Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (22 page)

The gun shopping was uneventful.  Now we had to hit the auto parts store, the pharmacy and then the big one:  We had to see if Nelson could get the tanker over to the helicopter.

The reason for the pharmacy was just the radios, but they were important.  We would definitely run into more situations like this one, where Rachel was alone, back at the helicopter.

“Don’t suppose anyone saw a CVS or a Walgreens, huh?” I asked.

“Nope,” said Nelson.  “Schnuck’s.”

“Schnuck’s?” I asked.

“Yep.  We passed it on the way to the gun shop.  In  that big center.”

“Okay, Schnuck’s it is,” I said.  I turned the motor over and put the Dodge in gear.  It felt good to have gotten more weapons, but there were two, maybe three more important jobs to finish before we could go back.  Splitting up significantly wasn’t a real option, because I did not want to lose anyone.  And by that, I meant to the rotters.

I drove into the center, and noted that the O’Reilly Auto Parts was there, too.  “Perfect,” I said.  “Two birds with one stone.”

“I’ll run to the pharmacy,” said Nelson.  “If you want to go to the parts store.  But why do you still need to go there if we can use the tanker?”

“I want to get a siphon,” I said.  “We lost ours, and we’re going to be back to bikes or cars eventually.  Once we get to California.”

“Makes sense,” said Nelson.

“Want a gun?” asked Serena.  “There’s plenty.”

“Nah,” said Nelson.  “Got my Subdudo and my stars.”

“How many stars do you have left?” I asked.  “You’ve left some behind, right?”

“Yeah.  I have four.”

“Where do you get something like that?”

“I sent off for them on the Internet.  Maybe a martial arts supply, but no big deal.  I have my martial arts in case I get into trouble, but it’s been a year, so how many can be inside there?”

“Be careful,” said Serena.

Against my better judgment, Nelson jogged across the parking lot and Serena and I went into the auto parts store.

I was hungry and exhausted, and remembered that we also needed some damned food.  Wow.  So much to remember and so much to do.

We found our siphon in a hurry.  It was the type with a battery powered pump, so we scooped up a few bags of D-Cells, too.  I grabbed some tire filler and patches, too.  Just in case.  The store was dead empty except for the expected deteriorated corpses and because the front door was smashed in, we didn’t have to worry about it being locked.

We bagged our stuff and got back to the truck, then drove the truck across the lot in time to find Nelson staggering out of the Schnuck’s Pharmacy with a full-sized, yellow plastic baseball bat in one hand and plastic bags hooked over his arms.  He was spattered with blood and he looked exhausted and shaken.

We jumped out and ran to him.

*****

“Dude, have you ever tried to kill a zombie with a plastic bat?  Much less three of ‘em?”

“What?” said Serena.  “Three of them?”

“There were six!” he said.  “I don’t know what they were doing in there.  Maybe they’ve been in there for a year, but I found three dead people – well, bones, anyway – and I was kinda spacing out, I guess, checking out the different radios.  They were real skinny and so dang quiet!  All wearing rubber-soled tennis shoes, like some kind of uniform or something.  I never heard ‘em.”

“So … you grabbed a plastic bat?” I said.

“They were too close for the stars by the time I saw them behind me,” he said.  “I reached down in this cardboard bin and grabbed two of these pieces of shit – excuse me, Serena – and I was two-hand swinging the things, but it takes a heck of a lot of pounding to make a dent with a bat like this.”  He held up the toy bat.

To be honest I was on the verge of a laughter attack.  Nelson was so damned serious but what he was telling us was just absurd and even funnier in my mind’s eye. 

Serena had taken the grocery bags from him and as he spoke, he waved around the yellow, plastic bat, darkly stained from the grip to the tip, with several reddish-black chunks clinging to the end of it.

“I ask you again,” said Nelson, “Have you ever tried to kill something with a plastic bat?  It’s insane!  I mean, you’re swinging and connecting, and you feel like some kind of … I don’t know, some brute or something, but nothing’s happening!  Even I don’t have enough energy for an all day beat down.”

“I’ll say with pleasure that I haven’t been put in a situation where I had to use a plastic bat on a zombie,” I said.  “Serena?”

“No, but the apocalypse is young,” she said, and I saw her trying to suppress her own smile. Luckily, Nelson was staring at the ground, breathing hard.  “Did you kill them at least, Nelson?” she asked.

He shook his head.  “Nah, almost.  Most of them are dead, I think.  I started poking at them, ‘cause the bats work pretty good as pokers.  I reeled back and put some kicks on four of them, and when they were down I ran into the aisle behind them and pushed the whole shelf over on top of them.”

“Wow,” said Serena.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah, right!  So while I’m jumping up and down on the rack trying to crush them underneath, I was just poking at the other two while I grabbed my bags and ran out here.   I was so damned tired!”

“Did you get the headlights and batteries, Nelson?” I asked. 

He stared at me in amazement.  “Dude, did you miss the entire story I just told you?”

I patted his shoulder.  “No, buddy, I just have to know if I need to go back in there.  You weren’t bitten or scratched by them?”

Nelson held his arms out, the yellow bat skyward.  “Hell no!  Check me out, man.  I want you to be sure so you don’t freak out or anything.”

“I trust you,” I said.  “I’m glad you’re alright, brother.  Seriously.  Thanks for doing that.”

Nelson nodded.  “I need to go sit for a bit,” he said.  He held out the bat.  “Need this?”

I pulled my gun from my holster, and Serena did the same.  “Nope, we’re good.”

“Shoot that jerk in the bow tie,” he said.  “I don’t like him very much at all.”

We nodded and he went to the truck.  We looked at each other and smiled.  “Maybe Nel tired them out for us,” I said.

“They’re right there,” she said, pointing at the door.  Sure enough, both zombies, the man in the bow tie – which was very intact – and a dead-eyed woman who was probably in her mid-fifties before the scourge struck her, stood at the door, clawing at the glass.  There appeared to be several dents in their faces, and as their gaping mouths gnashed aimlessly, I saw yellow plastic in the teeth of the man.  Nelson had been beating him in the mouth, obviously.

We walked toward the door and I put my hand on one door handle, with Serena doing the same to the other.

“God, I wish we had video of that fight,” I said.  “On three?”

“You’re funny,” said Serena.  Then: “One, two, three.”  We opened the doors, raised our weapons and placed clean, point-blank shots through the foreheads of each of the creatures.  They crumpled to the floor at about the same time the spent cartridges rang off the concrete behind us.  We walked inside and immediately heard more sounds from the other end of the store, so moved along the front counter to where Nelson had pulled down the rack.

An arm was clawing at the ground from beneath the fallen shelving unit.  I walked to it and stomped on it, then held my PPK through the two shelves and fired.  The fingers quit twitching.  I don’t even know if it was a male or female.  Didn’t matter.

“Let’s get the headlights and batteries, then get the hell out of here,” I said.  “This is all taking too long.”

“Food, David,” said Serena.  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving, and I’m sure everyone else is, too.  And water.”

“God,” I said.  “I am a terrible leader.”

“Just preoccupied,” said Serena.  “Can’t understand why.”

We took our time and loaded out as much of the canned food as we could.  Nelson even got up the cajones to come back in and help us.  Cases of water, canned vegetables, tamales, chili, beans, bags of Top Ramen.  Anything that didn’t look spoiled went into the back of the Dodge.  This would easily sustain all of us until we got to California.

*****

             
Chapter Nine             

Five rotters were shuffling toward us in a group from the east.  I turned and saw three or four stragglers coming from various directions on our west side. 

Being comprised of flesh and blood, I suppose we were enough to entice their sense of taste.  I again worried about Rachel and Don Weston, alone at the chopper for well over an hour now.

We pulled alongside the stalled big rig, but I did not get out of the Dodge, nor did Serena, because after a good fifteen minute rest, Nelson said he had recovered enough to handle it.

He climbed out of the pickup truck and pulled open the door of the diesel’s cab.  Nelson screamed, and Serena and I jumped, our guns out.

“Sorry,” he said.  Serena had her window down and stared up at him.  I leaned over so I could see, too.

“Roll up your window, Serena,” he said.

The moment it was up, Nelson dragged a skeleton, still wearing a tee shirt and jeans, with a Peterbilt cap on its skull, out of the truck.  It fell into a hundred pieces and the dust and hair blew all over the window where Serena looked out.

“Glad he warned us first,” she said.

“That would have been a mouthful,” I said.

Nelson gave us a thumbs up and climbed inside the truck.  The trucker likely would have turned the truck off to preserve fuel while he waited for whatever it was he was waiting for. There
was
an overturned car in front of the tanker, but it was clear behind him.  I wondered why he would have succumbed inside the vehicle, but I didn’t expect Nelson to concern himself with that detail, plus we’d seen enough cases of suicide in the face of this apocalypse that it did not pay to dwell on such things.

Nelson situated himself in the seat and seconds later, we heard the sound of an engine cranking.

It turned fast, winding three times before stopping.  A second later, again, it turned, turned again and stopped.

The next time the engine cranked, it was slower.  Nelson looked over at us, frustrated.  He paused and motioned for Serena to lower her window, which she did.

“I may only have one crank left,” he said.  “I need to see if you can pull off one of those Rachel prayers, Serena.”

“Of course,” said Serena.  “But I’ve been praying the whole time.  It’s kind of a natural background activity for me,” she added.

“Good.  I’ll beg the Universe,” he said.  “That’s how I work it.  If God’s out there, he’ll hear me.”

I didn’t say anything.  I figured these two had it.

Nelson closed his eyes, bit his lower lip, and turned the key again.  The motor turned once, twice and caught, clattering to life, rough as hell.  It sounded as though it would shudder and cut out, but as the entire cab of the rig shook and rattled, it finally settled into a smoother, quieter idle.

“Yes!” shouted Nelson.  “Wow!  Got it!”

“Okay, let’s go, Nelson,” I said.  “You’ll have to back it up.  Can you find reverse?”

“Duh,” said Nelson, rolling his eyes.  “Trucker school?  Photographic memory?  Any of this ringing a bell?”

I waved at him, smiling.

I was starting to wonder when Nelson became such a smart ass, but on him it was charming, because everything was accompanied by his thin-lipped, goofy smile.  Still, all this talk of his photographic memory made me wonder why he hadn’t mentioned it before.  Oh, well. 

Nelson focused again and we heard the gears grinding.  They ground.  On and on, they chewed at one another, and finally, with what appeared to be a good push with his right arm, the grinding stopped.  He looked over again double-pumped his left fist, then eyed his rear-view mirror and the truck lurched backward.

“Follow us!” shouted Serena.

Nelson nodded and we pulled hard left.

“Stop,” said Serena. 

“What for?”  As soon as I asked the question, I knew.  The five zombies that had been approaching from the east were now seven strong, and had gotten to within fifteen feet and still closing.

The ragtag bunch looked as though they came from a retirement home.  They were all trudging along in the bodies of expired senior citizens, blood-soiled, torn clothing and even a hospital gown on one of the men.  Wispy hair clinging to dried-out scalps, some completely bald, missing eyes and some noses, too.

In all cases their gnashing teeth were more than exposed, and pickings in this part of town must have been pretty slim, because no vapor emitted from their tear ducts.

Chalk up an advantage for us.

Their dead eyes saw us, but did not really see anything at all; still, Serena and I knew that their reaching arms would find us if allowed to try.

Serena unrolled her window and held out her Walther.  She aimed and fired once, then twice.  The first shot had missed its mark and had struck the neck of the man on the far left.  The second bullet took the creature down in a dry spray of rotting, biological matter.  Serena was right on with her third and fourth shots, so three down, four to go.

Her fifth bullet cut through a bald man’s ear.  Of course he did not go down, instead drawing to within five feet of us alongside the others. 

I reached into the back seat and pulled out a fully loaded AR-15 that I’d been preparing while Nelson recovered from his Tee-ball inspired zombie fight.

“Here,” I said, handing her the weapon.  “I disengaged the safety, and there’s a round chambered.”

“Hold your ears,” she said, raising the weapon.  She fired six shots in rapid succession, missing once.  The advancing creatures danced momentarily like marionette dolls on a demonic puppeteer’s string, then fell to their eternal positions of final decay.

Serena brought the gun back inside, leaned it against the seat between us and rolled her window back up, winking at me.  She did not have a smile to offer at that moment, and having known her for a while and falling in love with her, I knew why.

To pose a comparison, Gem Cardoza had a big heart, but she was also a wise-ass who fully accepted that these human beings-turned-zombies died long ago, when the infection set in.  Gem therefore looked at what she did as a service, not only to surviving mankind, but to the zombies themselves.

Kill the zombies, save the world.

Both things, in Gem’s mind, were reasons for celebration and joy.  I tended to agree, but we all dealt differently.

Serena processed things differently, and she had expressed it to me on many a quiet night as we lay together, talking.  She told me that as long as the creatures had even the most primal consciousness and desire – even if that was for human flesh – that they were worthy of our compassion and our mercy.

She fully acknowledged that our mercy was in their killing.  That is where she and Gem agreed: Killing them was merciful, and none should be left walking if they were even semi-convenient to kill.

Nelson stayed behind us, and as we pulled back up to the hospital and the helicopter landing pad, we saw several zombie bodies scattered around the chopper, leaking deep red ooze into puddles around them.  Rachel sat on the ground outside, the revolver hanging limply from her hand. 

She was crying.

*****

I threw the truck in park ten feet away from where Rachel sat, grabbed the AR-15 and ran.  When I reached her, I dropped to the ground, rolled onto my stomach and fired beneath the helicopter, where two zombies had crawled from behind to within three feet of Rachel, who sat unaware.

She screamed and leapt to her feet as I fired, but I hadn’t had time to issue a warning.  I saw them closing in on her and couldn’t even find any words on such short notice.

She stood there, all 4’10” of her, her hand on her chest, breathing hard.  She turned around and saw the two dead abnormals beneath the helicopter and said, “Oh, my God.  Thank you.  Thank you.”

The revolver was in her hand, and I noticed that it was open, the cylinders all empty.  The spent shells were on the ground around her feet.

“Rachel, are you alright?” Serena asked, running from the truck.

She shook her head.  “No … Don,” was all she could manage.  Serena’s eyes shifted to where Don sat in the Eurocopter, but she did not leave Rachel’s side.

I hadn’t even looked at him since we’d arrived because of the unexpected company.  I ran to the chopper and opened the door.  His hands were still cuffed to the dash-mounted bar, but his eyes were wide open, pinkish-white and blank.  There was a bullet hole in his right temple, and the window on the driver’s side was spattered and shattered from the blood spray and the exiting bullet that I knew Rachel had fired.

The poor woman had been forced to kill a man whom she saw as a father figure, and even though I now knew what he had done, I did not yet know whether I would ever tell her about it.

Nelson knew to focus elsewhere.  He was already connecting the thick hose to the tanker.  Now we would have to figure out how to get it from that huge hose into the chopper’s fill spout.

A little at a time.  That’s how we did it.  A crack of the valve.  A dribble of fuel. 

Like everything else.  A bullet here.  A bullet there.  A dead abnormal here, and one there.  It was the process until we were once again able to walk the streets without fear.

After some serious usage of alcohol swabs and gauze, we had the helicopter cleaned up and in the air in another forty-five minutes.

We left Don’s body behind, on the macadam. 

Just then I decided that I had actually liked the man quite a lot, and I realized I would miss him.

*****

We made it as far as Salina, Kansas on the next tank.  We decided, since we had some fuel to spare, that we’d set the chopper down in a more remote area on the outskirts of town.

We were exhausted, and found what appeared to be a grouping of model, manufactured homes.  We were stoked to find them locked, and full propane tanks in locked cabinets on the outside of each unit. 

We chose a nice, three bedroom.  We were able to use the stove, and an attached generator also ran on the propane, so we actually had lights and water, pumped from the clean water storage tanks.

Fucking showers.  Hot food.  Model home beds, actually made up and as comfortable as hell.

I felt bad for Don.  He would have really relished the bed.

I don’t know if I need to say any more than that.  This was Heaven in the middle of Kansas, and believe me – if you’ve ever been to Kansas, that is really saying something.  I’m pretty sure we wanted to stay here for a few days.

So that’s what we did.

Fuck it.  That’s actually what we said.  It had been over a year since the damned zombie apocalypse or whatever you want to call it had screwed the planet, and from our periodic tests, we knew the bubbles were still flowing, so it wasn’t going to end anytime in the near future.

This meant that if Uncle Bug was there, he would still be there in three more days.  Plus, we needed the rest – yeah, I know we’d only been on the road for two days, but the last day had been an awfully long one – and we intended to take whatever time we felt we needed without worrying about some schedule I had invented.

That first night, Serena and I waited until the propane heater had the water nice and hot, and we got in the shower.  I held her in my arms as the water cascaded down onto our bodies, rinsing away the unthinkable residue of a contaminated world.

Her arms wrapped around my waist, I leaned back to take in her perfectly rounded breasts, cupping them in my hands as I leaned in to kiss her neck.  She arched her back beneath my touch and I smoothed her long, brown hair down against her back as I pressed my cheek against hers, my eyes closed.

I know hers were, too.

I believe we could have remained there, beneath the clean, warm water for hours, but the supply wasn’t limitless, and we had the entire night ahead of us in a clean, soft bed.

But as we finished rinsing off and I watched her squeezing the water from her hair, I knew that the intense connection we’d shared for that brief moment of immersion, both in the water and one another, had created a permanent bond between us.

Loss has a strange way of shining a spotlight on what is important, and that did not just include your own loss; it included seeing the anguish and pain of someone like Rachel, who watched the only friend and companion she had known over the last year turn into something horrible and unrecognizable.  Worse, she had to pull the trigger of the gun that ended his life.

Serena had seen and felt it deeply.  Rachel was the only other woman with us and no matter how we men like to think we know how women feel, it truly takes another woman to know that.

It’s that awkward moment you take a break from your chronicle to see if you’re growing breasts … and are relieved to see you’re not.

So Serena cried in my arms that night.  She cried for Rachel and for Don Weston.  While I believe many of her tears were of compassion and sorrow, I also believe, as we made love and held one another, than a good bit of her emotion was joy.