Race to Refuge

by Craig, Liz

  I slowly rose to my knees and then stood up. This had felt like a safe place. It should be a safe place. But I knew that my friend’s friend’s friend’s (whatever) family lived here and they had a nearby neighbor. What if the mail carrier had attacked them, or even an infected local cop? It could be anybody. I turned on a flashlight since I couldn’t see in the dark as well as Mojo. I wanted to better illuminate whatever danger we might be in. I reached for the duffel bag for the gun I’d loaded last night before going to sleep.

  But it was too late. A few yards away now, I could see them. The family who’d graciously invited me to hunt on their land was now prepared to hunt me on it. Their hollow eyes stared hungrily at me and their arms reached out, swiping at the air. They moaned as they came.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mallory

  Joshua had only been in the gas station for a few minutes, but it felt like hours had gone by. That’s because my mouth was so dry and my heart pounded so hard that I felt stress pouring out of me, dragging the time out. Finally, he reemerged from the store, clutching a gas can. His eyes were huge and worried and he waved at me to drive off.

  “What?” I asked frantically. I put my window down a little. “Come on, Joshua! Let’s just get out of here. We’ll find another gas station. This place is creeping me out.”

  He shook his head and pointed far away, motioning for me to drive off. That’s when a guy with hollow eyes wearing a baseball cap and a shirt with his name on it stumbled out of the gas station after Joshua. After Joshua, that is, until he spotted me in my car. Then he lurched in my direction.

  I knew Joshua had to be a lot faster than this guy, but he was still frantically motioning at me to go.

  “Joshua! Come on! You can make it!” I yelled. I turned the car engine on and slowly coasted away from the slow-moving zombie.

  He shook his head sadly at me as I directed the car close to him. “Mallory, I can’t.”

  Undeterred, I stopped the car, unlocked the passenger door and shoved it open. “Hop in! Hurry!”

  He reached over, threw in some gas station snacks and the empty gas can and said, “Sorry I ran out of time to fill the gas can. Mallory, I’ve been infected already.” He raised the arm he’d kept close by his side and I could see it was bloodied. He firmly pushed the lock button. “I can’t get into the car with you or else I’ll put you in danger. You’ll be okay. Leave now!” His voice this time brooked no argument. He slammed the door shut and was dragged away from my car by the zombie in the baseball cap as another lumbered toward him from inside the station.

  I finally listened to him. My foot slammed on the accelerator. I was barely able to see where I was going with my tear-soaked eyes. And I was unable to handle looking in the rear-view mirror at the scene behind me.

  Later, I realized I’d gotten back on the rural route highway on autopilot. I couldn’t remember the miles that I’d driven in that fog I was in. All I could think about was the loss of my odd, kind, friend and how truly alone I was now. As I drove away, I took a few minutes to honor Joshua. Whatever mistakes he’d made in his life, I knew one thing: he was a good, kind man and I was lucky to have had him with me the short time I had.

  I drove on for several more minutes before I discovered that I was completely exhausted. There was no way I was going to be able to complete the drive up to the safe house when I felt like this. Despite the fact that I’d had a decent night’s sleep. Despite the fact that it wasn’t really late in the day. The events at the gas station, which I wouldn’t allow myself to revisit in my head, sapped the life from me. I felt numbness coursing through my body. I didn’t know if it was a coping mechanism or not, but all I knew was that I didn’t really care about much right then except sleep.

  But I didn’t feel safe. Not like I had last night when I’d drifted off so easily in the woods with Joshua to keep watch over me. The safety aspect wasn’t my top priority, though. I just wanted sleep. And that need was pushing me forward.

  I wanted something completely familiar. I didn’t want to camp out in the woods right now. I wanted a comfortable bed, a nightstand, a clock. I wanted curtains to block out the light, since it was still the middle of the day. I headed once more back on the interstate and drove a couple of miles to an exit that advertised a chain hotel I’d stayed at before. I took the exit. I had no illusions that there would actually be staff at the place, but maybe I could figure out how to get a key to a room. Or maybe the rooms weren’t all locked and I could find one and sleep for a while, behind a locked door. I could even try to call Annie and Jim from the hotel phone. Hotels also usually had food, which was something I knew I was eventually going to be interested in, even if I wasn’t right now. Maybe I could raid the area where they had their free breakfasts. Or maybe this one even had a full restaurant on the premises.

  Driving up, I saw that the hotel looked deserted with only a couple of cars in front. I saw no zombies lurking in the parking lot, which was a good thing since I was in no mood to deal with them and I didn’t have any weapons.

  I parked my car close to the building and walked in. As expected, there was no one at the front desk. It lent an eerie atmosphere to the hotel. But how was I supposed to get into a room? Did the hotel have those key cards with the magnetic strip, like most hotels?

  I walked around the front desk and started opening drawers. I heard voices approaching from the direction of the stairs and I quickly ducked out of site as the door from the stairway opened. These might be people who’d make good allies, but they might be people I needed to avoid. I didn’t have the energy to figure out which they were. There were several different voices, maybe two male, one female. The voices passed the desk and went into another room nearby. When I peeked to see where, it was clear they were in the hotel restaurant. As soon as they left my sight, I quickly headed up the stairs, abandoning my quest to figure out how to work the magnetic key card device. That was one thing I did agree with them on … I wasn’t going to trust the elevator. Although there seemed to be electricity now, who knew how long that was going to last?

  On the first floor, I peered out of the staircase and looked down the hall to see if any rooms were open. I did see a couple of doors that looked cracked open, instead of closed. But wouldn’t most people stay on the first available floor and save themselves the trouble of going all the way up the stairs? I decided, for my purposes, it would make more sense if I kept on going upstairs.

  I was huffing and puffing by the time I made it to the third floor. I peered down the hall again, and again saw doors that appeared to be cracked open instead of closed. I walked to the first one and looked in. It looked as if it had been ransacked, and not by the person who’d been a guest here. Someone had gone through their suitcase, pulling out clothes and searching for … what? Money? Jewelry? Did people still care about material things now?

  I felt like Goldilocks as I wandered down the long, empty hall. Each room I saw was ransacked in the same way. I guess the guests must have left abruptly due to the panic…maybe trying to return home to their loved ones? Trying to return home and collect their things before escaping town? Was the hotel itself attacked by zombies at some point yesterday? Followed by looters?

  Finally, I found a room that wasn’t ransacked. It wasn’t ransacked because it obviously hadn’t been occupied. The bed was made up and the room appeared to be awaiting a guest. I decided I would step into that role.

  Since the looters (who were perhaps the people downstairs) apparently had a master key to open all the doors, I put the chain on. Then I kicked my shoes off with relief, pulled the covers down, and climbed into the bed. It must have been only seconds before I fell asleep.

  I don’t know how long I slept, but it must have been a long nap since the light outside was starting to fade as the sun went down. What had awakened me were the voices again. I sat up in the bed, clutching the bedspread. At first I thought I was hearing the voices from outside in the hall. Then I realized they were too muffled and dis
tant for that. They were coming from outside. Then I realized—my things. All of my stuff in the Subaru.

  I jumped from the bed and stumbled to the window, pushing aside the curtain to see. Sure enough, there were two men and a woman who were breaking into my car. The worst part was that they were smashing the windows to do it. Those windows had provided at least some protection between me and the zombies. Once they’d broken a window, they reached in and opened up the door, dumping all of my things onto the ground to sort through them.

  I was shaking, my hands were fists beside me. What was I going to do, though? I didn’t want to confront them, because who knew what they might do? I couldn’t call the police. The police were slightly busy right now. I felt totally helpless, completely impotent. It was frustrating and maddening to stand there and watch my remaining possessions be sorted through and carted off. Looting survival equipment and food and water from a store was one thing. That’s completely understandable, given the circumstances. But going through someone’s personal possessions and stealing money and jewelry … how could anyone think that would benefit them at this point? And they must have realized that my car hadn’t been in the parking lot for long. They must know I didn’t just abandon it. They were taking advantage of the situation.

  They immediately opened and ate food I’d taken from my pantry. There was a big man who appeared to be in charge of the other two. He was pointing at things and barking orders and they were deferential to him. When he pulled out Joshua’s modest backpack, I thought I might need to be restrained from running down there and confronting them all.

  Which was when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. From my bird’s eye view on the third floor I saw that a group of five zombies who, according to their uniforms, had apparently been workers at this very hotel, were lurching toward the group looting my car. I learned that, as angry as I was over the violation and the selfishness of the looters, I couldn’t condemn them to their fates. I pounded on the window. The windows were thickly-paned and I wasn’t nearly as loud as I wanted to be. I pounded harder.

  The thin woman with them glanced up. Her eyes darted around until she spotted me in the window facing them. She said something to the big man and pointed up at me.

  I pointed at the approaching zombies and tried to convey my fear with frantic motions. But the big man misunderstood me and thought I was trying to keep them from rifling through my things. He grinned audaciously at me, holding up a bag of chips and making a show of stuffing several in his mouth. The other two laughed at his antics, ribbing him and ribbing me. I pounded again on the window, making my eyes big, pointing at the zombies who were just on the other side of the car now, but to no avail. And then it was too late. I turned away so I wouldn’t have to witness any attack. There was nothing more that I could do. Wearily, I climbed back into the bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ty

  “Ty? Are we going to go see Nana now?”

  Ginny sounded exhausted and I knew that I was. It was dark now. The thought of spending the night in the woods wasn’t very appealing, but the thought of us trying to figure out if the situation at the retirement community was safe while we were this tired didn’t exactly sound like a good idea, either. Besides, I really didn’t have much experience driving at night.

  “Ginny,” I broached carefully, “I want to see Nana too. But it’s been a really big day. Right? You were in school this morning and since then we’ve escaped town, looted a store, and run over a zombie with a car.” I tried to get a smile out of her and was glad to see just a hint of one play around Ginny’s mouth.

  “What are we going to do, though?” asked Ginny. “Where is it safe?”

  I was wondering the same thing. “We could go into the woods and camp out—just for tonight. We do have camping equipment.”

  “Do you know how to put the tents together? Because I don’t,” said Ginny.

  “The one I took from the garage I could put up in my sleep. But it’s a one-person tent. The one I just swiped from Bo is a new tent that might take me a while to figure out. And we’re losing light pretty quickly, too,” I said, trying to think it through.

  “Couldn’t you just turn on the van’s headlights and set up the tents?” asked Ginny.

  I grinned at her. “You’re thinking pretty well on your feet, Sis! That’s a good idea. The only thing is that I just don’t know how far this … infection … has spread. We might not want to attract any attention to ourselves with lights. Maybe, just for tonight, we can sleep in the van.”

  Ginny turned in her seat and looked doubtfully into the back. It was a mess, since I’d just flung stuff in the back in a massive hurry. The third row of seats were down and there was camping stuff and food and water bottles all over the place.

  “I can move some things around and make a place for you to lie down. And I’ll put the seat all the way back and just sleep in the driver’s seat,” I said.

  Ginny reached over and gave me an unexpected hug. “You’re doing a great job, Ty. Better than Mom and Dad would have done.”

  I felt myself coloring at the praise. I muttered, “Not that great of a job.”

  “You are. You know how Mom and Dad were.”

  I did. And it didn’t escape my notice that she was talking about them in the past tense. In a lot of ways, that was probably healthy.

  I carefully drove the van off the road and through a break in the trees off the rural route highway. I was hoping to conceal it a little from the road so that no one would see us, but vans aren’t exactly good off-road vehicles. Moving the stuff around did take a little longer than I thought. But by the time she and I closed our eyes, we were completely exhausted. I fell asleep quickly to the almost immediate sounds of Ginny’s regular breathing as she fell into a deep sleep.

  I woke up the next morning jerking out of my sleep with a gasp. Life itself was a nightmare right now, and waking up, my situation didn’t seem any better than it had in the dream. I checked my watch and saw it was already noon. We’d been tireder than I’d thought. Ginny was still sleeping and I hated waking her up. Maybe I could just start driving and she’d still be able to catch up on sleep.

  I needed to use the restroom, though. I smiled at my choice of words. Restroom. Yeah, there weren’t too many of those around. I didn’t want Ginny to wake up and not find anyone here, so I gently moved to the back of the van and lightly touched her shoulder. She woke with a start, too, just like I had.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said. Lying to her, as usual. Things were pretty far from okay. “It’s morning, but you can keep sleeping. I just needed to let you know I was going into the woods for a bathroom run.”

  Ginny’s brow crinkled. “Okay. I need to go, too. But I hate going in the woods.”

  “Not many restrooms around here, Ginny.” I shrugged.

  “No, I don’t mean that. I just mean that it’s kind of … it’s scary in the woods.” She said the words with hesitation, like she thought I might laugh at her. But I was far from finding anything humorous right now.

  “Tell you what. When I come back, I’ll just hang out on the edge of the woods in earshot and you can go, okay?”

  She nodded, eyes drooping again sleepily.

  “Maybe you can even go back to sleep while I’m driving to Nana’s,” I said lightly.

  Ginny smiled at the mention of Nana. “She always has treats for us. Peppermints. And she makes that great pound cake. Do you think she can cook for us? It’s been a long time since we’ve visited.”

  I was just hoping she hadn’t been run out of the place. That she was still there. That I could offload some of this huge responsibility I had to an adult who was related to us. “Sure. You know how much Nana loves cooking for us. And she has a kitchenette on her hall.” And she might even have total run of the big kitchen, too, depending on whether the staff deserted them or stayed.

  I headed off into the woods after making sure that Ginny had locked the van doors after us. Now that it wa
s daylight, the van was a lot more visible than it had been at night and I was ready to get out of there.

  I hadn’t gone far into the woods when I heard a soft groaning approaching behind me. My breath caught and I whipped my head around. It was a group of zombies. In fact, it looked like an entire family. A dad in a denim button-down shirt, a mom wearing a cheerful floral dress. Even a little girl in a Disney shirt and a toddler boy wearing overalls. Their eyes were hollow as they gaped at me.

  I started backing off. They were slow, I reminded myself. Much slower than I was. But the woods were full of obstacles and I was outnumbered four to one.

  The dad clumsily made a swiping motion at me and I scurried back a little. “Ginny!” I called out loudly. “Drive away!” There was no answer and I wasn’t sure she could hear me. Had she gone back to sleep?

  My heart sank as I heard a rustling behind me. I turned to see another zombie staring at me. That’s when I jogged away, heading deeper into the woods. They grunted and jogged awkwardly after me, a good deal faster than Bo had been, but not as fast as me. I stumbled over a root but caught myself before I fell.

  I couldn’t seem to shake them. They didn’t tire. They just blindly headed for me, loping behind me, training hollow eyes on me the whole time. The scariest thing was that they looked so harmless if you didn’t see their faces. And that they were so hard to shake off.

  I finally stopped panicking and started thinking. It took a while and I was pretty far into the woods at this point. They weren’t fast. They were really awkward and hardly surefooted. I spotted a steep, rocky hill covered with roots. I took a deep breath and sprinted up it and then down the other side. Sure enough, I could hear them muttering and groaning to themselves as they tripped over themselves and the hill. I didn’t wait around. I ran as hard and as fast as I could back in the direction of the van. I was so glad I’d left the keys with Ginny. Maybe she drove away. Or maybe I diverted all of the zombies in the area away from her.