The Dark Trinity (Book 1): Shuffle (18 page)
TWO AMIGOS
“Holy shit, dude! It’s like the fucking apocalypse out here
man!” exclaimed Pete as he peered through a crack in the door’s blinds.
“Great. How ‘bout you get away from the door before you
attract attention to us. I’ll be pissed if you end up getting me killed,”
replied Bill in his usual deadpan, monotone voice.
The two store clerks were stuck at work, like many others in
the city, ever since the outbreak began. The two men weren’t all that fond of
one another — hated each other in fact — but for some unknown reason, the pair
were inseparable. Now they hid out in the store with no weapons, a few
supplies, and no way to leave. Their building, with its windowless facade,
offered them the only protection they could hope for.
Pete was a large man in his early twenties. He had a
promising chance at playing center for the Steelers. His opportunity shattered,
along with his knee, during the “Backyard Brawl” against West Virginia last
year. Now, with hopes of a pro-football career in the toilet and an $8.50 an
hour job, Pete coped with his shitty luck by harassing his counterpart.
Bill was a few years older than Pete. His long, shaggy hair
and ten-inch long beard had earned him the moniker “Bearded Bill” from the
shop’s regular clientele. He hated that nickname. It always made him think of a
pirate. Having served two tours of duty in Iraq while in the Air Force, Bill
was content working this boring job. He didn’t even care that the pay was shit;
he was just happy that there wasn’t any excitement that came with it. The one
thing he couldn’t stand though, was the never-ending stream of garbage that
spewed forth from Pete’s mouth on a constant basis.
Pete made his way from the door towards the cash register,
where Bill leaned on the counter and read the Frank Miller graphic novel that
he had picked up the day before.
“How can you read that shit when the world is going all to
hell outside?” Pete asked.
“What would you rather I do? Stock the shelves? Take out the
garbage? Scrub down the back rooms? I’m pretty sure we’re not going to have any
customers come in, so how about you go fuck yourself,” Bill responded, without
even looking up from his book.
“Fuck off, Blackbeard,” Pete retorted. “How long did Sam say
he’d be?”
Bill shrugged off the pirate reference, although he was
getting closer to popping his colleague in the nose. “He didn’t. He just said
that he had to run home to grab his lunch, then he’d come straight here, so
just untwist your panties and calm the hell down.”
That was hours ago. Pete paced up and down the aisles looking
for something to do. He was bored out of his mind; had been ever since the TV
went off the air. Now with no news of what was going on, he was starting to
panic. The store was silent, save for the screams, explosions and other noises
of Armageddon. He began to sing the lyrics to Aerosmith's “Don't Want to Miss a
Thing.” The sounds outside were beginning to drive him insane. He walked behind
the counter and into the back office. A moment later he returned with a small
boom box. Setting it down, he opened the lid and loaded a CD.
The deafening roar of Gwar thundered from the stereo and
boomed throughout the empty store. Bill jumped from the sudden explosion of
death metal music and bounded towards the end of the counter. In a split second
he ejected the CD and flung it aside. “What the fuck do think you’re doing?” he
asked.
Pete stood there stunned. “I was going crazy listening to all
that shit outside. Figured it would help take our minds off of everything.”
“You’re going to attract every one of those things to our
doorstep. Sam told us to ‘play dead’ and that’s what we’re gonna do. That means
we keep quiet, you fuck.”
“I thought you liked Gwar,” Pete replied with a slight smirk
on his face.
“You really are an asshole,” Bill said, as he picked up the
stereo and tossed it into the back office.
BAIT
Sam and Evelyn drove in silence. They had to backtrack a lot,
since every road they ventured down choked with abandoned cars and bodies.
Finally, after about an hour of poking up and down various side streets, they
managed to make their way back onto Babcock.
Evelyn gazed out the window at the upside-down world.
Everywhere she looked, the same images appeared. Death, destruction, and
blood. Lots of blood. Everything seemed deserted. Not a soul, living or dead,
could be found. This struck her as odd. She had at least expected to see the
zombies scurrying around like insects swarming for food.
“Hey Sam, where is everybody?” she asked, looking out all the
car windows.
Sam slowed the car a bit and took a quick glance around.
“Hmm, that doesn’t seem right, does it? Looks a little too quiet.”
Evelyn’s eyes met Sam’s. “That’s just it. Everyone’s gone.
The last time we came through here, there were a ton of those things running
around killing everything that moved. Now they’re all just… Gone.”
Sam gave a grunt, signaling his agreement. He didn’t know
where the dead had run off to. Maybe they were hiding. Maybe they moved on in
search of more prey. It was impossible to say why they left. As far as he was
concerned, it was damn impossible to explain any of this mess.
BANG!
The gunshot rang in the air, causing both travelers jump and
Sam to swerve the car in an evasive maneuver. He slammed on the brakes and
brought the vehicle to a screeching halt in the middle of the road.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Sam and Evelyn ducked down behind the dashboard. As the
gunfire continued, both realized that they weren’t the ones under attack.
Raising his head, Sam chanced a quick peek above the dash. Fifty feet away, in
a large parking lot next to their car, a school bus sat covered with undead.
More gunfire erupted from the bus, throwing off one or two zombies with each
blast.
Sam ducked back down out of sight. His expression contorted
into a rock-solid grimace of indecision.
“What is it?” she asked. Gunfire continued to erupt from the
bus.
Sam looked at her, the intensity frozen on his face. “School
bus. Don’t know how many are inside, but those creeper things are swarming it.”
He made another quick glance towards the bus. “Looks to be maybe forty or fifty
are out there surrounding those folks.”
“We can’t just leave those people there to die, Sam. What’s
the plan?”
Sam looked in the back seat at the bag of ammunition, then
back at his gun. “Well, I’ve got enough ammo to take care of every creeper out
there and plus some, but there’s no way we’ll be able to reload fast enough.
They’ll overtake us after we blow our first load, so to speak. There’s no
telling how many people are on that bus or how many bullets they have left, so
we’d be stupid to assume that they’d be of any help. Safe bet is to stay in the
car.”
Evelyn pondered Sam’s words for a moment, then chanced a
glance out the window at the swarming mass of bodies around the helpless bus.
Guns blazed out of various windows of the vehicle, throwing off more gore and
bodies. The nearby car fires cast an eerie glow upon the carnage.
“Okay, Sam, here’s what I need you to do. I want you to
circle around the bus with the car, but make sure you give it a wide berth.”
Evelyn checked her pistol, making sure it was fully loaded.
“That’s it? That’s your plan? What the hell is that going to
do?” Sam asked.
“We need a diversion. Divide and conquer. We don’t have to
kill them all, just disperse them so those people can get that bus moving.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Great, so what kind of diversion did
you have in mind?”
“Bait,” Evelyn said as she opened the car door and jumped out
towards the mob of undead.
Sam nearly shit his pants as he watched her sprint towards
the bloodthirsty zombies. Bullets continued to spray out of the bus as Evelyn started
firing her pistol at the mass of bodies. He could hear her screaming as she
continued forward.
“Get that fucking car moving old man!” she yelled behind her.
He snapped out of his shock, popped the car into gear and
jammed the gas pedal to the floor. The car lurched forward and roared towards
the large parking lot. The murderous gang noticed the woman screaming and
shooting at them and began to give chase, completely forgetting the humans on
the bus. The mass of bodies began to peel away as if it were a single
organism.
The instant the creepers abandoned their quarry for the much
easier prey, Evelyn changed direction and moved away from the bus along the
outer edge of the lot. Sam made a wide arc around the bus and gunned the
engine, speeding the car towards the center of the group, which was now in hot
pursuit of the bat-shit-crazy woman running around the lot. The car hit at
least a dozen pair of legs and arms, kicking some of them up over the roof,
while crushing several under the speeding tires.
Evelyn zagged to the left, circling around in the opposite
direction of the car. Looking back to the bus, she saw the tail lights kick on
as the large vehicle began to pull forward. Good, they’re clear, she thought as
she cut in towards the middle of the lot. At the same time, Sam screeched
towards her on the outside, taking down another five zombies.
The surprise of their attack had passed and the creatures now
moved towards her. Sam saw the crowd careen towards Evelyn. In a split second,
he knew that they would get to her before the car would. With each blink of an
eye, the advancing dead closed the gap between her and inevitable suffering.
She knew she was in trouble. The distance to Sam and the
relative safety of the car was much farther than that of the creepers. Panic
set in, forcing her legs to pump even quicker than before. Her boot found the
only patch of black ice in a thirty foot radius, sending her sailing into the
air. She belly-flopped onto the asphalt and the wind left her.
I’m dead,
she thought.
Willing herself to regain her senses, Evelyn raised her head
and turned to see how many more seconds she had before ravenous teeth and claws
tore her flesh away. Her eyes rose up and met the cold stare of the lead
zombie, a mere three feet away. The ghoul erupted into a spray of thick, red
goo as the school bus plowed into the advancing mob, nearly hitting Sam in the
process.
“Jesus Christ on a cracker!” Sam exclaimed.
He cut the wheel to the left, missing the bus and his fallen
comrade. Slamming on the brakes, the car stopped next to Evelyn, who was
already getting back to her feet. She fired off three quick shots to the
nearest monsters as she jerked the door open and jumped into the car.
“Go! Go! Go!” she screamed.
Wheels spun, rocketing the car forward as the dead began
throwing themselves at the vehicle. The bus had turned around and was now
coming up on the pursuing zombies, crunching over them as it gained momentum.
Gunshots rang out on both sides of the bus as it cleaved through the herd of
creepers. Sam made a sharp left turn back onto the street, never letting up on
the gas. The bus followed, smearing a dark stain onto the road as it skidded
into the turn.
With the dead now behind them, the two vehicles sped down the
road, putting as much distance between the weary survivors and the horrors that
had almost ended their lives.