Then I remembered the news reports.
“The head!” I screamed at Kate, who had moved back as far as possible, but couldn’t close the door, as the creature was almost touching her. The pop of a second shot and the rear of the creature’s skull flew off, landing five feet behind it as it collapsed in a heap at her feet.
From the back of the truck, a scream pierced the chaos. I raced to the corner to find Earl on the ground and almost laughed, despite the circumstances.
A massively fat, naked, and refuse-covered man lay atop Earl, its hands grasping for Earl’s face. Bits of grime, bodily fluid, and spittle dripped on Earl as the obese creature struggled to eat its next meal. From the road behind us, I could now hear the moans of the approaching zombies from the street as they reached the station property, leaving the road.
Reversing the ax, I slammed the blunt side of the ax head into the zombie’s neck, feeling rather than hearing the crack of the spinal column as the blow interrupted whatever vital connection existed between the head and the body that allowed them to stay active after the delivery of otherwise mortal wounds.
The zombie fell to the side with the force of the blow, Earl’s ax handle pointing skyward. Grabbing Earl’s hand and pulling him to his feet, I threw one more glance over my shoulder toward the rear and followed him to the cab. He got in as I pulled the fueling nozzle out of the truck and, in a stroke of inspiration, locked the handle open, allowing fuel to pour onto the ground. The creatures behind us had reached the back of the truck. I satisfyingly sprayed them with the caustic-smelling fuel, dropped the handle and immediately jumped into the still open cab door, slamming it shut behind me.
I turned the key in the ignition and pulled forward, tires squealing on the cement ground that had been made wet by the still pumping gasoline. The creatures in front of us had reached the property and were moving toward the front of the truck, as I shoved the transmission into reverse, backing into a parking spot in front of the store, aiming the truck toward the road, shifting to park, and gunning the engine. As they moved slowly in our direction, moaning and shambling, I reached down and popped the cigarette lighter into it’s housing.
“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Earl shouted, looking from me to them to Kate and back to me. Fred caught the tension and bounced excitedly in his seat, pointing excitedly at the zombies.
“I’m a little sick of always being on the receiving end of this nationwide ass-mastering,” I replied, gunning the engine again, tauntingly. They had all reached the pumps, and the first few were again only feet from the cab.
“Pancake!” Fred shouted, as the first one reached the passenger door and Kate flinched back, looking sharply in my direction.
“Yeah, buddy. Pancake,” I said softly, shifting into drive and flooring the accelerator. The throaty engine roared, and the truck shot past the creatures, under the awning overhanging the pumps, and onto the street. Reaching a safe distance, I stopped as the cigarette lighter popped out dutifully from its recessed chamber under the dash.
The gently glowing lighter was a red and silver arc, tracing a slow, gentle decline into a pool of gasoline gathering at the foot of the pumps. The creatures, having turned to follow us, were now all clustered around and between the pumps, moving slowly in our direction. The graceful flight of the lighter ended abruptly in a yellow and orange roar, as the pumps, the awning, and the store erupted in flame, incinerating the creatures that had come for us, and throwing a sooty black column of oily smoke high into the air. The concussion from the blast rocked the truck.
We watched for a moment, quiet. Finally, satisfied that nothing had escaped, I pulled away from the curb. I felt myself smile, and allowed my new inner soundtrack to surface, humming softly to myself as I steered the truck to the middle of the road and headed west, away from the happily burning station.
Chapter 11
“Are you humming the fucking A-team theme song?” Earl asked, incredulous. We were moving through intermittently forested and suburban areas, neighborhoods flashing by on the right, forest on the left.
I kept my eyes on the road, not answering. I stopped humming as Kate spoke up.
“Earl, can you reach the radio knob? I’d like to see if anyone else is transmitting.” She and Fred were crammed closely together against the passenger door, her back to the window, right hand still holding the pistol. Earl was practically on my lap, the four of us making the best of a three-person cab.
He reached forward and pushed the power button, the backlighting for the tuner coming to life. As static streamed from the speakers, I looked down to check the frequency as Earl was extending his hand to reduce the volume. His left wrist bore the unmistakable oval of a human bite mark. I shifted my eyes back to the road quickly as he shot a look in my direction. He looked back to the radio, twisting the tuning knob.
“Doesn’t sound good,” I said, as Earl cycled through the stations, using his right hand for the other dial and holding his left arm close to his body. Had he seen me notice the wound?
“Where are we heading, anyway?” I asked, unfamiliar with the area.
“I figured we’d be safer on water than over land,” Kate replied, “So we were heading to the marina. I know it’s a long shot, but those things were swarming on the highways and if you think about it, the roads are probably our worst option.” She looked out the front window.
I looked at her, remembering the expressway entrance. She must have taken my look for questioning, so continued on.
“When this thing hit, everyone was directed to head for certain safe houses via the Expressway or the other major highways. But as fast as this happened, and as violent as those creatures are, all it would take would be one, maybe two stopped cars to stop the traffic on the expressway. Then everyone sitting in traffic becomes a target. Nowhere to run, and surrounded by other people.” She shuddered.
“Those cars, those buses,” clearly now referencing the evac buses from King’s Park-she probably had friends in there “would have been cages, and the expressways would have been a killing ground. Just a few of those things added to a confined space like that…” She faded off, clearly in her own head.
I nodded, thinking. Not knowing the area, I trusted Kate’s call. But now we had a situation with Earl. He was going to turn, we just didn’t know when. A-team had gone pretty quick, but he was already dead. I had no clue how long it would take someone who was still alive.
“How far to the marina from here?” I asked, slowing as a cluster of four shufflers moved into the two-lane road. We were approaching a small strip of stores on either side of the road, a post office to the left and a drug store and laundromat on the right. Traffic lights suspended above the intersection swung slowly in the wind, flashing a dull, yellow warning of caution.
Yeah, no shit.
The creatures saw the truck and turned toward us; I pulled the wheel to the left, smashing one to the pavement with the right front wheel and clipping another with the mirror that extended out from the cab on a pair of steel rods.
“About one more mile to…Holy shit!” Her calm response was interrupted as her voice rose quickly in surprise. We had reached the center of town, following the road around a bend to the right, and a roadblock had come suddenly into sight. Composed of mostly cars and smashed-up furniture, it was nevertheless fully manned by at least twenty or thirty men and women, all armed with rifles and handguns. I slammed the brakes, bringing the truck to a stop in front of the pile.
Beside me, Earl slammed against the dash, cursing under his breath. Looking over, I noticed his pallor and the sweat beading on his brow. We didn’t have much time.
Kate was rubbing the side of her head and Fred was looking intently forward, curious. His frying pan was at the ready, left hand rubbing the rim, right hand clutching the handle.
We stared ahead. The defenders stared back at us. A short, dirty man in a dark green jumpsuit that looked like a mechanic’s uniform rose to the roof of a Dodge pickup and yelled in our direction. In his right hand he held an automatic rifle, in his left a bottle of beer.
“You can turn around right now, or you can join these folk,” he gestured to the ground in front of the roadblock, indicating bodies littering the base of the barricade. I had assumed them to be creatures, but realized now that some looked human.
A man lay directly in front of the truck, face upturned to the sky, bullet wound marring the chest of his pink polo shirt.
No sign of infection, no gray skin, no bloodshot eyes, no gaping, half-chewed wounds. To his immediate left, a pretty woman in a pink sweater and jeans, maybe his wife or girlfriend, face turned to his, stomach soaked in blood, eyes vacant. I scanned the road to either side. Equal parts zombie and living humans, exterminated at the gates to this pissant village.
It took only moments of surveying the carnage to comprehend what had happened here. What would happen again.
“You’re murdering uninfected people!” Kate yelled from the passenger side, rolling her window down two inches so that her voice would carry. “You’re monsters!”
The bastard smiled. “Now how do we know whether or not they’re infected? News said that people don’t present sometimes until hours after they’ve been bit. All you folk are coming from the expressway, ain’t ya? We know it’s heavy round there.” He spit, companions on either side of him nodding. A shot rang out from the far side of the wall, and a triumphant yell sounded. I flinched, my eyes closing and reopening to check the windshield for a spider web bullet hole. Another crack, another shout. I realized they were shooting creatures behind the truck.
“These folk here tried to get in when we told ‘em to leave, and they got what’s coming to ‘em. We’re not letting anyone in. We’ve gotta look after ourselves, seeing as we haven’t seen the police or the national guard since this thing started, and we’re gonna protect our families and our property.” He turned to the side, spit again.
“The government will be out here sooner or later; you will be held accountable for this. It’s only a matter of time,” Kate said, the tone of her voice indicating that her statement was equal parts hope and determination.
He smiled again, his lower lip pulled in to hold his spittle. He looked amusedly at his compatriots then back to us. “You must be out of the loop, sweetheart!”
“Government,” he spat that word out like he had expelled the last two globules of spittle, “is already pulling back. Can’t handle this… situation. I’ve got five different HAM radio operators from Vermont to Georgia tellin’ me that the feds are drawing a line around the damn East Coast. Anything south of Maine and Northeast of Louisiana and Mississippi is considered no man’s land.”
I recoiled at the news. In three days? It was exactly like that Internet program-fast and almost impossible to get ahead of.
“Shit, they’ve already chalked up the initial sites as goners. New York City is full of these things, so is Philly and DC. Half of Congress likely got eaten-can’t say I object to that-and the President’s a no show, been flyin’ around in Air Force one for almost 72 hours straight. Even the fuckin’ Canucks are shootin’ people at the border. You think they give a shit about what we do here,” he gestured to the bodies before the barricade, “in our little slice of heaven?” Shaking his head.
Another shot from the barricade, another yell. The sound of a beer can opening and laughter.
“Bottom line folks: we’re on our own here.” He raised his gun. He wasn’t pointing behind the truck. “And you folk are too. Now, I’m going to ask you nicely one more time - ”
I shifted the truck into reverse, not waiting for the end of the sentence, and not even checking the mirrors as I turned us around. A thump from behind could have been a zombie or a Kia; either way, we moved back the way we had come.
We needed to get somewhere safe with thick walls, and some locked doors. We needed to get somewhere that we could put some distance between Earl and us. Maybe lock him out or in a different room or something. I didn’t know, but I knew he was going to pose a problem really, really soon.
I thought for a moment, finally turning to Kate.
“Where’s the closest school?” I asked, surreptitiously looking to Earl. His eyes were closed and he was drawing deep breaths. We couldn’t drive around with him in the truck, and we needed some time to regroup, maybe find another way to the marina. Besides, that pump hadn’t been on that long before we had to bug out, and we were going to be short on gas again in the near future.
Why couldn’t we have absconded with a hybrid?
She looked at me quizzically, and I shifted my gaze to Earl and back to her. She mouthed “what?”.
I looked at Earl, his eyes were still closed. I brought my arm to my mouth and mimed biting my wrist, a fake grimace of pain, and a blank stare, looking back to her and then nodding toward Earl. Her eyes widened in understanding, hand instinctively tightening on her pistol.
Speaking, she betrayed none of the visual concern. “It’s actually a half mile from here. Turn right at the second intersection and go about a quarter of a mile.” She looked at me, and back to Earl. His eyes were open again, and as he turned to me, I noticed some redness in his gaze. He was very, very pale.
“What the hell you want with a school? You wanna try for your GED?” He smiled, pleased with his little joke, and laying his head back. He laughed to himself and suddenly coughed wetly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We need to get to the water. Go trolling for dates on your own time.” His voice was weak as he laughed again at his own cleverness.
Not much time, I thought, as we turned at the intersection. Woods surrounded the road on either side, wind stirring the branches in the gray morning air.
A station wagon sat on the side of the road, doors open, vacant. A bloody handprint on the driver’s side windshield was the only evidence of foul play. In the field past the wagon, movement from the woods, and bodies could be seen passing between the trees. A deer bolted in front of us, passing out of sight into the opposite line of trees.