Plan B was born the moment I got to the hospital and saw zombies had taken over the parking deck and were coming out of the hospital entrance. Driving over to my truck, I saw a couple of zombies standing right there. They became very animated when they spotted me through the ambulance windshield.
That was when I decided the ambulance was going home with me. And wondered if this was the worst first workday in all of employment history.
Chapter Four
Mallory
As soon as I got off the phone with Annie, I switched what I was doing. Instead of focusing on my books, I headed into the kitchen. I pulled out some garbage bags and started throwing in food from the pantry.
Unfortunately, I’d planned on going to the store today. Before … well … everything. So the pantry was a little bare. I did get cereal, canned foods, and peanut butter. Then I realized I needed something to open the cans with, so I threw in a can opener. And all the while the sirens were blaring in the background.
There were no water bottles in the pantry so I dumped out every container I could find and filled them with water. Then I was left with a bunch of really heavy things to be dragged out to the Subaru.
I’d just filled all the containers when I heard a bunch of yelling in the parking lot at the other end of the row of apartments. “What’s going on?” I asked a woman who was standing nearby, hands clutched under her neck as she peered intently in that direction.
She shrugged a thin shoulder at me, not looking my way. “There’s some woman who’s flipping out. She’s trying to bite people. Somebody said she was … growling.” She gave the kind of dismissive laugh that wasn’t really dismissive at all—it was just baffled. “I called the cops, but no one is coming. Can you believe that? How busy could they be?”
Remembering all the sirens, I had a sinking feeling that they were a lot busier than she thought. That only strengthened my resolve to skip out of town and head for Annie’s spot in the country. There sure was a lot of yelling and screaming going on, that was all that I knew.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and I jumped violently. Whipping my head around, I wasn’t relieved at all to see Brendan there instead of the growling, attacking woman. Which just goes to show how I felt about Brendan.
His handsome, if rather spoiled, features were pointed into a frown. “Mallory? Why are you home in the middle of the day?” His eyes carefully avoided her bruise as if he weren’t quite ready to come to terms with his behavior yet.
I didn’t feel as if he deserved an answer. And now the neighbor I’d been talking to was suddenly more nosily interested in Brendan and me than the woman and the yelling and screaming at the other end of the parking lot. Her gaze traced the bruise around my eye.
“I just needed to come home briefly. I’m on my way out now, so I’ve got to run,” I said hurriedly. I dropped my keys and he bent to quickly pick them up, holding them tightly in his hand as he rose.
He turned to the Subaru and his eyes opened wide as he saw it was packed to the ceiling with not only my stuff, but also a whole lot of food and water. “You’re not leaving me, are you? Over some tiny misunderstanding?”
Now the neighbor folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against a nearby car. Settling in for the drama, I figured sourly.
“Brendan, just hand me my keys, please. I told you I need to run,” I said. I noticed Brendan’s hand grip my keys even more tightly—they must have been cutting into his skin.
Now he was angry. “So you sneaked over here during lunch to take all our stuff and leave? You don’t have the right to do that.”
“I have every right to do that,” I sighed. Why didn’t I see this side of him in the previous months that we’d dated? “And it’s not
our
stuff. It’s my stuff. Some of my things I even left there for you.”
His gaze narrowed again as he studied the things in my car. “Sure looks like a bunch of
my
food and a bunch of
my
containers with water in them.” He gave me a coldly calculating look. “I’m going to put this stuff back inside. We’ll talk it over after you get home from work.”
“No!” My voice was louder than I intended. “No. You
won’t
take it back in and we
won’t
talk it over tonight. There’s nothing to talk over.”
He didn’t respond to that, instead hitting my key fob and unlocking the Subaru. He proceeded to take out a suitcase of clothes, slam the car door back, hit the lock button, and started striding toward the apartment.
“Want me to call the police again?” asked the woman, head tilted to one side. “Maybe they’ll respond quicker with a domestic.”
“It’s not a ‘domestic’,” I said, the word distasteful in my mouth.
“Sure about that? That’s some shiner you’re sporting there,” said the woman in a somewhat sarcastic tone.
I was about to respond to that, but I never had a chance. Because right at that moment, the growling woman launched herself at Brendan.
The woman I was talking to gaped at them. Then she grabbed my arm. “Look!” she croaked.
The crowd of neighbors who’d been standing around watching the confrontation was now lurching toward us. There was blood covering them and their eyes looked hollow and soulless.
Brendan was screaming now, too, and dropped my suitcase and keys on the ground in his struggle to get away from the creature—she no longer appeared human—who was attacking him.
I didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t try to help Brendan. I didn’t call for help. Heart in my throat, I just edged up as close as I could while the thing … the zombie, unbelievable as it seemed … attacked him. As it was distracted, and as I was only feet away, I reached down and grabbed my keys. The suitcase couldn’t be recovered since it was lodged under Brendan.
“They’re coming!” shrieked the woman behind me as she ran off.
On legs that shook so hard I was terrified they’d collapse right under me, I fled for the car, locking the doors as I got in. It wasn’t a moment too soon as people—creatures—who used to be my neighbors converged on my car, eyes hollow, mouths slack, and moaning.
I stuck the key in the ignition and revved up the engine. I blared the horn. And then I thought,
really
? I’m treating these things as if they were human, or someone’s pet that I don’t want to run over. Who cares if these things get hit by my car on the way out? Maybe that will actually help to save some innocent person from being hurt by them.
It was good that I came so quickly to this realization. At that moment, the zombies started pounding on my car, so hard that I was afraid the glass might shatter. I put the car in reverse, pushed on the accelerator, and flew backward through the crowd of once-human creatures. Some of them were on my windshield, mouths moving wordlessly, eyes gazing hungrily at me. But then I hit the road as fast as I could, jerking my steering wheel from side to side to throw them off.
I looked at my hand where I’d written the address Annie had given me on the phone. 221 Crepe Myrtle Lane. Could I get the gas I needed to travel there? What about the roads? What kind of shape were they in? Would zombies overtake me? I had no idea if I could get there. But I was certainly going to try.
Chapter Five
Ty
After I threw the camping stuff in the van along with batteries, I felt like I was seriously running on borrowed time. I searched a couple of minutes for a gas can. I did play zombie video games and I knew the kind of problems I could run into. Like no gasoline. Or nothing to
put
gasoline in when you were lucky enough to find some. I discovered a spider web covered plastic red container in a corner of the garage and picked it up. It had what was probably a splash or two of gas in it, but at least I had a gas can. I put it in the back, too.
The zombies were still scratching and moaning outside the garage door. When I realized that these zombies could possibly be my parents, I thought my legs might fall from under me. Then I got it together. My parents were gone. Even if those things
were
my parents, it wasn’t the same. What I needed to do was get past them and get Ginny from the school before zombies attacked
there
.
I ran inside one more time to get my wallet. I had a feeling I didn’t need it anymore, that we were heading in a direction where driver’s permits and cash wouldn’t get us too far. But I’d just gotten my permit. I’d only, in fact, driven by myself twice. It wasn’t going to be the smoothest ride for Ginny, but it was going to serve its purpose.
I locked the door leading into the house—just in case someday I wanted to come back home. I didn’t want it overrun with zombies. I got in the car. I started it up. I locked the doors. I…yes, I put my seatbelt on. Then I took a deep breath and I hit the garage door opener.
It was an instant attack. Four or five of the things, a couple of them who used to be related to me, ran at the minivan. They put their bloody faces right up to the glass, scratching the panes with their fingers. And I put the car in reverse and backed up just as fast as I could, running over one or two of them as I did.
I drove off, wondering if that was going to be the last time I saw the house I grew up in. If the last sight of it was going to be my parents, arms reaching out for me hungrily.
I put it behind me. The next step was to get to Ginny’s middle school. And since there were police cars, ambulances and fire trucks whizzing by me, I figured the roads weren’t going to be too easy to drive. I pushed the accelerator, forgetting how sensitive it was. I zoomed past, almost into, a woman who stared at me as if I were a zombie myself. Hadn’t she ever seen a fifteen year old behind the wheel?
I fiddled with the radio to see if the news was picking up any stories about the zombies. The last thing I needed was for the middle school to go on lockdown. I could barely hear the radio over the sirens, so I turned the volume way up. “…some reports of a virus of some kind that may be spreading rapidly. It’s been suggested by a law enforcement spokesman that it could be related to rabies.”
Not. They only thought it was rabies because they couldn’t think of anything else that might make people attack and bite other people. Anybody could see it wasn’t rabies. Nobody was foaming at the mouth. And people got sick right after being infected—not like rabies, where it took a while.
I get to the middle school and pull right up to the front of the building, I fumble in the glove compartment for the notepad and pen that Mom always kept in there. I was still shaking so it took three tries for me to write:
Please release Ginny Parsons to her brother for an orthodontist appointment. Thanks, Shelia.
I hop out of the van, and run up to the school, clutching the note.
I took a deep breath, pushed my hair out of my eyes, and tried to look older. Old enough to be driving solo, old enough and responsible enough to have my sister released to my care. When you’re fifteen, this isn’t easy.
The office staff was already sort of looking sideways at me as I walked in. I remembered one of the women from when I was in middle school. She had short, blonde hair and wore a lot of makeup and was kind of staring at me as if she remembered me too … and didn’t think it had been that long ago either, even though I was already much taller than they were, and was a beanpole. So the very tall, very skinny look wasn’t helping me look older.
I cleared my throat and tried for a deeper pitch than my natural one. “Hi, I’m Ty. I’m here to pick up my sister, Ginny Parsons, for my parents. She’s a seventh grader.”
The blonde woman narrowed her eyes at me, thoughtfully. “Didn’t your parents send in a note with Ginny this morning? Usually they send in a note and then we have the student come to the office and wait for their
parent
.” She put a lot of emphasis on
parent
.
I nodded understandingly as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The whole time I’m thinking about how I probably only have minutes to get Ginny out of there—but that there’s no way they’re going to release her if they have
any
suspicion at all.
“Mom and Dad usually would send in a note at the beginning of the day. But they’ve been having sort of a rough time lately.” Especially today. I took a steadying breath. “I’ve been trying to help them out. They did send me with this note.”
I handed over the one I’d just written and the blonde woman scrutinized it, probably looking for shady grammar or misspelled words. But English was my best subject so I knew she wouldn’t find them there. She pursed her lips, looking at me thoughtfully. And the whole time it felt like my heart was going to beat its way out of my chest, I tried to look as if I couldn’t be less interested in taking my middle school kid sister to her orthodontist appointment.
The blonde woman exchanged glances with the other woman in the office, a woman with large red-framed glasses and a ponytail, and then back at me. “Let me make sure that you’re an authorized person to pick her up. Your parents would have had to sign a form at the beginning of the year that you were authorized for us to release your sister to you.”
My breath caught in my throat. Because there was no way that my parents would sign something like that. Why would they when I wasn’t even driving on my own yet?
But the woman with the ponytail said to the blonde lady, “Hey, I’ve been in this situation myself. The nerve of the doctor’s office to charge for missed visits! We should charge
them
for making us wait so long in their office. Our time is just as valuable as theirs. I’ll buzz her on the intercom. What’s her name again?”
I told her and she picked up a phone, punching some numbers. “Mrs. Thomas? Could you send Ginny Parsons to the office, please? She has an appointment. Thank you.”
I tried to keep my face from showing the relief I felt.
The blonde woman was looking pretty sour that I’d gotten my way. “You’ll need to sign your name here to authorize her being released. I don’t suppose you know your sister’s student ID?”
Was she kidding? I was doing well to know
my
student ID. Was this the kind of stuff Mom and Dad were expected to know? No wonder they kept forgetting everything … there was no room left in their brains. Then I remembered the last time I saw Mom and Dad. I immediately took out my phone to look at Twitter and to forget my parents.