Zombie Attack! Rise of the Horde (4 page)

“Who would TiVo the
Jersey Shore
?” Benji had settled
into the couch and was flipping through channels as if he didn't have a care in
the world. He had his dirty, crud-crusted Nike's up on the table. Not one
station was broadcasting, not even the armed service network emergency warning
that used to go out on every channel, so he had switched over to recorded programs.
He was scrolling through
Nitro Circus, Wipeout, American Ninja
, and
Jackass
.

“Someone who liked the show, I guess,” I shot back, trying
to hide my annoyance. The truth was, I just didn't feel safe and I wanted to
get moving as soon as we could. I peeked out the front window at the empty
suburban street. There was no sign of the zombie horde. It was quiet—too
quiet. The sun would be going down in just over an hour. I wanted to be sure we
were on the road by then. Out there in the dark, the only thing worse than
getting surrounded on foot by walking corpses would be getting trapped in a
house with no escape.

I wish Moto was here
, I thought.
He would know
exactly what to do. He always knows.

On our way down the street we walked through a typical
cluster of track homes. It was starting to get late and I didn't think it was
safe to stop, but Joel reminded me of my taunt for the twins to get cleaned up
and I eventually relented.

Tom picked the house he liked best and then we made a full
sweep of it, coming up empty. The fridge was stocked to maximum capacity. The
electricity was still on. The AC hummed. Everything was about as perfect as you
could ask for until we reached the upstairs bedrooms. The master bedroom was
fine. Nothing under the bed. Nothing in the closets. Then we swung open the
second bedroom door. With stuffed animals, nursery toys, a child's bed, and a
crib in the corner it was obviously the kid's room. No big surprise there. What
we hadn't expected was all the blood. The whole room was covered in dried
streaks of blood from floor to ceiling. It looked like something out of a
Halloween horror house, like someone had taken buckets of blood and just flung
them in every direction, painting everything.

There should be flies swarming all over this room
, I
thought,
like in the Exorcist
. If a single window had been cracked,
there would have been. My guess was that they kept the place air tight so they
didn't waste money on air conditioning. The air smelled like dull rust. I was
surprised it didn't smell like the zombies did, like death and decay.

We turned over every inch of the room but didn't find any
trace of body parts. No bones. No bloody weapons. No fingerprints or bloody
smudges. Nothing that would tell us what nightmarish, unthinkable thing had happened
in that place. There weren't any signs of struggle or clean up going into or
coming out of the room either. How it all happened remained a mystery to us.
Nobody said a word. We backed out of the room and shut the door, lost in our
own thoughts.

Joel and Tom raided the guy's closet for clean clothes and
stayed upstairs to shower. Benji and I set up shop downstairs, tearing into the
soda and snacks to fuel up on carbs before our big walk south. We were supposed
to keep watch and let them know if any zombies showed up so we could bolt over
the back wall and down the street. They had already been showering over a half
an hour. I knew they had at least a gallon of blood each poured over them but
it was starting to get ridiculous how long they were taking. This was the
zombie apocalypse, not a damn fashion show. Who were they trying to impress?

If they don't hurry up I might just grab Benji and go
,
I thought. I didn't have anything against the Parker twins. Like I said,
waiting there like that was making my skin crawl.

“Yeah but MTV plays the show over and over on a loop,” Benji
protested, bringing me back to the present. “If you ever missed an episode all
you have to do is just wait for it to start over.” He dug into the bag of
Frito's he'd salvaged from the kitchen, washing them down with an ice cold
Mountain Dew. In the background, Snooki fell off a bar stool and flashed her
crotch to the camera. I took a swig of Coke from the two liter I'd grabbed.
We'd bagged up a bunch of non-perishables to take with us, just in case. I
can't tell you how happy I was that the previous tenant left two huge bags of
high quality beef jerky. Light, easy to carry, tasty, and chock full of
protein. The only downside was it made you thirsty as hell, but we’d cross that
bridge when we came to it.

“Lucky for you that they liked it,” I said sarcastically.

“How can you not like
Jersey Shore
?” Benji turned to
me genuinely surprised. “It's the most entertaining show I've ever seen. It's
like watching a train wreck in slow motion.”

I smirked to myself at his seriousness.
Wonder if he
knows the meaning of the cliché he just used
, I thought. Everything seemed
like the biggest deal on earth when you were twelve. Everything was new and
exciting. A lot more of the buzz than I'd like to admit wears off each year. I
was only sixteen and I had already learned that.
Maybe that's why people are
so jaded
, I thought.
There's nothing new when you get older, just more
of the same old crap being repackaged and shoveled down your throat with a
shiny new bow on top.

“I don't have anything against the show,” I said, feeling
bad for disturbing what was probably the only relaxing moment he'd had in the
last twenty-four hours. “I guess it's just not my thing.”

“You're not into reality shows?”

“I've seen my fair share,” I said. “Dancing contests and
sing-off's and dating shows. I guess I just prefer to spend my time reading or
surfing the web over watching television.”

“What about
Breaking Bad
and
Dexter
?” Benji
asked.

“Yeah, I've seen those.”

“
Sons of Anarchy
?”

“I was gonna get around to it.” I answered reluctantly.

“Oh man, you missed out! Too bad they didn't TiVo that,”
Benji said, slipping back into a false sense of security. “We'd have to camp
out here until you'd seen them all. If Netflix was still working you'd have to
drag me out of here kicking and screaming.”

“We'll have to look into that at some point,” I said. “You
know, when things slow down.”

I flashed a weak smile. Benji gave me a look that suggested
I'd given him a satisfying answer and he turned back to the television. He
switched shows to some guy doing a back flip on a motorcycle over a monster
truck. It's amazing how much comfort we all used to take in moving pictures.
I'm not gonna lie. I loved television when I was younger, just like everyone
else. Moto used to call it the “slave box” and make fun of my obsession for
Saturday morning cartoons.

“You've got all the freedom in the world,” he would taunt.
“No school, all your chores done, and instead of running wild and exploring the
whole neighborhood, you're sitting in your footed jammies eating sugary cereal
with your eyes glued to the screen while it kills the few brain cells you still
have.”

I used to think he was so weird, but I soon chalked it up to
him being raised in a foreign country. I didn't know why he was giving me such
a hard time. Japanese kids loved television even more than we did. Eventually
he got under my skin and I bit the hook, letting him lure me in and feed me his
philosophy. Less than a month later, he started my martial arts and weapons
training. Given the circumstances, it turned out he did me the biggest favor of
my life. If he hadn't taught me all that stuff back then, I wouldn't have made
it through my first zombie night. Loads of people didn't. They saw the monsters
coming but their brains couldn't process what they were witnessing. They'd been
taken care of their whole lives, protected from things like this by other
people. I heard that tons of them just stood there blankly staring while the
zombies knocked them over and ripped off their pound of flesh with their dull
gray teeth.

Don't think about it,
I told myself.
Stay focused
on your goal. If you start thinking about it all now it will overwhelm you and
weaken your will to survive. Your survival depends on your staying sharp. What
did Moto teach you? Moto told me to stay put. There was more. Think! What did
he say about being out in the open? Keep moving until you know you’re safe.
Never let your guard down until you are absolutely sure you’re out of harm’s
way. This isn’t a mistake you get to make twice.

I turned back and scoured the street for signs of life,
coming up empty again.

“I think it's time we get moving,” I nervously said. A voice
behind me made me jump.

“Not thinking of leaving without us, are you?” I turned to
see Tom's smiling face. He looked like a different person. He had on khaki's
and a navy blue polo shirt. Joel was behind him, not smiling, wearing
practically the same thing in a darker shade of green. In fact, the only way to
tell them apart was by their radical personality differences.

“Wouldn't dream of it,” I said.

“Good,” retorted Joel, pushing past Tom and looking out the
window. “I got an idea.”

“I'm all ears.”

Benji shut off the television and walked over to us carrying
the bag of kitchen loot we'd snatched while the twins were cleaning up.

“One of these houses has a car in the garage,” Joel said. “I
know it. I say we make a sweep and find which one it is then load the thing up
and head out.”

“You know how to hot wire a car by any chance?” I asked.

“People left everything when they deserted this area,” Joel
shot back. “They didn't have time to turn off their sprinklers or shut off
appliances they wouldn't be using. That's why we have this beautiful air
conditioning right? So it stands to reason that if they left all their
valuables, they also left a set of car keys.”

“I hate to argue with you . . .,” I started.

“Then don't,” Joel interrupted, casting me an impatient
look. I ignored him and continued on.

“. . . but I think the reason we're not seeing cars on the
street isn't because the people who own them left 'em in the garage. It's
because they used them to flee.”

Joel shook his head in disbelief. Tom looked down at the
carpet. Benji awkwardly looked between Joel and me to see if we were going to
escalate this argument into a full scale fight.

“The sun is setting soon and with a zombie horde just north
of here, I'm not sure wasting more time is a good idea,” I said as softly as I
could.

“Fifteen minutes of searching could save us a long and dangerous
night walk,” Joel said. “Think about that.”

Everyone turned and stared at me. It felt weird to have so
much pressure on me all of a sudden. That was the last thing I had wanted.

“Okay then,” I said, giving in and letting him have his way.
There was no reason to keep having a power struggle. At the end of the day we
wanted the same thing—to be safe and far, far away from that horde. “You
lead the way.”

Joel nodded. A hint of a smile creased his face as he
charged out the front door leaving it wide open for us. Benji was last out and
he shut it, mostly out of habit I think. We went door-to-door like super
aggressive Jehovah's Witnesses, yanking open garages only to find them empty.
If we couldn't get the garage open, we went through the house. If the house was
locked, we broke a window. Just as I had expected, there wasn't a car to be
found. Joel's earlier swagger seemed seriously diminished by our inability to
lay hands on a functioning vehicle. At one point we were all excited to find an
old Mustang, only to have our hopes dashed when it didn't have an engine. With
one house left at the end of the block, the odds were looking pretty slim on
locating transportation.

“You wanna do the honors?” I asked, trying hard not to
gloat.

“Naw,” Joel said in a defeated but much more congenial tone.
“The kid can take this one.”

Benji looked glad to get a chance to participate. The only
thing we'd let him do on our search so far was climb through a window to unlock
a sliding door. He ran up the driveway and began trying to pull the heavy door
up. It didn't look like he was making much progress but then he gave it a hard
shove, getting the door over his shoulder and forcing it up.

“Guys! Hurry! Come quick!” Benji huffed out of breath,
sounding like Sean Astin without his inhaler in the
Goonies
.

We all turned and ran up expecting to find a brand new SUV
or maybe a stash of weapons. Instead we found a tiny looking kid, Samuel Thorn,
curled up asleep in a pile of candy wrappers. My only guess as to why he hadn't
heard the door open was that he had passed out from exhaustion. Tom nudged him
with his foot and the little guy sat up straight and screamed at the top of his
lungs like a cornered raccoon. He pulled a dull steak knife from his waistband
and waved it at us.

“Stay away!” Sam threatened.

“That supposed to ward off the undead?” Tom taunted him.

“Who are you people and what do you want?”

“It's me, Sam,” Benji said stepping forward and pushing the
knife aside. “It's Benji. Remember me? We used to trade comics back on the base.”

“What are you doing here?” I didn't want to sound rude but
we didn't have all night to sit around while the kid figured it out.

“I'm hiding from zombies,” he said.

“Perfect,” Joel said. “That's exactly the answer we were
looking for. Bravo.” Obviously he was as frustrated by this kid as I was.

“But how did you get here?” Benji patiently asked.

“I was in the school when they swarmed in,” Sam said. “I ran
down the long hallway to the back.”

“That's a dead end,” I shot back. “How did you get out?”

“You know the large oak tree in the yard?” Sam said. “I
climbed up to get away from the fighting. From there I managed to get on the
roof and jump the back wall.”