chapter 1
"Hey Clare...you think Lady Gaga's a zombie?"
"Huh?" Clare lifts her gaze from the dusty window where she's been sitting.
"What the h*ll are you talking about, Skater?"
"Lady Gaga..." he repeats, holding up a smudged cd showing the pop singer in a sultry pose,"...she's a zombie, right?"
Clare sighs, then shrugs. "Probably...maybe..." She wipes a strand of dirty blonde hair from her face. "I don't know..."
Clare stares at the cd in Skaters hand -Lady Gaga frozen forever in a guess-what-I'm-thinking way-. Los Angeles was one of the first cities to fall to the undead during the initial panic that swept the U.S. The military quickly overwhelmed by the surge of over three million undead, drawn by the meaty smell of those trying to flee the city. The news reports of the carnage, the footage of shambling hordes of reanimated corpses surging through the streets seeking anything living, shredding with clawed hands and broken teeth.
She remembers her own frantic flight from L.A., sneaking with hitched breath by piles of undead feeding on their victims, trying to ignore the sounds of tearing flesh and gurgled moans. Hopping over uncountable pools of blood and eviscerated bodies, making her way out of town in a slow, but frantic game of cat and mouse.
Most of all, she remembers her terror, raw and loud, which even months later still simmers within her under a thin layer of control. She had no idea if her family in Kansas City was ok. No one to turn to, nowhere to go but out. It was enough to drive her crazy, and nearly did.
She swallows hard, forcing her emotions back. A single tear wells up and tracks down her smudged cheek and she looks away, wiping it away with her sleeve.
Skater stares after her for a moment, then rolls his eyes. Humph, just what was her problem, anyway? Since the moment he'd run into her, hiding in the 7-11 near his house , shed always been a bit elusive. Yeah, the world was an utter sh*tpot now, but crying about it didn't do any good.
H*ll, he considered himself luckier than most. His dad had been one of those paranoid conspiracy junkies, worried about world takeover by commies or aliens, whatever. Crazy as a loon, but that craziness had payed off for Skater in the way of survival training. Since he could remember, dad had been preaching survival to him and his older brother, Jacob, constantly.
Skater had been lying on his bed, watching news coverage of the fighting downtown, when Jacob came running into the room, dressed in his urban fatigues and holding a shotgun. Apparently, dad had decided that the military was doing a better job of adding to the zombie numbers rather than subtracting from them. He and some of the neighborhood Delta Couch Force were going off to give the enlisteds a hand. Skater had heard instructions on the news from the military that 'civilians were absolutely NOT permitted to lend hands, feet, guns or anything to the fight.' Dad however, like so many others that day with a gun and an itch to use it, had decided better of it.
His truck loaded with supplies, guns and half-drunk men hellbent on turning back the undead tide themselves, dad had paused long enough to slap Skater on the back and hand him a rifle, two boxes of ammo and an open-band walkie-talkie.
"Watch the news, Skate," as he touseled his sons hair," and take care of your mom till we get back."
'Dad, don't do it! You need to be here! For once, don't be so dam*ned crazy!' He had wanted to shout to his father, to all of them. His eyes scanned the faces of those around him and he realized that it wouldn't do a tur*ds bit of good.
"Yes, sir...," he had nearly choked.
Dad flashed him a grin and with a quick hug for mom, jumped into the back of the truck with Jacob and they headed off down the street, whooping and hollering, horns blaring.
It was the last time he ever saw his father and brother.
The battleline had been overrun within two hours of his dads enthusiastic charge. Fighting had gone from defense to all out retreat, with the undead surge pouring out of downtown and into the suburbs.
Skater had watched the news, as ordered, until the power went out in his neighborhood and sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard rattling outside, bullets and shrapnel tinging off the sides of the house. His mom had told him to leave, -ordered him- to make his way away from the fighting. She would meet him at the 7-11 some miles down the road.
He had never had the chance to ask her why she had made him leave without her, but she had nearly pushed him out the door, throwing his backpack at him. Screaming at him to get out, her makeup smeared with tears of rage and anguish.
His backpack slung around his shoulders, he had made his way down the street on his bike, dodging abandoned cars and the occasional corpse. Though he didn't see any zoms that day, he did get shot at at least twice while pedalling through one neighborhood, one bullet zinging by his head close enough to feel it whizz by. When he finally arrived at the 7-11, he could see dark smoke pluming upward in the direction he had come from.
Skater had hidden his bike and stepped through the broken storefront window into the darkened store, carefully listening for anything zombieish. The place had been ransacked, but was thankfully empty of people, living or dead. That is, until he ventured into the back room.
It was in the back office that he found Clare. A bit taller than him, a little older maybe, dirty blonde hair and athletic body in torn jeans and a 'bite me' t-shirt, which he had found hilariously ironic.
She had joined with him without question and they had been inseperable since. She was normally cheery and pretty smart, but sometimes she would go off into her own thoughts, which required him to tap her or call her name to get her out of.
She's obviously in one of them now, he thinks wryly.
Tossing the cd back into the bin, Skater looks at Clare, still gazing out of the store window. He clears his throat loudly.
"Hey Clare, I'm about done here."
She turns from the window and looks at him.
"Mmm...ok."
She looks at his backpack, stuffed with cds, and laughs.
"You get enough, you think?"
"No," Skater says with a grin, " but it'll have to do."
"I don't even know what I was thinking, letting you talk me into going in here. We're supposed to be getting supplies for the group, not shopping for music."
"Yeah, I know, but as long as the batteries in my cd player hold out, I need tunes." He hoists the backpack over one shoulder, picking up his rifle and slinging it over the other.
"It's not like we have anything left to pillage." Skater shakes his head.
Lately, scouting groups had been coming back with more casualties and less supplies. Coach, their self-proclaimed leader, continued to send parties deeper into town to find whatever they could, despite rising protests from party leaders that the town was purged of anything and everything useful.
Clare sighs and adjusts her gunbelt before walking toward the shop door. She turns to look at Skater, reading the expression on his face.
"Look, I don't like it either, Skate. I know that Coach is becoming more unreasonable." She shakes her head in frustration. "But what can we do? We can't just...we can't just leave..." She bites her lip. "We owe him."
"We owe the people that heard us that day, Clare." Slamming his fist down on the bin, causing cds to clatter to the floor.
He points a finger at her. "We don't owe that fat son-of-a-bi*ch nothin!"
"Skater, he was the one that sent out the groups. If he hadn't, they would've found two more corpses, or two fresh zoms wandering around with the rest of them."
"We were doing alright!"
"We were surrounded, Skate!" Now she was raising her voice. "We hadn't eaten in two days! We had no food, barely any ammo and one stupid canteen of stale water!"
She walks over to Skater and leans into him. "Do you call that alright?" she asks quietly.
He looks down tight-lipped, his fingers messing with the cd racks, his mind racing back.
They had been pursued through the L.A. suberbs, staying barely ahead of the undead, who would give chase for awhile, then stop. Running by day, barricading wherever they could by night had left them tired and unable to effectively resupply. Every skirmish, even with a single zom, was a major risk.
Zoms had a way of staying mostly in one place when not in eat mode and made little noise, unless alerted. Make some noise however, or allow a zom to sense you and start moaning, nearly always sent several more shambling your way. When that happened, your day went from bad to down-the-tubes bad in a quick way. They were slow, but could potentially follow you for miles, never tiring, their inscensent moans alerting more of their wretched kind that fresh meat was nearby.
They had traveled this way nearly nonstop since their run-in at the 7-11. Sneaking on foot, or dashing through ruined streets, Skater pedalling the bike and she riding the handlebars. They would travel, then barricade, foraging in houses for anything edible. They would pull shifts, one awake with Skaters rifle, the other sleeping uneasily nearby
For weeks they traveled this way, no plan ever really spoken between them, just simply the desire to head east, out of the city of the dead.
That is, of course, until everything changed.
...to be continued
