Текст книги "Vaccination"

Автор книги: Phillip Tomasso

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

The car was done. Had it. Finished. The rims rolled on pavement. Didn’t matter. From where I stood on Latona, it was clear even an SUV would never make it traveling up and down Ridge Road. It was congested as fuck.

Dave threw Josh over his shoulder. Allison and I followed with the weapons. The cemetery gate was open. We walked on in.

I was anxious. Any spot of grass looked good to me. “What about here,” I said, pointing.

“I think under a tree would be better,” Dave said.

Allison touched my arm. It was meant to quiet me. I worked. Instead of talking, I ground my teeth. Felt muscles tighten in my jaw.

Dave walked to the center of the cemetery – it was not a big burial ground at all. Less than a street block. Place was old. Full, mostly. But it was peaceful, too, despite the main road traffic on two of its four sides.

I dug the shovel blade into the ground. Stepped on the rim.

Dave put up a hand. “I’ll dig this one.”

I nodded, pushed the handle toward him, and walked to stand near Allison.

“What time you think it is?”

“No idea,” she said. “Eight? Nine o’clock? Midnight? Not a clue.”

I closed my eyes and pressed a fist to my forehead.

“What?”

“I had my phone charging in the Lexus.” My phone, the charger . . . gone.

“Chase, I’m sorry.”

I wanted to say we’re going back. That I need to get my phone. That would not go over well. Not after my speech to Dave. He’d never understand the difference. Maybe there wasn’t one. “I’m fucked, Allison. If my kids aren’t at my place, if they aren’t there waiting for me, I’m fucked.”

“Don’t say that. We’re going to get through this.”

She didn’t get it. I wasn’t going to argue with her. If my kids weren’t at my place, I give up. I’ll totally surrender. Because this life wasn’t worth a shit before. Without my kids though? It’s not even comprehensible why I’d consider staying. She did not need to know that. Not yet. I knew it. It was all that mattered.

There was nothing more to say. I had a plan. Find my kids and get us all to Mexico, or bust.

Dave was a beast. I leaned my back against the tree. I felt helpless watching. I wanted to help. Dave didn’t need it. He removed chunks of hard earth with determination, and precision. He’d outlined a rectangle and was now diligently scooping out the center.

It would not take him long.

Allison grabbed my arm, pointed.

The shoveling was a steady noise. The shovel striking earth, scraping rock, dirt landing in a pile.

With no cars. No horns. No anything – Dave might as well have been a police siren screaming.

“Dave, hold up,” I said.

Three zombies were in the cemetery. They ambled over our way. I looked around the tree. There were more. Outside the fence, groups roaming aimlessly about. They bumped into things.

All of them seemed slow.

It was too dark to make out much. The streetlights were on. Must have been timer activated. “We’ve got to be quiet,” I said.

“Dave,” Allison said.

I turned around. Dave had stormed off. He held the shovel like a baseball bat. He went at all three zombies.

“Shit,” I said, “stay here.”

I snatched Allison’s hedge trimmers and followed after Dave.

Dave took a batting stance feet from all three of the zombies. He had earned their interest. They moved closer, one sluggish foot-dragging a step at a time.

He did not wait.

Before I reached him, his back-up, he’d swung. A head flew off the one zombie on his right. The body stood, arms outstretched for a long five-second count, before toppling over. In those five seconds, Dave had destroyed the remaining two creatures. He drove the shovel blade into the throat of the one standing in the center, and then spun to his right, full circle, and slammed the side of the shovel into the skull of the zombie on his left.

Once that last zombie fell, Dave used the shovel the way a shovel was intended to be used and dug off the creature’s head, stepping onto the shovel rim with all his weight until the zombie was fully decapitated.

I stopped a few feet behind him, bent over, hands on my knees. “We need to get out of here,” I said. I whispered. Dave handled these three fine, but the sheer numbers surrounding us was not on our side. The more I looked around, the more I was noticing – like looking up at a night sky and not seeing a single star, but then all at once you realize the entire sky is starlit. Only, this was way different. “I mean now.”

“I have to finish burying my brother,” he said.

“I get that, Dave. We’ll come back. Nothing is going to disturb him where he is. He’s actually safer than we are. But us,” I pointed at him, at me, back at him, “we’re in some shit here. We have no car. Once those walkers realize we’re here – once they smell us, we’re fucked. Okay? Fucked.”

Dave walked at me. His chest in my face. “Go if you want. I’m finishing the job.”

He’d kept his voice down, but the anger and disappointment were clear. Not hidden at all. “Dave,” I said.

“You don’t get it, do you, Chase? You’ve made these last few days all about you. Where you need to go. What you need to do. I get it, man. I got it. Your kids are important to you. They became important to us. All of us. Even Jason was on board. But you didn’t see it. Never saw it. Thought everyone was against you. Or that every one of us was some kind of obstacle bent on preventing you from saving your kids. Even the way you treat Allison,” he said.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I said between grit teeth. My eyes couldn’t have been open more than narrow slits. I felt my face grow hot, hotter.

“You think I’m just some adult dummy, some retarded guy that has to have his brother looking out for him all the time. You might even be right. I suck at math, keeping a job, getting by at most regular things that people like you take for granted, but you know why Josh always had my back? Because if anything, I know people. I have . . . had a ton of friends. Good friends. The reason for that wasn’t because they felt bad for me, because I was slow, it was because I knew what it meant to be a friend. To put other people’s needs before my own, assface. I think once you figure that out, you won’t be such a dick all the time. You might even start to figure out who you really are. I think I caught a glimpse of you here and there. You’re not that big a dick. Be nice to see someday, to meet the real you. Now, excuse me, I’m headed back that way.”

His forearm swept me aside, and he walked back toward the tree, toward Josh’s corpse, and to where Allison stood with arms folded. She’d been watching the exchange, no doubt. She’d want to know what was said. Someday, if we got out of this, I might even tell her.

We knelt around the shallow grave. Dave was a mess. His tears streamed freely. He made no move to wipe them away. Somehow, we’d managed to dig quietly for the better part of an hour. The roaming zombies stayed outside of the fenced area. At one point, Allison took out a female monster with her hedge clippers. Stabbed it through the chest, and then spread the blades wide like the jaws on a shark before taking of its head.

“My brother could have done a lot with his life. Could have been anything he wanted. I held him back. Because of me, he sacrificed all he could have had. I told him all the time how much I appreciated everything he did for me. I never let a day go by that I didn’t thank him for sticking by me, and he’d punch me in the arm, and,” Dave stopped, lowered his head. He brought an arm up and dropped his eyes onto the sleeve. “He’d punch me in the arm, and he’d tell me he loved me. He always told me he loved me.”

It got me. His love. His openness about the love they had. It hit me hard. I closed my eyes. I felt like I’d been spying on an intimate and private moment between family. I didn’t belong. Dave made it clear to me, and I realized now how right he’d been, that I was an outsider. Selfish. A dick. This wasn’t about me. I was in it. But it wasn’t about just me. I’d made it that way. Made it appear that way.

“I love you, Joshua. I miss you already. I still want you to be here. I don’t want you to be gone,” Dave said.

Allison moved closer, put a hand on Dave’s shoulder. It was all the initiative he needed. He pulled her in tight. His arms wrapped around her. He had his face buried in her neck. I could hear the both of them crying.

And being the dick that I am, that I still am, I felt left out. This was Dave’s moment. Dave’s time, and I felt left out.

My apartment was just east of the I-390 overpass. We couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile away.  We were spent. We had nothing left to give. Walking even a quarter of a mile seemed an impossible task.

Dave and Allison sat leaning against the tree until they fell asleep, and I let them sleep. I kept watch.

For whatever reason, not one zombie entered the cemetery all night. Perhaps the smell of death permeated from the ground. Maybe that dissuaded their attention.

I fisted a small handful of loose dirt. “I don’t know if you’d want this, but I’ll keep an eye on Dave for you,” I said, and sprinkled the dirt back in place over Josh’s grave. “I’ll do my best to see that he gets through this. He’s a pretty good guy. He’s taught me some shit. It isn’t so much a favor to you, or to him as much as I like the guy. I don’t deserve him as a friend, but, in time, I hope to. To be worthy of that.”

“You mean that?”

I jumped back. “Are you serious right now?”

Dave was behind me. He hugged me. “I am your friend, Chase.”

I almost shrugged his arm off. Instead, I patted his massive forearm. “Thank you, buddy. Thank you.”

“We’re going to find your kids, Chase. I promise you. We’ll find them.”

When Dave finally let go, I just stared up into that sky, at all the stars and wondered where on earth my kids might be.

Chapter Thirty-Six

When Char woke up, first thing she noticed was sunlight from the slightly parted curtain filling the room. She shielded her eyes with the back of one hand, as she threw off the bedspread and sheets. With bare feet planted on icy hardwoods, she shivered. She thought she’d seen slippers before going to bed, but wasn’t sure where. Right now, she needed to use the bathroom more than she felt the need to search for slippers.

Cash still slept. It had to be after seven. She wanted to be up before daybreak and on the move. Something about the room must have tricked them into getting a good night’s rest. Sleeping had been rough the last two nights. Last night was not only refreshing, it was appreciated.

Before Char could remove the desk she’d slid in front of the door to block it, she needed to un-stack everything she’d piled on top. It didn’t really make the desk heavier, it just ensured things would fall off and wake her if anyone, or anything, tried pushing their way in.

As she pulled off dolls, snow globes, books and dirty clothing, trophies, a lamp and crystal unicorn shaped knick-knacks, she listened. It sounded quiet beyond the bedroom. No feet shuffled. No grunts. No moans. Most of all, no smell.

The dead smelled. There was no explaining it, and more importantly, no mistaking it. She often felt like a wolf when walking the streets with her little brother. Her nose raised, nostrils flared, head cocking from one side, then the other. She wasn’t trying to see the dead. She was trying to smell them. Thing is, you see one, it’s obvious. They don’t hide. They don’t wait to attack you. One spots you, you spot it, and you run. And they chase. And the dead can run. Fast. Hunger drives them, no doubt.

But if you smell them, you can avoid them. Avoid being chased.

Chases are bad. It’s how they’d gotten sidetracked. The plan once leaving her mom’s house had been simple. Go find dad. She knew how to get to his apartment on the main roads. The zombies forced her and Cash to find alternate ways the last day and a half.

In this house, whatever house they were in, she did not smell the dead. At least not upstairs. Not near the still shut, still mostly barricaded bedroom door.

She cast a look at Cash as she pushed the desk away from the door. By the bed, leaning against the mattress was her pick-head axe. It was thirty-six inches long and just under fifteen pounds. Swinging it was not a problem. Crushing a dead’s head, simple enough.

Char needed strength freeing the blade or pick side once embedded inside a skull. She hated having to step on the dead’s neck and yank every time, especially when more dead were around, and there was only little time to retrieve the weapon currently impaled in a dead’s brain.

She decided to leave the axe. The house was silent. Cash would know it was there. If he woke up, he might even take more comfort seeing the handle of the axe near him, than his own big sister.

Char twisted the knob slow ly and opened the door but a fraction. She knew the hinges squeaked. But only at about twenty-five degrees. She also knew the third step from the bottom at the edge of the hallway squeaked. Normally, she’d never remember either thing. Currently, knowing what makes noise, when, and how, could be the difference between survival and becoming dinner for the dead.

Once she squeezed through the doorway, Char moved stealthily down the hall, past the staircase, toward the bathroom. She stopped at the banister, and gave the downstairs a once-over. Nothing looked troubling, the front door was shut. The chain engaged.

She sniffed at the air. Stale. Musty. The house must have been vacant since the virus spread, since the vaccination, meant to stop the H7N9, infected most of the United States. That was how long ago now? A year ago? Almost two?

In the bathroom, Char shut the door. Protocol was broken. She knew it. She engaged the simple twist lock on the center of the knob. The wood door was solid. Old houses were great that way. Hardwood floors, gum wood trim, and when taking shelter from the dead, solid doors. Nice.

If Cash ever went to the bathroom alone, she’d knock him in the head with a Bible and hope some common sense sank in. He was nine though. A kid. Stupid, even. Forget the fact he’s a boy, and boys just don’t think things through. At fourteen, Char knew better.

Usually.

Except this time.

When she finished with the toilet. She depressed the handle. It flushed. The bowl filled, her waste swirled and sank and shot through the plumbing.

Running water.

She closed her eyes, shook her head.

When she opened them, she knew what she’d see. The drawn shower curtain. How long had it been since she’d bathed? Just two days?

It couldn’t hurt. A fast shower. Even if the water was icy cold. The idea of a bar of soap ... wait, wait ... she parted the curtain, and yes, yes, soap, shampoo – conditioner, a razor! A razor!

She had to do it. A fast shower. And Cash could take one too. God knows he smelled raw. She must, too, it was just harder to admit. Easier to blame the stank on him.

She stepped out of her clothing, turned on the faucet and almost cried. Water flowed. But not just cold. Hot, too. She was going to have a hot shower. It felt like Christmas. The smile she wore felt so wide the corners of her mouth already began to ache. The muscles rarely used, were flabby and out of shape. She’d have to try smiling more, just wasn’t much these days’ worth smiling over. She missed living with her dad, her parents being apart, and now this . . . zombies.

While it felt like it was over in moments, Char knew she must have been in the shower for over half an hour. The hot water was barely tepid. If Cash was going to shower, he’d at least need water that wasn’t freezing. Or else she could just imagine him arguing with her about even getting in. And he was going to shower. Icy cold water, or not. The boy needed soap embedded in his skin, if not a flea-bath dip to boot.

She towel dried, pulled her newly scented Rain Forest hair under her nose and breathed it in. She didn’t know if the dead would smell her, the way she smelled them, but she also knew the fresh, clean hair would only last the day. By tomorrow, she’d begin to stink again. And so would Cash.

Char decided she’d put the bathroom supplies into her back-pack. Take the items with them. She wasn’t sure an actual rain forest smelled like this shampoo, but she was sure . . .

She took in a quick breath, lips closed tight and sniffed.

She released her hair, let it fall over her shoulder and turned her head toward the closed bathroom door. She sniffed again.

Her heart beat accelerated.

Dead.

Outside the door? Could be downstairs still. The smell, however, was strong enough to make her think—

Cash!

She spun around. The axe—she’d left her father’s weapon in the bedroom. Cash knew how to use it. It was heavy for him, but he was getting better at wielding it.

The sink counter-top held a bar of soap, a cup with three toothbrushes, and a can of shaving cream.

With freshly shaved legs forgotten, Char opened the medicine cabinet. Pill bottles, creams, disposable Bic Razors. Nothing she could see working as an effective tool to fight the dead.

Under the sink, she found only one thing. It might work. Mostly likely it wouldn’t. She had no other options. She grabbed it and unlocked the door. The solid wood –the only barrier between her and the dead– was also a barrier between her and her brother.

Cash might still be asleep. Vulnerable.

She couldn’t even remember if she’d shut the bedroom door when she left. She may have. But maybe not.

“Charlene!”

It was Cash. He was up. Worse, she knew that tone. He was scared. The dead had found him.

She threw open the bathroom door.

And screamed.

A woman stood there. Dead. Where the whites of her eyes should have been, there was merely bloodshot red. The eye was clouded over with a thick, grey film. The woman’s flesh was purple, blue. She’d been dead a while. Whatever bit her did a good job at chunking out meat along her throat and shoulder. The worst was seeing bits of skin tissue stuck between the woman’s teeth like chicken, or asparagus.

Char raised the over-sized can of Aqua-net and the lighter and did her best to mimic what she’d seen in movies. The hairspray jetted out from the small white nozzle into the dead’s lifeless eyes. Under the spray, Char thumbed the lighter’s roller to life. With barely a spark, the Aqua-net became a flamethrower, and caught the dead’s hair and face on fire.

Dropping back, Char pulled away the lighter, brought her hands down onto the sink counter and jumped up and she kicked the woman in the gut with both feet, knocking her backward and down the stairs.

The hall was clear.

Except at the end.

At the opened bedroom door.

The room Cash was alone in.

A dead had just entered.

“Hey!” Char ran out of the bathroom. The dead turned to face her. She tried to light the lighter. While running, it was impossible. She dropped it, and the hairspray.

The dead raised arms and lunged toward her.

She dropped down onto one leg, as if sliding into second base, stretched her arms out behind her to get as slim and thin as possible as she passed between the dead’s legs. Feeling a little like a crochet ball, she got back onto her feet inside the bedroom. Cash stood on the bed, the axe in his hands ready to swing.

“Cash,” Char said, held out a hand to him.

She didn’t want his hand. And he knew it.

Cash tossed the axe her way. She caught it by the axe head, and swung just as the outsmarted dead came back into the room.

The blade cut through his temple, left eye, and the bridge of his nose as if his skull had been made of warm bread. Blood squirted and poured and finally just oozed as the dead fell to his knees.

Char let him fall face first onto the nice hardwoods before planting her foot on the back of his neck and twisting the blade out of his head, ignoring the slurp sound of the blade pulling free.

“Get your stuff, Cash. It’s time to move.”

Any other little brother might moan, might complain, might ask for breakfast first, or to get to watch some TV. Cash was different. Times were, too.

“Where are we going?”

“Same as everyone else. Mexico.” The virus wasn’t there. The Mexican government couldn’t afford the vaccinations for its people. Now, the walls our presidents built to keep illegal aliens out of America were being used to keep Americans out of Mexico. “They don’t have the dead there.”

“But what if some got in?”

It was possible. Probable. “They didn’t,” Char said. What else could she say? “Come on. We need to keep moving.”