The Most Uncommon Cold (Book 5): Surviving Beyond the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Nothing else besides emptying the contents of my stomach mattered for the next few minutes. Eventually, I finished up and turned slowly to see Taylor, still on his knees heaving. I considered walking over to offer some encouragement. However, I have never found encouragement offered in times of vomiting to be beneficial, so I simply waited for him to finish.

  After a few minutes, Taylor stopped. He took a deep breath and turned toward me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that...I…don’t…”

  “Don’t worry about it. I did the same thing,” I answered. “This shit is nasty!”

  He grinned and nodded. “Yeah, that shit is definitely nasty.”

  “Let’s get it over with,” I announced with as much enthusiasm as possible.

  Clearly, our fat friend was not going to survive the trip from the hallway to the office. We found an old paint tarp in the storage closet, which we spread next to the shell to serve as a collection plate for spare body parts. Once we had gathered any stray organs, we rolled the torso onto the tarp and pulled the whole thing toward the office.

  Once we got near the kitchen, I went over to talk to Kat.

  “You really don’t want to see this,” I said. “That thing’s in pretty bad shape. Better if you stay inside the kitchen with Christina, okay?”

  “Yeah, I will.” Kat smiled, but it crumbled almost immediately.

  “It’ll be okay, Kat.” Christina took her hand and led her away from the front of the kitchen.

  We quickly covered the remaining distance to Carole’s office.

  Chapter 2

  Taylor and I tugged the tarp to the area below the open window. I was embarrassed by how winded I had gotten from the effort of moving the thing out of the hallway. I felt a little better when I saw Taylor drop down to sit on the floor next to me.

  He sat with his back against the wall a few feet away from the tarp. After a brief moment in that position, the young man looked over at the shell and wrinkled his nose. He made a show of moving further away from the tarp and its contents.

  “I seriously do not understand how one guy can make such a bad smell!”

  “Well, I have no answer for that. All I know is that this thing will smell much better once we get it outside,” I answered, getting to my feet. “So let’s get this thing outside.”

  Taylor stood up and came over to help me lift the tarp up to the window. It took some work, but we finally got the tarp and its contents ready to push through the window. The only goal either of us had was to get everything outside the building as quickly as possible. This probably explains why we were not aware of Kat until she spoke.

  “Hold on a second,” she said as she stepped up to the tarp. “I’m not sure who this is, but it sure the fuck isn’t Paul and shouldn’t have his watch.”

  She took the watch off the shell’s wrist and turned away from the tarp. Her steps slapped the floor as she marched back to the kitchen and Christina, who waited in the doorway. Without missing a step, Kat took her hand and led her back into the kitchen.

  Taylor and I grinned at each other before turning back to our gruesome chore. We got on either side and bundled the cloth to hold its bloody contents. It may not have looked graceful or well-planned, but we managed to get the soggy old paint tarp up to the window’s ledge. The large bundle rested, sagging over the ledge.

  “Say goodbye to our friend Paul,” I said.

  “Later Paul,” Taylor answered with a chuckle.

  Without waiting, I gave the bundle a shove. It became immediately clear that I should have thought a little more before taking action.

  Rather than spilling its contents out onto the alley next to the building, the bundle vomited its contents in a long stream along the wall. The stench was overpowering.

  Taylor stumbled around with his sleeve over his mouth and nose. After a moment, I did the same.

  Kat and Christina came trotting out of the kitchen.

  “What is that fucking stink?” Kat yelled.

  I gave her my look of disapproval which went mostly unnoticed. “We got the body outside, but the smell seems to be everywhere. Your buddy Paul appears to have had an extreme body odor issue.”

  I felt like crap as soon as I mentioned the name, and Kat sealed the feeling by starting to cry.

  Christina held her nose and made cross eyes at Taylor who returned the expression.

  “Well, isn’t there something you can do?” Kat quietly asked, sniffling.

  “Yeah, isn’t there something you can do?” Christina echoed in a pinched-nasal voice.

  Leave it to a kid making funny faces and voices to lighten the mood. Neither Kat nor I could remain serious with the high-pitched voice and the crossed eyes. Pretty soon we were all giggling and crying from the smell. Given the surroundings, it was certainly a strange reaction. Then again, perhaps that is precisely why it seemed so good to be enjoying a simple laugh.

  We headed into the kitchen and closed the door in a feeble attempt to escape the odor.

  After the laughter, Christina and Taylor were hyped up and acting silly. I expected Kat to say something sarcastic, but she appeared to be enjoying herself as she silently observed their play. I was doing my best to enjoy the distraction before turning my focus back to matters of shells and our future.

  After a couple of minutes, I moved over to talk to Kat as Taylor and Christina were engaged in a new game of twenty questions. “So do you have any thoughts on our next move?”

  She looked at me with her head tilted slightly to the right as if judging my sincerity. “Well, I haven’t really thought much about it, you know. Ever since Paul left, I’ve just been caught up with hoping he’d come back.” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing, “Now that I know he’s gone for good…uh…guess I hafta change my outlook.”

  “The way the world has changed I suppose all of us have had to do some outlook adjusting.” I smiled. “Now the thing to do is figure out what’s next.”

  For the first time since seeing Kat, I actually detected some hope in her attitude.

  She suddenly sat up straight and said, “Paul, had this idea that getting out to sea on one of those cruise ships would be the perfect plan. Plenty of supplies, comfort, communications, and recreational activities, he used to say.” Kat chuckled at the memory. “He had it all figured out. Said he knew a guy out at the Tiburon Port Authority who knew a way to get on a cruise ship heading up to Alaska.”

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. “Paul said he had a way outta the city to some place safe? Why didn’t you two go?”

  She stared straight ahead for a moment without saying anything. Finally, Kat continued, “Paul said a lot of stuff and not all of it turned out to be right. I’m not sure how much of it he believed... I take it back. I’m sure he believed all of it, but part of it he made up for some reason. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess so,” I answered. “But is the story about ships heading out of Tiburon part of the true part or part of the made-up part?”

  “I hope it is true. I mean, why would he make it up?” She shook her head. “But I guess I just really want it to be true.”

  Kat went on to tell me that Paul said he had heard on one of the news feeds about some cruise ships being prepared for departure from the Port Authority facility. He had been unable to contact the authority by landline but had managed to get through to his friend by mobile phone. Paul learned that although the first fleet of ships was already full, they would be returning to pick up more passengers six weeks later. She had no way of knowing if the information was correct, but she remembered Paul being certain that the ships would be at the port on June 18. Since it had been so long since such numbers had any importance to me, I needed to find a calendar to check the date. As luck or fate or something else would have it, the date was June 3. We had two weeks to spare, assuming that any of this was true, of course.

  The idea of having somewhere to go gave all of us a sense of purpose. Taylor got especially worked up.
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br />   “This is incredible! We’re finally going to do something. No more of this sitting around hiding out.”

  “Well, I’m not sure we’ve been hiding out,” I answered. “More like being smart and staying safe until things calmed down.”

  “Yeah, staying safe. Kevin promised to keep us safe,” Christina offered.

  “That’s right I did.” I leaned over and tickled her.

  “I sure hope Paul wasn’t feeding me a bunch of bullshit,” Kat broke in with her typically colorful vocabulary.

  My disapproving stares had no effect on her, so I eventually gave up and simply ignored her off-color language.

  “We’re going to have to hope that he was right about the date. Besides it’s not like we have a lot of other options to consider.” I tried to keep things positive. “We need to make a list of things to get over the next few days, so that we’re ready to go to Tiburon in a week. No sense waiting until the 18th.”

  “I definitely need some new clothes,” Taylor spoke up. “And there’s someone named Christina needs some new socks. P.U!”

  “Hey, you need some new underwear, ‘cuz yers are poopy!” Christina instantly shot back.

  “I think we could all use some new undies,” Kat broke in. “There’s a CheapMart right up the street. That’s where Paul went…and…well, they should have everything we need.”

  “Great! We can go on a food run and get some new clothes!” Taylor cheered.

  I sniffed my shirt and had to agree that a change of clothes might be a good thing.

  Over the next few days, we took an inventory of everything we might need if we managed to get aboard a ship. In addition to a clean set of clothes, we all needed coats and toothbrushes. Christina announced that she desperately needed some crayons and coloring books. Taylor decided some comic books would make him happy. Kat wanted to find something to play music. I considered it for a long time. What did I want to get from the store? What did I miss? What could I find in a store that would make me happy? I was able to list a whole lot of things which made me sad in the world, but nothing I could think of made me truly happy.

  Not that I was trying to be especially noble or selfless, but, from what I had seen over the last few months, few possessions held any true value. I remembered the beautiful gold wristwatch I had saved months to buy, the expensive briefcase I had to have because another teacher carried one, the new car, even though the old one ran fine. I didn’t really miss any of those things. None of those things added anything to my life, and none of them could bring my old life back.

  “What do you want to get, Kevin?” Christina’s question shook me out of my thoughts.

  I came up blank as to an answer. “Well, I don’t know. Do you have any ideas for me?”

  The little girl’s face showed an expression of comical seriousness as she considered the question. “Hmmm, I don’t know. What should you get?” She stared off into space for a moment. “I got it! You need a cowboy hat, a nice black cowboy hat!”

  “A cowboy hat?” I asked with mock disbelief.

  Taylor and Kat laughed.

  A serious expression covered Christina’s face as she answered. “What? Doncha think he’d look good in a cowboy hat.” Her voice cracked, and clearly the tears were ready to flow.

  “Okay, thanks for the idea,” I said, trying to keep her from tears. “If we see any cowboy hats, I’ll try one on.”

  “I’m sure you’d look great in a cowboy hat, Kevin!” Kat laughed. “Not like one of those redneck assholes at all!”

  Christina did not take the jokes well and was quiet for the next few minutes.

  We decided to head to the store the next morning.

  As silly as it sounds, I found myself genuinely excited on that morning. It seems like a terribly small event, but given the state of things, having anything to look forward to became a big deal. I didn’t remember the last time I had been really excited. I caught myself before I went off on that train of thought. Attempting to remember the last thing about which I had been genuinely excited did not promise to lead me to a place that I would enjoy. Instead, I forced my mind to stay in the present and focused on where we needed to go.

  Like other times that I had gone outside since the world had gotten strange, I became fully aware of a sense of dread at being exposed to the shells. The sense had grown with Lawrence no longer around.

  “So tell me again about this store,” I said to Kat a while later.

  “Not much to tell. Like I said, there’s a CheapMart a little ways up the street. You know what a CheapMart looks like, right? Seen one, you seen them all.” She shrugged.

  “Okay, but what’s around this store? Do you think there are shells inside?”

  She looked genuinely concerned with answering my questions as she took a long time before responding. “Sorry, I can’t really tell you. I know it’s important to remember that stuff so that we can be ready for whatever might happen and all that. But the thing is, I’m not really sure. I mean, I never really noticed those kinds of things. I had my mind more on getting in and out of there as fast as possible, you know? That was all that mattered. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, it does,” I answered, nodding. “With the way things have gone off the rails, keeping your mind working properly on the present goings on is not a small achievement.” I laughed despite myself. “I have not been entirely successful in managing it.”

  She looked at me as if not certain whether I was pulling her leg. “Are you serious? ‘Cuz you seem like a completely together, my shit don’t stink, no time for BS kind of guy.” Something like a snort came out of her nose, and Kat regarded me for a moment before continuing. “You really had trouble wrapping your head around the craziness that hit?”

  “I’d say trouble wrapping my head around it is an extremely mild way of putting it.” I smiled at Kat. “As dumb as it probably sounds, not until Taylor and Christina showed up and I realized that keeping them safe mattered more than keeping myself safe did things start to make some sense.”

  “Oh, it makes sense?” she asked quickly. “How about you explain it to me?”

  “Okay, maybe makes sense isn’t the right way to say it. It’s more like…uh…more like it wasn’t until Taylor and Christina showed up that I discovered some sort of purpose, something to concentrate on and dedicate myself to.”

  Kat was not completely successful at containing her giggle. “You sound totally like one of those born again goofballs you see on TV or sometimes outside the grocery store, handing out booklets and trying to save you.”

  “Okay, give me a break. I’m not trying to introduce anyone to the Lord. All I’m doing is trying to explain to you that when all this shit hit the fan or however you want to describe it…when everything changed, I really didn’t know for sure if there was any reason to keep going. I mean, it all seemed pretty hopeless. But then these guys came along, and they needed somebody to take care of them. You probably won’t believe this, but I have not always been the world’s most sensitive and giving person.” I paused to let Kat respond, but she said nothing. “Okay, so I guess you don’t have any problem believing it. Anyway, the two of them give me something to live for. I promised to keep them safe from the shells, and I intend to do that.”

  Kat’s expression made it impossible for me to tell if she was really serious about what I said or simply bored by my words.

  “So what do you think? Am I just some lame guy who gets his kicks by bossing kids around?”

  “No, you are definitely not a lame guy,” Taylor answered. I had not seen him listening. “Nothing lame about keeping a promise.”

  In the next instant, Christina had me in a hug at my waist. I am certain that it must have been a pretty funny sight. However, looking at the others, all I saw were misty eyes.

  “Thanks for taking care of me, Kevin,” Christina said, looking up at me.

  My heart rose up into my throat as I looked down at that little face. I would have lost it completely if not fo
r seeing Kat wipe her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. Christina still had me in something of a bear hug. I looked over toward Taylor, expecting to find some support for the awkwardness I felt. Instead, Taylor was also wiping his eyes and trying not to break down in tears. The whole scene really seemed like something straight out of an afternoon soap opera.

  Finally I found my voice and said, “Okay, now getting all emotional is not going to help us get to the store and get to Tiburon.”

  The others appeared grateful for my interruption. Taylor spoke right up.

  “Okay, let’s get going. We don’t wanna be stuck outside when it gets dark.”

  Chapter 3

  After our emotional break or whatever it should be called, the mood was good. We gathered our few belongings and headed out to the store.

  The store turned out to be farther than I expected. You would expect since I worked in the area I would know the distance to the nearest store. However, I never had any reason to shop around the office so I never bothered to look for the stores.

  We decided to walk the shortcut to the store that Kat knew and check what was there before driving. No sense taking the campervan all that way and wasting gas if there was nothing worth bringing back.

  We headed out the back and into an alley. This opened onto a nearly empty loading area where the delivery trucks usually picked up pallets full of newspapers to deliver around the Bay Area.

  “Sure is strange seeing this place so quiet,” I said to no one in particular.

  Kat made a sort of grunting sound before saying, “You should have seen it on the day things went to shit; an absolute cluster fuck.” She glanced over at Christina. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” the little girl giggled.

  “Anyway, you probably know pretty much how things went down. There were a lot of people gone with the bad cold going around. Seemed like everybody here was coughing and shit.” Kat paused for a moment, remembering something painful. “Paul and I both had it a little, but never as bad as others. Anyway, this one morning things got especially weird. Only a few people were here when I got here. Most days, the crew I work— worked—with gets here about 4. That way we can have the run of the place before the full-day staff of reporters and secretaries and stuff comes in. On this one day, I showed up but…but, well, I was…it was only me. Wait, I shouldn’t say only me. When I got here at a little before 6, one of the janitors was still here; a strange little Mexican guy. I know I’d seen him before…but, I don’t know, he sure was different. Maybe, it’s ‘cuz I’d never seen him outside of a group, you know?” I nodded, although I couldn’t be exactly sure that I did know. “Like I said, only me and this weird janitor were here that morning. I don’t even remember seeing any of the overnight security guards. Those jerks always seemed to be around, acting all macho and shit and getting into everybody’s business like cops or something. Now I’ve never been a big fan of cops or anything, but these security guys were just wanna-be cops, which is worse than the real thing.” Kat stopped herself from going off on a rant and brought herself back to the subject. “Anyway, this little security guy, David, was acting really weird. When he first saw me, the guy acted like we were long-lost buds. I came in the locker room to change into my work clothes, and I must’ve surprised him or something, ‘cuz he sorta jumped and looked at me about ready to shit his pants. He stood there and stared at me until I finally said, ‘You okay?’ His name badge said, ‘David Castillo’ so I repeated, ‘You okay…David?’ You woulda figured that I had stopped a bullet for the guy or something. He charged over and hugged me. The guy was little but damn strong. I thought he was gonna break my ribs. I’m not exactly a touchy-feely kinda person, so the whole thing made me pretty uncomfortable.” Taylor chuckled and received a dirty look from Kat. “So David told me that almost none of the night crew had shown up. Seems silly to worry about it now, but we both wondered how they could get the morning edition out without the copy setters and editors. Anyway, David seemed awfully nervous. He kept following me everywhere. At one point, I actually had to tell him to wait where he was while I went into the bathroom. He followed me around and told me how other people in the building had just sort of walked away. Like one minute they were doing their jobs and then the next, they were gone. After about an hour, David announced that his shift had ended. He didn’t seem quite sure what to do. He asked if I wanted him to stay, but, to tell you the truth, he kinda got on my nerves with all his jumpiness and needing to be around me every second. So I told him that I would be fine and that he should go home and get some sleep. Thing’s always look better after a good sleep. That’s what people say, right?” Kat did not wait for an answer before continuing. “David gave me another big hug, turned slowly around and finally left. It sorta seemed like he didn’t want to go, but, at the same time, like he didn’t know what else to do. Shit, I had forgotten all about that ‘til right now.”