She went back upstairs. Mostly, she listened and occasionally stuck her head out for another look.
Lily didn’t hear gunshots or screams, but stayed upstairs listening near the window anyway.
The screams started just after ten o’clock. She went downstairs to check on Abby.
“What’s all the fuss about?” the old woman asked, shuffling towards the back door.
Lily tried to stop her.
“No! Don’t open the door!”
Too late.
Abby opened the door and stepped out into the back yard. Lily was too far away to hear that she was talking to a figure walking up the yard.
“Come back inside, Abby” Lily said in a frightened, hoarse whisper that got stuck in her throat. “Come back inside before they get you.”
Lily pulled the gun from her waistband and turned the safety off. Finger over the trigger, she crept down and into the living room so she could see the back door. Abby was still talking to her neighbor, but was clearly worried that he wasn’t answering her. The distance and darkness made it impossible to tell, but Lily was fairly certain that the neighbor was no longer alive.
“Come back inside,” Lily kept whispering.
Suddenly, Abby was screaming. The shrill note of her cries made Lily’s heart skip a beat.
A large person wearing the jagged remains of a T-shirt had grabbed the old woman from behind. The neighbor grabbed Abby’s left arm as she flailed around, trying feebly to beat the first assailant off of her.
Lily started to move to close the back door and thought better of it. She crept back upstairs. Without turning on the light, she slung on her backpack and looked out the window at the front lawn.
She didn’t see anything down there except her truck and the old woman’s car.
A zombie started to beat on the back screen door. The back door soon crashed in as the zombie fell through it, scaring Lily almost out of her skin. She crept back and quietly closed the bedroom door.
The window slid the rest of the way open with little noise. Lily stepped out on the steep and narrow overhang that covered the wraparound porch. She put the pistol’s safety back on and stepped off of the roof.
Her boots were probably all that kept her from breaking her ankle, but she still felt something in her foot pop when she landed. Lily threw her left arm in front of her to counter her momentum from the jump.
Two zombies stood beating on the front door. Neither of them acknowledged her presence. Checking over her right shoulder one more time to be sure they hadn’t noticed her, Lily crept around the rear of the old woman’s car.
She started limping as the pain in her left foot reached her brain. Lily pushed aside the impulse to whimper or cry with each step and forced herself to continue towards her truck. The fifty feet from the front door to her car door seemed like miles.
Finally, she rounded the back of her truck. Shifting the gun into her left hand she fished out her keys and unlocked the door.
A twig snapped not far behind her. Lily spun and raised the gun. She instinctively squeezed the trigger with her off hand. No matter how hard she pulled the trigger nothing happened.
She could see the zombie coming toward her—a heavy set, older man. Lily counted her blessings that the zombie wasn’t moving any faster than a slow walk.
She shoved her keys between her teeth, and switched shooting hands. Her index finger automatically pushed the safety off. She fired three shots. One hit the man in the belly, one hit him in the shoulder, and if the third had been any higher it probably would have only glanced off his skull. Luckily, the third bullet did the trick and the body fell backwards.
The zombies on the porch and in the yard now turned her direction. In a near panic, Lily jerked the driver side door open and jumped in.
She flattened a middle-aged female zombie and smacked another, a Goth-dressed teenager, with the passenger-side mirror as she backed down the driveway at top speed. Four of the zombies chased her as far as the next house before they lost interest.
About two miles out of town, she put the gun on the passenger seat and turned off her headlights. With just the running lights, she had to drive slower, much slower, than she would have liked, but she was afraid the light would attract the wrong kind of attention.
* * *
Mike drove from Seymour south along US 277. They traveled under the speed limit only because there was no other option. The highway was a well-maintained two-lane blacktop, with curves and hills that could hide any number of unseen hazards. It also had a fair amount of road construction and detours. Already, they’d had a near collision with one overturned vehicle as they came out of a curve, almost causing them to miss the last jog of the detour back to the main road.
Joseph spent most of his time toying with the stereo dial, trying to locate a working radio station frequency. He figured it was an exercise in futility, especially in West Texas, but it beat trying to make idle conversation with Mike.
“Do me a favor, Joe, and just turn the damn thing off,” Mike said rather suddenly, glancing at Joseph.
“Wha-?” Joseph began, a bit stunned to hear Mike’s voice.
“The static’s giving me a headache. So just give it a rest, huh?”
“Sure. Just remind me to grab some CD’s next time we stop somewhere.”
“Riiiiiight.”
Joseph stared out his window and watched the country roll by. Unlike the cities, there was no chaos out here, almost no signs that anything was awry in the world. They could have been a couple friends going on a hunting excursion, road trip, or just buddies on vacation.
The more Joseph tried not to think, the more he couldn’t help but ponder the events of the last few days. He’d killed a coworker, fled the scene of a crime, broken about a hundred traffic laws, watched as a fat, shotgun-wielding man was bitten by a zombie, looted three stores, moved a bunch of corpses, killed five zombies, and survived with the odds stacked against him … and, it would seem, against the rest of the world. Now he was sitting in a car loaded with canned goods and guns, most of which were stolen, heading he knew not where with a man he’d only known for a short time, but who’d saved his life more than once and vice versa. That was a lot to digest for a business intern who hadn’t so much as held a gun until yesterday and didn’t have any family to speak of.
Mike pulled onto the right shoulder about ten miles south of the town of Munday.
“Grab the rifle. I gotta use the head.”
“The what?”
“Just get out of the truck and watch my back.”
Joseph scanned the area, rifle at the ready, while Mike “watered” a mesquite bush.
“Your turn,” Mike said, taking the rifle from Joseph.
Joseph walked over to the bush and started to relieve himself. He could hear Mike on the phone behind him.
“Hanse … yeah buddy I’m heading your way. Me and a kid I picked up. Ma? … No … no, she um, she didn’t make it. So we should be your way in another day or so. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Joseph finished and walked back to the truck.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Let’s roll,” Mike said, climbing into the passenger seat.
Twenty minutes later, Mike broke the silence once again.
“Killing comes pretty easy doesn’t it?”
“Where the hell did that come from?”
…
“Forget it. Talk to me about something … like about who you were before the world went all loco.”
The two men pulled into Haskell, Texas, still talking about who they used to be, and who they had thought they were going to be … before the dead woke up.
It looked as though most of the town was out on the streets of Haskell, and almost everybody working. A group of men were working diligently to build a sandbag and barbed wire barricade. The men looked tired but determined, and seemed to be making good time with their work. Joseph imagined they would eventually surround the entire town with this wall. A group of hard faced women were hard at work boarding up the ground floor windows of every building, and/or reinforcing weak doors and locks. It was as if every neighbor in Haskell had joined together to make sure each house was buttoned up good and tight when and if the craziness of the outside reached them. Haskell, Texas was no longer some Podunk little town … it was a beacon of light and would prove to stand so for a time, as one of the last strongholds of the living.
Neither man saw any of the tell-tale signs of chaos or disturbance, such as bloody windows or looting … or zombies.
“They have no idea what is going on, but they’re still preparing for the worst,” Mike said. “Let’s see if there’s a motel. This place looks as safe as we’re going to see for what could be a long while. We might as well get a decent night’s rest while we’re here. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”
An older man, shotgun resting in the crook of his arm, waved for Joseph to stop the vehicle.
“Where you boys headed?”
“Well sir, we’re headed for a friend’s house in Arizona, but we thought we might try to grab a meal and a night’s sleep if you have an open motel,” Mike said.
“What’s the word on what’s behind ya?”
“We didn’t see too many cars on the road, and those things haven’t started coming this way yet, either,” Mike said.
The old man thought about it for a moment.
“Thar’s a motel just the other side of the big intersection,” he said pointing down the main road.
Joseph followed the main road to the heart of town. Not a block after US 277 crossed US 380, they found a clean-and-cheap-enough looking motel.
Dead Come Home
Joseph and Mike woke up at the sound of the alarm. It was still dark out, but would not stay that way for long, and they had every intention of moving on as soon as it was light out.
“Go ahead and take a shower,” Mike said as Joseph stretched out with a loud yawn.
Joseph staggered into the bathroom and shut the door while Mike sat down at the table under the window and started to clean and oil the pistols. Joseph turned on the water and let it run for a moment before climbing into the shower. He let the hot water run ecstatically over his shoulders for a few minutes before he scrubbed himself down. His muscles relaxed for the first time since he’d fled Dallas the previous morning. After he finished washing, he stood under the water a few minutes longer, just enjoying the feeling.
His mind flashed inexplicably out of the fog it had been in, like the slide of a pistol snapping forward. He turned off the water and toweled off. Out of habit, he wrapped the towel around his waist and reached for where the comb would have been in his apartment. His hand hit cold countertop and nothing else.
Joseph fingered combed his hair and put his clothes back on. He walked into the main room as he pulled his T-shirt over his head.
“Shower’s free.”
Mike let the slide snap forward on the 9mm. He shoved the gun back in the shoulder holster and handed it to Joseph on his way to the bathroom.
Joseph dropped onto the bed and turned on the news, as much out of habit as for a genuine need for information. By now, the national news networks were overriding most of the local affiliates. He wondered how long it would be before the Emergency Broadcast System took everything over. Joseph turned through the stations, looking for something local. He stopped surfing when he noticed one of the newscasts had put up a map on the screen. Everything surrounding the major population centers was slathered in red.
—Reports of mass, unprovoked acts of violence are now pouring in from every major city. Eyewitness accounts claim that the attackers are actually eating the flesh of those they have killed. All National Guard and Reserve personnel have been activated and are ordered to report to their assigned duty stations for immediate deployment. As of 1 p.m. today, the Secretary of Defense has declared the nation under martial law. More information will be released at a noon presidential press conference. As we understand it, the media will be allowed to continue broadcasting as normal for the time being. However, many speculate that the president will soon order all media broadcasts to turn over to the emergency broadcast system.
The Red Cross and National Guard have established rescue stations in several cities and are expected to establish more in the next few hours. Your local affiliates should have those locations scrolling across your screens.
Mike showered considerably more quickly than Joseph. He came out fully dressed and took one look at the TV.
“Have they said anything we didn’t already know?”
“Yeah,” Joseph answered, “Martial law at 1 p.m. today, and the shit has hit the fan everywhere. The government isn’t saying much, but they’ve mobilized everything they got. They’re calling in all reservists … is that gonna change things for you?”
Mike’s eyes went hard. He looked back at the TV, walked over, and turned it off.
“You check the gas gauge before we came in for the night?” Mike asked.
“We got three-quarters of a tank from that last fill up.”