The kids were not surprisingly the first one’s up the next morning. And I made my way back to the Streamline. When I opened the door I was surprised to see everyone around the table drinking coffee. Nancy patted the seat next to her, and as I was about to sit down, Kimberly let out with a squeal from the bedroom. My jaw dropped, and I hurried back there. Bradley, still smaller than his sister was on top of her, tickling her mercilessly. I went to grab him off when a box from the top of the pile next to the bed fell off, hitting Brad in the back, and knocking him off his sister, and on the bed next to her. I lifted the box off him, but he was already crying. Elizabeth burst through the door, and knocked me out of the way to get to Bradley, and she cradled him in her arms caressing him. It didn’t look like he’d suffered any permanent damage. “It’s okay,” Elizabeth said.
“Bradley,” I said, bending down to him as he looked up at my face. “You can’t tickle you sister like that. We have to be really, really quiet,” I said.
Elizabeth looked up at me, with her long pale face, like I’d stabbed her. “Leave,” she said, using very little air. She rocked Bradley.
“Liz.” I said.
“Get out!” She screamed.
“Be quiet!” I whispered at her brusquely.
She shook her head at me slowly, looking furious but she was quiet, so I turned and left.
Before I closed the door, Nancy fixed me with a look.
“What?” I said.
“Why can’t you just get alone wit her?” Nancy said.
You’re kidding me.” My father looked down into his coffee intently.
“She’s a grown up.”
“Okay. If she won’t tell the kids to be quiet, I will.”
“You could do it a little more tactfully.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes unconsciously, and drank my coffee. I gestured with my hands, “It could be, you know, a big deal.”
“Something just fell on him,” she said.
Things were fairly quiet as we finished our coffee. Bradley eventually stopped crying.
“We should get going,” I said. My dad grabbed his rifle and started for the door.
“Let us drive today Stanley,” Nancy said. You stay back here with the Liz and the kids, get some rest.”
“That sounds fine Nancy,” he said, “I think I will.”
We both stood up with our weapons, Nancy went to tell Liz that we were going to go. The air outside was cold, and everything was wet with dew. I glanced around before getting out of the streamline but didn’t see anything. I slipped out of the trailer and tiptoed through the twigs and dried leaves to the Truck as quietly as I could. When I got in the car I took out the map. Finding that patch of woods had been incredibly lucky. It was still in the city, or verging on the suburbs but it was still large, and dense enough to totally block us from outside view. In fact, there were roads all around us. It looked like traffic was slowing down last night when we’d found the woods. We were still closer to the west edge of the city than the north.
Nancy popped up into the passenger-side window scaring the shit out of me before she got in.
“Even if we have to contend with a little traffic, or slowdown because of zombies, I think it’ll still take less time to go west,” I said. Nancy cringed when I said zombies—until I turned the truck on and putting it into gear. Nancy said alright, and we both buckled our seatbelts and I started driving away.
“I can’t believe you’re so together about this.” Nancy said shaking her head, smiling.
I shrugged my shoulders, honestly not knowing how myself. She was quiet for a while. I had a little trouble maneuvering the big trailer around a few times when the trees got really close together.
“Your Dad’s being okay—” She said.
“We haven’t even seen any of ‘em yet.” I interjected.
She pushed me and I jostled over to the window; “You’re superman all of the sudden.” She said, laughing.
I pulled the truck around a copse of four or five trees to see a mostly deserted cityscape. Nancy stopped laughing. The streets were unfamiliar to me, I’d never really been this far north. The sun was out, and everything was lit up brightly, but it still looked grey. There was a semi-circular drive coming up to a parking lot before a baseball diamond and chain link dugouts. Beyond, large divided roads intersected the one road I could see heading straight west, unfortunately it looked like there were lots of abandoned cars on it. In between the buildings, streets and signs were zombies. They were stooping, or shuffling slowly. They moved plaintively and looked pained, or bored, or anxious. There were some in the outfield, some crossing the roads farther west.
Two of them, in the ATM vestibule of a bank nearby began banging on the glass when they noticed us. Strength left my arms when I saw how their frenzy was still sedate, and I almost let go of the wheel in the middle of a turn.
“I hope they’re sitting down back there.” I said, gassing the truck, and preparing the clutch to shift up a gear. The truck, or the trailer made a horrible scraping sound when we went over the curb and back onto the road, drawing attention of a small knot of zombies on the bleachers. The starting hobbling toward us, some dragging what looked like feet, broken at the ankle.
“Oh God.” Nancy said as her hand shot to her mouth, her breathing quickened. “I can’t take this.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “look at how slow they are.” I glanced over at her, to see that her face’d turned pale. Her lips were clutched in her right fist and her left hand clenched onto the hammer. “We could out-walk them,” I said, leaning back into my chair. I swung the truck onto Springer, a street I’d never heard of before, and began to weave around the abandoned cars and crumpled bicycles that littered the road.
As Springer became more tangled, getting around the wrecks became more of a problem. It was nearly impossible to maneuver the huge streamline, and the truck didn’t like the back and forth. At one point, during an ill fated three point turn, one of them got too close to the window and Nancy started crying. I began to hear banging coming through the back of the Streamline. I swore under my breath and dropped the truck into drive and plowed into a car with the gas on the floor. There was a great rending sound, and soft tinkling of broken glass audible over Nancy’s quiet sobs, but the little Volkswagen gave way, and swung out of our path and into the shoulder.
“Alright.” I said.
Nancy shook her head, forcing in short quick breaths.
“We’re okay.” I said, looking over at her, grabbing her hand and patting it into her lap. I looked back at the road and had to swerve to miss a zombie who was standing in the middle of it. Nancy let out a yelp as the front corner of the truck clipped its legs, and in went down with an anguished wail and wet crunching sound. My breath got caught short, and a lump began to grow in my throat. “We’re okay Nancy.” She shook her head.
“Lets go north a little?” I asked.
Nancy looked over at me no longer crying, but the tears still dripping down her face. “Uhm,” she said breathing out, “yeah.” She put her hands up to her face to wipe away the tears and breathed out again quick. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
She nodded, and at the next North-South street I turned right, grazing an overturned cart.
—Introduction and Dramatis Personæ
