass to stop my fall. It was no use, and soon I was face down where Tom and I had once built a bonfire to kill time. Should I try that again? Did I have time? The fire might drive the zombies away. I started feeling around for twigs when I saw a shadow brush over me.
I looked up and expected a zombie, ready to pounce. What I saw was battered and torn with matted hair and wide eyes.
But it was no zombie.
“Lana?”
How could it… how could she…?
“Lana ?”
There was no way. How had she survived the blast? How had she found us?
“Lana?”
“Sam. Come on !”
I had seen too much to totally trust her.
“Are… are you…?”
“I’m not with them.”
I liked the sound of that. But still I had to ask.
“Really?”
She nodded and pulled me off the ground. I had so many questions, but now was not the time.
We broke into a run, the zombies in hot pursuit.
Part 4
I held Lana’s hand as tight as I could, and we raced away from Leslie’s house. There were so many screams behind us, but I was pretty sure that I could still make out Tom’s yells among the rest. I started to turn back, but Lana dug her nails into my palm and kept me running.
“That’s the wrong way!” she cried.
“I know. But---”
“No buts ! Keep moving, Sam!”
I could do nothing but follow her pull and her voice, but I still looked over my shoulder. The zombies chased us, and they seemed hungrier than ever. One zombie stood out from the bunch.
He or she or it was bigger than the rest, but it moved ten times as fast. By now I knew all about their brown teeth. This one was all tongue, blue and bloated and dripping with saliva. It needed the fix of warm flesh to find satisfaction.
I looked back to Lana and kept running.
“How are you here?” I screamed. I could feel zombie breath drawing closer, and asking questions seemed the only way to distract me from the very real chance of ending up in the big one’s jaws.
“Not now, Sam.”
“Humor me!”
We turned down the street. I felt one of them, maybe the big one, maybe another, grab my ankle. Without thinking, I kicked as hard as I could. There was a light growl, and I had to look back again.
It was the big one.
It had stumbled and smashed into its friends. Every zombie fell like a game of dominoes. I smiled at the crash and left Lana’s hand.
“Suck it!” I yelled. What a feeling! I was beating them at their own game with just a stomp of my foot, and there was nothing the zombies could do to stop it.
Could I take it to the next level?
I started to charge the whole pack.
“You won’t get all of us! We’re smarter than you. We’re alive.”
I brought my foot down again on the crippled one’s head. At that moment, the entire world was gray skin dripping off a skull. The big one fell into a silence.
I couldn’t say the same for its friends.
Before I could think, they were charging towards me, grabbing all of me. I shook and swatted to avoid their teeth. One of them, who had to have been a girl, almost had her fangs into my side. I kept struggling, but a part of me was resolved to going the way of the others. I could only pray for a bullet in my brain because I didn’t want to end up in a cage.
“Sam!”
I had barely turned my head when Lana reached for me. She had me by the shoulder. Her one hand was on me, but her other hand waved a branch like it was a sword. I knew that if Lana had the gun, she could take them all out in a split second. But even with just the rotting piece of bark, she moved like a superhero and held the surviving zombies back long enough for me to make an escape. I started running. Then I remembered Lana.
She swung and batted them into the pavement with a wild look in her eyes. I had never seen her look that way, and I wondered if she was just another Tammy trying to lure me to a quiet spot before she bared her brown teeth. I knew I should run. Just run. There was no way this could still be Lana. She couldn’t have survived the blast. Even if she had, how had she found Leslie’s house and me ? She was in league with the enemy. She wasn’t to be trusted.
But I just couldn’t leave her.
I grabbed her sleeve. Now the zombies fell like a house of cards after one wrong move. Why did I keep comparing the chaos to games? There was nothing fun about this.
Lana tucked the branch under her arm as we broke into a run.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“Shut up.”
“Don’t you tell me to---”
“I really shouldn’t even be saving you!”
The zombies were bound to get back on their feet and start up again, but Lana stopped me where I stood. When our eyes met, she looked hurt. And then she looked angry.
But she looked human.
“Lana---”
She slapped my face.
“I saved you, jerk! Like a lot of times. And this is how---?”
“How are you here?”
She got it, but still looked back at the zombies.
“Sam, I’m not with them. I’m still Lana.”
And she kissed me. The most recent tender exchange between Tom and Leslie taught me to be wary, but Lana’s mouth felt alive. When I left her kiss and saw the tears starting to form in her eyes, I decided to trust what she seemed to be.
“Lana?”
She hit me again.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
I wanted to know more, but a zombie moan told me that now was the time to get a move on. She was Lana. How she was Lana was a mystery, but I’d figure that out later. I didn’t say another word as we moved past Victorian houses that used to belong to tenured professors. Whatever lessons they’d had to teach no longer mattered, and we turned another corner. I was beyond excited when I saw salvation.
“Another car!”
I lifted the hood and prepared to hotwire the thing to escape. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lana slip into the driver’s seat. She honked the horn, and I shot her my meanest glare.
What was she trying to do? Had I been wrong? Was she with them, and was the horn a call to get their teeth into my skin?
I started to back away from the car when I saw something shiny through the dashboard. As I readied myself for bullets from a stray gun, I saw Lana’s eyes grow wide.
She had keys in her hand.
“Get in, Sam.”
I was still scared, but I didn’t need a second invitation as I climbed into the car.
“Took you long enough,” Lana said as she turned the key in the ignition.
“Took you long enough.
“I… forget it. Let’s ride,” she said.
Lana shifted gears and set the car roaring. We left the zombies in the dust, and I had nowhere to look but back to her.
“You gonna tell me now?” I asked.
She kept her eyes on the road. Each time she turned a corner, we were met by singular zombies removed from the pack. Each time one of them saw our headlights, they reached for the car. If I was behind the wheel, I wou
ld have swerved to avoid them. In my mind’s eye they were already hanging onto the hood, and I had no way of driving them off. Literally.
But Lana was in control.
She pounded the car into zombie after zombie. Only their splatter, shreds of gray flesh and green pus, clung to the windshield.
“Lana! Slow down!”
“Seriously, Sam?”
Before I could answer, yet another zombie was caught in our lights. This one had long hair, and it shined with the blood and spit and sweat of countless victims. Its eyes told me that we were destined to be next in line and---
“Hang on!”
Lana slammed the car into the creature. The zombie’s limbs left its body, and I turned to see the throbbing torso twitch for a few seconds and then stop as Lana slowed the car. Slightly.
“That was close,” she said.
I saw her white knuckles around the wheel. She scanned the road ahead like she was possessed. I knew I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of her car. Or the one she had stolen. Or whatever.
Was she turned ? Lana had called it. No rules. But I needed her to just be Lana and bring back something normal. Something from before this all started to go down.
“Sure was,” I said. The words sounded really stupid as soon as they came out of my mouth.
Lana glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.
“You okay?” I asked.
I swallowed hard. The rest of my questions were suddenly stuck in my throat, but they were quickly replaced by facts that she needed to know.
“Tom’s gone.”
Lana briefly left the gas pedal. I saw her eyes close for a second, but then she remembered the road.
“He’s dead?”
If only.
“No. No we went to Leslie’s---”
“His girlfriend?”
That’s who she had been.
“She’d turned,” I said.
“And what? She ate Tom?
If only. If only that was the extent of it.
“She… she made him into one of them.”
I looked down and saw Lana’s foot move for the brake. But then she pressed the gas pedal harder.
“Then… then we have to get away. We have to… and what about everyone else?”
My eyes stayed on her as I answered.
“The Professor got away with Morgan. I… I saved them.”
Lana let out a cold laugh.
Zombie University (The Complete Series): How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse Page 10