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( November, 1987 )
An inhuman scream cut through the air, sending a hundred birds at roost into the air squawking. Behind the wheel of the apocalyptically adorned van, Kali Prasad didn’t even flinch. She was used to monsters coming in human form. Beside her in the passenger seat, Chrissy Cunningham’s hands gripped the crowbar across her lap.
“It’ll be fine,” Kali told her, keeping her voice low for the four who were crashed out in the back.
Chrissy nodded. Her hair had grown long over the past two years. It wasn’t like salons were keeping their doors open with zombies on the loose. She wrestled the curls into a tight braid every morning. “I’m not cut out for this,” she said, squinting through the small open spaces in the windshield that weren’t covered in sheet metal.
“Sure you are,” Kali insisted. “You’re still here, aren’t you? That’s pretty much all that we can ask for these days.”
Chrissy pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded once, letting go of the crowbar. She twisted around in her seat to look in the back. It was dimly lit, with all the windows covered, but she could make out Argyle’s neon colored pants, Barb Holland’s pink sweater, Robin Buckley’s buzzed hair and Steve Harrington’s broad shoulders encased in a camo jacket. Her eyes lingered in Steve.
“The sun’s coming up,” Kali mentioned. They never stayed put after dark. It was easier to drive all night and find a place to crash during daylight hours. Once upon a time they’d snagged an RV but it had gotten trashed thanks to a particularly nasty horde.
Chrissy nodded, crawling into the back seat. She gently shook Steve awake, who startled and reached for his bat instinctively.
“We’re finding a place to stay,” she told him. He nodded, eyes going soft and he squeezed her hand for a few seconds before they woke up the others. Amongst groans and complaints, Robin got herself into the passenger seat with a map.
“Where are we?” she asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Route 4. I saw a sign for Rockport like thirty minutes ago.”
Robin used the small amount of sunlight coming through the window breaks to trace along the paper. “Got it. Um…there’s another town coming up soon. Looks like it was a small one, so it could be easy to find a place and not be overrun.”
“Sounds ideal,” Barb piped up from the back.
“What I wouldn’t give for a nice lush California King sized bed,” Argyle mused, leaning up against the side of the van, head tilted back. His wrist hung limply against a roughly welded mace propped up against the floor. “Soft towels, a nice hot shower, room service. ”
“That’s evil, man,” Steve said with a glare.
“We could always pretend,” Kali said from the front seat.
Argyle sighed. “It’s not the same.”
He was right. She could make a ratty hotel room look fancy and luxurious, but that wouldn’t actually change anything. It was always worth a shot though.
Everyone got themselves ready for the sweep as Robin guided Kali through the streets. They didn’t see any zombies shambling along the streets as they drove, but they still drove slow and steady, not wanting to kick up too much noise.
“One of these days we’re gonna roll up to a mansion,” Argyle said as they came to a stop at what looked like a two story building: general store on the bottom, apartment up top.
“Keep dreaming, babe,” Kali told him, cutting the engine.
“I hate this part,” Barb grumbled. Like all of them, she had a gun and a blunt weapon. She could handle herself in a fight, but before the adrenaline hit, it was the worst . Her nerves always got the best of her, but once she was fighting for survival, she could do it.
“Hoping there’s not many,” Robin said, folding up the map. She tucked it into the outer pocket of her army surplus jacket and then moved her hand up to hide hair behind her ear. But there wasn’t any. Old habits. Just two weeks ago she’d gotten a chunk of her hair ripped out by a zombie and had Steve shave her hair down as evenly as he could with Kali’s hunting knife. She formed her hand into a fist and dropped it to her lap.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Kali said, pocketing the car keys and double checking her handgun. They tried not to use guns if possible because the noise attracted other zombies, but sometimes you had to do it.
Argyle, Steve and Barb got out the back doors, staying quiet and surveying the area, listening for any movement. After a solid sixty seconds, Steve banged his fist lightly against the van and Kali and Robin jumped out. They grouped together naturally. They’d been doing this long enough. Their group used to be bigger.
They didn’t like to linger on the past. It made moving forward too bleak.
Kali held her hunting knife in an expert grip. They all moved carefully around broken glass and debris, keeping their ears open for any sounds of the undead.
Barb carefully pulled the door open to the store. Luckily the old bell didn’t ring out and they stepped through. They stayed in their pairs as they separated down the aisles to clear out the area.
Robin went first, gun in hand. Barb followed with her aluminum bat, squinting behind glasses with an expired prescription. Most of this food aisle had been picked clean already.
Steve and Chrissy took the middle ground. There were remnants of smashed Christmas ornaments (Merry Christmas 1985! Having no idea that an apocalypse was about to drop on December 16th) and even one fake tree still standing. Chrissy gripped her crowbar and tried to steady her breathing, only to freeze when her foot hit a stray golden bell on the floor. It rang and rolled across the tiles.
At the far end, in an aisle filled with a weird mixture of boxes of nails, adhesives, car cabin filters and remnants of expired makeup, Kali and Argyle heard the groan of a roused zombie.
Kali swore, instinctively hiding herself and Argyle with her power…only it didn’t work on zombies. It was instinct but it failed every time. The hesitation gave the monster enough time to come out of the back corner, followed by a chorus of at least three more.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Argyle hissed behind her.
“Back up,” she said, taking a step backward into him. He shuffled back and she ducked under his arm as he took a swing with the makeshift mace, catching the rotting corpse on the side of the head. It wasn’t a killing blow.
Kali squeaked as the zombie grabbed for her but she was quick and ended up on the other side of it, flanking. Argyle swung, this time hitting home with the large spikes adorning his mace just as Kali shoved upward at the base of the zombie’s spine with her knife.
The monster gurgled out a breath and fell limp as they extracted their weapons.
Simultaneously, another zombie headed directly for Chrissy and Steve. Chrissy slipped on a crushed ornament box, hitting her shoulder into an empty shelving unit with a spark of pain as Steve swung at the zombie with his nailbat.
The nails bit into the side and stuck, dragging the monster closer as Steve tried to yank it back.
“Son of a bitch,” he said through gritted teeth as the zombie reached and tried to grab onto his jacket. Chrissy whacked the arm with her crowbar and tried to kick the torso to get it unstuck.
A second zombie lumbered into the aisle and Chrissy yelped as it got its one arm around her. She kicked back and whipped her head back and forth so it couldn’t get a chance to bite her neck. She dropped the crowbar to the hooked end and then jabbed it upwards. It wouldn’t hurt the thing, but it distracted it enough for her to break free.
Steve knocked his zombie back into the shelves and tripped it, smashing the bat down on the thing’s skull, splattering blood.
Chrissy jabbed the crowbar through the jaw and up into the brain of hers, where it stuck and the zombie stumbled backward.
The last of the zombies, less rotting and faster, found Barb and Robin. Robin let out a yelp and ducked as it came for her. She reached for the machete at her side as Barb swung out with her bat, hitting the thing’s hand. It snarled at her and pounced, knocking her backward. She tripped on a squished box of fig newtons and landed on the ground hard, nearly knocking the wind out of her. She barely was able to put her bat up, hooked under the zombie’s chin to keep it from biting her.
With a little yell, Robin sliced with her lethally sharp machete. It didn’t quite cut completely through the zombie’s neck, but the body slumped onto Barb, useless but twitching.
Barb wriggled free, black blood staining her pink sweater as Robin hacked on the remaining neck. Barb got unsteadily to her feet and whacked down on the brain with her bat a few times until it was pummeled.
The whole fight took less than a minute total.
There were four dead zombies and six shaken but living humans. They gathered and checked each other for bites or wounds.
“They came from the corner,” Kali said, keeping her knife in hand and turning on a precious flashlight. Everyone followed, keeping together. Behind the dark corner, they saw a door and behind it, stairs that led upwards.
Barb and Argyle kept watch. Robin and Steve surveyed the pharmacy and found no zombies and two overlooked bottles of useful meds. Kali and Chrissy went up the stairs first. They could only go in a single file.
There was another door at the top which looked untampered with. Kali pushed it open and waited, listening. She heard nothing and stepped in.
The shades were open on the windows, letting in the morning light. It was a simple apartment. They were in the dining room and kitchen now. It looked largely untouched. Fanning out, they found a living room and three bedrooms. Everything looked as if the tenants had just disappeared.
It was almost creepier than finding the place all banged up. But there were no undead here. They locked both doors and barricaded the top one before unloading their weapons onto the table and testing the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen. Blissfully, they still worked.
After over an hour of cleaning up and making some food, they gathered together in the dusty living room. Argyle in a big fat armchair, Kali curled up in his lap, legs dangling over the armrest. Robin and Barb were snuggled up together on one side of the large couch, Barb’s glasses set on the coffee table. Steve was sitting on the other end of the couch, Chrissy on the floor between his legs. He was combing through her tangled hair that she refused to cut.
“It’s no mansion,” Argyle said, the warmth of the sun heating the place up and making it feel cozy despite the apocalypse going on outside. “But this is pretty dope, yo.”
“I’ll take this over a fifty room mansion any day,” Steve said, concentrating on a particularly nasty knot. “Imagine having to clear all that?”
“Touché, my dude,” Argyle said, clicking his tongue.
“We should get some rest,” Kali said, words slurred, eyelids heavy. “Someone should still keep watch, though.”
“I’ll start,” Robin volunteered. She was wide awake, her mind whirling. Which wasn’t unusual for her.
“Okay,” Chrissy said, unbidden, from the floor.
Argyle scooped up Kali to help her stand and they wandered into one of the bedrooms.
“Steve?” Robin asked after a beat, her hand steadying on Barb’s hair that she’d been petting.
“Mmm?”
“Do you think we’ll ever see the end of this?”
Steve let out a heavy breath. “I sure fucking hope so.”
“Me too,” Chrissy said softly.
It felt like it was never going to end. Two years was a long time. Hope felt like it was so far away.
After a few more minutes, Steve successfully finished Chrissy’s hair and she made quick work of braiding it. The two of them headed to another room and closed the door.
“You should go get some sleep too,” Robin prodded.
Barb shook her head against Robin’s side. “No. I’ll stay up with you.”
“B, you need rest. And there’s an actual bed behind that door.”
After a few more minutes, Robin followed Barb into the third bedroom. It looked like it belonged to a little boy if you took in the sailboat wallpaper and dark wooden furniture. Robin gave Barb a kiss and promised to wake her up for the second shift before she closed the door and tiptoed into the kitchen.
She settled down at the dining room table to start doing detailed cleaning on their weapons now that they had a working kitchen with supplies. She bowed her shaved head and started minutely scrubbing all the leftover bits of brains and blood off the metal.
If they had stayed in the car a bit longer, they would have heard the radio crackle on as it picked up a signal. Scratching, but repeating, coming through. The voice of a teenage girl:
“This is Suzie Bingham. Is anyone out there? Hello? This is Suzie Bingham. If there are survivors, make your way to Salt Lake City. Hello? Is anyone out there?”