All That I See - 02

by Shane Gregory

  I laughed, a little taken aback.

  “That’s none of your business,” I said. “I understand that she was just a girl when she was in your class, but—“

  “How old are you?” he said. “You’ve got to be at least fifteen years older than her. I’m guessing more.”

  I decided to try to stop it by putting his mind at ease. It would be the truth, after all. I held up my hand and stepped in closer to him.

  “The answer is ‘no’ to all of it,” I said. “But you need to realize that she isn’t the high school kid that you used to know. She and I have gotten…close the past couple of weeks. I do care for her quite a bit.”

  His brow furrowed as he considered what I said, but I think he’d already made up his mind about me. I glanced over at Ron, but he didn’t seem to like being there any more than I at that moment. Finally, Ben nodded.

  “I don’t mean any offense,” he said. “But I do plan to talk with her about it.”

  “Do whatever you need to do,” I said. “It’s not like I’m holding her against her will.”

  He walked away, and I shook my head.

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  “Ben is a good guy,” Ron said. “Don’t let it bother you.”

  “Does he have a thing for Sara or something?”

  “No way,” Ron said. “Ben has a family. He’s straight-laced when it comes to that kind of thing. He just tends to get a little too involved in the lives of his students in an overprotective kind of way, but he’s a good guy.”

  “I would think that would be a bad thing—being that involved,” I said.

  Ron shrugged, “Most of those kids don’t have much guidance at home. He’s kind of a father figure for them. Come on, and I’ll show you around the place.”

  He took me through the house and talked about the renovations that he’d been making. He was very excited about all the improvements he had planned for the house, as though they would eventually happen. I wasn’t really interested. It seemed pointless. We were coming down the stairs when Molly met us on her way up.

  “We have sick down by the gate,” she said. “Ben has gone out to have a look.”

  Old Mr. McAllister was out of his recliner and standing at the front window looking out.

  Ron grabbed his rifle from next to the fireplace, and the two of us went out onto the porch. Ben was on his way down to the road with a shotgun. Sara was standing by our car looking out after him. Down at the end of the driveway, on the other side of the gate, were two zombies. They were just standing at the gate watching Ben approach.

  “Let’s go check it out,” Ron said.

  We headed out after him. When we got to Sara she grabbed my arm.

  “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she said. “They haven’t had any out this way in days, and two show up after we do.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’re going to check it out; do you want to walk down with us?”

  “Mr. Parks told me to stay here.”

  “You can come with us if you want; you are a grown woman.” I said that more for my sake than hers. After my conversation with Ben, I was reminded that Sara’s age was an issue, and not just for me. Of course, it didn’t really matter what Ben thought, but it had brought up in my own mind that I wasn’t okay with it. It wasn’t the age difference so much as her particular age. Had we both been a little older, I wouldn’t have thought about it the same way, but she was still so close to high school.

  I looked into her eyes—beautiful green eyes—and it suddenly hit me that she really was a grown woman, more mature at nineteen than most pre-Canton B women were at thirty. Even though I’d been telling myself all along that this was so, I hadn’t really believed it until then.

  “If it’s my fault, then more will be coming,” she said.

  “Even if it is because of you, it won’t be your fault,” I said.

  She looked unconvinced. I cupped her smudged face in my hands and kissed her. Time seemed to stop along with my heart. I pulled away and looked at her more closely than I had before. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. A faint smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes were shining.

  I looked over and Ron was staring at us. He raised his empty hand and grinned, “Dude,” he said, “It ain’t none of my business.”

  Then we heard the shotgun blast. We all looked out toward the road. One of the zombies stumbled backwards and fell. Ben Parks turned the shotgun on the second creature and fired.

  “He shouldn’t be doing that,” I said. “He’ll just attract more with the noise.”

  “No big deal,” Ron said with a shrug. “They can’t get through the fence.”

  “Yeah, but they could surround this place and keep you from getting out for a while.”

  “We have plenty of food,” he said.

  I didn’t like his cavalier attitude. I was surprised that he had made it so long not understanding the gravity of our situation.

  “Well, we don’t,” I said. “We should probably go before more of them show up.”

  “You two are more than welcome to stay,” he said. “We’re all cool with it.”

  “I appreciate that,” I replied, “and we’ll be back, but we have some things we need to collect.”

  Ben Parks was on his way back up the driveway, “Ron, get your gloves!” he called out. “We need to drag them away from the property!”

  “We should go,” I said, looking at Sara. She nodded and walked out to meet Parks. They stood in the driveway and talked a couple of minutes while I waited by the car. Ben kept glancing up at me. Finally, she hugged him and joined me.

  “I told him we’d be back,” she said as we got in the car.

  I pulled around and started down the driveway. When I got to Parks, I stopped. He leaned over and looked in my window.

  “Take care of her,” he said.

  “We’ll take care of each other,” Sara said.

  He nodded, “We’ll keep an eye out for you. You come back when you can.”

  I eased past him down to the gate. Sara got out and opened the gate for me to pull out then closed it once I was clear. I kept looking in the mirror. Ben Parks hadn’t moved. He was just standing there in the middle of the driveway staring out at us. Ron came out of the house and handed him a pair of leather work gloves, but Ben never took his eyes off of us.

  “That man does not like me,” I said to myself.

  “What did you say?” Sara said as she got in the car.

  “Nothing.”

  Chapter 13

  “So, Mr. Parks, huh?” I said as Sara drove us back toward Clayfield.

  She nodded.

  “Shop?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  I shrugged, “I don’t know. I have fond memories of a couple of teachers. There was Mrs. Brown, my high school history teacher. There was Mr. Wallace, my museum studies professor in college. Ben Parks just seems like an odd choice for favorite teacher, that’s all.”

  “Mr. Parks is a really nice man,” she said, sounding defensive.

  “I’m sure he is,” I said. “But shop? I didn’t really take you to be a shop kind of girl.”

  “What kind of girl did you take me for?” she said, this time obviously in a defensive, perhaps angry, tone.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Who chooses their shop teacher as their favorite?”

  “I do,” she said. “Most of Clayfield High School does…or did. What do you have against Mr. Parks?”

  “Nothing.”

  We were quiet for a while. I looked out my window as we passed deserted houses and the shambling undead.

  “Why would he be your favorite teacher?” I said, still not satisfied.

  “Really?” she said. “Why was Mrs. Brown your favorite?”

  “Well,” I said, thinking it over, “she inspired me. She got me excited about history. It was because of her, that I chose my profession. Plus she was a really nice lady.”

  “Yeah
, and Mr. Parks is a really nice man.”

  “I know,” I said. “But, is that all? Did he really go above and beyond? That’s the thing about the good ones—“

  “Mr. Parks was voted teacher of the year by the students during my junior and senior years,” she said. “That should tell you something.”

  “It should,” I said. “But it doesn’t.”

  “Never mind,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I let it go, but I didn’t think the question was an unreasonable one.

  “Are we going somewhere in particular?” I asked, noticing that we were now headed north on the bypass away from town.

  “I thought we’d cross the county line, and find a liquor store,” she said. “I thought we would have a better selection in a store. I’d rather not drink any more nasty rum.”

  “Not all rum is nasty,” I said. “Wheeler and his group were going this way, remember? Maybe we should cross the line to the south and head over to Fullerton.”

  “I’m counting on Wheeler still being in Clayfield,” she said. “Fullerton is a long drive.”

  Clayfield is dead center in Grace County, so it was going to be a thirty to forty-five minute drive no matter which direction we went, and that was on a good day when we didn’t have to dodge wrecked cars and zombies. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the area. I could have argued that it was unnecessary--we were bound to find alcohol somewhere in Clayfield—but we hadn’t been out of the county since the virus, and I was kind of curious about how other places had fared. There weren’t really any towns immediately north of the county line—just liquor stores and bars built for the sole purpose of servicing the dry citizens of Grace County and Clayfield whose cash turned into tax revenue and helped to pave roads in a different county because they could purchase a particular item just a few feet over an imaginary line that they couldn’t purchase on the other side. It was silly, really.

  The four-lane highway leading out of Grace County was cluttered with abandoned and wrecked vehicles. Car doors stood open. There were a couple of pile-ups. Here and there were the undead. They were always around. Their deterioration was evident. They were wasting away either from starvation or because that was what dead bodies did—waste away. Seeing an infected individual in the first stage of the virus wasn’t as common as it had been. They were still around, but like us, the truly living, they were a minority.

  Another thing we’d noticed more of were the scavengers—vultures, ravens, coyotes, and dogs. These creatures weren’t wasting away; they were fat and happy. As we passed, they would pull their heads out of the carrion (some of it still moving) and grin at us with black, dripping mouths. I’d read once that a possible factor in the evolution of a sentient species was a full belly. When a creature wasn’t spending every waking hour thinking about finding its next meal, it had time to think on other things, like say, the meaning of life or something. I thought it was a ridiculous theory and full of holes, but I had been thinking about what would happen when all of the humans were gone; would another species on Earth evolve and take our place?

  Then there were the flies. They had started buzzing around, too. It had not gotten quite warm enough yet for the insects to be out in full force, but soon….

  Sara pulled the Crown Victoria onto a side road, then into the parking lot of a little gas station/grocery store. There was only one other car parked in front of the store and a pickup truck at a gas pump.

  “I like the looks of this,” Sara said. “If no one has been in here, we could get most of what we need.”

  “That truck at the pump looks good, too,” I said.

  We pulled our masks up, got out and stood next to the car, listening and looking. This had become a habit for us when we were both leaving a vehicle. Sometimes a large group of the things would be hidden from view behind a building, and we found it was always best to stay near the car for a few seconds and listen for any activity.

  We didn’t hear anything except birds, and even they seemed subdued. I was the first to move away from the car. I went over to the pumps and looked into the pickup truck, a late model Toyota Tundra. I cupped my hands around my eyes so I could see.

  “The keys are in it,” I said. “It looks like they filled her up, too. When we leave, I’ll drive it, and we’ll leave the Crown Victoria some place in Clayfield.”

  I turned and looked at Sara. She was standing by the car with the rifle on her shoulder, pointed at the sky. She nodded to let me know she heard me, squinting in the morning sun.

  “Better make sure it starts before we load anything into it,” she said.

  I climbed in. It cranked right up. The radio was on, and static blasted out of the speakers. I turned off the radio, put the truck in reverse and backed it up toward the front doors of the building.

  “Are you ready to go shopping?” I smiled as I climbed out of the truck.

  “Is the twenty-two loaded?”

  “Ready to go,” I said. “How about you?”

  “I’ve got eight bullets left,” she said. “I counted them this morning.”

  “We should come across more guns today,” I assured her.

  The doors to the store were unlocked. We went inside.

  “Wow,” Sara said. “It looks untouched. It sure smells bad, though.”

  “Probably all the bad meat,” I said, nodding toward a sandwich bar.

  She squatted down in front of the counter where they displayed the impulse items and tore open a Hershey’s Special Dark.

  “Want one?” she said, offering me a candy bar.

  I stepped forward to take it from her then noticed a lot of boxes in the floor behind the counter. They were cigarette cartons. They had been walked on. There was a puddle back there, too. There was a doorway in the far wall that was open to a dark room.

  “Someone has been in here,” I said. “I see—“

  Then there was a noise from the room—slow, dragging footsteps. Sara had been stuffing candy bars into her pocket, and she looked up at me. She’d heard it, too. She stood slowly.

  “Hello?” she said loudly, her mouth full of chocolate.

  The thing wasn’t much more than a walking skeleton. Skin hung loose on its bones, and its ragged clothes looked oily and wet. I think it had been a man once.

  “Do you think it can get to us?” Sara said.

  “I would think that after all this time, if he could have gotten out he would,” I replied.

  “In that case, let’s don’t worry about it,” she said. She pulled some small LED flashlights from the impulse rack. “Let’s take all this stuff.”

  We opened a couple of boxes of trash bags and used them to hold what we collected. We would fill a bag then put it by the door to carry out when we were done. On each trip back to the front, we would take a look outside and check on the clerk behind the counter. He paced around in his little space, but never did find a way over to us.

  We were able to get plenty of beverages, but the food selection was limited to mostly junk like candy, cakes, chips, and crackers—snacks people ate while on the road. They did have a few cans of soup and chili and two small boxes of cereal.

  We were able to restock our toiletries somewhat, too. When Sara wasn’t looking, I grabbed all the condoms. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if she saw me do it, but I just didn’t want to talk about it right then.

  Sara was in the back emptying the jerky rack when I noticed movement outside. I went up to the glass door and looked out. There were three shuffling into the parking lot from the west, and there was another by the gas pumps.

  “Time to go!” I yelled.

  Sara ran to me carrying a partially full bag and her rifle.

  “Do you think it’s because of me?” she asked. “We haven’t been that loud.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they heard the car when we pulled in, and they’re just now getting here.”

  She looked down, “How many bags did we get?”
>
  “Six,” I said. “We’ll carry out two each then you get the truck started while I come back in for the other two.”

  She nodded, slung her rifle onto her shoulder and grabbed two of the bags.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Don’t use your rifle unless you have to,” I said, picking up two bags. “Save the bullets.”

  We opened the doors, and went out into the sunshine. The nearest creature saw us and stepped up its pace. It was in a state of decay, but not as bad as the clerk. One of the creatures by the road howled. Behind us, the clerk howled as if in reply.

  “Are they talking to each other?” Sara said.

  We tossed our bags into the bed of the truck, and I heard breaking glass from one of the bags.

  “Shit,” I said. “Sounds like we lost some bottles of something.”

  Another howl, and another reply.

  “Start the truck,” I said, turning to go back inside.

  Off to my right, another one was coming at me from around the corner of the building. She was a teenager in pink shorts and a gray Hello Kitty t-shirt. She was more recently turned that the others. She still looked relatively healthy, except for the chunk of flesh missing from her left calf. She was very excited to see me.

  I ran into the building and pulled the door shut behind me. She slammed into the glass door over and over trying to get in to me. I looked past her to the truck, and I could see Sara looking in the big side mirror. The creatures coming from the road were at the pumps by this time, and the one from the pumps was now at the front of the truck. There were six more coming down the road. Behind me, the clerk howled again. Sara started signaling me with her arms. I wasn’t sure what her plans were, but I thought she was telling me to get out of the way. I grabbed the last two garbage bags then stepped over by the sandwich bar. I heard the engine revving then the rear of the truck came crashing in. Glass doors and Hello Kitty were shoved all the way into the counter.

  I tossed the two bags into the bed of the truck then climbed into the bed myself. I had to sit on top of our bags, and I could feel snack cakes and chips being crushed under my weight. Glass from the doors was everywhere.

  Sara shifted the truck into drive. I curled up, shielding my head and she pulled back through the hole she’d made. A few pieces of glass and a brick dropped into the bed with me as we exited the building, but none of it hit me. She sped away from the building back toward the highway, and the creatures chased us. I noticed that there were more in the distance converging on the little store.