He could still go. The key was on the ring with the truck’s. It would be the safest place for Lonnie to hide out, far away from anyone or anything else. He could ride the mess out for the week or two it took for the government to clean everything up and get it back to normal.
“Come on, asshole! Get that piece of shit movin’!” he yelled as he leaned out the open window and threw his hands up. He laid on the horn.
Instead of pulling himself back inside he remained frozen, hanging halfway out the rusty metal truck. He hadn’t been able to see from behind the steering wheel facing the rear end of the line of cars, but at that angle the horrible view of what blocked traffic was laid out before him.
VIII.
A construction crew had half the road closed off with orange cones and a slow traffic sign. That would have been enough to give any of the desperate drivers in line a bad case of road rage, but there was a more pressing issue at hand, one that came from the shadows of the lush green trees that lined the side of the road.
Dozens of bodies stumbled out, one after another, like a group of drunks at closing time. There was no end to the rows of undead it seemed. Their sites were trained on the exposed workers scrambling in the middle of the road, unsure what was going on, who the people were, and if they were in any sort of danger.
Some of the men didn’t wait around to help their fellow laborers. They hopped in whatever vehicle they could get to and took off in the opposite direction, leaving a few misfortunate souls trapped to receive a slow, painful, miserable death. The three left behind huddled together on the yellow line, their backs to each other to see from every angle.
Lonnie watched as the drooling zombies surrounded the crewmen who had nothing to defend themselves with aside from a sign attached to a metal rod. The man holding it swung out in front of him as the group converged from all sides. A tall male with a portly belly torn open and hollowed out swiped back at the sign and almost knocked it from the man’s hands.
Eight cars back, Lonnie squinted his eyes to try to make out the faces of the orange vested men on the road. It was a small town and likely he went to high school with one of them or it was the dad of somebody he knew. When his eyes roved over one, he stopped scanning.
He was incredibly tall, his brown hair styled with mousse to look like a California wave, and had tan muscles that tightened as he gripped the rod of the traffic sign. It was Rowan Brady, the guy he’d met the night before in his drunken haze, the one who left his number for Lonnie on a bar napkin.
If he didn’t do something quick, Lonnie was going to have to watch his new friend be ripped apart by the cold, dead hands of those things that inched their way closer. There was also the possibility that if he tried to help, he would also face the same gruesome death. Another one of the things reached the men and tried to get a grasp around anyone’s neck as it was shoved backwards over and over again.
Before his brain had time to process, Lonnie stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel to the left. He bypassed the other cars and hit the orange cones as he sped down the road toward the group of cowering men. A tall, fat male clad in overalls and a camo hat with half his face clawed, the flesh hanging loosely from his cheeks, stopped and turned to the truck just in time to see it plow over him, sending him high into the air. When he hit the pavement the back of his head cracked open and leaked thick black cerebral fluid over the hot pavement.
Another one stepped in the path of the Ford and suffered a similar fate, though the blonde female clung to the front end of the bumper for several seconds before it slipped and was crushed by the weight of the truck. Its pulverized insides remained stuck in the grooves of the rubber tires as they spun wildly.
Lonnie let out a whooping cheer and grinned like a madman as he ran zombies down left and right. “Take that fuckers! Woo! Yeah! How’d that feel?” He pulled up alongside the crewmen and leaned over to throw open the passenger door. “Get in! Hurry up!”
“Lonnie? Man, am I happy to see you!” Rowan Brady yelled as his lips turned upward in hopeful relief.
He climbed in and scooted all the way to the middle to leave room for one more crewmember in the cab. A muscular Latino man with a goatee reached his hand for the seat to pull himself in, but something had ahold of his leg. He yelled out as the thing took a chunk of his calf and ripped the flesh and muscle away with its teeth. A thick spurt of blood shot out from the wound and drenched the thing’s face and chest as it chewed thoroughly.
“Torres! I got you, brother!” Rowan leaned over and reached out to the wounded man, but couldn’t get a grip on his sweaty hand.
“Don’t leave me!” the man yelled out, his voice breaking off in anguish as two more of the undead joined to feast on his legs, pulling him further down to the ground and away from Rowan’s hands.
The cry was unbearable to listen to. Lonnie’s insides twisted up into a pretzel knot until he could barely take in a breath. How long could someone live while they were being ripped apart and eaten alive? One minute? Two minutes? Ten minutes? He felt nauseated just thinking about it.
One of the things pulled itself up and sunk its teeth into the tender part of the man’s shoulder where it met his neck. His cries turned to garbles as his life force drained into the mouth of the ravenous creature. He choked on the blood as it bubbled up his throat and out his paling lips.
The monstrous thing’s eyes rolled back in its head as the blood washed over its tongue, like a shark in a feeding frenzy. Its jaw worked on the shoulder relentlessly. It never pulled away to swallow or take a breath. It just kept feeding.
Lonnie was mesmerized, lost in a stupor of red. His hands fell from the steering wheel as he watched several sets of hands dig into the gaping neck wound of the poor man and tear out muscles, veins, and tissue. They shoved the sopping meat into their mouths with fervor. The wet sound of their lips smacking echoed in Lonnie’s ears until he thought he would lose himself all over again.
His vision started to fuzz. The sight of the small horde devouring the man called Torres felt further and further away, like a grim light at the end of a black tunnel.
Not now
, he told himself.
Don’t do this now. If you do, you’ll die. You can’t give up now.
Another voice inside his head argued.
If I let go then I’ll be more equipped to fight, to get us out of here alive. All those years I suffered abuse from my son of a bitch father and never did anything about it. Look what I’m capable of when I let go and let the darkness take over me. I can defend myself. I can beat this!
“NO!!” Lonnie Lands shouted as the last throws of life twitched from Torres’s body. An expanding swarm of zombies threw themselves on him and worked to devour every last morsel.
Lonnie stepped on the gas and the passenger side door smacked one of the feasting dead across the back of its head, sending it rolling alongside the truck.
“What are you doing? Jacobson is still out there! We have to help them!” Rowan screamed in panic as he gawked through the back window.
“Consider him dead and thank God you’re still alive.”
Rowan’s brown eyes were as wide as bullet holes. His tanned face was streaked with dirt, blood, and tears. He watched in horror as the last man standing in the road was taken down with a vicious bite to the face that tore away his nose and right cheek in a spray of red.
“Wouldn’t want to be that guy,” Lonnie chuckled as he watched in the rearview mirror.
“His name was John. He was a friend of my dad’s. I’ve known him since I was ten years old,” Rowan said in a far off, distant voice.
Lonnie blinked a few times as he returned his gaze to the two lane highway laid out before him. “I’m sorry, man. I just meant…look, I just came from a close call myself. Lost my fiancé and my dad, so I know what it’s like.”
“Shit. I’m sorry,” Rowan adjusted himself on the seat to stare blankly forward. “How’d you find me, anyway?”
“I didn’t. You just happened to be where I was headed.”
“And where are you headed?”
Lonnie didn’t answer. He only stared ahead. They were driving down a stretch of untouched highway—no zombies, no people, no cars. For a moment everything felt like it used to. Lonnie was sure if he turned around he would find his dad drunk in the Lazy-Boy chair in the living room, Amy dolling herself up in the bathroom for an early Sunday dinner date. But deep down he knew nothing would ever be like it used to.
Something in the tree line caught his eye. A female with long dark hair sauntered out in front of the truck fifty yards ahead. The closer the old Ford approached, the more Lonnie’s mind played tricks on him. He saw Amy’s face in the monster’s, but not the same face he’d seen just minutes ago. It was the smiling face he had looked forward to seeing when he woke up every single day for the last eight years. The face that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The face he couldn’t save.
IX.
Lonnie Lands pulled into the dirt driveway of a ranch home about three miles from the horde that almost made a meal out of Rowan Brady. The young man in the passenger seat was still in shock, his eyes unblinking and his hands shaking noticeably. Every few seconds Lonnie caught himself stealing glimpses of his new friend from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t help wondering if he was going to be an asset to survival or the thing that got him killed. Was it worth the risk, keeping him around? They were about to find out.
He stopped the truck and turned it off. The grumbling engine died out and left them in heavy silence. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t anyone around to attack them, though the house was surrounded by thick pine trees making it hard to see anything. Were the small movements in his peripherals more of the infected or were they just leaves blowing in the hot summer breeze?
Lonnie grabbed the rifle that sat in the middle. He took out the cartridge and turned it over in his hands. In his blackened haze earlier, he wasn’t sure if he had used the gun at all. By the state of his father’s smashed in face, it looked like he’d used the butt of the gun, but had never fired off a shot to kill him. By the weight of the cartridge he could tell there were still a few bullets left, but how many he didn’t know. He took a deep breath as he stared up at the ceiling of the cab and slammed the magazine back into place.
The entire time, Rowan studied Lonnie as he wrung his sweaty hands in his lap. Lonnie was only acutely aware of the man’s thin brown eyes locked on him. He was more focused on the task at hand. They needed to find shelter.
What little training he’d gotten from Army boot camp turned on in his head like a light switch and blocked everything else out, helping him to map out every possible scenario they could encounter in going up to the house they were parked outside. He hoped for the best case—to find the house already empty, abandoned by its owners. Luck had never been on his side, though.
“You’re probably going to need this,” he said as he leaned over and opened the glove box. He shoved a 9 mm pistol into Rowan’s shaky, wet hands.
The scared man let the gun lay in his palms like a baby bird, afraid to move at all. He stared down at it as it rattled in his hands.
“It’s loaded,” Lonnie assured him. “But only use it if you
have
to. What’s in the gun is all we got.”
He opened the driver’s side door and hopped out. The hinges of the truck creaked and echoed through the clearing until the sound was lost in the trees. If anyone was still inside the house, they already knew Lonnie and Rowan were there.
“Come on,” Lonnie said as he walked around the front end. “Let’s see what we’re dealin’ with here.”
Rowan got out of the truck slowly with a firmer grip on the small gun. He tucked it into the back of his dirty jeans and followed Lonnie’s lead up the steps of the porch and to the front double doors. For a moment the two men looked at each other, each one giving one last thought to if going up there was their only option.
Lonnie raised a fist and knocked. The loud noise contrasted with the peaceful surroundings, far enough away from the chaos that ensued further up the road that nothing could be heard except the birds in the trees. There was muffled movement inside. Faint sounds of people whispering could be heard. Lonnie gripped his rifle in both hands and held it at across his chest, finger on the trigger guard.
The door opened a crack and part of an older man’s face appeared. “What the hell do you want?” he grumbled.
“We were hopin’ to find shelter here, sir,” Lonnie said, his voice softened and polite.