by David Rogers
“Finally.” she muttered, staggering to her feet. Dumping the last few ounces of gas in the paint can back into the tank, she began capping all the containers. It took her longer than she liked to get them all lifted up into the back of the SUV, but she was tired, and five gallon cans of gas were heavy. She made herself slow down and double check the cords as she fixed them into place so they wouldn’t spill; wary of the danger of the cans falling over inside the SUV.
Plus, it would waste the fuel.
“Okay, we’re out of here.” she announced loudly when she finished with the bungee cords. Scooping the tools and paraphernalia up, she rolled it all back into the garbage bag and threw it in the SUV.
“Watch out, I’m coming down.” Austin replied.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” Jessica nodded. She used her foot to slide the tank lid back into place. Leaving it open would allow evaporation and rain to ruin the tank’s contents; but, honestly, she only cared in case they had to come back through here for some reason. She couldn’t think of what that might be, but all she could think of was needing gas again and finding it was bad because she’d left the tank open.
There were still zombies in view when she took her first really good look around since before starting the fill up; but none were close enough to be a threat. Jessica waited for Austin to step down to the hood from the roof, then sit and slide off the front of the SUV to the ground. When he was down, she opened the driver’s door. “Back seat.”
“I’m going.” Candice said, scrambling back over the center console. Jessica waited for her daughter to vacate the seat, then got in and closed the door. She had the engine started by the time Austin made it around to the passenger door and joined her. The fuel gauge was pegged at the top, which was reassuring. And the engine was turning over as smoothly as ever, which was equally comforting.
“One more fill up done.” she sighed, taking a long breath as Austin closed his door.
“Sorry.” Austin apologized. “You did it fast though.”
“We’re done.” she shrugged, dropping the transmission into drive and ignoring the slight exertion-induce quivering in her hands and forearms. “Let’s check the store real quick, then we’ll see if we can’t find a house or something.”
“Early stop?”
“After yesterday, I’d like to leave enough time to really look for something good.” Jessica said. “This isn’t a race. We’ve got time to do it right.”
“Good call.”
She spun the SUV around in a long arc that brought it up to the gas station’s convenience store, triple parking right in front of the doors. They were broken out, along with a number of the other glass panes that made up the majority of the frontage. She could see merchandise on the floor, most of it free of its packages and scattered or leaked out into a jumbled mess.
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re only looking for a map.” Jessica said as she eyed the scene. She couldn’t think of why anyone would trash the station like that. Zombies would beat on things and make a mess, but only when pursing someone. Maybe that had been it. She hoped so; the thought of people running around destroying perfectly usable food and supplies wasn’t reassuring.
“Wait for me.” Austin said as she drew the Taurus.
“I can see the maps.” Jessica said as she tugged the pistol’s slide back a little so she could check the chamber. Yup, there was still a bullet in it.
“Wait.” Austin repeated.
“Mom, wait.” Candice said anxiously as both adults reached for their door handles.
Jessica made herself pause for another slow breath. She was just tired. Both of them were right. She was sure she could be in and out in less than ten or fifteen seconds; but there was no sense in pushing providence. “Sorry. Go ahead Austin, but you’re backing me up, not the other way around.”
He got out without replying, moving gingerly around the front of the SUV with the MP5 at the ready. Jessica waited until he was past the driver’s side corner of the bumper, then looked over her shoulder to make sure the area was clear before she opened her door. She wanted to go quick, but she still closed the vehicle’s door behind her. The SUV was guarding Candice for her.
“There’s a whole bunch of them right there.” Jessica said, gesturing toward the rack of maps visible on the front counter. The station was set up with an island that dominated the center of the store, and wire shelving racks were bolted into place everywhere a register wasn’t positioned. Most of them were empty, but she saw the plastic wrapped maps. They looked picked over, but she only needed one.
“Right in, right back out.” Austin said. “I’ll cover you from the door. Make sure you check your sides.” There was a broad corridor of open space from the store doors to the cashier’s island; but flanking it were some shelf aisles. The whole building looked deserted, but some of the sightlines from out here to in there were a little blocked up. That made it possible something could be lurking. She didn’t think so, but it only took one mistake.
“Thanks.” Jessica nodded, gripping the pistol in both hands and easing forward. Her loafers crunched glass shards into the concrete as she stepped on them, but her footing felt good. She glanced to either side as she crossed the threshold, then again as she slowly moved in deeper toward the island. The aisles were clear, of zombies at least. The mess of damaged and discarded food and drink continued along either aisle, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even mind the sticky, tacky residue of sugared soda that pulled at her feet.
When she was close enough, she paused and lifted herself on tiptoes for as good of a look over the counter as she could get. Still clear; nothing hiding behind it to make a grab for her. Making a grab of her own, she clutched a couple of the maps with the vaguely gun shaped outline of Florida into her left hand, then backed away quickly. She almost tripped when she tried to turn – the sticky floor resisted her attempt to spin her foot across it – but she caught herself with a stumble that merely looked awkward.
“All good.” she said as she made it back to the concrete past the doors.
“We’re gone.” Austin nodded, turning and heading for the other side of the SUV. Jessica didn’t hesitate, she holstered the gun and got right in. While she waited for Austin to join her, she pulled at the plastic wrap on the road map. It resisted her efforts. There wasn’t a convenient corner she could get a grip on to pull on, with either fingers or teeth. She studied it unhappily, but Austin interrupted before she could decide what she wanted to try.
“Give me one of those.” he said as he slid in on the passenger side.
Jessica gave up and handed him the sheaf of maps. As he unsnapped the catch on the big survival style knife sheathed upside down on his right shoulder, she put the transmission back into drive and headed for the street.
She wove around a number of zombies getting from the gas station’s lot to the on-ramp of I-75, ran over a couple of bodies missing their heads courtesy of Austin’s shooting, and rammed a few more out of her way. The SUV’s bulk was up to the task, but she winced every time she saw an unavoidable impact coming. By the time she was back on the interstate, Austin had opened one of the maps and was busy unfolding it for a better look.
“Where are we on that?” Candice asked, leaning forward for a better look.
“Are you wearing your seat belt?” Jessica asked sharply when she felt the girl’s breath hitting against her elbow.
“Yes.”
Jessica looked over her shoulder and saw her daughter was telling a half-truth; the belt was on, but Candice had slipped out from beneath the shoulder portion so she could lean up.
“We’re . . . here.” Austin said, tapping a spot. Jessica spared a quick glance at the map, but she couldn’t make out much detail from this angle. Not while she was busy driving. I-75 had been more or less clear so far today, with only the occasional roaming zombie, but she didn’t like not paying attention to where she was going.
Wrecking would put a serious wrench in their travel plans.
“And where are we going?”
“Somewhere down here.” Austin said, moving his finger down the floppy fanfold of paper.
“Sit back, wear the seat belt properly.” Jessica interjected.
“Awww.”
Jessica made herself count to three, reminding herself that she was just tired and stressed. Even before everything had erupted on Labor Day weekend, the girl had been generally well behaved. Since then, she’d only rarely been even somewhat difficult to manage. And Candice was wearing the belt, just not all of it. There was no sense in making a huge ‘Mom’ scene out of this.
“Candy Bear, please, sit back. We’re in motion, remember the rule about that?”
“Sorry.” Candice said, sounding reasonably apologetic.
Jessica tossed a smile over her shoulder. “Thank you sweetie. It really distracts me when you’re not buckled in.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Here.” Austin said, breaking the wrapping on another map and handing it back. “Look for yourself. We’re just north of Ocala, and we’re headed south for Lake Okeechobee. They teach you how to read a map in school?”
“Sort of. We learned how to read the globe.” Candice replied as she took the map.
“Same thing. This is just flat, and folds up.”
“So it’ll fit in your pocket easier.”
“Got it in one girlie-girl. Pretty hard to lug a globe around when you’re out and about.”
Jessica reached for the GPS she’d stuck to the top of the windshield, but Austin put his hand out and covered the little screen.
“I’ll do it. I know you don’t like dividing your attention when driving.”
“Thanks.” she said, still trying to force herself to relax. The interstate was three lanes here, and she wasn’t even going that fast, but she put her hand back on the wheel and let him fiddle with the navigation unit. Without asking what she wanted, he adjusted the zoom level and scrolled south so it showed what was ahead of them. Namely, Ocala. Jessica let her eyes flit back and forth between the road and the screen, frowning at the layout of streets that came up as Austin panned the unit’s focus south along I-75.
“The west side looks settled, but spread out some.” Austin offered after letting her have a good look.
“And is further from Ocala proper.” Jessica nodded.
“Yeah, it looks like most of the core of the city is to the east from 75.”
“I think we’ll the next exit. Take a look around in that direction.”
“Why are we stopping so soon?” Candice asked, listening to them. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“And we don’t want to be hunting around in the dark for a place to sleep.” Jessica replied.
“We can’t get anywhere near where we want to go today anyway.” Austin told her. “Tomorrow we’ll keep going.”
“Oh.” Candice shrugged.
Jessica sped up some and, after a few miles, saw the signs for the next exit. Preceding the actual notice were several of the ‘what you can do here’ signs; three of them this time, one each listing gas stations, restaurants, and hotels.
“Hotel might work.” Austin remarked.
“Maybe. Do we want to park that close to the road though? What if someone comes by and tries to steal the car?”
“Hmm, I’d have to think about that one . . . but this thing isn’t as easy to break into as a normal vehicle.”
“Why not?” Candice asked.
“Well, for one thing, the windows aren’t windows. They’re armored, so they won’t break unless you really work them over.”
“We’ll take a look when we get there, see what’s available.” Jessica repeated as the actual exit came up and she drifted right to take it. Letting her speed drop as she coasted along it, she tapped the GPS to recenter the screen on the car’s position. A five car wreck partially blocked the intersection at the end of the exit lane, with some bodies laying next to, or half pulled from, the vehicles.
“Those . . .” Jessica said slowly.
“Yeah, I see.” Austin nodded.
Since the nightmare had begun, Jessica had become more inured to horror than she would’ve ever guessed possible. She’d seen all sorts of terrible and stomach turning thing; the kinds of sights that would make a splatter-horror fan cheer in excitement, and made her reach for her resolve. Bodies were on that unpleasant list, and she’d seen them in all stages and degrees of decay in her travels and scrounging.
Judging from the condition, she’d guess these people had died very early after the zombies had appeared; skin dried and stretched, eyes heavily sunk back in the sockets, and what tissue there was left considerably worked over by the elements. Since their deaths, they’d clearly been ravaged and snacked on by hungry creatures.
What was making her wonder a little was why there was anything at all left. She’d seen the remains of zombie meals, and it was typically only bones. Once a zombie started eating, it usually kept going until there was nothing chewy left.
Unless something distracted it.
“Where’d the zombies go?” she muttered.
“What?”
“That . . . looks like it wasn’t finished.” she said, pointing unobtrusively at the bodies. “Where’d the diners go if they didn’t finish?”
Austin considered for a few seconds, then shrugged. “They’re not here now.”
“I can see that.”
“I guess they were interrupted.”
Jessica sighed and turned right, away from the interstate. There was a sign pointing left that indicated a hospital was in that direction; she wanted no part of whatever had gone on there. Hospitals had been hit hard in the beginning. “Well, it’s odd.”
“Everything about all of this is odd.” he teased gently.
She shook her head with a smile and refocused her attention, taking in the surroundings. He was just reading her mood again, and trying to help ease her mind. She appreciated the effort, but it didn’t change the decisions that needed to be made.
Two of the hotels were in view; both in bad shape. One looked like it had been set on fire, and the other had taken a crashed semi-truck right through the center of the building. She figured there was probably one hell of a good story behind that incident, but if anyone was left to tell it, they weren’t here now. The one that hadn’t burned might have some usable rooms away from where the truck had rammed it, but Jessica decided to hold it as an emergency reserve in case nothing else turned up.
The main road was lined with widely spaced rural businesses, mostly fast food joints and chain stores closer in. As they got more than a few blocks from I-75, the bigger outlets began to be replaced by assorted independent stores, primarily gardening, and little craft and hobby establishments.
Every building, no matter what its function or supposed purpose, was in bad shape. No windows were intact, some had suffered fire or crash damage. A supermarket they passed had a small plane’s tail sticking out of its roof; and a helicopter laying on one side in the parking lot near the building’s main doors. Even from the road, with only a few quick glances as she drove, Jessica could clearly see the large number of bodies and fire damage around that particular piece of unpleasantness.
Based on the look of the roads in the areas beyond the one she was on, she turned south seeking something more residential and soon found herself amid what looked – on the GPS screen – an awful lot like neighborhoods.
The first section she toured through were trailers; not a trailer park exactly, but lot after lot with a house trailer positioned on it. Some were ramshackle and untidy, but most showed some thought and care had gone into their positioning and upkeep. The lower end ones rested on bare concrete blocks; but those were the minority. The rest tended to have trellises of wood, borders of hedges and bushes, and a few even had low stone walls that concealed whatever the trailer rested on.
There were also a number of zombies. Not an overwhelming num
ber, but more than a scattered handful here and there. They were roaming and ambling around in threes and fours in some spots, and twice she saw tight groupings numbering past ten. As Jessica guided the SUV through the loop of a side road with its tightly spaced cross-streets, she had to weave around a number of interested undead. At one point there were more than twenty in view.
“There are a lot of zombies here.” Candice remarked.
“Too many.” Jessica sighed. “Austin, play with the GPS again for me please. Anything look good further west? Maybe if we shift over some we’ll find a quieter spot.”
Austin tilted the GPS on its little stand and poked at the screen; changing the screen’s focus to drag it around. Jessica slowed down as she started running out of room to weave. Both sides of every street, even the little cross-connects in the trailer-park neighborhood, had drainage ditches that dropped several feet down before rising back up to level. The driveways all had ribbed culvert pipes beneath them linking the ditches on either side of the concrete slab.
Finally she had to run over a couple of zombies, doing it at less than ten miles per hour. The SUV’s mass was more than sufficient to knock them down, and its shocks absorbed the bumps as the tires rolled over their bodies without major incident. The only real concern she had about doing that was maybe breaking the headlights – which were needed if night driving came up – and the sickening, squishy thumps hitting the zombies made.
“Ewww.” Candice said.
“Them be the breaks.” Austin said without looking away from the GPS unit.
“Breaks is right.” Jessica frowned as she straightened back out and kept heading for the main road.
“Ewww.” Candice said again.
“The front grill isn’t set up for ramming, but it’s reinforced. If you keep the speed down, it won’t be a problem. And the bumper can take quite a lot regardless.” Austin shrugged, sounding unconcerned.
“Tires?” she asked, mostly to distract herself from the thought of what happened to the zombies after getting run over by the big vehicle. She’d heard the inventory of the SUV’s assets before, but she’d take any distraction she could to avoid dwelling too much on the horror show.