Hell Bound (Book 1): A Vacation From Hell (9 page)

       “You must stay close to the car and pee fast. We don’t know what is out there and what they are capable of.”

    Kat and I look at each other and slowly open up our doors. Mathew jumps out of the driver’s side, holding the gun tightly in his hand.

     “Mathew please don’t look,” Kat says sarcastically.

   “Kat I don’t want to look; let me know when you’re done.”

              Several minutes go by and Kat and I are finish doing our business. “We’re done,” I say letting Mathew know.

    “SHHHH,” Mathew says looking around. He has the gun out in front of him aiming it towards the bushes closest to him.

     I didn’t even see him grab the gun.

   “Get in the car.” Mathew screams.

              We jump back into the lancer. Mathew jumps in after us.

  “What did you hear,” I say, as my voice breaks.

              Mathew doesn’t answer me, as he is putting the car in drive, when I see them running out of the bushes. A horde of zombies, start running towards us. I try counting them as they run out of the bushes. One, two, three, I lose count, they just keep coming.

              The car wheels squeal on the cement floor as we race away. The smell of burnt rubber fills the air around us. The hoard of zombies is running towards the car, fast.

    “Mathew they are following us!” Kat screams.

              “I know!”Mathew screams over the sound of zombies. As the car picks up speed I grab the handles above my head and hold on for dear life.

     “Hurry! They are surrounding us!” Kat screams and points to the right of us.

   I turn my head to see where she is pointing; more zombies are racing out of the bushes on both sides of the car.

              “Mathew please go! Faster!”

              The zombies are racing towards us from each direction and they are unbelievably fast. A scream escapes my mouth when a zombie tries to jump on the car, but fails and falls to the ground. Another zombie jumps toward the car, but this time on Mathew’s side, I grab the gun that was sitting in the middle counsel.

          “Roll down his window Kat,” Kat jumps to the other side of the back seat and pushes the window button. The window starts to lower as the zombie manages to keep his hold on the side of the car.

              The window opens when the zombie puts its hand on the window seal. Slowly he pulls himself up; I point the gun towards the window and turn the safety off. I haven’t shot a gun in over five years; I hope my aim is still accurate. I aim it at the zombies head.

              “Baby, do not move!” Mathew doesn’t say anything, but he tries to smash his body against the back of the driver’s seat as much as he can. I try to get a good shoot at the zombie, but he keeps losing his balance every time we hit a pot hole in the street.

              Finally the zombie raises his head, giving me a clear shot.  Aiming the barrel of the gun at the zombie, I pull the trigger! The zombie screams in what I can only think of as pain and falls to the floor. Kat rolls the window back up and buckles up in her seat.

                I turn to my side of the car and see another zombie trying to take a dive on top of the car. The zombie jumps onto the bike rack and manages to hold on. I roll down my window, about to lift my gun when the zombie lets go of the bike rack and swings her legs into my open window.

              The zombie sits on top of me in the passenger seat. She somehow pinned both of my arms underneath her butt. Trying to unpin my arms from underneath her, but she is so much more heavy then what she looks.  She just stares at me and studies my face; I freeze afraid to make a sudden move knowing the zombie trapped me.

              She comes closer to my face slower, slower, closer, and closer. Seconds feel like hours. It seems like she is toying with me. I look straight at her face, she lifts both of her arms on both sides of my face and traps me.

              She’s inches from my face when she smiles at me and opens her mouth. I can smell her rotten breath on my face. I try once more to push her off of me. 

          “Scared?” The zombie says to me. My eyes get big and my jaw drops, when blood spatters all over my face.

      The zombie falls against my chest, slowly feeling her blood soaking through my t-shirt.

   “Are you ok SAM?” Mathew and Kat yell at me. I try to speak, but I’m still in shock at the fact that the zombie talk to me. I try to rub the blood off of my face.

    “SAM! BABY!” I hear Mathew yell at me.

      I turn to look at Mathew who is driving franticly trying to get us away from the army of zombies all around us.

              “YESSSS I’m okkkk, who killed the zombie?” I stutter, trying to answer him back.

        “Me Sam, are you ok?” Kat asks, concern in her voice.  I look down and see the zombie is face down on my lap. I push her off of me and she crumbles to the ground. I pick up my feet and sit Indian style on my seat, trying to not touch the zombie.

              I turn to Kat, grabbing her around the neck and pulling her into hug. That’s the second time she has saved my damn life in three days!! I owe her everything! “Yes I’m fine, thank you.”

     I turn around to see that the heard of zombies have stopped following us.

Chapter 16

Son, the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.

-David Wong-

             
   “Where did they all go?” Kat asks curiously looking around outside of the car.

     “I don’t know, but I’m not stopping this car until we are far enough away. Those things are fast and damn smart!”

    “It talked to me…. Didn’t you hear her?” I whisper as I look down at the dead women by my feet.“Did you see how that zombie swung her way into the car?” My mind is going crazy looking for answers that I know I will never get.

     “They are changing… getting smarter. Sam, try your cell phone again, see if you can get a hold of your parents,” Mathew tells me.

          I grab my phone and try to send a text message, but I still have no signal. I shake my head no to Mathew and put my phone back down.

      “What do we do?” Kat says still looking around outside.

     “Stay alive,” Mathew says out loud.

           We keep driving without stopping, not even for a bathroom break. We haven’t seen any zombies since the encounter with the zombie army earlier today.

  “Can we please pull over for a second so I can dump this smelly thing outside?” I put my hand over my nose to attempt to block out the smell.

              Mathew slowly pulls the car over and I open my car door and push the body out. Mathew wastes no time and gets back on the road. We finally reach California border when we stop for a pee break.

    “Make it quick and stay by the car,” Mathew warns us.

    I pull Mathew into a hug and cherish the warmth of his strong body against mine. I reluctantly let him go, while he turns around and goes pee.

      We get back on the road, when I see a sign that says
welcome to California
. I’ve never been so damn happy to be in this state then I am now.

       “We need more weapons Mathew. With a zombie army forming everywhere, we need more guns.”

       “Yeah, I was thinking of that too. We need a gun shop.”

              The zombie army’s are big and very smart and I imagine they would only form a bigger and stronger army, as time goes on. We need all the weapons we can get or else we may not see our kids again.

Steve pops up on the radio

            
 
Good evening, survivors……. I’ve got more bad news. The rabies virus has speed completely across the country. Nowhere is safe.  Three days is all it took for this virus to take over our country, I’m not sure if other countries are infected.

        That is not all the bad news that I have… oh yes, it gets even worse. Today I heard someone trying to open up the front door to my house.

              I thought it was another survivor trying to find somewhere safe to live. I was about to open my door when I thought better of it and peeked out the living room window that has a clear view of the front door. What I saw scared the shit out of me, it was a giant zombie.

          His clothes were all torn apart and what was left, was hanging off of his body. He was actually trying to open my front door. Now is it me or is this weird?  Fortunately the zombie didn’t stay long, I’m not sure if they know I live here but I need to be extra careful, and If I were any of you out there I would take extra precautions.

            
 
Well, I think we just got our answer. These things are changing and they’re becoming very smart. Oh god, what are they going to be in a week or a couple months?

       Will the world ever be able to kill them all and go back to normal? I look at the clock and it’s four p.m. I was hoping we would be way closer to home by now but that’s not going to happen. Especially if we have to go find more weapons.

    “Wow, so this is happening everywhere,” Kat says in disbelief.

    “I doubt it will get any better. I fear this is only the beginning,” Mathew says.

    “I was thinking the same thing.” 

   “But there could be zombies in the town or bad people like the ones we ran into back in Arizona,” Kat says with a worried expression on her face.

    “Yes but we have no choice, we need guns. Lots of them.” 

   “Baby, when do you think we will be home?”

   “I’m hoping tomorrow night at the latest, but I can’t promise anything,” Mathew says, shrugging his shoulders.

       On a normal day, Arizona to my parent’s house would have been a five hour drive, but considering we have to take back roads and had to make extra stops, it’s turning into a four day drive.                                                        It looks like we aren’t the only ones that decided to take the back roads instead of the freeways. There are tons of abandon cars on the side of the road, clothes blowing around in the wind, kid’s toys lying in the middle of the street. Blood splattered on the hoods of the vehicles.

              I feel sorry for the owners of the vehicles, I just hope for their sake they got away safely. But what can you consider to be safe anymore?  These zombies are getting smarter by the minute and if they can open up doors then nowhere is safe.

              “Look at all of these abandon cars. If the side streets are this bad can you imagine what the freeways look like?” Kat says surprised.             

          “We need to stop so you can change,” Mathew motions to my clothes. I look up at him and then look down at my clothes that I’m wearing. Oh god, how can I forget? I still have blood all over my clothes and it soaked through to my skin. I don’t know how I could have forgotten about it.

Chapter 17

Cursed is the man, who dies,

But the evil done by him

-Survives Abu Bakr-

              “Yes please,” I plead, trying to wipe the blood off of my skin. I need to take a long bath and scrub the dried stains off my body and burn these clothes.

    “Do you have any open cuts?” Kat says as she peaks between the middle of the two seats and checks me out.

   “No, not that I’m aware of. I’ll take a closer look once I get out of these clothes.”

     I’m not sure where we are because I’ve never taken these streets before. But for what I can tell we are in the middle of nowhere. All I see is dirt and Joshua’s trees. I haven’t seen any more abandon cars for several miles. I don’t know if that is a good sign or bad. 

              We finally come to a sign that says

“Ga
s
station 10 miles. Silver town 2 miles
.
”

     “Are we stopping at the town?” I ask impatiently.

     “I think we should because it’s closer and we need a good spot to rest for the night. Maybe find some medical supplies.”

     “Sam, can you see if your phone works?”Kat asked.

   “Yes, of course,” I grab my phone and notice I have two text messages. Where the heck did these come from? My phone is up all the way, but I didn’t get a notification.

              “I received a couple text messages about two hours ago!!!My phone didn’t go off!”

    “Well, who are they from?” Kat says impatient.

       She is not going to like the answer.

      “One is an emergency alert and the other is from my parents. I’m sorry Kat, nothing from your sister.”

          “I didn’t think so,” Kat whispers, as she sits back in her seat and wipes a tear from her eye.

              “What does the text message say from your parents? Are our boys ok? What Sam?”

    “It says Jennifer made it safely and everyone is fine.”

“Maybe one of the houses will have a working phone?” Kat interrupts.

     “Maybe,” Mathew says with uncertainty in his voice. Even I knew the chances of any of these houses having a working phone would be one in a million.

      Finally we get to the outskirts of the town around Five pm. It’s a lot later than what we wanted too. But it couldn’t be helped. It looks like a quiet town from this angle, but looks can be deceiving. As we get closer to the town we can see two stray zombies wondering around aimlessly. 

              We drive slowly by them and they don’t do anything, they don’t even look at us.

    “That’s weird; they aren’t paying any attention to us.”

    “Maybe they are full,” Kat says giggling. Mathew and I burst out laughing at her silly attempt to a joke.

              We drive slowly down the main road into town. The town looks creepy, something out of a nightmare; ghostly looking. Mathew keeps the car under ten miles an hour because of all the clothes and trash in the street.

              I don’t see any dead bodies which I find a little weird. I would imagine there would be a lot of bodies in the middle of the street or some in the cars. It looks like something out of the twilight zone show. Creepy….

              “Let’s check out what shops the town may have,” Mathew says, nervous as he tries to dodge the debris in the street. 

    “It doesn’t look like this town has been pillaged yet.”

    “No, might be because it’s in the middle of nowhere. But that doesn’t mean we are the only ones in this town,” Mathew says warning us.

              The town is fairly small. It looks like it had maybe hundred people in it. We drive through the whole town in thirty minutes. All they have is one grocery market, an elementary school, one junior high and one high school. The junior high and high school are in the same building.

              At one time, it looked like it was a very cute town.  It looked like one of the towns, where everyone knew everyone and your neighbors would wave when you walked by. But now it looks like this town is dead and long forgotten.

                We make a u-turn back towards the houses. The houses are small and unique, looks old fashion. They are all painted the same three colors, tan, gray and a light pinkish color.

              Mathew pulls into the first house we run across. It’s a gray color with a white picket fence surrounding the front yard. There is a big oak tree in the front yard with a tire swing hanging from it. Looks like the one my father put up in their yard, when Alexander turned two.

              We get out of the car and look around us. Kat walks to the white picket fence and closes the fence. She turns around and walks back to us and says “just because.”

I smile at her and turn back to the house.

              We walk with Mathew to the front door of the house. He puts his finger to his mouth to tell us to be quiet. Mathew puts his ear to the front door and shacks his head.

              Mathew tries for the door knob and it cracks open. Kat and I have our knives in our hands and Mathew has the gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He raises it and slowly walks into the house, Kat and I follow behind him and scan the area.

          We are in the living room area and it’s a mess. Trash and clothes lay covering the carpet. In front of us is a fairly big kitchen. It has beautiful granite counter tops and a perfect shade of oak cherry color shelves. Mathew goes to the left towards the hallway, Kat and I follow behind him quietly.

              There are five doors two on the left hand side and three on the right hand side. Mathew opens the first door on the left hand side pointing the flashlight and his gun inside. It turns out to be a linen closet. It’s full of blankets and sheets.

                Mathew closes the door and walks to the next nearest door which is on the right side of the hallway. Mathew looks back at us and puts up three fingers. He starts to count down from three very quietly, one, two, and three…. He opens the door and the smell hits us in the face.

              All three of us step back and hold our noses.

“ohhhh, god that smells awful,” I say putting my shirt over my nose.

     Getting the courage to walk back to the door and peeking into the room. It’s a Childs bedroom, from the looks of the color of the walls it was a little boy’s room. The walls are painted a baby blue with three race car posters taped on them. The bed is the shape of a red race car. My eyes land on the bed, a body lies underneath the blankets.