Lou opened the glove compartment, throwing papers on thefloor. Katie got down on her hands and knees, avoiding using her maimed hand,and shined her flashlight underneath the seats of the station wagon. Joan,knowing the suburban mind, ran her hands along the wheel wells of the car,mentally keeping her fingers crossed that the idiot who had left the stationwagon unlocked had hidden away a hide-a-key.
All she got for her troubles was a dirty hand.
"Got something for ya," Clara said, dangling apiece of cloth out of the car. It was a red bra, its owner probably long dead.
"You know, at this point, I'm thinking about it,just to have something sort of clean to wear."
"It's yours if you want it," Clara said.
Honestly, Joan considered snatching the bra from Clara'shand, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
They left the doors on the vehicle sitting open, closingthem just enough so the car would stop beeping. Two bodies rotted on the floorof the parking garage, Mort having added another curious soul to the pile viahis hammer.
"Maybe you can get yourself a job as a carpenterwhen this is all over," Clara said to him.
The joke must have gone over Mort's head because he justsaid, "I wouldn't know what to do."
They checked the cars on the first floor and movedupwards, curving around to their left and emerging onto the second floor of theparking garage. There were less cars here and less of the dead. They couldstill hear their clumsy feet scraping against the concrete floor of the parkinggarage.
"Where are they all?" Mort asked, his voicestill muted with grief as he commented on the relatively small number of thewalking dead.
Joan had no answer. No one did. Maybe they were justlucky that this place wasn't flooded with the dead. Maybe they were all on thehighway, or maybe this was just the result of the numbers game. There were alot more people in Portland than in the suburbs. Beaverton was still fairlypopulated, but it was less dense. Perhaps their luck was finally turning. Maybethey could actually get out of this thing alive.
They pressed forward, pulling on the handles of the carsas they passed. Joan was about to pull on the handle of a tall pickup truckwhen she spotted a quick flash of movement inside the blood-splattered windows.She backed away as a man in a Portland Trailblazer's hat smashed his faceagainst the glass, his lips sticking and dragging along the glass while his onegood eye locked on her. His fists pounded on the glass, and it looked like hewas trying to push his way through the window.
She backed away from the truck, continuing onward andupward, sprinting through the shadows of the parking garage. Their options wererunning out. All doors were locked. Then they were in sunshine, as they steppedonto the top floor of the parking garage. Joan squinted her eyes, in an attemptto keep from being blinded. Behind her, she heard a wet thump. It was the soundthat dead flesh made as it impacted concrete. They had all become familiar withthe sound over the last days.
Joan spun around only to see one of the dead rising totheir feet after falling off the upper level of the garage. She froze lookingat the woman. She wore scrubs, comfortable running shoes, and her hair fellover her shoulders. For a second, Joan felt as if she were looking into amirror. This was her. This was what she could have been if things had gone justa little bit differently. If Clara's boyfriend had chosen to bite her insteadof the nurse, she would be the dead one, the one walking around a parkinggarage, blood spilled down the front of her scrubs.
When the woman reached out for her, she was so entranced,that for a second, she didn't even think to defend herself. Then Clara wasthere, knocking the creature on its back and bludgeoning the woman with a metalpole she had liberated from a storage room in the zoo's gift shop.
"What the hell are you doing?" Clara asked.
Joan was shocked by how genuinely mad Clara was. "I-I don't know." Clara dragged her by the arm and pulled her further up theramp. "I just sort of froze," she said, unable to explain the weirdrabbit hole she had fallen into. A simple lapse in thought, a brief divergence,and she had almost lost her life.
"Keep your head on, Joan. We're not out of hereyet."
Joan tried to shake the thought that she had almost died,but it sat there in her mind, the scene playing over and over. Stupid thoughtsleading to stupid thoughts. She was too cerebral. Her mind wasn't an advantagein this world. Her thinking had almost gotten her killed. She wondered how manypeople had died just because they were thinking instead of reacting. Had theyso thoroughly bred the fight or flight mechanism out of themselves that peoplewould really stand there and die rather than run or fight back?
In front of her, the others checked the door of the fewcar on the top level of the garage. Meanwhile, Joan tried to clear her mind andlive in the moment. It was a tall order for her. Katie turned and yelledtriumphantly as the door to a brown, '80s era Cadillac swung open at her touch.
The survivors ran to it, and began running their hands alongthe curves and crannies of the car the way a judge at the Westminster Dog Showwould poke and prod the poodles and the pugs, feeling about for anyabnormalities, anything that could be a key.
Joan did the same, cringing at the dirt and grit that shegot on her already dirty hands as she explored the wheel wells. Then she feltit. A small plastic container that moved with the pressure of her hand. Shegrasped it and pulled it free from the metal. In the sunlight, she examined thetan container for the trick to opening it. She found it, slid the containeropen and pulled out a key, shiny and new,
