Wake the Dead (11 page)

“Liv, there is another mob coming! Let me get this off you and—“

“Please…kill me! Before I turn into one of them! Kill me!”

She was still in tears and undoubtedly in shock, having come to the realization that she was already dead, and neither of them could do anything about it. “It was nice getting to know you, Alex.”

He stared pleadingly at her, “No! I refuse to do this! We can patch these wounds—“

“Now!” she shouted, causing him to cease his argument. “Please, kill me,” she whispered. “Before I become one of those
fucking
things….”

He raised the gun toward her and held it for what seemed an eternity to him.

He had reached the bottom rung of demoralization once more in this shitty world, uttering curses under his breath. He steeled his gaze, a single tear running down his cheek.

She nodded her consent in utter silence and closed her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Liv. I’ve failed you.”

He pulled the trigger and closed his eyes.

He mechanically picked up her fallen thermos, stared at it and made it back to his feet.

“Just like Sara….”

He turned and ran into the cabin, grabbed her pack off the table, and noticed the gun was still there beneath her pack.

She left the gun in here!

He gathered his things along with what Olivia had packed, called for Shadow who followed him down the path, and did not look back even one more time.

He spent the next half hour running non-stop, spurred on by anger, hatred, and self-loathing. Shadow followed right behind him the whole time as he ran. He made his way through Olivia’s encampment and all the way to the forest’s edge before stopping. His heart was pounding under the strain as he bent low, and even fell to his knees as Shadow came up behind him and sniffed the air. He stared at the wolf, took a deep breath, and let it out.

Alex wept for a long time.

He popped the hood of the van and gave careful consideration to the inner workings of the engine. He believed that everything looked intact, as far as he could see, and dropped to his hands and knees to look under the van to inspect for leaks. He checked the hoses, the oil and the other fluids and was satisfied to see they were all up to snuff. Whoever owned the vehicle before him had taken good care of it, he thought gratefully. Moreover, they were kind enough to leave the keys in it, too. He took the keys and hooked them to his own set dangling from his belt loop, and inspected the rear of the van.

He was happy to discover a gas can, along with a short length of hose, which he removed and placed on the ground, a spare tire that remained intact, and a bag full of various tools. He nodded approvingly again before heading to the passenger side, opening the glove box and inspecting the previous owner’s credentials.

Sam Irving, you were a good man
, he thought, paying his respects to the man who’s van he was about to use. He could not stop reliving the death of Olivia, which in turn, brought up memories of what happened to his wife that fateful day last November.

No matter what he was doing, those dreadful images kept surfacing. He opened the back of the van and Shadow jumped right in, lying down comfortably. A headache intruded upon him as he removed and unzipped the backpack, fished around for the bottle of pain reliever, and downed a pair.

“Gonna be a long time before I forget about this,” he mentioned to Shadow, who looked past him and panted. “It’s everything I can do to shut out the image of her face….”

He stared out at the horizon and tried to laugh away the frustration of it all, realizing that talking to Shadow was somewhat cathartic. He put the key in the ignition and recognized that there was over a half tank of gas remaining. He strode across the street to a parked Honda Accord with slightly tinted windows. He peered inside for a second to see if there was anything to salvage as the doors were shut and windows were up.

“Shit!” he screamed as he instinctively recoiled away, almost leaping out of his skin in the process when something smacked against the inside of the window, clawing at it, trying to get at him.  He stumbled back a few steps and almost fell on his ass. “For fuck’s sake! Enough already! Please!”

He waited a long while until his heart stopped racing and looked inside. A pair of cold, grey eyes stared back at him as it scratched at the glass, trying to break through it to get at him. The zombie inside appeared very weak. It mustn’t have fed in a long time.

His skin crawled as he peered into the back of the car and his eyes captured the image of a baby seat covered in gore.

“My God, no….”

He pushed the disturbing images from his mind, put the hose into the gas tank and sucked until the onrushing taste of petroleum infiltrated his lips. He spat it out and put the business end of the hose into the gas can until it filled up. Then he let the gas pour out under the car and onto the road while he watched and poured the gas from the can into hiss van, watching the gas pool under the vehicle.

Alex replaced the hose and the gas can in the back of his van, rubbed Shadow’s head, shut the doors, and then started the engine, revving it angrily.

He waited for a few minutes until the gas tank had emptied, all the while listening to the pounding of dead hands upon the driver side window of the car.

He spun the vehicle around, the driver’s side facing the same side of the Accord, struck a match and dropped it just as the glass on the driver side window shattered. He watched as the match fell and landed in the gasoline in his driver side mirror as he sped off.

“Fuck you and die,” he said bitterly.

He peered into the rear view mirror to witness the car go up in flames and it quickly exploded before the undead creature could emerge from the vehicle.

He smiled, happy for that small victory.

He continued along in an easterly direction and decided to look in on his old section to see what happened to his place and his neighbor’s homes. It was a small neighborhood built in a very rural setting. They had only purchased the place a few years ago, getting in when the housing development company was breaking ground on the neighborhood. They’d put affordable homes smack dab in the middle of this mostly woodland area. But the land around was developing, too. They’d put up a few major stores in the area that included a SuperMart, a grocery store, and more than a handful of fast food joints, while still maintaining some ‘mom and pop’ stores.

He counted the time on the clock and it took forty-eight minutes to get there. As he entered the development, he took the drive all the way around.

“The ol’ development looks like shit,” Alex whispered. Yards were in upheaval, streets were full of trash and gore, homes were overgrown with shrubbery and lawns were thick with grass, too, being that it was summer for certain. He hadn’t even noticed the shift in weather patterns these last few weeks, as up on the hill, in the shade of those trees, it seemed like it was always cool.

As he rounded the drive and pulled onto his street, he could see his place in the distance, seeing it half burned down. It looked like the fire had taken only half the house along with it.

He thought about going in, but decided against it. There was no way that he could face seeing Sara or any of their belongings ever again. It would take an exceptional set of circumstances for him to ever enter that place again, he admitted, reminiscing of Sara and their all too brief history.

As he sat in the driveway, he did take a quick run into the back yard and into his shed. The door was still wide open, and he noted that someone had rifled through his belongings, taking a good amount of his tools. He quickly grabbed a case of water from a shelf where he kept their surplus. He paused, scanned the area quickly, and grabbed a small pair of binoculars, too, strapping them over his neck and chest. As he made to leave, he caught a glimpse of something on the wall of the shed. It was a photo of Sara, smiling wide, a memento of their trip to the Bahamas. He snatched it off the wall before running back to the van. He opened the door, tossed the water in and climbed back into the driver’s seat, looking back to see Shadow lying quietly in the back of the van.

He could not help but shed a few tears in anger and frustration at what could have been as he stared at that photo before finally tossing it onto the passenger seat behind him.

He backed out of the driveway, staring in the rearview mirror at the shell of his former home until it was out of view around the corner. As his eyes focused back on the road in front of him, he noticed that some of the undead had wandered out of the homes there and were making a break toward the vehicle, chasing after it with varying speeds. He stepped on the gas and managed to hit one with the passenger side front quarter panel as it bounced off, rolling away with the force of the impact.

He was able to outdistance the rest of the stragglers and decided to go right back on the highway and make his way toward the Renaissance Faire.

He drove the next dozen or more miles in reflection of his recent losses and yet, when he saw Shadow in the rear view mirror, was gratified to yet have companionship of any kind.

As he continued on, he witnessed some pockets of zombies gathered around corpses, feasting on the remains, or wandering in the open fields to the left and the right.

They were once people like him…like Sara…and like Olivia.

He pushed it all out of his mind and drove on until he found a rest area where no other thing could be seen, living or otherwise, and opened the back door of the van. Both he and Shadow emptied their bladders and he was thankful that Olivia had at least had the good sense to pack up some of the canned goods as he was famished.

He opened a can of beans and split it with Shadow, dumping a portion into his mouth and then leaving the can down for the wolf, quickly devouring it and licking the inside of the can clean. Thoughts of Olivia surfaced, stealing his appetite as he stared at the wolf that had no such complications.

“Guess you were hungry, eh?”

The pair quickly resumed their journey and Alex drove for a little while longer until pulling over only once they had made it to within walking distance of the fair. It was beginning to grow dim and so, he decided to pull the van off the road, locked him and Shadow inside, stared at the photo of Sara for a long time and then tried to sleep.

He spent the next few hours, dozing off and on, but images of Olivia’s recent and horrifying demise surfaced repeatedly, stealing any chance of him getting any revitalizing rest.

He awoke a few hours later according to the clock which had moved from 11 o’ clock to 6 o’ clock on the dash, to the bright intrusion of sunshine bursting through the rear view mirror, catching him full on in the face. He shielded his eyes to it and stirred, retrieved Olivia’s pack, and then removed and opened a can of tuna. He scooped out a healthy portion and tossed the remainder of the can in the back where Shadow again licked the can clean.

The Renaissance Faire parking lot was in sight and he decided to pull the van further off the road under a copse of trees and locked it up, after retrieving his canteen and weapons, along with the photo of Sara, which he stowed in his front pocket. He took the time to throw branches and whatever else he could find over the van until you could see none of its green exterior. He called to Shadow who came out from behind the tree line, and followed Alex obediently.

He took note again of Shadow, who seemed to have grown in size again overnight, or if he hadn’t, perhaps Alex had never appreciated the size of the animal fully before now. He stared at the wolf and shook his head, unsure if it was simply his mind playing tricks or something else entirely. Again, he had no real understanding of a wolf’s growth rate as he had no good frame of reference, except to compare them to dogs. As he inspected Shadow, The wolf’s paws and canines seemed extremely formidable and he felt sorry for the zombie that attacked this wild animal, for he would tear it to pieces.

The wolf was certainly more submissive than Alex would have ever considered, despite his grander proportions, before actually having experienced it firsthand. He suspected that ever since the two of them were together, Shadow treated him as the alpha, but he wondered, what if Shadow ever challenged him for that role.  

Again, that was presuming a great deal, but it seemed to be a real concern. In addition, there were probably more wolves from the sanctuary running around in the area, too.

What if they found Shadow? Would he go with them?

Then again, if the wolf presumably spent its youth alone, it would never have had the chance to develop a pack mentality. On the other hand, maybe that was instinctual behavior. Who knew? He would need to find some books one of these days so that he could do some research, as he had no real idea as to what to expect.

To the right, Alex could see nothing but cars lined up in neat rows, seeming to be the parking lot, or parking
field
in this case. Pockets of cars were missing and in the distance, there looked to be a tangled mess of twisted metal. Based on the direction and his familiarity with the area, it was the entrance to the turnpike.

They were trying to get home
, he knew, seeing the placement of the wreckage and the flow of it.
Must have been a hell of an accident.
He removed his binoculars and gazed out over the lot, seeing the occasional zombie wandering about lethargically. He also thought he saw something else in the distance, something moving in between the cars, but the sun was blinding in that direction.

As he made his way closer to the tents he had seen when he was running from the zombies, from the bluff directly to the left of where he now stood, presumably south by his estimation he guessed, he speculated as to where he might run if he were chased this time. He also thought, oddly enough, that his tackle box and fishing pole might still be on that bridge to the southwest.

Too far to go it on foot,
he considered as he closed in on the grouping of tents. He held his bow up, ready to fire, and then patted reassuringly the grip of his Beretta. Shadow followed behind him trotting at a comfortable pace.

He saw nothing but empty tents, in various states of disrepair and some that looked as though they were untouched from the outside. He came upon the first grouping and something nearby smelled unpleasant. He pulled his knife and peeked inside the closest one. It seemed to be an abandoned tent where food may have been sold at one point, but whatever was inside was offensive in ways Alex didn’t conceive possible only a moment ago. He replaced his knife and retrieved his bow and an arrow and readied them.