Derek stopped shuffling the cards when he heard Rhonda moan loudly. He had been confined to the backroom for the last forty-five minutes. He had done his best not to eavesdrop on Rhonda and Kevin’s conversation as he heard them talking, laughing, and sometimes whispering. For a while now it had been absolutely quiet except for the dead beating and clawing at their hastily erected fortress. He had grown tired of messing with his cards, taking breaks to rummage through the customer subscription boxes and pull out any comics that caught his eye. He would flip through them, admiring the art, not really paying attention to the story. It was hard to focus. His eyes kept going to the bathroom door which stood closed four feet in front of him. The woman’s zombified body was in there looking like two amateurs had taken a stab at making a mummy.
A zombie burrito is more like it,
Derek thought, and went back to shuffling his cards. He heard Rhonda moan again. For a moment, he fooled himself into thinking that perhaps she had become a zombie. He didn’t know how this was possible, but his mind clung to the idea. He stopped and listened. There it was again, softer this time. Then there was silence. He peeked his head around the corner and saw naked flesh, Kevin and Rhonda entangled. He saw one of Rhonda’s boobs as she rolled onto her side.
Derek ducked back out of sight.
They just had sex!
he thought and couldn’t quite believe it.
Rhonda puts out on the first date!
Not counting his own right hand, Derek was a virgin. It was hard enough to imagine having sex (he always imagined it would mirror his personality – clumsy and awkward), but having sex while a horde of zombies tried to break in from the outside? He heard Kevin and Rhonda whispering to each other, too softly for Derek to be able to hear what they were saying. What did they call that? Two people after sex?
Post-coital,
he thought, and the sound of the chip crunching apart as he chewed on it was deafening. The last thing he wanted to do was interrupt the two of them.
Derek reached into his pocket and pulled out Kevin’s car keys. He had seen them on the display case earlier and had snatched them up when no one was looking. He wasn’t sure why he had done it; he had never had a history of being a klepto. He had done it shortly after mentioning to Kevin that maybe they should try sneaking out the back and making a run for it.
Our cars are parked out front,
Rhonda had said.
You wouldn’t make it two feet…you’re fat,
Kevin had said.
Derek’s eyes went from the keys dangling in his hand to the thick steel exit door in the back room. Kevin had it right: Derek
was
fat, but Derek also knew how slow the zombies seemed. That it wouldn’t exactly take the speed of an Olympic sprinter to get past them.
Derek peered around the corner again. Kevin was on his back, topless. Rhonda was running her hand over his stomach.
Gross,
Derek thought and got up. His knee made an audible
pop
as he stood, and he held his breath, waited, wondering if they had heard it. He sneaked to the door and found the big gold-colored key with the wide fob that opened it on Kevin’s keychain. He inserted it noiselessly in the lock and twisted, his other hand twisting the door’s knob at the same time. It opened. He kept it propped a few inches with his foot, the cold night air rushing in and giving him goosebumps.
He shifted the keychain in his hand so that he was holding the wireless fob to Kevin’s Neon, his thumb poised over the gray UNLOCK button. He wouldn’t have time to mess around once he was on the run. He was nervous, his testicles making a hasty retreat upward.
Derek stood in the doorway long enough to second guess himself. A steady draft of coldness seeped in and he saw his breath on the air. Outside the door, the sky was clear, a sliver of moon in the sky. In the distance, he could see the lights and billowing smoke of the oil refinery. A large orange flame burned, jetting from one of the stacks. The gentle breeze was enough to carry the smell of the place to Derek’s nostrils.
He stepped outside, holding the door behind him so it didn’t swing shut too fast. He stuck close to the building’s brick wall, creeping along slowly, unable to prevent his shoes from crunching on the gravel of the unfinished back lot.
When he reached the building’s west corner, he poked his head around the side. He had a view of the left side of the parking lot and the lighted sign that advertised the various stores in the plaza.
From his current vantage point he couldn’t see the zombies, but he could
hear
them. Over the pounding and scratching, they formed a chorus, repeating the word
brains
over and over again.
Derek paused, clutching the black fob at the end of the keychain. He had heard stories about near-death experiences; people talking about what it was like to die and be brought back, and about how their life flashed before their eyes. Derek hadn’t experienced anything like that, but perhaps his first near-death experience was only a few short minutes away (
or,
he thought,
maybe it would be a
full-
death experience)
, but his life was already flashing before his eyes. Little snippets from childhood, arranged in no particular order. His father, who had skipped out on them when Derek was only three, smiling down at him; his first day of school; punching an elementary school bully square in the nose and feeling a rush of joy as the bully’s nose began to bleed; the first time had had kissed a girl; the first time he had kissed a
boy
. Something occurred to him then: all the good memories had come and gone during early childhood. Things had been in a downward spiral since junior high school, and he had never grown out of that awkward skin that caused most people to steer clear of him. At least back then he had been able to fool himself; convince himself that he was misunderstood. But now he knew better. He was weird and awkward and
different
.
The façade had always been to trumpet his own oddness; to wear his strangeness as a badge of honor.
Sticks and stones
…hell, he was bulletproof, and he would stand as the shining example of the abnormal until his dying day. A defender of that oppressed minority of people that didn’t seem to gel with the rest of society.
But keeping up appearances was hard work, and the toll was costly. Most of the time, he lived in a silent world of depression. In truth, he despised himself for what he was, and longed to be normal, to fit in, to be part of the “in” crowd. He wasn’t even asking for popularity. Mostly, he wanted the bullying to stop, the snickering behind his back to go away, and for people to quit looking at him like they couldn’t stomach the fact that someone like him was allowed to breathe the same air.
He wrangled his mind back. His legs were already growing stiff from the cold. It was do or die time.
Not really,
he thought.
I was relatively safe in the store.
Derek didn’t give himself time to think. He took a deep breath and started to run.
Kevin turned onto his side and stared at Rhonda. He was a little self-conscious about being bare-ass naked. Rhonda was on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her small but perky breasts jutted upward. Kevin had an overwhelming urge to play with her nipples, but didn’t. Their lovemaking had been nervous and awkward at first, mainly due to Kevin’s stage fright. It had been so long, and now that things had come together so quickly and so miraculously, he had been preoccupied with his performance before they had even gotten started. From the point that he had kissed her, an internal voice had taken to giving a play-by-play of his every move as things had progressed. It had played hell with his concentration. All he had kept telling himself was:
Don’t screw up!
But Rhonda had been a gentle and knowledgeable guide, and she hadn’t complained afterward (though it crossed his mind that she was just sparing his feelings).
The zombies’ incessant pounding had become almost soothing after a while; the kind of white noise that is annoying at first, but eventually transitions and has a calming effect.
“We should probably get dressed,” Rhonda said.
Kevin rolled over and collected their clothes from the floor. He watched as Rhonda dressed as she lay there, first pulling on her panties, then her jogging pants, and finally her t-shirt. As he stood up, he said, “Thanks.”
“No one’s ever thanked me before,” Rhonda said.
“My mom taught me good manners. You want another soda?”
She shook her head. “I’m good.”
I finally score and now the world’s coming to an end,
Kevin thought as he walked toward the back room. When he reached it, Derek wasn’t there. He approached the closed restroom door and knocked. “Derek? You in there?”
No answer. He couldn’t see light coming from under the door, and he couldn’t hear the noisy whir of the exhaust fan in the restroom’s ceiling. He opened the door. The bubble wrapped woman was under the sink where they had left her, the metal drainpipe digging into her cheek.
But Derek wasn’t in there.
Kevin threw on his boxers, jeans, and shirt and went back and turned the knob on the back door, finding it unlocked. “That idiot!”
Rhonda walked into the back room. “On second thought, I think I’ll have a Dr Pep –”
“Derek’s gone,” Kevin said.
“Gone? Where?”
Kevin pushed on the back door and it opened several inches.
“Why would he do that?”
“Wait a minute.” Kevin crossed over into the main room until he had a clear view of the glass display counter. “Dumbass took my keys.”
“You think he ditched us?”
Kevin shook his head. “I think the dumb bastard thinks he’s a hero.”
A second later, the rhythmic
honk honk honk
of the Neon’s car alarm started to go off.
To his credit, Derek didn’t think of it as an act of heroism. If anything, he was trying to prove something to both himself and to Kevin. Kevin was always telling him that he needed to earn his keep and take some responsibility, and this impromptu rescue mission was his way of fulfilling that expectation.
The car had seemed to get farther and farther away as he ran across the lake of asphalt. By the time he reached it, he was huffing and puffing. He risked a glance toward the front of the comic shop. The zombies were still pounding and clawing at the boards.
Holy hell! They didn’t even see me!
And then he pressed down on the fob’s UNLOCK button, only he hadn’t realized that he had moved his thumb during the mad dash, and instead of the UNLOCK button, what he really pushed was the little red button that activated the Neon’s locator alarm.
Frantically, he stabbed his finger at the buttons and managed to silence the alarm after three honks, but by then it was already too late. He glanced up. The zombies had ceased their pounding and were now staring at him.
“Fuck! Me!”
Derek found the unlock button, pressed it, and jumped into the car. He inserted the key into the ignition. He had only driven once, and it could hardly be considered “driving” since all his mother had let him do was to back the car out of the driveway. Kevin had promised to give him driving lessons, but had never gotten around to it.
He started the Neon. The little 4-cylinder came wheezing to life. Derek watched through the dirty windshield as the mass of zombies – he was terrible at math, but if he had to guess, he thought there were at least thirty of them in front of the store – came shambling toward the car. He put his foot on the brake, shifted into drive, and jerked the steering wheel to the right as he stomped down on the accelerator pedal. He was prepared for a swift leap forward, but the Neon let out a garbled scream instead, and for a second Derek thought it was going to give out and die.
It didn’t. It gave a sheepish roar and sped forward, Derek cranking the wheel to the right again to avoid hitting the corner of the building.
Derek’s eyes flicked up to the rear view mirror and he saw the zombies shambling around the corner as he turned left and disappeared around the corner. He slammed the brakes when he reached the back of the building. He cranked the window down as the door burst open and Kevin and Rhonda came running out.
“Great timing!” he said.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kevin said, yanking open the driver’s side door.
“I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day,” Derek said. He smiled. “That’s from Con-Air.”
“Get over.”
“Kevin, come on, man. I’ve got this.”
Kevin was about to argue when the first of the zombies came stumbling around the corner. He slammed the door shut and came around the passenger side, shoving Rhonda in first so that all three of them were squished into the front seats.
Something struck the back window. Kevin twisted his head around so he could see over the seat. A zombie had climbed onto the trunk, its face pressed up against the rear window. Kevin looked at Derek and said, “Step on it!”
Derek stepped on the accelerator. The Neon’s engine sputtered, caught, and jumped forward, sending up a spray of gravel. When they reached the other end of the building, he cranked the wheel hard to the left and the zombie clinging to the back spun off.
They sped across the parking lot, putting distance between them and the zombies.
“Of all the stupid things,” Kevin said.
Rhonda said, “He’s actually kind of a hero.”
Kevin accepted the fact reluctantly. “It was still idiotic.”
“True. But he
did
manage to save our lives.”
Derek was hunched over the wheel, deep in concentration. The speedometer’s needle hovered at twenty.
“Okay, I admit it,” Kevin said. “You did good. You managed to get past a zombie horde and rescue your boss and his girlfriend…” Kevin turned to Rhonda. “Is that okay? Calling you my girlfriend?”
“Sure, why not.” Rhonda said and smiled.
“Right. So like I was saying, you saved your boss and his girlfriend from zombies. Just don’t let it go to your head. At least not until we see how you do parallel parking.”