Zombie Playlist: A Rock Zombie Romance Read online

  “Thank you Lord for this meal we are about to receive and thank you for watching over me and Shiloh and making sure Shiloh didn’t get shot by the mean man. Amen.”

  I couldn’t fault her for keeping it simple and to the point. My parents had forced me to sit through some achingly longwinded meal time prayers. Noah’s fingers slipped from mine, and she immediately began to eat, not even bothered that I hadn’t finished her prayer with my own amen. Noah knew I wasn’t a believer in her God. Case in point, what kind of benevolent, almighty being allowed the world to wallow in such despair and ruin?

  “What are you doing?” I asked when I noticed Noah chewing on her beans, her face inches from a piece of paper, a pen in her hand as she scrawled away.

  “Leaving a note for the people who live here to thank them for the food.”

  In every way that I was cynical, callous and cranky, my Noah was the exact opposite. We were like two parallel roads that might be joined by blood, but never the two shall meet.

  “Where do you think they are, the people who live here?” Noah asked between mouthfuls of food.

  “Dunno. Maybe they went to the hospital? Or maybe they work away from home? Maybe they’re staying with other friends or family.”

  Noah nodded and didn’t say another word until she’d finished her food and thank you letter.

  “There’s a motorcycle in the converted garage.”

  Noah’s brow creased with confusion.

  “Are we going to take it?”

  I will admit, I had thought about it but quickly dismissed the idea.

  “I’ve only ever ridden pillion. I could probably figure it out but it’s a big-ass bike and I doubt I’d be able to hold it up with just me sitting on it let alone both of us.” Jumping up from the table, I grabbed the map from my backpack and spread it open on the table between us. Finding Blythe, I pointed it out.

  “We’re almost half way, which means we’ve still got over a thousand miles between here and Elmendorf.” Thinking back to the three-day hike I did in France with Cullen and Jez, I tried to guess how long it would take us to walk that far. The thought of Jez and the band became lodged at the forefront of my mind. Was he and Henry, our bassist, okay? I couldn’t even bring myself to consider them as motherfucking zombies. Jez would have gone straight home to his boyfriend, Damo. They’d only been together eight months, their relationship still in that can’t get enough of you sickly sweet stage. Henry planned on heading up north, to Seattle, to visit his parents. We’d always been close, like a family. During the last tour though, things had been strained, with bickering marring many of our stops. Jez had confessed he knew Cullen was cheating on me, again, and I punched him square in the face for not telling me. Consequently, Jez was no longer talking to me. Henry was sick of the drama and just wanted to play music. Can’t say I didn’t blame him, I should have cut Cullen off years ago and kept our relationship platonic. For me though, Cullen was like a gravitational pull, dragging me into his toxic stratosphere where I would become susceptible to his charm. We had so much history between us it hurt to think of throwing it away, and yet I spent most of our relationship wondering what it would be like without him.

  “Earth to Shiloh…” Noah sang from in front of me.

  Her words slapped me back to reality and though it was nice to escape thoughts of Cullen, remembering I was now living in a zombie fucking apocalypse downright sucked.

  “Sorry Boo, I was just thinking how good mint chip ice cream would be right now.”

  Noah’s eyes lit up and she jumped from her seat and began checking the cupboards for sweets.

  “I’m thinking it’s going to take us a few weeks to get to Nan and Pop’s. I’m being generous and giving us time to make plenty of stops.”

  “Why can’t we find another car?” Noah asked, dragging a packet of cookies down from a high shelf.

  “Because searching these homes is going to give me a heart attack. I don’t want to risk you or me just for a car when we’ve got two perfectly good feet. Not to mention we won’t be able to fill up on gas either. I guess I can figure out how to syphon a tank.” I’d probably need a hose, and something to syphon the fuel into. “I also don’t know how to hotwire a car.” Again I was cursing myself for not allowing Heath to pass on his skill set to me. “I guess if we find a car on the road with a set of keys in it, we’ll take it and drive as far as we can, but for now, let’s just go with what we know will work…our feet.”

  “I hate walking,” Noah complained as she sat down with the cookies.

  “It will do you good, I think the last time you did any exercise was when you were six, and Mom let me take you to that dance class.”

  Noah blew out a breath of air as she leaned back in her chair, her hands resting contentedly over her stomach, a small smile on her lips. My own food turned to lead in my stomach as I wondered when I would see her look so satisfied again. The next few weeks were going to be hard, and I worried that missed meals, sore feet, and exhaustion would be the least of our troubles.

  Track Seven: Aerosmith, Walk This Way

  CHAPTER 7

  My finger gently pushed the focusing dial on the binoculars, bringing the image before me into sharp focus. With only a slight shake to my hands, I studied the blocked highway. Noah stood beside me, praying. She was just as nervous about the blockade as I was, only her mind leaped to prayer while mine wished I had an arsenal of guns and ammunition. In front of the large obstruction of vehicles a figure leaned against a car, a rifle slung over one shoulder. Seeing the living, breathing human being, I pushed Noah to the side of the road, diving to the hard-packed ground like Bruce Willis might do in one of his Die Hard films. Noah grunted as she hit the dirt and immediately I felt guilty.

  “I’m sorry, Boo. I saw someone up there and panicked. Are you okay?”

  Dusting off her hands, she gave me a thumbs up.

  Raising the binoculars back to my eyes, I continued to watch the lined up vehicles that blocked the highway. I really did wish I had Bruce’s skill and weaponry. I was a motherfucking rock queen, what did I know about survival?

  This was our first day travelling by foot, and we were both pretty damn depressed. Noah was already sporting nasty blisters on her heels, and the small bottle of sunscreen I’d found at the soldiers’ house back in Blythe was definitely not going to last us the whole trip. Pulling my face away from the binoculars, I glanced toward Noah who lay in the dirt with her fingers linked together and her head bowed. Under the soldier’s helmet she also wore a black baseball cap, the visor offering her some protection from the merciless sun. Her cheeks were still flushed pink, sweat trickling down her temple, and the hair around her neck damp. For the thousandth time, I cursed the selfish assholes who stole our SUV. Upon leaving Blythe, I’d tried to investigate a couple of homes with cars parked outside but had been greeted by the snarling sounds of infected behind the doors. Unwilling to put myself or Noah in unnecessary danger, we’d given up searching for a car and began walking. I’d caught the occasional glimpse of movement in the distance in and around Blythe, and I’d carefully avoided all contact with the living or unliving. I’d also been careful not to alert Noah to the possible threats. She was already scared shitless, there was no way I was going to make things worse if it wasn’t necessary. The one before us was unavoidable though. Running a hand through my greasy hair, I tried to figure out how best to handle this situation. Reaching into the mesh pocket on the side of my backpack, I pulled out the map which was already folded to show our current position.

  “Qaurtzsite is up the road,” I murmured. “We’ll head inland here and go around. It’s going to add a few hours to our trip, but we’ll avoid whatever that is,” I glanced toward the distant blockade as I slid the map back away, “and we’ll also avoid most of the town. It should be safer on the outskirts, less people…less infected.”

  Though I’d never admit it out loud, I was terrified. In my stomach I felt sick and
my heart pounded hard and fast, my palms sweaty. Maybe we should have waited until night to walk, at least then we’d have the protection of darkness. Taking a deep breath and shoving my fear down deep, I climbed to my feet.

  “Come on,” I grumbled, pulling Noah along with me.

  Heading away from the road, I took us inland, the dusty ground beneath us no more appealing than the hard asphalt we had just left. There was little to hide behind, and I tried desperately to move from thorny, leafless scrub, to the patches of long, spindly grass in an effort to camouflage our trek over the terrain.

  “My feet hurt,” Noah complained from behind me as we grew closer to a large rise that would give us better coverage. My heart just about slammed its way out of my chest when I heard the growl of a vehicle’s motor in the distance.

  “Shit,” I cursed, chancing a glance over my shoulder.

  What I saw had my blood run cold, like ice fucking cold. Two off-road vehicles were headed towards us, fast. There was no way we could outrun them. We were about to be cornered. Stopping, I positioned my body between the quickly approaching vehicles and Noah. The pocket knife I had taken from the home in Blythe was tucked into my back pocket, but I wasn’t prepared to lose my one weapon, and I was in no way efficient enough to take on one person with a blade, let alone two. Correct that, four. There were two men on each buggy that approached us.

  “Shy?” Noah said nervously from my back.

  “Pull your bandana up and stay behind me. If I say run, you run, okay?”

  Her reply came with a great deal of hesitation, but eventually she agreed. The heat from the day was slowly disappearing, and the fear over the confrontation I was about to be forced into had goose pimples breaking out over my skin. Out here in the arid desert, with only tuffs of grass and rock to hide us, we were totally screwed. Pulling my own bandana up, I allowed my fingers to dance over the smooth surface of my golf club. I’d managed to slide it in the elastic bungee cord wrapped around my backpack. With a hard tug it would spring free. Maybelle was also tied to the front of my backpack, which made for awkward running. My pack felt bulky, and yet nothing had fallen free as we’d run over the uneven ground just now. I wasn’t sure if I should release the club and get ready to start swinging with false bravado, or to play it cool and see what they had to say. Some sort of buried intuition told me to keep my weapons hidden for now. Surprise was going to work better when we were outnumbered by bigger, stronger men.

  As the vehicles came to an abrupt stop, they threw up dirt which hung on the air around us in a dusty cloud. The vehicles remained running, but still, and four sets of eyes stared at us. The men looked ordinary enough, if anything a little hick, but nothing like the toothless hillbillies from Deliverance. They just looked tired and well used, which I had to admit was a slight improvement on zombies. One of them slowly stepped down from his quad, his heavy work boots crunching on dirt and rock as he stood to his full height, which was rather imposing. He was hellish tall, and wide, like an NFL quarter back. He was wearing an off-white wife-beater with denim jeans, his face covered in a tangled beard. His eyes were all kinds of fucked up. They had this dark manic gleam as they peered out under a heavy brow. This fucker had psychopath written all over him.

  “Where you girls off to out here?” He asked, his voice low and gravelly, and not in a sexy way.

  “Just doing our best to avoid people, the Red Rage is everywhere. We just came through Blythe, and it wasn’t pretty.”

  The stranger nodded, trying to peer over my shoulder and get a look at Noah.

  “She retarded or something?” He blatantly asked, and my back snapped straight with indignation and fury.

  “Nope, she’s actually quite smart.” Glancing over the posse of smirking assholes, I found the smallest, with a tuft of hair under his bottom lip, his ears wide like wingnuts, and his teeth dirty and crooked. He looked like a messed-up version of Steve Buscemi. Nodding that man’s way, I glanced back at the quarterback asshole. “I’m betting my sister has a higher IQ then Steve Buscemi over there.”

  “Who the fuck is Steve Buscemi?” asked the man in question.

  “Inbred looking dude from Reservoir Dogs,” answered the guy sitting beside him with a shit-eating grin.

  “Never seen that movie,” the dude said sulkily.

  “It’s dangerous for a pretty thing like yourself to be out here alone.”

  The quarterback appeared to be the self-proclaimed leader of this motley crew. He stood tall and arrogant and even though he wasn’t infected, I wanted to pummel him with my club for being an intimidating dick.

  “Well, I’m not alone, and a pretty thing like myself is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Thanks for your concern, but we’ll be on our way now.”

  Grabbing Noah’s hand tightly in mine, I turned to one side and took a few steps away, keeping all four men in my peripheral vision. I saw the moment the other three men climbed from their vehicles, and the fear trapped inside of me thrashed wildly, forcing my limbs to shake.

  “We’re not infected,” the leader said, moving with the slow, lithe grace of a predator. “You can lose the bandanas. Come into Quartzsite with us, and we’ll make sure you get a good feed and have shelter and protection.”

  “Thanks all the same, but we’re good,” I quickly replied. My fingers wrapped around my driver, ready to wrench it free when Steve Buscemi’s doppelganger stepped in front of me, forcing me to abruptly stop. He smiled, and his yellow, bucked teeth made me want to vomit.

  “We got warm, comfy beds,” he tried to purr seductively, but it came out like more of a lewd snicker. With a light breeze, I caught the bitter tang of his body odor that somehow bled through my bandana. I couldn’t imagine how bad he reeked without that layer of protection.

  “What? Quarterback over there not spooning you right, Steve?”

  His nostrils flared with anger, and I quickly stepped around him pulling Noah with me. Suddenly, a large, calloused hand wrapped around my wrist, and I sprang into action. Tugging my golf club the rest of the way free, I wrenched my arm out of the stranger’s grip and wrapped both hands around the familiar leather grip. With my makeshift weapon raised over my shoulder, I strategically placed myself between Noah and the threat. Noticing Steve reach behind his body with a startled look on his face, I didn’t wait to see what he might bring back in his hand. Instead, I swung hard and fast. The thick end of the club connected with a resounding thwack and Steve groaned, falling to his knees.

  “You mother fucking slut!” One of the other men shouted as he ran towards me, his meaty hand wrapped around a really big fucking knife.

  Swinging again, I clipped his shoulder, and he let out a pained cry as his knife was sent flying toward the ground.

  “What’s up shithead? Don’t like golf?” I growled before turning to face the man who had been riding with Steve. “What about you? You wanna play a little?”

  The balding man with a healthy donut of fat hanging over his belt raised both hands in a placating gesture. The surprise and worry on his face quickly turned into a sinister smile. His confidence pissed me off and when I would have stepped over Steve who was still making gasping, pained sounds from the ground at my feet, I was brought up short by Noah’s cry. Spinning around, I found the quarterback looking asshole standing with one thick forearm wrapped around Noah’s throat, a gun pressed into her cheek. Tears fell unchecked down her face as she sobbed hysterically.

  “Let her go,” I demanded, my voice sounding raw and feral.

  “Drop the club.”

  I did, without hesitation. My backpack was immediately dragged off my shoulders, and my arms were wrenched behind me. Something that might have been zip ties yanked around my wrists so tightly they cut into my skin. The pain was muted though, the screaming fear for Noah’s life bleeding into every ounce of my sanity.

  “Let her go,” I snarled again.

  Quarterback grinned. “I think I’m gonna keep her close
until we get home. Don’t worry, I’m not into retards, so she’s safe from me. My friend Archie, who I do admit does look a little like Steve Buscemi, well he isn’t as fussy but since you just clubbed him over the head, I don’t think he’ll be up for partying tonight.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you! We are not your enemy!” I yelled in frustration.

  My words echoed the sentiments I screamed at Richard and Amanda back in Blythe. Why did humanity have to sink to such depravity the moment the world turned to shit? Because the world has always been full of crazy, twisted fuckers, I thought.

  “Oh, you are definitely not my enemy, sweetheart. In fact, we’re gonna be real good friends.”

  Quarterback strode closer and tugged my bandana down. His head tilted thoughtfully to one side as he took me in, my eyes, my nose, lips, breasts.

  “You look familiar.”

  Holding my head high, I glared at the sick bastard before me. With my hands tied behind my back like this, I could easily slip the pocket knife free, but then what? I’d be up shit creek with a stupid little knife, that’s what.