“Lookey what I found outside,” said Dwain walking into the shop with Molly.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked and walked towards her.
“I didn’t want to stay there,” she said meekly looking down at the floor.
“You left her alone you bastard?” shouted Jason as he tensed up causing Dwain to back away.
“No, I left her with fifteen other people in a barricaded office on the first floor of a building surrounded by gates,” I said as I reached her.
“But I didn’t want to stay with them,” she said while she fidgeted with her blouse.
“You mean he didn’t abandon you?” asked Jason.
“No, he told us how to survive and then left because the group didn’t want him there,” she said.
“I am not a people person,” I said to Jason with a shrug and then grabbed Molly by the arm and took her to the side, “Why come here when you were safe?” I asked.
“Because they didn’t seem to want me around and I didn’t feel safe,” she said.
“What about Beth?” I asked
“She is a wonderful woman but it was the others,” she said and trailed off.
“But they doesn’t explain why you are here,” I said and let go of her elbow and then continued, “Listen maybe you can stay here with these guys they seem like good guys”.
“But I want to go with you,” she said as I watched Jason and Dwain from over Molly’s head.
“What I am doing is stupidly dangerous and you want to risk your life to follow me. Don’t you have your own family that your worried about?” I asked
“I live alone and any family I have are at the coast and I want to go with you because you are the only one that seems to have a plan,” she said.
“I don’t even know if I will live and now you want me to look after you as well. I am not a leader or hero or anything. I work best by myself when I don’t have to worry about others,” I said.
“But you will be alone,” she said.
“I can live with alone as long as I am not helpless and defenceless,” I mumbled and then said to her “These guys can look after you a lot better than I can,” they must have heard me because their body language changed dramatically.
“Please let me come with you,” she pleaded and I silently cursed myself.
“Do you even know how to ride a bike because scramblers are only designed for one person?” I asked.
“I have never driven a bike,” she said and started fiddling with her blouse again.
“Just great,” I mumbled.
“But I can drive a scooter,” she said.
“I can work with that,” I said and walked passed her towards the pair of jackals in the corner.
“I noticed you had one of those scooters outside setup for off-road use,” I said to Jason.
“Yea so?” he replied while watching Molly.
“Can I get that and another set of leathers?” I asked as Molly walked up behind me all the while both Jason and Dwain watched her.
“And how will you be paying?” asked Jason with a small wink towards Molly.
“There is one more piece of information that I have and it’s possibly more important than all the others,” I said as I put my backpack on and tried to look as nonchalant as I could.
“You already told me everything,” said Jason as he folded his arms.
“My dad is a gambler and when I was growing up he always taught me to hold on to a trump card no matter what,” I said and stared at Jason with a blank expression.
“You’re lying,” he said flatly
“Your funeral,” I said and shrugged and turned and looked at Molly who was standing right behind me and motioned to her to walk outside. After a moment she started walking and I turned to follow her.
“Wait,” called out Jason and I stopped walking, “What is it?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you after we get the scooter and gear,” I said as I turned around.
“How do I know you’re not going to rip me off?” he asked.
“You don’t but in the time it would take us to get our helmets on and onto the bikes you could stop us,” I replied.
“We could just force you to tell us,” said Dwain taking a step forward.
“You can try,” I said calmly.
“What you going to stop us?” asked Jason who also took a step forward.
“Nope but the moment you attack I start screaming murder and so will Molly over there now I know this won’t bring the police but I do know what it will bring,” I said causing Jason to stop.
“What’s that?” asked Dwain.
“Those creatures you idiot,” said Jason angrily.
“Precisely and then you will have to try and torture us while fighting those creatures off and without knowing the secret it will make it a lot more certain that we will all die,” I said.
“What’s the secret?” asked Dwain which caused me to look at Jason and stare at him in the eyes.
“Fine,” he said a little deflated.
Dwain and Jason went about fuelling and getting the scooter ready as well as giving Molly the same gear as me as well as a pair of boots.
“Quickly get dressed,” I whispered to her and she nodded and then looked around, “no time for modesty we have to hurry”, I said and she looked at me and then nodded and then walked to the corner and started taking off her pants. “It’s no wonder those two were eying her out,” I thought to myself as I turned away from her. She was good looking by most people’s standard with her shoulder length straight blonde hair which framed her opal shaped face. The centre attraction of her face was her blue eyes which looked like little pools of water on a cloudless day. This was closely followed by her mouth which was small but proportional to her face. Her lips seemed to be a natural shade of light pink that made them stand out against her snow coloured skin. She was of average height for a woman and was thin but still managed to have all the right curves.
A couple moments later she walked up behind me and said, “I am ready”.
“How’s the scooter coming along,” I asked Jason who had just walked into the store.
“It’s good to go, I just had to attach the seat properly,” he said wiping his hands on a piece of material and a couple steps behind him was Dwain carrying a jerry can.
“Awesome,” I said and started to walk towards the door with Molly in tow. I stopped when I reached Jason and motioned for Molly to go outside.
“We kept our part of the deal,” said Jason while looking at me with suspicion.
“Yes you did now for my side of the bargain. Those creature also have a very good sense of smell and like a shark can smell blood from a distance,” I said.
“So what?” asked Jason impatiently.
“You have a dead body outside covered in blood, it’s going to bring them here like chum to sharks and I for one don’t plan to be here when they arrive,” I replied and turned and walked outside.
“You knew that the whole time and didn’t say anything?” asked Jason with anger in his voice and then continued, “You wanted them to kill us didn’t you?”
“Not at all , I was going to tell you as I left because I couldn’t be sure you would honour your deal so I kept it as a parting gift,” I said as I watched both Jason and Dwain stare at the dead body. I waited for a couple moments and then asked, “We good?”
“Yea, go on,” said Jason as he motioned for Dwain to help him with the body.
I turned around and saw they had moved the bike and scooter to right in front of the entrance. I looked at Molly and motioned to her to get on her scooter as I walked towards the bike while putting on my helmet. When I reached the bike I fished out the keys from my jacket pocket and put it into the ignition and then zipped up my jacket and put my gloves on and mounted the bike. I looked over at Molly who was putting on her gloves and when we was finished she looked at me and nodded that she was ready. I flicked up the stand with my left foot and then put the weight of the bike on to it and reached down with my right hand and flicked out the kick start and with my right foot kicked down on it as hard as I could causing the bike to grumble to life. I looked over at Molly again and she had already started the scooter and was waiting for me. With a much practiced precision I flicked the bike into gear with my left foot while my left hand pulled in the clutch and the bike responded with a customary clunk.
I pulled off slowly and looked behind me to make sure that Molly was following which she was. I made my way through the parking lot aiming for the back entrance on the opposite site of the parking lot from which I had entered. The exit opened up into a small road that had no cars on it, as I drove slowly I looked about for any dangers and after a couple hundred meters I stopped. Molly drove up beside me and looked at me and motioned with her arms asking why we had stopped. I took my helmet off and motioned for her to do the same which she did.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We didn’t really have much time to talk back there I wanted to get away from them as soon as I could,” I said to her as I turned off the bike.
“Why?” she asked and turned off the scooter as well.
“Those two were looking at you like a pair of foxes eying a hen and I wanted to leave before they tried anything,” I replied.
“But you said they seemed like good guys,” she said with a confused expression on her face.
“They did right up until when you appeared or more precisely up to the point where I was trying to convince you to stay with them but then their body language changed as well as their expressions and I didn’t like it,” I replied.
“Oh,” she said looking away from me and then continued, “I meant to ask earlier but when did you find out about the Zombies being able to smell blood?”
“I didn’t it was a lie,” I replied.
“How did you know it was going to work?” she asked.
“The dead body outside was the key to the lie without it the lie wouldn’t have worked,” I replied.
“Oh,” she said and then looked down at the ground and said, “I am sorry”
“Well it’s not your fault that they reacted that way but it wouldn’t have happened if you had stayed in the office,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What’s done is done and I can’t change it but are you sure you want to follow me because you have your own transport not and can go anywhere you want,” I said.
“I am sure,” she said.
“Fine but there are some things we need to talk about. I am guessing that you have never ridden off road before on a scooter?” I asked
“Never but why is that important?” she asked.
“We won’t be able to use roads so we will be pavement bashing a lot of the way which is more like off-roading than driving on a road because of the having to climb up and down the pavements where needed. Basically when you are going up onto a pavement lean forward and yank back on the handle bars and accelerate and when dismounting yank on the handle bars just before the edge and lean back but don’t accelerate,” I explained.
“Ok,” she said while taking in what I had said.
“Also standing up when you do it will help,” I said as an afterthought.
“Why?” she asked’
“Human bodies are designed so that when we are standing we have better balance than when we are sitting,” I replied.
“Makes sense,” she said.
‘I’ll try my best to take a route that the scooter can handle but I don’t know what the roads will be like,” I said and then continued, “ one other thing try not to focus only on your review mirrors because if I stop suddenly you will drive into me”
“Ok,” she said.
“Molly are you ok?” I asked.
“Yes why?” she asked.
“You are only using one or two word sentences,” I replied
“I don’t want to upset you and make you leave me behind,” she said looking away again.
“Ah,” I said shocked at the response and then said, “I didn’t leave you with those jackals why would I leave you here?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Listen you would have to go seriously far to make me angry enough to leave you behind,” I replied.
“But you didn’t want me to come to start off with,” she said as she started crying.
“Don’t cry. Look its true I didn’t want you to come with me but that was for your own safety more than anything else and also I am not very good with people in normal times and today is anything but normal. Until I can get you someplace safe you can stick around,” I replied.
“Are you sure?” she asked still crying.
“Yea, if we come across some place where you want to stay I will help you get in and make it secure if need be and if we don’t then you can stay at my place as long as you want,” I replied powerless against her sobbing.
“Thank you,” she sobbed.
“Let’s get going, we are running out of daylight,” I said as I put my helmet on to hide my discomfort. She looked at me and nodded and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her jacket and put her helmet on and we set out.
The going was fast on that little road because there weren’t many cars obstructing the road but that changed when we reached the first main road. As we neared the road the amount of abandoned cars increased forcing us to snake between them but at the intersection things looked worse. When we reached the intersection I looked about and saw that on the main road the cars were packed together so close that there was no way to get through them so I motioned to Molly towards the pavement and then turned the bike in between two cars towards the pavement and mounted it. A couple meters away from the edge I stopped and looked behind me and watched Molly do what I had told her earlier she was a little unsteady but that was to be expected with her lack of experience. “By the end of the trip she will be an expert”, I thought to myself and pulled off.
We kept to the pavement from then on dismounting and mounting at every intersection. As we drove along I marvelled at the sheer carnage on the roads where at almost every intersection there was at the least a fender bender and in some cases multicar pileups. As we were approaching one such intersection I stopped the bike and studied it intently. Molly pulled up next to my and flicked her visor open and I did the same.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I could have sworn I saw some movement down there,” I answered and pointed towards the piled up cars in the middle of the intersection that was a couple hundred meters away.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“Give me a moment still figuring that out,” I replied while I looked around for an alternate route to take and spotted a small side road on the other side of the main road that had been blocked off from the main road for road works and had barriers up to stop people driving down it but this hadn’t stop one person who found out the hard way that even though they are made of plastic when you fill them up with water they become as hard as concrete. “Over there,” I said and pointed to the road causing Molly to look in that direction and then she looked back and nodded. We started weaving our way through the cars and made it to the other side eventually but as we rounded the corner I heard a woman scream which caused me to look back at Molly but it wasn’t her I then looked around and saw a woman being chased down the road by another woman and I reacted before I could think about the situation.
I accelerated towards the woman who saw me and started running towards me. “Stupid woman that makes it harder to help you,” I screamed as the world seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace. My hands gripped the handle bars with a little squelch from the sweat build up from the leather gloves. I placed my weight onto the back of my feet and half stood to give myself better balance. With every heartbeat the distance decreased until I was about five meters away from the woman and then the world slowed even more. I swerved to the right of the woman while pulling in the clutch with my left hand and started lightly breaking with my right foot .After I had passed the woman I swerved back to the left while slamming the back break with my right foot which caused the back wheel to lock. With the swerve and the locked back tire the back end of the bike started to pull out and at that point I started pulling the front break with my right hand which caused the back to flick out even more which caught the second woman in the thigh with a loud thud. As I hit the woman I could feel that I was tilted too far to recover and put my left leg out so that it wouldn’t get caught under the bike when it fell at the same time I took pressure off the back break and let go of the front break as I jumped against the foot stand with my right foot which caused me to fly away from the bike a little. When I did this I flung my left arm out instinctively and my hand hit the ground with a cracking sound followed by the rest of my body slamming again the road where I rolled a couple times.
I quickly did a mental check list, “Legs are ok, right arm is good and the only serious pain I have is my left forearm and shoulder,” I thought to myself and started to stand when I was upright I reached over my shoulder with my right hand and grabbed my trusty table leg that was sticking out of my bag and looked towards the second woman who was crawling along the floor with her leg at an impossible angle leaving a trail of blood behind her. I tightened my grip on the table leg and walked up to the woman who reached out her hand to grab me as I stepped closer to her. I looked at the outstretched hand and swung the table leg as hard as I could manage with one arm and connected with her wrist with a crack her hand flew away to the left I then raised the table leg above my head and brought it down against her head and the impact resonated through the table leg causing me to drop it but it had been enough to stop the woman who now lay there motionless. Instead of leaning down to pick up the table leg which was lying close to the woman I flicked it away from her with my foot.
“Thank you,” shouted to woman’s voice from behind me which caused me to turn around and see the first woman running towards me. As she got closer she raised her arms in the motion of a hug but before she could reach me I put my hand up to stop her which it did. From over the woman’s shoulder I could see Molly on her scooter driving towards us.
“Why are you out here?” I asked the woman as I opened my visor.
“My cat ran out of the house and I chased her,” said the woman and from that sentence I could tell what happened.
“Leave the cat and go back inside,” I said flatly and turned around to rescue my table leg from the edge of the road.
“You saved my life,” the woman started to say but was interrupted by Molly arriving.
“Are you ok?” called out Molly from behind her visor.
“I’ll live which is better than I can say for that woman,” I replied and pointed towards the first woman with the table leg and then continued, “The cat is probably safer out here than you are and at a guess I would say smarter as well.”
“How dare you,” the woman started to protest.
“I may have ruined my bike saving your life because you were stupid enough to leave safety to chase after a cat which obviously didn’t want to be caught?” I asked her through clenched teeth which where clenched more from pain than anger.
“I uh,” the woman started to say but was interrupted again by a man calling from behind me.
“Honey are you ok?” shouted the man.
“Let’s tell the whole world that we are here while we are at it,” I mumbled to myself as I walked towards the bike.
“I’m fine but Henry this man called me stupid,” she said and with an amazing ability that made the word ‘Man’ sound like ‘Scumbag’ which caused Henry to look at me and I could see in his eyes that he agreed with me but couldn’t actually say anything.
“Now listen here,” he started to say to me as he walked closer.
“Would love to stay and chat but with the two of you shrieking at each other every zombie in a ten kilometre radius is probably on their way here right now for a spot of lunch,” I said as I reached the bike. Henry stood there for a moment and then gave up and grabbed the woman’s arm.
“We need to get inside quickly darling,” he said in a tone that left no room for arguments but the woman didn’t get that memo.
“But Henry,” she said as she was being pulled back down the road by her elbow.
“The young man is right and we wouldn’t want to be attacked again,” he said to her and didn’t stop moving.
“Oh ok,” she said to Henry and then turned to me and said, “I hope they get you,” and spat in my direction and then turned and stalked off back down the road.
“It’s a pleasure,” I mumbled as I watched them for a second and then turned my attention to Molly who had pulled up right next to me.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“I didn’t being blunt is natural to me,” I replied as I took my bag off my back.
“No man I meant that thing with the bike,” she said.
“I know what you meant and I learnt it through doing it by accident a lot when I first started driving a bike. It normally sits in the ‘Things to not do’ part of my memory,” I said as I put the table leg back into my bag and put it back on.
“Are you hurt though,” she asked.
“Yea but nothing too serious,” I lied as I flexed my left hand which caused pain to shoot through my arm. “It’s fractured if I am lucky and broken if I am not,” I thought to myself and leant down and grabbed the handle bars of the bike and lifted it upright with a growl all the while my jaw was clenched so tight I thought my teeth were going to shatter from the pressure. When the bike was upright I flick the kickstand out and rested the bike back down on it.
“Is it ok?” she asked.
“Don’t know yet,” I said as I examined the bike and all the damage I could see was superficial like scratches on the tank and the left grip being ripped around the edge.
“I thought you said you weren’t a hero,” said Molly.
“I’m not. Hero’s do it on purpose I do it by accident,” I said as I climbed back on to the bike.
“What’s that called then?” she asked.
“Stupidity,” I replied as I pulled in the clutch which thankfully hadn’t snapped off but the action caused pain to shoot through my arm which I held in as best I could and any sound I did make was muffled by the helmet. I flicked out the kick-start and gripped the accelerator and kicked the kick-start and the bike let out a little purr and then nothing.
“What’s wrong with it?” Molly asked concerned.
“Hopefully it’s just flooded from stalling out,” I said and tried it again and again the bike let out a purr and then nothing.
“There is someone over there,” said Molly causing me to see her turned around in her seat looking behind her pointing at someone at the end of the block where we had come through.
“Awesome,” I mumbled and tried starting the bike again but it just purred again. I let out a sigh and watched as the figure started moving towards us.
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