A Little More Dead (6 page)

Chapter
Ten

Dan and Paul peeked around the corner of
the gas station, praying the crunching of snow beneath their boots hadn’t given
them away. Two empty cars sat parked at the pumps, one of which was a Missouri
State Patrol car with the driver’s side door hanging wide open. Three other
vehicles sat parked by the station’s glass front doors – one with someone
slumped over the steering wheel. The rotting state trooper did irregular
circles in the parking lot, alone and aimless, his round hat lying in a patch
of red snow by the front doors. The man stole Paul’s breath. It was the first
time he had the chance to stop and get a good look without running or pulling
the trigger.

“Well, at least we know which car is
his,” Dan whispered.

“Hopefully, he filled up before he
turned.”

The cannibal cop stopped his black boots
and sniffed at the air, like a bloodhound catching a sudden whiff of a fugitive
on the lam. Slowly, he lowered his chewed off nose and turned to Paul and Dan,
his eyes black holes to death.

“Oh shit,” Paul muttered, holding up a
hand for everyone to be perfectly still.

Sophia passed the message to Carla and
the boys, her pink gun aimed at the ground.

The trooper stared hard at Paul and Dan
for a moment before walking toward them much faster than he’d been doing
circles. He reached for them, boots shuffling through the unplowed snow, peeling
lips giving him a bloody sneer that made Paul shudder.

He glanced at the others hugging the
side of the building behind him and turned back to Dan. “Drop him.”

Dan came out from around the corner and
stepped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses in the snow. They cracked beneath his
weight and the cop stopped. Dan raised the shotgun and everyone froze while the
dead thing studied Dan like it was still a cop, like it knew Dan was up to no
good.

Dan stared back, finger curled around
the trigger.

The rotting corpse tilted its head to
one side and made a soft grunt.

Paul couldn’t believe his eyes. Was this
sonofabitch
was sizing them up, planning his attack?

“Shoot him,” Sophia whispered.

Carla nodded her agreement, clutching
her sidearm in her right hand with her boys pushed behind her.

Paul stepped out from the side of the
building, drawing the cop’s empty eyes. Paul couldn’t breathe. It was impossible.
This
thing
staring back at him was
dead. But wasn’t. Paul managed a shallow breath, skin crawling. “What are you?”
he screamed.

The cop snarled and started coming
closer.

Dan sent him jerking backwards with one
loud shot, prompting a
gray
-haired old lady to
burst out from a bathroom door on the side of the building. She tackled Matt to
the ground, sending Carla tumbling to the snow. The ravenous senior citizen dug
her teeth into Matt’s throat and pulled. Carla screamed in a wide-eyed panic,
watching the old lady raise her head and swallow a chunk of Matt’s flesh. Paul
unleashed his twelve-gauge, sending her toppling through the snowy lot with a
booming blast that removed half of her head.

Carla scrambled to her feet and pushed
Mike out of the way, sliding to her knees. She stared at her fallen boy, a
crimson pool blooming in the snow around his head. After a moment of hesitation,
she scooped Matt into her arms and screamed things that were mostly
unintelligible. But Paul bet if there were any more of those things around they
could understand what she was saying just fine. She was saying,
Hey
, we’re over here! Come and eat us!

“Dan, get the cop’s keys,” Paul yelled
over her screams.

Mike stood there staring at his little
brother lying in the snow, a blank expression canvassing his face. Dan had the same
dead look in his eyes.

“Dan!”

His gaze slowly rose to Paul.

“Get the goddamn car keys!”

Dan looked back to Matt, indecision
flickering in his eyes, and then sprinted to the state trooper. Paul covered
him while Dan rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Sophia took her place at
Paul’s back, gun gripped tightly in both hands.

“My baby, my
baby, my baby!”
Carla shrieked
,
rocking Matt’s limp body in her blood
stained arms, tears freezing on her cheeks.

“Carla, we have
go
!”
Sophia yelled.

But Carla didn’t hear. Carla was in
another place and time, where words and consequences held no value.

“Carla!” Paul screamed.

“Got
em
!”
Dan held the car keys up like they were a golden
ticket hidden inside a chocolate bar.

Paul nodded to the squad car at the
pumps. “Get the car, we’ll cover you!”

“Why!” Carla wailed, burying her face in
Matt’s bloody neck. “Why! Why! Why!”

Paul knew why.
Because
he fucked up and this was his fault.
He turned to Mike. “Mike!”

Mike slowly turned and stared at Paul
through terror filled eyes.

“Come on, buddy, we’re getting out of
here!”

Mike’s placid gaze slowly rose over
Paul’s shoulder and just when he thought the kid’s eyes couldn’t possibly get
any bigger...they did.

“They’re all over the place!” Sophia
shouted, swinging the pink 9-mm from stiff to stiff, not sure where to begin
shooting first.

Paul spun around to see twenty or thirty
of the bastards coming from the McDonald’s across the street. “Oh shit,” he said
beneath his breath, readying himself for the shotgun’s powerful kick.

Sophia took aim at a chubby redneck in a
Kansas Jayhawks coat running at them like the wind before yanking the gun to an
old man getting too close for comfort. She pulled the trigger, shooting him in
his face.

“Don’t hit the pumps!” Dan yelled, running
to the cruiser and blasting a hole through the redneck’s bloated stomach along
the way. The neck flew backwards into a pump and slid to the ground. He got
right back up, proudly displaying the shredded hole in the middle of his blue
coat, and ran hard at Dan.

Sophia put him down with a head shot and
he didn’t get up again. Paul took out three more closing in on the cop car,
clearing a path for Dan. A second or two later, the squad car’s beefy engine
roared to life, sending white smoke coughing out the back.

Paul turned back to Carla. “Carla! We –
are -
leav
...” he trailed off, watching two men in blue
jumpsuits drag Carla from Matt’s lifeless body. They sunk their teeth through
the sleeves of her coat like vampires, draining her life-force with greedy
jerks of their heads. Paul fired his shotgun, making one of the mechanics
flinch. Unmoved by Paul’s hostility, it went back to work on Carla, whose
screams were high-pitched and wet.

Mike stood off to the side, watching
them tear his mother apart, expressionless and alone.

“Mike, come on, sweetie!” Sophia pleaded
between shots, her eyes bouncing between Mike and the zombies trudging closer.

Paul’s next shot sent one of the grease
monkeys back to Hell where it came from. He pumped in another shell and took
aim on the other mechanic feeding on Carla. Just before he squeezed the
trigger, someone grabbed him from behind, pulling his shot wide. Instinctively,
Paul swung the butt of the gun around into a teenage girl’s rancid face, producing
a bone shattering crunch and knocking her to the ground. She took the shotgun
with her and Paul tried unleashing the Beretta from its holster around his leg
but his ski coat and gloves got in the way. The girl grabbed his
ankle,
her tattered McDonald’s uniform giving him a moment’s
pause. This shit wasn’t right but that didn’t stop him from stomping on her face.
She squeezed harder, threatening to crush the bones in his ankle with some
supernatural strength she didn’t have when she was serving up Big Macs and
fries. Paul stomped harder on her head with his boot to no avail, ankle
screaming with pain. “You fucker!” he said, finally freeing his handgun and
shooting her in the face.

 
He whirled around to find Carla no longer screaming and Mike missing
from the picture. His frantic gaze jerked to a Chevy Impala where Mike sat
leaning against the passenger side door. He stared blankly at Paul, his little
body wiggling as a mechanic chewed on his shoulder.

Tires slid to a halt in the snow behind Paul.

“Get in!” Dan yelled through the closed
window of the cop car.

Sophia dropped two more corpses floating
through the rising exhaust before whipping the back door open. “Paul,” she cried,
sliding across the vinyl seat and slapping a new clip in.

Paul couldn’t find his breath, paralyzed
by the escalating events. It all
happened
so fast,
everything now so red.

“Paul, get in the car!” Sophia rolled
her window down and plugged four more corpses.

Then five.

Then six.

Some stayed down.

Some didn’t.

Tears stained Paul’s cheeks. He screamed
at the top of his lungs and unloaded a clip into the vulture feeding on Mike.
The mechanic crumpled over Mike’s legs while seven or eight of those things
banged on the cop car with more coming just steps behind. Dan and Sophia screamed
Paul’s name at the same time and went back to shooting. Paul looked back to see
Sophia roll up her window and trap a mangled arm inside the car. The hand
thrashed wildly, trying to snatch at her long dark hair. She stuck the barrel
of her gun through the gap in the window and pulled the trigger. The arm snapped
out of the vehicle, following its owner to the parking lot.

“Get in!” Dan revved the massive engine
block and laid on the horn, ending another experiment: Car horns don’t scare
zombies.

They kept limping.
Moaning.
Reaching.

Paul stood incapacitated, turning back
to the dreadful scene on the side of the service station, the gunfire behind
him like fireworks on the other side of town. He stared at Mike’s lifeless body
with a dead mechanic slumped over his lap. It all happened so fast.

“Paul!” Sophia screamed.

He turned for the car and stopped.
Sophia gestured wildly, yelling things he didn’t hear. Dan shot a woman in the
eye. Sophia screamed bloody murder when Paul went back to Mike. Paul stared
down at the boy. He was only eleven, his brother, Matt, just eight – both dead
because of him. Paul pointed the Beretta at Mike’s face, tears blurring his
vision. Mike stared up at him through unseeing eyes, no breath visible on his
lips. “I’m so sorry,” Paul whispered. Then everything got quiet.
Peaceful.
The cold trigger felt good against his skin and
when he pulled it the gun barely jumped in his hand.

Gunshots.

Screams.

Blood.

Everything came back in a loud pop,
washing over him like an angry wave, sending him back into the chaos going on
around him.

“Paul, get in the fucking car!” Sophia
ordered, emptying a clip into the decaying fray on the other side of the cop
car.

He stared at the hole in Mike’s
forehead, doubling over with the guilt squeezing on his lungs. More gunshots and
a particular high-pitched scream from Sophia broke Paul from his trance. He ran
over and slid into the backseat, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Hang on!” Dan punched it and sent four
of the monsters hurtling to the ground as the car sped through the lot. Power
sliding through the snow, he steered the cruiser back onto the main road where
it had come with another driver sitting behind the wheel. Dan barreled toward
Interstate Thirty-Five and Paul made the mistake of looking back. It was a
warzone back there. Bodies and blood littered the ground, the smell of
gunpowder heavy in the air, engraving another ghastly scene into his mind he
would never forget. He turned back around and watched his wife cry, a defeated
sigh prying itself from his lips. He was almost certain Mike had never
screamed.

Not once.

Chapter
Eleven

They rode in silence for the next
several miles with the heater turned up and a black metal cage separating
Sophia and Paul from Dan up front. Though lit up bright, the police radio was just
as quiet as they were. Not even static. Again, Paul looked over to make sure
Sophia was in the car and still in one piece. It just as easily could be her
lying back there in the snow.

Wiping her nose with the back of her
glove, Sophia quietly reloaded her clips with bullets from one of the boxes
they took from the Jeep. Her fingers trembled. Tears streamed down her face. She
shook her head like she’d just lost some stupidly placed bet and Paul didn’t
dare attempt a pep talk now. He knew better than that, and didn’t have it in
him anyway. They were as good as dead and they all knew it. How could they
stand a chance against whatever the hell that was out there?

He stared up front, praying one of the
cop’s keys would unlock the shotgun mounted on the dash to replace the one he
just lost. It looked easier to handle, shorter. Intrusive thoughts pushed past
that small break and barged inside. Why didn’t they check that side door? How
could he have been so stupid? There would never be another Christmas, his last
words to Matt and Mike a hollow lie. Their frightened faces tormented his
thoughts, robbing him of his will. Paul rubbed his eyes, afraid to open them
again. Two young boys and their mother just died horrific deaths and it was all
because of him and his foolish confidence.

Him!

“How’s the gas?” he asked, determined to
focus for Sophia’s sake. She was still here and he would not forget.

Dan glanced at him in the rearview
mirror, a dejected look pulling on his face. “It’s full.”

Paul leaned back and released a pent-up
breath. It was another break. It just as easily could’ve been empty. He
swallowed dryly, imagining the state trooper removing the gas nozzle from the
patrol car and returning it to the pump just before all hell broke loose inside
the station, drawing him closer.

Occasionally, Dan glanced back at them
in the mirror but didn’t speak. He looked so alone up there, like the driver of
a horse drawn carriage traveling through the woods on a cool foggy night. Whether
or not Dan would become the eternal
third-wheel
randomly slipped through Paul’s tired mind. How would Dan ever meet someone
now? He could barely talk to a pretty girl before all of this. Were there even
any pretty girls left? The image of the old lady popping out of the restroom
knocked those trivial thoughts to the ground like she did Carla and Matt.

“Fuck!” Paul punched the cage, making
Sophia and Dan jump.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?” Dan let up
on the radio’s handset button, keeping the car at a smooth thirty miles per
hour. “Can anyone hear me?” He released the button and Paul leaned forward. The
lights were on but the radio remained quiet.

Not even static.

Sophia stared at her black gloves,
flexing her hands like she couldn’t shake the gunfire still ringing in her
fingers.

“I repeat, is anybody out there? Hello?
We are north of Kansas City. Copy that!”

They waited, hoping for another break,
like the gun store and the full tank of gas.

Dan swore and gave up, jamming the handset
back into its cradle but leaving the radio on just in case. The bright lights
were almost soothing. At least something still worked, even if it was just
those tiny little lights. They drove forever, a somber silence filling the car
as the miles slipped beneath them, the setting sun brushing the clouds with orange
and purple strokes. Normally, it would have been a beautiful winter day, the
kind where your car seats are already warm before you get inside, but they
would have to clear another house soon and there was nothing normal about it.

“I’ve
gotta
go.”

Paul met Dan’s eyes in the mirror,
crimping his brow. “Go where?”

Dan glanced at Sophia. “You know.”

Paul rolled his eyes and groaned. “Stop
someplace out in the open.”