Crimson Awakening

Chapter 5

Rey stiffened when Eve’s voice came from the cabin.

“Eve, stay there, baby. Don’t open the door. Go back in the sleeper and lock the doors, kitten. Papa’s coming in a sec,” Rey yelled from the roof of the cabin.

“Okey-dokey, Papa,” Eve said then did as she was told.

She was so small in the seat that she couldn’t even see the zombies below. They went into a frenzy for the taste of fresh blood and ripe brains in their depraved minds. Deformed arms reached for the window; teeth clacking amplified.

One hoisted himself onto the cabin’s step and reached inside through the open window. The curious zombie grabbed nothing but air. Then he looked up at Rey, vomit dripping from his chin, and he snarled with rotten teeth. One eye was dangling out of its socket and, inside the b****y hole, Rey could clearly see big fat pasty worms eating away the putrefied flesh. Strings of hair looked glued to his carved-up face; some were bunching inside the empty socket. Half his cheek was eaten away with infections that Rey couldn’t even name.

Too dumb to figure out the unlock button, huh? Rey mused as he sat on the hood of the cabin and kicked downward hard. The zombie’s head snapped back. It should have been instant death. However, the zombie continued to wiggle, and Rey realized that killing a zombie meant severing its head from the rest of the body. With a permanent link between the brain, as rotten as it was, and the rest of the body, the zombie would continue to wreak havoc.

Rey kicked downward again until the zombie’s skull caved in and brain matter spilled all over the cabin door. With one hand still gripping the handlebar, the rest of the body twitched on the cabin step.

“Son of a b***h,” Rey muttered. Now I have to wash it again.

Rey clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes as he grabbed the tire iron cross and hurled it toward another zombie. It spun in the air before thrusting into the creature, square between the eyes. The zombie toppled backward and expired within seconds. His limbs jerked for a bit, looking like a freshly planted corpse with a cross at his head.

“Rey, two; zombies, zero,” he announced then spat at the remaining zombies.

He grabbed the top bar welded above the door then reached for the zombie’s arm wrapped around the handlebar. He snapped it, causing the rest of the body to fold to the ground.

As the other four zombies lunged toward the human, Rey retreated onto the roof and sat down. He thought the trick with the tire iron might not have been his best idea as he searched for another way to dispatch the zombie nuisance. Why the hell did I stop? That was just stupid. I could have been on the road to California.

And Jenkins hadn’t returned his call.

Maybe he’s not the man I once knew. Five years is a long time, and people do change. s**t, I changed. Why wouldn’t he?

He glanced back at the zombies. They growled, almost angry their ranks had been thinned out. Unable to reach Rey, they clumped together by the driver’s door, shrieking and howling like hungry hyenas.

“Are you coming, Papa?” a voice jingled again from the cabin. “Where is Mama?” She paused for a beat. “What’s that noise?”

Rey’s blood froze in his veins. He clenched his fists, struggling to chase out of his mind an instant picture of horror if the zombies reached his little girl. He felt a torrent of invectives coming but ignored the urge. His nostrils flared.

“Eve, please go back inside the sleeper, baby, like I asked you,” he said, voice barely in check but loud enough to be heard above the zombies’ babble. “Daddy has to fix something on the truck. I’ll be right there, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” Eve sang.

At the sound of her voice, the zombies increased their commotion. One of them seemed to remember how his brethren had climbed up the cabin step and reached inside. He did the same.

Rey had had enough. It was one thing to threaten his life, but that of his kitten? Never!

He went back to the gap between the trailer and the cabin. From the toolbox, he plucked two large screwdrivers.

With one zombie gripping the handlebar and reaching inside, the other three hurled themselves toward Rey. He planted his feet squarely on the ground and waited. When the first two zombies reached him, Rey pounded the screwdrivers into their skulls so deeply that he nailed their tongues to the back of their throat. He kicked the third zombie in the groin.

Two bodies crumbled to the ground, wiggling like serpents, while the third flew backward from the powerful kick. Within seconds, though, the kicked zombie popped back up, unfazed by Rey’s vicious attack.

In a past life, the creature must have been quite skinny, but now, dressed in a suit several times too large and an unimpressive tie, the clothes hung loosely on his skeletal frame, hindering his movements.

He growled and flashed busted, black teeth. Then the zombie raised his head to the sky and howled like an animal. Caught in the moment’s frenzy, Rey responded with a half-grunt, half-yell, like the Maori Haka, as he learned from the New Zealand military.

The zombie ignored the ferocity of Rey’s yell and sprang forward. Rey was waiting for him.

As soon as the zombie got within reach, Rey grabbed him by the throat with one hand. With the other, he gripped the zombie’s belt and lifted him above his head. Then, with lightning-quick speed, he pulled the body downward, knelt, and slammed him over his other knee. The zombie’s back cracked and jackknifed, snapping his spine in two.

Enraged, Rey roared, his eyes bulging out and veins popping, engorged with fast-pumping blood. Adrenaline buzzed through his body.

With forging, hammer-like fists, he clutched the zombie by his scrawny arms and pulled outward. Dark blood squirted from the empty sockets. Rey held the b****y arms for a second then discarded them like hunks of bad meat.

Rey enjoyed the fight so far and, although he was sweating profusely, he had plenty of strength left in him. The anger and a heightened sense of protecting his daughter pumped more blood into each muscle cell and made them hard like battleship g*n barrels.

Suddenly, the image of a younger version of himself flashed in his brain—northern shores of Iceland, doing jumping jacks in the icy waters. The zombie fight was a walk in the park compared to that grueling exercise.

The fourth zombie had stepped down from the rig’s ladder and jumped him from behind. Unfortunately for the zombie, he was only a little over five feet tall and his attempt to bite into Rey’s jugular ended with crushing his head into the human’s back. He snapped his jaw but all he grabbed was Rey’s flannel shirt. The Icelandic giant spun around, and the zombie’s feet got stuck in the truck’s ladder, decoupling it from Rey’s back.

The zombie quickly stood up and faced Rey again. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and Rey noticed no sound of the familiar clacking came. On his back, he felt something dangling off his shirt. He reached back and found dentures attached to the fabric. Ew! You dirty son of a …

As the zombie approached, Rey fused his fists together and struck the zombie in the head with all his might. The zombie never stood a chance.

His head caved in, the force of the hit so devastating that the brain was mushed down his throat. With an automatic reflex, the zombie swallowed hard and ended up consuming his own brain. He crumbled to the ground like sand.

There, you didn’t even need teeth for that.

Looking at the c*****e left behind, Rey took off his shirt and wiped his hands with it. After he finished, disgusted, he hurled it at the expired zombies.

“Rey, six; zombie, zero. You lose,” he spat.

Rey looked at his hands that were still smeared with dark zombie blood. Then he jumped on the step and called inside the cabin, “Eve, baby? Papa is done. I just have to wash now, but I’ll be there in a minute. Stay there, ’cause I don’t want to get you all dirty. Okay, kitten?”

“Okay, Papa Bear,” her little voice came from the sleeper.

Rey opened the cabin door, grabbing a bottle of water and a roll of paper towels from under the seat. He then washed thoroughly and dried his hands before he turned to the truck.

“Eve, can you hand me the bleach, honey?”

After a few seconds, she came running, but Rey stopped her at arm’s length so she wouldn’t see the c*****e outside. Then he closed the door and, for extra protection, dumped a good amount of bleach on his hands and rubbed them thoroughly. Next, he turned to the collapsed zombies on the ground and thought for a second, wavering between feeding his daughter and calling Jenkins.

To hell with Jenkins. Eve is more important, he thought, although he needed answers about his wife.

Gabi’s image, smiling next to him when they had been driving across the country, filled his brain. His lips curled into a smile. He then climbed in the cabin and settled in the driver’s seat.

“Eve, I’ll pull on the side, and we’ll make waffles, okay?” he asked from over his shoulder.

“Okay, Papa. But I want pineapples and nuts on mine.”

“Sounds good. Papa, too,” Rey said, firing up the engine.

He drove for several miles, and when he saw a dusty side road, he turned and pulled the truck over. In the distance, plumes of smoke rose toward the Texas sky. Rey shrugged, locked the doors, and then went into the sleeper to make waffles for his daughter.

“Where’s Mama?” Eve asked, sitting at the small table.

Rey’s jaw tensed. How could he explain to a five-year-old that her mama was a zombie? He ran different scenarios in his mind, but all sounded stupid.

Rey looked at her—small, pale face with freckles of gold, flanked by swirls of blonde hair dropping to her small shoulders. Eve stared back with wide blue eyes, waiting for an answer.

He turned back to the small cooking plate, averting his eyes. “Mama is not well, kitten,” he said while dropping a waffle onto Eve’s plate.

“Does she have a headache?”

He stopped, pan and spatula in hand. “Yeah … something like that,” Rey said then sat at the table.

“But, where is she?” Eve looked left then right. “I don’t see her anywhere.”

He fidgeted with his fork, knowing this was not over. She would want details. The thought of explaining the unexplainable made his blood boil. Here it goes.

He put his fork down then steadied his hands on the table to hide the shaking. Rey searched for the right words but found none.

“Now, Eve baby, you heard of zombies, right?”

She sipped milk from a small cup and peered at him above the rim, nodding.

“Well … Mama got scratched by a zombie, and now … she’s a zombie,” Rey blurted.

Eve’s eyes widened in surprise. She couldn’t quite grasp the notion but instinctively felt it was bad. Instantly, tears filled her eyes, and her chin quivered.

Rey looked into her angelic eyes. What the hell did I just say?

“Listen, Papa’s going to drive us to California. There’s a good doctor there, and he’ll fix her right up. You’ll see.” He waited for a reaction, hoping he was convincing enough.

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” He sighed with relief. “Now, eat your breakfast. We got to hurry up.”

On the table, the phone buzzed.