The clock in this car is useless. It will show me what completely dead radio frequency the radio is tuned to, but it will not display the time. I wonder if time even has meaning here. I still wonder where exactly here is.
Wherever I am, I have officially been here long enough to be bored. There's no music to listen to, no scenery to look at, no food to eat, and no darkness around me to not trust since the sun never sets. I decide to take a look in the glove box.
With one hand on the wheel, I reach across to open the small hatch set into the dashboard, and a bunch of craps falls out. I see ketchup packets from Burger Bro, hot sauce from Taco Hut, and a pair of gloves, believe it or not. There are a couple paper clips, a quarter, a ballpoint pen with what looks like a smiling tyrannosaurus, and a single green army man.
The stuff that did not fall out of the box is a little more interesting. There is an owner's manual that indicates that this is a 1992 Subaru. A quick flip through does not reveal any owner's information though. There is also a map. Ah ha! Something useful at last.
I struggle to unfold the map while trying the keep the car on the road. I can see buildings up ahead, but still no road signs indicating what I am coming up on. It would be nice to at least know what the speed limit here is, but there don't seem to be any cops around to give me a ticket anyway (although I would welcome the troubles I would have being caught driving a car that isn't mine while having no identification at this point).
The map is useless. It is a road map, but there are no indications of where it is for. No city names, no street names, the highways are not marked. There are little squiggles that would look like text if this were viewed from a distance, but they are not text. It's more like looking at a movie prop than an actual map.
Oh, no, I stand corrected; there is writing on it. Scrawled in the margin at the top of the map are those now quite familiar words, “Don't Trust the Darkness” in the same sloppy scrawl as on that postcard I found a few hours (Days? Weeks?) ago. The words are slightly less chilling when read in broad daylight from a map than when painted on the floor of a dark, abandoned spaceship in what could easily be blood.
I am still convinced that this is my own handwriting, and I am going to prove it. I lean over to grab the pen that fell from the open glove box off of the floor in front of the passenger seat. It's a small car, but it's still hard to reach the floor while keeping one hand on the wheel.
I grab the pen, and sit back up in time to be surprised. There's someone standing in the road. I drop the map and the pen, and slam on the brakes, yanking the wheel hard to the right. The car jumps up onto the curb, but stops just short of smashing into the brown stone wall of what appears to be an apartment building.
I put the car in park, and jump out, running back to the person in the road, “Jesus Christ,” I exclaim, “I'm so sorry, I didn't think there was anyone around; you're the first person I've seen in... I don't know how long. Are you okay?” I blurt out so fast that it would probably be unintelligible to the average person.
How fast I spoke is irrelevant though, as when the man turns around I can see that he is very much not okay. He is wearing a filthy gray suit, the front of which is streaked with what I can only assume is dried blood. His face, the parts of it not covered in dirt and the same maroon substance that covers his clothes, is grayish, and his eyes are milky, as if covered with cataracts. Even with his mouth closed I can see his filthy teeth through a large, ragged hole in his cheek.
The man lifts his right arm, his left just hangs limply at his side, as if broken, and takes a step towards me. He opens his mouth, and gasps quietly. Yes, this man is not okay; this man is a zombie. The first person I have met since I woke up here, and it's a fragging zombie!
My gun! I reach for my waistband, and grab nothing but the front of my pants. It's still in the car.
I step back to the car, and leap in, grabbing the gun-shaped object from the passenger side floor. I turn over, the gearshift jabbing me in the back, and aim at the zombie. Thankfully it is a shambler and not a runner, so it is still a fair distance away.
I pull the trigger and hear a slight sizzling noise and see a flash of light, but nothing happens. Either this is not a gun, or I missed.
I stand up, still out of arm's reach of the zombie, take aim, and pull the trigger again. Another sizzling noise, another flash, but this time the zombie staggers back. There is a smoking hole in the front of its jacket.
It is a gun!
I pull the trigger again, and another smoking hole appears, but this does not dissuade the monster any. It continues to stagger forward.
I aim for the head, fire, and miss. I try again, and miss again. It seems that shooting a moving target in the head is not as easy as it appears in movies.
I pull the trigger again and again, wishing that I had a bat, or a crowbar, or something instead. I finally score a hit; I know because I am treated to the sight of the zombie's right eye flowing down its face followed by black slime. This time the zombie staggers back one step, then another, and then loses its balance, and falls over.
Victory is mine!
There's a crack like a cross between someone crushing walnuts and a watermelon as its head cracks open on the street. More black slime flows out, and I begin the wretch. The good thing about this is that the tears that flood my eyes obscure my view of the gore. It also does a fantastic job of eliminating my hunger.
When I am done trying to throw up on an empty stomach, I grit my teeth and approach the body. I kick it gently to make sure it really is dead, and it fails to grab at me, so I kneel down and go through its pockets with one hand, while keeping my gun pointed at its face.
Nothing, not even pocket lint.
I stand back up, and look around. I see the apartment building I nearly wrecked my car into, a liquor store, a number of empty storefronts, a fire hydrant, some small trees, but no signs of life. It's like being on a movie set after everyone has gone home.
“Hello!” I call, figuring that if there are more zombies out there somewhere, I can always retreat to the car idling a few feet away and get out of here. My voice echoes back off of the buildings, but no one calls back, and nothing moves.
With a sigh, I get back into the car. I place the gun (laser?) on the passenger seat, and take the now crumpled map and the pen off of the floor. I fold the map so that the handwritten portion of it is on top, brace it against the steering wheel, and write the words myself.
“Don't Trust The Darkness”
It's not exactly the same, but if I were writing on a table instead of a steering wheel it might have been. It's certainly close enough to confirm for me that this really is my handwriting. What does this mean?
Putting the map aside, and dropping the pen into the cup holder, I put the car in reverse and back off of the sidewalk. I try to avoid the corpse in the road, but one of the rear tires thump over its legs anyway.
I begin driving again. Once more towards the sun. Once more towards the light. Hopefully towards an explanation.
Or at least something to eat.