Chapter Thirteen.
They drove down the highway in the Hummer with the motorcycle trailing close behind. The Hummer's headlights illuminated the corpses standing in the road, giving Claire barely enough time to avoid them.
"Gas guzzling piece of crap," Claire said, looking at the gauge. They passed a sign that told them there was food and lodging a mile up ahead.
"We should stop," Carlos said. "We might get lucky and find some gas."
"More like a place to die," Claire said, sounding more morbid than she had intended.
Claire rolled down the window when the exit came into view and gestured that she was turning right. The right blinker had burnt out long ago. Alice put a hand up, signaling she got the message and followed the Hummer as it turned off the highway.
The lights of the Hummer showed them a ruined town. To the right of the exit was a fancy but small hotel across the street from which was a gas station. The faded Mobile sign hung precariously over a upended portable toilet while the nearby pumps did not look promising.
Heinkel and Yumiko both held flashlights pointed out the open windows, scanning the streets and buildings for movement. "Looks clear," Heinkel said. "There might be gas."
The four in the Hummer had made an observation during their time as scavengers across the dead land of America. The walking corpses followed people. Where people had been had been picked clean. No sign of zombies sometimes meant supplies, but not always.
Claire shut off the Hummer's lights and slowly pulled up to the gas station, parking in the center so they would be able to reach all four hoses without moving the vehicle. Heinkel and Carlos wasted no time in going into the station to ransack it. Carlos's rifle was fixed with a flashlight, while Heinkel held a pistol in one hand and a light in the other.
"I've got a pry bar," Alice said, walking up next to Claire as she scanned the ground with a flashlight, looking for the lid to the underground gasoline tanks. Yumiko was attempting to get the pumps to work.
Alice pried the lid out of the concrete with ease and the sweet smell of gasoline came wafting up from the hole. Claire felt like shouting with delight, but knew better. Not seeing zombies didn't mean they weren't there. "Thank God," Claire said. "Yumiko, get the siphon hose."
"Is there gas?" Yumiko asked, going to the Hummer and opening the back hatch. "Praise the Lord."
A small hand pump was used to siphon the gas up from the underground tank. Claire pumped it directly into the Hummer's tank while Yumiko pulled out the long empty red plastic containers they used for storage.
There was a lone pistol shot from inside the station. The three women outside all turned their heads and listened for more but none came. They were silent until gas came spilling from the Hummer's tank, prompting Claire to direct the hose into one of the plastic containers.
Heinkel and Carlos came out of the gas station. Carlos was carrying a cardboard box while Heinkel held his rifle. "We got canned eats," Carlos said. "Good stuff too."
Claire smiled and switched containers. There seemed to be a lot of gasoline in the tank and she wondered briefly if she wasn't dreaming. Too often her preoccupation with scavenging had lead her to dream of finding bastions of plenty along the desolate highways only to wake up to meager rations and the knowledge that soon they would hit a dry spell they couldn't rough it through.
"Do you hear that?" Alice said.
"Hear what?" Claire said, looking up and turning her head about while her eyes darted to the streets and ruined shops along the road.
Alice walked behind the Hummer and faced down the street the hotel was on. Holding up a flashlight, she flicked it on. Claire picked up the plastic container and moved it towards the Hummer's hood where she could see. Yumiko was standing there, her mouth slightly agape. "What…" she said, trying to puzzle out what she was seeing.
Caught in Alice's light like an actor on a stage was a human figure, crouched in the middle of the road like an ape. It was completely naked and lipless with shining eyes and blood red skin. It didn't like being in the light and it loped across the street behind an antique store sign.
"That's not good," Carlos said, rushing the box of food into the Hummer and taking his rifle back from Heinkel.
Claire had suspected it was all too good to be true. Wondering if she should turn on the Hummer's lights to ward off the creature or keep them off to avoid attracting more, she switched to the last plastic container. With so much gas, she wanted to find more containers and load up on as much as possible, but the bizarre zombie had cast doubt and fear on her plans.
"What the hell was that thing?" Heinkel asked, her German accent coming in thick. "It didn't move like a zombie."
"Maybe it's a mutant," Yumiko said.
"I think a bit of both," Alice said, drawing one of her curved blades. "Someone should probably shoot it. It's getting braver."
It edged out from behind the sign and crept forward on all fours. Claire was reminded of the skinless monsters in Raccoon City, the ones with the long lashing tongues that could split a man's stomach open with a quick flicker. "Got it," Carlos said, firing a single shot into the monster's brain. It fell onto its stomach and spasmed, dead.
Of the T-virus horrors she had seen over the years, all had proved killable for the most part. The only one that still haunted her nightmares was the thing called Tyrant. It seemed to take nothing short of a rocket launcher to blow it to pieces. Small arms had no effect on it, save maybe to anger what little was left of its mind. It had left her with the deep paranoia that she might run up against something that didn't care if its brains were blown out.
Alice, Heinkel, and Carlos all went over to the monster's body to examine it. To conserve batteries, Alice alone kept her light shining on it. "Looks like a zombie on crack," Carlos said. "Look at the claws."
"It's still got its skin," Heinkel said. "It's just flushed with blood."
"Dead blood shouldn't be that red," Alice said.
"I wonder if it's warm," Carlos said.
"Are you going to touch it and find out?" Heinkel asked.
Claire was about to tell them to quit poking the body and find more gas containers when the sound of a garbage can clattering came from down the street that made a T with the one they were on. Alice's light was on the street and soon another spry red zombie came walking upright down the road. This one was wearing tattered clothes, perhaps an old military uniform and it too was lipless with eyes shining.
It opened its mouth wide, letting its swollen purple tongue wave about as if it was already eating them in its twisted imagination. Claire found the gesture to be one of the more unnerving things she had experienced in recent memory and so apparently did Carlos, as she blew the top of the thing's head off without saying a word.
"I have a feeling this is going to get worse," Carlos said. "Let's bug out."
Claire pulled up the siphon hose, cursing. They all piled into the Hummer while Alice climbed onto her bike. With Claire in the driver's seat and the Hummer stinking of gas fumes, they drove back onto the highway with the windows down. "This isn't safe at all," Claire said, tilting her head out the window slightly. "On a lot of levels."
"We'll strap the containers to the roof once we're clear of this place," Carlos said.
"Good idea," Heinkel said. "I'm getting dizzy."
"Me too," Yumiko added.
Claire hit the wheel in frustration. "We have to go back in the morning. There was a lot of gas in that station."
"We'll see what it looks like in the morning," Carlos said as they drove into the night, the light on Alice's bike shining behind them. "You know the day can be worse for zombies."
Claire huffed, both in aggravation and in an effort to drive the fumes from her nasal passages. She pulled over. "This thing is going to explode if we don't strap those to the roof."
Alice pulled over with them and gassed her bike up with one of the containers. "Do you want to go back in the morning?" Alice asked.
"Yes," Claire said. "We'll need more containers."
They would also need some more luck, Claire though, although she guessed she might be tempting fate a little. Getting away with what they had was nothing short of a miracle as they had been on death's door not long ago. The red horrors seemed like hideous reminders that there was only so much luck to be had before one was pushing it too far.
Still, they would go back tomorrow and see what there was to see.
To be continued…