Dead River, page 8
Teresa squeezed her eyes shut and winced through tightly-clenched teeth.
She shook the stars out of her eyes and pushed past the pain to find the source. Her heart thudding with fear, she peered in the same direction her attacker had come from and sighed.
“How do you like that, you little bitch.”
Malik paced back and forth in front of her, his thick pink lips set in a hard line across his square-jawed face. Underneath his clothes, his flat muscular chest and thick biceps made him look like someone shot a dose of steroids into a chocolate Easter bunny. He stooped down in front of her, grasping a dented can of vegetables in his right hand and held it down by his side.
“I’ve had enough of your shit, puta.” He said. “You and that fat ass fucking puto. You think you can talk to me and my girl like shit. I’m The Motherfucking King Of Ninth Street and I’m not–”
Before he could finish his egotistic decree, Teresa leapt up from the floor, pulled her left elbow back and drove it against the bridge of his nose. His head whipped as he staggered back across the aisle, his arms flailing out from his sides. His face creasing with pain, he collided with the corner of the shelf and slid down to the floor.
The can of vegetables flew from his hand. It flew across the air like a blurry white projectile, struck the curved metal handle on the glass door standing in her place, struck the floor and landed in front of her in a drunken pirouette. Pain slicing down her arm from the tip of her elbow to the backs of her knuckles, she rose up onto her feet and sighed. Malik cursed under his breath, snatched the same can from the floor, stood up on his left knee and reared his arm back.
She drew a quick breath, sucking that rotten vegetable smell deep into her lungs and leaped across the floor to her right. She plopped down onto the floor with a bone-jarring thud that snapped her teeth together, squeezed the air out of her lungs and flooded her body with more pain. The can
Malik scrambled onto his feet, fell onto his knees and spun around. Her senses snapped back into focus long enough for her to see his hand sliding toward the front waistband of his jeans. It didn’t take her long to put two and two together.
He drew his weapon, held it sideways inside of his hand and cursed at her through a gory lopsided grin. He clenched his teeth together and squeezed the trigger. A loud report thundered across the store, echoed off the walls and droned inside of her ears like a tuning fork tapped against a hard surface.
She rolled onto her left hip as the bullet struck the floor beside of her. She rolled onto her back, ignoring the geyser of white powder bursting into the air around her and raised her pistol. It was now or never.
She fired twice. The first bullet struck the wall above the produce section as the other punched through Malik’s forehead above his right eye. Blood sprayed out the back of his head and splashed across the corner of the shelf behind him.
His gun slid from his hand and danced across the floor. His eyes rolling inside of their sockets, he staggered back and plopped down onto a pile of rotten black pineapples. His eyes wide with shock, a puddle of brownish-yellow liquid seeped out from the legs of his pants and spread across the floor under his feet.
She rose up from the floor, gun still drawn and exhaled. Her mind reeling with a mix of confusion and terror, she wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with her right hand and blotted against the leg of her jeans.
She glanced across the aisle and shook her head in disgust. She didn’t know how she was going to tell the others about what had just happened.
How was she going to explain that she’d done what anybody else would’ve done if it’d been them instead of her?
She knew Dominic would agree that Malik would’ve tried something like this but Pixie was another story altogether. She never wanted to hurt any of them unless they provoked her in some way.
All she wanted to do was get along with them and hope that they could survive to live another day. In a time when the world was falling apart from one side to the other, they needed to band together like a family.
A family she never had but always wanted. A lone tear brimmed in the corner of her right eye and slid down her cheek.
She heard a loud jarring sound coming from beyond the metal batwing door standing off to her left and flinched. No time to brag or dwell over what should happen and what shouldn’t. She wiped the tear from her cheek, ran down the aisle, snatched the last three cans of chunky vegetable soup off the shelf, cradled them inside of her right arm and fled out of the store.
CHAPTER TEN
EACH house had a different story to tell, each scene resembling nothing more than cheap Halloween decor. The shattered windows of crashed vehicles spoke of short-lived attempts to flee; the corpses that littered the front lawns like deflated stick figures were either victims of their own stupidity or plain old rotten luck. Blood winked off the sun-lit grass, pooled across the curbs and sidewalks, streaked across the windows of discarded vehicles sitting along the curbs and dotted every window on every house in large half-smudged handprints.
Colin and the kids paced up the street and scanned the carnage spread out before them. An overweight blonde in a white tee and pink-lace panties was sprawled across the front lawn of a brown stucco bungalow, her left leg torn off to expose a dripping red stump. A scrawny dark-haired guy in the red-and-black uniform of a popular pizza chain was splayed across the front of his car with his chest ripped open to expose his soft decaying flesh to the warm yellow sunlight. A gray and black Power Wheels sat on its side in a pool of blood spreading along the curb in front of a white clapboard where an old man in a loud tropical tee-shirt, khaki shorts and knee-high black socks lay sprawled in a large sticky puddle of blood, gripping a long green garden hose in one pale liver-spotted hand.
More bloody handprints were plastered along front doors; a black cat pranced along the top of a white sedan, licked its paws and eyed him with feline suspicion. A mix of collegiate, American and patriotic flags hung from a few porch pillars, weaving in the light spring breeze. Shaggy green shrubs had withered from months of neglect and harsh weather; the rectangular wooden flowerbeds that ran along the length of front porches had wilted long ago.
Colin grimaced at the stench of burnt flesh drifting across his face and hoped that whoever it was had died with a purpose. He raised his head to see where they were going when that noxious odor wafted across his face from his left shoulder. Something appeared in the corner of his left eye, drawing his attention away from the children.
He glanced at a pair of dead highway patrolmen in blood-crusted bluish-black uniforms and a heavyset Latino woman appearing out from behind a brown stucco bungalow. She wore a knee-length white dress covered in sporadic bibs of blood. A chunk of flesh was missing from what used to be her right hip and her right ear had been peeled away; the officers’ arms had been torn off at the shoulder, exposing fleshy red stubs that looked gray and petrified.
“Run!” He said.
Stacey glanced over her shoulder and, her eyes wide horror, followed Colin’s gaze. She clutched Rosie tight against her chest, her face blanched with fear, and hurried across the street. Jason cast a curious glance over his shoulder, watched them shamble over the curb and gave a low audible gasp.
The wind sighed through the treetops, tossing the mixed stench of blood, pine sap and rotten flowers wafted across their faces. Colin snatched Jason’s right wrist inside of his left hand and guided them across sharp right turn that cut across the next block of houses. He winced, fighting back the shockwaves of pain throbbing against his hip and slicing the pit of his stomach.
The undead horde’s protesting grunts echoing across the street behind them, they hurried across a small bridge that stretched above a dry riverbed weaving through a thin cluster of trees. His heart tickling the back of his throat, a fresh drop of sweat slid down the left side of his neck.
Colin saw the body of a young blonde woman bent back over a red fire hydrant, her black tee-shirt and a blue-jean skirt soaked in blood; the right side of her stomach had been scooped out. His wrist slid from Colin’s grasp
Colin peered over his shoulder and saw the two armless cops shambling toward them, their scarred bronze badges winking in the sunlight. The dead Latino gazed at them with ravenous heavy-lidded eyes, her piercing green glaze sending a deep ache through Colin’s chest. He tugged on Jason’s wrist, ignoring his painful cries for now, and paraded the boy ahead of him.
He followed them for half a block, sweat glistening off his cheeks and forehead, and signaled for them to stop. A black late-model SUV with Illinois license plates sat along the curb to his left, its chrome bumper glinting like teeth. Three sleeping bags-one green, one red and one white-were secured down onto the ski rack by thick black Velcro straps.
He scanned the street to make the coast was clear and did a quick inspection: both ends were okay. A nest of scratches ran along the driver-side door and the left rear taillight had been punched out; a hodge-podge of vintage bumper stickers were pasted across the bottom left hand corner of the back window. He’d drive the fucking thing with his feet like Fred Flintstone if it got them where they needed to go.
“Get inside.” He said. “Now!”
Stacey and Jason glanced at each other. Colin hurried over to Jason’s left, grasped the boy’s shoulder in his right hand, opened the back door with his left hand and stuffed him into the back seat. He led Stacey over to the rear of the truck, jerked up on the scarred metallic handle, dropped the cargo door, waited for her to drag Rosie inside and closed it.
Colin hurried back around to the front, climbed into the driver-seat and shut the door behind him. He stretched his body across the middle console, searched the visors overhead for the keys and popped open the glove compartment. He rifled through a stack of papers (mostly just unpaid parking tickets along with insurance cards and registration) and scowled in disgust.
He reached under the steering wheel, ripped the panel loose and fiddled with the wires. When he glanced down at the gauges, he shook his head and slid his hands away. He leaned forward, perched his head onto the top of the steering wheel and cast a dismal stare at the bright orange needle pointing toward the white E.
A loud gurgling sound came from somewhere inside of the truck and perked their ears to the wind to listen for its source. It was followed by a loud retching sound that sent a thick cloud of hot rancid air permeating around the SUV.
Stacy glanced down and winced at the large white chunk of vomit clinging to the front of her tee-shirt. Jason covered his mouth to keep from retching and, beads of sweat sliding down his forehead, threw himself across the back seat.
When he came up empty, he crawled over the middle console and laid himself across the back seat. He stretched himself across the back seat and laid his head down. He glanced out the back driver-side window, expecting to see the dead Latino woman and the two dead cops shambling past.
Five minutes later, he sat up and scanned the street; nothing. The stench was still there but not as strong as before.
"I'm getting too old for this shit."
He motioned for Jason to stay, climbed onto the back seat and peered into the rear. He tapped Stacey’s shoulder, waited for her meet his gaze and winked.
“This shit isn’t funny, man.” She said.
Colin shook his head and glanced down at a black duffel bag lying across the seat behind her. An old cardboard box sat on her right loaded with plastic silverware, a package of paper plates, red plastic Solo cups, large boxes of matches and a small squeeze bottle of lighter fluid.
He was sure that something in here would be useful.
He unzipped the duffel bag, peeled the flaps apart and found an array of metallic tent poles lying in the bottom of the bag, a few straight and few curved. A long strand of braided yellow rope and six yellow plastic tent stakes sat in the right side of the bag, twisted together like a misused charger cord.
He had no use for the tent stakes or the rope, but the poles would give him a fighting chance. He grabbed the first one he'd set eyes on, slithered back toward the front seat, climbed out and headed toward the rear of the truck. The cool spring breeze caressing the back of his neck, he cast a tentative glance down both sides of the street.
He held the tent pole in his right fist and yanked the cargo hatch open with his left. Stacey heaved a large cloud of air deep into her lungs, her eyes wide with relief, and held Rosie’s squirming body out to Colin. Jason’s face glowed with excitement as he climbed over the back seat and out onto the street.
She glanced down at her tee-shirt. “This is why I’m not having children of my own. Would you hold her for a second, please?”
Colin leaned the tent pole against the rear bumper and held Rosie in both hands. Stacey came around to unzip the duffel bag, a curtain of long dark hair shrouding one side of her face, and then reached inside. A few minutes later, she produced a bright yellow tee-shirt, zipped the duffel bag to a close and walked over to the front of the SUV.
He met the baby’s bright blue gaze and felt hot crimson splotches creep across his cheeks; his rough pale hands nearly consumed the bright pink star stitched along the right side of the baby’s onesie. He felt bad for her in a way because she’d been born in the right place at the wrong time.
“Hold her against your chest.” Jason said. “Here.”
He eased her out of Colin’s arms and held her against him. He cradled her buttocks in the crook of his left arm and massaged the middle of her back with his right. Stacey stepped around, her right hand bracing the cargo door and observed his facial expressions with a newfound sense of wonder.
He glanced over at Stacey and said, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She said.
He saw the flirtatious gleam in her eyes along with the bleached white glow in her face and brushed it away. He was flattered that she’d thought of him that way but there was only one woman who owned his heart since Day One; nobody could ever replace her.
She returned something to the duffel bag, zipped it shut and took Rosie back. He took Jason’s hand, looked both ways for any other hidden surprises, and hurried down the street.
They followed another middle-class neighborhood straight into the south side of the city where cracked sidewalks and bad brick streets were the least of anyone's problems. Detached and attached brick buildings sat along fractured sidewalks crippled by the decline of western civilization and financial woes. The street beyond that was flanked by shotgun homes and empty playgrounds, each one devoid of everyday sounds.
A pair of shoes were draped over a power line. Stop-sign shadows spread across the curbs and sidewalks like fat fingertips pointing to some distant location.
“If we just go this way and keep going north we’ll—”
Two black zombies were huddled around a dead middle-aged black woman lying across the curb in front of a red-brick apartment building scooping chunks of soft red flesh from her thighs and abdomen into their rotten black mouths.
Jason glanced over, his eyes brimming with tears. Colin snapped his fingers to get draw their attention and hustled them away.
Two blocks later, they wandered into in a close-knit cluster of ramshackle houses bordered by cracked sidewalks. The windows of the houses on this block were boarded up long, hiding their most darkest secrets, the kind that drove a person to walk out into traffic or attract any paranoid thought that cracked the foundation of their resolve.
He’d seen plenty of other houses that looked just like it, occupied by those who traded their spacious living rooms and cozy bedrooms for the dark musty ambience of an underground basement. No matter how heart-wrenching the scene might’ve looked to anyone else, the thought of those three men hauling his supplies away left a bad taste in his mouth. They didn’t just steal from him but from the very people who inhabited neighborhoods like these; people who needed those very supplies to live another day and have some semblance to a world that no longer existed.
He led them over to waist-high concrete wall decorated with multi-colored graffiti (a few racial slogans and a mix of territorial reminders) surrounding a two-story white clapboard house and signaled for them to hunker down low. When he inched up beside Stacey, Rosie gazed over her shoulder and let off a loud strangled cry of her own. He raised the first finger of his left hand and whispered a string of shushing noises to calm her down.
“You need to take care of this.”
“I’m trying, Colin.” Stacey said. “She’s probably—”
“Shut up, guys!” Jason said.
“We can’t have her—”
“This isn’t as easy as—”
“Someone will hear her and then—”
Something brushed across the crown of his right shoulder.
His skin bristling with fear, Colin tightened his grip on the tent pole, pushed the kids further behind the wall and out of sight. He threw himself over top of them, making sure not to smother Rosie and wrapped his arms tightly around their chests.
It was a simple knee-jerk reaction and nothing more. Stacey rolled out of Colin’s arm, sat and rested her back against the wall to keep Rosie’s head from touching the sidewalk. Jason perched the left side of his face against the crown of her shoulder as Colin peered over the top of the wall.
She clenched the front of Jason’s tee shirt and dragged him back.
Colin peered out of the corner of right eye and, his jaw clenched in both anger and shock, ran to her. The four zombies who’d killed the struggling black woman a few minutes ago, were now shambling toward her, strands of saliva dripping off the corners of their gangly black mouths. Jason’s eyes grew with shock as his body stiffened with fear.
“Colin!”
A loud hiccup issued from deep inside of Rosie’s lips, tickled the back of her throat and grew into a loud strangled cry. The row of hair on the back of Colin’s neck stood up on end as his skin prickled. Stacey held Rosie tight against her chest and, clutching the back of her blanket with firm pale fingers, knelt onto her right knee to shelter her from the dead man’s grasp.
