Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (29 page)

“Welcome to rural America,”
Scarlet says as takes in the emptiness.

Johnny fidgets with the steering
wheel uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Scarlet.” He looks at her shyly. “I know you
and Greg were close, but I only did what I thought was necessary.”

She holds back the urge to sob
and glances out the window, trying to keep her reddening face out of sight.
“Yeah, I’m going to miss him,” she says. “It’s not like we were actually that
close.” She frowns and turns back to Johnny. “We’ve been running since this
whole thing started. I wish I could have gotten to know him better the way
things were before.”

·20

The man on the gas station
rooftop adjusts his rifle on his shoulder and brings the binoculars to his
eyes. The morning sun is glaring and he shields the front of them with his hand
to make out the people who have jumped the curb and are making their way along
the frontage road.

He can see a man and a woman.
There looks to be someone in the back of the truck, but he can’t tell, only seeing
a tuft of hair poking up over the rear window.

“They’re
alive
,” he says,
lowering the binoculars to his chest. “How am I going to get them to see me?”
he asks aloud.

At the rear of the station, he
takes to a hatch that leads to inside of the building from the roof and slides
part of the way down the ladder, using his feet to guide him along the outer
rails. In his excitement, he nearly falls once he reaches the floor, but
recovers quickly and runs toward the front doors of the gas station.

In the early days, when the dead
first rose, he took refuge here within the construction gates of a remodeled gas
station. The shelves had been stocked and the underground tanks had been
filled, but the gate was to remain until the business officially opened. On the
outskirts of town, he figured it was the best place to go until he could muster
the courage to finally leave. That time never came.

In his mind, the dead were
everywhere. They were in the planters outside and in the light fixtures
overhead. They were in the air and under the dirt, just waiting for him to slip
up. They were biding their time and so was he.

But these people, they would
help. They were new and hadn’t succumbed to the nightmares yet. They obviously
hadn’t or they would be hiding out somewhere just like he was now.

At the front of the station, he
waves his hands frantically, trying to get their attention. He doesn’t dare
shout for fear that the creatures will find him out. With panic in his eyes, he
waves and jumps up and down at the edge of tears.

“You have to see me,” he
whispers. “You have to know I’m here.”

This place had become his deserted
island, a refuge in the wasteland of time and death. All he could ever hope for
was to escape, to live a little longer without the dead finding him. He had
been lucky. He knew to stay quiet and concealed. He knew anything else would be
a death warrant.

“Please see me,” he whines. “In
the name of all that is holy, see me and take me away from here.”

A child spots him from the
backseat of the truck.

“Yes, that’s it, tell them I’m
here,” he mouths the words through cracked lips. “Tell them…”

The girl tugs at the man’s
shoulder beside the truck. She points in the direction of the gas station. They
look his way with surprised expressions. When they see him, he falls to his
knees and thanks God to finally be seen.

“Over there.” Emma points.
“There’s a man at the gas station,” she says, guiding the way with her finger.

“She’s right,” Scarlet agrees.
“He looks pretty happy to see us too.”

Johnny hops back in the truck
and waits for Emma and Scarlet. “Well let’s see what he has to say,” he says.

At the front of the station, the
man waves frantically again. “Turn it off. Turn it off or they’ll hear you,” he
says with a twitch of his head, glancing around nervously.

Johnny turns off the ignition
and steps out of the car. A low hum sounds off in the distance like the loping
of an engine or the faint noise of electricity through a transformer.

“Oh, God, we have to go,” the
man says with a flare of his nostrils. The sweat is thick on his brow and
threatens to seep into his eyes.

“Just calm down,” Johnny
replies. “What the hell is that noise?” he asks, turning his head to focus on
the direction of the sound.

“They know you’re here,” the man
says, beads of sweat dislodge from his eyebrows and trail along to the sparse
facial hair along his cheeks as he turns his head quickly.

“Who,” Johnny asks, “who knows
were here?”

“The dead,” the man says, his
eyes turning to saucers as he gazes down the street at a black mass of curling
forms.

“Holy shit!” Scarlet cries after
casually changing her gaze to the direction the man is staring before realizing
what it is that has him so frightened.

“Oh my God!” Johnny exclaims.
“Get in.” He pulls the door open. “Get in the fucking truck!”

The man jumps in, taking the
center of the front bench seat and scoots over for Scarlet to fit.

“Go go…
go
,” he says,
looking back through the rear window at the gyrating mass of bodies.

Johnny turns the ignition, but
only an irritating clicking sound returns. “Don’t you fucking do this, you
piece of shit!” he says through clenched teeth and tries it again.

“They’re getting closer,”
Scarlet says, turning in her seat and pressing her back against the dashboard
as the dead draw near.

Through blurry eyes, Billy wakes
up in the back seat and stretches. He glances around at everyone looking over
his head through the back window. “What’s going on?” he asks, blinking away the
blur of sleep in his eyes.

Emma wears an expression of
absolute shock as she stares with her back pressed against the rear of the
front seat. She moves uncomfortably and snatches the rifle from the floorboard
and holds it tightly against her chest.

Slowly, Billy turns, following
the gaze of the others, and his jaw drops as the dead come into focus. Bodies
pack the street behind the truck. Stumbling, shambling forms wrench passed one
another as they moan out in unison, letting their voices gather into one
enormous howl.

Ron couldn’t believe what he was
seeing as he read the text in the little bar at the side of the screen. He
spent most of his days chatting with people all around the world. It made him feel
important, like he had friends everywhere. But tonight was different. Tonight,
someone was saying that bodies were washing ashore in Florida.

User fiskiri: It started an hour
or so ago. They’re all black and shit. It’s like they’re covered in tar.

User ronontop: Really?!!! Is
there anything on the news about it?

User fiskiri: No. No one has
said a thing. Total media blackout on this side of the country. Are you hearing
anything on the west coast?

User ronontop: Nothing. Same
fucking stories that are usually on the news this time of the day.

User ronders: you should go out
and poke one with a stick just to make sure Lol

User ronontop: STFU dude, this
is serious.

User fiskiri: Wait. BRB… Some of
them are moving - they might still be alive.

User ronders: shit I was only
kidding

Over the course of a few months,
he had tried desperately to woo the girl from Florida. She was all that he
could think about. He even copied her thumbnail picture and printed it so he
could pin it to the wall in front of his desk to imagine what it would be like
to be with her. He loaded up an image of himself and pasted it in the frame to
make it look like they were together. It was all he could do to actually be
with her.

For hours, he tries to message
her, but she hasn’t come back onto the chat room page since her last message.
He worries over what might have happened to her. At the end of his rope, he
reserves himself to the thought that she might be detained by the police, being
questioned, all alone without anyone to support her. His palms are sweaty from
the idea and he wipes them on his pants leg and fidgets with the keyboard,
outlining the edge as he finds himself deeper in thought.

As unnerving as it is, he logs
off the internet. He needs something to divert his attention until he can talk
to her again. He switches on the television and starts to get absorbed in a
Science Fiction flick on cable. He stuffs his face with
Twinkies
and washes them down
with a couple of bottles of
Mountain Dew
while pondering over what she
was doing, what might be happening to her at this very moment.

Later that night, he turns his
computer on and notices the connection has failed since the last time he used
it. He unplugs the wireless and connects his laptop directly to the line, but
nothing happens. Angrily, he slams his hands down on the countertop in the
kitchen where the connection is.

“What the fuck,” he says and
rests his head on the edge of the counter.

He slicks back his hair and
tries to regain his composure, but the thoughts of what she might be dealing
with keeps battering his imagination.

He gives up on the computer and switches
on the television to one of the news networks, hoping to find something out, but
the same stories are being replayed from earlier in the day.

“Everybody out, we’ve got to get
to the building,” Johnny yells.

“We can’t,” Ron says. “The fence
will never hold ‘em all!”

“We don’t have a fucking choice
here,” Johnny says as he jumps out of the truck. “Now move!”

Everyone exits the truck except
Ron.

“I’m not going out there,” he
says, holding onto the dashboard.

Johnny shakes his head. “Let’s
go,” he says and guides Scarlet toward the gate as she ushers the children
along.

The howling mass is at the back
of the truck when Johnny glances back at Ron. “Last chance, man,” he says,
trying to reason with him.

Ron slams the driver’s side door
as the first decayed fingers swipe at the glass. He shakes his head back and
forth, mouthing the words, “No, I’m not going back in there,” as he still grips
at the dash.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” Johnny
says and clasps the gate behind him. “Hurry, into the building.”

As they push through the front
doors of the gas station, Johnny can hear the ignition clicking away over the
moaning dead. He begins to close the door when he hears the engine crank over.

“He got it started,” Scarlet
says, shielding the children behind her.

“It’s too late,” Johnny says as
he slams the door. “Move to the back.”

As the dead approach the gate
out front, Ron hits the gas, sending a trail of dust up from the wheels as he
speeds away. In the rearview mirror, he can see the bodies begin to buckle the
fence, but he shakes his head and continues swerving along the frontage road
out of town.

“That motherfucker,” Johnny
remarks as he winds along behind Scarlet.

From behind, the dead begin to
scatter through a buckle in the fence and stagger toward the front doors. The
corpses howl and moan as they slap against the glass and beat at it with
gnarled hands, leaving bloody, brown waste in their wake.

“There’s a room back here,”
Scarlet says as she pushes the children through.

Still clutching tightly to her
rifle, Emma enters the back room, closely followed by Billy. They’re guided by
Scarlet as she glances back, praying to see Johnny coming up behind her.

Once everyone is in, Johnny
slams the door and braces himself against the protrusion as the dead pummel it
from the other side.

“Up the ladder,” Scarlet says.
“Get up on the roof!” She turns her attention to Johnny. “Come on, hurry!”

“I can’t, they’ll get through,”
he says, pressing all his weight into the door. “Just go, I’ll hold them off.”

Scarlet bites her lip and
watches the children as the poke through into the sunlight that is coming from
the hatch. She looks back and forth for a moment and breathes heavy when she
makes her decision.

“I’m not leaving you,” she says
and presses herself against the door beside Johnny.

“Are you crazy?!” he yells. “Get
the fuck out of here!”

“I said I’m not leaving without
you.”

Emma stares through the hatch
from the roof, waiting for Scarlet and Johnny to appear.

“Shut the hatch, Emma,” Scarlet
yells. “Don’t open it for anything. No matter what you hear, don’t open it…”
Her voice drowns out below the sounds of the screaming dead.

“No…” Emma says.