Zombie D.O.A. (49 page)

“Kelly?” I said.

“The very same,” she said, then stepped back and did a little spin. “What do you think?”

“You look…”

“Different?”

“Beautiful,” I said.

Over the next few days I made a quick recovery thanks in the main to the close attention of Yonder. She splinted my wrist and stitched up the gash across my cheekbone, and announced that I’d always carry the scar as a reminder of my run-in with Virgil. My ribs turned out to be badly bruised, but not broken, and in time the bruises on my face began to fade and the swelling lessened.

I was only in the hospital a day, but in that time I had visits from Hooley and Cal and Alice and of course, Giuseppe.

“Dang dog saved your life,” Hooley explained, “wasn’t for him, we’d never have found you.”

Within a week I was itching to get going, but Yonder persuaded me to stick around for a while and I was glad she did. It gave me the chance to check out the town and the fortifications Hooley and Cal had made.

They’d done a house-by-house clearance of a few blocks, and brought everyone into a tight grid. Learning from our experiences in Pagan, they’d devised some emergency evacuation procedures and Hooley was even talking about putting in some escape tunnels. He’d also begun distributing his arsenal among the townsfolk and setting up lookout posts with machine gun nests. Whoever planned on messing with the citizens of Whelan, whether Z or human, was going to have a fight on their hands.

One night over a few beers with Cal and Hooley I raised an issue that had been playing on my mind ever since I’d left the Kimberly Saloon with Tucci.

“I want to go back and get Nate,” I said.

“Hell yeah,” Cal said, “Me and Hooley’s been saying the same thing.”

We went in the next day, Alice driving, Hooley working the Browning on the back of the pickup, me and Cal going in to pick up Nate’s body. Many of the Zs were still milling around but that Browning of Hooley’s made short work of them.

We brought back Pastor Ray too and buried him and Nate side-by-side in Whelan’s Memorial Cemetery. I think Nate would have appreciated the irony.   

On my last evening in Whelan, I stopped by for one of Yonder’s infamous vegetarian meals.

“I miss Nate,” she said over coffee.

“Me too.”

“He was a good man.”

“The best.”

“You’re a good man too, Chris Collins.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “You are, and don’t you forget it.”

“It means a lot that you think so, Yonder.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know. This crazy world…”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Take it as a maybe.”

“Well, if you’re ever in Whelan” she said, “be sure to look up your friendly vegetarian veterinarian.” She started crying and I held her and wished that there was more that I could give her. I’ve met many people before and since, but very few of them measure up to Yonder Cartwright.

I left Whelan early the next day. Hooley had provided me with an Audi SUV that he assured me was the “sweetest ride in West Texas”, before adding, “sorry if that sounds unpatriotic.” He’d also insisted on weighing the vehicle down with enough supplies to last three cross-country trips. And he’d even managed to find me another AK, making me promise not to lose this one, before handing it over.

Kelly went with me, of course. Back in Tulsa Babs had slipped me a photograph, and that had been his way of asking me to complete the mission he couldn’t finish himself. I was determined not to let my old friend down.

Kelly had finally admitted to me that she had known Babs, that he’d been a friend of her mother and that her mother had even spoken of marrying him. She’d also told me that her mother was at an encampment in Flagstaff, Arizona, which is where we were now headed.

You’re probably wondering about Giuseppe. That dog had saved my life twice and it shames me to say that I asked Yonder to keep him. Yonder of course, refused. “That dog’s bonded to you,” she said. “I keep him here and he’ll just go wandering off across the prairie. God knows what will happen to him out there.”

So now Giuseppe sat proudly on the back seat, looking eager to be away. I was glad to have him along.

We said our final farewells and I slipped the Audi into drive and started rolling forward. In the rearview mirror I could see Yonder and Cal and Hooley and Alice and Jed Junior. Hooley tried to slip his arm around Alice and she shrugged him off, but with less enthusiasm than I’d seen from her in the past.

I put my foot down on the gas and the Audi started eating up the road. I was going to find my daughter, and nothing was going to stop me.

Dead On Arrival

(Book
Four
of the Zombie D.O.A. Series)

by

J.J. Zep

PUBLISHED BY:

JJ Zep

Copyright © 2012

www.jjzep.com

“Kiss me,” Kelly said.

“What!” I was standing with a face full of soap, trying to shave in the Audi’s side mirror.

“Kiss me,” she repeated, “It’s my birthday.”

“Can it wait?”

“No,” she said, and planted a firm kiss on my lips coming away with soap on her nose, while Giuseppe looked on with his head tilted to one side.

“I’m eighteen,” Kelly said. “Old enough to become an elected representative in some states.”

“Probably old enough to become president these days.” I said.

“President Kelly, I like that.”

“Well, President Kelly, as your first executive duty, how about rounding up this stuff and getting it in the car so that we can be on our way as soon as I’m done shaving.”

“Yes, sir,” Kelly said and saluted smartly.

We were just a day out of Whelan and had spent the night some twenty miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was hoping to push on today and maybe make Flagstaff by nightfall.

After Kelly had packed everything into the SUV, I filled the tank with a few of the five-gallon gas cans that Hooley had given us. With the gas cans now used up, I cleared a space in the back storage area to create a den where Giuseppe could curl up and go to sleep.

Then we got back on the road. It felt good to be moving again, watching the miles slip by and knowing every turn of the wheel was bringing me closer to Ruby. I’d even broken my old rule about staying off the main roads and was now driving directly down Interstate 40, with not too many obstructions and making good time.

  “So what do you want for your birthday?” I asked Kelly.

“Oh, I’ve got everything I need right here, cruising along through the desert with my two best guys, in this fancy SUV.”

“How about spending it with your mother?”

“We’ll be there today?”

“All things considered.”

Kelly was silent for a while and sat looking out at the barren landscape. “I’d rather be with you,” she said.

“Now, you know that’s not possible.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

“You know, I’ve got to go…”

“…to California, yes. So what, it’s not like another country or something.”

“It might as well be. Look Kelly…”

“Forget it. Just drop me in Falstaff. Maybe my mom can give you some baby sitting money.”

“I was about to say…”

“Forget it.”

I’d found out over the past few weeks that Kelly had a decidedly stubborn streak, so I changed the subject, “How’s the big guy doing back there?” I asked. Giuseppe was obviously enjoying his little den, and looking back I couldn’t even see him curled up in the storage hub.

“Look out!” Kelly shouted, and as I turned my eyes back to the road I saw that a woman had stepped directly into our path and was standing with her hands held together as if at prayer.

I stood on the brakes and the Audi came to a pretty civilized stop, hardly even swaying as it decelerated. 

The minute the car stopped, the woman came running in our direction frantically waving her arms. I did a quick three-sixty-degree sweep of the surrounds. We were on a flat plain of red desert earth and creosote bush and scrub grass. In the distance I could see arid flat-topped mesas, but close by there was nowhere to spring a trap from other than a dusty old diner about eighty yards down the road and to my right.

I flipped open the glove compartment, took out my .38 and slid it into my waistband covering it with my shirt. “Wait here,” I said to Kelly, and opened the door, just as the woman reached the Audi.

“Help me! Please!” the woman screamed, “My daughter, she’s not breathing! She’s not breathing!”

The woman looked mid-twenties with dirty blond hair and a faded floral dress. She was barefoot and her feet looked bloody and swollen. “Please!” she said, “Please help us!” She threw her arms around me and I could smell booze and sweat.

“Wait up,” I said easing her away from me. “I need you to calm down. Where is your daughter?”

She looked at me with crazed, tear-stained eyes, then half turned and pointed, “The diner,” she said.

Of course, it would be the diner. The only place in probably a hundred miles that someone could launch an ambush from. Still what could I do, this woman said she had a sick child and I could either call her a liar and drive away, or I could check it out.

“Get in,” I said to the woman.