The Zs hands were reaching out towards Beau, who was closer now that I’d stepped back. Beau raised the flashlight and brought it down on the undead’s head. It was a smaller figure, a kid, and the force knocked it to the side. I came in with the butt of my rifle and hit again. The Z went down, twitching. One more hit and it was down for good.
We went towards the stairs, keeping away from the attic entrance in case others would follow. After a few moments, no one followed.
“Find something for me to stand on,” I said. “That attic might be the safest place to stay in the house.”
“No way for them to get up,” Beau agreed.
We stuck close together and searched the rooms. A sturdy nightstand in the master bedroom did the trick. My head was peeping through the attic, flashlight sweeping the scene, in no time.
Before the kid turned, he’d been living up there. There was a heap of sleeping bags and empty food cans in the far corner of the area. No signs of a struggle. He must’ve died from starvation and came back.
“Looks good,” I said as I set my rifle next to me. I hauled myself into the space then I helped bring Beau up.
Unless the undead got smarter and figured out how to climb, we’d be safe up there. I was tired through to my bones and ready to sleep. As I tried to get comfortable, holding Pickle under my shirt to keep her warm, Kevin’s face popped up in my mind. His clueless smile. The deeply sincere insanity.
“You okay?”
Beau had been searching through a stack of dusty boxes, but he’d stopped to stare at me. I wasn’t sure why my expression set off his inner alarm.
“Yeah.”
He chuckled. “Listen, I can tell when someone has something on their mind. I’m perceptive. Plus if we’re going to survive together, I need to know if you’re a mental case on the verge of a breakdown. That might change a few things.”
I’d mentioned Kevin earlier on, just briefly. Beau knew I’d been captured, but he didn’t know I was actively being hunted. Or that Kevin wanted me to serve him. I was never the kind of person that enjoyed talked about their feelings or concerns, but this time I needed someone to affirm my thoughts on the subject.
“Remember how I told you I was captured by cannibals a while back?”
He nodded.
“It was more complicated than that. They had a leader, this religious guy who wore a robe and spoke his own verse. He’s a cannibal too, but he only eats redheads.”
“Sucks for you.”
I glared.
“Sorry.” He shrugged.
“Anyway, when I was waiting for him to kill me, I talked back. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, even if it was just a verbal one. He loved it. Decided I was meant to be a leader in his army.” I paused to stroke Pickle, who was motionless on my chest. I pressed my thumb gently against her chest. A faint heartbeat promised she was alive. “He said he’d hunt me down forever until he got me to see his way. I escaped, and I’ve tried not to think about it, but it’s been getting to me.”
“Having a personal stalker in the zombie apocalypse isn’t something I’d predict. You’d think people had better things to do.” Beau rummaged through a box, shoved it aside and sat down. “He has no idea where you are. He’ll never be able to find you.”
I thought of Blaze. I didn’t know where she was, but I thought I’d be able to find her.
“Right.”
He handed a crumpled piece of newspaper to me. It was an ad for a sporting goods store, claiming they had the best sale prices on last season’s winter gear. The store was located in Lake Steven’s, a town we’d be passing near anyway.
“We’ll check the map tomorrow for the exact location, but if it isn’t too far away I say we check it out. We need better gear, and this might be our only chance before we start driving in the boonies.”
I agreed. We turned off the flashlight to conserve batteries, casting us in complete darkness. I fell in and out of sleep, dreaming of Kevin filleting flesh off my arms and legs while I was still alive, while Blaze told me I deserved it.
Chapter 9
Frost coated the bare nails in the eaves. Golden light pierced the dimness of the attic, coming through the slats of an oval window positioned high on the wall. Particles of dust drifted in the path of brightness. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring at it, but staring beat facing the world just yet.
Something about the way the light played on the walls reminded me of growing up in Alabama. Memories of life with my grandparents and sister were fragmented. Recollections involving my parents were nonexistent. Yet on occasion one came to me, so vivid it felt as though it happened yesterday. Some part of my mind associated what I was going through to a moment in the past.
As I lay on the hardwood floor trying to ignore reality, I found myself thinking of a conversation I had with my grandpa. My parents had just died, putting me around seven. I was surprised I could remember
anything
that far back. They came to Washington to sort everything out and move me and my sister to Alabama to live with them.
I’d woken up crying. Crying because my mom and dad were gone, crying because it was the last day I’d be in my bedroom. Crying because I didn’t want to get up and go to their funeral. Didn’t want to admit they were dead. It had been a week since it happened, but this was the first time I’d really reacted.
My grandpa must’ve heard me from down the hall. He came in and sat on the end of my bed. He was kind, in his gruff way. When I was a kid I thought he was mean, but as an adult I could look back on him and appreciate his methods.
“I’m not going to ask you what’s wrong. I already know. I came in here because I want to tell you something. You’re a smart kid and I know you’ll understand.” He ran his hand across his balding head and sighed. “All night long, while you were sleeping, your brain thought about the bad stuff. When you woke up, everything seemed worse than it is. But I promise, Cyrus, once you get out of bed and get going for the day, you’ll start to feel better.”
What he said made sense now. Sometimes when I woke up, I was at my weakest. It was like my mind had been processing negativity in overdrive, pumping it into every thought, shoving aside confidence or optimism. You had to battle yourself. Fend off dread.
Do what grandpa said,
I told myself.
Get up and you’ll start to feel better
.
My extremities were numb. My face was numb. I was freezing to death. It wasn’t an unpleasant way to go. You didn’t even realizing you were dying.
Beau was awake. I could see his eyes, open and glazed, in my peripheral vision. I wondered if he, too, was dying. Or already dead. If he was at his weak point in the morning.
We shuffled around, getting our stuff together. Pickle looked emotionless as I set her into the cold pack.
Beau got up and dropped down through the attic entrance onto the table below. The thud was loud, echoing through the entire house. I followed.
Wood broke downstairs.. We rounded the upstairs hallway and saw the front door splintering in the middle. An old trail of bullet holes had weakened the wood, and the relentless banging of the undead made short work of it.
“Come on!”I took lead and went towards the back door.
Winter air nipped at my skin and made my eyes water. It took a second to adjust. I blinked until my vision cleared, then I spotted undead walking towards the truck and house from the forest. The closest one was a scant twenty feet away. It was an older man whose chest was obliterated from a shotgun wound. Rotting skin peeled away from his bones, like a wall shedding old paint. His arms were almost eaten away, but he still flexed his hands and came towards me, unhindered by his deterioration. If I didn’t have to shoot him I wasn’t going to. He was far enough from us that it shouldn’t be a problem.
Beau clicked the button on the truck keys to unlock the doors. Behind him, two women, young and intact save for their graying, rotted flesh, approached quickly.
As I slid into the truck, a hand with white bone showing through rotted tendons, grabbed the edge of the door as I pulled it. Slimy meat slid off and came with the door. The slow stumbled and fell. His whole body slammed against the truck and disappeared from sight.
Beau had the engine running. A handful of stiffs circled the front of the vehicle, and he threw it in reverse then hit the gas. Their fingernails screeched against the hood. I stared at their hungry faces with morbid interest, my heart rate already slowing down.
We were flung to the side as Beau made a hard turn and accelerated back to the highway. I took off my backpack and set it on the floor so Pickle wouldn’t be smashed.
Beau released a shaky laugh. “Close one.”
We pulled onto the highway, still dampened from yesterday’s rain, and were finally on the way again. My stomach grumbled, but the engine drowned it out. The heater kicked in after a few minutes, which we all appreciated.
It was cloudy outside and, if I had to guess, below freezing. It was going to snow, and soon. Our truck didn’t have chains on the tires, and that might mean bad luck in the future.
The trees quickly gave way to the occasional house and grassy field. The area was residential, and there didn’t appear to be any useful shops. I was hoping for a car shop we could get snow chains from. If we could find that sporting goods store Beau saw an ad for, that would be even better. When the apocalypse started it was spring, and there were probably still heavier jackets and boots in stock, just going on sale. We both needed jackets and pants suited for the weather. My bulky collection of sweaters reduced my mobility considerably.”I’m going to check the map, see if I can figure out how close we are to the store you saw.”
“Good, yeah.” Beau took a hand off the wheel and pointed to the glove compartment. “Check the map and see if it’s on the way. I don’t want to go too far off course.”
I took the map out and viewed our highlighted route. We’d be on State Route 204 for about three miles until we had to get onto Highway 9. Market Place, where the store was, was long before we had to turn. Ammunition, guns, and food were the first things to be looted from stores, and I doubted we’d find any. What we needed the most were winter clothes, which the sporting goods store would have.
Raiding anywhere was a hit or miss affair, just as traffic seemed to be. State Route 204 wasn’t clear of cars. Sometimes we had to drive off into side ditches to maneuver around wrecks or abandoned vehicles, but we made it to the turn.
We parked the truck in the center of the intersection and studied our route. The rest of 204 was blocked with battered military Hummers—powerful behemoths rendered useless without a driver. Walls of sandbags stacked waist-high stretched unbroken across all lanes.
Propped up against the middle of the sandbag wall was a large ply-board sign spray painted with the words ‘By foot only’ in red.
“This doesn’t look good.”
Excellent work, Captain Obvious
, I thought but didn’t say to Beau.”It’s fine. Let’s just go to the stores and figure it out after,” I told Beau, who followed the order and turned onto Market Place.
The back of a huge, red brick building greeted us. To the right was undeveloped land, with trees and overgrown bushes pushing at its edges. At our left was a grassy hill blocking off whatever was behind it.
‘Haggen’ in bold green letters revealed what the building was. It was a pharmacy and grocery store. At one point it was probably very well maintained, but the lawn was brown and muddy, grown out to at least a foot. A red SUV was rammed into the back wall.
We drove to the front. The area held a shopping complex with multiple real estate agencies and a movie store. Cars sat bumper to bumper in front of each establishment, blocking off any vehicle access.
Beau shifted gears and went faster, bypassing the parking lot. Only a few stiffs milled about. They were far from us, but shambled our way when they heard the truck.
We got to an intersection and Beau slowed down at the stop sign. I had to laugh. His shoulders loosened and he laughed, too. Still following traffic laws when no one was there to enforce? Priceless.
“It’s habit,” he said and continued past the stop sign into the next lot.
An
Albertsons
and
Payless
were the first businesses I noticed. We didn’t need to go into the supermarket. There was food in the back of the truck. The more stops we could eliminate from our route, the more likely we were to survive. The
Payless
had shoes, but I doubted they had a better selection than the sporting store. Nothing useful yet.
We passed a
Rite Aid
. All its tall front windows were shattered. Black scorch marks rose up from the inside of the building, licking up to the roof. Despite the natural light making it through the windows, the
Rite Aid’s
interior was black from fire damage. I saw movement somewhere in the back, but I couldn’t distinguish what it was.
Not like it could be anything but a zombie
, I thought.
The parking lot over in that area wasn’t as congested as the ones by the grocery store. Evidently a hardware store wasn’t as popular as a supermarket. Its front was beat up, though not at the level as the other stores. I guess no one thought to steal wood from here to fortify their homes.
Light, fuzzy flakes made it hard to see much and obscured buildings in a white haze. It was already piling up on the windshield. A slight breeze swooped flakes up, creating flurries that danced over the ground.
That primordial connection humans had with the earth spoke to me, telling me the sense of dread I felt was for a reason. My body knew a worse storm was coming. I could feel it. The charge in the air when a lightning storm was coming—I could feel it with the snow.
Although slows could only shamble, they’d made their way from distant parking lots and inside buildings to draw near. The closest one was only a hundred feet away. The cold made their movement more sluggish than usual, probably due to the stiffness the temperature induced.
I rifled through the assortment of junk on the car floor and retrieved the Mazuri ferret food. I needed to feed Pickle in case things got hectic when we found the sporting goods store.