The Undead Situation (24 page)

In the distance I could hear fast rustling through the forest, including savage howls from what could only be a pack of runners. They didn’t know quite where I was, which gave me an advantage. If I could get out of the woods fast enough, Blaze and I could escape without any more difficulties.

Now that the undead behemoth was out of the way, I continued forth. A thicket of blackberry bushes lashed at my face, tearing open the scabbing wounds on one side and creating new ones on the other. I barely registered the pain. There was one place I needed to get to and nothing was stopping me.

Just when I began to think I was lost, I broke into the cement clearing. Blaze stood a few yards away from the Mustang, picking off runners emerging from the forest. Every time I heard a round of fire, a runner fell.

Panting, I slammed up against the Mustang, grasping for the handle.

“Took you long enough,” Blaze called as she walked backward toward the car, shooting all the while.

I got the door open and was just about to slide in when I noticed a hand clenching my ankle.

Intestines trailed behind the torso that was gnawing on my steel-toed boot. Her face was torn into ragged bits, but her mouth worked just fine. In one swift movement, I yanked my foot back and brought it down on her skull, crushing it and breaking into the dead brain underneath.

I slammed my door shut and pressed the lock down, just for good measure.

“Get in!” I shouted, lunging for the driver’s door and pushing it open.

Blaze turned around and tried to dive into the car, but a runner came out of nowhere, latched onto her, and fell. He looked like an undead hippie. Long, ratted brown hair straggled around his head. Blood coagulated in his rat’s nest of a beard. An oversized tie-dye shirt completed the ensemble.

Despite the difficulty of yielding the shotgun in such close quarters, I brought it to his head and pulled.

Empty.

Still only half way in the car, Blaze tried to turn over and kick the zombie off, but she wasn’t succeeding. I reached down in a flash, grabbing my 9mm, and squeezed the trigger.

A clean round went straight through his left eye. Blood splattered onto Blaze’s camouflage jacket, soaking the middle of her back. I leaned over and shoved the body from the car, catching sight of a horde of runners headed straight for us.

Blaze shifted into place and closed her door, just as one of the undead slammed up against it. A hairline crack coated in blood appeared.

I punched her in the shoulder and yelled, “Get a fucking move on!”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” she said as she turned the ignition. The blessed engine rumbled to life a second before she put the pedal to the metal.

The speed pushed me back into the seat. From the backseat, I heard a frantic mewling noise and claws on leather.

When this ends, I thought, I’m building a mansion for that ferret.

Blaze expertly drifted onto the empty highway and evened out her speed. I twisted around and saw at least fifteen undead curving around the corner of the body shop, rampaging toward us.

I wondered when they’d slow down and become a normal, pleasingly slow undead.

“Well, that was successful,” Blaze said as she wiggled uncomfortably in her seat. I heard the wet sound of blood sliding against the hard leather behind her.

“Sure was.”

I stole another glance behind us, only to see the Zs fading into the thick fog of morning.

“For a second back there, I thought you were going to sacrifice yourself for me.”

Blaze chuckled, an amused grin curving her lips. “You thought that?”

It was hard to say whether I thought that or not. Recently words slipped from my mouth without me consciously deciding to say them. If I were going to get it together one of these days, I needed to work on that.

“No. I suppose not.”

An idyllic ten minutes of driving brought us to a hole-in-the-wall kind of town called Startup. I remembered seeing it on the map and thinking it was small, but not this small.

If Blaze hadn’t slowed down as we entered, we could’ve passed through the entire town in less than a minute. But I didn’t blame her. There were some sights to behold.

Grotesque, lopsided crosses lined both sides of the road and were planted in dead, brown grass. Decapitated bodies were nailed to them, crucified. No other whole bodies were to be seen, but thick mounds of gore were spread out in the grass and on the highway.

Memories of my time in Arkansas surfaced. The gruesome scene reminded me of time spent with Frank hunting and gutting deer. We would lay the bodies out on the dead grass in front of his cabin to skin them.

“This is the worst thing I’ve seen yet.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Blaze said as we slowly moved deeper into the tiny town.

A small gas station proclaiming “kegs to go” had black crosses spray painted on its side and the cement around it, along with a myriad of other graffiti.

Hell has come.

Ye shall be purified. We shall be purified.

God’s doing.

My eyes stopped on one set of words in particular:
We are watching you
. I swallowed nervously. It wasn’t like anyone was really watching me. So why was my hair standing up?

Drawing my eyes away from the gas station, I noticed a church to my left. It was old, with a steeple and everything. Metal structures were strewn about the front of the building, and a sign revealed it to be an antique store. Farther down the street were some houses and a post office, but I didn’t want to stick around.

“Let’s move.”

Blaze nodded, not rushing as she lit a cigarette. Her lighter was red with a naked, voluptuous woman on the side. She caught me looking at it and winked.

“This one caught my eye at the gas station.”

With an irritated sigh, I said, “Great. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, yeah. You should relax someti—”

I had been fixated on the signs to the right, but that didn’t stop me from noticing movement behind us and to the left. Stiffs were coming out of buildings. They looked fresh. A naked woman had dark blue rings of bruises around her neck, the only markings on her. Her skin wasn’t gray and still held tones of living flesh.

Before I could catalogue any more of their features, the car jerked forward. Blaze didn’t waste any more time. Smoke pluming around her face, she eased on the gas and we escaped the undead with no issue.

We’d only gone a few yards when she slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a skidding stop.

“There’s a blockage up ahead. Boards with nails. I don’t know where to go. There’s no turns.”

“Let’s just get out and move them, for fucks sake!”

Her voice rose in anger. “Look, you idiot.”

I took the time and looked. There were two rows of boards, each extending off the road. The individual rows were two long pieces connected in the middle in a hinge fashion with a padlock. It became evident they could be unlocked and opened like gates.

More zombies shambled out of an antique store beyond the barriers, and were coming towards us. We didn’t have enough time to figure out the mechanics of both barriers. The undead surrounding us were slow, but not slow enough.

I thought fast. Our options were narrowed to two solutions. We needed to get out of their sight so they could forget us. We needed to find somewhere to hide while the stiffs dispersed. While they did, we could form an exit strategy. The second, desperate plan was to run across the town and hope we made it to the Kellogg Lake Road in time. It sounded appealing, but we would have to leave everything behind. If the first plan didn’t work out, we would fall back on the second.

“Get out of the car. If we take off, we can let them follow and leave the Mustang. We’ll come back when it’s clear.”

My plan must’ve been decent—that or Blaze didn’t have a better one—because she grabbed her gun from the backseat and got ready to follow. I did the same and opened the car door, ready to bolt, but first I reached into the back and grabbed my pack. It took three fast tries before I grabbed Pickle by the backside and shoved her into her spot in the backpack. There was no way to know where we’d be going or for how long.

Before getting out of the car, she turned it off and pocketed the keys. Blaze swiftly exited and set off in no particular direction. I slammed the door shut and followed her.

None of the buildings within immediate sight appeared to be formidable or even accessible. Most of the structures were thoroughly boarded up, not granting entry of any kind, or were destroyed beyond all reason.

After catching up with Blaze I said, “Let’s get out of sight, first. They’ll catch up, but it might confuse them.”

She nodded and veered off to the right, behind a large square-shaped house. We trampled through tall, overgrown grass and entered an equally tangled backyard through an open wood gate. One lonely willow tree, half dead, loomed in the middle. The small backyard was cut off with a high fence. A single backdoor and window upstairs were on the back of the house. I shook the handle, expecting it to be locked. It was.

“We could circle back around. They’re probably gone,” Blaze said, slinking over to the gate and pulling it closed. It didn’t look strong. The undead could easily bring it down if they tried hard enough.

“I doubt it. They were going berserk for us,” I countered. “There’s no way others wouldn’t hear them and decide to join the party.”

Blaze blew out a long breath and shrugged. “Then what?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but sounds came from inside the house. At first just scuffling, but louder sounds followed, like furniture being slid.

The door creaked open to reveal a sallow, fearful visage. It was a man—one who was probably a real big guy before he started starving to death.

“Get in,” he said, pulling the door open farther. “Before someone sees you.”

Not this again. Dealing with other survivors hadn’t yielded anything good. On the other hand, we had nowhere to go. And if things started looking shady, we also had guns.

I moved forward and the man stepped aside, letting Blaze and me in.

The interior smelled and looked foul. The house appeared to be in the early stages of construction. No sheetrock had been laid, and only the skeletons of walls remained. It was dim, despite the two diamond-shaped lights up high on the left wall.

People of all ages and sizes were huddled in every available space. I counted ten before deciding to stop paying attention. This wasn’t looking good. People who were in bad shape often wanted things from those who weren’t.

Each of them turned their heads and peered at us, fright and confusion evident. Some of them started whispering the word “military” or “army.” I guess they hadn’t seen anyone as well outfitted as us and were getting the wrong impression.

The door closed behind us and I turned to look at the man, who I pegged as the leader.

“I’m Michael,” he introduced, offering a dirty hand to me.

I bit my lip and looked at his hand, then back to him. Michael squeezed his hand shut and pulled it back to his side. Some people were too kind for their own good, Mike there being one of them. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and save every human being on the earth if someone said he had a shot. He already had a good start, which was evident by the numerous survivors crowded around us.

“We’ll only be staying a little while,” I said. “No need for introductions.”

Michael’s face crumbled. A woman pushed past us and wrapped bone-thin arms around him. “You’re cruel!” she hissed.

“No, Angie. It’s fine.” He sighed.

The woman broke away and pointed a finger at me. “You think you’re staying for a little while? They know you’re here. It’s only a matter of time before they come to get us. All of us!”

I glanced at Blaze, who remained as blank as ever, then to Angie. “Who is going to get us?”

A haughty, pleased look crossed her face. “The lunatics down the street in the church.”

“The antique store?”

Michael chimed in, “No, there’s an old church across from the tennis court.”

“They’re the ones who started crucifying people,” Angie said. “Not dead ones either, but us. They come when we least expect it and take us.”

Someone in the room weakly added, “They don’t always kill us.”

Angie said, “They keep the girls and women. Sometimes we escape while they’re taking us to the church.”

Well, nothing new there. People kidnapping other people during an apocalypse to murder, rape, and otherwise disrespect. I didn’t voice this observation to anyone, of course. No need to upset the natives.

“And you probably led them here. They have someone who watches from the antique store, then they signal the ones in the church.”

I rubbed my temples. A headache was brewing already. Typically, I wasn’t very perceptive of what people wanted, but in that instance I knew exactly what Michael, Angie, and all the other people wanted from us.