Cruising along the vacant boarded up houses the three vehicle convoy made its way through empty littered streets, looking for any sign of re-entry onto a highway that wouldn’t be stopped up with traffic. But even at their vantage point several streets down from the main thoroughfare they could see rows of unmoving gleaming steel, like packages with reflective gift wrap shimmering in the fading light.
Jomo’s father took the rest of them through several towns, some more pleasant, others worse, but all strangely devoid of people. Word travelled fast. Finally they saw an opening a mile from what appeared to have been a roadblock and some sort of major accident. It was wrong to be happy about something so terrible being responsible for their good fortune, but they couldn’t help it.
The new section of highway they entered was entirely clear of traffic. The only vehicles they encountered were left abandoned on the shoulder. Jomo’s family was relieved but somber. The groups in Samir’s and Kamara’s cars cheered, whooping and raising fists in victory. That triumph was, however, short-lived.
Up ahead through a sharp curve and an uphill slope of highway was what could only be described as a congregation of dead souls. The zombies, dozens of them stood there shuffling about, as if waiting for their approach. The overturned bus lying on its side that they’d come out from had skidded to a stop several hundred feet behind them.
Jomo’s family saw them too late. His father
slammed on the brakes, the squealing of the tires and the smoking rubber peeling on the hot blacktop. The van shuddered, swayed, lost control, zigzagging from side to side. He tried to pull the wheel and over corrected. The van flung through the air to the right, hurling sidelong and crashing into and then over the metal guardrail, down the steep embankment below.
Jomo screamed, “Noooooooo!!” The other cars braked just in time to avoid the same fate. He leapt out of the vehicle, running to the twisted guardrail, to watch the van rolling down into the ravine. The others left the vehicles, following closely behind him.
The fuel tank struck something and ignited. The van exploded in a fireball. Jomo could feel the heat nearly sear his eyeballs, and he backed away a moment, only to look again at the smoldering remains of his family. The wail of anguish that escaped him was hard for any of them to watch. His mouth opened wide as he screamed for them, his face wet with tears. “Mama, Papa, sister, brother!!”
Samir and Klaus pulled him away from the scene. The groans rose behind them. The zombies were headed for the group. They sprinted toward the vehicles and their weapons. There was no time for grief, only rage.
Weapons in hand they faced the approaching horde. Full of fury Jomo skewered several of them through the face with his spear in rapid succession. Ian caved in heads as he swung his spiked mace. Klaus wasn’t as accurate with his sword, slashing one across the cheek and stabbing one through the chest, and after several attempts managed to pierce one through the forehead.
Xinga impressed with her handling of the Sai, weaving them through her fingers, simultaneously stabbing with her right hand while blocking their advance with her left. The sharp center point went through one zombie’s eye, another’s temple and one’s brow. The two prongs on the Sai in her left blocked the groping fingers of one particularly aggressive zombie. She drove the long inner blade through its palm, and sliced outward from the wound slicing its hand in half and turning it into a yawning flipping V where its middle fingers separated. Xinga gained a confidence she didn’t have before with these weapons at her disposal.
Kamara severed three zombie’s heads with her battleaxe, and then pivoted and spun around using the other blade, decapitating three more as they attempted to surround her. Where she couldn’t immediately cut off heads, she cut off limbs and reaching arms, hobbling one zombie by chopping off its leg, then bringing the full brunt of the battleaxe down on its head as it lay on the ground.
Samir loaded the musket as Marina showed him, through the chamber at the top of the muzzle, using percussion caps- .58 caliber Minié balls, and firing off the shoulder. It was slightly cumbersome, but its shoulder held stance gave him more stability. He could only fire three rounds per minute, so it wasn’t completely reliable in close quarters like this, but he thankfully had the bayonet attachment. He fired off a round and a zombie skull exploded several feet from him. He stabbed two through the throat with the bayonet, and cracked one across the head with the hardwood stock, before firing off another round.
The screams, the gunfire, the groans took on a rhythm of their own until they moved through them in almost synchronized fashion, the sounds fading away as they lost themselves in the motion of the kill. Marina was in her element firing the two Rugers at once. With ten rounds each she didn’t miss a shot and blasted twenty zombies in the head. Her ammo spent she was tempted to run back to the car and get the AK or the shotgun, or else move off to the side and reload from her ammo belt, but there were so few of the zombies left that she could see the rest of the group was easily picking them off. It was in their favor that they moved so slowly.
With all the zombies dispatched they moved back to their vehicles, driving around the overturned bus. They could make out the writing on the side now as it loomed in their immediate vision. It read Grasshopper Tour Lines. It was certainly a tour they wouldn’t forget. The open highway ahead of them along with an uncertain future, the passengers in the two vehicles drove forward in silence.
***
It was dark now. They realized that they were getting hungry. Kamara followed behind Samir’s car as they took an exit off the highway to a gas station.
The lights were still on so that was a good sign. There appeared be no one inside the convenience shop though, so that wasn’t.
“Hello?” Klaus said.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in here,” Samir said.
“No, I hear noise, like someone talking,” Kamara said.
There was the shuffle of feet and a man came out from the backroom. They raised their weapons, ready to shoot, slice or stab.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!!” the man shouted. “Friendly company!”
They lowered their weapons.
“We just came in to get some food, and maybe some gas,” Samir said.
The grey haired middle aged man eyed them curiously.
“We heard talking. Is there someone else here with you?” Marina asked.
“No, just me. What you heard is the TV. Watching the news from Atlanta. Won’t be long before they reach us up here. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll be closing up shop soon, getting out of Dodge, as they say- permanently.”
“We can pay,” Kamara said.
“No point. Whole world’s coming to an end. Money’s going to be as worthless as a forest without trees.”
Ian’s cell phone rang. He looked at it. “It’s my mother, calling from Pennsylvania.” He answered it.
“Mom?”
“Ian, thank God! We’ve been trying to reach you all day! Are you all right?! We’ve been hearing the news and...”
“I’m fine Mom. Yes. Yes.”
The group watched him as he answered questions they couldn’t hear.
“No. Ashley? Ashley’s dead,” he said, choking back the words.
“Can you get home, Ian? We need you here, safe, with u...”
“Mom? Mom?”
“What’s happened?” Jomo asked. After losing his family, he feared the worst.
Ian looked at his phone as if it were foreign to him. “The line, the line just went dead.”
“Try your phones,” Marina told the rest of them, pulling out her own.
They all did, and when they tried to make a
call or even get a ring tone, it was the same answer.
“Dead.”
The clerk walked into the backroom, and they watched him reappear seconds later. “TV is out too. It’s on, but no reception. I can’t get any channels.”
“Then it’s begun,” Marina said.
“What’s begun?” Jomo asked.
“The cover up.”
Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real.
- Leslie Marmon Silko
There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our convenience.
- John D. Barrow
“What’s your name fella?” Ian asked.
The clerk looked at him. “I’m Lloyd. Look, if you guys want to hole up here for a while be my guest.” He passed the keys to Samir. “Lock up after me.”
“You’re really going to leave your store behind? Just like that?” Klaus said.
“Yep,” Lloyd snapped his fingers, “Just like that. I’ve got a wife and kids, and they’re safe, and the store don’t mean shit unless I can be sure to keep them that way. So I’m moving us as far up north as we can go to escape this plague that’s upon us.”
“Well, what if there are more of them up north?” Kamara asked.
“Then we’ll keep moving. It’s back to the old days. Nomadic tribes and all that. Everything comes back around to the beginning.”
“Guess so,” Marina said. “Stay safe Lloyd.”
“Will do. You folks do the same.”
***
The group looked around the convenience store now that Lloyd was gone.
“What do we do now?” Jomo asked.
“Guess we stock up,” Kamara said.
Samir shook his head, “Doesn’t feel right. We haven’t earned this man’s merchandise.”
“Why did he go?” Xinga said. “Why he have to go?” Her questions and the way they were expressed told them she felt the same.
“He abandoned his post because he knows the
shit’s about to hit the fan,” Marina said. “I don’t feel right about it either, but we might as well appreciate his generosity, and take what we can use.”
“But where are we going?” Ian asked.
“To your parents, to Klaus’s; doesn’t matter. We head north, like Lloyd.”
“It’s not much of a plan, but it’s all we have,” Samir agreed, “Especially with the cell towers down and nothing on the airwaves.”
“Further up maybe more news?” Xinga suggested.
“It could be that stations are working further north,” Samir said, “But if it’s a cover up as Marina implied then we probably won’t get much news about what’s really going on.”
“There’s the rub,” Klaus said.
Marina shot him a look that said
Really? Shakespeare?
Klaus looked down sheepishly.
“I didn’t imply. I flat out stated this is a cover up. The military, the government, the CDC- someone- let this shit get out of hand, and now it’s biting us in the ass.”
“Maybe if we could not mention biting,” Ian said.
***
They stuffed several coolers with drinks, deli meats, and frozen goods, packing it all in with ice; then filled several grocery bags with power bars, cereal, snacks, bread, and other dry goods. Rope, first aid kits, toiletries, superglue, scissors, a five-pack of lighters, a can opener, duct tape, several hammers, and a drill; they took anything they thought they could use, and fit in the cars. Then they gassed up the
cars, taking several plastic containers with gasoline in case they got into any trouble on the road, and didn’t have a working gas station near. Moving Marina’s assault rifle and shot gun, they squeezed everything they could into Kamara’s car and then into Samir’s, leaving the bags and smaller items that didn’t fit on the floor of the backseats.
“I want to stay,” Jomo said.
The others turned to look at him.
“What do you mean, stay?” Samir said.
“There’s nothing for me out there. I have aunts and uncles in California who I will probably never see. But I have everything I need right here.” Jomo shook his head. “I don’t want to go out there and face those things again. If I stay quiet and keep to myself no one will ever know I’m here. I’ll close the store down, only leave on the back up lights.”
“Jomo, you’ve got us,” Kamara said.
“Yeah,” Ian agreed, “You can’t just be alone, especially not after...”
“After both my parents and siblings died? All I
want
is to be alone.”
“Please reconsider,” Klaus said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be safer with us.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again. But I thank you my friends.”
“We love you Jomo,” Xinga said.
Jomo almost cried then. “I love you too. But please, go on without me. I’ll be okay. I promise.”
They could see he had his mind made up.
“At least place something behind the door to keep anyone from getting in,” Marina said.
“I will. Thank you.”
“We’ll miss you Jomo,” Kamara said.
Jomo nodded.
With that they left, embracing him goodbye.
TWO MONTHS LATER
It seemed that human contact had gotten scarcer, the road lonelier. They’d been fighting zombies for months, stopping in hotels that were still running, and some that weren’t. Meeting people who each had their own ideas about what to do, and how they wanted to go about living their lives. The dead walking were growing, the military and police surprisingly absent. The towns they went through had either become ghost towns or weathered the storm with small groups of survivors that stayed in fortified households. They went as far as North Carolina, not holding out much hope for remaining family members. All broadcasts were still gone. All the cell towers dead. They were surviving, looting abandoned stores, and sleeping in abandoned homes. But there was no place that felt truly safe. None of them could understand how it had gotten so bad so quickly. They remembered that day of school as if it were yesterday, when they first encountered the living dead. They’d grown stronger as a unit, all six of them, Jomo and Lupe left behind. They got better with their weapons. Killing zombies had become surprisingly easy, and they were rarely surprised by them. They knew to check any place they entered, but the zombies generally announced themselves with their groans as soon as they smelled living flesh.
The group had begun switching cars and switching who rode with who and who was the driver. It was no longer Samir’s or Kamara’s cars, but the group’s cars, and they usually rode three to each car. Gas was getting scarcer as attendants left their posts and no tanker trucks came by to fill the bays with new fuel.
“Look,” Ian pointed, stopping the car, the others stopping behind them, both vehicles windows rolled down so they could hear each other. “It’s a farm.”
“I think we should probably avoid farms,” Samir said.
“But they might have crops. Fresh vegetables, that sort of thing.”
“If there were any mad cows they’re probably all gone now, having passed their sickness to the owners and dying,” Klaus said.
“We should investigate,” Marina said.
Samir gave up. “All right.”
They got out of the cars and strode toward the farmhouse.
The lights were out as they entered. The fields appeared devoid of animals. The house was paneled in wood from floor to ceiling. There was a table set in the center of the kitchen, soup that had long gone cold, moldy cheese, and rotten fruit, as if the residents had left in a hurry. Flies swarmed around the stinky remnants. They covered their noses, coughing.
They heard clucking coming from outside the house. There was a wooden door inset with rusty steel hinges that creaked and a mostly glass outer door with steel springs that did the same. When opened they led out to a small yard. Boxed into steel cage pens were six chickens. They were extremely thin, malnourished, fed solely by whatever crawled in the limited patch of soil underneath their clawed feet; their thirst quenched only by the puddles left by the rains.
Klaus shook his head. “Those poor unfortunate creatures.”
“We should free them,” Samir said.
They all agreed. They couldn’t find the keys to the cages; they were probably on key chains that the owners took with them. But they did find a pair of bolt cutters in a storage shed close by. Marina cut one side of the cage open until the chickens could shuffle their way out. “Hope you find some food there buddies.”
“Speaking of,” Ian said, “We should see what they had left in their fridge. We’re getting kind of low on food.”
“Wait,” Xinga said, pointing, “Noise. More animals.”
“She’s right,” Kamara said. “Over there. It looks like a stable.”
It
was
a stable, housing horses and pigs. They found three pigs in a pen. Two of them were already dead. The other was on its side, slowly dying.
There were four horses in their stalls. Two had died, and the other two were greatly emaciated and barely standing.
“Quick, bring water over from the house!” Samir said, as he unlatched the simple metal hook opening on the two stalls.
Xinga and Marina ran to the house to find water. Samir smoothed one of the horses with his hand. “Poor girl. We’re going to do our best to help you.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” Ian asked.
“Just a guess. I’ve been around horses before. My father used to take me to a horse ranch to ride them.”
They fed the horses grain they found in the stable and filled their metal bowls with water which the horses drank ravenously. The remaining pig was too weak to even eat.
“We should put the poor thing out of its
misery,” Samir said.
No one stepped up to do it.
“I can’t,” Kamara said.
“I’ll do it,” Samir said. “I’ve had to put animals down before.”
He put one of the emptied feed bags over the pig’s head. It jerked and spasmed as Samir suffocated it, letting out a weak squeal. “I’m sorry friend.”
The group looked away.
The pig became still. “It’s done.”
“What do we do with the horses?”
“Release them?” Klaus suggested, “As we did the chickens?”
“I don’t see another choice,” Samir agreed. “We can’t take them with us, and they’ll die on their own here. At least letting them go they’ll finish off the rest of the grain and go forage for food elsewhere.”
“There are troughs over there,” Marina said.
“Good, we can fill one with the remaining jugs of water, and the other with the rest of the feed. It should keep them for at least a few days; assuming they make it. They haven’t eaten or had water in at least a month.”
They filled the troughs and then released the horses from their stalls. From there they could leave the stable once their provisions were gone.
The two horses went to the water trough and slaked their thirst again.
“With how dehydrated they must be the water might last the day. At least now they have a fighting chance.”
A small garden away from the stables revealed what had been crops of corn, and lettuce and tomatoes on the vine, but they had grown rotten from under-watering and untilled soil. They were useless. The near completely consumed remains of beef and dairy cows were not too far from this small field, swarming with flies. Their sun-baked dried husks and innards left only a small lingering odor of rot, but it was enough to drive them away. Plus the likelihood they had succumbed to either Mad Cow Flu or starving zombies in itself made them want to steer clear. They went back to the farmhouse and gathered what food they could find for themselves to take on the road.
The creaking of the springs on the outer back door alerted them they were no longer alone.
“Someone’s here,” Marina said.
“Someone, or something,” Ian said.
“Should we make a break for it, or investigate?” Kamara wondered.
“No,” Xinga said, “No please don’t.” Her vocabulary had gotten better.
“It’s probably not a person. They would have knocked or spoken by now,” Samir said. “I say we finish filling up these sacks and leave.”
“Sounds good to me,” Xinga said.