“Watch out, Dee,” Alex says and Dee slows, watching the group of dead things turn their way. They’re blocking the street, packed in from building to building on either side. No way around except to backtrack.
When she puts the SUV in reverse, she’s halted by another group pouring in from a side road. “Shit.”
“There. Take that alley,” Alex says. “We have to get out of here before they have us surrounded.”
In one of her son’s favorite video games, Jackson could drive right over the zombies without much worry. Oh, eventually the car would give up the ghost and explode if not repaired, but it could plow through hordes with ease. In reality, hitting even a few dead things or getting them caught up in the underside of a vehicle was bad. Dan taught her that.
She swerves to avoid the grasping, greedy hands and stares down the long, narrow stretch of alley before taking the SUV in. She doesn’t want to get trapped between buildings. She thinks it would be a particularly claustrophobic way to die. She wants to be in the wide open if she’s killed. She wants to be able to gaze up at the sky as she shuffles off her mortal coil.
The alley dumps them near a storage center. She cuts through the parking lot and then takes the SUV off the road completely and into a field that stretches between the street and a thick bank of trees in the distance.
It’s bumpy and they all bounce around as she cuts across the grassy expanse to another road. A glance in the rearview tells her they’re being followed, but slowly. It doesn’t really matter how fast or slow they go. If they don’t catch up to the SUV, other hordes will.
Zombies are relentless. Once they have a meal in sight, they push on until they eat. She thinks they should use them if they get to a point in this apocalypse where they’ve settled enough to need electricity. The zombies can pull a turbine around and around in circles all day long. They didn’t need food, they didn’t tire.
Maybe they can be used as wagon pullers too.
More and more dead things are spilling into roadways as they drive, their eager mouths snapping as they anticipate a meal. Dee wonders how long it’s been since some of them have eaten. There can’t be too many people left. The Complex might be the only one of its kind or it might be one of thousands all over the country. She wishes she knew.
“What do we do now?” Gloria asks as they slow. Ahead of them, hundreds of dead things mill about, most not having seen the SUV idling a few hundred feet away. “There are too many to drive through.”
“We need a distraction,” Dee says, thinking of the gas station she blew up before she got into town. “Something that will draw them off the road. Something without danger to any of us in this vehicle,” she adds when she sees Pete ready to jump in. “No sacrificing ourselves today. Ideas?”
“What about hitting a car? Sideswiping it, I mean,” Gloria adds when we all look at her like she’s crazy. “We can set off a car alarm or three. That should distract them, at least, maybe mask our engine noise somewhat. Worth a shot?”
“Sure. Nudge carefully, Dee. We don’t want to get bumper-locked.” This from Alex, who is grinning, of all things. Grinning, which makes Dee want to grin too though she doesn’t know why. Perhaps this is what happens when you face death over and over again. You get used to it. It becomes funny.
So close to home. I’m coming boys.
38
Then
We were trapped for almost two weeks. It was both terrible and good. Dan and I both wanted to get back on the road to see if we could find Lana and Owen and the others, but it was peaceful here in a way none of us had experienced since this whole thing started. We had heat, we had food, we were safe from the dead things. I wondered if they were frozen or stuck in the snow. I wondered if the snow would kill them, maybe freeze their brains and keep them from tormenting us ever again. Too much to hope for, but I hoped for it anyway.
While we were there, I read at least a book a day. It was great sitting by the window in the kitchen while a pot of tea boiled on the stove, soup bubbled in a pot, and bread baked in the oven. We even had a cherry pie for our last dinner there, and everyone looked … well, happy. If any of us felt guilt over it, no one showed it.
The next day we packed up all our gear and stowed it in the truck along with a couple snow shovels Isaac had found on the back porch, some bags of sand in case we got stuck, and as much of the food from the house we could stuff in the back after we’d loaded up five Culligan water bottles filled from the tap.
Food, water, gear to stay warm. I was optimistic things were only going to get better for us.
The road wasn’t terrible. A couple days worth of sunshine had melted a lot of the snow and Dan kept the truck at about forty to make sure we didn’t slide right off the road and dump all our good shit.
Paisley and Isaac sat in the back talking about Jude. That was all he wanted to talk about and Paisley let him. I wondered if she would get angry again, but her resolve to live for only herself seemed to have been forgotten. She was a sponge, soaking up his attention,
