MZS- North East Read online

  Ahead there is a sign that says “Library of Congress” and we will need to decide if we go left or right. I’m leaning toward right, but hopefully Patrick will give me map directions before I have to turn.

  “I’m turning right up here,” I say. My statement is not confident: it’s actually a thinly veiled question.

  “Whatever. I’m still trying to figure out where we are on this map,” Patrick replies

  “We’re at the Library of Congress! Turning right onto Second Street. How hard can it be to find?” I shouldn’t be angry with him, but so far he’s not doing much better than Terri.

  “Well the screen’s not refreshing very quickly and Terri had it on somewhere in fucking Tennessee. Give me a break, okay,” he hollers.

  “Sorry,” I snap back at him.

  I suppose I should be more surprised that we’ve been getting along so well than I am at our snippiness. We’re generally strangers in the midst of a terrifying ordeal. It would be more remarkable if we clicked perfectly and could finish each other’s sentences.

  “Detour coming!” I yell.

  There is a tank blocking the intersection ahead. I’m going too fast to stop so I have to swerve left onto the sidewalk to avoid it. Further ahead are more tanks and what look like armored cars. The street is blocked, forcing me to turn left.

  We’re now heading directly at the United States Capitol building. I’ve slowed down some but I’m sure we’re technically speeding.

  “Hey, there’s the Supreme Court,” Parker says, like we are on a sight-seeing tour.

  “Tanks to your right. Go left.” Patrick is back to leaning between the two front seats.

  When I turn he loses his balance and falls backwards into Parker’s legs.

  “You okay?” I glance over my shoulder.

  “Eyes on the… Holy shit.” Patrick pulls himself back between the seats.

  Ahead of us the plaza in front of the Capitol is teaming with undead. It’s a combination of business suits and army fatigues. There are no bodies lying around, but I get the occasional glimpse of what I think are bones in small piles.

  The pillars protecting the plaza are designed to keep a car bomber from attacking the Capitol. I’ve seen enough news reports to know this means we need to keep detouring.

  Habits are hard to break and I instinctively check out my window for the street sign—“First Street.”

  “We’re going back the way we came. Take your next right,” Patrick says. He’s climbed back between the seats.

  We’re approaching another intersection and the Library of Congress is on my left. Making that first right turn was a bad decision: I should be careful with my criticisms of Patrick.

  Independence Avenue is eerily quiet. There is no gunfire, no tanks, and the zombies appear content to mill about in the plaza.

  I slow the truck to a more reasonable and manageable speed. We’re rolling along comfortably when the tremors strike. First my hands, then my legs, and soon my entire body is shaking.

  Patrick

  Chapter 40

  I’m ready to quit.

  Let’s just leave the Humvee and go off for a nice quiet walk. When the undead attack, I’m not going to fight back. They can eat me; I just hope it’s quick.

  Why is McLean stopping the Humvee?

  Terri is still moaning and crying in her seat. I don’t understand what the hell is wrong with her but it’s not just woman shit. She is a totally messed-up individual and I’m not sure if she thinks she’s dealing with her issues, because she’s not, they’re dominating her.

  The guys are all silent in the back of the rig. We feel whatever it is too, but tears aren’t coming for us.

  “Give me your gun,” I order Parker.

  He hands his gun over without argument. I can tell from the look on his face that this was the first time he’s ever killed. And not only was it a kill, it was a living human. The same should be true for Cupcake and it is for me as well. Though I don’t know if the guy I stabbed is dead or just badly injured.

  I have no experience with firearms. They don’t seem like complex tools, though. Instead of letting myself be intimidated by it, I approach the thing with confidence.

  The trigger is what makes it fire and I can be aggressive with it as long as I avoid that area. After pressing various circles and sliding the slide back, I find a button on the side. From the bottom of the handle pops a magazine, and I easily pull it out.

  There are nine bullets inside, and I can see where they slide out at the top. Pushing a bullet out is more difficult than I expect and requires substantial force from my soft thumb. Doing it the way I’ve seen in the movies, I slide the top bullet out and into my waiting palm, repeating the process six more times.

  I hand individual bullets around the cab. Each person gets one, except Todd, who is up in the turret.

  “If you’re the last person left, this bullet is to use on yourself. If the movies are right, put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Seems to make more sense than the classic temple shot,” I explain.

  “Will the bullet work in any gun?” Parker asks me.

  Silence.

  The two gun terms I know are “nine millimeter” and “magnum.”

  “It should work in most of the handguns we would find these days. These are nine-millimeter rounds, and most modern cop weapons use them. If the gun looks old or the bullet doesn’t fit, it probably won’t work,” Cupcake speaks up.

  Cupcake was supposed to be cut out for this shit, though I realize that was Tucker’s claim and not Cupcake’s. He knows about hunting and survival. We have the Humvee because Cupcake learned how to hotwire cars in case of a disaster. Now, when we’re falling apart, he’s cowering in the back of the truck, dripping out details that will help us commit suicide.

  “Is this what you hunted with?” I ask him.

  I want to give him a chance to snap out of it. If he starts talking about hunting and survival skills, maybe it will remind him that he knows what to do.

  “No. We had a small twenty-two rifle and a twelve-gauge shotgun. All we hunted were birds and squirrels,” he explains, shaking his head.

  Food is not a problem yet, but it will be. Cupcake may have hunted a little, but he doesn’t have experience killing anything big enough to feed the whole group. We could sure use some help from Terri’s prepper friends.

  “Do we know how the process works to become one of those things?” Parker asks, shifting topics.

  “If you die and your brain is still intact, you turn into a zombie. Pretty simple actually,” Tucker chips in.

  “But like if you get scratched or bitten by one, you don’t automatically turn into one or anything crazy like that. Right?” Parker presses on.

  Again silence.

  Honestly I cannot envision a scenario where you get bitten but not completely eaten. If they get their teeth on you, they don’t let go. There was something the news guy said about bodily fluids, but I can’t remember what it was. Could that really have been only three days ago?

  “It’s an infection, maybe a parasite,” Terri says from the front, suddenly reengaged with the rest of us. “If you get bitten or ingest any of their blood, you are going to turn into one of them.”

  “Could we put on a tourniquet to stop it from spreading?” Parker asks, thinking critically.

  “In some of the first threads on this topic, they tried everything, including immediate, like within seconds, amputation. One guy said it worked when his wife bit him on the hand right after she turned. Guess he didn’t know she was infected,” she answers.

  “So a guy chopped off his own hand and then wrote a post about it on a discussion forum?” Tucker asks, shocked by this idea.

  “Yeah. Preppers share data and solve problems. They just do it for shit that matters, not stupid sports statistics and leaked sex tapes,” Terri says, dismissing our interests with disgust.

  She must have checked out the archives of Barstool Sports.

  “Di
fferent strokes, baby,” Tucker says, not offended by her insult.

  “Idiot. Anyway, it looks like the age of the zombie affects how fast the infection spreads. The infection from a newly turned zombie moves relatively slowly; if you get bit by an older zombie, the infection moves lightning fast,” Terri explains.

  “And if you just die, it happens fast, too,” McLean says. Her voice is hoarse.

  How she knows this, I’m not about to ask. My personal belief is that it depends. There are probably a million factors that impact how you get infected and how fast you turn.

  Are we all infected, I wonder? If I die from a heart attack, will I turn into a zombie? I don’t really understand how it all works, but I’m not the guy to be looking for a cure anyway. My job is survival.

  I can’t quit or give up. There is a little something deep inside of me telling me to survive. It’s not just for me, either; it’s for everyone in this vehicle.

  “So let’s recap,” Terri says, rudely. “Blow your brains out if you’re surrounded, bitten, or just too tired to keep going. McLean’s going to step in front of the car and demonstrate. Go ahead, sweetie.” She’s gone back to arrogance.

  I need to keep going for everyone in the vehicle… except Terri, who is a colossal bitch.

  A large splat of blood falls from the turret. By the time I realize what it is, a second drop falls. It takes me another few moments to realize that it’s coming from Todd, who has not come down from his perch since we stopped.

  The fear of having one of us turn inside the rig is unspoken but clear. We Chinese-fire-drill out of the Humvee. When we’re all standing on the sidewalk, my heart starts beating again.

  “Todd? You okay up there?” I finally ask.

  Crickets.

  “Todd?” I ask again.

  “Someone has to get up there and check him out,” Cupcake ultimately decides.

  None of us wants to move. We probably shouldn’t be standing still on the sidewalk, but there aren’t many other choices.

  Eventually all eyes fall on me. I’m holding one of our two guns and the bullet reserved for Todd.

  “I guess I’ll go,” I finally say.

  I feel brilliant for climbing the outside of the Humvee instead of trying to tug on his shirt from inside. Standing on the hood, I can see that Todd is slumped backward in the turret. There is no movement or sound coming from him, so I will have to get close to assess his status.

  The metal beneath me dents loudly as I walk towards the windshield. No noticeable zombie-type reaction from Todd has me feeling pretty good. Hopefully he just hit his head and is out cold.

  “Todd?” I call cautiously as I place my knee on the roof.

  My hand instinctively goes to the barrel of the machine gun for balance but I can feel the heat before I grab it. Instead I reach up to the top of the turret and grasp it firmly.

  Now that I can see down into the turret, I truly believe that Todd will be okay. His face, neck and head are all clean, with no signs of injury. It could be that our diet of booze and junk food caught up with him and he just passed out.

  Before his cloudy eyes register with me, his face is flying forward. The wide-open mouth comes directly at my hand. At the last second, I release my grip and pull away. Todd’s’ teeth smash into metal and bite ferociously.

  “Son of a bitch,” I declare.

  “Is he okay?” Cupcake asks.

  “No. He turned. Tried to bite me, too,” I answer, a little too loud.

  From my elevated perch I can see a good distance. The area looks too quiet for such a wide avenue. If the military was able to clean the undead out, why did they leave the ones by the Capitol building and the bank-turned-female-penitentiary? More importantly, why aren’t they here picking us up and whisking us to safety?

  Dealing with Todd is a new challenge. So far none of us have had to kill anyone we know. Shoving my hockey stick in the eye of some random zombie was hard, but was getting easier.

  Suddenly I worry that there will be some weird transference up the aluminum shaft. If my stick penetrates Todd’s eye socket, I’m going to feel something. Not a vibration or a temperature change, but an emotion. I don’t want that.

  I don’t even have my stick; I left it in the car. That’s not a habit I want to develop, so I better remember it next time.

  My mind drifts back to that first zombie I knocked over in the alley. He was lying there on his back and I thought that I should kill him just to learn what it was like. I didn’t and later regretted not taking advantage of the perfect learning environment.

  Right now I can learn to shoot a gun and take care of the undead guy in our ride.

  Steadying myself to prepare for the recoil, I aim at our former friend’s head. My finger moves to the trigger and I brace my shoulders for a kick.

  “Might want to cover your ears,” I say down to the others on the sidewalk.

  Squeezing on the trigger with all my might yields nothing. It won’t budge. Apparently I broke the gun when I was pressing things and looking for the magazine.

  I find the button to release the magazine again—it’s easier to find when you’re holding the gun like you’re going to use it—and it pops out the bottom.

  Everything looks fine when I look closely, but it’s still foreign. Seeing no obvious problem, I slam the magazine back into the handle like an action star in a summer blockbuster.

  Before moving my finger to the trigger, I check the safety and casually flip it off and then take aim.

  BANG

  The noise happens quickly and the recoil is far smaller than I expected. Unfortunately, I missed.

  This time, more carefully, I aim right at Todd’s nose and pull the trigger.

  BANG

  The teeth stop chomping and the eyes roll backwards. Our zombie passenger is no more. Sadly neither is a solid guy who was going far beyond simply contributing.

  After hopping off the hood of the Humvee, my friends surround me. There are no words to exchange, but we share looks.

  We need to get his body out of the turret and get underway. The way things stand right now, I don’t want to find another group or follow another lead. I want to get to a farm or a campground and just hide out. Maybe after a long rest I’ll want to go fight zombies or join forces with another group, but for now I want to lay low.

  The buzzing arrives first. From in front of the Humvee and to our left, the start of a horde appears. It flows like water and there are more bodies in the front row than I can count.

  “Get in the rig!” I yell.

  Our small group scrambles around the Humvee and climbs in hastily. My friends have been kind enough to leave the driver’s spot for me.

  The engine rumbles to life before all the doors are even closed. Forward momentum swings my door and slams it shut.

  It is entirely possible that the horde will get across the street and cut off our path before we can get past them. The engine strains at its maximum revolutions and I worry it will explode.

  I let the truck drift to the right of the street and pray that we clear the horde.

  As we draw parallel to the side street they came out of, the front fender clips the outstretched arm of an undead and sends it flying. There is blood and tissue covering my side window, but we got around them.

  Ahead of me the street is clogged with more tanks, Humvees, and what look like armored cars. We can’t keep going this direction.

  I’m able to navigate to a cross street and take a left at the National Mall, directly onto the grass.

  McLean

  Chapter 41

  Patrick panics well. It’s probably not a skill I would have looked for on Match.com, but it is serving the group nicely.

  The Humvee is moving fast but not recklessly. We just turned onto the National Mall and the ride got a whole lot bumpier. With each jolt from the sidewalk curb or dips in the Earth, more blood rains down from the turret.

  I was one of the last to scramble into the rig and that has earn
ed me an actual seat. With the easy view out the window and support of my back, this is a far better mode of travel than the rear cargo area.

  Thinking that Washington D.C. was free of zombies was pretty naïve. The others may have assumed that there were still undead roaming, but I didn’t. I had moved on to how we deal with renegades and establishing trust with new groups.

  Having Todd turn into a zombie in the truck is resetting everything I thought I understood about the infestation. He wasn’t scratched, bitten, or otherwise infected. The simple act of dying caused him to turn.

  Jaden died and he didn’t turn. I guess dying from a headshot leaves nothing to turn. If zombies can start coming back without brains, we are in even more trouble.

  THUMP.

  THUMP….THUMP….THUMP

  “I could use a little help on the fifty-cal,” Patrick says, calm but loud from the driver’s seat.

  Parker has rolled down his window and is leaning out dangerously. The report of a handgun is distinct from his side of the rig. I never saw Cupcake pass him the weapon, but it make sense to use it from his seat. Patrick has the other gun, but he’s a little busy.

  Cupcake could probably get to the turret, but he is so large I worry that he won’t fit. Tucker is trapped behind him in the cargo space and I know how tight things are back there.

  That leaves me.

  I reach out and grab the magazine and duct tape armor around Todd’s leg. A drop of blood falls squarely on my hand. I pull away fast, as if the blood burns, worried that some little scratch is going to result in my infection. Fortunately, my skin is completely intact.

  I wonder for a second if anyone has studied the evolution of the infection. If body fluids are contagious while the zombie is animated, are they still contagious once the zombie’s brain has been scrambled? Maybe they are contagious for a time after the zombie transitions fully to being dead? The length of that window could tell us a great deal about whatever is causing this horror.