Clickers vs Zombies (23 page)

“Not good,” he muttered. “Not good at all.”

It wouldn’t be long before others noticed that the front door to his apartment had been battered open. He had to escape now. Making sure the apartment was still deserted, he retreated to the bathroom, locked the door, and opened the window. It faced out into the backyard, which was fenced-in and deserted. The window was small, barely wide enough for him to fit through, and Jim had a moment of panic when he thought he’d become stuck, but then his shoulders slipped free and he dropped softly to the ground.

Jim crouched in the backyard, listening to the sounds of death and violence all around him. He’d never been more afraid than he was at that moment. Then he thought of Tammy and Danny.

“I’m coming guys,” he whispered. “Just hang on. Daddy’s coming.”

EIGHT

Mendocino National Forest, California

Clark and Michele had encountered a National Guard roadblock while they were still ten miles from Bodega Bay. Clark had displayed his identification to the young Guardsman who approached the car, but the kid merely glanced at it and blinked.

“Can’t go that way, sir. The highway is overrun with Clickers.”

“How far?”

“Pardon?”

“How far up the highway?”

The young man blinked again. “All of it, sir. The entire West Coast, from San Diego all the way up to Seattle. Those things are crawling out of the ocean.”

“We need to get to Bodega Bay,” Clark said. “Official business.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s not there anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Artillery shelled it a few hours ago, trying to wipe those things out. First it was the Clickers. Then the zombies. The two groups started fighting each other. Commander called in an artillery strike. Killed two birds with one stone.”

Cursing, Clark had driven away.

“Where to now?” Michele asked.

“Mount Shasta. It’s the next closest power point. We can close the doorway there. All we have to do is reach it in time.”

“That easy, huh?”

He turned at her and smiled. “You’re doing fine, Michele. Just hang in there.”

They’d said very little to each other since then. Both were stunned by the magnitude of what was happening. They listened to the radio, desperate for news. A few of the stations went off the air as they listened. They avoided the highways, which were hopelessly jammed with cars, and opted instead for rural back roads.

And as a result, they were now lost in the middle of the National forest. Michele stared at the towering Redwood trees as the car bumped up and down over the ruts in the dirt road.

“So beautiful,” she murmured.

“What’s that?” Clark yawned, rubbing his face. His fingernails made scratchy-noises against his fresh stubble.

“The trees,” Michele said. “They’re just…I don’t even have the words to describe them. And not just the trees. This whole area. It feels so…old? Powerful?”

“This is Bigfoot country.”

“Is there really a Bigfoot? That’s always one of those things I wanted to know—I assumed I’d find out sooner or later, working for Black Lodge.”

Clark nodded. “Yep, they’re real. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve read field reports. Nothing really supernatural about them though, so they’re not our responsibility. As I understand it, they’re nothing more than an as-yet unclassified species of gorilla. Some experts believe they’re on the verge of extinction.”

“Maybe we’ll see one,” Michele said.

“If we do, knowing our luck, it’ll be a zombie.”

Michele laughed. “A zombie Bigfoot? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Oh, come on.” Clark grinned. “Are you telling me an army of zombie Bigfoots warring against humanity doesn’t strike your fancy?”

“No. It’s the dumbest thing ever. And it’s Bigfeet, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You said Bigfoots. I think the plural is Bigfeet.”

Clark shrugged, stifling another yawn. “Maybe…”

“Do you want me to drive for a while?” Michele asked.

“Not yet. I’m okay. Let me get us un-lost again, and then we’ll see how I feel.”

“Okay.” Michele glanced out the window again, watching the forest pass by. “It would be a shame if they were extinct.”

“What—the Bigfoots?”

“Bigfeet.”

“You say tomato. But yes, it would. Although if we don’t shut that doorway, they won’t be the only thing that’s extinct. Everything—including that forest out there—will cease to exist. The Siqqusim are only the first wave. After them come the—FUCK!”

He slammed his foot against the brake pedal and spun the steering wheel, sending the car into a slide. Screaming, Michele thrust out one hand against the dashboard for support, and turned her attention to the road in front of them. A deer stood there, mere feet away from the car, staring at them balefully. The animal didn’t move, even as the back end of the car whipped around and headed right for it. And then Michele saw why. The deer’s soft, white stomach had been ripped open. It’s fur was stained red, and its organs hung from the ragged wound, dangling to the ground.

The back bumper slammed into the deer, sending it flying through the air even as the car shuddered to a stop. The engine died. In the silence, Michele heard Clark breathing heavily.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Swallowing, she nodded. Behind them, a huge cloud of dust drifted in their wake, obscuring the road and the forest. Michele glanced around, frantically looking for the deer, while Clark turned the key, re-starting the car.

“It was already dead,” she said. “I saw, right before we hit it. It wasn’t a deer anymore. It was a zombie.”

“Let’s go, before it comes back.”

Clark backed up and then drove forward again, heading down the dirt road. Michele watched for any sign of the deer, but it had vanished. They rounded a bend, and the hard-packed dirt gave way to gravel.

“Well,” Clark muttered, “at least it wasn’t a Bigfoot.”

Mission Viejo, California

Rick sat behind the wheel of his car as it idled in the garage. He stared at the closed garage door and tried to stop hyperventilating. Princess sat on the seat next to him, panting. She whined, low and mournful.

“It’ll be okay, girl.” He patted her head, trying to soothe her, and noticed that his hand was shaking. “It’s only forty miles from here to San Pedro. We can do this.”

Princess looked at him as if to say,
are you sure?
Rick offered her a weak smile. Then, making sure he had everything he’d packed—cell phone, first aid kit, his Ruger .22 rifle, which was the only firearm he owned and was a gift from his father-in-law, along with several boxes of ammunition and half a dozen clips that held thirty rounds each—he started the vehicle, opened the garage door with the remote clipped on the visor, and slowly crept forward.

The vehicle moved down the driveway. Rick closed the garage door. Then, looking carefully up and down the deserted street, he drove out of his neighborhood and meandered toward Interstate 5, which would take him north.

San Pedro, California

For the most part they’d stayed awake out of sheer terror throughout the night.

Richard was sitting on the basement floor of the abandoned building, his back against the wall. Melody was sitting next to him on his right. The rest of the group was huddled close together. Sparky had taken up residence against the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Richard fumbled for his cell phone. He pressed the button to activate it. It didn’t return a time. Melody stirred beside him out of a light doze. “What’s happening?” she asked.

“Just checking the time,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

“It’s ten a.m.,” Sparky said.

Richard looked across the room. In the meager light from the cell phone, he could make out Sparky. The gang banger was resting with his back against the wall, legs splayed out in front of him, right leg bent at the knee casually. He was glancing at the shuttered basement-level window they’d entered, as if sizing it up. “I just checked my watch.”

Richard didn’t say anything. He could hear and sense movement from his friends. Like him, they hadn’t gotten much sleep either. They’d spent most of the night hiding in the basement.

Last night after heading upstairs, Sparky had led them through all the rooms in the building. He’d led the way with his rifle, moving as if he was a well-trained Special Ops sniper. It was a four-story building, and as they moved up to the upper floors it became quickly apparent that they weren’t going to find anything. Every apartment they entered (all of them unlocked, some with the doors already broken down or entirely removed from their hinges) was bare of furniture with the exception of one that contained a threadbare table, a rotting sofa in the living room, and a stained mattress on the floor of the bedroom and what looked to be an old fashioned crib. Some units bore the tell-tale signs of squatters. One of the back rooms in an apartment on the second floor was littered with old used condoms, dirty spoons and filthy hypodermic needles. That room had stunk of stale urine and old feces. Melody had gagged and almost thrown up. For some reason, the most tidy apartment was on the third floor. It was free of all signs of break-ins from the homeless. The only thing that had marred its walls and floors was the dust of time and the old shells of spiders and the remnants of their webs.

They’d all had a peak outside from one of the big windows that overlooked the street below. While it was dark, they could see the zombies moving about. The Clickers roamed forth, at one point pouring from the rocky beach a block and a half down as if the ocean was vomiting them from its depths. They’d watched spellbound as the creatures clogged the street, their claws clicking together like mad castanets. From this vantage point they saw several giant specimens lumber forth from a distance. Some looked big enough to knock the apartment building down, and for a moment Richard was struck with a momentary flare of panic. He was pretty sure one of the creatures would veer in the general direction they were hiding and blunder into the apartment building, knocking it down. Instead, the creatures moved on, and forty minutes later they were gone.

But outside, beyond their vantage point in Sunken City, out in San Pedro and Lomita and probably the neighboring cities of Torrance and Harbor City and Gardena and into Los Angeles proper, was madness and chaos.

As the screams of the dying and tormented echoed outside amid the sound of scattered gunfire and destruction, Richard had turned to Paul and Max. “I don’t know if it’s entirely safe up here. I mean, we can see everything, but—”

Sparky had nodded. “I get you. If one of those big ones knocks the building apart, we’re fucked.”

“So what are we going to do?” Melody had asked. Her eyes had been wide. She and Mary clutched each other like frightened little girls.

“We should hide back down in the basement,” Sparky said. “That basement level window is secure enough that nobody will think of checking it out. And we can lock the door to the basement from the inside.”

“Yeah, but if the zombies get in the building and somehow find out we’re down there, we’re fucked,” Paul said.

“If they come in, they’ll be doing it through the front entrance,” Sparky said. “The building doesn’t have a back door.”

“You sure?” Max asked.

“It doesn’t,” Richard said, nodding. “Only door that leads anywhere else but an apartment or out the front is the one to the basement.”

Paul looked nervous. He’d shaken his head, clearly not liking the idea of holing up in the basement. “I don’t know, man. Seems to me like we’re sitting ducks down there.”

“If we keep quiet, nothing will hear us,” Sparky had said. Richard had grown to admire the gang member in the brief time they’d spent with him. He was fast thinking. Everything he was saying made sense. “I have several weapons. If the zombies
do
find out where we are and break down the door, I can hold them off while you guys slip out through the window.”

Richard had nodded, running potential evacuation scenarios in his head. “He’s right,” he’d said. “If we stay up here and the zombies manage to find out we’re here, there’s no way out. We can’t exactly jump out the window.”

They’d retreated back to the basement. Using the light from their cell phones, they managed to get the door locked from the inside, then made themselves comfortable for the long night ahead.

They’d spent most of last night talking in low, whispered tones. Max had asked Sparky point blank if he had really intended to shoot them back in that neighborhood. “If none of this fucked up zombie shit hadn’t happened, yes, I was. No offense,
ese
, but you
cabrones
were in my way.”

“How were we in your way?” Max asked. “We were trying to get the fuck out of there!”

For a moment, that hardness crept back into Sparky’s demeanor. It was in his eyes, which narrowed slightly. “You want to start something about it?”