Dead Man's Party

by Nathan Robert Brown

  Stacy screamed. Joseph accelerated easily avoiding the clumsy attempts by the former soldiers to grab the bus. A pair of zombies, a man and a woman ghat Joseph didn't see approaching from his side of the road, made a grab for the bus. His arm smacked the windshield with a crack before he bounced away, taking the woman with him. Since the windshield didn't crack, Joseph assumed the sound came from the thing's arm shattering.

  Mike scrambled to get his feet under him. He stayed crouched, one hand holding his pistol on the door the other trying to hold himself upright while Joseph evaded obstacles on the road.

  “That guy looks normal. Look he's waving,” Stacy said pointing over Joseph's shoulder.

  Joseph looked where Stacy point. A lone soldier waved his arms over head, holding his rifle with his off hand to show he meant no harm. Joseph considered saying something to Mike about picking the guy up when the soldier turned and brought the weapon to his shoulder.

  The man fired twice and dropped one zombie, but he hesitated when a zombie in a shredded set of ACUs rounded a car. His hesitation cost him. The ACU clad zombie and the three following it crashed into the soldier, driving his weapon from his hands. Joseph had to give the guy credit, he launched one zombie off of him, leg pressing the thing off him as if he were at the gym. The others started biting him. His arms, his face, even his belly. One of the zombies holding him down sat up, pulling entrails out of the downed man as it did. The soldier struggled free of the zombies.

  He stood, intestines dangling like so much rope between him and the zombie.

  “Oh God,” Stacy repeated like a skipping record.

  The man staggered toward the bus and dove. His head and arms landing in front of the bus's approaching wheels. Joseph winced as the bus rolled over the man, popping his head.

  Stacy started sobbing. “I had no idea. This is what it's been like for you? Every day?” Heaving sobs drowned out anything else she said.

  Chapter 20

  First Impressions

  Lily woke, deliberately opening her eyes. In the low light provided by a small lantern, she saw her rifle, pistol and backpack sat neatly on a low trunk a couple feet away. Heavy, soft blankets weighed comfortably upon her. A damp rag slid from her head.

  She looked around the room. Boards and heavy furniture covered the three windows in the room. A narrow doorway let her see along one wall of the kitchen. The refrigerator closed with a muffled thump.

  At least this time, I'm not waking up tied up.

  Lily pushed the blanket down. Her mysterious host wrapped a fresh bandage around her arm and another around her chest while she slept. Her body still ached, but the pain no longer burned with the intensity of a sun. To her relief, her head didn't go swimming when she pushed herself to a more upright position.

  An athletic woman in cargo pants and a tank-top walked into the room, carrying a bottle in her hand. She wore her hair short, just long enough to show some femininity and not really long enough to give something to grab. A pistol hung from a drop leg holster on her right leg. She took a slug from the bottle in her hand.

  “You want something to drink? Most of it's luke-warm, but it's still clean.” The woman's voice held a subtle toughness that reminded Lily of a soldier. Lily nodded and whispered “Please.”

  Speaking the two-syllable word felt like work, and her voice sounded thin and weak. The woman returned carrying several bottles of water in one hand and the bottle she'd been drinking from, which Lily recognized as a beer bottle, in the other.

  “What's your name?” Lily asked as the woman put the water bottles on the coffee table, opening the last one to hand to Lily.

  “Kim Hartwell.” She pulled out a pen light. Do me a favor and look at the light; I know it's bright.” Lily looked at the pen light. Kim moved through practiced motions of checking Lily's vitals followed by her bandages and injuries. “That's good. I didn't waste that bag of Cipro' on you. Infection is clearing.”

  Lily looked at her blankly for a moment. “You don't remember do you?”

  “I remember getting attacked by the wolves, doing what first aid I could and taking some antibiotics. Then a lot of walking.”

  “Wolves. Explains a couple things. So I saw you wander into town a couple days ago. I almost shot you, thinking you were one of the shufflers. Then you wheeled around and fired that AR-15 at one of them coming up behind you. I shot it for you. Then you collapsed in the street.”

  Lily blushed. “I couldn't leave you out there, so I carried you back here. Lucky for you, I'm a former medic. Cleaned and dressed your injuries properly, gave you an IV and a bag of a super strong antibiotic. Probably been out a day or so.”

  “Thank you, Kim.”

  “We can stay here another few days before we'll have to move,” Kim said. “I've got a stock of books and magazines if you want. What's your name?”

  “I'm Lily. Do you...Can we just talk for a little while?”

  The question startled Kim. “Sure. You feel ok?”

  “I'm a little weak. I want to talk because it's been days, maybe weeks, since I've talked to another person. The last real conversation I had was with an old woman just a few hours before one of her neighbors ate her.”

  Kim sat down on the coffee table so Lily could see her without straining. “I think the last conversation I had was to warn some dumbass butter-bar not to set his perimeter so far out. That was about twenty minutes before half my company got eaten. Didn't help that half the people we were taking care of turned into shufflers.”

  “I'm sorry about your friends,” Lily said.

  “Me too. Most of them were good guys, once I showed them I could top 'em.” Kim smiled. “The shufflers mobbed the perimeter; they pushed through as soon as the boys ran out of ammo. I got a group out through a drainage system. Several people turned as we fled. Rain and floods took us by surprise. About ten of us made it to this town. I'm one of three still alive. The other two, well, I won't feel bad taking them out or leaving them behind.”

  Kim took a long slug from her beer. “Why's it been so long since you talked to someone?”

  “After the old woman got attacked, I left.” Lily took a drink of the tepid water. It soothed her cracked lips and dry throat. “I stopped driving around midnight. Just turned off the truck and went to sleep. I remember waking up in a closet with a reinforced door, naked and bound with zip-ties.” Kim's face flashed with anger. “I killed one man in my initial escape. Knocked the other out. Tied him up and staked him out as zombie bait so I could get away. Fortunately, they kept my truck for me, didn't completely rob me, and didn't have the chance to rape me before the zombies interrupted them. Got lost down some ranger trail in a national park. Had to ditch my truck and walk. Spent a week backpacking through the wilderness before the wolves caught up with me. Wandered away from that after wounding two of the three. You know more of the rest than I do.”

  “Damn, girl. You're tougher than I am. And that's saying something.” Lily smiled timidly. “Where you trying to go?”

  Lily hesitated. “Come on. No one goes through all that without trying to go somewhere. So what is it?”

  “I was trying to get home. To my parents in Haskell, Texas.” Lily started crying. “I haven't heard from them in days. I don't even know they're OK.”

  “Buck up. You've made it this far. I'm sure you'll make it all the way there. Especially if you have help. What do you say? Want a little company for your road trip?”

  Lily hugged the woman she only just met.

  Lily hung up the phone and burst into heavy sobs. Nothing could hold them back. Part of her died before she hung up that phone. Her old life, mirroring the world, ended, leaving an empty ruin for her to continue in. Right after she said hello, her father told her not to come home, to stay well away from Haskell. The elation she felt when the phone connected crashed with that one sentence. She knew later she would be happy she got to say “I love you” and “Goodbye.” For now, the tears flowed.

  It took most of an
hour to cry herself completely out. Kim offered Lily a rag and a shoulder. Lily took both. Afterward, Lily picked up the phone and called another number.

  ***

  Mike jumped out of his seat and danced around, looking for signs of damage to the bus or evidence bugs nested in the seat and then woke up. Whatever it was buzzed in his back pocket again.

  “Fuck me.” Mike fished his phone out of his back pocket, surprised it still had battery left. Or signal.

  “What's up?” Joseph asked, looking at Mike in the giant mirror from the driver's seat.

  “Someone's calling me. I didn't think the cell network was still up.”

  Mike looked at the number for a second then answered. “Who is this?”

  Joseph watched Mike's jaw drop. It seamlessly transitioned to sorrow. “I'm sorry to hear about your family. We're heading to my buddy's place outside of Ajo, Arizona. You think you can get there?”

  He nodded.

  “Alright. Try to get the biggest truck you can and fill it with supplies as you go, especially food, water and meds. That'd help things a lot.” Mike went silent again for a moment. “That's a very real possibility. Text me the route you plan to take. I'll text you directions for the last part of your trip and some code words shortly. Use them to let us know what's up. Try to get your hands on a CB radio. We'll be on channel 2. If you aren't knocking on our door in eight days, I'll come looking for you.”

  Mike's face went hard for a moment. “Let me worry about that. I'll see you in a week.”

  Joseph looked at Mike in the mirror again. He waited. “Well?” He asked after a moment.

  “Remember that couple at the diner? The one with the daughter trying to get home?” Joseph nodded. “That was her,” Mike said. “She's hooked up with an Army field medic. They're gonna head toward Hanse's place too.”

  “That explains why a truck full of supplies would make things easier,” Joseph said turning his head to look at his friend. “What was the rest of it about?”

  “She wanted me to forget about helping them if they ran into trouble. We may have to pick our battles carefully, but I can't keep saying it isn't my fight. You're rubbing off on me. Making me go all soft.”

  He clamped a hand on Joseph's shoulder. “Relax. We're almost there. Get some rest; then all of us can sit down with Hanse and his guys and figure out what comes next.”

  Joseph went back to driving, unsure how he felt—it'd be nice to intentionally save someone for once, but there's always a cost, and he wasn't sure he was ready to pay it.

  ***

  Kim looked at Lily as she hung up the phone.

  “I'm going to Arizona to meet a small group who met my parents back when all this started,” Lily said, turning the phone off.

  “I'm in,” Kim said. “You got some grit under that girly-girl shell. You an' me, we'll show the boys we can play just as rough.”

  “Got a map of this town?” Lily asked, switching smoothly into the mentality of a search team leader.

  Kim found some paper in a desk and sketched out as much of the town as she'd seen. She tapped the pencil against her teeth and looked at Lily who still reclined on the couch. “Besides the basic landmarks, what are you looking for?”

  “You were Army, you should have an idea of the tactically important stuff. We need to know places with food water, meds, weapons, transportation, fuel. All the basics.”

  Kim smiled and added a few more details to the map. When Kim finished drawing, Lily rolled to her side and studied the crude drawing.

  “Sorry. Never was known for my artistic abilities.”

  Lily pointed to a jagged line behind the local big-box grocery chain. “What's this line about?”

  “Those other two survivors I mentioned. Not long after we hit ground here, they burned half the town to the ground. Got lucky the wind pushed the fire East. Left us this half the town. On the plus side, it looked like most of the shufflers gathered on that half of town before the fire. That's why there's so few in the streets.”

  Lily studied the map. Two dozen houses lined the street their shelter stood on. A storage center sat some six blocks away. Kim's map showed just one vehicle accident, on the road in front of the box store, blocking the majority of the street.

  “That storage center rented trucks, right?” Kim thought for a second before nodding. “Any of the moving trucks still there?”

  Kim looked at the map and smiled. “You know, I think they had a couple.”

  “Better than a pickup.”

  Kim nodded. “Big, plenty of room, dual gas tanks.”

  “So, we go at dawn, find a set of keys from behind the counter, siphon as much gas as we can from the other trucks, and park it a house or so down from here,” Lily said. “Box store probably got cleaned out, along with the gas stations. So we go into the houses on this street, clean out all the food and drinks we can, load up and leave. We're gone in a day.”

  “You're probably right about the local shops. If we're going to be gone in a day, we could box up the food first, leave it at the front door, or behind a bush. Then go get the truck, drive along picking everything up and roll out in one shot.”

  They talked for hours, until Kim saw the drowsiness in Lily's face. Kim yawned, realizing she felt just as tired.

  “We both need rest. Come back at this tomorrow. This little plan we're putting together should work. Tomorrow we can put the details on it and start getting ready. If you feel up to it.”

  Lily gave Kim her best “Bring it” look.

  ***

  Some things came easily to Hanse. Waiting, sitting on his hands, drove him crazy. Since the world dove head first into its bloody end, Hanse and his three men from Moto-man Transport spent their days tending an acre of land for a garden, checking and re-checking provisions against the board Hanse set up in the dining room, and walking the fence to check for damage. Walking the fence and tending the garden took the most time, and provided the majority of the distraction.

  Everyday Hanse worried about Mike.

  The four of them waited at the northwest edge of the property where a packed dirt path wandered a few hundred feet from the main road through a cattle gate and on toward the house nearly a half mile away. Knowing his best friend, a former Marine who saved his life, planned to come knocking in less than a half hour did nothing to reduce Hanse's paranoia. He parked the Gator behind a clump of trees a hundred feet from the fence. Or'Zev stood on Hanse's right, holding an AK loosely at his waist, his good eye sweeping back and forth along the Highway 85. Hanse told the other two men to push out twenty feet and watch along the road for any signs of trouble.

  “I see a vehicle approaching,” the man facing south reported.

  Hanse checked his watch. “Right on time.”

  “Looks like a school bus,” the man said surprised.

  “Sounds like something that grunt would do. Kill a perfectly good up-armored SUV and steal a bus,” Hanse said to Or'Zev in Yiddish. Or smiled at his boss's joke.

  About ten minutes later, the bus rolled to a stop outside the gate. Mike bounded out the door. “Hanse! Sorry I'm late for the party.”

  Hanse stepped up to his friend, shook his hand and pulled him into an embrace. “There's a bottle of Quervo at the house. You owe me a story.”

  Mike laughed. Hanse laughed louder.

  “Good god, kid, aren't you dying in that leather jacket?” Hanse asked as he stopped laughing.

  “Yeah. But I've had one too many surprises in the last three weeks,” Joseph said. “You must be Hanse.”

  Hanse looked Joseph over. “What would a civilian like you know about surprises?”

  “Easy, Hanse. The kid's saved my ass twice. He's solid, and his driving would make a stuntman jealous,” Mike said. He stood between the two of them. “Joseph, this is Hansel Hanse, grease monkey, walking English to anything dictionary, and owner of Moto-man Transport. Hanse, this is Joseph, survivor of the zombie apocalypse. He's good behind the wheel, and a demon with that hatch
et of his.”

  Walter and Stacy stood on the steps of the bus. “And the rest of the group, Walter and his daughter, Stacy. Walter grew up country, so pick a gun, and he can handle it. Stacy is recovering from an illness, but should be able to—”

  Hanse and Or drew down on Stacy. Joseph drew on Or while Walter shielded Stacy.

  “When was she bitten? What the fuck are you doing bringing one of the infected here?” Hanse demanded.

  “She was bitten weeks ago. She's not gonna fucking turn,” Joseph shouted.

  “Not asking you,” Hanse spat at Joseph. Hanse looked at Mike. “When was she bitten, and why haven't you taken care of it yet?”

  “When all this crap started,” Mike said calmly. “I planned to take care of her as soon as she stopped breathing. She hasn't yet. Don't know of anyone else who's still normal almost three weeks after being bit.”

  Hanse told Or to stand down, but stay ready. The barrel of the AK drifted to the dirt at Lily's feet. Joseph dropped his aim to match.

  “She's immune,” Joseph said.

  “You, shut up. Stacy, I'm not going to hurt you. Come here,” Hanse said stepping forward but staying out of Or's line of fire.

  Mike nodded to Walter. Stacy took a shaky step toward Hanse, her eyes wandering to the muzzle of the AK and the one-eyed Israli behind the weapon.

  “Lets see the bite.”

  Stacy held her arm out for Hanse to see. The bite mark sat on the meaty part of her arm just below her elbow. Teeth marks showed where the bite clearly broke the skin. Parallel groves ran toward the center of the bite where the monster's teeth dragged along shredding skin but not deep enough to tear the underlying muscle. To Hanse the marks told the story of someone getting close, or the child trying to hug someone not knowing that person was dead. The shallowness in the bite said someone else pulled the attacker away as it took the bite. Pink skin showed under cracking scabs, evidence of healing.

  “Did you know the person who tried to bite you?”