Z Children (Book 1): Awakening (10 page)

Marty snapped
out of it, shaking his head vigorously like a narc coming out of a drug haze. I
guess I was scarier than what was outside.

“Do what I say;
kneel down on the floor boards, close your eyes and cover your ears.” I watched
as the boy obeyed quickly. I wanted to switch places with him, hunker down in
safety and let someone else handle the dirty work. A stream of unladylike
expletives ran through my brain as I turned to the little monster outside the too-thin
glass. I wasn’t exactly confident that I could pull a  proverbial rabbit
out of my hat and not die in the process, but I was ready to give it the old
college try. Maybe I’d feel a bit more confident if I’d actually finished
college instead of dropping out junior year to follow an ex-boyfriend to Texas.
Water under the bridge though; business classes were behind me and in front of
me was… a rabid and hungry little hazy-eyed bastard. I lowered the window a
little and stuck the .38 outside. My wrist ached as I held the handgun at an
awkward angle trying to point the barrel right at the monster boy.

My eyelids
clamped shut and reopened involuntarily and a scream left my mouth as the vile
child locked his hand around the barrel of the gun. He shook it wildly,
standing on tiptoes and smashing his mouth against the narrow crack between
window glass and door frame. I pulled the trigger. The boy’s hand, which
covered the bullet’s exit point from the barrel, blew into a dozen chunks of
flesh and blackening blood. His primal scream made me wince and I wanted to
distance myself from the small splatters of stray blood that dripped down the
interior window pane, but I stayed firm, kept the gun in position and ready to
fire a second round.

Recovering from
the injury, he lunged back at the T-bird, more determined than ever to satisfy
his hunger. Unfortunately for him, his mouth wrapped around the gun barrel just
as I squeezed off another shot. The sound was an explosion this time, somehow
amplified by the position of the barrel in the boy’s mouth. It was deafening,
sickening, as the cacophony of sound accompanied brain matter blowing from the
monster kid’s head and outward to spatter the surrounding parking lot. I closed
my eyes by my own volition this time and tried to steady myself, center myself,
ready myself to leave the relative safety of the car and get the shotgun. I
watched the boy’s body fall backwards toward the hard ground. As soon as he was
motionless, I made my brain forget he was there, forget that he existed.

The sight of
another dead child was numbing, but somehow, beneath the cold response of my
heart, I knew that gazing too long at the small frame and lifeless eyes would
threaten to put me over the edge.  My hands shaking, I pulled the .38 back
into the car, and set it down gingerly on the middle console. I hated it. I
hated that I wanted to pick it up again.
Just in case
. It only had three
rounds left in it though.

Without looking
at my handiwork again, I hopped out of the car, grabbed the shotgun, and placed
it lovingly on the dash of the car. I’d thought about tossing it onto the back
seat with the rest of the gear, but a prize this hard-won needed to be revered.
Plus… easy freaking access if I needed to blow a hole in another
kid-turned-killer. I wasn’t about to leave it out of reach.

Driving away
from the sheriff’s station was like leaving purgatory and finding freedom. But
even then, I was more scared than I ever had been in my entire life and I
didn’t breathe easier until Marty and I were cruising down the highway at 60
MPH.

Driving the big
Ford on the highway was like floating on air and the old school AC kept the
interior cool and comfortable- comfortable enough to put the young boy to
sleep. I should have had him move back onto the seat and buckle up, but I’d
been so relieved to be alive that I hadn’t thought about road safety. I’d pull
over soon, rouse the boy and have him sit properly, but for now, he looked too
damn peaceful sound asleep on the floorboards; let him have a moment of
dreamland. I swallowed, reflecting on what the boy could be dreaming. More
likely than not, his mind was a prisoner of nightmares instead of the sugar
coated wanderings he was used to.

I looked back at
the road and began to think of everything that had happened… to me, to Susan…
maybe even to my parents who lived states away, enjoying retirement and bingo
at Golden Shores Assisted Living. So many people that I cared about… were they
all okay? I was momentarily grateful that I didn’t have a husband and children
to worry about.
Damn… I don’t even have a goldfish at home
. Thinking of
my nonexistent husband, children, and goldfish, brought a very real person to
the forefront of my mind.

Juan Mendoza.

Holy shit, Juan!

He’d left for a
state competition two days ago… how the hell could I have forgotten about him?
I felt tears gather at the corners of my eyes. Juan- the only guy I’d ever
really given a crap about and he was somewhere else. I couldn’t just drive to
his dojo and see if he was okay. He may not even be alive. Of all the shit I’d
been through today… this realization was the one to really break the dam and
let the flood destroy my fragile resolve. Damn it. Not Juan. The insufferable
man didn’t even have a cell phone. What person in the modern world doesn’t have
a damn cell phone!

It was the end
of the world, and I’d never even asked him out on a date. I’d waited, stupidly,
sticking to the tradition that the man should ask the woman out. I could have
done it easily. I could have walked up to him after kickboxing class- all
sweaty, overweight and out of breath- and I could have asked him out for coffee
or sushi or Tex-Mex.

I tried to focus
on the road, but between the sun’s position- midway in the sky ahead and
perfectly positioned to blind me- and Juan’s face in my mind, I found it
difficult to see the yellow line. The harder I concentrated, the tougher it
got. Finally, I pulled off to the side of the road and gave in to my fears and
tears. I bawled there, idling and wasting gas, for longer than I’d ever admit
to anyone, but when I was finished, my need to cry was satisfied. I was
thankful that Marty was a sound sleeper; he never once stirred during my
breakdown. It definitely wouldn’t have instilled in him a great faith… just
more and more evidence that I’d have made a shitty parent.

Flipping down
mirror flap on the driver’s side visor, I checked to see how badly I’d screwed
up my makeup. Maybe I was a girly-girl, no matter how hard I tried to deny it-
who other than a girly-girl would think checking her mascara was the most
important task during an apocalypse of crazy, flesh-chewing kiddies? I wet my
index fingers with my tongue and swiped them beneath my eyes, trying to
diminish some of the thick black smears there. It was hopeless. ‘Waterproof’
mascara… total failure. That would teach me to buy a store brand knockoff over
my normal go-to. Because looking pretty is what I should be worrying about
right now.

Idiot.
I admonished
myself, because I was being an idiot.

Snapping the
mirror closed with a huff, I looked at the car gauges and gave a little laugh
as I noticed the gas meter needle was hovering near empty.
What the hell
next
? I thought, my heart free-falling into my stomach. That was it. I’d
failed myself, failed Marty. We were just going to run out of gas and die here,
on the side of the road, twenty miles out of town. Real hero I was.

Cradling my face
in my hands, I began to cry again. Nothing could make this day better. Nothing.

Then came the rap
on the driver’s side window glass.

Reflexively, I
yanked the pistol up from my crotch- having moved it from the console once we’d
driven away from the station- and swung it around to blast the next enemy out
of existence. Was that going to be my constant state of living now? Crying and
killing. Killing and crying. Was it worth living a life like that?

My hand froze in
place and my jaw went slack. It wasn’t an enemy.
Not an enemy
. My heart
leapt, leaving the acidic juices of my stomach and bypassing its normal resting
place to lodge squarely in my throat.

“Hey, Mamacita;
thought you’d gone and missed me back there. My truck overheated, think the
pump went out. I’ve been here all day waiting for someone; seems like nobody
drives on this godforsaken road anymore.” Juan… beautiful, handsome,
honey-tanned Juan… paused and looked at me quizzically, one dark brown quirked
upwards boyishly. “Wait a minute, isn’t this Kyle’s car? And who’s the boy and…
what the heck happened to your makeup?” His eyes moved from my face to the
shotgun on the dash; his expression changed from confusion to worry. “What’s up
with the gun? Sherry, are you okay?” His accent was heavy today; it always was
when he was tired.

I began to
laugh, almost hysterically. There in front of me stood the most beautiful
Puerto Rican I’d ever seen.
My Juan
. Apocalypse or not, before the day
was done, I would be kissing that man. No more fantasizing. This plush girl was
going to get her a piece of that sexy, in-shape, Latino hunk.
Me gusto tus lavios,
sexy hombre
. Good god, my Spanish sucked. I laughed again, this time
tipping into hysteria. My grandpa used to say “¿Que es la vaca?” every time he
needed to pee in Mexico. Even after we’d told him what that meant, he’d still
said it- grabbing his Johnson each time to get his point across.

“Sherry… you
okay?”

“No, Juan. I’m
very
not
okay.”

3

JUAN
MENDOZA

I stared at Sherry, her eyes wide
and innocent… and scared.

No way was her story
true, but why would she lie? Even if lying was in her nature- which it wasn’t-
what would fabricating such an outrageous story achieve? Besides the evidence
was all here- the scared little kid, the shotgun, the back seat chock-full of
salvaged gear, the pistol looking so odd in her porcelain hand. But there was a
fact that convinced me more than anything- Kyle would never let anyone race off
with his T-bird. Not in a million damn years would that man part with his
classic baby. He’d fight someone tooth and nail.

Of course, the
possibility that Sherry had snapped and become a complete psycho superwoman
slash car thief capable of taking down the sheriff’s department had crossed my
mind. But then she’d done that little nervous giggle- the high pitched involuntary
laugh followed by the soft snort that had made me fall in… like… with her
during kickboxing class.

So once she’d
laughed, my only choice was to believe her
 believe that our town
had gone to hell and killer kids were running rampant, taking sloppy bites out
of adult’s bodies and turning them into some sort of cannibalistic, mindless
monsters.
I think I’ll skip the horror movie playing at the Megaplex this
weekend…
Cabron… no puede ser real. Fantasía.

Even after I’d
chosen to accept Sherry’s story, it was a pill almost too big to swallow. What
made it worse was that I was now apparently homeless, cruising down the road
with my crush- not a thing to my name save the ratted Queen tee I was wearing
and the dirty laundry in my duffel bag. I hadn’t wanted to leave behind my
pickup, but, admittedly, Kyle’s car was in far better shape than my old Chevy.
So I’d siphoned out my faithful truck’s remaining gas and added the meager
amount of fuel to the T-Bird. It had been a tricky affair- the length of transfer
hose I kept in the bed of the truck was slightly too short to reach from one
tank to the other, but I’d managed.

As we’d driven
away- me in the passenger seat and the little boy named Marty now crammed into
the back seat, buckled and cushioned by a pile of gear- I’d kept looking back
behind us, wanting to mentally say goodbye to the vehicle that had seen me
through a decade of trouble. I had a feeling that saying goodbye to the rusty
old short bed Chevy would prove to be the first in a long list of finalities.

Sherry drove
erratically, her emotions controlling her body. We’d tried to work on that, her
emotional default in the face of crisis, during our one-on-one training
sessions, but she’d made little progress. It hadn’t helped that we’d spent half
the time flirting and half the time feeling awkward when we had to ‘fight’ each
other. In truth, I wasn’t much better prepared to face an apocalypse than she
was- I’d been off judging a statewide competition, something that had seemed
terribly important at the time. The only thing I really had going for me was
that I could fight… if the zombie kids and flesh-hungry adults wanted to get
into a judo match before going for the kill strike, I was golden. Somehow, I
doubted that a roundhouse kick to the upper chest would save my ass any better
than a bullet and decent aim.  If overemotional, scared-shitless Sherry
could take down one with a handgun and a little courage, maybe my odds weren’t
so bad though.

“Sherry,
Mamacita, you’ve got to be beat. Let me take over for a while.” I tried to make
my words soothing. One thing I’d learned about Sherry while she was taking my
course was that she didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves just because she
was a woman. She wasn’t exactly a feminist- hell bent on women’s lib and equal
pay- but she wasn’t exactly a 50’s homemaker either- all homemade pies and
vacuuming in heels. She was a happy balance. Most of the time.

To my surprise,
Sherry pulled over to the side of the road almost immediately. “Yeah. Maybe
that’s a good idea.” It wasn’t until her hands released the steering wheel that
I noticed her entire body was vibrating with small quakes. “I’m still a bit
shook-up I think.” She laughed and snorted softly, rubbing her hands up and
down her arms, trying to calm the shaking.

“I can’t imagine
why you’re bent out of shape. Just a bunch of zombies taking over the world.
I’d say it’s your average, everyday apocalypse. Pedazo de torta. Piece of
cake.” I smiled and placed a hand on her left shoulder. She laughed and her
voice only shook a little when she spoke again.

“It’s definitely
closer to cake with you around. Before finding you, it was more crow pie and
sour milk.”

I opened my door
and Sherry followed suit. We walked towards each other around the back of the
car, meeting midway at the trunk. Sherry’s eyes found mine and they were moist,
on the verge of letting loose more tears. I hated seeing a woman cry and seeing
her cry was like seeing my own mother cry. My madre had been able to get me to
do anything that she wanted with just a few tears. And now, as an adult, tears
were something that put me into instant ‘make it better’ mode. In seconds,
Sherry was wrapped in a bear hug, my abnormally long arms enveloping her in
what I hoped was a comforting, friendly embrace. I almost wanted it to be more
which was crazy. I didn’t know her well enough to like her that much. Oh… and
it was the damn fin del mundo. Romance should be the last thing on my mind.
Idiota.
Pull your head together.

When I let her
go, she smiled and whispered ‘thanks’ then headed to the passenger’s side. I,
in some stroke of curiosity, found myself opening the T-bird’s trunk. The first
item that caught my eye made me sigh. A damn transfer pump. That would have
made recovering the fuel from my Chevy a hell of a lot easier. It was a good
tool to have for later though, especially if the gas stations were ghost towns.
I rummaged around for a moment- the spare was top notch, and the tool kit
looked brand new. That wasn’t surprising. Kyle didn’t restore the car himself.
He’d used every dime of his retirement money to take the weather-weary heap
from junkyard to show quality. Why he had the tools at all was a mystery. Now,
the two bottles of Russell’s Reserve Bourbon weren’t shocking. I was more a
whiskey man myself, but I’d likely change my tune with no supply and a hell of
a lot of shit hitting the fan. Then, I was sure, any drink would do.

Just as I
settled myself into the driver’s seat and shifted into drive, a small voice
sounded in the back seat. “Sherry?”

“Yes, Buddy. You
doing okay?”

“Yeah.” Marty’s
swallow was audible. His throat sounded dry and raw. “I’m sorta hungry and
thirsty.” The last words were whispered, like he remembered it wasn’t just him
and Sherry anymore. It was him, Sherry, and a big, too-tan dude in the driver’s
seat.

“Let me see what
I got.” Twisting around in her seat, Sherry tugged on a backpack crammed
between my seat and the rest of the gear in the back next to Marty. After a few
good pulls, she managed to dislodge the dark backpack. A name was written on it
in black and white. Murray. Doug Murray’s backpack. It was my turn to swallow
audibly; thankfully, the sound was drowned out by Sherry’s voice. “Okay. I’ve
got a bottle of water and…” She unrolled the brown paper sack and found a pimento
cheese sandwich and a bag of corn chips. “Bingo. Do you like pimento cheese?”

“Not really.”
Marty’s voice trailed off. “But I am real hungry.”

Sherry smiled
and handed the boy the water and food. “Eat up and try to go to sleep. Okay?”

I watched the
little boy’s head nod up and down in the rearview mirror. I found myself
pleasantly surprised by Sherry’s ability to slough off her own fear and take
care of the kid. That was good. That meant she’d handle stress well. Hell,
she’d already apparently killed a monster; that was one more death blow than
I’d struck.

“Want anything?”
Sherry was holding a diet shake in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other. I
shook my head and she shrugged, chunking the shake back into the pack and unwrapping
the candy bar with unmasked enthusiasm. “Screw weight loss.” She murmured. “If
I’m going to die, I’d rather die fat and happy.” Her nervous giggle followed
and she glanced at me sheepishly before biting off a big chunk of chocolate.

It was damn adorable.

***

Driving the
T-bird felt great, like massage with a happy ending great. Not that I’d ever
had one of those…

The big V-8
under the hood worried me though. It couldn’t be getting more than 8 mph and I
could swear that the gas gauge was dropping way too fast, even at a mere 50
miles per hour with the RPMs firmly in check.  I was trying my damnedest
to conserve gas, but it was a lost cause. The big four barrel carburetor just
drank, and drank, and drank.
God, no wonder there is global warming, if this
was an example of all the cars in the 60’s. Screw the future; let’s build a big
block gas-guzzler. Industrialist assholes.

I cracked my
neck, wincing when the popping sound seemed to echo in the car. I knew I shouldn’t
do it- crack my neck- but I did it anyways. I cracked my knuckles, my ankles,
my back. I was in great shape, but martial arts could do a number on your
joints.

The landscape
passed by with no activity, no one in sight. The road signs were my only companion.
They ticked off the mile markers, warned me of towns and occupied areas. Sherry
had begged me to avoid anywhere that might have ‘people.’ I wanted to see for
myself, verify that what she said was true, because even though I’d made up my
mind to believe her, I still disbelieved that something like that could happen,
happen so quickly. I was just at a tournament with nearly a thousand people.
Wouldn’t I have seen some signs? Or maybe I had seen signs and I’d just been
too focused on competing to acknowledge them. There had seemed to be a lot less
competitors in the younger divisions there. No, it was just my imagination.

Sherry was
knocked out in the passenger seat now, her mouth hanging slightly open and a
soft snore adding to the sounds of the road. There was a little smudge of
chocolate on her bottom lip and my right hand wanted to leave the steering
wheel and rub it away, but I resisted.

Marty was
snuggled up against the gear in the back seat. He was silent, but his face was
drawn taut, his eyebrows knitted together in worry. They were both exhausted
from their ordeal. I couldn’t blame them, if only half of what Sherry had said
was true, then they both were lucky to be alive. A little exhaustion was
preferable to dead. Course, really dead was preferable to being sort of dead,
but upright and munching on people meat. Jesus. If it was true, then there were
zombies in the world. Real, live, fucking zombies
. Live zombies. Like the
voodoo stories mi abuela told, but worse. Live Zombies? Oxymoron much, you
moron? I let out a little snicker.

For the first
thirty minutes of the trip, my mind bombarded me with images of Sherry’s
frightening tale of a town gone wild, a clothing store morphed  to a
battleground, and school kids gunned down by a beloved officer. My mind was
reeling from it all. I almost wished my traveling companions were awake; maybe
we could talk about something else, focus on where we were going and get my
mind off the morbid mental pictures that plagued me.

I just couldn’t
bring it all into perspective. I couldn’t rectify the quiet world I was
currently passing through with one of carnage. The thought of a real world
‘dawn of the dead’ didn’t fit into my nice neat world; I was too grounded, too
based in nonfiction. To be driving away from everything I trusted as reality
just didn’t make any sense.

Then there was
this boat in Corpus Christi. Her friend’s father’s boat. That just didn’t seem
like a solid enough piece of hope to sink my teeth into. How did Sherry know it
was there still? For all she knew it could already be far offshore, on its way
to some safe and secluded island, with the owners sipping Mai Tis. I mean I
really didn’t even know Sherry that well. I’d talked to her a bit, flirted
occasionally, taught her, but we hadn’t even gone out on a date. I’d been too
chicken to ask and then she’d finished my course and opportunity had slipped
by. Now, I found myself heading with her off into the sunset in a stolen car.
Shit. A stolen car. What if all this was really the product of a psychotic
break? Sherry had flipped her lid at an unhappy parent returning a pair of
ripped swim trunks and ‘ta-da’ zombies and joyrides became the medicine of the
day.

I glanced a
little too long at Sherry, her body completely slack in sleep now, her shoulders
slumped, her face still wet with drying tear tracks. I had to see for myself. I
couldn’t keep driving on faith alone. I couldn’t let myself be misled by a
pretty face and infectious laugh.

I focused my
attention back on the road. Still not a car in sight. The route I’d taken was
seldom traveled; even in the most remote areas, though, I’d expect to see the
occasional farm truck or migrant work van. So far… zilch. The total absence of
people made my belief scale tip slightly in Sherry’s favor, but it wasn’t
enough.

Confirmation.
That’s all I wanted.

Proof.