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Impassable

Page 9

by Ponce, Jen


  “What are we going to do?” Lana asked, her eyes on the gas gauge as if watching it would make it move back up to full. “We’ll have to get out of the car and …” She opened the glove box and rifled through it, then closed it with a snap. “No gun.”

  I hid my grin. “We should have stolen a mobster’s car.”

  She glared at me. “This is not funny, Deena.”

  It was my turn to glare, though without any heat. “It is hilarious under the circumstance, Lana Banana.”

  “If we don’t get gas, we’ll be stranded. If we get gas, we might die.”

  “We won’t die.” We’d passed Fremont and it had been teeming with crazies. A few smaller towns had had the same problem, but surely there’d be a place for us to get gas without risking our lives to do it. We just had to find it.

  “Farms,” Ivy said. “They often have small tanks near the house or barn. We could check out a few. There wouldn’t hardly be anyone around a farm, I’d imagine.”

  Being a born and bred city girl, I really hadn’t thought about farms at all, except as places where my food was grown. I appreciated them but knew nothing about them. “Okay. We’ll try that if this next town is a no go.” This car was one of those modern jobbies that let you know how many miles you had remaining on your tank of gas and we still had almost fifty. The next town was only eleven miles away and it was worth checking out before we started traveling farm roads.

  “Daddy? I have to pee.”

  I slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. We hadn’t seen any crazies since the last town and there weren’t any for miles that I could see. I figured it was safe enough for Owen to get out here. Just in case, we all got out, each of us staring out across the fields as Owen stood on the far side to go potty. When he was done, I realized I had to pee too and they stood watch for me.

  As I finished up and Lana passed me some fast-food napkins, movement in a nearby field caught my eye. I wiped hurriedly and stood, yanking up my pants. “Guys, there’s something out there.”

  Everyone tensed. Dan hustled Owen back into the car while I checked over my shoulder to make sure nothing was sneaking up on us from behind. All clear.

  “What is it?” Lana asked, standing on her tiptoes as she tried to figure out what the brown blob in the distance was.

  “Deer, I think,” Ivy said. She, too, took a look around, then eased herself into the ditch and hauled herself up the other side. She stood next to the rough-hewn fencepost and stared off into the distance. “Yep, a deer. Oh, look at that, I think it heard me.”

  The deer had indeed spotted us, his head lifting majestically, the light from the sun highlighting his antlers.

  “Nice rack,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.

  Lana smacked me lightly on the arm.

  “Uh,” Ivy said. “Uh, holy shit. That thing is coming toward us. Fast.”

  Sure enough, the deer had his head lowered and was running at us full tilt. At us? Why the hell would it run at us? Ivy took the ditch too fast and slipped, plopping on her ass in the knee-high weeds. She cursed loudly, as did Lana when I jumped down into the ditch to yank her to her feet.

  “Hurry up! It’s almost here!” Lana shrieked.

  “Get in the car!” I shouted back, shoving Ivy from behind to get the older woman back onto the road.

  I could hear the pounding of the deer’s hooves now and my heart thumped faster in response. I tore around the car to my door, getting it slammed in time to see the deer sail over the fence, horns lowered, eyes gleaming.

  It slammed into the side of the car, slapping Ivy’s door shut and missing her foot by an inch. The bang was loud enough to startle Owen into crying again and the deer’s impetus rocked the car. I’d bet fifty bucks we’d find dents later. The damned thing had hit us full force.

  Then it hit us again.

  “Let’s get out of here before it breaks a window,” Ivy said with a tremor in her voice. “That was too damn close.”

  “Why did it attack us?” Lana asked, sounded almost offended.

  The deer’s muzzle was speckled with blood.

  Dear goddess, did we have to deal with zombie animals too?

  “Aren’t deer vegetarians?” Ivy asked into the silence, her mind headed the same way mine was.

  Dan cleared his throat. “They aren’t, actually. Herbivores, I mean. They’ve been known to eat from carcasses, even their own kind.” At our looks, he said. “I like to hunt. It’s good to know your prey.”

  Right.

  The zombies certainly knew their prey. They knew just how to scare the shit out of us. I wouldn’t think adding cannibal deer to the mix would make things worse, but somehow it did.

  “I don’t think it’s a zombie, for what it’s worth,” Dan said when we were a few miles down the road. “It was probably in rut. Even deer that are used to humans get aggressive when it’s mating season.”

  “And is it mating season?” Ivy asked.

  “A little early, but only by a week. And I suppose deer hormones don’t rightly care about our human calendars,” Dan said.

  “You don’t know how relieved I am to learn that,” Ivy said. “Never in my life would I have ever thought I’d be giddy to know horny deer are angry deer.”

  The laughter that filled the car was uneasy but it was there. I hoped Dan was right and the only dead things walking we had to worry about were the two-footed kind.

  Trust me, that was bad enough.

  16

  Now

  Something wakes her. A noise where it shouldn’t be. Or silence where it should be noisy. She lays sprawled in front of the fire, her sleeping body forgetting to be afraid. She wants to curl into herself, but she doesn’t dare. If she moves, if one of them is in this room with her, they’ll be on her in seconds.

  The ceiling is full of shadows, and they all scream danger. She scans the room as best she can without moving her head. The fireplace is an orange glow in her peripherals. The room that stretches out to her left is bare. She can see everything well but for the area toward her feet. Her damn boobs are in the way and she can’t tell if one of them stands in the hall just beyond where her vision reaches.

  How had they gotten in? She checked the doors and windows more times than she can remember. She checked the closets and under the beds. She looked everywhere one of them might be hiding.

  What had she missed?

  What had she missed?

  Oh god. What had she missed?

  They could stand there forever. Something inside them shuts off when they don’t have prey in sight. It’s like they go into sleep-mode to conserve energy for the moment something made of living flesh bumbles by. Or makes noise in their sleep.

  Lana always said she talked in her sleep.

  Grief slices through her, sharp and hot. She tries to push it away, unwilling to deal with it now but it won’t be denied this time. Tears leak from under her lids, tracing itchy arcs along the sides of her face and pooling in her ears. They’re hot at first, then they cool as they puddle, and she wonders if the thing standing right out of her line of vision can smell them.

  It’s probably just my imagination.

  But what if it isn’t?

  She can’t lay here wondering but she can’t move, either, and she curses herself for leaving the gun on the coffee table. It’s only a foot away, sure, but it’s also a mile away for all the good it will do her. She doesn’t know if she can grab it, aim it, and fire before it is on her. She’s not sure she can move that fast. She wants to believe she could, but she knows better. Doesn’t she?

  There’s a small creak, like a floorboard settling under someone who has just shifted their weight. Except, they don’t need to shift their weight? They don’t seem to feel pain or cold or any other unpleasant sensation. Maybe she really is just imagining things.

  “Dee.”

  A thrill of fear shoots through her. The word is whispered so quietly she barely hears it. The plosive consonant and breathy vowel stre
tches out like the howling wind outside.

  Maybe it’s just the wind. A tap of a branch on the window combined with the wind. Maybe she’s going insane.

  Maybe she’s already insane.

  She shuts her eyes and counts to ten, to twenty, to a hundred. No other noise except for the storm raging outside. Her mind stubbornly goes back to Lana, her Lana, the one person who could have held her hand and told her everything would be okay. It goes back to her, to her expressive eyes and her sense of humor and her stubborn streak and her survival instinct.

  “Don’t get yourself killed for strangers, Dee. Don’t sacrifice your life to save anyone else. We have to get home to our boys.”

  She failed her.

  She is so fucking sorry.

  She gets lost in the pain, the ache in her chest so fierce she wonders if she’s having a heart attack. The sobs are dammed up; she doesn’t dare let herself make noise, so she opens her mouth to let the pain out silently, trying desperately to keep her chest from bucking with the force of her grief. Everything goes away for a while, everything but the specter of Lana, who suffocates her.

  When she can think again without diving into that endless well of sadness, when she can breathe without fear of loosing a sob, she realizes the room has lightened. She strains to see what lurks in the hallway but can’t pick anything out in the shadows that linger.

  She moves her hand the tiniest bit, then a tiny bit more. Stop. Move. Stop. Move, inching herself closer and closer to the gun. She vows not to leave it this far from her again as she starts raising her hand, going even slower, gritting her teeth when her muscles protest their extra load. She wants to rush but can’t. Not if she wants to survive. Not if she wants to live. Not if she wants to see her boys.

  Lana’s boys.

  No. Not again. She shoves the memories away and locks them in the back of her mind from where they’d escaped. She can’t give into the grief. She owes Lana a proper mourning, but she can’t. Not yet.

  Another slow inch.

  “Dee.”

  It’s not the fucking wind.

  She lunges for the gun, her hand knocking it halfway across the table. The feral scream unnerves her, turning her muscles to water. She fumbles the gun again and it falls off the other side of the table with a heavy thunk. She jerks back, picks up the table and turns with it as the thing from the hallway—

  There’s nothing there.

  Heart thumping so hard it hurts, she pushes herself onto her knees, table still gripped in her fingers.

  There’s nothing. Nothing there.

  There has to be …

  She drops the coffee table and grabs the gun, holding it in the double-handed grip Dan taught her. She approaches the hallway on wobbly legs, sure it will come roaring at her, fingers curved like claws, mouth open …

  Nothing here.

  She searches the whole house on legs that barely hold her, the trembling in her body worsening with every empty room, every monster-free closet, every bed under which nothing lurked.

  The windows are locked. The doors are locked. Just as she left them the night before.

  She sits on the stairs and cries.

  17

  Then

  The next little town we came to was quiet. None of them loitered in the streets. There was no sign of the living, either. A couple cars stood abandoned in the middle of the street when we first came into town, but other than that, things looked neat. Put away.

  Empty.

  It was eerie.

  “We need weapons,” Ivy said. “What the hell are we doing out here without weapons? Another reason to visit a farm. We might score a shotgun and some shells at the very least.”

  I’d always been very anti-gun, but that was before people started eating each other. Having a gun now seemed more of a practicality than it had when 911 was still a thing.

  I pulled up to a pump and parked, though I didn’t turn off the engine. We all watched for movement, for something to come running out a door, from around a nearby business, from the bushes on the far side of the street. Nothing.

  I turned off the engine and we sat for another five minutes. As we waited, Lana pulled her emergency credit card from the pocket of her coat.

  “I’ll get out and leave the door open on my side. You pop the gas door. Ivy, you get out and leave your door open too. You undo the cap while I put the card into the machine. I’ll put the hose in and gas us up. If we see any of them, we get back in the car and go. The pumps have breakaway hoses, so we just go. Got it?”

  We all nodded, too cowed by her decisiveness to say anything against her.

  This did not sit well with her, apparently. “No one is going to say anything else? Offer a different plan?”

  “It sounds good to me,” I said.

  “Why don’t you pop the trunk?” Dan said. “I’ll grab the crowbar. It’ll do for a weapon until we can get a better one.”

  Lana shook her head. “It’s probably wedged under the spare. I don’t want you wasting time doing that here. Maybe we can find a nice open spot on the road to do that. No,” she said, “gas only this stop. Dee, you and Dan keep watch this way. Ivy and I will watch each other’s backs. If you see one of them, get our attention and we’ll hop back in.”

  I didn’t like Lana risking herself by getting out and said so.

  “If the tank was on your side, then you could risk your ass. It’s on ours, so Ivy and I do the deed.” She took a breath and then opened her door, sliding out to go straight for the gas pump. She put her credit card in, her head swiveling every direction at once. I realized I was watching her and not our surroundings, and whipped my head the other direction to stare out my window.

  Surely we couldn’t be this lucky.

  Ivy said something I couldn’t hear. I risked a look over my shoulder to see her talking with Lana about something, I didn’t know what. Lana’s face was pale, two spots of color high on her cheeks. She was terrified. So was I.

  I turned back to my watch and saw a kid standing kitty-corner from us. “Lana,” I snapped.

  “I see her. We have five gallons. I’m going to keep going. Ivy, get in.”

  “I’ll wait with you.” Ivy made a noise. “There’s another, just coming around the far end of the gas station. They ain’t moving fast, just staring mostly.”

  “Lana, get in the car. Now.” The little girl hadn’t moved, but the one Ivy’d seen was, a big lumbering man in overalls, half his face hanging off his jaw. He looked like a movie zombie.

  I cursed, looking back over to where the little girl was.

  Had been.

  She was running at us.

  “Lana! Now!”

  “Almost ten now,” she said. “Ivy—”

  Ivy yanked the hose from the tank and jumped in, slamming the door shut behind her. Lana slid in soon after, her door almost shut when the man in overalls stuck his whole arm inside with us.

  Lana screamed and I lunged across the seat to grab the door handle, yanking it hard.

  The man yanked back, inarticulate grunts making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. He already sounded like he was eating us, though the eating part of him was clearly broken.

  He fell against the car in his greed to get at Lana, trapping his own arm in the door.

  “Drive. Drive!” Dan said as the little girl hit the car, her milky dead eyes glaring through the window at Owen.

  I couldn’t drive. I was holding the damn door and if I let go …

  “I’ve got it,” Lana snapped. “Go. If you go fast, he’ll fall and I can get the door shut.”

  “Lana—”

  “Do it!” Her grip was tight, but I was afraid I’d lose her. She was leaning away from the guy’s grasping arm and yelling at me to move, move, so I let go, praying I hadn’t just killed her.

  I started the car as she screamed, as Owen cried, as Ivy cursed up a blue streak, and when I punched the gas, sure enough the man fell out.

  He fell out but snagged Lana’s coat
and pulled her halfway out of the car before I could slam on the breaks. Ivy and Dan grabbed what they could of her as Lana screamed for me to go, go, go.

  “I can’t!” I groped for something to grab, latching onto her pocket, knowing it wasn’t strong enough to keep her in the car if the man pulled on her hard enough.

  “He’s got her coat but he’ll be up in a second. We got her. Go.” Ivy nodded at me and so I went, though not as hard as the first time.

  Ivy grunted and her hands slipped. The pocket I held ripped, a long tearing sound that nearly stopped my heart. I slowed the car, intending to brake, to jump out and beat the asshole off her, but then Ivy shouted, “He let go. We’ll pull her in. Go!”

  I did and they did and Lana was safely inside, her face beet red from her exertions. She was panting and crying and all I wanted to do was stop the car and hug her, but I couldn’t because they were pouring out of their hidey-holes.

  They’d been hiding. Waiting.

  Dear god.

  We rode in silence for a good long time and then Lana said, “Next time it’s your turn to get gas.”

  I laughed because she wanted me too, but inside I vowed to never let her near danger again if I could help it. It had to be her that got to the boys in the end. I was just bonus material, but they needed their mom. They needed Lana.

  I would get her there or die trying.

  18

  Then

  Lana managed to get us three-quarters full and that got us another four hours, until I was falling asleep at the wheel. Owen was restless as little boys were wont to be on long car rides, and we were all suffering from flat ass syndrome.

  “We need to stop,” I said, though I wanted to do nothing of the kind. We’d almost lost Lana at the gas station. There was no telling how worse things could get if we got out of the car. But we needed food and water and sleep.

  “Let’s stop at the next farm,” Ivy said for the hundredth time. “I’m telling you it’s the best solution for our problems.”

  I nodded, then yawned so hard it hurt my jaw. “Okay, I’m down. I can’t drive anymore.” We had the crowbar thanks to Dan digging it out from under the spare. We also had a couple of golf clubs that had been in the trunk. They had a nice weight to them, and I was guessing we could bash some heads with them if we were lucky enough to find zombies willing to stand still while we beat on them.

 

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