Apocalypse Atlanta (65 page)

Jessica yanked open the drawer on the table on the side of the bed her mother had been sleeping in.  Still nothing.  Jessica vented her frustrating by slamming the drawer closed, almost catching her fingers.  Then a thought occurred to her, and she blanched.  Turning her head, she looked at the corpse, at her father, on the bed.

“He promised.” she whispered, making her way back around the bed again, her loafers squishing slightly in the blood on the carpet.  Gingerly, reluctantly, she reached out and slowly, very slowly, slid her hand under the pillows her father’s lifeless head rested on.  The weight of his skull seemed to be immense, and she gritted her teeth as a quavering grunt rippled up from her chest.  Her heart was pounding, she did not like this, but her fingers contacted something that was as heavy as her father’s head.

When she got it out from beneath the pillow, she almost teleported away from the bed, eager to be away from the body.  The holstered gun came with her, gripped tightly in her hand despite feeling like it weighed hundreds of pounds.  When her back bumped into the wall next to the door, she stood and panted like she’d run a marathon, trying to slow her thudding pulse.  A few tears were clinging to her cheeks and eyes, and she blinked several times to clear her vision.

She forced herself to draw a slow and steady breath, interrupting the quick in and out that was sure to make her hyperventilate.  Another, slow inhalation, pause, steady exhalation.  Better.  Jessica looked at the gun in her hands almost as an experiment, as if testing to see if it would set her off.  The gun’s shiny steel glinted at her around the black nylon of the holster and the dark checked rubber on the grip.  She stared at it like it was an alien device for a moment, then frowned as another thought occurred to her.

Looking around again, she glanced at the closet.  Stepping a little closer, she spotted the gun’s box on the top shelf.  When she reached and pulled it down, the weight confirmed the spare bullets had to still be inside.  Jessica set the holstered weapon atop the box and hugged both to her chest, gripping her son’s bat in her right hand, and very purposefully did not look at the bed as she left the room.

She descended the stairs much more quickly than she’d gone up them.  Now that she had what she’d come back for, all she could think of was Candice waiting in the car.  The dark interior of the house with its suddenly looming and irrationally unfamiliar shadows was something she found easier to brush aside now.  But as she crossed the living room, a heavy thump on her left caused to her startle so violently that she tripped over her own feet.

Stumbling down to her knees, the gun hit the carpet with a heavy thump, followed an instant later by the lock box it was supposed to live in.  Jessica barely caught herself with her abruptly empty hands before she cracked her chin atop the metal box.  Sprawled on her hands and knees, she blinked as if taking mental inventory, then snapped her head over to the side as she heard another thump.  This time it was accompanied by a cracking sound that echoed loudly through the room.

The sofa was in front of the sliding doors that opened out into the back patio and yard, where her father had insisted they move it too earlier.  And the curtains were drawn.  But, as she looked in that direction with a wild expression of alarm, the thump sounded a third time.  And this time it was paired not with nothing or with a crack, but with an ear splitting shattering as the glass panel of the door broke and fell apart.

As she registered the door’s destruction, something thrust through the curtains.  She saw . . . fingers, grasping and clawing, clearly evident through the heavy curtains.  Jessica let out a shriek, she couldn’t help it.  Her pulse was beating fast enough to put her right through the roof if only she could pair its energy to wings or a propeller.  But there was nowhere for the terror fueled hammering of her heart to take her unless she got moving, and she felt glued to the living room floor as she stared at the groping arm on the other side of the curtains.

Jessica heard her breath whistling in her ears as she sucked air in and out, and made a tremendous effort to look away from the sliding doors.  The lock box was right under her, between her arms.  As she shifted to a kneeling position and reached to gather it back up, she realized she’d managed to hang onto the bat when she’d gone down.  She tucked it back under her left arm, grabbed the gun, and started to stand.

There was a ripping sound, and despite her desperate determination, Jessica glanced over.  Whatever was on the other side of the curtains was pulling and weighing on them heavily enough to start to bring them down.  She shook herself and ran for the garage, fumbling frantically at the knob.  Behind her, in the living room, she heard the curtain rod come down from its brackets.  The doorknob slipped through her fingers as if it were actively trying to defy her, as she juggled the items in her arms and tried to seize hold.

Finally she got a grip and the door opened.  She spilled out into the garage and stumbled for the car.  Candice was looking at her with a clearly alarmed expression, and Jessica raised her voice.  “Unlock the doors!”

Her daughter stared at her for a moment, then Jessica heard the locks click.  Jessica wrenched the door open more by force of will than actual physical action, not exactly sure at which point during its opening when she’d managed to get a hand onto the latch.  But it opened, and she dropped into the seat behind the steering wheel as she tried to shed herself of the items in her arms.  The holstered gun she thrust up on the dashboard for the moment, which let her all but hurl the box and bat into the backseat.

“Mom?” Candice asked, her voice clearly tinged with an element of panic.

“Everything’s fine.” Jessica said tightly as she dug her keys out of her pocket and fumbled through them to find the correct one.  When she found it, it took her four tries to get it slotted home in the ignition.  The Accord’s engine came to life again, and Jessica had a fresh surge of panic when she realized the doors were still unlocked.

Hitting the button, she winced as she felt something in her index finger protest the force with which she pushed. 
‘Get a grip’
Jessica thought, taking a second to draw a breath and try to calm down.  She was on the verge, and it wasn’t good.

“Is something in the house?” Candice asked.

Jessica took another breath, then nodded tightly.  “That’s why we can’t stay here.” she said as she reached for the button to open the garage door.

“What about grandma and grandpa?”

Jessica closed her eyes.  “They can’t come with us.”

She heard Candice draw a breath, like she was about to say something, about to ask the question.  But the question didn’t come.  Jessica avoided looking at her daughter, instead focusing on the rearview mirror, waiting for the door to roll up out of the way.  She mentally cursed as she saw the truck on the driveway behind her.  Her throat felt tight when it occurred to her neither of her parents were ever going to drive that truck again, but she banished the thought almost instantly.  Instead, she twisted in her seat and looked at the available room.

Finally, the garage door finished its cycle.  Jessica shifted into reverse and backed out, cranking the steering wheel around almost immediately.  The Accord left the garage at an angle and bumped onto the grass next to the driveway.  Jessica steered down the side of the driveway to clear the truck, then back over to avoid the curb before rolling out into the cul-de-sac.  She was so intent on avoiding her dad’s truck she never saw the figures staggering towards the car from two different directions.

A heavy bump rocked the car as the rear bumper clipped something.  Jessica braked instinctively, looking from the rear view to the side mirrors curiously.  As she searched, trying to figure out what she’d hit, Candice’s scream brought her head snapping around.  Rebecca Johnson was less than two feet from the passenger side of the car, arms outstretched.  Jessica froze, aghast at what she saw.

Her neighbor, former neighbor, wore only a skimpy negligee and boy shorts.  The strap on the left side of the top was broken, leaving it to hang down and flap open, revealing her chest from shoulder to abdomen on that side.  The side of her neck, across her shoulder and her right arm to just above the elbow had been eaten down to the bone.  Jagged flesh and ripped, torn muscle were visible around sickeningly white bone that was only partially stained red.  Her head wobbled on her neck unsteadily as she approached, and her left arm flopped about in stark contrast to the purposeful reaching of her right.

Save for the fixed intensity in her eyes, her features were alien in their lack of expression.

“Mom!” Candice screeched, shrinking back from the door.  Rebecca reached the car, and her hands slammed against the passenger window, hard.  Cracks spread across the glass immediately, and Candice screamed again.  Movement behind the car drew Jessica’s attention, and she saw Pete Johnson in the side mirror, sitting up on the pavement.  His face, neck, and chest were stained with dried blood, his face as slack as his wife’s.  His head was fixed on Jessica, eyes locked to hers in the mirror.

Jessica’s hand clicked the gearshift into drive, and her foot slammed down on the accelerator, without conscious thought.  Tires squealed as the engine revved abruptly.  The seat seemed to reach out and punch Jessica in the back as it slammed into her.  The car pulled forward, and she blinked as she saw she was headed at an angle destined to put her through her mailbox instead of up the street.  She twisted the steering wheel, narrowly missing the mailbox.

Fighting with the wheel as the car swerved, throwing her to the left as the car veered right, Jessica straightened out and was flung the other way.  She heard Candice drawing rapid breaths that had a hint of whimpering in them, clinging to Jessica’s arm tightly enough to make steering difficult.  Jessica felt her own pulse pounding, her heart hammering away in her chest hard enough to make her head hurt.

The end of the street was fast approaching, where the neighborhood dumped out onto the main side road that led back to Highway-124.  A part of her mind, a very small and distant part that wasn’t consumed by voracious panic, whispered that this might be a bad thing.  Her frantic eyes went to the speedometer; she was past fifty miles per hour.

“Shit!” Jessica blurted, jamming her foot on the brake, and automatically reaching to try and prevent Candice from catapulting forward into the dashboard as the Accord slowed.  She could feel her shoulder and elbow protesting, but she held her daughter back long enough for Candice to get her own hands off Jessica’s arm and braced defensively against the dash.  The car shuddered to a halt at the stop sign, and Jessica looked wildly around the vehicle, checking windows and mirrors.

The streets, both the cross street in front of her as well as the neighborhood access behind her, looked quiet.  She couldn’t see through the web of cracks on Candice’s window however, and that was enough for Jessica to check that there were no cars coming before pulling out, slightly less enthusiastically.  She felt safer in motion for the moment.

Jessica drew a deep breath, forcing herself to try and even her breathing out.  “Put your seat belt on.” she said tightly.

“Mom, those were sick people.” Candice said in a small voice, as she sat back in the seat and reached to pull the belt down across herself.

“Yes, I know.” Jessica said, staring through the windshield and trying to think.  “Are you okay?”

Jessica heard her daughter click the seatbelt into place.  Her mind was starting to kick into gear, and she abruptly twisted in her seat.  The purse wasn’t on the seat anymore, but when she felt behind her on the floorboard her questing fingers contacted it.  Pulling it up and forward to her lap, she slowed to about fifteen miles per hour as she dug in it.  Her phone filled her hand, and she used her thumb to unlock the screen before dialing shakily.

Pressing the phone to her ear, she checked the mirrors again while she waited for the call to go through.  There were no other cars on the street, no headlights approaching or cruising up behind her.  She let the car putter along just past creep and waited.  Finally the phone gave her a busy signal.  Frowning, she tapped the screen to end the call, then redialed very slowly and deliberately.  Maybe she hadn’t hit the correct numbers on the screen.  Nine, one, one, send.

The wait this time seemed to stretch and stretch as she held the phone to her ear.  Busy signal again.  Jessica stared at the phone, then looked back out the windshield at the deserted road.  In the distance up ahead she could see 124, the traffic light showing red to her.  No cars were passing in either direction, but she did see figures on foot; a couple on or next to the road with more visible on the four lane thoroughfare ahead.  They moved with shambling, staggering gaits.

As she neared the first, she had to swerve around when it didn’t get out of the road.  Her illuminating headlights revealed blood stained clothing and a glimpse of the now horribly familiar empty-yet-hungry expression.

“Mommy, there are a lot of sick people around here.” Candice said in a tiny voice, barely audible over the sound of the car.

Jessica didn’t say anything, clutching the phone in one hand, holding onto the steering wheel with the other, as she tried to think of something, anything, to do.  As she did, a light illuminated on the dashboard, drawing her attention.  Jessica blinked at it numbly for a moment.

“Oh no . . .” she muttered quietly.

She hesitated as the car approached the intersection, torn.  Maybe there was someone in the neighborhood she could take shelter with . . . no.  She thought of whatever had crashed through the glass doors from the back yard.  And the front of the house had a lot of windows on it too.  It wasn’t safe.  There were zombies wandering around now, and all it would take was one to catch her or Candice unawares and it was all over.