The Lazarus Impact (15 page)

CHAPTER 29

The road leading to the highway is filled with parked cars. Brandon tries them all but the doors are locked. One or two even have the unholy creatures trapped inside. The unfortunate souls turned into zombies while driving. Brandon can hear them groaning as he passes. He’s half tempted to blow one of them away and take the car for a joyride.
Why not? I just killed a man and got away with it. There’s no law, or at least in time there won’t be any.
But he’s half afraid, too. He never drove anything except the cars in video games where you get points for crashing, causing multi-vehicle pile-ups, and mowing down pedestrians.
It can’t be that hard
. But he doesn’t try.

He cautiously passes shopping centers and chain restaurants. Most were closed when the impact hit, so no one was out shopping. But afterward people must have gone out for supplies, thinking they could hunker down and survive this mess. There are stray zombies up ahead at some of the stores. He sees them. He walks quietly and slowly, crouching behind cars and hedges along the side of the road. His eyes scan the scene slowly until they come upon a naked woman. Then his gaze is locked.
Damn, she’s hot! I’d hit that
. The glazed yellow look in her eyes is almost lost behind the long ratty blonde hair that dangles down in front of her face and falls upon her tits.
I don’t care if she’s a zombie
.
I’d still hit that
.
But what about the smell?
Never mind the blood and gore that smatters her skin. Brandon can see streams of piss running down her thighs and shit stains at the bottom of her ass. His face contorts in disgust.
I wonder if I’d catch the zombie disease from banging her
.
If not, I’d definitely hit that
.
Just have to tie her down, cover her mouth, and clean her up a little
.

He forces himself to turn his attention back to the road, despite the raging boner in his pants. He eyes Dickie’s Outdoor Sports Shop and is almost tempted to go in for some supplies, but he worries about zombies lurking in the shadows within.
No lights inside a large building with no windows and lots of clothing racks and aisles to hide zombies
.
There may not be much left on the shelves, but whatever is there would be mine for the taking.
He had no problems with looting in an emergency like this. But he passes on the idea.
Too risky
.

Soon he reaches the highway, and the gas station is in sight.
Less than a mile to go
. But ahead in the distance he can hear a lone car approaching. Then he sees it; a police officer. He ducks back and slinks off into the woods along the road, peeking out behind some trees to see what’s happening.
The last thing I need is a cop asking me why I have a gun
. Wild thoughts of rationality overtake him.
Maybe they already know about the man I shot
.
Maybe he or the coughing woman upstairs struggled to a phone and somehow called the police
.
Maybe they gave a description and they’re looking for me
.
Maybe the world isn’t ending
.
Maybe there’s still law and order, and this is all trumped up in my mind
.
Maybe I’m going crazy
.

He stays clear of the dry leaves as he quietly continues to move closer and closer. The car pulls into the gas station and parks beside one of the pumps. Smoke rises up from the hood. Brandon can hear the bell ding twice as the front and back wheels cross over the strips of tubing that lay across the pump docks. The engine shuts. Brandon moves closer and closer, but no one comes out of the car. He flattens himself on the ground and props his gun up on a gas can. He looks down the barrel at the scene before him. Nothing moves.
Is the cop waiting for full service? Waiting for some young, greasy haired foreigner to pump his gas?

Then suddenly a ruckus comes from within the convenience store, near the cash registers. Brandon hears glass breaking and things falling.
Maybe someone is looting
.
Did the cop hear it? Maybe his radio is on and he was talking, maybe he was talking to his partner, or maybe the sound wasn’t loud enough to hear from inside the car
.
But the sound of commotion cuts short as quickly as it began. Then the car engine starts again, and it rolls up to the next pump. The bell chimes again as they pass another set of rubber strips on the pavement. Immediately, the noises begin again from inside the store.

Then Brandon sees it. It presses its face against the windows on the inside of the store, between banners for cigarettes and motor oil. Blood smears across the glass as it moves toward the sound of the running engine. The driver’s side door opens and an older man steps out with a shotgun and a rag tied across his face.
A bandit? No
.
What am I thinking? This isn’t the old west
.
It’s a makeshift breathing mask
. The man wearing it walks right up to the store window, lifts his gun to his shoulder, and blasts the risen creature in the face. The glass shatters and falls all around the dead zombie, piercing the air with mayhem.
That’s no cop
.
That’s a survivor
.
It’s already become lawless
.
The guy stole a police car
.
The end is here!

A moment later a woman steps out of the passenger side door wearing a cheap hospital-issued gas mask. Her arm is in a sling, but she has a slim, sexy body.
Nice
...
A MILF
. She walks toward the store, poking her head through the broken window to check for more cannibals. An instant later one of them comes running from the service garage in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. Brandon instinctively fires a round at it.
Bull’s eye
. The headshot causes a fine crimson mist to fill the air around the beast before it flops to the ground. The man and woman stop in their tracks. Their heads turn to follow the sound of Brandon’s rifle. He stands up and walks over to greet them.
I’m getting good at this whole sniper thing
.

CHAPTER 30

“Thank you,” Sheryl says to Brandon as he struts over to them.

“No problem,” he says. “I came looking for gas.”

“Us too,” says Willy, who kneels beside a small manhole cover on the ground. He pries at it with his fingers but it’s stuck. He wanders off in search of a crowbar.

“The pumps aren’t working, so we’re going to have to fish it out of the tanks underground,” Sheryl explains. “I’m Sheryl and that’s Willy. What’s your name? And aren’t you a little young to have a gun and be out here on your own?”

“Brandon Jessup. Lost my parents, so I’m on my own whether I like it or not.” He was starting to like it. No rules, no bed time, no homework. Only jerking off, playing video games, and killing zombies.

Sheryl hears his name and immediately puts the initials together in her head. “Do friends call you BJ? I have... had a son named BJ. Bobby Junior. He was ten.”

“You should be glad he didn’t make it to high school then,” Brandon coldly responds. “Only the bullies call me BJ. Blow job, cock sucker, pasty fag, and whatever else.”

Willy returns with a crowbar and some other items that he plans to take with him in the car. He opens the trunk and tosses them inside. Rocky greets him with a paw to the back windshield.

“You got a dog?” Brandon lights up with a smile behind his mask, showing a flicker of his dwindling untainted, innocent youth. There isn’t much left remaining.

Sheryl instantly responds like a mom would. “Come on let’s take him out. He can use a little exercise. He’s been stuck in the car all day. His name’s Rocky.”

“Leave your gas cans, son. I’ll fill ‘em for ya,” Willy offers.

“How come he didn’t turn?” Brandon asks as he pets Rocky.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen any animals turn yet. Maybe they’re immune,” Sheryl answers. "Just saw some birds drop from the sky after eating a body, that's all."

Sheryl and Brandon take turns tossing a stick back and forth between them, playing fetch with Rocky. Willy pries up the manhole cover to reveal a five inch wide pipe leading down into the storage tank beneath the gas pumps. He rigs up an empty plastic bottle to a length of string and lowers it into the abyss. Once he feels it fill up with liquid, he slowly pulls it back up from the pipe. He smells it just to be sure. It’s gasoline. He begins to fill the gas cans with fuel, one 20 ounce bottle at a time. Once they’re filled, he cuts down a hose from the pump. He inserts the nozzle into the police car gas tank, and pours the gas into the back end of the cut hose, using it like a funnel to get the gas into the car.

Sheryl and Brandon see how painstaking the process is, and they decide to help, each making their own gas fishing rig with string and bottles. Eventually the car and Brandon’s two gas cans are topped off.

“Think you guys can give me a lift back home? I’m just past town, about five minutes from here by car,” Brandon asks.

“Sure, hop in,” Sheryl answers before Willy can even think it over. Her eyes were lit up like a Christmas tree. She saw both her sons in Brandon. She tried to. BJ, older, more self reliant, and Stephen, meek and sweet. She wanted to take care of Brandon, to be his mother. But Brandon seemed a bit disconnected, detached from reality. In the little time Sheryl spent with him, she could tell something was off.
Too many video games and not enough real socializing
, she thought.
It’s all too common these days
...
Well, maybe that will change now that there’s no electricity
.
But there are all sorts of new problems involved with social interactions now
.

“I’ve got a bunker with video games and food and stuff, but I guess you guys are all stocked up,” Brandon says as he eyes the car full of supplies.

So much for my theory about video games becoming a thing of the past
, Sheryl thinks.

“What’s your plan? Everyone has to have a plan otherwise they’re doomed,” Brandon asks.

“West,” Willy replies. “Past the impact, where it’s safe to breathe.”

“That’s what I want to do too. Just trying to figure out how to do it. I have a lot of stuff, food, supplies... not sure how I can bring it all with me. But there’s a place I know where people have been surviving for a long time all on their own. They don’t rely on anyone or anything. Totally self contained, remote.”

Brandon goes on about the compound and Willy eyeballs him in the rearview mirror as he speaks.
That’s just the kind of place I’d like to set up
.
Someplace safe
.
It’d be good for Sheryl
.
Somewhere she can rebuild her life
.
Maybe runnin’ into this Brandon kid is a blessing
.
Sheryl can fill the holes missing in Brandon’s life, and Brandon can replace BJ and Stephen in Sheryl’s life
. He hopes, but he knows no one can ever really replace someone that was lost. He knows that first hand from losing his daughter to drugs, and losing his wife to... well, to the war. She left him soon after he came back from Vietnam. They had a daughter and things were going well at first, but soon the nightmares were creeping into reality. The horrors of war were always with him. Some nights he would wake up in the middle of strangling his wife or hitting her, without any clue as to why or how. He came back from war, but so did all the death, all the evil. He came back from the war, but the war came back with him, as they say. Like a plague it stayed with him, infected him. The veterans’ mental health programs helped a little bit, more so recently, but by then it was way too late. His wife left him, and his daughter went with her. Some years back he learned that his daughter had gone off to Hollywood to be a star. She got hooked on drugs and overdosed in a swimming pool at some big shot director’s house in the hills during a party. Since then Willy has been numb, other than the occasional flashbacks. But now things are changing again. Killing a zombie, to him, is becoming just like fixing a pipe at the hospital, or mopping up blood in the ER. Routine. Normal.

“She said I can bring whoever I want. Maybe you guys can drive and we can go together, you know? I don’t know how to drive.” Brandon finishes rambling about his apocalyptic paradise.

Sheryl looks over at Willy with questioning eyes, as if asking “Can we keep him, Daddy? Please?” Willy nods his head yes. He already sees they’re a good match. They’re each what is needed for the other to cope.
What do I need?
Maybe just to be needed again
.

“We’ll take you,” Sheryl says.

“I’ll teach you to drive. It ain’t so hard. They let old people like me do it, so a youngin’ like you’d have no problem,” Willy says, receiving a laugh from Brandon and a smile from Sheryl afterward.
One big, happy, fucked up, post-apocalyptic family
.

They pull into Brandon’s driveway. Willy can smell the gasoline that leaked out from the crushed cars in his driveway. He looks around to see the damage the house and surrounding area sustained from the impact. “You’re lucky you survived,” Willy says.

“Not lucky. Ready,” Brandon responds. “Back there is the bunker.” Brandon leads them to his hole. They walk past his mother’s rotting, stinking corpse along the way.

“What happened here?” Willy asks.

“Oh that’s just my mom. Don’t worry. She’s really dead now,” he says nonchalantly.

A queer look fills Sheryl’s face as her eyes meet Willy’s. She’s sure of it.
There has to be some mental break with this kid
.
I can fix that
.

Brandon clears the brush covering the shelter, pops the hatch, and takes them down. He quickly covers his porn mags with a blanket, but the pungent scent of puke still permeates the air. “I was gonna make several trips for gas for the generator, but seeing how difficult it is just for one can to get filled, I think I need a new way to power my bunker.”

“Well if you mean to leave for your friend’s compound, then save your gas for the car,” Willy says.

“Or for their generators,” Brandon adds.

“Well I can help the people there build a wood-fired generator, or convert it from gas power to wood if they haven’t already.”

“And I used to be a school teacher once upon a time, before I had kids. If there’s need for that kind of thing, I can help,” Sheryl adds.

“Last thing I want to do is go back to school,” Brandon jokes.

“Education’ll help with survival,” Willy says. “You sure they’ll have us? Let us live there?”

“Yeah. She gave me the address and I have directions to get there.”

“Alright then. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning,” Willy says. “How far is it?”