All Together Now: A Zombie Story (15 page)

Its rear doors were open. A man in a shirt the same royal purple as the van and a teenage boy were unloading two shopping carts packed with plastic sacks of food.

In front of the men was an enormous woman dressed in jeans and also wearing a too-tight royal purple T-shirt with a white cross on its front. She had both meaty arms raised with a rifle aimed at the encroaching dead, her eyes wide behind its sight.

If we tried approaching her from the front, I had no doubt she'd mistake us for zombies and blow our brains across the Wal-Mart parking lot.

"This way," I said, yanking Chuck, who yanked Michelle.

We stayed in the street, where there were no zombies, and made our way around to the side of the parking lot.

A dead man sitting beside a cart corral snarled and reached for us, giving me a jump until I saw the reason he was sitting.

His right leg looked as though it had been shredded by a school of piranhas and was attached to his body by thin tendrils of muscle and tissue. His left leg was gone below the thigh.

Even so, he flopped onto his stomach and slithered toward us, dragging himself along the pavement with his arms.

"Hello?" I called.

Some of the dead looked over at me, but I thought it might be worth it if I could get the attention of the living.

"Hello?"

The zombies growled in unison.

"Hello!"

The teenage boy looked as though he'd heard something.

"Over here!" I waved my arms.

Several of the zombies changed direction and instead of shambling toward the van, they veered toward us. The legless man from the cart corral was now less than five feet away.

We needed to run toward the van or run away from the Wal-Mart, but either way, we needed to do it quickly.

The boy waved at us.

I yanked Chuck, who yanked Michelle, and we ran along the sidewalk beside Wal-Mart toward the van.

The fat woman in the purple cross shirt swiveled toward us, aiming the gun at my head.

I let go of Chuck and put my hands in the air. Michelle did the same.

"We're alive!" I shouted. "Don't shoot."

The woman nodded, but didn't lower the gun.

Chuck screamed.

I turned and saw a dead man in a blue Wal-Mart vest had sunk his fingers into Chuck's shoulders, grabbing him from behind.

Keep him safe, Ricky.

I swung my bat into the back of the zombie's neck, but it bounced off.

He stooped to bite Chuck.

61

A SINGLE GUNSHOT RANG OUT.

The zombie in the Wal-Mart vest fell over and Chuck leapt into my arms. I hugged my little brother tighter than I've ever hugged anyone and felt the top of his head to verify he hadn't been bitten.

The zombie lay on the sidewalk twitching. His forehead streamed dark blood, but the bullet had only injured his brain, not killed it, and he snarled up at us.

I looked back to the fat woman. She waved us toward her with her rifle, then pivoted and shot another zombie, shouting, "Forgive me, Brother!"

Michelle ran to the van, and I followed, carrying Chuck.

"Help us with the food," the teenage boy called.

Zombies approached on all sides.

I was in no position to argue. I grabbed a handful of plastic bags from each of the shopping carts.

The rifle sounded again and I actually heard the smack of a corpse against the pavement under the snarls.

The back seat of the van was folded down to make space; they'd been piling the sacks of food in without any discernible organization. I shoved my sacks in, dodging the boy who came right behind me with another load.

Michelle grabbed her own load and between those of us not holding a rifle, we had the carts unloaded in about 30 seconds.

The man slammed the van doors shut and said, "Get in."

I walked around to the parking lot side of the van and two dead hands thrust toward my face.

I ducked just in time.

The zombie grabbed only the empty air above me.

We ran to the Wal-Mart side of the van. Michelle and the teenage boy slid in, then I got in and put Chuck on my lap.

The man slid behind the wheel. The fat woman was already sitting in the passenger seat.

Dead fists pounded the windows and hungry white eyes peered in at us.

"Drive, Daddy!" the woman screamed.

The man started the van and pulled forward only a few feet as our path was blocked by two zombies.

"Move, Brothers!" The man yelled.

In my lap, Chuck was shaking. I held him tight.

We backed up and drove forward again only to stop as a dead woman in a pink tank top stood in the van's path.

"Move, Sister!"

The fat woman bowed her head and prayed loudly. "Heavenly Father, do not forget Your children. Deliver Your faithful servants that we may go on serving Your divine will a while longer still. In Jesus' name, Amen."

"Amen, Mommy!" The man shouted and drove forward.

The van struck the dead woman hard enough to knock her over.

"Forgive me, Sister!"

He reversed to avoid driving over the woman, then drove around her, through the Wal-Mart parking lot, and onto the road.

As soon as we were away from the crowd of zombies, the fat woman reached over and fiddled with the stereo until it played a too-loud gospel song I didn't recognize. It was something about watching the lamb.

"Can we please turn that down?" the teenage boy asked.

The woman increased the radio's volume.

No one else said anything. We all sat in the dark listening to the singer crooning about the crucifixion of Jesus.

"Lucky we found you guys," I said, mostly to say something.

"There is no luck," the man said, his eyes firmly on the road. "There is only God's plan and it was His will that brought you to us."

"Yeah," I said. "Good thing."

"God is great," the man said.

"Amen, Daddy," said the woman.

I glanced over at the teenage boy as he rolled his eyes. He had short blond hair and patches of stubble on his cheeks. There was an earring in his right ear and beneath the sleeve of his purple cross T-shirt, I saw the start of a tattoo.

He offered his hand and I shook it. "I'm Levi," he said. "Levi Davis. And these are my parents."

"Ricky Genaro. Nice to meet you."

It would've been better for everyone if we'd never met.

62

THE STORM GOT BAD. FIRST the wind picked up, blowing the pages of this journal every which way so I had to stop writing. After the wind came the rain.

It was just little drops being blown at first. But by the time I opened the hatch and tied the strap of the first pack to the top rung of the ladder, it was pouring.

I tied the other pack and closed the hatch, propping Ernie's shoe beneath to keep the way inside the station open.

I looked over the edge of the roof to see how the dead were handling the storm. I hoped they'd head off in search of shelter, and wait to try and eat us again when the weather improved.

No such luck. There were still more than 100 corpses gathered below us. I'm not sure the zombies even noticed it was raining.

They staggered about, their collective moaning the same pitch it’d been for days. Chuck looked up at a particularly bright streak of lightning, then went back to wandering aimlessly.

Michelle and I huddled together to keep warm, and it worked at first. She wrapped her hands around my waist, and I put a hand in her hair to pull her close.

We put our heads together, cheek to cheek, and for a time I couldn't feel the rain or my hunger or anything else except Michelle's touch.

Then the rain came down harder as though Gaw-ed were washing the world under a faucet. Michelle shivered and her teeth chattered next to my ear.

She clung to me as the wind howled, the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed.

"Come on," I said, letting go of Michelle. She said something in response, but I couldn't hear her over the storm.

I went to the hatch and opened it. Michelle shook her head, but I ignored her.

I took a deep breath and started down the ladder.

My feet slipped out from under me a few times with the squeaks of wet tennis shoes rubbed against metal, but I climbed all the way down without falling.

In the wall between Ernie's office and the food mart was a window. Through it I saw four corpses staggering among the aisles of chips and soda, illuminated by lightning.

None of them looked at me as I slowly closed the office door, the thunder masking the sound. I motioned for Michelle to climb down.

She shook her head, but when thunder pounded so loud it sounded like a mortar shell exploding directly above us, she got moving and closed the hatch behind her.

I sat with my back against the door so if any dead tried to open it, I'd know. I motioned for Michelle to sit as well so the zombies in the mart couldn't see her through the office window.

I doubted we could stay down here for long, but it was good to be out of the rain. Michelle and I cuddled for a while, but then she stretched out on her back.

I don't know if it was worth the risk or not, but I climbed back up the ladder to get this journal, which isn't even damp. I saved one of the plastic bags from the boxes of crackers we ate to keep it in.

You're welcome.

From the sound of it, the storm is going to rage all night. If the dead knew we were no longer on the roof but instead in this office where it's dry, I'm sure I would've felt them pounding on the door by now.

So I've got time to write one more thing that happened, the last thing.

63

IT TOOK ONLY MINUTES TO reach our destination. We drove long enough to turn onto a gravel road bordered on either side by empty fields.

"We're going to need some gas, Daddy," said the fat woman who was probably named Mrs. Davis, though she never introduced herself. She tapped the gauge below the steering wheel and I could see from the back seat it was on 'E.'

"Not sure where we'd stop, Mommy. But praise His holy name, we're home." Mr. Davis pulled the van into the parking lot of a small white church.

A sign out front proclaimed this the New Life Christian Church. The letters were white against a purple background, so I could read them even in the dark.

There were about a dozen other vehicles parked in the lot. A circle of light hit the back of one of the church windows and then moved away: the beam of a flashlight.

Mr. Davis shut off the engine and left the keys in the ignition. We climbed out of the van.

With no light pollution, I could see a long way and what I saw in every direction was nothing but grass and the occasional tree. New Life Christian Church was in the middle of nowhere, which was good since there weren't likely to be any zombies out here.

But even then, something about this little white church so far removed from the rest of the world made me uneasy.

"There she is, friends," Mr. Davis said. "The bride of Christ. And she's never looked more beautiful. Will you help me get this stuff inside?"

It was a request so ordinary that at first it didn't register.

Mr. Davis opened the van's rear doors, and he and Levi each took as many sacks of food as they could carry. I gave two of the lighter sacks to Chuck, then Michelle and I loaded up as well.

"Careful, boy!" Mr. Davis shouted at Levi, who was already changing his grip on his sacks to keep from dropping them. "Them bags aren't the Ark and you aren't Uzzah. Your wicked hands may touch them bags in whatever manner they see fit without angering the Almighty."

"I've got them," Levi said.

Mr. Davis looked at me. "A boy my son's age is besieged on all sides by the alluring temptations of this sinful, secular world. Got his head so full of impure thoughts, he can scarcely focus on the task before him."

It was clear Mr. Davis expected me to respond, so I gave a half smile and kept walking.

Levi muttered something so low I couldn't understand him. It sounded like "duck cough."

"Boy, still your forked tongue. Speak not but praise for thy King."

Levi's mother waddled straight to the double glass doors at the front of the church and held one of them open for us. I followed Levi into the foyer and lingered there until everyone was through the doors.

Mrs. Davis flipped on a flashlight and led us down a hall with doors for Sunday school classes on either side, past the sanctuary, to a kitchen. As we were dropping the plastic sacks on the countertops, more flashlights shone from the hall.

"Peter!" a man said. "Ruth! You're back! And I see you've brought new souls to the house of the Holy Host."

And that was how I learned Levi's parents were Peter and Ruth Davis.

The man stepped closer and when my eyes adjusted to the new flashlights I saw he was in his 50s or maybe 60s. He had short black hair with patches of gray and a handsome, clean-shaven face. Bright blue eyes gleamed over a mostly white smile.

He was what Grandma Lacey would've called a silver fox.

Dressed in a royal purple suit complete with jacket, white shirt, and matching purple tie, the man looked like he was ready for Sunday morning, though it was late on a week-night. His collar was even buttoned up.

"This is the Reverend Hopstead," Peter Davis said.

The reverend waved a hand, flashing two expensive-looking rings. "You can call me Brian. Or Rev, if the Spirit moves you. And you are?"

"We ain't had time for a proper meet and greet," Ruth Davis said.

"I'm Ricky. And this is Michelle."

"I'm Chuck!"

The reverend smiled and knelt down to shake Chuck's hand in a way I'm sure melted the hearts of many a mother over the years. "Brothers and dark Sister Michelle," he said, "the King of Kings has led you here as He once led His people out of the desert, and I thank Him."

I looked the reverend (the Spirit never once moved me to think of him as "rev") up and down, not sure what to say to that. I decided to try out the local dialect: “God is great."