Free District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser Page B

four standing
beside a pair of vehicles parked on the gravel lot three blocks to the west.
    The redheaded guy in the camouflage hat and the fresh-faced
girl with the ponytail who had arrived alone minutes earlier were doing most of
the talking. Judging by the group’s fairly relaxed body language as they stood
in a ragged circle conversing amongst themselves, the girl with the ponytail
who had initially entered the auto body shop alone had inexplicably avoided
becoming lunch for the purged . The less-than-urgent response her friends
in the big black truck had displayed while responding to the scene, and that
nobody down there was breaking out a first aid kit, all but confirmed to the
watcher that she wouldn’t be collecting anything as a result.
    Part of her was happy the girl had survived her brush with
death. But the fleeting emotion wasn’t fueled by any kind of empathy she
harbored for the brunette. It was selfish and self-centered and born from the
knowledge that the long wait for the victim or victims to finalize their purge
and eventually stagger off in search of prey was not going to happen. But more
so than that, the fact that the brunette and her redhead friend were still pure and not scavenging claimed territory alone as the watcher had initially reported,
spared her momentarily from going through their personal effects—a necessary
task that always dredged up painful memories from the time before the purged had risen to usurp the unbelievers.
    Shuddering at the prospect of eventually having to again relive
that old-life moment when all she had held dear had been violently
stripped from her, the watcher panned the binoculars left of the group and
scrutinized their vehicles. Sure they were probably full of supplies, their
tanks holding precious fuel, but the mere thought of siphoning them instantly
turned her stomach. Smacking her lips, she screwed up her face as a Pavlovian
response reminded her how awful it would taste in her mouth. Though the
cigarettes left behind after the purge were barely palatable, and what she was
required to do sexually to Mom and others in order to acquire them even worse,
she lit up another and inhaled deeply.
    Down the street the small group of uncleansed —the
term Mom had bestowed upon those not like them who had survived the purge—entered
their vehicles two-by-two, closed their doors in unison, and motored off the
way they had come.
    Two-by-two , thought the watcher, smiling as the
figure of speech brought back yesterday’s lesson of Noah and Mom’s mention of
the space ark being constructed for the Enlightened .
    Still smiling dumbly and in her mind already light years
from a slowly dying Earth, she set the binoculars aside, scooped up the CB
radio, and called in to report what she had just witnessed.
    After listening to the soothing, slightly robotic voice on
the other end instruct her exactly what to do next, the watcher lowered the
volume on the handheld CB and then wiggled her knife from the sill where she
had stabbed it when the white truck had so rudely interrupted her work .
    She set the radio down on the wood floor, leaving a garnet
trace of her own blood on the light ash surface. Then, picking up where she had
left off, she finished the final flourish on the descending serif of the ornate
capital R that she’d already spent the better part of an hour carving into the
painted windowsill.
    She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly while moving
her head left-to-right along the length of the dirty windowsill.
    Even before the fine wood shavings had floated all the way
to the floor to be absorbed into the blood spattered around her crossed legs,
she was attacking the next letter in the chosen one’s name with the quiet vigor
and precision of a Buddhist monk laboring over a sand mandala.

Chapter 11
     
    “Drive it like I stole it” was still cycling through Oliver’s
mind when Daymon came upon a straightaway, sped up exponentially, and
inexplicably took one hand