The Apocalypse

Chapter 39

Ram

Amarillo and East



“So much for all your promises,” Cassie said, barging into the dentist's personal office the next morning. “Gotta take a dump. I'd leave if I was you since there ain't no runnin water.” The dentist's bathroom was right there and she breezed into it as if she hadn't been the least bit offensive.

Julia sighed and placed a hand across her face. “Damn.”

“I'm happy to see that you lived, Ram. Me too Julia,” Ram remarked in falsetto. He tried to get up, only his right knee was swollen and wouldn't bear his weight. “I think I messed my knee up pretty bad. How's your leg?”

“Fine, I'm sure. And yes I'm glad we both lived. It's just…” She nodded to the bathroom door. “We did make a promise.”

“I was under duress when I made the promise,” Ram replied. “It wouldn't stand up in court. Now let's see that wound.”


She peeled back the dressing and took a close look, saying, “It was only a flesh wound, nothing serious. Though I should change the bandage everyday and it would be smart to take an antibiotic as a precautionary measure.”

Despite her words about it just being a flesh wound, she hobbled about, collecting her supplies in a cardboard box. Ram worked his knee back and forth. When it felt warmed up enough he tried his weight again and swore like a sailor as he stood.

“Are you going to help with the supplies?” he asked Cassie as she left the bathroom.

“I am. Look, toilet paper. This stuff is gold, baby. Let me have the keys.” She held out a hand and he shook his head. “Come on. What am I going to do? Drive off with all the toilet paper? Fine. Julia, let me have that box. Ram thinks I should be helping the woman who went behind my back.”

“It was my fault,” Ram said, quickly.

“I don't want to hear it,” Cassie said holding up the flat of her hand to his face. “You two wanna team up and leave me out in the cold. Fine. Just know that I can break promises too.”

“Yeah?” Ram asked. “What promises have you ever made?”

“Here's some: I promise to always be here for you. I promise to have your back. I promise I won't run off with the first pretty face that comes along. I could go on, but what does it matter? You two knew how I felt but you didn't care.”

“I'm sorry,” Julia said. “I was…uh, I was weak and scared. I shouldn't have let him.”

Ram shook his head at this. “A minute ago I wasn't sorry in the least, but now I am. Julia, stop trying to act like you aren't a part of this…this us. You are. We both know you could have stopped me last night at any point, and we both know that you didn't want me to stop. You wanted me right where I was. So why the act? Are you having morning regret?”

“I just don't want to hurt anyone,” she said.

“You're hurting me,” Ram replied, his face stony.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Give me the f*ckin keys while she strings you along.”

“Put the stuff by the car,” Ram said without looking her way. “And don't forget a gun. We don't know what's out there.” When she left, he and Julia stared at each other until she dropped her eyes. “Really, are you regretting sleeping with me?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she answered, looking at the floor. “I dream of my husband every night, now. I made so many mistakes with him and now that he's dead I realize I should've done more…done something different to make him stay. And then I wake up and I see you and I'm so afraid of driving you away just like I did him and I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or how I'm supposed to feel. I regret it and I don't. And then there's Cassie. She's looking for a reason to trust us and we keep throwing it in her face.”

“I can't worry about Cassie,” Ram said. “And if I had known about how you were feeling about your husband, I would have let you be. That's a far better reason to take things slow. That being said, I want you to know I will take it slow, but I'm not giving up. You have to see it as well as I do that we have a connection between us, something that time and distance and zombies couldn't stop.”

“I see it,” she replied, moving close and touching his chest with the flat of her hand. “I see there is a future for us. We just have to deal with the now, with Cassie. And with my past, my husband. Inside of me is this great guilt and fear, but I also feel you. Let's get around more people. Let's go the CDC and find other survivors and see what happens.”

They had seen exactly three people on their trip, and none had been the least bit accommodating. Two had scurried away into hiding, while the third had aimed a rifle at the passing Bronco. There were far more unseen people. They had come across a number of smoldering fire pits and even more numerous were messages left to loved ones spray-painted on houses or barns. These were usually accompanied by a date, and some of these had been only days old when they were read by Ram.

Julia's plan to take their personal relationship slow seemed a good one but somehow it crossed over into their travels as well. They departed the vastness of the American west and their pace was slower than they had expected. A journey to the CDC would have taken only a day of hard driving before the zombies, now as they avoided cities and hunted for gas and water the trip was much longer. That first day out of Amarillo they made it just beyond Tulsa, after following a circuitous path.

They had thought to avoid Oklahoma City by cutting south, but ended up running smack into a legion of zombies that dotted the plain like herds of buffalo. They high-tailed it back and went around the city northward and then was forced north again to bypass Tulsa.

The next day they crossed over into Missouri and from then on water wasn't a problem and gas was more plentiful, however the zombies were thick as flies and the armed town of Mountain Grove, a most inhospitable group of suspicious people had them again detouring north, so it was that tired and a bit cranky they came upon the last barrier to the east, the Mississippi River in the late afternoon.

“How the f*ck are we going to cross that?” Cassie asked. The black water was a thousand feet wide at its narrowest. Cassie had tried to be surly after Amarillo, only it seemed to take a lot of effort on her part and she gave it up on her own after a few hours—something Julia had foreseen. Not that she was any more pleasant to be around, but she wasn't worse.

“I'm sure there are bridges,” Julia answered.

A person would think so, however Ram went south on the western bank for miles and though he saw plenty of signs for ferry crossings it was an hour of slow driving before he saw a sign for a bridge, and then when he came up to it he saw that it had been demolished. A part of the span had fallen into the river and there was a great clogging of boats and debris beneath what was left—and not to mention zombies.

Even a quarter mile away he could see them swarming. He made to turn around, but the road was narrow with abandoned cars and so he went closer, hoping to find a good spot.

“There are people down there,” Julia said. She pointed beneath the bridge where the debris had melded into a shifting island of sorts.

“They is good as dead,” Cassie put in, her face looking a little disgusted. “I don't want to watch that.”

A single shot split the air and Ram had hope that if more were to come the people would be able to fight their way to freedom, however that one shot was all that came and now he could see the three people fighting with strange weapons.

“What are you doing?” Julia asked. At first he didn't know what she meant, but then he realized he had floored the Bronco and was speeding to the near end of the bridge.

He hadn't given it any thought, but the answer didn't seem to require any. “We're going to help. I'll work the SAW. Julia, you keep the stiffs off of me and Cassie keep me supplied with ammo.”

“Why do I have to…” Cassie started, but he spoke over her.

“Because Sarah's a better shot and because she's hurt and can’t run back and forth. Now get me the gun,” he said this slamming on the brakes and literally hopping out of the car. His knee still bothered him and a one-legged hop was his quickest mode of ambulation. “Hurry!” he ordered. The three were only still alive because the makeshift island was not easy for the zombies to cross, however more were coming up out of the water right at their feet.


Cassie came huffing up with the SAW in one hand and the first ammo can in the other. “Thanks. I'll need two more.” In the time it took him to say that he had laid bare the feed tray, slapped down the links, thinking to himself: Brass to the grass as he he'd been trained and then smacked down the cover.

In a second, tracer rounds, like zipping glow bugs showed him exactly where to fire.