“Buckle up,” Ian said.
As I put the seatbelt on, Ian put the car in reverse and sped out of the alley. He turned the car around quickly, barely missing the edge of the building.
Ian slowed down as we made our way through the parking lot and away from the zombies.
“Well, that was fun,” he said.
“So much fun,” I replied sarcastically.
“Come on Cate, don’t you feel the blood pumping through your veins? The adrenaline going crazy?”
“Ian, don’t make me punch you in the back of the head while you’re driving. I’d hate to cause you to flip the car.”
“Yes, it would suck to die in a car accident after surviving a full scale zombie attack.”
“I wonder why that wasn’t a line in the song “Ironic”, it would have been so fitting.”
Ian laughed, “We’ll have to rewrite the zombie apocalypse version.”
I began to laugh with him.
We were making our way to the house where our van was hidden to add some of the cans to our stash. I often felt bad for taking some of the food we found but we never took too much. Just a can or two here, a bag or two there.
I also saved as much of the rationings I got at the safe haven as I could. Though having food leftover when your new ration came in was frowned upon. I found that very odd but it was. Many families who tried to portion their food so it would last longer received less in their rations the next delivery. The attitude seemed to be that if you didn’t eat it, you didn’t need it. It wasn’t fair as I thought everyone should get the same.
I kept my extra food hidden from the guys that distributed the food so they wouldn’t report back to Aaron that I had leftovers. It wasn’t hard to hide my food as my apartment wasn’t under the same scrutiny. There were no random checks that some of the other tenants endured. That was about the only upside to having a roommate who was sleeping with the corrupt bastard running the place, I could slide under the radar a bit more.
I would take my leftover food with us on our runs. Ian gave me his leftover food to hide as well since he was still subject to the random checks.
Though I had a feeling Aaron was catching on that something was up. It could’ve been in my head but he just seemed a lot nosier and interested it what the two of us were up too. It unnerved me. Ian said it was time we picked a day to leave and just not go back. They would all just assume we died on a run. It almost happened, it would be believable. They would also never waste the man power or fuel to try and find us since we never told them where we were going.
Emma didn’t like that I didn’t tell her but I told her, that’s not how runs work. Plans fell apart. You had to go where there were no zombies, that didn’t look torn apart by other people. Which were things that were very hard to find. You couldn’t predict or plan it.
I hadn’t agreed to this plan of Ian’s because I couldn’t leave Emma. Though Ian was my friend, Emma was my constant link to the world before the dead walked it. I had to give up on her to survive but it seemed heartless and cruel. I wasn’t ready to cut that tie but if I waited too long, it would be too late.
As Ian drove down the road, dodging the abandoned cars, it began to rain. Not just rain but pour. It was as if the sky had burst open.
Ian started the windshield wipers, they barley worked. They were so cracked and dry. They were making it worse almost. The one thing I never thought of when I picked up random auto parts at stores or off other vehicles were the windshield wipers. It was the same before this all happened, at least in Arizona. It rained so little that one was not aware the windshield wipers were a problem until needed.
Ian was driving slowly. I didn’t know how he could see anything, I know I couldn’t. There wasn’t really a worry of running into any other vehicles driving on the road but the ones that had been abandoned. Though we had driven down that road so many times, maybe Ian had the vehicles locations memorized.
Ian turned left into a neighborhood and pulled into the first driveway.
“Wait here,” he told me.
He shut off the engine and got out of the car and into the loud, pounding rain. I could barely make him out in the heavy rain. I could vaguely see him trying to unlock the garage.
From the left side of the house, I saw movement. It looked like a person walking towards Ian. A person walking slowly with some kind of limp or something. I knew it was a zombie. Usually the rain would act as somewhat of a deterrent but not this time.
Ian didn’t seem to notice the zombie coming towards him; he was so busy with the garage door.
I got out of the Mustang. I was instantly soaked to the bone as soon as I stood up out of the car.
“Cate, what are…” Ian began but stopped as he heard the zombie’s growl behind him.
He turned as the zombie approached. I went forward with my knife out in case he needed help but Ian put a knife through the zombie’s skull.
I made my
