Euphoria-Z (42 page)

“OK,” Jeff said. “When you turn next, slow down and let me out. Then resume your normal speed. Drive a block down and pull over. I will hide and let the car pass. Then I will come up behind and see who it is.”

“Then what?” Cooper asked.

“You walk off, not toward the office, just off in another direction. Then we’ll see what happens.”

“How does that help us?” The next turn was coming up. The following vehicle was at least a block back, plenty of time for Jeff to get out of the ambulance unseen and hide, and for Cooper to continue on.

“I will be behind you, and we have guns. We can see what happens.”

“I don’t like it. What if there are like five people in the car?”

“If we see more than one person get out of the car, you run back to the vehicle and take off. Meet me where you dropped me. If it’s only one, they’ll probably follow on foot. I will get you in our vehicle, and by the time they get back to their vehicle we’ll be long gone.”

At the next turn Cooper slowed almost to a stop, and Jeff opened the door, jumped out, and ran into the darkness. Cooper was almost immediately back up to speed.

He watched in the mirror, and a few moments later a vehicle came out after him. It didn’t slow or stop, so it seemed Jeff was safe. Cooper could see more clearly now as they left the tree-lined office park and were on a wide street lined with stores and strip malls. It was a pickup truck that followed them. He went about a block and pulled into the parking lot of a Best Buy. He parked close to the entrance and looked out at the street.

He watched for a few moments, nervous that Jeff had been caught or the guy was sneaking up on him from another direction. Then he saw a chunk of shadow move. It was a figure that walked onto the lot and stopped behind a sign. This gave Cooper chills. The figure could still be a friendly survivor who was just real cautious, but he had a bad feeling about it. He left the vehicle when he knew the figure could see where he went.

He followed the street next to the store back into a neighborhood. He looked back and watched the figure step from the shadows and hurriedly walk toward him. He went deeper into the neighborhood. He looked back. The figure was walking faster, gaining on him. Cooper was debating whether he should tip his hand and run or keep walking. Running was never a good idea at night in places like this. He was getting whiffs of decay and felt the dead were near. He didn’t venture many looks back and was starting to worry about Jeff not showing up when he heard the low, throaty sound of the ambulance’s ten-cylinder engine. He looked back and the figure was in a run to catch up to him, but whoever it was was too far back for that. As the ambulance sped past him, he turned and ran back the opposite way, presumably to his car.

Jeff pulled up and Cooper jumped in. “Hit it, man.”

Jeff took off. “No need for panic. I took care of his truck. Unless he has four spare tires, he isn’t going anywhere.” He started back toward the office park. After a moment he slowed down.

“I have an idea.”

“Let’s hear it.” Jeff was driving so slow it made Cooper nervous.

Jeff slowed even more. He was driving extremely slowly as he stared out the window, thinking. “It’s dangerous, I think, but we can’t keep playing this game of cat and mouse. If we hadn’t seen him…”

“I think your body took the form of a unicorn just now,” Cooper joked as a nervous reaction to Jeff’s behavior.

Jeff, still deep in thought, put his fist out to Cooper. “Stepbrothers. Hit it.”

Finally, Cooper thought, something they had in common, but what the hell was the guy thinking? “Maybe I should drive.”

§

By the time Banjo found another vehicle, the ambulance and its occupants were long gone. He was pissed. He went back to the parking garage to check on Jack. A minute after he stopped, Jack came to the passenger door.

“No sign of Weed?” Banjo asked and was driving as soon as Jack was in the car.

“Well, I found this.” He held up Weed’s fire stick. “It was by that big old fucking hole. I think he might have fallen in. It looks like it’s just you and me now, brother.”

“I’m heading back to the Costco so we can regroup.” Banjo left out the part of the evening where he’d been outsmarted and left stranded. “I’m tired of all this shit. I want to find them and end it, end all of it.”

“I’m with you all the way, brother, but the sooner the better.” Jack still had his brothers to avenge and mourn. Jack wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but he’d lost all of his men and so had Banjo. They would have died too, if they hadn’t walked away.

§

Wendy climbed to the top of one of the many tall shelves. They were like small buildings stuffed with boxes of stuff. She made it to the top of a shelf piled with boxes of diapers wrapped in cellophane to keep them all together. She got comfortable. She was a good twenty feet up in the air and was nervous, but she also knew she was undetectable up here. The roof was still a good ten or more feet above her. She lay on the boxes for a while, looking at the skylights. The moon had risen higher and put more light through the skylights, so she could see the beams, the tops of the other shelves, and the catwalk for changing bulbs and other maintenance. She sat up suddenly.

All the smaller catwalks that crisscrossed the ceiling met at the edges, where a larger catwalk circled the store. She looked around the store from her new vantage point, and with more light she could see things she hadn’t before. Most notably, she saw a sizable room with windows all around it. This room was situated at the edge of the store and above shelves and a mixture of ground-floor refrigerators and other service counters. The room could easily be overlooked by anyone who didn’t know it was there. She climbed back down the shelving unit and made her way over to the area below the room. She assumed it must be some kind of office. Maybe she could get in there if she had to wait in here for any length of time.

Wendy found the lone door that most likely led up to the office. It was open when she twisted the knob, so she went in. Up the stairs she found the other girls. They had all shot up. Alanis still had a tube wrapped around her arm, which was dark blue. She went to each of them and tried to wake them. They were all dead.

“Stupid skanks,” she whispered as she looked upon the women, dead from overdoses. It made her mad that she cared more about their lives than they did. But she was mostly mad at herself for risking so much to get here. She felt like an idiot.

She couldn’t stay in here now, not with three corpses that had pissed and crapped themselves. They were slowly putrefying, and soon the flies and maggots would appear. She was tired of waiting for the bikers to return. She realized that if she waited until they arrived, she would then be trapped inside the Costco with them. The conditions on the streets would not have changed. She decided to chance leaving. She opened several doors, only to pull them shut after seeing the dead ambling about. She had an idea and turned to walk back to where her car was. The lights had gone out, which could only mean that the battery had died.

The car was still blocking the door. The dead were still trying to get in, and her presence only made them more agitated. Maybe if she let these guys in one door it would clear the lot out enough for her to leave through another. It would also provide a nice surprise for Banjo and his buddies when they returned.

Wendy practiced her escape route. First she was going to tap on the door and then she would open it, not wide, just enough so, theoretically, the dead nearest the door would discover it after a moment and it would take time for the others to follow them in. If she whipped the door open dramatically, she was certain to attract a lot all at once, and they would pile in and get stuck in the doorway.

She took a few useful items and was ready to go. She rapped on the door with her knuckles, popped it open, then jogged away about twenty feet. She watched as the door got bumped, a hand reached in, and the door slowly opened. She turned and ran across the store. She stopped at her planned exit door and slowly opened it. The activity farther down attracted the dead and they were moving toward it. The lot was thinning out. She stepped from the door and started running.

§

Cooper was now driving. Jeff was sitting on the edge of the open window with Cooper’s scope. They were following the guy who had followed them and wanted to stay back as far as possible.

They doubled back and watched from a distance as the guy searched for a new vehicle. After he found one he took off, and they followed him. He had all the lights on, so they found it pretty easy to follow from a good distance. They watched him from the edge of a warehouse as he picked up another man. With the scope, Jeff could see them and confirmed their suspicions. It was the bikers.

They saw only two bikers, and Cooper and Jeff both suspected that was all there were. Two seemed better than seven to deal with. The men drove off, all lights and squealing tires. It was easy to follow them to the Costco.

The men pulled into the parking lot and ran down a few of the dead. Jeff dropped the scope and slid back into the cab.

“They’re staying at the Costco. What now?” Jeff’s window was still open.

Both Cooper and Jeff had become complacent. They hadn’t seen much of the dead, other than a few stragglers, and were sitting in the ambulance with the windows down. A hand grabbed Jeff’s arm, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He recoiled, threw himself backward, and was digging for Dale’s gun. He stopped when he looked up and saw a beautiful brunette looking at him.

“Please, can I get in? They’re coming.” The door wasn’t locked and she opened it. Jeff didn’t have time to move over. She climbed over him and got between him and Cooper.

Cooper rolled up his window during the commotion. He was pretty startled too, but being across the car and facing Jeff he saw the pretty face right away and knew it was no zombie.

“Thanks for letting me in.” The woman was pretty, very pretty, and the sweat suit she was wearing didn’t hide her figure.

“Hi, I’m Cooper and that’s Jeff.”

“I’m Wendy.” She smiled at each guy. She was pretty good at reading people—pretty girls tended to get a sense of guys and their intentions early on. She could tell these two were probably OK.

“Where did you come from?” Cooper asked her and noticed Jeff was looking at him with wide eyes. He didn’t seem too comfortable with females.

“It’s a long story, but I was in the Costco and had to get out.”

“The bikers?” Jeff asked.

Wendy turned and looked at him with a tinge of fear and a bit of suspicion. “Why are you guys here?”

“Why did you have to leave the Costco?” Cooper asked, making her look back at him again.

“OK, I asked first, and I need to switch places with one of you or I will break my neck.” She started climbing over Jeff, who was looking a little freaked out as her her hips and thighs smashed against his face. She plopped down as Jeff scooted toward the middle.

“That’s better.” She could lean forward and see both young men. “Where was I? Oh yeah, I asked first. What are you doing here?”

“Sorry,” Cooper said. “Our ambulance, we get to ask the questions, unless you want to get back out.”

The dead were getting closer. They had followed her from the lot. She looked at Cooper and smiled. “You know you aren’t going to make me get out of this vehicle. But OK, I’ll go first. I was in the Costco trying to help some friends. They couldn’t be helped, so I had to get out before Banjo—he’s a real asshole—got back with his friends. And yes, they’re all bikers. So, you guys?”

Cooper started the vehicle and drove slowly away from the Costco, drawing the dead with him. Wendy told the two about being a dancer and promised to tell them her life story later, and all about Banjo killing Dar and Slick, taking the dancers, and shooting Sally. She told them she’d tried to save the other dancers but they were all ODed. Cooper gave a summation of coming from Monterey looking for his sister. Jeff looked surprised.

“You walked from Monterey to here? Through all this shit? Wow, mucho respect. I made it about three blocks before Ron picked me up in the middle of the street running from a million zombies. Took me a while to figure some things out.”

Cooper hadn’t told him about any of the stuff he had gone through, just that he’d made it this far on foot. He too promised to swap stories later.

Jeff’s story was pretty straightforward. He’d left his house for food and got caught in the grocery store by a horde and barely escaped to the street, where Ron saved him. He was offered a ride home but decided to stay with Ron. Home was an apartment he shared with his abusive dad, and he was glad not to return there.

After they all exchanged stories, they decided Wendy needed to come back with them. There really was no other option. They got back to focusing on the misdeeds of the bikers within the Costco.

“So you think there are only two bikers left?” Wendy was asking the guys. She could never tell exactly how many there were. She’d seen some new faces.

“I think so.” Cooper was still driving as slowly as he was when he pulled away from the Costco. The trailing crowd of zombies grew. “I…” The memories were fresh and painful. He hesitated for a second, but no one took note. “I saw four of them die and two just walk away.”

“There is a way to find out exactly what we’re dealing with,” Jeff said. “We can look inside.”

“No way I am going near those sick fucks. You can let me out here.” Wendy was serious too. She would rather deal with an army of the dead than Banjo and his kind.

Cooper was doubtful. “That sounds dangerous. Besides, the others must be worried about us.” He was thinking of Ana and Lisa too.

“Remember, we are two smart guys. We can do better than that.” Jeff was waiting for Cooper to respond. “Come on, man. If we leave and they take off, we’ll never find them.”

Cooper sped up so they could find a place to stop without the dead pounding on the ambulance. “Wendy, tell us everything you can remember about the inside of the Costco.”