Because we’d turned the car off during the long waits the day before we were in good shape gas-wise, not even having expended one tankful. The city was much more spread out the farther north we got, the landscape too took on more character. The road began to stretch out, laying in shallow valleys, and flirting around the grassy tops of knolls. There were lots of small strip malls, probably full to overflowing with food. Nancy told me that we had enough, and we did. But I just didn’t like missing the opportunity, for fear that we’d need it later. There were lots of little commercial centers, with little shops, and offices, and restaurants. There were wooded neighborhoods, and open tracts of trees, or empty rail yards, or parks. The zombies had also subsided. So much so in fact that Nancy offered to take over driving, and I graciously accepted.
It was almost two when we stopped. Nancy nudged me to get my attention; I looked up over the dashboard to see a vast asphalt parking lot around what looked like a small bus station.
“This is great!” Nancy sighed.
It’s pretty good.” I said.
The truck came to a slow stop, crunching gravel under the tires. Nancy and I both got out and locked the doors. I knocked on the door of the trailer. Liz pushed back the curtain, and seeing it was us unlocked and opened the Streamline’s door. Liz and my Dad were sitting at the table, eating sandwiches, as we sat down.
“Pretty good place, right?” Nancy asked. Liz shook her head.
“Shouldn’t someone be a lookout?” Liz asked.
I nodded at my father, “You up for it Annie Oakley?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, getting up, “if you’ll hand me my gun and my sandwich.”
I could see Nancy make a face out of the corner of my eye.
I nodded. My father retrieved his gun from the cupboard, and picked up a hat of his that he must’ve found in his stuff. We went out of the Streamline, and I held the sandwich and gun, grudgingly, while my father clambered onto the roof of the truck.
When I opened the door Nancy was at the counter making sandwiches.
“PB&J,” she said to me.
“Sure.”
Kim and Brad bounded out of the bedroom at a sprint, shaking the whole trailer. This time Kim was chasing Brad, screaming at the top of her lungs. I inadvertently look at Liz but didn’t make a face. Almost at the same moment as our eyes met Liz spun around and looked at the kids.
“Look at me, look at my face,” she said.
They both stopped in their tracks, and turned around and went back into the bedroom.
“Thank you, Liz,” I said, in earnest, but she didn’t look at me, and noded slightly. Nancy came back to the table with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a paper towel for me.
Lunch went by uneventfully for ten or fifteen minutes. The kids were playing quietly in the back bedroom, they’d apparently already had lunch, at noon. I’d almost finished my second sandwich when the door to the back bedroom burst open again, this time with Brad chasing Kimberly. Nancy put down the soda she was drinking, and looked straight ahead. I forced myself not to look at Liz, or at the kids.
Liz just closed her eyes, we each sat for a frozen second, unable to react when we heard the door to the streamline open. I just looked up to see Liz flailing backward in a spiral motion when we heard the children screaming. Liz gained her faculties quicker than Nancy or I, and as we were still sitting stock still looking at the door, she was jumping out of it. When my body finally did react I moved from the chair to the doorway as fast as possible. I’d just stuck my head outside, hanging on to the door frame, when the truck started to move. The drivers side door of the cab was still open, my father tucked in at the wheel inside. Liz was five feet of the right left corner of the trailer just beginning to chase after us. Nancy’d made it to the window and pulled the curtains aside as my Dad began a slow left turn. Looping away from our original position with Liz gaining on us, were two bloody zombies on the ground laying face up underneath Kim and Brad who were both still. I looked down toward my feet to find a grey, cut up hand holding onto the last step, shaking wildly. I stepped on it at first and felt bones cracking under my shoe, but the hand didn’t let go. In a swift kick I wedged my shoe under the broken fingers pushing them off the step. Liz’s eyes buldged as the trailer bucked wildly on the back tire, and a broken body slowly appeared on the ground from behind the trailer. A few more zombies were standing up, shuffling out from behind a tree, and further out on the opposite side of the lot. Liz was suddenly very close to me, and I braced myself against the wall, and hung my arm out. She grasped it and I leaned back, pulling us both back inside the streamline and onto the floor in a pile. I reached up and pulled the door shut, and locked it.
Liz extricated herself from me and stood up slowly.
“Liz,” Nancy said crying, holding her arms out to Liz who walked into her. Nancy grasped her and sobbed slowly, in short quiet wails. Liz looked surprisingly sober, if a little tired. I though she might be in shock, but wouldn’t have known what to do about it anyway.
I was having trouble keeping my breath. It would come and go in spats. Nancy sagged onto the couch pulling Elizabeth with her. I sat down at the table and looked down at what was left of my sandwich on the other chair, its paper towel by the couch. There was mud tracked in the trailer.
—Introduction and Dramatis Personæ
