A Girl a Dog and Zombies on the Munch Read online

  “I don’t,” said a new voice, and Sally Ann entered. She had a strange look about her, a glint to her eyes that Courtney never saw before.

  “You’re back to yourself?” Billy said. “Good.”

  “My dad just died, you jackass,” Sally Ann said. “Show some feelings, even if you don’t have any.

  “Hey now,” Billy said.

  Sally Ann turned to Courtney. “We should get while the getting is good. There will be other farms, other houses. An hour or so down the road, it should be safe to stop and eat.”

  “You’re guessing,” Courtney said.

  “Hold on,” Billy said, going to the table. “Listen, kid....”

  “Sansa,” Courtney said.

  “Listen, Sansa. I’m Billy. We’ll take care of you if you want. And you can help us.” He gestured. “Are there any guns in the house? Was your dad a hunter or....”

  “He had a rifle,” Sansa said. “Upstairs in their bedroom.”

  “Hot damn!” Billy whisked out before anyone could say another word.

  “All he thinks about are weapons,” Courtney said.

  “He’s being sensible,” Sally Ann said. “If we’d had a rifle, my dad might be alive.”

  “I’m really sorry....,” Courtney began.

  “Don’t go there,,” Sally Ann said coldly. “I’ve already put him from my mind. He was a jackass and got what was coming to him.”

  “How can you say that about your own dad?”

  “It’s a new, vicious, world out there, bestie,” Sally Ann said. “Wake up and smell the blood and guts.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Billy was in the lead, the rifle he had found at the farmhouse held firmly in both hands. Around his waist was a cartridge belt with some of the biggest bullets Courtney ever saw. The rifle was something called a Marlin .45-70. Billy seemed to think it could drop just about anything.

  She was a few yards behind him, Gaga by her right leg, Sansa on her left. Willis was on a leash, one end wrapped around Sansa’s wrist.

  Last came Sally Ann. She carried the shotgun and wore the bandolier. On her it looked out of place, as if she were pretending to look tough.

  Courtney didn’t say so, of course. Her friend was upset enough over her father’s death, and acting very unlike herself. As if she were mad at the world and everyone in it.

  The farm was half a mile behind them. They were sticking to the road and so far had lucked out. There was no sign of more mutates. No sign of zombies, either. Or anyone else.

  “How old are you, Sansa?” Courtney posed a question she realized she should have asked sooner.

  “Eight,” the girl said. “I’m small for my age. My mom says I take after her mom, who was short her whole life.”

  She stopped, and her lower lip quivered.

  Not wanting the girl to burst into tears, Courtney said, “I want you to know something. From here on out, I’ll look after you as if you were my own sister.” She meant it, which surprised her. Before the bombs and missiles hit, she didn’t give a damn about much of anything—or anyone. Her brother annoyed her, her sister was always underfoot, her mom was too bossy, and her dad worked so much, she hardly ever saw him.

  “That’s awful nice of you. I don’t have anyone else.” Sansa said. She glanced back and wistfully added, “If you hadn’t come along, I might have stayed there forever.”

  “Weren’t you scared? With your mom as she was?”

  “She was my mom,” Sansa said. “I couldn’t leave her. So I hid out up in the attic. I was real careful. She only spotted me once but didn’t come after me.”

  “Didn’t she ever leave?” Courtney wondered. It was unlike a mutate to stay in one place. They tended to roam all over in search of prey.

  “Hardly ever. Most of the time she sat at the kitchen table.”

  “She just sat there?” Courtney said in disbelief.

  “With her head down. Sometimes she cried. I could hear her from clear upstairs.”

  “I didn’t know mutates could do that.”

  Behind them Sally Ann chimed in with, “Maybe she didn’t turn all the way. Maybe a spark of humanity remained.”

  They were approaching a bend in the road, framed by woods. Billy wedged his new rifle to his shoulder and slowed.

  Courtney put her hand on the revolver. The trees were thick along the road’s edge, hiding whatever lay around the bend.

  “You hear that?” Sansa said.

  A heartbeat later Gaga growled.

  “Hold up!” Courtney said quietly to Billy.

  “What for?” Billy said. But he stopped.

  Courtney strained her ears. Faintly, she heard a peculiar sort of grunting and scraping. “Stay here,” she whispered to Sansa. Hurrying past Billy, she said, “You too. I want to take a look.”

  “Better if it’s the both of us,” Billy said.

  “Stay with the girl.”

  “Well, hell, Courts....”

  Courtney wasn’t listening. To him. She was trying to make sense of what she was hearing from up ahead. Crouching, she edged forward until she could see the next stretch of road.

  The first thing that hit her was the stench of gasoline.

  Two vehicles had collided. A large farm tractor and a tanker truck. The best Courtney could guess, the tractor—a green John Deere— had either been in the middle of the road or trying to cross when the tanker came barreling around the bend and slammed into it. The impact had crumpled the tractor like so much tin foil and sent it skidding on its side into a field. As for the tanker, it was on its side, too, blocking the road, the red semi canted at an angle, the white tank ruptured near the top. Gas had spilled out, gallons and gallons, forming a gas pond around the truck that had since dried. But the stink remained.

  Straightening,Courtney ventured around the bend. The scraping grew louder, and she saw that the truck driver was still in the cab. The crash had killed him, and now, in typical zombie fashion, he was scraping at a window in a vain effort to be free.

  Courtney figured the farmer in the tractor must be dead too. Then something tugged at her leg.

  Courtney screamed. She didn’t mean to. It tore out of her even as she kicked and sprang back, half startled out of her wits.

  The farmer from the tractor—or what was left of him—was on the ground at her feet. How she hadn’t noticed him, she couldn’t say. She’d almost stepped on him.

  It was well she hadn’t.

  From the waist up he was a big, burly man, with a rugged face and a square jaw. Now most of his left shoulder and left arm were gone, his face was a gashed ruin, and his jaw looked as if it had been split by a hatchet. From the waist down there was nothing; he had somehow been split in half. Intestines dragged on the ground in his wake as he grunted and clawed anew at her leg.

  Courtney skipped back, drawing the Vaquero. She wasn’t quite fast enough. The farmer’s big hand closed on her foot. She tried to jerk loose but suddenly her leg was yanked out from under her, and the next she knew, she was on her side in the road, her back to the zombie, and her revolver spun loose from her grasp.

  Wincing at the pain, she rose on an elbow and looked over her shoulder. Straight into the zombie’s eyes. Eyes that were glazed and lifeless yet lit by a craving from beyond the grave.

  “No!” Courtney cried, and tried to scramble away. Fingers as hard as iron and as cold as ice clamped onto her shoulder.

  The farmer’s mouth gaped, and he bit at her neck.

  In utter terror, Courtney broke free and scrabbled toward the gun. The zombie slithered after her. That it only had one arm slowed it but not as much as she would have expected. Her hand was inches from the revolver when the zombie’s hand latched onto her hair.

  Courtney cried out as her head was yanked back so hard, it was a wonder her spine didn’t snap. She punched the thing’s arm but it didn’t seem to feel her blows. Again her head was yanked, and now she found herself on her back with the zombie seeking to slide
on top of her.

  Courtney pushed but the thing clung fast. Its hand shifted from her hair to her neck. She felt its nails dig into her flesh, felt the wetness of blood. She bucked upward but all that did was bring its face closer to hers.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the zombie sink its teeth into her cheek. Saw it tear her cheek half off and gulp the morsel like a seal gulping a fish.

  Then a shot boomed and the top of the zombie’s head burst. Gore and bits spattered her, and she whipped her head to one side to keep the stuff from getting into her mouth and nose and eyes.

  The zombie sagged, motionless, and at last Courtney was able to heave it off. Sitting up, she grabbed the revolver, pushed to her feet, and took aim.

  “A little late for that,” Billy said. He was ten feet away, the .45-70 to his shoulder.

  Sansa ran up and wrapped her arms around Courtney’s leg. “I was so scared for you!” she exclaimed.

  Sally Ann stepped to the zombie and poked it with a toe. “Stupid,” she said.

  “Their brains don’t work,” Courtney said. “You know that.”

  “I meant you,” Sally Ann said, shaking her head. “Letting it catch you like that. It doesn’t even have legs.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “Situational awareness,” Sally Ann said. “Never leave home without it these days.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Courtney said. “You used to be more considerate.”

  “Ladies,” Billy said. “Gripe later. That shot might brings others. We should make ourselves scarce.” He limped on, moving off the road to avoid the truck.

  Sansa tugged on Willis’s leash and followed.

  Gaga, to Courtney great surprise, went with them.

  “Your mutt has a new friend,” Sally Ann said.

  “Cut it out,” Courtney said.

  “We need to talk anyway,” Sally Ann said. “Just the two of us.’

  They walked together, neither saying anything until they were past the tanker.

  “All right. Listen up,” Sally Ann began. “We’ve been friends since elementary school, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So don’t go off on me when I tell you that you have to get your act together.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” Sally Ann said. “That thing should never have gotten close to you. Yet it almost did you in.”

  “It snuck up on me,” Courtney said.

  Sally Ann sighed. “You have to up your game, girlfriend. I mean it. If you don’t, you’ll never reach that compound we’re hoping to find. Toughen up. Or else.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Courtney hated being lectured. Her mom used to do it and usually Courtney just shut her out and then went and did as she wanted to anyway. Her dad didn’t lecture so much. When she broke their rules, he punished her. Grounding, usually. Although now and then he took her phone.

  But to have her best friend act like her mom rankled. Especially since Sally Ann wasn’t the bossy type. Sally was smart, and knew things a lot of people didn’t. But she didn’t flaunt it. She wasn’t one of those know-it-all’s.

  It didn’t help Courtney’s mood any that Sally Ann walked ahead to be with Billy instead of her.

  At least Courtney had Gaga. She patted Gaga on the head and received a warm lick in return.

  “You and me against the world,” Courtney said.

  “Me too,” Sansa said. “I like how you talk to your dog. I talk to Willis all the time.”

  “Does he ever answer?” Courtney joked.

  “He’s a dog,” Sansa said, as if it were the dumbest question in the world. “Dogs can’t talk.”

  “Just not my day,” Courtney said.

  “Pardon.”

  “Nothing.” Courtney wanted to keep talking so she said, “From here on out, I want you to stick close to me. We never know when something might happen.”

  “Something bad you mean,” Sansa said. She scrunched her face in thought, then said, “Why do bad things happen, anyway?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Girl, how would I know?” Courtney said. “We’re born into this world with no say over how things are. If we’re lucky, we get through life without a lot of bad things happening. If not...” She shrugged.

  “This is bad,” Sansa said, motioning at the world around them.

  “It’s become so, yes.”

  Sansa looked at her. “Does God really love us, like my mom used to say? If so, how could all of this happen?”

  “Damn, you ask hard questions,” Courtney said without thinking. She frowned. “I don’t have the answers, kiddo. To anything. I’ve always sort of tried to make it through each day one day at a time, you know?”

  “No.”

  “What I’m saying is, you should ask a minister or somebody.”

  “But what do you think? Does God loves us or not?”

  “If He does, He has a strange way of showing it.”

  Sansa laughed.

  “You find that funny?”

  Sansa gazed into the woods to their right and went to say something, and stopped, her eyes widening.

  Courtney spun, Her hand dropped to the revolver but the woods were still. “What did you see?”

  “Something...,” Sansa said. “I’m not sure.”

  Courtney probed the shadows for movement. “Describe it?”

  “I can’t,” Sansa said. “It was there and then it wasn’t.”

  “A person?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “An animal?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Courtney peered deeper into the woods. “A zombie, maybe?”

  “Aren’t you listening to me?” Sansa said in annoyance. “I didn’t get a good look.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Courtney said. “Whatever it is might be stalking us.”

  They hiked on, Courtney wished their dogs were of more use. Gaga and Willis were only interested in each other. They paid no attention to their surroundings. “Dummies,” she said under her breath.

  A hill loomed. Billy and Sally Ann reached the crest and stopped.

  Sansa was puffing when Courtney and her joined them.

  “We resting a bit?” Courtney said.

  Billy pointed.

  The road ahead was blocked. About fifty yards from the bottom of the hill, a barrier had been erected; two old cars to either side, with a bunch of furniture piled in the middle.

  Farther on, a quarter-mile or so, was a cluster of buildings. Lights glowed here and there.

  “A town,” Billy said.

  “A hamlet, more like,” Sally Ann said.

  “What’s the difference?” Billy said.

  “Hamlets are smaller. Fewer people.”

  “Well, whatever, they must have a generator,” Billy said. “And they’re country folk. They’ll be friendly.”

  “We don’t know that,” Sally Ann said. “We should go around.”

  “Come on, Sal,” Billy said. “They might have food they’ll share. They might even put us up for the night. Maybe we might get to sleep in a bed for a change.”

  “Might, might, might,” Sally Ann said.

  “I vote we go see,” Billy said. “You vote we don’t.” He turned. “That leaves it up to you, Courts. Do we pay them a visit or not?”

  Courtney was all for a hot meal and a bed but she remembered Sally Ann’s little lecture. “I pass. I don’t want to vote.”

  “Not an option,” Sally Ann said. “We’re in this together.”

  Sansa tugged on Courtney’s leg. “That’s Marysville. My mom and dad took me there now and then. To buy stuff. There’s a store. The people were nice.”

  “You hear that?” Billy gloated.

  Courtney made up her mind. “In that case, I vote we go on in.”

  “God help us if you’re wrong,” Sally Ann said.

  CHAPTER 7


  “Get behind me,” Billy said as they neared the barricade. He was holding his rifle ready to shoot.

  Sally Ann moved up beside him. “We don’t need protecting.”

  Courtney did the same, saying to Sansa, “Hang back with the dogs.”

  There was no hint of movement and no one challenged them.

  Courtney was beginning to think the barricade was untended when a man called out.

  “That’s far enough, you kids! Stop right there!”

  “Who is he calling a kid?” Billy said.

  “Grow up,” Sally Ann said to him. Holding the shotgun out from her side, she took a couple of steps. “We’re friendly, mister! We’re just looking for a place to stop and rest.”

  “Tell the boy to sling his rifle,” the man said.

  Courtney pinpointed the voice as coming from behind the pile of furniture.

  “I’m not no boy!” Billy angrily responded, but he did as the man wanted.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked.

  Billy told him.

  “I’m Harry,” the man said. “Didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just we can’t take unnecessary risks. We have our families to protect.”

  “We?” Sally Ann said.

  Part of the middle section moved, and Courtney saw that the furniture had been cleverly linked together so it could be slid aside. Two men came through. At the same time, two others came around the cars on the right and the left. All were armed with rifles but they didn’t point their weapons.

  The stockiest of them was clad in an old denim jacket and dungarees. “I’m Harry Comstock.” He was in his forties or so. It was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping well. His face was drawn and tired. But he smiled. “Who’s the little one?”

  “Sansa Kent,” Courtney said, and introduced herself, and then Billy and Sally Ann.

  Harry was most interested in Sansa. “Did you say Kent? I know a family by that name. A farmer and his wife who live down the road a piece....”

  “That’s the one,” Courtney said.

  “Where are her folks?” Harry asked.

  Courtney shook her head.

  “Damn,” Harry said, then coughed. “You’re welcome in Marysville. You have to hand over your weapons, though. And you don’t go anywhere unescorted.”