I swallow, feeling sick. “Call the police,” I say hoarsely. “Tell them about the wreck.”
Frederico nods, woodenly complying with my request.
I head down the frontage road. We roll into Geyserville, a small town ten miles north of Healdsburg. The town sports one stop sign, a fire station, two restaurants, and a few tasting rooms. It’s surrounded by gorgeous vineyards, and today, it’s filled with tourists for Barrel Tasting.
I scan the tourists, looking for signs of trouble. At first, all I see is regular people strolling, talking, and laughing. A bit of tension eases out of my chest.
Then I spot a man in a linen suit with a big red stain on his arm. To the average person, it would look like a wine stain. But I see his staggering gait. The sun hits his face, illuminating eyes glazed with eerie whiteness. His nostrils flare, head tipping in the direction of the crosswalk and a group of wine tasters meandering between the white lines.
“That guy over there,” I say, pointing. “I think he’s—he’s one of them.”
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
Frederico looks at me. “What do you think we can do?”
“We—” I break off, really considering his question.
What can we do? Get out of the car and try to warn people away from the man in the linen suit? Who would listen to us?
We could tie the man up and call the police. For an instant, I have a crazed vision of us finding a jump rope and tying the man to a restaurant chair. I immediately dismiss the idea as impossible.
We could bash his head in with a crowbar. That’s what heroes do in zombie movies, right? Except there’s a big difference between real life and the movies. No way could I ever bash in someone’s head, even if they are a zombie. Could I?
These thoughts flash through my head as I roll toward the crosswalk—and keep rolling, despite the fact I’m pressing my foot down on the brake pedal. I frantically pump my foot but nothing happens.
“My brakes! My brakes!” I stupidly flap a hand at Frederico, like that will solve anything. I roll down my window and shout at the tourists moseying through the crosswalk. “Get out of the way,” I scream. “Move! My brakes are out!”
A few of the tourists hear me. They hurry out of the way, giving me wide-eyed stares. The rest of them continue their unhurried mince through the crosswalk, sipping on their wine glasses and wholly unaware that they’re about to be run over.
The man in the linen suit chooses that moment to attack. He launches himself like a wildcat into the crosswalkers. Most of them scatter with confused and indignant yelps, but one poor middle-aged woman goes down under him. He wastes no time ripping her shirt open and taking a huge bite out of her breast. Shiny red blobs of flesh gleam in his mouth as he starts to eat.
Those nearest us go into full panic mode, myself included.
“Shit-shit-shit,” I cry, yanking on the steering wheel, as if that will somehow slow the inexorable roll of the car.
Without warning, Frederico hoists his leg into the driver’s side and slams down on the accelerator. My hatchback rockets forward, plowing right into Linen Suit and the woman he’s eating.
Linen Suit is thrown onto my car. He latches onto the hood right below the windshield, snarling at us with bloody teeth. The woman is tossed through the air. She lands on the sidewalk, immediately surrounded by people. I careen through Geyserville’s intersection without hitting anyone else.
Except that now I have a thing on top of my car.
Frederico shifts, retracting his foot. “Go!” he shouts, and I slam down on the pedal.
We zip down the tiny main street, carrying the zombie with us. I whip the steering wheel violently to the right. The man’s legs slide to one side and dangle over the ground, but he doesn’t let go.
A minute later, we’re flying down a two-lane country road surrounded by vineyards. Geyserville is a dot in my rearview mirror.
Frantic, I turn on the windshield wipers and pound on my horn, hoping to startle Linen Suit and dislodge him. No such luck. His face is pointed in my direction, though it’s impossible to tell if he’s looking at me; his eyes roll oddly in his sockets, never settling on anything in particular. Can he even see? He gnashes his teeth together, clawing brainlessly at the window with one hand.
“That really is a zombie,” Frederico says quietly, chilling calm in his voice.
To my horror, he rolls down the window and boosts himself out. He sits on the edge of the sill, one arm still inside the car gripping the oh-shit handle. In his other hand is the neon-blue Maglite I keep in the car, which he wields like a club. His curly gray hair flies in the wind.
“Frederico,” I yell. “You crazy bastard, get back in here!”
He ignores me. I keep my foot on the gas, afraid that if I let up, Linen will find some semblance of balance.
The man shifts, saliva dripping out of his mouth. He tries to get onto his knees, one bloody hand slipping as he does. As soon as he loses his grip, I swerve again.
My plan works. Linen Suit tumbles off the hood of my car.
Unfortunately, so does Frederico. With a wild shout, he flies backward and lands between a row of grapes.
“No!”
I whip the steering wheel to the left, trying desperately to pull a U-turn. The car burns rubber as it spins. The left tires momentarily lift off the ground. The hatchback clunks loudly as it lands seconds later.
Linen Suit has regained his footing. His clothes are in tatters, as is most of the right side of his body. There is no way he should be conscious, let alone on his feet.
His milky white eyes roll in opposite directions, but his face is aimed in Frederico’s direction like a hunting hound’s. My friend grunts softly, struggling to his feet.
I don’t think. I just act. Aiming the car at Linen Suit, I gun it.
My poor hatchback slams into the man. He is sucked underneath the tires. The car plows through three feet of vineyard, the thick stocks of the grapes denting the hood before falling prey to the grill.
I hear and sense something on the rear side sheering. The hatchback grinds to a halt, caught by the half a dozen vineyard trellises on the outskirts of Geyserville.
I throw open the door and leap out. Frederico is on his feet, bracing himself against a grapevine.
Linen Suit is still going. Both his legs are broken, but he’s crawled out from under the car. Propped up onto his hands, he is dragging himself through the vineyard like a seal. He’s heading straight toward Frederico.
I can’t hide from the truth. This thing that used to be a man—it’s not human anymore. No human could have survived what he’s been through.
It’s a zombie. As in, one of the undead. As in, a flesh-eating monster.
“You fucking undead asshole,” I shout at him. “Stay the hell away from my friend!”
Chapter 6
Broken Skull
Adrenaline surging through my body, I snatch a large rock lying on the soft soil of the vineyard. I take several steps toward the zombie, arm raised high above my head.
Linen Suit hears my approach, his head turning in my direction. He growls, scenting the air.
Fear paralyzes me. I have the advantage, but what if I’m not fast enough? What if I go in for the kill, miss, and get eaten?
In a moment of girlish fear, I chuck the rock as hard as I can. My aim is off, but it does deliver a glancing blow to the chin, which pisses him off. He snarls, clawing his way toward me.
“Shit.” This is not going well.
“The Maglite,” Frederico calls. “It’s over there.”
His frantic gestures help me spot my neon-blue flashlight lying near the side of the road. Thank god I picked a bright color.
I rush to the Maglite and snatch it up, holding it in front of me like a bat. I advance on the zombie, palms coated in sweat.
“Circle around,” Frederico says. “Come at it from behind.”
Linen Suit whips his head back and forth, attention swiveling between
me and Frederico. My breath rasps as the creature focuses his attention back on me, dragging himself in my direction.
Following Frederico’s advice, I circle around the zombie. Still pushed up like a seal, he tries to follow my progress.
Squelching all reason, I dash in and swing the Maglite straight at his head. There’s a sickening thunk as I connect with the skull.
“Again,” Frederico shouts. “Hit it again, Kate!”
I grit my teeth, squashing the revulsion rising within. The zombie is wounded but still alive. I am not cut out for this shit. I can’t even pick up the birds killed by my cat. I get my neighbor to do it in exchange for cookies.
Flinching, I swing the Maglite a second time. A shudder goes through me. The memory of beloved blue eyes momentarily blinds me.
“Again!”
A third time.
“Again!”
A fourth time, and a fifth. I hit it over and over. The horrible sound of shattering bone blinds my eyes with tears.
Gentle hands close around my shoulders, pulling me back.
“You got it,” Frederico says quietly in my ear. “It’s over.”
I blink away my tears, staring at the skull of the battered zombie, at the blood oozing from the big wound in the back of its skull.
The potent memory I’ve been fighting surges up and socks me in the gut.
“God.” I stumble back, breaking out of Frederico’s grasp. I fall against the hatchback and bury my face in my hands. My chest rises and falls in short, panicked breaths.
Kyle.
*
It was three weeks before Carter’s high school graduation. I dragged my son to the mall to pick out new clothes for the occasion. You’d think we’d undertaken some task of horrific proportions, like scraping gum off bleachers at the high school football stadium instead of shopping in an air-conditioned department store.
“I look like a yuppie.” My eighteen-year-old son scowled at himself in the Macy’s mirror. “A penguin yuppie.” In Carter’s world, yuppies were scions of the devil.
“You look handsome,” I corrected, straightening the sleeves of the blue button-down shirt he wore. The color of the shirt set off his eyes, which were a perfect match to his father’s. “What color of tie do you want?”
“A tie?” The anguish on his face was laughable, although I was careful not to laugh.
“We can skip the tie, but—”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “I don’t want to wear one of those things.” He tugged at his shirt collar, as if wearing a tie was akin to having a constrictor around his throat.
“If you skip the tie, I want a trim.”
Silence. His scowl shifted to me.
“I’m not getting rid of this.” His drew a protective hand across his giant bushy beard.
“I wouldn’t think of asking you to shed the lumberjack look,” I replied with a straight face. “Not for graduation. I just want a trim. Two inches?”
“One,” he countered.
“One-and-a-half.”
“Fine.” His shoulders slumped as he peered at me suspiciously. “One-and-a-half inches off my beard, and no tie?”
“No tie,” I agreed.
My son was going to fit right in at Humboldt University, where he’d be moving in three months. I tried hard not to imagine a hippie girl with hairy armpits hanging on him.
God, let him find a girlfriend who uses deodorant, I thought.
Carter couldn’t get out of the shopping mall fast enough. If I left things up to him, he’d never buy new clothes. It was up to me to remove ratty shirts and jeans from his dresser and replace them with new ones from Old Navy. Sometimes he even noticed.
Carter relaxed as soon as we got in the car and headed home. “I ordered some new malt,” he said. “I want to try and make a stout.” My son wanted to be a brewmaster and open his own brewery when he graduated from college. “The secret to stout beer is all in the grain you use,” he continued. “I read all about it . . .”
He rattled on as I drove, telling me about his new beer yeast and the theory behind making a good stout beer. Which he wasn’t even old enough to drink, but Carter never worried about little details like that.
“I’m researching different barleys,” he said, keeping up his nonstop monologue. “Mixing malt and barley is key . . .”
I listened, enjoying the time with my son. I was almost disappointed when our riverfront bungalow came into view, knowing our one-on-one time was at an end.
At least my other favorite man—my husband—would be waiting for me. We had plans to make dinner together. Tri-tip with blue cheese butter and roasted vegetables—
“Dad? Dad!” Carter’s voice jarred my train of thought.
My son threw open the car door and leaped out, even though I was still rolling up the driveway.
I slammed on the brakes, following Carter’s sprint across our front yard. That’s when I saw my husband.
Kyle lay face up on the cement walkway in front of our house. He wasn’t moving. The hose was on, water spurting across his ankles.
“Kyle?” I yanked on the emergency brake and jumped out of the car, fumbling for the phone in my purse.
“He’s not breathing!” Carter screamed. “Dad!”
He lifted Kyle’s head, revealing the small pool of blood under my husband’s skull. The certain knowledge of loss—of an awful, soul-crushing loss—made my feet and legs numb. I froze, mouth going dry as I stared in horror at the scene before me.
“Call nine-one-one!” Carter yelled.
The phone slipped from my fingers, cracking loudly against the cement walkway. I fell to my knees, snatching clumsily at it.
“My husband fell,” I said breathlessly to the operator. “Please, send an ambulance. Please, please . . .”
Even as I said the words, I knew it was too late. Kyle was gone. His face was pale and flaccid, mouth hanging slightly ajar. His beautiful blue eyes stared sightlessly at the sky above him.
Carter placed both hands on Kyle’s chest, pumping up and down. “One, two, three,” he counted, choking on a sob. He bent over, tipping Kyle’s head back and blowing air into his father’s mouth.
I folded over into a ball, sobbing. I felt my world shatter delicately around me. Carter continued to administer CPR.
It didn’t do any good. Kyle was gone.
*
A fluke. A stupid accident. Kyle slipped on wet pavement and cracked his head open. Just like that, he was gone. Stolen from me and Carter.
Sometimes, when I lie in bed at night, I imagine I hear the crack as the back of Kyle’s skull connected with the cement. It’s a dull sound. Distinct, but not very loud. Soft, but deadly and permanent.
In all my nightmares and morbid mental movies of his death, I am haunted by the sound of his skull connecting with the pavement. It’s a deep, faint thud I’ve only imagined, and it’s identical to what I just heard when I split this zombie’s skull.
The sound often drives me into my running shoes and out onto the road, but it doesn’t matter how far or how fast I run. I can’t escape the fact that my husband, the love of my life and my best friend, is gone.
Did Kyle hear that dull, horrible noise before he died? Had he died instantly, like this zombie, or had he dwelled in unconsciousness while his life bled out of his head? Could Carter and I have saved him if we’d gotten home five minutes earlier? Ten minutes?
As I stare at the zombie’s ruined head, all I can think of is Kyle. My dead husband’s brown goatee and strong nose are superimposed on the face of the zombie with the bleeding skull. My hands shake. My chest is constricted, making it hard to breathe.
“Kate!” Frederico shouts in my ear, giving me a rough shake. “It’s not Kyle. It’s not Kyle!”
And just like that, the moment is over. Kyle’s features melt away, replaced with the grotesque one of the zombie. Panic drains out of my chest, letting breath flood normally into my lungs. I sag, letting tears dry on my cheeks.
“I miss him,” I whisper. “Every moment of every day. I miss him so goddamn much.”
“I know.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I know, Jackalope.”
I press fingers to my temples, burying thoughts of Kyle. Grief and sorrow will not help me now.
Focus on something else. That’s what I need to do.
I push off the car, frantically rooting around in the passenger seat until I find my phone. I nearly sag with relief when I see a missed text message from Carter.
I’m OK. Had 2 move furniture in front of door. Text when u can. Don’t call. Can’t talk. Need 2 stay quiet.
I press the phone against my chest, momentarily closing my eyes.
Carter is okay. My son is still alive. Taking a steadying breath, I text back.
We’ve seen the zombies. Are you safe?
I purposely do not look at the mangled body lying a few feet away. Even if it was a monster, I don’t like thinking about what I did to him.
I’m glad you’ve seen them, comes his reply. Wasn’t sure how 2 explain things.
A strangled laugh escapes me.
Zombies aren’t supposed to be real, I text back.
No kidding. Everyone said they were meth-heads. Then I saw 3 girls eating a guy at a party last night.
Frederico leans against the car beside me, glancing over my shoulder at the phone. In the aftershocks of my panic attack, I realized I’d forgotten all about my friend’s catapult into the vineyard.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, looking up from the phone. “I’m a complete shit. Are you okay? You flew at least fifty feet.”
“I’m a tough bastard,” he replies. “Don’t worry about me. Carter okay?”
I study my friend, giving him a head-to-toe once-over.
“I’m fine, really,” Frederico says. Other than a scrape on his elbow and dirt smudges on his face and legs, he appears unscathed. “I felt worse when I fell off that ledge in the Santa Barbara hundred.”
I snort. Frederico had forgotten to change the batteries on his headlamp on that race. Instead of trying to tag along with another runner, he tried to forge ahead alone—and ended up plowing right off a ledge and twisting his ankle. The stunt had forced him into a DNF—a Did Not Finish.
Undead Ultra Page 4