Preservation - 03

by Phillip Tomasso

I lifted my foot. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Well, don’t flood it.”

  I gritted my teeth. No one knew shit about engines. We all took turns throwing out problems. Transmission. Alternator. Battery. Belts.

  Charlene knelt beside me. “What do we do now?”

  Finding another bus was not likely. Looking for an SUV made sense. We were in trouble. Michelle was in rough shape. She was still asleep. There was no way she could walk, anyway. Carrying her would be a worse idea. She’d have to wait here. Someone could stay with her. “Charlene, Dave and I are going to look for another vehicle,” I said.

  “You’re leaving us?” Melissa said.

  “We’re coming back.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. Does it make sense to go out this late?” Andy looked from me to my daughter, and over his shoulder at Dave. “You might as well rest. Go in the morning.”

  Of course that was a far more attractive offer. At this point, I’d pick procrastination over most any option. I was tired of always being on the go, pro-active, defensive. I didn’t really want to go out looking for another ride. I wanted the bus just to work. “We could go in the morning,” I said, but didn’t want to lose time. We were so close. “Dave?”

  “I agree. The morning sounds good,” he said.

  I looked at me daughter. She nodded. “First light?”

  “First light,” I said, agreeing to wait until the next day. “We should try to get some rest. All of us.”

  No one looked comfortable with going to sleep. Thing was, we were in a disabled bus on the Interstate. If zombies attacked, we were trapped. I figured as long as we didn’t make noise, kept the lights inside the bus off, we should be alright. Might not be much consolation, but there wasn’t much more we could do, or that could be done. It was what it was.

  And what it was, was bad.

  # # #

  Thursday, November 5th, 0700 hours

  The three of us climbed out of the bus. “Keep everything locked up,” I said.

  Andy looked like he might laugh. “Ya think?”

  “We’ll be back as fast as we can,” I said.

  “You are coming back, right?”

  I couldn’t blame him. Humanity had suffered a serious blow. Trust was now an issue. With Michelle injured, he must think us taking off and continuing on to Mexico without them would be easier. And it would. “We’ll be back, Andy. You have my word.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “We’re going to need it.”

  First choice, which direction to head. Back the way we came seemed like a good call. At least, I remembered seeing plenty of abandoned vehicles. Whether there were keys or full tanks of gas was another matter.

  “Know what? When we find a truck,” Dave said, “I’m driving.”

  “You’re driving?” I said.

  “When we were in Rochester, you smashed up at least two cars while we were together. And if I remember what Alley said, there was one or two before we hooked up. That’s four accidents in a day, bro. Way I see it, you crashed more cars than you killed zombies,” he said.

  “Asshole,” I said.

  And we walked.

  The first car we reached, a hundred yards from the bus, had keys. “Don’t matter,” Charlene said. “Seven of us are not fitting inside that thing.”

  She was right. “Let’s remember it’s here. We have to split into two groups, two different cars, we will.”

  “An SUV will be best. Something where Michelle can lie down in back,” Dave said.

  “I agree. Beggars sometimes can’t be choosers.”

  Plumes of smoke rose and billowed in the sky no matter which direction you looked. Texas was no different than anywhere else we’d been. Everything was on fire everywhere. You could smell the smoke. Part of it made me feel reminiscent of campfires, toasting marshmallows, drinking beer, telling scary tales to the kids. Mostly, I imagined death, and dying and zombies. Hopelessness. That’s what those fires really represented. A complete hopelessness.

  “It’s going to be hard to get back to normal,” I said.

  “What bothers me is the zombies,” Dave said. “They’ve changed the game.”

  “You mean with them learning?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” Dave said. “Sorry, Char.”

  She smiled.

  I’d protected my kids from vulgar language. It was a different time then. The “F” word was just a word now.

  “Do you think anyone is working on a cure or a solution,” she said.

  “I’d like to think so, honey,” I said.

  “But do you think so?” she said.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

  The sun rose in the east. Only a few clouds slid across the sky. I shivered. It was much warmer this far south, the chill was not from the temperature. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

  Dave tensed. “From which direction?”

  “Not sure.”

  “I can still see the bus,” Charlene said. “Think it’s Andy?”

  “No.” I looked left, and right. Made it as casual as possible. I did not want anyone to think we were on to them. “Could just be me.”

  Dave opened the door on a pickup truck. “Keys.”

  “We could take that and the other car,” Charlene said.

  “I don’t want Michelle in the bed of a pickup. She’ll be bounced around, and exposed to the elements,” I said.

  “Could throw a mattress from the bus into the back,” Charlene said.

  We could, actually. “Not a bad idea. Let’s check a few more vehicles. I’d still prefer something we could all ride in.”

  “Seven people, with Michelle needing to lie down,” Charlene said.

  “We’ve been walking for ten, fifteen minutes. Let’s give it a few more,” I said.

  “Ten or fifteen minutes to us is going to feel like hours to them,” Andy said.

  “Just another few minutes,” I said. “Besides, if we’re being followed, I don’t want to lead them back to the bus.”

  “So you think someone is out there, for real?” Dave said.

  “I didn’t see anything. I just, I…feel it.”

  “Should we just be gallivanting down the middle of the road like this, then?” Dave said.

  “I don’t want them to know that we know they’re out there,” I said.

  “If they’re out there,” Charlene said.

  “Trust me, something is out there, and they are watching us,” I said.

  “There’s a van,” Dave said, pointing.

  I looked for it. I have no idea why I envisioned a conversion van with a starburst painting on the side. What I saw was a white work van, a ladder on top. “It’s going to be filled with tools,” I said.

  “Might not be a terrible thing, we could go through it to see what we want. Leave the rest on the road. Then we do like Charlene said. We pull a few mattresses from the bus. Throw in supplies. Might be a tight squeeze, but at least we shouldn’t have trouble fitting seven people inside.”

  Supplies. Hadn’t even thought about that. No way, we could keep leaving valuables behind. “I like it,” I said. “Cross your fingers that the keys are still inside.”

  “Check it,” Dave said. “I’m keeping watch.”

  I approached the van with caution, each step carefully placed, as if I were on stairs in a house I was burglarizing. I peeked into the front windshield. No one or nothing was inside. The van was empty. “Lots of tools in there,” I said.

  “Keys?” Charlene stood beside Dave, sword in her hand. She didn’t say to hurry. I heard it implied in her tone of voice.

  Everything felt eerie. It was day time and there were no visible zombies or people. There were black pillars of smoke both near and in the distance spiraling up into a blue sky and we had the feeling we were being watched.

  I opened the driver side door, leaned in. Keys.

  “It’s got ‘em,” I said. I climbed into the van and turned the keys.
r />   The engine sputtered. I expected the worst and held my breath. Instead of not turning over, it started.

  I saw my daughter bob her head toward Dave and she was smiling.

  “Climb in,” I said.

  They went around to the passenger side. Dave knocked on the window. I reached over to unlock the door. Charlene pulled it open.

  “It has a flat,” she said.

  “Tire?”

  Dave stared at me like I’d just replied in German. “What else might be flat?”

  I shut the engine and punched the steering wheel. Once. Twice. I should have stopped there, but didn’t. Three times.

  My fist hit the horn.

  It beeped. I cringed and pulled my hand back, as if I’d been burned, as if I’d just touched a hot stove. The horn continued to blare. I only realized how silent we were, everything was, when the horn started to blare.

  “Shut it off, Dad,” Charlene said.

  I gripped the steering wheel in both hands. “It won’t.”

  I hit the horn again. Nothing.

  “Open the hood.” Dave stood in front of the van.

  I looked under the steering wheel, found the release and pulled it. I heard the pop. Dave opened the hood. I couldn’t see what he was doing. The horn stopped. I climbed out of the van and walked around to the front. Dave stood there with a cable in his hand.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” Dave said.

  “My bad,” I said.

  “Dad,” Charlene said. “They heard us.”

  “Who heard…” I stopped. The zombies approached from the banks. Both sides.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There were far more than a few zombies. They came onto the road from both sides of the small embankments. Dave, Charlene and I stood by the van with the flat tire. The sun had barely risen, the morning had just started, and already, I knew this was going to turn out to be another mother fucking sucky day.

  It would be pointless to stay and fight. We had to run. The question was, run to where? Toward the bus? That didn’t make sense. Away from it might have made even less.

  “That car, Dad,” Charlene said.

  That car. The one with the keys in it. The one about a hundred yards from the bus. It was a good call. If we could make it to the car, we could at least get away from this herd. We could lead them away from the bus, keeping the others safe inside.

  “Fast zombies,” Dave said. He pointed behind the van.

  “The car,” I said, and nodded. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  We sprinted. It was an all-out run. Dave had the lead. Charlene was right behind him, and I was directly behind her. I could hear the zombies fast approaching. I could smell them. The odor of burning homes and buildings was quickly overpowered by a stench of decay. That was not an exaggeration. A putrid aroma of rotting meat assaulted my nostrils.

  “Keep running. Get to that car,” I said. I stopped and spun around, as I yanked my sword free of the scabbard. I didn’t think Dave or Charlene realized I wasn’t running alongside them anymore. I needed to cause interference. If I couldn’t, the three of us would die. It was that obvious, that simple.

  The fast zombies were fast and close. I had only mere seconds to get into a fighting stance. This was not going to end well. I saw no way out of this. I raised my sword.

  I saw their faces.

  This was much different from sitting behind the driver seat in the bus and running them over like animals. Doing that had filled me with an unexplainable empathy. I knew then that it wasn’t the fault of the creature, that they had once been people, and I thought for each one I’d run down, I saw some sort of spark in their glossed over eyeballs.

  I’d been wrong.

  These things may once have been human, no different than me, but looking at the hunger in their eyes as they barreled forward, I knew the human element was gone, that it had been replaced with a simplistic survival instinct: kill, and eat.

  I didn’t even know if these things slept.

  It didn’t matter now.

  They had to die. All of them. Somehow, ridding the earth of this infectious plague had to be accomplished. There was no way to coexist with such mindless beasts, even if they’d learned to open doors, and especially if they figured out how to plot attacks. They needed to be completely annihilated. It was unfathomable to believe that God’s next choice for a race to rule the planet was zombies. Dinosaurs, man, zombies? That did not seem like a natural progression. I’d have picked cockroaches next, rats even. Not zombies.

  I swung my blade. And twisted and turned and swung it some more.

  I screamed as I thrust the steel into throats, and sliced off limbs.

  The fast ones were on me. I was down.

  The smell was more than I could stomach. My throat tensed. Muscles tightened. I feared I might pass out or vomit.

  Rapid gunfire erupted. It sounded like a machine gun. The fast bursts were deadly. The sound echoed against and alongside and over the zombies moaning and crying.

  Skulls shattered overhead as if detonated. The thing with its mouth open, teeth bared, ready to bite a chunk out of my face was decimated. I closed my eyes, and mouth against spraying brain matter and coffee ground blood.

  I squirmed and bucked underneath the weight of the other zombies on top of me, and cringed as something pierced the skin on my leg above my ankle. I suddenly prayed I hadn’t been bitten, that something else had broken my skin.

  Kicking out and thrashing around, I was able to wiggle free and scrambled to get back onto my feet. My sword was gone. Buried under the mass of decaying corpses, some still animated, some finally fucking dead for good.

  I reached over my shoulder for my machete.

  It was gone. I’d loaned it to Dave, and couldn’t recall him giving it back to me. Motherfucker.

  Secured to my hip was the hunting knives. I removed them, and held one in each hand. I took a step forward, and nearly fell, unable to place weight on my right leg.

  “Dad! Run!”

  Charlene and Dave were behind me. My daughter ran at me while Dave used the assault rifle and fired until the clip went empty.

  “Put your arm around my shoulder,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

  There was no helping me. “I want you to run! Get out of here! You shouldn’t have stopped!”

  “We don’t have time for this!”

  If I argued, I wasted time. It would be easier just to let her help me. She supported some of my weight and that helped. We were able to run.

  Dave had killed most of the fast zombies, if not all. The slower ones were still ambling forward, but we had a chance to make it to the car at least.

  Running ahead of us, Dave made it to the car first. He opened the door. We were not that far behind and the zombies were not that far behind Charlene and me. It was coming down to the wire.

  I felt tears well up behind my eyes, each step caused pain that shot up my leg.

  I heard the engine roar to life. The engine revved. Dave closed the driver’s door and threw the car into gear. Smoke spewed from the front tires as they spun almost uselessly, as the tires screamed in protest against dry pavement.

  The car whipped around and came right at us. Dave spun the wheel as he slammed on the brakes. He brought the car to a sideways stop, and Charlene pulled open the back door. She shoved me into the car, head first and climbed in next to me. “Go, Dave, go!” she said, and punched a fist over and over on the passenger seat’s headrest.

  “Where to?” Dave said, but wasn’t waiting for me to answer. He released the break and must have stomped hard on the accelerator. For a compact, 4-cylinder car, the thing had some balls. It pulled away with heart just as the zombies reached us, as flesh deprived hands slapped at the windows.

  “Stay away from the bus. Go past it, just keep driving,” I said.

  “They’ll see us. They’ll be watching. They’ll think we’re abandoning them,” Dave said.

  “We’ll come back for them,” Ch
arlene said. “If they’re watching, they’ll know that right now, we have no choice other than to get away.”

  She was right. I didn’t want to leave them stranded. I wouldn’t. They had to trust that we would return as soon as we could.

  Trust was difficult. “We will be back,” I said.

  We passed the bus.

  I looked out the back window. The zombies were still approaching. It looked like things might work out.

  And then I saw the bus door open, and Kia stepped out. She waved her arms. She was trying to flag us down. Did she not see the approaching horde of creatures behind her?

  “Dave, stop the car,” I said.

  “What is she doing?” Charlene said.

  “She doesn’t see the zombies. She only saw us driving past them,” I said.

  Kia turned around, as if she might have heard the zombies desperate cries. Her arms dropped to her sides. She went back onto the bus. The doors closed.

  Dave stopped the car.

  We all twisted in our seats to stare out the back window as the zombies forgot about me, my flesh, us and the car, and were now just focused on the bus and the people inside of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “We have to go back,” Charlene said.

  She was right, of course. Time was limited. It sounded melodramatic, but time was now a luxury I did not have. I wanted Charlene and Dave as far away from this danger as possible. I wanted to see them safely to Mexico, with or without me. “You have more clips, Dave?”

  “No.”

  “Still have my machete?” I said.

  He shook his head. “On the bus.”

  “Take mine,” Charlene said. She opened the car door and got out of the vehicle. She pulled the machete out of its sheath.

  Dave got out, too, and took the machete.

  I had my knives.

  “You can’t even walk. Your ankle is twisted,” she said. “You’re staying in the car. Get behind the wheel.”

  “Charlene--”

  “Stay!” She turned to face the bus. “Dave, let’s go!”

  “Shit,” I mumbled. They were gone. Headed into a battle that I couldn’t protect them in. I scrambled up and over and plopped into the driver’s seat. I grabbed my pants and pulled my leg up. I looked at my ankle.