“Yup, time to go!” Luther warned.
Luther dashed to the bed and picked up Justin, and they ran to the Jeep. “Where’s Scarlett and LuLu?” Dean panicked.
Justin gave him a knowing look, but Dean didn’t know what Justin meant by it.
“Aren’t they with you? And how did the hotel burn down?” Dean questioned as they all scrambled into the Jeep.
“It’s sort of a long story,” Ella hinted.
“I see a freeway entrance,” Luther announced.
“Wait!” Justin yelled, startling everyone. “Turn around.”
“Where’s Scarlett and LuLu,” Dean asked again, but everyone continued to ignore him.
“No, I need to get back to the mall,” Justin seemed to be out of his bloomin’ mind.
“OK, Luther here needs to know which way to go,” Luther sounded frazzled.
“I’ll explain everything. Go back.” Justin was adamant.
“What in tarnation?” Dean was losing his patience.
“I need to check on something at the Best Buy,” Justin yelled.
“No Problem, I can do that,” Luther said, “Everyone settle down. Ol’ Luther here can’t handle you all going postal.” Luther flipped a 180 and headed back down Arden Way.
“STOP!” Justin yelled when Luther entered the Best Buy entrance.
Luther stomped on the brakes, and everyone turned to Justin.
“Dude, can you like help me out?” Justin said emphatically, holding his ribs, still in obvious pain.
“What, you lose something?” Dean asked, his patience wearing thinner. As much as he loved the kid, sometimes Justin had a way of getting on his nerves with his cockamamie ideas.
***
Justin had to know. He had to know one way or the other if the whole thing had been a vivid hallucination or if it had actually happened. He had been reliving the zombie fight over and over in his mind. And now, it didn’t even seem real anymore.
How could it be?
He didn’t think he could explain it because it seemed unbelievable
even
to him. He knew if he
did
try to explain it, they’d all think he had been delirious or something.
Luther had helped him out of the Jeep, and he felt woozy as he stood there surveying the shopping cart island. He just stood there staring and thinking. He fought back the wooziness and hobbled over from one de-activated Z to another, not finding what he was searching for.
He noticed the strange looks Luther, Dean, and Ella exchanged when they thought he wasn’t looking. He overheard Ella say, “Guys, you sure he’s not turning into a zombie, he’s acting sorta weird?”
Then Justin found what he was searching for, the Super-Z; it wasn’t emaciated like the average Joe six-pack-z. It still wore the red and grey flannel shirt—the flannel shirt Paxton wore so often.
Like the dude only ever wore one shirt
. The de-activated Z was face down on the pavement, the back of its skull already disintegrating into a mushy-gooey substance. Justin shoved the body with his foot until he managed to roll the Z over onto its back.
“Paxton,” Justin ranted. He furiously kicked at it while he raged, “You son of a bitch, you evil, psycho son of a bitch—”
Dean rushed over to him, “Son, it’s all right. It’s all right,” Dean said, trying to calm him down.
“That? That’s Paxton?” Ella cowered.
“Yup, time to go, people,” Luther’s voice boomed. “They’re onto us!”
They all rushed into the Jeep. “Where to?” Luther asked as he stormed out of the parking lot.
“We can’t forget Scarlett and LuLu?” Dean reminded again.
“Dean . . .” Ella started.
Dean turned to look at Ella, sitting in the backseat next to Justin.
“She, she’s dead—” Ella finally managed to say without sobbing.
Justin had been avoiding breaking the news to Dean. Dean turned around and met Justin’s eyes. Justin saw such sadness in the old man’s eyes that the pain pinched his heart as well.
“And LuLu?” Dean started as if afraid to finish his sentence.
“Sorry to say, she didn’t make it either,” Justin said.
“Any of this got to do with the Stockton Boys and the burnt-down hotel?”
Justin fought the lump swelling in the back of his throat. He gave Ella a questioning look, and she nodded yes with glassy eyes ready to spill over with tears. It was time to tell Dean.
“Might as well give it to me straight,” Dean said softly.
Justin explained, “Apparently it was all some elaborate scheme to get you to go to Travis AFB, because the night you guys left, the Stockton Boys started the hotel fire. Paxton and Nate made us think they had saved us, when in actuality they were, well, kidnapping the women.”
“LuLu saved us!” Ella blurted out. “And, and then Scarlett saved us too.”
Dean glanced back at Justin, “Go on, son.”
“Ye-ah, well Paxton and Nate wanted Ella and Scarlett to be like, uh,” Justin was super-embarrassed to say it, “like, uh, sex slaves.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. Justin thought Dean was about to spontaneously combust with anger.
“And, you know Scarlett, she is—
was
—always so brave. She came up with a plan, and we escaped,” Justin said.
“What happened to her?” Dean’s tone was flat and remorseful.
“It all happened so quickly. Ella and I went one way, and Scarlett went in another direction to keep Paxton off our trail,” Justin continued.
“But what happened to Scarlett,” Dean whispered.
“We never saw her again. Then we accidently ran into Paxton and a couple of his new recruits, and they sort of kidnapped me,
again
. Paxton told me Scarlett was dead or a zombie, but he never did say how it happened,” Justin said.
“And LuLu, poor LuLu . . .” Ella wailed.
“Uh, ye-ah, and Ella actually de-activated her first Z. Unfortunately, it happened to be LuLu.” Justin said, realizing that he and Ella probably weren’t explaining things in the right order and hoped Dean and Luther were following along OK.
“They were gonna leave her like that—all zombie-like . . .” Ella cried.
“You mean to say, LuLu got bit, and Paxton didn’t put an end to it?” Dean asked with disgust.
“Ye-ah, dude. He like, left her there for the fun of it. Like he enjoyed it,” Justin shuddered. He still couldn’t get that scene out of his head. “Ella and I were both hiding, and Ella did the craziest thing
EVER
. She grabbed my gun and shot LuLu—in the head. So like they, I mean Paxton and his two new recruits came back. I told Ella to hide. So, they only saw me, you see.” Justin tried to explain, realizing that none of this was making sense even to him. How could he possibly explain everything that had happened?
“And, Justin left me by the shopping carts,” Ella sounded exasperated.
Justin could tell Dean thought their whole story was totally insane. Dean stared blankly from Ella to Justin his mouth gaped open while he shook his head in amazement.
“And,” Dean waited.
“I escaped that same night when I thought they were all asleep. I went back to our hideout. And, duh, Paxton followed me. And then—”
“Dean it was so way cool! We lived on the roof of a house,” Ella interrupted again.
“Anyway,” Justin rolled his eyes. It was hard enough to explain without Ella helping him. “I went back to our rooftop hideout to find Ella. Only she wasn’t there. Apparently, Paxton had followed me. It was like he knew Ella was really alive all along, and he was playing me for a fool, waiting for me to lead him to her so he could kidnap her.”
Dean kept shaking his head.
“Then, then, well, I sorta shot him. Several times. After that, I ran like crazy to the Best Buy cause that’s where I last saw Ella. It was so freaky—it was like I could hear her calling out to me.” Justin stopped for a moment thinking how bizarre it had all been. “But, you want to know the weirdest part? I killed Paxton. I shot him several times, and I actually saw him fall off the roof.”
“Wait,” Ella said confused, “was that before or after he turned into a zombie?”
“Son, you know none of this makes any sense what so ever . . .” Dean looked completely baffled.
Justin really didn’t know how Paxton could have followed him after being shot
and
falling off the roof. “He must have been in a kind of pre-zombified state. Ye-ah, but that breaks all the rules. Zs don’t have any brains once zombified. They can’t think. You know what else is weird? It was like he was a Super-Z. He had incredible strength . . .”
“Saw that back in the No-Zone,” Luther joined in the conversation.
All eyes turned to Luther.
“In the beginning, the people that died from the Super-Summer flu instantaneously re-animated into the zombie-state. Zombies, as you know, are feeble and dimwitted. Guess I didn’t mention about the new strain of zombies—” Luther paused, as if afraid to continue.
“What?” Justin, Dean, and Ella all said at about the same time.
“My bad. Back when this mess started in the Bay Area, I was trapped in the No-Zone for a few months with a group of people—not infected with the virus. The military enforced a lockdown, and no one could get out or in the quarantined area: the No-Zone,” Luther said.
“Ye-ah, but you managed to escape the No-Zone,” Justin said, wondering what the big deal was.
“In a matter of speaking,” Luther said.
“Go on,” Dean said, his tone tense.
“You ever hear of contrails?” Luther’s voice wavered.
“That conspiracy theory bullcrap is just a bunch of malarkey invented by those New Age stoner-hippies,” Dean remarked flippantly, waving his hands in the air.
“Yup, that’s what I used to think too. But, after the lockdown, the sky was full of planes spraying the skies with some lethal shit—God knows what? Contrails were everywhere,” Luther stated.
“There’s a scientific explanation for contrails,” Dean said impatiently.
“These here weren’t normal contrails. Nah, these glowed a fluorescent green, like the color of antifreeze. Man, it lit up the sky with glowing shades of green. Looked like the aurora-fucking-borealis in broad daylight. Pardon my language, Ella,” Luther apologized.
“Sounds creepy. What did you do?” Ella whispered, now squeezing both of Justin’s hands tightly.
“Dude, I remember that. It was all over YouTube—tons of video footage of glowing-green skies.” Justin had been glued to YouTube when he had been trapped in the basement. But at the time, he thought the disco-glowing-green sky videos had been faked to scare people.
“Ol’ Luther here is a God fearing man. When I saw that shit falling out of the sky, hauled my black ass underground and hid out in a janitorial room in the BART station,” Luther explained.
“What was it?” Justin asked, but he really didn’t see the point of scaring them. Not now, after all they had been through the past few months.
Luther cleared his throat and continued, “We had a scientist with us. He said the contrails were the easiest and fastest way to fumigate large areas—like the No-Zone. He went so far as to say the government had been dousing the skies for decades with all kinds of shit. Can you believe it? They used entire cities as lab rats and doused the people with chemicals, pesticides, immunity builders, and nanotechnology shit,” Luther sounded upset.
“Luther, my friend, what exactly are you saying here? Cause if you’re trying to make a point, I’m afraid I’m not getting it?” Dean said, glancing back at Justin and Ella.
“What I’m sayin’—is this. The military or the powers that be, attempted to control the zombie virus, otherwise known as the Super-Summer flu, by fumigating the entire Bay Area with toxic chemicals. As usual, those lamebrains got it all wrong.”
“What do you mean
?
” Dean asked slowly.
“The aerial fumigation did manage to kill off some, the weak ones,” Luther’s tone took on a super-serious tone. “But, the ones it didn’t kill—those muthers mutated from the emaciated zombie into what you called a Super-Zombie.” Luther’s eyes locked onto Justin’s in the rear view mirror. “These ones are fast, tough, and can even think a little. It’s like you can see them working out things in their head. And, did I mention damn near impossible to kill? It usually takes a few bullets to the brain. Or, blowing them up works pretty damn good too,” Luther let out a tense laughed.
“So it’s sort of like the overuse of antibiotics,” Justin theorized to everyone. “Where eventually the virus strain mutates enough to become immune to the antibiotic, and it becomes a super-strain,” Justin exclaimed, glad he finally got what Luther took so long to explain.
“You got it,” Luther said.
“Come to think of it, I do recollect Paxton mentioning they had only made it as far west as Vallejo before he and Nate had to turn back,” Dean said.
“Yup, if Paxton made it to Vallejo, that’s damn near close to the No-Zone barricades. And with the wind factor, there’s a good chance he and his friend were exposed to the fumigation. And that would explain Paxton’s super-zombie behavior,” Luther said plain as day.
“Say, what ever became of Nate?” Dean suddenly asked.