The Zombie Plagues: The Story Of Billy and Beth (7 page)

Billy opened his door and settled his feet onto the pavement. It wasn't just old pavement, he saw, it was gray, like it was completely washed out, used up. There was no black left in it. Beth stood slightly in front of the truck, her gun in one hand the toothbrush working around her mouth on its own. The other hand was reaching for the rifle which was just coming free of her shoulder. Billy hand his own rifle off his shoulder and into his hand before he even saw what had alarmed her. She spit out the toothbrush, holstered the gun and flicked the safety off. Three men stepped out of the shadows of the open garage bay.

They were kids, Billy saw. Or at least not much more than kids. They walked slowly forward.

Beth raised the rifle and pointed it at the lead kid. “That's it right there.” She said.

She didn't scream it, softly spoke it, Billy thought later, but the kid stopped I his tracks.

“What's with the fuckin' guns?” The kid asked.

“Ours weren't aimed at you until you aimed yours at us,” Billy said. He hoped he sounded as cool as Beth had.

“Bullshit,” one of the other kids said. “You had it in your hands when I looked at you. That's why I got mine ready.”

“I don't want to kill anyone today,” Beth said.

“It really don't bother me,” The third kid said. His eyes were blood shot. They had interrupted him while he was sleeping, it seemed. He kept rubbing at his eyes, Beth saw.

“I think you're right. Can't matter if you're dead,” Beth said.

“Hey,” the lead kid said, “Maybe all's we want is to party a little.”

“Well I don't know if Billy swings that way,” Beth said.

“Pretty funny,” the kid responded. “Look... It's our town. We ain't the only ones here. You shoot there will be twenty more here in seconds. Then everybody dies.”

“Oh... I guess I didn't see it right,” Beth said. “I can see where it might be preferable to get raped and then murdered instead of getting murdered outright.”

The one in the back, the one with the sleepy eyes, stiffed a yawn and reflexively raised one hand to his mouth as his eyes slipped shut for a split second. Beth shot the lead kid in that split second, Billy had the second guy a moment later. The third kid opened his eyes to a changed situation.

“Just give me a reason,” Beth said. “Any reason.” The kid released the rifle he held and it dropped from his hands to the pavement.

“Can't shoot me I ain't got no gun... Can't...
Can't shoot me...
” He spun and looked off toward a rag tag collection of trailers that lined a dirt road in back of the station. “Johnny!” he screamed.
“Johnny! Killers!”
he turned back to Billy and Beth. “Can't shoot me... I ain't armed...
Can't...”
Billy shot him.

A second later the truck roared to life and Billy spun the wheel hard heading back towards the drop off from the pavement, back the way they had come.

Beth bounced around the cab and smacked her head hard enough on the windshield to star the glass when the truck left the pavement at better than fifty miles an hour and hit the hard packed dirt that ran alongside I10. She finally got her balance, swept one hand across her forehead, looked at the blood and cursed lightly. Behind them three trucks had launched off the pavement and were running hard to catch them.

“Fuck me,” Billy said. He pushed the pedal to the floor, there was nothing else for it. The glass in the back window starred a second later as Beth rammed the rifle stock into it. Another hit and the glass fell out into the pickup bed area. She raised the rifle and began to fire back at the trucks. A second later a hole punched through the windshield to Billy's left. He mashed the pedal harder into the floorboard feeling the truck skate across the hardscrabble of the desert as it flew beside the highway.

“We have to get north, the other side of the highway. If they squeeze us south we'll be in the goddamn desert,”
Beth yelled above the scream of the engine.

“There's cars up there,”
Billy yelled back.
“On the highway!”

“There are bullets down here and they're gaining on us,”
Beth yelled back.

“Better sit down,”
Billy yelled.

“Just do it, Billy!”
She continued to fire out the back window.

Billy turned the wheel hard right and the truck lurched hard to the left, threatening to roll over as the center of gravity changed. It nearly rolled before it hit the edge of the pavement, broke over, and then became airborne. It came within ten feet of a stalled, wrecked semi and trailer and then it plunged off the other side of the highway so smoothly that billy couldn't believe it had actually landed.

“Nearly broke my neck slamming it into the ceiling,”
Beth yelled. She fell silent.
“I...”
She started, but an explosion from the highway stopped her words.

“Hit that fucking truck,”
Billy screamed.
“Has to be.”

“Keep it floored though, Billy. Keep it floored.”
She stayed where she was, staring out the back window, knees driven into the seat top. Billy's eyes strayed to her ass, and then snapped back to the road. He watched the hard packed earth fly by.

“Roads coming up... Like dirt roads,” Billy said. He had no sooner said it than the truck hit the slight rise and flew across it.

“Like back roads, looks like,” Beth said. “Nothing on the map.” She was trying her best to read the map as the truck bounced and tilted. One hand clutching the seat back held her in a somewhat stable position as she looked at the roads. “Looks like all dirt roads, back roads and then it falls away to nothing. Just keep it pointed at the mountains in the distance.” She turned completely around and sat down with the map in her lap. “Must have hit the truck or each other. Whatever it was I don't think they feel like coming after us again... Billy, we can't fuck up like that again. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking letting my guard down like that.”

Billy said nothing. Beth went back to reading the map.

“Start breaking left, Billy. There's a river... No, maybe some sort of waterway, not a river, too straight. It ends and then picks up again a few miles later. We can get through and into the desert from there.” She looked at the map for a few more minutes, “Maybe twenty miles or so.  Just run right by I10 and we should be good.” She turned and peeked over the back seat once more. “We're leaving a lot of dust, Billy.”

He looked over at her.

“We gotta figure this out too. I mean, we're going backwards, back to where we came,” Beth said.

“I could loop out deep and then swing back,” Billy said.

“Yeah, except I'm thinking in this desert you can see dust for miles... The dust is the problem.” She leaned over and looked at the gas gauge. “Less than a half tank, so gas is a problem too.” She frowned.

“We've got gas in the back,” Billy threw in.

“I'm thinking this. We hit that water way, or an out building, has to be something around here. We crash, sleep the day away, and then tonight we run across the desert to the other side of Phoenix. What do you think?”

“Sounds like a plan... I'm shot,” Billy agreed.

“Okay, so take the next road that crosses, slow down to keep the dust down and let's start looking for a place to hide for the day... We've got enough gas in the back we can get a long way before we need to find a station if we don't burn it up running in circles and backtracking.”

Billy slowed the truck and began heading to the right, the east. “One of those towers will do... High voltage lines? Something like that. Just scrap metal now, but that will hide us if we drive right up to it,” Beth said.

They drove to the tower and a dirt service road that circled it and continued to the north. Billy pulled the truck up close to the tower and shut it down. The silence held for a few moments, he fisted his hands into his eyes. “Jesus, I'm shot.”

“Come here,” Beth said. She pulled him down to the seat and laid his head in her lap. She began to rub lightly at his temples.

“God, don't do that, It'll put me to sleep,” Billy told her half jokingly.

“Which is why I'm doing it.” She stretched her legs, angled them across to the drivers side floorboard, and leaned back into the door. The last thing she remembered was smoothing the hair out of his eyes and then she spiraled away into a series of dreams.

Billy and Beth

March 15th

It was late afternoon when Billy awoke. Somewhere in the day Beth had wound up beside him, two spoons in a drawer. He lay still unwilling to let her go, his hand was curled protectively around her. Beth moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One moment all soft and willing, the next a live wire.

“You didn't cop a feel did you?” Beth asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.

“Beth, can't you ever just say something like, I don't know, good morning?”

She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. The one that had started him falling in the first place. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it wasn't that secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched, yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV so we have some place to sleep too.”

“I don't know, I kind of liked this,” Billy said before he could shut his mouth down.

Beth laughed and it was the unguarded Beth once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking directly in his eyes.

“I... I know the deal,” Billy said. The press of her body was maddening.

“We really don't need to talk it out?”

“You know how I feel, Beth.”

“I do,” she nodded and her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I considered sleeping with you before you became my friend, before I knew it couldn't work between us. I even considered it after... Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost me a friend because it wouldn't mean to me what it would mean to you.” She held his eyes as if willing him to understand.

“It's like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Billy. So far. You have been on the bad side of me and so I can't see why you still try to see me that way.” She laughed. “It's a thing men do. Like... Like that is love, you see? Instead of love just being about all the other stuff... The things I admire about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix... But no, I'm a princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It's not possible... The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks at me as me.” She watched his eyes.

“I think I can do that,” Billy told her.

Beth laughed.

“No, really. I think I can separate those things... I'm pretty sure.”

“Yeah? I think you like the idea of me... I think you want to fuck me... I think it might even hold together in a situation like this... At least for a while. And I think you could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant that we were together, and it wouldn't mean that at all. It would mean we were scared and we took some comfort in each other... Because the attraction was there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath. “But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that's the way this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I've seen it... I've felt it... And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my fiend, because he doesn't want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one hand up and pushed Billy's dirty blonde hair away from his eyes. That hair, and the way it hung across his eyes was one of the things that had nearly made her give in. He looked like a little boy, vulnerable, maybe he would love her forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be reacting to something in her that didn't really exist. Something only he saw. That little boy, awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to feel, to be in with her... She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his eyes.

“We probably should get going,” Billy said. A smile played across his lips. Tentative, but there.

“Okay,” she laid her head against his chest. “I need a toothbrush... That little bastard made me lose my toothbrush.”

Billy laughed. “I got extras.”

She lifted her face up, “Really?”

“Really.”

She bent and kissed his forehead and then rose from the seat and looked around at the scrub brush and sand before she rose all the way up and sat on the edge of the seat while Billy straightened his long frame out and sat on the drivers side of the seat.

“That felt sort of, I don't know, brotherly... That kiss.”

“I hated my brother,” Beth said. She levered the handle and stepped down to the ground.

“Hey?” Billy said. Beth stopped and looked back at him, her eyes careful.

“I'll work at it... I mean,” he looked at a loss. “I don't want to lose our friendship.”

Beth smiled. “Thanks... I mean it. Now get out here and get me a toothbrush, Billy Jingo.” She laughed as she finished.

~

“So, look.” Billy jabbed his finger at the map and Beth leaned across and looked at the map. “Teddy Roosevelt Lake... Tonto National forest... Connected to Gila National forest... Cibola National forest. Pretty isolated.”

Beth turned her eyes back to the desert. There was little to see, but twice she had hit bushes that popped up out of what seemed like nowhere. They had passed under the truck, but there were cactus out here too in places, and she was pretty sure a cactus wouldn't just pass under the truck.

“So... Why there?” Beth asked.

“Just a place to get our shit together: Breath for a few moments, really look the map over and pick a destination.”

“Isn't that taking us closer to Yellowstone, or whatever is causing the problems to the north?” Beth asked.

“It is... But,” Billy checked the scale and did some quick measurements. “Still close to a thousand miles away from there.” He looked up. “I think it is Yellowstone. I heard something just before the shit hit the fan, something about the park in Yellowstone.”

“What was it?” Beth asked.

“I don't know,” Billy answered. He shrugged. “I wasn't paying attention... Wish I had been... Something like everyone in the park went off line... Like they couldn't reach any of the stations, rangers, whatever you call them... Something like that. And seismic activity, like an earthquake centered there.” He shrugged once more and shook his head.

“So it's a good place to stay away from,” Beth said.

“Yeah... I would say so, but we'll be a thousand miles away.” Billy shrugged once more.

“So?”

“So, head north... We'll have to cross a few highways... Just keep out from the cities... I mean Phoenix turns to suburbs that spread out a long way, at least that's what the map looks like. Like it just kept spreading and so they just kept adding names.”

Off to their left the city was easy to spot. There were fires all through it. In some places huge sections were on fire, in others it was scattered fires. There were no areas that didn't seem to be affected, and with the fires it was easy to track the edge of the cities as they drove.

Beth laughed. “So they just added names. Well, couldn't the same be said about New York? About any large city as it grows? Isn't that the way it works?”

“I guess... I hadn't thought it out, I guess.”

~

“Going to have to cut through part of the city,” Beth said a few moments later.

Billy looked up from the map as the truck rolled to a stop. “A river.”

“Probably a canal...” Beth said. “Either way we can't drive over it... Does it break anywhere?” She turned the truck and began to run alone the side of the canal heading for the city once more. In the distance several fires burned, but the fires seemed to be a few mile distance, nothing close. “Like a housing development or something,” Beth said a few minutes later as the truck bumped up onto a road that was paralleled by a brick wall. The wide concrete gutter was bone dry, the pavement smooth after so much time in the desert

“Not on the map...” He shrugged. “I just don't know, Beth.”

Beth had stopped on the edge of the housing development. It was dark, lit only by the headlights of the truck. Cars and trucks sat neatly in driveways. The streets were empty. Heavy dust seemed to blanket the whole scene. Little trails cut from place to place.

“Fucking spooky,” Billy said. “Volcanic ash?”

“Probably... What do you think the trails are?”

Billy frowned. “It has to be dead.”

“It doesn't have to be dead... Could be small animals raiding house to house... No garbage any more so they have to get into those houses and get what they can or starve... Or it could be dead.”

“Great, you had me ha...”

Something hit the truck hard and it rocked on its springs. The smell of death hit them about the same time, and Beth hit the gas, mashing the pedal into the floor boards.

A rotting hand came through the open back window and fastened around Beth's throat, her hands left the wheel as she was yanked backwards, and the truck spun hard to the left and accelerated, her foot still mashed on the gas.

Billy lifted his gun and shot the zombie in the face. It seemed slow motion at first, the face exploded as it fell away into the back of the pickup, Beth drew a deep breath and tried to grab the wheel but it was too late. Everything sped up to real time and the truck roared forward and slammed into the side of a house, continuing into it. Her foot had slammed down on the brake and the truck finally stopped several feet into the house.

Billy hit the dashboard hard and then rebounded and slid under the dash as the truck plunged into the house. Seconds later he scrambled out from under the dash, the smell of gasoline was strong, the smell of the hot motor equally strong. He looked over at Beth but she seemed dazed, her eyes unfocused, a trickle of blood running from somewhere under her hairline, mumbling softly under her breath. Billy levered his door open with a little help from his foot, it screeched as it opened. The screech of metal was very loud in the silence of the house. The headlights were still on, illuminating what looked to be a kitchen.

The smell of death came to him over the smell of gas and hot motor.

“Jesus, Beth. Jesus. We got to go,” Billy said loudly. He reached down, gabbed Beth's rifle where it had fallen to the floor and then shoved his gun into his holster. He was surprised he had the presence of mind to actually pull the strap over the hammer and snap it in place to hold the gun in. He reached over and pulled Beth to him, she came willingly. A second later he was outside the ruined truck and staring out the hole it had punched through into the house. He saw no dead, but he could smell them. He debated only briefly and then ran for the hole and the moonlit night outside.

The dead were all around, pulled from their wanderings by the sound of the wreck and the smell of the living. Billy shifted Beth's weight more fully onto his shoulder, and lifted the gun. Before he could fire the truck blew up behind him and he felt himself pushed by the blast out into the street where he struggled to stay on his feet. A warm rush or air moved rapidly past him and Billy got his feet moving only a second later.

The dead scattered. They made this odd clicking sound, a sort of strangled scream, which Billy supposed was all they could do with no air to move their lungs, as he ran they slowly disappeared into the hiding paces they had stumbled from. An SUV loomed out of the darkness, illuminated by the flames and the moonlight. Dusty, sitting in the driveway of a house three houses over from the one they had plowed into. A second later and Billy had the door open and Beth tumbled inside onto the passenger seat. He ran around the car to the other side and fired a quick burst at three of the dead that came from the side of the garage and started toward him in their stumbling, dragging way. They all three went down, but they were back up again almost as quickly as they had gone down. He was too far away for head shots. He got the handle open and jumped into the car pulling the door shut behind him.

He sat, his breath coming in ragged gasps and pulls. His lungs hurt, there was a stitch in his side and his heart felt like it just might explode at any second. He looked over at Beth, but her head was rocked back against the seat back. A sob escaped his throat, but he bit down on it, and breathing hard checked the ignition.

No keys, but that was what he had expected. What he hoped for was gas. The car should start, the gas was the important thing. He reached to the floorboards for his knapsack and a screwdriver to jimmy the ignition and that was when he realized he had nothing to get the truck started with. All he needed was a screwdriver to hammer into the ignition, pop the cylinder, and then start it. But he had neither the screwdriver nor a way to get it into the ignition in the first place. He fisted his hands and slammed them against the wheel. His head sank onto his hands.

“Smash it,” Beth said. It was not much more than a whisper, but it bought Billy's head up fast. Outside the truck the dead were gathering. Just three or four, but they could smell them, and it wouldn't be long until more showed up. He focused on her face which was ashen and blood slicked, unsure if she had really even spoken. She turned her face to him, eyes heavy lidded, unfocused. “Smash it, Billy... Rock... Rocks by the driveway... Saw them... Smash it.” Her head sank down to the dashboard and stayed there. A trickle of blood ran across the dusty plastic and rolled toward the edge of the dash before it slipped over the edge and continued down into darkness.