“Alright girls, lets go.”
Nancy led the way down to the lobby from the internal stairwell next to the main elevator shaft. When she got there she looked around, noticing a few changes and spying a notepad that had not been there when they passed through just an hour before. “What’s this girls? Someone has been doing some writing.” She picked it up, but it was blank. “Hm, I did this once when I was a kid, hand me that pencil V, it is time to play 'spy'. I saw this once on the Kid’s Club on PBS.” Nancy scribbled the pencil lightly in a sideways motion across the page, revealing the three addresses Max had scribbled down fifteen minutes before. “Hah! A clue Scooby! Now we probably know where they are going, this will be plan ‘B’, we still have to find Fred, if we don’t find him we may head over to…” she scanned the paper briefly, resting her eyes on the last address, “Max’s house and see if we can pick up a quick meal and let V make amends to me for letting the meat get away. Plus I am sure Julie would like a word with that computer geek who shot her, right Julie?”
Julie nodded, “More meat first. This is way west of here, a long walk. Maybe we drive?”
“Yeah, lets go take care of getting us some wheels girls, no need to stick together just find a Chevy and stand next to it so we can see if the key fits. Oh, V? Go grab Walt’s keys too, then we can choose the ride we like best.” Nancy dearly wished she would have hung onto her keys, which, as far as she knew were still sitting in the Gap where she had changed clothing. Shrugging she thought if the cars here were worse than hers they could always drive the couple of blocks to pick up her keys.
There were not many cars left in the lot and finding a Chevy was made easier by the fact that there were only two parked out there and by the fact that Walt’s keys were also for a Chevy. His was a rusted out piece of shit Impala, the other was a white Chevy Van with a sticker Nancy recognized from visits to her sister’s house. Her nieces were infatuated with dvds of the cartoon that this character starred in and obviously who ever the guy was in Kirkpatrick’s office he had younger kids in his life too.
“We take the van girls, hop in and I will drive. We are going to circle this block then start circling block by block until we find that fucker Fred. And keep an eye out for Jimbo too, we didn’t see his body anywhere and the guys that left didn’t seem like they had enough time to hide any bodies to me.”
The girls climbed in and, ironically, buckled up. Nancy followed suit, soon they were driving out of the parking lot with Mojo-jojo the genius monkey, one of many villains from the now aged “Power Puff Girls” cartoon, staring evilly at the empty lot behind them as they left.
Chapter 26
While everyone had been quick to go for the cars, not many were actually driving. Max and company rapidly discovered an accident about halfway to Tom’s house. A bad accident that came with three lingering zombies feeding on the carcasses of the victims. Stewart backed up, Steve already too close to the pileup, veered onto the sidewalk, taking out a zombie who was turning towards the sound of the cars. He almost got hung up on a mountain bike but when he came down off the curb on the other side of the wreck the bike tore free.
Seeing that Steve had cleared the way, Stewart stopped and started forward again. The two remaining zombies watched the car with rapt attention, but made no moves toward them. Stewart cleared the wreck and started following Steve’s car, which was leaking what looked like fuel out the back. Stewart honked and pulled up alongside Steve on the four lane street. Max rolled down his window and they motioned Steve to stop.
When they stopped Stewart said, “Good driving, seriously I mean it, if you had not veered we could have been picking you out of a wreck. Max go check Steve’s car.”
Max hopped out and peered under the car, he clearly saw a large hole in the gas tank spilling fuel onto the pavement.
“Not good, gas is leaking everywhere and it looks like your muffler is hanging on by a thread.”
“Fuck. Damn it. This is my car, my car! Now what?” ranted Steve.
Stewart looked around and said, “Hop into the cruiser, no choice, I hope you don’t have anything in there you can live without.”
“Worth my life? Not hardly! I just…you know, it is my car! You never want to see something happened to your car. Or be forced to give it up, not like this.”
Max, between both vehicles, saw the zombies from the wreck peering their way, both were making tentative steps towards working their way up the block towards them, using cover as they came.
“Ah, the zombies are coming; I see two behind us, about half a block away, so quite chit-chatting and move please.”
“Fine.” Steve patted the dash of his car while Tom opened the door on the passenger side, both moved into the cruiser and they were soon underway, at a steady, slow, twelve to fifteen miles per hour. Tom gave directions to Stewart from the back seat and they soon arrived at his apartment complex, they had to go up onto the sidewalk twice more to skirt accidents before they arrived. The place was quiet, no sign of violence or undead, just another normal day in south Denver, quiet and chilly as the sun began to lighten the sky on the plains behind the buildings.
The apartments were set up with outside entrances, almost like a massive cancerous duplex gone wrong. Tom climbed out of the cruiser and Max joined him. Stewart said, “Good you two go and get what Tom needs, Steve and I will hold the fort in the parking lot, we will move the car around the building so any zombies come after us and leave the way clear here. If we honk it means ‘get your asses down here’, if we hear gunfire, we will come up and assist. Everyone clear?” There were grim nods all around. “Good I won’t get worried for ten minutes, anything more than that and I probably will leave Steve with the car and come after you.”
Max followed Tom up the stairs, “What level is your apartment on?”
“Third floor, the top. It has great views though, worth it.”
“You mentioned roommates? How many? Any girlfriends that stay over or pets or anything else that might be moving in there?” asked Max.
“No, nothing. Here you take the shotgun, if my roommates are, are undead I might hesitate, you won’t ‘cause you don’t know them.”
“Makes sense. Safety off? Yeah? Okay, lets go in.” in a stage whisper, he continued, “It had to be the third floor.”
Tom stage whispered back, “I love you too.”
They got to the doorway on the third floor and it was cracked open, there was blood on the landing and some footprints had been tracked through the blood, going both into and out of the apartment. Max took the lead and softly pushed against the door with the barrel of the shotgun. The place was dark, very dark and the twilight from the rising sun was not good enough to shed any light into the house. A soft blue glow turned on behind him and as he looked back at Tom he saw that he was holding a small key chain light and trying to use it to push back the darkness in the apartment. It helped, but only a little. Cautiously Max stepped into the apartment, whispering to Tom, “Turn on a light, not a bright one if you can help it, or maybe open the fridge. I don’t know where I am going here, whoa!” as he said the last part Max stumbled into something on the floor, it felt like a long pillow weighed down with a lead weight. As he caught himself on the couch Tom brushed by him and shined his light on the floor.