Nanowrimo Fanfic: "The Long Road - Chapter Fourteen"
SO very sorry for the long delay since the last chapter. Still bronchial, still infectious, still feeling run down and tired. But very happy to get this up finally. I promise promise promise next chapter won't be so delayed.
Title: The Long Road
Chapter: Fourteen
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Rating: PG to R throughout the series
Word Count: 4474
The Long Road
By Severina
A Sequel to “Whenever You’re Ready”
A QaF Zombieverse Story
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Michael is sitting on the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him and his back resting on the cushions. His hair is messy and there is a smudge of dirt on his chin. Ted thinks he looks adorable, and is restraining himself from saying so only through an incredible force of will that he didn’t even know he possessed.
“You know,” Michael says, the hand holding his glass wavering just a little, “I’m not sure this is the smartest idea we’ve ever had.”
They planned to leave the next morning, so they’d taken the time to search the executive offices for anything that might prove useful in this new zombie-filled world. Michael pried open a locked drawer in the desk in the first office and found an impressive ten inch dildo. He tucked it away in his backpack, ostensibly for Brian. Ted saw the way Michael was looking at the thing, though, so he had his doubts about whether it would actually make it to its stated destination.
And Ted had hit the mother lode, as far as Michael was concerned. He found the liquor cabinet.
Michael had already polished off the remains of the whiskey and was currently working on the vodka.
“Michael,” Ted says patiently after taking a sip from his water bottle, “we’re trapped in… in…”
“In an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre?” Michael suggests, giggling.
“What?” Ted splutters.
“Haven’t you ever seen that episode of Friends?” Michael asks. “Oh my God. It’s so funny Okay, so there’s a blackout, right? And Chandler gets stuck in an ATM vestibule--”
“With Jill Goodacre,” Ted finishes.
“Yes!” Michael shouts. “You have seen it!”
“No, you just told me--” Ted stops, shaking his head. “Michael, I don’t watch Friends.”
“Fine, Mr. Masterpiece Theatre,” Michael says snippily.
“My point,” Ted says, “is that we’re trapped, not in an ATM vestibule--”
“So funny,” Michael giggles.
Ted sighs. “But in a richly appointed executive suite, whilst--”
“Whilst?”
“Whilst rampaging zombies gather round to feast on our flesh,” Ted finishes. “And it seems to me that that is a perfectly acceptable reason to have a little nip of the Stolichnaya. If you so choose.”
“I do so choose,” Michael says. He looks blearily into the bottom of his glass. “I just wish I didn’t have to drink alone.”
“Well--” Ted begins.
“Not,” Michael adds quickly, “that I want you to break your vow of…non liquor drinkingness… or anything…”
“It’s called sobriety, Michael.”
Michael frowns. “Right. That. I just wish… I mean, I just miss…”
“I know,” Ted say softly. “I miss them too.”
“When we get to Florida,” Michael says, gesturing wildly, “the first thing I’m going to do is make a Cosmo. In honour of Emmett.”
Ted wisely doesn’t point out that they are already in Florida. “Okay,” he says, rescuing the drink before it spills and setting it down on the floor far away from Michael, “but right now, I think it’s time I got you into bed.” He stops, gaping, and blushes as he backtracks. “I don’t mean that I want you in bed… I mean… it’s late, and--”
“Mmm. I think I’ll just sleep here,” Michael says, sliding onto the floor. He pillows his head on his arms. “’Night, Teddy.”
Ted looks from the sofa to Michael, and back again. Hauling his friend’s boneless body up onto the sofa will be a chore, and then he’ll have to be concerned about Michael sliding off in the night. Possibly hitting his head. Getting a concussion.
Right.
He decides to let Michael remain where he has slumped.
Ted scurries quietly around the room, capping the vodka bottle and putting Michael’s glass on top of the large entertainment unit. He considers the bottle -- and the others in the cabinet -- for a moment, then spends fifteen minutes wrapping a couple of the bottles in towels from the bathroom and tucking them into his backpack. In a worse case scenario, liquor could be a painkiller. In a best case scenario, his friends would have something to celebrate with when they reunite and find Lindsay and the others.
Ted wishes he believed in the best case scenario. And then he remembers Emmett, enthusing about farming and orchards and living off the land. And he squares his shoulder and closes his eyes and prays.
He feels calmer after that. He drags the lone blanket from the other room and spreads it over Michael, tucking it in around his shoulders. And then he knows that he should retreat to the second office, curl up on the other sofa and try to get some rest.
But instead, he sits on the floor. Rests his head on the arm of the sofa, and watches Michael sleep.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
The Starlite Motel is the kind of place that Brian would previously have never set foot in, not even for the best fuck -- Justin -- or to land the world’s most important client. It’s neon sign, dark now of course, is missing at least half its bulbs, and its once bright yellow awnings are long faded from the sun. There’s an underwater motif complete with peeling seashell wallpaper in most of the rooms. The beige carpet is worn and dirty and threadbare, and covered with stains.
But none of those stains are from blood. And after they’d parked the car and sprinted up the outside stairs, they’d proceeded carefully down the length of the outer balcony and searched the entire second story, tense and scared, baseball bats and lengths of barn board held at the ready. They’d looked under beds and inside closets. Pulled back slimy shower curtains, expecting something to jump out at them at any moment. They’d found clothes abandoned, toiletries spilled on bathroom floors and filling tiny rooms with the overpowering scent of cheap perfume. They’d found suitcases half packed and then discarded on unmade beds. But they’d found no occupants, either living or undead.
Brian slings his backpack on one of the beds, and coughs at the dust that spirals up into the air from the multi-coloured floral bedspread. “Fuck,” he says, “this place is a fleapit.”
“It’s not so bad,” Justin says from the window. He scans the parking lot and surrounding area. Their car is only one of three on the lot, covered now with newspapers and garbage blown into the area from the wind and the weeds that are already struggling through cracks in the pavement. Aside from a couple of zeds stumbling across the asphalt, the place is deserted.
“I’m just sooooo glad to have a bed,” Abigail says, poking her head in the door.
Justin waves her inside. “I think we should stay off the balcony,” he says. “We don’t want to catch their attention.”
“A bed,” Brian says slowly. “She’s right. We have a bed.” He pulls back the covers and wrinkles his nose at the state of the sheets. But he realizes that beggars can’t be choosers.
“Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve been able to sleep in an actual bed?” Abigail asks.
“Whatever, Blondie,” Brian say distractedly. “Justin, get naked.”
“I think we should go up on the roof,” Justin says.
Brian shrugs. “I’d prefer the bed, but if you want to get dirty--”
“Not for that,” Justin says. “We should try to get our bearings before the sun sets.”
“Bearings is not what I want to get,” Brian leers.
Abigail rolls her eyes. “We still have running water,” she says. “No hot, of course. But if it’s all right with you, I’m going to take a quick shower.”
“Sure,” Justin says.
“And I want to go through the rooms. Check out what clothes have been left behind. And then you can have your Armani back, Brian” she continues, fingering the soft material of the shirt that Brian had leant her. “And I’ll check for you guys, too. You need to get out of those jeans, Justin.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Brian drawls.
“Stay close to the wall when you’re outside,” Justin tells Abigail, ignoring Brian completely. “And try to stay below the railing height.”
“I’ll crabwalk,” Abigail tells him.
“I’ve got something you can do that’ll keep you on your knees, Sunshine,” Brian tries.
“I’m going up to the roof,” Justin says. He crosses his arms at his chest and looks at Brian. Rolls his tongue in his cheek. “Now,” he says, “are you coming… or going?”
Brian grins cheekily. And follows Justin out the door.
They find access to the roof in the small storage closet at the end of the hall. Justin pops the lock with his shoulder and emerges warily, trying to scan all four corners of the roof at once.
The roof is flat, with nothing for anyone to hide behind. And though there are no people and no zeds on the flat expanse, there are signs of life left behind.
Justin bends down to pick up one of the tripods, one of several laid out at twenty feet intervals along the west edge of the roof. He shakes his head, letting it dangle from his grasp. “I don’t get it,” he says. “If there were people here and they had sentries posted to watch for zombies, why did they abandon this place?”
“No food,” Brian suggests, lifting a shoulder.
“Maybe,” Justin concedes. “But there’s a vending machine filled with chocolate bars and chips at the end of the hall, and it hasn’t even been touched.”
“Perhaps,” Brian says, “the hotel was holding a convention of diabetics, and they couldn’t eat the chocolate bars.”
Justin shoots him a look. “Smart ass.”
“You think too much,” Brian huffs out. “Why don’t we see more animals? Where did the people go?” he mocks. “We’re never going to know the answers.”
“So we shouldn’t ask the questions?”
“So we shouldn’t--” Brian starts, then stops and points. “There,” he says.
Justin looks out over the horizon. A small strip mall to the west has been ravaged by fire, the scent of burning wood and plastic still hovering on the air even over the omnipresent stench of dead and rotting flesh. Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings have been covered by large sheets of plywood, and most of those show signs of being ripped apart from the outside in. Justin doesn’t even want to think about how many zeds must have stormed the homes, the buildings, the businesses, tearing apart every defence the people of the town had thrown up. Doesn’t want to think about being stuck inside one of those buildings and hearing the barricades come down and the low, eager moans of the dead, and knowing there was nowhere to run.
Justin bites at his thumbnail. Looks at Brian. “What? Destruction, carnage, the usual. What are you seeing that I’m not?”
“They weren’t staying here,” Brian says. “They were staying there. At the delicatessen or the dog groomers or the fucking strip mall. They set up operations on the roof here to monitor the situation there.”
“Makes sense,” Justin says.
“Of course it does,” Brian preens.
“But that doesn’t explain--”
“It’s starting to rain,” Brian interrupts. “We need to get inside.”
Justin turns away from the burnt out buildings, from the destroyed barricades. “Yeah.”
“We can take down a couple of those shower curtains and make a tarp,” Brian says. “And finally use the camp stove. Hot food, Sunshine.”
“Yeah,” Justin says. And he takes Brian’s hand as he follows him back to the access shaft.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Michael stands at the top of the stairs, head cocked.
“I don’t hear anything,” Ted whispers.
Michael shakes his head, and adjusts the bag on his back. “I’m going first,” he says. The gun is tucked -- rather rakishly, Ted thinks -- in the waistband of his jeans, and the baseball bat is firm in his hand. “When I get to the bottom, I’m going to dart around the corner. And just pray nothing is there.”
“How will I know if you’re okay?”
“If you don’t hear a blood-curdling scream of terror, then you can assume I’m fine,” Michael says dryly.
Ted lays a hand gently on Michael’s shoulder. “I’ll be right behind you, Michael,” he reassures his friend.
Michael starts slowly down the stairs, hugging the far wall, with Ted at his heels.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs without incident. And there is nothing around the corner.
There is nothing, in fact, in the entire west side of the building. They find several more offices and a workout room, but no shambling undead and no sign of Steve’s prior passage.
They even make it through the lobby and to the pickup truck without incident.
“Okay,” Ted says, “that was too easy.”
Michael just shakes his head as he starts the engine. It’s only when they’ve pulled out of the parking lot and are heading down the road that they realize they have no idea where to go.
“Any ideas?” Michael asks.
Ted cocks his head. “Do you think there’s any white parties going on in Miami?”
“Ha ha,” Michael says.
“Because if there are, that’s where Brian will be,” Ted points out. Michael gives him a look, and Ted holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Maybe we should find the hotel that the girls were staying at,” Michael muses.
“We could do that,” Ted says. “Or we could try the beach. I’ve been wanting to work on my tan.”
He’s relieved to see Michael smile. “Actually,” Michael says, “we can kill two birds with one stone. They were staying at a resort right on the water.”
“Sunshine and surf,” Ted says. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
Ted thinks that if he closes his eyes and squints, he can almost pretend that the boardwalk is just like it was several months ago, before the dead inexplicably rose and attacked the living, before civilization was destroyed and life became a frantic search for safety and loved ones. The little shops that line the boardwalk are stuccoed in bright colours of yellow and blue and orange, and the tourist trappings of Fort Lauderdale T-shirts and mugs and sun visors are still piled in the windows to entice visitors that will never come. The only sightseers the beach gets now are grey and rotting, staggering along the creaking boards and stumbling through the sand.
Ted ducks down behind the large rock at which they’ve taken shelter. “I wish we could have brought the truck,” he grits out.
Michael glances regretfully back to the parking lot where they’ve left the vehicle. “It’s pedestrian only,” he reminds Ted. “We’ll get mired in the sand.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean I can’t wish it.”
“At least the zeds are slowed down even more here,” Michael says. He points to one of them -- a very thin, very blonde creature in a skimpy green bikini. In life she would have been the type to make any straight man lose all composure. In death, a bloodless gaping wound in her stomach crawled with maggots, and she managed to take only two shuffling steps in the sand before falling to her knees. “I say we make our way to the waters edge,” Michael continues after pulling his gaze away from the zombie. “We can move a lot faster than they can in the sand, and if worse comes to worse, we can swim.”
“Actually, Michael,” Ted admits ruefully, “I can’t swim.”
“You can dogpaddle.”
Ted winces. “Actually--”
“We’re going to the beach,” Michael says firmly.
“Right,” Ted says. He adjusts his backpack. “The beach.”
They are spotted as soon as they emerge from their hiding place behind the large white boulder, of course. Ted gives a stifled scream at the proximity of the closest zed and barely dodges a skeletal hand and then they are running, and when Michael stumbles he takes his hand and hauls him through the sand and doesn’t stop until they have reached the edge of the ocean and put a hundred feet or more between them and the nearest zombie.
“That,” Ted says, bending over to catch his breath, “really sucked.”
Michael squints back the way they came. Already, the chorus of moans has begun. Already the zeds are moving in their direction. “Do you hear that?” Michael asks.
“I always hear that,” Ted says, sighing. “I hear those moans in my dreams.”
“They’re going to follow us now.”
“You know, you are just a treasure trove of happy thoughts, Michael.”
“Uh huh.” Michael turns away from the sight of the pursuing zeds for a moment, and turns his attention to the beach, and Ted follows his gaze. The coastline stretches on as far as they can see, and dotted here and there between the kitschy stalls on the boardwalk are the paths that lead to many of the resorts themselves. With the ocean on their right, the boardwalk on their left, and a hundred feet of sand in between, they seem impossibly far away.
Michael removes his backpack and digs around for the binoculars before slinging the pack over one shoulder. “I’m going to scan the signs as we pass them,” he tells Ted. “The one we’re looking for is called Sun Vista.”
“Where the girls were staying?” Ted asks.
“Right.”
“Are you sure it’s on this beach?”
Michael bites his lip. “No.”
Ted was never a great student of geography. But he’s well aware that there are miles and miles of beaches to cover, probably hundreds of hotels and resorts. The task they’ve set for themselves is almost hopeless.
But Michael looks so lost, and so scared. And Ted realizes it has nothing to do with the zombies that are even now closing the gap between them. He is terrified of having come all this way, traversing all the obstacles in their path, losing a dear devoted friend -- and then being unable to find his daughter and his mother and all their other loved ones.
Ted squares his shoulders. Takes Michael’s hand and squeezes it. “Well,” he says, “the sooner we start, the sooner we find them.”
Michael lets out a breath. “Yes.”
By the time they have made their way halfway down the beach, the zombies trailing them are fifty strong. They’ve had to dive into the water twice to avoid zeds that cut across the sand in front of them, their fingers clutched as always into claws as soon as they feel they’re within striking distance. They’ve jogged past waterlogged corpses in rotting green wetsuits with seaweed straggling in their hair, and narrowly avoided the grasp of a legless zed who hitched his way across the sand using his hands to pull him along. That one was almost on top of them before his gurgled moans reminded them that they have to look down as well as straight across.
Finally, they run, abandoning all attempts to scan the distant signs on the boardwalk in a desperate attempt to put some distance between them and the undead horde.
They wade into the water to again catch their breath, and watch the zeds stumble relentlessly onward.
“I knew I should have done more cardio,” Ted pants.
Michael wraps an arm around his waist comfortingly. “You’re doing fine.”
“Sure,” Ted says. “If you call about ready to pass out ‘fine’.”
“We should probably start heading back toward the truck. We can find the next parking lot and start again at about this point.”
Ted glances back toward the zeds that lurch their way across the sand. “Back through that?” he yelps.
“The farther we get away from the truck, the longer the trek back will be,” Michael points out. He looks at Ted soberly. “We don’t want to walk so far that we’re too tired to make it back.”
“Well,” Ted says, grimacing at the advancing zombies, “when you put it that way--”
Michael cocks his head. “Do you hear that?”
Ted sighs. “I told you -- I always hear that. I hear moans when I’m sleeping, and showering, and eating. I’d probably hear moans when I was jerking off, if I ever actually did that any more. I hear--”
“Not the zombies,” Michael says softly. “A voice.”
Ted blinks. “What?”
“Shhh!”
The moans are so pervasive that, try as he might, at first they are all that Ted can hear. He watches the zeds stagger down the beach, stumbling and falling and always, always managing to get back up again. He watches their mouths open in round O’s and can almost see the sound emerge from the backs of decaying throats.
In the end, he turns his back on the zombies. He lifts his face to the sun and watches the way it sparkles on the water, sees the white crest of waves in the distance.
And then he hears it. A woman’s voice.
He turns startled eyes to Michael. “Where is it coming from?”
Michael’s eyes are big and round and filled with such hope that Ted can feel his own eyes filling with tears.
“I think… that way,” Michael says hesitantly, pointing toward a distant stretch of boardwalk.
Ted reaches out and takes his hand again. Feels the warmth of his skin. “What are we waiting for?” he says with a grin.
They run. Ted doesn’t think it would have been possible to run faster than he did in junior high, when he was incessantly teased, stalked and chased by Joey Carmichael. But somehow he manages it -- and through sand, to boot. He thinks that if he doesn’t have a heart attack or get torn apart by flesh-eating ghouls, he’ll take time later to be proud of himself.
The female voice gets louder and stronger with every step they take.
When they reach the boardwalk at a dead run, pushing aside zombies that stumble too close, using the baseball bat or very occasionally the gun on those that they can’t simply shunt aside, they discover why the timbre of the voice has remained so consistent. Why they haven’t heard any other voices besides the lone female voice.
A dozen zombies scrabble at the base of a pole, their hands stretched above their heads to reach the item well beyond their grasp. And at the top of the pole -- the thing that they reach for --- is… Ted squints against the sun to see it, but can only make out a large box of some kind. A speaker of some kind. A speaker broadcasting a recorded announcement.
… will help you to get inside, the voice says. This message will be repeated every day at one p.m. for fifteen minutes. We wish you good luck.
The speaker falls silent.
Ted stumbles back against the wall. “Was it--” he begins.
Michael’s eyes are wet with tears. “It’s Lindsay,” he says.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
“I still say we should continue down the coast,” Abigail argues.
“I still say you wouldn‘t know a decent plan if it bit you on your flat ass, Blondie,” Brian counters.
Justin turns away from the ongoing argument and steps cautiously to the open motel room door, taking care to stay in the shadows. The zeds outside are still few in number, but he knows it would only take one sighting for the call to go out and for the undead to surround the dilapidated motel. Some people already tried to hold out here, after all. They failed. He has no intention of repeating any of their mistakes.
He squints into the sun and leans out just a little so that he can feel it warm his skin. A cool breeze takes the edge off the humidity and the fronds of the palm trees planted along the boulevard across the street sway gently in the air.
He was in Florida once before, though not in Fort Lauderdale. The spring break that a young man of his age and background would have traditionally spent in Florida had instead been spent in learning how to suck dick and the fine art of rimming.
He barely remembers the trip to Florida he did take. It was the year before Molly was born, and he and his parents went to Walt Disney World. He has vague memories of soft ice cream and getting a sunburn.
This time in Florida he--
Justin blinks.
Palm trees and ocean breezes. Florida.
He ducks back inside. “Brian,” he says, “we’re in Florida.”
“Thank you for that news bulletin,” Brian says dryly. “Now why don’t you make an announcement about the strange rotting creatures that seem to be so prevalent on our highways and byways?”
“We’re in Florida,” Justin huffs. “And so is Michael.”
For a moment Brian doesn’t move. And then he dives for the backpack at the same time as Justin. Their hands scrabble at the zipper but it’s Justin who reaches inside first, and who comes up with the battered walkie-talkie.
Brian snatches it out of his hand.
“We’re supposed to call on the hour,” Justin says. He takes a quick glance at this watch. “It’s one thirteen.”
“What are you talking about?” Abigail asks.
“I don’t give a shit,” Brian says. He thumbs the button on the walkie-talkie. “Mikey! Can you hear me?”
“We agreed with the others to make contact -- to try to make contact -- as soon as we each got to Florida,” Justin explains quickly. “Every hour during the day.” He frowns at Brian. “The red light is supposed to come on when you--”
“I know,” Brian bites out. He tries to press the button again, but Justin steals it out of his hand before he can do more than shift his thumb.
“Is it on channel 23?” Justin asks, turning the two-way radio over in his hand. “You have to have it on channel 23!”
“It’s ON fucking channel 23!” Brian insists. He makes a wild grab for the device and manages to swipe it out of Justin’s grip and on to the dirty carpet. He snatches it up again and smashes his thumb on the button. “Mikey!”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Abigail mutters. She steps forward and paws the walkie-talkie out of Brian’s hand and turns her back on both men. Quickly checks the channel and then calmly depresses the large button on the side of the two-way. “Michael, come in. Michael, do you hear me?”
She releases the button, and for a long moment there is nothing but open air hissing down the line. And then the radio crackles to life.
“Who the fuck is this?” Michael’s voice sputters from the tiny speaker.
Autumnwrite Goal:
119176 / 150000 words. 79% done!
Nanowrimo Goal:
55113 / 50000 words. 110% done!
Title: The Long Road
Chapter: Fourteen
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Rating: PG to R throughout the series
Word Count: 4474
The Long Road
By Severina
A Sequel to “Whenever You’re Ready”
A QaF Zombieverse Story
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Michael is sitting on the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him and his back resting on the cushions. His hair is messy and there is a smudge of dirt on his chin. Ted thinks he looks adorable, and is restraining himself from saying so only through an incredible force of will that he didn’t even know he possessed.
“You know,” Michael says, the hand holding his glass wavering just a little, “I’m not sure this is the smartest idea we’ve ever had.”
They planned to leave the next morning, so they’d taken the time to search the executive offices for anything that might prove useful in this new zombie-filled world. Michael pried open a locked drawer in the desk in the first office and found an impressive ten inch dildo. He tucked it away in his backpack, ostensibly for Brian. Ted saw the way Michael was looking at the thing, though, so he had his doubts about whether it would actually make it to its stated destination.
And Ted had hit the mother lode, as far as Michael was concerned. He found the liquor cabinet.
Michael had already polished off the remains of the whiskey and was currently working on the vodka.
“Michael,” Ted says patiently after taking a sip from his water bottle, “we’re trapped in… in…”
“In an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre?” Michael suggests, giggling.
“What?” Ted splutters.
“Haven’t you ever seen that episode of Friends?” Michael asks. “Oh my God. It’s so funny Okay, so there’s a blackout, right? And Chandler gets stuck in an ATM vestibule--”
“With Jill Goodacre,” Ted finishes.
“Yes!” Michael shouts. “You have seen it!”
“No, you just told me--” Ted stops, shaking his head. “Michael, I don’t watch Friends.”
“Fine, Mr. Masterpiece Theatre,” Michael says snippily.
“My point,” Ted says, “is that we’re trapped, not in an ATM vestibule--”
“So funny,” Michael giggles.
Ted sighs. “But in a richly appointed executive suite, whilst--”
“Whilst?”
“Whilst rampaging zombies gather round to feast on our flesh,” Ted finishes. “And it seems to me that that is a perfectly acceptable reason to have a little nip of the Stolichnaya. If you so choose.”
“I do so choose,” Michael says. He looks blearily into the bottom of his glass. “I just wish I didn’t have to drink alone.”
“Well--” Ted begins.
“Not,” Michael adds quickly, “that I want you to break your vow of…non liquor drinkingness… or anything…”
“It’s called sobriety, Michael.”
Michael frowns. “Right. That. I just wish… I mean, I just miss…”
“I know,” Ted say softly. “I miss them too.”
“When we get to Florida,” Michael says, gesturing wildly, “the first thing I’m going to do is make a Cosmo. In honour of Emmett.”
Ted wisely doesn’t point out that they are already in Florida. “Okay,” he says, rescuing the drink before it spills and setting it down on the floor far away from Michael, “but right now, I think it’s time I got you into bed.” He stops, gaping, and blushes as he backtracks. “I don’t mean that I want you in bed… I mean… it’s late, and--”
“Mmm. I think I’ll just sleep here,” Michael says, sliding onto the floor. He pillows his head on his arms. “’Night, Teddy.”
Ted looks from the sofa to Michael, and back again. Hauling his friend’s boneless body up onto the sofa will be a chore, and then he’ll have to be concerned about Michael sliding off in the night. Possibly hitting his head. Getting a concussion.
Right.
He decides to let Michael remain where he has slumped.
Ted scurries quietly around the room, capping the vodka bottle and putting Michael’s glass on top of the large entertainment unit. He considers the bottle -- and the others in the cabinet -- for a moment, then spends fifteen minutes wrapping a couple of the bottles in towels from the bathroom and tucking them into his backpack. In a worse case scenario, liquor could be a painkiller. In a best case scenario, his friends would have something to celebrate with when they reunite and find Lindsay and the others.
Ted wishes he believed in the best case scenario. And then he remembers Emmett, enthusing about farming and orchards and living off the land. And he squares his shoulder and closes his eyes and prays.
He feels calmer after that. He drags the lone blanket from the other room and spreads it over Michael, tucking it in around his shoulders. And then he knows that he should retreat to the second office, curl up on the other sofa and try to get some rest.
But instead, he sits on the floor. Rests his head on the arm of the sofa, and watches Michael sleep.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
The Starlite Motel is the kind of place that Brian would previously have never set foot in, not even for the best fuck -- Justin -- or to land the world’s most important client. It’s neon sign, dark now of course, is missing at least half its bulbs, and its once bright yellow awnings are long faded from the sun. There’s an underwater motif complete with peeling seashell wallpaper in most of the rooms. The beige carpet is worn and dirty and threadbare, and covered with stains.
But none of those stains are from blood. And after they’d parked the car and sprinted up the outside stairs, they’d proceeded carefully down the length of the outer balcony and searched the entire second story, tense and scared, baseball bats and lengths of barn board held at the ready. They’d looked under beds and inside closets. Pulled back slimy shower curtains, expecting something to jump out at them at any moment. They’d found clothes abandoned, toiletries spilled on bathroom floors and filling tiny rooms with the overpowering scent of cheap perfume. They’d found suitcases half packed and then discarded on unmade beds. But they’d found no occupants, either living or undead.
Brian slings his backpack on one of the beds, and coughs at the dust that spirals up into the air from the multi-coloured floral bedspread. “Fuck,” he says, “this place is a fleapit.”
“It’s not so bad,” Justin says from the window. He scans the parking lot and surrounding area. Their car is only one of three on the lot, covered now with newspapers and garbage blown into the area from the wind and the weeds that are already struggling through cracks in the pavement. Aside from a couple of zeds stumbling across the asphalt, the place is deserted.
“I’m just sooooo glad to have a bed,” Abigail says, poking her head in the door.
Justin waves her inside. “I think we should stay off the balcony,” he says. “We don’t want to catch their attention.”
“A bed,” Brian says slowly. “She’s right. We have a bed.” He pulls back the covers and wrinkles his nose at the state of the sheets. But he realizes that beggars can’t be choosers.
“Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve been able to sleep in an actual bed?” Abigail asks.
“Whatever, Blondie,” Brian say distractedly. “Justin, get naked.”
“I think we should go up on the roof,” Justin says.
Brian shrugs. “I’d prefer the bed, but if you want to get dirty--”
“Not for that,” Justin says. “We should try to get our bearings before the sun sets.”
“Bearings is not what I want to get,” Brian leers.
Abigail rolls her eyes. “We still have running water,” she says. “No hot, of course. But if it’s all right with you, I’m going to take a quick shower.”
“Sure,” Justin says.
“And I want to go through the rooms. Check out what clothes have been left behind. And then you can have your Armani back, Brian” she continues, fingering the soft material of the shirt that Brian had leant her. “And I’ll check for you guys, too. You need to get out of those jeans, Justin.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Brian drawls.
“Stay close to the wall when you’re outside,” Justin tells Abigail, ignoring Brian completely. “And try to stay below the railing height.”
“I’ll crabwalk,” Abigail tells him.
“I’ve got something you can do that’ll keep you on your knees, Sunshine,” Brian tries.
“I’m going up to the roof,” Justin says. He crosses his arms at his chest and looks at Brian. Rolls his tongue in his cheek. “Now,” he says, “are you coming… or going?”
Brian grins cheekily. And follows Justin out the door.
They find access to the roof in the small storage closet at the end of the hall. Justin pops the lock with his shoulder and emerges warily, trying to scan all four corners of the roof at once.
The roof is flat, with nothing for anyone to hide behind. And though there are no people and no zeds on the flat expanse, there are signs of life left behind.
Justin bends down to pick up one of the tripods, one of several laid out at twenty feet intervals along the west edge of the roof. He shakes his head, letting it dangle from his grasp. “I don’t get it,” he says. “If there were people here and they had sentries posted to watch for zombies, why did they abandon this place?”
“No food,” Brian suggests, lifting a shoulder.
“Maybe,” Justin concedes. “But there’s a vending machine filled with chocolate bars and chips at the end of the hall, and it hasn’t even been touched.”
“Perhaps,” Brian says, “the hotel was holding a convention of diabetics, and they couldn’t eat the chocolate bars.”
Justin shoots him a look. “Smart ass.”
“You think too much,” Brian huffs out. “Why don’t we see more animals? Where did the people go?” he mocks. “We’re never going to know the answers.”
“So we shouldn’t ask the questions?”
“So we shouldn’t--” Brian starts, then stops and points. “There,” he says.
Justin looks out over the horizon. A small strip mall to the west has been ravaged by fire, the scent of burning wood and plastic still hovering on the air even over the omnipresent stench of dead and rotting flesh. Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings have been covered by large sheets of plywood, and most of those show signs of being ripped apart from the outside in. Justin doesn’t even want to think about how many zeds must have stormed the homes, the buildings, the businesses, tearing apart every defence the people of the town had thrown up. Doesn’t want to think about being stuck inside one of those buildings and hearing the barricades come down and the low, eager moans of the dead, and knowing there was nowhere to run.
Justin bites at his thumbnail. Looks at Brian. “What? Destruction, carnage, the usual. What are you seeing that I’m not?”
“They weren’t staying here,” Brian says. “They were staying there. At the delicatessen or the dog groomers or the fucking strip mall. They set up operations on the roof here to monitor the situation there.”
“Makes sense,” Justin says.
“Of course it does,” Brian preens.
“But that doesn’t explain--”
“It’s starting to rain,” Brian interrupts. “We need to get inside.”
Justin turns away from the burnt out buildings, from the destroyed barricades. “Yeah.”
“We can take down a couple of those shower curtains and make a tarp,” Brian says. “And finally use the camp stove. Hot food, Sunshine.”
“Yeah,” Justin says. And he takes Brian’s hand as he follows him back to the access shaft.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Michael stands at the top of the stairs, head cocked.
“I don’t hear anything,” Ted whispers.
Michael shakes his head, and adjusts the bag on his back. “I’m going first,” he says. The gun is tucked -- rather rakishly, Ted thinks -- in the waistband of his jeans, and the baseball bat is firm in his hand. “When I get to the bottom, I’m going to dart around the corner. And just pray nothing is there.”
“How will I know if you’re okay?”
“If you don’t hear a blood-curdling scream of terror, then you can assume I’m fine,” Michael says dryly.
Ted lays a hand gently on Michael’s shoulder. “I’ll be right behind you, Michael,” he reassures his friend.
Michael starts slowly down the stairs, hugging the far wall, with Ted at his heels.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs without incident. And there is nothing around the corner.
There is nothing, in fact, in the entire west side of the building. They find several more offices and a workout room, but no shambling undead and no sign of Steve’s prior passage.
They even make it through the lobby and to the pickup truck without incident.
“Okay,” Ted says, “that was too easy.”
Michael just shakes his head as he starts the engine. It’s only when they’ve pulled out of the parking lot and are heading down the road that they realize they have no idea where to go.
“Any ideas?” Michael asks.
Ted cocks his head. “Do you think there’s any white parties going on in Miami?”
“Ha ha,” Michael says.
“Because if there are, that’s where Brian will be,” Ted points out. Michael gives him a look, and Ted holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Maybe we should find the hotel that the girls were staying at,” Michael muses.
“We could do that,” Ted says. “Or we could try the beach. I’ve been wanting to work on my tan.”
He’s relieved to see Michael smile. “Actually,” Michael says, “we can kill two birds with one stone. They were staying at a resort right on the water.”
“Sunshine and surf,” Ted says. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
Ted thinks that if he closes his eyes and squints, he can almost pretend that the boardwalk is just like it was several months ago, before the dead inexplicably rose and attacked the living, before civilization was destroyed and life became a frantic search for safety and loved ones. The little shops that line the boardwalk are stuccoed in bright colours of yellow and blue and orange, and the tourist trappings of Fort Lauderdale T-shirts and mugs and sun visors are still piled in the windows to entice visitors that will never come. The only sightseers the beach gets now are grey and rotting, staggering along the creaking boards and stumbling through the sand.
Ted ducks down behind the large rock at which they’ve taken shelter. “I wish we could have brought the truck,” he grits out.
Michael glances regretfully back to the parking lot where they’ve left the vehicle. “It’s pedestrian only,” he reminds Ted. “We’ll get mired in the sand.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean I can’t wish it.”
“At least the zeds are slowed down even more here,” Michael says. He points to one of them -- a very thin, very blonde creature in a skimpy green bikini. In life she would have been the type to make any straight man lose all composure. In death, a bloodless gaping wound in her stomach crawled with maggots, and she managed to take only two shuffling steps in the sand before falling to her knees. “I say we make our way to the waters edge,” Michael continues after pulling his gaze away from the zombie. “We can move a lot faster than they can in the sand, and if worse comes to worse, we can swim.”
“Actually, Michael,” Ted admits ruefully, “I can’t swim.”
“You can dogpaddle.”
Ted winces. “Actually--”
“We’re going to the beach,” Michael says firmly.
“Right,” Ted says. He adjusts his backpack. “The beach.”
They are spotted as soon as they emerge from their hiding place behind the large white boulder, of course. Ted gives a stifled scream at the proximity of the closest zed and barely dodges a skeletal hand and then they are running, and when Michael stumbles he takes his hand and hauls him through the sand and doesn’t stop until they have reached the edge of the ocean and put a hundred feet or more between them and the nearest zombie.
“That,” Ted says, bending over to catch his breath, “really sucked.”
Michael squints back the way they came. Already, the chorus of moans has begun. Already the zeds are moving in their direction. “Do you hear that?” Michael asks.
“I always hear that,” Ted says, sighing. “I hear those moans in my dreams.”
“They’re going to follow us now.”
“You know, you are just a treasure trove of happy thoughts, Michael.”
“Uh huh.” Michael turns away from the sight of the pursuing zeds for a moment, and turns his attention to the beach, and Ted follows his gaze. The coastline stretches on as far as they can see, and dotted here and there between the kitschy stalls on the boardwalk are the paths that lead to many of the resorts themselves. With the ocean on their right, the boardwalk on their left, and a hundred feet of sand in between, they seem impossibly far away.
Michael removes his backpack and digs around for the binoculars before slinging the pack over one shoulder. “I’m going to scan the signs as we pass them,” he tells Ted. “The one we’re looking for is called Sun Vista.”
“Where the girls were staying?” Ted asks.
“Right.”
“Are you sure it’s on this beach?”
Michael bites his lip. “No.”
Ted was never a great student of geography. But he’s well aware that there are miles and miles of beaches to cover, probably hundreds of hotels and resorts. The task they’ve set for themselves is almost hopeless.
But Michael looks so lost, and so scared. And Ted realizes it has nothing to do with the zombies that are even now closing the gap between them. He is terrified of having come all this way, traversing all the obstacles in their path, losing a dear devoted friend -- and then being unable to find his daughter and his mother and all their other loved ones.
Ted squares his shoulders. Takes Michael’s hand and squeezes it. “Well,” he says, “the sooner we start, the sooner we find them.”
Michael lets out a breath. “Yes.”
By the time they have made their way halfway down the beach, the zombies trailing them are fifty strong. They’ve had to dive into the water twice to avoid zeds that cut across the sand in front of them, their fingers clutched as always into claws as soon as they feel they’re within striking distance. They’ve jogged past waterlogged corpses in rotting green wetsuits with seaweed straggling in their hair, and narrowly avoided the grasp of a legless zed who hitched his way across the sand using his hands to pull him along. That one was almost on top of them before his gurgled moans reminded them that they have to look down as well as straight across.
Finally, they run, abandoning all attempts to scan the distant signs on the boardwalk in a desperate attempt to put some distance between them and the undead horde.
They wade into the water to again catch their breath, and watch the zeds stumble relentlessly onward.
“I knew I should have done more cardio,” Ted pants.
Michael wraps an arm around his waist comfortingly. “You’re doing fine.”
“Sure,” Ted says. “If you call about ready to pass out ‘fine’.”
“We should probably start heading back toward the truck. We can find the next parking lot and start again at about this point.”
Ted glances back toward the zeds that lurch their way across the sand. “Back through that?” he yelps.
“The farther we get away from the truck, the longer the trek back will be,” Michael points out. He looks at Ted soberly. “We don’t want to walk so far that we’re too tired to make it back.”
“Well,” Ted says, grimacing at the advancing zombies, “when you put it that way--”
Michael cocks his head. “Do you hear that?”
Ted sighs. “I told you -- I always hear that. I hear moans when I’m sleeping, and showering, and eating. I’d probably hear moans when I was jerking off, if I ever actually did that any more. I hear--”
“Not the zombies,” Michael says softly. “A voice.”
Ted blinks. “What?”
“Shhh!”
The moans are so pervasive that, try as he might, at first they are all that Ted can hear. He watches the zeds stagger down the beach, stumbling and falling and always, always managing to get back up again. He watches their mouths open in round O’s and can almost see the sound emerge from the backs of decaying throats.
In the end, he turns his back on the zombies. He lifts his face to the sun and watches the way it sparkles on the water, sees the white crest of waves in the distance.
And then he hears it. A woman’s voice.
He turns startled eyes to Michael. “Where is it coming from?”
Michael’s eyes are big and round and filled with such hope that Ted can feel his own eyes filling with tears.
“I think… that way,” Michael says hesitantly, pointing toward a distant stretch of boardwalk.
Ted reaches out and takes his hand again. Feels the warmth of his skin. “What are we waiting for?” he says with a grin.
They run. Ted doesn’t think it would have been possible to run faster than he did in junior high, when he was incessantly teased, stalked and chased by Joey Carmichael. But somehow he manages it -- and through sand, to boot. He thinks that if he doesn’t have a heart attack or get torn apart by flesh-eating ghouls, he’ll take time later to be proud of himself.
The female voice gets louder and stronger with every step they take.
When they reach the boardwalk at a dead run, pushing aside zombies that stumble too close, using the baseball bat or very occasionally the gun on those that they can’t simply shunt aside, they discover why the timbre of the voice has remained so consistent. Why they haven’t heard any other voices besides the lone female voice.
A dozen zombies scrabble at the base of a pole, their hands stretched above their heads to reach the item well beyond their grasp. And at the top of the pole -- the thing that they reach for --- is… Ted squints against the sun to see it, but can only make out a large box of some kind. A speaker of some kind. A speaker broadcasting a recorded announcement.
… will help you to get inside, the voice says. This message will be repeated every day at one p.m. for fifteen minutes. We wish you good luck.
The speaker falls silent.
Ted stumbles back against the wall. “Was it--” he begins.
Michael’s eyes are wet with tears. “It’s Lindsay,” he says.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
“I still say we should continue down the coast,” Abigail argues.
“I still say you wouldn‘t know a decent plan if it bit you on your flat ass, Blondie,” Brian counters.
Justin turns away from the ongoing argument and steps cautiously to the open motel room door, taking care to stay in the shadows. The zeds outside are still few in number, but he knows it would only take one sighting for the call to go out and for the undead to surround the dilapidated motel. Some people already tried to hold out here, after all. They failed. He has no intention of repeating any of their mistakes.
He squints into the sun and leans out just a little so that he can feel it warm his skin. A cool breeze takes the edge off the humidity and the fronds of the palm trees planted along the boulevard across the street sway gently in the air.
He was in Florida once before, though not in Fort Lauderdale. The spring break that a young man of his age and background would have traditionally spent in Florida had instead been spent in learning how to suck dick and the fine art of rimming.
He barely remembers the trip to Florida he did take. It was the year before Molly was born, and he and his parents went to Walt Disney World. He has vague memories of soft ice cream and getting a sunburn.
This time in Florida he--
Justin blinks.
Palm trees and ocean breezes. Florida.
He ducks back inside. “Brian,” he says, “we’re in Florida.”
“Thank you for that news bulletin,” Brian says dryly. “Now why don’t you make an announcement about the strange rotting creatures that seem to be so prevalent on our highways and byways?”
“We’re in Florida,” Justin huffs. “And so is Michael.”
For a moment Brian doesn’t move. And then he dives for the backpack at the same time as Justin. Their hands scrabble at the zipper but it’s Justin who reaches inside first, and who comes up with the battered walkie-talkie.
Brian snatches it out of his hand.
“We’re supposed to call on the hour,” Justin says. He takes a quick glance at this watch. “It’s one thirteen.”
“What are you talking about?” Abigail asks.
“I don’t give a shit,” Brian says. He thumbs the button on the walkie-talkie. “Mikey! Can you hear me?”
“We agreed with the others to make contact -- to try to make contact -- as soon as we each got to Florida,” Justin explains quickly. “Every hour during the day.” He frowns at Brian. “The red light is supposed to come on when you--”
“I know,” Brian bites out. He tries to press the button again, but Justin steals it out of his hand before he can do more than shift his thumb.
“Is it on channel 23?” Justin asks, turning the two-way radio over in his hand. “You have to have it on channel 23!”
“It’s ON fucking channel 23!” Brian insists. He makes a wild grab for the device and manages to swipe it out of Justin’s grip and on to the dirty carpet. He snatches it up again and smashes his thumb on the button. “Mikey!”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Abigail mutters. She steps forward and paws the walkie-talkie out of Brian’s hand and turns her back on both men. Quickly checks the channel and then calmly depresses the large button on the side of the two-way. “Michael, come in. Michael, do you hear me?”
She releases the button, and for a long moment there is nothing but open air hissing down the line. And then the radio crackles to life.
“Who the fuck is this?” Michael’s voice sputters from the tiny speaker.
Autumnwrite Goal:
119176 / 150000 words. 79% done!
Nanowrimo Goal:
55113 / 50000 words. 110% done!