None!
“I love you, Mama.”
BOOM!
Every muscle and joint in
Jim’s body begged him to go back inside his neighbor’s apartment, take a seat
and relax. Have another beer and get some real food. Drink a gallon of water.
Take a hot shower. Wait for tomorrow when you aren’t so tired.
Why dive headlong into
the abyss?
Jim thought.
Why risk it?
No matter how convincing
the voice inside Jim’s head could be, he had a job to do. He stepped up onto
the lower railing and threw his leg over the top rail. He moved quickly to get
himself onto the ledge of the landing. Frank reached out and held one of the
straps on Jim’s backpack. It helped steady Jim as he inched his way over to the
handrail that ran down the flight of stairs below him. The noise caused by his
boots on the metal and concrete seemed to echo out into the parking lot. As Jim
reached out for the stair’s handrail Sara made her move up and over to follow
after him. Her toes snaked along the edge of the landing. She moved like a cat.
Despite Sara’s agility the
noise was getting them some unwanted attention from the monsters below. A few
of the infected that made up the horde were on their way up the stairs to greet
Jim. The monster’s failing bodies moved slowly, one step at a time, hungry for
the filet mignon in the leather jacket.
Jim’s boots touched down
onto the steps and he whipped his body around to face them. His spear was ready
to slice and dice the closest asshole that tried to take a bite. Sara was up
and over the step’s railing and by Jim’s side in a quarter of the time it took
him to do it. Now it was Frank’s turn.
For a man in his sixties,
Frank was in great shape. He had owned a fishing and hunting shop for twenty
years in downtown Washougal, Washington. Frank and his brother, Bob, opened the
store with the money left to them when their father passed away. Frank’s father
smoked a pack a day and even though he knew the Big C would get him someday as
well, he couldn’t kick the habit.
Ten years into running the
store Bob was done with retail. He wanted to try something new so he sold his
half of the company to Frank. Bob went off to raise cattle on Government
Island. Two years ago Frank was ready to retire and was able to sell his old shop
to a young man that had just moved up from Los Angeles. The Californian had
just made a killing selling his home in Hollywood to some new starlet and Frank
got top dollar for the store.
The years he spent unloading
heavy boxes of equipment into his store and the frequent hunting and fishing
trips had kept him fit and trim. The pack of smokes and pot of coffee he
finished off daily, along with a lean meat diet helped tremendously.
Jim thrust his spear into
the face of a creep as Sara’s blade bat came crashing down on another one’s
skull. Frank made the transition over the rail and was ready to jet for the
car. He slid the bolt back on his rifle and the SKS was ready to fuck some shit
up. Jim was pretty sure that the zombies, as Tina called them, did not care
what kind of weapons his crew was toting, but he liked the idea that the sound
of Frank’s bolt clicking into position sent a shiver down their dead spines.
Jim and Sara stepped to
the side and let the man with the deadliest weapon pass. They followed him down
the stairs. Frank wasted no time and opened fire. His rounds ripped the small
horde to pieces. The methodical pop, pop, pop of Frank’s gun and the brass
casings hitting the ground was the only sound the three of them could hear.
When the last body dropped to the asphalt Frank paused for a moment and flipped
his tapped banana magazine over for a fresh set of rounds.
“Leave a little for us
next time,” Sara’s sarcasm helped to lighten the dark task at hand.
Jim hit the unlock button
on his key fob. The tail lights flashed and the locks clicked. Jim swung the
driver’s side door open and the undeniable smell of Burgerville hit him in the
face. Oh baby, did it smell good. Jim would slaughter a whole horde of those
zombies with his bare hands to get one of the famous pepper bacon cheeseburgers
he loved so much. The oil stained paper bag was all that remained besides the
odor. Karen had gone there for lunch earlier today and the wonderful smell
reminded Jim of his family. He ached to be with them, but there was no time to
sit and smell the burgers. They had to hit the road.
“You’ll have to sit in the
back between the car seats,” Jim told Sara. She was the only one with a small
enough butt to fit.
Frank opened the
passenger’s door to find his seat covered in junk mail and overdue bills.
“Sorry, Karen’s arms are
always full of the kids’ stuff and she doesn’t clean the car often,” Jim slid
into the driver’s seat and negotiated a spot for his spear. Frank used his hand
like a rake and pulled the loose papers off the seat and out onto the asphalt.
Frank hated to litter but there was only so much mess a man could take.
Sara wiggled her slim body
over Robin’s carseat and squeezed herself into the spot. A lost French fry sat
in Robin’s car seat. Sara could tell it was not that old. She picked it up,
blew on it and scarfed it down. She didn’t know if she would ever get a chance
to eat another Burgerville fry? So why the hell not. It was still delicious. The
floorboards were covered with children’s stuffed toys, extra jackets and shoes
that had been left behind over the last few months. The seats to her left and
right had hard chunks of plastic poking at her shoulders and ribs.
“Can I move these into the
back?” Sara asked Jim as she pointed at the two seats, “If we crash again or I
need to get out quickly these things might get me killed.”
Jim didn’t like the idea
of unhooking the girl’s seats. It was like Sara wanted to confirm that the
girls were gone and never coming back. He thought about it for a second and understood
why she was asking to move them.
“That’s fine,” Jim
grumbled the words out. Sara looked over the belts to see how they weaved
through the seats and then hit the release button. It took a lot of effort to
get the safety seats up and over the backseat and tucked into the little trunk area
of the PT Cruiser.
The doors to the PT
slammed shut and Jim worked the key into the ignition. As he backed the car up
the weight of the vehicle pulverized what was left of the bodies in the lot
behind them.
Cliff and Tina stood at
their bedroom window and watched Jim, Frank and Sara pull out of the parking
lot. It was the second time they watched a Blackmore leave the apartment
complex that afternoon.
“You think we’ll ever see
them again?” Tina said, her voice filled with sorrow. She hoped to God they
would make it back with the equipment. She didn’t want that young man in the
living room dying on her. She had already seen enough death today.
“Maybe, they made it out
of Portland,” Cliff said as he rubbed the back of his buzz cut head.
“If one of them comes back
with a bite taken out of them, what are we gonna do?” Tina rested her head on
her husband’s shoulder.
“I don’t know. I guess
we’ll figure that out if and when it happens.” Cliff tilted his head to rest it
on top of Tina’s.
Sara tossed over the last car
seat into the back. With them out of the way she had plenty of space and it
felt so much better now that she had room to move. Jim had pulled out of the
parking lot and crossed a street. The road was clogged with busted flaming
vehicles. So he headed into the backlot of a shopping center. As they rounded
the corner of the building Sara spotted a Black Rock Coffee kiosk. Sara worked
at a coffee kiosks in Portland, close to where she and her parents lived. She had
gotten the job about three months ago and liked it well enough. The other girls
she worked with were fun and Sara had mastered the extra flirt it took to get
the male and some female customers to leave a little more cash in the tip jar.
She worked there part-time and was enrolled at Portland State University. For
the last two years she had been studying history.
She wasn’t sure what
career path she was going to take learning about ancient Greece, The Roman
Empire and the last two World Wars, but she found them very interesting.
Seeing the ruined coffee
shop caused her mind to rewind and replay the day. She had worked the opening
shift and that meant she was there at four-thirty in the morning and got off at
noon. The ride home was a little crazy. People were driving like idiots, they
were all over the road and crashing into each other. She had no idea what was
really going on.
When she finally pulled up
to her parent’s house, she found it alarming that the front door was wide open.
Her father had been terrified of home invasions her whole life. To find the
front door unlocked was peculiar, to see it wide open was insane. Sara walked
with caution for the front door as she sipped an ice mocha she had made for
herself.
“Mom? Dad?” she called
from the open doorway. The living room was a mess. Sara took another sip of her
cold coffee, “Maa-,” she cut the call for her Mom short when she noticed the
red streaks along the back wall of the living room. From the kitchen she heard
the sounds of someone kicking pots and pans across the tile floor. Something
was coming her way, fast. Her knees buckled when she saw her parents. Her Mom’s
right arm had been eaten to the bone. Her Dad’s belly bulged from the excessive
meat he had chewed off of his wife. Sara caught herself from falling to the
porch. She didn’t know what to make of this. Were her parents playing a trick
on her? It was not like them to mess up the house and cover themselves in fake
blood just for a chuckle. What the hell was going on? As they approached her,
she could smell an iron tang in the air.
That’s real blood!
The two monsters crossed
the living room in a hurry. Their black eyes zeroed in on their daughter. Their
mouths cracked from the impact of enamel on enamel as their jaws snapped shut.
She had to move fast. Sara’s first reaction to something coming to attack her
was to throw her half empty plastic coffee cup. The mocha exploded all over her
Dad’s face, but it didn’t slow the infected man down. She pulled the front door
shut and slammed it closed right in their dead faces.
Sara ran. She didn’t know
where she was going, but she knew she had to get as far away from them as she
could. She got a block away when she heard the front window of her house smash
to pieces. She stopped in the middle of the street and turned to look back at
her childhood home. Her infected parents were on the loose and coming her way.
A neighbor teen called her name from down the street and she ran to him and his
friends. She hid inside the teen’s house as Sara’s parents found a new victim.
She listened in horror as they ferociously tore the man apart in the middle of
the street. His cries for help were unlike anything Sara had ever heard. Her
Mom and Dad were like wild animals.
What the hell happened
to them?
Why are they killing
that man?
The teens didn’t have any
answers for her. They were clueless as to what was happening, but for the
moment she was safe. The guys suggested that they should go to another friend’s
house and that they should take a shortcut through the graveyard. Sara was in
such shock she agreed to go and followed them in a cloudy haze. It wasn’t long
after that when Jim showed up and saved her.
Jim’s PT Cruiser raced
passed the remains of the Black Rock and Sara thought,
I need another coffee
.
As they raced across the parking
lot, nasty thoughts stabbed violently into Jim’s mind.
What if his family
didn’t make it to Penny’s?
What if they died on
the road?
Maybe they were torn to
shreds?
Calling my name and
wondering why I wasn’t there to save them.
He did his best to squash
the blood soaked visions in his head. Dwelling on negative, hypothetical
possibilities wouldn’t help him get his family back. He stayed focused on the
task at hand. He had to get to RS Medical, get the supplies and race back to save
Devon. That was what Jim needed to focus on. What the next job that had to be
accomplished. Then the job after that. That was the mindset he had to develop
to keep himself alive. If he spent too much time thinking about what might have
happened or dwelling on outcomes he could not control it would get him killed.
Jim couldn’t believe the
destruction that had taken place in his neck of the woods. The structure fires,
the dead bodies on the ground, the total mayhem that had ravaged the city of
Vancouver. It was straight out of a big budget disaster movie. As he moved the
car through the lot he drove carefully, watching out for oncoming vehicles,
looking out for monster hordes or any gun toting humans. So far the route to
the store was clear. Jim had shopped there a year ago when he needed a specialty
knee brace after a bad kick injured his leg in his Krav Maga class. He quickly
remembered the back way to get there so he wouldn’t have to take any roads that
might be choked with the dead and blocked by stalled vehicles.