Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory (11 page)

Gunshots ring out as the person driving the
truck fires on some zombies. Vida had been so distressed and
hell-bent on escaping, she had forgotten all about the walking
dead. The sound makes Brad take cover as well, for she doesn’t hear
his shoeless strides on the concrete walk anymore. She hopes this
will buy her some time.

The black truck slowly cruises the street
like a trolling fishing boat, and as soon as its taillights are out
of sight she moves. Vida squeezes through the hedges, heading
toward the street since Larsen is nearly to her hiding spot.
Cautiously side-stepping left, she comes to a short brick wall that
separates the motel’s frontage from the parking lot of a
neighboring pawn shop. She follows the divider to the street while
a second truck joins the black one as it takes a right down another
street.

She emerges from her location and dashes down
the sidewalk, taking a left into a residential area. The path she
has chosen to get away from the human menaces is slightly pitched.
Striding uphill, Vida tries the doors of the cars parked in front
of each home. She has no luck until she crests the incline, finds
one unlocked, and slides behind the wheel of an old Charger.

The Dodge’s black paintjob is sullied by
thick road dirt and grit. Some well-meaning, or ill-mannered,
passerby had scrawled ‘wash me’ on the hood. Wishful thinking has
her looking for a spare key, but to no avail. So she ducks below
the dash, keeping an eye out for Brad while worrying he saw where
she went and will come running up the hill to claim her.

###

“Where the hell did she go?” Brad growls
while standing behind the motel’s sign, completely naked. He blames
her for his current situation. He was right on her heels when the
shots were fired. Fear paralyzed him a second too long and she
slipped out of sight. Had she gone for the jeep, he could have
seized her once more.

He feels vulnerable as he cowers, unsure
where the trucks are. All he wants now are his clothes. It takes a
bit for him to build the courage to head back up the stairs for his
uniform.

Staying low like a person approaching a
helicopter, he feels ridiculous and embarrassed, though no eyes are
on him. The wrought iron railing that connects the concrete risers
doesn’t give him much cover. He takes the series of hard slabs two
at a time, hoping to make the trip back to 202 as short as
possible. He needs to get dressed and find that girl. Brad is
unwilling to abandon his initial plans for her, and he can’t let
her reach Eagle Rock, should he need to go there himself. It would
be bad enough returning to that life, but even worse if he arrives
only to get tossed in the stockade.

The rough stucco exterior to his left becomes
pock marked by bullets as the large truck returns. Standing
partially out of the vehicle, a black haired man shoots a
semi-automatic assault rifle. Brad scrambles up the rest of the way
in a crawl as the plaster explodes during his journey to the second
floor.

Brad throws himself into Room 202 and slams
the door shut. He bolts every lock and even flips the security
latch. A safeguard he’s never held much confidence in but at the
moment seems rather important to use. He leans against the door and
listens for more gunfire, or feet on the stairs, before grabbing
his clothes and his own assault rifle.

###

“You get one, Marko?” Jessie pulls up in the
smaller red truck. The fat elbow he hangs out of his window
resembles a raw ham hock. “I thought we got all the zombies
yesterday.”

Biff pipes in from the passenger seat,
“Either we missed a few or it came from somewhere else.”

“Ya think?” Marko says sarcastically. “I
think it was a zombie. The way he moved, though, he might be
alive.”

“You shot at a survivor?” Jessie asks with
dismay.

“The freak’s running around naked!” Marko
says, negating to mention he had continued to fire even after his
target took evasive actions.

“What now?” Biff asks.

“Keep looting. There’s a pawn shop over
there. I’m heading to the gun shop.”

“We got plenty of guns, Marko,” Biff says.
“We ain’t got but two hands to use ‘em.”

“I want it all!” Marko snaps. “We need ammo,
right? Might as well have the hardware to use it too.”

###

Brad Larsen spies from his window, now fully
clothed and more confident. The man that had shot at him appears to
be giving orders to someone in a second truck that is pointed away
from the motel. This leader has indicated for the red truck to turn
around and head in the direction Brad traveled. Then the black
vehicle speeds away in the opposite direction.

Are
they
trying
to
flush
me
out
? he panics. Brad
assumes the red truck is going to lie in wait and the black truck’s
departure is merely a decoy. He needs another way out and remembers
that the bathroom has a small window that faces the back alley.

Brad pushes out the frosted pane of glass,
but it only swings part way due to a pair of thin chains on either
side. He forces it open, breaking the links so he can squeeze
himself through. He carries out the first part of his plan and now
dangles from the sill. “Now what?”

From this vantage he can see his jeep, but
the height makes it look like a child’s electric powered car. Brad
is vulnerable as well. Not only are his hands preoccupied with the
duty of keeping him swinging in the air, but his rifle is also
slung across his back and would be no help to him should the men in
the trucks enter the alley. He tries to think of a way down yet is
unable to achieve inspiration. His fingertips are losing their
purchase on the sill.

For a split second, he is weightless before
he falls to earth. He lands hard on the asphalt, feet first. One of
his ankles rolls beneath him, and he must subdue his reaction to
the intense pain. He clenches his jaw and his eyes water. He
doesn’t dare scream, though every fiber of his being wants to.
Instead he shifts his weight to his good leg and hobbles to his
ride.

Brad lays his M-16 across his lap before
hitting the ignition button. The intruders may have him
outnumbered, but he knows he has them outgunned. The .50 caliber
machine gun on the back of the jeep should be more than adequate in
taking on these men.

As much as he’d love to have a medic tend to
his ankle, he isn’t looking forward to joining the ranks of
enlisted. Brad ponders other courses of action.
Perhaps
Canada
, he brainstorms.
Grab
Vida
and
hide
out
together
in
America’s
attic
. First things first. He has to make it out of this
town alive.

Having woken up in the jeep yesterday,
already in the middle of town, Vida has no way of getting her
bearings so she can find the highway. Sitting in silence within a
stranger’s car, with nothing to do but think about how lost she is,
drives her mad. She opens the glove compartment in hopes of
locating a map. Releasing the small hatch results in a cascade of
napkins and papers, along with a slim pair of leather gloves.
Gloves
in
a
glove
compartment
.
She can’t help but snicker.
I’ve
never
actually
seen
that
.

The papers strewn on the floor among the
stacks of disposable towels are useless to her. They’re mostly old
registration forms and take-out menus.

She leaves the mess she has made and glances
down the hill once more, still expecting to see Brad come charging
up at any moment. For the span of several breaths, there is no
movement ahead of her. She almost wishes he was on his way. It
might jumpstart her brain.

All she can do is sit and wait, without the
benefit of even knowing what it is she is waiting for. Vida looks
around at the residences, begging for some sign of life--the
movement of a curtain or someone shouting at her to get out of
their car. Nothing.

Hopelessness builds within her enough to make
her give up. It almost makes her return to Brad and let him have
his way with her, if only for a ride to Eagle Rock. She places her
forehead on the steering wheel. Her eyes are open but she sees
nothing. Her mind is a blank slate. Try as she may to formulate a
course of action, she has nothing.

Vida lets out a groan just to hear something
other than her own breathing. Her eyes dart from object to object
within the cramped confines just to create the illusion of action.
She longs for stimuli other than the taste of her morning mouth,
the feel of the steering wheel, and the smell of this old
Charger.

The smell is the worst: old cigarette smoke
and spilled food. It nauseates her and makes her not want to
breathe.

As her eyes continue their game, they settle
on the center of the dash. Below the heater and the stock radio is
a shelf jammed full of cassette tapes and a pack of cigarettes.
Vida pulls out the ashtray below this and locates the source of the
infernal smell--a brimming bowl of butts and ash. She is tempted to
open her door and dump the tray, but instead she takes the pack of
smokes. Within the cellophane is a book of matches.

Stamped on the yellow cover of the book, in
red lettering, is a location she saw yesterday:
Gary’s
Gas
and
Go
. It’s the store Brad got gas at and
the liquor he drank last night. What really gets her attention is
the endorsement below the name of the establishment:
Several
locations
.

Inside the flap, behind the rows of matches,
Vida learns that the place is a small chain. She finds the one she
and Larsen had stopped at on a rudimentary map. There is another
one down by Waterloo, and another, the original and largest, in a
small neighboring town called Poland Creek. After focusing on the
Gary’s in Worchester on the miniscule atlas, she studies the other
businesses it maps out. She finds the motel she had spent the night
at and the pawn shop next door. Just enough to give her an idea of
where to go from here.
I
have
a
where
.
All
I
need
is
a
how
.

###

Hoping to get the drop on the red truck, Brad
cruises slowly around the block and finds it parked in front of the
pawn shop. Two large men in bright orange vests are at the doors of
the establishment trying to gain entry. He laughs at the men, not
sure why they’d mess around with the lock rather than just shatter
the panes of glass to get in. He’s about to aid them by spraying
the area with heavy machine gun fire from where he has coasted to a
stop just a street away. Before he can, tires roll toward him from
the right.

Brad ducks behind the front seats, expecting
to see the black truck bearing down on him. Instead he sees a dirty
Charger rolling lazily past his location.

It’s
her
! he realizes.

Before he can turn his attention back to the
pair of bungling burglars, he loses the element of surprise. Vida’s
car has coasted into a telephone pole with a modest but audible
crash. The obese men turn just in time to dive out of Brad’s line
of fire.

The throaty roar of Brad’s salvo overpowers
the shattering glass of the pawn shop and the rattle of falling
shell casings. He eases off of the trigger and waits for the men to
pop up from where they hide, allowing his barrel to cool lest it
warp from the intense heat of the weapon’s high rate of fire.

The day-glow garments the men wear as a
preventative measure against getting shot while hunting actually
works to their detriment now. Brad sights one of the men where he’s
pinned behind a bus stop bench, then he releases a small burst that
devours the wooden planks shielding the portly man. Before Brad can
find just the right spot between the boards to hit the cowering
thief’s vulnerable flesh, he starts taking fire himself. A round
whizzes past his face, then a second plants itself in his left
thigh.

He ignores an impulse to turn his weapon on
the new arrival and retreats instead. He knows it’s the guy with
the AK-47 by its distinct noise. Brad jumps back into jeep,
vaulting the seats and consequently exacerbating the pain in his
leg. He grits through the agony and reverses his vehicle, driving
two streets away before darting left around a corner.

Limping out of the jeep with his assault
rifle and a few other items, he makes it to the building. With his
back against the wall, he pulls the pin on several smoke canisters
and begins lobbing them towards the intersections that stand
between him and his opponents. Both he and his enemies will lose
visibility, but he’s been trained for it. Brad crouches before
entering the rising haze and silently stalks closer to his quarry.
The men curse and scream at one another, which only gives up their
positions. Brad readies a handful of pebbles to trick them into
firing where he tosses the stones. All he needs is to see their
muzzles flash.

They aren’t taking the bait, however. The man
to Brad’s left orders his boys not to shoot. So Brad holds a hand
against the hole in his leg, which burns and bleeds profusely, and
waits. He wants to drop these men soon so he can dress his wound
and stop the hemorrhaging. His thoughts also go to Vida, since he
didn’t see her get out of the Charger and he needs to know if she
is still around or if she slipped away in the chaos.

The thick smoke grows patchy, dissipating in
spots due to a slight breeze. Brad’s prey have grown silent. He
looks from side to side, into each pocket of clarity, and knows
they are doing the same.
Just
a
glimpse
, he
thinks. Should he wait much longer, he will be a sitting duck.