by bret Wellman
Chapter 3
Dany was dreaming about being on a water bed that was gently rocking her back and forth. She rolled over a little and hit her head on the door handle hard enough to jar her awake. She sat up when she realized that the rocking motion was still going on. There were about four zombies on her side of the car and she was out of gas.
“Hey, Regan, wake up.” She patted the dog’s head until her big brown eyes opened. “We have visitors.” Regan’s ears went up and she growled when she saw the rotting bodies pushing against the car. The growling woke Marigold. Her eyes fell on the zombies and her entire body froze up with fear. “Calm down, Marigold, it’s going to be ok. Look, they’re all on one side of the car. All you have to do is let Regan climb out your side of the car and she and I will take care of them, ok?” The girl couldn’t speak, but she nodded understanding anyway. She flattened herself against the back of the seat, letting her legs make a good jumping platform for the dog. “On three, open the door for her, ok?” Marigold nodded again. “One, two…three.” On three Dany burst out of the car, machete in hand and sprinted across the front of the SUV to reach the zombies. Regan went around the trunk area and growled a warning to her enemies before leaping at the nearest one and driving it down to the ground so she could rip it’s throat out. Dany was slicing away, and soon there were no more zombies to beleaguer the car. Dany leaned against the driver side door to relax for a moment and catch her breath. Regan came and lay at her feet, tongue lolling. She heard a surprised shriek, then an agonizing scream. Dany whipped around.
While they had been fighting the four zombies that were pushing the car, it seemed that another one had heard the commotion and come to investigate. Marigold had been too frightened to close her door again after Regan had jumped out, and he’d come up behind her and pulled her out of the car. The first shriek had been when he’d grabbed her. The second had been because he had bitten her on the junction where her neck met her shoulder. Dany sprinted around to the other side of the car and sliced the zombie’s head into two perfect hemispheres. By the time she’d gotten his rotting hands to let go of Marigold, her body was already twitching in the telltale signs of the change.
“Oh, shit. Regan, get ready, girl. We have to take her out, too.”
Marigold dropped to the ground and began to have a seizure. It went on for a minute before she froze. She began to moan. As Dany watched, she stood up and her head swept the surrounding area. Her eyes were a dead gray with streaks of red, with black irises blending into black pupils. Her gaze locked on Dany and she lumbered forward with her arms outstretched. Dany took a step back and swung the machete. Marigold’s head soared over the hood of the car to land in the pile of bodies that Dany and Regan had dispatched a few minutes ago. The blackish red blood that Marigold’s body now had, bubbled up in the opening where her head used to be and oozed down her neck, onto her body as it fell to the ground. The area was clear for the moment, but Dany wasn’t going to risk it. The tree line had started quite a few miles back, and she led the German Shepherd into it. Once she’d gotten far enough away from the car, she checked on the contents of her backpack and made sure she still had everything she needed. She pulled out the map and crossed off the stretch of highway they’d traveled in the car. She sighed. It still seemed like so far to go. She had to go from Ohio to Pennsylvania, then into New Jersey. Pennsylvania was going to be the longest part of that trek. The state was roughly three hundred miles across. Dany was trying to focus on something logical, so she wouldn’t have to face how she felt about Marigold’s demise. Even though she’d only known her for a few short hours, it made Dany feel terrible that she’d lost her. Dany was responsible for her, and now she was dead.
“Ok, Regan, we have to get a move on. Maybe we can find another car, but for now we better find a safe place to hole up for the night in. We still have a lot of ground to cover.” Regan walked over and nuzzled her hand, wanting affection. Dany smiled at her and rubbed her head between her ears. Regan woofed her thanks, and Dany set out again, keeping on a route that was roughly parallel to the highway.
The sun was directly overhead when Dany called for a stop. It was time they sat down and ate something to keep their strength up. She found a large maple leaf and laid it gently on the ground before taking the can opener she had out of her backpack. She opened up three cans of tuna and dumped them on the leaf for Regan. Dany grabbed a can of soup out for herself and a spoon. The two ate in as much silence as they could muster, keeping their eyes and ears strained for any sign of movement or death groans. Lunch passed by peacefully, and the two moved on until the sun was ready to go down for its evening nap. Dany was far from any city as far as she could tell, so it looked like she would be sleeping in a tree, tonight, while Regan made do on the ground. Whenever they had to sleep like this, she was worried that one day Regan wouldn’t be there in the morning.
“Come on, girl, time to get you all tucked in.” Regan woofed unhappily. She apparently didn’t like this type of sleeping arrangement either. She hunkered down at the foot of the tree that Dany was going to sleep in and Dany covered her with brush, twigs, leaves and a little loose dirt to disguise her smell and her shape. Regan settled down to sleep. Dany climbed the tree and hung her backpack from a long branch. Then she sat on it with her back against the trunk and her legs sticking straight out in front of her. Using a small piece of rope that she carried for occasions such as this, she looped it around the branch and her legs a few times and tied a clove hitch knot to hold it. She let her eyes drift closed.
Dany awoke with a start. She could hear death groans coming closer to her. The moon was full and gave off enough light so that she could see Regan’s luminous eyes in the dark below her. She was awake, too, but staying still and quiet. Dany started to twist her head slowly from one direction to the other, looking for signs of movement. There, to her one o’clock were two zombies coming her way. She stayed as still as she could manage, and she saw Regan try to hunch down even more to make herself as small as possible. They waited. The zombies were moving slowly, as if they had no purpose, and they probably didn’t. There was no fresh meat in front of them that they knew of, so why should they hurry? As they got closer, she could see that one was a man and the other was a woman. The light of the moon glinted off something on their left hands. Wedding bands. These two had been a married couple at one time. The moon came out from behind the cloud it was hiding in, and Dany had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. The light intensified and she could see that she knew these two. They had once fed and clothed her, taken her to school, and protected her and her little brother from everything that they could. Unfortunately, they couldn’t protect her from themselves. Tears slid down Dany’s cheeks as she watched what was left of her parents amble right by the tree. Neither one of them could tell that she and Regan were there.
After that, Dany just sat in the tree until the early light of morning made its way through the dense foliage to announce a new day. She’d been staring off into the night sky at a star and watching it get lighter and lighter until it eventually disappeared. She climbed down from the tree and packed her rope away. She nudged the sleeping dog who unburied herself from the massive pile of coverings she had, and the two went on in silence. Dany was in shock. She couldn’t believe that her parents had made it this far. What was driving them? Was there some sliver of their former selves in those empty husks after all? The way they stayed together like that was fascinating for her to see. Even when they had no rational thought left to them, they stuck together like they did when they said, ‘I do’. It made Dany wish that the world hadn’t gone to hell and that maybe one day she would find someone to have that kind of love and devotion with. This was no time for daydreams. The Ohio border was a mere ten feet away. They had to keep moving.
Near sundown, Dany and Regan stumbled on an abandoned house surrounded by a lot o
f fields. This old farmhouse looked like the ravages of the zombies had never happened. The fields were neat, the fence was in place, and the house had no streaks of blood on it. Dany needed a place to sleep for the night so she approached it cautiously. Just because there was no blood didn’t mean that there weren’t zombies inside. She took her machete out of its sheath and held it in her hand like a sword. She tried the door, it was locked. That meant there was another way of tackling the question of zombies. She banged on the door as loudly as she could for a few minutes, then put her ear next to the door to see if there was a response. She got a response, but it wasn’t the one she expected. She heard footsteps, but they were from a normal gait, not the shuffling, dragging steps of the zombies. She backed up from the door and waited to see what would happen, Regan at her heels. The door opened and a young man around her own age came out. She would have noticed how handsome he was if he didn’t have a shotgun pointed at her.
“You’re alive.” It wasn’t a question, but he lowered his gun. He turned his head and called to someone in another room. An older man came out to see what was going on. He said something to the young man and he eventually lowered his weapon. The older man came to the door and motioned for her to come in.
“Hello there, young lady. You’ve got to pardon our Russ. He hasn’t really seen anyone alive around hear in a while, and he was just making sure he was being cautious. I’m Merle, and you’re welcome to come in and eat with us. Dinner will be on the table in about ten minutes.” This all sounded too good to be true.
“How is it you can keep a normal life here with all the hell that’s going on outside?”
“That’s a story for the dinner table. Come on in and bring your dog with you.” Dany obeyed, but she didn’t let her guard down. She was led into a dining room with a large table, covered in a white tablecloth, and set for four. The old man and the teenage boy would count as two, so there had to be two more people here.