Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (31 page)

Emma whispers back in agreement
and cowers down lower in the back seat, placing her hand on Billy’s head,
instructing him to do the same.

“Now walk slowly toward the
gate” The bullhorn sounds out with a dry click and faint static.

With machine guns leveled at his
head, Ron shuffles through the corpses at his feet, too afraid to flinch. The
smell is overpowering as maggots and dried shards of flesh squish beneath his
shoes. He can imagine Hell in the odor, sweet with decay and pungent with rot.

“Stop,” the soldier orders, “and
get down on your knees.”

Ron glances at the filth with a
sick expression and drops down to one knee. He can feel the bile rise in his
throat as the slop courses up through his pants. He imagines mud and tries to
breathe through his mouth to abate the stench, but is assaulted by a rancid
taste that clings to his teeth and lines his mouth. His eyes begin to water as
the bullhorn barks back to life.

“Keep your hands on your head.”

Ron’s eyes tighten, loosening
tears as he nods in compliance. He can hear faint clicks sound out as he
recoils from the stench and tries to hold his breath.

An order is given, but Ron can’t
make out the severity over the bullets that rain down upon him. He feels the
hot lead penetrate like a volley of fists, but can’t register what’s happening.

Emma screams from the backseat
as she watches Ron jerk from the impacting bullets. She jumps to the front of
the truck and fumbles for the keys. After scratching the side of the ignition a
few times, she manages to get the key to fit and twists it hard. As tall as she
is for her age, she can’t reach the pedals and is forced to slide down until
the windshield is out of view before she can stomp on the gas.

The truck swerves and weaves
over broken bodies, sending a splattering of rot up along the bed as the tires
spin in the remains.

“I need your help,” she screams
as she whips the truck around and slams the shifter into drive.

Out of the corner of his eye, Billy
can see a soldier taking aim. He can see the determination in the man’s glare. He
launches himself over the seat as bullets pepper the side of the truck. There
is a burning sting in his side as he pushes Emma out of the way, but he ignores
it through the adrenalin and panic that is coursing through his veins.

Emma jerks back in the seat and
stares at Billy. His eyes flicker with pain as he gives her an awkward smile. She
tries to thank him, but he’s on the floor and pressing the gas pedal before she
can. The truck skids and fishtails through the bodies below as Billy puts his
weight on the gas.

“A little slower,” Emma shouts
and Billy eases up on the pedal.

Gunshots quiet in the distance
as Emma steers the truck, trying her best to keep it on the road over the slick
that still clings to the tires.

“My side hurts,” Billy says.

Emma looks down at the pool of
red saturating his t-shirt. “It’s going to be okay,” she says, trying to
comfort him. “We’ll stop soon.”

 Emma pulls off the road and
onto a narrow dirt trail inside a sparse cropping of trees. She drives along
the path until she can’t see the main road any longer. She glances down at
Billy from time to time to make sure he’s all right.

The boy’s breath has become
shallow and he wheezes through Emma’s instructions.

“Tap the brakes,” she says. Once
the truck slows enough, she tells him to press the brake pedal down as far as
he can, and she sets the shifter into park.

Billy rises up from the floor
with a look of pain that distorts his face. He makes his way up to the seat, grunting
and holding his side. He looks down at his blood covered shirt for only a
moment before he feels lightheaded and turns away.

“Let me look at it,” she says
and begins to lift his shirt.

“Do you know doctor stuff?” he
asks, gritting his teeth as Emma peels the shirt back.

“No.” she shakes her head. “But
I know how to bandage cuts.”

He shakes his head and moans.
“If my dad was here, he’d know what to do.”

Emma reaches in the back and
grabs her pack. After sorting through the contents, she pulls out her book and
the first aid kit. She leafs through the pages until she finds what she’s
looking for.

“It says to keep pressure on it
and make sure it’s clean.” She opens the kit and pulls out a can of antiseptic
spray. “This is going to sting,” she says as she taps the nozzle.

Billy recoils in pain when the
mist hits his side. “Ow, it hurts,” he says as he looks down at the wound and
nearly passes out.

“Just lay back, I think I can do
this,” she replies. Bloody fingerprints stain the pages as she flips through
the pages of the book. She uncoils a length of bandage and places it on the
side of the seat. “I need you to sit up so I can wrap this around you.”

Billy does as he’s told and
winces through while Emma applies the gauze and begins to coil the bandage
around his body.

“We’re going to have to put
fresh ones on every once in a while,” she says, placing a length of medical
tape across the end.

“Do you think it’ll be okay?” he
asks.

“I think so.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, wrinkling up the
side of her mouth in a smile. “I kind of like having you around.”

Billy smiles at her and lies
back on the seat, his eyes fluttering sleepily as he rests.

“Thank you,” she says as he
begins to nod off.

“For what?”

“For saving me.”

“Awe, it was nothin’” he
replies. “I just didn’t want to see you get hurt.”

She smiles at him and watches as
he dozes off.

As Billy sleeps, Emma sorts
through what they have stored in the truck. From behind the seat, in a small
pouch attached to the back, she finds a map. It is a thin book and not very
detailed, but she can make out where they are. She traces the roads with her
finger and guides it along a highway that leads to Colorado.

From the back of the survival
guide, she pulls out a picture, wrinkle and broken around the edges. On the
back is directions written in her grandpa’s handwriting. It details the roads
that would be best to take to get to the cabin on the other side of the
picture. The directions are simple and easy for her to read now that she has a
full map. She flips the picture over and again as Billy snores on the other
side of the bench seat.

She remembers going there a few
years ago with her mom and meeting up with her grandfather on the long,
desolate trail. She remembers how high the cabin was and she remembers the
smell of the trees and the wood that the cabin was built out of. She remembers
it as a hazy dream from when times weren’t so bad.

As Billy rests, she gathers the
things she needs and fastens a set of large, empty water bottles to the gas and
brake pedals with the medical tape. She sits in the driver’s seat and tests to
make sure she can reach them without having to sink too far down into the seat.
Satisfied, she locks the doors and eases herself back, letting her eyes rest as
she thinks about what she has lost.

All the faces gather and jump in
her dreams, fluttering from one image to the next as she remembers them. She
sees her grandfather fall over backward through the hatch and her view changes
abruptly.

April stares through the attic
window and quietly asks why. Greg is there too, his mouth is snarling as the
dead thing knocks him to the ground. She misses Scarlet the most, she misses
they way she smiled even when things were at their worst. Johnny ruffles her
hair and grins, the blue of his eyes shimmering like the sky.

For all of this she remembers,
her dreams are scattered and hopeless, but then the cabin comes into view just
like the old, blurry picture she found. In that image, all of the pain and
misery seems to fall away and becomes replaced with hope and possibility.

Epilogue -

Emma is much older now. Her face
is thinner and more refined. Her features have become delicate and more
pronounced.

Her hair trails at the side of
her face, gently caressing her cheeks as she stands at the edge of the cliff in
front of the cabin and gazes down at the dead. The emaciated husks stumble and
swoon in the valley below, letting rotten strips of flesh swing with their
tired movements. The skeletal remains of countless others that followed them so
many years ago lay like the twigs and branches of disregarded trees after a
storm. They shine under the morning sun, gleaming white and clean like they’ve
been bathed in countless ages.

She turns and her stomach juts
out in pregnant glory, curving down to her waist, ushering in the promise of
many tomorrows. She cradles it like the most fragile of things and places her
hand on top as she turns back toward the cabin.

Out front, there is a hand well
with flaking red paint and rust at the edges. Along the porch, plants sway in
the breeze that comes from behind, taking away the smell of the dead. At the
other side of the property, a steep slope descends to the canyon floor, shaded
in trees too old to fret over the passing of days.

A simple garden sprawls out
along the far side of the cabin, growing under the constant sunlight it
receives. Corn stands against the cabin, dropping down to poles covered in
beans and potatoes resting at the bottom. Carrots and onions round out the edge
of the garden, right in front of a patch of herbs that glisten with a fresh
watering.

The cabin is modest, but gives
them everything that could hope for. Billy hangs a hide from a circular network
of twigs, bound together with sinew, and stretches it before hanging it from the
side of the cabin to dry. A small smoke house bellows out the aroma of meat and
spices and he adjusts the flue to lower the temperature.

The squawking of birds sounds
out from overhead as their wings flap furiously before they glide downward to
the valley. There are more of them with every passing year, more than Emma can
count at once. They dive through the air and attack the wavering dead,
relieving them of the rot that hangs from ligaments that juts out between
cracked and weathered skin. With scraps of rancid meat in their beaks, every
predatory bird Emma can recall makes itself known to the sky. They flip the
meat in their beaks and return to the sea of death that has gathered.

“How long do you think it will
take them to eat all that,” Billy says, wrapping his arms around Emma.

“I don’t know,” she answers.
“Every year, they thin them out a little more.”

“Do you think there’ll ever be a
time when we can go back down?” he asks, straightening out the sparse tuft of
beard that covers his chin.

“I don’t know why we would ever
want to,” she says. “We have everything we need right here.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,”
he says with a nod and a deep breath. “Still, it would be nice if our son had
someone to play with.”

“I told you, we’re having a
girl,” she says, pursing her lips. “We’re going to name her April.”

“After the month?” he asks.

“Yeah, after the month,” she
replies.