“Why go after them at all? Why not go somewhere else?”
“I, I don’t know exactly. Max and Stewart have stayed alive so far, they might have a plan and I just can’t think of one right now. So”, she shrugged, “I want them to do the work of figuring out where to go. They owe us that for leaving us behind.”
Diane gave Amelia a sideways look and responded, “Amelia, dear, we are still alive so far too. Don’t underestimate us.”
Chapter 25
“You dumb little bitch!” Nancy spat, looking down at Veronica, who sat cowering on the floor, “I give you one little task, one simple thing to do, ‘keep the meat from escaping’ and you cannot handle bringing them to the bathroom?” Nancy turned towards the window in Kirkpatrick’s office and watched as a Cadillac sped out onto the street, making towards the highway in the pre-dawn light.
“Well V I am not in such a forgiving mood right now, anyway you can see Julie got the lions share of the meat, there ain’t much energy left unless I miss my guess. Trish you might as well eat what is left, it looks like Veronica let her supper get away.” Turning back to Veronica she said, “V you are the hunter returned home without any protein, your job today is going to be to find us more. And by ‘us’ I mean me and you, I could use a bite. If you don’t find anything suitable I may give cannibalism a try.”
“W-what? Cannibalism?” whispered Veronica.
“I mean you, V. You. C’mon lets evaluate our options here and decide what to do. Trish, check the guys pockets, look for car keys dear. It seems everyone is driving these days, maybe we should jump on the bandwagon too?”
A quick search revealed the man was carrying keys for a Chevy, scanning the lot Nancy could make out several cars remaining and a van, but she was not a car person before becoming a member of the undead and the change had not imparted her with any of that mystic knowledge either.
“V? You know cars? No? Trish? Julie? Oh for Christ sake the minute we need Jimbo, he is not around. Well we do it the hard way, check each Chevy until the key fits, there can't be that many of them in the lot. Julie you ready to roll yet?”
Nancy had been amazed at the progress of Julie since she fed her most of the man they had slain in Kirkpatrick’s office, her torso had fully re-attached, she could stand up and she seemed more mentally alert than before the shotgun blasts. She still needed more meat, the healing process had slowed down dramatically after the first five minutes and she was barely mobile. The point was, she was not a loss, a four girl gang, that was a modest power in this new world.
“Alright girls, lets go.”
Nancy led the way down to the lobby from the internal stairwell next to the main elevator shaft. When she got there she looked around, noticing a few changes and spying a notepad that had not been there when they passed through just an hour before. “What’s this girls? Someone has been doing some writing.” She picked it up, but it was blank. “Hm, I did this once when I was a kid, hand me that pencil V, it is time to play 'spy'. I saw this once on the Kid’s Club on PBS.” Nancy scribbled the pencil lightly in a sideways motion across the page, revealing the three addresses Max had scribbled down fifteen minutes before. “Hah! A clue Scooby! Now we probably know where they are going, this will be plan ‘B’, we still have to find Fred, if we don’t find him we may head over to…” she scanned the paper briefly, resting her eyes on the last address, “Max’s house and see if we can pick up a quick meal and let V make amends to me for letting the meat get away. Plus I am sure Julie would like a word with that computer geek who shot her, right Julie?”
Julie nodded, “More meat first. This is way west of here, a long walk. Maybe we drive?”
“Yeah, lets go take care of getting us some wheels girls, no need to stick together just find a Chevy and stand next to it so we can see if the key fits. Oh, V? Go grab Walt’s keys too, then we can choose the ride we like best.” Nancy dearly wished she would have hung onto her keys, which, as far as she knew were still sitting in the Gap where she had changed clothing. Shrugging she thought if the cars here were worse than hers they could always drive the couple of blocks to pick up her keys.
There were not many cars left in the lot and finding a Chevy was made easier by the fact that there were only two parked out there and by the fact that Walt’s keys were also for a Chevy. His was a rusted out piece of shit Impala, the other was a white Chevy Van with a sticker Nancy recognized from visits to her sister’s house. Her nieces were infatuated with dvds of the cartoon that this character starred in and obviously who ever the guy was in Kirkpatrick’s office he had younger kids in his life too.
“We take the van girls, hop in and I will drive. We are going to circle this block then start circling block by block until we find that fucker Fred. And keep an eye out for Jimbo too, we didn’t see his body anywhere and the guys that left didn’t seem like they had enough time to hide any bodies to me.”
The girls climbed in and, ironically, buckled up. Nancy followed suit, soon they were driving out of the parking lot with Mojo-jojo the genius monkey, one of many villains from the now aged “Power Puff Girls” cartoon, staring evilly at the empty lot behind them as they left.
Chapter 26
While everyone had been quick to go for the cars, not many were actually driving. Max and company rapidly discovered an accident about halfway to Tom’s house. A bad accident that came with three lingering zombies feeding on the carcasses of the victims. Stewart backed up, Steve already too close to the pileup, veered onto the sidewalk, taking out a zombie who was turning towards the sound of the cars. He almost got hung up on a mountain bike but when he came down off the curb on the other side of the wreck the bike tore free.
Seeing that Steve had cleared the way, Stewart stopped and started forward again. The two remaining zombies watched the car with rapt attention, but made no moves toward them. Stewart cleared the wreck and started following Steve’s car, which was leaking what looked like fuel out the back. Stewart honked and pulled up alongside Steve on the four lane street. Max rolled down his window and they motioned Steve to stop.
When they stopped Stewart said, “Good driving, seriously I mean it, if you had not veered we could have been picking you out of a wreck. Max go check Steve’s car.”
Max hopped out and peered under the car, he clearly saw a large hole in the gas tank spilling fuel onto the pavement.
“Not good, gas is leaking everywhere and it looks like your muffler is hanging on by a thread.”
“Fuck. Damn it. This is my car, my car! Now what?” ranted Steve.
Stewart looked around and said, “Hop into the cruiser, no choice, I hope you don’t have anything in there you can live without.”
“Worth my life? Not hardly! I just…you know, it is my car! You never want to see something happened to your car. Or be forced to give it up, not like this.”
Max, between both vehicles, saw the zombies from the wreck peering their way, both were making tentative steps towards working their way up the block towards them, using cover as they came.
“Ah, the zombies are coming; I see two behind us, about half a block away, so quite chit-chatting and move please.”
“Fine.” Steve patted the dash of his car while Tom opened the door on the passenger side, both moved into the cruiser and they were soon underway, at a steady, slow, twelve to fifteen miles per hour. Tom gave directions to Stewart from the back seat and they soon arrived at his apartment complex, they had to go up onto the sidewalk twice more to skirt accidents before they arrived. The place was quiet, no sign of violence or undead, just another normal day in south Denver, quiet and chilly as the sun began to lighten the sky on the plains behind the buildings.
