Chapter 12
By failing to prepare,
you are preparing to fail
-Benjamin Franklin-
“Okay,” I agree, getting out of the car, Mathew has the ten gallon tank in his hand. I’m holding onto my knife so hard my fingers are starting to turn white, from lack of blood flow.
“What are we going to use to stifle the gas out of the car?” Kat ask, as she studies the abandon blue Nissan. Mathew holds up a hose and goes closer to the car.
We stay quiet and walk gradually up to the little car. Mathew goes around to the driver’s side and opens up the door.
“SHIT,” Mathew says loudly, taking two steps back from the open door.
His sudden burst of words making me jump,
“What, is it?” I ask, afraid I may already know the answer.
“There’s a dead women in the drivers seat, she was shot in the head, there’s blood all over the inside of the car.”
“How long has she been dead?” I question.
“A day, the heat is deposing the body faster.”
“Pop the trunk for me,” Kat asks, standing behind the car. The hood pops open and Kat searches through it. I stand near the car and keep watch.
Kat slams the trunk shut, “I found a flash light, two twenty four packs of water bottles, and a blanket.”
She carries everything back to the car and sets it in the back seat. She walks back to the front of the Nissan, holding the blanket in her hand, her hand is shaking, the expression in her face looks like she may break down right here in the middle of the street and cry.
“Kat, let me,” I ask stopping her. “I’ll cover her body.”
Kat quietly agrees, and hands me the blanket. I walk to the driver’s side door, slowly laying the blanket over the women.
Mathew is still messing with the gas tank, trying to stifle gas. Kat walks back to me and stands next to me.
“Finally, I got it to work,” Mathew says, frustrated.
“Hurry up please; I don’t like just standing out in the open like this. Plus I don’t like knowing this woman has a bullet hole in her head. This means there are other people close by. They would love nothing more than to steal our stuff,” Kat warns Mathew.
Several minutes later, Mathew announces he is done. As we are walking back to the car, we hear a loud popping sound coming from the street ahead of us. Gun shots ring out again, and again.
“Quick, get into the car,” Mathews says in a hurry. “Let’s back track down the street and hide the car,” Mathew says while slamming his door shut.
Mathew starts the car and puts it in reverse. We back track about a half mile down from where the abandon car was. Mathew drives down a side road and drives into the bushes. Bushes, scratch against the side of the car, my face cringes at the sound of each scratch that rubs against our car.
We sit in silence for what seems like forever, but is only minutes. I don’t hear any more gun shots. Hopefully it means that whoever was firing off the guns are long gone. Or far enough away for us to get away from here.
“Babe is it safe for us to leave?” I whisper to Mathew.
“I don’t know. I don’t know who those trigger happy people are or what they are shooting at, but I don’t want to drive down the street and run into them,” Mathew says uneasy.
“When should we leave?” Kat asks, her voice shaking.
“Let’s give it another hour or so, if we don’t hear anything then we will go.”
We sit in silence for the next forty five minutes, still not hearing anything. Mathew starts to turn the key and then I hear it.
I can hear loud drums, coming from music and gun shots, echoing through the air.
“Mathew don’t!” I scream in panic, when I hear the music go off again.
Mathew hand falls from the key in the ignition.
“I hear it too,” Kat whispers.
“I think its best we stay hidden. Once the sun goes down, we should take a walk to where the music is playing and see what’s going on.”
“Can’t we just turn around and go another way?” Kat asks.
“Let’s look at the map and see if there is another way.”Mathew says, while opening up the map.
“soooo, if we take Joshua street to angus road we will get to the little gas station in less than two hours. But if we back track to Air Express Way it should lead us to the corner of air express way and Dirt Street. But it’s eight miles out of the way.” Kat says, pointing at the map.
“Let’s wait until night fall. They might just pass us by. If they are still there and a threat, then we will take the other way”
I guess Mathew is right, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea walking over around in the dark. I guess we have to see what we are up against. If it isn’t this group of people it will be another group.
Around six in the evening, we can still hear people laughing and screaming. It sounds like they are having a party. We haven’t heard any gun shots in a while…. Maybe they ran out of bullets or are saving them. Either way this group of people are way too loud considering it’s a zombie apocalypse. Wouldn’t they be afraid of attracting zombies?
“Alright, we stay quiet and hidden, let’s see what these people are up too,” Mathew says to us. This is not how I imagined my vacation, being hunted by zombies and being scared of the human race.
It’s getting dark by the time we start walking towards the new group. We can hear their laughter, somewhere off in the dark, but we still can’t see their location. Mathew stops behind a tree and ducks, Kat and I follow behind him and duck behind a group of bushes.
“What do you see?” I whisper into Mathew’s ear.
Mathews face looks hard and stern, concentrating really hard, staring off in the dark, in front of us. His mouth is in a firm straight line, his breathing has slowed down.
“I see fire up ahead,” he motions with his head.
I try to look in the same direction, but see nothing but the dark sky. Kat nudges me and points towards a faint red and yellow glow. I finally see what they see; it’s a camp fire in a little opening in the bushes.
They don’t look so bad at the moment but knowing they still have guns worries me. Staying hidden for a little while longer, trying to studying the group in front of us.
I think I count ten of them, for what I can tell I can hear a woman’s voices, but can’t see where she is. Maybe it’s a family or something. Mathew signals us to follow him a little closer to their camp fire.
Mathew gets down on his belly and starts to crawl; I look back at Kat and nod my shoulders. I really don’t know what he’s doing but I’m not going to question him right now and give away our hiding spot.
Kat and I get down on our bellies and start to crawl towards Mathew. He finally stops about six feet in front of the group. Now that I can get a better look at them, there are six men and two women. They don’t seem to be any sort of threat.
“That lady in the little car had no idea we were coming.”
A little man on the left of the camp fire says, laughing and lifting a beer can to his lips, chugging it down. Then lets out a burp, you can hear it echoed throughout the quiet night.
“I enjoyed how she begged for her life before I shot her in the head,” Another man said sitting next to the little man on the left.
“I can’t wait to get my turn with that little red head we found,” The chubby man said coming out of a bush, zipping up his pants.
Chapter 13
We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones
They start laughing, as the little guy gets up from his lounge chair and grab a couple beers from an ice chest; he passes the beers around to the men sitting around the fire.
A scream echo’s out of the trees near the group’s camp site. The men start laughing again, “Mike must be having a field day with that one,” the chubby man says while sticking chewing tobacco in the corner of his mouth, sloshing a black chunk around and around.
Mathew signal’s for us to follow him, as he stays on his belly while he crawled away. My stomach starts to hurt from all the sticks poking at it on the dirt floor.
I feel my shirt riding up a little and I have to stop crawling to pull it down again. Kat must be getting scratched up because I can hear her a cry escape her mouth every couple seconds.
Mathew finally stands up and turns to help Kat and me off the floor.
“No one talks until we get to the car,” He whispers to both of us, his face looks nervous.
I can’t blame him, these guys seem ruthless and they don’t seem to care what they do to anyone. Are there even authorizes anymore? Or did they run away? What’s going on out there that we don’t know about? I hope my parents and my boys are ok.
We reach the car and quietly get inside, carefully trying to close the doors without making a sound.
“They have guns, lots of guns. I saw a couple duffle bags by their camp site. They seem to kill and obviously rape for sport.” Mathew says in disgust.
“Can we help that woman?” I question.
“No Sam we can’t, we are outnumbered and they have guns. There’s nothing we can do, if we try to save them, they could kill me and then rape you two.” Mathew says firmly, sounding irritated with my question.
Kat starts crying; pulling her close, and hugging her tight, trying to comfort her. I know Mathew is right, we can’t help that woman. But I feel so sorry for her.
“What do we do?” I ask as I look at Mathew.
“We go the other route and try to stay away from these guys.”
“When can we go?” Kat asks.
“Now, and hope they just ignore the sound of our car,” Mathew starts up the car, and drives down the dirt road we are on, ignoring the new scratches he’s sure to have on the car.
We turn onto the main road speeding off towards air express way. I turn around to look out the window, to make sure no one is following us. Hopefully those guys where too drunk to follow us.
Mathew looks so worried and tired. He’s filthy and he has dirt splotches on his face. Looking down at my clothes than at Kats clothes, noticing in just the two days that we have been in a zombie apocalypse it has already taking a toll on us.
Kats and my shirt are ripped around our belly button, where we were crawling on our stomachs, and our pants are full of dirt and dry blood. We need to soak in a bath tub, but I will settle with a change of clothes.
“Do you think once we’re a safe distance away we can change out of these nasty clothes?” I ask Mathew.
“Yes.”
I wish I knew what he was thinking, but I have never seen him act this way it scares me. I don’t say anything else as we keep driving down air express way.
“We need to make a right at Angus Street and go down at least three blocks and we will come to the gas station.” Kat reminds us.
We turn onto Angus Street and follow the directions on the map. I look out the window and see the stars and darkness. I don’t see any abandon cars or street lights. Kat was right this place is in the middle of nowhere. Pulling into the parking lot of the little gas station, the building looks haunted, run down, the paint is chipping off of the pumps.
“Should we get out and look inside of the gas station?” I ask Mathew.
“I think so, might be a good spot to sleep for the night.” Mathew says opening the door. “Be very quiet and don’t leave each other’s side.”
Kat grabs three flash lights and hands each of us our own. Walking up to the gas station slowly, I can’t hear anything but the soles of my shoes hitting the cement floor.
The name of the gas station is bobs Gas & Mart, the sign is creaking in the breeze; it hangs on by a thread, trying hard not to fall to the ground. The gas station is ancient, long forgotten by people.
The sign needs to be re painted, the cement has several pot holes in them. And the front door is chipped and has a piece of duck tape lining the crack in the glass. Mathew tries to pull the front door open but it doesn’t budge.
“There’s an exit in the back,” Kat whispers to us.
We slowly walk around to the back carefully, trying not to make too much noise. The exit door is on the side of the building.
Mathew pulls on the handle, this time it budges. He looks back at us and whispers
“Be ready.”
He opens the door an inch and shines his light inside, the mini mart looks like it hasn’t been touched. All the shelves are still fully stocked.
We keep walking through the building but see no one. “I don’t think anyone is here.”
“I will check the stock room just in case.” Mathew says while he is walking to the back of the mini mart.
I shine the light all around the room one more time and check behind the counter. Mathew comes out of the stock room, with bread and peanut butter and jelly.
Mathew loves his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Of course that would be the first thing he grabs.
“This place is still stocked up. Let’s spend the night here and eat in peace,” Mathew says smiling at me.
“What about the car?” I question “shouldn’t we pull it around the back so no passing car sees it parked in the front?”
“I’ll do that now, you ladies stay here. It will only take a minute.”
“NO! I will go with you, no one goes alone.” I say panicking, I’m afraid if he leaves my sight, I may never see him again.
“Okay, okay, geese don’t yell at me babe.” He says sarcastic.
I roll my eyes at him and turn towards Kat.
“Kat are you staying inside or coming with us?” she looks around and sits down on the floor with her flash light.
“I will stay and make us dinner.”
Mathew and I walk out the back door together. We stay quiet and jog to the car. We both jump in and drive the car around to the back of the building.
Unfortunately there is nowhere for us to hide the car, no trees, no bushes, just cement surrounding the gas station. The car being this close to the exit would make for an easy escape, if we need it.
We walk back inside of the gas station and See the floor is covered by candles. Three paper plates with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sits on the floor waiting for us to eat them. Next to the plates are three bottled waters. It looks so peaceful and the food looks so good!
My stomach rumbles out loud and I rub it like it would make it stop. I walk up to the candle light on the floor and sit down. I look for Kat but don’t see her anywhere.
“Kat where are you?”I call out, I look up at Mathew, he shrugs his shoulders.
“Kat where are you?” I yell a little louder.
“I’m here, I’m here. Don’t get your panties in a bunch Sam,” She says walking out of the back room with pop tarts in her hand. Mathew sits down next to me giggling and shaking his head.
“I was getting us desert.”
She lays down 3 chocolate pop tarts in the middle of us.
“Yummy” I say sarcastically rubbing my belly. Every one laughs and I’m about to take a big bite when it dawns on me….shouldn’t we say a prayer? We’ve made it this far in one peace.
“Wait let’s say a tiny prayer. To see us home safely,” I question, looking at Mathew and Kat, thinking Kat would disagree.
We bow our heads in prayer for a couple minutes and then we say amen together. I feel a little at peace after I finish my prayer. We dig into our peanut butter and jellies and our wonderful desert.
It‘s a small meal, but delicious just the same. As we finish eating our meals and throw our trash in the trash can. I look out the window and see someone walking past the gas station.
“Come here hurry.”
Mathew and Kat come walking up to me and look out the window.
“Is that a person or zombie?” I question.
“A zombie….look at the way it’s dragging its back leg. And look at its arm and how it is hanging by its side,” Mathew answers back.
“Does that mean they are near us or it’s a straggler?” Kat asks as she hurries and blows out the candles. The only light left inside of the store is the moon light shining into the building.