Surviving Beyond the Zombie Apocalypse (15 page)

     There was no time to waste imagining what had taken place here. I needed to get back to the others and I needed to take this poison with me.

     I reached through the broken window and unlocked the driver’s door. There was a broken phone on the floor of the cab. More importantly, just as I had to hope, the keys were still in the ignition.

     I looked around feeling a little guilty at stealing the truck before I turned the key. The engine turned over slowly and I saw that the dome light had been left on. It dimmed almost to the point of going out when I turned the key. The battery was damn near dead. Just what the hell I needed! There is finally some shred of hope in this shitty world, and I have to get screwed by some dead battery. I slammed my hand down on the dashboard in anger. The pain of the useless act brought me back to reality.

     I took a deep breath and held it as I turned the key. The engine turned over enthusiastically a few times before slowing.

     “Goddamn it!” I swore right before the engine caught and roared to life. I couldn’t keep the whoop inside and let out a loud yell.

     Then I realized the back of the truck remained open, and I was no longer alone on the street.

     A single shell shuffled down the sidewalk about fifty yards away. I didn’t want to take the chance of having any of the poison spill out of the truck as I drove away, but I also didn’t want to make friends with the shell coming to meet me. My inner conversation was getting me nowhere, so I bolted out of the driver’s seat with the goal of closing the cargo door and making it back to the cab before the shell had a chance to grab me. Not the best plan in the world, but it beat simply waiting for the shell to pull me out of the cab.

     Either I was not as fast as I thought or the shell picked up some speed. In any case, I had just gotten up into the cargo area and was reaching up for the canvas strap dangling from the door when the shell grabbed my foot. Fortunately—if anything could be called fortunate when a dead thing suddenly grabs your foot—I kicked the hand with my other foot before the shell got a firm grip. I stepped back and looked down at the shell of a heavyset man in a medical coat grab at me from the street.

     I observed for a moment before remembering what I had behind me. I grabbed one of the little yellow boxes and pushed my finger into the little perforated square on the side. A hole opened up, and I poured some of the sandy-looking poison onto the shell.

     I’m not sure what I was expecting and judging by the confused expression of the shell neither did it. The grains simply rained down, and the shell stared at me. After a moment, the shell wiped its hair and licked its hand. Its movement became more frantic, as if the shell was tasting something incredible, something that it had been starving for forever. After rubbing its head obviously trying to get every grain of the poison left there, the shell knelt on the ground apparently searching for any of the sand that had found its way there. It looked all around, lowering its face to the ground like some bloodhound. Apparently, it found a bit of the stuff, because the shell pressed its face to the pavement and began licking.

     My usual disgust with the shells got momentarily replaced by genuine curiosity. What could make this rat poison so incredibly delicious to the shell? It was another question that really didn’t need an answer. The important thing was that this could possibly be used as a weapon to control the shells. Perhaps, I was getting way ahead of myself, but it had been quite a while since there had been anything about which to be enthusiastic.

     My enthusiasm was soon overpowered by disgust once more as the shell on the street began convulsing. It had gotten to its feet and was attempting to climb into the truck when its limbs began trembling. The tremors grew and soon forced the shell to fall to its knees. Its twitching head faced me for a few seconds before a grayish liquid began dribbling from its mouth. Just like that the shell collapsed to the street and stopped moving.

     I stood there staring in amazement. How could this be possible? As I asked myself such useless questions, the place where the shell had been sprawled out became empty except for a pile of clothes.

      “Well, fuck me!” I was unable to come up with anything more useful to say after seeing the incredible scene.

     The truck was still running, which was sure to attract more shells, so getting the hell out of this place seemed like an excellent idea.

     I pulled the door closed with a loud bang, pushing the latch into place as three shells trotted toward me from about a block away. I threw myself into the cab and pulled the door closed an instant before one of the shells slapped the hood of the truck. I wanted nothing more than to slam my foot down and run the shell down but feared that the truck would stall out and leave me stranded.

     For once I did the smart thing and simply accelerated gradually. Rather than being knocked under the front of the truck, the shell got nudged aside as the truck slid through the gathering mob. The street was narrow and several times I scraped the cars parked along the curb. I also knocked over a few trash cans. I wondered how long those cans had been at the curb. I remembered the people who had dutifully taken the cans out to the street side for the garbage truck to empty. Perhaps that was the last sign of true civilization, regular trash collection. I smiled at the irony of such a notion.

     Once I had gotten past the crowd of shells, I saw few others. Every once in a while I would spot a shell crawling along the gutter or shuffling on the sidewalk, but this was not common. What appeared more plentiful were the bundles of clothing scattered along the street. I wondered if these were the remains of shells that had eaten the rat poison or had collapsed due to something else. I was still considering this when I made a right turn at the end of the street and found myself in front of CheapMart. The shock of finding the store sent a jolt of energy through me.

     I am a naturally optimistic person, but even so, I had serious doubts that I’d ever find the place. Despite my newfound energy, I couldn’t help but notice how bad the front of the store looked. Previously, I had not taken the time to examine the damage done by looters or shells or soldiers. Now I looked closely at the broken windows and stacks of boxes and broken shopping carts. I wondered if they had been there before or whether these clear signs of a fight had been left since I had been there.

     Suddenly, a sense of dread squeezed my throat to the point that I gasped for air. I rushed over to one of the boarded-up windows at the front of the store and tried to see inside but saw nothing.

     “Kat!  Christina!” I called without considering the danger of making noise. I didn’t care at that point. If something had happened to them, there was nothing the shells could do to me that would not be welcome. I trotted around the front of the store, looking for something that would give me hope. The truck remained wide open with the engine running. It did not occur to me that the noise of the truck might draw the shells or that it would be wise to conserve the gas in the truck. The only thing that filled my consciousness was the need to find the others. I ended up scurrying all around the store to the back. Nothing I saw gave me the slightest clue about the whereabouts of Kat and the kids. Of course, my overactive imagination provided me with an abundance of gruesome and disheartening images of what had befallen them. I did my best to push the pictures out of sight.

     Unfortunately, my best efforts to push aside the images proved less than enough. My head suddenly filled with a scene of Christina running and screaming down an aisle in the store.

     “Taylor, help me!” She ran until a hand reached out from behind and caught hold of her hair. The little girl’s head was immediately jerked back and her legs went out from under her. Her head hit the tile floor with a sickening thud. In the next instant, several shells covered her body. I tried to look away from the horrible sight but only managed to spot Kat’s torn body sprawled on the floor a few yards away. I looked back to the place where Christina had been swarmed by shells to see Taylor now joining in on the massacre. He faced me and flashed something between a smile and a snarl. The horror of the scene hit me hard and even after squeezing my eyes closed and rubbing my temples for what seemed like several minutes I could not completely rid myself of the sickening feeling. 

     Finally, my brain kicked in once again and reminded me that the truck was still running and wasting fuel. I walked slowly back to the truck at the front of the store.

     As I turned the corner, I saw that the sound of the engine had drawn the shells which were now crowded around the front and sides of the cab.

     Still shaken by the violence of the images in my head, I walked slowly to the back of the truck. Fortunately, the sound and perhaps the vibration of the truck’s engine held the attention of the shells so completely that they did not seem to care about me at all. There was no use trying to get to the cab with the shells all around, so I didn’t even try. Instead, I slowly lifted the cargo door and let it slide up as far as possible. I held my breath as the door let out a high-pitched squeal. The squeaking of the sliding door went unnoticed by the shells. I quickly climbed into the back.

     The sight of the yellow boxes of rat poison actually brought a smile to my face. Admittedly, it looked sort of twisted and devious with no real joy but a smile nonetheless.

     I picked up one of the boxes and shook it. “How much would it take to kill all of the shells in front of the truck?” I asked myself. I certainly did not want to waste any of the stuff with its potential for ridding the world of shells. Still it would be important to know that. I reasoned the only way to answer the question was to use some poison and wait for the response before using more. Sure it made sense in my mind, but actually standing there and waiting to see what happened proved something else altogether. While I continued pondering my next action, the images of Christina and the others made their way back into my mind. I managed to handle them with the determination that if the images turned out to be real then I would take out as many shells as possible. On the other hand, if the images proved to be nothing but a product of my overactive imagination, the poison would serve to keep them safe. With that in mind, I grabbed a few of the boxes and stepped to the edge of the truck’s cargo area.

     “Hey, dumbasses!” I said loudly. “Stop staring at that fucking engine and come get me!”

     I waited for a moment, but there was no response. I shook my head at the irony of the situation. How many times had I crept around to avoid attracting those things? Now when I wanted to get their attention, I could not.

     A calm voice inside my head said, “Life sure is funny sometimes.” It took me a second, but I recognized the voice as Glen’s. I had to agree with the young minister and said, “You got that right!”

     I wondered whether I should risk climbing down and moving to the front of the truck to get the shells’ attention. Even in my slightly deranged state of mind, I recognized the lunacy of such a thing. There had to be a way to get their attention without taking so much risk. I considered simply waiting until the truck ran out of gas and the engine stopped. Given that the truck had at least three quarters of a tank, it would probably keep idling for several hours. It occurred to me that I could make much more noise than simply yelling. There had to be some way to make more noise than the idling engine. 

     I looked around the cargo area. Besides the boxes of rat poison, I found a ballpeen hammer and an about two-foot long piece of chain. The pair did not look like much in the way of noise makers. Still, I had no idea really about how much noise would be needed to draw the attention of those things.

      With the profoundly deep thought that there was only one way to find out, I headed to the back of the cargo area and began hitting the wall with the ballpeen hammer. The slight tapping sound made from the ballpeen hammer was pretty pathetic, and I did not keep it up for long. I felt a bit silly doing it.

     Next I tried swinging the piece of chain against the wall of the cargo area. It made little more than a tinkle. This would clearly not be enough to draw the shells away from the engine. Out of frustration, I kicked the wall to produce a good deep thud. I laughed as I did it again. My foot hurt, but at that point I did not care. I swung my leg back and kicked again. This time the sound proved even more satisfying, but it also hurt more and made me stop to have a look at my throbbing foot.

     I had knelt down and was rubbing the toe of my shoe when the first shell shuffled around the corner. Soon, a couple more appeared.

     “Well, hello, you rotten bastards!” I greeted them cheerfully. “Nice of you to join me. Now we need to wait for a few more of your friends.”

     It didn’t matter whether my kicks on the wall or something else had drawn the interest of the shells. In any case, the back of the truck soon became crowded with shells shuffling around aimlessly. I watched them and wondered what made them keep moving. I had never been a big proponent of motivation or figuring out the sources of it, but that was exactly what I wondered right then. What motivated the shells to keep moving rather than simply turning to dust right off the bat?

     More useless mental masturbation that nearly got me into trouble as I was so deep in thought I did not immediately see the shell climbing up the other side of the truck. When I did see the shell of a young woman in a lavender sweat suit pulling herself up, I quickly moved over to kick her arm to send her falling back to the pavement. At the sudden movement, the shells moved around the fallen shell. For a moment, it seemed that the shells were eating. But a few seconds later, the shell in the lavender sweat suit got up. I realized that the shells must be able to distinguish other shells by scent.