Euphoria-Z (13 page)

He’d anticipated Bill’s actions and knew the backhoe would draw all the dead for miles around, so he left and raced to a nearby warehouse to set an idea in motion. He was glad he had because he wasn’t even halfway to the giant structure when he saw Bill speed off in the van.

By the time he’d heard the backhoe rumbling toward the garage, he was almost ready. He’d only had a few minutes to frantically search the offices in the warehouse to get what he needed and set it all up. Then he waited. He sat in the rear of the warehouse, facing the giant open door. Moments later a flood of dead bodies flowed past the open door. The swarm thickened as their numbers increased and they continued to move toward the parking structure.

Jeff was waiting for the backhoe to shut off. He was counting on Sal and Ron to stop Bill. He still didn’t have a solid escape plan when the backhoe’s engine finally cut off. He couldn’t waste time, so he just started things in motion. He flipped on an old CD player he’d found. It was at full volume and was playing some really crappy music, but it did the job. It had been harder for him to find batteries that worked than to locate the player.

The swarm turned and began filling the large warehouse. A large portion of the swarm packed itself tightly into the building.

Ron and Sal heard faint music when the backhoe was turned off. They watched as the dead turned back the way they had come and were soon gone. They used the opportunity to make a run for the van.

Ron drove. He was happy, or as happy as he could be under the circumstances.

“That had to be Jeff.” Ron smiled. “That kid’s very clever. I should never have let Bill shut him down like that.”

Sal agreed, and they drove in silence for the most part. Sal still found himself dwelling on Maria, but he was working on being happy where he was at the moment. Ron was looking forward to getting started on making the parking structure a secure and comfortable home with all the room he wanted to build individual dwellings, store supplies and food, and eventually take in survivors or help others set up their own communities. He was even starting to wonder what they should do about all the dead—destroy them, trap them…there were many issues surrounding that, and he was probably getting ahead of himself.

“Is that a fire?” Sal rousted him from his thoughts. A column of dark gray smoke rose up from a spot that appeared to be just a few blocks away.

“Looks like it. Want to check it out?”

“Yeah. I’d hate to see the city burned up by a fire we could’ve doused.”

Ron pointed the van toward the dark column of smoke drifting slowly upward.

“Doesn’t look too big.” As he drove he saw that the fire was attracting the dead and wondered how. Was it the smell? Had to be sound, he thought. Maybe there were people trapped, or maybe it was a fire they started to keep warm or cook.

“Here we are.” As they rolled up to the location of the fire and passed the last building hiding it from sight, they saw the most unexpected sight.

“What the fuck?” Sal sat forward, trying to decipher what was going on in the parking lot.

Ron stopped the van. He was silent as he too tried to understand what he saw.

The van was in the street at the entrance of a very large parking lot. There was a big box beverage store across the way, and the fire was in front of the doors. The fuel was a huge pile of wooden pallets. But what was disturbing about the scene were the five men engulfed in flames walking around the lot. They had to be the dead because they showed no sign of pain or panic.

One dropped, and four flaming corpses tottered about the parking lot. The fire seemed to confuse them. They walked in slow, serpentine patterns, turning randomly with every few steps.

There were three men pouring what appeared to be liquor on the corpses and lighting them. Two more flamed up, and they all laughed and kicked at the flaming corpses.

Ron and Sal took in the entire scene in mere moments, and almost as soon as they pulled up to the lot they were backing away.

Ron watched the rearview mirror as they drove slowly back the way they’d come. Sweat beaded his forehead, and his heart pounded so hard he could feel it in his neck.

“I almost raced into the parking lot to see if I could help. I thought those people were alive.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. You see the vests?”

“Yes.” Ron was focusing on driving smoothly. He wanted to tear out of there, but the bikers would hear the engine race, the tires squeal.

Sal looked back. “I don’t think they saw us.”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t, but we’re going to have to keep an eye open for those guys.” Ron looked in the rearview mirror constantly until he felt they were indeed safely away. He hated that these kinds of people were still around, and he hoped they would move on. He was especially upset because even from a distance he could see the motorcycles and the vests marking these men as bikers. Their behavior told him they were probably outlaw bikers, not the kind of folks inclined toward sharing and teamwork.

§

The dead filled every nook and cranny of the giant warehouse. They were so tightly packed in that they couldn’t move their arms. They were all looking up at the same point in the air, at Jeff.

Jeff stood on a large duct, thankfully a square one. He hoped it would hold his weight as it swung from the metal straps that held it high in the air. He slowly got down on all fours. His hands sunk into an inch of dust. He started crawling slowly along. The metal of the duct sank inward beneath him and creaked as he crawled along it. He had to traverse the entire length of the warehouse in this tedious fashion. Every time a duct popped loudly under his weight, or a strap twanged, his heart went into his mouth. He wasn’t sure what he would do if a duct gave way.

This was part of the last-minute plan he wished was different, but he saw no other way. He peeked over the edge. A horde of zombies watched him with dead eyes like dogs waiting for a scrap of food to hit the floor. Standing room only, he mused.

He made it to the front of the warehouse. Fortunately, the duct ran all the way to the front wall, and he could reach the chain that opened and closed the big door. He reached for it and started pulling it closed, trapping the dead inside.

He trapped a large number of the dead inside, but there were still plenty more outside. He was busy for the next couple of hours, leading them into other warehouses and trapping them. There were hundreds he had to deal with, maybe more than a thousand, but fortunately the number that appeared was relatively small compared to what it easily could have been in the densely populated city of San Jose. The fact that they were in a pocket of office parks, warehouses, undeveloped airport land, and the giant parking lot made that possible.

Jeff had to use the thick power cables between buildings to move between them. Normally he would have been afraid to touch them, worried he would fry to death, but there was no juice flowing through these lines, and they were the only way to the next building.

Almost all the dead were trapped or had wandered away. Jeff then took some time to search the local office park. He found an abandoned grocery cart and wheeled it through several offices, shopping.

§

When Jeff returned shortly before sunset, as he didn’t want to be out at night, he ran into Bill coming from the rear of the structure. Bill had worked for hours moving rubble by hand away from the structure. It was as if he was trying to prove that without the backhoe it was going to be hard work.

“What’s all that junk?” Bill asked, acting exasperated as if Jeff were pushing a cart of actual rotting garbage and he would personally have to deal with it.

Normally, Jeff wouldn’t even bother talking to a person like Bill, but he was part of his very small world and he had to try. Besides, Bill’s hot wife was really nice to Jeff, and he felt a strong bond with her. She seemed fairly smart and educated, not Bill’s type at all, except in one respect.

“Just stuff we may need to survive. We need more than just food and water.”

Bill said, “OK,” but spoke in the tone of “whatever.”

“I got stuff I thought everyone would like: books, snacks, more pencils and pads for Mary. I even got you beef jerky.” Jeff was trying. He had no patience for people like Bill, disliked them a lot. He wasn’t even sure how he could be near the man for much longer.

“What makes you think I like that shit?”

“OK, whatever.”

“What’s that?” Bill faced Jeff, but Jeff just kept pushing the cart up the ramp.

“I said you’re welcome. I believe what you should have said was thank you, not that shit you came up with.” He knew Bill’s type, and he didn’t want to provoke him at first. Maybe now he should, let everyone see what the man was really like.

“Prick,” Bill said as he walked up the ramp, leaving Jeff to push the heavy cart by himself. He yelled back, “You have to do some kind of work, kid. You can’t just go gift shopping if you want to survive.” He pulled his shirt off over his head in a dramatic gesture and let it drop to the concrete.

Minutes later, Jeff arrived at the upper level. Donna saw him coming and ran down to help him push the cart the rest of the way.

“Thanks.” Jeff handed Donna the pack of beef jerky. “I hope Sal or Ron like this stuff.”

“I think every guy likes this stuff, besides it’s the thought that counts. You are very sweet.” Donna kissed him on the cheek. She called Mary over and the three dug through Jeff’s haul with excitement and gratitude, not only for the usefulness of the items and the sweet thoughts, but for the needed distraction. The stack of paperbacks especially excited Mary. Jeff also got her pads of paper, pens, and pencils.

“You even remembered the sharpener!” Mary beamed. She hugged the little gifts to her chest.

“Well, Santa-Jeff, this is the best Christmas I ever had!” Donna smiled. “I am serious. This was so sweet and such a nice surprise. Thank you very much.”

“Yes, thank you Jeff.” Mary stopped to look over her shoulder for a second and then turned back to the little party.

Donna didn’t notice, but Jeff did. “Fuck him,” he said and nodded toward the roof where Bill had disappeared. Mary looked at him with fear, and her glance shot back to the ramp. When she turned back, she didn’t look at Jeff; she looked down. She excused herself and took her treasures over to the cluster of lawn furniture and boxes they had started calling the living room.

Donna looked at the odd but useful collection of gifts Jeff had brought her and smiled at how thoughtful he was. He’d actually apologized for not knowing what to get her as he handed her gifts he’d literally risked his life to get. She held up a scarf he gave her, smiling at how incredibly sweet Jeff was and because she would have to be ninety years old to wear it anywhere other than an apocalypse. She would never complain; in fact she would make a point of wearing it. She tied it around her neck. There was a travel pillow, which looked new. She would use that soon, she hoped. There was a giant pack of gum and other things.

She was having trouble reading the expiration date on a can of peaches. She couldn’t wait to devour them and drink all the juice. The long shadows from the setting sun and the fading light made it difficult to read. Suddenly she stood up, letting the can drop to the concrete. Ron and Sal had been gone for hours. The fact that she had no way of getting in touch with her husband panicked her. What if he never returned?

She ran to the edge of the parking garage and used the binoculars to search for him in the fading light.

11.

Cooper jogged through the trees, wanting to run, but he didn’t want to trip and fall or wear himself out, should he need to sprint later on. The dead were all around him in the woods, but the way forward appeared clear. They were still many yards away and had yet to notice him. He was slightly ahead of the pack and didn’t want to rush and risk slipping and falling. But he was too nervous, and his fight-or-flight instinct took over and told him a vigorous flight was needed right now.

He didn’t want to risk getting ringed in, so he started to jog. When he changed pace, it looked as if two zombies noticed him, which fueled his flight with adrenaline. He’d only jogged about twenty steps when an old man stepped out from behind a tree. Before he could think, Cooper lifted and cocked his arm back and elbowed the man in the side of the head hard. He reacted so quickly that he hadn’t even considered whether it was a living or dead human he was striking. He would have felt terrible if the old man was alive, but he was dead. The old man hit the ground, snarling as he tried to stand. Fogged glasses fell from his face. Cooper had a lead, but for all he knew he was headed into a giant swarm.

He pumped his legs, putting as much distance as possible between him and the dead. He had a good lead when he broke through the trees and found himself on a one-lane road, another thin tarmac strip winding through the hills. Before him was a wall of eroded dirt where the hill was cut away so the road could pass through. He couldn’t go that way. He looked left and right, and the road looked clear both ways.

He chose the right, and within a few yards he saw a figure come out of the trees and onto the road, another close behind. He looked back, and the dead were emerging from the trees in larger numbers and filling the road. He’d made a good choice going this way, but he still had to run, putting all of his energy into flight. There were too many to fight.

As he ran, he heard branches snapping and an occasional thump as the dead tripped and fell. Their numbers were huge, and most of them were still just shadowy figures deeper in the trees. Two corpses made the road, and he got the drop on the first one. Without slowing, he planted both hands in the center of her back and pushed. The shove plus the momentum of his body sent the nude female flying into the ditch on the side of the road. She hissed as her head snapped back and she flew through the air.