The Z Contingency

Chapter 48

Natalie looked at Gary’s phone and shook her head. “I can’t get hold of my parents. I hope they get my message about staying put in Europe until this is over.”

She handed the phone back to Gary, and then placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you for coming to save me, Gary. For saving all of us. Now tell me, what the hell has been going on? I was off the grid for two weeks, and when I get back, my phone is flooded with messages and emails from you and from work. Then I hear these news stories about a massive outbreak, and now this. You and that guy you were with seem to know a lot about it. Who was he, by the way? He looks awfully familiar.”

“How could you forget Simon?” Gary muttered, more to himself than to Natalie.

“Simon? Simon who?” Natalie asked. “Wait, wasn’t your roommate from college named Simon? Was that him? How did you manage to hook up with him again?”

“Like you don’t remember,” Gary said peevishly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” A trace of anger was starting to creep into Natalie’s voice. First she had to put up with Tyler’s nonsense for her entire vacation; now Gary was starting up with something, and she didn’t like it.

“You know full well what I’m talking about. You and him!” Gary exclaimed. “And him! I thought he was my friend. He knew I was interested in you, but he goes behind my back and sleeps with you anyway.”

“What!?” Natalie’s voice was filled with equal parts of indignation and anger. “I never slept with him. Where the hell did you get an asinine idea like that?

“I overheard a couple of your sorority sisters talking about how he had asked you out on a date, and then spent the night with you.”

“And from that you got that I slept with him?”

“Yes. Go ahead and deny it.”

“Of course I deny it. He did ask me out once, but it didn’t turn out to be a date.” Natalie said testily. “We went to dinner, but all he could talk about was you. We went back to my room, but he kept going on and on about how great you were. I finally told him that maybe he should be dating you, and kicked him out. I have never been on a date where the guy talked up another guy. I swear, it sounded like he was either trying to set us up, or he wanted to go out with you himself.”

“Wait. So, Simon didn’t sleep with you?”

“No! Look, Gary. I didn’t know him that well, but you used to tell me that he was your best friend at college, right?”

“I suppose so....”

“You know so, and you also know that he didn’t have any problems with the girls. We, I mean, all the girls wanted to go out with him. I know there were at least a few times where he was with two girls at the same time even. I doubt he ever had any problems getting dates.”

“I remember” Gary muttered, thinking back on the times he returned to their room, only to be greeted by a sock tied around the doorknob; their signal that a girl was being “entertained” in the room. “I remember” he repeated, with a trace of bitterness.

“So, if he was your best friend, and he had plenty of girls of his own, why would he screw you over?” Before Gary could respond, Natalie answered for him. “He wouldn’t.” She waited a moment for Gary to say something, but after tiring of waiting for a response from him, she continued “If you wanted to date me, why didn’t you ever ask me out?”

“I didn’t ask you out because I thought you were way out of my league. Wait, what do you mean, Simon ‘was trying to set us up’?”

“I was so pissed off. I thought Simon was actually asking me out on a date, but all during dinner, he kept going on and on about how great you were, and how you and I would make a great couple.”

Before Gary could react, they arrived at their destination. It was a small subdivision of nearly identical manufactured houses on small quarter-acre lots. Each had a neatly-trimmed lawn with two or three shrubs or small trees. They turned around the next corner and drove down the dead-end street to the last house where Travis lived. Natalie turned into his driveway, and parked behind his vehicle. She and Gary got out and went up to the front door. Gary rang the doorbell. He and Natalie could hear sounds coming from within, but after nearly a minute, the door had not opened, so they rang the bell again, and started calling out his name. The door to Travis’s house suddenly burst open, nearly hitting Gary, with three bodies falling out onto the yard. They picked themselves up and started lumbering toward Natalie. She let out a scream, as Gary grabbed her arm and ran back to the truck. “Quick, they’re all zombies! We’ve got to get out of here!” The commotion had caused other doors to start flying open, with more and more zombies heading toward them. Natalie pulled the truck out of the driveway, and sped back up the road.

“Stop!” Gary yelled as the truck turned the corner. “There are people in the road” Natalie reflexively slammed the brakes of the Ford F-150 pickup she had borrowed from her father, and peered down the road.

“Those aren’t people any more, Gary. They’re zombies, and we have to get through them to get away from here.”

“But what if they’re still in a curable stage? If we run them down, there will be no hope to save them.” There was a plaintive sound to Gary’s voice, with a tinge of resignation.

“You mean like the ones you and Simon blew up back at the hospital?” Natalie immediately regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. I know you did it to rescue us. That was completely uncalled for.”

“Everything is so confusing now....” he trailed off.

Sensing the need to continue moving, Natalie put her hands on Gary’s shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye, and said, “we don’t have a cure yet, and if we don’t get to a lab, we can’t even start working on one. We have to go through them, Gary. It’s like you Trekkies say, ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’”

“Yeah.... You’re right, but I’m more of a Trekker than a Trekkie. Trekkies are....”

“I so don’t care about that right now, Gary.” Natalie stepped down hard on the gas pedal, barreling the two and a half ton vehicle into the horde of undead that grabbed for Gary and Natalie as they sped by. Thank goodness Dad got the brush guard and skid plate installed, but he’s going to kill me when he sees this mess, she thought as they slammed into and rolled over the bodies. I hope he and Mom get my message.

Gary suppressed a wave of nausea with each bump that jarred the vehicle, and watched in horror as the bodies crashed into the front of the truck. The mass of bodies was too heavy for the truck to easily plow through, so Natalie threw it into reverse, and backed away to try another path.

Plowing through the remaining zombies that blocked their escape, they continued speeding toward the highway and on to the rendezvous point.