Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
With a loud crack, the woman’s head explodes in an instant. What’s left of her slams into the side of the truck as she falls over, collapsing into the vehicle before sliding down into the dirty street, next to the bones of a man who met a similar fate that close to the car. I realize that I’m coated in her blood, covered in droplets that make me want to throw up, that make me want to gag. It’s warm and sticky and I feel like there’s a thousand bloody spiders crawling all over me. Infecting me. Making me one of them.
I look up to Noah who gives me the ‘okay’ sign again and I furrow my brow at him. What the hell was that all about? He could have killed me. I shove my anger aside and look at the clear opening to the fanatics’ truck and take my chance. I run as quickly as I can, skidding to a stop as I slide up next to the driver’s door, clamping onto the handle and ripping it open. Slipping into the truck, I feel the keys in the ignition, where I left them earlier. With a twist of my fingers, the truck starts with a single roar. Smiling, I see that they have a little over half a tank left, more than enough to get to the dealership.
Putting the truck in reverse, I feel the bumper slam into something and I glance out my rearview mirror to see that I’ve slammed into one of the zombies. I could care less. Putting the truck in drive, I swing around and slam into a second zombie. Its back bows as the back of its head slams into the hood before it is yanked off its feet and slips under the truck. I grind another under the flat tire on the passenger’s side. The truck drives all wrong, but I quickly get the hang of it. I can do it. Slamming into four more of the lumbering creatures, one right after another, I skid to a stop in front of where Greg is still shouting at the creatures. As I hit the brakes, the small truck slides a little before Greg grabs the handle and pulls open the door.
Halfway into the truck, I hear him scream and I look to see what’s happening, but I can’t see a thing. As he slams the butt of his shotgun at something by his leg that’s still sticking out of the truck, I begin to put the pieces together. Whatever has him lets go and I see him pull his leg back into the truck, groaning and grinding his teeth in pain against the injury that he’s just received. I look at his right calf and see that there’s a chunk of it hanging by a flap of skin. I can actually feel the blood draining from my face as I look at him. Something has just taken a bite out of Greg.
Chapter Nine
I can’t stop looking at it. He claws at his pant leg while he sucks in his breaths, holding them for only a second before he shoots them back out in a panic. Fumbling for the cloth, he pulls up his pant leg and I look in horror at the chunk of skin and flesh that’s hanging by a small piece of skin and nothing more. He grimaces and groans at the sight of it and I let out a small sigh as I look at the amount of blood that’s coming out of it. I watch him reach out and touch the tender flesh with his trembling fingers.
It’ll be no consolation for him right now, but he hasn’t been hit on any major arteries or veins. If anything could be said of it, this would be considered a lucky bite. He won’t bleed out, but he’s going to lose a bit of blood if he isn’t careful. We need to take care of it as quickly as possible, but we have a growing list of issues that we need to be addressed first. I watch him pull up his tube sock, using it to hold his piece of flesh back into his leg. The dirty, once white sock is already completely tarnished by the blood running down his leg. He leans his shotgun against the dash and I notice the hair coagulated in the blood and chunk of scalp attached to it. I try not to throw up at the sight of all of it, choking down the bile that rises in my throat. Greg looks at me with a terrified and pained face that immediately twists into worry that lets me know that we’re in immediate danger.
Turning my head, I look to see that there are nearly a dozen of those things within five feet of the truck. Taking my foot off the brake, I punch the gas, feeling the truck jump forward, angrily throwing us onto the road as we bounce and shake on the flat tire. I watch the zombies vanish behind us in an instant, catching a glimpse of the twitching, dying one that Greg had beaten to the final steps of its life before climbing into the truck. Pressing the gas harder, I lay on the horn, honking it several times.
“What are you doing?” Greg snaps at me as I take a left down the next street, narrowly avoiding a stalled, dead car in the middle of the road. It’s hard driving a hobbled car, but I do the best I can with what I have. I look at him and see that he’s already starting to go pale from the shock and adrenaline fighting to take control of his senses.
“Ringing the dinner bell,” I tell him.
Honking the horn again, I see that the zombies are coming out of every crevice that this town has. They come skulking and lurking out of the gaping windows and doors, crawling and sniffing the air, listening to the sounds of commotion that could only mean one thing to these things. Life is out in the world and they want to feed on it. I keep my foot on the gas as several of the zombies in better health run outside at full speed, turning their faces toward the revving truck’s engine before I slam into them, plowing them under the truck and churning them out as broken, crumpled messes in the middle of the street. They scream and shriek as I leave them as nothing more than a pile of shattered bones and bloody flesh. The other zombies that are slower to the party immediately start tearing apart their dying brethren, feeding on the easy flesh.
Turning left again, avoiding a stalled food truck that was in the middle of a delivery to the local diner before it was abandoned by the driver, I narrowly miss the trailer. I take another left and see the five-ton truck in the distance, punching the gas once more and honking the horn. Noah was right, there are so many of these things here that I wonder if the entire town has converted into the masses of bloodthirsty flesh-eaters who are now lurking in the streets. I don’t try to avoid them. I slam into them mercilessly and leave them for those that I miss. I dodge the cars that are abandoned in the middle of the road the best I can, but a collision or two is inevitable. I swerve to avoid the five-ton and slow down, skidding to a stop and slamming into two more of the zombies.
“What the hell are you doing?” Greg shouts at me.
“We don’t want them around the truck or anywhere near here when we get the Dodge over here,” I remind him. “I’m getting them to follow us.”
“That’s a brilliant idea,” Greg snaps at me angrily. “This town isn’t that large, Val. What are we supposed to do when we get to the dealership?”
“We work fast,” I tell him with a frown on my face. I don’t need the attitude right now. I get enough of that from Lexi and Noah. He can’t go to the dark side now too. I hear thumping underneath the truck, and I take my foot off the brake again and drive just slow enough for them to follow but fast enough for them not to catch up. Taking another left, I head down the main street, driving straight for the bridge that’ll put us at the dealership again. Greg winces and grips his wounded leg as I swerve to avoid the three cars in the middle of the intersection, tossing him against the door. “You should put your seatbelt on,” I tell him.
“I’ve got other priorities right now,” Greg says to me, growling through his clenched teeth.
“Is your shotgun on safety?” I ask him, nervously looking at the shotgun that slid with him.
“No,” he says flatly.
“So that thing could go off at any moment?” I snap at him. “Put it on safety or you’re going to blow your face off.”
“Val, it’s not going to just randomly go off,” Greg tells me while he looks down at his blood-soaked jeans. “Jesus, am I going to turn into one of those things now?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, making my way through the last intersection and heading straight for the bridge. If this disease, or whatever it is, is anything like rabies, he’s got it, and my blood shower probably means I have it too. But there is no time to worry. We have to act.
I hit another zombie, watching his head smash on the hood, his jaw slamming closed and biting off his own tongue. I yank the wheel, watching him roll off the side, leaving him for the lumbering horde to feast upon. I look over at Greg and give him a comforting smile. “If you do, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he smiles back at me through the mask of pain that he’s been holding onto.
I feel bad for him. We don’t have time at the moment to dress his wounds, but we might later on. We just have to get the new truck and get the supplies loaded in it before we head out. Once we’ve put this town behind us, I’ll get out one of the medical kits and I’ll stitch him up just like I stitched up Marko yesterday. Looking at his pale face, I hope that he doesn’t turn into some sort of flesh-eating monstrosity. I don’t want to lose my man like that. I love Greg too much to watch him wither away into madness and hunger like one of these things chasing us. I don’t want to see the darkness around his milky eyes like that woman Noah had killed in front of me.
“Jesus,” Greg says, drawing my attention to him. He’s looking at me as if I’ve just burst into flames.
“What?” I ask him, glancing back at the road as we cross the bridge.
“You’re covered in blood, Val,” he says to me in a worried voice.
“Yeah, but not mine,” I tell him with confidence. “Noah killed someone right in front of me. Got blood all over me. Don’t worry about it. Focus on the Dodge.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he grumbles and winces again, looking out the window. “That kid’s losing his grip on the world. Have you seen the way he just sort of looks out at nothing? He needs to pull it together or he’s going to murder us all in our sleep.”
“Yeah, we can discuss that later,” I say to him as I pull into the dealership and hit the brakes, throwing Greg and the shotgun against the dash as it skids to a stop right before the Dodge. I don’t want us to be blocked in once we get the Dodge started. I watch Greg throw open the door and slam it shut as he rushes over to the Honda Civic and starts undoing the cables.
I pop the hood and step out quickly, rushing around and lifting up the hood. I leave Greg to deal with all of that and reach behind me for my Sig. I feel the handle just as I see the first figure appearing on the bridge. It looks over toward us and I feel a moment of terror deep down inside of me. This is absolutely recklessness. I can feel my nerves dancing as I see more and more figures appearing on the bridge, lumbering through the intersection and searching for us. Most of them look like they’re just wandering in the vague direction of an engine idling, but soon they’re going to find us, even if they stumble into a dozen cars on the way here.
Greg is hooking up the jumper cables and I feel my nerves getting hotter and hotter, like a Fourth of July fireworks display going off inside of my brain. I nervously grip my Sig, waiting for one of them to get too close. I can’t help but count them, five, eight, nine, thirteen, nineteen, and the numbers keep growing as they come closer and closer, making their way to the other end of the bridge. I look over my shoulder at Greg, who is rushing back to the Dodge and climbing in. I don’t want to tell him to hurry. I want to shout it at him. This was not a good idea.
He cranks the keys and I hear the engine start to groan a slow rhythmic whine. I look over my shoulder at the shuddering truck and feel like my world is crumbling with every rumble that doesn’t result in the truck coming to life. I stare back at the bridge; over thirty of them. Nervously, I adjust my grip on the Sig and wonder how many of them I’m going to have to kill or wound to stall them. Maybe if I just shoot one, they’ll all descend upon the poor guy and rip him apart. I hear Greg shouting inside the cab of the truck, bargaining with God to try and help him start this truck magically.
“Any day now,” I shout at him anxiously.
Once more, he twists the key in the ignition and the truck roars to life with a guttural cough, and I turn and look at the enormous cloud of smoke shooting out of the exhaust pipe. It hasn’t been started in well over a year, so I guess that some trouble is to be expected, but this little moment of hesitation has cost us serious time. I watch as the first of the zombies start climbing over the parked cars, slapping their hands on the panels and looking straight at us. I feel like they’re actually seeing me, and they wrinkle their noses as their blackened lips peel back into horrendous snarls of amber teeth. I want to scream and run, but there’s nowhere to go. I just look at them and feel the overwhelming sense of dread and fear deep down inside of me. I want to scream and unload everything I have at them, but they’re starting to fan out, moving faster as they stumble and clamber toward us. I raise my Sig as Greg kicks open the door.
“Val, come on,” Greg shouts at me.
I turn and rip the cables off of the fanatics’ truck’s battery while Greg gets the cables off of the Dodge’s, throwing them aside and slamming the hood down, sending up a plume of dust and ash that makes me choke and gag. I look over my shoulder at the growing crowd. There has to be over fifty of the creatures coming for us and that’s when I stop moving and look at them. There’s no way we’re going to get out of here. There’s no way that we’re going to stop them from following us and getting us if we just leave now with the fanatics’ truck sitting here. They’ll chase after the Dodge and they’ll be right back on our doorstep where we left them.
“Val, what are you doing?” Greg shouts at me again, climbing into the truck. “Move your ass.”
That’s when I start making my way back toward the white truck with the black cross painted on it. The creatures are closing in, but I think I have time. I think I have time to keep them here instead of following us. If we can’t get the supplies in the Dodge, after all, this whole thing will be a waste of time. Nothing will get saved and we’re all going to be stuck back where we were. We don’t have the ammunition to keep whittling them down one by one. We need to keep them here for just a little while longer. Dropping down into the passenger’s seat, I flip on the silent radio and hear the static softly buzzing.
That’s no good. I hit the seek buttons and try to find something on the radio, glancing over my shoulder at the dusty rear windshield, to see that I have less than a minute before there are dozens of those things on top of me and I’m going to be stuck in this truck with the hood up. I keep hitting the seek button, searching for anything, but there is nothing in the world, not even an estranged lunatic ranting on their own private radio station.
“Come on,” I hiss, looking at a button that’s my last hope.
I hit the CD button and see that nothing happens. Who doesn’t have a CD in their radio for those days that there’s just nothing worth listening to? I growl and pull down the visors, looking at the row of burned CDs. I can’t help but feel the irony of dogmatic holy men driving around with burned CDs. There are a lot of copyright laws they’re breaking right now. I grab the first CD and stuff it into the slit, watching the machine slowly swallow it. I hear the first hand slamming onto the tail of the pickup as a bloodcurdling shriek escapes the mangled lips of the creature. I look at it and sense that I’m not going to make it. There’s no time. The CD slides into the player and I watch as the screen lights up. Grabbing the volume knob, I crank it up past thirty and dive out of the truck, leaving the door open for all of them to listen to my little concert for them.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but when the music begins I know the lyrics, I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised to hear a song claiming, “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. The creatures flocking around the truck, staring at me, turn their heads to the source of the noise, glancing from me to the machine that’s screaming at them in pure nineties glory. One of the creatures isn’t too willing to let me go and reaches out for me. Its fingers grip my shoulder, but I let it slide off, brushing it aside and rushing toward the Dodge, holstering my Sig. Greg flings the door open and I clamber into the large truck, taking a deep breath of pine air fresheners that have been baking in this thing for over a year. Slamming the door shut, we watch the demented creatures surrounding the fanatics’ truck, completely ignoring us. The only creature that still has any interest in me is ground under the passenger’s wheel when Greg roars out of the parking lot.