900 Miles: A Zombie Novel (15 page)

With the missed call from Jenn still in the back of my mind, I was drawn to the movements of the creatures.  They had what I can only describe as an erratic organization to hunt.  They were spreading out, canvassing the area.

Every one of them would walk to a bush or a tree, stop to listen, and then move on.

When I was a child, the kids in my neighborhood would get together at night.  One of the many games we played was aptly titled, “Midnight.”  One kid would stand by a tall lamppost in the middle of the neighborhood, while the rest of us would go hide.  The kid in the light would count.

One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, and so on all the way to eleven o’clock, then scream out, “Midnight!”

He would then run off to find the kids that were hiding.  As he found
them, they, in turn, would be recruited to run off and find the rest of the kids.  Before long, there would be a whole bunch of kids running around the neighborhood, canvassing the area, looking in every bush and behind every tree. Looking for that final, remaining kid who had the best hiding spot.  The game was over when they found him.

I sat there in that eerie house, suddenly reminded of that same feeling of being the last kid hiding, and hoping that they would never find my hiding spot.

The problem was that the game always came to an end.  Always.

I looked at Kyle just after a zombie passed by the front of the house.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be long before they discover us in here,” I whispered.

“I’ve been thinking about that.  I think we need a distraction of sorts.  Those things love noise, and we have that chainsaw in the back of the house.”

“That thing is pretty loud.  We could hear it all the way from the siren,” I agreed.

“The only thing is, those two ass fucking cops are still chained up out back, and I’m sure they have been turned by now.” He motioned toward the back door with his head.

He was right; it was too risky.  They would certainly alert the rest of the horde to our presence.  The only way out was through the front.

Michael crept up behind us, holding his wounded hand to his shoulder, his good hand protecting his gut.

“I saw a key hook by the garage,” he said in a small voice.

“So?” Kyle scowled, his mind already working on possibilities.

“Well, if there is a spare set of keys for that Porsche out there, maybe we can set off the car alarm again, giving us enough time to make it to the Hummer.”

We didn’t have a chance to reply; a gunshot from across the street grabbed our attention.  A man with blue jeans and a trench coat had climbed up into an oak tree. He was hanging over a branch. The
gunshot attracted six or seven of the creatures, who were all climbing on top of each other trying to get to their quarry.

The guy had the right idea and was just out of arm reach, except for his coat which hung just a few feet lower than the branch.  A zombie that looked like she was dressed in a black and white nun outfit caught hold of the jacket, and pulled him backward.  He was able to squeeze off two more rounds before hitting the ground, the vile undead instantly tearing into his flesh.

We all stopped for a moment, exchanging glances.

“So…I think that key idea is worth a look,” Kyle finally said.

Nodding in agreement, the three of us, still crouching, moved quickly through the kitchen, and down the hall to the garage.  The hook held three sets of keys.

Kyle cautiously opened the garage door.  There were two other vehicles in the three-car garage. Both of them were smaller cars, with what looked like extension cords attached to nearby electrical outlets.

“Fucking hippies,” Kyle spat.

“Yeah, a lot of good an electric car will do us in a world without electricity,” Michael shrugged.  Of the three sets, I took the one that had the familiar Porsche emblem on it. When we got back to the front door, we all looked outside, weighing our options. The zombies were still out there, meticulously searching.

“You ready for this?” I whispered, lifting the key chain up so we could all see it.  I noticed my hands were sweaty, but took in a deep, steadying breath. Kyle opened his mouth to answer when, in that instant, just before I could push the key chain’s button, the grandfather clock chimed on the hour.

DONG! DONG! The noise was ungodly loud in the silence.

DONG! DONG! DONG!

Michael jerked violently as if shot. I could hardly blame him, nearly having shit my pants as well.

“Are you kidding me?” Kyle screamed over the noise.

Looking outside, it was clear that the zombies could hear it, too.  They were all convening on the front porch.

“
Hit it!
” Michael screamed suddenly.

DONG! DONG! DONG!

I fumbled it for a second, and then pushed the button to the alarm on the Porsche.  Nothing.  I smashed it down again.  Still nothing.

“We’re not close enough!” I yelled.

Kyle kicked open the front door, and drove his metal weapon down across the closest zombie’s head.

“Come on!” he commanded channeling his inner drill sergeant.

The three of us burst from the house.  I was still jamming my finger on the button as I brought my hammer down into the eye of the creature dressed like a nun.

Swinging the metal, Kyle cleared a path for us.

Kyle and I were getting closer and closer to the Porsche, when I realized Michael was not with us.  I looked back and could see that he had not left the front porch.

“Come on!” I yelled at him.

He was paralyzed with terror.  Two creatures were heading right for him.

“Shit!” I yelled as I pulled the pistol out, targeted the sight right on the first zombie’s head and fired.

“Fuck!” Total miss. I was damn lucky not to hit the man I was trying to save.

Drawn by the noise of the shot, the two creatures turned around, and started towards me.

I leveled the gun again, paused, took a deep breath, and exhaled as I pulled the trigger. Another miss.

“Fuck me!” I howled in sheer frustration.

The movies make it look so easy.  The reality is that the head is a pretty small target.  Add the complicating factor of
moving
targets, and you can bet your ass that making it out to the shooting range a few times a year, won’t make you the Rambo of the Zombie Apocalypse.

I holstered the gun, and raised the hammer
, my trusty hammer.  As Kyle would have said, I’d have to go with hand to hand combat. I finished off the zombies with straining arms.

I took another five steps toward the Porsche, and hit the alarm button with all the strength my thumb could muster.

The most beautiful sound in the world erupted from the middle of the street.

I saw the three dead polishing off what was left of Sophia.  They were quickly joined by the accumulating crowd, clearing the front yard just enough for us to navigate towards the safety of the Hummer.

Running over to Michael, Kyle grabbed him by his shirt collar, dragging him along the side of the house.  The three of us crawled up into the Hummer, and I hit the ignition.  Throwing it into gear as the car seat moved up, and the seat heaters turned on, I accelerated past the pack of zombies crawling all over the Porsche, and sped off down the street.  Blowing through the blinking stoplight by the pharmacy, I watched the glow of the neighborhood lampposts through the rearview as we drove away.

Even now, I remember them vividly.  They were the last ones that I’d see working.

We spent the night parked on the side of the road near an overpass.  It gave us some shelter, yet left us with a three hundred and sixty degree view in case of a hasty escape.

As we hunkered down to catch some sleep, Michael popped a couple more pills and downed them with our diminishing supply of bottled water.  I didn’t say anything.  After all, he had drawn the shortest straw for the first watch.

We knew we’d have to find more gas and supplies in the morning.  It was inevitable.

I was drifting off to sleep, my face turned into the corner between the seat and the locked door, when I could feel a light shine on my face.  I opened my eyes to the glow coming from the sky.  As the grogginess started to subside, it became clear that something was falling out of orbit.

My initial reaction was that it was a comet of some sort due to its long tail, like you’d see in pictures or the movies.  It wasn’t heading straight down so much as it was shooting across the sky.

“It’s a satellite or a space station,” Michael said wearily. “Either way, it’s some sort of man made space junk.”

“How do you know?” I asked curiously.

“Well, you see how it’s breaking apart, pieces falling all around it?  That is the metal burning off.  A meteor would be more rounded in the front.  There are over twenty thousand pieces of man made space junk floating around up there.  Some bigger than others, obviously.”  He was quite knowledgeable about it, telling me about the differences between how comets, meteors, and space debris fell through the atmosphere.

“How do you know about all that?” I asked.

“My
son was really into it. We’d go up to our building’s rooftop to watch the stars. Well, watch ‘em as much as we could through all the smog in the city.  Hell, with the right telescope you can still see plenty.” Michael paused. “He wanted to see a comet so badly…,” he finally said, drifting off into thought.

He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, but I knew his son wouldn’t be seeing a comet.

We sat there for a while, watching the glowing projectile.  If it was, in fact, a space station, I wondered if there was anybody still alive in there, or in any space station for that matter.  Good luck with the re-supply.

Looking across the front seat, I saw that Kyle was fast asleep.

I also caught a small movement out of the corner of my eye.  The glow from the falling object had lit up a small field with tall grass to our right.  There were three zombies out there.

They simply stood there, with faces pointed upward, gazing at the sky. They were completely drawn towards the light.

“Look over there,” I whispered.  “With the moon gone, especially after being near full for a number of nights, we may never have known they were out there.”

We watched them from the safety of the Hummer.  Each of them rocking in place, trying as hard as their stiff bodies would allow them to look up at the light show.

Following their gaze, I thought back to before Jenn and I had been married.  We were out camping with some friends, and she and I had snuck away from the group, lying in the bed of an old rusted pickup truck. A shooting star flew across the night sky.  It was the first that I’d ever seen. We kissed for the first time under that spectacle. Her lips were soft as silk, and I remember feeling the warmth of her body against mine. Call it what you like, but I knew right then and there that she would be my wife.

“Looks like it’s landing
southeast.  The same direction we’re heading.” Michael interrupted my memory.

That observation was a little unsettling to me. Neither of us said anything for a few moments. Drawn towards the light as much as the zombies outside. Michael seemed to feel my discomfort.

“It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see it.  It will probably burn to bits in the atmosphere before it ever hits the ground.  Probably,” Michael added.  I snorted in amused relief.

I woke Kyle then, to let him know that we were moving down the street a ways to find a better place to sleep for the night.  He gave a sleepy nod but his attention was on the light. Still mesmerized, the zombies didn’t even budge when we started the car or drove away.  I parked in another spot, having used the headlights and alleged falling debris light to scout an area free of zombies.

I fell asleep wondering if Jenn was watching the show from wherever she was.

You’ve saved my life countless times.  You have my word.

The morning hours were spent scavenging other cars on the highway.  We tried to stay away from groups of cars, as they proved to be the most dangerous, and likely had crawlers or grabbers.

Crawlers were the dead that crawled across the ground, usually with some sort of physical deformity that would not allow them to walk.  Grabbers were what we called the zombies that were still buckled into the cars.  They would grab at us when we walked by an open window.

Both would scare the shit out of us, especially because we usually couldn’t see them coming as easily as the ambulatory creatures, who we eventually coined as just plain old
Zs, based on what the people back at the neighborhood had called them.

I was on the hunt for some new clothing.  I had noticed that morning, aside from my suit being covered in blood and torn, that I was continually pulling up my pants.  I had definitely lost weight.  A steady diet of snack bars and bottled water will do that to a man, especially one who lives on burgers and fast food.

We had a pretty good routine going around siphoning gas from abandoned cars.  Two of us would watch on either side of the car, while one would be on siphon duty.  The Hummer took an enormous amount of fuel.