A Little More Dead (8 page)

That single thought scared the hell out
of Paul. They would need to find a gun store or sporting goods store and on the
now plan. Ammo had to come before food and water. At the bottom of the other
staircase, Paul’s breath rushed through the beam of light. He looked back to
Sophia and Dan before going up. Each groan of the wooden steps turned him to
stone, making the staircase stretch forever. Dan went up backwards, guarding
their backs with his shotgun pointed into the darkness swallowing them from
behind.

At the top of the stairs, Paul held up a
hand. They stopped, their heavy breathing the only sound in the tight space. He
put an ear to the wooden door and listened, pulse thudding in the hollow of his
throat. Looking back, he shook his head and quietly took turned the icy doorknob.
His left eye went first, bravely peeking through the crack in the door while
his other eye hid in the dark. “Pitch black,” he whispered.

“Keep going,” Dan replied.

A long screech sang out when he pushed
the door open and eased into the bar. Sophia’s flashlight cut through the
darkness like a
lightsaber
, illuminating the tables
and chairs surrounding a T-shaped stage with a brass pole mounted at each end. She
jerked her gun to their reflections in a mirrored wall and nearly pulled the
trigger. Paul gave her a warning look, realizing it was too much too soon. If
they were still alive a year from now, they might be more adept at putting such
painful tragedies like Matt and Mike behind them in short order.

But this was only day seven.

The pain blinded.

And death closed in.

There were a thousand different ways to
die in this world now and, ultimately, inexperience could prove just as lethal
as the biters. Paul put a shaky finger to his lips and pressed on while Sophia
relaxed her trigger finger and let out a long breath that tumbled through the
light. A gunshot rang out, shattering the giant mirrored wall. Glass shards
flew through the air as they took cover behind a Valley pool table off to the
side. Paul slid the shotgun into his shoulder, ears ringing from the indoor blast.

“Holy shit, those things are shooting at
us now!” Dan cried in horror, leaning against the pool table.

“I’m not one of those
things
!” a
female voice called out.

“Neither are we!” Paul quickly replied,
not wanting to leave any room for misunderstandings. “We’re human!”

A trigger clicked back. “What do you
want?”

“We’re just looking for a safe place to
sleep for the night.” Paul looked at Sophia and Dan, heart racing. “We came
down from Iowa!” he added, hoping that would give them some kind of clout.

“Good for you!”

He cringed with her frosty tone and
started to get up.

Sophia snatched his wrist. “We’re not
looking for any trouble,” she yelled out. “We can leave.” She ignored the sour
look warping Paul’s face. “Are you hurt?”

It was a moment before the woman
replied. “Not yet.”

Paul could feel the weight of her eyes
and gun upon them. He figured the place must be secure or she would’ve been
stripper-stew by now. Outside of the broken mirror, everything looked in order.

“What’s your name? Mine’s Sophia.”

“You’ve come to the wrong place, Sophia!”

“Listen, if we come out will you promise
not to shoot? These two idiots have gotten me into enough trouble for one day
and I am too tired to deal with any more.”

The woman laughed sharply. “That’s men
for
ya
, isn’t it?”

A tension-filled silence gripped the
room as the mystery woman quietly deliberated their fate. “Alright, come out
with your hands up or I will shoot you dead and that is a guarantee.”

“Okay,” Sophia said, trading a hesitant
look with her husband. She started getting up and Paul pushed her back down. He
rose to his feet, holding his shotgun over his head like he was crossing a muddy
river in Vietnam.

The woman hit him with her flashlight,
making him squint.

“Can they get in here?” he asked, even
though he already knew the answer. The question, however, placed them on the
same team.
Us against them.

“You think we’d be having this conversation
if they could?”

Sophia calmly stood up, her flashlight
and pink gun held high. “This is my husband, Paul, and our friend, Dan,” she
said, quickly establishing a human connection.

“Sorry we scared you,” Paul added.

“Sorry about the gunshot,” she said,
setting the flashlight on the bar. The beam of light rolled off to a darkened
Golden Tee in the corner. The woman was gorgeous, with blond hair flowing over
her puffy purple coat like streams of honey. She stared at them for a moment
before speaking again. “I’m Wendy.”

Dan got up next, his brow folding when
he saw the blond bombshell standing behind the bar. “You could’ve killed us.”

“If I wanted to kill you, honey, you’d
already be dead.”

Sophia kicked him in the leg. “How long
have you been here, Wendy?”

Wendy took a slow drink from a rocks
glass with a finger’s worth of amber-colored liquid inside. “Three days.”

“Are you alone?”

She set the glass down and nodded. “I
figured someone would’ve shown up by now. My sister and her husband own the
place.”

Paul surveyed the bar, his fingers
tingling with blood loss. It was the typical hole-in-the-wall strip-bar, hidden
out in the middle of nowhere. “So what’s your plan?”

“Plan?”
Wendy laughed
and traded a .38 snub nose revolver for the bottle of whiskey on the bar.
“You’re looking at it,” she replied, pouring another finger.

“Please tell me you have tequila.”

Wendy looked up and stared at Dan for an
awkward moment before grabbing a bottle of
Cuervo
from a shelf above an old fashioned cash register. She slid the bottle down the
bar and then a shot glass. “Sorry, we’re all out of limes, sweet pea.”

Dan gestured to the shotgun he was
holding above his head. “You mind?”

Wendy studied the wisps of blond hair
curling out from Dan’s ski cap. “Set it on the table.”

Dan set the Browning on the marked up
green felt and went to the bar.

Wendy took another drink, watching him
out the corner of her eye, her right hand a few inches from the gun on the bar.
“Don’t tell me your plan was to come here because I can tell you from personal
experience it’s not a very good one.”

Paul didn’t wait for permission and laid
his shotgun on the table. “We’re heading south to get out of this cold.”

Her eyebrows went up.
“To
where?”

“The Gulf of
Mexico.”

The ghost of a drunken grin played on
her red lips. “And do what? Play volleyball on the beach and live happily ever
after?”

Dan filled the shot glass. “Pretty much,”
he said, knocking the glass back and slamming it on the bar. “We’ll find a
beach house and put our backs to the ocean,” he continued, unable to tear his
eyes from Wendy.

She lit up a cigarette. “Sounds like
somebody’s been watching
Couples Retreat
,”
she said, blowing smoke out.

“It’s more of a plan than you’ve got,”
he responded, glancing to his wing-man for help.

Paul shrugged at him. She was right. It
wasn’t much of a plan, but it beat staying here and he could care less about
convincing her of that.

Dan poured another shot and tipped it
back, grimacing with the tequila’s slow burn. Silence ensued, the kind when a
date isn’t going so hot. He set the shot glass down and exhaled a warm breath.
“Mind if I use the bathroom?”

“Toilets don’t work but knock
yourself
out,” she said, jerking her chin to a door across
the room.
“Other side of the pool table.”

Paul took Sophia’s hand and led her to
the bar. “So did you work here with your sister or something?”

“Used to.
Have you come
across anyone else?” Wendy asked, changing the subject.
“Any
other survivors?”

Sophia traded a shamefaced look with her
husband and holstered her gun. “Two young boys and their mom,” she said, taking
a seat and setting the flashlight on the bar.

Paul sat down next to her and took off his
itchy ski cap, running his fingers through his short hair. “We lost them taking
a car at a gas station this morning.”

Wendy stopped the glass in front of her
lips. “That’s horrible.”

“It was.”

They studied each other through the glow
of the flashlights, shadows pushing in from the corners of the room.

“You look hungry,” Wendy concluded.

Paul sighed. “We’ve been running on
candy bars all day.”

Wendy laughed. “We’ve got those too,”
she said, disappearing through a set of swinging doors behind the bar.

Sophia took a long moment to scope the
place out. “Well, this is weird,” she whispered.

“What’s really weird is she could be the
last woman on the entire planet and I bet Dan still blows it.”

“If he does, it puts all the pressure on
you and I to repopulate.”

Paul shuddered at the thought of
bringing a child into this world. “We should get him a lap dance.”

She laughed and quickly covered her
mouth.

“You got any ones?”

Sophia poured tequila into Dan’s glass
and shot it back. “She’s lucky to be alive.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Dan returned from the bathroom, his thin
eyes roaming the place. “Where’d that super hot chick go?”

Paul glanced at the swinging doors
behind the bar. “Think she went to get something to eat.”

“Damn, she has the bluest eyes I’ve ever
seen,” Dan whispered, taking a stool next to Sophia. “We have to talk her into
coming with us. Mankind could depend upon it.”

Sophia smiled at him. “Think you’re up
to the challenge?”

“If I have to take one for the team,
then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Paul laughed and poured himself a shot.
“What a good sport.”

Sophia pressed her lips together. “We
can ask her if she wants to come,” she said, looking around again. “She can’t
stay here. Not by herself.”

“I’ll Jedi mind trick her if I have to.”
Dan blew into his cupped hands and rubbed them together.

“And here we go,” Wendy said, popping through
the swinging doors with a cardboard box in her hands and a lit cigarette
dangling between her lips. “Take all
ya
want.” She
dumped the contents across the shiny bar top. “We’ve got boxes of this stuff in
the office.”

Paul stared at the beef jerky, chips,
peanuts, gum and candy bars. It wasn’t the pizza or cheeseburger his body
craved but it would do in a pinch.

“I left some water out back in the sun
all day that hasn’t refrozen yet,” Wendy said, refilling her glass with some more
whiskey.
“Plenty of booze too.”

Under the yellow light of a single candle,
they ravaged the snack food, whiskey and tequila like they’d just won a reward
challenge on
Survivor
. Despite the day’s carnage, Paul was hungrier than
he thought. Shootouts in the cold will apparently do that to a guy. Unfortunately,
the small amount of
unfrozen
food
they’d found thus far barely made a dent in their hunger. It was funny how
quickly one could miss fast-food. Paul would trade his left nut for a warm Big
Mac right about now and didn’t give two shits if it was made with pink slime or
not.

“So how’d you make it this far?” Sophia
asked, drinking some water.

“Dumb luck,” Wendy replied, pulling out
a joint and sparking it up. She blew a stream of
skunky
smelling smoke to the ceiling and passed it to Dan before beginning her
horrifying tale of
dumb luck
. Like
most people, she spent the first few days holed up inside her apartment with
the shades drawn and the doors locked. When the windows began breaking out in
the units below it was time to leave. The thought paralyzed her mentally and
physically, she lamented, but her brother-in-law, Joe, kept a loaded pistol
under the bar and the doors were made of solid steel. It was as good a spot as
any to hide, if not better.

Dan exhaled a cloud of smoke and started
coughing, passing the joint to Sophia who shook her head.

“Where’s your sister now?” Paul asked,
taking the joint from Dan.

Wendy shrugged. “Haven’t seen Tammy and
Joe since the day before all hell broke loose and lucky
me
,
my car was in the shop so I had to walk here.” She paused for another sip of
whiskey, watching the candle through faraway eyes. “Actually, I had to run
here. Peter Bowers, one of our local cable guys, tried to kill me along the way.”
Her eyes thinned into reflective slits. “Only that wasn’t the Peter Bowers I
grew up with. I don’t know what that was but he caught me by my hood and almost
brought me down. Luckily, I took kickboxing lessons for two years and put him
on his ass.” She smiled at Sophia. “I was just glad I wasn’t wearing heels.”