The Undead Situation (14 page)

“I’m using you. I need to go east for a while, and I know you’re capable of getting me there. When you told me where you were headed, I decided to take advantage of it.”

“You think you’re going to stay with us?”

“Us?”

We looked at each other blankly. What was she implying?

She grinned, showing that cracked canine. I didn’t know what was funny, so I remained devoid of emotion.

“You really think we’re all going to make it?” Behind her words, I detected a threat.

“I guess not. I know I will. I never considered the rest of you.”

“You’re not unstoppable.” Blaze got up and walked to the door, leaving me alone and full of thought.

* * *

When the undead craze started, I was a different person. Cold, calculated. I took pride in how much of an icy bastard I could be. As I started saving people, I started giving a damn. Just a little damn, almost insignificant, but it changed me. First with Gabe, then I let Blaze Wright in for the ride. The only person I was comfortable caring about was Frank. Everyone else was an abnormality. My old self would consider the new self a complete idiot, a failure. I disagreed. I wasn’t that far gone.

Having people rely on me wasn’t what I had planned. Somehow, I let Gabe convince me, and my policy changed entirely. How did I let that happen? How could a barely-adult, screwed up liar of a girl convince the great Cyrus V. Sinclair to do anything?

The V stands for versatility, I guess. Heaven knows I’d been compromising and versatile with my plans.

I let my gaze wander around the nondescript room. Queen bed with a navy blue comforter. Walk in closet, chest of drawers. Night stands. One of them even had an old glass of water on it. While I stared at the glass, my vision went out of focus. Blaze was right. Not all of us would make it. Most of my conscience wanted only me to make it, and maybe Frank. No, that was selfish. Frank was the reason the plan existed. Frank could make it, but Blaze? Gabe?

The women were unnecessary, and no matter how much I defended her, Blaze was right about Gabe. She was a loose cannon and would be a nightmare to live with. Hell, she was a nightmare no matter what the circumstances.

And Blaze? Black hair, long nose, dark eyes, scar on her right cheek, cigarette pressed between her lips. Many words fit her: efficient, callous, badass. She’d be useful in surviving, but I knew she’d kill me without a nanosecond of hesitation if she wanted to. In fact, I’d bet she’d leave me to an agonizing death-by-zombie if it granted her a few extra minutes of escape time.

I admired her ruthlessness and, honestly, aspired to be like that. It would make surviving in an undead world a lot easier.

However, surviving had been easy so far, so did it even matter? We had a gas-guzzling behemoth loaded with weapons, ammunition, and food. Resources weren’t an issue. The only issue was the conflict in the group I was surviving with.

I thought about how good Orange Hi-C tasted with Sour Patch kids. Talk about a delightful sugar rush. I’d have to raid a convenience store if it was…well, convenient. Just because most of the world happened to be living dead didn’t mean I’d skimp on what I liked.

As long as the situation didn’t worsen, everything would work out. Even if the players didn’t get along, we still had better odds than most people out there. We weren’t afraid of the undead and we could defend ourselves. What more could someone ask for?

Scratch that question. I knew what other people would ask for. The zombies to disappear, life to return to normal, what have you.

Good thing I wasn’t other people.

After pondering my existence a while longer, I left the bedroom to find the rest of them sitting around in the living room. Blaze and Frank sat in silence on a beige couch patterned with golden leaves and flowers. I wasn’t shocked to see Gabe sitting in an armchair across from them looking anywhere but at us. She was angry and I couldn’t blame her.

I sat between the veterans and propped my feet on the coffee table. To the side of my boots was
Better Homes and Gardens
with a glorious chocolate cake on its cover. Every part of me craved that confection the moment I saw it.

No one was speaking. It was nice to zone out and forget about killing, escaping, surviving, and anything related to those verbs and just stare at a magazine cover It was becoming harder to clear my mind as the days went by.

“What were ya’ll doing when you found out?” Frank asked.

Our heads turned. The women stared at him like he was crazy, and I would’ve too, if I didn’t know any better. Frank loved a good story, and now seemed like a fitting time to share. Frank knew my story, and it wasn’t spectacular, but it would break the ice.

“I was at work,” I said.

“Where did you work?” Gabe interrupted.

“24-hour Walgreens. I was a pharmacist working graveyard shift.”

Gabe snickered. “I figured you’d do something more evil. Like killing baby animals or evicting people.”

Ignoring her, I continued. “I was working with another guy named Rick. It was probably two in the morning, so there wasn’t anyone in the store. Just a teenage kid figuring out what kind of condom to buy. Doors slid open and this woman shuffled in. She was white with a kind of blue undertone. I didn’t give her more than a glance, because I never look at the customers. Rick was on his break, and I was encased in the pharmacy section of the store. It’s the kind that’s all decked out with hard plastic. Probably bullet proof.

“I was sucking on a mouthful of cherry Jolly Ranchers, and I went back to separating the rest of the flavors. Then I heard the Condom Kid yelling. The woman grabbed at him and he kept pushing her away. She bit him on the arm. Her neck was chewed out and some of her face. The kid started gushing blood. I called the cops.

“One thing I knew back when things were normal was to never get in the way. I didn’t know she was a zombie. I didn’t have time to think about it. It’s not like you see something like that and go, ‘Yeah, living dead right there.’ But I did know if I killed her and played hero, I’d probably go to jail for it. Never mind she was trying to eat that kid. He ran out of the store and she followed him. Ten minutes later the cops showed up, I explained what happened, then took off the rest of the night.

“That was the last night I worked. I knew something was wrong. It all felt cliché, like in horror movies. I went home and everything happened. The news, power failure, total chaos. I left a few times to stock up on supplies, but that was it.”

My story ended on a boring note, just like it started. Not everyone had to have an epic story of how they found out zombies were real, how they survived and coped with it.

A memory of my childhood popped up. There was a series of books for teenagers at the library called “Coping With.” Coping with divorce, coping with anxiety. I wondered if twenty years into the future there was going to be a “Coping with zombies” or “Coping with killing your undead relatives and friends.”

“I’d just gotten back from my second tour in Iraq,” Blaze said, her voice distant and a little dreamy. “I had nowhere to go because I’d been in the military for so long. So, I went to my half-sister’s house. She needed someone to watch her son, Joey, and said I could live there if I took care of him. Just until I figured things out for myself.”

I pictured Blaze Wright as a different person pre-Zombie era. When she spoke of her previous life she even sounded different—a little less cold and unmoved.

“I lived there for a few weeks before news of some new virus caught wind. Carolyn, my half-sister, was bitten and went straight to the hospital. The TV said people were typically quarantined for a few days. She told me to take care of Joey until she got back. I agreed, because what else was I going to do?

“Anyway, I woke up and went downstairs. The front door was wide open. Joey was eight and had a tendency to let himself out to play in the front yard. He’d never shut the door no matter how angry his mom and I got. When I went to close it, I heard noises in the kitchen. You know. The chewing noises they make when they’re eating.

“I shut the door and locked it before going into the kitchen. The neighbor, Bill, was eating Joey. His stomach was ripped up like a grenade got to him. Blood was everywhere. Bill didn’t notice me. I knew what he was. I didn’t have a hard time believing things like that. I picked up Carolyn’s cast iron pan out of the dish rack and beat his head in. Joey started twitching while I was doing that, so I crushed his skull, too.

“I didn’t have many things. I went upstairs and packed my sack and got my gun out of the closet. I just had a little 9mm and a couple of extra clips. I had no idea where to go, but I figured I owed it to Carolyn to tell her about Joey. Maybe save her. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I would’ve realized a hospital was the worst place to go.”

Blaze shook her head. “That’s another story, though. The hospital and everything after.”

Frank looked unusually sympathetic towards her. “How did you end up at the prison?”

Her eyes gleamed with rage. “I had the Mustang at that point. When I got to Monroe, I stopped at a roadblock they’d created. They jumped me. I killed two of them.

“It’s all so funny. Right when Carolyn left for the hospital she said to me, ‘Bea, you’re almost thirty and you have no kids, no husband. What’s it going to take for you to find that? The end of the world?’ I guess she was wrong, though. End of the world and still no kids, no husband.”

Gabe piped in. “Did you even want that? A couple of kids, a demeaning husband?”

Every once in a while, Gabe suppressed her stupidity and said something insightful. This was one of those times. Blaze looked at her and shook her head.

“I can’t have kids. I got a hysterectomy before I went into the military. As for a husband…most men I’ve met don’t like the fact I have bigger balls than they do.”

We all chuckled. It was true about her being overly masculine. I couldn’t imagine any normal man wanting to be with a woman who could handle herself better than he could. Most men wanted to protect their women, but Blaze didn’t need protecting. I liked that about her.

Frank turned to Gabe. “What about you, firecracker?”

Blaze’s face went blank, and I forced my face to do the same. After what she had just told me, I wanted to kill Gabe for her dishonesty.

“I don’t have a story. It just happened.”

I was expecting her to lie and make up some half-assed story about the East Coast and her assassin past. When she didn’t, I wasn’t sure what was going on. She told me the tale easily enough. Maybe it was because she knew Blaze knew the truth? Or she just wasn’t in the mood to talk. I wasn’t sure.

Out of habit, I patted down my vest pockets, just to take inventory of what I had. One pocket had a familiar box in it. I pulled out a fun-size container of Dots.

Score, Cyrus.

Frank, keen on keeping the ball rolling, launched into his story. I chewed on stale sugar dots and listened.

“Well, I’ve been living down in Little Rock since as long as I can remember. Then I got antsy and moved up here to Washington, up in the mountains. Built me my cabin, real good. Then, when I was in town, I heard about the virus and whatnot. I wondered how Cyrus was doing, so I packed a bag an’ made my way to Seattle.”

“How did you know where I was? I didn’t tell you when I left Little Rock.”

“Tracked you down,” was his reply. Apparently, that part of the story wasn’t up for discussion.

Stillness filled the room again, leaving everyone to their own thoughts.

Moments later Gabe spoke, asking a question that was in the back of our minds. “Why do you think some of them are fast? Why don’t they stay that way?”

Frank and I both shrugged. As of late, I didn’t have time to consider many whys.

“The warden had a theory,” Blaze said. “She thought it had to do with rigor mortis. It doesn’t set in for a few hours, which is about how long the zombies can run. Once it sets in, they’re slow.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Everything starts decomposing after death. Once rigor goes away, the decomposition is probably grave enough to make them slow.”

Once a few more theories were shared, we stopped talking. There were things to consider. Our plan of action, for one. Monroe was teeming with life, more so than Seattle had been. The cars we heard earlier might be driven by hostiles, just like the men at the prison. Heaven knew I didn’t want to run into a fiasco like that again. Even if they were good Samaritans, I’d rather not deal with it.

Frank pulled out a map from his coat pocket . He spread it out on the coffee table in front of us and we found our location. We mapped out a way across to the next town. So far, the highways and freeways had been drivable, but if there were a safer, less populated way to get to Sultan, there would be no plausible reason not to take it.

I voiced my thoughts to the group.

“We were on West Main Street before we pulled off,” I said, setting my finger on the road. “I guess we took a right about here at Morris Street.”

After some careful analysis, we decided there were three ways to get out of town. The first was to take Highway 2 due east, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. Frank told us it was a narrow, two-lane road, and was packed when he came through it weeks before, so it was probably too dangerous.