Euphoria-Z (24 page)

Finally they moved. Ana had to lie down and hold Lisa’s hand to get the ladder. It was heavy for her to lift with one hand, but she got it and together the girls pulled the ladder the rest of the way up and over the wall. They lowered it on the other side and noticed that the wall dropped an additional two feet on the outer side. That distance was huge given the circumstances. When it was lowered, the ladder threatened to fall over completely. Ana went down, made sure it was stable, and then climbed back up.

“You have to go down first. I will hold your hands and help you down.”

Lisa looked scared. She started shaking her head no.

“Look, you already fell off this wall and rolled to the high—” Ana stifled an involuntary laugh.

Lisa was too scared to react. “I can’t.”

“You have to. I am staying until you’re safe. Do you want me to get caught?”

Just then the sound of the shotgun tore through the air, and Ana jumped and yelped involuntarily. They heard screams from down the street coming from the direction of the main gate. Even though this was a sizable development, the thirty or so people remaining in it had all moved to the houses close by each other and near the gate. They heard a male shouting.

“We know you’re here! Come out!” It was a man’s voice, loud and confident.

This made no sense to either of the girls. Another voice yelled out.

“I know you’re here. All I want is the Mexican bitch and the asshole with her.” This voice was weaker, less full and far less powerful. It took a moment for the words to register. Ana’s eyes went wide.

“We have to go now. Those are the guys who tried to rape me and killed…” She was pushing Lisa over the edge of the wall. They heard another voice, faintly yelling a warning, an old man’s voice. Then the roar of the shotgun silenced it.

“We got more to kill. We got you surrounded.”

Lisa was fighting back, tears in her eyes. “We have to go save them.”

“And what, let them rape us? Do you think they’re going to leave any of us alive?”

“We have to do something,” Lisa said with pure anguish in her eyes.

“What? What can we do? I saw what these men would do to us.”

“All right!” the voice yelled, and then a cacophony of booms and flashes disturbed the night. The girls were certain there were no survivors.

“Quick, we should go while they’re still blind and deaf from the gunshots.” Ana was once again pushing Lisa. This time she went over, tried to hang from the edge, but slipped and dropped to the ladder. Ana was still holding her wrists and fought to keep the heavy woman from falling. Lisa struggled down the ladder, Ana right behind her.

The two slid down the steep hill in the dark toward the highway, unsure what they were to do next. But the highway was dark, and they figured they could get away. This was a very large area with deceptively high grasses and dips in the land.

They heard a car start, and light came from the main gate behind them and to their right. A pickup truck was speeding down the road toward the highway. It went right and up the highway in the direction Cooper had gone.

“They’re going after Cooper. We have to warn him,” Ana said.

“We’re going to have to drive, and that means light, noise, attracting the dead. And we won’t get there before they do. How are we going to warn him?”

They both walked in silence, watching the truck recede slowly north. They heard the moans of the dead coming from all around them. They had only minutes to decide what to do.

“We have to get to a car.” Ana spoke as she looked around, eyes wide. There were only a few on the highway here. And out of those cars, only a handful weren’t already occupied by the dead. The problem was that neither of them could hot-wire a car, and the cars with keys in them were also the ones with the dead in them. Ana stayed clear of the cars as Lisa looked until she found one that had only one flailing corpse in it. A smallish woman in a minivan was still strapped into the driver’s seat. The inside of the minivan wasn’t as befouled as the others seemed to be. She waved Ana over.

“I need your help,” she whispered.

Ana came over, arms folded tight to her body. She looked at Lisa, waiting for instructions.

“We need to get her out of there.”

Ana’s eyes shot open. “What? Let her out, then what?”

“Well, I have an idea on how to deal with her. She has a seat cover, so hopefully the seat will be OK.”

Ana hadn’t even considered the fact that they were about to sit in a van where a corpse had sat for days or even weeks.

“Come on, Ana, you need to learn not to react this way. You need to be more aware and take action quicker, or you will die.”

“Sorry.” She shook off her daze, heeding the words of her new friend. “What do I need to do?”

Moments later, Ana opened the door and the noise of the moaning dead woman increased. She waved a leather boot from the highway in her face and the woman grabbed at it. She heard a faint click, and the woman toppled toward her and out of the car. She was already running around the van. The woman was standing and starting to pursue her. More of the dead were shambling in from the surrounding darkness.

Ana came around the van quickly. Lisa was already in the passenger seat. She was trying to close the door but couldn’t. Ana threw her weight against it, but it didn’t even come close to closing. Ana stopped. They hadn’t made an alternate plan should this happen. She couldn’t get Lisa in the van but couldn’t leave her like this either.

“Oh well,” Ana mumbled. She took off around the van again as the dead woman was coming around the front. She ran around the back of the vehicle and could see at least three more of the dead coming at her. She grabbed the seat cover with both hands at the top near the headrest, hoping there wasn’t anything gross on it, and pulled with all her might. She almost fell backward as the cover pulled free easily. She dropped it and jumped into the van. Thankfully, the seat felt dry even though the stench was overpowering. Even with the impending threat of a horrible death, she almost jumped back out of the van in reaction to the smell. She pulled the door shut and tried to start the van. Lisa was holding on to the dashboard with tears in her eyes.

“I almost got you killed! I am so fat, so fucking fat!” She let go of the dashboard and started to slide backward.

“No!” Ana screamed and grabbed her by the hair and started trying to pull her in. It was futile, but Lisa couldn’t slide out now.

“Let me go!” Lisa was crying.

“No! I can’t start the van if I have to hold you, and I’m not letting you go.” The dead woman arrived at Ana’s side of the van and started slapping on the glass. Ana saw two of the dead coming at Lisa from the darkness. She let go and twisted the keys again, and the van started. “What do I do now?”

“What!” Lisa screamed, the answer so obvious she didn’t know what to say. “Drive!”

Ana screamed even louder, “How do I make it go?”

Lisa realized Ana didn’t know how to drive. She reached up and pulled the shifter to drive, and the van lurched forward. She started yelling instructions. “Turn the wheel—harder! Push down with your right foot—a little lighter. Keep it on the road.”

Moments later, Lisa still half out the van, they pulled over and she rolled out. She found the latch and let the seat slide all the way back. Ana was busy rolling all the windows down. Thankfully, there was a sunroof too, and she opened that. Lisa was able to squeeze into the van and close the door.

The dead were still a ways behind them. They both sat quietly for a few moments in the dark van, door closed, windows open. Ana let the brake up and slowly drove forward.

“So, as I was formulating this brilliant plan it didn’t occur to you to tell me that you couldn’t drive?”

Ana looked at her sideways. “And you can’t tell when a space is too small for your body to fit into? How long have you been fat?” Ana was smiling, trying to relax and lighten the mood with a joke, but she still was shaking badly from the close call.

Lisa smiled. Her weight pained her and jokes about it usually hurt her deeply, but those jokes were from mean-spirited people. Ana had almost died because of her and the girl still saved her, refused to let her die. She could comment on her weight as much as she liked.

Lisa had another thought and slid back out of the van. “We need to cover the running lights, the brake lights…they can’t be turned off and are visible for miles.” She was gone for several minutes. The dead had to be close by now. Ana was getting worried when Lisa hopped back in.

“I had to find something to cover them with. I found some of that silver tape in a truck and cut up a jacket and covered all the lights.”

“Good thinking.” Ana turned to her. “Now what?”

“Now what? Again, now what?” Lisa shook her head and smiled. “I’m hungry. Let’s look for a drive-through.”

Old Monterey Road paralleled the 101 for miles and was close enough at spots to be seen from the highway, while at other places it was a mile or more away. It was dark and dangerous, and it was here where Ana learned to drive. She had to drive rather fast too, with no lights. They watched the truck on the 101 as it moved north, and eventually they got ahead of it. They still wondered how they would find and warn Cooper.

They watched the lights of the truck on the highway cruising slowly along. It stopped and started up again on occasion. The girls had a substantial lead.

“If you can drive under these circumstances, I would say you can drive anywhere, anytime.” Lisa broke the silence.

Ana didn’t respond. The lights were out and it was dark. The windows were all up and the sunroof mostly closed. The smell wasn’t as bad since the van had aired out. As they drove, they passed several clumps of cars and a few of the dead and almost hit a dog. A few times, as they slowed for some of the larger obstacles, the dead would slap at the car. It was always a completely horrifying event. Even if they saw it coming, the face of a corpse smashed against their windows in the dark of night was scary. The girls managed to stay on the road, despite all the dangers.

Lisa turned and looked back out the window. She couldn’t see but didn’t want to roll the window down either. “Maybe we should slow down, stay with these guys.”

“What?” Ana asked as if it were the stupidest idea she had ever heard, but she didn’t take her eyes off the road.

“We need to get to Cooper first. If we pass him and these guys find him first…we might be of more help to him if we can be there when they find him.”

“I don’t know.” Ana sounded dubious. “I guess we can try that for a while, but eventually something is going to happen. They might spot us, we can run out of gas…”

“Well, if you think of something better, let me know.”

They drove for almost an hour until the truck stopped and turned its lights off. This time the truck seemed to be taking longer than before to turn its lights back on. The girls waited for several long minutes with the windows open. The night was dark and cold.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Lisa was looking into the dark but saw nothing.

“Don’t know, maybe they found him.” Ana looked around before opening her door. They hadn’t seen dead or living for quite some time, so both got out of the van. It felt good to stand in the fresh night air.

“I can’t see them.” Lisa turned, and her stomach dropped. Part of the covering over the running lights had come loose, a bright red beacon that could be seen for miles. Just then, the low idle of an engine and the crunch of gravel alerted them that the truck was close. They saw it pulling on the road a few hundred yards behind them. Lisa pressed the tape back in place.

“We have to get going,” she hissed.

“Won’t they just chase us down?” Ana asked as she jumped behind the wheel.

“Probably, but there’s nowhere to hide out here. Maybe we can get to a building or something where we stand a chance.”

They drove off, and the truck seemed to follow. Its lights were back on, which made it easy for them to see it and hard for whoever was driving to see beyond the range of his own headlights.

25.

On the bottom level of the parking structure, Jeff stood several yards away from the first of the two up/down ramps. He was silent for a few minutes, and Ron and Sal watched him dubiously. He was just standing there doing nothing. Suddenly he turned.

“Oh crap, here, you will need these. This baby’s coming down soon.” Jeff pulled two pairs of clear safety glasses out of his pockets and handed them to Ron and Sal. He was seemingly as crazy as Bill. There was nothing in view that Ron or Sal could see.

“What is this?” Sal asked.

“Wait for it.” Jeff was standing cross-armed and smiling, looking right at the ramp.

Jeff looked like he was trying to pull the ramp down with his mind. Just then there was a loud creaking moan, and dust spewed from the seams of the ramp.
Holy shit, he is doing this with his mind,
Ron thought. Sal got nervous and backed up a step. There was another loud moan, a loud crack, and an explosion of dust that billowed across the structure. Something stung Ron’s cheek, drawing blood.

“What the hell is happening, Jeff?” Ron yelled louder than he wanted to.

“Ye of little faith and all that.” Jeff smirked. “Should be soon.”

There was a long, loud, shuddering moan, the screech of steel on steel, then a loud clanging pop followed instantly by a thunderous roar as the ramp dropped to the ground right in front of them. The ground shook like an earthquake, and both Ron and Sal retreated from the ramp. Sal tripped and fell backward on the ground. The air was thick with white dust that choked and blinded them.

The wind quickly carried the dust away. Lying on the ground behind Jeff was a very large slab of broken concrete where the ramp once ascended, and above it a neat rectangular hole fifteen feet up.

Jeff was whooping and hollering. The undemonstrative youth had never displayed near this level of emotion. He was dancing around and yelling, “Did you see that? Did you see that shit? Yeah, I am the man! I am the man! Hey, fellas, who’s the man?” The dust was coming off Jeff in clouds. He stopped to cough.