“Do you think we lost them?” Paul screamed in despair, hands compressing the steering wheel to almost squeeze it.
“How the heck should I know?” Nick retorted. “Do you want me to go out there and check?”
“Yes, why don’t you? You’re surely not helping any in here!”
“Oh, this is great! If you didn’t drive like a pregnant hippo, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place! Do you want me to drive?!”
“No, I want you to shut the fuck up!”
“Stupid ninny!”
“What was that?!”
“HEY!” Susan yelled. “Would you stop that? We got way bigger problems!”
“Yes we do!” Becky said grinding teeth. She was sitting by Susan with arms embracing her knees. “We got nothing but cowards in here!”
With furious eyes she looked at Frank, sitting across them. His tearful eyes could not return her punitive look.
“Asshole!” Becky said.
“Stop it!” Susan ordered her.
“Don’t you dare to defend him! He killed Lucas!”
“He had to, can’t you see? He got bitten!”
“We could’ve at least tried to think of something, maybe amputating his leg, I don’t know!”
“He begged us not to do it! He didn’t want to turn into one of these things, he wanted to die!”
“He wasn’t thinking! He was scared! And you didn’t even try to help him, none of you! All you could do was running scared!”
“Everything happened so fast, Becky. Please, I… I don’t pretend to know how you feel, but…”
“Then don’t!
‘Cause
you’re right! You have no idea how I feel! I loved Lucas!”
“Really?” Frank decided to join the conversation. “Well, I didn’t see you being there for him! You ran away too, remember?”
“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” Becky jumped to Frank, angry teeth occupying most of her face. She slapped and kicked him with all she got. He raised hands to protect his head against such attack.
“Back off! BACK OFF!” Susan screamed, getting her arms around Becky, trying to pull her away from Frank.
“He was my best friend, okay!” Frank shouted. “It was very hard for me too! And yet, I was the one who had to put him out of his misery!”
“Enough!” Susan screamed her last ultimatum.
She managed to hold Becky down, and the girl burst into tears on Susan’s right shoulder.
“This won’t bring him back.” Susan whispered.
“This won’t bring Joyce back either.” Frank murmured. “And she was only thirteen.”
“Where we go now?” Becky asked, trying to get a grip on herself.
“Far from those dead bastards!” Nick said.
“Oh no, No, NO!” Paul suddenly shouted, hitting hard the steering wheel with his left hand.
“What…? What happened?” Nick mumbled.
“Right now, we’re not going anywhere. We got a flat.”
“Ah Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus…!”
Paul was about to lose control of the vehicle. The van veered off harshly, almost overturning. A few yards from the main road, he finally brought the vehicle to a halt.
“Are you alright?” He asked everybody.
They all nodded a yes.
“This is great, this is just great!” Nick grunted. “What now?”
“Now we run!” Paul said.
“What? Are you crazy? Those freaks will eat our guts, like they did to Joyce!”
“Not if we run.”
“I say we stay here.” Becky suggested. “Come on, they can’t get in with all doors locked.”
“And how long are you planning to stay in here?” Paul retorted “Until we starve to death? We have to try to make a run for it.”
“Run where?” Nick intervened. “We are in the middle of fucking nowhere! As far as we know, those things can be everywhere!”
“My point exactly! We’re not safe in here. They’ll turn the car around, they’ll break into here.”
“Only if they see us.”
“They will find us eventually. They can also smell us.”
“But they can’t get in!”
“Oh I think they can. Those fuckers are strong!”
“They are rotting corpses. They can’t be stronger than a human being!”
“They seemed pretty strong to me.” Frank opined. “Besides, there’re too many of them. They might as well open up this truck like a tin can.”
“Well, you pricks do what you want.” Becky said. “I’m not moving from here.”
“We can’t stay here forever!” Paul spoke.
“Alright, then you go out there and see if those monsters listen to your bullshit!” Nick replied. “Maybe you’re lucky and they don’t eat sissies.”
“Hey!” Susan protested, while Becky opened a very tiny smile.
Paul jumped to Nick and pushed him violently. They both crashed against the side of the van, shaking the vehicle and making a thunderous noise.
“Break it up, you’re crazy?” Frank hopelessly tried to separate the two fighting men.
“Hey! Stop all of you!” Susan interrupted them loudly. “Look!”
Everybody looked out of the window, to the direction she was pointing at.
“That’s beautiful!” Nick gasped “If we can make it there.”
“The lights are on.” Susan spoke. “There must be somebody inside. It’s not that far. I think it’s our best shot.”
“Maybe our only shot” Frank agreed.
“Right on!” Paul said.
“I’m in the mood for a movie anyway.” Nick spoke.
They turned to Becky. She hesitated, but finally said:
“Fine, let’s go. At least a Cinemark is big enough so I don’t have to look at your ugly faces all the time.”
Very slowly and with extreme caution, Nick opened the van left door. He peeked outside. No sound. He waited.
“I guess we’re good to go.” He murmured to the others.
They stepped out of the vehicle one by one, as if such order was necessary. But they barely set foot on the floor and a symphony of snarls deafened their eardrums. Horridly deformed silhouettes grew bigger as they approached fast.
“Shit, RUN!”
They ran, trying not to trip on their own ankles.
“Did you close the doors of the car?” Nick asked.
“Of course not!” Paul replied. “I didn’t exactly have the time!”
“Then we can’t go back to the van anymore! Nice doing, genius!”
“Shut up and run you too!” Susan screamed.
Arguing in the middle of a run almost caused Susan to trip and fall down on the grass. But she managed to restore balance and kept on running.
They reached the movie theater and tried to open the door, to no avail.
“Hey! Open the door!”
“You guys, please, open the goddamn door!”
“They’re going to kill us! Open the door please!” Their voices overlapped.
Only Susan didn’t say a word. She frenetically waved arms and hands to a camera just above the heavy, thick gates. They heard a click sound. The doors unlocked and they ran inside. Frank had to kick one of the hungry beasts that kind of got caught on him.
Another click sound and the huge gates were locked again.
“Thank God for surveillance systems.” Susan said breathless.
“Are you alright?” Paul asked Frank. “Have you got bitten… or scratched?”
“No, but that thing touched me!”
“It was a female dead.” Nick noticed. “Guess she liked you.”
“Yeah, maybe it was your sister!”
“Or your mommy!”
“Enough, you too!” Susan scolded them. “Damn it, you’re such a bunch of kids!”
“And assholes too!” Becky seemed to agree, but her insult sounded general.
They walked around the lobby.
“Look at this place.” Paul said. “Lights are on, everything’s neatly organized, definitely not Hurricane Katrina torn apart and upside down like all other places we’ve been.”
“We’re surely not alone here, dude.” Nick concluded. “Somebody’s giving this place a lot of love.”
“Maybe a movie fan” Frank proposed.
“And what are they showing tonight?” Paul queried.
“I hope it’s not a zombie movie, we got plenty of that outside.”
The men laughed boyishly.
“Shut up!” Becky said.
“Hello!” Susan shouted “Anybody here?”
“Hey, not so fast, sweetie” Nick interrupted her. “We don’t know this people, or their intentions.”
“That’s right.” Frank agreed. “What if folks here are into one of those apocalyptical cults in which mutants probe normal people’s asses?”
“You’re in the right place, dude.” Paul spoke. “You have been seeing a lot of movies.”
“Whoever they are, they opened the door and saved our lives.” Susan replied. “Maybe they didn’t show up because they are worried about
our
intentions.” She raised her head and her voice again “Hello there! We mean you no harm, our car broke down! We just want shelter!” And, after a pause: “Thanks for letting us in!”
Only silence responded.
“Maybe they’re just shy.” Nick proposed. “I’m sure they’ll come to us at their own convenience. In the meantime, let’s eat!”
In less than ten minutes, they were all occupying the most comfortable seats in the biggest cinema of the theater, M&Ms, ruffles and pounds of popcorn all around them, not to mention gallons of soda pop distributed in five king-size plastic cups. They were feasting at will, but not watching anything in particular on the giant white screen.
“We could try to get into the projection booth.” Frank suggested. “See if we can watch something.”
“That’ll be great to blow off some steam.” Nick said.
“Only with the kind permission of our hosts, whatever they are” Susan replied. “We’d better get to know them first.”
“They don’t seem to have a problem with us devastating their food supply.”
“Do you even know how to work a projector?” Becky asked.
“We figure it out. It can’t be that hard. Today, everything’s digital. It must only be a matter of pushing a couple of buttons and run some software.”
“Like the movies you illegally download to your laptop?” Susan spoke.
“Precisely!”
“Maybe some other time” Susan decided. “Let’s finish eating first.”
“That’ll take days!”
They all laughed, except for Becky.
“You got to eat something.” Susan turned to her. “Come on, join the party.”
“Unless there are vegetables in there, I pass.”
“Popcorn comes from corn.” Paul joked.
Becky just twisted her lips, and not to smile.
“You might as well put some weight now.” Nick spoke to her. “It’s not like the model agencies are hiring too much these days.”
“You might end up like those zombies out there if you don’t put some flesh around your bones.” Paul agreed.
“Yeah, thanks for reminding me that everything’s hopeless now!” Becky complained. “As for the zombies, even their rotten dicks are bigger than yours!”
“Nice.” Paul muttered.
“She got a point there though.” Nick said.
“About their dicks being bigger than mine?” Paul asked.
“No, about everything being hopeless.”
“Are you going all pessimistic on us now?” Susan queried.
“No, not pessimistic, just hopeless. See what we’re doing now, hiding like rats, always running from one shelter to another. We’ll probably have to run for the rest of our days, if we survive.”
“Yes, it’s tough not to be on top of the food chain anymore.” Frank said.
“Right” Nick continued. “We’re practically slaves of those dead fuckers. They appear, we run scared.”
“They dilacerate our bodies if we don’t.” Susan spoke.
“My point exactly” Nick whispered. “They say jump, we ask how high. I’m sorry, but that feels pretty pointless to me.”
“And to think that perhaps all we need to turn this tide is a hockey stick.” Paul said.