by P. J. Kelley
At one point, they heard a small plane circling overhead, but it left after ten minutes or so. They didn’t look very closely to investigate, but if they had, they would have seen a small parachute sprout in the air carrying a small metal box to within a hundred feet of the cider press building.
Finally, after Isaiah and Gwen had been talking for two hours, hours which were wonderfully restful for both of them, they got around to talking about more personal issues.
“So I got hospitalized after I had partial kidney failure, and I was just lying there wishing I had just died when my husband came in and said he was divorcing me unless I went to rehab and stopped drinking. He said I had embarrassed him enough. I was lying there, and all of a sudden, as he was talking, I suddenly wanted a drink so badly I would have drunk nail polish if they had let me have any. I just can’t understand how things got so screwed up,” Gwen regretfully related.
“You say that, but in a way, you haven’t changed that much at all,” Isaiah said reassuringly.
“Oh, that’s nice of you to say. Here’s the kicker-when I did get to rehab, they put me on this reality TV show called On The Road to Recovery, and sent us to this museum in New York, right in the middle…”
Spasmodically, Isaiah interrupted her. “No! How could I have not…. I watch that all the time!” Isaiah was genuinely excited. “This is crazy. The show is mainly about The Celtics because The Angels took off and The Cowboys all got killed. You are a Steeler! Holy smokes.” He ran to his computer and frantically started striking the keyboard. “Your monitoring equipment got damaged right out of the gate, so there were only fragments of conversations heard from the bus, and no video. I wonder though, now that you are out…Whoa! Crystal clear pictures coming from all four of you! Nothing from Marie though. Wow! I am on it now, because you are looking at me. It must be in the buttons on your coat. This is truly amazing.”
At that instant, a loud thumping could be heard on the door downstairs. Charlie came out of the sitting room looking alarmed.
“Hate to break the news, but I can see a couple of hundred Psychos or Zombies or whatever right outside your door, and a lot more coming down the road straight at us,” he informed them.
Time is a strange commodity, if thought of as a commodity. Some hours and days are so fleeting, yet if one could purchase time, and could choose the fleeting moments as opposed to the moments that seemed to drag on into infinity, the fleeting moment would be the ones bought, and the buyer would have no sense of being swindled. For The Steelers, the next few moments were not the kind they would ever wish to purchase again.
The very air seemed to have thickened, and Gwen fought for breathe like an asthmatic. She ran to the window and looked out, and Charlie had not been exaggerating. They were being swarmed hard.
Everyone was in shock. It just intuitively did not make sense to them. Isaiah checked the satellite feed on the Internet, which had been converted from tracking traffic patterns to Zombie migrations, and if he scanned back over time, it was obvious that a large swathe of Zombies had started converging on this precise spot from several directions about two hours ago. What’s more, these weren’t semi-lethargic Zombies just poking around to see what they could stir up. These fellows were in a frenzied state, hurling themselves against the outside doors and walls like organic battering rams. Nothing any of them had seen had prepared them for the ferocity of this onslaught.
“Dude,” Charlie quavered, “Are those doors down there going to hold?”
Isaiah spoke carefully. “I don’t know, I thought they would. They seem like they are tearing at the fieldstone walls. They might eventually break through.”
The minibus was being destroyed by degrees. It was probably undrivable, and definitely no longer safe. That exit was blocked.
“Isaiah, the only explanation for this is they followed us somehow. I am so sorry for this. If I had thought this would happen I would not have come here in a million years. Please believe me.” Gwen was in tears.
“Followed you how? This makes no sense,” said Isaiah. “Anyway, I’m still glad you came.” This seemed to have been the right thing to say, because Gwen started to calm down immediately.
“Okay, right now we have to think. We will figure out the how of it later. First, where exactly were you guys going?” Isaiah asked.
In a rush, Joe explained their destination and their plan, and their hope that once they got to The Cloisters they would be met and taken to a safe zone, or at least back to the rehab.
Isaiah looked at them. “I know the gist of this from following the show, and ordinarily I would try to talk you out of it because the whole thing is so crazy, but now I don’t know. I don’t think it’s safe to stay here, and therefore we have to go somewhere, if you don’t mind me joining you. There is a garage downstairs, where in honor of my father who loved this vehicle like a second son, I maintain his old International Harvester Scout in almost perfect condition. That thing can go anywhere, in any terrain. He was a farmer, so he had an underground gas tank, just like a filling station. Have any of you ever fired a shotgun?”
Joe had, and Charlie said he had as well.
“Okay, me and George are going to start loading up The Scout with supplies. The rest of you stand at this window and do this,” Isaiah said, as he aimed his 10 gauge. A Zombie who had been in full stride to batter the front door again suddenly exploded as Isaiah fired the shotgun at him at the height of his charge. “This will keep them off the front door, and buy us some time. Let me see you try.”
No shrinking violet, Joe grabbed the powerful gun, reloaded it with great efficiency, and managed to blast a charging Zombie equally as well as Isaiah had.
“Good. Very good. Teach Charlie. Gwen, what size ammunition does your gun take?” Gwen didn’t know, so Isaiah took it from her. “It’s a .38 caliber. I have boxes of those. This is an old school cop gun.”
“You have a gun?” Charlie was incredulous, and George and Joe were also taken aback. “Did the rest of you get guns? Why was I the only one left out?”
“Marie gave me this gun in the minibus,” Gwen said. “I don’t know why she gave it to me.”
“Oh,” said Charlie, who had some inkling that Marie had not held him in very high consideration, if she had considered him at all.
As Joe kept blasting, Isaiah gave Gwen a quick lesson in firing the .38. “I want you to get some practice. We have some time until we are ready, and I want you to get blooded, as they used to say.”
Gwen frowned, not understanding.
“I want you to get the experience of shooting at Zombies from the safety of this window. Whenever Joe is reloading, I want you to fire at them. Don’t worry so much about your marksmanship-just get the experience of shooting at something.”
“Okay, first, all of you give me your coats, and take these wool sweaters my Mom used to make instead. If you have anything in your pockets you need take it out, but please don’t bring anything electronic, okay?” Isaiah was friendly but firm, and he took the coats into another room, shut the door and came back.
“Now, I believe I can get you to The Hudson River. There is a long band of National Park land, and from hunting and fishing around here since I was a kid, I know back roads and Park roads that will take us to a place a few miles below Bear Mountain without ever having to get on a real highway. From there, I believe we can get a motorboat or at least a couple of canoes and make Manhattan early tomorrow morning. Sound like a plan?”
The others agreed. The plan was essentially the same, except for the route to the river, but staying off the beaten track definitely had its selling points.
So while George and Isaiah did whatever it was they were doing to make The Scout road ready, Joe, Gwen, and Charlie took turns taking pot shots at the mass of Zombies congregating outside the front door. Not only did this get them used to firing guns, it also attracted all the Zombies to the front of the building, causing them to leave the garage doors in the back unattended.
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nbsp; The assault had devolved into a standoff, apparently, but this was deceptive. Eventually, no matter what Isaiah had stored, ultimately they would run out of ammunition, the Zombies would break through the front door, and it would all end badly for them. Finally, after about an hour, George and Isaiah came upstairs.
“Did you hit anything?” Isaiah asked.
“I hit a couple. I fired the gun like a hundred times,” Gwen said, feeling silly for being proud.
“Well, you kept them off us. Thank you,” Isaiah said to the group in general. He grabbed a boom box and put in an old AC/DC tape, cranking it at full volume, and placing it at the window. “Fill your sacks with these boxes of ammunition,” he instructed them, grabbing a couple more .38 revolvers from a desk drawer.
“Why do you have so many guns and stuff?” Charlie wanted to know.
“I’m a farm boy. For us guns are like toy blocks are for most city kids. Besides, my dad was the town sheriff. Let’s go.”
To the loud strains of AC/DC, the group walked to the garage and piled in to the loaded up Scout. Water bottles, food, shotguns, fishing rods, gas cans, and even camping equipment were neatly tucked into the back. Isaiah had evidently been a Boy Scout.
“Good, now the garage doors open up and we blast right out of here. I couldn’t find a completely Zombie-free route just from looking at satellite, but I found one we should be able to negotiate. Get ready.”
As soon as they were clear enough from the raising doors, Isaiah gunned it out of there. He had already locked the wheels into 4 wheel drive, and they went racing up the hill through the apple orchard meeting very light Zombie resistance thanks to the distractions Isaiah had prepared. Soon, they were moving at a decent controlled speed through the vast forest, as the late afternoon sun began to cast longer shadows.
Isaiah was a locked-in driver, looking neither to the right nor the left. While Joe had kept them on the edge of their seat, Isaiah inspired confidence. In fairness, these country roads were the same ones he had learned to drive on, and as they drove on through the evening and into the night, generally always heading towards The Hudson River, they saw no one and nothing saw them.
Gwen could feel herself drifting into sleep, which was amazing under these conditions. As she entered that state of being where overlooked events come out of from hiding in the background, something occurred to her.
“Isaiah, you said your dad was the town sheriff, so why didn’t he arrest my dad for drinking and driving when he drove into that ditch in front of your house?”
For a while, Isaiah said nothing, and then he answered quite reasonably. “My dad could have pulled your dad’s car out of that ditch in five minutes, but he made him wait around for eight hours so your dad would sober up. I admit it, my parents didn’t like your parents, and talked about them for years, but they loved you. I remember my mom asking you if you wanted to be her little girl and come live with us, which was completely out of character for her. I think she thought you would actually wander up to the orchard someday to stay. She always wanted a little girl. My dad said he probably should have arrested your dad, but he did give him a good talking to. He seemed sad about the whole thing. Gypsy missed you too.”
“Oh,” said Gwen, and fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve: Showdown With The Creep
The helicopter was already fueled up, needing only to be warmed up a little. Since they were the only flying machine in sight, they didn’t need to bother being cleared for take-off. As the helicopter rose up to a hundred feet in the clear sunlit morning, the three were treated to the sight of the barbed wire fences shaking and collapsing, as a horde of Psycho-Zombies, or Zombie-Psychos trod it down through sheer weight of numbers. Arty ran his hands through his hair, looking like a pensive and diminutive Jack Nicholson, and Marie could swear that she heard Phil stifle a small sob of what might have been relief.
Finding the uncle’s boat was pretty easy using the helicopters state of the art GPS monitors to hone in on the yacht’s coordinates. The uncle was only a few miles out, off the Jersey Coast. It was touch and go for a while, since climbing down a rope ladder onto a boat from a hovering helicopter is even more difficult than it sounds, and Phil and Arty were not exactly trained commandos.
“Just one thing,” Marie said, right before the two prepared to begin the climb down the ladder. “My dad doesn’t know I’m coming. I want to surprise him. This means I really don’t want you on the radio talking about me. Is this going to be a problem for you?”
Both Phil and Arty looked at her as Joe had in the minibus. Whether she was an angel sent to deliver them or a demon sent to damn their souls they sensed they might never know for sure. They swore to radio silence, allowing themselves to pretend to believe that Marie seemed like the type to engage in a little father/daughter prank at a time like this. They landed on the deck, safely but shaken, and waved feebly at the already vanishing helicopter.
Marie may have waved back, but both were sure that she probably hadn’t.
Alone, Marie finally began to talk as she flew the chopper towards Manhattan. “That was incredible. Right in the nick of time. Of course they won’t tell. What is up with those two though? Zombies! My stars. They were living it though. They think this is The Night of the Living Dead. That is so cool.”
Marie was a decent pilot, though not a great one. Wryly, she reflected that Donnie had been a good friend after all, since his National Guardsmen brother had trained her on a very similar model, though of course Daddy Dearest had his loaded with all extras. This was a limousine with propellers, whereas the one she learned on was stripped down surplus Donny and his nutty brother had bought at an auction, retooled, stored in a barn and went tearing around over old coal fields, strip mined “black deserts” that would have suffered no material damage if they’d crashed, since they were already wastelands. Donny and his brother were extremely mechanically minded, and the brother was an adept at stealing parts from National Guard sources, so the two lower income brothers were able to enjoy what is usually considered a rich man’s hobby.
They had had some good times, drinking beer and smoking reefer while junketing around in their chopper. After Donnie and his brother accepted the fact that she was not romantically interested in either of them, she had thought they had evolved a genuine friendship. Maybe they had. Marie could forgive Donnie for not wanting to go to jail for her, but she knew Donny was not going to be able to forgive himself, and this would forever taint their relationship. Nobody wants to be seen as weak.
Marie wished she could speak with Donnie now. Whatever had happened, Maria now knew she was destined to be doing exactly what she doing, no matter what were the circumstances. Her flying skills were making this mission possible, and she had Donnie to thank for that at least. She wished she could make Donnie understand how sympathetic she was for the loss of his innocence.
As she approached Manhattan, she fumbled open a compartment and pulled out shades and a flight cap, which she put on. There was a blue windbreaker with the logo of the airport on it, and she put that on as well. There were security cameras on the roof, and she wanted to delay the moment of recognition for as long as possible. The security guard hut on the roof was empty, as she had been hoping against hope for. Apparently, The Creep had been abandoned. Marie’s luck was just rolling today.
She landed and quickly secured the helicopter as she had been taught. She hurried to the security intercom, and wiped a thin film of helicopter grease over the security camera lens before pressing the button for her father’s condo. Her father’s voice, sounding groggy and dazed, answered after a few minutes.
Gruffly, muffling her mouth with the top of the windbreaker, she spoke harshly. “Sorry for the delay. Your helicopter is here, we should leave immediately.”
“Who are you?” A lifetime of treachery had made her father cautious.
“The pilot service sent me. Zombie Psychos got Manion and his whole family. I was the last one left. I’m a good pilot, I just got h
ired out of flight school though,” Marie rolled her eyes. The hope was that the fear of being saddled with a novice pilot would trump his other suspicions. Marie was staring at the intercom, looking away from the befouled camera lens with her windbreaker and cap pulled low.
After the briefest of pauses, her father spoke, “We’ll be right up. We just have to grab a couple of bags. You got here just in time; the Psychos are already in the building. We’d just been discussing heading for the roof anyway as a last resort.”
Marie wondered if “we” meant who she thought it might, and sure enough, in a few minutes, the stairwell door opened, and The Creep and Esther walked onto the roof. Blinking in the suddenly strong sunlight, it took a few moments for it truly to register that the smiling young lady standing there pointing a sawed off shotgun at them was Marie.
“Shut the door,” Marie commanded, and Esther kicked the door shut behind them. Her father, red eyed, hung-over, and obviously high looked at her with disbelief. Esther seemed clearer headed, but also incredulous.
“You are dead. We saw you get killed. You can’t be here!” Esther screamed.
Not quite knowing how to respond to this, Marie shrugged her shoulders and grinned a little. “This could be all a dream,” she said. Both barrels of the shotgun were cocked. Marie held the gun with both hands at a distance of less than ten feet from her father and Esther.
Her father tried, “It’s just that…we’re glad you’re not dead, honey, but we saw you killed on the reality TV show, On the Road to Recovery. Psychos ripped you apart. I’m so glad it was a lie.”
Esther spoke, “Wait, what team were you on? The producers swore you would be on The Cow…” Esther stopped in midsentence.
“I was a Steeler. Why, what happened to the other teams?”