Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America (17 page)

“Where should I take them?” Dave asked Joni as Martin hopped around as if his bladder would burst at any moment. Jessica showed much more poise.

Joni looked to me and I said, “This place looks like a ghost town. Let’s try one of these houses.” Houses were spaced at irregular intervals along the street. On the right side of the street was one story brick house. There were no lights on or cars in the driveway. On the left was a white two-story house built in the old plantation style with tall white columns extending from the ground to the second floor roof.

Enie-meenie-minee-mo
, I said to myself and picked the two-story house.

“Randell, do you want to accompany me?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said through a yawn.

“Let’s go,” I said and led our small group forward. The contingent was larger than I expected. It was Jessica and Joni, plus Jane. Maybe sitting too pee was a female primal urge not to be denied? I’m guessing the guys felt like they could find a nearby tree. Dave ushered Martin towards a wide oak tree just off the street. Jay followed along whistling slightly off-tune.

Robbie said, “Wait for me,” and joined our group. At least one man had a sit down performance to attend.

We moved off the asphalt, the sounds of crickets and other night creatures making their night music, filling the air. The partially parched grass crunched lightly underfoot sounding like we were stepping on dried angel hair pasta. It had been a while since this place has seen rain.

We made it to the front sidewalk and I put up a hand for the group to wait as I made the final approach with my gun in hand. The wood on the porch creaked a little as I stepped onto it. I waited to see if there was any reaction inside, but none came. It was two steps across the short porch and I was at the door. Again, I stopped to listen, but only heard the breeze blowing through the trees.

It was time to put my money where my mouth was as I grabbed the outer door and opened it. The inner door was made of solid wood and would effectively kept me out had it been unlocked, but it wasn’t. I grasped the door handle and heard the slightest of clicks when I turned it. The door offered no resistance and opened easily.

That’s when it hit me. A wall of moist and sickeningly oversweet decay wafted over me so powerful it nearly bowled me over. After being out in the open air lately, the smell acted almost like a physical wave. I definitely wasn’t prepared for it. I gasped and took a step back.

“What is it?” Randell asked as he switched off the safety on his rifle, the click sounding like a gunshot in the clear night air. I nearly jumped, but the insects and night creatures took that as their cue to end their performance mid-stream and the night went quiet.

“Stay back,” I said as I braced myself to enter. I stepped forward and the smell assaulted me again. I fought back the urge to toss my cookies and pushed the door fully open.

The smell was bad, and, of course, it made me think of the undead, but there was a difference in this odor. Something not so fresh and active. There was an undercurrent of staleness.

I stood still in the doorway letting my eyes adjust to the interior darkness and gradually the dark world within became more discernable. A long hallway extended back into the house with a tall China cabinet along the wall. I stared into the shadows for any movement, but saw none.

“I’m going inside,” I said in a low voice. “If you hear a gunshot, get everyone back to the truck and wait for me. If I don’t say anything or don’t come out, go on without me.”

“If its dangerous, you shouldn’t go in,” Joni said.

“I don’t think it is, but you never know about these things,” I said. To cut off any further debate, I stepped inside and let the door close behind me and immediately regretted it. With the door open, the fresh air was cut off leaving me in the cloying stench inside.

I crept forward and looked into a room on my right. An expansive dining room table filled the room surrounded by high backed wooden chairs. I thought I could make out place settings in front of each chair, but the light was too dim to be sure.

I turned my attention to the room on my left. A persistent buzzing seemed to emanate out the dark room. I initially thought the buzzing was in my ears because I was listening so intently, but the longer I stood there, the more I knew it was a very real sound. The room was nearly pitch dark and no matter how long I stared into it, it didn’t get any lighter. And like an idiot, I had left our single flashlight in the truck.

There was nothing to do, but enter. I did this with my gun extended in front of me with the safety off and my finger on the trigger. I only hoped some stubborn homeowner didn’t decide to stumble out of the shadows because they’d get a face full of lead whether they were living or dead.

Something buzzed by my cheek and then another something did the same by my ear. The buzzing intensified as I moved forward, a cautious step at a time. In the dim light, I could barely make out dark shapes against the back wall of the room. The shapes were long and low and were mostly symmetrical. They could only be furniture of some sort.

I side-stepped and promptly rammed my shin into something hard. The sound of something tumbling over in the dark followed and the buzzing sound increased. More things buzzed by my head as I jumped back and aimed down at whatever had fallen over. I poked out with my foot and it hit something wooden and solid.

It didn’t move. I continued toward the front of the room with my gun aimed into the darkness at the back of the room. I kept my attention locked on the shadows and groped with my other hand for the wall. After a few seconds, it hit something soft, yet scratchy that yielded to my hand. I pushed against and, at first, I thought it was drapery, but upon deeper inspection decided it had to be something much heavier like a blanket or a bedspread.

I grasped it in my hands and gave it a hard tug. Something ripped and the covering came free, spilling onto the floor around my feet. The buzzing things filled the air, flying this way and that.

Moonlight streamed in through the windows and I saw two bodies on a long couch at the back of the room. A knee height coffee table sat directly in front of the couch. One body was covered with a yellow and white quilt. The other body was only partially covered with what was left of its head exposed. I didn’t want to do a close inspection, but moved close enough to see the head was that of an elderly man. Most of his head was gone and a shotgun sat across his lap. The form under the blanket could have been anyone because I wasn’t about to pull off the quilt, although I thought I saw a dark stain about where the head would be. A black swarm of flies hovered over the bodies, flitting this way and that.

The picture was obvious, but to make it clear, there was a note on the coffee table. It was hard to read in the dim light, but jist of it was that Fred and Melissa had lived their whole life in this house and “No zombies” or government evacuation was going to drive them from their home. That was until a zombie bit Melissa. Things changed fast and Fred took care of business.

This was just more evidence that our world was swirling big drain. I was just wondering who was going to flush the rest of us?

I wadded up the note and tossed it on the floor as I walked out of the room. I was out the front door a few seconds later hoping the fresh air would rejuvenate me, but instead it left me feeling wrung out and sweaty.

“Let’s use the house across the street,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” Joni asked. “You’re as white a sheet.”

“It’s nothing.”

She came up to me and put a hand on my arm, “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“It’s a bad scene,” I said wanting to pull away, but liking the feeling if her touch. “We’d be better off across the street.”

Avoidance had been a lifelong habit for me, but I did what I hadn’t done in quite a few days and looked her in the eyes. What was there on the night we had kissed was there now, but with her husband back, there was nothing to do about it. So, it was a useless exercise to consider what could have been. We were where we were and it was what it was. The writing was on the wall and there was no future there and only a brief past.

As gently as I could, I reached up and pulled her hand off my arm. As it fell away, I could see her look down and thought I saw her wince.

“Come on, mom,” Jessica said tugging at her mom. “I really have to go.”

And with that, the moment was gone. We ushered the group across the street. As we went Dave shouted for us to look for anything good inside because he was hungry. The entry and time inside this new house went without incident. Those who had business to take care of, took care of it. We did grab some canned goods and found some bottled water.

We were loading up our people and cargo when a slight whomping noise sounded in the far off distance. When I looked up, I could see a flash on the southern horizon. It glowed like the sun at noon for about fifteen seconds, then darkened like a candle going out.

“Was that what I thought it was? Jane asked.

“What are you thinking it was?” Jay asked.

Jane looked at him with her head tilted and her hands on her hips and said, “Jay, sometimes I think you’ve smoked every brain cell out of your head.”

I turned my attention back to south, watching for any other flashes. A few seconds later another flash occurred. This one seemed more intense and closer, rising in a ghostly yellow and orange glow. An icy knot formed in my gut.

Robbie rushed up me, holding his small portable radio out to me, and said, “All the signals just went off the air.”

“Shhhh,” I said quietly, “We don’t want to scare the kids.”

“Shit, this is serious Grant,” he said, looking like a kid himself. “You saw the flashes. I saw the flashes. We both know what they were.”

“What were they?” Jay said, a perplexed expression on his face.

Jane turned to him and punched him on the arm and said, “I’m cutting you off.”

“Owwww,” Jay said massaging his arm.

Jane leaned in close to his ear and whispered something that I couldn’t make out.

Jay’s eyes widened and he said, “Nukes!”

Jane punched him again, but this time a lot harder.

Jay cried out again, but didn’t say anything else.

“Robbie, there’s nothing that hasn’t been serious about any of what’s happened to us. This complicates matters, but we still need to do what we can to survive.”

When we left the Alamo and I was interviewed by a reporter about our “heroic” escape from the Alamo. I had half-jokingly said, “Forget the Alamo.” (I really said a different “F” word, but the media softened it later -- against my wishes.) With these far off flashes, I was beginning to think we might being saying ‘Forget America’ soon. Maybe ‘Forget the World.’

Some famous Danish philosopher (I forgot his name) a couple centuries ago coined the term ‘existential angst.’ It was meant to encompass our deep-seated human dread or despair. All I can say, that at the moment, I wasn’t using any fancy philosophical terms; I was scared shitless and feeling an overwhelming hopelessness start to work at me on the edges.

They say the waiting is the hardest part. I stood there pausing for the next flash, hoping it wouldn’t happen or, if it did, it would be further away, but deep down expecting it drop right down in front of us. Call me a pessimist if you want. If recent past experience was educational, I was learning the hard way.

There was no third flash, but I thought I felt a warm rush of air from the south pass through the trees, rustling the parched leaves, and swooping past us, leaving my mouth with a dry feeling. The wind could have been my imagination, but flashes meant that it was time to get back on the road.

“Let’s mount up, folks,” I yelled.

That command was greeted with groans and some swearing, but those that knew what the flashes were did not hesitate and the others thankfully followed.

For the first time since I’d been around her, Joni let me drive. It seemed to be a milestone for us, but she was exhausted, so I got behind the wheel. She was asleep before we were out of the town. She stayed awake to watch re-learn how to drive a big rig.

It took a few minutes for me to get used to driving the big rig, but I kept it on road and the gears intact after only grinding them a few times. Even in her sleep, Joni groaned each time the transmission roared in protest.

The in-town driving was the test and I only had to a few abandoned cars to avoid to prove myself worthy of being able to drive. To my credit, I only scraped against one of them. That is if you call knocking the car into someone’s front yard ‘scraping.’

The town was deserted with not a soul around as we cruised through town on our way east. At least not a live soul. Just as I was about to hit the city limits on the east side of the town, the unmistakable shambling form of a zombie wandered onto the road. Attracted by the headlights, it headed for us, doing the zombie shuffle down the center of the road.

I took no evasive maneuvers and I took it head on.

In a contest of a forty thousand pound truck versus a two hundred pound undead body, the clear winner is the truck. It was not even close. The impact was barely an impact, but the body still exploded like a sausage left in a microwave too long.

Robbie winced a little though, then gagged a little as I used the windshield wipers to remove some of the gore. I didn’t hold it against him.

About an hour outside of town, Joni slumped against me and let out a contented sigh. It felt too familiar and too nice.

Robbie noticed it and looked our way out of the corner of his eye. I tried not to pay attention to the fact that he noticed, but he kept looking my way. We drove for another fifteen minutes and he finally worked up the courage to speak. I knew the question was coming.

“What’s up with you two?” he asked is a whisper.

“Nothing,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.

It only took another five minutes for him to get back the courage again. “It doesn’t look that way to me.”

“Look what way?”

“You guys are into each other.”

“Okay, listen,” I said, maintaining my focus straight ahead while keeping my voice down. “We went through a lot together in those first few days. Things like that bring out strong emotions. Emotions get mixed up. We had a night. Well, really only a few minutes.”