Zomb-Pocalypse (15 page)
He turns and gives me an annoyed look, but doesn’t speak. I do a double take. The street is deserted! The truck is gone. A feeling of elation goes through me. Ryan made it.
I tap Silas on the shoulder, and he gives me the annoyed look again.
“The truck is gone,” I whisper.
Silas scans the street. “We still need to look,” he says finally.
I shake my head in surprise, “But…he isn’t here.”
“Someone could have stolen it. Did you have anyone else in your group that could have taken it?” I start to shake my head, but then stop—the woman in the backseat that we pulled out of that wreck. She could have woken up and taken it.
Silas reads my face and starts walking again. The glass door of the pharmacy is completely busted out now, and so are the two large front windows. The glass is covered in zombie goo, and fear creeps into my heart, as I imagine how many zombies it took to do this.
Silas steps over the glass, and the crunching makes my heart pound loudly in my chest. It feels like the crunching glass is a big dinner bell ringing for every zombie on the block to hear. Silas doesn’t seems as concerned by it. I try to follow his example, until I see him stop and stare at something.
Three zombies are hunkered down eating…something. A cry is pulled from my lips as I imagine that all the blood pooling on the floor, and covering the zombies, belongs to Ryan. I instantly regret the noise as three hungry zombies turn to look at us.
“Idiot,” I hear Silas mutter at me. He raises his gun and takes them out, one right after the other.
I ignore him and run over to see what the zombies had been eating. I start bawling when I see that it was some poor dog and not Ryan after all.
“Is it him?” Silas asks, walking over. He stops and looks perplexed when he sees the dog lying there with its intestines all pulled out.
I know he thinks I’m crazy for crying over a dog, but I don’t have the energy to explain to him that I’m not actually crying over the dog, though it is extremely sad. I’m crying from relief.
“Where was the last place you saw him?” Silas asks, obviously deciding to ignore my crying fit. I try and ignore it too and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.
“Over there,” I point.
Silas whips out a high-powered lantern and lights the store up like it’s Christmas.
The smell is overwhelming as we get closer to the scene of the massacre. I know Ryan had started shooting them, but I am shocked when we come around the aisle and see the amount of carnage. A couple aren’t truly dead, but they’re down and crawling around through the goop of their fallen brethren. Silas steps over the bodies and knifes the crawlers in the top of their heads.
“Do you see your guy anywhere?” he asks.
I scan the bodies with both fear and eagerness. “No,” I finally say, when I can be sure, and flash Silas a wide grin.
Silas nods, like he didn’t really care either way. “Looks like he got out then,” he agrees at last.
I feel elation. It lasts for a good ten minutes as I follow Silas around the store like a lost puppy. He grabs stuff from the shelves and shoves it in his backpack. I try not to judge him when he jumps over the broken pharmacy counter and throws a couple bottles in his bag.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says finally, and I can’t agree more. Being in this death trap reminds me of the last time I was here and almost didn’t make it out. I don’t think I could survive another trip out the window.
When we walk out into the cool, bright morning, I stop as I realize something. Yes, Ryan is alive, but he also isn’t here. Did he leave me? Panic begins to engulf me, but I give myself a mental shake. Maybe I have spent too much time around Silas, and it’s coloring everything with the same brush. I know Ryan isn’t like that. He probably had to bug out, but I know he’ll be back to look for me.
“What now?” I ask when Silas stops and takes a look around.
“We gather supplies.”
I stop in my tracks. I’m not here to help Silas prepare for winter, I need to find Ryan.
“Silas…” I stop talking when he turns to me with his dark, penetrating gaze.
“What?” he says in a tone that makes me think he knows what I’m going to say.
“I need to find Ryan.”
Silas takes a deep breath like I’m trying the patience of a saint. “So you mentioned…a hundred times.”
I’m offended by Silas’ attitude, but I don’t dare to open my mouth or argue with him.
“We might find your Prince Charming on our way,” he says after a minute of staring at me with an unfathomable look in his eyes.
I weigh my options carefully. I can go along with Silas—not the nicest person, but an amazing shot. Or, I can strike out on my own with little to no survival skills and hope I find Ryan before a zombie makes me his lunch. That really isn’t much of a choice.
“I’ll come with you,” I tell him after a minute, trying to keep the grudging tone out of my voice.
“Smart choice,” Silas says, rubbing it in, in typical Silas fashion.
He takes off on me again, and I have to run to keep up. We stick close to the buildings, and I can see that most of them haven’t been disturbed.
Silas stops outside the grocery store and whips a set of keys out of his pocket. I stop and stare at him in surprise. He opens the door and motions for me to go ahead of him.
I go inside, terrified that a zombie is going to jump out at me. Silas follows me in and locks the door behind us. I look around, but I don’t smell rotting flesh. It hits me then that I don’t smell rotting anything.
“Did you work here or something?” I ask, and it makes Silas laugh like I told a joke or something.
“Do I look like I bagged groceries?” he asks, and I take a long moment to truly examine him. He’s tall and muscular, like he used to work out a lot or had some kind of physical job. His eyes are dark and brooding and his equally dark hair is shaved close to his head. He looks like, if he did work in this store, he would have scared all the little old ladies.
“Hey, even a gangster has to eat,” I blurt out without thinking, and then am scared that I’ve crossed the line.
I peek up at Silas as he lets out a guffaw of laughter.
“You’re a weirdo, ya know,” is all he says as he wanders around the shelves, stuffing various things into his pack.
We pass an entire aisle of freezers that stand empty, and I’m confused.
“Where’s all the stuff?” Surely there wasn’t a rush on freezer goods when the apocalypse hit? The rest of the store doesn’t look picked over.
“I threw it away, into the dumpster out back. I didn’t want the stuff to rot and start stinking.”
I look over at Silas. That was an odd thing to do.
He probably reads the thoughts on my face because he shrugs, “I didn’t have anything else to do. This is my food supply, and I wanted to preserve it.” It had sounded like a crazy idea at first, but now it sounds kind of smart.
“I found this place the first day and hunkered down and rode it out. I took out a couple zombs, snagged the keys, and voila. I ate everything perishable that I could eat during the first few days and slowly began hauling all the frozen junk, fruit, veggies, and meat outside to the dumpster.”
I make a non-committal sound in the back of my throat, not sure what I should say.
“It also keeps the stench down. So if a zombie gets in here, I’ll know right away.” Silas grabs a few more things. “Help yourself. The store is cleared, feel free to wander.”
I’m not really sure that I want to go wandering off into a dark grocery store by myself, but I wonder if Silas wants some time alone. He hands me a flashlight and off I go.
I stuff a few lightweight non-perishables into my pack, though it’s already pretty full. I find the aisle with the Tylenol and stuff a few bottles into my bag, stopping to pop one open and down three pills with a warm bottle of pop from a nearby shelf.
I’ve been playing it tough with Silas all morning, but my arm is aching like crazy and I’m not sure how much more I can take.
A bag of beef jerky catches my eye, and I throw that into my pack as well.
I round the corner and stumble into a solid mass. “Sorry, Silas,” I mutter, but the thing that isn’t Silas moans. I go cold and grope wildly for the gun that’s strapped to my hip. I raise it up and fire as the zombie starts snapping its teeth at me.
Nothing happens, just a click. “Silas!” I yell in terror as my fingers, suddenly wet with palm perspiration, press the safety off. I raise the gun as the zombie bites the end of the silencer, and I pull the trigger. The kickback tells me that it worked this time. Even though I’ve spilled my light and it’s lying on its side, I can still see the goo spray everything within a six-foot radius as the back of the zombie’s head erupts.
The zombie drops and stays down. I curse under my breath as another one comes skidding around the corner. I raise my gun and shoot, but the shot goes wide. I shoot again and, with the zombie five feet away, it’s harder to miss this time. I drill a slug into the zombie’s chest, not on purpose, I’m just a bad shot, and he keeps on coming.
“Damn it!” I shout to who? I have no idea. I try to aim more carefully. This time I actually get the thing’s head and watch as it explodes like an overripe melon.
Silas comes skidding around the corner at top speeds, and I raise my gun and aim it at him.
“Don’t shoot, it’s me!” he says, and I consider shooting him anyway. This store is safe—my foot!
“The store’s been compromised,” he says as I lower my gun. Despite the gravity of the situation, I have to bite back a bitter retort. “Someone must have broken in the back door and left it open for the zombies to come in.”
“Why didn’t your smell test work?” I snap at him.
He shakes his head, “They must have stayed in the back until they heard us coming.”
Silas spins on his heels and quickly pops two zombies heading our way. “Let’s get out of here,” he says and takes off again without waiting to see if I follow.
Silas shoots a path to the door. The smell of rotten zombie is overpowering now. It almost makes me yearn for some rotting chuck steak, or a shrivelled up, goo-ified piece of broccoli to smell instead.
We burst out the door. There are a few zombies in the street, but they’re further down. Silas doesn’t bother shooting them as he runs away from the main street at full speed. I follow him, huffing and puffing, past cute houses with white picket fences and zombies, so many zombies.
Every time we run by, they look up at us like startled deer and then join in the chase. I’m beginning to feel like the zombie pied piper when Silas jumps a fence up ahead of us. I let out a groan. There is no way I will be able to jump the six-foot wooden monstrosity. I slow my run as I stare up at it. Even without a screwed up arm, this would be difficult for me.
I look back at all the zombies that are swarming in on me from all sides and decide to make a run for it. Screw Silas and his fence-jumping long legs.
I get to the end of the fence when Silas calls me. “Where are you going?” he sounds shocked. I look over my shoulder and see that he’s swung the gate open for me, and I run like a mad man to reach it before the ripping, tearing, biting fan club behind me.
“You were really gonna leave?” Silas asks, still sounding totally stunned.
“Well, you left me. I couldn’t jump the fence,” I defend myself, following him up the back steps of a house. Silas pulls a lock pick set from his pocket and sets to work.
“You thought I ditched you?” Silas snickers, and I have to suppress the urge to punch him.
“Let’s try to communicate next time,” I snap at him.
The zombies have reached the fence, and I can hear their bodies bumping up against the obstacle. Worse is the sound of their fingernails scratching and chipping against the boards. The fence rattles, but seems to hold.
I get anxious and bounce up and down on my heels. I scan the yard for an alternate escape route, but we are pretty much trapped in here. I look at Silas as he concentrates with his little tools. I want to question him, but that would be distracting and I really don’t want to be responsible for our deaths.
The gate hinges creak under the weight of the zombies, and I almost open my mouth to ask if he really knows what he’s doing. I bite my tongue to keep from saying it.
Why would he have this stuff if he didn’t know how to use it? I try and reassure myself. My anxiety is through the roof when I hear the lock click and Silas pushes the door open.
The smell of death and decay hits us right away, and I’m reluctant to step into this death pit of a house. I’m still deciding when the gate comes crashing open and a flood of hungry zombies start streaming into the yard.
“Creepy death house it is,” I mutter before jumping inside. Silas slams the door shut and locks it behind us.
“That isn’t going to hold very long,” Silas warns as the zombies start pounding against the door.
I take my first step away from the door as another zombie comes lumbering around the corner from the kitchen.
“Oh, hell!” Silas curses as he raises his gun and fires.
The zombie is a middle-aged man wearing a sweater vest and pants that used to be white. I wince as I stare at the dried blood that stains them now.
We stumble into the darkened kitchen, our senses on high alert, trying to hear if there are any more zombies in this mess. Silas turns on his flashlight and pans the kitchen at the same time that I trip over something solid on the floor. I give an involuntary shout as I fall down on the hard linoleum. I catch myself with my flailing arms, but the pain in my cut arm makes me unable to hold myself up for long. I collapse into a pile of sobbing panic. Something jumps on top of my back, growling, and I scream when I feel a sharp bite sink into my leg.
“Oh God,” I cry as I struggle to get away from the zombie on my back. I realize it’s actually quite small and scramble to my feet, causing the zombie to fall off as I stand. I’m numb, too numb to fight it off, and it bites me again, this time near the ankle. I hear Silas’ curse, a thud, and then a yip piercing the air.
“Silas, I’m bit,” I sob on the verge of terror. Silas shines his light in my face, making me squint.
“It wasn’t a zombie that got you, it was that damn dog. I booted it,” Silas tells me, pointing towards his beam of light.
A streak of white fur is racing towards us again, and Silas aims another kick at it. I’m suddenly terrified that whatever this is has crossed species. The idea of a zombie dog is horrifying. They would be so much faster than human zombies.
The dog suddenly changes its mind and cowers, hiding behind me instead of biting as the death stench increases and a woman comes teetering around the corner on wobbly legs. In some places, her face has been chewed right down to the skull, and she only has one good eyeball because the other one is completely missing.
I cringe, and thankfully Silas shoots her. “God that one was ugly,” he exclaims. Even though I agree with him, I can’t voice it as callously as he did.
Silas races to the front door and peeks out the spy hole. “There are a lot of them out there,” he says, his words causing fear to turn my breakfast sour in my stomach.
“What do we do now?” I ask. I hate sounding like the helpless girl, but let’s face it, that’s exactly what I am.
Silas thinks hard for a full minute, I can’t though…not with the sound of the dead beating against the back door.
“This house has an attached garage,” Silas says at last. “With any luck, we can find a vehicle in there.” We wander around, opening doors with guns drawn until we smell the telltale scent of gasoline and oil.
“I think we found it,” Silas says victoriously, opening the door to reveal one of the worst things I’ve seen yet.
A zombie kid. He’s standing in the middle of the garage, shuffling around aimlessly when we open the door. Then, he turns on us with a snarl and snapping jaws.
Silas and I each take an identical step back. The poor kid was probably only four or five, one of his parents must have turned and attacked him. He probably ran in here to get away from them, only to turn into a zombie anyway.
I feel sick to my stomach. The stupid dog, who’s been following us around the house since we killed its zombified owners, starts barking frantically at the kid. The zombie kid walks slowly towards us, his eyes black and soulless and his skin papery and thin and torn in several spots.
“Oh God,” I hear the tortured words rip from Silas’ lips as he raises the gun and fires, putting the kid out of his misery.
“It’s for the best,” I tell him gently, placing my hand on his arm. I know my words can’t make it better, but I feel like I need to say something. Silas shakes my hand off, remembering his tough guy act just in time, and starts toward the vehicle parked inside. It’s an older model, single cab pick-up.
“Think it will start?” I ask, trying to think of anything other than the small body lying a few feet away.
“Here’s hoping,” Silas says as he gets in. He searches the whole truck but can’t find the keys. We can hear the door jamb finally give way and the moans of the zombies as they start to fill the house.
I run to the door and slam it shut just as we see the dead pour in. They jostle each other as they rush to fill the narrow hallway, until they spill out into the kitchen, and begin pounding at the garage door.
“Get in!” Silas yells at me as I stand in the middle of the garage hyperventilating.
“But, you don’t have the keys!” I yell back, forgetting to be quiet. It’s not like they don’t know we’re in here anyway, and it’s only a matter of time until they get in.
“Don’t need them,” Silas mutters as he bends his head under the dash. I hop in the truck just as it fires to life.
“Did you just hot wire this truck?” I ask incredulously, and he gives me a look. The dog scrabbles up into the cab just as I’m about to shut the door, and the terrible though of chucking the little ankle biter back out crosses my mind. I let the dog stay, against my better judgement, and clip my seatbelt on just as Silas puts the truck into drive, pins the gas pedal, and rams the automatic garage door.
It’s a horrible sound of metal scraping metal, and I’m terrified that we are going to die. One second later, I’m still terrified, and we’re driving at high speeds down the driveway with the garage door stuck to the front of the truck. I can’t see where we’re going, and I know that Silas can’t either. From the bangs and crashes hitting the door, I also know that we’re hitting a lot of zombies with our makeshift plow.
I forget my fight with the stupid dog and grab hold of the thing for dear life to keep it from getting thrown around the cab.
“Hold on tight!” Silas shouts to be heard above the noise, and then he slams on the brakes. My seatbelt tightens and my neck snaps a bit as our windshield clears and the door goes flying off.
“Holy hell!” I yell when I get my first look at all the zombies milling around; we’re in the middle of a sizeable crowd.
Silas doesn’t sit still to assess the situation, like I might have done, he stomps on the gas pedal again. The truck roars back to life and takes off like a shot. Silas hits a couple of the zombies as we fly by, and somehow, one of them ends up on the hood of the truck. It’s an ugly bugger, and it snarls and snaps its rotting jaws as it stares hungrily at us through the window. I let out a scream. Silas brakes hard again, and the horrible thing goes flying off the front and gets crunched underneath the tires as Silas runs it over.
“Time to get outta dodge,” Silas says whipping the truck down the first clear road we come to and pinning it. Houses, trees, and zombies whip by us at high speeds, and Silas doesn’t slow down until we’re out of town. Once we get far enough away, he pulls the truck over and parks on the side of the road.
“What just happened?” I exclaim, barely able to believe that we’re still alive.
“We were lucky,” Silas agrees grudgingly, rolling down the window and lighting a cigarette from a crushed pack in his pocket.
I stare at him like he’s grown an extra head. I know I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’ve never met anyone like Silas before. He’s probably a terrible person, but he’s also a straight up bad ass.
The dog lets out a strangled bark and starts to struggle against my death grip, and I let him go. I stare at the fuzzy little beast and he looks back at me, assessing. The dog makes a move towards me, and I pull my hand back, scared that he’s going to bite me again; my leg is still smarting. The dog ignores my rejection, walks the extra few steps to my hand, and surprises me by giving it a wet lick.
“I think you’ve found a new friend,” Silas says with a snicker, and I join in with a laugh because it feels so good to still be alive.
“You know those things will kill you don’t you?” I retort, pointing at his cigarette, but he only shakes his head.
“In this life, what isn’t trying to kill me?” Silas fires back, and I find his words of surprisingly profound.
“Where are we going?” I ask, realizing that Silas has already started moving the truck again. Silas shrugs.
“There’s an old motel up the road a bit. It’s fairly secluded from the town and it was for sale when all this stuff started, so there might not be any unwanted guests.”
A motel sounds terrifying, but Silas hasn’t stopped to ask for my vote. We pass a big wooden sign that’s old and faded, announcing the motel, which is only a five-minute drive up the road. It isn’t long before I can see the building’s outline up ahead.
The motel isn’t the sprawling metropolis that I had imagined. It’s a ramshackle, rundown building with only six rooms to rent and an office. Silas pulls up to the office and opens the door.
“What are you doing?” I hiss at him, and he gives me a look.
“Getting a room key.”
My heart starts to beat faster. I want to wait in the truck, maybe even slide over into the driver’s seat so we can make a fast get away when this idea turns south, but I don’t.
I think I surprise Silas as much as myself when I open the door and follow him out. I pull my pistol from my pocket and, this time, make sure I click the safety off. The dog follows me, jumping out of the truck with his little toenails clicking on the cement. The dog lets out a sneeze, then runs to each of the truck tires and relieves himself.
I watch him for a second before I realize that Silas is walking away from me and towards the office. “You could wait for me,” I complain as I jog to catch up. Silas doesn’t even acknowledge me, he’s frozen, listening at the door.
“Hear anything?” I whisper, getting right in close to his ear.
“Not with you talking all the time,” he shushes me with a frown, and I step back a couple steps to let him work.
He tests the door, and we are both surprised to see that it’s open. We exchange a look before stepping inside.
The air in the office building smells slightly stale, but at least I don’t smell zombie. The light is dim; as Silas turns his flashlight on and spans the beam around to get the lay of the land, I let out a scream.
Silas see’s what I’m looking at and raises his gun.
“That’s enough of that sonny,” the old man, sitting in the rocking chair with a loaded rifle across his lap, speaks after a moment. He isn’t threatening in any way, and he doesn’t make a move towards the gun.
“What are you doing here?” Silas asks, and the old man flashes us a toothless smile.
“This is our motel, we’re just tryin to survive like everyone else.” The old guy has a kind face, but I’m kind of getting the creeps and wondering if this is going to turn into some kind of The Hills Have Eyes horror scene.
The door opens to the left and an old woman comes shuffling out.
“Bless the Lord, we have guests,” she beams at us, and I holster my weapon in my confusion. Silas doesn’t put his away, but he isn’t exactly pointing the gun at the elderly couple anymore either.
“I’m confused,” I don’t mind admitting.
The woman gives me a kind smile. “My name is Agnes and this here is Jep. We used to run this motel, though we were trying to sell it to retire to Florida,” she gives us a sad smile. “That isn’t going to happen anymore. As soon as things started to go crazy, Jep pulled us out of the retirement home and brought us back here.” A tear leaks from her eye and she wipes it quickly away.
“Do you kids need a room?” Jep asks, changing the subject, though he still doesn’t get up from his chair.
“We don’t have any money,” I admit, and Silas gives me a look like I shouldn’t be giving away all of our trade secrets.
“Money isn’t much use to us anymore,” Jep replies with a snort.
“Do you have any supplies you would be willing to part with?” Agnes asks with interest, staring at our full backpacks.
“We aren’t as limber as we used to be, it’s tough going to go out and find the things we need,” Jep doesn’t mind telling up, making me feel terrible for this elderly couple. I have selfishly only thought about how the end of the world has affected me. I’m suddenly so glad that I’m not eighty during all of this upheaval. It’s a sobering thought.
“We might have a few things,” Silas agrees after a moment of thinking.
“Our rooms are guaranteed zombie free, and include a continental breakfast,” Agnes reports proudly, and I almost laugh out loud. Is she being serious?
“We’ll take one night,” Silas says, digging in his bag and pulling out a box of shells that are a match to the gun Jep is holding. He sets them on the counter before motioning for me to turn around. I turn, wondering what he’s up to when he starts digging around in my bag. He pulls out two bottles of pills from my bag and squints at them.
“Any interest in arthritis medicine, and some ibuprofen?” he asks, and I watch as both their faces light up.
“Do you have anything sweet?” Agnes asks excitedly. I dig out a handful of chocolate bars and slap them on the table beside the other stuff.
“Hell, you kids can stay forever,” Jep laughs. “Was that one room or two?”
“One,” Silas says without hesitation, and I give him a look.
“That okay with you girl?” Jep asks, not missing the look of surprise on my face.
I smile at his concern, “That is fine, thank you.”
Agnes shuffles over to a peg board where a row of six keys are hanging neatly and picks out the number three key. “It’s the best,” she says proudly as she hands it over to Silas.