Becca

Kim was hot.

She twisted to wipe the sweat from her forehead onto her sleeve.  She knew she had done the right thing when she hid, but as the car’s trunk continued to warm in the late day sun she also knew she could not remain in here much longer.  She wondered if anyone else had made it.  She could still hear Erin’s screams in her mind.  Erin was gone, maybe one of them now.  One moment she was searching an abandoned car for anything of use, and the next she was hiding in it, listening to those things tear her last remaining friends apart.  She blinked a few times, trying to clear more of her sweat from her eyes where it had run, again, stinging.

She listened.  It had been a while since she had heard anything.  There were no shouts, cries, moans, not even the shuffle of feet along the asphalt outside.  Kim squeezed her eyes shut.  She would wait two more minutes and then open the trunk.  Carefully she twisted to her side and reached out for the emergency release pull, the glow in the dark yellow handle bright in contrast to the darkness of trunk.  She started to count down from one hundred twenty.  

At seventy eight she gave up waiting and pulled at the release.

Nothing happened.   There was no sound of the latch giving way, no bright light as the trunk swung open.  She remained, sweaty and hot, trapped in a metal casket.  

She pulled again at the release, pressing upwards on the trunk with her other hand, hoping to force it open, but it remained closed and locked.  She began to feel light headed.  She had to get out and she had to get out now.  Kim wrapped both hands around the release and, bracing her feet against the side of the trunk pulled hard.  The plastic handle snapped, sending her back into the other side, slamming her head against the metal and forcing her to swear.

“Help!”  Kim started to scream and bang her fists onto the trunk’s roof.  She had to get out.  “Please, someone!”

* * *

Garrett cursed as the walker turned and started to shuffle towards the noise.  He eased the bow string back and moved as quietly as he could along the side of the highway.  The walking corpse started to pick up speed.  Another walker lifted itself from where it had fallen;  it had been between two cars, hidden from view. Lurching forward, it joined in the pursuit of the banging and screaming.

He had missed that one on his walk through.  All he had seen before was the one walker slapping its hand uselessly against the window of an abandoned car, trying to get at some nose maker inside.  Garrett thought that maybe there was a cooler of rotting food that it had confused for human flesh.  Either way it would have been an easy shot before it started to move.  

The shambling corpses had surrounded the car, and the screaming intensified..  Garrett could not see very well and took a few steps closer.  The angle of the embankment cut off his line of sight.  He looked over his shoulder at the empty stretch of highway for southbound traffic, and the tree line beyond it.  

But, did he know that voice?

Moving up the road he found a minivan and climbed up onto its roof. There were six of them now, the sounds of wet flesh pounding on the metal frame joining with the cries for help.

“Please I don’t want to die,” it cried out.   He was sure he knew the voice, now.  Garrett scanned the area.  If there was anything to scavenge they would have to come back for it.  One walker and it would be an arrow to the head.  Two walkers, he could manage before they got to him.  Three, he might be able to kite one around the cars after he dropped the other two.  But six would require something a little louder.

Garrett slipped the arrow back into his hip quiver and pulled an iPod from the strap across his chest.  The velcro made a ripping noise, ignored by the corpses as they continued their efforts to tear open the steel cage protecting the screaming woman.  He pressed the power key, and while the device came online, slipped from the roof of the minivan.  He set the device on the ground and glanced back up at the corpses.  They were still making every effort, futile so far, to beat their way into the car.  He hit the play button, and then kicked the iPod down the road, under the cars.  Without seeing where it had ended its skid along the asphalt, he slipped out towards the road, and pressed his back to a car.

The modified speaker began to belt out a syncopated clapping followed by lyrics that Garrett just plain loved for times like these.  “Buddy you're a boy make a big noise,  playin' in the street gonna be a big man someday.”

“C’mon,” Garrett muttered as he lifted himself slowly and watched the first of the corpses turn its head towards the noise.  The sounds from the trunk stopped as the next lines could be heard.  She was smart enough to stay quiet.  The first walker started to investigate the noise with the other walkers falling suit blindly.  Garrett could hear them shuffling along just on the other side of the car, towards the noise.  Gently he stepped, glancing between his goal and the corpses kept their attention.  Usually they stayed when the songs switched over, but a few times they had given up during the fades.  He reached the trunk, slipped his fingers under the plastic latching handle, and lifted.

The hatch swung up towards him, groaning as the dented metal frames no longer fit perfectly as they should.  He watched the walkers as he pushed it up.  They had started to pound on another car, trying to find the source of the noise.  

He looked down to see Becca Whitmore looking up at him, her hand shielding her from the sudden blast of midday sun.  Her tanktop was soaked through with sweat and it clung to her body tightly.  Her shorts were filthy but she was every bit as beautiful as he remembered her to be.  Five years had not changed a thing about her.

* * *

Kim looked back up at her savior.  “Oh, thank God,” she sobbed, still panicked.  He quickly waved a hand at her as he stared off to the side. She lifted herself, kneeling on the floor of the trunk to see.  The warm summer air was cool on her cheek compared to the oppressive heat of the trunk.  

“Let’s go,” the man whispered, reaching for her arm to pull her out of the trunk.  “We can catch up later.”  

Kim swung a leg out of the back of the car as quietly as she could and stood up.  Her legs were still shaking from the heat and the panic, causing her to stumble.  Her rescuer tried to catch her, but instead was simply knocked back into the car behind them.  He hit it hard and his bow resonated on the hood as he tried to right himself, easily audible over the sounds of Brian May’s guitar solo.

“Dammit, Becca,” he cursed through gritted teeth.  He was staring at the walkers again.  “Move.”

Confused, Kim looked around, expecting to see someone else.  Down the road and between the cars she could see a half a dozen walking corpses surrounding a car, the source of the music.  One of them had heard the man hit the hood and was looking at them.  It started towards them, slowly, almost curiously.  Frantically she started to make her way around the cars, trying to find her balance again and to ignore the sickness in the pit of her stomach.  She paused for breath as her savior came around the car as well, his knees bent low.

“Listen, Becca,” he whispered.  “We’re going to head towards that tree line, there.”  He pointed.  “Don’t get too far ahead of me.  I don’t want to lead them towards my truck and I don’t want to lose you out there.”

Nodding Kim looked towards edge of the road.  She wanted to correct him, or to at least introduce herself and learn his name, but this did not seem a good time.   They both jumped a little when the car’s hatch groaned under stress.  One of the corpses had reached it and was pawing around.  It had to smell her.

“Go,” the man whispered, pushing her away from the car they had sought to hide behind and towards the tree line.  She stumbled, still lightheaded, and then found her stride.  She glanced over her shoulder to see him following.  The walker had seen them moving and was starting to follow as well.  Kim jogged further ahead, then paused.  The man had stopped and lifted his bow.  She watched as he took aim and held his position.  The walker continued to close with them, tripping over its own feet in its haste.  It lurched forward then rocked onto its back as the arrow caught it in the forehead and took it to the ground.

Kim watched in silence.  The guys had tried to make stands, but none of them had ever shown that level of coolness as a walker ran at them.  Gina had shot one with her dad’s shotgun, but all that had done was brought three more on them before she could reload.  A month ago there had been fifteen of them and they were going to show everyone that they could do this on their own.  That morning there were three, including herself.  Now, she reasoned, it was probably just her left.

They made their way through the brush as quietly and as quickly as they could.  Kim was tired, hot and thirsty.  Eventually he called for a stop and Kim put her back to a tree to rest.

“Do you have any water?”

He looked back and then shook his head.  “Not on me.  It’s extra weight when I’m scavenging.  There’s some in my truck.”   He glanced around, taking stock of the area, then up at the sun to get a sense of direction.  “We should able to reach it in half an hour.  Can you make it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”  Her forehead had stopped sweating, and she was starting to feel sick again, but it did not seem to make much sense to say so now.  

He nodded and started off in a new direction.  “We can catch up once we get to the truck.  Till then we should probably keep quiet.  Turning to look over his shoulder at him, he smiled, briefly.  He was young looking, his face round and pleasant, even with the humble starts of a five-o-clock shadow.  

Kim followed, putting a hand to a tree every few yards to steady herself before pressing on.

* * *


Garrett lead the way until they came out again at the highway.  A single Jeep Cherokee was parked just off the road, about two yards before the jam of cars willing the northbound lane.  “I didn’t want to get too close in case the sound of the engine got their attention,” he explained as he crossed out of the brush towards the truck.  He kept watching the road and the abandoned cars as they went.

The back of the jeep had some supplies, but the number of empty boxes in the back seat showed how lean things had gotten over the weeks.  He eased the water cooler bottle over at an angle to pour some into a mostly clean plastic cup for Becca and offered it to her.

She took the cup and began to drink it quickly, swallowing the warm liquid in gulps before Garrett could get a hand out to stop her.

“You have to drink it slow,” he said, withdrawing his hand, a little embarrassed that he had nearly knocked the cup out of hers.  “Chug that all down and you’ll just puke it back up.”

Becca nodded and took a smaller drink.  She looked paler and more shaken than when he had pulled her out of the trunk.  She clearly was struggling not to drink all of the water.  He sat down on the bumper of the jeep and eased his backpack off.  He let her have a few more minutes to drink the water and gather herself.

“Thank you,” Becca said, finally, taking short breaths.  “I haven’t had clean water in,” she paused, “days.”  

“Eat anything?”  Garrett started to look through one of the small canvas bags nestled between the water bottles.

“I’m not sure I should,” Becca whispered, putting a hand to the side of the jeep to steady herself.  She wiped the back of her hand over her forehead.  “I,” she started, her voice low.  “I want to thank you.  I didn’t think anyone could hear me.”

“All kinds of luck today,” he answered, smiling.  “I just can’t believe of all the people to run into up here it’d be you.”

She looked surprised.  “Me?”

“Well,” he continued.  “I only had a crush on you for most of highschool.  I spent most of junior year feeling guilty because you were going out with Ron and that really put you off limits.”

Becca started to look nervous.  “I really appreciate what you did for me, back there, and I hope this doesn’t seem, I don’t know, ungrateful or something,” the words were tumbling out randomly and haphazardly.  “I’m super sorry but I don’t think I know you.”

It was his turn to be surprised.  This had to be her.  Her round cheeks, the green eyes, the dusting of freckles over her nose.  He was so sure it was her.  “You’re not Becca Whitmore?”

Becca shook her head. “Kimberly Coates.”  She twisted her lips into a pained grin.  “I hope this doesn’t mean...”  He was not going to abandon her, though he understood her fear.  The world had changed a lot.  He studied her.  His hand started to reach for her, to touch her and see if she was indeed real.  Blinking he stopped himself and instead folded his arms over his chest.  

“No,” Garrett said with forced casualty.  “I’m sorry.  You do look a lot like Becca, around the eyes, I think.  She has freckles, too, like yours.”  He looked her over again.  “She has darker hair, and it’s shorter in the front.”  

Awkwardly Becca brushed several long strands of blond hair out of her face.  She stood quietly, looking down at the ground.

“What’s your name again?”  Garrett had already forgotten.

“Kim,” she answered. “Please don’t leave me.”  She did not look up at him.  

“Right.”  Garrett stood up and reached for the handle to pull the back of the jeep closed.  “Well, it’s good to meet you.”  He paused.  “Kim.”  Garrett said the name a few more times to himself, trying to imprint it into his memory.  “And no, I’m not going to just leave you out here.  Let’s pull up to the back of the line and see if there’s a smaller car we can move the gear to.  I love this thing but it’s crap for mileage and this far north gas is hard to come by.”  He eased the door down and then closed it firmly but without fanfare.  “And if I say move, we move.  I don’t want to deal with any more walkers today.”

“That’s fine by me,” she whispered in response.

* * *

Kim sat back against the tree, and stared at the low fire still burning under the scavenged cooking grill.  “That was, most likely, the best burger I have ever had.  Seriously, I think it was better than sex.”  She glanced over at Garrett to see him smiling back, sheepishly.

“Well, I wouldn’t be too excited.  I have no idea how old that hamburger was so we could be dead tomorrow.”  He continued to wipe down the metal spatula he had found in the same car as the cooler of food.

Kim closed her eyes.  “Then I die happy.  Where did you find the blue cheese to cook into them?”

“I’ve had that a while, actually,” Garrett said.  Kim could hear him starting to organize the few things they had brought from their newly acquired car to their cook site.  “I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”  She opened her eyes to watch him maneuver some items inside the small cooler.  “We need to find more ice.  Probably a good thing I used up some of the stash.”

Kim blinked as she listened, two words forcing her to sit up a little more.  “Special occasion?”

Garrett didn’t look up as he continued to pack up.  “Well, almost a special occasion.”  He kicked the grill out of the small fire pit and stomped down the coals.  That done he looked over at her and shook his head.  “I just can’t get past how much you look like her.”

“Like your friend?”

“Becca,” he said.  “You smile just like she does.  I keep thinking any second now you’re going to turn to me and say ‘Gotcha!’ and let me in that this is one big joke.”

Kim pulled herself up from the ground, and started to follow him.  “Are we just going to leave the grill?”

Garrett nodded as he turned and started to lead them back towards the road, some distance away.  “It’ll take too long to cool off.  The by time we can carry it, we’ll have given every walker within a three mile radius a chance to catch the smell of dinner.  We can find another one.”

They walked a bit before Garrett turned around and looked at her, continuing while walking backwards.  He shook his head and turned back again.  

“What?” Kim asked.

“You walk like her.”

Kim considered that.  “You must have really liked her.  Did you two ever go out?”

Garrett did not look at her as he talked.  “I didn’t date much in school.  I tried too hard or I didn’t try hard enough.  I don’t know.  Whatever it was, I was usually the single one.  And when a girl came into our circle of guys, well, they usually tried to pull their guy away from us, rather than come into us.  No one wanted to hang around the third wheel.”  He ducked under a branch pushing it up with a hand.  He paused to hold it up for Kim as she followed him under it as well.  She waited for him to take the lead again, and he continued to talk once he had, his back to her.  “She always asked me how things were going, if I wanted to see the movie they were all going to see, that sort of thing.  I like to think she was into me, that she, you know, like-liked me.”  He ran a hand over his short brown hair.  “God, that sounds so middle school.”

“I understand,” Kim said.  “She sounds like she was really cool.”  She considered.  “I’m sure she was into you.”  Being honest, she suspected that she had not been.  This, however, was not necessarily the best time for such truths to be spoken.

* * *

They circled the market for the third time on foot.  The car was parked near the door.  Garrett had backed up to it, and they waited to see if the noise had attracted any walkers.  It had not.  As they came back to the doors he turned to his companion.  She looked nervous, her blond hair held back now with a rubber band.  Her cheeks were white with fear, making her freckles stand out even more against her skin.  She forced a smile and nodded that she was ready.  

He took hold of the sliding doors and pushed them apart.  He handed her a flashlight and turned on his own.  There were rows of shopping carts nearby, still stacked up from weeks ago, before Hell on Earth had arrived.  She followed his flashlight beam to the metal cages.

“Some call it the Rapture,” she said in a low voice.  “The pious few were whisked away while the rest of us languish here until we join the zom-”

Garrett cut her off.  “We’re only going to take ten minutes here.  Get some food, supplies and get back to the car.”  He pointed his flashlight towards the produce section.  “I’m going to see what I can find there that’s not rotted yet.  You take a cart and get some boxed foods, stuff that won’t go bad.”  He aimed his light towards the back of the store, continuing before she could speak.  “It will probably be picked pretty clean, but we might get lucky.”

“What about walkers?”  She flashed her own light towards the back of the store.

Garrett shook his head.  “It should be clean.  No sign of corpses outside, just a few well picked skeletons.  Any walkers here would have cleared out by now to find someplace else.  Just don’t take any risks.  Get what we need and get back here.”

She took hold of the handle of one of the carts.  “Right.”  She pulled herself upright and nodded a few times, apparently working up the courage to venture into the darkness.  He patted her shoulder and pushed his own cart off to the left.

He was assailed immediately with the smell of rotten food.  Brown liquified vegetables filled their bins.  If the time had not taken its toll on them, the lack of active refrigeration had.  He shone his light around, looking for anything that could still be edible.  He found some melons that looked ripe, maybe too ripe, but he put them in the basket of the cart anyway.  He sighed as he pushed the cart around the corner and shook his head.  Then his spirits lifted a little:  bulk sales nuts, trail mix and candy.  Plastic bags still sat on their roll next to the bins.  He pulled one off and licked his fingertips to help open it.  Quickly he loaded the bag, and gave it a twist.  Without thinking he turned and dropped it into the scale to see if he had exceeded a pound.  Garrett paused.  Why was he weighing it?  Even if he was going to pay for it, with money he actually still had, there was no one here to take it.  He opened the bag again and scooped more mix inside, then proceeded to repeat with shelled peanuts, some of the candy, and the dried fruits.  

There was a crash towards the back of the store followed by Becca’s scream of terror.  He dropped the bag and started to run towards her, the beam of light from his flashlight cutting into the darkness.  He was a dozen strides along when he realized that his bow was resting in the open trunk of the car, and the two guns he still had ammo for were both in the back seat.  If there was a walker, he’d have no way to subdue it.  All he could do was hope that he could get Becca out of there before she got bit or killed.

There was the sound of glass shattering.  He dodged around half full carts and stock pallets as he tried to reach her before they did.  He could not lose her now.

He came around the corner to the back of the store.  A dozen of the corpses were pressed against the glass of the freezers, their bloody fists banging on the clear surface.  Heavy pallets had been slid against the doors to pin them shut.  Three of the shambling walkers had managed to break through one of the panes and were crawling out of it.  Becca was next to her cart, frozen with fear, crouching in the darkness.  She held one of them in the beam of her flashlight, staring helplessly as it hissed at her.  

Garrett looked around, quickly.  Dropping his flashlight, he took hold of a bulk value bottle of detergent with both hands.  He spun around once and launched it at the walker, hitting it square in the chest and sending it sprawling against the door to another freezer.  The other two turned to see the new living body and started towards him.  He bolted past them towards Becca.

“Check out time,” he said grabbing her arm with one hand and the cart with the other.  He pushed and started towards the exit. “Becca, light,” he ordered, his voice firm and quick.  She struggled to follow, still shaken from his sudden appearance.  She managed to gather herself enough to aim her flashlight ahead of them as they turned the corner and ran along the length of the store towards the doors.  The white light of the outside created a bright portal to aim at and both of them leaned forward, gaining speed.  Garrett squinted as they emerged into the sunshine.  The cart crashed into the back of the car.  Helped by its forward momentum he helped it up, groaning as he lifted it and poured its contents into the car.

She stood by panting as he deposited their spoils and let the cart fall back to the asphalt.  

“Becca?  Get in.”

He did not see if she nodded or not but she was in the passenger seat by the time he had started the engine.  They drove off, the trunk still open.  It was a few moments of tense driving as he guided the car along, and away from the store.  They passed empty shopping plazas and office buildings before he finally turned off the road.  

“Are you okay?”

Her hands were still braced on the dashboard, where she had placed them when they began their escape.  She nodded, though her arms were shaking.  Her lips were pressed tightly together.  

“You sure?”

She slowly turned towards him, her face red with the flush of excitement and activity.  She blinked a few times.  She, again, forced a smile, her lips parting to reveal the small gap between her two front teeth, the gap that he had always considered the prettiest part of her grin.

Garrett put a hand out to rest on her shoulder.  “What happened back there?”

She slumped forward and rested her forehead on the dashboard of the car.  She started to shake with sobs.  He had said something that set her off and he sat there with his hand, uselessly on her shoulder.  She cried for a few minutes before getting her breath.  He remained next to her, letting the silence eat at him.  He should say something.  She was clearly terrified.  He released his seatbelt and leaned towards her, pulling her into an embrace.  She came to him easily, her own shoulder strap making the only other sound in the car.

“I just thought it would be nice to surprise you with some ice cream, if they had any left.  It was so dark and I couldn’t see in the coolers so I tried to clear some of that junk out of the way.  That’s when they saw me.  Oh my God I was so scared.  I’m so sorry.”  She choked the words out in gasps.  Garrett held her another moment.

“It’s okay.  We still have what you found.”

He got out of the car and walked around the back.  He had not looked at what she had filled the cart with but anything was better than nothing.  Things were quiet enough here that they could repack the storage boxes in the back seat and organize their supplies to get a better idea of what they had left to find.  

He leaned over the open trunk and sighed.  There were bags of chips, some cans of non-refrigerated dip and some large plastic barrels of pretzels.  He sifted these out of the way to find several bulk-packaged boxes of macaroni and cheese.  There was a full pallet worth of ramen noodles.  Edible but the salt in them would seriously tap their clean water.  

“I thought I could cook for you,” she offered coming up along the other side of the car.  “Only I realized I really don’t know how to cook much besides mac’n’cheese.”  She reached into the trunk and drew out a cooking pot.  “I grabbed something to cook them in, like over a fire.”

Garrett sighed and put his hands on the rim of the trunk.  What had he expected, really?  Finding anything useful was a longshot at best.  Staples like flour or canned goods like soups were probably long gone.  Then again, they would not know now.

“You’re not happy.”  

Garrett shook his head. “No, Becca, it’s fine.  I just thought you would have found some soups or something.”

“Kim.”

He turned to look at her.

Becca sucked awkwardly on her bottom lip, that gap in her teeth apparent again.  “You called me Becca again.  I’m Kim, remember?”

He chuckled.  “Yeah, I know.  Sorry.”  He reached up to close the trunk.  “We’ll find something substantial at the next stop, I’m sure.  If not, maybe we can barter the chips for something.  Not many people will have comfort food out here.”  There was a reason for that, of course, but he could not bring himself to say it to her.  It was bad enough that he had risked his life for the chips and dips, he did not want to dwell on what they might have found.

* * *

“So, where are we headed?” Kim asked after they had been driving about an hour, listening to random country songs off an old iPod.

Garrett did not look away from the barren road as he answered.  “My parents have a cottage up by Interlochen.  We thought we’d head there.  It’s not totally off the grid but there are some windmills that went up a few years ago so it should still have power, and it’s away enough that it won’t attract too much attention.”  He shook his head a little. “We’re banking that they follow patterns of people so if we get away from people we get away from them.”

“We?”  Kim did not remember any previous discussion on this.

“The guys, the ones I went to school with.  We met up just before the cell network crashed, and agreed we’d head north.  Well most of us met up.  Ron was working crowd control at Beaumont Hospital when it got overrun.”  He paused, probably thinking about his friend.   He shook his head before continuing.  “The plan was that moving alone or in pairs would be safer.  My sister headed off with her boyfriend towards his family’s place near Kalamazoo.  I think my folks are still up north but we won’t know till we get there.”

Kim listened quietly, nodding a few times.  “That’s, well, a good plan,” she said when he was done talking.

“How about you?”  Garett turned towards her a little.  “I’ve just assumed you were on your own, but is there someone you were hoping to meet up with out here?”

She thought about the last few weeks.  When things had really started to get bad, her parents entered the lottery to take refuge on Selfridge Air Base, but she would not wait to see if they got selected.  Andy had called and said he would pick her up within the hour.  She threw some clothes and makeup in a bag, told her parents she was going to save herself with the people she could trust and walked out to his SUV.  She had no idea what had happened to them.  Her dad had tried to stop her, but she was not going to wait around for someone to invite her to safety.  Andy and his friends would know how to take care of her.

They picked up the rest of their circle of friends, stocked up on supplies with Jack’s fake ID, and headed out on their own.  The ID was actually fairly useless.  By then most stores had been abandoned and it was a day or two later they had shot their way, boldly, into a liquor store.  Her head hurt just to think about the hangover she had had the next day.

“There were just a few of us,” she whispered, remembering.  It was Mandy’s idea to try to hide out in the GLC Outlet mall.  That was where Mandy got bit by one of them, ironically.  They had managed to get out, but lost Cassidy, Steven, and Nora.  They left Mandy at a rest stop.  Everyone got out for fresh air, and once Mandy was out of the car, Paul shouted for everyone to get back in.  It was a mile later that she realized they had left Mandy behind.  That had been Paul and Andy’s plan.

They were torn apart two days later raiding a Walmart for more ammunition.

“Three really,” Kim said a few minutes later, still mostly lost in thought.  Garrett let her think and simply drove in silence.

Blaine, Erin, and herself had been the last three.  Erin still had her dad’s twenty two rifle, but she had never fired it.  Kim was not even sure if she had ammunition for it.  Blaine had shot a few of them, mostly while trying to help get the girls to another point of safety.  He had always been the one to protect them.  He did not even have time to make a sound for help when they last stumbled onto a pack of the walkers.  Erin had.  Kim could hear her through the side of the car.

“We really didn’t know where we were headed.”

Garrett shook his head.  “Becca always had plans.  She was sharp, too.  Would make Ron think it was all his idea.”

Kim nodded.  She worked the rubber band out of her hair, and started to run her fingers through it, feeling the oil and the dirt.  She really wanted to take a shower.  The trees sped past the car, silently.  Kim hated the silence, hated that if you heard any sounds of life, death soon followed.

“I’m sorry about the store,” she said, breaking the quiet between them.  “I should have been smarter about getting stuff we needed.”   She could not look at him.  She did not know if she smiled at her, or even glanced her way.

The silence returned for a few minutes.  

Garrett grunted.  “It’s okay, Kim.”

He had called her Kim.  That was a good thing, she thought.

* * *

Garrett cursed and pulled his hand back out of the engine compartment.  He had never been very good about maintaining cars.  That had always been Bill’s thing.  He glanced around some more and tried to find where the antifreeze had been leaking from.  It was a slow leak; he had not seen any puddles under the car.  Either way, however, the car was overheated and they were not going much further in the midsummer heat in it. If they went slow, and gave it time to cool, they may limp another few miles in it.

“Everything okay?”  Kim asked, peering around the hood of the car.

Garret just grunted back and reached up to slam the hood down.

“I’m sorry I can’t help with that,” she put the binoculars back to her eyes and resumed scanning the field to the car’s left for any kind of movement.  They were well into the northern Michigan farm country now.  Long stretches of flat farmland, like the stretch to their left, with dots of thick tree stands, as was to their right.  “My dad swore that the last thing I needed was a car.   He flat out refused to let me buy one even when I left for college.”  Garrett moved next to the car to lean on the hood while she talked. “‘Cars are the gateway drug to premarital sex,’ he’d say.  ‘No daughter of mine is going to have a baby before she has a degree.’”  She dropped her voice low to imitate her father’s voice.  “Didn’t really work.  My virginity was long gone by the time we had that talk.”

Garrett could feel his cheeks burning with her brazen discussion of sex.  He was not a virgin either, but he was never comfortable talking about.  Sex was private, or should be.  He turned from her to hide his face, and caught motion out of the corner of his eye.

“Have you been watching the tree line?”  He raised his hand to shield his eyes as he stared between the tall pine trunks and into the thickets.  

“No,” Kim said, pointing the binoculars towards the trees.

He could see something moving.  Then another body, this one coming along the road, shuffling in the dust.  “There’s two,” he said pointing.  How had Kim missed the one on the road?  “We’d better get back in the car-”  A loud hiss to his right cut him off.  Across the hood of the car another walker snarled at him and reached out a grimy hand to claw into his face.  

Kim turned too with the noise and screamed.  The binoculars fell to the ground, shattering on the hard blacktop.  Garrett did not have time to consider their loss as he pushed her along ahead of him so that he could get the door open.  The walker was climbing over the hood towards them.  Garrett wrenched the door open and shoved Kim in ahead of himself.    The first walker was just climbing off the hood when he finally pulled the door shut again.  A wet, decaying hand slapped against the driver’s side window.  A second had scaled the front of the car and was starting to beat on the windshield.  Garrett gunned the engine and the car jolted forward, slamming the animated corpse into the glass.  It held but a crack formed.  Relentlessly the walker straightened enough to beat its fist into the glass again, a meal of warm flesh inches away.  The windshield splintered as a web of lines shot out of the point of impact through the tempered glass.  

Garrett cursed again, and slammed the brakes. This sent the corpse tumbling forward off the hood.  Slamming the gas again they drove past it, leaving the small pack of them behind.

He glanced at the woman next to him, her eyes wide as she stared at the point where the windshield had nearly shattered in on them.  She was going to get him killed.  And he was not going to die for some stranger.

They drove on.  He slowed down a little to conserve gas, but would not look at her.  He could hear that her breathing had calmed.

“You really are amazing,” she said finally.  “I’m really lucky you found me.”  She did sound grateful, at least.  He did not know what to say so he just kept driving.  “Hey,” she broke into the silence again.  “Can you pull over for a second?”

He did not want to stop; they were still too close to the walkers for his taste but he did slow the car to a stop.  He turned to ask what she wanted and instead found that she had moved closer to him, leaning towards him over the center console.  He paused and stared back at her.

“I just want you to really understand how much I appreciate you looking after me.”  She tilted her head down a little, as though looking at his lap.  He caught her eyes, focused on him now, looking at him through her long eyelashes.  “I mean, I owe you my life a few times over.”  Her hand was on his leg.  “And I’ve been terrible about showing you my thanks.”

He had always been the last one paired off for any dance or other social function.  It took his mind a few moments to register what Kim was suggesting.  Here?  Now?  In the front seat of a stolen car with a broken windshield?  He started to say something when she moved his hand from where it rested on the shifter to her breast.  She pressed it against the soft flesh and smiled up at him.

He felt the weight of her breast in the palm of his hand.  It had been a long time since he had touched a girl.  He thought about the number of times he had wanted to do just this, to feel the curves of Becca’s body, to hear her response to his touch.  He had never dreamed that Becca would just take his hand like this and offer herself to him.

Garrett blinked and pulled back his hand.  

“Look, Kim,” he said, putting the car back in gear, “it’s not that you’re not cute, but we need more distance between us and that pack.  We don’t know how many there are or how thick this stretch of trees is with them and with this car running hot I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go before it dies.”  He pressed down on the accelerator.  “Maybe later.”

There would not be a later, he knew that much, but he was too kind to say so to her aloud.  There were times that such truths were best left unspoken.

* * *


Kim and not said a word since they started driving again.  The sun was sinking low she was starting to get nervous.  Garrett had not said a word, either, since she had asked him to pull over.  She knew he was lying when he said that he would let her show her appreciation later.  She knew enough about boys in general to read their faces when they were breaking up with her.

The car slowed as he pulled it into the parking lot of an old truck stop.  The broken sign advertised showers and a fully stocked convenience store.  Garrett put it in park and turned off the engine.  He reached in the back seat and took out a shotgun.  He did not say anything as he got out and pumped a round into the gun’s chamber.  Kim slid from her seat and gently closed the door.

The glass front of the store was broken out, the late day sun creating long shadows along the still standing shelves.  She followed as Garrett stepped over the window sill and scanned each row.  They looped through the store a few times, to be sure there were no corpses, living or unliving, to be found.   Though still standing, the shelves were picked fairly clean.  

To Kim’s relief, Garrett spoke, finally.  “I think we got lucky.  I’m going to use a real bathroom if you want to start scavenging for things we can use.”   He smiled a little, a smile she did not believe.  “I think we’re good on the chips and dip, though.”

She nodded and watched him head towards the Men’s Room.  He was her best chance at surviving.  He may be lonely and confused but on her own she would be dead within a day.  She walked along the rows of soaps and shampoos and other non-edible items.  These shelves were still full of stock.  Kim sighed as she picked up a box, examining the image of the smiling brunette on the front.  What she was about to do was the most cruel she had done to survive.  But what choice did she have?

She walked through the aisle of school supplies, helping herself to a pair of scissors.  Near the registers she spotted a rack of tee shirts.  She slid them along the top, looking at the silk screen printed  logos of various bands.  Something personal from their history would go a long way to solidify the illusion.  She lifted a few in her size and draped them over her arm.

Why was she starting to cry?  This was what she had to do.  If she had a choice she would take it.  She took a breath as she approached the bathrooms.  Was she crying for him?  Garrett was a good man, maybe even a great man.  She pressed her lips together and took a long slow inward breath.  She knocked at the Men’s Room.

“Garrett?”

“Yeah?”  He sounded annoyed.

“Promise me you’ll wait for me?  I was thinking I’d take a shower and there’s all this soap out here.”  She gently put her forehead to the door, closing her eyes.

She could hear the sound of water rushing inside.  “There’s good pressure here.  That’s not a bad idea.”  He shut the water off.  “I promise I won’t leave you, Kim.”

Kim took another deep breath.  It was time make the change.  “Who?”  She tried to sound confused, lost as to who he might be talking about.

“What?”  

Becca forced a chuckle.  “Well if you say hi for me to this Kim that’d be great.”  She took another quick breath and then started again before Garrett could say anything.  “Hey, I was trying to remember.  Last year, Ron, me, you and everyone went to that concert.  That was Evanescence, right?”  She looked at the tee shirt with the band logo on it.

“They were sold out, remember?”  Garrett was approaching the door.  “We decided to catch Bullet for my Valentine instead.”  Quickly, Becca flipped through the shirts and found the words scrawled across one.  “Beccah, is that you?”  He started to push it open only to find her foot tight against the bottom edge, pinning it shut.

“I thought you were taking a shower,” she said leaning on the door.  “C’mon we both smell and who knows when we’ll find running water again?”  She felt the pressure on the door pass as Garrett retreated.

“Yeah, good call,” he said, moving away from her.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes,”  she called through the Men’s Room door.  Becca took a few strides to the Women’s Room.  She did not look back as she slid in and locked the door. Setting the shirts on one of the sinks, she took a place in front of another.  A blond stared back at her through the dirty mirror.  Becca opened scissors and brought them up to look at them, to show them to the girl in the mirror.  She took hold of some hair and cut.  As the locks fell away leaving a trimmed line of bangs, she knew that Kim was dead.  Walkers had gotten her on some random stretch of M23, pulling her from the trunk of an abandoned car where she had sought to hide.

Becca studied the directions on the side of the box with the brunette.  She started to run the water and watched it wash the blond hairs down into nothingness.  She could not think about them now.  Becca had other thoughts to fill her mind.  Thoughts about a new life about the boy she always wanted to be with, but just never had a chance before now.