The Undead Situation (18 page)

“What about the food situation?”

Blaze rummaged through all our packs for a couple minutes and came up with the one MRE, some gummy bears, a protein bar, and a few bottles of water. The MRE was spaghetti with meat sauce. Appetizing.

I stopped the car, leaving it idling, and reached back for the MRE. We decided to each take a third of it and share one bottle of water. It would have to do until we found somewhere to raid, or got lucky. Heaven knew luck hadn’t graced us with her presence recently. She was long, long overdue.

No one wanted the gummy bears, so I took those for myself.

The spaghetti was edible, but not enjoyable. While in the midst of an apocalypse, a guy couldn’t care about flavor. Like a man, I swallowed my portion in gulps before passing it to Frank, who took more time. All that man ever ate was MREs, so I figured it wasn’t an issue for him.

A slimy, artificial tomato taste coated every surface in my mouth. I ran my tongue over my teeth repeatedly, hoping to rid myself of it. In that moment, I’d easily consider killing Blaze and giving up my first born (not like I’d ever have one) for a toothbrush or bottle of Listerine. Poor hygiene and a lack of firepower weighed heavily on my morale. Feeling dirty, itchy, and unprepared grouped me with the rest of the survivors. I hated that.

Ahead and to my left, the brush on the side of the road stirred. A man in a sheriff’s outfit fell out and onto the ground. Not a heartbeat later, he got to his feet and dragged himself toward us. There was a gaping hole where his stomach used to be, ragged ends of intestines slipping out.

“Time to go,” I said and put the car back into drive.

Our happy lunch over, we set off again.

The sheriff lunged toward the Mustang as we passed, and fell yet again to the hard asphalt. I watched in the rearview mirror as he disappeared behind us.

“We have to think about when and where we’ll stop for supplies,” I said, even though trying to drive straight through sounded appealing. “I know your cabin is stocked, but as we all know, things don’t go according to plan. It might take multiple days to get there. I don’t want to be starving to death during that time.”

Two towns and a lot of road stood between us and the cabin. While it should take twenty minutes to pass through, considering how long it took to get through Monroe, it was feasible Sultan or the next town, Startup, might slow us down. We still had to hike a ways into the mountains, and we’d need food then.

Frank said, “Depending on how Sultan is, we can look there. We’ll enter about a mile from the town grocery store.”

“I don’t like the idea of backtracking,” Blaze said. “If we see any houses along this road, why don’t we check them out? They’re bound to have canned goods in them, if anything.”

I agreed, and began to verbalize, but Frank cut me off. “The people out here know how to defend themselves. The houses out here, well, they’re probably all boarded up.”

“We can still try, Frank. Better to take chances out here than inside an infested town,” Blaze countered, an edge of impatience in her voice.

On occasion, she was easy to read. Her story about where she was when hell broke loose showed her lack of concern toward family or children. Now her general attitude toward Frank showed her great impatience for the elderly. It gave me the impression that Blaze was all about efficiency and everyone being on board for The Plan, no matter what it was.

“It’s true,” I agreed. “If we get lucky out here, we wouldn’t have to worry about it again. We just need enough to last us until we get to the cabin, right?”

He chewed on his lip, and then nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess ya’ll are right. Just be wary, ‘cause some strange people live in these woods.”

The discussion ended and we lapsed into silence once more. A pungent, unmistakable scent wafted into my nostrils. Blaze lit up a cigarette. Frank pawned one off her and they both smoked up the car. I rolled the window down and let the hot summer air carry the smoke away.

Sounds of the river and wind whipping through trees were quintessential to the season. When the apocalypse started, it was a very rainy and fitting April. Time flew by quickly when I was on my own, and even when Gabe was with me in the apartment. Now time crawled. Getting from point A to point B was riddled with quarreling and impediments of all sorts.

When I was a little kid, life was painstakingly slow. Summer seemed like a decade, which made going back to school that much worse. As I grew older, a summer was gone in the blink of an eye.
Every
day came and went like that. I stopped caring when I was a teenager.

Yet normal people hated the passage of time. They hated feeling like their lives were slipping away. Now I’d kill for a day like that. A day where an hour didn’t seem like four and every task tripled in difficulty.

Blaze was abnormal, so I wondered how she perceived things. Did she also think time slowed down when the dead walked? What did she think about
anything
? I knew she was callous, and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about another human, but what about the “whys.” Why did the dead start rising? Why did people go crazy so fast? Why did the government fail?

Or the big question; why was she an emotional robot?

I stopped myself from laughing and glanced at the gas gauge. There was only a fourth of the tank left. If we didn’t get gas at some point, we were screwed. If we didn’t get food, we’d be hungry and screwed. If the house we picked was full of crazies, well, a lot of variables added up to one general concept: We’d be screwed.

“Really strange people,” Frank said, having not dropped the subject yet.

With no more time to ponder Blaze’s persona, I said, “Three trained and armed professionals versus a few desperate civilians? What’s the worst that could happen?”

Frank knew someone who used to live nearby. He said her name was Judy-Beth, the sister of his Vietnam friend Buggy. In the war, Buggy impressed him with his valuable survival skills. His whole family was taught to be self-sufficient if not antisocial. Frank met Judy-Beth once to deliver the news of Buggy’s death. That was close to forty years ago. Since then a distant friend told Frank Judy-Beth died and the house was abandoned. Frank didn’t appear to believe the story of her death even as he told it.

“Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?” Blaze asked.

“If you couldn’t tell, girlie, I’m not keen on stopping anywhere back here. Until you cross the mountains, the farther east you go the crazier everyone gets.”

“But she’s dead.”

“I don’t know that for sure,” Frank said. “But if she’s alive and in that house, there ain’t no way she isn’t a lunatic.”

“Frank, if she’s alive she’s a frail old woman, and—”

He cut me off. “I’m her age, boy. Do I look frail and old?”

Blaze coughed to mask a laugh.

“No, sir,” I said. “But there’s no way in hell she could take on the three of us. Even if she has a couple friends, we’re better off.”

“And if she’s alone, or the house is abandoned, we have nothing to worry about,” Blaze added to reassure Frank.

He scowled at me before giving Blaze the same face. No one could convince him if his mind was set, and he was set on Judy-Beth being alive and capable of harming one or all of us. We all dropped the subject.

Once we decided to find her house, we found it without issue. Frank’s memory was impeccable, even though he’d only been to the house a handful of times. It was an odd shade of blue with peeling paint and junk strewn about its yard. The roof on a poorly built side extension was about to cave in. A black, wicked looking wrought iron fence circled the property. Dense forest shrouded the house, making it look creepier than it had the right to look. If I saw the house pre-apocalypse, I’d call it white trash in a heartbeat. Now it was something from a horror movie.

I drove down a short, gravely road and stopped a couple yards from the front gate. The house didn’t need boarding up. Whoever owned it decided to get bars placed over all the windows, even on the second story. Breaking in through a window would be impossible, but that didn’t matter. The front door was visible, and had no coverings.

The windows on first-story apartments or bars in Seattle were often barred, but the reason was obvious; it was a big city with a lot of derelicts who had no issue with breaking in. Whenever I saw houses outside of the city with barred windows, I wondered if the owners were keeping something out or in. My morbid side said they were keeping something in.

Something about the place made me feel uncomfortable. Was it the old tricycle on its side in front of the gate? Or the liquid shadows underneath the front porch? How about the curtains in the windows? I could’ve sworn I saw them shift.

Not letting the spooks get to me, I got out of the car first and reached into the backseat for my new carbine. Blaze handed it to me then slid out, looking at the house with evident suspicion.

Now that I was out of the car, I noted the sullen absence of birds chirping or other expected noises. Of course, this only added to my sense of unease.

“How do you want to do this?”

Maybe Blaze felt wrong about the place, too. Why else would she be whispering?

She spat her cigarette onto the ground and dug her boot into it before looking at me.

“I guess we should just go right in.” I shrugged and strolled over to the gate, trying hard for nonchalance.

I heard gravel crunching behind me, and a car door slammed as Frank and Blaze followed. They stopped when I stopped and we all looked at the gate together.

It was locked. A huge, thick chain wrapped around the double gates, padlocked several times over. Nothing could be easy. I threw my gun around my shoulder and grabbed the bars, quickly hoisting myself up. They rattled noisily as I climbed to the top and began my descent to the other side.

After I jumped to the ground, I looked at the two from the other side. “Can you make it, Frank?”

“I’m not totally incapable, boy. I’ve climbed more fences than you have in your life.”

Francis went first, a little slower than me. His boots slipped against the bars, but eventually he made it over. Blaze, as expected, was over in a flash, standing with us and looking at the house again.

Once we were all on the other side, I took another look at the property. The grass was beyond dead, and everything on top of it forgotten and destroyed. Rusted household appliances, kids’ toys, and other random objects were cluttered together. It looked like the family decided to never throw anything away. Near the side extension, I noticed a mountain of black garbage sacks.

From somewhere behind the house came the faint humming of a generator.

I brought my gun up and walked toward the front door, caution in every step. There was no way I considered the house abandoned. It was too well fortified.

“Fuck!” I yelled as a loud whining noise started up and petered out. My pulse was throbbing in my throat as I looked for its source. A toy truck off to my right. It must’ve gone off on its own. Its warped, waterlogged sound scared the hell out of me. I glanced at Frank and Blaze, who also looked a bit pale.

Just as I was about to put my boot on the first step up the porch, a muffled voice called out from inside.

“Who are you?” The voice was old and high-pitched. A woman.

I lowered my gun and motioned for my companions to do the same. “My name is Cyrus. This is Frank and Blaze.”

“I like those names. Very honorable. What do you want?”

“We’re just looking for food. We’re hungry,” Blaze said in a tone I’d never heard before. I knew the real Blaze, who used one general, flat tone for everything. This voice was higher and subtly mimicking the woman inside. She was quite the actor and psychologist when useful.

“Oh, oh, oh. Well, I can’t have that.” Clanks of deadbolts being pulled. “Can’t have you children going hungry.”

A nappy, tall old lady stood in the now open doorway. Her hair was a million shades of grey and stuck up in an equal number of directions. She wore a grossly stained floral skirt and a white blouse. Heavy boots completed the ensemble.

“My name is Judy-Beth. Please come in.”

I stole a glance at Frank, who raised his eyebrows at me before proceeding in. Judy-Beth led the way, not looking back once at her guests. Apparently she didn’t recognize Frank.

The interior of the house was worse than the outside by a long shot. A narrow walkway guided us through boxes piled up to the ceiling. They had words scribbled in black marker, but I couldn’t read any of it. Most of them had water damage or mold growing at their bases, and they smelled musty.. Bare fluorescent light bulbs swung from the ceiling

I wasn’t even sure what part of the house we were in. Living room? Dining area? What the fuck was this? Why was the carpet so unevenly brown? It felt like I’d walked into a surreal dimension straight out of the Twilight Zone.

Judy-Beth made a sharp right and Frank followed. Just before Blaze fixed to follow, I grabbed her arm. She moved closer to me and leaned in.

“Something isn’t right,” I whispered.

Blaze was so close I could see her bloodshot eyes in detail, which were framed with uncommonly long lashes. She blinked and I mentally slapped myself for admiring her.