Zombies! A Love Story Read online

  The fingers were still wriggling and grasping at the ground. Chuck took my hand. I dragged my eyes off the horror of it, and we clambered up the gorgeous red rocks. The things were clawing their way up after us, or trying to. They were slow, and they didn’t seem able to reason. They’d climb up a little, then slide down again, then climb a little more. But there was no quit in them. A few made it to the top of the red boulder only seconds behind us as we scrambled down the other side.

  Mom came speeding up with the car before I even found the flashlight app to signal her. Those things had reached the bottom and were slogging toward us again. Moving like sleepwalkers, but faster. The station wagon skidded to a stop in a cloud of red dust. I heard the locks pop open and Chuck reached past me to open rear door. They were so close!

  And more of the things were dragging their way over the rocks now, all but falling from the tops of them, tumbling down and then stumbling to their feet again. I was so scared.

  Chuck grabbed me and shoved me into the back seat.

  I landed face first, but turned over fast, and saw one right behind him as he leaned in. I lifted the gun. The thing grabbed him. I fired.

  It’s head exploded and it went down. Chuck lunged into the car, pulled the door closed behind him, and Mom hit the gas. The car flew, sending rooster tails of red sand behind it.

  “Turn on the headlights,” I told her.

  She did. “It bit him,” she was saying. “It bit him, didn’t it?”

  “No. No, it didn’t.” I was willing it true, not stating a fact.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay.” Chuck leaned back in the seat, looking at me, then at Mom. He was a mess. “I’m okay.” Then his lips pulled into a grimace. “Sally’s not. God, I just killed my own sister.”

  Mom looked back in shocked horror.

  “She was already dead,” I told her. “Then she... came back. As one of them. She attacked us.”

  Mom nodded. “That wasn’t your sister, Matthew. That wasn’t her at all. These things...they’re not human beings anymore. I don’t know what they are.” She met my eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s pretty obvious, if you ask me,” I said. And I looked from one of them to the other. “They’re zombies. I mean, they’re zombies. Right? What other word is there for it?”

  “There are no such things as zombies,” Mom said. “I don’t know what they are. But I do know that we need to get some help.” She looked in the mirror again, at my Chuck. “Are you sure you weren’t bitten?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or even scratched?”

  He looked at himself, shook his head, but I could tell he wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so.”

  Mom looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. That we ought to tie him up or something, that we ought to make sure he wasn’t going to change. But he wasn’t. He couldn’t.

  “Mom, those others were all killed. They turned into...whatever they are after they were killed. Chuck’s alive.”

  She nodded. “Still–”

  “She’s right,” Chuck said. “I’ve got to get cleaned up, make sure I didn’t get a scratch or anything that could potentially make me...like them.”

  “We need to get out of town and get some help out here, Mom. The FBI. The CDC. The National Guard. Someone.”

  “We need to get help out here,” she said. “But we’re not taking Chuck beyond the town line. If this thing spreads....”

  She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. I didn’t know what kind of plague had been unleashed in my beloved little town of Bloody Gulch. But I did know that we couldn’t risk it spreading. As fast as it had moved from host to host, it could decimate the state in a matter of days.

  Maybe the whole country.

  “Head for the village,” Chuck said softly. “We can warn everyone, get them organized. Besides, we can find supplies at the general store, gas up at the service station. There’ll be more weapons at the police station, along with a cell where you can lock me up, if necessary.”

  I met his eyes. “Chuck–”

  “I’d rather be locked up and fine, than free and not so fine,” he said, looking me dead in the eyes.” I don’t want to hurt anyone else I love tonight, Suz.”

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  THE VILLAGE SEEMED like a ghost town. Okay, it would be pretty deserted on any Sunday at four in the morning, but there was something more to it this time. A feeling that wasn’t right, even before we were close enough to see.

  As we drove nearer, I realized there were doors hanging open, windows busted out all over the place. Those things, the zombies, because there was nothing more accurate I could think of to call them, had apparently been here, too. I didn’t see anyone moving. Curtains, hung out of broken windows, flapping in the breeze. A few cars had stopped in the road at cockeyed angles, their doors open, occupants missing. It was so silent, so hauntingly silent, that I half expected to see a tumbleweed go rolling across main street.

  The place had been ravaged. God, hadn’t anyone survived? “Turn off the headlights, Mom,” I whispered. “And go real slow. We don’t want to disturb...anything.”

  She nodded, did so, eased the car a little further and then pulled it to a stop in front of the small adobe building that housed the Bloody Gulch Police Department–in short, that meant it was where Chief Mallory sat behind his desk and answered calls about lost dogs, feuding neighbors and the occasional belligerent drunk. The PD was three stories, but only the bottom was in use, the rest was storage as far as I knew. It sat right beside the bank, which sat right beside the diner. All the buildings in town were adobe, but some were whitewashed instead of clay red. We had a real southwest style going on in Bloody Gulch. No tourists, that wasn’t us. It was just the way it had always been.

  On the opposite side of the road there was a small convenience store-slash gas station, the only thing made of brick in the entire village. It also looked abandoned. The ten wheel gas truck was out front, where he was in the wee hours every Sunday and Wednesday when he delivered gas. The big hose lay on the ground, not leaking, not inserted into the underground tank, just lying there. Like maybe the old truck driver, Bert McCourtney, had been interrupted before he’d been able to make his delivery.

  Damn.

  We sat there for a full minute, none of us moving or saying a word, and then Mom finally shut off the engine.

  There was nothing moving inside the Chief’s office. No lights on in there. It felt empty. “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We just go right up to the front door,” Mom said.

  “What if it’s locked?” I asked. I glanced over at Chuck.

  “Dive back in the car,” he said. “Try not to slam the doors. Keep as quiet as possible.”

  “You think they’re attracted by noise?”

  He shrugged. “It kind of seems that way to me. I guess it could be smell.”

  “In which case, we’re screwed.”

  Mom was staring at the front doors of the PD, and I thought her eyes were damp. “Maybe just one of us should go,” she suggested.

  “We need to stick together,” Chuck told her. His voice sounded funny. Tight. Then again, he’d just lost his sister. I was pretty sure he’d been battling a full blown bout of grief ever since we’d picked him up.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  He met my eyes, nodded. “So far, so good. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t scratched or bitten. I promise to let you know if I start getting the urge to eat brains.”

  I shuddered but refrained from punching him. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Everyone ready, then?” Mom asked.

  He nodded. Mom scooted over to the passenger side, and we both unlocked our doors. Then we opened them, real slow. Mom got out with her gun in hand. I got out with mine. Chuck slid across the seat and got out behind me. He’d left his hatchet at the campsite. (Thank God. It had his sister’s brains all over it.) But he had located a jack handle
in the spare tire compartment on the way over, a nice big one, the way they made them back in ‘85, and he held it now. Together we crept across the sidewalk and up to the front door with the words Bloody Gulch Police painted in a half circle over a star on its pebbled glass. I reached out real slow to touch the door handle.

  “We’ve got creepers coming up the sidewalk from the north, about a hundred feet away,” Chuck whispered.

  “Ditto from my side, only fifty feet,” Mom said.

  I closed my hand on the doorknob, tried to turn it.

  It burst open all by itself, and the barrel of a shotgun pressed to my forehead.

  “You shoot my daughter I’ll tear you apart and feed you to those things myself, John Mallory.”

  Before Mom even finished the sentence, Chuck pulled me aside and wedged himself in between me and the gun barrel, and then Chief Mallory lowered it and stepped aside, holding the door open. “Get in here and hurry the hell up about it!”

  We did, and he closed the door behind us. Then he moved away a little, and yanked a towel away from a lamp that was on his desk, filling the entire reception area with light. I saw the blankets hanging over each window, which explained why no light or motion had been visible from the outside. Groans and wet, smacking sounds came from the back, and I backed up to the door, raising my gun and aiming it that way.

  “Don’t shoot, girl,” John whispered harshly, pushing my gun hand down. “They’re behind bars. They can’t hurt us and you go shooting you’re gonna attract the rest of ‘em.”

  There were three of them, I saw as my eyes adjusted to the light and shadows; two in one cell and one in another, moving around and bumping into things, but apparently not caring or maybe even noticing.

  “For the love of God, Chief Mallory, what are you doing with those things?” I asked.

  But he wasn’t hearing me, or replying. He was staring at my mother like he was looking at an angel, and then she moved closer to him and he wrapped his arms around her. They stood there like that, locked together, rocking slow a little bit. “I went out to get you, but you were gone,” he said.

  “We had to go after the kids,” she told him. “The party out in the desert. But...it was too late for everyone but Matthew.”

  Chief Mallory lifted his head from the top of my mom’s and met Chuck’s eyes. “Your sister?”

  Chuck just shook his head.

  “Damn, son, I’m sorry.” Then he narrowed his eyes on the blood all over him. “You get bit?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Not good enough. Go in the washroom and get cleaned up, make sure.” He took a shirt from a peg on the wall, a black button-down, and handed it to Chuck. “This is clean. Oughtta fit.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” Chuck went into the tiny restroom, but left its door wide open. It was touching the way he was making sure I wasn’t out of his sight. Almost...heroic. Then he pulled off his shirt and my eyes about popped. Since when had my science geek boyfriend been ripped like that? He looked like a photoshopped image depicting sheer male perfection. Holy.... I gave my head a shake, tore my eyes off his back and shoulders, focused on the chief, who was still holding my mother close. “So when did all this happen?” I asked, indicating the two of them.

  The chief didn’t let her go. Just met my eyes. “Your mother didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not the time,” Mom said.

  I was pissed, but when I looked back at Chuck he met my eyes in the washroom mirror and gave me a subtle “let it go” look. I glimpsed his chest in that mirror and decided there were more important matters to focus on at the moment, than my mother’s secret love life.

  “Okay, new topic. What’s the deal with the walking dead in the cell back there, Chief? Do you think locking them up is going to fix this?”

  “They weren’t like that when I locked ‘em up,” the chief said. Mom turned but stayed close beside him and he kept an arm around her shoulders. “Those two in Cell A had some kind of fit halfway through their lunch, keeled over dead as doornails. I was on the phone trying to get through to the emergency squad, when they came around again and...they were like that.” He lowered his eyes. “I got the third guy out of the cell, but...it was too late for the fourth one. They tore him apart, right in front of me.” He shuddered, and closed his eyes like that would stop him from seeing it again in his mind.

  “Wait, wait, they were in the cell?” Chuck asked. He was coming back into the room, buttoning the chief’s shirt. “Before all this happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how did they get it?” he looked at me, and I nodded, getting him.

  “Did they have any visitors, sheriff?” I asked

  “Not a one. And they haven’t been out, either. Best I can figure, this thing has to be airborne.”

  “Then why haven’t the rest of us turned?” Chuck asked.

  “Maybe it was something they ate.” My eyes were on the trash can when I said it. I moved closer, took the crinkled up bag off the top. “These were the same chips everyone was eating at the party. I didn’t, because I don’t eat GMOs and it’s a Sonatta product.”

  “You think food poisoning could do this?” Chuck asked, coming to take the bag from me, examining it himself.

  “I didn’t think anything could do this, Chuck. But obviously something did. Did you eat any of the chips at the party?”

  “No. I’ve been on a health kick for the past year. Eating all natural. Working out.” He was still staring at the bag, reading every detail on the package.

  “I noticed.” He looked at me quickly, but I looked away, feeling my face heat. “You, Chief?”

  “I had the same lunch they did, grilled steak and cheese sandwiches from the diner. Only I didn’t have the chips.” He patted his belly. “Been trying to take off a few pounds.”

  “And I’ve never heard of Sonatta Brand potato chips until today,” I said.

  Chuck heaved a heavy sigh. “That’s because they’re not supposed to be on the market yet.”

  “What do you mean?” I looked at the others in the room, and at the cell full of shuffling, groaning monsters. “Chuck?”

  “I’ve seen these bags before,” he said. “At Sonatta.”

  “In the company cafeteria?” I asked, praying he would say yes, but knowing better.

  “In a storage unit. Waiting to be distributed to grocery stores nationwide.”

  “Waiting on what, exactly?” I asked.

  “FDA Approval.”

  I bit my lips. “They’re from those genetically modified potatoes you were telling me about, aren’t they, Chuck? The ones that could provide more protein than pure beef?”

  He lowered his head, nodded.

  “What are you talking about?” Chief Mallory asked. “What’s your daughter talking about, Mary?”

  Mom just looked at me, waiting.

  “Chuck, when I asked you how Sonatta managed to make potatoes deliver all that protein, you didn’t answer me. Maybe you need to tell me now.”

  He swallowed hard. “They modified the DNA.”

  “Yeah, I got that. In what way?”

  Lifting his head, he looked me in the eye. “They added the DNA of an insect. High in protein, otherwise harmless, to modify the potatoes. These chips are the most nutritious, protein rich things you could imagine.”

  “Obviously. Aside from the fact that they turn you into a freaking zombie, they’re a dream come true.”

  “You don’t know it was the chips.”

  “All right, let’s investigate further. What kind of insect?”

  “What difference can that possibly–”

  “What. Kind. Of. Bug.”

  “I don’t know, some kind of a mantis.”

  “A mantis.”

  He looked up slowly. “Yes, a mantis.”

  “An insatiable carnivore.”

  He blinked, lowered his head. “Yes. Not an idea I’d have backed, by the way.”

  “I’d
just like to know how these chips got into the food supply,” the chief asked. “If they were still awaiting FDA approval on the GMO potatoes, then how could they–?”

  “It’s voluntary,” Chuck said, sinking into a chair. “Technically, the FDA doesn’t have to approve genetically modified vegetables. Just meats. The company asked them to vet the potatoes just to be sure, but they were under no obligation to wait. I guess Mr. Reynolds got impatient.”

  He’d wet his hands and scrubbed them through his hair, and he hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning. A shadow of whiskers covered his jawline. He looked sexier than I’d ever seen him look. “I’d feel better if I had a weapon,” he said. “You have anything I can borrow, Chief?”

  “Townsfolk raided the place,” he said, going to a cabinet with its door hanging by a hinge. “Said they were going to fight their way out. Took everything but this.” He handed Chuck a big black rifle.

  Chuck made a face. “This is an air gun.”

  “It’s all I’ve got left, besides my own.”

  Chuck nodded. “Any chance you have a tool kit around here?”

  “Back room. Been remodeling it to make me an office, leaving room out here for a receptionist and a full time officer.”

  Chuck got up and walked into the back room, which used to be just for storage. When he came back, he had a huge tool box and carton of large nails. He sat back down and started taking the air gun apart.

  “Did you find any wounds on you, son?” Chief Mallory asked.

  “Not a one. I’m clean.”

  Mom had made coffee. That was my mother. Maybe the zombie apocalypse was in progress, but she wasn’t going to face it without a fresh pot of coffee. She knew her way around the office, too. Obviously, she’d been spending a lot of time here. She got out cups, filled them, handed them around, and put powdered creamer and sugar on the table. “You really think he’d change, if he’d been bitten, John?” she asked.

  John said, “The guy in Cell B did.”

  “Everyone at the party did, too. But they died first. Then changed.”

  “He didn’t.” John sat on the edge of his desk. “I told you, I got the third guy out of the cell. He had a few bites. Nothing too serious, though. I put him in the empty cell, even though it’s not finished yet, and gave him the first aid kit and told him to clean himself up.” He shook his head. “Paramedics never arrived. I couldn’t call out again. Nothing I could do for the guy. He started feeling odd, he said, then just laid on his cot, uneasy, but alive. It took about an hour before it got real bad. Started thrashing around, fell on the floor and had some kinda seizure, Then...his eyes went red. His skin started turning blue. He...turned. And he didn’t die first. He just...turned.”