Mark Clodi (15 page)

“Well V I am not in such a forgiving mood right now, anyway you can see Julie got the lions share of the meat, there ain’t much energy left unless I miss my guess. Trish you might as well eat what is left, it looks like Veronica let her supper get away.” Turning back to Veronica she said, “V you are the hunter returned home without any protein, your job today is going to be to find us more. And by ‘us’ I mean me and you, I could use a bite. If you don’t find anything suitable I may give cannibalism a try.”

“W-what? Cannibalism?” whispered Veronica.

“I mean you, V. You. C’mon lets evaluate our options here and decide what to do. Trish, check the guys pockets, look for car keys dear. It seems everyone is driving these days, maybe we should jump on the bandwagon too?”

A quick search revealed the man was carrying keys for a Chevy, scanning the lot Nancy could make out several cars remaining and a van, but she was not a car person before becoming a member of the undead and the change had not imparted her with any of that mystic knowledge either.

“V? You know cars? No? Trish? Julie? Oh for Christ sake the minute we need Jimbo, he is not around. Well we do it the hard way, check each Chevy until the key fits, there can't be that many of them in the lot. Julie you ready to roll yet?”

Nancy had been amazed at the progress of Julie since she fed her most of the man they had slain in Kirkpatrick’s office, her torso had fully re-attached, she could stand up and she seemed more mentally alert than before the shotgun blasts. She still needed more meat, the healing process had slowed down dramatically after the first five minutes and she was barely mobile. The point was, she was not a loss, a four girl gang, that was a modest power in this new world.

“Alright girls, lets go.”

Nancy led the way down to the lobby from the internal stairwell next to the main elevator shaft. When she got there she looked around, noticing a few changes and spying a notepad that had not been there when they passed through just an hour before. “What’s this girls? Someone has been doing some writing.” She picked it up, but it was blank. “Hm, I did this once when I was a kid, hand me that pencil V, it is time to play 'spy'. I saw this once on the Kid’s Club on PBS.” Nancy scribbled the pencil lightly in a sideways motion across the page, revealing the three addresses Max had scribbled down fifteen minutes before. “Hah! A clue Scooby! Now we probably know where they are going, this will be plan ‘B’, we still have to find Fred, if we don’t find him we may head over to…” she scanned the paper briefly, resting her eyes on the last address, “Max’s house and see if we can pick up a quick meal and let V make amends to me for letting the meat get away. Plus I am sure Julie would like a word with that computer geek who shot her, right Julie?”

Julie nodded, “More meat first. This is way west of here, a long walk. Maybe we drive?”

“Yeah, lets go take care of getting us some wheels girls, no need to stick together just find a Chevy and stand next to it so we can see if the key fits. Oh, V? Go grab Walt’s keys too, then we can choose the ride we like best.” Nancy dearly wished she would have hung onto her keys, which, as far as she knew were still sitting in the Gap where she had changed clothing. Shrugging she thought if the cars here were worse than hers they could always drive the couple of blocks to pick up her keys.

There were not many cars left in the lot and finding a Chevy was made easier by the fact that there were only two parked out there and by the fact that Walt’s keys were also for a Chevy. His was a rusted out piece of shit Impala, the other was a white Chevy Van with a sticker Nancy recognized from visits to her sister’s house. Her nieces were infatuated with dvds of the cartoon that this character starred in and obviously who ever the guy was in Kirkpatrick’s office he had younger kids in his life too.

“We take the van girls, hop in and I will drive. We are going to circle this block then start circling block by block until we find that fucker Fred. And keep an eye out for Jimbo too, we didn’t see his body anywhere and the guys that left didn’t seem like they had enough time to hide any bodies to me.”

The girls climbed in and, ironically, buckled up. Nancy followed suit, soon they were driving out of the parking lot with Mojo-jojo the genius monkey, one of many villains from the now aged “Power Puff Girls” cartoon, staring evilly at the empty lot behind them as they left.

Chapter 26

While everyone had been quick to go for the cars, not many were actually driving. Max and company rapidly discovered an accident about halfway to Tom’s house. A bad accident that came with three lingering zombies feeding on the carcasses of the victims. Stewart backed up, Steve already too close to the pileup, veered onto the sidewalk, taking out a zombie who was turning towards the sound of the cars. He almost got hung up on a mountain bike but when he came down off the curb on the other side of the wreck the bike tore free.

Seeing that Steve had cleared the way, Stewart stopped and started forward again. The two remaining zombies watched the car with rapt attention, but made no moves toward them. Stewart cleared the wreck and started following Steve’s car, which was leaking what looked like fuel out the back. Stewart honked and pulled up alongside Steve on the four lane street. Max rolled down his window and they motioned Steve to stop.

When they stopped Stewart said, “Good driving, seriously I mean it, if you had not veered we could have been picking you out of a wreck. Max go check Steve’s car.”

Max hopped out and peered under the car, he clearly saw a large hole in the gas tank spilling fuel onto the pavement.

“Not good, gas is leaking everywhere and it looks like your muffler is hanging on by a thread.”

“Fuck. Damn it. This is my car, my car! Now what?” ranted Steve.

Stewart looked around and said, “Hop into the cruiser, no choice, I hope you don’t have anything in there you can live without.”

“Worth my life? Not hardly! I just…you know, it is my car! You never want to see something happened to your car. Or be forced to give it up, not like this.”

Max, between both vehicles, saw the zombies from the wreck peering their way, both were making tentative steps towards working their way up the block towards them, using cover as they came.

“Ah, the zombies are coming; I see two behind us, about half a block away, so quite chit-chatting and move please.”

“Fine.” Steve patted the dash of his car while Tom opened the door on the passenger side, both moved into the cruiser and they were soon underway, at a steady, slow, twelve to fifteen miles per hour. Tom gave directions to Stewart from the back seat and they soon arrived at his apartment complex, they had to go up onto the sidewalk twice more to skirt accidents before they arrived. The place was quiet, no sign of violence or undead, just another normal day in south Denver, quiet and chilly as the sun began to lighten the sky on the plains behind the buildings.

The apartments were set up with outside entrances, almost like a massive cancerous duplex gone wrong. Tom climbed out of the cruiser and Max joined him. Stewart said, “Good you two go and get what Tom needs, Steve and I will hold the fort in the parking lot, we will move the car around the building so any zombies come after us and leave the way clear here. If we honk it means ‘get your asses down here’, if we hear gunfire, we will come up and assist. Everyone clear?” There were grim nods all around. “Good I won’t get worried for ten minutes, anything more than that and I probably will leave Steve with the car and come after you.”

Max followed Tom up the stairs, “What level is your apartment on?”

“Third floor, the top. It has great views though, worth it.”

“You mentioned roommates? How many? Any girlfriends that stay over or pets or anything else that might be moving in there?” asked Max.

“No, nothing. Here you take the shotgun, if my roommates are, are undead I might hesitate, you won’t ‘cause you don’t know them.”

“Makes sense. Safety off? Yeah? Okay, lets go in.” in a stage whisper, he continued, “It had to be the third floor.”

Tom stage whispered back, “I love you too.”

They got to the doorway on the third floor and it was cracked open, there was blood on the landing and some footprints had been tracked through the blood, going both into and out of the apartment. Max took the lead and softly pushed against the door with the barrel of the shotgun. The place was dark, very dark and the twilight from the rising sun was not good enough to shed any light into the house. A soft blue glow turned on behind him and as he looked back at Tom he saw that he was holding a small key chain light and trying to use it to push back the darkness in the apartment. It helped, but only a little. Cautiously Max stepped into the apartment, whispering to Tom, “Turn on a light, not a bright one if you can help it, or maybe open the fridge. I don’t know where I am going here, whoa!” as he said the last part Max stumbled into something on the floor, it felt like a long pillow weighed down with a lead weight. As he caught himself on the couch Tom brushed by him and shined his light on the floor.

“Oh God! Oh God!” then turned aside and started throwing up on the carpet. He also took his hand off the light plunging them from gloom into total darkness once again. Tom’s sobbing cries grew louder and Max hissed at him, “Pull it together Tom! You gotta pull it together, whatever did that could still be here!”

“No, no you don’t see you didn’t see. Here take this.” with that he grabbed Max’s hand and shoved his key chain into it. Max fumbled for a moment before finding the light and then turned it back on and shone it upon the body. One dead person, a man with severe head trauma. Oh. Oh, no, not good. He was not bitten to death or munched on anywhere so far as Max could tell, just beaten about the head. “I see it Tom. I see it, who would have done this?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, it is so…so…” retching sounds again as Tom once again voided his stomach., “Oh God I gotta pull it together. Peter Hambran, that was one of my roommates, him and Gray, we called him Gray, his real name was Gene. Gene Tandry. They shared one room, I took the other.” Tom stood up and Max heard him make his way into the kitchen, where it sounded like he was turning on lights and opening the refrigerator door. Nothing was happening.

“No lights, no power.” Said Tom.

“Any flash lights anywhere?”

“Er, I keep one in my bedroom on the nightstand, we have some candles though, it was Gray's birthday last Saturday, hold on a sec.”

After fumbling through some drawers Tom struck a match. In that light he watched Tom approach the stove, a gas stove and then Tom light a burner. “Well that works, now for the candles.”

A short time later two burners and four birthday candles were burning, casting the main room of the apartment in a dancing light of shadows. Max shut and locked the door to this light. He then grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and spread it out over the late Peter, obscuring his corpse from view.

“Well probably anyone, thing, else would have been out here by now. Four doors down the hallway. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a closet?”

Tom nodded, “My bedroom is on the right. The last door on the right.” Tom got up and headed to the hallway. He peeked in the closet first, nothing. Then swung the partially open bathroom door open, his candle light was enough to determine nothing was in there. He hesitated and went to the left door. Max approached with two feet, watching both doors with wary eyes. Tom swung the door open, letting a wave of foul odor out as he did so. So many things happened at once that Max once again felt like he was in a slow motion movie. First he saw the remains of a man on the bed. Then he saw the man’s hands and feet were tied to the bedposts. Movement. He turned to see a naked man, no a zombie fling himself towards the door. Tom dropped back onto his butt. The zombie seemed to hang in the air, Max raised the barrel of the shotgun while keeping the butt against his hip, he fired and struck the zombie’s neck and lower face. Tom screamed as the headless corpse landed on him. The zombie on the bed had his, it's, hands tied to the bed posts above his head, his feet were similarly tied to the corner posts at the foot. Tom was screaming. Max took a moment to let his eyes readjust from the flash of the shotgun blast. Someone was yelling for Tom to shut up. 'Oh it is me.' Max thought, trying to quiet down, then he turned to help Tom up, saying, “Shut the door Tom, shut the door man!”

Tom complied shutting them in the hallway and blocking out the scene in the bedroom. Max wasted no time opening Tom’s door, he was surprised to see a bald headed young man pulling on a shirt, barely visible in the the glare from the parking lights through Tom's window. “Freeze!” Max shouted, and it worked! He thought to himself, 'I always wanted to do that, now I think I know why some police like their jobs.' The man pulled his head through the opening and looked with bleary eyes at Max, “Who’re you?” he demanded in a scornful voice, “The cops? No you ain’t a cop, you got no light.”

While Max was pondering that bit of language, the man continued to pull on his shirt. Max then said, “I said freeze asshole! No I ain’t no cop, I’m the guy with the shotgun! Fucking stop moving, right fucking now!”

The man, let out a sigh and soft “She-it” then stopped reaching for his pants, which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Max started to ask a question, but Tom beat him to it, screaming, “What did you do? What did you do? What are you doing in my fucking house, you asshole!?”

The man recoiled a bit, enough for Max to see he was not wearing any thing from the waist down. Good. Men without pants oughta be easier to control, right? The man gathered the covers around him and stared at Tom and Max and said, “Nothing, you ain’t nothing, I got nothing to say to a couple of queer boy fagots. Go fuck yerselves.” He then proceeded to stand up, blatantly drop the covers and stoop to get his pants on.