by Geo Dell
Beth nodded. “It has got to be overgrown, the golf course. Be great, perfect, if it wasn't. But it's been several months, and that grass has got to be higher than we stand. I say no. I can't see a way we could be safe.”
“There's an overpass ahead,” Don offered.
“I saw that, but it looks like a pedestrian overpass. That's not gonna work,” Bear said. “They could use it to drop right down on us if we stayed under it, and we'd have to be on foot if we stayed up top.”
Beth traced a finger across the map. “Look. We need to get to 81... We decided that... 3 to 46... 46 to 80.. 80 to 81...” She sighed and looked up.
Bear laughed. “Yeah, and no way to tell what is what.”
Beth nodded. “I think the map is pretty close to worthless.”
Bear nodded this time. “It's just that there has been so much destruction. It might get better as we go,” he shrugged his shoulders, “It might get worse. But it's not too bad. I say keep the map. It may help on occasion. It's not bad to know where we might be. But we have to acknowledge that everything is torn up and there is no way to know if a particular route will be where it should be.” He looked at the map himself and then straightened up. “Okay, sun sets in the northeast now. A compass can not tell us that. Or if it can, I don't know how to do it. All I know is that the few times I have tried to use the compass, it points at different areas. Needle won't stay still. So,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small key chain compass.
The key chain itself held several keys. Bear looked at the keys for a second as though he had never seen them. “Well, anyway,” he said. “It's no good.” He drew back and rocketed the keys, compass and all into the sky. “Should have gotten that gone a long time ago. So, no good. But sun rises in the southwest, a little more to the south than the west. That gives us something to follow. If we stay to the right of the sun by a few degrees, we'll be okay. Even if we followed the sun itself, we'd be okay. That will bring us to 81 eventually. Of course, I'm not sure 81 will do us much good once, or if, we find it.”
“How so?” Mac asked.
“Because, Honey,” Iris said. “Remember?”
“If I remembered, I wouldn't have asked,” Mac said. “Hey... I mean that in a not-being-an-asshole way,” he added.
“Sounded like it,” Iris said dryly. “Well, there was a run toward the south. I remember seeing the interstate and the thruway clogged. People tried to leave the north. So I would bet that everything going to the south is packed solid.”
Bear nodded. “Saw that,” he agreed.
“Bad wrecks on the thruway.” Winston added. “I remember seeing huge wrecks on the way here... I think it was the thruway.”
“So, a few degrees to the right of the sun as it travels. Or follow routes where we can. We have about fifty to sixty miles to get into Pennsylvania. I'm thinking about staying away from the cities. I'm thinking what could they, the dead, want in the middle of nowhere? It seems we could be safe there.”
“Probably,” Beth agreed. “But there's no way we'll make it today.” She looked out of the parking lot at route three, which was hopelessly clogged and had only been getting worse as they drove it. She turned and looked back at the store behind them.
“Listen, this will sound crazy, but if we drove right into the store, built a fire right outside the doors... a big one... burn all night... how could they get us?” Beth asked.
“Leave early... get on the road. We might be able to make Pennsylvania tomorrow,” Mac agreed.
“Not bad,” Billy agreed.
“We'll need a lot of wood to burn,” Bear threw in.
“More of those pallets. Every store has those out back,” Iris added. "Dead wood from the tree parks around here."
“Parking lot full of tires. Tires burn,” Winston added.
“Let's get to it then,” Bear agreed.
An hour later, as the sky began to darken, they had a stack of pallets and tires piled up in front of the doors to the store. The five trucks were inside. The back doors to the loading docks were shut and locked once more.
Several more piles of pallets were set up about ten feet apart in a half circle that closed in the front of the parking lot. Tires had been piled on top of the pallets Spares from cars and trucks in the parking lot. They had not tried to get them off the rims, just punched holes in them so they would not explode as they burned.
Kerosene lanterns burned inside the store, casting their light. Beth finished pouring a can of kerosene she had liberated from an aisle in the store over the piles, and Bear stepped forward and flicked a match at the first pile. It went up with a whoosh. He and Mac held sticks in the flames and then set the other piles ablaze one by one. Bear finished by lighting one of his cigarettes from the stick, and then tossed the stick into one of the piles to burn. He walked back to the building, sat down on a pile of pallets, leaned his back against the building and smoked as evening came down.
Donita
The Moon shone brightly in the sky. Cold air curled around her as she walked along, slipping from shadow to shadow at the building fronts and the alleyways. The boy and the twin clung deeper to the shadows, farther behind, under the overhangs of the buildings, hidden from the moonlight, trailing along behind her. The big man farther still, but not so far that she was out of his sight at any time. The others farther still.
The breather she was following was alone, walking the roadway.
Falling down and then getting back up and walking the roadway would be a better description, Donita thought. Was he injured, she asked herself. No. It was more than that. He was injured, at least a little from falling down repeatedly, she could smell the blood that leaked from his palms where they had scuffed the roadway, but that was not it. There was something else wrong with him, something else that she knew she should be able to understand, yet she could not get it to come.
She thought about it, but her new mind did not work that way. Something... something she should know... something from her old life, but that was quickly dissolving into nothing, fading.
She knew she had come from the breathers. They all came from the breathers, but she could not remember the details of that life. It wasn't there. It was like that part of her memory was dying away, gone more and more each day.
He stumbled, fell, got back to his feet after a time and scrubbed one skinned hand against his pants. Donita could smell the blood from where she was in the shadows. She could feel the excitement from the boy and the twin as they smelled it.
She had brought only the boy, the twin and the big man with her. The others were in a factory she had chosen. More joined them by the hour. They knew she was there. They knew they should follow her. They made their way to the factory and waited with the others.
She had left to hunt for a time, to bring her familiars with her, away from waiting for what would soon come to them: war. She cocked her head from side to side, scenting the air with her eyes.
The old sensory inputs meant nothing. She did not breath, so there was no scent that came to her as the air was pulled into her body. Instead, all smells being particulate, her eyes absorbed the particles and turned it into smell. It was a thousand times stronger than her old human ability to smell. Deeper, more complex; it told a story, not just delivered a scent. She drank it in now.
The man scrubbed his hand against his jeans, leaving a trail of blood so bright, so glaring, so compelling that Donita herself could barely stand it. She could see the microscopic droplets clinging to the cotton, some falling away, becoming airborne. Her head ducked lower as she drank in the intoxicating scent. She straightened suddenly.
Two things had disrupted her train of thought. Intoxicating. That was what was wrong with the man. He was intoxicated. She remembered intoxication. Had she ever been intoxicated herself or had she simply remembered seeing it, she asked herself. She had no answer. She could not remember either being intoxicated or not being intoxicated. The second was the other of her own kind who stood hidden h
erself within the shadows two blocks down. She had scented the man also; then she had scented Donita. Donita drank her in.
There was no give to this one. She believed she would be the one who took the man. She did not ask; she knew, and she transmitted this knowing to Donita.
Donita was sure she had felt her own knowing too, and she wondered when the defeat would come. One would win. One would lose. There was no other position, and Donita knew she would be the one to win. For some reason the other did not know that.
Donita stared at her through the gloom from her hiding place in the shadows, the man forgotten temporarily. A second later, she stopped. The boy and the twin skittered away into the darkness, sent away by Donita. The big man moved up closer to her, protective of her, barely restraining himself from rushing at the other female where she had hidden herself in the shadows.
The man finished scrubbing his hand, unseen by anyone except the boy and the twin who were deep down an alleyway slightly ahead of him. As he began to walk again, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and watched a woman, surely a dead woman from the look of her, step into the moonlight. He stopped and stared, his mouth hanging open.
A blur farther along the line of buildings caught his attention, and he watched as another woman, also dead - he could tell from the way her skin stretched too tightly across her face, the way her bones protruded through that skin in places - stepped out into the moonlight and faced the first woman. Before he could fully grasp what was happening, the first woman screamed and then launched herself at the other one. The man stumbled back, backed into the alley wall where he stood watching in fear.
Donita met her in midair. Her hands, hooked into claws, punctured the other woman's chest and dragged her down to the ground. From there it was all downhill for her. She had underestimated the power that Donita possessed. Donita's fingers had punched straight through her chest, hooked into her ribs and then ripped her chest apart. Donita threw her to the ground and then pounced on her, her feet driving powerfully into her. Her mouth angled down and tore at her face as her hands closed around her neck. She squatted on her torn chest, weight on the balls of her feet, and rode her as she fought to live.
The fight did not last long. Her powerful hands ripped her head from her neck even as her teeth tore her face apart. There was no mercy in treachery. This one could have been a part of Donita's army. She could have had power handed to her, but she had decided to go her own way, and she had convinced herself that defeat of Donita was obtainable. That was not a belief that could be allowed to grow.
She looked over at the breather. He stood still, mouth open, staring at Donita. She looked back at him levelly. He was really too big for the boy and the twin. If he had been stronger, in his right mind, she would have taken him herself. But, as he was, he was perfect for the boy and the twin, and they needed to practice... learn. She dropped her eyes from the breather, looked up at the bloated moon and then gave them permission to take him.
The boy flew from the shadows, thigh muscles bunched, arms extended, and fell on him. The twin circled to the other side and grabbed his flailing arm, nearly wrenching it from the socket as the two of them took him down to the ground. In his shock, he never uttered a sound. Teeth closed on his neck, and the man's feet began to beat against the pavement as he finally realized, too late, how serious the situation was.
Donita walked slowly from the shadows to where the boy and the twin held the breather, the big man behind her, his glassy eyes fixed on her as she walked up, so alive, but he was dead. He just did not understand it yet. And this death there was no coming back from. She watched the two take him all the way, the eyes losing focus, sliding upward. They knew that she was proud of them. She squatted on her haunches and watched, along with the big man, as the two began to feed.
~
They came through the roof...
Bear was talking to Beth, leaned against the door frame, staring out at the night black parking lot, when the first Zombie dropped from the ceiling of the store behind them. There were four of them outside the vehicles talking or keeping watch on the parking lot. Bear and Beth, Mac and Billy. When the first one dropped, Billy spun around and clubbed it to the ground. But the rest came so fast that they could not hope to easily and quickly pick them off.
Beth raised her machine pistol straight up and began firing into the roof. The light from the lanterns didn't penetrate the darkness all the way to the ceiling, so there was no way to see how many there were or even where they were. She found herself wishing she still had the flashlight taped to the rifle barrel.
Six dropped, and Bear had to wait for them to come at him so he could be sure of shooting them and not accidentally shooting into the trucks. Billy ran from truck to truck pounding on the doors and window glass, waking everyone up.
Bear reversed the stock of his rifle and ran at the Zombie in front of him. He clubbed his head flat and then reversed the rifle and shot him through the head once he was on the floor. Six more UN-dead dropped from the darkness above, one right after the other. Two landed on Bear's truck, and he heard Cammy scream from inside. One stood from the roof, preparing to leap at Billy as he ran towards Don and Ginny's truck, and Bear shot him off the roof of the truck. He fell right onto one of the kerosene lanterns, and the flames shot up immediately, running under and up the side of Don and Ginny's truck where the kerosene had splashed. It seemed like less than a second to Bear before the truck and the stock in the aisle behind that truck went up in flames. The line of flame rolled away into the store, catching the merchandise on the shelves as it went.
Beth shot another Zombie as it dropped from the ceiling and landed nearly in front of her. Don's truck started, and a second later, Don's eyes showed just above the dashboard as he dropped the truck into gear and lurched forward. Bear jumped at Billy, knocking him out of the way as the truck roared by with scant inches to spare. They both rolled, came up and Billy fired low, taking the legs out from under one of the dead. Bear gained his feet, spun towards the front and watched Don's truck smash dead center into one of the piles of pallets and tires. It was already burning, flames shooting from under the truck and up the sides. The flames had fanned when Don had dropped it in gear and driven from the store. The truck hit, bounced and then came back down hard on the tires and pallets.
Sparks flew high into the sky. The truck bounced twice more, Bear saw Don's head bounce off the side window, and then the truck veered sharply to the left and roared off into the parking lot covered in flames. A second later, the sound of the crash came to them as the truck slammed into several cars in the lot and came to a fast halt. Bear forced himself to turn away. He couldn't afford the luxury of watching something he could do nothing about.
As he turned, the gunfire inside the store picked up. The dead seemed to be dropping from the blackness of the ceiling in a flood. Thick, black smoke was lifting up to the ceiling and billowing out into the store. Orange and yellow-blue flames danced everywhere. The ceiling was lit from the fires, and as Bear looked up, he could see the dead crouching on the steel beams that made up the underpinnings of the roof and the ceiling above them, waiting to drop on the living below.
Bear swore under his breath and then yelled aloud. “Take them out up at the ceiling. Just open up on 'em!”
A second after that the dead began coming down faster, shot, some dead, others full of holes but still moving. The four of them managed to get close to each other and then backed into the inside store wall, putting the concrete block at their back and mowing down the dead as they dropped and tried to get to their feet. It seemed like only seconds later when the dead stopped dropping from the darkness.
There were two still moving, and Beth took care of both of them with her long knife. She slammed one boot clad foot against their heads, one by one, held it tight to the ground and drove her long knife straight through it in one shot.
In the silence, Bear could hear someone screaming in the parking lot, and he remem
bered the truck. He turned and ran toward the door when Beth screamed his name.
“Bear!” Her shout was loud in the store. Bear stopped dead and turned back, sure more of the dead had begun to drop from the ceiling once more. As he turned, his rifle began to lift toward the ceiling.
“Where in fuck do you think you're going?”
He stared stupidly at her for a moment. “The truck, Beth. The goddamn truck...”
“I know... I saw the same fucking thing you did. But where are you going? Because it looked to me like you were going to run right out there in the dark... right to that truck.”
“She's screaming, Beth... she's...”
“Yeah, and that's bad. I don't want to hear it either, but if you run out there, you'll be dead too, sure as shit. Dead, and not a goddamn thing to show for it.”
The silence fell again, and the screaming from the parking lot bled back in. Bear stood, torn, knowing Beth was right, but the screaming pulled at him like a physical thing. A second later, something out there blew up, and the screaming stopped. A second after that, the silence was hard and heavy. Bear heard a scratching, scrabbling noise from the other side of Billy's truck and walked over quickly.
In the aisle, behind the trucks, Mac and Billy were spraying down the fire with chemical fire extinguishers, clouds of white rising now instead of the thick black.
Bear came up the side of Billy's truck. One of the dead had managed to get itself crawling once more, a hole in the base of its skull. It was moving in jerks, erratic, but it was moving. “Better come see this shit,” Bear called out.
The four of them stood and watched the jerky movements of the zombie as it tried to gain its feet.
“Very fuckin' bad,” Mac said. He tossed the fire extinguisher, and it clattered to the floor and rolled away.
Billy's face was hard. He stepped forward, levered one single bullet into the chamber of his rifle and fired point blank into the Zombie's head. It blew apart, and the Zombie finally quit moving.