Part Three

Janice stepped into the sporting goods store, noticing how most everyone at the checkout counters was purchasing outdoor gear; tents, lanterns, and hiking supplies. “We might have trouble finding the hiking frames here.”

Gordon shook his head. “We’ll find something.” He walked past the checkout counters and down an aisle. “It looks like a lot of people are taking the hint before the cops do. That’s a good thing, at least.”

“Not so good.” Janice frowned as she leaned closer to him and lowered her voice. “I’ve been thinking about how the leader got an army put together before he got here. I suspect that if we started checking outside the city, we’d find a lot of smaller urban towns have been emptied.” She gestured back at the checkout counters. “Those people will camp somewhere on the outskirts of the city, thinking they’ve traveled far enough away to be safe, and when the horde is leaving the city, he’s gaining that many more reinforcements.”

“I can see what you mean, but the only way to truly end this is to hunt down the leader.”

“Have you considered the possibility he might not show himself? He was cocky last time, and that gave us the chance to wound him.” Janice stopped in front of a row of hiking frames. “He’s likely to stay in hiding, especially if he knows we’re in town. Frank may have already been spotted, so all of our sneaking might be pointless.”

Gordon leaned over to pick up a frame and tried it on before he adjusted the straps. He nodded and pick up another to hand to Janice. “Here, try it out. If it doesn’t feel comfortable now, it will really be a problem when it’s loaded down.”

“What, you’re just going to ignore what I said?”

“I agree with you, but then we don’t have many options here, do we? Would you like to just leave and go hide somewhere?” He turned to watch her before nodding at her silence. “See? You don’t have any ideas either.”

Janice’s eyes lost their glazed look, and she shook her head. “All I’ve got is an idea that sounds similar to yours We can either find Frank or the leader, but as for an actual plan, I’m stuck.” She tried on the hiking frame and nodded. “Sure, this will work. What else are we here for on this trip?”

“Propane and kerosene. We’ll have to spread out our purchases a little bit, or we’ll make the natives restless.”

“Too late, Gordon.” Janice paused to gesture around the store. “The natives are already restless.”

***

President Crane stirred from sleep and raised his head off the back of the recliner. “What’s happened?”

“Sir, we’ve just received word from San Antonio. They’ve had a spike in missing persons reports,” Jake said. “There are twelve hundred people missing from the north side and parts of Universal City.”

The president stood up and stepped into his shoes. “The leader must have had converts escaping from Dallas well before we put the quarantine into place.”

“Possibly, sir, but there is also the possibility that the leader took some time to convert a few smaller rural towns in between the major cities. In fact, he may still be working outside of the cities. While we focus our efforts on his efforts in Houston, he is mass producing an army to move into the cities, not away from them.”

“Do we have anyone checking that?”

“Yes sir, and the FBI has been finding ghost towns.”

President Crane frowned. “It’s already too late to set up a quarantine of individual cities. Get general Louis on the phone and have him put together an emergency meeting at the Pentagon. Then get the speech writers on some kind of explanation for this. We can’t admit we lied, so they need to be creative about how we discovered that this isn’t a virus.” He paused and looked down in thought. “Tell them to start using Jamal’s name in the press releases. We may risk a mass panic, but we can’t hide this much longer if the leader is accelerating his conversions.”

***

Frank watched the TV with the volume low while Robin cried on his chest. She had woken up crying, and aside from the few brief moments of silence he had alone in the bathroom to shower, she had spent most of the morning clinging to him while lost in her own bleak thoughts.

Frank doubted the TV was helping. The local broadcasts had begun reporting eyewitness accounts of zombies on the streets, and the traffic reports showed that the highways were flooded with people trying to get out of the city. Thousands were missing, and the police were out in full force in an effort quell the abductions.

The national news was sticking to the story that a virus was at work, but the president was expected to issue an update during the afternoon. All flights and bus traffic into the  city had been canceled, and though there hadn’t yet been mention of a quarantine, Frank expected it would be in place by the early evening.

His stomach growled loudly, and he looked down at Robin. He couldn’t really move away from her, but she showed no signs of recovering herself. “Robin, I’m going to have to get up and make us something to eat.”

She raised her head, and he suppressed a grimace at how swollen and red her eyes were. “I’ll do it. What do you want to have?”

“You’re not in the best shape to be working.”

Robin got up slowly from the couch and wiped at her cheeks gingerly with the sleeve of her green long sleeve top. “No, I need to pull myself together. The zombies will be out  again tonight, and if I’m still blubbering like this, they’ll be able to take me easily.”

She turned to walk to the kitchen, and Frank got up to follow her. He leaned on the door frame to watch her start a pot of coffee and put bread into the toaster before she prepared fried eggs and sausage in the same skillet on the stovetop.

Frank had barely finished his breakfast when she took the dishes to the sink to wash them. He watched her working quietly, but he began to fidget with the need for a cigarette. He went to the counter to refill his coffee instead and leaned against it.

Robin glanced at him and looked back down while she washed the skillet. “Two months after Jody was born, my dad had some kind of psychotic episode. He started screaming at my mom, and when he hit her, I called the police.” Robin rinsed the skillet as she spoke then moved to dry it. Her lower lip twitched and she swallowed, looking down at the counter.

“He was held for six months in a state asylum before someone got careless. No one ever explained to me how he escaped, but he did, and he came home. Mom was still at work. I was in my room when he kicked in the door and started shouting at me. He said I’d betrayed him.” Frank stepped over to lay his hand on her shoulder, and she took a long shuddering breath. “He raped me. Then he started hitting me. A neighbor heard me screaming, and they called the police to take him away again. Mom had us move, and she told me-” The phone rang. She turned to stare at it, dabbing at her cheeks with her sleeve before she crossed the kitchen to pick the wireless handset off of the charger. “Hello?

“Robin? Are you all right?”

“Yeah mom, I’m… I’m okay. Where are you?”

“I’m stuck in Boston. I’ve been trying to call you since last night, but I keep getting a message that the trunk is busy.”

“You didn’t try my cell phone?” Robin asked.

“No, I did, but all I get is a busy signal. Instead of calling you this morning, I’ve been trying to book a flight or at least get a bus back. The problem is, everything going into Houston has been cancelled. They’re saying a virus has broken out in the city, the same one that wiped out Dallas.”

“I can’t really explain what’s happening here, but you shouldn’t try to come back here.” Robin took a breath to steady herself. “It will be better if you take a flight to Las Vegas and stay with grandpa for now. The city isn’t safe no matter where you go.”

“Is Jody okay?”

Robin closed her eyes. “I’ll have to explain it-“

“Robin, what happened to-”

She hung up the phone then reached out to unplug the phone from the wall. In the living room, the phone began to ring. She sighed and looked at Frank. “We should take a walk around the block to see if there are any survivors.”

Frank looked down at the phone and nodded. “Are you sure you’re ready to leave yet?”

“No, but we don’t have time for me to get over this.”

“What did your mom say about calling your cell phone?” Frank asked.

“She said my phone was busy last night.” Robin slipped a slender silver phone from her hip pocket and looked down at it. “That can’t be right. My  phone says the network is unavailable.”

“Déjà vu.”

“Is that important?”

“It may be. I remember someone in Dallas, Janice, said their phone was also down, but it came a lot later. Gordon’s cell phone was still working for a call to go through on the third night, though. If your phone was off last night, then it may mean there’s been some kind of acceleration of the plan.”

***

Janice set the shopping bags from the hardware store in the back seat and straightened up to look around the parking lot of the shopping center. Turning her head toward the street, she noticed two things at the same time. A cop car was pulling into a gas station, and the store appeared to be empty. Flicking her eyes around, she couldn’t find the clerk or any customers despite there being four cars in the lot.

Gordon was already watching the storefront as well, and she heard him groan when the uniformed officers got out of the car. The officers had both just stepped inside when zombies rose from behind the counter and the aisles. Janice counted ten in total, and she saw Gordon turn his head to look back at her with a sickened expression.

They both got into the car and sank down in their seat to watch as the officers and a line of customers were dragged away. The clerk wasn’t with them, or at least no one wearing a uniform was carried out. They waited for any signs of movement before Gordon started the car and drove to the station.

Janice glanced back at the patrol car. “We could take their radio and the shotgun.”

Gordon sat watching the patrol car before he gave a tiny nod. “We should go inside to check around. At the very least, we’ll have another tape.”

“No, forget that. There’s no point in gathering visual evidence. We’ll look for the clerk, and if they aren’t inside, we’ll… we’ll loot the patrol car.”

Gordon sighed as he opened his door and got out. “When did we become criminals?”

“When we agreed to lie about Frank.” Janice walked to the door and held it open for Gordon, staying outside until he had checked the store. When he nodded that it was safe, she stepped inside. “All right, so now what do we do?”

Gordon shrugged. “Let’s try the direct approach.”

“Go ahead.”

“Hey! If anyone is in here, the zombies are gone!” Gordon shouted. “We’ll be leaving in a minute ourselves, so unless you just like being alone-” He smirked as the door of the check cashing booth in the corner swung open, and a lanky, dark haired teen dressed in black slacks and a bright green work shirt stepped out of the booth. “Hi there. What’s your name?”

“Scott.”

“Well Scott, I’m Gordon, and this is Janice. Would you like to take a ride with us, or take your chances trying to get home on your own?”

Scott shook his head and crossed the store to stand beside Janice. “I’ll go with you.”

“Hold on.” Janice walked behind the counter to grab a handful of plastic bags before she passed a pair to Gordon, and then to Scott. “Grab the beef jerky and the canned foods.”

Gordon smirked as he crossed the store to fill a bag. “The city hasn’t even collapsed yet, and we’re already going to start looting?”

“It saves our remaining funds for the potential jump to another city, doesn’t it?”

Gordon nodded, watching Janice walk back to the beer cooler to pull out a twelve pack of Budweiser. “Oh, what the hell? How do you explain needing that?”

“We don’t.” Janice shrugged. “I’ve just always wanted to make a beer run.”

Gordon chuckled and went back to the counter to pull down several packs of cigarettes. He was walking back across the store to grab bottled water when he noticed the flashlights. “Hey, I’m taking the first load out to the trunk. We can stock up on lights and batteries here.”

“Look what I found.” Janice held up a can of fire starting fluid. “There are six bottles here, plus another row of nine lighter fluid bottles.”

Scott looked back and forth between them and frowned. “Hey, are you sure you’re the good guys?”

Gordon laughed quietly. “Ask us again in eight hours.”

He walked outside and unlocked the trunk to begin loading bags. When he turned around, he saw Janice was leaning over to look through the passenger window of the patrol car. He stepped behind her and she turned to frown at him. “We’ve going to need tools to get the radio out of the harness, not to mention a hacksaw to get the shotgun free.”

“Forget it for now. Give this city eight hours, and we can take everything on a five finger discount.”

Janice leaned into the car to listen to the radio chatter. She shook her head and stood up. “I don’t think we’ll need to wait much longer. The zombies are already trying to ambush patrols like they did in Dallas.”

“Then we’ll let them take the precincts while we gear up for combat. Then you and I will head to a precinct and try to recruit some local help.”

“So for now, we’re just robbing a convenience store instead of looting a cop car.”

 “Right, we need to make our descent into criminal activities slowly.”

***

Robin sat back on the couch, raising the remote to turn on the TV. She looked over at Frank as he flopped onto the couch. “Should we try driving out a few miles to try another neighborhood?”

“Maybe later. We should try to rest and get ready for a really long night.” He leaned over to take the remote from her and changed the channel to a local station, and his stomach tightened as he saw the reporter’s apprehensive expression.

“-are inside the building now, and we don’t have much more time left before they break into the studio. If you’re watching this, get out of the city now. Leave everything behind and get out while you still have a-”

Frank shut off the TV, looking over at Robin’s shocked expression. “Robin, tonight the final assault is going to begin, and we have almost no chance of taking these things out on our own. We need to get out and look for other people, and the best place to look will be near the police precincts, before the zombies make their full assault.”

“Do you want to leave now, or take a nap first?”

“Let’s eat and take a nap. We’ve still got plenty of daylight hours before things get really hairy.”

Frank walked into the kitchen and sat down while Robin began making burgers. Neither of them would talk about the walk around the neighborhood because the situation seemed quite grim. Only a few driveways were empty, suggesting that someone had managed to escape. The only signs of life outside had been the birds chirping, and even their numbers seemed diminished.

They widened the search to cover eight block on either side of Robin’s street, but just a few minutes after noon, they decided to give up and return to the house. Robin had grown increasingly morose on the walk back, but he noticed that she seemed to calm down by running through the mundane tasks of preparing a meal.

The kitchen filled with smoke as the burgers cooked, and she went to the back door to open it. Frank watched the smoke with a voice nagging at him that he needed to be edgy. He watched the door and shook his head, deciding he was nervous because he was starting to suffer his first nicotine fit. He needed a reason to be moody, and of course his mind had many easy targets to choose from. But each time he looked over at Robin, he reminded himself that shouting at her, even for something which wasn’t her fault, would be a bad idea.

They ate quietly, and again Robin was moving as soon as the dishes were empty. He could understand that she was trying to keep herself busy to stop her thoughts from wandering, and when she turned to glance at him, he found the anguish in her eyes was so obvious that he had to look away.

He drew in a sharp breath when he saw the zombies crouched outside the open door, and even as he stood up, they were bursting into the kitchen. Frank took hold of a zombie’s head and twisted it back, fighting with the zombies who tried to take hold of his arms. He lost sight of Robin but heard a loud crunch as the skillet struck a zombie’s skull. Driving his elbow into the jaw of one zombie to get his arm free, Frank drew his sword. He still had his arm back behind him as he prepared to swing when he saw a man in a black uniform run through the door and raise a rifle.

Frank tried to shout at him not to shoot, but the soldier fired a short burst, sweeping the rifle over the largest cluster of zombies. Frank’s warning became a gasp as three bullets tore through the zombie in front of him and struck him in the chest, shoulder, and stomach. The world was muffled by a loud hum as he fell back. He saw Robin screaming at the soldier to stop shooting while she picked up Frank’s sword. A zombie was trying to grab Frank’s arms and Robin dropped the blade to decapitate it. The body landed on his chest, and something cold and wet started spread out over his skin.

It flowed over and into his wounds, and the cold feeling began to fill his chest. Raising his head weakly, Frank watched pools of white blood drain into his wounds. Though it seemed impossible to him, the puddles dried up, and not even a wet stain on his shirt remained. Frank dropped his head, and a spasm in his chest robbed him of the little strength he had left.

For several seconds, he could still hear gunshots and Robin screaming. When she stopped, he feared the worst until she crawled back over him. “Frank? Oh god, you don’t look so good.”

Frank shivered, trying to turn his head to look at the soldier. He couldn’t, but a second later, three soldiers were moving to stand around him. One knelt on his left and took out a syringe. “Don’t... don’t waste the drugs.” He took a short breath and coughed. “It doesn’t even really hurt that bad anymore. I-”

The spasm in his chest returned as his heart stopped. He tried to draw in a final breath but his lungs seized instead. A deep ache filled his limbs while his body went into convulsions. Then all at once, it stopped.

Frank saw Robin bury her face in her hands to start crying. He understood that he was dead, but he’d had the impression that he would leave the body after dying. A cold fear was gripping him as he thought of being buried and left alone for all eternity, but he noticed the soldier kneeling over him was watching Frank’s chest with a growing look of alarm.

“Ma’am, get back.”

Frank wanted to ask what was happening, but he couldn’t find a way to make his vocal cords work. The soldiers forcibly pulled Robin away even while she fought with them. Frank heard a rifle bolt slide.

“No, what are you-” Robin screamed.

A burst of rifle fire stole Frank’s vision.