Forget The Zombies (Book 2): Forget Texas (9 page)

I laid there, looking up stars, panting, and was grateful that I lived yet again to fight for another five minutes. It turned out that five minutes was really one as a shadow moved over me. I started to bring my gun up when a voice shouted at me.

“Grant, Grant, Grant, don’t shoot me, dude!” It was Jay. Two more silhouettes moved in over me.

“You need help getting up, bro’?” Huck asked, holding out a hand.

The sound of doors slamming and feet on the pavement came next. I turned my head to see Sammy, Joni, and a couple others running towards us with weapons in hand.

I reached up and took Huck’s hand and he pulled me up. A shooting pain in my butt and down my leg protested the move, but I knew I couldn’t lie there all night.

Joni was the first to reach us with Sammy right behind. She looked me over with wide eyes, then plunged into me, hugging me tightly. “Oh my God,” she said. “At first, I thought they’d shoot you, then I thought I’d ran you over.”

“No, I survived on both accounts,” I said as Joni pulled away from me. “Thanks to the quick thinking of these guys.” I pointed to Jay, Huck, and Jane.

The three of them looked to me and then to each other.

“You guys took off from the truck right away when you saw trouble. That was quick thinking. Then you put down the glow sticks as a distraction, right?” I asked.

“No, man,” Jay said. “I thought the cops were going to bust me for my pot. We just ran.”

“And the glow sticks?” I asked.

“I was ditching my bags of pot and the glow sticks were still in my satchel. They just fell out by accident as we ran,” Jay said, looking a little sheepish.

I looked up to the heavens and apologized to God for thinking he wasn’t looking out for me. I also thanked him for His sense of humor.

I looked back down at them and asked, “But you did shoot at them?”

Jane spoke up this time. “Oh yeah, that was me. I saw that they were about to shoot your ass, so I took some shots at them. Pretty kick ass, right?”

“Have you ever fired a gun before?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “but we play a lot of Halo.” She looked to Huck and Jay who put out their fists and she fist-bumped each of them.

I cocked my eyes skyward, again.
Really, God?

“Help!” A voice shouted in the night. The voice was coming from back near where the roadblock used to be.

“That has to be the guy I shot,” I said and started toward the man. My leg and butt cheek pounded with pain causing me to limp. “Sammy, can you make sure the truck is secure? A couple of the guys at the roadblock ran away when they saw Joni coming at them with the truck.

“Sure, Grant,” Sammy replied and took off in the direction of the truck.

“Are you hurt?” Joni asked.

“More my pride than anything,” I said. “The cop shot me in the ass. It’s not bad. I think it just grazed me.”

“But still,” she said, moving in beside me and nudging her way under my arm, “I can take some of the weight off your leg.”

Each step ached, but Joni’s support took some of the pressure away. I was grateful for the help, plus having her next to me was sort of nice.

“Help me!” the voice cried out again.

“Hold your horses,” I said. It took another twenty steps before were next to the guy lying in the road holding his leg.

He was rolled into a ball on the ground, his face contorted in pain. He held his leg tightly as blood coursed between his fingers.

“You son of bitch,” he said looking through squinted eyes at me, “you shot me.”

“That I did,” I said. “But I would imagine that you and your cop friend would have shot me in due time.”

“That was all Harley’s idea. He sort of got out of control after the zombies started showing up.”

“And you opposed him by taking me hostage at gunpoint? That doesn’t sound like you were working against him all that hard.”

“You had to go along with him or else he might shoot you,” the man said.

“Like you had no will of your own? Did you ever consider shooting him?”

Joni shifted away from me and I nearly fell down because I had become accustomed to her support.

“Oh my God,” she said.

She fixated on the two bodies in the road, her face caught in a grimace. It was the cop and the other man. Both of them were badly crushed with broken bones and a lot of blood. They had been pulped when the truck rolled over them.

“I did that?” she asked. “With the truck?”

She broke away from me and rushed to the other side of the road where she started vomiting. Killing a live person for the first time rocked her. It wasn’t easy for me. In my entire career, I had only shot and killed one person. One of my protectees thought he had been tracked down by someone he had testified against. I was back on his protective detail when a hitman showed up. He wasn’t expecting my guy to have protection. It got ugly and I shot the hitman. You’d think in my career, that I would be prepared for something like that, but I saw the light go out behind the hitman’s eyes for several months in my dreams. Periodically, his face still comes back to as I suspect some of faces of the men at that roadblock will, but in this new zombified world, it was us or them - living or dead.

“You going to help me or not?” the man asked.

“Are there more people like your cop friend in town?”

“He was sort of the ringleader.”

“So, you’re saying that if we go into town, we’ll be okay?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What about the guys who ran from the roadblock?”

“They’re chicken shits. They won’t bother you.”

“You sure of that? Because I’m not. Here’s the deal. We just need to fill-up our truck and get out of town. If you tell us where and how to do that, we’ll help you out and be on our way. If not, we’ll let you bleed out. That’s our final offer.”

He agreed. What choice did he have?

We bandaged his leg and he acted as a navigator, guiding us around the side streets to his farm on the north side of town where we were able siphon enough diesel fuel off one of his tractors to fill the truck. That’s where we left him as we drove off into the night.

My ass ached and every time we went over a bump. It felt like someone was spanking me with a barbed whip dipped in acid. Joni noticed my grunts and once we were a safe distance out of the town, she insisted that we pull over.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Keep going.”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re whimpering like a baby.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too.”

She stifled a laugh. “Listen here, Chief, I’m driving, so we’re stopping. No ifs, ands, or buts. We need to take a good look at the wound.” A sign for a rest stop loomed just ahead off the side of the road and slowed down, easing us into the rest stop. It was a small one, with bathroom and a picnic area. A small grove trees sat behind it. There were no other cars there.

“You just want to look at my ass,” I said.

“There’s that,” she said and smiled.

It turned out that Rosalita got that pleasure. Before she had retired, she had worked in a nursing home, and, as she stated,
‘had learned a thing or two about taking care of old people’s culos.’”

There was no escaping the indignities of the zombie apocalypse.

“It is not that bad,” Rosalita said as I bent over a picnic table with my butt hanging out. The others were milling around the truck, but I could swear that Joni was watching intently from off to the side.

“Just a graze,” Rosalita said as she worked on me with a first aid kit she discovered in the back of the truck. “You have a nice groove in your cheek now.”

“There goes my modeling career,” I said trying to maintain some dignity. That’s when she poured alcohol over the wound and I let out a yelp.

I could swear I heard Joni laugh.

After I was all bandaged up, it was decided that we’d we camp there until morning. With the breakout from the camp, the long drive, and the run-in with the rednecks, we were all wrung out. The consensus was that we would all be better off if we started fresh in the morning. I certainly didn’t object.

I worked with Randell and Sammy to arrange guard duty. I volunteered for the first watch, but Joni demanded that I rest. So, off to rest I went.

As I limped to find a place just behind small bathroom, Jay sidled up beside me.

“Hey Grant man, you need anything for the pain?” he asked. “I’ve got some good stuff in my bag here.” He patted his shoulder satchel.

“No, thanks,” I said. I’ll be fine.”

“If you change your mind,” he said, “I’m always here.”

I found a soft place on some bristly grass and eased myself onto it. It was hard to get comfortable, but I figured out a position after a minute and closed my eyes. The events of the days played out in a macabre theater behind my eyes making it difficult to really shut down. I considered taking Jay up on his offer, but utter exhaustion took over and I drifted down into sleep.

I don’t know how long I was out, but I awoke to the touch of a hand on my shoulder. Initially, I thought the worst, jerking up my arm up, until a voice shushed me.

It was Joni. Her face hovered over mine, silhouetted against the moon which hung as flat and bright as a silver plate in the cloudless night sky. I could see the slightest bit of the glint of light in her eyes.

“Grant, I killed those men,” she said, her voice far away. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life. Never even hurt anyone, really.”

“This won’t make it all that easier, but it was us or them,” I said. “They were bad guys. You weren’t up there with me. I doubt if any of our men would have made it out of there alive and what would have happened to women…I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Is that what I have to do? Make them evil?”

“You do whatever you have to do. This world isn’t going to make it easy on us. If you can find a way out, I say take it.”

“I’m tired of all this,” she said. “All the dying. All the running. What kind of effect is this having on my kids?” Something caught in her voice.

I sat up even though it shot a pain down my backside and tentatively reached a hand up to touch her shoulder. She collapsed in on herself and then into me as she choked back sobs, not wanting anyone else to hear.

I was out of my element. Way out. The last woman I had consoled was the one that broke up with me on my birthday a year ago. I was weak when it came to women crying, but also felt about as useful as a Dixie cup of cold water tossed on raging fire. The tears came and I wrapped my arms around her, trying to help her ride them out. Her body bucked with each wave of wracking sobs. A part of me wanted to join in, but that wouldn’t help her or anyone else, plus it would be breaking the man code.

The sobs lessened with each round until she finally got them under control. I gently patted her back for about a minute, stopping when I sensed that she was ready to pull away.

“Look at me,” she said. “I must look horrible.”

“The zombie apocalypse isn’t a beauty pageant, you know.”

“But still,” she said as she wiped at her eyes and pulled herself together. I thought she was about to get up when she reached and touched my face. “You cut your cheek.”

“When the cop was shooting at me, I caught some asphalt there,” I said.

She moved into take a closer look. “Do you want me to get something to clean it out?”

“No,” I said, “it will be fine.”

She pulled back, but not all the way, ending up with her face only inches from mine. Her hand stayed on my cheek gently caressing it and I sort of liked it. Her eyes locked onto mine and she looked at me as if she were seeing me the first time. Something passed between us and we stayed there for several seconds. I forgot about the pain and it was just the two of us.

She made the first move, pushing her hand back into my hair and gently pulling me towards her as she closed her eyes. I closed my eyes, too and our lips met.

It was nice as everything melted away, including the past few days. There were no people around us. No zombies ready to munch down on us. No menacing rednecks. No dead or dying friends.
And, Toto, it seemed like we weren’t in Texas anymore.

I don’t know how long our kiss lasted, but it seemed like forever. It also felt like only a millisecond. A warm tingling started rising within me and that’s when the real fireworks started.

Well, not really fireworks. More like gunshots. Three shots to be exact.

“Zombies!” Someone shouted.

Dammit! Do zombies have to ruin everything?

We broke apart but despite whatever danger lurked out there, we sat still for another few seconds, just looking at each other.