Love in the Time of Zombies (15 page)

How could I hold on to my new-found faith when everything in the world seemed determined to show me how shitty it could be? The Target store and the group attached to it were gone. Squinting into the haze from the smoke, I spotted several people dead on the ground. I moved closer. No bites. Just burned skin and broken bones. They weren’t burnt undead, just burnt dead. Something had killed them.

I brought my forearm up against my nose. The stench of burning oil and plastic roiled out of the shattered storefront to mingle with the sickening odor of burning flesh. A quick scan of the area showed no other damaged buildings. I squatted down and petted Nickie.

“I bet a propane tank or furnace blew. I don’t think the zombie army came through here.”

To my right, the sporting goods store stood unharmed except for scorch marks and other red, wet marks I didn’t want to identify on the wall. A few skinbags meandered in front of it. I turned the recorder back on as I jogged over. They scattered like plastic bags blown across a parking lot.

Plywood filled the doors where the glass had been. Reaching out, I banged on the wood with my fist, waited a second, and then put my ear to the wood. Silence greeted me. I did it again. Still nothing.

I pulled a flashlight out of my duffel bag and went inside. The musty scent filled my nostrils. It felt empty, if a place is capable of feeling empty. I shut the door and turned back to the cavernous place. Like a strobe, I swung the light back and forth to see if anything jumped out at me. Thankfully, still nothing appeared.

I allowed myself a small sigh. Cockiness gets you killed in the ZA. I turned off the recorder. Batteries were the first order of business. Before, batteries filled the checkout lines. After wasn’t much different. Except, the group had them all spread out on a table by the registers. A giggle escaped me. Shoplifting doesn’t count if there was no one left to take your money.

I took all the double A’s for the recorder and the D’s for the flashlight. I left the rest. Someone else might come along and need them. Greed wasn’t good in the ZA either.

Heading to the back where the crossbows and bolts were, I took a deep breath. Just dust. No decay. No rot. Like a girl in a jewelry store, I smiled when I spotted all the stuff left. Plenty of bolts for the crossbow, holsters for the guns, and even some ammo.

I found a backpack that fit well after trying on several and transferred most of the stuff over. Grabbing some protein bars and bottles of water gave me a sense of relief. Starvation and dying of thirst were too easy at the end of the world without the ease we were used to having instant food the minute we were hungry. Drive-thru fast food restaurants and easy microwave meals have spoiled us. The duffel bag got the extra ammo and some guns that I wasn’t sure what they took but would make good trade goods. That would be my drop bag. The one I’d drop if I had to get the hell out of somewhere in a hurry. Food, water, and supplies were staying with me.

Loaded up, Nickie and I headed to the front. The scratching alerted me before we reached the doors. The odor confirmed it. Undead waited for us outside. I reached for the recorder and it wasn’t in my pocket. In a panic, I swung in a circle. It wasn’t on the battery table. It had to be back at the guns. A plywood panel cracked and popped off the door. Nickie yelped and started growling, his fur up on end.
Why does everything have to be so damned hard?
All I wanted to do was go out the door I came in. Was that too much to ask for?

“Come,” I yelled, running back to the gun section. The recorder sat on top of the glass case where I’d stupidly left it. I scooped it up as I ran. A push of the play button brought nothing. Damn batteries. I stuffed it in my pocket and headed to the rear of the store. Exit doors are usually by the bathrooms. And those are usually in the right or left rear.

The crash of display cases and clothing racks filled the store. I swung the flashlight to the right. No bathrooms. Left it was then. We ran. The thump of my boots and the scratching of the dog’s nails on the linoleum floor filled my ears.

The green light was dead with no power, but the Exit sign hung over the hallway. Slowing down, I took several deep gulps of air and held my breath. Chaos behind me, silence in front of me. The flashlight’s beam picked out the silver bar on the emergency exit. No electricity, so I didn’t need to worry about an alarm. No chains or locks on the door. I let out my held breath.

Moans and shuffling were getting closer. “Okay, Nickie. One. Two. Three.”

We burst through the door and slammed it shut behind us. Looking around, I spotted a board and jammed it under the doorknob. I kicked the bottom as a thud sounded on the door, followed by several more. The handle rattled but the board held.

Pulling the gun from the holster, I turned in a circle. Nothing was there. I said a quick, silent prayer in my head. Ten seconds later I had reason to say a much longer one. In the corner of the enclosed back lot stood a bicycle with an attached baby trailer. I stopped to listen, nothing but the breeze carried to my ears. A price tag fluttered on the handlebar. Taking a moment, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I wouldn’t need to face a baby zombie or a zombie mommy. The thought would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing or real.

When one door shuts, another one opens. Or in this case, an even better door opened. Someone was watching over me and I knew it. Knew it deep down inside.

In seconds, I had the backpack and duffel bag in the trailer with my crossbow. The gun and holster stayed on me. Now, all I had to do was find the first rendezvous spot. Commander Canida had made us memorize the location and several ways to get there. All I had to do was find Oakley and Neroly Road.

I’d tried to get Nickie into the trailer too but he wasn’t having any of it. A few yelps and scratches on my arms convinced me to let him walk. I loaded the recorder with new batteries and put it in a fanny bag attached to the handlebars. I knew it was working, because my fillings hurt and the dog was right at my side again.

The familiar saying of never forgetting how to ride a bicycle is partially true. I hadn’t been on one since childhood, and the trailer made me wobble a little, but a hundred yards down the empty, cracked asphalt brought it all back. By the time I reached the dead end and turned right on a small road, I was pedaling along.

I glanced at the department store sitting by itself in a field of waist-high weeds that had claimed the parking lot and wondered for the umpteenth time what Brentwood would have been like without the end of the world knocking it on its ass. The store sat by itself. A huge sign by the freeway proclaimed more had been coming. A promise of prosperity frozen permanently in time.

The thump of the undead on the inside of the glass doors of the store had me pedaling faster.

Nickie easily kept up, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he trotted by my side.

We stopped where the shopping center’s street met the road. The silence was thick and heavy. No insects chirping. No birds calling to each other. Not even the bark of a dog. The town was dead in all ways.

The moan of a skinbag across the road caught my attention. He swayed back and forth, caught in the barbed wire strung in front of a house. Putting the kickstand down, I hopped off the bike and got a knife from the trailer. I strapped the sheath onto my belt and pulled the blade.

Skinbag was a relative term. There seemed very little skin left beyond a few hanging tatters. The rest had been seen to by carnivorous predators and rapacious birds.

The undead had been an elderly man judging by the gray hair clinging to the remains of his peeling scalp.

Putting my hand on his head, the blade of the knife slid into his temple with ease. The burning hunger died in his opaque eyes and his chattering chomping jaw fell silent as he sagged against the barbed wire. The strands pulled loose from the wood posts and he collapsed to the ground.

I stepped back, fell to my knees, and burst into tears. Dry heaves brought up bile and not much else.

The tears died and my stomach calmed. I’d never been pregnant before but I’d read enough books in my fruitless quest to recognize hormone swings and hunger pangs had me in a dangerous state. I couldn’t remember my last food beyond the orange from Antonio.

Harshly wiping my cheeks, I cleaned the knife on the zomb’s shirt and jammed it back into the sheath on my belt.

I glanced across the road to see Nickie sitting at attention beside the bike.

“Okay, buddy. Water, food, and we hit the road.”

I shot a look up and down the street as I jogged back to the bike. A quick search in the backpack yielded a bottle of water and a protein bar I’d grabbed and thrown in at the sporting goods store. Using my hand as a cup, I shared half of the water with Nickie, as well as the hard as a rock granola bar. Good thing their expiration date was years from now, because I was starving and being stale wasn’t going to stop me.

My stomach grumbled as food and water reached its emptiness. I held my breath, but the contents seemed willing to stay put. The dog looked up at me with pleading eyes, but the moans of zombs on the move had me pushing him away and straddling the bike.

With a tap of my boot heel, the kickstand was up and we were again on our way. To the north and the next town over should be the survivors of the attack on the compound, if there were any. I crossed my fingers and sent a quick prayer skyward, because if they weren’t there, the second site was a whole hell of a lot more miles away.

Before I knew it, we hit Neroly Road. At a crossroads, the flat land was deserted. The middle of nowhere, rolling tumbleweeds punctuating the point. A few houses sat back from the road, but no live people appeared. The breeze carried dust and the tumbleweeds down the middle of the road, looking so much like a movie of the apocalypse as to be surreal. I sat there a moment waiting for the gang from Mad Max to come thundering up the road.

I wiped the grit from my eyes and pushed off. The dog stayed by my side. Sometimes I had to swerve to miss his paws, he was so determined to be right under my feet, but in the middle of unfamiliar territory I was leaving the recorder on as long as possible.

Coming around a curve, we came upon houses. I pedaled slower. Red X’s marked the doors of each home. Some had shattered or boarded-up windows. What had been once verdant lawns sat brown and dead, weeds grew waist-high to the edge of front windows. Some had burned down to the foundations. The feel of a ghost town followed me as I pedaled down the middle of the road, allowing ample room for unpleasant surprises.

I stopped the bike and trailer with a skid. The RV storage yard sat a few burned-to-the-ground houses up the street. People bustled in and out of the front gate. I spotted several kids I didn’t know, but a big red R-1 graced the cinderblock wall and the American flag flew overhead.

I looked down at the dog. Tears burned my dusty eyes. “We found them, Nickie.” Now, I wasn’t alone.

“Emily,” a female voice yelled from on top the wall.

I waved as Michelle jumped down and ran toward us.

Darkness only masks the evil on the land.

Flowing water only conceals the moans.

Nothing escapes the rot of the dead

who refuse to die.

— Seth Ripley

The soft whispers and the occasional giggle from Miranda filtered from the cabin below, up to the deck. Seth rubbed his aching phantom fingers and pushed his gloved hand away in disgust. The smile on the young woman’s face as she’d gazed at Cody had made it easy to retreat up the stairs to join Teddy in fishing.

A pile of flapping fish in a bucket brought back the memory of taking the first load of fish to the Brentwood shopping center. His breath caught. The day he’d met Emily. His first glance of her as she battled zombies from atop a truck. Her soft dark hair cut short, framing her lovely face. Her dark eyes shining bright and full of life. Her happy acceptance of the life she now had. One that was not even close to the one before. Her tears and anger at young Nick’s senseless death.

He rubbed his chest. It hurt, deep inside, to think of Emily’s spirit crushed by the relentless undead army at General Peters’ beck and call. Pinching the bridge of his nose, still the tears came.

A large hand thumped on his back. “You lost someone special, didn’t you?”

Special? Yes, Emily had been that. That and more. “Her name was Emily. She was the fiercest fighter I’ve ever seen. The bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

Teddy’s eyes narrowed. “Did you see her die? Did you have to…you know?”

His gaze focused on the sunlight bouncing off the river. “No, I wasn’t there. But General Peters and his zombie army were headed there after the attack at the hospital in Concord. There’s no way the people at the shopping center could have won against a force that big. The hospital fell in minutes according to Miranda.”

“Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear,” Teddy said, grabbing his jerking fishing pole and reeling in the line.

Seth laughed. “Where did you get that pithy saying?” His fishing pole jerked in its holder and he reached out to get it before it went overboard into the river.

Teddy reeled in his fish, pulled it off the hook, and tossed it into the bucket. He leaned the pole against the side of the boat. “My momma would say that anytime I said someone said something about someone else. That woman didn’t hold with any gossip at all. She wouldn’t even read those magazines at the store checkout line. She said they were for people who didn’t have enough to worry about in their own lives, so they had to butt into others.”

Teddy turned in a circle, rocking the whole boat. “Lot of good it did us. Worrying about who Brad Pitt was dating or who wore what to which award show didn’t stop all this, did it?”

Seth sat back, his fishing pole forgotten in his hand. “What does Brad Pitt have to do with the end of the world?”

The big man spread his arms wide. “As far as you can see. That is all we have. No more 24/7 cable news. No emergency broadcasts. No more telling us every detail whether we need to know it or not. Nothing to tell you the shopping center and its people were overrun or not. No ‘breaking news’ to show the outcome. No telling if your Emily is dead or alive. But you won’t know until you get there.”

“I don’t need to see her shuffling around as the undead to know she is gone,” Seth got out in a loud, cracked voice. “I know she’s gone. In here.” He thumped his chest. “I’m not going to Brentwood.”

“Miranda, stop!” Cody yelled over the thump of the girl’s boots.

She burst through the door and onto the deck. “You promised,” she cried, pointing at Seth as he stood. She walked over until her finger pressed against his chest. “You promised.”

He pushed her hand away. “Promises don’t mean anything anymore. Nothing means anything anymore.”

The girl pulled her knife from its sheath and had it at his temple before he could take a breath. “Just say the word. I’ll put you out of your misery. But you’ll leave this world never knowing. Is that what you want?”

His breath left him in a shudder as he pushed Miranda’s knife away and fell into the deck chair. Did he want to die? He could join his mother and Emily in death. He closed his eyes. The boat rocked and the dark comforted. A million pictures flashed across his mind in the second from one breath to the next.

Of her baking cookies when he was a little boy, the warm scents of chocolate chip goodness filling their home. Of her cool hands on his forehead when he was sick. Of taking her to the hospital when the zombie virus hit.

A flash and he was with Emily in her tent. Touching her silky skin with his fingertips was as real as life. Her cries of passion during their love-making echoing in his brain and even her cries of anger when he’d left filling him with shame.

His eyes shot open. “No. I don’t want to die yet. But if we find her as one of the undead at the shopping center, I will release her to the final death by myself. Are we understood?”

Ran and Cody nodded at his question. Teddy looked away and pretended to be fishing even though the line wasn’t in the water.

Seth turned to the big man. “You’ll watch over them, won’t you?”

“Of course,” the man’s voice rumbled like thunder in a rainy sky.

Miranda stared at him, tears falling down her face. “I don’t understand.”

He grabbed her hands and held them. “I’ll go back. I’ll see what is there. Prove that Emily is dead. Then we will go our separate ways. You have Cody now. Teddy will watch over you both.”

Her hands squeezed tightly. “Then what? You’ll kill yourself?” Her voice cracked.

Seth pulled his hands back, looked away, and didn’t say a word.

By the time darkness was falling, Teddy had the boat ready to go. They’d eaten the fish dinner in silence. Miranda wouldn’t look him in the eye and her tears still fell from time to time. Cody held her hand and she leaned on him.

They gathered round as Teddy took the wheel and ordered them to cast off and to secure stuff. The man acted as if he knew what he was doing, so Seth just followed orders, pulled the rope from the pier, and gathered it into a looping pile on deck.

“You seem like you’ve done this a few times. Have you?” he asked as Teddy navigated the boat away from the dock.

“Oh, sure. This was my uncle’s boat. We went out every weekend from the time I was a little boy.”  Seth stared up at the giant and Teddy laughed. “Yes, at one time I was little.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“You want to go to Brentwood. We’ll get to the Antioch Bridge first. We’ll dock there and follow the highway into town. Easy, peasy.”

“I doubt anything is easy anymore,” Miranda piped up as she and Cody joined them at the wheel.

“Not easy, but doable with the four of us,” Seth said, wrapping his arm around Ran’s shoulders and relaxing as she let him.

The full Moon came up with a brisk breeze blowing from the river to the land. The light shone over the ripples of water, breaking and glimmering. The wind carried the freshness of the river and covered the stench of the undead on land. The moans were muffled and then died as the boat floated along the water highway. The tension left his shoulders.

“How long will it take?” Miranda asked Teddy.

“Well, we have to go slow because it’s dark and I can’t use the lights. In the old days, it would take no time in all to go the distance to the bridge. But at our putting along, I’d have to say about two hours, maybe.”

Seth felt the tension in Miranda’s shoulders. “How far to Brentwood?”

“About five or six miles, give or take.”

She smiled.

“But we have to anchor at the bridge and wait for daybreak.”

Her smile fell. “Why can’t we go as soon as we get there? Six miles is two hours, even walking slow.”

“Don’t know about you, Miss Miranda. But Teddy is not walking through zombie land in the dark,” Teddy said, his eyes forward, his hands on the wheel.

“Damn,” her voice broke. “I just want to get there.”

“And we will,” Seth spoke up. “In one piece.”

“Fine.” She flounced over to a seat like the teenager she still was as she threw herself down on the cushion. “But we leave at first light.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Teddy answered.

He held his laughter in as Teddy’s enormous shoulders shook with his own silent laughter.

Just as the big man promised, in a couple of hours the bridge appeared like a dinosaur arched over the river. In the dark, with just the light of the Moon it could have been a brontosaurus come to the river for a drink.

“Dude,” Cody spoke up. “I’m waiting for the music from Jurassic Park to start playing.”

Miranda laughed. “Lots of people said it looked like a dinosaur.”

Seth had to agree.

They drifted into its shadow in the middle of the river. Teddy pushed a button and the sound of the anchor clattering filled the air. It stopped suddenly and silence reigned again.

Teddy turned from his seat at the wheel. “You should have seen the old bridge, before this one. All wood and old. It creaked and moaned when you went across in your car. Felt like it swayed too.”

Seth shuddered. He’d always hated bridges. The thought of it breaking and sending him to a watery grave had filled many childhood nightmares and made his first days as a truck driver harder than they’d had to be.

“I’ll take first watch,” he volunteered, turning his arm to look at his missing watch, a habit he hadn’t had time to break yet. He kept meaning to get a new one after losing the last one fighting a zombie, but some other aspect of survival always took precedence.

“It’s nine thirty now,” Teddy said, looking at his own watch.

“How do you know it’s right?” Miranda asked before he could.

“Synced to the Atomic Clock in Colorado, which I assume has to be running at least for a while longer. Plus I check it at noon every couple of weeks.”

“Cool,” Miranda and Cody intoned together.

“Seth and I will take the first watch,” Teddy said. “You kids can take over at two. By five thirty, six o’clock should be close to dawn. I’d feel better if we watched in teams.”

Miranda and Cody nodded and headed down the stairs to below deck. Seth didn’t buy the team story Teddy was handed out. The man meant to convince him to live.

Wasn’t going to happen.