It was a bittersweet departure from the cabin in the woods. They had spent three normal days together, laughing and enjoying the company of friends and lovers. Lauren knew rationally why they had to leave, but she was still remiss to do so.
Lauren tossed a duffle bag to Bo who was repacking the trunk. When they were through stealing whatever provisions they could from the cabin, Kenzi called after Bo and Lauren. "Uh, guys. We've got a problem."
A one-armed infected approached up the long driveway. Bo knew, where there was one, there were hundreds. "Get in the car." Bo followed Kenzi and Lauren out the front door and to the car. She unscrewed the gas tank and began filling the Camaro with gas cans she had found in the garage, for the generator they hadn't used, she presumed. It was finds like these that made their lives easier. Without the Camaro they were as good as dead. They relied on it to make speedy getaways and help them pass impossible distances. But right now Bo was using the Camaro's latest addition: a cow catcher the she had found in a barn a few days after the outbreak. The Camaro snarled as she approached "Lefty" as Kenzi had called him and the engine revved as she took him out at the knees, sending Lefty flying end over end.
"Hang time bonus!" Kenzi exclaimed.
The two had made a game out of killing the infected. She supposed that was the only way to reconcile killing things that were once people, but Lauren didn't subscribe to that reality. No, she saw people who were sick, people who she could help if she just had a lab instead of a baseball bat to crack against their skulls.
"Ungh!" Kenzi grunted as the Camaro skidded to a halt. The passenger door flew open and Lauren jumped out of the car like it was on fire, Kenzi wrenched her body from the back seat and jumped out onto the concrete. Bo tossed the keys in the air and caught them with a jangle before tucking them into her jacket pocket. She started walking towards an ominous looking church. "Gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee!" Kenzi ran past up the embankment.
"Kenzi, be careful!" Bo called after her.
"It's a church, what's the worst that can happen?" Kenzi hollered back.
"Famous last words," Lauren smirked as she joined Bo, walking towards the small town steeple.
It was humbling walking through a cemetery where the tombstones were more than a hundred years old. It was also more than a bit eerie to be walking through a cemetery during the zombie apocalypse.
They approached the front doors, still ajar from Kenzi. Once inside it was easy to tell that they had used the church as a hold out against the infected. Pews were pushed against the doors, save the one from which they had entered and there were clear signs of a fight. Oddly, though, there were no bodies. But blood, there was plenty of that to go around.
"What happened here, Carrie's prom? A town-wide exorcism?" Kenzi appeared beside Lauren and Bo.
"We should go." Lauren pulled on Bo's arm.
"We should look for supplies," Bo insisted.
"Bo, I have a bad feeling about this."
There was movement in the office and the women raised their weapons. Bo approached the door slowly; her sword sang as she unsheathed it and pushed open the door with its casing. A man sat at the desk in front of a stained glass window. The colors it cast over his face were eerie reds and blues.
He stood and gestured behind him. "Come child, my congregation awaits." The bookcase slid open and stairs appeared. Lauren could hear the moaning, not of sick people in need of a doctor but dead people in need of a mercy killing.
"Bo," Lauren warned, placing a hand on her arm. But Bo shook her head and followed the man down the rabbit hole. At the bottom of the stairs was a recreation room of sorts, filled with infected.
"Hey Mister," Kenzi started. "Your flock is a bunch of people-eating zombies."
"They're not zombies," Lauren interjected.
"Not the time, Doc, not the time." Kenzi admonished.
"Buddy, I don't think you understand what you're dealing with. These people, are very ill and they will hurt you if you're not careful." Bo tried the friendly neighbor tact.
He threw open his robes to reveal bite wounds covering his arms. He smiled. "By the glory of God, I am still alive."
"What the shit?" Kenzi muttered.
"How is that even possible?" Bo asked.
"He's a carrier," Lauren said simply.
"So what? This guy gets to play Father Zombie to an adoring and might I add, bloody congregation in the basement of his church? That's messed up."
"Well, you seem to have everything under control here," Lauren backed up towards the stairs, pulling the backs of Kenzi's and Bo's shirts along with her.
"It's so rare that we get visitors," the pastor said. "Won't you stay?"
"Love to, but you know, I just crossed 'hang with a zombie priest and his congregation' off my bucket list the other day."
"Keep up the good work," Bo added as they carefully backtracked up the stairs. The women busted out of the front doors of the church and high tailed it to the Camaro.
"I got one." Kenzi said, ducking into the back seat. "A lesbian scientist, a thief and a bisexual sex demon enter a church…"
"Who bursts into flames first?" Bo smiled.
"The scientist," Lauren answered with a lopsided grin as they sped away. "Alchemy that be true?"
They had escaped to the sewers. The horde was much too large for them to fight without firepower and Bo only had a few shotgun shells left, so she lifted the manhole cover and ushered her humans into an uncertain fate. They were knee-high in sewer water, something Kenzi was unprepared for as she complained about the state of her boots.
Kenzi wagged a finger at them. "Bee tee dubs, we are totes stopping at the mall when we get outta here."
"It's the end of life as we knew it, Kenzi, nobody cares what you're wearing."
"I care if what I'm wearing smells like shit."
"Shhh…" Bo hushed them, holding up a hand. They stopped walking and the water lapped against the walls.
They were attempting to circle around the block to the Camaro from which they had become separated while Kenzi went on a field trip to the local deli looking for cured meats. In the time it took Kenzi to case Hero's sandwich shop, the street had filled with the infected. They packed as much cured meat as their satchel could hold and headed for the manhole cover in the alley.
Now they were entrenched in the disgusts of the sewer on their way back to their lifeline, the Camaro. It was times like these that reminded them how important the yellow beast was to them. Bo shouldered the manhole cover to the side and surveyed the street.
"We're clear," Bo said into the hole.
Lauren emerged from the sewers to Bo's smile, softening the day's experiences. Bo held a finger to her lips and nodded her head towards the main horde which was at the other end of the street, where they had come from. Bo pulled Kenzi out of the hole. They piled in the Camaro as fast as they could and Bo gunned the engine. At that, the horde came limping towards them. She plowed through the bodies like a lawn mower through grass, taking the corner at breakneck speed to clear the hood. They had made it through another impossible situation unscathed. One of these days their luck would run out.
"Jesus," Lauren said at the carnage in the empty emergency room. There was blood everywhere. On the desk, up the walls, in the waiting room. It was more blood than any one person could give. She opened her bag and pulled out gloves and masks for Bo and Kenzi.
"Is this really necessary?" Kenzi held up the mask with two fingers.
"Let's put it this way: even with masks and gloves I would still advise you not to touch anything." Lauren smiled smugly.
Bo snapped on the sterile gloves and placed the mask over her face. She eyed Kenzi who, believe it or not, was still deciding on whether or not she wanted to wear the ensemble. "Just put them on," Bo pushed Kenzi's shoulder for effect.
Kenzi made a face and slid into the gloves before covering her nose and mouth with the mask. "Now where can I get one of those crash carts?"
Bo and Lauren looked at one another and chuckled at Kenzi's irrepressible spirit. Bo led the way into the darkened hallways of the hospital, emergency lights having burnt out long ago. Thankfully, they had scavenged the flashlights they were using from another stop in their illustrious Camaro tour of the area. Much like this stop, there was a method to their madness.
Criss-crossing the city kept them from being cornered and it kept them abreast of the horde's movements through the city center. Having left their home base in a blaze of glory, they now had nowhere to hang their hats, leaving them with more options. Being mobile was the key to survival and gathering gasoline was their first chore. The second was Operation: Flashlight. With little electricity still connected, they were quite literally groping in the dark and risking their lives in the process. The undead like the dark and the deeper they descended into the hospital the darker things appeared.
There were bloody handprints on the walls of the corridor, it was disturbing and surreal and the women were really beginning to dread the moment they found the source of them.
"We need to find the pharmacy," Lauren said to no one in particular.
"Doc, if you find an herb named Mary, you're gonna grab her, right?" She rolled her eyes at Kenzi. Kenzi's eyes widened. "Right?" She looked after Bo. "I can't even deal with her anymore."
Lauren twirled her bat. It was one of those idiosyncratic habits she'd developed since getting in touch with her brutish side. She was utterly connected to her bat. There was an imperceptible groove that only her hand fit into and she knew it.
The unmistakable scent of the infected alerted the women to their presence. The putrid smell of sweat and feces, of blood and puss. As they approached the end of a long hallway, the unmistakable moans filtered through the walls and closed doors. Lauren looked up at the sign in front of the door and then to Bo. Bo shook her head. The pharmacy was through that corridor.
Bo kicked down the door, burying a few infected in the process and Lauren came out swinging. Another sickening crack-a broken jaw, concussed, she diagnosed. Another swing, another thud-cracked skull, she thought again. She made her way through the crowded hallway fighting at Bo and Kenzi's side, something she never thought she'd do in her lifetime but who was she kidding, this was another lifetime.
At the end of the corridor Lauren tried the doorknob. Locked. Which was a good thing. It meant there was still medication in there. It also meant there wasn't an infected pharmacist in there with the meds. But how to break into a room that was built to be unbreakable?
This is where Bo stepped in, quietly taking the bat from Lauren's grasp and bashing the doorknob out of the door. She smiled and handed the bat back to Lauren who used it to push open the battered door. Once inside, she worked quickly, taking anything that might help them. Kenzi waited by the door and Bo stood inside watching Lauren work. In less than ten minutes she had taken every pain killer, anti inflammatory and a host of other practical and impractical chemical compounds. She looked up from her bag and nodded at Bo. Go time.
The Camaro sped through town. Lauren was using the time to go through her bag of medication, mentally cataloguing what she had should the occasion arise that they needed it. There was some rustling and then Lauren tossed a baggy into Kenzi's lap.
Kenzi looked down. "No, shiz!" she said, lifting the baggy to look at its contents in the light. Bright green buds filled the baggy. "Medical miracles do exist!"
"This is only medical in the sense that I pulled it off the pharmacist's body." Lauren smirked. "It was a hunch. I've known a few pharmacists in my day, thought maybe…" Lauren shrugged.
Kenzi sniffed the baggy. "You've just made my millennium, Doc."
The mall, while completely selfishly motivated, was the best idea Kenzi had in weeks. It still had power for some strange reason so their food court was an extravaganza for the trio who had been eating canned peaches and Chef Boyardee for the past month. They made a trip to the camping store and grabbed a few coolers and bottled water in addition to sleeping bags and a portable camp stove. Once Kenzi was dressed in clean clothes and righteous new boots, the women began to lug the supplies back to the Camaro.
Halfway across the mall, Bo stopped them to listen to the rustle of life or the absence of it. Bo and Kenzi drew their weapons as Lauren lifted her bat. She felt her stance settle on attack mode and gave her bat a little waggle.
"You there! Identify yourselves!" came a disembodied voice.
The women kept their weapons up. Bo spoke, "Easy, fella. We're just passing through."
"You're gonna have to pass through me," said the man walked around the corner and approached the trio.
Bo cocked her head and smiled. "Shouldn't be a problem."
"You think a couple of girls playing vigilante have a shot in hell against us?" he said revealing his two partners in crime. Big guys, bigger than the speaker by far.
"I do. Now if you'll excuse us." Bo pulled a cooler behind her as she approached the man. In a flash he made a move on Bo. She dropped the cooler and her hand shot out, wrapping around the man's neck. It was as good a time as any, Lauren thought as Bo drained the man to within an inch of his life.
"What are you?" one of his partners could be heard saying before Bo drained him, too. She must have been so hungry, Lauren watched as her eyes, a brilliant blue, shimmered as she took in their chi. She was unsure of what her next move would be and to her surprise, Bo continued to feast on the survivors. While Lauren abhorred abject violence, she was somehow okay with Bo's brand of killing, or almost killing as it were.
Every time they came in contact with other survivors it was always the same. If they were friendly, Bo would gain their trust and then the day would come when she would have to feed. She would always try to keep herself away from the survivors, knowing full well what she was capable of. That didn't change the fact that Bo had gone weeks without a feed or feeding on Lauren until she couldn't take it anymore. They both needed their strength if they were going to survive the seemingly impossible post-apocalyptic world and the harsh reality of that is Bo had to feed and she had to feed off of innocents, though on days like today she was relieved to get a three-fer of baddies to quell her urges.
End pt. 2