Chapter 10
"Tell me again why I have to drive?" J.D. grumbled as he once again attempted to adjust the driver's seat of the wagon to his bulk. Despite pushing the seat back as far as it would go, he continued to appear a bit squished behind the steering wheel. He tried to move the steering column up while driving but managed to drop it down further on the tops of his thighs. Poor giant, I almost felt sorry for him. I caught Fred's sneer in the rearview mirror, where he entertained Wolf Girl with a game of slap hands. The girl appeared to be over her earlier wariness of him, squealing with delight when she landed a blow, and continued to show no signs of going undead native.
"Of the two of us, who has gone two rounds with a huge bear and won?"
J.D. turned his frown on me. "What-what does that have to do with anything?"
I shrugged, it was Fred. "You know you lost round one to the bear."
"He surprised me!" Fred raised his voice as he smacked Wolf Girl's fingertips. He might be stronger but the wild child was incredibly fast. Must come from a life spent honing her reflexes to catch squirrels. The thought made me shudder. "My point, big guy, is you aren't the only one who can deal with the nasties, so my turn."
"You aren't touching my guns," J.D. said, not taking his eyes off the ragged path we followed along the crater of the city.
"Don't need your guns. I have my own tricks, thank you." Fred's retort was half way civil, which clued me into his real feelings on the matter. I put a hand on J.D.'s arm before he could respond, keeping my voice low, though I knew Fred could hear every word.
"Drop it. Can you blame him after what happened earlier? We can switch off later."
The soldier relaxed under my touch. For whatever reason, Fred was right. I appeared to have a knack for making the two idiots back down. Of course, this didn't mean J.D. possessed an ounce of tact. "How's Wolf Girl doing? Is she getting sick yet?"
"Did you seriously just ask that question, Private Ryan?" Fred snapped, kicking the back of the driver's seat. J.D. glared at him through the rearview mirror.
"Call me another stupid movie name and I will send you through this windshield," he growled.
Fred thumped his chest. "Bring it!"
"Would you two knock it off," I yelled, causing both of them to sink down in their seats pouting, for nearly two blissful minutes of silence.
"Okay, but have you come up with a plan-"
I groaned over J.D., letting my head thud against the window. Looking at the situation from his perspective, I couldn't blame him for asking. What did he owe her, or any of us? Hell, we knew each other all of a day, but he cast his lot in with us, survived an alien fire fight and the decimation of a whole freaking city with us. Those kind of experiences made bonds form fast. I didn't know anything about J.D. beyond his death, but I trusted him, not as much as I trusted Fred, but I trusted J.D. not to fuck us over. He gave me his word he would let us deal with Wolf Girl. He just wanted to know what to expect before everything went to hell.
"Right now, I want to reach a safe spot for the night. One crisis at a time," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the drifting scenery outside. The silence of the car was broken by the metallic pings of kicked up rocks and debris knocking against the under carriage of the wagon. The alien weapon had resulted in about half a mile of surrounding neighborhoods being wiped out along with Rochester. Support beams poked up from the leveled houses, dotting the landscape like broken bones poking through skin. With the crater of the city on our left and the shredded landscape on our right, the situation looked pretty bleak.
The army store room wasn't a total bust, but of the dozens of drums stored in the intact sub basement, we barely salvaged enough liquid to fill two gas cans, the rest lost to time and evaporation.
Our getaway vehicle was a cramped, ancient station wagon which continued to puzzle me. Someone kept this vehicle in working condition for a while before abandoning it to the elements. This wasn't like the military grade hummer Fred worked on in the city, built to withstand a crap ton of wear and tear, this was a freaking wood paneled wagon. His skills with cars might be mechanic worthy, but if my guess was right, there should have been a decade worth of weather and rust to contend with, which was conspicuously absent.
Thinking about our very own mystery machine kept me from the real issue wrenching around my skull. The lone human of our group was a ticking time bomb of undead insanity. We had no idea how this virus operated, hell we didn't know if it was a virus, or a bacteria, or if hell ran out of room and spat out rotting souls with a hunger for human flesh. Yeah, it's not like the movies could help us out here, this was our reality. I didn't know how to deal with this. I didn't want to deal with this. I rightfully couldn't claim the desire to survive since I was already dead, possibly for years, and while I didn't want to 'die' again, I didn't know how to cope with this state of existence either.
Unbidden, my memories of the last few days surged up with a vengeance; my horror at waking up a corpse, covered in my extraterrestrial victim's blood, and my fumbling attempt to revive the Muppets, who I led to their second deaths days later in this god forsaken city. The Denny's diners, the parent and child in the Walmart changing room, Wolf Girl's parents rotting side by side in their bed-- I wonder which of us was the lucky one, them or me.
Of course there was also the memory of Fred feeding me slimy purple chunks of alien brain, especially the moment the flesh hit my tongue. How good it tasted, and how part of me, the part I couldn't examine too closely, craved another taste. This sucked. I thudded my head against the cool glass of the window, grateful for the chill against my skin.
I pressed the whole side of my face against the glass. The cold was faint, far away, like a small breeze brushing along my skin, but it was there. I felt the cold where yesterday I felt nothing at all. Was this my imagination? I shucked the glove on my left hand. My second helping of alien brains furthered the regrowth of my skin. The hole over my ribs was sealed, but a couple of toes and my left pinky were still fleshless. The little finger bone made a light clicking sound as I splayed my hand over the window and felt...nothing. There was a slight pressure where my hand met glass but not a hint of cold. I released a huff of disappointment, chalking it up as a wistful delusion until my forehead touched the glass again. My hand might be numb but my face was not. The difference between the faint sensation and complete lack thereof was top of the line bizarre, the kind you have to share to figure out.
"Hey, Fred, have you noticed- Holy shit, stop the car!" I shrieked, my moment of tactile discovery forgotten at the sight out the window. If I hadn't been looking out the window, I would have missed them. J.D. slammed his foot on the brake, sending all of us jerking against our seat belts, except for Fred who fell against the back of J.D.'s seat with a muffled oath.
"What the hell, Li?" J.D. snapped, but I was halfway out of the car, Wolf Girl scrambling after me. Relieved laughter spilled from our lips as we stumbled toward the two tottering figures cresting over a shallow hillside. They raised their heads at the noise we made, increasing their limping pace toward us. Wolf Girl raced past me, her thin frame crashing into the stout figure of Ernie, sending them both to the ground. I caught up a second later, throwing my arms around Bert. I didn't give a rat's ass how they stank to high heaven. I had no idea how they survived and they couldn't tell me, but they were alive. Bert rested his chin on the top of my head.
"God, you smell awful," I sniffed. Sue me, I cared a little. I was so focused on my long lost Muppets I didn't hear the commotion behind us until Fred's tone hit a frantic level.
"Easy, easy, big guy, they're friends, stop, they're friends. Do you hear me? Jeremy!"
I turned, keeping my body in front of Bert, since I had a pretty good idea what was going on. Fred danced around J.D. who had his service pistol up and sighted on us, his legs braced apart in a shooter's stance. Disbelief and confusion roiled through his eyes, but his gun hand was steady, not a twitch.
"Li, what is this?" Despite the clear turmoil of his thoughts, J.D.'s voice was calm. I guess I should be grateful I would get a chance to explain the Muppets before he started shooting. I held up my hands in a placating gesture, trying to come up with a relatively sane explanation before Fred jumped in and made it worse.
"I promise we aren't fraternizing with the enemy. I know they look like your average zombies, but I did something to them." I waved at Wolf Girl and Ernie, who watched us silently from the ground. "Look, they don't even attack live humans."
J.D. looked at me like I grew a second head. "What the hell did you do to them?"
The gun didn't move. Dammit. I crossed my arms, glaring at him like he wasn't a foot and half taller than me. "I tried to make them like us. It didn't work. They still look like zombies, but they're different." I sounded like an idiot. I sighed. "Please don't kill them."
J.D. grimaced at them for a moment before lowering his gun. He didn't put it away, but it was a step in the right direction. "Girl, I don't know what you did to these two, but they don't look like any zombie I've seen."
I frowned at him, turning to look at the Muppets. Honestly, I was so happy to see them, I hadn't really looked at them beyond noticing their incredible stink. I studied them now, picking up on more and more details. The boys had filled out since I last saw them, putting on muscle mass. They had skin, not the paper complexion Fred and I sported, or J.D.'s ashen coloring, but a dark gray, stretched and textured like old leather. Their faces were beginning to reconstruct, cartilage growing out from bone, forming noses, cheekbones, and chins. The process was in flux, just beginning to take root, far from a complete face. It was a shock to see, but it didn't hold a candle to their eyes. The milky white color was threaded with streaks of black, splayed across their corneas like roots. The effect was super creepy but I could tell where the Muppets were looking now. Bert stared down at me, as if aware of my scrutiny.
So, they looked a bit different. They seemed to be the same old Muppets. I turned to J.D. with a shrug. "What can I say, they're my monsters."
He snorted, giving them a once over. He was not impressed. "What the heck are they covered in?"
"Eh?" Taking in the new and improved Bert and Ernie I failed to observe the healthy coating of muck they both sported. They were completely spattered by the stuff, especially their hands and arms. I looked down at my shirt with a groan of disgust. Planned on burning this shirt anyway. I held the fabric up, catching a whiff. It smelled like three week old sewage sewn up in a dead dog. "Geeze, guys, what is this stuff?"
"Uh, Li, I think you should see this." Fred stood at the crest of the hill, looking in the direction the Muppets had come from. He sounded a little shell shocked. Between his tone and the unholy muck, it felt a little ominous. With a shiver of dread I peeked over the ridge.
Below us was a massacre. The hill topped a shallow ravine filled with rotted body parts, viciously torn apart to little more than bits and pieces. Zombies, I realized, possibly the ones who'd fled Rochester like rats. They hadn't made it far before meeting the agents of their demise. I gaped at the mess. Did the Muppets do this? Why? Why go after the zombies? From what I could tell in the city, the undead left their fellow deceased alone. It wasn't until they caught a whiff of eau de Wolf Girl they went on the attack. Did the Muppets kill them to protect her? It was a far fetched explanation, since Wolf Girl was with us the whole time. I wasn't sure these two had the brain capacity to eliminate threats like this. Which meant they'd killed these run of the mill zombies because they wanted to. For some reason, that was a far more chilling concept.
An appreciative whistle broke the morbid turn of my thoughts. J.D. observed the carnage with a raised brow, holstering his sidearm with a nod. "Alright, they can stay."
***I would let them stay too. Who wouldn't want a pair of guard Muppets? Don't forget to vote!***