Dying To Live & Fighting To Live-Book One and Book Two (Zombie Overload Series) (4 page)

It was several blocks away but
that doesn’t really mean anything, now does it? I hardly think
those things are going to stop and knock on each door, hoping for
carry-out.

I look toward the house and see
my dad leading my mom and my boys out the door, with Will guarding
them from behind.

I hear a moan, a shuffle of feet.
I whip my head around just in time to see hands reaching for my face.
I jerk my head back and almost fall from the force of the movement
but manage to keep my footing. I have no weapon. The swords and
knives are in the van. (Real bloody smart of me, wasn't it?) I kick
the old bald man in the kneecap, he probably only weighs 100 lbs, if
that, and I manage to knock him down. Down, but not staying down.
He's already getting back to his feet. Now I see movement to my left.
I risk a quick glance and see at least four more coming straight for
me. Help! Oh my GOD! I'm not that strong. I can't do this!

Someone grabs me from behind and
I shriek and start fighting. I get in a good elbow jab to the stomach
of......my husband. OOPS! But, come on! Who the hell grabs someone at
a time like this? Whatever. I run to the van and fly into my seat.
Shutting and locking the door I turn to my kids and I'm relieved to
see that they are ok. Not ok, ok. But inside and alive. Good enough
for me right now.

I realize Will isn't in the van
yet and the blood running through my veins turn to ice. I open my
door and look back. I see him using his arms and legs to take each of
the zombies down. Can't kill them like that, but I guess broken leg
bones still mean you can't walk, even when your dead. (Before, that
wouldn’t have made much sense. But now, you know what I'm
talking about.) Damn things can still crawl, though. And here come
more. At least a dozen!

"Hey, Bruce Lee! Time to
go!" I yell to Will.

He
runs to the van, finally, and starts it up. We back out of the drive
and head south to the main street. My parents are safely following us
in their van. Will pulls out his cell and makes a call. He's telling
his sister what's going on and to get the hell out, that they don’t
have time to pack anything. She believes him without question (of
course she does. She's big into zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc.)
and as we pass her house, we see her and her family, which consists
of her son, his fiance, and their three kids, already getting in her
car. Will calls his brother and tells him the same thing. His brother
doesn't believe him regardless of what Will tells him. Will throws
his phone to the floor and let's loose a few choice words. I touch
his arm and give it a squeeze but I say nothing. What
can
I
say? Hopefully, his brother will figure it out somehow before it's
too late and take action. He's not stupid. Stubborn. But not stupid.

We continue out of
the village and I suddenly remember the gas situation. Little Village
has no gas station but the next town over, Lilo, does. I look behind
us and check on my parents. Still there. I also notice Will's sister,
Kim, is following us, too. I grab up Will's phone, praying it still
works. Relief when I see the screen glow as I open it, I call his
sister and tell her we have to stop in Lilo to get gas. She says she
does, too, and will keep following us.

We see nothing on
the short drive to Lilo but as we near the city limits, chaos rules.
People both dead and alive, and some in between, are everywhere. How
did they get here so quickly? I ask Will that same question.

He responds, "The
only thing I can think of is someone who was infected brought it here
before turning. Maybe. I don’t know. I have a feeling nothing
is going to make sense anymore. I'm still going to try to get some
gas. We aren’t going to make it much further and there isn’t
any other gas stations until Springfield. We definitely don’t
have enough to get there. I really don’t wanna run out of gas
right now."

Uh,
no kidding?

We make it around to
the west side of Lilo where the gas station is and find it deserted.
No living, or dead, or.....living dead. But it's closed. Apparently,
Will didn’t find that a problem. He pulls up to the pumps and
jumps out of the van. I watch him run over to Kim car. Then I watch
as he runs back to our vehicle and she runs to the store. She takes
her keys and unlocks the door. What the hell? I see her run behind
the counter and push some buttons on what I assume is for the gas
pumps. I see them light up and Will starts filling up the van. Dad,
on the other side of our pump, is doing the same. Kim runs back out
and gives her vehicle some go-juice, too. I know she used to work
here, but she doesn’t now and hasn't for at least a year, so
what's with the keys? Whatever. Who cares!

Will finishes
filling up the tank and maneuvers the van much the same way I did
back home. Except this time it's the building and the ice cooler he's
wedging us against.

Confused, I look at
him and he does a double-take at me. (Yeah, Buddy. Still here.
Remember me?)

"We're stocking
up." He simply says, as if I should have known that. And I
probably should have.

He sits sideways in
his seat and just stares at me.

"What?" I
ask.

"Honey, you
gonna get out?"

"OH!" I
exclaim. I get out and go through the glass doors. I snatch up a box
of trash bags. Opening the box, I pull out a bag and start filling it
up with as much canned food as I can without busting out the bottom.
A separate bag for vehicle items such as; oil, transmission fluid,
windshield wash, etc. Another bag for snack cakes, chips, and candy
bars and still another couple bags for sodas of every size and
flavor. (Yep. Sure did. I'm not stupid. I know we might never have
junk food again.) I pass each bag to Will once they're full, grab
another empty bag, and load it with smokes. (DON'T GO THERE! Besides,
I got the important stuff first.)

As I'm behind the
counter, Kim comes in and grabs the box of trash bags and starts
filling them with the rest of the smokes and the other items I hadn't
taken. Don't worry, I left plenty for her.

I'm watching the
activity going on outside the large window. Dad has placed his van
side by side against ours with only a very small space between. He
has opened his side door facing our van and both of our side doors
were open, too, making a safe passage between vehicles. As Will
loaded the bags, some went to their van, some to ours. I'm going to
have to make sure the bag of smokes goes to ours. If my mom sees
them, I won't have to worry about the dead killing me.
She
will. I notice the sliding door on the opposite side of my parents
van has been opened while I was freaking out over Mom seeing the
smokes, and Kim's car is right next to it with her passenger side
windows rolled down. Now they are passing her bags through both vans
and into her car. Good thing she has a car with a backseat that folds
down to get to the trunk, AND a large trunk, because with three
adults and three kids, there's not a lot of room. Bet she's not
making fun of me for getting a van now!

Will
is finally done loading bags and comes into the store. He snatches up
a couple trash bags and some duct tape. He winks at me as he walks
back to the door. I smile in response because I can't wink (yeah,
whatever) and watch him move to the back passenger-side where our
window used to be on our van. He puts his arm inside, pulls out a
handful of glass, and throws it in the rocks between the building and
the cement walk. He sticks his arm back in and I see him jerk back a
little, then lean inside. Suddenly, he jumps back and let's out a
loud, "Son-of-a-bitch!" My dad runs over to him and I move
closer to the window, trying to see what is going on. My dad grabs
one of the trash bags, reaches inside, and pulls out a freakin' ARM!
The zombie who broke the window must have lost it when Will took off
so fast back home.
OH
MY GOD!
And
we've been riding around with that
THING
in
there this whole time???

But the men deal
with it and go right back to fixing the window. Duct tape and trash
bags won't keep out the zombies but it will help keep out some of the
cold night air.

My attention is
pulled back inside the store as my sister-in-law walks up next to me
behind the counter.

She turns to me and
says, "You know, we may need money if there are still places not
affected, yet. I don’t have any. You?"

I shake my head.
"Nope."

She turns on the
register and pushes a button which sends the tray flying out with a
whole lot of drama and noise and it startles me in the quiet of the
store, plus I'm already super-sensitive to all noises and movements
right now. She chuckles and winks at me when I jump and cry out. I
give her a quick embarrassed grin.
(What the hell is it with these
people and their eye twitches, anyway?)

She empties what
little is kept in the drawer and then leads me to the office. She
quickly, and with ease, opens the safe and pulls out moneybag after
moneybag. Opening them, she finds one with checks and tosses it back
in the safe. Then she divides the bags up and hands half to me. She
takes the video tape out of a hidden recorder for the security
system, "just in case" and we leave the office. We rush to
the front doors and then both of us stop dead. (Not really. We just
stopped suddenly.)

Outside,
there are walking dead,
everywhere
!

Will grabs both our
arms and practically drags us to the van door. He pushes me into the
front seat and pushes Kim in one side and out the other of our van.
She goes through mom and dad's van and then freezes. I bend down in
my seat to see why she stopped and I see two zombies crawling onto
her car and more heading our way. The two zombies are at the back of
the car. One is all the way up on the trunk slapping at the back
window just behind where her grand-kids are sitting. I'm terrified
that any moment the glass is going to shatter and explode all over
those poor babies and then the nasty things will be able to get to
them.

Everyone, including
me, starts screaming at Kim to HURRY! MOVE IT! GO! She unfreezes and
dives headfirst into her open passenger window and yells at her son,
Wes, to "step on it". I watch her try to get her ass in the
seat instead of her head as they take off. Bo jumps inside his
grandparent's van and pulls the driver's side sliding door shut and
then the opposite door after jumping back in our van (they really
need automatic sliding doors!). He pulls the door on his side shut
(we only have a passenger side automatic) and Will pulls away from
the store, following the others.

As each vehicle
races for the exit, we watch the two zombies that are still on Kim's
car. The one that is only half on the trunk flies off like she weighs
nothing as Will's nephew makes a sharp left turn in an effort to
dislodge them. My dad has no time to swerve (or else he just doesn’t
care at this point) and runs the middle-aged woman over. As his
vehicle goes over her body with both passenger tires, I hear
crackling, snaps, and a wet bursting sound as her body gives from the
weight of the van. I 'm sickened by the sight and sound. Sound? Could
I really have heard that with my window up? Surely not. I'm wondering
if my imagination helped with that some.

I remember the other
zombie. The one still on their car. It's still slapping and punching
at the window. The horde of zombies (maybe sixty or so. I'm not
counting them. Sorry.) are doing their best to catch up to us,
although they are still at least a football field away. I turn my
attention back to the front and see the car whipping back and forth
too hard and too fast. Is he trying to flip the damn thing? At this
point, you can tell he's driving more out of fear and frustration
than common sense.

Suddenly,
he stops the car. We are all thrown forward from having to stop so
quickly to avoid plowing into each other. Now remember, I said Will's
brother
was
the smart one. Not the nephew. He jumps out of the car and runs to
the back. The zombie, seeing fresh meat that isn’t behind the
display glass, moves pretty darn fast for a dead guy. He's off the
trunk in seconds and starts a weird sort of trot-shuffle towards
Will's nephew. Wes takes too long taunting and screaming at the
zombie and that costs him. The zombie is on him before he even has
time to take a step back. We hear screams of terror coming from Kim's
car.

Dad and Will both
fly from the vans and charge forward to help. They reach Will's
nephew and the dead guy, who has Wes by the arm and is pulling it
towards his snapping mouth. My dad wraps his own arm around the neck
of the zombie and pulls. As the zombie's head is forced back, in a
desperate attempt to still try and get his food, it's hand rips a
chunk of flesh from Wes's arm. Wes screams and cries from the pain.
The screams from Kim's car is devastating to hear.