Dead Stop (23 page)

“Hey!” Deke
started to come around the girl towards Gerald. “Hands off, Buddy!”

“Gerald,” Rachel
soothed, “I think Harley’s right…”

Gerald wasn’t
hearing it.

“No! Wait!” He
cried as Stacey started for the kitchen again, and this time grabbed her arm.

And that’s when
things went to hell.

Rachel realized
as soon as he did it what would happen. She saw Gerald’s hand close in a tight
grip right on the spot where the monsters at the back door had torn Stacey’s
arm. He probably had no intention of hurting her, for that matter he most
likely had no idea what he had just done, but that didn’t change the outcome.
The small waitress cried out in pain and clutched at his hand over her arm.

A split second
later Deke punched him dead in the face.

This had one
intended, and two unintended consequences. First, Gerald fell over backwards
with a bleating wail. Second, Deke also choked back a whimper of pain and
grabbed his shoulder which had likely been torn open again from the exertion.
Even worse, Gerald hadn’t released Stacey, which resulted in her being pulled
to the floor by her injured arm. And then things escalated from there…

“
Pinche
pendejo
!” Marisa snarled and snatched the baseball bat she had been
carrying earlier from a nearby table.

“No!” Holly
tried to either grab Gerald or get between him and Marisa; it was hard to tell
in the dim light. Either way, she had put herself in serious jeopardy of getting
brained. Meanwhile, Deke looked like he had just figured out that the good hand
he had used to grab his wounded shoulder could just as effectively be employed
to continue beating on the downed redhead. He looked enormously pleased with
the discovery and appeared to be readying himself to put that plan into action.

Rachel realized
things were about one second away from descending into a brawl…

…with her right
in the middle of it.

“GODDAMMIT!” she
bellowed at the top of her lungs. “KNOCK IT OFF!”

Everybody froze…
and as all eyes settled on her, Rachel became suddenly aware of how much older
she was than the rest of this bunch. Hell, with the possible exception of
Harley, these were all kids. Some of them were only fresh out of high school.
No wonder Grandpa Tom had decided to have her come up here…he hadn’t wanted to
be the only grownup in the room.

“Okay,” she took
a deep breath. “First…Gerald, let go of Stacey’s arm.”

“But…” Gerald
gasped, his eyes wide in what Rachel realized was the prelude to hysterics.

“Now!” she
snapped, and was gratified to see him comply. She had a sudden hunch that he
had never been punched in the face before, and in his little world Deke,
Harley, her, and the rest of them were all almost as alien and threatening as
the monsters outside. At another time she might have felt sorry for him, but at
the moment he could damn well have his little breakdown on his own time. “Now
go over there and let Holly tend your nose. I’ll come check on you in a
minute.” She gestured towards a booth by the fire door.

 Then
Rachel turned her attention to the young redneck who still looked at Gerald
with blood in his eyes. She decided a little redirection might be the order of
the day here.

 “Deke, I
need you to take Stacey over to the counter there, and both of you wait for me
to come look at your bandages and see if they need to be redone,” She said it
gently, but with the same firmness she would have used in directing a tech to
help her with a patient.

“Yes, ma’am,”
Deke nodded and helped the girl to her feet.

Rachel found the
“ma’am” somewhat mortifying under these circumstances but chose to say nothing.
Apparently Harley was content to let her be the only adult in the room so the
doctor figured she might as well start assuming the role. She turned to address
Marisa but the girl was already walking past her towards the kitchen.

“I’ll go flash
the lights,” the taller waitress growled as she passed.

She didn’t make
it.

“Marisa, stop,”
Harley’s voice brought her up short. “It’s too late for that now. It’s time to
go with plan B.”

“Plan B?” she
frowned.

“Yeah,” Harley
peered out the window as it began to brighten with the reflected beam of
headlights. “Can you turn off the lights in the store from back there?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because,” the
tall man sighed, “something very bad is about to happen, but at least it may
give us an opportunity I can take advantage of. I’m afraid it’s ‘wingman’ time,
but I need those lights out in the store.”

###

Plan B?
Wingman?
Rachel wondered to herself as she watched Marisa nod and rush for
the back.
What’s going on with these two?

Whatever it was,
Marisa didn’t look terribly happy about it.

Rachel didn’t
have time to puzzle over it because things started to happen at a rapid fire pace.

The windows
flared with light that she could just make out being the result of several
police cars turning off the highway and pulling into the gas pumps. Their beams
sliced through the downpour and hit the streaming windows, fragmenting into
thousands of brilliant points of light.  The shadows of the dead were cast
in sharp relief against the running glass. Unfortunately, they were the only
clear shapes she could make out through all the light and distortion. Adding to
the confusion, the red and blue strobes from the cruiser’s light bars caused
the rain jeweled windows to pulse in a disorienting cadence.

The crack of
thunder only made matters worse.

“Can you see
what’s going on out there?” She stood on her tiptoes and squinted at the
windows from her place in the middle of the room. “What are they doing? What’s
happening?”

“It’s hard to
tell,” Harley called back. He had one hand up trying to shield his eyes from
the glare. “I think two have hung back at the road, and the other two have
pulled into the pumps. Hold it, there might be another car or two out there
that’s not cop cars. Yep, there are definitely more cars out there. I didn’t
see them because they don’t have lights on their roof.”

“Harley, be
careful!” Deke called from his place at the bar. “Those headlights coming
through the windows are going to make you visible to the outside!”

Rachel cursed
herself for not thinking of that. The fact that Harley hadn’t either surprised
her.

“It’s okay,” the
tall redneck answered, but took a couple of steps back from the windows anyway.
“They’ve all turned around and are looking at the cars. I wonder why they
haven’t attacked yet?”

“They’re
probably confused by all the lights,” Rachel answered, still craning to see,
“and this rain is probably making it worse.” She saw Marisa return from the
back and noticed the doorway to the store had gone dark. “I doubt it’s going to
last, so you might want to take that into account with whatever you and Marisa
are up to.”

“Actually, I’m
counting on it.” Harley continued to stare at the window.

“Believe me,
this ain’t my idea,” Marisa muttered.  “I was hoping he would forget this
little plan of his.”

“What are you
talking ab…”

“They SEE them!”
Harley called, “Here we go!”

Rachel looked
back at the front window to see the silhouettes had already assumed that attack
crouch they favored, with the shadows of their spread claws magnified on the
wet glass behind them. Something…some movement at the gas pumps they recognized
as human…must have triggered them.

Everything from
this point on was inevitable.

“And there they
go,” Harley said as the monsters at the front window charged off into the
storm. He rushed back to the window and faced to the north again.
“One…two…three…”

“What are you
doing?” Marisa demanded, her hands knotted around the handle of the bat in a
tight grip.

“Four…fivesix…”
he held up one hand to ward of interruption.

“Hey!” Holly
called from her and Gerald’s side of the diner, “They’re all leaving from over
here too!”

Rachel looked
over to see cadaverous shapes running past the windows and towards the gas
pumps from that side of the truck stop as well. Everything seemed to be
happening at once. The dead were staging a mass attack on the gas pumps.

“Seven…eight…”
Harley waited a second or two longer then turned back to the room. “Hey, Holly?
How many zombies did you count in the store again?”

“Ten?” the blond
recalled, trying to keep track of the action going on outside while answering
the question. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yep, that’s
what I recall too. Okay, eight just ran out the front door and one is cooling
her heels in the freezer…so unless something has changed, that leaves one.”

A gunshot
cracked outside, and the shadows cast into the room split and veered as one of
the cars out at the pumps must have started to move. Faint screams could be
heard through the din of the storm and Rachel understood people were running
and fighting for their lives out there…and some weren’t going to make it.

“What are you
thinking, Harley?” she yelled as she ducked under a table.

It occurred to
her that bullets flying around came with dangers of their own. Especially since
the only thing separating them from the monsters outside were large sheets of
glass.

“I’m going to
try and improve our position,” he replied. “Marisa, I need you to come over
here and get ready to unlock the door. Stay low.”

“Tell me you
aren’t making a run for your truck,” the waitress grouched as she scuttled over
to the restaurant door. “There’s too many of those things out there…even if
they
are
distracted.”

“Run for his
truck? Harley, are you insane?” Rachel hissed from under her table.

More gunshots
sounded from out in the storm, and shadows slid across the walls as another car
pulled away from the truck stop. Any second she anticipated the sound of a
window shattering, heralding their collective doom.

“I’m not going
for the truck,” Harley crab walked over to the door next to Marisa. “I’m
thinking if there is only one of these things left in the store then now is our
chance to get all of them out of the building. That would give us a second area
to retreat to in case something happens to one of these windows. If nothing
else, it will give us more options and also a large supply of junk food if we
end up having to stay here for a while.”

“Harley,” Rachel
warned, “I don’t think this is a good idea. I know you beat one of these things
once, but do you really want to square off against another one? They may be
stronger than they look, and you can’t be sure there isn’t more than one of
them over there.”

She winced at
the sound of another scream from outside but held his gaze.

“Doc,” he
replied, “the last thing I want to do is go over there…but it needs to be done.
This situation ain’t gonna get better by itself. And now that we know there
ain’t gonna be any help coming, it’s up to us to get out of this alive. I
have
to do this.”

“Are you sure?”
Marisa challenged him, “Are you absolutely sure we’re on our own?”

“Marisa,”
Harley’s tone took on a quiet urgency, “those cop cars out there have radios.
They know what’s going on in the world, and they just acted on it. They could
have chosen to park and wait between here and town until help arrived…but they
didn’t. And the only possible reason for that is they knew help wasn’t coming.
That means it’s down to us.”

Rachel’s stomach
plunged as she followed Harley’s logic and could find no flaw in it. She
realized that while Harley had been “lounging” up here drinking coffee, he had
actually been putting all kinds of pieces together about the situation as a
whole while the rest of them had been fighting different personal demons and
trying to come to grips with the situation right in front of them. She began to
wonder just what all he had figured out.

What the hell
was going on out in the world? How widespread was this thing?

“Right now,” he
continued, “the zombies have all been pulled away and their attention is
elsewhere. That isn’t going to last, and we aren’t going to get this chance
again. I have to try this while it’s still possible.”

Marisa looked
from Harley, to Rachel, and back to Harley again with a tight face. The doctor
could tell the girl was struggling with what he had told her, and not liking it
any better than she did. At the same time, she appeared to come to the same conclusions.
Like it or not, there was no other way.

“Okay.” She
fished the keys out of her pants and started hunting the one to the door. “If
we’re going to do this then let’s get it over with. I don’t want to have to
think about it too long.”

“Hey wait,”
Harley objected, “I said
I
would go…”

“No!
You
wait.” Marisa cut him off. “I’m your ‘wingman’, remember? Face it, you’re our
best chance of getting out of this alive and we can’t risk losing you because
you decided to be a hero and go do this without somebody watching your back.”
She pointed the key to the door at his nose. “So you think about that when you
make these plans of yours. If it’s too stupid for you to have me along as
backup, then it’s probably too stupid for you to be doing in the first place.
Comprende
?”

Rachel could
tell the girl was scared right down to her socks, but that she didn’t intend to
back down on this. Whatever understanding these two had come to earlier, it
looked like she meant to make him stick to it.

Harley must have
seen that too.

“Okay,” he gave
in with an unhappy sigh, “if you insist. But let me handle things over there.
This is what I do…what I need
you
to do is stay clear and watch my back,
okay?”