Sven didn’t hear Evan respond. Jane and Lorie were whispering something to each other, then Ivan let out a loud, angry hiss.
“I know,” Sven said, “it’s some creepy rain out there, but we’ll be okay. You can have all the cat food there is at Wegmans. You can pick out whatever it is you like best and eat just that. How’s that sound? I bet they even have some delicious raw fish for you to tear into.” Sven was surprised to find he was repulsed by the mental image of fish, and of food in general. His appetite was unusually absent, and he felt none of his usual enthusiasm about eating. None at all.
“Sven,” Jane said, “any chance you can drive any faster? Evan’s passed out again, and I’m sure the car ride and noise of the rain isn’t helping. We need to give him liquids and soup and all that, and let him rest.”
“I can try,” Sven said. “We’re most of the way now, but we need to get there in one piece. We’ll get there, hole up, and hang out until this whole thing blows over. Evan will get better, and everything will be fine.” Sven wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
Ivan hissed again, looking as agitated as he had so far that day.
“Jane,” Sven said, “can you try to calm him down? Maybe give him another treat or something?”
“Yeah, I’ll try, he’s been acting really weird.” Jane gave Ivan a snack, which seemed to appease him. “Sven…about holing up at Wegmans, isn’t that what people usually try to do in the movies?”
“Yeah,” Sven said, but that made him think. It never worked out in the movies. Holing up with supplies and trying to wait out the zombie contagion usually ended in disaster. Wait, was it usually or was it always? Sven tried to think of a movie where it worked, but he couldn’t. Then again, trying to fight the zombies usually ended in disaster too, unless you happened to have super zombie-fighting powers like the Resident Evil woman. “We’ll see what the situation is, rest, stock up on supplies, and then take it from there.” He wasn’t sure where they would take it from there, but he was sure they needed rest, and they needed food and water.
“If the movies are any indication,” Sven added, “we need to be on the lookout for people taking advantage of the crisis. We need to be on the lookout for them as much as for the zombies…if not more so.”
Chapter 80
Cooled by the rainwater, Milt was feeling much better. Actually he was feeling quite good—as good as he felt after a moderate World of Warcraft pillaging victory. The pulsing in his head had calmed, replaced by the knowledge that the day’s strange events heralded his impending rise to power, and perhaps even to fame, as the simpleton squire had suggested.
Leaning into the squire’s car, Milt felt around his jaw line for a lump. He found one, and squeezed it greedily, until the pimple popped.
There was a painful prick, and Milt knew that he had pushed some of the infection deeper. That was good, because that meant there would be more to pop later, and it was more likely to be yellow and bloody and maybe even a little greenish. Those were the best, the most interesting of bodily expulsions.
He brought his thumb and forefinger up to his nose and sniffed at it. The smell was nothing special, and, bemused, he brought his fingers up for a closer inspection. The product of the pimple was pasty, but there was no hard, little kernel in it as Milt had hoped.
Next time, Milt thought. There was always a next time, and he relished the anticipation of it. He loved the sense of accomplishment that came with the pop. It was glorious. Milt wiped the pus on his jeans and smiled.
“So, any new ideas?” Brian asked. “About what’s going on? Like maybe it’s just a virus, or maybe some kind of radiation. I guess it must be some kind of infection, what with the biting and everything. Then again maybe it’s pollution. People really are screwing up the planet pretty good these days, and I think what goes around comes around, you know?”
Milt felt his smile fade as he turned to Brian. Brian was growing increasingly pathetic. He kept asking about what was happening and why it was happening and what they should do about it and so on. He was a whiner, a childish whiner. He didn’t understand things the way Milt did. But what could Milt do about it? It was so hard to find any kind of help that good help was most assuredly out of the question.
It was obvious to Milt that why and how the zombies had come didn’t matter. It didn’t make one modicum of difference. What mattered was that the world had changed, and the balance of power was shifting…shifting to people like Milt, people that had the guts, and the intelligence, to take control.
Brian might be mostly worthless, Milt thought, but I can lord over him for a while until he outlives his usefulness.
As simple as Brian might be, he might have a role to play in Milt’s ascension. It wasn’t Brian’s fault that he was dumb, of course, and Milt did appreciate that the guy had bandaged his head, albeit a little too tightly.
Milt sighed. “No, no new clues.”
“I sure would like to know what’s going on,” Brian said.
“I am sure we will find out presently,” Milt said, responding to the drug-dealer turned squire. Brian had tried to play off the drug-dealing by saying he was in sports nutrition or something equally laughable. Not only was Milt combating the zombie infestation, but he was cleaning up the community by rehabilitating its criminals. He felt pride in having such a positive effect on the people around him.
Now they were waiting for someone else to come. Brian was convinced that there would be more survivors, and that they would come here. As much as Milt didn’t want to admit it, he agreed with Brian. This was the place to go, it wasn’t densely populated, and there were supplies. There was just the matter of clearing out the diseased monsters that were there.
“You gonna keep on using that thing?” Brian asked, pointing to the sword. “Don’t you think that’s a bit dangerous, you know, with how you’re not feeling well and everything? You might cut yourself again. Maybe a blunt object would be better, or a crowbar or something. I’ve got a crowbar, do you want it?”
Milt tightened his grip on the hilt of his Conan the Barbarian replica sword, and looked at Brian. The squire looked so stupid with his muscles and lean body. What was the point of all that? Milt knew that sports rotted the brain. He knew that even before he met Brian, and Brian was yet another confirmation of that fact.
“Yes I will keep using my Sword of Crom, thank you very much, and I will have you know that I did not cut myself. I do not question you about the silly body sculpting routines in which you obviously engage, or about your perfectly ridiculous use of that baseball bat as a zombie-dispatching device. Therefore, please refrain from questioning my own zombie slaying and life choices. Oh, and I should add that I reject your offer of your crowbar, which is no doubt rusty and tetanus-ridden.”
“I was just trying to—”
“Enough! Let us sit here in peaceful silence so that I may calculate our next move. That way we will be ready at a moment’s notice. Why don’t you listen to the pelting that the rain is giving the pavement and ponder the ecosystem, or something equally inane.”
A few minutes passed, and Milt began to feel more at ease. Brian was, it seemed, actually capable of sitting still without making a sound.
But then, to Milt’s great chagrin, the silence didn’t last long.
“Hey!” Brian suddenly yelled. “Look over there!” He pointed into the center of the parking lot, the area where Milt had encountered the horde of shopper zombies.
“Yes, very good. That is the parking lot, and we shall cross it and enter the Wegmans when the rain has ceased. Now let us please resume the nice tranquil silence that we were enjoying before you just now decided to speak. I suggest that you pretend you are a monk of an order that requires taking an oath of silence as a condition of membersh— ”
“No! Look! They’re moving!” Brian jumped to his feet, and started hopping up and down, pointing to the center of the parking lot. “The zombie parts from before, the dead zombies, I mean the zombies wi
thout heads or whatever, they’re moving! Look! Look!”
“That is utterly preposterous,” Milt began, but when he looked where Brian was pointing, he wheezed out a gasp and then he was furiously pulling up the back of his jeans so that he could reach into his back pocket and get his inhaler. His bothersome alveoli had become uncooperative at the very instant Milt saw the writhing mass of undead, their limbs flailing without purpose under the heavy downpour.
Then Milt’s ears filled with the sound of his own wheezing breaths, and everything went black.
Chapter 81
Lorie held the long, serrated hunting knife at her side. She’d taken it out of her back pocket as she climbed into the car, knowing that it would be impossible to sit with the knife in her pocket.
She was sure nobody had been looking—Evan was lying down and Sven was cursing at the pouring rain. Lorie slowly put the knife beside her, between her leg and the door, where nobody would be able to see that she was holding it. She didn’t think Sven would care much about her having the knife, but it seemed Jane hadn’t wanted Lorie to arm herself, and Lorie saw no need to inform anyone that she had found herself a notched knife to play with. It was nowhere near as big as the butcher knife, but she was happy with it all the same. She was looking forward to breaking it in.
Now they were slowly driving up 29, farther up than Lorie ever went, except when her dad used to pick her up and take her back to Arlington with him. Lorie’s mom and dad had separated when Lorie was six, and then Lorie's dad died of a heart attack when she was eleven.
Her mom told her it had to with his stressful government job. Lorie didn't know that much about her father, and she was always working up the courage to ask her mom about him. Now she realized she might never know more about him than she already did.
Concentrating, Lorie gazed out the window and made the memory flit out of her mind and into the storm. She knew it would visit her again, but now wasn’t the time to be a gracious host.
It had been years since Lorie was last up this way, and she didn’t recognize anything. The rain was finally getting lighter, and through the breaks in the downpour Lorie caught glimpses of large expanses of woods, punctuated occasionally and briefly by strip malls.
The scenery they passed made her feel lonely and cold, even though it was a warm day and the storm hadn’t brought more than a few degree temperature drop with it. The panorama they passed made Lorie feel cold all the same. She was grateful to be in a car, in some relative safety, with people who were as determined as she was to survive. That made her think of something, something that she recognized had been bothering her at some subconscious level of understanding.
“Hey,” Lorie said, uncertain of where to begin, “so I keep thinking about all the bad stuff that might happen, all the stuff that can go wrong...not in a depressing sort of way, but to be ready for it. I think we should be prepared for anything right?”
“Right,” Jane said, “of course. What’s on your mind?”
“Well,” Lorie said, “I think maybe we should talk about what we’ll do if something goes wrong with the car. What’s the backup plan for going on foot? Where would we go and what would we take?”
The silence that followed made Lorie uncomfortable, so she spoke again to fill the quiet. “I mean I think it’s doable, we should just be ready for it, like if we split up the food so each of us has some, or if we just have everything in bags and ready to go, and...well,” Lorie’s voice changed to a whisper, “what are we going to do with Evan? We can’t leave him, and I can’t carry him.”
“Jane and I will carry him,” Sven said.
“Of course we will,” Jane said, “we’re not gonna leave him behind, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Lorie looked over at Evan. He showed no reaction to their talking about him.
“Okay,” Lorie said, “good. We can’t leave him behind, I just want to put it out there that with the amount of stuff we’ve just taken, we won’t be able to carry everything on foot. We’ll be too slow, and...”
“You’re right,” Sven said, reassuring Lorie. “People come first, before weapons and ammo. If we get caught and have to leave the car for whatever reason, we leave the heaviest stuff behind and go on with the bare minimum that we need to eat and defend ourselves.”
“I’m going to fill my pockets with extra ammo,” Jane said. “So that if we have to ditch I’ll have some to work with.”
“I can take Evan over my shoulder,” Sven said, “and Lorie, can you take Ivan in his pack?”
Lorie nodded eagerly, happy at the acceptance they had given her fear of going on foot. “I’ll take him.”
Ivan meowed.
“See?” Sven said. “Ivan agrees with the plan.” He laughed, and then Jane and Lorie joined in. Lorie’s laugh felt as forced and uneasy as Sven’s and Jane’s looked.
The plan worked for Lorie, and helped to set her mind at ease. She needed to know what to do in the eventualities that she could think up.
Luck favors the prepared, Lorie thought, as she lightly stroked her knife’s serrations with the tip of her thumb.
The rain was getting lighter still. Through the rear window, Lorie saw some streaks of light peeking through the storm clouds. Turning back around and looking in the direction they were traveling, Lorie didn’t see any reassuring streaks of light, but the rain was calming down all the same. The ominous sound of the pounding rain on the roof of the car had lessened to a smoother, somewhat less threatening background noise.
“We’re just about there,” Sven said. Lorie was glad to hear his voice. The car had gotten way too quiet. “How’s Evan back there?”
Lorie was reluctant to check on him, for reasons she couldn’t place. “I’ll see how he’s doing.”
“No!” Jane snapped from the front, spinning around in her seat, looking like she was about to keep Lorie away from Evan by force if necessary. “I mean…” Jane seemed to be trying to make up for her overreaction. “I mean we should let him rest. We’ll be able to stop soon, and then I’ll take care of him properly. If he’s able to sleep through this, we ought to let him.”
“Okay,” Lorie said. She held eye contact with Jane for a few moments, and found herself inexplicably sliding into the corner of the backseat, closer to the door, and farther from Evan. She watched him, thinking he must be really sick to be able to sleep at a time like this.
For a while, they rode in silence through the gloom.
Then the rain stopped, and Evan’s eyes shot open.
Chapter 82
Twinkle, twinkle, the twinkling twinkles twinkled.
Milt opened his eyes all the way, and comprehension dawned on him. He was staring at the water droplets collecting at the bottom of a mud flap. He squirmed sideways, and saw that the mud flap belonged to a tire. He squirmed farther, and saw that the tire belonged to a car.
Then Milt turned his head to the left and screamed.
“It’s alright,” Brian said. “It’s just me. I think you had a panic attack and passed out.”
“Hogwash,” Milt said. “Men such as myself are not prone to panic attacks. A heavy branch must have fallen from the tree above me, crashing into my skull and rendering me unconscious.”
“Actually, I think it had something to do with that.” Brian turned and pointed.
Milt looked, and he began to wheeze again, groping for the top of his back pocket.
“I’m all over it,” Brian said, and handed Milt an inhaler. “I got it out of your pocket when I saw you trying to get it. I gave you a few puffs, and you came to.”
Milt was infuriated at the invasion of privacy to which he’d succumbed while unconscious, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing the inhaler and puffing on it.
The cold, medicated puffs felt magnificent in his lungs. The seditious alveoli unfurled and relented. Milt kept puffing as he turned back to the implausible sight in the parking lot.
It couldn’t be! How could it? They were moving, grasping, clu
tching at the air, kicking their legs, and contorting their faces into masks unseen even in hell’s lowest rungs.
He could even see the faces of the decapitated zombies twist and warp and snap their teeth as if chomping on imaginary hunks of human flesh.
Suddenly cold, he looked with surprise at the inhaler he still held in front of his face. His hand was pumping it violently, and Brian was clutching at his hand and the inhaler, trying to wrestle it away.
The squire was saying something, but the churn of the zombie parts had jolted Milt out of his regular bodily awareness, and so the squire’s voice was far away and hard to make out, if it was there at all.
Then Brian wrenched the inhaler free, and Milt snapped back into himself at once.
“Take it easy on that thing,” Brian said. “You’ll OD.”
“Th—th—they…”
“Yeah, they’ve been doing that for a while. I think it’s got something to do with the rain, but they haven’t put themselves back together or anything like that. They’re just moving in their broken pile.”
“They w—won’t ge—get us?”
“No, they haven’t come any closer. Pretty damn creepy though, huh?”
Milt made a gurgling sound.
Brian pointed up at the sky. “At least the rain stopped.”
“M—may I ask why you s—said the thrashing had t—to do with the rainwater?”
“Because it didn’t start until the rain began. Then the more rain there was, the more violently the parts moved. It was a lot worse than this while you were passed out. Then, when the rain began to let up, the thrashing let up too. Now the rain is gone, and the movement is dying down. I think maybe the rain feeds them. You see how dry they were before, the way their heads exploded when I hit them? It’s as if they’re made of sawdust. I bet they’re not as dry now, I bet if we go over there and prod at the parts or hit them, they won’t turn to dust, they’ll be more like regular people parts.”
Milt calmed, and his sense of self returned. “Preposterous. Truly and undeniably outrageous. How could you have seen or measured the degree of their undead rattling from your position here, and through the substantial rain? I am afraid it is impossible.”