Dia of the Dead (23 page)

Brendan helped Reagan over the bodies on the ground into the supply closet.

I stepped over the broken dishes, ready to follow them inside when I heard yapping coming from the restrooms at the end of the hall where the little girl stood decaying. 

I know those yaps.

I took off, stepping over the bodies, slipping a bit on the black liquid that pooled on the floor near their heads but managed to stay on my feet. I ran past the middle-aged zombie who was making his way toward the kitchen from the dining room. I bypassed the open door of the supply closet—tossing my bag to Brendan as he and Reagan yelled for me to get in there. But I didn’t stop. My body was on autopilot, moving on its own while my brain was focused on the yapping from a moment ago. I kept running. The little girl with the pigtails didn’t move. She stood at the end of the hallway, dangerous dark eyes on me. Her meal was being delivered. At the exact moment I reached for the bathroom door, she leapt forward, letting out a fierce snarl and broke into a quick sprint. If I had opened the door a second later, she would’ve taken a bite of my arm though she was missing her two front teeth.

I closed the door behind me and moved a garbage can in front of it. The yapping turned into barking.

A “shhhhh” came from one of the stalls. The barking stopped with a yelp.

“Frank?” I asked, cautiously walking past several stalls.

“Dia?” a familiar voice called.

“Mom?” I ran to the last stall and swung the door open.

“Mom!” I gasped, covering my mouth. Trisha Summers huddled in a corner of the stall. She leaned against the wall, her face drenched in sweat. The front of her shirt covered in splattered blood and a trail of black goo the color of the puddle beside her. I rushed over to her, ignoring the growls and scratching at the bathroom door.

“No!” she said, pushing me back as I tried to kneel beside her. “Stay back.” 

I moved away, looking her over. “Mom, why are you here? What’re you doing here? I thought I told you I—”

“I said I’d meet you at eight.” She smiled weakly.

I wanted to yell at her for not listening to me. I wanted to call her “hardheaded” like she would’ve called me if I disobeyed her but all I could manage was, “What happened? What happened to you?”

“A bite.”  She drew in a long breath and began coughing. Black liquid dribbled down her chin. She lifted up her arm for me to see.

“NO!” I screamed, looking at the wound on her arm. “NO! NO! NO!”

“Shhhh. It’ll be alright, honey. It’ll be fine.” She spoke slowly, not sounding like herself. Her voice was weak and lacking too much sass to belong to Trisha Summers.

“No, Mom. It won’t be all righ
t,
” I sobbed. “It won’t be fine. Nothing’s going to be fine ever again.”

I couldn’t stop the tears if I wanted to.

“It will be once you get out of here. Out of the city. I watched those movies you had. The people usually do better once they get out into a rural area. You said you were with Reagan, Brendan, and Kaci. You all have to stick together.”

She coughed up more black liquid and struggled to lift her arm to point to something behind me. “Grab that bag over there.”

I turned around and found a black duffle bag with Frank curled up on it. I went over to it, shooed Frank asid
e,
and picked it up.  It was heavier than it looked.

“Open it.” She coughed.

I sat it back on the floor and unzipped it. Sitting on top of everything was a small black gun.

“Do i
t,
” Mom said from behind me. I looked at her over my shoulder. The blue rash had begun to take over her brown skin. Everyone changed at different rates. Some faster than others. I didn’t know how quickly it would affect mom but I knew time was running out.

“I can’t,” I said through tears.

“You have to. I know what happens after you’re bitten. I-I-I’ve seen it. I want you to remember me as me. Trisha Summers: fly diva, cool mom.” She tried laughing but it was more like a choking gurgle. “Not as one of them.”

My body shook with silent sobs. I couldn’t do it for Kaci, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it for my own mother. Though there was nothing I could to stop it, I didn’t want to my last memory of her to be what she was asking of me.

“Mom, I can’t. Mom, I—“ I turned around to face her. She began to shake.

It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room. Time slowed down as I looked into the bag again and pulled out the gun. I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy. I hated the way it felt in my hand. It was as deadly and dangerous as what my mom would become. I closed my eyes and whispered my goodbyes to Trisha Summers. I reopened them to a room blurred by tears. I aimed the shaking barrel at my mother. She’d stopped convulsing. Instead she leaned against the wall completely still.  She looked like she was just taking a nap. Dreaming about something she loved—shoes, books, Frank, and me. She looked peaceful.

Seconds ticked by, feeling like hours. I promised myself to remember everything about her except this moment. I promised to remember Trisha Summers the way she was and not the monster that blinked open black eyes. I inhaled sharply, steadied my hand and squeezed the trigger. A loud pop ended the low growl a few feet from me. Just like that, I’d lost everything I had in the world.

I dropped the gun and doubled over, puking caviar on the floor. I wiped my lip with the back of my hand and looked at mom. I wanted to run to her. Wrap my arm around her. Squeeze her. Rock her. Stay with her forever.

I didn’t.

My feet were planted on the ground. The small hole in her forehead and the gore on the wall behind her kept me away. All my plans had come undone. I’d been so set on rescuing my mother that I hadn’t thought about what would happen if I weren’t able to. There was no room for that thought before but it was all I could think about now. I just knew I’d be able to get to her, be with her and we’d be able to figure the next step out together. Like always.

I wasn’t like Dia Muerto at all. She was a hero. She came through in a crunch to save the day. I was nothing. I had failed both her and my mothe
r
.

A metallic screech snapped me back to reality. The garbage can in front of the door had moved.  The little zombie girl had finally made her way inside. She growled as she stalked forward, passing the row of sinks on her way to us. Frank whimpered and ran away from the stall’s open door. I wanted to stand there and let her do what zombies did. I wanted to give up. Frank whimpered quietly. I looked down at his brown eyes. He was a good pup and didn’t deserve to be zombie chow. I shook my head in attempt to clear away the darkness. My focus shifted to Frank. He was all I had now. I slowly moved out of view, dragging the duffle bag with my foot.

“Frank,” I hissed as I pulled the bag closer and tried to coax him inside. He must’ve sensed the danger we were in. He hopped into the bag; listening to me for once instead of thinking I wanted to play a game. I struggled with the bag, trying to get it across my body with one arm and the added weight.  I shifted it to my right side and reached for the gun with the left hand. I almost had it when the girl let out a wild growl.

She saw me.

Fumbling for the gun, it slid away from me, stopping in the puddle of puke.

“Ugh. Gross.”

I lunged for the gun and grabbed it, holding the vomit-covered grip.  The little girl snarled as she charged, her eyes locked on me. I aimed and fired a shot. It ripped through her arm. She didn’t even flinch. I fired again. She hit the ground with a heavy thump. I didn’t wait to see if she was going to move again or not. I grabbed the bag and skirted past her on my way out of the bathroom. I ran down the hall, the heavy bag—with Frank— bouncing at my side, the gun still in my hand, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. I hoped the gun wouldn’t go off as I ran.

Another body joined the older couple outside of the closet.

“Where the hell were you?” Brendan yelled, his face red. “You nearly gave me a—whoa, what’s that?” He took a step back, holding golf clubs in both of his hands.

“Long story.” I breathed and lowered the gun. I looked around the room.  “Where’s Reagan?”

“She’s down there waiting for us. She has the food. I thought you might’ve been in trouble and was on my way to check on you. Really, where did you get that thing?” He pointed a club at the gun. “I don’t think you should be holding it like that.”

I had it at my side, my finger still on the trigger.

“The safety’s not o
n,
” he said. “Here, hand it to me.” He sat the golf clubs down, carefully took the gun out of my hand and examined it. He removed the bottom of it. “Oh.”

“What?”

“This thing would be great to have…if there were any bullets left.” He pushed the bottom of the gun back into place and handed it back to me. I slipped it inside the bag.

“Do you think there’s more bullets in the there?” He motioned at the duffle that seemed like it weighed a ton now.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I moved the bag to make it a little more comfortable to carry.

“What’s in there?”

“Some stuff my mom packed.”

Frank popped his head up.

“Oh and Frank.”

“Your mom’s here?”

“She was,” I said solemnly.

“Where is she? Is she coming with us?”

“No. She was bitten.” I blinked away tears, not wanting to let him see me cry.

Brendan moved closer and tried to hug me but I pushed him away.

“We better get going,” I said, avoiding his gaze.

“Let me get that for you.”

He reached for the bag.

“I got it,” I said, taking a step away from him. Frank poked his head out of the bag again. Brendan shrugged, putting the gun back into the bag and picking up the clubs again. We headed through the trapdoor closing it on our way down.

“What took so long?” Reagan said, tapping her foot impatiently. Her eyes narrowed. “Where the hell were you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said quietly.

Brendan handed Reagan one of the golf clubs. “You’ll probably need this.”

She accepted it and handed him two of the bags of food. “We need to head back to the office building. The entrance to my dad’s garage is in his secret exit.”

We followed her out and into the corridor. We ran as fast as we could to the other door and outside. The three of us walked close together, Brendan in the lead, Reagan and I flanking both sides. I held my breath as we moved through the crowd. It was much more difficult with the weight of the duffle bag. Not to mention the fear that Frank would bark or whimper as we walked and alert everyone to our presence. He remained quiet. Seeing Kaci in the crowd made my chest tighten and my eyes well with tears. She looked nothing like the Kaci I remembered. Pieces of her flesh were missing, exposing the rotting meat underneath. Her long strawberry blonde hair was tangled and matted. Her clothes tattered and caked with more black goo than we’d encountered the day before and her eyes were no longer green. I had to look away before what was left of my heart shattered further. She didn’t even seem to notice us as we moved past her. We were almost to the door to Mr. Bixby’s office when Frank shifted in the bag causing me to bump into what used to be one of the studio tour guides.

“Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap,” I mumbled to myself as I backed away from her.

She growled wildly which caused some of the zombies surrounding her to turn in our direction, all growling and snarling.

“Dammit,” Brendan said, craning his head from side to side, surveying the increasingly agitated crowd around us. I looked at the black-eyed bodies as they began to reach out for us as they circled.

“Run!” I shouted and took off in the direction of the office building. Reagan and Brendan weren’t too far behind, along with a few zombies who seemed to have gotten a whiff of our still beating hearts. We made it to the door. Brendan tried to keep the crowd away from Reagan as she hurried to enter the passcode into the door’s keypad.

“Hurry up!” Brendan yelled, swinging at the crowd.

Reagan’s fingers trembled as she punched the buttons. The door unlocked. Reagan opened it quickly and headed inside, waving us in.

“Brendan! Come on!” I yelled. He turned around and ran toward us, making it inside just before the crowd that followed him. Their growls and snarls could be heard through the metal door. Reagan headed across the landing to another door. We followed her inside and into yet another short corridor. The run to an unmarked door was short. Reagan reached the door first and opened it. Her screams flooded the hall as she was lifted into the air, dropping the bags of food, and pulled inside the garage. Brendan and I rushed toward the open door to see what grabbed her.

Mr. Bixby’s private garage didn’t just house six cars; it also seemed to be a hang out for a couple of zombies, including Mr. Bixby himself. Guess he didn’t make it to that business meeting he had after all. He was disheveled, gray-skinned with a rash of blue bruises, and black eyes but he was still in his excellently tailored suit. Reagan screamed for our help as her father tried to clamp down on her with his teeth.