What We Left Behind (16 page)

“We need to keep moving,” David says. His voice is cold and uncaring.

“She needs a minute,” I say, still holding Jane, hugging her tight. I think I know what she’s feeling. She’s still caught in the moment, feeling the icy cold grip of that zombie’s arm around her neck. She needs to feel a heartbeat, lungs filling with air, the soft texture of my skin, the warmth of life.

“We don’t have a minute.”

I glare at David, and I’m sure my eyes reveal a level of disdain mere words could never adequately express.

“She can have a minute at the top of the hill,” he says.

“I’ll be fine,” Jane says, pulling away from me.

Jane picks up her pack, leaving me staring at the scarred, dark zombie bleeding out on the concrete. His fingers twitch, but I convince myself that’s just reflex.

I lean down to grab my pack when Steve charges at me. His teeth are clenched. His boots pound on the gravel. His eyes scare me with their intensity. He swings his steel pipe at my head. I drop. The pipe connects with a zombie crouching over me.

I collapse on top of my pack, feeling hands clawing at my back. Sharp fingernails scrape against my shirt.

Steve jumps over me and continues striking at the fallen zombie. Dark, black blood sprays outward with each hit. Zee moans as he lies there on the ground with his brains sliding half out of his crushed skull.

Steve pants for breath.

“I—I had no idea,” I say, lying on my pack looking up at him.

Another zombie stumbles into view from behind the bus. Steve catches him with a left-handed swing, squishing his head against the side of the bus with a single, powerful blow. Blood drips onto the road as the dead body slumps to the concrete.

“We have got to move,” David cries, and I have no doubt about his advice this time. I scramble to my feet, grab my pack, and jog off after him. Steve brings up the rear, allowing Jane and me to travel safely in between him and David.

We run for a couple of hundred yards. We’re no longer on the lookout for zombies. We know where they are. We just run.

The pack bounces on my back. Leather straps bite at my shoulders. I try to time my run, but my pack moves awkwardly regardless of what I do. Sweat drips from my forehead. A sharp pain stabs at my side. I’m sucking in huge breaths. I can’t keep running like this.

David leads us into the shade of an oak tree hanging over the road.

Jane drops her pack behind the tree. I drop mine on top of hers and it rolls to one side. I’m ready to go on without it. We’re all wearing greaves, but they’re starting to rub, causing blisters on my shins.

Jane and I collapse on our backpacks, using them as seats as we stare back at the intersection. We’re out of sight, half behind the trunk of the oak tree. The shade is a welcome relief.

The boys are more astute. They check around us, looking further up the hill, in the adjoining yards, and down a side street. When they’re satisfied we’re not in any immediate danger, they join us and rest.

I take a drink from my canteen.

“Damn, that was close,” I say.

“Too close,” Jane replies. “Way too close.”

Her voice has lost its quiver. She’s regained her composure, but I wonder about the nightmares she’ll have in the weeks to come.

“Look,” David says, pointing at the bus. We’re maybe a quarter of a mile from the main intersection, well over halfway up the gently sloping hill.

Zee swarms around the bus. There must be at least twenty of them. Some of the zombies are crouching, sniffing at the ground where Jane and I fell. Others are feasting on their fallen comrades. A handful of them wander up the hill behind us, but they’re staggering like drunken men, moving without any real sense of direction. They look just as likely to wander into one of the open yards as to follow us. Several others head back up the other side of the hill, following our scent back to the old house, and it’s clear our run into the crosswind has left less of a scent trail to follow.

“This is good,” David says, but he stops mid-sentence.

“Good?” I ask. “How is this good?”

“Don’t you see?” he replies. “We’re drawing them in, drawing them away from the parallel roads we’ll use for our return journey.”

I guess that’s good. Only I wish such goodness hadn’t just about cost Jane and me our lives.

“We’ve got to stay out of sight,” Steve says.

“And on the move,” David adds.

As much as I want to rest, I know we can’t. Jane and I grab our backpacks and follow David and Steve. The boys cut in and head up the uneven pavement, staying close to the parked cars but keeping off the road.

Corpses litter the front yards. Sometimes there’s little more than a femur or a dismembered hip stripped to the bone by zombies, birds, maggots, and ants.

So much for watching the rear. Jane and I have our heads down, crouching beneath the weight of our packs. Going uphill is tough. I fight against my burning muscles, forcing them on. The wind gusts around us. Leaves fall from the trees.

I step over a rib cage and spine devoid of any other body parts. White sun-bleached bones make a mockery of life. And I’m reminded of the skeletons I saw in museums growing up—empty skulls, lifeless bones from epochs lost in time. It seems tragic to me that bones endure for tens of thousands of years when life does not.

I gag.

It’s all I can do not to throw up.

“Waypoint,” David says. He points to an abandoned garage on the corner of a side street. “Take that road for half a mile and then turn right and you’ll find a main road running parallel to this one.”

David is always thinking about contingencies, always planning an escape. My mind is blank. It’s all I can do to acknowledge him. I’m ready to drop my pack and go on without any supplies, but we could be stuck in the city for another couple of days.

Most of the weight I’m carrying is water. If I drop my water, I have no right to any other canteen. Water is so goddamn heavy. Steve would share his water, but it would be wrong of me to expect that of him so I press on, putting one boot in front of the other.

Onward, upward, I tell myself. Just keep moving, Haze.

I’m so busy pushing off up the hill I don’t realize we’ve already made it to the top. My head hangs low. Sweat drips down my neck. All I can see is broken, crumbling concrete and weeds falling beneath my boots. Suddenly, every step I take goes down and I’m confused. I want to go up.

“OK, let’s take a break,” David says. I stare out over a vast valley crisscrossed with streets and homes. There are tens of thousands of roofs stretching as far as I can see. We’re in the city proper. I can see the mall in the valley and beside it the animal hospital.

Hundreds of zombies wander through a distant intersection and my heart sinks.

We sit in the shade of a massive car dealership sign that must have once provided great advertising from up here on the hill. Shedding my pack, the first thing I go for is my water. It’s warm, but I don’t care, gulping it down.

David pulls out a pair of binoculars and points at the map.

“We’re so close,” I say.

“We might as well be a million miles away,” he replies, peering through the binoculars and comparing the sight before us with his map. David hands the binoculars to Steve, who peers through them intently, studying the intersection in detail.

“Look at that,” Steve says, handing the binoculars back and pointing at a rundown house on the corner overlooking the intersection. A solitary zombie stands on the grass staring at the chaotic jumble of zombies on the street.

David peers through the binoculars.

“That’s what I saw,” Steve says. “That night in the camp.”

“Well, he’s an old one, that’s for sure,” David says.

“See how everyone else is in motion, but not him. I’m telling you. He’s in charge.”

David looks sideways at Steve, but he doesn’t say anything. Zombies have no leader. Zee moves as one. He has no need for someone to direct him.

David hands the binoculars to me. I peer through them. The zombie on the corner has a stooped back. He’s bald. I blink and realize he’s a she. It’s hard to make out facial features, but she looks horrible. It’s hard to believe she was once human. I go to say something but David cuts me off.

“Either way, that’s a death trap,” he says as I hand the binoculars to Jane. “Drink up. We’ve got about five minutes before we move out.”

“Where are we going?” Jane asks.

“Well, we’re not going down there,” David replies. He points at the map. “Sorry, Haze, but this is the end of the line. Time to go home. It was a valiant effort, but not even a full contingent of marauders could go any further.

“From here, we’ll box Zee, cutting across to this access road running parallel with the main road, then we’ll take this road east for a block and head out of the city. Once we get to the hotel, we’ll dump our packs so we can make double time back to the commune. With a bit of luck, we can make it home before nightfall.”

My head drops. Steve squeezes my leg, patting my thigh gently. He gets up and walks off. I’m so discouraged, I don’t care where he’s going. It’s all I can do to stare at the horde in the valley and realize David’s right.

“Zombies are like cockroaches,” David says. “For every one you see, there’s five or ten more hiding in the shadows.”

I’m silent.

Jane puts her arm around my shoulders to comfort me.

“Have something to eat,” David says. “You’re going to need your strength.”

I’m not hungry.

I’m numb.

David and Jane chew on some jerky while I sit there looking out across the vast valley. Zombies amble through the parking lot next to the distant intersection. There’s a strip mall on the far corner, opposite the animal hospital.

I don’t want to admit defeat, but David’s right. We’re out of options.

Gravel crunches softly under the tread of a tire. The sound is so soft and gentle I barely stir, but then I realize this is a sound I haven’t heard in almost a decade. I turn and look and a car has pulled up silently beside us. But that’s impossible.

“What the?” David says, getting to his feet.

Steve smiles from behind the wheel of a red Cadillac. The car is covered in dust, but it looks new nonetheless. The tires are almost flat, sagging as they squish the road with the weight of the vehicle.

Steve gets out of the car carrying a clipboard with dozens of keys hanging on it.

“How did you get her started?” David asks.

“I didn’t,” Steve replies.

“You want to go down there?” I ask, incredulous. I love Steve for being so ambitious, but this is my quest and even I think he’s nuts.

“Oh, no,” Steve replies. He stands there with the door open and rocks the steering wheel slightly but it doesn’t move. It’s locked in place.

Steve smiles at me, saying, “I’m bowling for zombies.”

“You’re what?” Jane asks, standing beside David.

Steve leans in and releases the handbrake. Slowly, the Cadillac rolls forward, gathering speed as it careens down the hill. David, Jane, and I stand there speechless as the Caddie thunders down the road. The car plows into a herd of zombies, sending bodies flying as it races through the intersection crushing everyone in its path. The tires leave bloodstained tread marks lining the road for over a hundred yards. Wounded zombies crawl away into the shadows.

Steve jumps in the air, shaking his fist at the sky as he yells, “STEEE-RIKE!”

I burst out laughing.

The Cadillac keeps going for the best part of a quarter mile. It clips a few parked cars, squishing a couple of zombies against a bus before it finally collides with a lamppost well beyond the mall. There’s a trail of dead zombies stretched out behind the car. Several of them saw the Caddie coming and wandered into its path like moths drawn to a flame. Some of them limp away, but most of them are dead. Dark splatter marks seep into the pale concrete.

“Damn!” David cries with excitement. His face lights up.

“You’re up,” Steve says, throwing David a set of keys. “Here’s the keys for another stick shift. Be sure to lock the steering wheel before you roll.”

“How did you?” I ask.

“My dad,” Steve says. “He used to sell Caddies. I practically grew up on a car lot. We’d move them around all the time, setting up sales displays and stuff.”

David checks the description on the key ring and jogs over to a car parked in the front row as Steve hands me the clipboard. He looks at the keys with the mock interest of a connoisseur surveying a wine list, saying, “I’m going to go for something a bit lighter as my last bowl pulled to the left a little. I’m thinking I need back-to-back strikes or at least a spare to stay ahead of David.”

I must be grinning from ear to ear as Steve smiles at me and says, “We’re going to make it, Haze.”

I nod.

Tears of joy well up in the corner of my eyes, but I hold them back. I love him. In that moment, I realize love is more than a feeling—it’s a connection, a partnership. I want to tell Steve that, but the timing is wrong and he jogs away. Maybe I’m being overly emotional with all we’ve been through, but I don’t think so. Steve has taught me that love is never giving up regardless of the odds.

David has the driver’s door open on a royal-blue Cadillac and is leaning into the door frame, pushing it slowly forward off the car lot. He steers with one hand, using his shoulder to get leverage.

I lean the clipboard against a lamppost. Jane and I run to help, pushing the car from behind. David jumps in as we get onto the hill. He lines the car up, using the handbrake to bring the Caddie to a stop on the incline. Already dozens of zombies are making their way up the road toward us.

I watch through the rear window as David makes fine adjustments, carefully steering the Caddie into position. He pulls the key from the dead ignition and locks the steering wheel in place before he jumps out. Jane and I don’t have to push, but we do anyway, joining in the fun.

The Cadillac thunders down the road, easily crushing a dozen zombies, but it veers slightly to one side, taking another couple of zombies as it flies through a guardrail and into the mall parking lot. Bodies lie scattered like bowling pins. The Caddie comes to a halt with its ass sticking in the air. The trunk pops open.