A yell shook Carey from her sleep. She opened her eyes and squinted into the darkness of her temporary room, trying to discover its source. A second screech and a laugh followed in short order and she could see tongues of flame through the remains of a mangled curtain. Now almost instantly awake, Carey threw her clothes on and slipped the vest over her head as fast as she could. She heard another shout that, by the sound of it, couldn't have come from more than a block or two away.
"What the hell is going on?" she asked quietly as she picked up her small pack and slung it over her shoulder. She paused to take a peek out the window and saw a number of buildings a handful of blocks over burning. Carey cursed humanity as she picked up the shotgun and began her descent from her high-rise apartment.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and only vaguely remembered barricading the doors the previous day. She pulled couches and other heavy furnishings from the doorway and cracked the door enough to eyeball the street. Her finger tightened on the gun's trigger when she saw a gang of shadows moving much too gingerly to be zombies. Another building caught fire after one of the shades lobbed a flaming bottle against its wooden facade.
"I swear to..whoever...why did the zombies have to take all the normal people but leave morons like that running around?" she muttered as she pushed the door closed and made for the rear entrance. Carey was half-tempted to turn back around and go dispense some Old West-style justice on them but it was a passing thought. She gritted her teeth as she began unblocking the other door.
Carey stepped out into a side street and immediately dusted ash from her shoulders. She looked up and saw it was falling like snow and wondered exactly how much of this city was ablaze. Carey shook her head and crept along the building's wall, careful to stay in the shadows lest she come across more of the self-appointed urban renewal experts.
Now that she had escaped what could have been a fiery end, Carey's adrenaline rush began to ebb and she realized that she only hurt fractionally less than she had the day before. Before she had turned in for the night, she'd made the mistake of looking at the massive bruise that being shot in the chest by a hand cannon from less than ten yards away had given her and had grimaced. It was already ugly, a sickly yellow and purple mixture, and she could only imagine what it would look like in another few days.
"Still don't know how a glorified coffee mug saved my life but I'm okay with that," Carey said as she tapped the ballistic ceramic plating in her vest for the hundredth time. It was shattered now but it had done its job. As she walked, Carey pulled the bottle of pain relievers from a pocket and dry-swallowed a few. The pain hadn't dug its claws in her yet but it would. Definitely would. She was determined to give it as small a foothold on her body as she could.
Carey had nearly reached the outskirts of the city in a half hour of skulking but she had to duck behind an overturned Dumpster when she heard more of her firebugs coming around a corner. She crouched down, one knee right beside what had to be the remains of a Diaper Genie, when they came into view. The were each swinging a plastic Walmart bag full of glass bottles and she could smell the gasoline on them. "Molotovs. Viva la resistance." Carey raised a comradely fist in front of her and turned it into a one-fingered salute.
She watched as they passed out of sight and in front of her hiding spot and felt the urge of blowing the backs of their heads through their nose evaporate when she saw how young they were. The twins' age. Maybe a year older, tops. Not old enough to shave yet. "I ought to spank your asses raw..." she whispered as they appeared again on the other side of the bin. She took some deep breaths and let them pass with just a shake of her head.
Once she was sure they were gone, Carey stood up and felt her back twinge. She grunted and stretched the muscles as much as she could before moving on again. As much as she tried to prevent it, Carey's mind kept drifting back to the boys she'd just seen and then on to her own. She knew, knew, that her sons wouldn't do that so why were those two? What was so different? She scowled as she walked through the last vestiges of the town and into the suburbs.
Maybe they've given up, her brain said long after she thought the conversation was over. They don't have anything left to live for so they're doing things they always fantasized about but never did in the normal world. Carey slowed her gait and considered that point. Zack and Cody knew, or at least believed, that she'd somehow make her way out of New York City and find them at their aunt's farm. They had hope, a reason to go on putting one foot in front of the other. The kids back in Covington? Maybe they'd seen their parents get eaten before their eyes and figured there wasn't anything remotely good for them on the horizon. Maybe they'd just given up and were waiting for their time to run out.
Carey sighed as she pulled her water from the pack. That just wasn't fair. "Shit," she said after a long pull from the bottle. She stopped in her tracks and looked back the way she'd came. Somewhere behind her were two kids that, as far as she could tell, weren't even carrying guns walking through a zombie-infested city. It pulled on her heart strings and it took everything in her power to stop from going after them. She rationalized it by telling herself that they could be anywhere in the city by now and, just in case she forgot, there were hundreds or thousands of walking dead roaming around. "Shit," she said again. "Why didn't I say something when I saw them?"
Carey put the lid back on the bottle with as much malice as she could and jammed it back into her pack. There was no point in recriminations, she knew, but it still dug at her. She shook her head and started walking again, determined to get out of the shadows of the city and find a car as quickly as she could. As she walked, Carey reviewed her route in her mind. Louisville was the next major city she'd come across and it wasn't that far away, an hour and change if she remembered right. She hadn't made the drive in years but was fairly sure that Louisville hadn't moved all that much.
"I've got to figure out how to hot wire a car," she said as she leaned against the fender of a Neon. "They always make it look so easy in the movies. Just cross a few wires and then poke something with a screwdriver. Where are you when I need you, Nicholas Cage?" she asked with a smile.
It didn't take long for her to revert to her old habit of looking for cars in driveways and then breaking into a house to hopefully find a key. It had worked before it and sure beat trying her luck on the sides of the road. Carey found a likely neighborhood and got to work looking and was rewarded in less than ten minutes. She pulled the truck out of the driveway and maneuvered to the highway before she put the hammer down.
Carey made her way down I-71 and noticed that it was easily the clearest highway she'd been on. There were a few cars here and there but the majority seemed to have been moved and dumped unceremoniously on the sides of the road. The miles to the city rolled down as she passed the road signs. Carey suddenly slammed her hand on the steering wheel as the possibility of the bridges across the river being out occurred to her for the first time.
"Oh they'd better not be. I'm tired of stealing cars."
But they were. Coming into the city from a different direction than her sons, Carey had a better view of the river and all the sections of bridge decking that laid in it. "Son of a-...fine. Whatever." She mumbled a slew of choice words as she headed down a ramp. She'd turned off the exit and gone less than a mile before one of the front tires blew out. "Oh you have got to be kidding me," she yelled over the flapping of loose rubber. The truck was becoming hard to control and she stopped it and got out.
Carey gazed up and down the street and figured that it wasn't her day. The truck had brought her as far as the beginnings of the downtown area and the adjacent riverfront, but there was nothing but partially demolished warehouses and broken glass and empty streets. "Tomorrow will be better," she told herself as she started walking down the blacktop. "No, this afternoon will be better." She nearly added because it can't get any worse but stopped since it most definitely could.
Carey only had to shoot two zombies while she walked the street and that surprised her. She'd been there a time or two for Derby and knew it wasn't as small a city as many people assumed. "They're probably all down at the track drinking a brain julep or something," she said to herself as she finally got another view of the river. "Or tailgating."
The sound of a motor broke her out of her reverie and Carey instantly looked around for anywhere to hide but found nothing close. She unslung the shotgun and head it ready as the truck approached. "I dare you," she said into the rumble of the engine, "try something."
The truck slowed and veered to the center of the road and Carey brought the gun up a little higher in her arms. She wasn't aiming it yet but it would only take a fraction of a second to point it at the truck and pull the trigger. "Be cool, Carey," she told herself as it idled to a stop a few feet away from her. Her eyes widened as she saw the driver and passenger were no older than her boys and for a brief instant, thought that they were the kids she'd seen earlier in the day. The gun dipped slightly in her hands when she saw they were just as nervous as she was.
"Pardon me, ma'am, but we were wondering if you'd like a ride," the driver said.
"Usually I'd tell you to come back when you can grow a beard and try that pick-up line again but this time I'll make an exception if you're going somewhere with a boat."
"We are."
"Really?" Carey was a little surprised.
"Yep," the passenger chirped, his voice still high.
They're so young, Carey thought as she pondered her response. "Well consider me Mrs. Daisy."
"Huh?"
"That's a yes," she said as she stepped onto the truck's running boards and latched a hand on the door frame. The boy hit the gas and Carey swore she heard one of them whisper "she's kinda hot" as they drove away. She grinned.
The drive back took longer than she expected. The truck had to navigate an obstacle course of shattered streets and burned out roadblocks before finally arriving at the compound. Carey and the boys traded small talk as they drove and she was nearly thrown from the truck when the driver swerved in shock when she told them her name after learning theirs.
"There is no way," Nate said when he'd regained control.
"Freaky," the other boy added.
"What's freaky and why is there no way?"
Nate stopped the truck and looked at her through the open window. "You are Carey Martin?" Carey nodded and waited for him to continue. It dawned on her the second he began to speak again. He's seen the boys! "You wouldn't happen to have a set of blond twins and a little dark-haired boy on a journey to Kansas or somewhere else really flat, would you?"
"You've seen them?" she asked, her mind too overwhelmed to notice the addition of another in her sons' group. Her heart expanded in her chest and she gripped the door tightly. They'd seen them! Every night she'd spend in bed looking up at the ceiling and wondering...
"They were here. Right here. Not even a day ago."
Carey felt like she was going to faint. She'd crossed almost half the country, traveled who knows how many miles across the United States of Zombieland, and she'd missed her boys by less than twenty-four hours. "How much faster can this truck go, Nate?" she asked, urging him to find out when he wasn't sure.
"Give me the radio, Jimmy. We should be close enough now," he said after they'd meandered through the warren of streets and finally had the colony in sight. Jimmy dutifully handed it over as Nate began making his way up the road. "Yeah, it's me," he said after a garbled voice blasted out the speaker. "Get me Ben. He's not going to believe who we have with us."
Carey looked the place over as they went up the switchbacks. It looked like a house that had been turned into a small fortress. Gun emplacements sat on sandbags at the top of the hill and she was sure she saw the glint of a scope coming from the roof. She looked again but whoever was there had either moved or shifted their aim. And what were those black lines on the hillside? They looked fairly new.
Minutes later they were parked and Carey hopped off and turned to the small crowd that was approaching. Nate and Jimmy got out and stood beside her. "Carey Martin?" the apparent leader said when he stopped a few feet away. His hand was hovering near a pistol strapped to his leg, making no move to grab it but obviously on alert.
"That would be me."
"It seems your reputation precedes you, Ms. Martin."
"Whatever it is that the twins broke, I'm sure I can help you find a new one," she said, instantly falling into damage control mode as she had a hundred times before with Moseby.
"No, it's not that. Not hardly."
"Oh, I'm sure they broke something. You probably just haven't found it yet," she told him and he laughed.
"Why don't you come inside and I can fill you in on the details that I'm sure you're dying to hear." Carey nodded and followed him, the others in the posse forming up behind her.
"As I'm sure Nate told you, your three boys were here yesterday-"
"Wait...three?" Nate's earlier statement flashed through her head. She'd been too emotional to register it at the time. "Either I had a kid I don't remember somewhere along the line or they picked up a stray."
"I'm fairly certain it was the latter, Carey." She was pretty sure his eyes had just roamed over her figure and she felt her cheeks blushing slightly. "Little black haired boy, maybe eight, maybe nine. Seventy pounds with lead bars in his pockets and holding two gallons of milk."
"Definitely the latter." She wasn't overly surprised that they'd picked up an orphan on their way. Neither boy would leave someone like that alone, especially not Cody. He had a caring streak a mile wide for little underdogs like that. "Were they okay? Healthy? They weren't hurt, were they?"
"As far as I could tell, they seemed in good health. A little skinny, maybe, definitely in need of a hair cut, but nothing bad."
"That's good news," she said and meant it.
"It would have been even better news if they were still here today. I, we, tried to get them to stay with us at least for a while to rest up. I can't even imagine what all they've been through coming all the way from Boston. It's been bad enough here."
"Coming out of the east coast was...an adventure, to be honest. I still sometimes wonder how I managed to get out of there in one piece."
"Some of us are survivors, Carey. You, me, the people in this compound," he gestured around. "When push comes to shove, we shove back."
"Very true. No zombie is going to stop me until I find my boys," she told him.
"You hear that, Nate? Never mess with a momma grizzly." The boy nodded and grinned.
"I'm waiting for a Sarah Palin joke, Ben. I really am," Carey said, keeping a straight face for all of two seconds.
"I can see Indiana from my house," he deadpanned and rolled his eyes. "Bet she and her ilk are safe from the zombies. No brains and all that. Anyway, you arrived just in time for lunch. After that, we'll see about getting you across the river."
Carey had thought that her days of eating fresh baked bread were over but she was wrong. Lunch consisted mainly of deer on a bun and a ladle of beans from a huge pot but it was the best thing she'd had since she'd left for New York City so many weeks ago. That was good but the cold beer that Ben brought out for dessert blew her away.
"You have a refrigerator?" she asked as she nursed it.
"Several. We run them on solar and diesel. Took a while to get it all set up right but it works fine."
"I bet Cody would have loved to get his hands on your system."
"He did. He and Anthony, that's the other boy's name, by the way, spent quite a while studying it before they left. Looked like he was committing it all to memory."
Carey laughed. "I bet if they beat me to the farm I'll arrive to a fully powered house."
"I wouldn't be surprised. He seemed like a very bright young man."
"He is." She was tempted to give him examples of just how bright her son was when a siren went off.
"Walkers!" Beer forgotten, Ben shouted and lunged for a nearby rack of rifles. He picked up one and hesitated before tossing another to her. "Can you shoot this?"
"An M-16? Yes. I had a crash course when we were trying to get out of Brooklyn." She caught the gun and followed him out the door, grabbing two extra magazines from the table as she passed.
"What's the story?" Ben called as they stepped into daylight. She saw a group of five take cover behind a wall of earth and begin popping off rounds down the hill.
"Either the walkers have learned to snip wires or we have a bad connection down there somewhere along the perimeter. The alarm never went off until I triggered it myself," a woman said as she ran by.
"How far up are they?"
"The lead walkers were halfway up the hill before I saw them."
"Great," Ben said. "Get patrols on all sides of the hill, even overlooking the river. If we've got a fault in our tripwires they could be everywhere. And get ready to light the trenches." The woman nodded and took off, barking orders. A mini gun wound up somewhere and began lacing the slope with hundreds of rounds a minute. The building emptied and dozens of guns pointed down at the mass of zombies and opened fire. Carey joined one of the boys she'd met earlier as he scrambled into the back of a truck bed to get a better view.
"This happen often?" she asked as she fired a short burst.
"Never," Nate answered, echoing her rounds with his own. "We knew it eventually would, though.
"It's the beer," Carey said with a laugh. "They can't resist it."
"Yeah, that's it!"
"You're supposed to answer that they can have it because it's nasty or something," Carey said as she aimed.
"Thirteen is the new twenty-one these days," he replied and unloaded a burst.
As she shot, Carey noticed how many there were and her skin crawled. Thousands of them, slowly and stupidly coming up the hill at her. Each time she lined one up in her sights and blew its head apart, three more filled its spot. This was going to be a very interesting afternoon.
The mass of undead had almost reached the summit of their little hill when she heard Ben shouting. "Fill 'em and flame 'em!" he yelled and she watched as the person nearest a gasoline tanker run to it and start turning the handle on a large valve. A hose went stiff with pressure and the astringent smell of gas reached her nose as she saw black troughs fill and then overflow with the liquid. Aah.
"Poor man's flamethrower," Ben said as he came near her truck. "Watch this." he motioned to the truck and the gas was shut off. Seconds later something flaming sailed over her head and a gigantic whoooosh! ripped the air and Carey could feel the heat on her face as the whole hillside erupted in flames.
"Holy shit," was all that she could say as the flames spread and engulfed every zombie unlucky enough to have been doused with the running gasoline. She watched them as they stumbled aimlessly and thought that the movie directors had got at least that part right. Their hands were up and they moaned almost piteously as their foul skin melted away.
The shots tapered off and finally came to a halt as the zombies began falling by the hundreds. The smell...Carey finally noticed how awful it was. Burnt, rotten meat. She breathed through her mouth so she wouldn't gag.
"I was hoping we'd never have to use that," Ben said as the last hundred or so zombies fell over and smoldered.
"Well, for an ace up your sleeve, that was a pretty good one," she told him. "What are you going to do about the bodies? Leave them?"
"Even if they didn't stink we couldn't leave them there. Walker bodies, burned or otherwise, seem to attract more walkers. So we liberated a bulldozer from a construction site just for an occasion like this."
"A mass grave," Carey said coolly.
"Exactly. But we're going to let them sit and cook for a little while just to make sure that they're all good and dead and stay in the ground when we put them there. While they're roasting, let's see about getting you over the river."
A short while later she was standing on the deck of their boat and marveling at the guns mounted at each end. "Wow."
"That's about the same thing your boys said when they saw our modifications."
"They're very impressive, that's for sure," she said as the engines sputtered to life. The lines were cast off and the boat began moving away from the dock.
"I should start charging fares for all the people I've been taking across the river lately," the pilot joked as he steered the boat out into open water.
"Do you take Visa?" Carey asked and he laughed.
Just like the previous day, he took the boat a mile or so down the coast from where the bridge suddenly ended and came to a stop near a dock that had seen better days before the twins were born. The two men manning the machine guns were getting ready to open up and make sure there weren't any surprises waiting for her when she stopped them.
"Just in case my boys are over there somewhere," she explained.
"But ma'am..."
"I'm a big girl, I can handle myself. Plus, listen." she cupped a hand to her ear and heard nothing over the puttering of the motors. "It's clear."
"You sure? I really don't mind." the man lovingly stroked the barrel of the machine gun.
"I'm sure. Thank you for getting me across the river. I don't know how to thank you."
"Just find those boys, ma'am."
"I will," she said as she shook hands.
They watched as she climbed onto the deck and made her way up the gentle slope and disappeared into the trees. Carey heard the boat leave as she made it to the top. She scanned the area and saw a single road and began to follow it, hoping that it would take her somewhere she could find a ride quickly.
The road grew larger and there were soon houses on the horizon. Good, she thought. Houses meant cars and cars meant she could make up more ground on her kids, all three of them, before the sun went down.
How far could they go in a day? She had to assume that they'd figured out how to drive or else they'd still be...where, exactly? Probably barely out of Pennsylvania. And unless they were supremely lucky or had inherited the hot wiring gene from Kurt, they had to be having the same problem finding transportation as she was. She laughed at the thought of either of her boys trying to drive a stick.
She walked past the first group of buildings after deciding that they didn't look very promising and kept going until a sign for a truck stop appeared off in the distance. She felt a smile creep across her face as she saw more than a handful of big rigs sitting in its parking lot, all their chrome winking at her in the sun. "Perfect."
Carey picked up her pace and nearly jogged down the road. She paused across the street from the stop and crouched behind a car and surveyed the building and the immediate surroundings. She wished for a pair of binoculars but as far as she could see, the area was clear. Carey stood up and crept to the parking lot, eyes and ears alert. The nearest row of trucks was only a few dozen yards away but her attention was drawn to the building itself.
She was low on supplies and, knowing what all could be found in a truck stop from first-hand experience with Kurt when the band was just starting out and were touring in an old Volkswagen bus, couldn't resist going inside.
Carey pushed the door open with a shoulder and moved inside. It was quiet and she relaxed slightly as she began walking around. She filled up her pack with water bottles and high calorie junk food and walked past what seemed like acres of chrome accessories. She noticed a glass counter near the center of the store and headed that way. Sunglasses and knives mostly, she saw as she stepped up to it. "I've never had a pair of Oakleys before," she said as she smashed the case with the butt of the gun and grabbed a pair, shuddering when she saw the price tag hanging off one of the ear pieces.
"Two hundred dollars? No wonder I've never had a pair." She began peeling the label off. "Attention shoppers, today only, all sunglasses are free," she said as she put them on her head. She smashed another case and picked up a nicely sized knife and turned it over in her hands. "Knives are free, too," she said in her announcer voice as she stuck it back in its sheath. She'd find a way to attach it to her vest later. Her gaze briefly settled on a rack of mesh trucker hats and she laughed. "I don't care if they are free, no way." Satisfied with her new purchases, Carey stealthily crept outside.
She was halfway to the line of big trucks when she saw a much smaller white tow truck sitting near the gas pumps. Carey altered her course slightly and looked inside and grinned when she saw the keys hanging in the ignition. She opened the door and slung her bag in the passenger seat and climbed in. As the motor warmed up she thought maybe the trucker hat wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.
"Breaker one, breaker one," she said, holding an imaginary CB, "this is Crazy Cooter comin' atcha." Carey checked the gas gauge and saw she had three quarters of a tank. That was good. That might get her all the way to the edge of the Mississippi river. She was under no illusions of there being a bridge over the river after what she'd seen so far. "And," she added, "if I need to, I can clear my own path if I get stuck in traffic. Assuming I can figure out how to run the hook."
Carey put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot and merged onto the highway. She had gas, she had sunlight, and she had the knowledge that somewhere ahead of here were her twins. "And Anthony," she said to herself as the wind whipped her hair. "I want to meet that boy."
I think that I got a big old dose of ADD each time I sat down to write this chapter. I found myself wasting time on Wikipedia looking up the most obscure things (I can now tell you waaay too much about molten salt or Earth's Proterozoic Peroid if you're interested) and almost entirely plotting out my next big thing (a lengthy TSL story set in the Star Wars universe) instead of doing this. But it's done. Thanks for reading!