Nowhere to Hide (6 page)

“Greg Torrence, sir,” the boy answered, respectful even though he was shaking like a leaf.

“The dozer is Terri-Lynn,” Nancy added after a moment. “She fainted.”

The older man nodded. “I’m Marshall,” he offered.

“Thanks for your help, Marshall,” Nancy replied. She gripped the steering wheel a little harder as the car struck a younger-looking zombie wearing a private school uniform.

Marshall nodded, closed his eyes for a moment, and seemed to be thinking about something. After a few seconds he opened them again and asked, “Where are we headed?”

For a few minutes Nancy didn’t answer. She was staring, wide-eyed, at the hundreds of zombies roaming the streets as she screeched past them. Her apartment was in a fairly quiet part of the city, but now that they were moving through a busier area it seemed that they were driving through a veritable sea of the undead. She struggled to keep calm as she drove through them, winding this way and that to avoid abandoned cars and fires in the street. She kept glancing up at the windows in the buildings around them, wondering where the rest of the survivors were, why it didn’t seem like anyone was fighting back. Eventually she forced herself to reply to Marshall’s question: “The bar where I work. It’s a big, strong brick building. There wouldn’t have been anyone there when everything went to hell, so we should be able to hide out for a while.”

Marshall nodded and said nothing, but Nancy could tell that he was contemplating all the problems with her plan. For one, there were zombies everywhere. Even if they found their way into the bar, how long could their little rag-tag group last camped out in there? There was some food, and running water (for now), but little else. Eventually they would need supplies, weapons.

Nancy realized that she was expecting this nightmare to last, and she tried to shut off that part of her brain. No... No, the military would do something, surely? This mess would be cleared up. They just need to stay alive for a little while.

Stay human...
her mind added.

“Do you think this is happening all over?” Greg piped up from the back seat. His voice was small, frightened.

Marshall nodded without hesitation. “Look around,” he told the boy. “Do you see the army? Do you see the cavalry swooping in to save us? No... We’ve seen no sign of any kind of military assistance, which can only mean that the cavalry is tied up elsewhere. No, if they’re not here dealing with this right now, then they must be dealing with it somewhere, maybe
everywhere
, else.”

Nancy’s throat felt like sandpaper.
Well, there goes that idea
, she thought.

At one traffic light there had been an enormous collision between at least six vehicles. The mess was still smoldering, blocking the way through, and several zombies with smashed bodies were trying to weasel their way out of the wreckage. With a gag crawling up her throat Nancy quickly pushed the car into reverse and took off for a different side street.

“Excuse me, Nancy?” Greg spoke through his hands as he covered his eyes unashamedly. “How are we going to get into the bar without them seeing us and following us to the entrance? I mean, they don’t seem particularly smart, but once they see you they do tend to try and follow...” It was clear from the sound of his voice that he spoke from experience.

Nancy thought about the group of zombies that had been trying to break through Terri-Lynn’s door and cringed. He was right. If the creatures saw them enter the building, they’d know where to go, and if there were enough of them they’d eventually make their way through the door.

“Does the bar have a back door, Nancy?” asked Marshall.

Nancy nodded, biting her lip.

“They I say we go in that way,” he offered. “I’ve been watching them and they don’t seem to have anything resembling reasoning skills. They head for a door only because they see someone disappear behind it. If I can dispose of the ones who are close enough to see where we’re going, others may come toward the sound of the gun but they won’t be able to figure out where we’ve gone once they reach the spot. At least, that’s my theory.”

The idea of trusting their lives to a theory made Nancy’s stomach wrench, but they weren’t in much of a position to debate. She couldn’t just drive around the city forever; eventually she’d run out of gas or they’d wind up in an accident like the truck driver she’d seen earlier. She nodded at Marshall’s idea and took another side street that would bring them around the back side of the bar. She couldn’t help herself from swerving to avoid a zombie that looked to be no older than seven. Marshall saw what she did, but said nothing. It was a weakness she was going to have to overcome to survive, she thought, but the old man didn’t seem ready to chastise her at the moment.

As they approached the bar, Nancy drove in several circles around the block, until she was satisfied that she’d distracted as many of the zombies as she was likely too. Then she sped up and swerved into the back parking lot. There were three zombies wandering around the immediate area; Marshall took these out expertly while Nancy fumbled with the lock on the back door and Greg struggled to haul Terri-Lynn out of the back seat. By the time they got into the building and Nancy had relocked the dead bolt, Marshall had blown apart the the heads of ten former city citizens to keep their hideout as secret as possible. Nancy felt ill and Greg looked pale as a ghost, but they both knew that it had been necessary.

With the men carrying Terri-Lynn, Nancy led the way through the dark corridors to the kitchen, where there were no windows and they would be able to close the thick metal door and turn on the lights without fear of being noticed. Nancy was shaking like a leaf, so she occupied herself by playing host and pouring two glasses of whiskey for the men, another for herself. Marshall accepted his gratefully and took a long gulp. Greg eyed his a little before taking a sip. He cringed and then took another. Nancy downed hers in one shot.

“And for Sleeping Beauty...” Nancy muttered while filling up a large glass of water. She unceremoniously tossed the liquid in Terri-Lynn’s face. The other woman coughed, sputtered, shook her head, and then looked up at the group with confusion. “Where am I?” she asked stupidly.

“What do you remember?” Nancy countered.

Terri-Lynn seemed to think for a moment, and then her face went green. She looked at Nancy with wide eyes. “Oh god,” she whispered. “It was a dream, wasn’t it, Nancy? It was a dream, right?” She reached out and pulled on Nancy’s jean leg with desperation. “Please, Nancy, tell me it was a dream!”

Nancy shook her head and turned away. She didn’t know what to say.

“Okay, everyone,” Marshall announced. “I don’t want to go steppin’ on anyone’s toes in case you’ve already established an order of command here, but may I make a few suggestions?”

Terri-Lynn curled up in a ball on the floor and began rocking back and forth. Nancy hopped up on the preparation counter and nodded. Greg chugged back the rest of his whiskey with a grimace.

Marshall placed his rifle on the counter by Nancy and paced a little as he spoke. “We’ve found ourselves in a damn insane position here, I think we can all agree on that.” He paused for replies, but no one offered any so he continued. “The fact of the matter is that there isn’t a whole lot smart that we can do right now. I imagine that you three, like myself, were woken up in the middle of the night by all this insanity, yes?”

Nancy and Greg nodded.

Marshall continued, “It is now...” He looked down at his wrist watch. “Eleven A.M. We’re running on a few hours sleep and I don’t know about you all, but I haven’t eaten anything since supper yesterday. We find ourselves reasonably safe for the time being, so I suggest we stronghold our only possible weakness first.” He gestured at the one door in the room. “Then we can get ourselves a few hours rest, if we can, have a bite to eat, and see if we can’t come up with a better plan once we’ve had a chance to calm down.”

Nancy thought that the concept of calming down, in this context, was just about the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard, but she found herself nodding. She pointed to the large, silver monster of a fridge in the corner of the room, near the door. “We should be able to block the door with that without unplugging it.”

“Alright then,” Marshall agreed. “Give me a hand, Greg?”

The teenager pushed aside the whiskey bottle he’d been sneaking extra sips from and jumped up. “Yeah, yeah, sure, of course.”

While the men heaved the huge fridge into place, Nancy knelt down next to Terri-Lynn. The older woman was still rocking back and forth on the floor, and she was muttering something to herself that Nancy couldn’t quite make out.

“Terri,” she whispered, “Hon, you have to breathe. Everything will... We’ll be okay if we stick together.”

Terri-Lynn looked up at Nancy and the terror in her eyes was indisputable. “You can’t possibly promise that,” she whispered.

Nancy deflated. “You’re right, I can’t,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean that you should just give up and lay down to die.”

Terri-Lynn stared for a moment. Then she turned her face away and pulled herself over into a corner to be by herself. Nancy took a deep breath, counted to ten to keep herself from screaming, and turned back to the men. “Should I, um, turn off the lights while we sleep?” she asked quietly.

Greg’s eyes widened slightly before he could stop himself. Marshall noticed and saved the boy from his embarrassment by stating, “I think we’d best leave some of them on, just in case.”

Nancy nodded, flicked off two of the three light switches, and gave the men a nervous smile before she curled up on the floor near the stove.

Chapter Four

The world was red.

Crimson fluid poured from the skies and bubbled up through the ground. Nancy looked at her hands and saw that it was was dripping from her fingers. She looked up into a mirror to see that her hair and face were drenched with it. Streaming red tears leaked from her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream and the thick redness choked her. She tried to run and it broke over her like a bloody tidal wave. As she tried to swim, rotting hands reached out from the sea of red, groping at her, twisting her limbs, and dragging her under. She struggled to survive, but they pulled her to the depths and she choked and drowned on the torrents of thick, crimson death...

Nancy woke because her heart was hammering in her throat. Salty tears were running down her face; she swiped them away angrily.

“It’s okay, m’dear,” said Marshall. Nancy jumped in alarm at the sound of his voice, having expected the others to be asleep. The older man was perched on a counter top. He appeared to be cleaning his rifle. “Crying, that is,” he explained in a soft voice.

Nancy shook her head in exasperation. “I don’t have time to cry,” she muttered.

Marshall grinned a strange grin; not cruel, but amused. “Think you’re special, do you?” he asked gently. “Think you’re going to look horror in the face and laugh, hmm?” He gestured toward Greg, who had curled up in a corner, and Terri-Lynn, who was still cowering where they’d left her. Both were twitching, their sleep as disturbed as Nancy’s had been. “You can’t hide your fears in your sleep, m’dear. You were tossing as much as them.”

Nancy felt her face grow hot. She tried to mask her embarrassment by raising an eyebrow in mock-amusement. “You were watching me sleep?”

Marshall smiled. “I tried to rest myself, but I don’t sleep well when I’m scared shitless.”

Nancy stared for several moments before, surprising herself, she burst into goofy little giggles. “I’m sorry,” she insisted between breathless chuckles. “I don’t know why I’m laughing.”

Now Marshall smiled a genuine smile. “It doesn’t matter, m’dear,” he assured in her a grandfatherly way. “It’s because you’re human.” With a movement that made Nancy realize just how old the man really was, he climbed down off the counter, knelt creakily down beside her, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Keep crying when you’re sad, and keep laughing when the urge strikes you, okay?”

Nancy gave Marshall a thankful nod. He let himself plop down into a sitting position on the floor and resumed the cleaning of his rifle. Nancy watched him in silence for a while before speaking again. “So... What do you think is happening here, Marshall?”

He considered the question for a long while as he examined the rifle’s sight. “I can’t rightly say that I’ve got any clue,” he admitted. “If I had to make a wager, well I guess I’d say that it’s the apocalypse.”

Nancy didn’t know what kind of answer she’d been expecting, but this one surprised her. “The apocalypse...?”

Marshall nodded slowly, then sighed and placed the rifle down on the floor beside him. “My wife died last week, you know?” he shared in a quiet voice. His eyes were fixed on the floor.

Nancy was taken aback by this sudden new piece of information. “I’m so sorry-” she began, but Marshall waved his hand toward her. “Don’t be,” he insisted. “Cancer. Long time coming. Nothing to be done about it. I love her, and I miss her terribly, but I was as prepared as someone can be to lose a loved one.” He smiled in a miserable sort of way before continuing. “Three days after she died, while I was trying to sort myself out and make the last of the funeral arrangements, I got a visit from the police. Said they hated to bother me, but my wife’s body had gone missing from the morgue and they had to consider me as a possible suspect.”

Nancy’s mouth dropped open in horror.

“Yeah, I was pretty disgusted, let me tell you,” Marshall grunted. He placed a hand on his rifle and gripped it in a strange way that made Nancy envision a very heated debate with the police. “Then there was a call over one of the officers’ radios. She’d been found... She was gnawing on the throat of some poor young candy striper.”

“Oh my god,” Nancy said. The color had drained from her face and she felt bile rising in her throat. She tried to hide the reaction a moment later, but she was sure Marshall had noticed because he was nodding.

“From what I understand, she took down two cops before someone shot her in the head. The whole thing was covered up and I was ordered to keep my tongue until they figured out why she’d been pronounced dead when she clearly wasn’t.” Here he snorted as though remembering a terrible joke. “But I knew. I knew she was dead. I was with her when she went. And also, I know she wouldn’t kill anyone like that. She was such a gentle woman. She’d never hurt a fly.” He looked up at Nancy. There was a pained, haunted expression in his eyes that unnerved her.

“You may think me just a crazy, religious-minded old man,” he continued, “but I don’t think that was my wife. That is to say, her body, but not her soul.”

Her body but not her soul...

Nancy opened her mouth to pose a question, but was distracted when Greg began to stir and wake. She pushed her curiosities and the morbid conversation aside in favor of not upsetting the boy the moment he woke. “How’re you doing there, Greg?” she asked as cheerfully as she could manage.

Greg shrugged and grunted as he pushed himself up off the hard floor and stretched. “I’ve definitely been better,” he groaned. Then, with a sheepish sort of look, he admitted, “I hate to say it, but I’m totally starving.”

“I’m with you there, boy!” Marshall agreed. He followed Nancy’s suit in pretending that the previous conversation had never occurred. “What have we got to eat here, Nancy m’dear?”

Nancy pushed herself up, cracked her neck, and brushed off her pants. “Well,” she said while heading to the fridge, “keep in mind that we’re in a bar.” She pulled open the double doors and peered inside for a few seconds, though she already knew what awaited her. “We’ve got French fries, onion rings, hot wings, battered vegetables, and garlic bread.” She turned to the men and made a face. “Breakfast of champions.”

Marshal chuckled and Greg allowed himself a small smile.

“A little of everything then, hmm?” suggested Nancy. “At least there’s a lot of it.” She pulled a handful of bags off the top shelf and headed over to the fryers.

Terri-Lynn was awakened soon after by the hiss-pop of the frozen food hitting the hot oil. She stared at the others for several minutes, ignoring their greetings as if confused about what was happening. Eventually she wandered over to the wall-mounted storage containers, grabbed a large bottle of wine, and slunk back into her corner to drown her misery. Nancy, who was losing patience with the woman but didn’t want to be cruel, simply ignored her while the men shot each other bemused looks.

“Grease is served!” the makeshift chef announced a while later. She laid it out on platters along the counter tops so everyone could pick at what they wanted. Greg immediately dove onto the hot wings, while Marshall nibbled conservatively at the garlic bread. Nancy popped a few veggies in her mouth. When Terri-Lynn didn’t come forward for the food, Nancy piled a couple of pieces of everything on a plate and laid it down on the floor next to her. She stubbornly refused to look at either Nancy or the food, and took a large swing from her wine bottle. Nancy sighed and returned to her own food.

“So, Marshall,” she asked through a mouthful of fries, “what do you think we should do next?”

Greg stopped in mid-bite, hot sauce running down his fingers. “What do you mean?” he asked with a pitiful waver to his voice. “Shouldn’t we just wait here to be rescued?”

Marshall gave the younger man a gentle smile that wasn’t the least bit condescending. “If we could do that, that would be great, m’boy,” he said. “Realistically, though, we have to think outside the margins. Help might not come. We’ll eventually run out of food, and if what’s going on outside continues it’s a good bet that the power and water supply might get cut off as well. Then we’d be
forced
to leave, and without any supplies and only the few bullets I’ve got left.”

Nancy nodded, agreeing, though not happily. “So what we should do is prepare weapons and some of the supplies for a probable journey.”

From her corner, Terri-Lynn snorted loudly, but said nothing while taking an extra-large swing of wine. Greg looked at her, but Nancy and Marshall ignored the outburst.

“There’s also the chance, however unlikely,” said Marshall, “that the creatures might wind up in here at some point, which is why we should be considering weapon options more sooner than later.”

Greg eyed the big steel freezer against the only door. “But we’ve blocked the way in,” he pointed out.

“Think about what you’ve seen already,” Nancy told him gently. “Those things seem stronger than they should be, and they’re resilient. They’ll just keep pushing and clawing and banging forever. Against that kind of determination, the door will eventually break. And the more of them that show up, the faster their progress will be.”

Greg shuddered.

“We could easily make Molotov cocktails,” Nancy suggested, gesturing to the large cabinets filled with liquor.

“You’re thinking,” Marshall told her, “but I can vouch for that not being the greatest idea. Did you happen to notice several buildings on fire across from your own when you were fleeing?”

Nancy cringed and nodded.

“Then I imagine you can see where I’m going with this,” he continued, a weary sigh on his lips. “A
lot
of those fires were started by people trying to fight back. Take it from me, it don’t work. At least, not fast enough. They just keep coming while they burn, you see, and they spread the fire to everything they touch in the process.”

Nancy couldn’t help picturing a hoard of burning zombies shambling toward her, completely unaware that their bodies were engulfed in flame. The image chilled her to the bone.

“Well,” she conceded. “We’ve got some large knives, and there are some pool cues out in the main lobby that could be sharpened to a point, but that’s about it, I think.”

“Listen to you!” Terri-Lynn exclaimed suddenly. Nancy and the men jumped in surprise. “Talking about weapons and moving on when the food runs out!” She stood up with a slightly-drunken wobble and pointed an unsteady, accusatory finger. “You’re all insane! There’s no fighting those things! There’s no running! We’re all going to be torn limb from limb, or else we’re going to starve to death waiting for it!” To stress her defiant attitude, she hurled her almost-empty bottle of wine across the room where it shattered into thousands of sparkling pieces against the far wall.

Greg cringed; the tiny sparkle of tears threatened at the corners of his eyes. Marshall frowned like a parent unsure how to deal with an unruly and unreasonable child. But Nancy’s blood pressure rose in a steady incline and her temper finally exploded. She strode meaningfully over to Terri-Lynn, hauled back, and cracked the other woman across the face as hard as she could. Terri-Lynn’s head reeled back for a moment before her hand flew to her cheek. She looked back at Nancy with shock in her eyes.

“We could have left you behind, you know!” Nancy hissed. Her heart was pounding and she could feel heat rising in her cheeks. “We could have left you behind on that fire escape, passed out and helpless, but we didn’t! Greg and I risked ourselves to haul your limp, useless body down from there and take you along with us! We dragged your stupid ass to safety while Marshall protected our backs, and
this
is the fucking thanks we get?!”

A cool, shaking hand touched her shoulder and Nancy whipped around to face Greg. He was looking at her with wide eyes, and his head was shaking back and forth, just marginally. Nancy glanced back at Terri-Lynn, who had tears in her eyes, and pointed a concrete finger at her. “If you’re not going to be helpful, then keep your goddamned mouth shut!” she jeered before letting Greg lead her back to the other side of the room. Marshall waited there with a resigned face.

Terri-Lynn slunk back down to the floor and curled up into a quietly sobbing ball. Nancy found that she didn’t feel even the least little bit guilty.

Terri-Lynn said nothing for the rest of the day. A few times she was seen picking miserably at the plate of food Nancy had given her, but other than that she remained curled up in her corner, moping and nursing the welt growing on her cheek.

Nancy, Greg, and Marshall spent several hours looking through every inch of the kitchen. Aside from the aforementioned knives, some cast-iron frying pans, and the half-hearted suggestion of broken liquor bottles, they were unable to gather any decent additional weaponry. Therefore, armed with one rifle with waning ammo, Nancy’s katana, and the largest kitchen knife they could find, the three reluctantly decided that once the sun set, they would search the rest of the bar.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here, Greg?” Nancy asked again.

It was clear that Greg ached to say yes, but he was headstrong and stubborn, and more than a little embarrassed to be coddled by a girl. He shook his head for the third time and squeezed the handle of the butcher knife a little tighter. “I’m coming,” he insisted.