Tonight The World Dies (2 page)

I narrowed my eyes at him, wanting to tell him chivalry is dead when it comes to guns, but nodded instead. No use arguing with him when the boys wanted to play commando. They stalked forward, their mouths set in a straight line, concentrating. It took them five minutes to thoroughly check the vehicle interior, underside, engine, and gas reserve. They waved us forward.

It was nice inside. Hot, but roomy. It had four separate bunks in the back with heavy partitions hiding each one, should someone want privacy. The bathroom was immaculate, with an actual shower and soap. That was an extreme luxury. I looked in one of its cabinets, and spotted the holy freaking grail of cleanliness: Shampoo! A kitchen and dining area separated the living quarters from the front, with stiff bench seats and a sturdy table. The windows, thank God, where reinforced with thick metal slats that opened wide enough to allow a gun barrel to poke through and swivel. Best of all, the key was in the ignition. This was the kind of luck you’d expect in horror movies or novels, not in real life. But who was I to argue with fate?

“Fuel?” I asked.

“Half a tank and a few gallons in the storage area below.” Sully said.

“Good. And that table will work well for the equipment. Let’s start loading stuff from the car guys.”

Although I marveled at our astounding luck, I couldn’t help but wonder what could have happened. Well, someone had to have turned, though there was no blood. Could they have been overrun? Did they have to hoof it? Herds didn’t move that fast, and there wasn’t much dust inside. They had to be near-by, but there was no one in sight. Did . . . did someone else happen across them? In a world full of freaking zombies, the real danger is the people.

Billie skipped forward, holding something behind her back with both hands. In the blink of an eye, she swung it out and hit me square on the head. Though the impact was light, it still hurt. The thing was small, black, and heavy. I recognized it at one.

“Did you just hit me on the head?”

“Maybe.” She said.

“With a bible?

“Maaaaaybe.”

“Oh, you are so going to hell!” We looked at each other for a moment and then all four of us doubled over laughing. If we couldn’t enjoy the little things, there was no point living. All thoughts of what happened to the former residents of the RV was pushed to the back of my mind as we started loading our few belongings into our new mode of transportation.

Sully and I struggled under the weight of my bullet reloading equipment while Billie and Dean walked behind us with our boxes of empty shells and a box of water bottles, our duffle bags of clothes slung over their shoulders, the lucky jerks. They weren’t carrying fifty pounds of solid, squat metal with their fingers. While I was busy securing the reloader to the table, Sully started up the engine and Dean and Billie found places to store our stuff. We felt euphoric, our spirits sky high as we relaxed into our seats, occasionally looking through cupboards and shelves.

“We hit pay dirt!” Billie yelled from the kitchen, her head shoved in a cupboard. “Food!” She yanked out a couple boxes of crackers.

There was such a shortage of food that, quite often, we would have to eat pet food just to sustain ourselves long enough to get to the next place that might have something for us to take. In that train of thought, did you know puperoni dog treats really do taste like pepperoni? It’s true.

Billie opened a package, handing out five crackers a piece, which we ate slowly, relishing the stale flavor. “Ok Sully my boy, you’re the one that used to drive these behemoths all the time, you’re going to be the first to drive.” I nodded at him, mouth full of crackers.

He jammed his last cracker into his mouth and swiveled his seat around to face the steering wheel. “Let’s do this thing.” He said, casting a sideways grin at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Onward and forward to town. We could use some bomb supplies and power tools.”

“Power tools? Dean asked.

“Yeah. If we get the battery powered kind, with enough batteries, we could use them as weapons.”

“Like chainsaws?” His eyes lit up.

“Well, they take gas, but I don’t see why we can’t check them out.” I smiled. Chainsaws were a rather good idea, if popular culture had been accurate.

We could probably do with a few new axes if they had any, and baseball bats. The last few people we met had talked about writing down what they had learned, claiming they could fight all they wanted, but the knowledge they had gained could die with them. Well, the pen is mightier than the sword, but a baseball bat can be pretty effective too, if you know how to swing it right.

On the ride through the flat, I let my mind wander again. It was the last semester of high school, just a month before word got out that the zombie apocalypse was upon us. Billie had come running up to me before school, grinning widely.

“You’ll never guess what just happened!” She said, bouncing up and down where she stood.

“You got into Stanford? ‘Cause that’s something no one would guess.” I said.

She stopped bouncing. “Number one, that hurt. Number two, I just found three dollars in quarters!”

“…And?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m now three dollars closer to being a millionaire?” She turned the statement into a question, attitude creeping into her voice.

I just laughed and shook my head.

We rolled into town at dusk. There had been a few shamblers and crawlers milling about, but they didn’t notice us. We stopped at a sporting goods store first, loading up on bats, rackets, and anything else that looked like it could be useful. The only grocery store in town was packed full of the undead, so we decided to skip it and try the next town for food. Finally we entered Lowe’s, clearing the aisles quickly before buckling down and searching for tools. We loaded wooden stakes, battery powered air compressors, and metal pipes into the RV first, then focused on nails, hammers, and power tools. I had found a nice nail gun that could send a nail through the soft skull of a zombie like a hot knife through butter. Or like a sharp nail through a soft zombie skull. We had loaded all the hardware we could fit into the storage areas of the RV before going back in one last time to look for food by the cash registers. The food racks and refrigerators were unfortunately empty, so we turned to leave when the unthinkable happened.

We were surrounded.

Chapter Two

Have you ever run down the Lowe’s light fixture aisle, being chased by an angry zombie? If the answer is yes, you’ll know exactly how I felt. If the answer is no, I don’t recommend it.

We had managed to shoot our way through the crowed and were now running flat out down the aisles. I grabbed a couple axes off the floor, handing one off to whoever was running next to me. I wasn’t really paying attention to that particular detail at the moment. I knew that eventually, we’d run out of ammo and have to resort to using melee weapons, but I prayed it wouldn’t come to that until the last one or three zombies, preferably crawlers. I looked around me again. There was no way of knowing just how many there were, or if we had enough bullets. A couple of zombies were right behind us, gaining speed. Those freaks were actually running! One moaned loudly, its jaw unhinging, and three more zombies appeared ahead of us. Did he just…? Did they…? No, it couldn’t be possible, could it? Where they actually thinking? Zombies can not think! That was the number one, undisputed rule about them that everyone, everywhere knew without a doubt! So why did it seem like they were using strategies against us? How the bloody hell was this happening?

More zombies were coming at us from every angle, surrounding us once again. The one with the unhinged jaw moaned again and his fellows stopped. They stared at us, their cold, hungry eyes peering unblinkingly at our small group, far enough away to be completely out of swinging range, but still an easy shot with our pistols.

“What are they doing?” Sully said, confusion and fear coloring his voice.

“They can think.” I whispered.

“Huh?” Billie said.

“What?” Dean asked.

“They can think. These are not the average undead lowlifes. They can freaking think.” I whispered again, my voice hoarse.

“You are completely out of your mind!” Dean hissed.

“Duly noted.” I said.

The apparent leader scowled at me as best as a zombie can scowl. Frack. They could think and understand us. We are in deep shit people.

“Please.” I said. “Please, let us leave in peace, and we won’t kill any of you.”

It seemed to consider my offer for a moment and then shook its head. He nodded once and four of his flunkies shambled toward us, their arms outstretched. There were just too many to risk using all our ammo right away.

“Save your bullets if you can. We don’t know how many of them there are” I whispered, lifting my axe, ready to chop off the head of the zombie coming straight at me. I guess it was time to thin the herd a bit without our guns.

A flash of movement and the four zombies lay dead on the floor. Totally dead. We may joke around a lot, but my guys are damn good at killing things. The horde rushed us, trying to run forward on broken, boney legs.

“This way!” I yelled, pulling them further into the store, cutting down everything in our path.

We dodged around the freaks, occasionally stopping long enough to remove a head from a wayward zombie. I ran down the aisles, leading everyone to the back of the store. When I was sure that the entire horde was behind us, I changed directions, sprinting toward the front door; my friends followed suit, confused.

“What are we…” Sully began.

“Don’t talk. Just run.” I panted, pushing myself harder. We had to make it out in time.

I could hear the zombies behind us, running to catch up. We were a full two hundred yards ahead of them, but if we slowed down at all they would be on top of us again. We raced to the parking lot and threw ourselves into the RV, slamming the door behind us.

“Somebody, get us the hell out of here, now!” I heaved.

Sully crawled, still panting, into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine roared and we sped out, desperate to put as much distance between us and that store as we could. The building grew smaller and smaller as we tore down the streets of what was probably once a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere. Most towns are quiet now, I suppose, but every single one is now overrun by the living dead. I tried to relax after that close call, but my mind kept returning to the same idea, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. They could think and understand. They could communicate with each other. This wasn’t just killing reanimated bodies anymore. The freshly dead always acted out some semblance of their former lives when trying to get food: going to the store, turning a doorknob in a house, smashing a rock against a window. These things, although frightening in every possible way, were normal and generally to be ignored. It was like muscle memory. Sure, they may look like they could think and use reasoning skills, but they weren’t people anymore. But then there were the zombies in that store, communicating with each other, using tactics against us, the one even understood what I had said! I struggled with the idea, the notion that they may still be alive in some way; that they were intelligent beings capable of thought and possibly feeling. Could they feel the slice of the axe, the sting of the bat as we cracked it against their skull? Did they fear us as we pointed a gun at their head and fired? Tears streamed down my eyes; a sob caught in my throat. Was everything we had ever thought about the zombies and their condition wrong? Maybe the years and years of Hollywood’s influence had led us astray. People get sick and try to eat other people, their bodies decompose while they continue to walk around, and we think they are zombies. When the zombie apocalypse happens, you shoot them in the head, or you sever their upper spinal cord. That’s how you kill them; that’s how you stay alive. But then, that’s how you kill living, breathing, feeling people too. Maybe they weren’t zombies after all. And even if they were, how were we to know what it truly meant to be a zombie? I rolled over and cried into the floor.

“Jo?” Billie asked, crawling next to me, her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re still human. They can think and reason.” I sobbed. “I’ve been killing people!”

She tilted her head to the side. “What are you talking about? The zombies? They can’t think.”

“Jo, chill. They’re zombies. Don’t you remember The Walking Dead? When they come back, they aren’t themselves. They aren’t human anymore.”

I stopped crying and narrowed my eyes at him. “That was TV. This is real life. Why don’t we string you up on a flagpole and see how long it takes for them to figure out how to get you down. Besides, if you actually remember that show, you’d recall that even those zombies showed some ability to effing think.”

He looked at me, shocked. I didn’t normally speak to them like that. Not with that much attitude. It didn’t matter to me anymore. He didn’t understand, none of them did. They were human. Or at least, very close to human. I finally understood what my dad went through in the military, why he wouldn’t talk about it, and why he always sought solace in nature- it was the only place he could be without fear of being judged, where he could forget the horror of knowing he took the life of another, of a lot of others.