When the World Comes In Part Two
SPRING
Spencer had stopped checking the short wave radio somewhere around the end of February, if Ryan’s calculations were correct. They probably weren’t, but end of February was close enough.
They didn’t talk about why he stopped checking, but Ryan didn’t need Spencer to explain it. Spencer stopped checking when there were fewer and fewer people on the other end of the line. Not everyone was gone, just an alarmingly high amount of what was already a tiny number of survivors.
It wasn’t like these people were otherwise occupied, jetting off to the south of France or going on vacations to the sea. It wasn’t like they were even heading out to run errands. Nope. If people weren’t responding it was because they were dead.
So it made sense, it made sense that Spencer stopped checking. But someone had to. So Ryan did.
He tried to do it when Spencer was busy with other things, but it didn’t always work out, what with the way they all shared space all the time. The sharing space thing was better now, but the look on Spencer’s face when Ryan got nothing but dead air probably wouldn’t ever get better.
Despite what could only be dwindling numbers of survivors in Vegas, none of them had ever questioned that they’d leave. They had a plan, and they were going to stick to it.
-
They got a van. Or they borrowed a van. Ryan left a note on Premier Trucking stationary under a rock in the place the van used to be. It had their names and where they were headed, you know, in case the previous owners missed it while stalking the streets of Vegas for fresh brains. Or whatever.
It took some doing and it took some time, but they managed to cram the van full of food and blankets and guns. There were other things, too, but that was the important stuff.
Gas was last on the list. Spencer had thrown empty canisters in the back and the plan was to fill up the van and take some to go. Spencer did not want to die somewhere on the 40 because the tank was on empty and they couldn't run forever.
But other than that one last stop, they were all set to go. Spencer had poured over so many maps so many times that he was starting to dream in taupe and green and highlighted red lines. He had their route memorized, he had alternate routes memorized. There was no city between Vegas and Chicago that he hadn’t gone over at least a dozen times.
It was their last night in the warehouse and everything looked better than it ever had. Spencer knew it was some kind of trick that nostalgia and hope were playing on him, but he didn't care. He loved the stupid mattress that Brendon had stupidly brought them, and he loved their stupid dirty windows, and he loved their stupid camp stove that never stood up straight. He loved it all so much that he never wanted to see any of it ever again. And the best part was he wouldn't have to.
Ryan wandered by in his striped boxers and flip flops that looked too big, even for his big clown feet, and Spencer hauled him in for a kiss, just because he could. Because he was allowed now, and he maybe always wanted to even if he had never let himself think about it until recently.
Ryan’s hair was wet and his shoulders were damp, and if Spencer had to guess, he’d wager that wherever it was that Ryan had decided to clean up, there was more water on the floor than in the bowl. Spencer laughed and buried his nose in Ryan’s neck. He smelled good and felt good and things could be better, but right now they didn’t feel so bad.
“You’re in a good mood,” Ryan said.
Spencer settled his hands on Ryan’s hips. “You always wanted to get out of Vegas, right?”
Spencer could feel it when Ryan inhaled and his body got tight and stiff. “Right,” he said, but it sounded more like wrong.
“I mean, I know zombies were never part of the plan, but. Ryan…” Spencer trailed off.
Ryan smiled at him and shrugged. “I’m just being stupid, it’s nothing.”
“I- Ryan, you know we won’t let anything bad happen, right? We can’t. I can’t stay here.” He would. He would totally stay there if Ryan asked him too. But he really didn’t want to.
“No,” Ryan said, “no, it’s not that. I don’t want to stay.”
Spencer exhaled the breath he hadn't known he was holding. “What then?” he asked.
Ryan leaned back against one of the metal shelving units. Spencer could see him working out how to say whatever it was he was going to say.
“I don’t want to stay,” he said again, “but. I don’t know, leaving’s weird, too. It wasn’t bad for what it was. It was an okay home. For a little while.”
Spencer laughed before he could think carefully enough not to. “It was horrible,” he said. “We had to wash from bowls.”
Ryan twisted his mouth up, like, fine, Ryan would give him that. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, but it had you guys.”
Spencer was an idiot. He was an idiot, but he recovered well. He slung an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “That’s the great thing about us,” he said, “we travel well.”
-
Even though he had worked it up in his mind as some kind of big deal, getting the gas proved to be the least of their worries on their way out of town. In fact, it was almost easy.
Either they were very lucky, or something was going on.
In recent weeks, due to starvation or possibly boredom, Spencer didn't know, the zombies had been more aggressively stalking any movement. Spencer was probably projecting the boredom thing, it had to be hunger. It made sense, their food supply was dwindling.
This meant that, with increasing frequency, their little trips for food and supplies and little necessities like clean underwear had become an exercise in fleeing for their lives and also shooting the shit out of zombies. Okay, life had been like that for a while, but despite that, there was a definite sense of things being turned up a notch.
All of which resulted in Spencer knowing things about his best friends that he had never in a million years thought he'd know. For instance, Ryan was a really good shot. Like surprisingly good. Especially from a distance. Spencer and Brendon had been shocked by this turn of events, but no one was more surprised than Ryan. Every time he made a clean shot, which was pretty often, Ryan’s eyes got wide and he raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
Brendon was the exact opposite. He wasn’t so hot from a distance, but the way he could kill from up close was actually a little disturbing. He was just...it was like... Spencer actually couldn't describe it. Brendon was just very fast. And also pretty nimble. Ryan wasn't nimble at all.
Spencer didn't think he was a particularly good shot or a good fighter or anything, really, but he hadn't died yet and that had to count for something. He could run fast. And the biggest thing in their favor was speed, but silence came in awfully handy, too. They had figured out early on that zombies relied far more heavily on their hearing than their sight. Smell was almost a non issue. Presumably they could smell, because people could smell, but Spencer had no reason to believe the zombies had a heightened sense of smell or anything. This was great because, despite frequent bowl bathing, they were all getting progressively more and more rank.
At any rate, currently there were no zombies to run from or hide from or shoot at or beat the living hell out of with a baseball bat. The general lack was disconcerting rather than reassuring. Given the way they had been constantly present, Spencer had sort of assumed that getting at their brains or limbs or sweet, sweet flesh was a high priority for the zombies.
So where were they? They had driven a loud freaking van to their destination for heaven's sake.
Ryan and Brendon still stood guard, alert and focused until Spencer had filled the last canister, but they stood guard against nothing.
“What’s going on?” Brendon said as he looked around one last time before climbing into the passenger seat.
“Who knew not having zombies around was freakier than having them around?” Ryan said.
Spencer agreed, but he just crammed the last of the gas into the trunk space. What could they do, yell for the zombies to come out, come out, wherever they where?
-
It wasn't just the gas station that was empty. There was no one anywhere.
Even back at the beginning, when the zombies had a lot on their plate with the high variety people to eat, they had never had an excursion outside where they didn’t see at least a modicum of zombie activity. There was something going on and it was freaking Spencer out.
It got so bad that Spencer started hoping to see a zombie just so he'd know that things hadn't up and changed on them again. They had to be somewhere. They couldn’t have just left Vegas in the night seeking bloodier pastures.
Driving was kind of a bitch. Spencer had to go slow and weave around cars that had been abandoned months earlier. In some places the unmoving traffic jams got so bad that he had to start doubling back just to find a way out. Eventually, Spencer just hoped to find a way out to open desert. He could find the 15 after they got out of the city, so long as he didn't drive too far east.
It was probably a good thing there weren't any zombies around. He was pretty sure one could overtake the van in no time at the rate they were going.
As they got closer to the Strip, they saw the first of the zombies, sporadic at first, stumbling clumsily after the van. The road got wider, and it got easier to dodge both cars and zombies.
Spencer glanced in the rearview mirror to see Ryan tilt back one of the side windows and aim. By the time he shot, Spencer's eyes were back on the road.
The open desert lay beyond the Strip, just past the freeway, but Spencer wasn't about to risk the grid lock that that probably was.
He kept driving south, hoping a way out would present itself.
The zombies grew in number the closer they got to the edge of town.
“I think we found them,” Brendon said. Ryan fired again. Then again.
"Guys," Spencer said.
No one answered. Brendon had his window down now, too. Between the two of them, Brendon and Ryan were just managing to pick off the close ones.
"Guys," he said again.
There were so many zombies now, in bigger and bigger groups, too many to shoot. It was like the zombies somehow knew they were trying to leave and they wanted nothing more than to prevent it from happening.
"Guys," Spencer said, sharper than before. "Roll up the windows."
They were getting so close and there were so many of them. Spencer could see the way their skin sagged and their arms flopped around when they weren't using them to reach toward the van. He could hear them groaning. It was horrifying. And they were going to die.
Brendon fired another round, just missing a woman in broken heels and a headdress that was probably white and tall once, but after weeks of wear had become sort of gray and withered. It was falling over one of her eyes and Spencer insanely wished that she’d reach up and adjust it. It swayed as she moved toward them, bobbing with every uneven step. Brendon fired again and she fell outside of Spencer's line of sight.
"Seriously," Spencer said. "Windows up." He would do it himself, and child safety lock them, too, only Ryan had the shittiest taste in vans ever and the windows were manual.
A few of the zombies stumbled close enough to beat their hands against Spencer's door, close enough for Spencer to feel bumps where he was running over their feet. And that, that Spencer did not want to think about. At all.
Ryan finally shut his window and crouched in close, sticking his head between the front seats to yell useless instructions in Spencer's ear. Yes, yes, as a matter of fact Spencer did see the overturned sedan. There were zombies climbing all over it. It was kind of hard to miss.
Brendon turned the handle and his window slowly rose. Spencer watched the way it inched up little by little, and, Jesus, it was like that was the only thing he could see. Just outside of the world’s least effective van window, a particularly gaunt zombie curled its dirty fingers around the top of the glass and tried to push his face into the open space. Brendon pressed his gun against its forehead and pulled the trigger.
To his credit, Brendon waited until the window was all the way up to freak out. "Fuck," he said, "fuck fuck fuck." There was blood spattered on his face and his arm and on the inside of the windshield, but the zombies were outside and they were inside, so it probably could have ended a lot worse.
They were on all sides now. Spencer felt closed in and cut off and he couldn't see anything but zombies climbing on other zombies climbing on the hood and clinging to that stupid ladder in the back. The van started to rock. They were definitely going to fucking die.
Spencer honked the horn. The zombies didn't seem to care. Actually, the only thing it really did was infuriate Brendon.
"What are you even doing?" He yelled.
"I don't know! If you have a better idea I'm all ears." Spencer beeped the horn again.
"Yeah I have a better idea. Don't drive into the mob of zombies. That's a better idea."
Spencer's foot was all the way down on the gas pedal. The engine revved, but the van only crept forward. There were more bumps, too many to register as separate occurrences.
“Ryan, sit down and put your fucking seat belt on,” Spencer said.
There had to be fewer zombies behind them than in front of them. In a last ditch effort to not die in a van at the hands of thousands of zombies, Spencer slammed on the brakes and threw the car in reverse. The jolt threw a few zombies off the hood and, oh, the roof apparently, but they only managed to back up a few feet. Spencer slammed on the brakes again, yelled “Seat belt!” at Ryan, and pushed on the gas again. They lurched back, same as before. Spencer floored it again and again, and they went further and further back each time. The second there was enough space to do it, Spencer turned the van around, knocking zombies down, and rolling over god knows what. They went back the way they came.
Spencer didn’t look in the rearview mirror, but he could see figures following them, slowly and steadily, clear enough in his head anyway.
They left Vegas the back way. The freeway was packed with cars, and probably would be until the end of time, so they drove through side streets and straight through Summerlin to get there. They hadn’t been back since the zombies came around. It made Spencer feel weird and sort of empty to pass the shopping center with Port of Subs and his mother’s grocery store.
Eventually, the housing developments thinned out and the only buildings were gas stations and convenience stores tucked in close to the highway. Spencer thought again about cutting off the road and driving straight into the open desert, but he didn’t have to. There were scattered cars in their way, but nothing he couldn’t drive around.
When they were far enough out of town that there was only desert in front of them, Spencer stopped the van.
“Someone else needs to drive,” he said. It was funny how once they were safe, or safe-ish anyway, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Brendon didn’t ask why. He just raised his hand and said, “I’ll do it.”
Spencer unbuckled his seat belt and got out. It was bright outside, so much brighter than they were used to, and Brendon squinted at him as they passed each other to switch. When they got close, Brendon grabbed his hand and squeezed briefly before releasing it.
When Spencer got around to the passenger seat, he changed his mind. He slid the rear door open instead and pushed some stuff around until he could crawl in next to Ryan.
He changed his mind again and reached into the third level of seats to retrieve a bottle of water and someone’s shirt.
When he hunched up close to Brendon, he showed him the shirt and the water and Brendon nodded. It didn’t take long to clean him up. Brendon shut his eyes and let Spencer wipe his face. When Spencer was finished, he passed the bottle to Brendon. He leaned outside and dumped the remainder over his arm and wiped the blood away. Then he dropped the shirt in the road and shut the door.
Brendon slapped his palms on his thighs. "Okay, who's ready to go to the third most populous city in the country?"
Spencer watched the little white heap of a shirt in the middle of the road until he couldn’t see it anymore.
-
They drove and drove and then they drove some more. Long into the night, slower that they wanted because it was hard to see what was in front of them, and what was in front of them could be a surprise fourteen car pile-up.
When they couldn't drive anymore they stretched out as much as they were able and tried to sleep.
It was cold in the desert so late or so early or so whatever it was. Brendon didn't have the energy or inclination to look at his watch.
Brendon laughed softly when Ryan arranged his blankets into some kind of fort to keep out all the light that was sure to be coming in through the windows in just a few hours.
Brendon tried, but he was so tired he couldn't sleep. He had stayed up front in the front passenger seat with the back tilted all the way down. It was comfortable enough, but he couldn't get settled and he couldn't stop thinking about the difference between thick concrete walls and thin metal ones.
They had picked this spot for a reason, though. There was nothing for miles in any direction, not even so much as a rest stop for twenty miles east and thirty miles west. There were scattered abandoned cars, but their owners were long gone. It was so quiet, nothing at all but the wind. As far as Brendon knew, it was just Ryan and Spencer and him alone in the desert at the end of the world.
Even if there was something terrible waiting in the dark, it wasn't like they’d ever be deep sleepers ever again. And they had guns. Many, many guns.
Brendon pressed his forehead to the cold glass and looked up. He could see a million stars. He strained his eyes for shapes in the landscape, but all he could see were the dark silhouettes of low and distant hills. It was all so empty. Eventually he turned and shifted and brought his gaze inward. He looked at Ryan and saw nothing but heaps of blankets around his head. His legs were virtually uncovered and Brendon could see where his fingers curled around the barrel of the rifle resting on his hip.
Spencer was closer than Ryan, just across the way in the driver’s seat. It was tilted back at the same angle as Brendon's. Brendon shut his eyes for a long moment, exhaustion finally taking over, and when he opened them again it was to Spencer looking back at him.
"Can't sleep?" Spencer asked, hushed and strangely intimate.
Brendon shrugged.
"Come here," Spencer said. Brendon leaned over, across the gap in the seats. He bumped the drink holder and empty Red Bull cans knocked against each other. Ryan stirred in the back and Spencer grinned. Spencer pulled his hand out from under himself and brushed his thumb across Brendon's cheek. "Close your eyes."
Brendon did and Spencer kissed him, slow enough and sweet enough that Brendon didn't mind the way his arm was going numb from holding himself up. Spencer's pacing matched Brendon's sleepiness and Brendon felt himself slip easily into a place where he could drop off.
Brendon settled back into his seat and blinked at Spencer. "I thought," he said. "I hoped we'd find something."
"Find what?" Spencer asked, still quiet.
"I don't know. Something." Brendon closed his eyes and kept them that way. "Something that wasn't Vegas. Something alive."
Spencer didn't answer and Brendon opened his eyes one more time.
"I know," Spencer said. Brendon fell asleep.
-
They woke up to a truck parked alongside the van, no more than a handful of feet between them. Brendon's heart ratcheted up a notch before he had the presence of mind to figure out what was going on. By the time he did, Ryan was already sliding the passenger door open. Brendon scrambled to get at his own door, but not before he snagged his baseball bat from the space between the seats.
There was a girl. A girl with impossibly long hair. She sat with her equally impossibly long legs hanging out the door and her bare feet swinging above what had to be incredibly hot pavement.
There was also a guy. A very scruffy, unwashed guy who sat in the front seat and was currently pointing a gun directly at Ryan.
"Give me all your money," he said.
Ryan stared for a minute and then started to laugh. Brendon had no idea what was happening. Like at all. They didn't have any money. Presumably, no one anywhere had any money. Or, maybe they did, but it was kind of all Monopoly money at this point.
The girl with the bare feet whacked the guy in the head. "Be nice, Alex," she said.
Ryan continued to laugh. Brendon continued to have no idea what was going on.
Alex, if that was even his name, lowered his gun and smiled. His smile was just as scary as the pointing of guns, though his teeth did look very clean.
A second girl poked her head around the guy called Alex. "Actually," she said, "we are in the market for some gas though, if you could help us out with that. Or maybe a siphon or something. Either or. Unless of course Alex is being too much of a prick. Then we understand."
"Siphon," Spencer said blearily, "that would've been a good idea."
They hooked them up with some gas, because if politeness went out the window, than the zombies had already won, blah blah blah. Brendon wasn't about to leave people stranded on the highway during an apocalypse, what if they were the ones who had run out of gas, what then?
Spencer slid out of the driver's seat to grab one of the extra cans while Brendon set his bat back down on the floor.
"I gotta take a piss," Ryan announced.
"I like the way you think, young man," Alex said. He opened his door to follow Ryan out into the desert and a million tiny gum wrappers flew out into the breeze. They almost looked pretty, floating away close to the ground like that.
The girl in the passenger seat slid over and reached around under the seat to open the gas tank.
"Nice truck," Brendon said, just to have something to say. It wasn't really all that nice, it was pretty beat up and the paint had rusted over in some spots. Not that Ryan's penchant for old minivans left him with much room to talk.
"Tennessee likes red," she said, like that was a reasonable explanation.
"Oh?" Brendon said. It was really nice and kind of novel to have somebody new to talk to. He wasn't going to let a little thing like potential lunacy get in the way of conversation.
The girl grinned wryly at him. "That's Tennessee," she nodded toward the girl in the back seat. And okay, the Tennessee likes red thing was starting to make sense. Tennessee was putting on her shoes. Brendon was oddly comforted by this. Bare feet and zombies made him nervous.
"Hey," Tennessee said, looking up from the laces.
"Oh, is this like that movie with zombies and the names of cities? Like that girl named Cincinnati or Barstow or whatever? Are you from Tennessee?"
"No." She drew out the o in no around a light laugh. "And Tennessee is a state, not a city." Tennessee had an English accent that Brendon was only able to pick up when she said more than a couple words at a time. It was incongruous and oddly charming. And she definitely wasn't from Tennessee.
"Anyway, you met Alex, we're pretty sure he's harmless. And I'm Z. And that's everybody."
"Uh, that's Spencer." Brendon pointed towards where Spencer was wrestling with the gas cans - they had wedged them in pretty tight. "And that's Ryan." He pointed behind him where Ryan was presumably taking a leak. "And I'm Brendon." He probably didn't need to point at himself, but he did anyway.
"Nice to meet you," Z said. "Thanks for the gas. Really. I did not want to walk to the nearest station, you know? We totally owe you."
"No problem," Brendon said, "You guys are the first people we've seen outside of Vegas. So yeah, no problem."
"Oh hey, us too," Tennessee said. "Well not outside of Vegas, outside of LA. And only if you mean the kind of people who aren't zombies, cause we saw plenty of those."
"Right. Yes. People who aren't zombies." Brendon nodded. It was possible that he had lost the ability to talk like a regular person to people who weren't Spencer and Ryan.
"Hey," Ryan said, coming up between the cars with Alex trailing behind him. "These guys are going to Chicago, too."
"We are indeed," Z said.
"We should start a two car caravan, right?" Alex said. He leaned against the van next to Ryan and Ryan looked at the pavement and smiled.
-
It took them a while to put it all together, but it wasn't just Vegas where the zombies were clustering. Gathering. What have you.
Spencer knew from Tennessee that getting out of LA hadn't been the greatest experience for her little group of survivors either, but it took going through a few new cities for him to really start to get it.
They had bypassed Henderson back when they went north out of Vegas, which meant that the first town they had gone through was tiny. And it was dark. And yeah, there had been zombies waiting for them. Spencer had attributed it to the lights from the van and the noise of the only car on the road. They had driven through them, shooting and speeding, but it was nothing like leaving Las Vegas, so at the time it hadn’t occurred to Spencer that it was anything other than normal zombie activity.
He continued to think along the same lines through the next few one stoplight towns, too. Only now it was broad daylight and they were coming up on Albuquerque in a couple of hours. It was about time they started putting two and two together.
Spencer started musing out loud. Zombies getting together to thwart them wasn't necessarily something any of them were eager to talk about, but it was either that or, you know, die, so they made sacrifices.
"So, why?" Spencer said.
From the driver’s seat, Ryan said, "I don't know, man, instinct maybe?"
"Yeah, yeah," Brendon said, "I mean, if you figure that they've mostly weeded out all the people in town, the only, like, consistent source of edible people would be the ones either coming or going." Brendon paused. "Not that I think they're sitting down and planning it out like that. It's probably more like 'brains here, brains good.'" Brendon's zombie imitation was pretty good, what with the outstretched arms and drooling. It was probably due to all that real life exposure.
Spencer leaned toward Ryan and glanced at the dash. "Oh good," he said. "We're overheating again." It was only the third time that day. At least they could discuss it with the other guys while they were pouring all their good drinking water into the radiator and waiting for their piece of shit van to cool down.
Alex and Tennessee confirmed what they had already started to expect while Z and Ryan poked ineffectually at the innards of the hood. Every town they had driven through had been bracketed by zombies. Phoenix, according to Tennessee, had been particularly brutal. It was probably all those suburbs.
"Which leaves the question," Spencer said, "how the fuck do we get to Chicago and avoid all major cities."
"First," Z said, "you ditch the van. This thing is just a very ugly death trap on wheels."
"But I like the van," Ryan said. Spencer knew exactly why Ryan liked the van. Ryan liked the van because he'd always carried the notion of touring the country in one not all that dissimilar. But given the choice between the van and the bunch of them getting to Chicago alive, Spencer was pretty sure Ryan would choose the second option.
"Second, I have an idea." Z said. The hood of the van they were evidently ditching slammed shut as though Z needed external punctuation.
"Oh good," Brendon said. "I'm a fan of ideas."
Alex made hand motions. They were probably supposed to indicate go on, but he had a cigarette in one hand and sun glasses in another and Spencer guessed that even on a good day, Alex’s hand motions weren’t other people’s hand motions. “Are you gonna share your idea, or do we have to guess.”
Z snagged his cigarette and just before taking a drag said, “It winds from Chicago to LA.”
Brendon smiled slowly. “Is it more than two thousand miles all the way?”
“I do believe it is,” Z said. Z and Brendon grinned at each other like they were geniuses. Ryan rolled his eyes.
“I see some flaws in your plan,” Alex said. “First, I’m relatively certain that Oklahoma City does not look mighty pretty right now. Second, isn’t Route 66, like, gone? Isn’t it just another highway now?”
“No no no,” Tennessee said, “Or okay, a lot of it is just other highways, but a lot of it is still there, and the point of Route 66 is that it avoids traffic in major cities.” Tennessee said the last bit like she was taking an oral exam. She sounded absurdly proud of herself.
“Okay,” Spencer said, “Okay, and if the zombies are instinctually attracted to places people travel the most, they’re probably hanging out around major highways. Avoiding those would be good.”
“Right,” Brendon said. He looked at Z, then Tennessee, then back to Z again. “How do you know so much about Route 66?”
“We planned a road trip one summer,” Z shrugged.
“Why didn’t you invite me?” Alex asked, affronted.
Z patted at Alex’s arm. “I said planned. We were fifteen, we didn’t actually go.”
“See,” Tennessee said, “How there’s a road and we’re sort of on a trip? We totally invited you.”
Alex looked around and shrugged a that works for me sort of shrug. “So were all on board with staying away from the large groups of zombies, good? Good. What we need now is map. I mean, a better map then the map we have.”
Spencer raised his hand. “We have a better map.”
-
"You know who I bet was the first to go?" Alex paused, like they were all going to chime in with various theories of their own.
When no one answered, Z said, "No Alex, tell us please. Who was the first to go?" Her voice was a gravelly mix of sarcasm and affection. Ryan could listen to her talk forever.
"People who don't watch TV. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that these people without TVs missed all the late breaking news about, you know, people eating other people and what not, but fuck that. That's not what I'm talking about." Alex veered off the road to drive around a long vacant blockade. He couldn't avoid driving over some shrubbery and mounds of dirt, so they all bumped around a little, but the truck was better equipped to handle off-roading than the van, so Ryan just held on to the arm rest and rode it out.
When they got back on the highway Alex picked up his train of thought like he had never been interrupted. "Like not even people without TVs. The first people to die where those kids whose parents wouldn't let them watch violent movies."
"I was that kid," Brendon said.
"Yeah, yeah," Alex said. He caught Brendon’s eye in the rearview mirror. “I bet you watched them anyway, though, right?"
Tennessee glanced back at where Brendon was slumped against Ryan. "Brendon thought I was called Tennessee because of Zombieland. He's probably the reason you're all still alive."
Brendon laughed, low and sleepy and into Ryan's shirt.
"No, see? That's what I'm saying," Alex went on. "You watch a zombie movie, right? What's the first thing you learn? You need guns. You need guns, like now. Also, sorry, the government can't help you."
"Wait.” Spencer said as he leaned his head back against the window. “So you’re telling me people who didn't, like, watch low brow zombie movies had no idea they should have some kind of weapon? I don't know man, I don't think you're giving people enough credit. I think they probably made the leap to guns."
"Ah," Alex said, "but how long did it take them to make that leap? Just long enough to get their brains eaten, probably. I'm hungry, who’s hungry?"
"I could eat," Z said.
"I could stretch my legs," Brendon said.
They ate stale crackers and cheeze-wiz in the middle of the road. They washed it down with warm coke. Around a cracker, Alex said, "I didn't mean just zombie movies. I meant violent movies in general." He said it like there was a definite distinction, like it was important that they get his meaning. "I am this close to confident that I wouldn't know how to make a Molotov cocktail in under twenty seconds if I hadn't seen it in a movie. Or how to hotwire a car."
Tennessee scoffed. "You can't hotwire a car."
"No," Alex admitted. "But your girlfriend can."
Tennessee turned to Z. "You can hotwire a car?"
"Yes, yes I can. A skill, by the way, that I did not learn from the movies."
"How did you learn?" Tennessee asked, awed.
Z brushed her hands off on her shorts and swallowed the last cracker. "The neighbor kid taught me when we were like twelve."
"Uhuh, uhuh," Alex said, "and ten bucks says the neighbor kid learned it from a movie. Ten bucks. Little ruffians hotwiring cars in Beverly Hills."
"Yeah, well, I don't actually remember and it's not like we can ask him now. Besides, half the cars left in the road have the keys in the ignition."
"Trust me it was the movies."
Z looked around. "Why are we still talking about this?"
"Because hotwiring cars is cool?" Spencer and Ryan said at nearly the exact same time.
Tennessee nodded. "Exactly," she said.
"What, you had so many other scintillating topics of conversation? That new song you heard on the radio? That neato time you had out the other night? What do you want to talk about Z Berg?"
Z and Alex continued to bicker good naturedly. Tennessee clapped her hands. "Okay, driver switch." She looked at Ryan and Spencer and Brendon, "Sorry, the kids who picked the dying minivan don't get to drive."
As they all climbed back in the truck, Tennessee asked Z, "How come you never told me you could hotwire a car?"
With six of them crammed into the truck, the entire trip pretty much went exactly like that. Sure, there were scattered moments of shooting the undead in the head, but yeah, pretty much that’s how things continued to go down.
-
They had a problem. It was kind of a big one. The closer they got to the city, the more apparent it became. And the more apparent it became, the more Spencer thought about it. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t breathe like a normal person.
The thing was, Chicago was big, huge really, and Spencer had no idea where they were going.
Z and Tennessee and Alex were sort of vague on the particulars as well. Because as much as people had talked about things happening in Chicago, no one had known precisely where. Which was just fine when Chicago was a magical, nebulous destination in their heads, but now that they were this close to driving into what could be a metropolis comprised entirely of flesh seeking zombies, well, it got a little worrisome.
They had focused so much on the actual getting there that the what they'd do when they got there hadn’t really come up.
Brendon told him, “We’ve made it this far, we’ll find a way.”
“Has anyone actually been to Chicago?” Spencer asked.
“I have,” Alex said. “Um, it was seven years ago. For three days.” Alex was no help.
They would have been fine if they had been able to stay in the truck. Or maybe they would have been fine if they knew their way around the city. But they didn't and they weren't.
They had to stop and walk a handful of miles outside of Chicago proper because the stopped cars on the freeway were too tight to weave around.
They took only what they needed, which basically amounted to guns and ammunition. They could worry about restocking their dwindling supplies once they'd found some kind of shelter.
They spread out, the six of them, and walked slowly between cars. They heard the zombies before they saw them. This was actually pretty awesome, because as much as that game I can’t see you if you can’t see me doesn’t work in reality, it does when there’s zombies involved.
It sounded like low grade humming at first, something electrical or mechanical. But when Spencer listened hard, he could distinguish the rising and falling of familiar disembodied moans. Alex held up his hand, fist closed tight, like it was war and the enemy was approaching. Which wasn’t all that far off the mark, actually, even if he did look like a douche.
They took the next exit, walking down it and onto the street below. Spencer wasn’t delusional enough to think that there wouldn’t be zombies at street level, but at least this way they wouldn’t be caught on a five lane highway with only one way to run.
-
It was just like Vegas. Sporadic zombies at first, and then a throng of them too big to count, writhing and stumbling as one hungry, decaying mass. They were smart enough this time to not run headlong into the center of it. Which Ryan liked to think spoke to their ability to learn from their previous mistakes.
“We should have just gone to a farm,” Brendon said. “Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I could live on a farm. I’d be a great farmer.”
Tennessee squeezed his arm. “We can do that next, okay?” she said.
Ryan sided with Brendon on this one. He really didn’t see anything wrong with going now. They had seen plenty of farms on their way in. They could just go get the truck, turn around and go grow tomatoes. Raise goats. Milk cows all day. Ryan could do that.
Tennessee broke through his reverie. “Oh my lord, black hoodie, two o’clock.” Z raised her shot gun and fired. The zombie went down, but there were others. They had to find some place safe.
They went left because that way looked clear. They half ran, half walked, looking for some place that looked like it might have a decent supply of food and water. Ryan was slowest, mostly because he kept turning around to cover their backs.
After a while, Spencer caught on to Ryan’s admittedly flimsy plan and hung back to watch Ryan’s back so all backs were covered. It worked out well for a bit. Shots rang out from ahead and behind when someone lumbered close, but they made it pretty far pretty fast and they avoided the zombie hoard.
“Tan jacket, two o’clock,” Spencer said and Ryan swiveled left.
“No,” Spencer said, “Two, not ten. Your other right.”
Ryan rolled his eyes at Spencer and raised his shot gun and peered through the scope. He paused.
“That’s not a zombie,” he said. It wasn’t. It was just a guy. A regular guy. That Ryan had almost shot, Jesus.
“Guys,” Ryan hissed.
The regular guy got closer. He looked very young, even with the beard. And short. He did not look like a guy who’d be walking around calmly in the midst of a city gone empty and dead, save for the zombies. When he got close enough to talk without yelling, he said, “Hey. Um, hi. I’m Jon Walker.”
“And you’re here to rescue us?” Brendon supplied.
Jon Walker laughed, loud in the quiet of the empty street, like he hadn’t meant to, but Brendon had surprised it out of him. Ryan smiled.
part 3
Spencer had stopped checking the short wave radio somewhere around the end of February, if Ryan’s calculations were correct. They probably weren’t, but end of February was close enough.
They didn’t talk about why he stopped checking, but Ryan didn’t need Spencer to explain it. Spencer stopped checking when there were fewer and fewer people on the other end of the line. Not everyone was gone, just an alarmingly high amount of what was already a tiny number of survivors.
It wasn’t like these people were otherwise occupied, jetting off to the south of France or going on vacations to the sea. It wasn’t like they were even heading out to run errands. Nope. If people weren’t responding it was because they were dead.
So it made sense, it made sense that Spencer stopped checking. But someone had to. So Ryan did.
He tried to do it when Spencer was busy with other things, but it didn’t always work out, what with the way they all shared space all the time. The sharing space thing was better now, but the look on Spencer’s face when Ryan got nothing but dead air probably wouldn’t ever get better.
Despite what could only be dwindling numbers of survivors in Vegas, none of them had ever questioned that they’d leave. They had a plan, and they were going to stick to it.
-
They got a van. Or they borrowed a van. Ryan left a note on Premier Trucking stationary under a rock in the place the van used to be. It had their names and where they were headed, you know, in case the previous owners missed it while stalking the streets of Vegas for fresh brains. Or whatever.
It took some doing and it took some time, but they managed to cram the van full of food and blankets and guns. There were other things, too, but that was the important stuff.
Gas was last on the list. Spencer had thrown empty canisters in the back and the plan was to fill up the van and take some to go. Spencer did not want to die somewhere on the 40 because the tank was on empty and they couldn't run forever.
But other than that one last stop, they were all set to go. Spencer had poured over so many maps so many times that he was starting to dream in taupe and green and highlighted red lines. He had their route memorized, he had alternate routes memorized. There was no city between Vegas and Chicago that he hadn’t gone over at least a dozen times.
It was their last night in the warehouse and everything looked better than it ever had. Spencer knew it was some kind of trick that nostalgia and hope were playing on him, but he didn't care. He loved the stupid mattress that Brendon had stupidly brought them, and he loved their stupid dirty windows, and he loved their stupid camp stove that never stood up straight. He loved it all so much that he never wanted to see any of it ever again. And the best part was he wouldn't have to.
Ryan wandered by in his striped boxers and flip flops that looked too big, even for his big clown feet, and Spencer hauled him in for a kiss, just because he could. Because he was allowed now, and he maybe always wanted to even if he had never let himself think about it until recently.
Ryan’s hair was wet and his shoulders were damp, and if Spencer had to guess, he’d wager that wherever it was that Ryan had decided to clean up, there was more water on the floor than in the bowl. Spencer laughed and buried his nose in Ryan’s neck. He smelled good and felt good and things could be better, but right now they didn’t feel so bad.
“You’re in a good mood,” Ryan said.
Spencer settled his hands on Ryan’s hips. “You always wanted to get out of Vegas, right?”
Spencer could feel it when Ryan inhaled and his body got tight and stiff. “Right,” he said, but it sounded more like wrong.
“I mean, I know zombies were never part of the plan, but. Ryan…” Spencer trailed off.
Ryan smiled at him and shrugged. “I’m just being stupid, it’s nothing.”
“I- Ryan, you know we won’t let anything bad happen, right? We can’t. I can’t stay here.” He would. He would totally stay there if Ryan asked him too. But he really didn’t want to.
“No,” Ryan said, “no, it’s not that. I don’t want to stay.”
Spencer exhaled the breath he hadn't known he was holding. “What then?” he asked.
Ryan leaned back against one of the metal shelving units. Spencer could see him working out how to say whatever it was he was going to say.
“I don’t want to stay,” he said again, “but. I don’t know, leaving’s weird, too. It wasn’t bad for what it was. It was an okay home. For a little while.”
Spencer laughed before he could think carefully enough not to. “It was horrible,” he said. “We had to wash from bowls.”
Ryan twisted his mouth up, like, fine, Ryan would give him that. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, but it had you guys.”
Spencer was an idiot. He was an idiot, but he recovered well. He slung an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “That’s the great thing about us,” he said, “we travel well.”
-
Even though he had worked it up in his mind as some kind of big deal, getting the gas proved to be the least of their worries on their way out of town. In fact, it was almost easy.
Either they were very lucky, or something was going on.
In recent weeks, due to starvation or possibly boredom, Spencer didn't know, the zombies had been more aggressively stalking any movement. Spencer was probably projecting the boredom thing, it had to be hunger. It made sense, their food supply was dwindling.
This meant that, with increasing frequency, their little trips for food and supplies and little necessities like clean underwear had become an exercise in fleeing for their lives and also shooting the shit out of zombies. Okay, life had been like that for a while, but despite that, there was a definite sense of things being turned up a notch.
All of which resulted in Spencer knowing things about his best friends that he had never in a million years thought he'd know. For instance, Ryan was a really good shot. Like surprisingly good. Especially from a distance. Spencer and Brendon had been shocked by this turn of events, but no one was more surprised than Ryan. Every time he made a clean shot, which was pretty often, Ryan’s eyes got wide and he raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
Brendon was the exact opposite. He wasn’t so hot from a distance, but the way he could kill from up close was actually a little disturbing. He was just...it was like... Spencer actually couldn't describe it. Brendon was just very fast. And also pretty nimble. Ryan wasn't nimble at all.
Spencer didn't think he was a particularly good shot or a good fighter or anything, really, but he hadn't died yet and that had to count for something. He could run fast. And the biggest thing in their favor was speed, but silence came in awfully handy, too. They had figured out early on that zombies relied far more heavily on their hearing than their sight. Smell was almost a non issue. Presumably they could smell, because people could smell, but Spencer had no reason to believe the zombies had a heightened sense of smell or anything. This was great because, despite frequent bowl bathing, they were all getting progressively more and more rank.
At any rate, currently there were no zombies to run from or hide from or shoot at or beat the living hell out of with a baseball bat. The general lack was disconcerting rather than reassuring. Given the way they had been constantly present, Spencer had sort of assumed that getting at their brains or limbs or sweet, sweet flesh was a high priority for the zombies.
So where were they? They had driven a loud freaking van to their destination for heaven's sake.
Ryan and Brendon still stood guard, alert and focused until Spencer had filled the last canister, but they stood guard against nothing.
“What’s going on?” Brendon said as he looked around one last time before climbing into the passenger seat.
“Who knew not having zombies around was freakier than having them around?” Ryan said.
Spencer agreed, but he just crammed the last of the gas into the trunk space. What could they do, yell for the zombies to come out, come out, wherever they where?
-
It wasn't just the gas station that was empty. There was no one anywhere.
Even back at the beginning, when the zombies had a lot on their plate with the high variety people to eat, they had never had an excursion outside where they didn’t see at least a modicum of zombie activity. There was something going on and it was freaking Spencer out.
It got so bad that Spencer started hoping to see a zombie just so he'd know that things hadn't up and changed on them again. They had to be somewhere. They couldn’t have just left Vegas in the night seeking bloodier pastures.
Driving was kind of a bitch. Spencer had to go slow and weave around cars that had been abandoned months earlier. In some places the unmoving traffic jams got so bad that he had to start doubling back just to find a way out. Eventually, Spencer just hoped to find a way out to open desert. He could find the 15 after they got out of the city, so long as he didn't drive too far east.
It was probably a good thing there weren't any zombies around. He was pretty sure one could overtake the van in no time at the rate they were going.
As they got closer to the Strip, they saw the first of the zombies, sporadic at first, stumbling clumsily after the van. The road got wider, and it got easier to dodge both cars and zombies.
Spencer glanced in the rearview mirror to see Ryan tilt back one of the side windows and aim. By the time he shot, Spencer's eyes were back on the road.
The open desert lay beyond the Strip, just past the freeway, but Spencer wasn't about to risk the grid lock that that probably was.
He kept driving south, hoping a way out would present itself.
The zombies grew in number the closer they got to the edge of town.
“I think we found them,” Brendon said. Ryan fired again. Then again.
"Guys," Spencer said.
No one answered. Brendon had his window down now, too. Between the two of them, Brendon and Ryan were just managing to pick off the close ones.
"Guys," he said again.
There were so many zombies now, in bigger and bigger groups, too many to shoot. It was like the zombies somehow knew they were trying to leave and they wanted nothing more than to prevent it from happening.
"Guys," Spencer said, sharper than before. "Roll up the windows."
They were getting so close and there were so many of them. Spencer could see the way their skin sagged and their arms flopped around when they weren't using them to reach toward the van. He could hear them groaning. It was horrifying. And they were going to die.
Brendon fired another round, just missing a woman in broken heels and a headdress that was probably white and tall once, but after weeks of wear had become sort of gray and withered. It was falling over one of her eyes and Spencer insanely wished that she’d reach up and adjust it. It swayed as she moved toward them, bobbing with every uneven step. Brendon fired again and she fell outside of Spencer's line of sight.
"Seriously," Spencer said. "Windows up." He would do it himself, and child safety lock them, too, only Ryan had the shittiest taste in vans ever and the windows were manual.
A few of the zombies stumbled close enough to beat their hands against Spencer's door, close enough for Spencer to feel bumps where he was running over their feet. And that, that Spencer did not want to think about. At all.
Ryan finally shut his window and crouched in close, sticking his head between the front seats to yell useless instructions in Spencer's ear. Yes, yes, as a matter of fact Spencer did see the overturned sedan. There were zombies climbing all over it. It was kind of hard to miss.
Brendon turned the handle and his window slowly rose. Spencer watched the way it inched up little by little, and, Jesus, it was like that was the only thing he could see. Just outside of the world’s least effective van window, a particularly gaunt zombie curled its dirty fingers around the top of the glass and tried to push his face into the open space. Brendon pressed his gun against its forehead and pulled the trigger.
To his credit, Brendon waited until the window was all the way up to freak out. "Fuck," he said, "fuck fuck fuck." There was blood spattered on his face and his arm and on the inside of the windshield, but the zombies were outside and they were inside, so it probably could have ended a lot worse.
They were on all sides now. Spencer felt closed in and cut off and he couldn't see anything but zombies climbing on other zombies climbing on the hood and clinging to that stupid ladder in the back. The van started to rock. They were definitely going to fucking die.
Spencer honked the horn. The zombies didn't seem to care. Actually, the only thing it really did was infuriate Brendon.
"What are you even doing?" He yelled.
"I don't know! If you have a better idea I'm all ears." Spencer beeped the horn again.
"Yeah I have a better idea. Don't drive into the mob of zombies. That's a better idea."
Spencer's foot was all the way down on the gas pedal. The engine revved, but the van only crept forward. There were more bumps, too many to register as separate occurrences.
“Ryan, sit down and put your fucking seat belt on,” Spencer said.
There had to be fewer zombies behind them than in front of them. In a last ditch effort to not die in a van at the hands of thousands of zombies, Spencer slammed on the brakes and threw the car in reverse. The jolt threw a few zombies off the hood and, oh, the roof apparently, but they only managed to back up a few feet. Spencer slammed on the brakes again, yelled “Seat belt!” at Ryan, and pushed on the gas again. They lurched back, same as before. Spencer floored it again and again, and they went further and further back each time. The second there was enough space to do it, Spencer turned the van around, knocking zombies down, and rolling over god knows what. They went back the way they came.
Spencer didn’t look in the rearview mirror, but he could see figures following them, slowly and steadily, clear enough in his head anyway.
They left Vegas the back way. The freeway was packed with cars, and probably would be until the end of time, so they drove through side streets and straight through Summerlin to get there. They hadn’t been back since the zombies came around. It made Spencer feel weird and sort of empty to pass the shopping center with Port of Subs and his mother’s grocery store.
Eventually, the housing developments thinned out and the only buildings were gas stations and convenience stores tucked in close to the highway. Spencer thought again about cutting off the road and driving straight into the open desert, but he didn’t have to. There were scattered cars in their way, but nothing he couldn’t drive around.
When they were far enough out of town that there was only desert in front of them, Spencer stopped the van.
“Someone else needs to drive,” he said. It was funny how once they were safe, or safe-ish anyway, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Brendon didn’t ask why. He just raised his hand and said, “I’ll do it.”
Spencer unbuckled his seat belt and got out. It was bright outside, so much brighter than they were used to, and Brendon squinted at him as they passed each other to switch. When they got close, Brendon grabbed his hand and squeezed briefly before releasing it.
When Spencer got around to the passenger seat, he changed his mind. He slid the rear door open instead and pushed some stuff around until he could crawl in next to Ryan.
He changed his mind again and reached into the third level of seats to retrieve a bottle of water and someone’s shirt.
When he hunched up close to Brendon, he showed him the shirt and the water and Brendon nodded. It didn’t take long to clean him up. Brendon shut his eyes and let Spencer wipe his face. When Spencer was finished, he passed the bottle to Brendon. He leaned outside and dumped the remainder over his arm and wiped the blood away. Then he dropped the shirt in the road and shut the door.
Brendon slapped his palms on his thighs. "Okay, who's ready to go to the third most populous city in the country?"
Spencer watched the little white heap of a shirt in the middle of the road until he couldn’t see it anymore.
-
They drove and drove and then they drove some more. Long into the night, slower that they wanted because it was hard to see what was in front of them, and what was in front of them could be a surprise fourteen car pile-up.
When they couldn't drive anymore they stretched out as much as they were able and tried to sleep.
It was cold in the desert so late or so early or so whatever it was. Brendon didn't have the energy or inclination to look at his watch.
Brendon laughed softly when Ryan arranged his blankets into some kind of fort to keep out all the light that was sure to be coming in through the windows in just a few hours.
Brendon tried, but he was so tired he couldn't sleep. He had stayed up front in the front passenger seat with the back tilted all the way down. It was comfortable enough, but he couldn't get settled and he couldn't stop thinking about the difference between thick concrete walls and thin metal ones.
They had picked this spot for a reason, though. There was nothing for miles in any direction, not even so much as a rest stop for twenty miles east and thirty miles west. There were scattered abandoned cars, but their owners were long gone. It was so quiet, nothing at all but the wind. As far as Brendon knew, it was just Ryan and Spencer and him alone in the desert at the end of the world.
Even if there was something terrible waiting in the dark, it wasn't like they’d ever be deep sleepers ever again. And they had guns. Many, many guns.
Brendon pressed his forehead to the cold glass and looked up. He could see a million stars. He strained his eyes for shapes in the landscape, but all he could see were the dark silhouettes of low and distant hills. It was all so empty. Eventually he turned and shifted and brought his gaze inward. He looked at Ryan and saw nothing but heaps of blankets around his head. His legs were virtually uncovered and Brendon could see where his fingers curled around the barrel of the rifle resting on his hip.
Spencer was closer than Ryan, just across the way in the driver’s seat. It was tilted back at the same angle as Brendon's. Brendon shut his eyes for a long moment, exhaustion finally taking over, and when he opened them again it was to Spencer looking back at him.
"Can't sleep?" Spencer asked, hushed and strangely intimate.
Brendon shrugged.
"Come here," Spencer said. Brendon leaned over, across the gap in the seats. He bumped the drink holder and empty Red Bull cans knocked against each other. Ryan stirred in the back and Spencer grinned. Spencer pulled his hand out from under himself and brushed his thumb across Brendon's cheek. "Close your eyes."
Brendon did and Spencer kissed him, slow enough and sweet enough that Brendon didn't mind the way his arm was going numb from holding himself up. Spencer's pacing matched Brendon's sleepiness and Brendon felt himself slip easily into a place where he could drop off.
Brendon settled back into his seat and blinked at Spencer. "I thought," he said. "I hoped we'd find something."
"Find what?" Spencer asked, still quiet.
"I don't know. Something." Brendon closed his eyes and kept them that way. "Something that wasn't Vegas. Something alive."
Spencer didn't answer and Brendon opened his eyes one more time.
"I know," Spencer said. Brendon fell asleep.
-
They woke up to a truck parked alongside the van, no more than a handful of feet between them. Brendon's heart ratcheted up a notch before he had the presence of mind to figure out what was going on. By the time he did, Ryan was already sliding the passenger door open. Brendon scrambled to get at his own door, but not before he snagged his baseball bat from the space between the seats.
There was a girl. A girl with impossibly long hair. She sat with her equally impossibly long legs hanging out the door and her bare feet swinging above what had to be incredibly hot pavement.
There was also a guy. A very scruffy, unwashed guy who sat in the front seat and was currently pointing a gun directly at Ryan.
"Give me all your money," he said.
Ryan stared for a minute and then started to laugh. Brendon had no idea what was happening. Like at all. They didn't have any money. Presumably, no one anywhere had any money. Or, maybe they did, but it was kind of all Monopoly money at this point.
The girl with the bare feet whacked the guy in the head. "Be nice, Alex," she said.
Ryan continued to laugh. Brendon continued to have no idea what was going on.
Alex, if that was even his name, lowered his gun and smiled. His smile was just as scary as the pointing of guns, though his teeth did look very clean.
A second girl poked her head around the guy called Alex. "Actually," she said, "we are in the market for some gas though, if you could help us out with that. Or maybe a siphon or something. Either or. Unless of course Alex is being too much of a prick. Then we understand."
"Siphon," Spencer said blearily, "that would've been a good idea."
They hooked them up with some gas, because if politeness went out the window, than the zombies had already won, blah blah blah. Brendon wasn't about to leave people stranded on the highway during an apocalypse, what if they were the ones who had run out of gas, what then?
Spencer slid out of the driver's seat to grab one of the extra cans while Brendon set his bat back down on the floor.
"I gotta take a piss," Ryan announced.
"I like the way you think, young man," Alex said. He opened his door to follow Ryan out into the desert and a million tiny gum wrappers flew out into the breeze. They almost looked pretty, floating away close to the ground like that.
The girl in the passenger seat slid over and reached around under the seat to open the gas tank.
"Nice truck," Brendon said, just to have something to say. It wasn't really all that nice, it was pretty beat up and the paint had rusted over in some spots. Not that Ryan's penchant for old minivans left him with much room to talk.
"Tennessee likes red," she said, like that was a reasonable explanation.
"Oh?" Brendon said. It was really nice and kind of novel to have somebody new to talk to. He wasn't going to let a little thing like potential lunacy get in the way of conversation.
The girl grinned wryly at him. "That's Tennessee," she nodded toward the girl in the back seat. And okay, the Tennessee likes red thing was starting to make sense. Tennessee was putting on her shoes. Brendon was oddly comforted by this. Bare feet and zombies made him nervous.
"Hey," Tennessee said, looking up from the laces.
"Oh, is this like that movie with zombies and the names of cities? Like that girl named Cincinnati or Barstow or whatever? Are you from Tennessee?"
"No." She drew out the o in no around a light laugh. "And Tennessee is a state, not a city." Tennessee had an English accent that Brendon was only able to pick up when she said more than a couple words at a time. It was incongruous and oddly charming. And she definitely wasn't from Tennessee.
"Anyway, you met Alex, we're pretty sure he's harmless. And I'm Z. And that's everybody."
"Uh, that's Spencer." Brendon pointed towards where Spencer was wrestling with the gas cans - they had wedged them in pretty tight. "And that's Ryan." He pointed behind him where Ryan was presumably taking a leak. "And I'm Brendon." He probably didn't need to point at himself, but he did anyway.
"Nice to meet you," Z said. "Thanks for the gas. Really. I did not want to walk to the nearest station, you know? We totally owe you."
"No problem," Brendon said, "You guys are the first people we've seen outside of Vegas. So yeah, no problem."
"Oh hey, us too," Tennessee said. "Well not outside of Vegas, outside of LA. And only if you mean the kind of people who aren't zombies, cause we saw plenty of those."
"Right. Yes. People who aren't zombies." Brendon nodded. It was possible that he had lost the ability to talk like a regular person to people who weren't Spencer and Ryan.
"Hey," Ryan said, coming up between the cars with Alex trailing behind him. "These guys are going to Chicago, too."
"We are indeed," Z said.
"We should start a two car caravan, right?" Alex said. He leaned against the van next to Ryan and Ryan looked at the pavement and smiled.
-
It took them a while to put it all together, but it wasn't just Vegas where the zombies were clustering. Gathering. What have you.
Spencer knew from Tennessee that getting out of LA hadn't been the greatest experience for her little group of survivors either, but it took going through a few new cities for him to really start to get it.
They had bypassed Henderson back when they went north out of Vegas, which meant that the first town they had gone through was tiny. And it was dark. And yeah, there had been zombies waiting for them. Spencer had attributed it to the lights from the van and the noise of the only car on the road. They had driven through them, shooting and speeding, but it was nothing like leaving Las Vegas, so at the time it hadn’t occurred to Spencer that it was anything other than normal zombie activity.
He continued to think along the same lines through the next few one stoplight towns, too. Only now it was broad daylight and they were coming up on Albuquerque in a couple of hours. It was about time they started putting two and two together.
Spencer started musing out loud. Zombies getting together to thwart them wasn't necessarily something any of them were eager to talk about, but it was either that or, you know, die, so they made sacrifices.
"So, why?" Spencer said.
From the driver’s seat, Ryan said, "I don't know, man, instinct maybe?"
"Yeah, yeah," Brendon said, "I mean, if you figure that they've mostly weeded out all the people in town, the only, like, consistent source of edible people would be the ones either coming or going." Brendon paused. "Not that I think they're sitting down and planning it out like that. It's probably more like 'brains here, brains good.'" Brendon's zombie imitation was pretty good, what with the outstretched arms and drooling. It was probably due to all that real life exposure.
Spencer leaned toward Ryan and glanced at the dash. "Oh good," he said. "We're overheating again." It was only the third time that day. At least they could discuss it with the other guys while they were pouring all their good drinking water into the radiator and waiting for their piece of shit van to cool down.
Alex and Tennessee confirmed what they had already started to expect while Z and Ryan poked ineffectually at the innards of the hood. Every town they had driven through had been bracketed by zombies. Phoenix, according to Tennessee, had been particularly brutal. It was probably all those suburbs.
"Which leaves the question," Spencer said, "how the fuck do we get to Chicago and avoid all major cities."
"First," Z said, "you ditch the van. This thing is just a very ugly death trap on wheels."
"But I like the van," Ryan said. Spencer knew exactly why Ryan liked the van. Ryan liked the van because he'd always carried the notion of touring the country in one not all that dissimilar. But given the choice between the van and the bunch of them getting to Chicago alive, Spencer was pretty sure Ryan would choose the second option.
"Second, I have an idea." Z said. The hood of the van they were evidently ditching slammed shut as though Z needed external punctuation.
"Oh good," Brendon said. "I'm a fan of ideas."
Alex made hand motions. They were probably supposed to indicate go on, but he had a cigarette in one hand and sun glasses in another and Spencer guessed that even on a good day, Alex’s hand motions weren’t other people’s hand motions. “Are you gonna share your idea, or do we have to guess.”
Z snagged his cigarette and just before taking a drag said, “It winds from Chicago to LA.”
Brendon smiled slowly. “Is it more than two thousand miles all the way?”
“I do believe it is,” Z said. Z and Brendon grinned at each other like they were geniuses. Ryan rolled his eyes.
“I see some flaws in your plan,” Alex said. “First, I’m relatively certain that Oklahoma City does not look mighty pretty right now. Second, isn’t Route 66, like, gone? Isn’t it just another highway now?”
“No no no,” Tennessee said, “Or okay, a lot of it is just other highways, but a lot of it is still there, and the point of Route 66 is that it avoids traffic in major cities.” Tennessee said the last bit like she was taking an oral exam. She sounded absurdly proud of herself.
“Okay,” Spencer said, “Okay, and if the zombies are instinctually attracted to places people travel the most, they’re probably hanging out around major highways. Avoiding those would be good.”
“Right,” Brendon said. He looked at Z, then Tennessee, then back to Z again. “How do you know so much about Route 66?”
“We planned a road trip one summer,” Z shrugged.
“Why didn’t you invite me?” Alex asked, affronted.
Z patted at Alex’s arm. “I said planned. We were fifteen, we didn’t actually go.”
“See,” Tennessee said, “How there’s a road and we’re sort of on a trip? We totally invited you.”
Alex looked around and shrugged a that works for me sort of shrug. “So were all on board with staying away from the large groups of zombies, good? Good. What we need now is map. I mean, a better map then the map we have.”
Spencer raised his hand. “We have a better map.”
-
"You know who I bet was the first to go?" Alex paused, like they were all going to chime in with various theories of their own.
When no one answered, Z said, "No Alex, tell us please. Who was the first to go?" Her voice was a gravelly mix of sarcasm and affection. Ryan could listen to her talk forever.
"People who don't watch TV. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that these people without TVs missed all the late breaking news about, you know, people eating other people and what not, but fuck that. That's not what I'm talking about." Alex veered off the road to drive around a long vacant blockade. He couldn't avoid driving over some shrubbery and mounds of dirt, so they all bumped around a little, but the truck was better equipped to handle off-roading than the van, so Ryan just held on to the arm rest and rode it out.
When they got back on the highway Alex picked up his train of thought like he had never been interrupted. "Like not even people without TVs. The first people to die where those kids whose parents wouldn't let them watch violent movies."
"I was that kid," Brendon said.
"Yeah, yeah," Alex said. He caught Brendon’s eye in the rearview mirror. “I bet you watched them anyway, though, right?"
Tennessee glanced back at where Brendon was slumped against Ryan. "Brendon thought I was called Tennessee because of Zombieland. He's probably the reason you're all still alive."
Brendon laughed, low and sleepy and into Ryan's shirt.
"No, see? That's what I'm saying," Alex went on. "You watch a zombie movie, right? What's the first thing you learn? You need guns. You need guns, like now. Also, sorry, the government can't help you."
"Wait.” Spencer said as he leaned his head back against the window. “So you’re telling me people who didn't, like, watch low brow zombie movies had no idea they should have some kind of weapon? I don't know man, I don't think you're giving people enough credit. I think they probably made the leap to guns."
"Ah," Alex said, "but how long did it take them to make that leap? Just long enough to get their brains eaten, probably. I'm hungry, who’s hungry?"
"I could eat," Z said.
"I could stretch my legs," Brendon said.
They ate stale crackers and cheeze-wiz in the middle of the road. They washed it down with warm coke. Around a cracker, Alex said, "I didn't mean just zombie movies. I meant violent movies in general." He said it like there was a definite distinction, like it was important that they get his meaning. "I am this close to confident that I wouldn't know how to make a Molotov cocktail in under twenty seconds if I hadn't seen it in a movie. Or how to hotwire a car."
Tennessee scoffed. "You can't hotwire a car."
"No," Alex admitted. "But your girlfriend can."
Tennessee turned to Z. "You can hotwire a car?"
"Yes, yes I can. A skill, by the way, that I did not learn from the movies."
"How did you learn?" Tennessee asked, awed.
Z brushed her hands off on her shorts and swallowed the last cracker. "The neighbor kid taught me when we were like twelve."
"Uhuh, uhuh," Alex said, "and ten bucks says the neighbor kid learned it from a movie. Ten bucks. Little ruffians hotwiring cars in Beverly Hills."
"Yeah, well, I don't actually remember and it's not like we can ask him now. Besides, half the cars left in the road have the keys in the ignition."
"Trust me it was the movies."
Z looked around. "Why are we still talking about this?"
"Because hotwiring cars is cool?" Spencer and Ryan said at nearly the exact same time.
Tennessee nodded. "Exactly," she said.
"What, you had so many other scintillating topics of conversation? That new song you heard on the radio? That neato time you had out the other night? What do you want to talk about Z Berg?"
Z and Alex continued to bicker good naturedly. Tennessee clapped her hands. "Okay, driver switch." She looked at Ryan and Spencer and Brendon, "Sorry, the kids who picked the dying minivan don't get to drive."
As they all climbed back in the truck, Tennessee asked Z, "How come you never told me you could hotwire a car?"
With six of them crammed into the truck, the entire trip pretty much went exactly like that. Sure, there were scattered moments of shooting the undead in the head, but yeah, pretty much that’s how things continued to go down.
-
They had a problem. It was kind of a big one. The closer they got to the city, the more apparent it became. And the more apparent it became, the more Spencer thought about it. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t breathe like a normal person.
The thing was, Chicago was big, huge really, and Spencer had no idea where they were going.
Z and Tennessee and Alex were sort of vague on the particulars as well. Because as much as people had talked about things happening in Chicago, no one had known precisely where. Which was just fine when Chicago was a magical, nebulous destination in their heads, but now that they were this close to driving into what could be a metropolis comprised entirely of flesh seeking zombies, well, it got a little worrisome.
They had focused so much on the actual getting there that the what they'd do when they got there hadn’t really come up.
Brendon told him, “We’ve made it this far, we’ll find a way.”
“Has anyone actually been to Chicago?” Spencer asked.
“I have,” Alex said. “Um, it was seven years ago. For three days.” Alex was no help.
They would have been fine if they had been able to stay in the truck. Or maybe they would have been fine if they knew their way around the city. But they didn't and they weren't.
They had to stop and walk a handful of miles outside of Chicago proper because the stopped cars on the freeway were too tight to weave around.
They took only what they needed, which basically amounted to guns and ammunition. They could worry about restocking their dwindling supplies once they'd found some kind of shelter.
They spread out, the six of them, and walked slowly between cars. They heard the zombies before they saw them. This was actually pretty awesome, because as much as that game I can’t see you if you can’t see me doesn’t work in reality, it does when there’s zombies involved.
It sounded like low grade humming at first, something electrical or mechanical. But when Spencer listened hard, he could distinguish the rising and falling of familiar disembodied moans. Alex held up his hand, fist closed tight, like it was war and the enemy was approaching. Which wasn’t all that far off the mark, actually, even if he did look like a douche.
They took the next exit, walking down it and onto the street below. Spencer wasn’t delusional enough to think that there wouldn’t be zombies at street level, but at least this way they wouldn’t be caught on a five lane highway with only one way to run.
-
It was just like Vegas. Sporadic zombies at first, and then a throng of them too big to count, writhing and stumbling as one hungry, decaying mass. They were smart enough this time to not run headlong into the center of it. Which Ryan liked to think spoke to their ability to learn from their previous mistakes.
“We should have just gone to a farm,” Brendon said. “Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I could live on a farm. I’d be a great farmer.”
Tennessee squeezed his arm. “We can do that next, okay?” she said.
Ryan sided with Brendon on this one. He really didn’t see anything wrong with going now. They had seen plenty of farms on their way in. They could just go get the truck, turn around and go grow tomatoes. Raise goats. Milk cows all day. Ryan could do that.
Tennessee broke through his reverie. “Oh my lord, black hoodie, two o’clock.” Z raised her shot gun and fired. The zombie went down, but there were others. They had to find some place safe.
They went left because that way looked clear. They half ran, half walked, looking for some place that looked like it might have a decent supply of food and water. Ryan was slowest, mostly because he kept turning around to cover their backs.
After a while, Spencer caught on to Ryan’s admittedly flimsy plan and hung back to watch Ryan’s back so all backs were covered. It worked out well for a bit. Shots rang out from ahead and behind when someone lumbered close, but they made it pretty far pretty fast and they avoided the zombie hoard.
“Tan jacket, two o’clock,” Spencer said and Ryan swiveled left.
“No,” Spencer said, “Two, not ten. Your other right.”
Ryan rolled his eyes at Spencer and raised his shot gun and peered through the scope. He paused.
“That’s not a zombie,” he said. It wasn’t. It was just a guy. A regular guy. That Ryan had almost shot, Jesus.
“Guys,” Ryan hissed.
The regular guy got closer. He looked very young, even with the beard. And short. He did not look like a guy who’d be walking around calmly in the midst of a city gone empty and dead, save for the zombies. When he got close enough to talk without yelling, he said, “Hey. Um, hi. I’m Jon Walker.”
“And you’re here to rescue us?” Brendon supplied.
Jon Walker laughed, loud in the quiet of the empty street, like he hadn’t meant to, but Brendon had surprised it out of him. Ryan smiled.
part 3