Naturally this all played out in my car on the way to work, so I’ve probably forgotten a fair amount. That version was probably better and funnier, but at least I got the bones down.
You know what’s funny? The end of the world never happens when you’re actually prepared. So inconvenient. You plan, you stock up, canned goods probably, get one of those Life Straw things, but do you have those when it happens? Nope. They’re all in your truck, at the shop, getting a 60,000 mile service. These are my thoughts as I sit in my crappy loaner car in a parking garage downtown. Not what you’d expect for the end of the world, right? You’d think it’d be more like
FUUUUUUCKOHSHITRUNWHATTHEFUOHGODRUNRUNRUNFUUUUUUU
and you’d be right, too. That’s exactly what was pinging around my otherwise empty skull about 15 minutes ago. Voluminous cursing and blind panic will only get you so far in life, though. Semi-rational thought had once again claimed the helm. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to hang on. The panic was still there, prying at the edges, like the static waiting behind your favorite TV show. Waiting for the signal strength to wane just enough for it to come rushing back in. Must stay in tune.
Did I mention the little girl sitting in the car next to me? No? I don’t know that much about kids, she’s maybe – waist high old? What’s that, like 10? More? I don’t know her, we only just met about a half hour ago when her father…
She was crying, the screaming crying thing kids somehow pull off without ejecting their larynx into the atmosphere, but now she’s quietly staring into the depths of the dashboard and leaking tears. Again, I don’t know much about kids, I’m not sure if that’s better or not. Quieter, though.
“Hey,” I begin sagely, turning slightly to face the girl. My muscles protest even this much movement, having turned wooden in the aftermath of both fight and flight. “I don’t even know your name.”
The girl stares at me like I’m a moron, stupefying terror momentarily forgotten.
“Yes, I should have asked already, sue me. I was running for my life,”
The girl’s face softens slightly and I can actually see her personality swim up to the surface.
“My parents named me Delilah,” she says, with no small amount of scorn, as if she hadn’t been consulted on the decision originally. “I go by Lilly.”
“Lilly’s not short for ‘Delilah’,” I get the moron look again, but I press on, “wouldn’t it be Lila or something like that?”
Lilly crosses her arms over her chest and appraises me, my age estimate is ratcheting up.
“Yes maybe,” she replies, pure ice in her tone, “but I like Lilly better.”
I smirk, and the smirk warms slightly into the beginnings of a smile, “Good enough for me, Lilly it is.”
Lilly puffs out a sigh. There are layers of emotions in that sigh, relief, victory, you can almost hear them over the hands scrabbling at the windows of the car.
“Lilly, want to play a game?”
“Like, how do you escape a locked car surrounded by fucking zombies?” She asks in a matter of fact voice. I lose it, instantly, laughter rebounds off the cheap, plastic interior of the car and for six glorious seconds it’s all I can do to keep breathing through the cackles. By the end even Lilly is grinning, she does at least have the decency to be blushing slightly. But not much.
“I’m not supposed to say that, really,” she admits
“Lilly, ‘fuck’ is now authorized for the duration.” I say, the last few chuckles rolling out between words. Lilly arches her eyebrows in a really?
“‘Shit’ even.”
I get the full-wattage smile this time, her glossy brown curls even seem to bounce a bit. Is there anything better than a kid with permission to use bad words?
“Maybe I did miss out,” I murmur
“On what?”
“Nothing,” I say, again quietly, almost below the constant scrabble of fingernails on glass.
It’s amazing what you can learn to drown out. The wet-fingers-on-glass sound of the two…people…trying to get to us through the windows was the first to fade into the background. I have to keep my head turned, though, or the sight will ruin it. Their hands aren’t wet with water. Fingernails on glass, catching now and then on the weather seal, were harder. I’ve seen several rip off now, and that’s pretty tough to filter out. The hardest part? The sound that just absolutely cuts right through to your lizard brain? The teeth. Human teeth clacking into metal with no reservation, no attempt at self preservation, is not a sound you can just ignore. Especially when they break off, slide down the window.
I’m not ready yet.
“So, how old are you?” I ask, stalling.
“Twelve, almost thirteen,” she says, in a practiced rush, almost all one word.
“Almost thirteen? You’re sure?” I ask, squinting at her. “I know some thirteen year olds who could probably buy beer. They seem…” I make a motion with my hands, like sizing up the overhead space to see if your bag will fit, “…bigger.”
“Well those thirteen year olds are weird. I’m the right size for my age.” Now Lilly is looking down at her toes, and I’ve obviously hit a nerve. Kids should come with instruction manuals.
“Eh, sucks to be them. They’d have been put to work in the fields back in the old days.” I say, leaning back into the pleather, feigning a calm I absolutely do not posses. “I bet you run faster, too”
“Yeah! Less weight to haul around!” She says, brightening instantly, the way only children can. But then a cloud crosses behind her eyes and her look falters, “I still hope those other kids are okay, though.”
“We’re going to be okay,” I say for maybe the fiftieth time, “we’re getting out of here.”
“How?” Lilly half sobs, and there’s such eloquence in that one syllable. It’s all in there, anger and pain and fear. Hope and hopelessness. I have to get off my ass and figure it out. Now.
“Look,” I point up, “this car has a sunroof. The…the bad people…”
“Zombies”
“…are at the windows. They’re not climbing up on the hood or the roof.” I keep talking, plan now having reached the half-baked stage, “we can go out the sunroof, run back down the car, get the hell out of here.” I looked in the rearview mirror, the cement ramp down to the garage exit was clear. I could occasionally even see signs of life flashing past. Cars speeding by, people running for their lives, arms flailing. Still, you know.
Lilly cranes around and looks out the back window, doing her own mental arithmetic on our chances. Her eyes dart briefly to the mid-forties man who’s worked his fingers to bloody nubs trying to get through the window not six inches from her face, then flinch away.
“Who goes out first?”
I look meaningfully at Lilly.
“No. Nononononono…” she’s shaking her head back and forth and I start making calming motions with my hands, like when that one asshole in every meeting doesn’t even wait to hear your idea before telling you there’s no money in the budget for it. Lilly stops, looks me dead in the eyes and whispers,
“Fuck no.”
Oh God, the giggles, they’re coming. Stopstopstop, monsters outside.
I have to do that thing with my lips where you need to act like some serious shit is happening but your face wants to smile so hard you can’t stop it.
“Ok, obviously I’ll go first,”
I look up, unclip my seatbelt that ridiculously I fastened as soon as I got in. “I’m going to bust up out of here and stand on the roof…”
“What if they try to get in when you open it?”
“I’ll close it and we’ll think of something else,” I reply, calmly, like an adult, “So once I’m…”
“That won’t work, they have safety stuff, if there’s fingers in the way it won’t close!” Panic was edging into Lilly’s voice. She had a point. I hate safety.
“Look, I’m going to jump up out of this sunroof like Captain Marvel and the first zombie that tries to bite me is going to get a face full of fuck-off. Then I’m going to reach down, grab your arms and pull you out and basically throw you. With any luck your feet won’t even touch down until the trunk. You hop off and run toward the exit, it’s straight downhill. You’re a kid, right? Kids are always running like madmen down hills aren’t they? You can do that?”
I stared hard at Lilly, willing her to summon her inner badass, because frankly, I’m hanging on by a thread and right now I need this 12-almost-13 year old girl to help keep me together. She must have figured it out, because she gave one sharp nod of her head.
“Straight back to the exit, but then I’m waiting for you, you have to get away, too.”
I nod
“Then let’s do it.”
If you’ve ever seen a movie ever, you know this is where the wheels come off. I take off my jacket and throw it in the back seat, tuck in my shirt, double-knot my shoelaces then tuck them into my shoes, and before I could rethink my obviously doomed plan, punch the button for the sunroof.
“I think you have to turn the key on first.”
I growl, deep and rattling and mean, turn the key to the ACC position and punch the button again. Plastic cracks and strains, Lilly quietly contemplates the lint on the armrest.
Smart girl.
I was waiting for the sound of the electric motors to draw the, their attention, but on both sides the, what? I seriously needed a noun. Anyway, neither of them seemed inclined to deviate from what they thought was the shortest route to their objective – through the windows. I figure that’ll change when I launch up out of the car.
It does.
I put my right foot on the center console and heave upward, catching my left shoulder painfully on the edge of the opening. My legs are long enough that I just keep right on going and basically step up onto the roof. The horror show on my side tracked me the whole way up and reached for my leg. I snatch it up out of her reach and snap it straight back down, all of my weight and terror behind it, right into her face. The woman’s neck breaking is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever heard. The green-stick jolt of her spine snapping travels up my leg and would have emptied the contents of my stomach, except my entire body is clenched so hard not even air was getting out.
“Now!” I blow the word out on a gust of pent up breath and suck in a new one as I haul Lilly up and clear, swinging her toward the rear of the car. Good to my word she touches down on the trunk lid, her feet barely touching the metal before she’s off and running. Mr. Middle Age is a little slow, but he’s after her quick. I take two long steps down to the trunk lid, plant my left foot in the same dent Lilly’s made, and kick my right foot around at her peruser with my best Kung Fu Theater scream. The top of my foot connects with the guy’s nose, there’s a sickening pop, and he drops.
Naturally, do do I.
I didn’t anticipate the shock of the kick landing, or the physics of me trying to stop the forward momentum of the heavier man, and I end up on my ass on the concrete.
“Are you okay!” Lilly shouts, the words echoing up the cement ramp and around the structure. She’s almost out.
“Keep going I’m fine!” I shout back at her, rolling up to my feet more slowly than I’d like. I look down the ramp to see Lilly running to the exit, her little silhouette backlit by glorious sunlight and freedom. I pitch forward and start after her. A twinge shoots up my right foot with every step, but it isn’t enough to stop me. Ahead, Lilly reaches the sidewalk and raises her arms in a triumphant “V” and smiles, “You’re almost there!” She yells, and even though I know it, it’s still good to hear.
A car drives past behind her, then another in the opposite direction.
A man runs down the sidewalk.
Tripps over Lilliy.
Sinks his teeth all the way to the gums into her neck.
We both scream, mine is raw with surprise and fear and unadulterated rage at the universe. A formless roar.
Lilly’s is just one word.
And I can’t. I am too late, I was always going to be too late, it was too far. I was too slow. From the moment we met an hour ago to 40 seconds ago when I tossed her out of the car. I was always going to be too late. I’m frozen, my body completely rigid. A wet, hydraulic hiss bursts from Lilly’s mouth, she’s still trying to scream, oh God she can’t, she can’t, he’s…
I felt the static climb up the sides of my throat first, then it poured into my ears and I couldn’t hear anything anymore. When it seeped into the corners of my vision I didn’t even try to fight it. Lilly’s eyes were still locked on mine, through the blood and her wild curls and the clawing fingers she never broke contact. I saw it, saw when she stopped…stopped being her. A sob wracked my body, but couldn’t get out, my teeth clenched too tightly.
“I never told you,” I whisper, hysteria crashing in, rocketing around the otherwise hollow place behind my eyes. “My name’s Lilly too, how weird is that?”
The static came, then, and drowned everything else out, and for a while I stopped being me, too.
