My hand was already turning that bluish shade of pain and internal bleeding.
“You righty or lefty?” Mary asked, holding my hand.
“Righty,” I told her, “but I shoot leftie.”
Her face sank a little as she held my rapidly swelling left hand.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I have wonderful recuperative powers.”
She looked at me funny; I did not feel the need to elaborate.
“Mike, your hand is broken,” she said, pushing her finger into the bluest part as if to prove her point.
“Yup,” I winced.
“Hey, they’re following it!” Josh stated exuberantly.
I figured I only had seconds before the car had traveled its furthest radio-receiving distance and then they’d turn their attention back to me.
“Wish me luck,” I said as I once again opened the front door. Hand Slammer was gone this time and I had, at least, learned something from Mary as I got the security door opened much more easily. I looked immediately to my right, expecting to see Hugo rapidly approaching maximum distance. All I saw were zombies who were heading towards the side of the house. I ducked my head back in, Josh and Gary had shifted to another window. The kid was brilliant. Instead of just taking the car and heading for maximum distance, he was dodging and weaving it through the zombies, thereby giving me way more time to get the hell out of here.
“Go,” Mary said, her eyes wide with fear. Partly because I had the front door to her house open and partly because I wasn’t moving yet.
I jumped down the three steps and started running in the direction I had last seen BT heading. As soon as I hit my stride, I began to doubt the validity of my entire plan. I’m all for “alone time” and the need for it, but somehow during a zombie-pocalypse doesn’t seem like the right time. Should I shout? There weren’t tons of zombies out, but I also didn’t want to change that status. By my reckoning, one zombie is one too many.
I skipped Mary’s neighbor’s house, and as I approached the next, I began to wonder if BT had maybe traveled through a backyard or two and maybe got on to another street. I mean, what then? He knew where we were, but I had no clue where he was. Why don’t I think this shit out before I act?
I could hear Josh’s car off in the distance, but for some reason, that distance was getting closer.
Chapter Eight
“That’s awesome, Josh, they’re all following it,” Gary said excitedly.
Josh did not immediately answer, as sweat began to form on his head. “I’ve lost control!” he shouted. “I think the batteries in the remote are dead.”
“Shouldn’t the car just stop?” Mary asked.
“No,” Josh said in resignation. “I put the car on ‘auto’ so that it would keep running when it was out of range.”
“Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it, honey? We’ll get you another one,” Mary said, leaning up against the front door as if she thought it might open without her there to stop it.
“Which way did Mike go?” Gary asked, moving from the window on the side of the house to one of the side lights by the front door.
“Left,” Mary answered.
“Figured as much,” Gary said as his eyes tracked Hugo heading left.
“Shit,” Josh said.
Mary did not correct him, not this time. If ever there was a time and a place to use an expletive, this was it.
Hugo was heading down the street towards Mike like a heat-seeking missile.
Chapter Nine – Mike Journal Entry 7
“Shit,” I said, watching Hugo head my way. “I bet Gary’s working the damn thing.”
Hugo was cool; the two dozen speeders trying their best to catch him were not.
“Here we go again,” I said as I began to run. Couldn’t I get déjà vu, at like Oktoberfest, while I was sampling different beers? Because that would be so much cooler.
I started running down the sidewalk. Hugo was about dead center on the street. I don’t know about you, but I’d never had much luck with RC cars. Usually, I crashed them into something or they broke consistently, but not good old Hugo! Nope. He was running straight and true right down the bloody center (English slip) of the road. He was looking like he could do it all night long. What was even way better was that the damn street we were on did not have a curve in its foreseeable future. The one and only thing I had going for me at the moment was that the zombies were completely focused on the truck and its bloody contents (not an English slip, actual stuff it was hauling).
I had a few options. First, keep running in the same direction. Hugo would pass me up shortly and I would become victim to those old zombie posters. You know the ones, “I don’t have to be fastest, only faster than you!” Hugo would zip away and the zombies would turn to me for solace and food. I might be able to keep one or two at bay, but I did not understand my powers well enough or even know if it were possible to do much more than that.
Second, I could cut across a yard and start searching elsewhere, but here we come back to the needle-in-a-haystack analogy, although with the size of BT, it’s more like a cop’s nightstick than a needle, which in reality, shouldn’t be all that hard to find in one haystack. Or third, I could hide behind a bush against the house I was next to. I didn’t like the idea of not moving, especially if even one zombie was looking my way when it happened. But it might work, I’ll just let them run on by. I thought through all of these scenarios in a flash, and was already diving into a small mulberry bush as I was thinking it. Hugo was almost even with me by the time I was able to turn and feel that I was completely concealed from the road. The zombies were a good twenty yards trailing, but they didn’t look like they planned on stopping. My upper torso was completely under the bush, but the bottom-most branches were still a good six inches above my back, and my legs were uncovered. This, all of a sudden, felt like not such a great maneuver. If a zombie saw me and headed this way, it would be all I could do to extricate myself from my hidey-hole and get up to full speed.
“Dumb, dumb,” I said softly as the zombies approached. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the crunching of plastic, and the high-pitched whining of spinning tires upturned. Are you shitting me? Hugo took this most inopportune of times to flip. I stuck my head out an inch, two at the max to see what happened. I was done in, by a fucking pothole! How damn ironic is that? The very job I had been doing before the zombies came and my equivalents down in North Carolina couldn’t do their part to make our streets a safer place to drive on.
The zombies pounced on the truck. The wheels stopped spinning as Hugo’s life came to an abrupt end. Gary’s shirt was shredded in the feeding frenzy, bandages and swabs flying like chaff in World War II. Zombies sprang up as they realized they had been duped. Well, maybe they didn’t figure that part out; they just knew they weren’t eating anything with substance and now they were on active search mode again. I pulled my head in slowly, not wanting to give my spot away. The moonlight felt like it was shining bright enough to rival a morning sun. Sure, no clouds when you want one, unlike that time back in 1978 when I was trying to watch the lunar eclipse. Oh yeah! They were all over the place then. Stayed up all effin’ night, didn’t see a damn thing except for clouds. I told God that he should probably stick to his day job and leave the ironic comedy to the professionals.
“Awesome,” I whispered, putting my head down for a second. Had to be at least thirty zombies just milling about, no more than thirty to forty feet from where I was. They didn’t go back to Mary’s house, which would have been a blessing. They just milled around, like stoners in their parents’ basement. They just didn’t know what to do with themselves. I’d been one of them, so I knew this could possibly go on all night. I guess zombies were a lot like stoners; neither did much in the way of action until food was involved. At least, I would be able to keep myself amused.