The Adventures of Steve and Terry: The Zombie Chronicles (11 page)

He and Jill quickly ran to all
sides to see if the dead had followed, but so far they were safe. Just then
they heard an explosion. It had come from the other side of the building. They
rushed to the other side to see dead knocked to the ground. They watched as a
small, round object flew from inside a convenience store, out into the street.
They realized what it was a second later when it exploded. Suddenly, two
slightly overweight men, covered in blue paint, ran from the store carrying
armloads of what looked like soda and chips. They rushed to an SUV and threw
the loot in the back. Then, they jumped in the vehicle and sped off with the
sound of screeching tires.

“Looks like they made it,” Jill
said.

“Yeah,” Dave said, in complete
shock. “Do you think they just fought off a horde of undead for—
chips and
soda
?”

Jill shook her head with a small
laugh. “It did look that way, didn’t it?”

“It looks clear, we should keep
moving.”

They made their way from the
building and continued through the streets. It was nearing dusk when they
rounded a corner and came face to face with the same SUV they had seen the two
pudgy men speed off in, only now it was abandoned. Dave motioned for Jill and
Paul to wait and went ahead. He kept his gun ready, checking for the vehicle’s
owners. He didn’t see anyone. He opened the driver’s side door to find the keys
still in it. He checked the back to see food, soda, and water.

He quickly motioned for Jill and
Paul to join him. They ran for the SUV but screamed and stopped when bullets
sprayed the street in front of them. Dave spun toward the gunfire. He spotted
one of the men and leveled his gun, but didn’t fire when he felt a cold gun
muzzle against his neck.

“No sudden moves,” someone said.
“Drop the gun.” Dave did as instructed. “Hey Steve, I got him.”

The man Dave had been aiming at
stepped out from where he had been hidden. “Good.” Steve said. “We’ve lost too
many cars, lately, man.”

“We’re sorry we tried to take your
car,” Dave said. “But please, let the woman and boy go.” Paul suddenly ran for
Dave. “No Paul, stay where you are!” But too late; the boy was wrapped around
Dave’s midsection.

“Ah, dammit!” the man behind Dave
suddenly swore.

“Agreed,” Steve said.

“What? What happened?” Dave asked,
worried. He suddenly felt the gun removed from his head. He stepped away slowly
and turned cautiously.

“We’re not gonna kill you,” the
man said.

“O-okay. Thank you.”

“Terry, this sucks!” Steve said.

Dave suddenly realized Steve must
really have wanted to kill him. He was shocked then, when Terry spun the
assault rifle, he had held on Dave, around, and held it out to him butt first.

“Is this some sort of sick joke?”
Dave asked, wondering what type of game they were playing at.

“No joke,” Terry said. “Take it.”

Dave reached out tentatively and
took the gun. He quickly shouldered it. He spun to check on Jill to see Steve
handing her his weapon, as well.

“What are you guys doing?” Dave
asked.

“You got a kid man,” Steve said.

“Yeah?”

“And he doesn’t look anything like
you,” Terry said.

“Yeah?” Dave asked again,
confused.

“Which means you saved him,” Steve
said. “And damn if that doesn’t take a special kinda person.”

“What’s going on?” Jill asked.

“Take the car, and the guns,”
Terry said. “It’s got enough fuel to get you a hell of a long way from here,
and enough food and water to last you weeks.”

“Why?” Dave asked.

“Because he’s a pussy,” Steve
said.

“Am not!” Terry yelled.

“Thank you,” Dave said.

“You don’t know how much this
means to us,” Jill said, crying.

“Just get the hell outta here
before we change our minds,” Steve said.

They didn’t need to be told twice.
The three of them jumped into the SUV and sped off into the coming night. Steve
and Terry stood in the street, watching the SUV disappear.

“Now what?” Terry asked.

“Now we go get what’s left of our
stash of weapons and move on.”

“Like where?” Terry asked.

“You ever been to the zoo?”

“No,” Terry said, getting excited.

The two ran off down the street
with childish giggles, disappearing into the night.

VII. The
Zoo

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh
my. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Lions and tigers and bears, oh—”

“Shut. The. Hell. Up.”

“Honestly, what did you think were
at zoos?”

“Pandas, monkeys, giraffes maybe.”

“And lions, tigers, bears,
leopards, hyenas—”

“Do you think they’re all
zombified?” Terry asked.

“God I hope not. Remember the dogs
in the Nest? Now, imagine that’s actually an eight hundred pound tiger.”

“Why did we come here again?”

“You said you’d never been to the
zoo?” Steve said, as if it were simple.

“True. But why did we come in the
middle of the night?”

“Cause we gave our car to that
zombie family and it took a long ass time to walk across town to get here.”

“They weren’t a zombie family,”
Terry said.

“Well of course I’m not saying
they were actually zombies.”

“That’s what it sounds like you’re
saying.”

“Are you saying you think I’m
incapable of distinguishing between zombies and living people?” Steve asked.

“If your track record is any
indication, then yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve
ever said,” Steve insisted.

“Oh really? In the last couple of
weeks you shot a little girl, almost shot a lone survivor trapped in a tank,
bola’d a normal man, and shot a bunch of mannequins.”

“Hey, the mannequins were pale!”
Terry just shook his head. “And you threw a net on one of those guys too.”

“I was in a second story office. I
just followed your lead man.”

“Well I haven’t shot you, yet.”

“
Yet
,” Terry said.

“Hey, there’s the zoo,” Steve
said, pointing.

Terry stopped in his tracks. Steve
got a few feet ahead of him before realizing and stopping as well. He looked
back at Terry with a question in his eyes.

“Is this a good idea?” Terry asked
suddenly.

“Why not? And zoos have the best
corndogs ever, man.”

“You do realize there is no one in
there actually serving corndogs, right?”

Steve spluttered for a moment.
“Yeah.”

“Do you think these shotguns will
put down a zombie tiger?”

“They wouldn’t put down a
non
-zombie
tiger.” Terry turned around and started to walk away. Steve chased after him
and stopped him. “Dude, dude! They’re in cages. It’s all good man.”

“They’re in cages?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “And you
call me stupid. The animals aren’t just walking around, moron.”

“I—I knew that,” Terry said with
false confidence.

“Besides, it’s not safe to just go
wandering around the city at night, man. Best bet is in the zoo.”

Terry took a few deep breaths to
reassure himself. “Aight, let’s do this.”

They reached the entrance of the
zoo to find the gates open. Steve pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and
clicked it on. They entered into a broad thoroughfare.

“Where are the animals?” Terry
asked in a whisper.

“They’re all in separate areas.
Let’s grab a map.”

“A map?”

“Zoos are big, man.”

“Okay, a map.”

“Why are you whispering?” Steve
asked.

“Why are you not?”

“It’s a zoo. It’s not like there
are—”

“Zombies!” Terry cried, pointing.

“Around every corner.” Steve
trailed off and looked where Terry was pointing to see several undead in zoo
uniforms. “Huh, look at that.”

Steve and Terry unloaded several
rounds from their shotguns and put the zombies down. As they started to reload
a tremendous roar sounded out, vibrating their bones.

“What was that?!” Terry asked,
nervous.

“It sounded like possibly a lion,”
Steve said calmly. Suddenly, Steve got excited, almost jumping up and down. “I
wanna see the lion, I wanna see the lion!”

Terry took a step back from the
man like he was contagious. “I’m worried about you. I really am.”

“What? I like the zoo, okay.”

“You know that lion is either a
zombie, or really, really hungry.”

Steve thought about it, but then
he got excited again. “Do you think we could feed it?”

“You really are hopeless. Let’s
just get going.”

They found a map of the zoo and
proceeded further in. Steve highlighted the mammal’s area, but Terry thought
they’d be safer in, say, the insect displays. They walked through the
abandoned, creepily quiet zoo. Terry was trying his hardest to steer Steve
toward the place with the least likely dangerous animals, but somehow they
wound up near the reptiles.

Steve traipsed ahead with a little
giggle. He ran right past the tortoises, which were still alive and moving, and
straight to the alligator enclosure. Terry joined him, reluctantly. He stepped
up to the railing beside Steve and forced himself to look down. There was a
large pond of dark, green water surrounding a small island of dry land. He
immediately noticed the bones filling the dry ground. They almost looked . . .
human.

“You don’t suppose they were,”
Terry paused at the atrociousness of the idea, “feeding the zombies to the
gators, do you?”

Steve cocked his head as he looked
down into the enclosure. “I don’t see them.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yeah, yeah, probably,” Steve
said, leaning over the railing.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“It’s one way to get rid of—”

The water suddenly exploded in a
spray as something massive leapt straight for Steve. Steve stumbled back with a
girly scream, tripping and falling to the ground. The giant alligator dropped
back into the water with a tremendous splash.

Steve climbed back to his feet and
was immediately back at the railing. “Coooolll.”

“That thing almost ate you!” Terry
said, standing well away from the edge of the enclosure.

“I know!” Steve said excitedly. “I
didn’t know they could jump that high. Hey, did you see if it was zombified or
not?”

“It escaped my notice,” Terry
said, grabbing Steve’s shirt and pulling him back. “Let’s just keep moving.”

“Ooh, ooh, I think the lions are
this way,” Steve said, running on.

Terry tried to grab him and stop
him, but he was surprisingly agile for a bigger guy. Terry chased after him,
but before he caught up they had entered the mammal’s section. Steve ran on
ahead. Terry was just catching up again, when he heard something move in a
small shed. He stopped in his tracks and leveled his shotgun. He called for
Steve, but the man had rounded a corner and was gone.

Terry pulled out a flashlight and
clicked it on. He shined it on the shed, which seemed to be some sort of
employee storage area. He heard something fall from inside. Something was
definitely in there. Terry made sure he had a round chambered and approached
cautiously. He screamed as something stepped out into the open and stumbled
back firing. Luckily what stepped out was so short his shot went right over it.

Terry pumped his shotgun and
readied to fire again, but stopped as he got a good look at what had stepped
out of the shed. It was a small chimpanzee. It looked sadly at Terry with big
brown eyes. At first Terry pointed his gun at it, but then he realized it was
just a sad, lonely animal. He held his hand out and the chimp scuttled forward
and took it. Terry smiled and led the little ape away.

Steve reached the lion enclosure
and quickly got as close to the bars as he could. He didn’t see anything, but
then again it
was
dark. He pulled out a flashlight and clicked it on,
shining it in the cage. He still didn’t see anything and began to worry that
maybe the thing was loose. But then a massive blur leapt out from behind a tree
and slammed into the bars. Steve stumbled back with a scream.

The lion had definitely succumbed
to the plague. Part of its muzzle was torn away, revealing its teeth and it had
lacerations on its side showing its ribs. Its coat was dark and mottled with
rotting flesh. Its mane was filthy and clumped together. Two more lions,
female, and in as a bad a shape as the male, stepped out from behind the tree.