Claire tapped me on the shoulder. “John. Couple of zombies on the sidewalk.”
I looked where eagle-eye Claire was pointing. Sure enough, about half a dozen undead were shambling towards us from the courthouse steps. It was too unsafe to scrounge for supplies. We would have to move on.
“Let’s get out of here. It’s not safe to stop and look around with all these dead guys walking around,” I said to Claire as I turned the bike around towards the road.
“Yeah. Looks unfriendly.” She got my rifle ready, just in case we were rushed.
I got to the road and slowly opened the throttle. The big scooter began to pick up speed as we started to leave the zombified town behind us. As we passed by the side of the courthouse, two more undead slowly came out to the sidewalk. The town was really infested.
All of a sudden, the scooter misfired. It rolled a few more feet under power, and then it died.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. The one time I needed the bike to work, and it died under me. I pushed the starter button over and over, but it would not start. I now had at least eight Yellow-Eyes bearing down on me and no way to escape.
“What happened? Why won’t it start?” Claire looked like she was about to panic. She glanced nervously at the approaching monsters, and gave me my rifle back. They were very decomposed and moving slow, but were advancing at a steady pace towards our position.
“Don’t know.” I looked around for the closest place where we could hide. “Let’s go for that cellphone store.”
Claire and I started to run. “What about the scooter?” she yelled back at me.
“Leave it. We’ll try and get it later.” One of the Yellow-Eyes got too close, so I dropped him with a rifle shot to the side of his head.
Claire reached the phone store first. She threw open the door and ran inside. I took out two more zombies, then joined her. Claire and I crouched the window and peeked outside. We were both breathing hard, and I could almost hear Claire’s strong young heart beating in her chest.
We watched as the remaining walking corpses approached the bike. They milled around it looking for a meal. A few zombies lifted their heads to sniff the air to try and pinpoint where we were hiding. It looked like they didn’t know where we were. I breathed a little sigh of relief. After a few anxious minutes, the zombies returned to their aimless shambling on the sidewalk of the town square.
The crisis was over for now. I still had the problem of getting the bike inside, but at least we were safe.
Claire slumped down and sat on the floor. “Geez, that was close. That could have got ugly.”
I sat down next to her. “Yeah. The whole damn town is infested. One of the worst I’ve seen.”
She turned and looked at me as we sat there. “What’s the plan, Tiger?”
I didn’t have a plan. I tried to think of something, but I was still sweating from the close call outside. My stomach was churning with fear. I put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Let’s just sit here and collect ourselves. We can check out the store later. Maybe I can get the bike inside in a few minutes.”
Claire patted me on the leg. “Sounds good.”
We sat on the floor of the store surrounded by about a thousand dead cellphones for about forty-five minutes. We sat in silence, each contemplating our situation. We were in quite a pickle. With all the dead guys around, it would be a tough walk out of town. I had to find a way to get the scooter inside so I could make repairs.
Claire got up, walked over to one of the phone displays, and picked up a small pink phone. “I had a phone just like this.” She turned the little phone over in her hand. “Oh, cool. This one has the better camera. Mine took sucky pictures.”
Hearing Claire talk about phones kind of snapped me out of my funk. I got up and joined her at the sales stand. “Yeah, but did you call any body with it?” I asked, with a sarcastic tone.
She smiled a bit. “Oh no, John. I never used it as a phone. Nobody ever used their cellphones to call anyone.”
We shared a weak laugh. Our senses of humor were still working.
We walked around and checked out the store. There was nothing much of value. Just useless phones, tablets, and other dead gadgets piled on the floor. Maybe one day, if the cell tower grid is ever reactivated, these antiques might come in handy.
I turned my attention to getting the scooter. Claire and I stood by the door and waited for a monster-free opportunity to grab the bike. My plan was to burst outside, get the bike, and roll it inside the store. I stationed Claire by the door so she could quickly let me inside.
I rehearsed the actions in my mind:
grab the bike, stow the kickstand, roll it inside quickly …
grab the bike, stow the kickstand, roll it inside quickly …
grab the bike, stow the kickstand, roll it inside quickly …
I went over and over it in my mind. When I was ready, I nodded to Claire. “Close the door and lock it till I get back with the scooter, okay?”
“Okay.” She looked nervous. “Do I really have to lock the door?”
I pulled my handgun, and got ready to go. “Yes. We don’t want any zombies forcing their way inside.”
Claire took a deep breath and opened the door. I ran out onto the sidewalk, making a beeline for the scooter. I reached the bike without incident, threw up the kickstand, and started back to the store. The return trip would be the tricky part. To push the heavy scooter, I had to put my gun away and use both hands, so I would be defenseless on the way back. I took a quick look at Claire in the doorway. She was ready to open the door. I shoved the big bike towards the store as fast as I could. It felt like it weighed a ton.
I was almost to the door when a heavily decomposed Yellow-Eye suddenly blocked my path. He stood right in front of the door on the sidewalk. His twin yellow eyes fixed on me like the headlights of an old car. I think he even licked his lips as he anticipated making a meal out of me, but that might have been my imagination. I saw Claire draw her gun and start to unlock the door. I took one of my hands off the bars and waved frantically at her to stop. No sense getting her involved.
The Yellow-Eye focused on me and began to advance, making happy zombie noises. I could feel a few more undead bearing down on me. I had to do something soon or I was dead, so I used the only weapon I had on hand at the time.
I ran the Yellow-Eye over with the scooter.
I put my head down, grabbed the bike, and used it like a battering ram. The zombie went down on the sidewalk. As I rolled the scooter over him, I could hear the sickening sounds of rotten bones crunching beneath the wheels. The back wheel caught him in the head and caved in his face. The sidewalk in front of the store was now awash in blood, old rotten clothing, and zombie body parts. I guess he was a little more brittle than he looked.
Claire unlocked the door and threw it open. I pushed the now fluid-encrusted bike into the store. I put the kickstand down while Claire closed the door and shot the lock. I collapsed to the floor. That little trip outside had been rough.
Claire rushed to my side. “John! You okay?”
I slowly rose to my feet. I felt a little woozy. “Yeah. I’m okay. I think I got the bike dirty.” I felt my stomach begin to churn again.
Claire grabbed my arm. “It’s okay. A little wax and it will be good as new.”
While I rested and tried to feel better, Claire prepared two meals from our shrinking MRE supply. As she prepared our dinner, she kept making worried glances in my direction. “You sure you’re okay John? You look a little pale.”
“Yeah. I’m okay. I must be coming down with something.” Actually, I felt like crap. I hoped it wasn’t the flu. The flu could be bad news without any doctors around. If the number one killer of humans in this new world was the undead, number two was the influenza virus. Sickness had wiped out a lot of survivors during the outbreak.
I was able to eat a little, but by the time I was finished I was really sick. My stomach turned, and I was running a little fever. Claire insisted I lie down, but I wanted to see if I could fix the scooter. I gathered up some tools, and took the panels off to access the motor. A quick diagnosis revealed that the motor wasn’t getting any fuel. After about an hour or so, I found the problem. The fuel filter had clogged and killed the motor. I didn’t pack any replacements, so I washed off the old one with some bottled water and returned it to the engine. With my hasty repair complete, I reassembled the scooter, and tried to turn it over. It fired into life on the first try.
Now I was really feeling lousy. The stomach cramps and fever were joined by stuffed-up sinuses and overall body aches. There was no denying it now. I was sick. Claire touched my forehead to check my temperature. “Oh boy, Tiger. You’re burning up. You need to lie down.”
It was getting dark outside, and the bad guys were circling. Someone had to keep watch. “I’m okay. Someone needs to keep a lookout.” I started to set up a post at the window, but a wave of nausea hit me like a wrecking ball.
“Oh, no. Not tonight. I’ll be the lookout. You’re going to bed,” Claire said sternly. “Give me the rifle.”
I was going to refuse, but she wasn’t going to let me. She stood in my way with her arms crossed: a five-foot-nothing, one-hundred-pound roadblock. “All right. You win. Please wake me up if something happens,” I said, handing her my rifle. “Also, please don’t shoot yourself by mistake.”
Claire checked the rifle’s magazine. “Ha ha, sick boy. You need to lie down now.”
She led me over to a clear spot on the floor. I really was feeling bad now. I hoped a few hours sleep would help me shake it off. To help speed it along out of my body, I took a few antibiotics from our medicine stash. I placed my backpack under my head for a pillow. I’d been sick a few times since the outbreak, but never like this.
Claire sat on the floor next to me. ”Comfy?”
I nodded. “Very comfortable.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Good. Just get better.” She smiled and blushed a little.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. It just occurred to me that this is the exact same situation as the jewelry store the night we met. It was reversed. Remember? I was the one on the floor that night.”
“I remember.” That night seemed so long ago. Claire and I had been through a lot since then: Mollie’s Place, the firehouse, Glenn, the Highwaymen. Now I was waylaid by possible flu. I guess it’s true when they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I bet “they” never had to face a horde of undead ghouls.
Claire stayed with me until I drifted off to sleep. It was a deep sleep, full of horrible dreams of zombies and Highwaymen doing all sorts of nasty things. A freshly-dead Glenn also showed up to haunt me. I must have been talking or yelling in my sleep, because at one point Claire had to wake me up. When I opened my eyes though, it wasn’t Claire. In my sick state of mind, she had become my wife Gia. Claire’s auburn hair was replaced by Gia’s long red flowing locks. It was such a powerful hallucination that I could almost smell that flowery body spray that Gia always used. Instead of Claire’s sparkling blue eyes, it was Gia’s smoky deep brown ones gazing into mine.
“It’s okay John. You’re really sick, that’s all.” It was my dead wife’s voice I heard, not Claire’s. “You’ll be all right.” It was Gia, not Claire, who placed the cold-water compress on my head and held my hand.
Even as sick as I was, I knew it wasn’t Gia. My fevered brain was playing a cruel joke on me. I begged her to forgive me. “I’m sorry, Gia. Please forgive me. Gia … Gia … I …”
“It’s okay, John. I’m sure she didn’t suffer.” My hallucination ended, and I saw Claire again. She put her arm around me and brought my head to her chest. “There’s nothing you could have done. It all went to hell pretty fast, and it was out of your control. I’m sure she’s at peace.” I couldn’t help myself, and cried uncontrollably on Claire’s chest for a few minutes. She stayed at my side until I fell back into a troubled sleep.
When I got up the next morning, the sun was already above the trees. I estimated that it was about 9 o-clock or so. I felt a little better. It must have been a mild case of food poisoning or something. The fever had broken sometime in the night, and the stomach pains had gone away. My head still felt like it weighed about a hundred pounds, but at least I could stand up and walk around. The sleep and the antibiotics had done the job.
Claire wasn’t there when I woke up. I wasn’t worried. She was probably in the ladies’ room or something. I walked to the back of the store to try and find her. She wasn’t in the back of the store either, and the bathroom was empty. I checked back in the showroom, and found Claire’s backpack where she had taken it off the night before. I looked around for my semi-automatic rifle, but it was nowhere to be found. I guess Claire still had it on her.
“Claire, where are you?” I called aloud. There was no answer. I started to worry.
Claire was gone.
Where the hell could she be? I told her not to go out exploring alone. I know she is smarter than that. I knew she wouldn’t go out alone looking for supplies either. I also knew she wouldn’t leave her backpack behind. She must have been forced to leave.
Disregarding my own safety, I went outside calling Claire’s name repeatedly. All I got back was an echo of my own voice coming back at me from the brick walls of the town. A few scattered zombies raised their heads and looked over at me. I scanned the groups of undead to see if Claire was among them. I feared she might have been turned in the night. Thankfully, all the little groups of zombies were Claire-free.
I ran around the back of the store calling Claire’s name, but she wasn’t back there either. She was really and truly gone, and I had no idea where she might have been taken. I walked back inside the store in a full-blown state of panic. Who could have taken her?
And then it hit me. It was those jerk offs we met on the road, the Highwaymen. They found us, and kidnapped her.
My panic turned into white hot rage.
I got ready in a hurry, grabbed Claire’s backpack, and left the store at full throttle. I didn’t really have a clear plan of action. I figured I would go back down the road and see if I could find Claire. I swore to myself that, if they hurt her, the Highwaymen were going to pay. I let Glenn go, but these guys were going to pay for anything that happened to her.