Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (14 page)

But what was going on in the world
now
—this plague or whatever it was, this frightful blight on
humanity—maybe it wasn’t the end. It certainly wasn’t final or fast
or even in the traditional vein of apocalypses.

No.

This one—this “zombie apocalypse”—was slow.
This one was not absolute, like the coordinated explosion of a
nuclear weapon on positions of densely-populated areas. That was
the epitome of final. Within the range of the explosion is absolute
extermination. No second chances, no hope, no way out.

This one, if it is truly to be humankind’s
end, (and she had no qualms about being so pessimistic, judging by
the chaos she was witnessing,) was excruciatingly slow.

This one, this zombie apocalypse, was not
providing absolute extermination. This living dead armageddon was
allowing for the unwilling participants to have a chance, to have
hope, to have a way out. And most importantly, since this was an
apocalypse that wasn’t wiping everyone out all at once, people
could deny it wasn’t happening. They could refuse to see it. They
could attempt to distract themselves from it.

That was what Keri Lawrence was doing, even
before she realized she was doing it. She had gone to work—the only
one to show up, in fact—and went about grading papers in her empty
classroom. It was a symptom of
Terror Management Theory
, as
taught in her college Psych 101.

Despite the growing numbers of flesh-eaters
multiplying at an exponential rate across Texas, the nation, and
the globe, she was denying the severity of it. Like another
psychological phenomenon, “the bystander effect,” Keri didn’t want
to risk committing an overemotional
faux pas
by running
straight to her family and friends and blowing everything out of
proportion.

Keri Lawrence had family and many friends,
and she had always considered herself the rare type of human being
that would never take any of them for granted.

A co-worker, George Zaragosa, was one.

He was a single man, though he had made the
jump towards lifelong commitment several months earlier, before his
soon-to-be betrothed was murdered. It had left a hole in George’s
heart that could never be filled, like a puzzle with a piece lost
on the floor and swept away, never to be complete again. George
also had a family. A mother living widowed in San Uvalde. It was
his quick detour on his journey home to his mother that brought him
back to his work, where he found Keri under attack by two walking
cadavers that Keri had—until that very moment—tried to deny was
real. The corpses had somehow found their way into the empty school
and to her classroom as she mechanically entered students’ grades
into her computer.

Keri and George had resonated harmoniously
for years at their workplace, Branton Junior High School. And it
was not until he rescued her from the fevered hands of the two
zombies that all preconditioned notions of respect and social mores
were thrown aside and their energies melded in a triumphant release
of lust.

It was proof for Keri that she was still
alive, and it allowed her to parallel physically her mental
exhilaration. But more important than that, it confirmed with
overwhelming evidence that she had indeed been taking people for
granted.

Within the growing imperfection of the world,
two humans, alone and scared, found perfection together. By the
encounter with George, Keri found contentment in a land of sadness
and death. Together their souls rose into the spiritual realms,
spinning and swirling, touching perfection one last time as the
early Texas spring morning dawned. Their ecstatic cries sang in a
harmonious chorus of joy and humanity.

As the world slowly crept to its fate in the
zombie apocalypse, two friends found solace in the most needed
resource in a world literally consumed by fear, that one
vibrational beacon that is the heart of salvation:
Love
. It
was the one and only stable principle amidst chaos. It was the only
worthwhile distraction. There was no excuse in any of her old
Psychology courses to justify anything other than freely displaying
real human emotion.

Keri Lawrence understood now.

* * *

Like two young high school lovers anxious at
the prospect of leaving each other’s arms before the tardy bell
rings to start their class, Keri and George held each other tight
near the large front doors of Branton Junior High, casting glances
into the dangerous world outside.

They finalized their plan as they continued
to embrace.

“Just stay behind me and everything will be
fine,” George said.

Keri couldn’t help but feel vulnerable in her
summer dress and boots. She had not even prepared herself for the
potential that she might have to fight for own survival. She said,
“I’m just so scared.”

“Don’t be. Really. They’re all spread out
right now and very slow. As long as they don’t get a grip on you,
you’ll be fine. Your car is just right there.”

True: the parking lot was only about twenty
yards away, and her blue ’95 Mustang was parked where it always
was, in the space reserved for her with her name on it, despite
every other parking space being empty.

However, though each zombie was at least
fifty yards away from any other, as George had pointed out, they
could be seen absolutely everywhere as far as her naked eye could
see, even past the horizon.

“This is bad,” she whispered.

“Then come with me,” George said.

Keri sighed. “I can’t. I…” she paused. “I
just want to go home.”

“To Austin?”

“No. To Houston. To my family. But I’ll need
to go to Austin to get my stuff before I go.”

None of it made sense to George. But neither
did driving to his work to pick up his deceased love’s locket. But
like him, Keri was following her heart despite the dangers that
awaited her in Austin and her anticipated journey down the road to
Houston.

George loved her as a dear friend and did not
want to argue with her over her conscious decision.

“You know it’s very dangerous right now in
Austin, right?”

“You’ve told me about it already,
remember?”

“Still, everything I said is true, Keri.”

The two stood in silence for a while, resting
their foreheads on each other.

Keri whispered, “I’m going to miss your
smile.”

“I’ll miss yours more,” George replied.

“You’ve always been a good friend. I want you
to know that. I hope this isn’t a permanent goodbye.”

“It won’t be,” George said. “We’ll see each
other again down the road.”

“Here’s hoping,” Keri said. She kissed
him.

A click and the sound of a classroom door
opening awakened their senses. They quietly followed the noise to
its source down the hallway at the other end. The sight of a
zombie, wearing the funk of a day’s worth of post-death decay as it
shambled clumsily into the hallway, confirmed their fears. George
had entered the school from a window in that exact room. A creature
wearing a computer monitor on its head had been wedged into the
open window, exposing it to zombies outside. George was uncertain
if another would figure out that it could enter from there.

One did.

“Maybe its just one,” George said.

Another entered the hallway, dragging the
gnawed stump of its foot behind it—another victim turned
perpetrator. That was how the cycle worked.

“This is not good,” Keri said.

Yet another entered, followed by two more.
The second zombie caught sight of Keri and George and advanced
toward them. The others quickly followed suit, like soldiers
following their leader into battle. Their moans echoed through the
hallway.

“Listen, Keri. They just upped the ante. We
gotta move. You ready?”

Keri bit her bottom lip, looking at the
advancing gang of flesh eaters, second-guessing her chances.

Before she knew it, George had whipped her
out the front doors and into the fray. Keri yelped with surprise as
the two dashed down the concrete walkway to the parking lot amid a
modest gathering of zombies. She kept her eyes focused on the back
of George’s freshly washed red and black flannel shirt, not so much
wondering why he was wearing it during these hot spring days, but
mostly to keep from looking at the putrefied faces of the living
dead, not unlike being afraid of heights and not looking down.

Zombies in the parking lot began focusing
their pursuit at the living humans. Fortunately, Keri and George
were able to negotiate most of the distance to the lot before any
of the zombies near the school noticed. But it did not take long
for every one of them to shift their random shuffling to direct
pursuit of the two as the couple arrived at Keri’s car.

She pulled her keyring from her pocket and
shuffled through the keys. She had their order memorized, so she
found the correct one quickly, even through the panic.

George grabbed her for one last kiss before
pushing her into the driver’s seat.

“Drive it like you stole it, babe,” he said.
“Go.”

She tried to say, “Call me when you get to
San Uvalde,” but George slammed the door shut before she could
finish.

As she put the keys in the ignition and
started it, she heard George say something, but it was too muffled
through the glass and the noise of the engine. She tried to read
his lips, but couldn’t.

She watched George dash across the parking
lot, heading to his own car that he had parked on the other side of
the street behind the sign of a local subdivision, mostly hidden
from view. He scuffled briefly with a couple of the monsters before
climbing in and driving away. It didn’t take long for his car to be
just a tiny spot in the distance.

“
Let him make it okay
,” she
whispered.

A creature tripped and fell on the hood of
her vehicle, waking her from her thoughts. She shifted into reverse
and hit the gas. If she was going to tally the number of zombies
she was going to finish off on her journey, she officially bagged
her first as she backed up her vehicle. The ghoul was violently
knocked to the ground, bouncing its head off the pavement with
enough force to put it out of commission. Keri provided a final
slap in the flesh eater’s dead face by backing over its legs. She
couldn’t hear the crunch they made, but she could certainly feel
the bumps.

Though she was afraid, she girded herself
with courage to face what stood before her in Austin and on the
road to Houston.

She watched the batch of zombies around the
school scramble to try to catch her, but it was no use. Flicking
her blinker on out of habit, she turned out of the parking lot,
then hit Koehler’s Crossing on the way to IH-35.

The sky was blue. The clouds were full and
white. Birds flew across the sky.

It confused Keri that the end of the world
was looking like just another day. Where was the blood moon? The
boiling seas? The falling skies? The earthquakes and the fire and
the brimstone?

But as she drove down Koehler’s Crossing, it
did not take long for her to understand that, signs or no signs,
the world was done for. The sight before her was confirmation that
despite the natural world taking its course, her civilized world
was out of order.

To her left sat a small car, wrecked and
desolate in a ditch. Blood caked the windows and interior with
death. On the road, a large gathering of vultures had picked apart
a corpse right down to the bone. Only a cowardly few chose to give
up their spot by the body as Keri drove by. The pungent stench of
the vultures and rotting carrion they were eating drifted through
the vents and went straight for Keri’s nose.

She passed the body and continued on, seeing
two charred-black vehicles, wrecked and skeletal on the road. She
felt as if they were two lonesome guards protecting the road to
IH-35, granting permission to any that dared pass, like stone lions
at the gates of an aristocratic estate. If this was a taste of how
the crisis had affected the small town of Koehl, she could only
imagine what Austin looked like, much less Houston.

The world was falling apart, just like her
relationship with her now ex-boyfriend did.

Monday night after work had been miserable.
She suspected Chris was cheating on her after spending too many
nights alone. The queen-sized bed they slept in together never
seemed so vast, so lonely than on the nights he said he was working
late. When she confronted him about a curious list of phone numbers
she found hidden in
Dr. Phil’s Family First
book, he was
belligerent.

“Keri, after all I do for you, you treat me
like this?”

“Who are these numbers for, Chris?”

“No one, Keri. No one.”

“Then who’s Laurie?”

Chris flinched.

Keri caught him.

“Get out of my house,” she groaned, sad and
defeated.

Chris picked up his jacket and walked out.
Keri cried herself to sleep in her bed, the light from the
television danced across her body and against the wall behind her
as she sulked. Drowning in sadness, she ignored the first televised
reports of the dead rising from the graves.

The next morning at work, she remembered
seeing George Zaragosa making copies before class.

“How are you, Miss Lawrence?” George asked
courteously.

“Mr. Zaragosa, I’m great. How are you?” She
offered a brief and casual hug that George readily accepted. Their
hearts resonated with positive energy.

“I’m doing okay now,” he said. “A hug is a
near cure-all, even for bad mornings.”

“You’re too sweet, Mr. Zaragosa,” she said.
In an effort to keep their attraction as ambiguous as possible to
their old, stuffy co-workers, she moved to her office mailbox,
pulled out her mail, and proceeded back to her room. She passed her
hand along George’s lower back as she walked by. “Bye,” she said,
lacing each letter with appreciation.