Episode 7: The Long Journey Home

"What the hell’s your problem?" Jennifer yelled at Todd, the moment they were back on the road. Prior to being on the road they had dropped Elli and Waldo at Waldo’s car, and were now following them back to the trio's suburban hometown. Before they had even dropped off Elli and Waldo, Todd had tried to call his home to reach his family, but he got a busy signal. He figured that was a good sign.

"My problem?" Todd stared at her. "What the hell are you talking about? You’re the psycho who tried to smash Mario’s head in!"

"Oh, and what if he had been a zombie? If he had been a zombie would you have wanted me to not smash his head in?"

"Of course I would have wanted you to smash his head in! But he wasn’t out to kill us!"

"Well his distraction got Jill killed!"

"We don’t know if she’s dead yet!"

Jennifer ignored this. "What if he was working with them? Trying to get them some food?" She knew she was wrong, but she hated being contradicted.

"Oh, yeah. And if you want to feed the undead, you always have to kill them right after they eat. He must have been helping them."

Jennifer fumed, and the two sat in silence for a minute.

"Why did you want to come with me, anyway?" Todd asked sharply and suddenly. A faint hope fluttered up his spinal column, but he knew it was wrong.

She kept her eyes on the road.

"Well?"

"I’m thinking!"

Another moment of silence passed.

"I’m not sure why," She finally said. "I got angry at you, and I wanted a chance to yell at you."

"And so you came, far out of your way, with me and my friends to rescue our families, abandoning any loved ones you might have? Just to yell at me?"

She glared at the road, half imagining it was him, with her wheels pointedly rolling over him at high speeds.

"In the middle of a goddamn zombie invasion?" He was getting louder.

She kept silent.

"Why the hell aren’t you saying anything?"

"Because I’m on goddamn auto-pilot, that’s why!" She finally screamed, punching the gas even harder to make sure she was keeping up with Waldo and Elli.

"What?" Todd was suddenly absolutely befuddled.

"Ever since the zombies hit, ever since I first saw them, I’ve been driven purely by instinct!"
"But… Uh… You came up with a plan."

"It was pure instinct. Someone had to take charge, and I just sprung into action. I’m an alpha male."

"But… You’re a chick."

"It’s just an expression."

"Oh. Why not be alpha female?"

"Because she’s the one who leads… Oh, I don’t know! Dammit, fine, I’m an alpha female. The point is, it is in my genetic code to take charge."

"Why did the zombies scare you so much?"

She was silent for another moment.

"Because… I don’t like zombies." She whispered.

He knew she was lying, but, considering that she was a terrifying beautiful psychotic bitch, he decided not to press the matter. For his own safety, of course. He told himself it was for his own safety, anyway.

"So, what about your family?" he asked, after another moment.

"My family? They’re…" She froze up. "Where’d the car go?"

Todd looked out the windshield. "Oh, sh…. Pull over!"

* * *

"No answer at my place, either," Elli whispered.

"What’s going on?" Waldo asked, intending it rhetorically.

"What’s going on? What’s going on, he asks! What’s going on is that the world has been overrun by the living dead!"

"Well, yeah, but where are our families?"

"They’re probably dead, trying not to be dead, or damn undead!"

"Woah! What’s wrong with that woman?" Waldo sped up to keep from being rammed by the van following them.

"I don’t know. She’s probably a dormant schizo or something."

"She doesn't seem very dormant. Man, I hope she doesn’t kill Todd."

"Or us! Look out!"

She had just slammed on the accelerator again, and Waldo only barely managed to speed up enough to avoid being rammed.

"What’s she doing?"

"If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were…"

"Look!" Waldo pointed to a Burger King off in the distance; the lights were on, and a small troop of zombies was standing outside it, scratching on the windows.

"Oh, no, you’re not…"

"We should go help them."

"But we have no weapons!"

"Sure we do."

"Like what?"

"The car, for one."

"You are not going to waste our only means of transportation to try and rescue some Burger King employees."

"For one thing, it’s not our only means of transportation; it’s just that the other is driven by an absolutely insane bitch." Waldo said it as if there were nothing unusual about any of the situation. "For another, I’m in the driver’s seat. Besides, we can find weapons anywhere."

By this time, Waldo had begun circling the Burger King.

"Look, I’m telling you, there’s no way we can do it and survive."

"So you just want to leave those people to die?"

"Well, if the glass holds…"

Criiiiick… craaaaaaaaaaaaack… tinkle!

"Well, they’re doomed anyway…" Elli started saying; but Waldo had already hit the accelerator, and was charging at the building.

"Ochitbayl!" flooded from Elli’s mouth, as he scrambled to unbuckle. Before he could manage, Waldo swerved, and slammed through a good chunk of the zombie troop that was slowly flooding into the building. Most of the corpses turned towards the now stopped, and vaguely smoking, car.

Waldo struggled to get it started back up; it choked, and sputtered, but finally, just as the corpses were reaching the handles, it suddenly went speeding in reverse, Waldo steering it very deftly. Elli distinctly heard what he remembered as the sound of a watermelon at a Gallagher show. He tried to convince himself that it really had been a watermelon, and that one of the people they had just saved was actually Gallagher.

Five bodies, moving distinctly faster than any of the zombies, came dashing out of the wreckage; the one in the back of the line, with a distinctly female shape, waved "thanks" to Waldo and Elli. Waldo returned the wave, knowing she had already turned back around, and went speeding back out onto the street.

"Holy crap dude!" Elli screamed. "What were you thinking?"

"That I’d be helping someone," came Waldo’s calm reply.

"Helping? Helping someone? What if you had gotten us both killed? Who would that have been helping?"

"The people in the Burger King would’ve had a distraction to get away with. Besides, I didn’t get us killed, did I?"

"You damn well nearly did! You sped into an army of walking corpses, who have a distinct taste for us, and the car stalled! It STALLED!"

"But I got it back on again, didn’t I?"

"Oh, yeah, wonderful job you did there. You saved our lives when you had almost killed us."

"Well, then, everything's even." He continued before Elli could. "Hey, where’s the van?"

Elli looked around; there was no sign of the van that Todd and the crazy woman were in. It was just gone.

"Oh, you don’t suppose they didn’t follow us when we went careening through a glass window!"

"Broken glass window," Waldo corrected.

"Oh, excuse me! I didn’t realize that… that… oh, man… this is… this is insane."

"See? I knew you’d come around."

Elli gave Waldo a horrible look, a mixture of fear, anger, sorrow, and an emotion that humans have not discovered yet. He began to say something, when the van suddenly pulled up beside them. Todd leapt out and ran over to the car.

"Where the hell did you guys go?" he screamed, obviously panicked, not angered.

"Oh, we just almost got ourselves killed at Burger King is all!" Elli screamed, obviously angered and panicked.

"Where’d you guys go?" Waldo asked, calmly, not screaming for any reason.

"We were… talking. And we lost you." Jennifer called out the window, just generally angered. "Can we get back on track yet?"

"Talking, eh?" Waldo asked, in the same voice that one would say "Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge, Say no more!" Elli continued to fume at both of them, at Jennifer, at that bag of chips he had left unfinished at home, and at the entire situation in general.

"Yes, we were just talking," Todd said, getting the drift. "Look, Jennifer… She just has a few problems."

"So you’re going to stay in that van?" Waldo asked. "Hoping to get to know her?"

Todd rolled his eyes. "She’s got something. Something that has something to do with this."

"What?" Elli said it in time with Waldo.

"I don’t know. I’ll explain later."

"Hey, I just had an idea," Jennifer said. She clearly wasn’t working on instinct anymore; she was now making thought-out decisions.

The three boys turned to her.

"Why don’t you two go on ahead? Check on your families and all? I’ll take Todd to check on his family, and then… We can figure out what to do from there."

"Split up…?" Elli asked. That didn’t seem like that good an idea to him.

"It would be more efficient," Waldo said.

"Okay!" Todd nodded. "It’s a good plan. Give me your cell number." He pointed to Waldo. Waldo did so. It started to rain.

Todd looked up. "Well, that’s gonna make things interesting." He turned back to Waldo. "See you later; be safe!" He started to head back in, but turned around and pulled something out of his pocket. "I swiped this off a corpse for you," He handed the gift certificate to Waldo, scrambled around the front of the van, and got into the passenger’s seat again.

Waldo smiled at the gift certificate, silently thanking Todd, and started up the car again, with relative ease this time, and turned to Elli. "Your place is closer," he grinned. Elli just gave him that horrible look again, in part because Waldo's grin was so creepy. They drove off.

Todd, soaking wet, smiled at Jennifer. "You sure this is okay with you?"

"Of course," she growled, but a lot less angry than she had been when they had left the baseball field. "I have nothing better to do."

"Most people would be saying that sarcastically," he chuckled, turning to look ahead of them. The corner of her mouth twitched, and she hit the gas. They sped off, heading for Todd’s house.




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