“Looks like we’re going camping?” Mindy asked smiling.
“Yea we just need to find something to cook. All the meat in here is bad.”
“There’s canned meat,” she said with a grimace.
“Yea, but it’s not very good. But we might not have a choice. After a while even all of these canned goods aren’t going to be edible.”
She nodded.
We found some canned meat. We both grimaced when I put it in the cart. We also tossed a case of bottled water, some pain killers, some bandages, a big pack of toilet paper, and a fifth of Jack Daniels into the cart.
At the front of the store, Mindy helped me move some of the corpses out of the way so we could push the cart out to the front of the store. Outside, we left the cart sit while we walked around in the parking lot looking for possible cars or vans to use for the continuing trip east.
Mindy laughed “I used to drive one of
these.” She was pointing at a Ford Tempo.
“Nice. I used to drive a
Geek Squad
bug.”
She laughed.
Stopped. We both looked at one another.
We kissed. Her lips were soft and warm against mine.
“I’m glad I got to meet you, Dan” she whispered.
I hugged her and said “I’m glad I got to meet you too, Mindy.”
“I was scared for you when they took you away from us in the base.”
“I was fine.”
We hugged for a minute longer.
“Hey!” she said, “Hey we can take that!”
As I still held her, I looked over my shoulder at what she was pointing at. It was a Nissan
Xterra.
“Yea!”
I said. We both ran over to it. It was unlocked, but there were no keys in the ignition. “Damn we need the keys.”
“Hold on,” she said. She got in, looking through the center console. “Some of these older cars used to have push button ignitions.
If the person who owned this car left their
…yes
!” She held the key up. “They left it in here!” She depressed the brake, pushed the ignition button next to the steering wheel and the SUV started. I was surprised that the battery wasn’t dead.
“Awesome! Let’s get the groceries.”
She unlocked the door for me. I got in and we drove over to the cart. When the groceries were loaded, Mindy drove back across the street to the hotel. The van wasn’t in the parking lot. Ski and Cindy were gone.
“Where did they go?”
Mindy asked me, her eyes wide.
“I have no idea. They were just here. We weren’t gone that long.”
“Oh God, Dan.”
“Just relax,” I said. “I’m sure they didn’t go far.”
“We shouldn’t have split up,” Mindy said. “Dammit I hope they’re ok.”
We sat there in the gray hotel’s parking
lot. It was almost dark now.
“Well, let’s look around for them,” I said.
“They couldn’t have gone far.”
Mindy nodded. She drove east to the end of town. We had to go around a bad wreck in the middle of the street as we drove. We passed gas stations and small shops, but we
didn’t see the van anywhere. “God Dan, I hope the army didn’t get them,” Mindy said. “What if the guys who let us escape changed their minds and they came back for us? And we weren’t here so they only took Cindy and Ski?”
“I don’t think Ski w
ould let that happen,” I said.
Mindy turned around at the east end of tow
n. We went back to the hotel.
I said “Let’s eat something while we wait.”
She nodded again. I got out, opened the hatchback, and rummaged through some of the stuff we found. I grabbed two small cans of peaches with pop-open tops. I also got two bottles of water and some plastic forks.
Back in front, Mindy was crying.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I said. “They’re strong.”
A dead was at my window. It slammed in
to the window hard enough to shake the SUV. Mindy screamed. I saw that it had dried white paint all over its arms. Its teeth were wet with fresh blood.
Where the hell is the tire iron?
I thought crazily
. In the shopping cart!!
The cart was still in the parking lot a
cross the street at the store.
“Go to Safeway quick!” I hollered at Mindy.
She shoved the SUV into gear. We tore out into the street. She screamed “Did you see them??”
“No the tire iron is in the cart still!”
“Oh shit!”
She sped through the parking lot to the
front of the store. The cart still stood there, untouched. I spun out of the passenger side door. Quickly I grabbed the tire iron then jumped back into the car.
“That zombie was bloody!”
Mindy cried. “It had fresh blood on it!”
“It could have been from anything!” I yelled closing the door “Let’s go kill it.”
Mindy put the car into park. She started crying loudly. “Oh Ski,” she cried. “Cindy…”
“They’re fine!
C’mon!”
The dead
was shambling toward us. His hands were outstretched.
I flipped the door open again. As I stepped around the door, I swung out. I whacked the dead with a low underhand arch. The tire iron came up, smashing the deads jaw upward into its face. It went down.
Back in the SUV I tried to comfort Mindy. She was so distraught. I was scared, too. What had happened to Cindy and Ski?
I finally convinced Mindy that we would have to look for them in the morning. It was starting to get too dark. We were still sitting in the
Safeway parking lot. We needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
She drove into the parking lot of the gray hotel.
“We should sleep right here in the parking lot,” she said.
I sighed, agreeing. “Yea we shouldn’t leave. We
really
could get lost from one another if we did.”
“Yea
.” She reached to the side of the seat, pulling a lever. Her seat reclined backward. I did the same with mine.
She sat up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. She locked the doors.
She lay back down. We looked at each other, listening for anything, as the world grew darker around us. Her eyes were serious. There were no smiles.
She slept after a while. I listened to her breathing when it got too dark to see.
I stayed awake for a long time.
Listening.
I woke up in very dim morning light. It was before dawn.
The SUV was surrounded by deads. They didn’t know we were in there. They were simply shuffling along, going nowhere. They grunted every now and then, some higher whimpers, some low like they were choking on vomit.
Their shoes scuffed along. They all walked around like they had no meaning to do anything.
What went through their heads
, I wondered
. Did they think
? Did they have any idea that they were dead? What was it that drove them to constantly scavenge for flesh or blood?
Washburn had said that we all had the MCON virus. What the hell did MCO
N stand for and what did it do? I didn’t feel like a dead. I didn’t want to eat flesh. I felt fine, not sick. My brain didn’t hurt. I didn’t even feel ill at all, not even a fever or rash or anything.
I wondered if the Air Force base was something that had been pre-planned. Marge
had said that the place looked new. Had it been revamped? And if so, what for? I wondered if some psycho military officer had launched the nuke after he had seen his wife or family get eaten by a group of deads. Maybe it was his payback to humanity. Maybe Washburn was totally out of his mind and ordered the murder of all mankind because of someone he lost…or didn’t want to lose? Was someone on the plane that he wanted dead? Or maybe he was trying to stop the plane or someone from going to Kansas City.
I could go on guessing forever…
We didn’t have much time. We needed to get moving.
I laid there, listening to the shuffle of the feet. Listen
ing to the gurgles and whines.
Where was Ski and Cindy?
Mindy was starting to stir. I put my hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide.
“Quiet,” I whispered. “
Shhh
.”
She stayed lying down but looked around. She saw all the deads.
“Let’s go!” I whispered.
Her eyes told me she still didn’t want to leave.
“We need to get away from here!” I whispered a little louder this time.
“Just wait,” she whispered.
We waited a while. The deads were slowly moving to the west. It didn’t look like they were doing it on purpose, just meandering that way.
By the time the sun was up, the deads had moved pretty far off into the distance.
Mindy grabbed the can of peaches I had given her the night before. She popped open the lid.
The dead with the broken jaw suddenly attacked Mindy’s side of the car. It clawed the window
with its white painted hands.
Its face was caved in from the chin upward. The tire iron must not have crushed high enough up into the deads skull to end its existence. Mindy dropped the can of peaches. She started the engine of the car.
A van pulled up right next to Mindy’s side of the car. The van was so close it smashed the dead between the vehicles. The crushed dead fell to the ground.
The passenger window of the van rolled down. It was Cindy and Ski.
Mindy quickly rolled her window down too. “Where the hell have you been?” she shouted.
Ski looked at Cindy in confusion.
“What the hell you talking about?”
“You scared the shit out of us, Ski!” Mindy cried. “We thought you guys left us…we don’t know what happened!”
“We wouldn’t leave you!” Cindy said. “We went down the street and found a better hotel. It wasn’t ground floor like this one. That’s what we said we were going to do!”
I said “We slept out here all night waiting for you to show up. Did you guys even
look
for us?!”
“We saw you go into the fucking store” Ski shouted. “We left a fucking note for you right on the god-damn front desk of this hotel.”
“A note in the office? How were we supposed to know you did that? And how come you didn’t come looking for us?” Mindy cried.
Cindy and Ski looked at one another. Ski said “Shit, I don’t know. We thought you guys would find the note and come to the hotel down the road. We figured you’d be safe. We found a room and pretty much went right to sleep.”
Mindy was angry. “I can’t believe you left us.”
“Jesus Mindy”
he said. “How were we to know?”
“It’s called wa
tching each other’s backs, Ski! It’s called being careful and not separating from one another.”
Ski said “You guys went for food. We went after somewhere to sleep. I’m sorry for
upsetting you.”
Mindy looked at me, tears running down her cheeks. I looked at Ski. He looked mad but with a lot of questions on his face. He asked “Did you even see the note I wrote?”
“No man,” I said. “We didn’t even go inside.”
“We’re sorry guys,” Cindy said.
“We were worried sick about you,” Mindy said. “We thought you were gone.”
“Well we’re all together now. Here.” Ski reached into the back seat of the van. “I found these in a pick-up down the road.” He held up a pistol as well as a hunter’s rifle with a scope. “Mindy, give this to Dan.”
He handed the pistol to Cindy who handed the pistol through the window to Mindy. She held it for a minute, feeling its weight.
She said “I should shoot you with this, Ski.”
“Oh Jesus,” he said. “We had a case of mis-communication. That’s all.”
She handed the gun to me and said “We need to get going. They’re gonna blow that nuke off and we’re still in range of it.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “We still need gas though.”
Mindy looked at the gas gauge. “”We’re at three-quarters of a tank here. What do you got?”
Ski said “Less than a quarter.”
“We could siphon yours into ours,” Mindy said.
“There’s a gas station over there,” Ski said, pointing. There was a Shell station on the south side of the road.
Cindy suddenly said quite plainly “Oh shit.”
Ski touched her arm. “What?”
She was looking in the passenger side rear-view mirror. In it she saw a great light trailing up into the western sky.
The nuke had been launched.