Epidemic of the Undead: A Zombie Novel (13 page)

Nan shook her head at Brady’s lack of sensitivity.  

“Hell, if I was you, son, I’d make my move before someone else does.” Brady patted Chris firm on the shoulder to show that he didn’t mean anything by it.

“What, Steve?” Chris laughed. “Na… Steve doesn’t have a chance with Stephanie.”

“You’d be surprised, son,” Brady said. “Hard times equal vulnerable times. The better man sometimes just has to step aside. Don’t let that be you. You hear?”   

Before Chris could put in his two cents about it, the gas pump let out a muffled ping, signifying that it was ready. The numbers on the dial lit up with all zeros.

“Sweet! We’re in business.” Chris eagerly started filling the car. “Think you can go check on them, man? Something to eat wouldn’t hurt either.” 

Brady nodded and then started to walk away.

A shot rang out from inside the store. Before Brady even made it to the front door, Steve stumbled out and fell to his knees. His pale chest was pouring blood from a hole, which had been punched somewhere above his heart. His eyes were wide with fear. Stephanie spilled out behind him from inside screaming bloody murder. With the rifle tightly gripped in both hands, her knuckles tensed white. Steve fell forward, slamming his face on the cement as she passed. Brady knelt down at Steve’s side. Retrieving his side arm, he checked the young man’s vitals, while eyeing the storefront for movement.

Out in the streets behind them, the gunshot and screaming had instantly attracted unwanted attention. Chris couldn’t see them at first, but he definitely heard them. Their moans glided across the wind, and Chris could tell that the dead were only blocks away. It sounded as if the noises were coming from his left, but when Chris looked back at the street in that direction, there was nothing. However, to his right, a lone figure appeared, and not far beyond that, another, and then another. If there were a different name for wildfire, then undead epidemic would be it. Because it was unbelievable how fast, they spread into view. First a few and then too many to deal with. All occurring in the matter of minutes. With five or more already closing in on the right, some started to show up on the left as well. With them came that God awful smell.

“What the hell is going on?” Chris yelled out to Brady.  

“This is my place! Go find your own, you hear me?” A large burly looking man appeared at the gas station entrance. He wore overalls and was shirtless underneath. Something dark stained his pants legs and he was wearing a tattered ball cap, sporting a truck emblem on the front. Black nappy hair curled wildly past his ears from under the cap. His extremely bushy chest hair also buffed out around the top of the overalls. As he yelled, Chris saw small bits of gold in his busted up teeth from all the way across the lot. A sudden volley of two more shots rang out, which were clearly warning shots. 

Brady started to stand, swiftly raising his handgun toward the man.

“Don’t even think of trying it, grandpa! I mean it. I’ll blow you away right where you stand!” The brawny man shouted. “Just go back the way you came. Now!” He jerked his gun in the air toward Brady, and Steve who wasn’t moving. “Now git!” 

Stephanie ran around the car, hunkering down at Chris’ side. With a deep heaving breath, she panted. “Steve! Steve’s been shot! Oh my God, oh my God.”  

“Well isn’t that just a hoot. You done gone and done it, you dumb sons a bitches!” The belligerent man guarding the door to the store eyed the incoming creatures off in the distance. Their numbers had quickly grown. “You stupid, mother fuckers. Now, how am I supposed to hide out in here, when you went and drew all of them right to me! Where the hell am I supposed to go now?” He yelled, waving his gun around at Brady, and Chris who had ducked low behind the car.

“You shot my best friend! Go to hell! Of all places to hide out, a convenience store has to be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard!” He shouted, having been ready to do the same thing last night.

“What the hell do you know, you little punk! I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“No, I don’t suppose you are!” From low behind the car, Chris fired his first shot. The shot would have been a hit, but the crazed man had already darted back into the confines of the store. A barrage of fire rang out from inside. Brady took the sudden opportunity to grab Steve’s limp pale body by one arm. With his back to the car and handgun drawn toward the gas station building, Brady started dragging Steve backwards, scraping his loose body across the pavement, leaving a small thin trail of blood. A little puddle remained in the place where his body had initially landed. The sound of bullets ricocheting left and right in a volley of return fire made it hard to tell who was firing the most. The frame of Stephanie’s car dented in a few sporadic locations as shots were traded. As Brady reached the car, Chris noticed that the old man hadn’t taken a single shot. The passenger side window shattered right over Brady’s head.

What the hell are you doing, Brady? Now’s not the time for an Alzheimer’s moment
, Chris thought between shots. What glass in the windowpane wasn’t already broken, split simultaneously with the pull of the trigger.

A barrage of shots was returned.

“I’m out,” Stephanie shouted, after only firing a handful of times.

“Nice!” Chris kept firing, said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, and he kept on firing.

Suddenly, Nan jumped back into the car and slammed the door shut. Chris ceased firing for a second and looked over his shoulder to where Nan had been standing. Beside him only a few feet away, a zombie lurched forward, stumbling its way around the pump. It reached out with hungry eyes and wide teeth. Drool slid down its cheek from its purple, busted lip. The lip drooped low like a flapping chunk of dead skin. The creature’s bottom teeth snarled even without the zombie’s grimacing smirk, the sagging lip doing the work for it. Chris jerked the pistol around, taking aim at the creature. The zombie reached out and grabbed Chris’ arm. Its cold dead hand jolted a frantic panic into Chris’ body. His body jittered with the sudden wave of trembling emotion. Chris closed his mouth and eyes to be sure he wouldn’t get any of the creature’s fluids on him, and then he turned his head away. If something as simple as a scratch were going to cause a child to turn, then surely getting any bodily fluids in the mouth or eyes would be just as deadly. 

He pulled the trigger.

The ghoul’s head rocked back in a contorted squish of putrid gore. The right eye exploded with the weapon’s report. Blood and the remains of its matted eye and skull fragments sprayed across Chris’ chest, his shirt becoming covered in brain matter. The zombie slumped to the ground, confirming the kill.

This was my last clean shirt too, really?
Chris looked down at his pus-covered shirt.

“Fella couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, I tell ya what!” Brady shouted. Still leaning over Steve’s body, he shouted just loud enough for Chris to hear. “Quit firin’ a sec! We need that yeller belly to show us his location.”

Just like that, he did. Chis held his fire and the man inside decided to take a chance. He quickly stepped into view to get a better shot. When he did, it was too late. Brady took his shot, and it was a done deal. The man took the bullet in the center of the throat. Blood gushed out when he attempted to scream. He fell somewhere behind the wall inside, undoubtedly to bleed to death.

The shooting stopped.

“Help me get the boy in the car,” Brady shouted.

Opening the car door on Brady’s side, Nan reached out to help pull Steve into the backseat. Around them, the dead were getting closer. It seemed as if all of downtown Beaumont had decided to visit that very spot all at once. They were coming in from out in the street, from inside nearby buildings, from behind parked cars, and from behind the gas station itself. The air around them filled with a noisy hum. It took Chris a second to realize what it was. A multitude of voices groaned out in a chorus of scratchy busted vocal cords.  

“Get in the car!” Brady shouted at the top of his lungs, just as he slammed the backdoor shut. “We need to get the hell outta here!”

Chris didn’t protest. Jumping into the driver’s seat, Chris frantically waved Stephanie to get in. She stood frozen in fear, still holding her rifle tight to the chest.

Chris honked the horn, startling her back into the here and now. She jumped into the backseat with a loud scream. Only moments after closing the door and shoving the lock down, the closest ghoul collided against the window in a fiery rage. The zombie beat on the car in hopes of driving out the soft, chewy meat inside.

“What the hell are you waiting for, Chris? Drive!” Stephanie cried out, looking deep into the eyes of the grotesque figure, as it tried to break the car window. It snarled with spite and malice, its blood covered hands smearing across the glass.

The vehicle bolted forward ripping the nozzle from the pump. Chris’ foot slammed on the gas. Liquid spilled out from the pump through the busted hose as they drove off. With a violent thud and a pivot against the shocks, the car ran down a zombie in the path. Not at all concerned for its own wellbeing, it stayed the course in relentless pursuit of those trapped inside the moving object. The zombie went flying over the hood and roof, crashing to the pavement below. Others reached the car and started pounding on the hood, but only for a moment. The car quickly passed them, heading off down the narrow road.

Behind them, Chris watched as the sea of bodies converged at the center of the gas station’s parking lot. Some continued the hunt, following the car as it grew small and smaller. Chris looked on the devastation with disgust. He watched in the rearview as a woman, uninfected, suddenly appeared at the entryway of the convenience store with a large handgun. Her attire and features highly resembled that of the man that Brady had just shot and killed. Only, she looked to be pregnant.

She must be his wife or girlfriend. He was only trying to protect her
, Chris thought, aghast. Suddenly, he was filled with hatred at what he had to become in an effort to survive. If only people would band together in times like this rather than reach selfishly for their own gain. Maybe then that man and the pregnant woman would still be okay. It had become so easy to kill for luxury. Chris pounded the steering wheel in blind frustration and rage. He hated the connection. He was no better a man. All he could think of as he drove off was that the crazy guy from the store had only been trying to protect his lover, just as he would have protected his cousin if he could have, just as he had failed to protect Steve.

The woman from the store screamed and shouted. A dozen zombies fell on her before she was able to get off a single shot. Teeth gnashed and claws slashed in ravenous rage. She instantly disappeared amid a pool of putrid festering bodies.

Chris glanced over at Brady, wondering if he too had noticed it. Brady was leaned over the front seat tending to Steve, who lay in the backseat with his head in Stephanie’s lap. With his eyes on the road, Chris struggled to look at his friend. Took focused on keeping the car on the road, he didn’t know if his friend was going to make it. He cringed, gripping the wheel tighter.

“How bad is it, Brady?” Although Chris tried to sound calm, his voice cracked. His body was still racing with adrenaline. All that Chris could see in the backseat was red. He glanced at Stephanie for a second, her expression void of any hope. “Well, tell me! Is he going to make it or what?”

“Just drive, Chris!” Brady pointed out toward the road ahead of them.

“To where? I don’t know where I’m going!”

“We need to get this boy to a doctor.” Nan grimaced, while applying pressure to the wound.

“The rescue station in Orange! Last night, the radio said they would have medical staff stationed out there. It’s not too far from here! And the hospitals would be too risky anyway,” Stephanie said. 

“Here, hold ‘em still, hold ‘em still.” Brady pulled out his pocketknife, cutting into one of his pants legs. Tearing it free, he said, “Tie this into a tourniquet, would ya? The tighter the better! We need to stop the bleedin’.” Brady turned back to Chris sitting straight in his seat. “Stephanie’s right. He needs medical attention. It ain’t bad, I can tell that. The bullet exited out the back, which is good and all. But he needs stitches something fierce.”

“So, he’s going to live?”

“He took that bullet right between the shoulder and the left bicep, he did. As long as he didn’t break any major blood vessels or send bone fragments deeper into that chest of his, he’ll manage. There’s no way of us knowing any of that without risking infection though. All’s we can do for him is to stop the bleeding. He did lose a lot of blood, so he’s gonna be mighty weak for a spell. That rescue station is his best bet. I don’t recon you know how to get there, do you?”

“No sir, I don’t,” Chris said with distress.

“What about you, Stephanie? Do you remember?” Brady asked. 

Stephanie sat for a while trying to remember exactly where. A few locations rolled around in her head, but one came to the surface. “It was one of the high schools. I remember that much. Andrew . . . something,” she said.

“The old Community Church School, off the highway in Orange. Anderson High? I thought they shut that place down, honey?”

“Not from what I understand, Nan. Either way it was one of the locations they mentioned last night on the radio. They for sure, said something about medical support there.”

“I remember how to get there,” Brady smiled. “Stephanie’s sure of the place, then that’s the place we’re headed. Any objections?” Brady asked, sensing uncertainty in Chris’ demeanor. 

Chris glanced to the backseat at Steve. Steve lay across Stephanie and Nan, his breathing faint. The bleeding looked like it had stopped, thankfully.
Leave it to you, Steve, for keeping us from getting home sooner. Always just thinking of yourself,
Chris thought jokingly. With a heavy sigh, Chris said, “Show me the way!”  

Chapter Seven

Getting onto the small teaching grounds had proven itself to be no easy task. It had gotten dark quite quickly, and with no way of communicating with those inside, Chris and the others found themselves circling the facility multiple times before getting ample notice. Not just from the dead, but from those inside as well. At one time, Anderson High had been a private Catholic school, which made it high on the list when considered as a rescue station by the state; something Nan had pointed out. She seemed to know quite a bit about the school’s history. Chris took what Nan had said into account the second he set eyes on the place. The seven-foot steel fence surrounding the school seemed almost impenetrable. It was definitely an ideal place to hold up. They had almost given up after circling the facility for a third time. Then Stephanie spotted a group of people on the roof of one of the smaller buildings. It had taken a five-mile drive away from the school, deflecting most of the dead away, and communication with those on the roof to allow them access. The fact that it had gotten dark made both situations very tedious.