A New Death (Savannah's Only Zombie Novel) (14 page)

Something was not right. Lexx was yelling from the back of
the truck. The truck seemed to sway from side to side, as the men shuffled
around in the box. Tori slammed her fist against the back of the cab.

“Hey! What’s going on back there?” she yelled.

She looked at Jeremy and he nodded. He pulled the truck over
into the parking lot of a grocery store. They got out and walked around to the
back of the truck. Tori readied her pistol. Jeremy unlatched the door and flung
it open. Ben and Lexx came running out of the truck. LJ was in the back corner,
pistol raised.

“What the hell?” Tori asked.

“He’s fuckin’ bitten!” Lexx yelled.

“What?” She yelled back.

LJ put his pistol down and walked to the end of the truck.
Lifting up his shirt, he revealed a badly infected bite wound right under his
left ribcage. He grimaced and put his shirt back down. They all stood in
silence for a minute. Jeremy thought about what to do. He knew from the movies
that zombie bites were generally not good things. In the past few days however,
he had not really seen anyone with just a bite. Every person he had seen
attacked had been mauled in some way. No simple bites.

He looked at LJ’s face. The man seemed a mix of worry and
anger. He was probably worried on how the group would react to this unexpected
announcement. And he was probably angry because he knew how they would most
likely react.

“When did you get bitten?” Jeremy asked, breaking the
silence, but not the tension.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, that’s convenient,” Tori mumbled.

“Tori...” Jeremy said giving her a firm look.

“Look, I don’t know. It must have happened during my
blackout. I swear I didn’t know until it started to itch in the truck. I feel
fine, just a little warm,” LJ said.

He was sweating. The weather had cooled drastically from the
day before. But that was November in Savannah for you. He might have a fever.
Jeremy’s mind began to race with possible outcomes.

“Everyone relax,” Jeremy began. “We don’t know much about
what’s going on, or this infection, or whatever it is. I think we all have seen
zombie movies and know that this is not a good thing, but this whole thing
hasn’t played out just like the movies. He could recover from this. Maybe it’s
not the bite that kills you.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Tori said.

“You’re right. The only thing we know for sure is that we
don’t know anything for sure.”

She didn’t seem to like that answer, but she did back down.
Jeremy assumed that she would inform him of how she really felt once they were
back in the cab of the truck. He looked forward to it.

“LJ, we’ll keep an eye on your, your
condition
. If it
gets to the point where we or you feel like you’re going to turn into one of
those things, we’ll deal with it then. How would you-”

“Put a bullet in my brain before I turn into one of those
things.”

Jeremy was taken aback by the man’s bluntness, but he understood.
He didn’t really want to be a citizen of the undead either.

“Ok then. For now, we continue on as normal.”

Tori huffed when he said, ‘normal,’ but he ignored it. They
were just outside of Rincon by a few miles and once they got that far, they still
had a few more to go to Ben’s parents. He looked over at the grocery store
across the parking lot. He hated that the first thing he noticed was the
scattered grocery carts. He hated it even more that it bothered him.

“While we’re stopped here, let’s check out that store and
stock up on supplies. We can help supply Ben’s parents in exchange for room and
board. The store looks pretty abandoned,” Jeremy said.

“There’s a few z’s over there by the dollar store” Lexx
said, pointing to the opposite end of the strip mall.

There was a small group of them, three and a half as far as
Jeremy could tell. The half being the upper torso of a middle aged man who
crawled around on his hands. His bottom half was completely gone, except for
the entrails that dragged behind him. They all wandered in front of the store
aimlessly, bumping into each other and the building itself.

“We’ll be sneaky-sneaky then,” Jeremy said with a smile.

Lexx nodded and returned the smile.

***

Once inside the store, they decided it best to split up in
pairs. Lexx and Tori wandered off towards the canned goods. Ben and Jeremy were
going to try and see what the produce section looked like. The power was out in
the building, but some of the fruits and vegetables should still be fresh. LJ
went off on his own. Since the confrontation outside, he had not said much.
Jeremy asked him if he was okay, to which he just nodded, and walked off.

Ben was also being really quiet. For having been so vocal in
the argument over LJ earlier, he had been strangely silent since the parking
lot. Once they got to the produce section, Jeremy decided to pick his brain a
little bit.

“Hey man, you okay with LJ staying with us?”

Ben looked at him.

“Yeah. I’m cool with it.”

“You sure? You’ve been kinda quite about the whole thing.”

“I argued for him back at the warehouse didn’t I? My opinion
remains the same. It just bothers me how quick Tori and Lexx want to dump him.”

He stopped before looking over some bananas and placing them
into his cart.

“I get it, I do,” he said. “I want to survive all this too.
Trust me, I do. I already left my grandmother; I just can’t leave someone
behind like that again. I wasn’t raised that way. My parents always taught me
to do the right thing, you know, do unto others.”

“I understand. Me too,” Jeremy said. “My mom always had me
in Sunday school. I got the being a good person talk many a time.”

“Oh man, Sunday school. They didn’t put this on the felt
board did they?”

They both laughed. Jeremy picked up a tomato, but saw that
the other side was starting to get mushy. He put it back down and moved down to
the fruit. There were apples in bags that still looked fresh. He grabbed a
couple of those and sat them in his cart. It almost felt like they were really
shopping.

“Man, we went to this little old country church where the
preacher was one of those fire and brimstone kinda guys,” Ben said. “I still
remember him preaching this scary as hell sermon on the rapture and the seven
years of tribulation. I was so scared and didn’t want to go through any of
that, so I walked down the aisle and said the sinner’s prayer. You ever do
that?”

Jeremy nodded.

“Haha, yeah a couple times,” he said.

“I did it every Sunday for a month straight. I wanted to
make sure, you know?”

Ben paused for a second.

“You think any of that stuff was true? You think this is the
end times?”

The question floored Jeremy. He had not really thought about
it much. Everything going on lately, some of it did seem plausible. The church
his mother went to didn’t really teach a lot of stuff like that when he went. It
was a lot more like don’t drink alcohol or have sex outside of marriage.
Basically, anything fun.

Could this be the end times though?

He thought about what the Padre told him about how this was
not God’s wrath, but maybe it was just our fault somehow. It made sense kinda.
Maybe some scientist was trying to play god and wound up creating this disease?
He remembered having to read Frankenstein back in high school. Could this whole
thing be an experiment gone wrong? It all seemed so science fiction.

Jeremy still had a hard time accepting that God would just
sit on the sidelines and watch though. His mother got up and read her Bible
every day and went to church every Sunday she could. He didn’t help her. Or the
Padre, who apparently was someone who dedicated his life to the Lord’s work.

Why isn’t God doing anything? Where is He?

***

“Hold up, I need to get something from this aisle real
quick.”

Tori turned down the aisle before even really checking to
see if Lexx was going to follow her or not. He quickly changed his direction.

“Are you getting what I think you’re getting?” He asked.

“Yeah. Zombie apocalypse or not, a girl’s still gonna need
tampons,” she said, as she reached up to grab a few boxes off the shelf. Lexx
watched as she piled them into the cart.

“Geez, how many you takin’?”

“I don’t know when we’ll find more anytime soon, so I’d like
to have a nice supply. Trust me, I can make these last.”

Lexx started to look around as she placed a few more boxes
in their cart. The “feminine hygiene” aisle was also the “family planning”
aisle. Rows and rows of condoms, pregnancy tests, and assorted lubricants sat
neighbor to the maxi-pads, and tampons.

Things kinda go full circle here, huh,
he thought.

He picked up a pack of condoms off the shelf, turned it over,
and began reading the back of the package. Tori eyed him with a smile creeping
up on her face.

“You plan on using those anytime soon there, big boy?”

His face flushed red as he fumbled to put it back on the
shelf.

“I uh, was just, uh, reading it,” he said.

“Oh yeah? I bet that’s some good reading there!”

“Shut up.”

“You embarrassed, Lexington?”

He gave her a smile when she called him that.

“No, Victoria,” he mocked. “Maybe I will grab some. I don’t
know when I’ll be seeing them again, so I’d like to have a nice supply.”

“Oh, haha. You are so funny. Good luck finding someone to
use them with,” she said as she walked away.

He wasn’t sure if she was swaying her hips on purpose, or if
it was just his imagination playing tricks on him. Could be both. The skin
tight jeans she was wearing hugged her curves nicely and the oversized tourist
t-shirt hung loose, exposing the bare skin of one of her shoulders.

He came up next to her and the cart, and emptied his arms of
the thirty boxes he grabbed from the shelf. She let out a huge laugh. It was
larger and louder than she expected, so she quickly covered her mouth. He
chuckled at her awkwardness.

“Oh wow, someone’s full of themselves,” she said.

“No, just confident. Besides, I’ve pretty much already been
to second base with you. You wanna make it a grand slam?” he asked with a sly
smirk.

“Uh, no. And going along with your stupid baseball analogy,
whenever did we get to second base in your mind?”

“Downtown. You pretty much just flashed your breasts at me!”

She laughed at the way he said ‘breasts.’ This time she
didn’t hold back her giggles.

“That’s not second base, you doofus! Second base is actually
touching them! You, my friend, haven’t even stepped up to bat yet!”

He stopped walking and put his hand on her waist. She
immediately stopped and looked up at him. She fought against herself, but knew
she was melting in his hands. He looked into her expectant green eyes and
inched slowly closer to her face. She put up no fight as he leaned in and
kissed her. Their lips locked for a few seconds, before he pulled away. She did
not try to hide the big smile on her flushed red face.

“Not bad Lexington, not bad.”

“You’re not too shabby yourself, Victoria.”

“And a gentleman too,” she added. “You could have gone for
more and I would have probably given it to you, but you didn’t and I respect
that.”

He smiled and they continued to walk again. She started to
say something else, but was cut off when the alarms went off. They looked at
each other worriedly, grabbed the cart, and bolted for the front of the store.

***

“What the hell is going on?” Tori yelled, as they got to the
front of the store. “I thought the power was off?”

Ben and Jeremy got there the same time as Lexx and Tori.
Jeremy threw up his hands in confusion. He winced as the alarm continued to
blast throughout the store.

“Sometimes alarms are kept on a backup power source,” Ben
yelled. “Maybe this is one of those alarms?”

“Well, what the hell set it off then? We’ve been in this
store too long for the alarm to just now be going off,” she continued. “Wait.
Where’s LJ?”

Everyone else noticed that the fifth member of their group
was still missing. Unlike the others, he had not run to the front of the store
once the alarm started blaring. They began to look around to see if they could
find him when there was loud crash from the pharmacy. They ran there and saw
that it had been broken into and was the source of the alarm.

Jeremy walked in first cautiously. The others followed
slowly and nearly bumped into a stopped Jeremy. There lying on the floor was an
extremely intoxicated LJ covered in prescription pill bottles. He looked up to
the group with a big, goofy smile and said,

“Hey guys! I feels better!”

They stood there in disbelief as LJ struggled to get up to
his feet. He was unsuccessful and fell back into the sea of orange bottles. He
just laughed.

“You did this?” Tori screamed, drowning out the alarm. “You
set off the alarm, you stupid son of a bitch? Fuck him! We are definitely
leaving his ass now!”

She turned and glared at Jeremy. She was right. He nodded.

“We’ll leave him. Just not here.”

She started to protest, but he cut her off.

“Look, this place will be crawling with z’s soon. We can’t
leave him here. We’ll find him somewhere safe and leave him there.”

“After all the trouble he’s caused us?” she asked.

He only nodded, and proceeded to try and get the drunken man
to his feet. His breath was hot with alcohol. He must have wandered off to the
beer and wine aisle, before making his assault on the pharmacy. Ben and Lexx
both joined Jeremy in helping the man up. Once they had him up, Ben started to
put the small amount of fruit from their cart into Tori’s.

“Here,” he said. “Put him in the cart and we’ll push him out
of here.”

Jeremy and Lexx moved LJ over to the cart and slowly lowered
him into the basket. The man barely fit into it, his arm and legs dangling over
the sides. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping his head up, because it
swayed back and forth.

“You guys,” he said between hiccups. “You guys are the best.
Hiccup.”

Ben moved a fuming Tori out of the way, taking control of
the cart, and pushing towards the front of the store. They all ran, grabbing
things off the shelves, and throwing them into the other cart. LJ began to
laugh uncontrollably.

“Whee!” he yelled.

“Shut up!” Tori yelled through clenched teeth.

As they reached the storefront, Jeremy noticed that the
parking lot’s occupancy was much larger than when they entered the store. There
were now several zombies wandering the parking lot. It was not until they got
through the doors and got outside, that he realized how bad the situation
actually was.

The parking lot was swarming with dead.

“Oh shit...”

The words slipped out of his mouth involuntarily. There was
anywhere between fifty to seventy-five z’s out there. He had yet to see that
many of them group together like that. It was as if the pharmacy’s alarm was
the dinner bell, and they were dinner. He noticed his mouth had dropped open.
He quickly closed it.

“We have to get out of here,” he said quietly.

“No, you think?” Tori shot back.

“HEY GUYS! LOOK AT ALL THESE FUCKING ZOMBIES!”

Tori put her hand over LJ’s mouth. He squirmed, so she put
him in a sleeper hold.

“Nighty-night LJ.”

He was out. Jeremy noticed that Lexx was trying to hide his
smile. Even Jeremy had to admit, it was a cool trick. The truck was not far and
most of the dead had not gotten that close to it yet. They pushed the carts to
the truck and began loading the groceries into the back. Tori ran quickly up to
the cab. She returned pumping a round into the shotgun. Once the men finished
loading the groceries, they struggled to get LJ’s dead weight into the back of
the truck. He flopped onto the deck, letting out a moan, which was answered by
other more-dead moans.

“Look out!”

Tori pushed Jeremy out of the way and blasted a zombie that
had wandered too close to the group. She took a huge chunk off the top of
homeboy’s head. His corpse fell with a thud. Ben and Lexx climbed into the
truck and began closing the door.

“Thanks,” Jeremy said.

“Don’t mention it. Now get us out of here,” she responded,
as she pumped another round into the barrel.

Jeremy ran for the cab. The closest zombie was ten feet away.
Too close for comfort. He left the keys in the ignition, just in case something
bad happened and they had to bug out quickly. The truck roared to life. It was
answered by more moans.

And then the shrieks came. Two of the runners, or pinkies,
came sprinting full speed across the parking lot. They pushed and shoved their
way through the crowd of grays, knocking over several of the less balanced
zombies. Jeremy didn’t give them much attention as he peeled out in the
delivery truck. The truck fish-tailed, and both Lexx and Ben could be heard
cursing in the rear.

He pulled the truck back out onto Highway 21 and headed west
towards Rincon.

They'd be somewhere safe by the day’s end.

This thought brought a smile to Jeremy’s face. Ben told them
that his parent’s house was on a well, so they would have fresh water, and no
shortage of it. They had plenty of generators and an old fuel tank full with
reserves. They even had a chicken coop. He could almost taste the fresh omelets
they’d be eating the next morning.

“What is that?”

Tori’s question brought Jeremy back into reality. She was leaning
forward and squinting, trying to make out something ahead of them. Jeremy began
looking at the wide, dark shape that went from one side of the highway to the
other. Something was blocking their way. It went all the way across the
four-lane highway. As they got closer, a chill shot down Jeremy’s spine as he
slowly realized what the shape was.

It was a massive group of zombies.

A solid wall of rotting flesh stretched from one road
shoulder to the other. As a group unit, they shambled towards the sound of the
alarm. Which put the truck right between the two. Jeremy brought the truck to a
stop.

“Turn around,” Tori said slowly.

He put the truck in reverse and turned the truck in the
opposite direction. Lexx was yelling, trying to figure out what was happening,
but both Tori and Jeremy ignored him for the moment. Jeremy began driving back
the way they came. He couldn’t help but to continue to look in his side mirrors
though. The dead were not moving quickly, but they were moving. It would only
be a matter of time before they reached them if they did not get out of there.

They neared the store and the zombies there were wandering
around the parking lot.

“What happened to the alarm?” Tori asked.

Jeremy listened. The alarm was off. The backup power source
must have run out. He looked back in his mirror. The group was still steadily
moving in their direction. It then dawned on Jeremy that the noise they were
being attracted to was not the alarm. It was the truck.

This idea of his was confirmed when he realized that the
dead in the parking lot were now also headed for the truck. He passed the
grocery store.

“Where are you going?” Tori asked. “Back to Savannah?”

“Where else can I go? We’ve got z’s coming from every
direction!”

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she yelled, pointing in front of them.

Another group of the undead, although not as large as the
one from the west, was making their way towards them down Highway 21. Jeremy
thought about weaving through them, but that would only lead them away from
where they wanted to be. And right smack dab back where they didn’t. So, he
made a split decision.

He turned onto the entry ramp of southbound I-95.

“The interstate? Are you crazy?” Tori screamed.

“Not a lot of choices here.”

“Man, this thing is gonna be packed, wall to wall cars!”

For once
, Jeremy thought.
I hope she is wrong.

***

She was. The southbound side of Interstate 95 was mostly
clear. There were some abandoned cars and the occasional semi, but for the most
part, pretty easy to navigate. The northbound side, on the other hand, was not
so lucky.

Traffic filled all three lanes. It seemed to go on for as
far as Jeremy could see. The cars were all passenger-less except where the
passengers were unable to leave. There were quite a few zombies still strapped
in by their seat belts. Blood covered the inside of windows where someone must
have turned inside their vehicle. Or where family members were forced to put
down one of their loved ones.

He looked over at Tori. She did not seem to be too upset
that she was wrong. Her eyes went from car to car on the northbound side. She
scanned for any threat lurking amongst the graveyard of vehicles. Jeremy
decided to ride in silence and save talking about what they were going to do
with LJ for later. For now, he’ll just focus on how to get to Rincon from 95.
He wasn’t too familiar with the area. Jeremy rarely came out this far west.
Downtown was normally as west as he got. Hopefully, Ben would know how to get
to his parents from here.

There was a banging on the wall separating the cab from the
back.

“Hey guys, you might want to pull over when you get a
chance,” Lexx said through the wall.

Jeremy looked at Tori.

“It’s clear. We can stop here. I’ll keep an eye out, while
you go see what’s going on,” she said.

He nodded, and brought the truck to a stop. He grabbed LJ’s
pistol from the console and walked to the back of the truck. His mind raced
with ideas of what could be wrong. Was LJ turning? Did he already turn and now
Jeremy had to finish him off? His hand gripped the pistol tight as he knocked
on the back door.

It slid open to reveal Lexx and a crouching Ben. Ben was
kneeling next to LJ; his hand on the man’s sweating forehead. Jeremy relaxed.
He wasn’t really ready for a mercy killing yet. Killing zombies was one thing,
but putting someone off so they don’t turn into a zombie? That still feels too
much like murder.

“What’s up?” Jeremy asked, as casual as he could muster.

“His fever’s getting worse. Ridin’ in the back of a truck
ain’t helping either,” Lexx said. He looked back at the man, who was still out
cold, but breathing heavily. His breaths were strained and wheezy. He didn’t
look good. He looked like death.

“Look, I hate to say it, but if we’re gonna need to stop
somewhere, we need to do it soon,” he continued. “I don’t think it would be
right to leave him, even though he did screw us over big time. I’ll handle
talking to Tori about it. You just find us somewhere to go. And quick.”

Lexx turned and looked back at LJ again and then back to
Jeremy. The change of heart in Lexx surprised Jeremy. Maybe Lexx was right
about himself and there really was more to him than his gruff exterior. Jeremy
was also sure that riding in the back with Ben had something to do with it too.
Or perhaps seeing the dying man.

They were near the exit ramp to Highway 80. Pooler, a suburb
of Savannah, was right there off the exit. There should be somewhere they could
go there. Jeremy ran his hand through his hair, searching his brain for
somewhere that would be safe. He went to walk back to the cab, but stopped.
That’s it. The answer to where they would stay was right in front of him.

On the other side of the congested northbound lane, down a
small slope, and past some small ponds, was a huge building with a glass front.
The whole front must have been windows. Backhoes and front loaders in striking
poses were dotted across the landscape. It was one of the largest construction
vehicle manufacturers in the world. And now, it was gonna be the place where
they spent the night.