Z Day +1

  JAMES

  I woke up sometime later. The house was silent. Everyone seemed asleep except for Shae, who sat beside my bed.

  “Looks like your shakes are gone,” Shae said, examining my hands. “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know…kinda…fat?” I said.

  “Fat?” Shae asked.

  “Bloated, maybe?” I said.

  She frowned. “Your stomach staying put?”

  “Yeah, it seems fine. Hungry actually…for food, real food.”

  “I guess that’s a good sign.” She filled me in on their plan while I snacked on some crackers and water.

  “And we’re ready to move out now? Good, let’s get moving,” I said, starting to get out of bed.

  “I think we should wait until daylight,” Shae said.

  “What are you talking about? It’s plenty light outside,” I pulled the curtain back, revealing morning sunshine flooding the street. “See?”

  “Uh, James. It’s 2 a.m., and it’s dark outside,” she said carefully.

  I looked back outside. “Oh.”

  “Does it look bright outside to you?” her voice had the tone of one talking to a crazy person.

  I nodded, still looking at the fully lit street.

  “Maybe you should rest a bit more,” she said.

  “Fine, but we’re gone at first light,” I countered.

  We were loaded up and moving as the sun crested the smoke-stained sky. I could tell Shae was still worrying about me; she wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. I had slept a few more hours and ate some solid food when I got up. Worrying about my condition faded into the background as we left the house.

  Driving away from the property I’d grown up on, various memories ran through my mind. Past Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easter Egg Hunts. My family had always gathered here for the holidays. I remembered cutting the grass with my grandfather or helping him in the garden with the onions he loved so much. So many of my childhood memories were set here. As we left it behind I had to put them all away so I could focus on the here and now.

  Shae and I were in the first vehicle, along with Mark and Becca. Shae’s bike had managed to fit in the truck's bed after all. The rest of the crew were in the second truck. There was a CB radio in my truck, and the chatter was nothing but talk about roadblocks, delays, and what a bunch of assholes the National Guard were. The truckers had been sitting at roadblocks for hours or diverted back the way they came.

  The neighborhood didn’t seem that out of place until we reached the edge by the police substation. There were cars parked all over the station and not a cop in sight. We weren’t sure what to make of this and kept going.

  Our first stop was to be the closest Super Walmart. I was hoping it hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned out yet, and I knew four gas stations were within a block of it. As we rounded the corner, we saw the stations were still open, but the lines were long. We queued up, and Shae and I got out to walk to the Walmart. Becca was supposed to call me when they finished getting gas and circle the parking lot until I called them back.

  The store wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Many people were still paying heed to the news broadcasts and staying home with locked doors. It surprised me that the food side of the store still had several shelves full of food. It seemed people had gone for their favorite frozen treats as almost all the frozen food was gone, along with most fresh food.

  There were only a handful of checkout counters, as it looked like most employees had stayed home.

  Security was one of those who had come to work. There were two out front and two more inside the store. They didn’t concern me much, but to ordinary civilians, four armed guards meant things were under control. I knew from experience that if the people in the store rioted, those guards didn’t stand a chance.

  I made my way to the sporting goods section in the rear of the store. It appeared to have been cleaned out as well. I kicked myself for not coming last night.

  “Can I help you?” a clerk appeared nervously from around the corner.

  “You have any ammo left?” I asked.

  “Only .22. A guy just came and literally bought everything else,” the clerk said.

  Shae was gone in a flash.

  “I’ll take what you got.” I looked at the display cases that held firearms but knew better than to try to buy anything, as the background check and paperwork would take longer than we had.

  A scream from across the store made the clerk jump and drop his keys. More shouts and scuffling were coming from further back in the store.

  “Code brown to hardware, code brown,” a frantic voice called across the intercom.

  “Sorry, I’ll…be right back.” The clerk hurried away toward the shouts, leaving behind his keys.

  It only took a few seconds for me to make up my mind. I’d “appropriated” more than my fair share of things since being in the service; it was part of being a cop. We were the worst of the lot.

  I had the display cases open and looked around. I knew there were cameras, and security would be on me in no time. Grabbing two large hunting bags, I stuffed the weapons and .22 ammo into them.

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  I jumped a moment later as a shopping cart smacked into the counter behind me. I turned and found Shae with a cart half full of ammunition boxes. A giant bolt of cloth was draped over them as concealment. She grinned at me as I took it all in.

  “I don’t want to know,” I said as I tossed the two bags into the cart, and we turned around. Something caught my eye as we walked out of the sporting goods aisle. I stopped, pulling every machete and long knife off the rack beside me. I loaded them into the cart until they were spilling over the sides. My phone rang just as I finished, causing me to jump again.

  “You’re pretty jumpy, Conner,” Shae said as I put the phone to my ear.

  “We’re done,” Becca said.

  “Meet us out front and have the back open.” Turning to Shae, “Let’s get out of here.”

  As we exited the section, I could see two security guards hurtling straight toward us at a dead run.

  “Don’t kill them,” I mumbled, bracing for them to come.

  “What do you take me for?” Shae chastised me.

  The guards hadn’t drawn their weapons, so I figured we had a good chance of taking them down without a fight, at least not a lethal one. My head started to pound as my heart sped up. I could feel the blood coursing through me as I tensed for the fight.

  At first, I thought it was just the guards who seemed to slow down, but as I watched, I realized the whole world seemed to slow to a crawl. The phenomenon was so distracting that I didn’t realize the guards had passed us until Shae nudged me.

  “Come on,” she hissed.

  I hurried, noticing a man lying face down in a fabric aisle as we passed. When we reached the front of the store, I knew there was no way we would make it through the checkout line, not with two duffle bags full of guns. The guards would be on us no matter what else was going on. Picking up my phone, I dialed.

  “Miria, you out front? Good, leave one truck at the South entrance, tailgate open. Take the other back to the North entrance and cause a diversion. I don’t care what kind of diversion, but I need it now!”

  I looked around nervously, precisely what a thief should not do to draw attention.

  “Stop fidgeting; pretend like you’re still on the phone,” Shae said with a bored look on her face. She looked like someone in a store who didn’t want to be there.

  A few people noticed our cargo and were mumbling a short distance away while I pretended to talk on the phone.

  A loud screech from outside marked our distraction as I saw the other truck pull up. We pushed forward past the doors, setting off the door alarm. We got outside, still expecting guards to be waiting for us, and found they were on the other side of the store dealing with a traffic accident.

  “Quickly,” Shae hissed, drawing my attention. I’d been standing there, staring at the accident my sister had caused.

  “Help me,” she said. I helped her pick the entire cart up and tip it into the back of the truck before closing the tailgate and camper shell.

  “Did y’all just steal all that?” Mark asked as we jumped into the back seat.

  “Just drive,” I growled, picking up my phone. “Miria, we’re good. Meet you at Slaughter and Manchaca.”

  “My, my, my, a cop stealing,” Mark scolded.

  “It’s called appropriation,” I snipped.

  “Maybe in the military. Those of us in the real world call it stealing,” he grinned.

  “Watch the road and stop bothering our thief…er appropriator,” Becca patted Mark’s shoulder.

  I didn’t feel right about stealing all of that. As a kid, my sticky fingers had gotten me into more than one spot of trouble. I’d learned my lesson but knew it was easy to fall back into that habit once I figured out how easy some thefts could be. Regardless, it was wrong, even for a good cause. I turned to Shae, but she seemed to read my mind and held up a hand before I could speak.

  “Don’t ask me a question you don’t want the answer to,” was all she said before looking behind us to see if we were being followed.

  I swallowed my question about the ammo guy and kept my mouth shut as we made our getaway.

  We passed a burned-out car that had been pushed to the side of the road with another right behind it. I could see more smoke coming from inside the subdivisions around us and wondered if anyone was there fighting all these fires. Every gas station we passed was swarmed with cars from every direction, causing mayhem. At one of them, a shootout started right as we passed.

  We saw our first shambler while waiting for the second truck at the meeting point. We were sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store, which boasted being open 24 hours but was locked up tight. It was in a small strip mall with a Mexican restaurant on one end that had the best pralines. I wondered if we had time to stop by when the shambler came around the corner from the back of the building.

  It was far off, on the opposite side of the parking lot from us, and didn’t seem to be coming our way. Instead, it seemed to be drawn by the moving traffic of the road closer to it. We watched its slow process with grim fascination. It was a man wearing jeans and a t-shirt that said “Keep Austin Weird.” Its left arm hung limp at its side, and it dragged its right foot.

  “Still wonder if it’s a zombie?” Shae asked.

  Mark shook his head. “Damn,” he whispered.

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Becca couldn’t take her eyes off it; none of us could.

  “Don’t waste the ammo,” I managed just as the zombie pulled itself up to the sidewalk from the parking lot and straight into traffic.

  The car didn’t even slow down. No one expects a pedestrian to step out into traffic; it’s just not done. Being struck at nearly 80 kilometers an hour can destroy anything it hits, including the vehicle.

  The shambler crushed in the front of the car before being flipped up into the windshield and over the top. It came to a rest back on the sidewalk it had come from. The damaged car screeched to a stop. The driver behind the first car didn’t have time to stop and slammed into the first car. Several more cars attempted to swerve around the collision. A few scrapes followed, but no significant damage as the traffic slowed and began to weave around the scene.

  No one stopped to check on the two cars.

  “Should we…” Becca started.

  “Wait, look,” Shae said.

  Someone got out of the second car and made their way shakily up towards the first. They poked their head in the window and pulled out a cell phone.

  “Look!” Becca indicated where the shambler had come to rest.

  The shambler’s body had been mangled, but one arm still worked. We watched in horrid fascination as the one-armed ghoul began to pull itself towards the crash site. The wounded and shaken victims had no idea what was coming.

  “I…I can’t watch,” Becca said but didn’t turn her eyes.

  “OK,” I said, picking my rifle up off the floor and reaching for the door handle, but the door didn’t budge. I absently reached for the door lock and realized it wasn’t the lock, but the horribly burned face of a woman pressed up against the glass. I froze. I couldn’t move, speak, or breathe as numbing fear gripped me.

  *No, no, no, no, no, no,* my mind cried as the world around me disappeared and was replaced with a burning desert.

  ∞?∞

  SHAE

  “James!” I pulled James away from the door before kicking it open, knocking the blackened figure to the ground. I calmly crawled over him, stepped out and shot it in the head with the .357 I had tucked into my back. I glanced about the truck but saw no other monsters and returned to James. He was curled up in a ball on the seat. When I touched him, I could feel a hardened wall of pure terror around his mind. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t feel like it was because of the zombie.

  I climbed back into the truck and said, “Move away from that thing and keep your eyes open.”

  Mark moved the truck without a word.

  I put James’s head in my lap and tried to figure out how to bring him out of whatever he was in.

  “Is he OK?” Becca asked, glancing back.

  “I don’t know, something’s wrong,” I said.

  “You think it’s the drugs or blood?” Becca asked.

  “I don’t think it's either,” I said.

  “PTSD,” Mark said as he moved the vehicle to another part of the parking lot. “James mentioned he’d been diagnosed a while back, something about a convoy being hit by a roadside bomb. All I could get out of him was it didn’t end well.”

  Miria’s arrival ended the conversation. “Don’t say anything yet. If she asks, tell her he’s asleep. I’m going to try and bring him out of it,” I said as I quietly pricked his finger and then my own.

  I hated full-blood-on-blood contact and avoided it at all costs. It was simply too powerful. There were no secrets or walls; either party could read the other’s soul. It was also the only thing I could think of that might penetrate the barrier he’d formed around himself.