Zombie Fallout 4: The End Has Come and Gone (6 page)

No other sound emanated from the gas station store, but I still brought my gun up out of an abundance of caution. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tracy tense up.
Gary for all his comedic endeavors was now all business. He came up beside me as we advanced on the store. Justin went up to the front doors and peered out. I stole a glance towards him. His thumbs up assured me that our one avenue for escape was still clear.

“One chance,”
Gary
said loudly, startling the hell out of me.

I hated giving potential enemies any sort of heads up. Maybe that was how they had done it when Gary was in the Air Force. Marines? What can I say, we don’t fight fair, we fight to win.

“Did you hear me?”
Gary
asked again. “I said one chance .” “Dude,” I said impatiently. “You already gave them their one shot, enough already.”

“We’re coming in!” he added just for good measure.

I stopped and let my gun slack down. “Really? Are you kidding me? Should I get some flyers printed up, with our arrival date and time?” “Well I don’t think
that’s
necessary,” Gary answered.

“Don’t shoot!” came from the far corner and of course the dimmest lit section of the store.

We both swung our guns and trained them on that spot, advancing even slower.

“Don’t move,” came from our immediate right.

“Text book,” I said quietly.

“What?”
Gary
asked.

“We just walked into a trap.”

Why
Gary
looked down at his feet I don’t know, maybe he was looking for a tripwire.

“Not that kind,” I told him.

“Put your guns down,” came the voice from the corner.

Like gasoline to a fire Travis came running up to the store entrance. “Drop that fucking gun!” he yelled.

“No swearing!”
Tracy
said reflexively from the food court.

I could hear the metallic sound of the action being moved on the pistol that was aimed at my right side. I started going through the laundry list of vital organs exposed to that potential shot, any of them being damaged was not something I wanted to deal with today.

“Hold up!” I yelled. “I’m putting my gun down. Travis, do not do anything.”

“Dad, it’s just a girl,” Travis said. I don’t know if he meant he could take her down quickly or ‘it’s just a girl and what the hell do I do?’

“How big is the gun?” I asked evenly as I bent over very slowly to place my rifle on the floor.

“Fucken huge,” he said with some awe.

“No swearing!”
Tracy
said again.

“Angel, you alright?” the voice from the corner asked.

I couldn’t believe it. The girl apparently holding a rhino killing pistol started to giggle. “I’m alright Eyean. But he looks scared.” And then she started to giggle again.

I had placed my rifle on the floor and stolen a glance at my captor as I stood back up. She stuck her tongue out at me when she realized I was looking at her. A six year old girl holding a .44 magnum had gotten the drop on me. “Wonderful,” I said in self-disgust.

She put on her meanest face, probably the one reserved for when she found out that the Hannah Montana episode on that night was a repeat. However, it was no joke when she motioned with the gun for me to put my hands over my head.
Gary had already put his gun down and was lying prostrate on the floor.

“Dad?” Travis asked.

“Put the gun down. I’d rather get shot than ever shoot a little girl.” Visions of a Wal-Mart loading bay blazed across my memories. “Again,” I added.

“Eyean, all their guns are down,” Angel said, putting her hand over her mouth to stifle another giggle.

“Eyean, why would you send this girl out here to do this?” I was enraged.

“It’s
Ryan
, she’s never been good with the ‘R’,” a skinny kid maybe 15 or 16 years old said as he came out from behind a NASCAR display. “She was in the bathroom when we heard you come in. I told her to stay there.” “Any chance we could convince her to put that gun down before anyone gets hurt? And considering I’m the only one under aim at the moment, it would most likely be me.” “Mister, I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “But we don’t know you at all.”

“Stranger danger!” Angel said excitedly.

“Wonderful, so now what?” I asked.

Ryan didn’t seem so prepared to answer that question.

Tracy
came up cautiously to the front of the store. “Why she’s just a little girl Talbot, what’s the matter, did she trap the big brave men?” she asked condescendingly, laced with a bit of humor. I don’t know how she pulled it off. It was magnificent and it also had the added bonus of diffusing a potentially bad situation.

“Hi pretty lady,” Angel said, waving the hand that was not holding the magnum. How the hell such a little girl was keeping that cannon trained directly on me I don’t friggen know.

“Hi, Angel is it?”
Tracy
said, getting a little lower to be on eye level with the Bonnie (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) wannabe. That might seem harsh to you but I was the one being held at gunpoint. Give it a whirl sometime and let me know what you think of it.

“Yes,” the girl answered coquettishly, lightly kicking her left foot forward.

“You’re very pretty Angel,”
Tracy
said softly.

“Thank you pretty lady,” Angel answered. This would have been an awesome Disney flick if that cold steel huge caliber weapon wasn’t pointed at me.

“It’s
Tracy
,”
Tracy answered.

“My mom’s name was Alicia,” Angel answered back.

We all noted the key word ‘was.’

“Oh honey,”
Tracy
said, standing back up. As she walked forward she opened her arms wide.

Angel didn’t give a
crap
about me as her gun clattered to the floor and she ran into Tracy ’s outstretched arms. I was thankful it didn’t go off, especially considering the first action of the dual action revolver had already been engaged. When I walked over to retrieve the weapon I increased my embarrassment level exponentially. I opened the revolver only to realize that she had no bullets.

“What now mister?” Ryan asked, cautiously watching his sister as she sobbed heavily into Tracy ’s chest.

“Nothing, come on out.” I looked down.
Gary
hadn’t moved. “Umm, you can get up now brother.” “All clear?” he asked.

“You could say that,” I answered, showing him the empty revolver.

“Oh, I knew that all along,” he said seriously.

I couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or just trying to save face. Ryan stepped hesitantly up to where we were.

“You’re fine, kid, we probably don’t fit the definition of Good Guys but we sure as hell aren’t the bad ones.” He seemed to relax a bit, especially when he saw how Angel had taken to
Tracy .

“Can we come out Ryan?” another voice from the shadows asked.

I grabbed my rifle and slung it over my shoulder.

“Can they mister?” Ryan asked warily.

“It’s Mike and yes, this is
your
place, we’re the ones intruding.” I could tell Ryan was feeling more comfortable, not completely trusting yet but not fearful either.

“It’s alright guys,” Ryan said.

Three more kids came out from behind the end aisle cap. They were all roughly the same age as Ryan. One was a little taller and looked to be suffering greatly from their gas station food diet. Drakes Cakes were playing hell on his acne. I hadn’t noticed before but Ryan, Angel and the other three castaways were filthy, they looked like orphans from 18th century France . Apparently 21st century America wasn’t as far removed from those troubled times as we had hoped to believe.

“How many more of
you are there
?” I asked Ryan.

“This is it,” he said with downcast eyes. “Benny and Chirp went home when the end started and they haven’t been back. Dizz and me,” he said, pointing to the aforementioned face-pocked tall kid. “We went to look for them a couple of weeks ago and maybe see what happened to our parents,” he added softly. Angel had finally unburied her face from Tracy ’s chest and was listening intently.

“How far away do you live from here?” I asked.

“Not very, from the back of this rest area you go through the fence, a small woods and then we’re about two streets away. “Half mile maybe?” he asked his friends, looking for validation.

One of the dirtier kids (who was aptly named Sty) just shrugged his shoulders. “Guess so,” he answered in that typical dripping with contempt teenager way.

“What were you guys doing out here?” I asked, just to change the subject. He had lost at least two friends and his parents and probably didn’t want to rehash that again.

“We were sledding, there’s an awesome hill right at the fence,” Ryan said with a ghost of a smile on his face.

“And this store used to have the best chocolate milk,” Dizz added a little
melancholy .

“I drank the last one,” Angel said. “Dizz gave it to me. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dizz said, a little embarrassed.

“Our mom was going to get her hair done,” Ryan said. “She told me I had to take Ang with us if I wanted to go out.” “Daddy wasn’t feeling good, he was cranky and had gone to sleep,” Angel added for good measure.

My immediate thought was that he had been infected. Ryan must have been able to see the wheels spinning in my head, he nodded in assertion to my unspoken words.

“I had just come back up the slope and was waiting for my turn when I heard a bunch of horns and some skidding,” Ryan said.

“And then a lot of crashy noises,” Angel said, placing her hands over her ears as if it was happening now.

“Zombies just started walking out into the roadway. I mean, we didn’t know they were zombies then. It was horrible, trucks and cars were just plowing into them or crashing into the guardrail or each other trying to avoid them. But that wasn’t the worst part.” “Don’t Eyean,” Angel begged, trying to bury her head and her thoughts deep down.

“Well anyway,” Ryan started back up, leaving out the gorier details for the sake of his sister, and I guess for all of us actually. “We watched, we just couldn’t believe what was happening.” Angel groaned. “Customers and people that worked here they all left, I mean in a hurry, and the zombies pretty much followed them. I know it was wrong but we,” and he made sure to point at all of the guilty parties. “We just had to come in and take a look.” An untended store as a teenager, that’s a no-brainer. I would have ransacked the hell out of the place. It’s in my nature.

Ryan looked at me to see if I was holding judgment over his actions. “I would have done the same thing,” I told him, and he seemed relieved. Now to clarify, just because I would have done it definitely didn’t make it right, but I decided to not tell him that.

“We were still in here messing around,” he continued.

“And eating stuff,” Dizz added.

Ryan looked over at him crossly. “And yeah, I guess, eating some stuff.”

“A lot of stuff,” Angel said with a big grin.

“I get it, you ate a bunch of stuff,” I said.

“A bunch,” Angel agreed. “And then the army men came.”

“Yeah, they were using huge trucks with plows to push all the cars out of the way,” Dizz said.

“We thought they were coming for us,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, it’s a Capital Offense to steal a Slim Jim,” I said sardonically.

Angel started crying. “Nice one Talbot,”
Tracy
said, trying to comfort the girl.

“I was just kidding Angel,” I said, trying to placate her. “And how do you know what capital offense means?” “So we were scared,” Ryan continued. “We hid until they had gone by, it was completely dark by then and the power was out. Couldn’t see anything here because there was only a little bit of moonlight. We heard some wicked fighting down the road.” “Guns, grenades, missiles, everything,” Dizz said in fond remembrance. “The sky was pretty bright because of it.” “And smoky,” Angel interjected.

“Yeah, definitely smoky,” her big brother said.

I was going to ask them why they hadn’t gone home at that point. But this wasn’t a difficult puzzle to piece together. The power was out everywhere, no fun being out and about when you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, much less whether zombies are after you. I wouldn’t have taken that chance either.

Ryan continued his narrative. “The next day, early on, we saw some army guys heading back the way they had come and then nothing. No cars, no fighting, nothing. Benny and Chirp said it was time to go.” Ryan looked down at his feet. “Mister, I was scared, for… for my sister.” ‘Nice recovery,’ I thought. Can’t ever show weakness in front of your friends,
especially not your friends.

“We had been safe in the store the night before, there was no way of telling what was happening outside. They called me chicken but promised they would send help back.” “That was a long time ago,” Angel added softly.