by J. Thorn
But she wasn’t puking. She was only barely feverish. And she seemed to regain some of her fight. All good signs.
“What time is it?” Haley asked as we hovered near the door to our safe little haven, nobody really wanting to leave the quiet space.
Harrison held up one of the lanterns to his watch and said, “Six-thirty.”
“Good lord,” she groaned. “I used to sleep in!”
“Are you still tired?” Nelson asked sounding surprised- like his twenty minute morning nap was enough to sustain him.
“Nelson,” Haley grumbled. “Look at where we slept last night. If we keep this up I’m going to be still-tired for the rest of my life! And worse I’m going to look like it!”
“Because of the premature wrinkles?” Tyler asked innocently and I cringed for her sake.
Haley was by no means vain. But that wasn’t exactly fair play from a girl that had yet to kill her first Zombie.
Haley sucked in a sharp breath and I could see her blonde hair igniting with the fire of her wrath. She had this expression when she was angry and it was, frankly, terrifying. Honestly, she reminded me of Medusa. Her eyes would bulge out of her head, and then her hair would almost take on a life of its own. I always pictured it rising off her shoulders like snakes ready to strike.
I avoided this Haley as often as I could- unless there were Feeders around, then I tended to utilize this Haley to our survival advantage.
“She didn’t mean wrinkles!” Nelson stepped in to rescue Tyler. “She meant laugh lines,” he finished with a placating superiority.
“Oh, no,” I moaned.
“Even I knew that was the wrong thing to say,” Harrison exclaimed.
“You think I have laugh lines?” Haley sounded so hysterical I wanted to giggle- obviously I didn’t, but I wanted to. “Reagan, do you think I have laugh lines?”
Ok, I so wasn’t getting dragged into this. Couldn’t someone just open the door already? Couldn’t we discuss wrinkles and laugh lines in the car?
“Haley, come on, we all know you’re gorgeous,” Vaughan cut in, effectively saving the day. “My brother’s oblivious and Tyler’s jealous. That’s the only reason they would say those things to you. Now, lock and load people, we have got to get going sometime today.”
Tyler’s angry retort came next, but it was somewhat drowned in the clicking and snapping of guns getting ready. Somewhat anyway.
“Listen here, you cocky bastard!” she marched after Vaughan who had stepped forward to open the door and then lead us back to the van.” I am not in any way jealous of any of you! You’re basically homeless people but you smell worse!”
“We smell worse?” Vaughan shouted down at her. “You can’t honestly-“
But his words died on his lips. Outside the store Feeders walked back and forth casually, as if on their way to errands or a leisurely stroll around the town.
Tyler stopped huffing too and Haley immediately got over her indignation.
There were at least ten Feeders that were making consistent loops in the parking lot where the van was parked. Through the dirty-glass we could see more in the distance. They seemed unhurried and mindless as they rambled aimlessly around and around.
But we all knew better.
The minute our fleshy-blood scent wafted through the air, they would become a frenzied, teaming horde, intent on eating our faces.
“I’m not going out there,” Tyler stated adamantly.
“Me either,” Miller joined the mutiny.
“Me either,” I added, just for fun.
“We have to get to the van,” Vaughan shook his head, then looked down at Page in his arms. “If we stay here they’ll find us. We won’t be able to stop them from destroying this store to get to us.”
“Oh, is that what they do?” I asked pretending to be confused. “I forgot for a sec.”
Hendrix nudged me in the back with his hand, and then let it fall to my waist. “Play nice,” he whispered in my ear.
I shot him a look over my shoulder, but he was right. Tyler would get over this attitude. She would. Or she’d die from a disease we couldn’t cure with expired Tylenol, a Feeder attack or from the elements. So…. there was that.
It was hard to hold a grudge during the Apocalypse.
Vaughan passed Page off to Nelson and pulled out guns. All of the Parkers- with the exception of Page- had mastered the two handed shooting thing. I couldn’t multitask like that yet. And either could Haley, although she could shoot better with her left hand than me.
Tyler and Miller were nowhere near the two handed attack. They were lucky if they got their shots fired in the general direction of the conflict. Miller was considerably better than Tyler, but where Tyler had never been allowed to hold or handle a gun, Miller confessed that he wasn’t that great for lack of practice. Apparently Miller had always been rebellious and his father never trusted him to learn how to use a weapon for fear Miller would use it on him.
From what I had seen that was probably a legit fear. But now we were stuck with the aftermath. A girl who would rather cower during a scary situation than try to fight her way free and a boy that could sometimes hit a target, but was more likely to shoot himself in the foot.
“On my mark,” Vaughan instructed when we were as ready as we could be. Most of us knew exactly what to do, but he had to spell it out for the new arrivals, “Head straight for the van, do not stop, and do not kill unnecessarily. Just get in the van and get out of the way for the next person. Kids and the females first.”
“Am I a kid?” Miller whispered sounding legitimately afraid.
“After Page, alright?” Vaughan asked with a softened tone.
Miller nodded, and then Vaughan was off. He took the butt of his gun and slammed it against the flimsy chain King had used to secure the front doors. The chain went flying and the doors were officially opened.
Vaughan was first into the fray and Hendrix and I were close behind- spreading out so that with the help of King, Harrison and Haley, we could protect those in our center.
The Feeders looked up slowly at us, their eyes vacant depths of starvation and their mouths drooling milky saliva. They seemed just as stunned to see living creatures walk out of the Publix as we were to see them bump into our van and then teeter off, not affected at all.
With slowly dawning intent they altered their paths for us. We were the only thing that mattered to them all of a sudden- their addiction kicking in immediately.
We started running then, making the mad dash to the van. Vaughan hadn’t bothered to lock the thing so when he reached the passenger door he flung it open. Taking Page from Nelson’s arm, he tossed her to the floor. Miller was next and then Tyler flung her body through the door. Haley crawled in and I pushed King and Nelson in before Hendrix picked me off the ground and tossed me inside. He crawled in after me and then Nelson slid the door shut. By the time I could lift my head from the mountain of bodies I was sprawled on, Vaughan was already in the driver’s seat begging the van to start.
Nelson was the last one in and I felt Haley’s sigh of relief as she let one out from underneath me. We were a tangle of bodies, tightly wound in each other. It was like the clown car in a circus. We were a mess.
A banging sound had more than one of us screaming. I lifted my chin from King’s thigh and was startled when the blood red eyes of a Zombie stared back at me through the glass.
Another fist pounded on the passenger window just above my head. The strength from these guys was insane. The van was rocking back and forth from their combined effort and their sickly death-bed smell was starting to waft through the windows.
“Let’s go, Vaughan!” Haley screamed as a third fist came down on glass.
“I’m trying!” he snarled.
The sick whirring of the engine every time he turned the key did not sound promising, but it had been doing this lately and Vaughan always seemed to pull off the start. Although he had never had to do it so fast.
He kept tu
rning the key and the engine kept sputtering and clicking, but nothing was happening. More Feeders were moving our way the longer we sat here.
The pounding of fists became louder and more furious. I glanced over to see a lone bead of sweat trickle down Vaughan’s temple and my stomach dropped to my toes. This was the first obvious sign of panic I had ever seen from him and I was not Ok with that.
And in the backseat we were a mess. Page was shoved into a corner behind Vaughan’s chair and the wall, King, Harrison and Miller had somehow squeezed in around her. Tyler was taking up the captain’s chair to my left and Haley, Hendrix and I crouched in the middle of the aisle. Not a second of this was comfortable, but I was too afraid to move closer to the incessant beating.
A hard crack ripped another scream from my throat as the latest hit created a fissure down the middle of the back window. This seemed to electrify the entire horde and the pounding grew louder and stronger. If Zombies could show emotion then excitement was written all over their gaping, half-eaten away faces.
Finally Vaughan got the van to start but it was still spitting and now there were bodies on every side of us. Hands slapping the glass mingled with pounding fists and we were forced to watch as they dragged their disgusting mouths over the glass as if they could just eat right through to us. Their rotted teeth and sickly white tongues scraped against the glass and broken, bloodied, inhumanly thick yellow fingernails followed.
I swallowed down the nausea coated in terror and prayed for a break.
“I’m going to shoot some of them,” Nelson declared and reached for his manual roll-down window.
“No!” Haley screamed on a choked sob.
There were too many Feeders, and even a crack of his window would give them the opening they needed, but what choice did we have?
Vaughan looked at his brother and revved the pathetic engine again, but we had no leverage and there were too many bodies. We couldn’t go anywhere. They shared a look and then Vaughan reached over and picked up his own gun up off the arm rest between them.
With sincere gravity and dark emotion flashing across his face, Vaughan looked at Nelson and said, “Do not miss. We cannot waste those bullets.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at the idiocy of men, but Vaughan was right. We barely had anything left after last night and it wasn’t like this would be our last Zombie encounter. We could easily escape this predicament only to find ourselves surrounded by Feeders again in less than an hour.
Although right now I felt like this should be our last. Like, I just wanted to sit down with whatever higher power had allowed this to happen and explain to him that we had done our due diligence with Zombies. In fact, I dared to say we passed this level. We were ready for something else- anything else! At this point I would have taken probing alien abductions or those huge worm things from the movie Tremor.
I could climb an electrical tower quickly. Bring it on.
Nelson cocked his gun, and then held it up while he readied his hand on the lever. Vaughan mimicked his motions on the other side and then counted them off in Spanish- obviously to mix it up.
Hendrix scrambled to a helpful position and held up his gun in way of backup.
“Uno…. dos…. tres!”
The windows went down and the muzzles of their guns slid out through the just-big-enough opening. And then they fired quickly and accurately.
Someone else screamed this time, but I couldn’t have told you who. I had my head buried in my knees and my hands slapped over my ears. The sound of gun fire exploded in the vehicle and the smell of burnt bullets mixed with the acrid scent of decaying flesh. The car grew dark as with each kill shot Feeder blood splattered everywhere and the thick, sticky substance coated the windows. Still the van rocked back and forth with the pressure to break through the metal and glass and inhumanly strong hands banged against the windows.
If anything, the piles of dead Zombies around the car only seemed to ignite more fuel for their hunger. They became crazed around us, desperate and starving for our flesh. They clawed and keened and pounded to get to us. Nelson and Vaughan kept shooting, but Vaughan had already reached for his second gun because his first was empty now.
Vaughan revved the engine again and it made a little progress. The Feeders in the front of the van were working their way to the sides to either finish off the now legitimate dead bodies of their Zombie friends or get better access to the all-you-can eat Parker Family and Friends Buffet.
Nelson let out a string of curse words when one of the disgusting creatures managed to get his hand through the half an inch wide space and his nasty fingers clawed at Nelson’s face. There was blood caked under his elongated nails and his fingers were boney but still unfairly strong. His pinky was missing completely and the skin on his thumb and forefinger had been stripped away leaving only dull, dried out tendon and some white bone peeking through.
Oh, shit. I was going to be sick.
And the smell! It was so unbearably noxious!
With one more concentrated fist to the back window it shattered over us while we were distracted with the front of the van action. All of the girls screamed in unison but quickly went to work. Haley immediately picked up her gun and started popping off as many Zombies as she could in a row.
I followed suit, leaning into Tyler so I could still use my right hand to do my shooting. They were easy to pick off now that the window was gone. It was kind of like shooting fish in a barrel- if that phrase meant disgusting, evil undead instead of actual fish.
Hands and faces reached through the open space and we couldn’t shoot fast enough. Harrison had joined in our defensive assault, being the only boy capable of getting his arm in the right position so he wouldn’t shoot anyone in the van on accident and Hendrix had turned around to assist as well.
Still, they seemed never ending all of a sudden, but I was sure it had to do with the direct attack and my blind panic- surely there was an end to all of these Feeders!
Vaughan stomped down on the gas pedal one more time and the van finally lurched forward enough to keep the momentum. He pressed his foot all the way to the floor and the engine made a sick grinding noise but cooperated. Slowly the Feeders seemed to slip away. We were cruising now, the car going about as fast as it could go- 40mph. And we all slunk back into relaxed positions as the last Zombie in the back of the van got tripped up trying to run with the new breakneck speeds and slid down the back and finally to the ground. Nelson’s Feeder- the one that was trying to give him a life-altering handshake- watched as his own arm popped right off and his fingers stayed lodged in the window- waving at us in the undead sort of way.
Nobody made a sound as we waited to see if this could possibly be real- if we really defeated all those Feeders and were driving off into the sunset. Ok, not exactly sunset. More like mid-morning with no happily ever after in sight.
We passed a few more Feeders on our escape route. These ones were calling out to each other with a horrifying guttural screech. They were communicating something.
And that was scarier than almost dying.
I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself off the floor. While the vehicle seemed caked with blood from top to bottom, it was still running. Thank God!
A rush of relief washed over me and I could barely believe we’d made it out of yet another harrowing situation without losing anyone.
Until, then- until that very moment when I realized our harrowing situation was not exactly over.
The engine made a loud, angry popping sound and then steam exploded upward from the hood. The steering wheel shook violently as Vaughan struggled to grapple control of it and we swerved wildly before the engine finally sputtered and died.
So… this wasn’t going to turn out good for us.
Now that the engine was off, we were mostly quiet. Our loud, panting breaths and checking of guns were the only sounds to break up the tense silence.
And the moaning- there was always moaning.
And it seemed to be cha
sing us.
We looked around, each of us taking responsibility to find out what was coming. Nobody had more than five bullets left a piece and after those were gone, we were armed with hunting knives but that was it.
Hunting knives were definitely dangerous, and better than nothing but the thing about them was…. you had to be very close range to use them.
Vaughan angrily cranked down the window again and Nelson followed suit. Both of them perched their bums on the window ledge and readied their small handguns. Hendrix climbed over Haley and me followed by his brothers.
“Haley and Reagan stay with Page,” Vaughan ordered.
Tyler started hyperventilating in her captain’s chair. Her knees pulled up to her chest, and her body rocked back and forth as tears streamed down her face. Shocking sobs racked her body and every appendage was shaking uncontrollably. Miller climbed into the seat with her and put his arms around her, but he didn’t seem capable of comforting her.
I watched them for a second. I understood her fear and her inability to fully come to terms with what we would have to do to survive. The sight of her was unnerving- but natural. This was the natural or normal reaction for anyone faced with a literal throng of Zombies chasing them down.
So why had I never reacted like this?
Even after my parents died, I never broke down like this. Was there something wrong with me? Was I a cold-hearted bitch that didn’t respect life or care about people I loved?
I wanted to give myself credit and blame courage and strength of spirit. But if I was honest with myself, it felt more like stubborn willfulness not to die. And that wasn’t the same thing.
I ignored Tyler and Miller and refocused my attention on the back of the van.
“Stay in the van for as long as you can,” Vaughan commanded. “And don’t let any of them get inside.”
“Geez, Vaughan, with instructions like that, I regret voting you off the island,” Haley grumbled sarcastically.
“You voted me off the island?” Vaughan sounded amused but his arms never wavered as he held them out the window.
“In the last tribunal,” Haley admitted. “It was either you or Reagan and I like her better.”