Free Sometimes We Ran (Book 1) by Stephen Drivick Page A

car for a few moments. “Claire, I have to silence it, or it could bring others to our location.”
    “Okay, but be careful.”
    I walked slowly up to the car and looked inside. The car was burned to a crisp, along with its occupant. In fact, the zombie was nothing more than a blackened skeleton sitting in the driver’s seat. Part of its collarbone and shoulder was bitten off in a huge chunk. It turned towards me and started making a horrible screeching sound. This might have been the worst one I had ever seen. I dispatched it with a rifle shot, and that unholy sound stopped. Yep, this one was going to be one of my top ten zombies. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, another hellish image pops up in this world.
    “Man. That’s just horrible. I don’t think have ever seen one so bad,” Claire said, covering her mouth.
    “Yeah. Poor bastard never had a chance.”
    We stood there and pondered the fate of the driver in the car for a few minutes. Sometimes you found yourself staring at these horrible scenes unable to look away. What had happened here? Had the driver come upon the accident scene and tried to turn around? Was he or she overrun by the dead? Why had the car burned?
    It’s amazing how insensitive you become to all the horror. A few months ago, seeing something like a burned-up zombie in a car would have probably sent Claire and I screaming off into the night. Now we stared at the poor bastard imagining possible scenarios for his or her death.
    Must be a coping mechanism or something.
    We pulled away from the scene toward the gas station. “You know, I’ve always wondered something,” Claire said as we passed the gas station’s sign. It said $3.61/gallon for regular unleaded.
    “What’s that?”
    “Who’s going to clean all this stuff up?”
    “Don’t know. Maybe nature can take care of it,” I answered half-jokingly. At the same time, I pictured highways and roads turning into fields and city streets turning into forest. Actually, that didn’t sound too bad at all. Maybe future survivors could grow corn or wheat in city parks and empty lots.
    We reached the gas station across the street from the mall. It was a large multi-pump affair with a food store attached. Wrecked cars and trucks littered the lot. It also looked like a fire had broken out in the store. The roof had collapsed, and blackened corpses were inside the building. There was a wrecked fire rescue truck parked in front. I wasn’t even going to bother to check it out; it looked like nothing usable remained. Besides, I didn’t feel like stepping over barbecued humans to find supplies.
    Claire and I established a lookout point in some decorative bushes. “Make sure nothing sneaks up on us from behind.”
    “Okay,” she said, getting her gun ready.
    “Don’t shoot me by mistake either.”
    “I won’t. Just hurry up and take a look.”
    I put the binoculars to my eyes and took my first look at the strip mall. The parking lot was a war zone. There were abandoned cars and trucks scattered everywhere, many with their doors wide open. There were some smaller shops arranged on each side of the larger store in the middle of the mall. There was also a lot of glass and debris lying in piles throughout the parking lot. It looked like some of the vehicles and stores may have been on fire; that explained the hook-and-ladder fire truck on the road near the mall entrance.
    There were also a lot of bodies.
    I could make out at least twenty to thirty decomposing corpses lying around in the parking lot. I couldn’t tell if they had been zombies or not. Some of the bodies had piles of rotting groceries near them. They must have been alive. I didn’t see anything walking around, but that didn’t mean no bad guys were around. The undead sometimes took to hiding.
    I aimed my binoculars at the big store in the middle of the mall. The sign said “Mollie’s Place” in big red neon letters. The “M” was shattered, and red glass was