Zombie Attack! Rise of the Horde (22 page)

“What does it say?” I asked, feeling lame.

“It says that he knew he wasn't going to make it anyway and
that he just wanted to go out with one last high on his own terms,” she said.
“It says that he's a coward for not trying harder and not saying goodbye but
that he loves that he got to spend one last night with his real fans doing what
he loved, playing music. It's beautiful and totally screwed up and I hate him
so much right now for doing this but I miss him too much to be angry.”

She burst into tears again and this time I held her close to
me. I glanced over at Benji, who seemed to be just as affected by this tragedy
as Felicity was. He looked up at me with the sadness of a lost child.

“It's going to be okay,” I said to both of them. “I know
this is hard but the worst is over. You'll see.”

“Are you still planning on leaving today?” Her words were
muffled as she spoke into my shoulder.

“I was,” I said, “before I heard about Jackson. I just woke
up so it all feels like part of my dream right now.”

“I want to go with you,” she said.

“Of course,” I agreed. “That's a great idea.”

“What are you going to do with Jax?” Benji looked up at us
with his big puppy dog eyes swollen with tears he was fighting back. I had been
wondering the same thing. Was he propped up in bed? Did he smell already? Was
she sure he was even dead?

“I found him in bed,” she said as if she was reading my
thoughts. “He was naked. His body was blue. He felt ice cold. His eyes were
open. There was no sign of life in him at all. It just didn't seem real, you
know?”

“How long ago was this?”

“About an hour,” she said. “I was going to put him in the
bathtub. I don't know why. I'm not thinking clearly right now. I just feel so
crazy inside.”

“We could bury him in the yard,” I offered sympathetically.

“I thought about that,” she said, “but now I think we should
just leave him where he is. After all, this is his house. He was happy here. He
died happy, with friends and fans who loved him.”

“I understand,” I said softly. I wasn't trying to be more
insensitive than I already had been but I was glad we weren't going to spend a
lot of time digging up a grave for him. I wanted to get moving as soon as we
could. Plus it seemed crazy to bury him given the condition the world was
currently in. There were dead bodies in various states of decay pretty much
everywhere you went, some just lying there stinking and others walking around
and trying to kill you. Leaving a guy dead in his own bed like he was
peacefully sleeping didn't seem so heartless when you thought about it in those
terms.

“Besides,” she said, walking to the patio door and sliding
it open. “I'm not sure how much time we have left here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“See for yourself,” she answered.

I walked over to join her and what I saw blew my mind. There
on the beach was a huge tanker ship with some kind of foreign writing on the
side that looked Russian. Up on top of the ship I could make out twenty or
thirty former humans in various states of decay ambling around. One of them
fell over the side while I was watching and splashed into the ocean. Looking
down I could see a handful of zombies making their way out of the water and
roaming listlessly on the sand in search of food. If the jogger went for his
morning run today, he was going to be in for a big surprise!

“When did that thing get here?” I asked in near panic. I had
been intending on doing some Tai Chi in the backyard and stretching before we
left, in the impossible hope of bringing my life back to some sense of normalcy
and routine.
That's out for sure now
, I thought.

“I don't know,” she said, a little too casually for what the
situation called for. “It was just there when I got up this morning. I didn't
see any zombies until an hour ago, and those were still on the top deck. Must
be only a matter of time until they find their way up into the neighborhood.

Why is she being so casual? It's not like those are fire
ants coming to spoil a picnic,
I thought
. These are undead demons from
the depths of hell, devoid of all mercy, coming to rip us to shreds in a
horrible, violent death!

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “We left the Escalade
at the entrance to the community near the gates. It has some gas left. We'll
figure the rest out as we go.”

“That's not necessary,” she replied. “Jackson has a fully
fueled Lexus SUV hybrid in the garage. It gets like a million miles to the
gallon. He loaded it with water and two extra cans of gas after we came out of
the panic room. There is even a first aid kit under the passenger seat.”

“Wow,” I said. “I'm surprised he planned an escape route.
The way he acted last night was like he never planned on leaving this place, no
matter what.”

“It wasn't for him,” she explained. “It was for me. He said
he wanted to make sure when the time came I could just grab food and leave. He
really was the most thoughtful man I knew.”

“Benji,” I said. He turned and stared up at me again,
ungluing his eyes from the floor. “Why don't you grab some plastic bags and
help Felicity pack up all these portable meals? We don't want to leave anything
behind that might be helpful on our trip. Got it?”

“Yeah,” he said, wiping tears off his face and standing up.

“What are you going to do?” Felicity asked.

“I'm going to grab my sword and check out the Lexus. Make
sure it's fired up and ready to roll with no surprises. I want to be out on the
road in the next ten minutes. Who knows how long we have?”

“Okay,” she said, sounding aloof as she turned and sauntered
into the kitchen. I shook off her attitude, chalking it up to grief over
Jackson's suicide. I jogged back to the guest room and fetched my sword, then
made a pit stop at the bathroom before heading off to the garage. I splashed
some cold water on my face to wake myself up. There was a bottle of pills on
the counter with the lid off. I picked it up and read the label. Soma. I wasn't
sure what they did but I was certain they were responsible for Felicity's
condition.

Cut her some slack man
, I thought.
It's been a
very traumatic morning for her by any standards
.

I decided not to bring up her apparent relapse, but that
didn't mean I wanted her doped out. We might literally be running for our lives
at any moment, fighting these undead monsters. The last thing I needed was a
spoiled celebrity with a pill habit slowing us down because she was high and
thought they looked pretty. I stuffed the rest of the bottle in my pocket and
headed out to the garage.

The Lexus was fully gassed and stocked as promised. The keys
were in the ignition. I fired it up and the engine purred to life. This was a
true luxury vehicle. My heart practically sang with joy. With this car and the
supplies we were bringing, there was no reason we couldn't finally get to
Hueneme and safety at last. I didn't mean to get my hopes up. If the last few
days had proved anything it was that things could turn out horribly different
than you expected, with little or no warning at all. Still it didn't hurt to be
optimistic, did it?

“Wow,” Benji said, setting down a shiny black trash bag full
of ready-to-eat gourmet meals. “It even has television screens in the back of
the headrests. I wonder what's in the DVD player?”

“Jackson's last tour footage,” Felicity said as she popped
open the back and set another shiny black bag inside. “The car was a gift from
his record label. They thought he'd like seeing himself. They really didn't
know much about him.”

“So he never drove it?”

“Oh he did,” she said, “but mostly to the store and back to
get supplies. He used the CD player, but he didn't have long road trips to take
with small children. That's what the players in the back of the seats are
really for. Can you imagine Jackson taking friends on long distance trips and
making them watch him play a concert in Prague? He was way too humble to do
something so egotistical.”

Yeah
, I thought,
but he's still the same guy who
played his video version in Guitar Hero and when he lost, threw an impromptu
concert in his living room to prove his expertise. Not really what I'd call
humble.

I knew I shouldn't be so hard on Jax. I had only met him
once, but it didn't take much to see the guy was plagued by the types of demons
that traditionally torment all creative types. His inability to conquer them
cost him his life at a young age. If we didn't get moving, we'd be tortured
soon by worse.

“Hop in,” I said, sliding into the driver's side and
positioning my katana between my right leg and the center console for easy
access. Benji didn't hesitate to climb into the back. The idea of watching a
free rock concert in a comfy leather luxury vehicle while drinking a Coke
didn't strike him as all that bad. Felicity seemed to be taking a bit longer to
get her act together.

It's probably the drugs
, I thought, tapping my
pocket.
Here we go
.

“I was going to grab something,” she said.

“We really need to get moving,” I told her. She hesitated
for a minute then gave up.

“Shouldn't you open the garage door,” she said. “We don't
want to get carbon monoxide poisoning in here.” Benji's head shot up at the
suggestion.

“It's far too ventilated in here for that,” I said, thinking
back on the pile of dead people in the gym from the day before. “Besides we're
only going to be in here a minute. The last thing I want to do is risk opening
the door and having an unexpected guest come barging in.”

“The gate didn't stop you,” she teased.

“Get in,” I repeated. “And put on your seat belt.”

Felicity finally complied. Once she was in and buckled up, I
locked the car doors and hit the garage door opener. The door rolled up
blasting us full on in the face with bright sunlight. Luckily there were no
signs of zombies, probably owing to the high walls and iron gate. I pulled out
of the garage and rolled down the driveway.

“How do I open the gate?” I asked Felicity.

“Just pull up and it will open automatically,” she said.

“Even without electricity?”

“It's wired to the backup generator,” she informed us, “in
case of earthquakes.”

I pulled up and the gate slowly swung open. We pulled out
onto the asphalt and a loud thump hit the right side of the car. Benji screamed
at the top of his lungs. I turned to see a wet, rotting corpse in a sailor’s
uniform pounding his fists on the side of the Lexus.

“What are you waiting for?” Felicity yelled, finally shaken
from her pill-induced state of relaxation. “Drive!”

I pulled down the street to the main gates. They were
already open. The Escalade was where we had left it, but the doors were torn
off now and one of the tires was missing. Whoever hit it had left it up on the
spare tire jack.

“Glad we didn't try to make a run for the Escalade,” I said.

“Me too,” Benji chimed in.

I looked over and noticed Felicity was violently shaking.

Poor thing,
I thought.
She probably hasn't seen a
lot of zombies, being locked away in that prison palace with Jackson this whole
time. She doesn't know how common it is to see these creatures, or what worse
horrors await. She's in for a huge surprise!

We pulled down the Mesa and back toward the highway. Along
the way, Felicity gasped as we passed carcasses of dead people and animals left
out for the flies and scavengers. The air was hot outside and we had a nearly
unlimited supply of AC, thanks to the Lexus, so she didn't have to smell the
scent of rotting death that had settled over most of the world. Surprisingly,
we only saw a few zombies on our way to the freeway onramp and they were all a
long distance off.

I drove around a stalled car abandoned in the middle of the
freeway and took off south toward Ventura. We were driving past Santa Claus
lane in Carpenteria when she spoke again.

“I want to go to Ojai,” she said.

“It's a little out of the way,” I responded. “For now we
need to stick to the plan and just drive straight through to the military
base.”

“I want to go to Ojai,” she said again, stubbornly.

“It's beautiful out there,” I said, trying not to sound
condescending, “but now's not the time.”

“You don't understand,” she argued. “My mom lives there. I
haven't seen her since the zombie outbreak.”

“Maybe you can talk some of the soldiers into taking you on
a trip out there,” I said.

“They are going to lock us up like prisoners,” she retorted.
“I don't want to stay there. Who knows how long we have left? We could die at
any moment out here. If I am going to die I'd rather be at home with my mom.”

“It's not a great idea,” I repeated.

“Isn't it? Listening to you talk about your brother all the
time made me miss my family,” she said. “Why should you be the only one who
gets to do what he wants? Why are your plans more important than mine?”

I rolled my eyes. She was just trying to guilt trip me into
doing what she wanted, and I knew it. Sure she missed her mom, but it just
wasn't safe to go wandering off into the countryside.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“Don't change the subject,” she said. “Don't be passive
aggressive.”

“No,” I said. “There is something going on up ahead.”

We'd reached the point in the road where the freeway veered
off along a narrow strip between the ocean, a set of rail road tracks, and high
cliffs. It was the final stretch between Santa Barbara and Ventura. Usually
cars flew up the five lane road on both sides as fast as they could. Instead,
we saw a line of cars stretching the wrong way across the road three deep,
effectively creating another road block. Surly looking guys with beards on
motorcycles rode up and down the freeway on either side.