All Together Now: A Zombie Story (12 page)

Michelle stood looking at us uncertainly. When the zombies snarled and lurched toward the cruiser, she slid in beside Chuck. Dad drove off before she had a chance to close her door.

47

"GET YOUR SEATBELTS ON," DAD said.

I laid my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. Pain echoed through my skull and my sole focus was not puking in the police cruiser.

As we were nearly clear of the square, Dad slammed the brakes to avoid hitting an old man. When he looked up at us and snarled, we drove around him and onto Harrington Street.

At the intersection of Harrington and Kirkman Avenue (that's right, they named a street after him), the traffic light was blinking red. There were eight cars ahead, their drivers waiting patiently as though the rules of the road or the rules of anything still applied.

Ahead of the cars, a military convoy rounded the corner and headed down Kirkman Avenue.

"Are they going to Daddy's?" Michelle asked.

Something about the way she called Gerald Kirkman "Daddy" made my head hurt more.

"Yeah," Dad said. "Been coming in all morning. Is everybody good back there?"

"Good," Chuck called.

We waited another minute, but the convoy seemed endless. Trucks and jeeps, and even a tank.

Behind us, corpses from the square stumbled onto Harrington Street.

"Screw this," Dad said and fiddled with switches on the dash until the cruiser's siren sounded. He pulled into the left lane and we went around traffic and the convoy.

"We aren't going to Daddy's?" Michelle cried.

Dad shook his head, swerving around traffic and speeding up now that most cars were pulling to the side of the road for us. The end of the world or not, some responses are automatic.

"It's authorized personnel only until they get the cure out. Your father asked me to take you with us to Indy," Dad said. "There's a secure shelter on the north side and we're going to wait this out there."

"I don't want to go to Indy, I want to go to Daddy!" Michelle cried.

In the rearview mirror, I could see her makeup running in her tears. She was trembling and whimpering, but her eyes were every bit as wide as the pizza manager's had been as he approached the dead cop.

Beside her, Chuck was watching and I could tell by the way he was breathing he was getting worked up.

"You're not a little girl," I spat at Michelle. "Pull it together."

Dad sped up to 90 mph even though the speed limit on Harrington Street was 30. When you're in a cop car with sirens blazing and lights flashing, you can go pretty much as fast as you want.

"Are you listening to me?" Michelle screamed. "I want my daddy!"

I clamped both hands over my ears. "Please stop yelling."

I looked back and saw Chuck was crying as well.

"Everyone be quiet," Dad said.

I wanted to put my arm around my little brother, but, of course, I couldn't. I put my finger through a hole in the metal grating separating the seats. Chuck grabbed it with his whole hand.

As we approached the ramp to I-65 we slowed and passed Ernie's on our left. Through the glass front I could see Ernie and his wife, Sue, standing behind the counter watching the wall-mounted television.

"We can go south and get off at the next exit," Michelle said without hope. "Daddy's plant is right there."

Dad said nothing.

We turned left, heading onto I-65 north toward Indianapolis.

A blue truck roared up the ramp, going the wrong way, and headed straight for us.

48

THROUGH THE TRUCK'S WINDSHIELD, THE driver's eyes were wide and his face was contorted in a scream. He yanked the wheel to his right.

Dad yanked the wheel to our right.

The blue truck passed so close it clipped the driver's side mirror, knocking it off the cruiser with a loud metallic clink and sending it skittering.

Just off the exit, a semi-truck's trailer was flipped sideways while its cab remained upright. In front of the twisted semi was a smashed motor home, two zombies stumbling beside it.

Dad drove our stolen cruiser around the wreck and we passed under the familiar green sign reading:

Welcome to Harrington

Population: 15,792

"The birthplace of Kirkman Soda"

I guess that population count would be quite a lot lower now.

"We can still turn around!" Michelle cried.

"We're not turning around," Dad said.

A purple Volkswagen driving south on the northbound interstate flew past us.

I watched it pass and when I turned back I saw a red jeep also driving the wrong way, headed toward us.

Dad swerved. "It's all right. I got this."

I lay my head back against the seat, but I didn't dare close my eyes. The ringing in my ears had softened and the urge to puke was mostly gone, but I still felt dizzy.

Dad slowed the cruiser.

In the road ahead, five walking corpses were crowded around a blue church bus flipped on its side. I couldn't see who was inside. I only know it was a church bus because of the big green cross painted on its back.

We drove around, but didn't speed up again. On the other side of the bus was the start of the worst traffic jam I've ever seen.

It made me think of a video I'd seen once of a momma pig lying on her side so all her piglets could crowd in, pushing the others away to get to her milk.

There were six cars wedged across the highway so there was no longer any right or left lane, only one giant lane so clogged with vehicles that, like the piglets, none of them could move forward. Long honks and short stiletto beeps punctured the air above the sound of panicked drivers shouting.

Two cars passed on our left. They drove straight toward the jam, then veered left into the wide stretch of grass between the north and southbound lanes of I-65.

They left tracks in the grass and had to drive slowly, but the cars got around the jam.

Dad grinned. "We're in a police car. We can do whatever we want."

The cruiser's siren was still blaring and I could see the red and blue glow of our emergency lights reflected in the windows of the vehicles ahead of us.

Dad drove off the highway into the grass.

It was smooth going at first. We went slowly, passing stalled cars on both the right and left. There was a nasty traffic jam in the southbound lanes as well.

Other cars pulled onto the grass from both sides of the highway and soon we had a bunch of followers.

We made it maybe half a mile and then we came to an area where there were more cars stalled in the grass than on the highway.

Just ahead a stream ran beneath I-65. Both lanes of the highway had bridges, but between the lanes the ground sloped to the stream so severely it was like the edge of a cliff.

"This could be bad," Dad said, stopping the cruiser.

Behind us, the grassy median was fast becoming a parking lot.

Dad turned us around, but by the time we were ready to drive back the way we came, there were too many cars blocking our path.

Dad swore and shut off the cruiser's emergency lights. They weren't helping anyway.

In the absence of the siren's warble, I heard new sounds: screaming and snarling.

Moving across the bridge was a huge group of bodies, as though a charity fun run were passing through. They moaned and staggered and I knew every one of them was dead.

The crowd of corpses passed between the cars, smashing windows to get at squealing drivers and passengers.

"This is definitely bad." Dad opened his door.

49

THERE WERE ZOMBIES IN THE southbound lanes as well as the northbound; a flash mob of corpses from nowhere.

One moment we were stuck in traffic, the next we were surrounded by the dead.

It makes sense, though.

Suppose there were one or two cars on the highway ahead of us containing infected people, people with severe wounds, their loved ones driving them as fast as they could toward the emergency rooms in Brownsborough on the northbound side and Harrington on the southbound side.

Suppose those infected people bled out or otherwise died and came back as zombies in a moving car. Wives would attack their husbands and vice versa, children would attack their parents, and the cars would wreck, blocking traffic.

When their loved ones were just as dead as they were, these zombies would wander back toward traffic. Good Samaritans might hop out of their cars to help only to be killed and turned into walking corpses.

Just as a fist-sized snowball can become a car-sized boulder when rolling down a snowy hill, the crowd of wandering zombies would start as only a few, but grow as it worked its way along the highway killing and turning everyone they passed until the crowd became an army.

Dad came around the front of the cruiser and opened the passenger side door. "Can you stand?"

I didn't know, but I said "yes" and got out of the car.

Before a game, my teammates and I used to grab each other's arms, glare into one another's eyes and yell "Strap it on." None of us knew for sure what "it" was, but we all knew what the saying meant.

When I stood, I tottered and fell back against the side of the cruiser. Dad grabbed me before I went all the way over. I wanted to puke and almost did.

I stood up straight and willed the weight in my head to center. I took a deep breath and strapped it on.

"I got this," I said.

Dad nodded and opened the rear door. "Let's go," he called in. "We're on foot from here."

Michelle got out saying, "Can we go back to Daddy now?"

A man screamed behind us and we all turned. He was standing by the next car over, fighting with a corpse that was tearing the flesh from his arm. Inside the car, a woman and a little girl watched in horror.

"Come on, Chuck!" Dad yelled.

What happened next was not my little brother's fault and I will never think otherwise.

50

I WAS NINE THE YEAR Chuck was born, and at first my parents wouldn't let me hold him.

When Grandma Lacey took me to the hospital, Dad was waiting for me and he gave me a present, even though it wasn't my birthday.

I unwrapped the package hoping for a toy, but found instead a shirt with the words "Big Brother" printed across its front.

Grandma Lacey squealed and made me change shirts right there in the hospital waiting room in front of everyone.

Then Dad took us back to see my mother.

The first thing I saw upon entering the room was a basket of food around which had been tied three blue balloons reading: "Congratulations! It's a boy!"

The card in the basket was signed Gerald Kirkman.

My mother was sitting up in her hospital bed, holding what I thought was a bundle of blankets. Dad took me over to her.

"Richard Allen Genero," he said, "meet Charles Walter Genero."

I wasn't impressed.

Chuck looked more like a blob of uncooked dough than a baby. His skin sagged like an old man's.

The way his pale eyes flicked up at me and then away, I was pretty sure he wasn't impressed either.

I reached out my hands to hold him. My mother twisted and moved the baby out of my reach.

"Honey, it's okay," Dad said.

My mother shook her head.

I didn't want to start my parents fighting the way they did at home, so I didn't try to hold him again. Instead, I leaned over and planted a kiss on Chuck's soft forehead.

My mother's breath hitched and then she and Grandma Lacey were both crying. When I looked up at Dad, he turned his head and wiped his eye.

My mother and Chuck came home the next day.

Mostly, Chuck slept and cried. My mother wouldn't let me into the nursery when she went to feed him.

When I did go in, Chuck was always asleep. He still looked like a lump of bread barely browned in the oven. And most of the time he smelled like poop and sour milk.

Late one night, Chuck was screaming his head off. Babies don't care about anyone's sleep but their own.

I wrapped my pillow around my ears and waited for my mother to go in and shut him up. But when the door to my parents' bedroom opened, it wasn't my mother who came out, but Dad.

I tried to go back to sleep and couldn't. I had to pee.

When I came out of the bathroom, the lights in the nursery were on.

I wandered in and found Dad sitting in the rocking chair beside Chuck's crib, Chuck in one hand and a bottle in the other.

"Good morning, son," Dad said and then to the baby, "Look who it is. It's your big brother, Ricky. Yes, it is. Yes, it is."

"Thanks for waking me up, baby," I said.

"Oh, he doesn't know any better," Dad said, and then to the baby, "Do you? No, you don't know any better, do you?"

I turned to go back to bed.

"Come here, son," Dad said and by the absence of baby talk I knew he meant me.

I went over to Dad and he moved Chuck to his side. "Sit in my lap."

I did. Dad put Chuck in my hands and put his arms under mine. "Take the bottle," he said.

I shoved the bottle at Chuck's face and he cried.

Dad put his hand on mine and guided the bottle to Chuck, who sucked it contentedly.

"You're somebody's big brother, now," Dad said. "It's a big job. You have to look out for your little brother and help him grow to be as big and as smart as you. Will you do that?"

"Yes," I said, and looking down at my baby brother, my father's arms around me, I knew that I would.

Chuck laid his tiny head against my chest. It was warm.

I laid my head back against Dad's chest. It was warm.

We sat there, the three of us, until I fell asleep. Then Dad put Chuck in his crib and carried me back to bed.

51

ONE YEAR AGO, THE DAY after my mother left, I went into the room that used to be the nursery and found Chuck crying. The crib and the rocking chair were long since gone.