Impassable

by Ponce, Jen

  We found two more of them back there, which Evan and Isaac took out. I wasn’t sure I had the strength or will to shove my weapon in anyone else’s eye socket today, zombie or not.

  We found a dozen gas containers and a several large containers to hold water. We used shopping baskets to carry all the food we thought would be helpful—much of it was candy, though they did have an aisle with basic canned foods and a few cooking supplies. We also took a lot of the camping gear, tools, oil and other things for the vehicles, and more. We were all a bit giddy with excitement from the haul. When we pulled in, we’d noticed a couple trailers for sale too, which had decided us on stopping. We could hitch one to the SUV and one to the mini van. Filled with all our loot, we’d be set for the long haul. And if we managed to fill all these gas cans with gas, we wouldn’t have to risk our lives filling up at gas stations.

  Things were finally looking up.

  We made our plans for getting things loaded, sorting through our finds to figure out what we had to have and what we could leave behind if we didn’t have room.

  We were halfway through the sorting when the horn honked outside. Once, Twice. Three times.

  Shit.

  We raced across the store, scrabbling for our weapons. I had a machete now, the poky cone thing abandoned in the backroom.

  We slowed when we got near the front windows. The parking lot was filling with them. I could see Lana in the van, already on the street, honking as she tried to lead them away from us.

  “Block the doors!” I yelled, racing to the doors, which obligingly slid open as I neared. I shoved at them trying to get them to close. When they finally did, I tipped the card rack over to keep it from opening again. Dan did the same thing on the other side, using the pitchfork he’d found.

  “My kids,” Jean said. “Evan, our kids.” She clutched at him as we watched the crazies swarm the front of the store, as we watched the van disappear from view.

  Dan looked about as horrified as they did, but he was the one who stepped up and said, “They’re okay. They’re in the van and they’re moving. We’re the ones in deep shit. Lana will get them away and wait for us down the road like we planned.”

  Stay safe, Lana. Please stay safe.

  “We need to find another way out of here. Remember the one with the rock?” Dan directed the question at me. As if I’d ever forget the one with the rock. The one I still believed might not have been one of them. I nodded though, because now wasn’t the time to argue.

  “Come on. Now! Let’s get back. Maybe they haven’t seen us yet.” Isaac tugged at Dan’s shoulder, then mine. “Let’s go. Get back.”

  We ran through the store to the loading bay where we’d piled our stuff. The door to the storage area was on a swinging hinge and there was no way to lock it against them if they got inside with us.

  “Help me move this in front of that door,” Evan said. He and Isaac got on one side of a heavy shelving unit, Dan got on the other and I was in the middle. It shrieked along the floor, practically guaranteeing the crazies would hear it outside, but we needed to be sure they couldn’t get at us all at once.

  That done, we pushed another in front of the first one, then packed supplies into backpacks from the camping aisle. I hated leaving anything, but maybe we could come back for it if we could figure out how to lure the zombies away.

  Please let Lana be safe.

  The words were a litany in my head as I finished packing another backpack. We had food and water enough to outlast a siege, I hoped. How long would it last? How long could Lana and Ivy hold out on their own? If we didn’t come out in a day or two, what would they do? They couldn’t live in the car, not with all the kids.

  Those questions and more were going through the heads of the others too, especially Dan’s, Evan’s, and Jean’s. Their kids were in more immediate, obvious danger than mine, but I understood the fear in their eyes.

  “What are we going to do? We can’t stay here,” Jude said. I’d forgotten about him, to be honest. He was a lot quieter than his brother and tended to hang in the back protecting his girlfriend rather than entering into the fray. I didn’t entirely blame him.

  “We have to wait them out,” Isaac said. “Remember at the farmhouse? We stay quiet, they eventually leave. We just have to wait them out.” His eyes slid to Evan and Jean and away, as if he worried they would protest.

  They didn’t, just huddled together in a miserable clump, praying.

  Dan sat in a corner with his head pressed against the wall, eyes closed. I didn’t know if he was praying too, or if he was just doing what my brain was doing, chanting, “Please be okay.”

  They had to be okay. This mess had already torn through us. Did it really have to keep going? Not satisfied with ripping, it had to destroy us utterly?

  I sat near Dan and pulled out my phone. I texted Lana hoping I’d get an answer, but every time I tried to send the message, my phone would buzz and a message would pop up that said, “Send failed. Try again.”

  “Fuck,” I whispered, and tucked my phone away, ignoring my desire to thumb through the pictures I had of Lana and the boys. It would waste the batteries and the charger was in the SUV. Maybe I couldn’t call Lana or text her on it, maybe that was now a thing of the past, but I couldn’t bear the thought of letting it die completely. What if I never had the opportunity to charge it again?

  A few hours later, Isaac volunteered to slip out the back door and scout the parking lot. He’d let us know if the crazies had moved on or if we needed to figure out a different plan. He had a rifle and the machete and brushed off Paisley’s fretting. “I’ll be fine. No worries. Going to peek and that’s it. If I see any of them, I’ll run back here, no worries.” He smiled at his brother and then he was gone, running alongside the back of the building, looking rather like a badass hero in an action movie.

  Jude shut the door and we waited, nervously, for his return.

  25

  Now

  The rooms are picturesque … if rooms can be called that. And they can’t enjoy them because Will is sick, is dying, and she will have to end him when its time.

  Right now he shivers on the bed with the ruffles and the fluffy pillows, under a painting of a St. Bernard with a barrel under his noble chin. The TV is hidden away in a cabinet so as not to screw with the aesthetics of the place.

  She has a medical bag open on the nightstand and has disinfected the wound and bandaged it. He’s chewed four aspirins—his idea. “Heroes in Stephen King novels always chew their pills,” he says, the shiver in his voice concerning her. Now he leans against the headboard, dead-eyed though not in the zombie sense of the word. Not yet.

  “Maybe you won’t turn,” she offers. He doesn’t even respond because why bother? They both know it’s a death sentence. Instead of saying anything else, she sits on the bed next to him and draws him close, whispering the same words of comfort she’d use on her boys.

  He curls into her and his body relaxes and with her cheek pressed to his head, her eyes closed, he could almost be one of her boys. His breathing steadies into the sound of sleep and she finds her own eyes sliding shut.

  Then she remembers.

  She can’t fall asleep, or it will be her last.

  After a while, Will starts to cough and by the time he’s caught his breath, he’s awake and shivering next to her. When he can speak, he asks, “Will you do something for me?”

  “Sure thing.”

  He shifts, digging his wallet out of his back pocket. He hands it to her, then lets his arm drop as if that small motion has worn him out. “Tell my parents and my sister that I tried to get home. If you can get to them. If they’re …”

  “Of course. I will. I’ll tell them how hard you worked to get back to them. They’ll know, Will. I promise.”

  “The address, it’s on my driver’s license. Tell my mom I wish I could’ve hugged her one more time. Tell my dad how much I wanted to be like him. And Cordy? Tell her I’ll be there with her, okay? I’
ll posses Mister Wiggles and be with her always. Okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Repeat it. Please? So I know you got it …” He coughed, sounding phlegmy. His skin is already warm and getting warmer. It won’t be long now.

  “I’ll tell your mom you wished you could hug her once more. I’ll tell your dad how much you wanted to be like him and that you’ll posses Mister Wiggles to be with Cordy always.” It seems morbid but sounds like something Jackson and Tucker would say to each other.

  Her heart aches.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Will.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, just heats up next to her and coughs more and more, until he’s gasping for breath. When it’s time, she slides her knife into his eye socket. One firm push and he sags against her, no longer Will, no longer a living, breathing human being.

  She covers him with the other bed’s comforter, then packs up the med kit and gathers their things, then shuts the door on his corpse.

  She stays the night at the hotel, but at the opposite end of the place, away from Will, away from the tragedy that hangs like black smoke over the room. In the morning, bleary-eyed from waking several times throughout the night, she drops her things over the balcony and onto the SUV after making sure there aren’t any of them around. She eases herself down after, and puts their things into the passenger side, placing his wallet in the cup holder to remind her of her promise.

  She vows not to pick anyone else up. It’s too hard watching them die.

  Pulling back out onto the road, she starts her final stretch into Seattle, though she knows she won’t be able to drive right up to her house. If small towns were full, she can’t even imagine what Seattle looks like. She doesn’t know if she’s ready or if she can face the teeming dead.

  She doesn’t want to die, but she’s increasingly terrified she will.

  It’s rough going. The winter storms have torn through the road in places, making it nearly impossible to drive faster than a slow crawl. There are potholes, cracks and, in a few spots, whole sections of roadway just gone. She hopes she doesn’t find a bridge out but it’s looking more and more likely the higher in altitude she climbs. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she can’t get through.

  Go around, of course. She’ll go around.

  She’ll find a way. She promised Lana. So she will.

  But damn, she hopes she can make it straight through. She’s been away from them long enough.

  She rounds a bend and there are cars blocking the roadway. Both lanes. The banks off either side are steep, and she thinks she can get the SUV down one side and up the other. Inside the cars, they sit and stare at her, their hungry eyes on her as she eases past them. She doesn’t want to know who they were, she doesn’t want to stop and ponder their lost humanity, she just wants to get home.

  The SUV goes down onto the grassy median easy enough, but then she hits a patch of mud and the tires spin without propelling her forward. She eases off the gas and wills herself not to panic.

  How many of them had been in the cars? How many cars? She hasn’t let herself look and now she regrets it. She curses herself but there’s nothing she can do about it now. She puts the SUV into reverse and twists the wheel in the other direction. When she pushes the gas, she moves a couple feet. She keeps going for a few more, hoping she can find dryer ground. When she gets stalled out again, she puts it back into drive and skirts the mud—at least she hopes she does.

  She gets farther than before, then gets mired. She can backup fine once again, so she does. It’s as if fate is telling her she can’t go forward. She slaps the steering wheel as if it’s the SUV’s fault she’s stuck. She wants to scream but doesn’t, knowing she’s already caught their attention with the motor. Screaming would draw them to her, screams would make sure they knew she was food.

  Fine then.

  She backs up and up and tries for the other side, gunning the engine to pop herself up onto the road. She leaves the roadblock and the mud behind, wondering why it’s so easy, wondering if she’s finally catching a break or if the universe has something worse in store for her just down the road.

  Please, she asks anyone or thing who might be listening, please let me catch a break. Surely I’ve earned it.

  26

  Then

  Isaac didn’t come back. We waited ten minutes, twenty. We waited until his brother was flushed red with fear and ready to explode.

  “I’m going after him,” Jude finally said, jerking his arm out of Paisley’s grip when she clutched at him. “I have to. Isaac would come for me. Shit. Shit!”

  “Shh.” Dan held up his hand and when he was assured everyone saw him at the door, he opened it carefully, the hinges silent because Evan had had the foresight to squirt them with WD-40. He popped back in after a moment, his face grim. “The little bit I can see of the parking lot is full of them. We aren’t getting to the vehicles any time soon.”

  Had Lana stayed, they would’ve been surrounded and trapped in the van, so I was glad she’d gotten out. It still didn’t make me any happier not having her with me, though.

  “What if we distract them to the far side of the building?” I asked. “There are kitchen timers in the main part of the store. A couple of us could duck walk out there to get some things to make noise. Toss them on the far side and then skate along this edge. It could be that Isaac is stuck in a car, unable to move.”

  Jude had his fingers thrust deep into his hair, pulling hard as he paced. Any time Paisley got near, he jerked away from her until she was in tears.

  “These aren’t movie zombies. I don’t know that they’d even be fooled by the lure. I mean, they use lures. If they have enough brain power to do that, they might have enough to figure out the timers are a feint.” Jean’s and Evan’s eyes kept going to the door, though, as if they wanted to rush out and after their kids, damn the consequences. The only thing holding them back was the fact that those consequences would be deadly. They might make a few yards, a quarter mile, but they were everywhere and eventually Evan and Jean would be seen.

  Then it would be game over.

  “We can’t just sit here and do nothing. If he is out there …”

  “Remember the farm,” I said to Dan and he nodded grimly.

  “What?” Jude asked. “What?” he almost shouted and we all shushed him. “If you know something …” he growled at me and I raised my hands in a ‘we’re all friends here’ gesture.

  “We saw one using a tool. A rock. To try to break a car window.”

  “Shit. Shit. So you’re saying, even if my brother managed to lock himself inside a car, he’ll still probably die?”

  “No. I’m saying one of them managed to use a rock as a tool. Doesn’t mean they all know how to do that. Doesn’t mean he’s not safe. We just have to be a little cautious. That’s all.”

  “Cautious,” he mocked. “Fuck caution. I’m going to go get my brother and if you simps don’t want to come, then fuck you all.” He grabbed one of the machetes and a gun and when Dan tried to stop him, he shoved the gun in his face. “Don’t.”

  Dan stepped back and we all watched him disappear. Paisley followed soon after, apologizing as she went. As soon as she left, Dan cursed under his breath. “Great. Cuts us in half.”

  “Not quite. Cuts us down a third is all. Well, if you don’t count Isaac.”

  A scream rang out. Another. Gunshots.

  “We have to do something,” I said, and Dan glared at me.

  “What? Get yourself killed too? We don’t have to do anything.”

  “No,” Jean said quietly, “but we should.”

  I ran to what I assumed was a manager’s office, a tiny box of a room filled with paper and files and corporate despair. I grabbed the radio off the desk and checked it to see if it had batteries. It blared out static when I turned it on, so I dialed down the volume and went back out, holding it up.

  Dan, tight-lipped and angry, nevertheless grabbed his we
apon and nodded at me. Evan and Jean hefted their weapons too, which made me feel marginally safer. And by marginally, I really meant not at all.

  What the fuck was I thinking? I said a silent apology to Lana and ran out the door after a quick check around, heading left to the opposite end of the building. It seemed to take forever and the farther away from the door I got, the more terrified I felt, until I was pretty sure I’d pee myself if anything jump-scared me.

  Trembling, I peeked around the corner and didn’t see any of them. I gestured to Dan to keep going and we did, taking it slower, veering around pallets stacked with feed. When we got to the next corner, I eased my head out as slowly as possible. All of them were converged on the far side, huddled around something … someone. Evan’s truck was right in front, as was the car. We could all squeeze into the pickup and tear out of there, but that would mean leaving Jude, Isaac, and Paisley to their fate.

  “What do you want to do?” I whispered, so quietly I barely heard myself.

  “Evan should take the truck and see if he can lure them out. Leave the radio here full blast and then we’ll run back around the opposite way. Evan can pull up to the fence on the outside to get us out.” Jean squeezed her husband’s hand. “Go.”

  He went. There wasn’t time to agree or argue. It was really our only option and once they got wind of us, it would be on.

  I waited until Evan was inside his truck before setting the radio on the ground and turning it up full blast. We were running toward the back as soon as the noise started, so I had no idea how many had been distracted. We heard Evan honking and I prayed they would take that bait. The radio I wasn’t certain of, but surely they’d want to try to grab dinner.