Zombies and Chainsaws (Book 2): Dark Roads (11 page)

Chuck stood there waiting for a reply, but Jude was already on the move, pulling Joann behind him, with Charlie and Leslie in tow. Leslie said, “Well, come on, Chuck, you aren’t going to be able to treat me proper if you stay here and get your ass bitten, right? The quicker we get on the road, the better for both of us. We'll find us some nice place to hole up where we can take it easy, and maybe these things will run out of food, or die again?”

Chuck thought about long mornings in bed with her and had to walk funny for a moment, until he got his head back into the game.

When Jude looked into the studio, he saw that most of the dead inside were not of the slow type, and cursed. Everyone but Jude had a working saw. He said, “We work through this area real quick, you got me? I want you to go in teams of two. Chuck and Leslie, you walk it together—Chuck, you get their knee caps. Leslie, I want you to go after heads. Charlie, Joann, you do the same thing. We do this right, we can be out of here before we know it.”

“And what, exactly, are you thinking you'll do?” Leslie asked.

“Me? Oh, I'm going to go out there and smash through some jaws. I'm damn sick of these things already, and we need to get on the road, together and all alive!”

They started their saws, walking out into the room and doing exactly as Jude had planned. The first one that came up to Chuck got a kneecap sliced off, and as it fell forward, Leslie was already bringing the saw down, a look of disgust painting her face. She was starving for this insanity to be over.

Charlie went for the first of his and missed. The dead jumped at him, knocking him back a few feet and off-balance. Joann yelled, “Hey, Jude! Jude, help Charlie, damn it. I can’t get that close to his face without cutting him and that thing open!”

Jude ran back across the floor, doing his best to avoid the dead roaming the studio looking for easier meals. He kicked the dead in the ribs. It went over easy, rolling to a stop a few feet away. Jude got Charlie up on his feet and covered him until he got his saw back in his hands. As the dead started to rise, Jude brought the blunt side of the axe down into the back of its skull. The force of it was loud enough to echo through the studio. Each of them cringed, thinking of the pain the blow would have caused a normal, living person.

When the path out looked clear enough, Jude yelled for them to follow him. In the hallway, they found a few of the confused dead pushing clumsily at buttons on the wall.

Chuck laughed. “Man, they are dumb as shit.”

Jude said, “Shut up and keep it quiet. If they wanna push random buttons for the rest of eternity instead of doing horribly violent shit until someone takes them all out, I say that's wonderful."

Chuck did not retort, and they started walking down the stairs slowly. The five of them looked over the railing, trying to see if there would be any issues as they descended. When they were near enough to see outside, they saw a giant horde trying to get into the building. They were also blocking the path to the truck, which was currently the group's only means of escape.

They stopped at the edge of the last set of steps, not wanting to tease the dead into coming for them. Joann said, “Okay, studs, the lobby is full, the truck is blocked, what are we going to do?”

Jude stood there for a moment, trying to figure something out. Chuck said, “How about everyone hides in the elevators while one of us lures them out of the lobby, and we leave.”

“That's the best we can come up with?" Charlie scoffed. "I mean, that sounds great and all, but it kind of seems like there are plenty of ways for that to go completely to shit.”

“Right now, that's the best we've got,” Jude said. “You guys get up the stairs and in the elevator, and I’ll get them coming this way.”

Chuck said, “No, it was my idea; besides, with all this I got here, they’d much rather chase me down than your bony ass. You’d be lucky if they showed any interest in you at all, Jude.”

“All right, Chuck," Jude agreed. "Your idea, your plan, go for it.”

“Wait, you're gonna let me do it alone? You…you aren’t going to come with me?”

Jude smiled, nodding for the rest to go up the stairs. He gave his broken saw to Joann and took her working one. “I’ll make sure and get this back to you real soon, I promise. Chuck’s hand is all kinds of messed up right now. I don’t think him being on his own is that great of an idea.”

The other three turned, running back to the stairs. Leslie stopped and yelled, “Hey, so are we going to wait and have you ride down with us?"

Chuck snapped back, “You bet that sweet little ass you're waiting! When you hear us coming, get ready to let us in!”

Leslie could be heard, as they ran back up the steps, saying, “Why don’t I ever go for the smart ones?”

Joann said, “We can figure that out later.”

Chapter 8

Patrick sat on the floor of the basement, smashing two of his favorite cars head-on into each other. He loved his Hot Wheels, and would rarely go anywhere without them. Maria said, “Honey, you stay right there. I need to run upstairs for a moment, okay?”

“I'm so bored, Aunt Maria. I want to go outside. I want to go upstairs and at least watch cartoons. Why don’t we get to go upstairs? Is there more tornado warning, or something?”

Maria said, “Yep, that's exactly why we're downstairs. So you make sure that unless I say we should go upstairs, you keep your little butt down here.”

“Well, I don’t ever remember staying down here for this long before.”

Maria loved having a very bright nephew, but knew coming up with excuses, at some point, was going to be difficult. “Just for a little while longer. Your daddy is only, like, two or three hours away, I hope. He said they were heading this way. Your dad said he and Chuck would be here as quick as they could.”

Patrick said, “What about the other guys? Why aren’t they coming back?”

Maria gawked for a moment and finally said, “That is an excellent question; you can ask your father when he arrives home.”

Patrick shrugged, going back to his cars, and yelled, “Grab a juice box, Aunt Maria, I’m dying of thirst down here.”

Maria pushed the door open slowly, looking around and listening for a moment. The blinds were open, so she crawled on her hands and knees to the fridge, taking all of the pop and juices that they had and stuffing them quickly in a paper grocery sack. Looking around, she made her way to Jude's room, pulling his shotgun out of the gun locker. The advice he’d given her made it seem like shooting with anything smaller would be a waste of time. She was let down at the limited number of shotgun shells he had. She decided, at the last second, to take the twenty-twos that she and Patrick shot when they went out as a family.

She stuffed everything into one of Jude’s army duffle bags, along with a few pairs of jeans she grabbed from her own room and Patrick's. Maria wanted to be sure that they didn't get stuck with no more than the clothes on their backs. When she returned to the kitchen, she took all the canned goods, a few pots to cook them in, and the family first aid kit.

She looked down at her makeshift bug-out bag, thinking it was pretty pathetic. Going forward they would keep more damn food in the house than a family of ten needed. If Jude had the money, they could live out in the country, and very far away from all of this. After a second thought, she realized there might never be another normal day again, that searching for food, hiding from the dead, and being on the move might be the new norm.

She looked up at the open blinds, wanting to close them. One of the dead was looking down at her, licking the window; it left a blood streak behind. She smiled uneasily, hoping it would simply go away. The dead answered by moving out of view and then coming back, smashing its face into the window. When it did, the glass shattered and ripped the skin from the dead’s face, leaving flaps and spraying the counter with its blood.

Maria reached for the duffle bag with the shotgun in it. She thought how it might have been a poor choice now to put all the food, bullets, and shotgun shells in one bag. The dead was smashing out the rest of the glass with its hands, and it seemed to get angrier the longer it fought to gain entry. Maria gripped the bag, turning to run back to the temporary safety of the basement. When she did, a loud thud and growl came from behind her. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the dead falling off the sink and then to the ground. When the dead got its bearings back, it pushed up from the ground, gripping tight onto her ankle and pulling her back towards itself with mouth ready, already chomping at the potential meal. She flipped over, bringing her free foot back and kicking it once, twice, three, and four times until she finally snapped its neck and paralyzed it. Its arm went limp and the grip loosened. She pushed herself away, crab-walking backwards. The dead, frustrated at being unable to move, was screaming at her now.

Patrick came up to the door, looking out, yelling, “What’s wrong, Aunt Maria—you all right?” His eyes grew to the size of cue balls when he saw the bloody man lying in their kitchen, the broken window, and the blood-covered counter. Patrick whispered, “Oh my, what did you do to him, Aunt Maria?”

Maria said, “He’s the real reason we have to stay downstairs
—
because he is a bad man and we need to stay away from him, honey.”

Patrick could barely take his eyes off the dead lying there and chomping at air. He pointed with a shaky hand over her shoulder. “Are those bad men, too, Aunt Maria?”

She turned around, seeing additional bloody faces at the window. She saw they had been shot multiple times in the chest. Maria could only assume the people of the town had yet to figure out head shots were all that counted. She could not blame them; the only reason she had any clue was because of Jude. She looked back to Patrick and the basement, and thought of the small windows down there and the slim chance she’d be able to squeeze herself through one. She said, “Yes, those are bad men, and you don’t let them touch or bite you. Do you understand me, Patrick?”

He nodded. He very much did not want to get close to the bad men. “You wanna go back down to the basement, Aunt Maria?”

“No, no, I don't. I want to get out of here. I want to drive out of town, honey, and keep on driving until we can get somewhere safe and away from here.”

“Where we going to go?”

“I haven’t the slightest clue. Your dad said something about a hunting cabin he and Chuck use in the fall that maybe we could go to.”

“You know, Dad has that old tent in the garage above where you park your car sometimes. We could grab that and the cooler from the garage, and we can stay wherever we want, Aunt Maria.”

She pulled him close, giving him a kiss on his head. “You know you're a genius, right? I mean, you are just as smart as they come.”

Patrick laughed. “Of course I’m a genius.”

Maria opened the bag, pulling out the shotgun and already thinking of the kick it would give off.

Patrick said, “Whoa, what are you doing with Dad’s shotgun, Aunt Maria? What are you going to do with it?”

“Well, Patrick, I’m going to make damn sure that they don’t touch you.”

“Oh, Maria, you said damn!”

She put in a shell and pumped the shotgun. “Damn right I did. Now come on, we need to get out of here before more come in.”

Patrick sprinted down the stairs and grabbed his Hot Wheels. He nodded as he came back. “Okay, I got my stuff.”

She said, “You follow right behind me, honey. These things aren't going to do anything good.”

She threw the duffle over her shoulder, carrying the shotgun in one hand and pulling Patrick with the other, past the dead on the ground. When they were clear of it, they rushed through the living room. The dead were all trying to get in now, smashing at the window, furious to get in. When the living room window shattered, bitten dead rushed the two. Maria pushed Patrick behind her, shouldering the shotgun, and put the bead dead center on its skull. The blast tore through its cranium, sending it sprawling back out of the window. When the next came through, she missed, and it rushed, gripping the shotgun. She knelt with it, aiming it straight up and under its chin. She pulled the trigger, sending a decimating shot through its head and blowing the top of it off, sending it to an eternal rest. Maria gripped Patrick, not wanting to fight off the rest coming through. She knew there were only two shells, and refused to click empty.

Patrick said, “How we gonna get out of here, Aunt Maria?”

“We're going to get out of here, Patrick.”

“Yeah, I know, but how? We can’t go outside with those things. Isn’t your car parked in the driveway?”

Maria walked as close as she dared to the window. Gleaming in the afternoon sun was her Ford Thunderbird, surrounded by the dead in the driveway. She couldn’t in good conscience take Patrick out there. The two climbed into the attic just as the dead charged through the broken living room window. She pushed Patrick hard enough that he practically flew up into the storage area. Patrick looked down as Maria shoved the duffle up and saw the dead directly beneath her. “You best get on up here, Aunt Maria, or that thing is gonna take a bite out of you.”

She looked over her shoulder, seeing one of them attempting to climb the ladder. Their motor skills did not seem on par with her own. When a cold hand gripped her ankle, she brought up her knee as high as she could and then brought it down, cracking it in the skull with her heel. It let go instantly, falling back, and then three more took its place.