Becca smiled and pulled her jeans down, turning and showing Randy her thonged ass. “If you ever want this you’ll do it as well.” She turned and grinned, putting a finger seductively on her lower lip. “And if you ever really want my ass you’ll do it.”
Randy blushed. “I’ve never done that.”
Becca dropped her jeans to the floor and moved her thong away with one finger. “There are too many things’ you’ve never done, Randy. Help me load up and then this can be yours.” Becca spread her legs and bent slightly forward. She rolled her eyes and moaned softly. “It’s up to you.”
Randy dumped the contents of the backpack on the nearest shelf and held it out to her.
She pulled her jeans back up and grabbed the backpack in almost one motion. “The sooner we get filled up the sooner you get my ass.”
Randy piled the items on her shirt and went back to his list, trying to keep his mind off of Becca and her show. It was tough and distracting but after another half hour he finished his list, tied up the ends of her shirt and stood patiently by the door while Becca filled up both backpacks, her jean pockets, her mouth and another bag she had found in the room.
“Can we go?” Randy asked.
“Go where? It’s probably dark outside by now. We need to stay here for the night. We have the food and water, pills, and my ass.” Becca popped another handful of pills. “Join me,” she said and put her hand out to Randy.
“I don’t want to.”
“I guess you don’t want to fuck me then, right? What a shame.” Her jeans hit the floor again. “What a waste.”
“Fine.” Randy hesitated. He didn’t want to lose himself in drugs like the other night, but he wanted her. His bulge was getting uncomfortable. Who was he hurting? Technically it wasn’t even illegal anymore. Nothing was.
He took her hand but almost stopped when he saw five pills. Becca pushed them into his mouth and gripped his hand, placing it firmly on her breast.
XIII
At first Randy thought the knocking was in his dream, but realized he was awake. The banging might have been his pounding head. He was sprawled out on the floor of the pharmacy naked.
The noises were coming from the other side of the door, out in the hallway. Randy rose with a start and almost passed out as his head swam. Now he could hear the moaning. He was amazed that the door, already broken from yesterday, had held.
“Becca?”
She was gone. He instinctively knew it. The backpacks were gone as well as most of the food and water. He felt stupid but he ignored the attack on the door and searched in vain for a letter, some Dear John note scrawled on a mirror or a scrap of paper. There was nothing.
The room smelled of sex. He’d been reluctant at first but the pills, and her excitement had made him a more than willing participant. They’d fallen asleep on the floor naked, wrapped around one another. The drugs hadn’t been as intense as the last time but he felt good when he closed his eyes. What could be better? Crazy great sex with the woman of his dreams and a game plan for the rest of their lives. They could live in relative peace despite the world in Hell around them.
“Shut the fuck up!” Randy finally yelled at the noise at the door. He swallowed down bile before he puked on the floor. He was sweating and the smell of the sex – and he thought dramatically, the smell of betrayal – in the room was overpowering.
The pounding stopped for several seconds before it began again, louder and faster-paced. “No one is home,” Randy yelled. He found his clothes and got dressed. Once he had the machete in hand he started for the door but stopped. “Fucking bitch!”
Becca had taken her shirt back, dumping the drugs Randy needed on the floor. At least she hadn’t taken them or broken the bottles.
He piled them up on a counter but couldn’t find a suitable carrier for his find. He glanced at the door and hefted the machete. “Hey, can I trouble anyone to see if there is a bag or box out there somewhere? I could use some help,” Randy yelled. He knew he was losing it, knew he was tipping over the edge of no return. He didn’t care right now. His anger welled up inside and he imagined opening that door to find Becca standing there and perhaps Crow. He would take them out with his machete.
“First thing’s first,” he said. He pushed cabinets to either side of the doorway, creating a killing ground. Now only one zombie could enter at a time. Randy stood to the left side past the counter.
The door was stuck and wouldn’t open easily. He tried to pull it open but it didn’t budge. “Push, you stupid pieces of shit.”
Whether they heard and obeyed or simply pushed at that moment, he didn’t know or care, because the door swung wide. The first zombie in wasn’t Becca but it might as well have been, for Randy severed its neck with a backhand swing. His heart was racing as he kicked the body back and waited for the next zombie to move forward. Three chops of the machete brought it down and the next one plowed ahead, where it was cut apart.
Randy was panting heavily and had to stop and control his breathing. Three more zombies were crowding the doorway, trying to get at Randy with outstretched rotting hands. He took two steps forward and kicked a body to the side, allowing another zombie to enter the room. It was swiftly dealt with.
He lost track of the zombies piling inside and outside the room. Eventually, too exhausted to lift the machete, he leaned against a counter and panted. There were still foes in the hall to deal with but the body parts had mounted to a sizable mound.
“I’m not getting any younger,” Randy yelled. “Here I come.”
He shouldered through, kicking arms, legs and heads out of his way. The first zombie in his path was a small boy, his right arm missing at the elbow. Randy chopped his other arm off before decapitating him. Three more zombies were in the hall, lined up in a row and trailing gore. He wanted to be done with this and simply charged them, hacking brutally until the trio had fallen.
“You gotta be shitting me,” Randy said. The room down the hall was alive with pounding still. The same banging from yesterday. The same noises.
Randy went to the door and opened it. It was a large janitorial area, with boxes, mops, chemicals and towels strewn across the floor and shelving. Without a thought he drove the machete into the first zombie. When his weapon stuck he kicked the second zombie away from him to gain some room and tripped the first. The machete came out of the head when he pressed his shoe against its neck, and he slashed at it.
Just as the second zombie touched him with seeking hands he swung in a wide arc and ripped through its eyes and forehead. A second swing severed its neck.
A glance back down the hall told him he was still alone, but for how long he didn’t know. He needed to move.
Randy emptied a sturdy cardboard box of the Clorox bleach inside and went back to the pharmacy and filled it with his find. He ignored the blood and death around him, wondering if the last few months or years of violent video games had gotten him this far.
XIV
Dirty Jim had obviously been a bad poker player before all of this mess, because he tried to act nonchalant when Randy showed him the box but Randy knew it was more than he thought he’d see.
“You have yourself a deal,” Dirty Jim finally said. He was sitting in the office with his leg propped up on a chair and the shotgun within easy reach. He grabbed the first bottle of Crown Royal and unscrewed the top, taking a big slug from it. “There are three trucks out back, and they should all be gassed up. Take your pick.”
“I was looking at the Mustang out front.”
“You can’t haul fencing with that.”
“I don’t need to anymore. I need the speed.”
Dirty Jim pushed his leg off of the chair and stood by leaning against the wall. “Which one?”
“The red 2002 GT coupe. I hope it has a CD player.”
Dirty Jim laughed. “It does. I even have a box of CD’s in the back office left by some of the kids that worked here during the summer. I’ll throw them in as well.”
&nb
sp; “Deal.”
Randy went into the back office and stopped when he saw the clutter there: chairs piled against one wall, the three desks jammed against the back door and the windows boarded up. There was a makeshift bed in the center of the room with a hotplate nearby. “You live in here?”
“Yep.” Dirty Jim laughed as he hobbled into the room. “The funny part? I been living here like this even before the damn end of the world. Just comfortable for me.”
“Do you need food?”
“Nope. I got me plenty of cans of corn and soup to last a lifetime, as short as it might be for me. All I really need is the drugs to make my time on this shithole planet more enjoyable.”
“I could get you more food.”
“Nope.”
“You could come over to the building; there are thirty apartments you can have. Becca has a garden.”
“I only eat corn.”
“I’m trying to help.”
Dirty Jim snorted. “I don’t need your help anymore; you helped me more than you can know. Now get your CD’s and your fancy muscle car and get going. Before I change my mind and keep that sweet ride for myself.”
Randy shook the old man’s hand. “Until we meet again.”
Dirty Jim spit tobacco juice on the rug. “You know where you’re going and where I’m going, so don’t fool yourself. We might meet again.” He pointed up. “Or maybe...” he pointed down and grinned. “Good luck.”
Randy went through the box of CD’s and smiled when he found the perfect soundtrack to what he had to do. “I’ll just take these two.”
“Excellent choices.”
The ride home with the loud motor running was unnerving, but Randy only had to speed past two zombies that made an awkward move to get in front of him. He parked at the spot where he had first entered the grounds and cut the engine, expecting a horde of zombies to pour from the bushes across the street or already be inside the compound. When he got safely back inside the building he was almost disappointed.
He took the steps two at a time, dreading getting upstairs. When he’d returned from Baltimore he’d only gone as far as the stockroom apartment to retrieve the four whiskey bottles.
He slammed the door open and when he saw that it was empty he fell to his knees and began to cry. The last shred of hope that Becca had simply gone home had been crushed. She hadn’t been here. Their stuff was just as they’d left it.
He fell into their pillows and blankets, taking a deep breath of Becca’s smell as he began to sob. It wasn’t fair. The only woman he’d ever loved had left him, had run away to an older, more powerful man. Randy felt emasculated.
The sobs turned into a raging, shuddering howl and he stuffed his face deep into the pillows. Randy remembered some old eighties song about love, some cliché line about it being better to have lost at love than never to have loved at all. He didn’t think that was the case.
He spent the rest of the day and most of the night crying.
Three: Rock N Roll
XV
Randy watched with disinterest as the machete hacked through the tomato plants. He stomped on the pots and planters lined up in neat rows, and spilled the boxes of unused seeds over the side of the building.
The grill was lit and he used it to burn everything that reminded him of Becca: her pillows and blankets, her clothes scattered around the room, the empty baggies that had stored her pills, and her meager book collection.
He held the Edgar Allan Poe collection in his hand and shook it. He wished Crow was before him now, and he imagined his fingers wrapped around the bastard’s neck while he squeezed and shoved his face into the fire, where his skin peeled away and blackened.
“Fuck you, Becca! Fuck you, wherever the fuck you and your old man boyfriend are!” Randy screamed and tossed the book into the flames.
The book popped with a large crack and the cover smoldered away, revealing the first page and writing. “Shit!” Randy yelled and reached into the flames, pushing the book out of the fire and burning his hand. The book hit the floor, ashes and smoke covering it.
‘This is your clue, My Love – You’ll figure out where to find Me – Crow’
“Fucking bitch!” Randy thumbed through the book, looking for more writing and clues. There were none. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He stopped when he reached “The Raven” and started to read it, but it made no sense to him right now and his anger was overwhelming. His instinct to rip the book apart page by page and feed them into the fire almost overtook him.
In frustration he threw it against the wall and watched it explode, pages drifting to the floor. His head hurt and he decided that he would drink heavily, forget about Becca and Crow and zombies and death and live his shitty life until he died alone. Unloved.
“Where are you?” he whispered. He stared at the pages of the book. No clue.
He didn’t feel any better when he began feeding them into the grill and watched them disappear.
XVI
Randy had slept on and off for days, one folding into the next. He didn’t really care. The alcohol had run out sometime yesterday between naps, and the only reason he remembered eating was because of the pile of cans at his feet. Hours were spent overlooking the demolished garden, drinking and cursing at no one in particular. When night came he would watch the fires in the distance and watch the sky for any aircraft, even though it had been months since the last helicopter or plane. More often than not the sun would wake him in the morning, his legs and back stiff from sleeping drunkenly in the chair.
Several times his loneliness was interrupted by zombies wandering the streets. He’d watch them with the binoculars, sometimes for hours. There didn’t seem to be a discernable pattern to their movements, although he once noticed five independent zombies, spread out over three blocks, all suddenly turn and head east. He wondered if they’d heard a noise and gone to investigate. They’d eventually moved out of sight.
Not one living soul had crossed his wide view. He thought that by now Dirty Jim was likely the only other living person within miles. He wanted to go and see the old man and make sure he was alright and the medicine was working. He hoped the Crown Royal had helped as well. Randy wished he had saved one of the bottles for himself now.
The Mustang was parked within the fence just outside the front door. So far the fence was holding but without the generators running most zombies had shuffled past, unaware that a tasty meal lurked just overhead with binoculars dangling from his neck.
XVII
Engines roared on the highway running past the building, waking Randy from a nightmare. He was coiled in the covers and drenched in sweat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed.
He went to the balcony and scooped up the binoculars, but didn’t need them. Even with dawn about an hour away the sky was clear and the lights from a convoy of trucks and cars gave ample light.
Men were shouting orders and most of them were wearing Army uniforms. At least a hundred men walked to either side of the vehicles wielding an assortment of weapons, both military issued and private stock. Mixed in her and there were women and even children with rifles and baseball bats and broken pieces of furniture. They moved quickly but not quietly.
The first five trucks that came into view were converted garbage trucks with steel blocks welded to their noses. They drove burned cars and debris from their path. The vehicles were crawling with machinegun-carrying warriors. Occasionally Randy could hear a shot ring out and saw the approach of several zombies from all directions.
Immediately the column halted as orders were barked and everyone took a defensive position. A bevy of weapons fired on the advancing zombies and they were quickly dispatched.
Randy pulled up his chair and watched the one-sided battle. Despite the ragtag group the sheer numbers of them made it easy to see why they were traveling so openly and brazenly. With the right firepower they could hold their own against the undead.
For the first time i
n a week Randy decided that he was a man of action and was tired of feeling sorry for himself. He was sure that the group had ammunition for his pistol and he could get into them with his stockpile of food.
Retrieving his shoes – which he hadn’t bothered to wear in days – Randy sat back down on the chair and listened to the sweet sounds of random gunfire below on the highway. He heard the garbage trucks begin to move again, the scrape of dead cars being tossed off the side of the bridge and orders to move given.
Deciding against trying to hail them and perhaps get shot, he hatched a quick plan to follow them at first light and join up with them. By then it would only be a couple of miles back for his supplies, which he imagined a recon force of a dozen men would suffice.
Perhaps this was a government-sanctioned action, with large groups of armed men combing the big cities of America and wiping out the zombie scourge. Randy figured it would only be a matter of time before fighter planes roamed the skies, blasting pockets of resistance.
By the time he got his shoes tied and Randy found the pistol the column had passed out of earshot. He used the binoculars and strained around the corner of the building to get a glimpse of the rearguard before they moved out of sight.
He decided to pack a bag of supplies just in case they decided not to return. Six cans of soup, a box of matches, two pairs of clean socks and three sets of undergarments were stuffed in a backpack. While he worked he glanced repeatedly at the grill outside and at the scattered pages from the book.
At the same time he heard the rumble outside his mind turned over and he could feel his brain lock into place. He dropped the backpack on the floor.
The sun was peeking through the swirls of smoke and Randy had a nice view of the horde of zombies pouring forth from the Baltimore area, following the hundred survivors. He estimated fifty times their number, coming slow and steady in their wake. As far as the eye could see in the semi-darkness they came, streaming over the highway and on the side streets, following along.
Highway To Hell (Dying Days Book 1) Page 5