Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“How many are there?” a woman shouts before more gunshots fill the air.
Suddenly there is a series of loud thumps. “Come on, damn it!” a guy screams before gunshots once more consume the air. I can hear a scream behind them, but I’m too afraid to look. Some of the gunshots die out and I can hear the screaming man clearer. I don’t need to look. I know what is happening. Zombies. They were being chased and they took the wrong route. I hear another window shatter and the sounds of footsteps on the hood of a car. They’re abandoning the truck.
“We got to go!” I hear the woman shout.
“We can take them,” a man answers.
“Shit!”
More gunshots before there is a loud bang and more screams, painful, horrifying screams that haunt me to the core of my soul. I never wanted to see or hear a man eaten alive, but I’ve heard that noise too much over the time I’ve spent on the road. I sit where I am, waiting. Someone is still shooting. They have an automatic weapon of some kind, but before long, they’re out of ammo and I hear the bang of the gun against a vehicle. I ready my machete, certain that they’ve forgotten about me.
There is a savage nature to the world now. Whoever is left alive is too focused on the Zombies ripping apart the leftovers of their friend to remember that I’m here. They have better supplies than I do and that means that they’re a threat to me. I have to get south and it’s a very long way south. I can’t risk not getting to the girls, and their gear might help with that. I ready my machete, willing to do whatever is necessary to keep myself alive and to get their equipment. I listen as hasty footsteps are echoing across the bridge, coming closer and closer to me. Crouching down, I listen, waiting.
She appears on the far side of the bridge, right up against the railing. She stops and hides behind the tailgate of a Ford before she spots me. What makes her surprising to me is her age. She looks maybe forty years old with streaks of silver running through her jet black hair. Her skin is dark tan from the merciless sun and her face is worn with wrinkles and weathering. She looks much older than she should. I look at her eyes and she sees the machete in my hand. There’s a long, tactical knife in hers. I’d say we might be evenly matched. The only difference between the two of us is that my hand isn’t trembling. Her eyes are filled with terror and I immediately know that she doesn’t want to fight with me. From the look of her, there’s nothing of value on her. She doesn’t have anything that looks remotely useful for my journey. I don’t even see a water bottle or canteen. She’s screwed if everything she had is now swarming with the hungry, mindless hunters of this barbaric and wretched world.
Slowly, I stand up and I can hear her whimper when she sees my missing hand and the Frankenstein harness that Lindsay has assembled for me. I realize now that I’ve changed. I’m no longer a victim or a survivor. Lindsay has given me something more with her added personage. I’m a hunter now. I have the strength to oppose people, to intimidate. On my own, I felt weak and helpless. With her somewhere behind me, I now feel powerful. I now feel in control. The Zombies are too preoccupied with their feast to give a single thought to me. It might as well be the two of us out here. She wasn’t very good with that automatic she had, so what are the odds she’s good with a knife?
I take a step toward the woman.
Before I take another step, the distinct hiss and sound of an arrow piercing flesh and bone arrives and the woman’s head whips back, snapping violently before she drops, lifeless and limp. I stare at the crumpled pile of woman across the bridge with the arrow sticking through the side of her head. I follow the trajectory of the arrow and there stands Lindsay, her left hand holding the bow as steady as a rock and her right hand sticking up in the air, still in the release pose. Her eyes are on where the woman was, hawkish and unwavering. Suddenly, they flick toward me and there’s a soft smile on her lips.
I count nine of them on or around this side of the truck. The woman was foolish enough and useless enough with that automatic that she completely obliterated the front of the truck, sending countless bullets through the engine compartment and popping the front tire on the driver’s side. If she was still alive, I would slap her, but I figure that her death has been punishment enough for the crime. Lindsay takes a moment to get up next to me and her main priority at the moment is retrieving her arrow. As she pulls it from the woman’s head, she wipes the tip on the woman’s tattered, worn shirt before nocking it again on the drawstring.
“There’s a lot of them,” I say.
“Just enough,” Lindsay smiles at me, a bright beaming smile that makes me feel warm and powerful inside.
“You really think we can get through nine of them?” I shake my head.
“Get through?” She shakes her head. “No, but we can kill them.”
“Funny,” I say, trying to formulate a plan that won’t get one of us grievously wounded or injured.
“Ready? I’ll cover you.” Lindsay stands up and steps out from behind her cover, drawing back her arrow and releasing it with a humming hiss that strikes true. I don’t see the arrow hit its mark, but I can hear the creature shrieking in pain and slamming against the side of a vehicle, trying to get it out. “What are you waiting for?” she asks me while she draws another arrow.
I get up and decide to take her advice. For the first time in all my time on the road, I feel in control with these kinds of scenarios. Why get terrified now? I don’t want to get stupid, but I’m done letting fear dictate how I survive. I grip my machete and try to steady my hand. Clearing my head is the first priority. Opening my eyes to the scene, I look for the first threat.
Three of the creatures are tackling the wounded one that Lindsay sent into a world of misery and horror, while two others are busy biting mouthfuls of flesh from the dead gunman on the hood of the truck. They pull out long, stringy mouthfuls of flesh, tearing and ripping, dragging the dead man from the hood where he plummets to sprawl out on the ground. They’ve eaten most of his face and it disturbs me that they would go for that first. Hollow eye sockets stare blindly out of a bloody, fleshy skull that has been mutilated and maimed for good. One of them is chewing on a mouthful of fingers as he grips the man’s left wrist with desperate ferocity, the creature’s whole body is shaking in starving euphoria. I can’t stand the sight of it, any of it. The first threats are those ripping apart their comrade, the three.
Before I can get to them, another arrow hisses past me, too close for comfort, and pierces through the nearest creature’s back. Throwing back its head and clawing helplessly for the arrow in the center of its back, the creature’s neck is exposed and I raise my machete. The creature never sees me and I watch as the blade descends, slamming into the creature’s face. There is no blood with the initial impact, but it begins to pulse out of the wound as the creature’s jaws snap with dying twitches. Its whole body begins to sag and the two remaining horrors next to it look up at me with wide, ferocious eyes. Before the second nearest can react, I’m thrusting my stump at its throat, catching it between its collarbones before ripping the machete from the dead monster’s face. The third creature makes a run for it as the second’s shifting gaze lowers to the bladed stump pushing through its neck. I rip the blade free, tearing it out of the Zombie’s throat before kicking it in the chest and toppling it over.
The third makes a clean getaway, clambering over the tailgate of the nearest truck before lunging over the cab and rolling down the hood to safety. I don’t care about him. He can go. He can run back to whatever rat warren he came from and die there. It’s the others that I’m worried about at the moment. Another arrow launches past me, just barely making it over the windshield, and pinning one of the three in the bed of the truck in the chest. The creature is knocked backwards, screaming in bloody pain as I descend upon the two left on this side of the truck. Striking out with my stump, I pierce my blade through the gap between her protruding ribs and into her lungs, twisting as I raise my machete, and give the turning, surprised remnant of the Zombies a machete-filled backswing that takes off half of its head. The blow is fast, powerful, and I barely notice the crunch of the skull as I rip through his forehead and send the top of his skull whirling into the ether behind me. The Zombie’s eyes twitch before he drops dead, but the woman isn’t giving up without a fight. She’s turning on me, dragging my bladed stump through her organs as she twists, screaming and shrieking at me. I bring the machete back down onto her head, refusing to let her clawing hands get ahold of me or even come close to me.
The machete sinks into her skull and stops any movements that she’s making toward me. As she slumps backwards, onto the dead driver, I hear the two remaining in the back of the pickup fleeing. They’re shrieking defiantly at us, but they’re running nonetheless. Lindsay launches past me onto the hood of the truck that the woman riddled with bullets. Over shattered glass, she jumps onto the roof of the truck and draws back the bowstring once more and fires one last arrow. I can hear the screaming of the Zombie that she hit. How she got so good at that baffles me, but her skills are truly undeniable. I wish I was that good with a bow. Pulling my bladed stump free from the dead woman, I remember that I never will be.
Lindsay drops down off the hood of the truck and begins retrieving her arrows. She’s silent, grinning happily as she works. I swear, I half expect her to start whistling joyously as she does it. As for me, the car is far more interesting. There is no way that the truck can still work. There’s gas in it, but the whole thing is wedged between two pickup trucks. I don’t think that there’s a way to get the truck out. It’s jammed in real well. I try to wipe the glass off the hood of the truck before I climb onto the bumper and onto the hood, peeking through the shattered windshield at the trophies inside.
Unfortunately, there aren’t very many trophies to behold. In fact, it’s mostly a bunch of empty bags and some tents. I try to climb into the front seat as gracefully as possible, which winds up being more like a marionette without strings. Digging through the truck, I rummage through their supplies. I find five backpacks, which leads me to believe that these people have had a bit of a run in before, probably before they came up the bridge. There’s enormous bottles of water that are nearly empty and coolers that likely once held plenty of water inside of them. Among the trash are also empty cases of beer and cans of food. I grab one duffle bag and feel the weight of it. I pull the zipper back and look inside.
It’s a familiar sight. There are towels wrapped around bundles of long, dark, hard meat that has the same resemblance to the bundles of jerky that I found on Cal and Denny. I look out the window at the half-eaten man whose blood is smeared all across the hood of the truck and feel very little sympathy for him or the woman that Lindsay shot through the head. In fact, I feel as though a little justice has been served to the world. I find a box with seven shotgun shells in it, but none of the people inside the truck have a shotgun. I clamber out of the truck and onto the hood again, trying to avoid the glass as best as I can. Stepping onto the roof of the truck, I feel it bow under my weight and the sound of metal bending while I step over and into the bed.
There’s a dead Zombie in the back, the one that Lindsay shot in the chest. As for the gunman that had been firing all the way to this point across the bridge, there wasn’t much left of him. One of them went straight for his stomach and ripped pretty much all of his insides out. The others had gone to work on his face and neck while the last was more interested in the fleshy right leg. The clothes the man was wearing are torn to shreds and worthless, the gun is a bolt action hunting rifle. It looks similar to the one I lost in the Jeep. I’ve been wanting a hunting rifle for a while now, but rifles are out of my skill range now. At best, I’m capable of only a pistol. I find a revolver in the bed of the truck, but it’s spent.
The only real thing of value is the water in the cab of the truck and the cans of gasoline in the bed, with a length of hose that they’ve been using to syphon. There’s enough gas in the containers to fill the truck’s tank for one more trip. If we can find a car soon, we might be able to come back and get the fuel. I take the hose just in case. Wrapping it over my shoulder and across my chest, I hop out of the back of the truck and slowly walk toward where Lindsay is standing.
“Anything useful?” she asks.
“Water and some gas,” I shrug. “If we find a car, we could load it up, but without one, they’re too cumbersome.”
“Damn,” she shakes her head.
We’re only halfway across the bridge and decide to make the rest of the trip without much worry. The truck has cleared a rather direct path toward the other side. I keep my machete ready and Lindsay keeps her bow nocked. She’s running down on arrows. She has twelve left, but since the time she’s been with me, she’s lost five. We need to find a sporting goods store and resupply. Her ability to put arrows through people’s eyes is a lot harder to show off without any ammunition. She’s silent while we walk, smiling and letting the dusty breeze toss her hair.
At the edge of the bridge on the southern bank, we stop and look out over the interstate connectors. There’s a vast desolation to the south of here, one that is daunting and more than intimidating. Enormous, black, billowing clouds cover the southern horizon, great hurricane gales blowing vast tracts of dust and ash. It’s waiting for us, and it’s not going to let the crossing be easy. I can’t imagine walking all of that to find Florida. How are we going to endure all of that?
“Can I see the binoculars?” I ask Lindsay.
She hands them to me and I survey the surrounding area. There’s nothing of note to be seen. Unlike the northern bank, there is no encampment or refugee sanctuary. There are no bandits waiting for us, just lots of debris and forgotten waste. There’s one thing that I spot that looks of note and promise to me. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, the bodies of nearly two dozen Zombies lead down the off ramp to where a Tundra is sitting next to a pair of tents and a smoldering campfire. There’s a bloody mess of a sleeping bag still by the campfire and a handful of bodies littered among the hideous ruins of the Zombies.
“I think I found our ride,” I tell her, pointing to the white Tundra.
She follows my finger and smiles anxiously. “Damn, there was a lot of them,” she whispers.
“More than we would have been able to take care of,” I nod to her.
“It’s like there are more and more of them every day,” she whispers with disappointment.
“Didn’t you say it had something to do with the dirt?” I ask her as we keep walking.
“No, the toxins in the dirt,” she corrects. “It’s a neural toxin, slowly corroding the brain or something.”
“How do you know this?” I ask her skeptically.
She doesn’t take the skepticism lightly. “I knew a guy in Dayton who said he was a doctor. He said that the toxins were a byproduct of animals consuming the fertilized plants, that it was building a massive plague that was going to kill all life. He said that it started with the plants, but it would be a slower death for those of us with brains. It turns us into animals, reverting back to the most basic and primal needs.”
It makes sense. Cities like Detroit were being burned to the ground. Columbus was probably gone, after hearing what Lindsay witnessed there with its collapse. There was plenty out there to be frightened of and the massive dust storms were definitely beginning to top the list. With less and less shelter being available, the toxins were going to be harder to avoid. People trying to cross the wastelands on foot would be helpless, poisoned. Those who did find shelter would be forced to defend it from others trying to get in, just in case they were murderers or rapists. A lot of miscommunication would lead to death. Those too afraid to seek shelter or unable to would end up caught in the whirlwinds, slowly being poisoned by the dust and ash on their skin.
“I captured one once,” Lindsay confesses to me as we near the truck. I look at her as she starts her tale. I’m not sure that it’s one I want to listen to. “Well, he wasn’t one when I first caught him. I found a group of hunters moving through Dayton, just four of them, nothing too threatening. There are groups of a hundred in Columbus and I hear Cincinnati has an entire army of cannibalistic hunters. Anyway, four wasn’t bad. I could deal with four, and I did. I set up an ambush and killed the first with an arrow to the chest. He went down and slowly bled out while the others took cover. Too bad they took cover right where I expected them to. I’d doused the house they were in with gasoline and burnt them alive. Only one made it out and he had some pretty bad burns on his right leg. He didn’t put up much of a fight when I dragged him off.
Anyway, I chained him up in an alleyway that was blocked off. I let him scream for help, but after a while, he knew there wasn’t anyone coming for him. Not even the Zombies could get to him. I kept him alive, feeding his friends to him. He seemed to enjoy it. After the first storm, I barely noticed a difference. A second and a third storm came and he looked like he was made entirely out of dust and ash. That was when I started noticing the twitching and the drooling. It takes a while, but it slowly begins to take them. They become this sort of feral monstrosity. Anyways, I let him keep deteriorating. Storm after storm, I would study him while he withered into a feral horror. Eventually he gnawed off his left foot—the one I’d chained him with. He bled out in the middle of the night, pieces of his own foot stuck in his teeth.”