The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (5 page)

“We
aren’t too far from Teddy’s house. It’s on the way to the bus. We can make a
quick stop at his house and look around to see if they’re home. We don’t have
much time, so if we are going to stop, we need to leave now so we don’t miss
the bus.”

“All
right, let’s do that. If everyone’s ready, let’s go,” said Mary.

“Keep
calling Cori. See if she answers her phone while we walk over there,” Jerry
said.

“Okay,”
Mary replied. “I’ve called her about six or eight times already, but I’ll try
her again. Stan, do you have Teddy’s number?”

“Yeah,
I’ll call him. If he answers, I’ll ask him what the hell is going on. I just
hope that they aren’t just messing around. They could ruin this for all of us.”

“Stan,
we’re going, with or without them,” said Jerry. “Our room charges are non-refundable,
and I’m not going to miss this trip for anything. We need to leave now if we
are going to stop at Teddy’s. The bus won’t wait for us.”

As
Jerry was standing on his porch, he was looking at what the girls had brought
with them. They each had a backpack, which was fine; that’s what they had been
told to bring. The thing that baffled Jerry was that each girl also had a
suitcase. Jerry bent over to pick up Mary’s suitcase. It was heavy.

“Mary,”
said Jerry, “What have you got in your suitcase? Rocks? Do you remember we
asked you guys to only
bring
what you needed
,
in
one backpack? Did you pack everything that was in your closet?”

Rosie
stood up from the step she was sitting on. She looked directly at Jerry and
said, “For your information, Mr. Timmel, I know nearly everything about
clothing and fashion. We only have the basic, essential things a woman needs
when she is going to be away for this long. We have shoes, dresses,
undergarments, pants, blouses, sweaters, coats, and makeup, along with whatever
else we
might need. You want us to look good for you, don’t you? Girls
need to be ready for anything. We also brought a sewing kit, extra buttons. And
a first aid kit with Band-Aids and medical tape. If you don’t think all those
things are important, it’s high time you learned. What’s going to happen when
you are married with two or three kids? Are you going to make your wife put
everything into a backpack for each person?”

“A
real
gentleman would carry his lady’s bags — if he loved her, that is.” She looked
at Stan. “What do you guys have in your backpacks?”

“Uh… I
have an extra pair of pants, two pairs of socks, two pairs of shorts, one pair
of shoes, two tee shirts, my toothbrush with toothpaste and my deodorant. I’ve
got all of the essentials that a guy needs. And we still have more room if we
need anything else.”

“Wow,
Stan. You really planned ahead for this trip, didn’t you? After a few days, you’ll
need to stay downwind of all of us.” She looked at Jerry and Mike. “What about
you two? What did you guys pack?”

“We
all brought about the same stuff as Stan. We don’t really need much more than
what we have, do we?” said Mike.

Stan
stood up. His face was flushed. He was kind of sorry that he started this.
“Don’t get me started on that, Rosie. I would like to find the guy who started
that ‘Carry my stuff for me, honey’ crap. I’d knock him the hell out.”

“Stan,
for your information, that guy is a 60-year-old, happily married man with six
children, all but one a boy. He has four grandchildren. He carries his wife’s
bags, or anything else that she needs to bring on the trips they take together.
He opens doors for her, pulls her chair out at the dining table, holds it for
her to sit. He’s a very happy man. His wife is happy too. Remember: happy wife,
happy life. So there. How do you feel about
that?”

Stan
knew when he was on the losing end of a conversation. He huffed and snorted,
then he walked over to her suitcase, bent over to pick it up, and started a
cadence.

“Okay,
men! It’s all on us! Suck it up! Pick it up! Move it on! Grab it, lift it! Tote
it down the line! Be a good boy, make it quick, make it clean. We have to be
there on time, ‘cause the train is coming down the line! Get it there, don’t be
late! On top of it all, don’t forget, to smile and make sure you tip that hat!”

Stan
picked up Rosie’s suitcase and started walking towards Teddy’s house, not
saying another word about the girl’s suitcases.

From
Jerry’s house it was a fifteen-minute walk to the bus stop. It was only six
minutes to Teddy’s house. The guys grabbed their girl’s suitcases and they
started walking, and stopped at Teddy’s house.

From
the street, they could see that the front door was broken, hanging open. They
left the suitcases with their backpacks on the sidewalk. Cautiously, they
walked to Teddy’s front door. The guys were in front, the girls following. They
carefully stepped through the open door into the house. Jerry took over. With
an authority to his voice, he told everyone what he wanted them to do.

“Guys,
I don’t like this. The door has been deliberately broken in. We need to be
careful.” Everywhere they looked, they could see that everything was beat to
hell. “If Teddy or Cori are here, we need to find them quickly. If we don’t
find them soon, we need to be out of here in ten minutes or less. With or
without them, we need to get the hell out of this house as quickly as we can. I
don’t want to run into whoever did all this and I don’t want to stay around
this house any longer than I have to. Something bad has happened here. I don’t
want to miss the bus, either, so we can’t stay here long — ten minutes, max.”

He
pointed to his friends as he issued commands. “Stan, take Rosie go upstairs and
see if they are up there. Mike, take Jennifer and go to the back of the house
where the kitchen is. Check every room that you find. Open any closed doors. If
we don’t find them, we’re out of here. Mary, come with me. We will go out back
to look. We need to be back on the sidewalk in ten minutes or less.”

He
looked around to make sure they were ready. “Okay, everyone — be careful. Let’s
go look for them. If you find them hurt, call out. If they are here, I want
them found. Either way, I want to be out of this house as fast as we can —
again, ten minutes, no more.”

Everyone
split up, looking for Teddy or Cori. Other than everything being all shredded
or ripped up, Teddy or Cori were nowhere to be found. In less than ten minutes,
everyone was back on the front porch. Jerry questioned everyone as they returned.

“Anyone
see them?”

“No,
Jerry, nothing, other than that everything was all beat to crap, there is no
one in this house,” said Mike. “We didn’t see them, not even his mother’s cat.”

“Us either,
Jerry,” said Stan. “There is nothing but torn up stuff everywhere. This place
is starting to creep us out. We need to get away from here,
now.”

“Ok,
everyone make sure you have all your stuff. Guys, you know the drill, grab your
ladies’ suitcases. Let’s get to the bus terminal. Mike, sing it to us.”

“Okay,
men! It’s all on us! Suck it up! Pick it up! Move it on! Grab it, lift it! Tote
it down the line! Be a good boy, make it quick, make it clean. We have to be
there on time, ‘cause the train is coming down the line! Get it there, don’t be
late! On top of it all, don’t forget, to smile and make sure you tip that hat!”

Teddy
and Cori were going to be left behind. No one knew where they were or what
happened to them. As they were looking, what they
did
find were teeth, fingernails,
hair and blood, but no bodies. They would have to worry about them later. They
had a bus to catch.

On the
way to the bus terminal, everyone was pretty quiet. Arriving at the terminal,
they could see that the bus was scheduled to be there in a little less than
eight minutes, if it was running on time. They walked into the waiting area
with their luggage.

The
waiting room at the bus terminal was small. Tourists and locals alike were
waiting for the same bus. They walked around the terminal looking for a place
to sit. Finding none, they went back outside to sit on the steps. None of them
had spoken much since leaving Teddy’s house. Mary was sitting next to Jerry
with her arms around him. After they sat for a few minutes, Mary was the first
one to speak.

“What
we just saw at Teddy’s house was kind of weird… scary, don’t you think, Jerry? And
Raymond told me last night he stopped at Kathy’s house on his way over to my
party. He said that Kathy’s house had been busted up, too. Everything was on
the floor, broken. It kind of sounds like Ted’s house.”

“It
sure does, but right now I don’t really want to talk about it. All I want to do
is get out of town. We need to leave all of this behind for a bit. We can’t let
it ruin our trip. We planned this vacation to have fun. This isn’t the way I
wanted to start it.”

“Do
you know what worst thing was at Teddy’s house?” said Mary. “The
scratches.
They were all over the walls, the floors… the doors, too. They were so deep it
looked like something with big, strong claws made them.”

“I
know,” said Jerry. “But I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

Jennifer
was listening to them talking about Teddy’s house. She asked Mary, “What are we
going to do about them? We can’t just do nothing. We should do something. Maybe
we could call the police. We could tell them what we saw?”

Mike jumped
in to the conversation. “Jennifer, if we call the cops, they’ll want us to come
back to Teddy’s house. They’ll ask us all kinds of questions, and they’ll want
us to write down what we saw. They might make us stay in town for a few days
while they check things out. That will ruin our trip.

“Yes,
they’re our friends; and yes, we’ll miss them, but as far as I’m concerned,
since we didn’t have anything to do with it, the only thing we could tell the
police is that we were there after it happened. If we don’t want this trip to
be all screwed up sitting in the police station filling out reports, we need to
stay out of it. Maybe someone broke in and trashed the place. Right now all I
want to do is get out of this crap town for a while. There have been too much
hinky shit going on. We can talk to the cops when we get back. We don’t know
anything about what happened. It might not be anything serious.”

“I
know, Jerry,” said Jen. “But if it was my house and I was missing, I’d want
everyone to do whatever they could to find me. I feel like we ought to do
something. Did you guys see the fingernails and teeth and the hair on the floor
in the blood? That was the scariest part of the whole thing.”

Stan
had been quiet since they left Teddy’s house. He was sitting holding Rosie’s
hand as she stood next to him. His face was expressionless. He was staring
straight ahead, at nothing. After holding Rosie’s hand for a while, he mumbled
to Rosie, “Baby, please sit next to me. I need you to hold me right now. You’re
my best friend, and I really need you to sit next to me. Please?”

Rosie
sat next to Stan. She leaned in and pulled his body to hers. They sat there
until the bus arrived, and everyone was able to get on board.

The
45-minute ride to the train station was uneventful, other than the bus being full
of tourists. The group sat up front, close to the driver, and after a bit Jerry
began to talk to him.

“How’s
your day going so far?”

The
driver gave a shrug.

“Have
you seen any of the houses around here all torn up?”

“Well,
as a matter of fact, yes, I have. I live over on Old Wood Road. Two days ago my
neighbor’s house was torn up and my neighbors were gone. We couldn’t find them
anywhere.”

“You
look tired.”

“The
bus company’s running with a really short shift. A whole bunch of drivers and
mechanics didn’t show up for work. I’ve been putting in a lot of overtime the
last couple days to help keep the buses running. And it’s not just the drivers.
Police are missing from work. The fire department is short staffed, too. If
this keeps up, we will have to cut back on the number of buses we run. I also
heard that the trains into the city are packed when they run at all. If they
come, they may not be on time.”

The
bus ride was good for Stan. Rosie was able to sit next to him. She held his
hand the entire trip. The simple act of holding his hand allowed Stan to unwind
from what he had seen. While holding on to Rosie, the trip allowed him to
settle his nerves. Towards the end of the ride, they were talking to each
other. Rosie was even able to get Stan to laugh at her jokes.

The
bus stopped across the street from the train station. The walk from the
sidewalk to the train platform was about three minutes, or maybe five to six
minutes if you had a lot of luggage to carry, or if there were a lot of people
trying to cross.

Everyone
that had been on the bus got off with them. It seemed that everyone wanted to
go to the city. Today it took them nearly six minutes to get across the street
and into the train station with everything. They made it with only about five
minutes to spare.

The
platform was crowded. The six of them were lucky to find six seats together.
Stan sat down with Rosie next to him. They were talking amongst themselves when
Rosie spoke up.