Sometimes We Ran (Book 1) Read online

  He glanced at the roll-up doors, then made a beeline for the door we were hiding behind. I pulled my handgun and got ready. He started to grab the handle, but then thought better of it and walked a few feet away from the door. It looked like he might just move on down the road.

  No such luck. “I know you’re in there,” he said in a loud voice. “You might as well come out and talk.”

  I put my gun away and turned to Claire. “I’m going outside to have a little conversation with this guy. You stay here and keep a lookout. If anything happens to me, you get the hell out of here.”

  “The heck with that, I’m coming with you. You may need some help,” she whispered back.

  We didn’t have time to argue. “No way. You stay here and watch.”

  Claire wouldn’t let it go. “What if he’s armed? If he smokes you, I’ll be trapped in here.”

  It was against my better judgment, but I relented. “You stay near me and don’t say a word. Understand?”

  Claire nodded in agreement. She looked a little shaky.

  I pushed the door open to meet the first live human being I’d seen since I found Claire at that long-ago intersection. “Ah, there you guys are. I thought someone was here,” he said in a somewhat friendly tone. “My name is Glenn.”

  I eyed him carefully. “I’m John, and this is Claire,” I said, nodding in her general direction. I took off my glove, and extended my hand for a handshake.

  He left me hanging, and didn’t shake my hand. My senses went into overdrive. Something wasn’t right.

  Glenn moved in closer. “Wow, she’s a real cutie. Found yourself a little road companion, huh, John,” he said with a little smile. His comment and slick smile instantly sent shivers up my spine.

  “She’s a friend. Are you armed?” I got right to the point.

  Glenn showed me his hands, palm out, and stepped to conversation distance. “Whoa, big fella. I’m not armed unless you count this little dull carpet knife on my belt. I’m like you …just walking around.”

  The tone of his voice was a little slimy. I made sure he caught a glimpse of my gun. “Where are you from, Glenn?”

  He turned and pointed down the road. It was the direction that Claire and I had come from. “I came from that way. It’s pretty rough down there,” he said turning his attention back to me.

  The conversation was going nowhere, and I still didn’t trust him. “So Glenn, you need something or are you just passing through?”

  He laughed a bit. “Well, I could use a little food and water. My cupboards are a little bare.” He started to fidget a little bit. He also began to flex his hands and look around a lot. Something was about to happen. I moved my hand closer to my gun. Here we go.

  Claire chose that moment for some misguided charity. She stepped out from behind me and said, “We have a little food. We can give you some.”

  Glenn’s face broke into a greasy smile. “Well, little girl, it doesn’t exactly work that way. You and your lover boy here are going to drop your weapons and leave. I’m going to need to take it all.”

  I put my hand on my gun and said, “Now, you know that’s not going to happen. We’d be happy to share with you. No violence necessary.” We stared at each other like two gunfighters from the Old West. Each of us was waiting for the other guy to make a move.

  Glenn moved first.

  He lunged at Claire so quickly that I didn’t even have time to pull my weapon. He grabbed her by the collar of her denim jacket and dragged her to his side. He then pulled his carpet knife and jammed it into Claire’s throat. I pulled my gun and drew a bead. He was using Claire like a human shield. I couldn’t fire without hitting her in the face. Claire yelped a bit as he jostled her around. He was hurting her.

  Glenn’s eyes were wild with fear and desperation. “Okay sporto, this is how it’s going to work. You drop your gun, or I slice up your little bitch here and watch you cry over her dead body. Got it?”

  I had no choice, so I started to put my gun down. “That’s it …very smart. I would hate to kill her. She looks like she is a real tiger in the sack,” Glenn said with a laugh. This guy was a real slime-ball. Just like all the rest of them out here. If he hurts so much as an auburn colored hair on her head, I would kill him.

  Glenn was concentrating so hard on disarming me that he forgot about Claire. She went into action. First, it was an elbow into his midsection, and then came one of her signature moves.

  She kicked him right square in the nuts. It was a strong blow for such a small girl.

  Glenn fell to the ground, clutching his injured crotch. “You little bitch!” he yelled. “Now I am really going to kill you. I am going to slice your goddamn throat open.” He started to get up. Claire started to get away, but tripped over her own feet and fell. Glenn reached for her leg with his carpet-cutter in his hand.

  Now it was my turn. I rushed over and kicked Glenn in the ribs. He flipped over onto his back, with his arms outstretched. I stepped on the arm with the cutter in it, kneeled down, and jammed my gun into his head. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled his head off the pavement. My gun was jammed so far into his head it left an impression in his skin.

  I leaned down close and decided to tell him a few things. “Still want to cut her throat, Glenn? Is that what you want to do?” I said angrily through clenched teeth. He started begging for his life, but I wasn’t through talking yet.

  “It’s not enough that I lost my wife and everything I held dear, but now you come along and try to take my friend away from me. She’s one of the few reasons for me to keep going in this otherwise fucked up world, and you wanted to kill her. Give me a reason Glenn, any reason at all, not to blow a hole in your fucking head, and throw your worthless corpse in the road for the crows!” Eight months on the road running from bad guys had changed me. I was not the happy-go-luckylovable freelance telecom engineer I used to be, and I was absolutely not bluffing.

  Glenn was about to die.

  I shot a quick glance at Claire. She was standing there, frozen in fear from what I was about to do to Glenn. I hadn’t told her about all my past adventures on the road. I really didn’t want to relive them anyway. The fact is, sometimes you have to kill to survive. After the outbreak, every geek, punk, or loser in the free world thought they could take over. They would gather up weapons, and terrorize everyone else into giving up their stuff. They didn’t want to work together. They would often kill you as much as look at you.

  In the early days of the apocalypse, you took the high ground and you didn’t kill. Eventually, after other survivors repeatedly try and kill you, it’s every man for himself, and you start defending yourself. It eats you up inside, but all too soon it becomes easy. The guilt and remorse you used to feel after murdering someone is replaced by a primal, almost animal, need to survive.

  I had killed before. There was the guy a few months ago that jumped me out on the road. I jammed my knife in his chest and watched him die calling for his dead mother. Then there was the husband and wife team that tried to burn down a store while I was inside resting for the night. They got my backpack, but didn’t get away. I put a bullet into the back of each of their heads as they tried to escape. In both cases, I was almost on autopilot. Glenn was just another loser in a long line of losers, and he deserved to die.

  Or so I thought. It was the look on Claire’s face that caused me to pause. It was a look of fear and sadness at what she was about to witness in that driveway. She was about to see her friend, someone she trusted, murder someone, and toss his body away like so much garbage. Claire knew what this world was like, but she didn’t like what it was doing to me.

  I closed my eyes tightly. I didn’t like what it was doing to me either. It was consuming me. Day after day I was dying inside …fading away just like to old pre-zombie world.

  I really wanted to change that look on Claire’s face.

  I stood up and pulled Glenn to his feet by his collar. I threw him against one of the roll-up doors an
d stuck my gun in his face. He raised his hands and continued to beg for his life. He started to bargain, telling me about all the things he could get for me. I took a half-step backward, and lowered my gun. “Just go away. Don’t come back,” I said, fighting back tears. Glenn scurried away with a puzzled look on his face. He walked away so fast that he forgot his knife. I watched him go down the road till I couldn’t see him any more. I walked back to the firehouse, picking up his knife along the way. The blade was dull and gray, but it still could have ripped Claire’s throat open from ear to ear. She would have bled to death right in front of me.

  I threw the knife into the weeds and walked back to where Claire was standing. She was just standing there in the semi-foggy driveway with her arms crossed hugging herself. She looked very pale, frightened, and so very small. I wondered what had scared her most, being manhandled by Glenn, or me almost killing him.

  That hopeless feeling began to wash over me all over again.

  I said nothing as I put my arms around her in what I hoped was a reassuring hug. She started to cry, so I handed her a clean handkerchief to dry her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you hurt?”

  She slowly composed herself. “No, I’m not hurt. It was my fault …shouldn’t have trusted him. You told me not to trust anyone, but I didn’t listen and it almost got us both killed.”

  “You were only trying to help another human being. He was just an asshole,” I said as we started to walk to the firehouse door.

  Claire stopped walking and looked up at me. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him. I mean …killing the dead ones are bad enough, but you’re such a nice guy I didn’t want you to get all messed up. You know what I mean?”

  Claire was such a bright girl. “I know what you mean, kiddo.”

  She smiled and blushed a little. “Did you really mean all that stuff about me being one of the reasons for you to go on?”

  “Every word. Now let’s go inside and have a few pancakes. We also have some packing to do.”

  We walked inside the firehouse, enjoyed our last meal in our sanctuary, then packed our stuff. It was time to hit the road again.

  Chapter 17

  The Scooter

  “It looks pretty clear to me. What do you think, Tiger?” Claire handed me the binoculars so that I could take a look at our potential safe place for the night.

  I took the glasses and put them up to my eyes. We were on a small hill looking down on the main street of a small town. I scanned the businesses on both sides of the street. A few of the buildings were blitzed and unsuitable for shelter, but a few were intact enough to provide some cover for the night.

  The light was fading. We definitely needed a place to stay for the night. I pointed to a shop on one of the corners. “Let’s go for that motorcycle shop on the corner. It looks nice and cozy.”

  “Roger, Tiger. Let’s roll,” Claire answered as she got her bat ready. There didn’t seem to be any after effects from our little battle with Glenn at the firehouse. She was still her brave, bad-ass self.

  We walked towards the shop slowly and kept our eyes peeled for baddies. It had been a tough week since we left the firehouse, and we had to be ready for anything. Claire and I had been in a few situations and had escaped them all unharmed, but we were both exhausted. The number of undead seemed to be picking up. I hoped it wasn’t a trend.

  There was no argument from Claire about leaving the firehouse. She knew the drill. We faced a challenge from the living and the dead. Either the zombies come to our driveway to check out all the noise we made, or Glenn brings his friends, if he has any, back to the firehouse to kill us. Neither one of these situations was not going to work out for us, so we packed up our stuff, grabbed as many MREs as we could carry, then beat cheeks out of there. As it turned out, we did meet up with Glenn again after all. However, our second meeting was much different.

  Glenn had become a member of the undead army since we had seen him last. It could happen that quick. One minute you’re king of the road, the next, a meat-eating monster.

  It was a day or two after we left the firehouse. I was checking out an abandoned truck looking for supplies, and Claire was keeping a lookout. The truck was a dead end. Almost all of the good stuff was gone. I was moving some old packing material around to check out an almost empty pallet when I heard Claire call me.

  “John, get out here! We’ve got company.”

  I ran to the door, and jumped to the road. Claire was pointing down at her feet. A hand had reached out from some debris and grabbed her ankle. “I was watching the road, when something grabbed me!” she shouted.

  I looked at where she was pointing and recognized this particular zombie. It was Glenn.

  Some bad guys had done a number on him. Half of his face was torn off, and his legs had been removed below the knees. The remaining pieces had turned in the night. He looked up at me with his one good yellow eye and groaned. I wondered if he knew who I was.

  Claire walked over. “John, please put him out his misery.”

  I probably should have left him like he was, considering what he tried to do to Claire. I almost walked away and left him to his own personal hell. I raised my gun, and did what she requested. I guess it was the humane thing to do. After I finished him off, I searched his body and found out he was a former prisoner. The gray trench coat hid his prisoner number on the prison-issued orange coveralls. It may explain why he acted the way he did. Former prisoners were rare. Most of them were executed as the zombie apocalypse accelerated.

  Claire and I made it to the street in front of the motorcycle shop. The shop appeared to be the only business on the main street without any broken windows. The shop sold a variety of motorcycles and scooters to the general public. Old signs in the windows told about new models and low, low financing. Parked in front of the store was a small pickup truck with a primer paint job. I guess it was a company truck to pick up parts and other things for the shop.

  We approached the open front door of the shop carefully. The door was about half open, and paper and debris spilled out of the opening onto the sidewalk. I took a quick peek inside. It was a wreck, but it looked empty. I gave Claire the thumbs-up sign and waved her inside, but instead she pointed at the sidewalk behind me.

  I turned around and saw a zombie with two broken legs crawling towards us. The poor devil was a real mess. It was even hard to tell if it had been male or female. The face and scalp were ripped off, revealing bone and muscle tissue, and its legs were mangled. It was moaning loudly, dragging itself along the sidewalk with one good arm. The damn thing was going to alert every zombie within earshot.

  “I got it,” Claire said, swinging into action. She ran past me and stepped on the zombie’s back to pin it in place. Then she swung the bat and drove it into the skull of the sidewalk zombie, almost like she was hitting a croquet ball. The creature’s head collapsed, and blood and brain matter leaked out all over the sidewalk.

  “Oh ick. It got all over my shoes.” Claire dragged her old sneakers on the sidewalk to clean them off. I found it very amusing.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to get you some new shoes, Claire.” I handed her my handkerchief to wipe off some of the goo.

  “Yeah, maybe a darker color next time. It won’t show the brain splatter as much.”

  We shared a quick laugh. It’s amazing how you can find humor in all this horror. I think we were getting a little road weary. We both needed a little rest, I think.

  We got inside the store, and I locked us inside. The shop was fairly large, with rows of new and used motorcycles and scooters along the walls. Several stands in the middle of the shop had a few vehicles that were special deals. Other merchandise included helmets, gloves, jackets and shoes on one wall, and chrome parts and other accessories on pegboards nearby. The parts counter and cash register area completed the shop’s floor plan.

  The store was a mess, as usual. A lot of the merchandise was spilled on the
floor. Several of the motorcycles and scooters were overturned in twisted piles, and many of them were entirely stripped of parts. There was also the usual paper and other debris spread around the floor. The place smelled vaguely of gasoline and motor oil.

  “Claire, go check out those shoes over there. See if you can find any that fit you.” I shined my flashlight in the general area of the clothing area. “I’ll check out the back room. Be careful.”

  She moved off in the direction of the shoes, while I contemplated the door behind the parts counter. I assumed it led to a storage area or maybe a service garage. I put my ear to the door to hear for any bad sounds coming from the other side, but there was only silence. I pushed open the creaky door and entered a large service area. I stood near the doorway for a few seconds, scanning the room with my flashlight. There were several work-tables with motorcycles in various states of assembly laid out in neat rows. Tools and other supplies lay nearby, ready for use. The whole room was crammed with wrecked or dissembled two wheeled vehicles. There was also a small storage area with racks of new parts with their tags still attached. I also saw a few newly delivered vehicles standing by a big roll-up door still in their crates.

  There was also something dead nearby.

  I couldn’t see it yet, but the place had a heavy dead-body smell mixed with a little gasoline odor. I pulled my gun and slowly walked into the dark room. I sincerely hoped that the body I smelled was really dead and not moving. I walked down the service bays looking for anything that might jump out at me. The deeper I went into the garage the stronger the smell became. Claire and I might have to start running; there could be a zombie nest in this back room, based on the smell.

  I walked to the end of the work-tables and found the source of the powerful smell. To my right, in a corner of the shop, were two dead bodies lying on a quilt. Behind them, near their heads, a custom motorcycle rested on it’s kickstand. I stowed my gun and took a closer look. It looked like a male and a female had spent their final hours together back here while chaos reigned outside. I guessed the bodies might have belonged to the owner and his wife or girlfriend. From the looks of the kerosene lanterns and the empty cans, they might have been trying to survive back here. I saw no evidence of gunshot wounds or zombie bites, so I couldn’t tell how they died. They must have swallowed pills or starved to death.