The reporter lay across the desk now, blood pooling under her head as she whimpered softly. But I already could tell she was starting to transition. Her posture went from weak to something more ready. And when she lifted her head, her eyes had a red glow that had nothing to do with the bloody camera viewfinder.
“Oh no,” I whispered. “Those poor people.”
Sure enough, she turned toward the group of men who had just tried to save her. With a crazy grin, she dove down amongst them with a guttural scream and then the screen went white with just the words, “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.”
Dave opted not to follow the neatly printed directions on the screen and instead clicked the TV off. We sat in silence for a long time, staring at the black screen. Finally, I rolled over on my side to face him.
“It’s getting worse,” I said after the silence had stretched out a long time.
“It seems to be,” he agreed.
“If there are a million infected in less than twenty-four hours,” I continued, “by the end of tomorrow half the city or more will be gone. So is the plan the same?”
He thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. “With the telephones out, the power is probably next, and I’d rather not be in the city when they shut her down completely. I think it’s going to be mass hysteria.”
“It’s a crappy neighborhood anyway,” I said. “Between the thugs and the zombies, we’d be fucked if we stayed.”
He shrugged. “I say we get up early and get moving as soon as it’s light out. My sister lives what… a hundred and thirty miles south in Longview? Maybe that will be far enough away. And without traffic to slow us down, we might even make it there in less than two hours.”
I groaned as I flopped back on the pillows in dread and frustration. “Gina? You want to run to Gina in a crisis?”
There was a long pause as Dave clenched his teeth. Finally, he asked, “Why not?”
I looked up at him. “Um, she fucking hates me for one.”
“I always figured the feeling was mutual,” he said, his eyebrows lifting. “Come on, admit it, you never really tried with her.”
I folded my arms. Okay, so I’ll tell you something I never would have admitted to him. He was right (again, that asshole). I hadn’t ever really tried with Gina.
She was only five years older than us, but acted like a mother. A really boring, plaid-wearing mother. And she doted on David. Nothing he could do was wrong, which meant everything I did was. When we were with her, he acted like her little brother, not my husband. And he deferred to her, never taking my side if we disagreed.
I hated visiting her.
“Okay, how about this, which is worse,” he asked. “Zombies or Gina?”
I hesitated too long, I guess, because he grabbed the pillow behind him and swatted me with it playfully. I laughed as I fended him off.
“Okay, okay, zombies are worse,” I admitted. “But just barely.”
He pushed the pillow behind his neck but remained lying on his side looking down at me. As I stared up at him, I realized we hadn’t been so close in bed for a long time. I’d forgotten how nice it was. And he smelled good since we had tossed Jack out the window earlier in the evening and taken showers to clean up.
“Thanks,” he said softly. He reached down and brushed a little damp hair off my cheek. “I know you hate going down there. I think I even get it, though I wish you liked my family. But I have to see if she’s okay, at least.”
I nodded. Okay, so I got that. I wondered about my family, too, but Gina was closest.
“This is going to be really dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice soft in the dark.
He didn’t answer for a long time, but finally he nodded slowly.
“We might die,” I continued.
He nodded again, his gaze never leaving my face.
I reached up and cupped the back of his head and drew him down toward me.
“Well, I guess we better go out with a bang.”
He smiled before he dropped his mouth to mine and kissed me.
Give each other compliments every day. Even when the undead attack, it’s nice to feel pretty. Or badass.
I should have known that having “end of the world” sex wouldn't solve our problems. Though, it was pretty great and I highly recommend it. It’s one of the big benefits of an apocalypse that no one tells you about. It just makes everything… better, because you know it might be the last time every time.
But despite all that, by the time we were traveling down to the parking garage the next morning, David and I were snipping at each other again. It was like our mind-blowing night had never happened.
I guess it had all started up when I woke up in the middle of the night with a stunning realization. I hadn’t checked the Internet! I had bolted from bed and logged on to our ancient desktop to find that I did have mail, as the old AOL saying used to go. One, from my Dad, dated earlier the previous day. His tense one-sentence, “Are you okay?” had said more than any page-long tome could have.
After shooting him an e-mail to let him know we were all right and planning to leave the city, I’d told Dave I wanted to go to San Diego and that had started a three in the morning bruiser about the intelligence of heading to another highly populated area.
I knew he was right that it wasn’t smart and that we should stick to our original plan to go to Longview and see how things were after that, but I wanted my Daddy in that moment. So now this morning we were back to fighting.
“I’m just saying, maybe we should have checked a few more of the apartments in the building for supplies before we left. You never know what people have in their cupboards,” I said as the elevator moved down floor after floor slowly.
Dave glared at me. “And risk bumping into a passel of zombies who could be hiding in any part of that building? No fucking way am I dying for some extra Power Bars! No, thank you. We’ve got enough supplies, at least for the time being. We’re not going very far.”
I looked at him incredulously. “Come on, David! It might take us longer than we think to get to your sister’s. And she might not even be there when we get there. The last thing we should do is find ourselves stuck in some podunk town at the Washington/Oregon border without any supplies.”
“As opposed to going to… say… San Diego?” Dave clenched his gun tighter, his eyes straight ahead. “Oh, big surprise, Sarah, you bagging on my family, my ideas, my —”
Amanda frowned as she adjusted the hand truck we’d found buried under at least five loads of laundry in her old apartment.
And why did she have a hand truck?
Well, it turned out it tired poor old Jack out to take the garbage out by hand, so he’d stolen a hand truck from the loading dock at his job. Annoying story, but it was helpful for transporting boxes of food, ammo, and the backpack stuffed with extra guns.
“Guys, as entertaining as this all is,” she said, “the elevator is about to open and my hands are full, so I’ll need you two to figure out if there are any zombies around. I don’t really want to get killed because you two are fighting over… um, whatever it is you’re fighting over.”
I scowled at Dave as I cocked the shotgun. The sound of the slide of a shotgun is awesome. Dave popped the safety off his rifle just as the elevator slid open. Our twin glares said we’d finish this discussion later, but for now we concentrated on the task at hand.
Gingerly, we moved forward like some kind of trained unit of the military. Yeah, we catch on quickly. I looked to the right, scanning the garage for any sign of movement or infestation. Dave did the same on the left.
“Are we clear?” I asked as the three of us slipped from the elevator posed like some kind of ridiculous Charlie’s Angels. Only Amanda really had the hair for it.
“Clear,” he verified.
We inched forward. The garage was in far worse shape than it had been the night before. Amanda and Jack’s wrecked car had been flipped onto its roof at some po
int. I guess the zombies must have wondered if there were easy victims inside waiting to be eaten.
Blood slashed one wall of the garage. A lot of blood. I shivered as I wondered if it was one of our former neighbors who had lost their battle there or just some poor soul who had managed to get inside thinking it might be safer. Wrong choice, for sure.
“It looks like lots of activity here last night,” David said, motioning to the other side of the garage.
More pools of black sludge and blood sat beside a few of the cars that were haphazardly parked at odd angles.
“We’ll have to be extra careful,” I agreed. “Amanda, stay close and don’t be afraid to drop the hand truck and run if it comes to that, okay?”
She nodded as we reached our car, but her pale face told me how terrified she was at the prospect of seeing a fully transitioned zombie since she hadn’t yet had the pleasure.
When we reached our old beater, I peered into the backseat, but there was nothing lurking there.
“Car seems clear.”
“I’ll check the trunk,” Dave said, positioning his key. When I looked at him incredulously, he said, “Hey, Jack got into our tub.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “I guess that’s true.”
I stood guard beside Amanda. We both looked around nervously as Dave cleared the trunk. He motioned to her and she wheeled the cart to the back of the car. Together, they loaded the food into the trunk, leaving out only a few things for our trip down to Longview.
The guns and ammo we had decided to put in the back-seat, so Amanda opened the back passenger door and began work positioning the weaponry for easy access.
“I still feel like it’s not enough,” I said as I looked at the car with worry.
David slammed the trunk hard enough that the car shook.
“Sarah, God damn it, nobody knows if we’re doing this right or not. Seriously, maybe you’re right! Is that what you want to hear?”
I opened my mouth, but apparently he wasn’t done.
“Maybe we’ll get ten miles up the road and be wishing we brought more fucking Pop Tarts. Or maybe we’ll get all the way to Gina’s without incident and find out that the rest of the universe is safe and happy. I have no fucking clue and I’m doing the best I can.”
I stared at him. For all our snipping and all the strain in our relationship over the past six months, it was pretty rare for him to snap and say what he felt. Now I stared at him and I saw the strain on his face.
“You’re right,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry. We’re both doing the best we can in a bad sit —”
Before I could finish the thought, a blood-curdling scream echoed from the backseat of our car. I spun toward Amanda and found her half in and half out of the vehicle, pointing wildly toward the garage gate that led to the street.
“Look!” she screamed over and over. “Look! Look! Look!”
Dave saw them first. “Fuck!”
Three zombies were coming toward us from across the garage. I recognized one as a homeless guy who stood near the bus stop every morning hawking the charity newspaper Spare Change. The other two I didn’t know, but one of them was fucking huge. Using the car roof as a place to balance my weapon, I took aim as best I could and fired off a shot.
Okay, so I wasn’t so good with a gun at the time, but with a shotgun you don’t really have to be. The buckshot just flies out like a net and catches anything nearby.
I managed to hit the biggest zombie in the shoulder and blew off a chunk of his rotting flesh. He paused for a minute and looked down at the injury. His mouth twisted like he was mad, as well as totally confused, but then he started toward us again, this time at a much faster and more purposeful clip.
Next to me, Dave fired his gun and dropped the homeless guy in one hit. I reloaded my gun by opening and shutting the chamber at the same time he did and this time when I fired the zombies were close enough that I hit the big guy full in the face and chest and he whined as he fell backward and hit the concrete floor with a thunk.
The third zombie kept moving forward and surprised me by launching himself over the low roof of our car. He slid between Dave and me and snapped his mouth at me. I barely dodged as I staggered backward and hit the still open passenger door. Inside the car Amanda was cowering and screaming.
“Gun’s jammed,” Dave called out as he frantically tried to fix it.
I guess I should have fired my shotgun, but like I said I was pretty new to all this then. Instinct kicked in and instead of firing my perfectly good gun, I swung it. The butt met the zombie’s face with all the force in my body and there was a satisfying wet thud.
The creature roared in pain as I shattered his nose and caved in part of his head. I ignored any pity I might have once felt for another living creature. I had to remember that this creature wasn’t. He was nothing more than a crazy animal who needed to be put down.
With that in mind, I swung a second time and this time he didn’t make any more noise because he was dead. Well, I guess no longer undead. A vague, but important distinction.
Amanda was still screaming. Her thin, piercing wail traveled through the parking garage and bounced off the concrete walls so that it echoed back to us in an eerie, never-ending cry.
I stared at the dead body on top of my car. I stared at the other two on the garage floor. Then I stared at my husband. He was smiling at me. Smiling even though we had just bumped our formerly human, currently zombie killing spree up to a nice round six (not counting Mack, since we didn’t actually know if we’d killed him when he flew off my car in the parking complex).
“Amanda, it’s over. For the love of God, shut up!” I snapped with a roll of my eyes.
I moved out of the way so I could close the back passenger door of our car. Her cries continued, but they were much quieter behind the shut door and then they finally trailed off entirely. Through the smeared glass I could still see her lying in a fetal position on the backseat, twitching with fear every once in a while.
“What?” I asked, because Dave’s smile had gotten wider. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
He shrugged as he moved around toward the driver’s seat. Before he got in, he grabbed the car zombie’s ankle and yanked him off the roof with a violent tug. I heard him hit the ground below with a wet and somehow also crunchy smack.
“Nothing,” Dave said with a shrug as he stood at the driver’s side door. “I was just thinking how much cooler you are than any other girl I ever knew.”
He opened the car door and Amanda’s low whimpers greeted us. He motioned his head toward our guest. “Especially this one.”
I couldn’t hide my own smile as I got in the car. Putting on my sunglasses, I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Okay, David. Let’s roll.”
Make requests, not demands. “Please” kill that zombie, honey, I’m out of bullets.
Dave didn’t have to open the window to enter our garage code because some time during the night the heavy, metal gate had been torn from its hinges. Without further incident, we pulled out onto the surface streets and Dave began to dig around under his seat as he kept one hand on the wheel.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking for the stereo button that broke off.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “That you broke off,” I corrected him.
“Is it this?” Amanda said from the backseat and she held out the little button. “It must have rolled back here.”
I took it with a brief look toward Dave, but he was staring straight ahead, his mouth a thin line of irritation. I laughed as I fiddled with the button until it slipped back into place and I was able to turn the radio on.
They weren’t playing the “stay in your houses” bulletins anymore, so we all sat quietly as the voice on the radio droned on about the plague spreading throughout and even beyond the city. Even if they hadn’t talked about it, we could see the devastation for ourselves.
Up and down the streets, th
ere were burning cars and broken windows. Buildings were slashed with blood and sidewalks pooled with it, but there were no bodies.
I guess because there were zombies, instead.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies lurched along the blocks that led up to the highway. They dragged themselves along side streets, they carried mangled and broken limbs in their mouths like wolves with bones of prey. And they came in every shape and size, women and men, they were of every color, there were children and toothless grandparents.
“God,” Amanda whimpered from the back.
“I’m not sure there is a God,” I said softly. “How could there be in the middle of all of this?”
Dave didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes on the road, maneuvering around debris and powering through intersections where the zombies seemed to wait for potential victims. Eventually he managed to make it to the highway and we edged the car down the high-walled onramp.
When we reached the actual highway, all of us gasped. The day before when we had made our way to and from Dr. Kelly’s office, the traffic had been so light that it was creepy. Obviously residents of Seattle’s first response to the crisis had been to go home or stay at work, just as the bulletins had advised.
But as the local and national news coverage had gotten worse and worse, it seemed like the entire city had come to the same conclusion we had: that it was time to run. Only many of them hadn’t waited until morning. They had ventured out into the dangerous night without a plan.
From the empty cars that were lined up, bumper to bumper in every lane to the bloody pavement beneath them, it was clear the freeway had become a deadly battlefield in the last eight or ten hours.
“Holy shit,” Dave muttered beneath his breath. “Look at that.”
I followed his gaze upward and sucked in a breath through my teeth. On the overpass was a hanging highway sign. You know the kind — the electronic ones that give out Amber alerts or warn about highway construction. Only this one now read, WARNING: ZOMBIES AHEAD.
Married with Zombies: Book 1 of Living with the Dead Page 7