Hissers II: Death March (25 page)

One more, he thought, jumping out. If he could just move one more he could drive the truck through it and pray to God he found Amanita. He couldn’t believe what that girl was doing, and he knew he would never forgive himself if she got killed.

He looked for something old, something that could be put in neutral without new-fangled steering wheel locks. The only thing that fit the bill was an old Chevy station wagon with fake wood paneling along the sides. It was locked and his elbow hurt but it looked like it was the only way to get the window smashed. But then he kicked an abandoned metal car rim and realized he had another choice. It crashed through the window with ease, landing on the passenger seat. He popped the lock, got in and checked for keys. No dice. The wheel was locked as well. This was not going to work, he thought. He didn’t have the tools to hot wire it and he didn’t have time to get under the hood. “Sonofa…” Without thinking, he grabbed the tire rim and smashed it into the steering column. Over and over, until it splinted and fell apart revealing the inner workings of the gear shift. He tried to move it. Nothing. Hit it again. Nothing. Hit it a third time and the stick moved down to neutral. The wheel still wouldn’t move so he smashed it again and the car began to roll on its own. Doug whooped and got on his feet, shoved the station wagon across the road a good six feet before it locked up again.

He looked to the sky. “Thank you, Lord, I owe you big time. But right now…wait, where was I?” He’d forgotten about the song. Johnny would definitely
be singing the last couple lines by now. He raced back to his truck, vocally jumping into the last verse: “That’s where I want to stay. And I’d let that lonesome whistle…”

***

“Blow my blues away.” Amanita saw the road ahead of her, felt hot breath on her neck, felt tears on her cheeks. She couldn’t run any longer. Her sides were in stitches and her lungs were beyond exhausted. Blood was running down her legs and turning her jeans into a tacky mess. She could hear Luther Perkins guitar riff ending the song, that low bend on the G note, concluding on the F. She could hear the crowd cheering in her head for the song’s finale, even if that crowd was dead and the cheering was the sound of bloodlust behind her. She hit the road and screamed. The hissers were on her. She did the last thing she could think of. She lay down and screamed. And just like that the hissers were off her, and the sounds of bones breaking and bodies splatting filled the air. She opened her eyes and saw she was under Doug’s truck.

The guy had drive
n his truck right over her, parked above her. He was either a genius or a madman.

As for her, outwitting hissers by lying under trucks was apparently her super power.

“Get in!” he yelled.

She rolled out from under
neath, saw the mob of hissers coming across the land, and jumped into the back, kicking at the ones trying to get in with her. The truck sped down the highway and the creatures gave chase but couldn’t keep up. She climbed into the front passenger seat and tried to stop from dry heaving.

“Sorry,” Doug said. “I didn’t see any other way.”

“You ran me over!”

“Yeah, but you said you were used to it.”

“It’s not funny. And where were you! I finished the song and you weren’t there!”

“I forgot the lyrics for a minute.”

“How! You’re in a Johnny Cash tribute band! How do you forget lyrics to songs you sing every night!”

“Hey, Johnny Cash did that all the time.
”

“Shit this hurts.” She tentatively touched the blood stains on her jeans. “I need to take my pants off. Will you not look?”

Doug tiled the rearview mirror at the ceiling and stared straight ahead. “My eyes are only on the road.”

Wincing, Amanita removed her jeans and sat in her und
erwear, readjusting the gauze on her legs. She breathed heavy as she tried to maneuver them so the white parts now covered her bloody wounds.

“
Seriously, I’m sorry,” Doug said, “but look, we made it. You did it. They’re all behind us and we’re close to San Diego. We’ll be there before sundown. We did it, Am, we did it. It’s okay.”

It was all she could do to stop crying
before she said, “Thank you.”

PART IV

AIN’T NO CALIFORNIA

SUNDAY, 8:04 AM

Connor shi
vered, his clothing still wet from the ocean. The sun was up but its heat had not yet dried him. Trying to sleep in the boat at night was terrifying, and both he and Olive had barely gotten two hours of dream time. At the first sound of morning’s gulls hovering above, they’d raised the small anchor and headed for land. It had not been their first choice of plan, but they’d decided wandering around on pitch black beaches in the dead of night was a bad move. They took their chances that no more monsters were underwater. It had paid off.

Now, s
moke billowed from the the cliffs of La Jolla. Undead bodies littered the beaches, mutilated and wet from the spray of the sea. A man-made rock jetty extended out into the water in an arc that created a swimming hole on its inside. The far end of the jetty ended in a railed-off viewing point for visitors to watch the seal rookery at its base. Connor smiled as he watched the seal pups swimming alongside the boat, their parents keeping time beside them. They dove under the water like zigzagging torpedoes and resurfaced, barking with curiosity before diving again. Connor envied them, like he did most animals these days. They were blissfully ignorant of the death and decay plaguing the land. Their only worry was getting a good spot on the rocks to sunbathe.

“There’s a staircase on the other side of this thing,” Olive said, maneuvering the boat past the viewing point
of the jetty, continuing on to the far side where the cliffs met the water in a thin strip of sand hardly big enough to be called a beach.

While she fought to
get over the waves without hitting the jagged rocks, Connor kept his eyes on the staircase and other paths that led up to the street above. Every now and then he could see the random bobbing head of a hisser passing by, looking for something to eat.

The boat hit the sand and came to a stop. “We
need to hurry before they see us,” Connor said, hopping over the side onto land. Olive was right behind him, and together they ascended the stairs as fast as their burning legs would allow.

They emerged onto a sun-baked street that was eerily deserted, save for a couple hissers
ambling away from them without a reason to look back. It had once been a posh community, with tiny houses on hills and condos with ocean views nestled among quaint art galleries, mini luxury hotels, coffee shops, and jewelry stores. Signs pointed out La Jolla’s few picturesque photo ops, such as a cliffwalk, some caves, and a hang gliding company, but Connor could care less about taking in the sights. A small cardboard sign had been staked into the ground: SURVIVOR SETTLEMENT IS LEAVING. HEADING SOUTH. GOD SAVE US ALL.

“Looks like we’re alone,” Olive said.

“This way. Coffee shop.” Connor sprinted across a grassy area with picnic tables, onto the street, and across it into a café with a broken front window. He spied an office door, ducked inside, waited for Olive to squeeze in, and locked the door. The sun shone almost deep orange through the  hideously retro 1970’s curtains.

“This is what passes for hip these days,” Olive said,
shaking her head, then wasting no time searching the only desk in the room for something blunt. She found a baseball bat resting against its side. A company jersey and dirty softball were on a chair nearby. The bat clearly wasn’t meant for protection, but it was a welcome find.

She
grabbed the jersey, held it up to herself as if trying it on. “Turn around for a second. I’m freezing in these clothes.”

Connor turned his back to her, didn’t mention that he could see her reflection in the dark computer monitor screen. She slipped off her shirt,
exposing her taut, muscular back, took off her bra. It was all he could do not to imagine what was on the other side of that bare body. Even though he knew he was being rude by staring, he could not stop himself. But his dirty thoughts were gone in a flash as she slipped the jersey on, turned back with the bat resting on her shoulder. She looked more like someone pretending to be a baseball player for Halloween than anyone actually going to participate in a game.

“I look okay?”

Connor turned back, read the front of the shirt: “Coffee Cloud Crows. Terrible team name.”

“I bet they sell shirts here. Lemme check the closet.” She came back
a minute later with a red t-shirt for Connor that read Coffee Cloud, La Jolla. He slipped it on and felt instantly warmer, despite his jeans still being wet.

“Okay, well, we’re in La Jolla,”
he said. “Now what?”

“What’s the name of that lab?”

“Aminodyne. I think. Something like that.”

“T
ry to find a phone book or something. We’ll look it up. How big can this town be?”

Connor spun in a circle but didn’t know where to begin.
He hadn’t ever used a phonebook. There’d been a Yellow Pages in his parents’ house, but he’d always used his computer to google phone numbers and addresses. The Yellow Pages was only ever used as a step for his mother to get something off the top of the fridge.

“Found this,” Olive said, thumping a phonebook down on the desk. It wasn’t a yellow pages but it was of similar ilk. “Knew a small business would have one.” She began flipping through the pages. “I don’t know that a science lab is gonna be listed but you never know.”

“Try under biotech.”

“I think that’s kind of a broad category, don’t you.” She ran her finger down several listings on many pages. “Nothing. Even if it’s in here the listings in these things never make sense.”

“Crap. What did people do before the Internet to find businesses?”

“You’re looking at it.”

“I mean if they didn’t have a phone book.”

Olive thought for a second. “Called the operator, I guess. You know, dialed zero and talked to a human who looked it up.”

“Like calling one of those companies that answers questions?”

“Sort of.  Only they didn’t take kindly to people asking stupid questions. I did it once as a girl, around your age, asked what the fastest animal in the world was. The operator told me she was going to call my mom back and tell her I’d been prank calling people.”

“Once, my friend Seth called a phone sex line.”

“I don’t want to know. You’re too young.”

“I am not. And besides, he got hung up on so it doesn’t matter. My dad got the charge on the phone bill for five bucks but he didn’t know what it was so we didn’t get in trouble. I’m not really that young.”

Olive offered a lopsided smile. “
Considering what you know now, no, but compared to me, yes.  But back to our dilemma, how do we find this Aminodyne?”

“Try cancer,” Connor said.

“What do you mean?”

“In the phone book. Nicole said they did DNA research and stuff. That kind of thing is always for medical companies, right? And Cancer is, like, the biggest medical problem, right? So check under cancer.”

Olive flipped the pages, found nothing. “It’s all just oncology practices.”

“
What about…what’s it called when you have a research division? Research and development?”

She flipped
the pages again, broke into a mile. “Connor, I could kiss you.” She turned the book to him and he saw the listing at the top of the page: Aminodyne Research Laboratories, 13400 Eucalyptus View Road.

“Is there a map in there,” he asked.

“Yeah, right here, in the back. We’re here, on Prospect, and the labs are…over here. Not far.”

“Too far to walk. We’ll need a car.”

“No, look, there’s an aquarium over here. And this is a preserve. And the ocean is right alongside it. We’ll just backtrack in the boat, get up the cliffs, and cut through the woods. Pray it’s deserted.”

“The last time I climbed up a cliff, people d
ied. I don’t know if I want to—”

“It’s either that or drive through town
, yet again announcing our presence. Personally, I’m tired of fighting. My jeans are soaked and they’re tight and running is not going to be easy. For once let’s pretend we have an inkling of stealth training.”

“Fine. Climb one cliff you might as well climb them all.”

SUNDAY 8:34 AM

The hills of East County San Diego looked like they were covered in snow, but Amanita knew that was impossible. This was a tropical climate, and even if it did get cold in the desert at night, it didn’t snow. No, what she was seeing was ash. As the city burned the embers fluttered into the dry grass and trees and bloomed into wildfires. The ash coated just about everything, and turned the the sky gray.

The smell was the worst. A thick miasma of rot burned her lungs that she could only
withstand by putting her shirt over her mouth.

Doug kept watch on their gas gauge, which was hovering around an eighth of a tank. “I don’t want to stop out here and try to siphon gas,” he’d said a few minutes ago. “Let’s get past the fires first and into the city. We can probably get a new car or maybe even find a gas station with some reserve tanks
filled up.”

Now, he hummed a tune to himself, glancing at her occasionally, and at the soot-covered hills outside. Billboards passed by promoting everything from casinos to restaurants to morning talk radio shows. What Amanita wouldn’t give to to hear some lame disc jockey complaining about politics or sports or something right now. Anything really, just to know there were people in town. But they’d tried the radio and all it did was hiss back at them in anger.

“What’s that song you’re singing?” she asked.

“Something I wrote about my truck a long time ago.”

“Why do boys sing about dumb things?”

“Whoa there, missy, my truck ain’t dumb. My truck had style, you know.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s a truck. You never wrote any love songs? Nothing about breaking hearts or anything?”

“Why would I want to write about that?”

“Because that’s what song writers write about.”

“Am, you ever had your heart broken? Probably not, you’re a little young, but take my word for it, you don’t want to relive it over and over. People who write those songs, most of them ain’t never had their heart destroyed like that. They write them songs because people with real broken hearts need to know they ain’t alone, and they listen to them, and the writer gets money. If they’d had their hearts broken they wouldn’t have been able to put the words together to describe the pain.”

“What about Johnny Cash?”

“Johnny’s a rare breed. He stands alone on a lot of things.”

“So you had your heart broken?”

“Once. Yeah.”

“And you can’t describe it?”

Doug chuckled. “Sure, I can describe it in one word. Uuuuh.” He moaned like a man that had been stabbed in the stomach.

Amanita put her shirt over her mouth again, took a few clean breaths, then said, “That’s how I felt when Seth and Nicole died. I wasn’t in love with them, not in that way, but I felt like someone kicked me in my soul”

“Then I guess you got a broken heart.”

“Felt that way about my parents too. I still feel it, like, every second. It just never goes away. I just…fight to not think about it.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No. I just want the feeling to end.”

Doug put the windshield wipers on for a second to clear off the ash. “So now you know why I don’t write songs about heartache. It’s not something worth living through again.”

The hills gave way to suburbs now, one story tract homes on thin streets. Strip malls and car dealerships flew by, their lots empty, small fires burning. The highway was littered with cars that had flipped over or crashed into each other, and the occasional dead body with brain trauma lay skeletal and frozen in the way. They saw no signs of hissers or the spider monsters, but that didn’t mean they weren’t lurking around the next corner; San Diego was too big a city for everyone to have just disappeared.

“Look,” said Doug, “the football stadium. Boy, what I wouldn’t give now to see the Chargers going for a first down.”

“What’s a first down?”

“What’s a first down! Am, don’t tell me you
don’t watch football? I thought you were an American?”

“Yeah, an American
girl
. I do girl things, and sports isn’t one of them.”

“S
o, then what? Shopping, huh?”

“If it were a sport I’d be a gold medalist. Is it crazy that I want to go get a new outfit right now?”

“No. I think we’re pretty ripe and dirty. New clothes would be nice. But later.”

Am watched the stadium disappear behind them. “Where are all the undead?”

“You noticed that too, huh? It’s kind of weirding me out. Figured there should be millions of them running through these streets. But maybe God is giving us a fighting chance, so I don’t want to question it too hard. We’ve got about another twenty minutes to La Jolla, so let’s just stay focused on finding your friend.”