Running with the Horde (19 page)

             
This message stayed on a repeating loop.

             
Somewhere deeper in the room, a powerful fan kicked in and a light mist filled the air. Suddenly I could smell Mark, Sam and Jacob like they were in there with me.

             
I knew it was them but they smelled more pungent, irresistible even!

             
I looked at the scroll again. The room started to shake, the word override had been changed to engage.

             
The smell had overtaken me and I had accidently changed it from override to engage. I yelled override and it changed it back and the room settled back to the way it had been.

             
I wondered why
I
didn’t register as a fourth heartbeat. The ground in the room opened up and a new display rose from the floor right next to my funhouse walkway. A line registering my heartbeat scrolled across the middle of the screen in gray.

             
The only text on the display read:
Control 1
with a blinking cursor.

             
“What is Control 1?” I asked.

             
My face appeared as an icon in the upper right corner of the screen. I jumped back startled but collected myself and moved closer for a better look at my smiling mug.

             
It had been a number of months but it was my Facebook photo.

             
That was weird and off putting and I didn’t want to look at it anymore. I stumbled on to the next room and the one after that, no longer really seeing anything anymore. I trudged gamely on anyway through this stranger’s mind.

             
I didn’t want to be doing this anymore but I kept on for my new friends.

             
Mark was still a stranger to me but he seemed like a nice guy who’d endured a tough road and still managed to keep his boys alive. I had told him everything would be okay and I intended to do everything I could to make that happen.

             
That meant staying inside the awful funhouse I created to see if I could get some kind of help from the zombie pharmacist.

             
I did pledge not to ask the weird operating system any further questions about myself. I had to remember this whole thing was literally just in my head anyway.

             
It was highly probable I was making all the data up as I went along. I only wished that damn screaming would stop but at least it served as constant reminder that I couldn’t control everything going on inside this place.

             
The next room I came to was labeled Memory Motel, if I was to find anything useful this would be the place.

             
I walked inside and immediately wished I hadn’t. A kaleidoscope of images hit me from every angle in the room. His name was Linus Peterson. He was born in Marshall, Minnesota. He had a cat named Roger and a wife named Ethel. He hated corn and picked his nose when he thought no one was looking. He cut off the tip of his pinkie finger when he was 11, he sucked on the nub a lot.

             
A million little factoids about a man I’d never met assaulted me like angry bees. I closed my eyes and counted down from 10. The room was on pause when I opened them.

             
Millions of home videos made directly from Linus’s mind waited for me to play them.

             
“Show me anything related to strep throat,” I said.

             
One of the screens went black and text appeared:
307,684 memories match your query.

             
Neat but not very helpful.

             
I kept filtering the results until I was watching Linus review and create an Amoxicillin prescription for a child who couldn’t drink the liquid form.

             
I was exhilarated my little experiment had worked yet terrified as well. The whole zombie control situation was unbelievable before, now it was also very confusing.

             
It was time for me to get back to reality. Mark would be waiting.

             
But the screaming was getting to me. It would be good to know what was causing it. I looked further down the corridor but couldn’t tell what was down there. Another earwax-melting scream made the decision for me.

             
The screaming was getting louder, as I got closer to its source. I tried commanding it to stop several times but only succeeded in muting it slightly.

             
The signs were now warning me of danger ahead. Rounding a corner I discovered the walkway ended at a wall of heavy duty sound absorbing tiles.

             
I had come to the end of the ride.

             
The screaming was coming from behind the wall.

             
I walked up and looked for some kind of door but there was none. I ripped one of the tiles down. Underneath it were egg cartons. I clawed through those and found a layer of thick foam.

             
After a frustrating moment of silence, I pulled the foam off as well to reveal a cold steel wall underneath. I took a step back and examined it.

             
The layers of material were clearly the result of me trying to quiet the screaming. I blinked and all the layers were gone. Only the steel wall remained. There was a large door in the center of the wall with a viewing slot to the room beyond.

             
A sign above the door warned:
DO NOT FEED THE ANIMAL!

             
The screaming was very loud now as I edged my way up to the slot, afraid to look. I peeked inside and saw…nothing.

             
Suddenly a screaming face filled my field of vision. I screamed in return as I fell back. The whole room wavered in darkness as I almost lost my connection. I went back to the window. The man was still there, red-faced and delirious as he slapped both hands on the wall repeatedly. Spittle sprayed against the window as he raged with tears and snot streaming down his face.

             
I stared at him in shock, this was the man from the Memory Motel! This was the man whose head I was currently exploring as he might have appeared at 25 years old.

             
Realization spilled over me and tears flooded my eyes. They weren’t just soulless zombies, they were prisoners trapped inside their own minds!

             
It took months for me to come to grips with idea that most of the world now roamed the Earth as the undead. It made things immeasurably more devastating to know some portion of each person remained inside, forced to know cannibalism and countless other ghastly acts as hostages in their own bodies.

             
Linus Peterson continued to wail at me through the window, there was no doubt about it. He was stone cold insane. I looked away. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I muted the screaming again as I ran out of the room back the way I’d come.

             
Racing down the metal catwalk, it dawned on me that I didn’t need to waste my time navigating the whole terrible not-so-funhouse.

             
I blinked and arrived at the Prey Portal to check on Mark and the boys.

             
Oh hell, they were no longer alone. Several new display screens showed more heartbeats pounding away.

             
A lot more!

             
It was time to end this experiment and get out there to see what was happening. I cleared my mind of everything but the blue energy, this time I called it into my hands until it formed a ball the size of a small pumpkin.

             
“Rest in peace, Mr. Linus Peterson,” I said.

             
With considerable effort I crushed the ball in my hands until it exploded.

             
I snapped back into myself just in time to see Linus drop off his stool dead as a doornail.

             
There has to be an easier way for me to do that,
I mused as I gathered what I needed for Sam’s medicine.

             
It was strange as far as the medicine was concerned. It was like I’d always known what to get and where to find it.

Chapter 31

“Sanctuary”

             
The sound of gunfire, car engines and shouting could be heard coming from outside the drug store. I sensed we were getting close to emergency status out there. I stuffed the medicine in my pack and secured the straps tightly on my back.

             
I drew my gun as I jogged to the door.

             
The three former looters turned pharmacist killing zombies had their faces pressed against the spider webbed glass and were grunting almost in unison. They clearly desired to be outside but were unable to push the metal bar and open the door.

             
As sophisticated as it had been inside Linus’s head, I had never witnessed the zombies do anything that required thinking unless I told them to do it.

             
They made room for me as I stepped up next to them.

             
A very bizarre chase was underfoot outside the drugstore. At first all I could see were zombies running past the front doors like I was in a viewing station at a marathon.

             
They just kept streaming by at a decent jog. Then came a military-style Humvee I didn’t recognize. The windows were all blacked out so I couldn’t tell who was inside or how many. The vehicle was completely surrounded by jogging zombies.

             
Was it possible they were circling the building?

             
Sure enough, next came the Equinox also surrounded by jogging zombies. Mark was white knuckling the steering wheel going about 8 miles per hour while Sam and Jacob were glued to their windows in the backseat.

             
They were ogling the zombies running right next to them. The zombies, for their part, were just as interested in the boys and were slapping at the windows trying to get through.

             
I waited one more loop to see if I can learn anything more about the Humvee. Maybe it was trying to help but based on my track record I doubted it. This time as they came around a man was poking his head up through the vehicle’s moon roof with a machine gun. I caught just a partial glimpse of a profile before they passed.

             
White guy with a military haircut. Damn, he looked familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had a feeling he hadn’t been a friend from the old days though.

             
It wouldn’t do to let him catch us just to find out how I knew him.

             
As Mark came around the corner I briefly closed my eyes and connected to the zombies. It was getting easier each time. There were 403 of them doing laps around the drugstore. I sent all of them directly at the Humvee with instructions to get inside and eat every person aboard.

             
That much direction was probably unnecessary. The undead would have tried to do that anyway.

             
I walked out the front doors as Mark skidded to a stop in front of me and threw open my door.

             
“GET THE FUCK IN!” he screamed.

             
Even Jacob was too scared to notice his dad just said a naughty. It was important I seem panicky as well.

             
“What’s going on?” I asked as I jumped in and shut the door. Mark didn’t answer, just peeled out and aimed the car for Central Avenue heading south, straight toward Minneapolis. I was sure he was going to kill us the way he veered around stalled cars and dead bodies. But Mark tuned out to be one hell of a driver. I found out later he used to race stock cars in northern Minnesota for a handful of years before he had kids.

             
While he rolled the dice with our lives, I closed my eyes and focused on my connection with the horde back at the drug store. The blue energy was still there but it was just a thin wire now and getting thinner by the second. Apparently, I had a range limitation for my little gift.

             
I jumped to a random zombie near the center of the large circle.

             
The Humvee had stopped and was in bit of a pickle. There were three shooters wedged into the moon roof trying to keep the truck free of zombies. I switched vantage points several times to get a look at them.

             
I was certain I had never seen two of the men but that first guy I saw…him I recognized but couldn’t remember how I knew him.

             
He ran out of ammunition, dropped a magazine out of his rifle and looked down to replace it. He slid the fresh one home and looked up in deep concentration chewing his tongue… chewing his tongue like a cow chews her cud.

             
Then I remembered…Steven!

             
The connection was lost because we were too far away and I was once again sitting in the front seat of the Equinox.

             
Mark was eyeballing me as he drove. He had slowed down considerably.

             
“What is wrong with you? You looked like you were having a stroke or something,” he said.

             
I maybe would have tried explaining myself if he hadn’t been staring at me like I was a serial killer.

             
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine just keep driving, I got some medicine for Sam.”

             
“Did you have to wait for them to mix it? Was it a long fucking line?”

             
He was asking me these questions through clenched teeth as he plowed through the ditch to get around a city bus that was blocking the road.

             
“I was gonna leave your ass! I probably should’ve,” he kept glancing at me as if waiting for me to explain what had taken so long. “I was driving those zombies around in circles like I was in a goddamn video game! Then that truck shows up…” he trailed off.

             
“Thanks for not leaving me,” I said meekly, keeping my eyes on the road.

             
“Oh, fuck you, man! I had my boys with me. I don’t even know you. I had my boys!” he shouted.

             
That one almost got Jake involved again but Mark cut him off.

             
“Not now, Jake!”

             
The boy, to his credit, was wise enough not to correct his father this time.

             
“You say you got some medicine? Great job! Congratulations because I don’t think he even needs it anymore. You were in there so long he got better!”

             
As if on cue Sam starting moaning in the back seat directly behind Mark.

             
“Daddy, I’m gonna be sick,” Sam said in that desperate voice one only acquires during times of extreme intestinal distress.

             
I had never seen anybody projectile vomit before but that day I got to cross that one off my bucket list.

             
Sam sprayed the driver’s seat and consequently the back of his father’s head with a hot stream of partially digested Swedish Fish, Pringles and bile. Perhaps candy and chips were a poor choice to feed a sick child but it’s not like I was at a Whole Foods or something.

             
Mark slammed on the brakes and sat there fuming with both hands on the wheel. I heard Sam whisper a quiet apology and Jacob giggled. A piece of a Swedish Fish dropped from the top of Mark’s head and hit him on the bridge of his nose and just…stuck there.

             
I expected some kind of obscenity-laced tirade but he just sat there stewing silently on Central Avenue halfway between 28
th
and 29
th
streets. Finally, and with great ceremony, he removed the piece of candy from his nose very delicately with his right thumb and index finger. He flicked it at the windshield where it found a new home. It looked like a big red bloody booger. He watched it hang there a moment before turning to me.

             
“I’m done,” he said and got out of the car leaving the door open and stalked up toward an overgrown outdoor garden center where he disappeared from view.

             
“Daddy!” Jacob called from behind me.

             
Sam started crying and soon his brother joined him and they were both wailing. I felt like crying too. Ironically, I wasn’t ready to be a father.

             
I sat there a moment and listened to the boys cry and the door ajar bell ping. My breath was coming out in a foggy vapor from the cold December air. At least it hadn’t snowed yet. That was a mercy for sure. I wondered what the hell I was going to do next. I couldn’t very well leave two small children unsupervised in a car to chase after their nervous wreck of a father with monsters running around willy-nilly.

             
Fortunately, I didn’t have to do anything as Mark came screaming out of the garden center with two zombies hot on his trail. He jumped into the driver’s seat from a dead sprint and had us moving again before the zombies even had a chance to enjoy our exhaust fumes.

             
He was definitely having a really bad day but clearly Mark wasn’t ready to die yet. I eased back in my chair and picked a few stray candy chunks from the sleeve of my coat. The boys stopped crying and were quiet except for the occasional sniffle. We drove on for another half mile or so before Mark broke the silence.

             
“Look, I need to get cleaned up somehow and find a change of clothes and Sam needs…whatever it is you got for him.”

             
“Absolutely! Pick a street and we’ll find a house to spend the night. I’m sure we can find some clothes for you to wear,” I said.

             
I was happy to stop, the interior of the car was getting ripe and the heat wasn’t helping at all. He took a left into an old residential neighborhood off of Lowry Avenue.

             
It was like National Night Out for the undead. I figured we would see more of them the closer we got to the city. I wasn’t wrong. Mark was getting upset again as we drove slowly up one block and down another, navigating around migrant zombies packs.

             
I wasn’t concerned, when I was around they didn’t bother anyone I was with. They just noticed the car and went back to their business. I was too busy scanning for a house with a second story deck.

             
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he said nervously.

             
“What are the alternatives, Mark? We can’t stay in the car all night and you really do need to clean up,” I answered nonchalantly.

             
On McKinley Street I spotted a place I liked that matched my criteria. It was an old two story monster with a walk out deck built onto the roof.

             
I could see a big gas grill set up by the door on the deck just waiting to heat up our water and cook our food.

             
“Boom! There’s home for the night! Slow down here and I’ll go check it out while you circle the block,” I said.

             
“I don’t know…there’s a lot of activity,” He had already missed it by two houses.

             
“Seriously stop! It’s not gonna be better anyplace else, we’re in the fucking city now. We’ll secure the top floor, they won’t be able to get in there.”

             
We were already to the end of the block when he stopped. I opened the door and hopped out.

             
“Just lay on the horn if there’s trouble,” I said as the door shut.

             
The jog back to the house was brisk but refreshingly free from the smell of vomit. I was really hoping he didn’t have to honk. It was a long day and I’d had enough drama for a while.

             
It was late afternoon and the sun was setting when I walked up the driveway toward the old green stucco house. I stopped by the side door to close my eyes and check for zombies inside.

             
Remarkably there weren’t any.

             
The garage, the side and front doors were all securely locked. It looked as if this house had avoided both the undead and looters. I was almost nervous at this turn of good fortune.

             
It was pristine, I didn’t want to break any windows because it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. So I checked all of them carefully and got lucky to find a rear window had been left unlatched. The window stuck when I pushed on it but I was able to open it eventually by banging on it with my palms. I pushed aside some lacy curtains and boosted myself inside.

             
It was a room made for sitting in the hot afternoon sun and sipping iced-teas, not for zombie apocalypses and smelly guys with dried vomit on their clothes. I kept waiting for an apron wearing grandmother to hop out of a broom closet and hit me with a wooden spoon as I tried not track mud across the soft wine-colored carpeting.