Hamsikker 3 (16 page)

Jonas turned to Lukas and shouted. “They’re coming. Push!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Straining every aching muscle that he had, Jonas put his whole body weight against the car, and with the rain beating down on him pushed with as much energy as he could muster.

Lukas heard the thunder echoing through the sky and felt the car move. He saw the panic on Jonas’s face, and knew something was wrong. With a surge of effort they got the station wagon off the road and out of the way.

“Go, go!” Jonas shouted to Dakota. He waved her on, and she immediately began to move the truck forward.

Unaware of the crowd amassing behind her, Dakota inched the truck forward through the gap in the cars and onto the crossing area. She then rapidly picked up some speed and hit the pile of bodies. As soon as it hit the first body the truck slowed as it churned its way through the sinking mound of rotten flesh and crumbling bones.

“Lukas, get…”

Lukas pointed and shot the first runner in the head. “I see them,” he said. The red taillights of the truck had illuminated the crowd, and it was enough for him to see what had Jonas so worried. This was no trap. This was just the dead, seeking out the living, as they always did. He suspected a lot of them were people from the cars littering the highway they had passed on the way to this point. “Get after Dakota; make sure she gets through.”

Jonas knew what Lukas was doing. He would take down as many as he could, but it wouldn’t be enough. Lukas had reloaded his gun in the truck, but he wouldn’t have enough to take them all down. No matter how he felt, this was not the way to end things.

“No,” said Jonas, grabbing Lukas’s shoulder. “Get going. We go together.”

Both of them ran after Dakota. She made it over the mountain of corpses, and was waiting for them to join her. When she stopped the truck ahead of the border at the start of the bridge over Pigeon River, she opened the driver’s door and looked behind her, expecting to see them jogging to catch her up. Instead, she saw the mob of zombies on the road with Jonas and Lukas only a few feet ahead of them.

“Run!” she screamed.

As they began to clamber over the stinking pile of bodies, their progress was slowed. The rain and the weight of the truck had created a sort of funnel through the bodies, but it was slippery underfoot, and it was difficult maintaining any momentum. Jonas watched as Lukas went down, and quickly scrambled to get up, away from the mangled people beneath him. Checking behind him, Jonas saw the zombies were now terrifyingly close. A runner broke from the pack and headed for Lukas. The stench was sickening, and Jonas knew they needed more time. He leapt from the bodies, and found himself sheltering against a tank. He had seen something glistening in the rain which should do the trick. If it didn’t work then he was as good as dead.

“Keep going,” he shouted to Lukas.

The two dead soldiers lying beneath the tanks wheels weren’t moving. One’s head was under the body of the tank, crushed to a pulp, while the other was riddled with bullets. Neither would be getting up again, and nor did Jonas care. It wasn’t the men he was interested in. On the road between them lay a machine gun, its black body shining in the dim light. Jonas reached down and picked it up.

“This had better work.”

Seeing the runner close in on Lukas, Jonas wasted no time in testing it out. A ripple of gunfire told him it did, and he watched as the runner fell. Lukas jumped off the bodies and ran for the truck.

“Time to kill the dead.” Jonas opened up his body and let the machine gun do the work. The gun was lighter than he thought it might be, and it bristled with life as he held it. He wasn’t a very good shot, but right now he didn’t need to be. A tornado of bullets ripped through the advancing zombies. They twisted and turned, chest cavities bursting open and heads exploding into a red mist as they were torn apart. Jonas laughed as the dead fell one by one. He knew he wasn’t getting headshots in every case, but they were at least being incapacitated. The machine gun was easy to handle, the bullets fast, and he was almost enjoying it. This was how it should be. He was in complete control now. There was nothing they could do to hurt him, nothing. The front of the pack had been decimated, and he had done enough to hold them off for a little while, to give himself some time to get to the truck safely and over the bridge. That was all had to do. Still, it was good to get some payback for Julie, and he decided he may as well shoot until the ammo ran out.

As he poured more and more bullets into the crowd of zombies, he failed to notice the lone zombie scrambling through the mud behind the tank. A fallen soldier, half his face missing, slowly began to claw at the ground. It scratched at the hull, snapping off its fingernails, until it hauled itself up onto its feet. Swirling blood and rainwater pooled in its one empty eye socket, and it groaned as it neared Jonas. It could hear him, see him, sense him, and with his back turned, Jonas was easy meat.

The machine gun finally clicked empty, and Jonas heard the clink of metal on metal close by. He turned, expecting to see Lukas, but instead found a zombie right in his face. The clinking sound had been the soldier’s belt hitting the side of the tank, and Jonas raised the gun to bat the dead man away. The dead soldier’s arm fumbled around the gun, and Jonas pushed it back. The soldier simply fell against the tank, dropped the gun, and resumed its attack. It rushed Jonas, and opened its mouth to bite him. Jonas saw only a few teeth in the man’s head, and a huge hole where the left side of his face should be. As he prepared to dodge those deadly teeth and fight it, a single gunshot ran out, and the zombie’s head exploded, cloaking the tank with the man’s brains.

“Hamsikker, move it,” shouted Lukas, lowering his gun.

Jonas ran to the truck, thanking Lukas for being such a good shot. “You should be in the truck with Dakota,” said Jonas as he joined him.

“And so should you,” replied Lukas.

They jumped into the cab, and Dakota took off. She checked the mirror. A few zombies were still standing and would undoubtedly follow, but they were far enough away now not to cause any problems. The bridge was short and relatively clear of traffic, so Dakota pressed on, speeding up as the road cleared. They passed a series of buildings to their right, some kind of border patrol station, and then the road turned northwest, away from the Lake, taking them inland.

Once they were over the border a sense of relief filled Jonas. It wasn’t just a physical barrier they had overcome, but a mental one too. It was as if being in Canada was the last hurdle they had to get over, and now he felt closer to Janey, closer than he had in a long time. Nothing was going to prevent him from finding her now, not an army of zombies, and certainly not Javier. The zombies that had come from the woods were unfortunate. That station wagon blocking the way was either incredibly bad luck or conveniently positioned. Had Javier made sure it was there to foil anyone trying to follow him?

As they left Lake Superior behind, the trees flanked them on both sides, and the highway became clearer. The wind whipped the truck wickedly, battering it, and surface water flooded the road in parts, making driving difficult. The truck sent huge plumes of water onto the grass verge, and yet the rain did not stop. If anything, the storm seemed to intensify, and thick rain pelted the windshield. No more zombies appeared from the tree line, and the ones at the border were a distant memory. Dakota wished she could say the same about Julie.

Lukas offered to take over the driving again, but Dakota was happy behind the wheel. It gave her something to think about. Watching Julie suffer such a terrible death reminded her of Terry. He had been killed by the zombies, too, forsaken to be eaten alive. His death, just like Julie’s, was on Javier’s hands. Would he really be waiting for them? She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She knew that Jonas was desperate to get to Janey’s. She could feel the tension in him; the urgency with which he did everything. She had no brothers or sisters, so couldn’t put herself in his position, but if it were Jonas she was trying to reach, she would move Heaven and Hell to get to him. Right now, it felt like they were doing exactly that. She wasn’t sure what to expect when they got to Thunder Bay. There were so many permutations, so many different outcomes to what they might find, that she had given up trying to second-guess it. It felt like things were coming to an end though. The journey they had been on after leaving Kentucky, after all they had been through to get to this point, was coming to a head. She had a baby to think about now, and in a few months she would be showing. Whatever happened after today, she needed to find somewhere safe; somewhere to raise her child with Jonas. She needed to be settled, not scurrying around trying to dodge bullets and zombies. The road ahead was grey and wet, and as she tried to focus on the driving, she wished she could turn the radio on. It would be so good to hear another voice, to know that they weren’t alone. It was a thoroughly miserable day, and she needed a boost. They all did.

“There,” said Jonas.

The truck shot past a dirty white sign that indicated Thunder Bay was coming up. Jonas thought he would be arriving under different circumstances. He was supposed to be with Erik, Pippa, Peter, and Freya, but Javier had torn that family apart. Instead of Lukas, Jonas should be sitting beside Terry, Mrs. Danick, and all the others who had put their faith in him. Quinn should be driving, not Dakota. It was hard to fathom how things had gone so wrong. Events just seemed to spiral out of control, and even when Jonas thought he was doing the right thing, the whole time Javier had been undermining him. Jonas was caught in two minds. Part of him wanted to find Javier. He wanted to find him and make him pay for what he’d done. He also wanted to find Quinn, Erik and Freya, and the two things went hand in hand. It was a daunting prospect, and he wasn’t sure how things would work out if they did reunite. The other part of Jonas hoped to never see Javier again. What Jonas really wanted was peace. He wanted to find Janey, Mikey, Ritchie, and Chester. He wanted to build a new home with Dakota and his child. He wanted to keep anyone who fell under his custody, like Lukas, safe. It was so close now he could feel it.

The deluge continued, and Jonas peered up into the sky. The storm front was moving over them, dark wind swirling and blooming into thick clouds that looked like an erupting volcano, spewing out freezing cold, prickly rain and cavernous thunder. Was this what it had been like when Javier had crossed over the border? Had he been forced to take shelter? Were Quinn and Erik still helping him?

“There it is,” said Lukas.

They crested a small hill, and then the city of Thunder Bay came into view. Jonas hadn’t expected a welcoming party, but neither had he expected the grim sight that he was confronted with. The town looked like it hadn’t escaped the plague of the zombies. He could see from the nearest buildings that they had been ransacked, destroyed, and there was no sign of life. No cars moved in the streets, no lights blinked on or off in the houses, and no people walked the streets. The quiet atmosphere of the city seemed apt somehow. It felt as if they had gone back in time to a place where there were no people or cars. The deep greens of the trees were the only evidence of life, and many of the buildings they approached had been burnt out. Between the fringes of the city and the lake, he saw Fort William rising through the parkland and the rain like a beacon. It instantly reminded him of Freya and the key chain he had given her. Did she still have it? Was she still clinging to it, waiting for him to save her from the monsters and the bad men? Jonas doubted that she had emerged from her self-induced bubble that she had wrapped around herself to protect her from the horrors that surrounded her daily. Javier had made sure she would grow up without a mother, and there was a fair chance that she would find herself without a father, too, before long. Freya hadn’t spoken a word for months, and seeing Fort William only reinforced Jonas’s feeling that they needed to hurry. It wasn’t just Janey he had to reach.

Jonas took some comfort in that he couldn’t see any zombies ahead in the city. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, though, and he knew they would have to proceed with caution. Going into any place where people had lived was a risky prospect these days.

“Dakota, slow it down a notch.” Jonas felt his heart beat faster. Knowing Janey was here was hard to accept. It had been such a hard journey that it didn’t feel real. “Let’s cruise in, and try not to draw any attention to ourselves.”

“Sure.” Dakota drove carefully, methodically picking a way through the growing cars that had been abandoned on the highway.

Thunder Bay spread out before them beneath a covering of dark sky and heavy rain. Lake Superior appeared faintly in the distance, but the murky rain kept it hidden behind a blanket of water. Jonas had often wondered what this place was like where his sister lived. It had sounded much nicer when she had described it to him. Thunder Bay had been just a place he imagined in his head, a distant dream, but now that he was here the reality was very different. It was like everywhere else. Death hung over the place like a pollutant, gripping the city with its talons, like an evil toxin destined to ruin it forever. He couldn’t accept it was too far gone. He couldn’t accept Janey wouldn’t be here either. She would be. She had promised him. Jonas looked at the buildings as they crept past them silently. He saw no lights on anywhere. Windows dark, doors closed, and cars immobile, lawns overgrown, and piles of rubbish unattended; it was like riding through a ghost town.

“Shoot,” said Dakota, frowning.