Life After the Undead (Completed)

PART 6: Car Troubles .1

Melissa's P.O.V.

Evelyn had given me time to talk to my three companions before I left, mainly because Rebecca had complained so loudly and for so long that Evelyn's sleep function booted up too quickly that Evelyn had to delay leaving to change the system parameters. Keith had offered to help her but she had locked him out of the computer room while she worked. That was when he told me what the computer was rigged to do.

"How did she even get the keyboard wired to send electrical pulses if the password is attempted wrong too many times?" he had asked me. It was a rhetorical question because how could I know? And it wasn't like I could ask her, then she'd know we were trying to log onto her system. Even though I had a feeling she already knew, I didn't want to confirm her suspicions.

I had given him orders to keep trying, see if he could work his magic on her computer but I had a feeling her computer was too advanced for him. When I left with Evelyn that nightfall it felt wrong. It felt wrong to leave them alone in a house that could possibly turn on them, it felt wrong to leave after dark when the zombies were the most active. They were attracted to light, noise and movement, we would be a freaking beacon to them.

There are horror stories of cars being swarmed in the night, moving or not moving. And it's not just zombies we have to worry about. Drifter were known for taking cars for their own, killing the drivers taking all their supplies and firepower. There were never any survivors, only witnesses, people who saw but chose not to help. That was our world now. The point is, night time was a no-go time, no one ever went out after nightfall, not unless it was an emergency. But this rule, apparently didn't apply to Evelyn apparently who seemed at ease at the wheel as always, playing old songs with an even older iPod and singing to them ridiculously loudly and off key.

I hadn't been on a road trip in years, but for the first time I felt as if I might be. As it turns out I didn't have to be worried about zombies, not even the one that was in the trailer hitched to the back of Evelyn's jeep. We didn't even have to worry about Drifters, turns out Evelyn had radioed that despicable Jack Daniels and got him to agree to let her travel on his roads and any other roads she wanted so long as she brought him back something cool and continued to pick up alcohol for them. I thought they had already agreed to that but I wasn't going to comment on the way Jack did business. From the gleam in her eyes I had a feeling he had asked for a girl from Flemming and that kind of annoyed me. I'd like to think that Evelyn wasn't like the rest of us, trading anything or anyone without a thought, but I knew she was.

Flemming had a mansion, literally a mansion out in Richmond Hill. Right on the outside of Fodder Flats, the place that the slower zombies congregated in large herds during the colder months, and with fall in the process of turning to winter the place was already teaming. I had been worried about going through there with a car, but while the zombies stared at us as we went by, they didn't swarm us, they barely even moved.

Flemming's estate was huge, bigger than Evelyn's even. It had a perimeter of barbed and electric fence, obviously he had electricity and running water as every light was on and the large lawn and all the topiary decorations were a lush green regardless of the dry summer we had had and the fact that it was fall now and everything should be dying by now.

The man who met us at the door was not what I expected. He was dressed in a cherry red robe, with what looked to be blue pajama pants on underneath and a pair of fluffy slippers. His jet black hair was coiffed back almost professionally. I almost expected a pipe in his mouth to complete his something like a Hugh Heffner look except this guy was so much younger. He couldn't have been older than forty. I didn't like the way he was looking at me as I got out of the car.

"Oh, what a nice specimen. I thought you meant that you had a zombie for me," he said, his voice having an acid like drip to it that sent shivers down my spine.