The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak (24 page)

Given the situation with mother and son leaping from a second story window like that, Garrett would have probably thought in any other circumstance that either the house was on fire or they were trying to escape some other imminent and life threatening peril. The one thing that convinced him that this was not a case of a mother and son desperately fleeing a more immediate hazard inside that house was the perverse and pure loathing visible
on the face of Steve's wife as she started charging across the parking lot towards them. He knew without a doubt that her intent towards them was pure hostility in the most primal of ways, if she reached them, she was going to do all she could to rip them apart with her bare hands. Steve was still doubled over and in no condition to try and move or even help to talk his wife down. Garrett would either have to make a run for it and leave him to face his wife in this condition alone or stand his ground and try to fend her off. He glanced from side to side for anything that he could possible use as an improvised weapon, a garbage can lid, tree branch or even a child's toy left outside. There was nothing but cars and concrete anywhere within a reasonable distance and he realized he was going to have to go toe to toe with this crazed woman with just his own bare hands. He took two steps past Steve to place himself between the charging woman and her incapacitated husband, and planted his left foot behind him with his weight evenly distributed and ready to absorb the full impact of her head on charge and to do his best to keep her from reaching her husband and ripping him to shreds.

A flash of color moving fast across the parking lot and the sudden roar of a motor coming from his right ca
ught his attention as a green truck accelerated rapidly around the corner into the parking lot in front of his apartment. Garrett thought that the driver must be crazy or blind, because as the truck straightened itself back out in between the lane of parked cars, the front bumped turned at an angle that now seemed to be purposely aimed at a point where it would intersect Steve's wife. He instinctively shouted out a warning to the woman, but whether she heard him or even understood was something he would never know. The truck slammed into her at close to thirty miles per hour, there was no indication that the driver had tried to either swerve out of the way or even hit the brakes, from the sound of the racing engine Garrett was convinced that if anything, the truck had continued to speed up even after striking the woman. Steve's wife disappeared from view as the truck sped past, Garrett had a fleeting glance of a flying tuft of dirty blond hair billowing out from the front of the truck as the vehicle crossed in front of him and then an instant later slammed into the rear quarter panel of a black Mustang tucked into the last parking spot on the next row of buildings. The impact of the crash turned the Mustang almost completely sideways as it was pushed by the heavier pickup truck onto and past the sidewalk where the passenger side folded up around the base of a solid concrete lamp post. The rear bed of the truck rose up off the ground several feet as the lamp post absorbed the impact but held fast and stopped both vehicles in their tracks. A loud snap was followed immediately by a hissing sound as a fog of hot steam began to escape from the side of the bent and twisted hood of the truck. Steve's wife was nowhere in sight and Garrett was certain that her crushed and mangled body must be wedged into the narrow space between the front of the truck and the smashed side of the Mustang. He was certain that the woman was dead, the impact of the truck alone had carried her fifty to sixy feet across the parking lot where she must have suffered the brunt of the collision between the two vehicles. He imagined that it was even possible that she had been cut in half at the waist given the height difference between the front bumper of the truck and where it had slammed into the lower sitting car.

Garrett glanced down at Steve for a second and saw that the man had now completely collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees while dry heaving as his stomac
h continued to work against him. Rivulets of snot were dangling from his nose all the way down to the vomit covered ground under his face, the man looked to be in pretty bad shape. Whether he had even the slightest awareness of what had just happened to his wife and son, Garrett had no idea, but in his current condition he knew it was not the time to mention it. With nothing more that he could do for Steve at the moment and the threat to him now removed, Garrett focused his attention back to the smoking wreck of the pickup truck. Through the rear window of the passenger cab he could see two figures in the front seats, the passenger appeared to be leaning towards the door on that side and was not moving, possibly injured from the wreck, the driver on the other hand seemed to be struggling to open his bent door. Garrett left Steve where he was and dashed over to the truck to see what he could do to help whoever was inside. He had made it to within a few feet of the bed when the driver’s door finally popped open with a squeal of tortured metal. The driver rolled out of the seat and onto the ground with his back to Garrett and it looked from the way the man was moving slowly and clumsily like he might be injured.

"Hey man, are you ok?" Garrett yelled out as he continued to move closer to the driver who was now resting on the ground facing away from him.

"What do you think asshole? Have you ever known me to cry about a few bumps and bruises?" There was no mistaking the voice of his longtime friend Calvin and as he was speaking he rolled back on his side to face Garrett. Aside from a few fresh cuts across parts of his face and what was probably going to end up being a nasty black eye probably from the air bag impact, he looked to be in decent shape.

His surprise at seeing his old friend roll out of that wreckage was replaced with the shocking implications of what had just happened,
"What the hell? You ran that woman down Calvin, did you even see her?"

Before Calvin could reply
, Garrett was already moving around towards the front of the truck to see if there was even a chance that she could still be alive and if there was anything that he could do to help her until they could get an ambulance out there.

"STOP! Let her be, just thank me for saving your damn stupid ass. She was about ten seconds from chewing your ugly face off and turning you into one of her own kind. Don't get any closer to her either, chances are she is still dangerous even after a hit like she just took."

Garrett had just reached the edge of the smoking engine compartment when he was stopped in his tracks by Calvin's sudden crazy outburst. Confused and also now concerned that maybe he had hit his head harder than suspected, he turned back to him, "Are you sure that you are ok? What the hell are you talking about? Turning me into one of her own what? She might still be alive under there, you could go to jail for this, the least we can do is try and save it from becoming a murder rap if she dies."

Calvin moaned as he tried to stand, his hand clutching against his chest, "Damn, might have busted a rib or two after all. Listen to me Garrett, I am guessing you are a little behind the times in just exactly what the hell has been going on in the world and we don't have a lot of time to stand here in the open and have a long discussion about it.
It’s a fucking zombie apocalypse my friend, just like in the movies, your little blond friend there was already a full on zombie and had you and your buddy back there locked in her sights for her next snack."

Not knowing Calvin for one to be influenced by media or other sensationalized stories Garrett was even more convinced that his friend must have smacked his head pretty hard and was possibly suffering from a concussion or other internal injuries. He actually let out a sarcastic laugh as he replied, "Zombies? Man you must still be drunk from last
night, is that what's going on? You’re going to add a DUI to everything else here. I really don't know how the hell I am going to be able to bail your ass out of this one."

Calvin had now regained his feet and was turning to look inside the truck suddenly remembering that he had someone else in the cab with him, "Look, we don't have time to stand out here in the open and argue this at the moment, those damn things are starting to turn out in larger numbers all over the place. Kimberly is sick, I need to get her somewhere safe, my place is not good right now. Take a look at you
r little victim in front of the truck if you don't believe me, but don't get within arm’s reach, trust me on that. After you are satisfied, get your ass over here and help me get her inside."

Looking back towards the tangled mess of the bent and steaming hood of the truck, Calvin was just able to make out a clump of hair sticking an inch or so into the air from the small space between the crushed ends of the truck and Mustang. He took several steps to the left to reach a point where he could see into the gap between the point of impact and recoiled back a foot at the
sight. As he had suspected, the impact had been angled just right to cut the woman in half across a point just below her navel. The bottom portion of her body was almost at his feet as he approached the front of the truck, one shoeless foot was jutting out from underneath the Mustang and bent away from the ankle at an unnatural angle. That sight was bad enough, what really caused him the greatest shock was when his eyes came to rest on the upper half of the woman's body. A tangled mess of fecal matter and partially digested food was still spilling from the torn ends of the mangled length of intestine dangling like a weathered hose from the remains of the upper half of her body. Held in place by a portion of the trucks grille embedded into the side of the Mustang, if seen from any other angle it would look as though the woman was still completely intact. In fact if he had seen her from a different angle he would have not only thought that she was intact but that she was still alive and trying to claw her way free of the wreckage and he may have been tempted to rush to her aid. As it was, the injury should have killed her instantly, there was just no possible way that a human being could have survived. Instead of the upper half of the body simply laying slumped lifeless across the hood of the truck, she was very much still alert and just as anxious to get her hands on him as she had been right before she became this permanent hood ornament for the truck. Trying with all her might she was slashing her hand through the air in a clawing motion towards him, her dead looking milky eyes were locked on him while her teeth continued snapping and biting ready to sink into his flesh at any moment. It seemed to Garrett that she had no understanding of the position she was in, she acted as though her body was still in motion and that in only two or three steps she should be on top of him. The other thing that he noticed about her was that there was no indication in her distorted facial expressions that she was experiencing even the slightest measure of pain. He had taken Calvin's proclamation about a zombie apocalypse as a product of a possible head injury he suffered from the impact, but now he was starting to think there may actually be something to it after all. He had to admit that as unbelievable as the notion sounded he didn't really have a clue what else to call it. He also reminded himself that Calvin could not have seen the condition this woman was in from his position either before or after falling from the truck after the wreck. But he had known what Garrett would find when he walked around to the front of the wreckage and spied the woman. He was looking at a woman who had actually already been dead well before the truck had cut her in half. As much as he hated to admit it, the zombie theory also explained what had happened in Steve’s house when he was attacked by his wife and son. He had been bitten by the boy and that was probably why he was suffering such an agonizing sickness, his own son had infected him with the virus.

Backing away from the struggling woman but still unable to take his eyes off of her clawing and reaching arms, he started moving back towards the cab of the truck where Calvin was working to free the unconscious Kimberly from her seatbelt.

"Satisfied?" Calvin called out from inside the truck, "Now give me a damn hand with her,
the door is bent in on her and she's stuck. I don't think she’ hurt any more than she already was but I need you to pull the door from the outside just enough so I can pull her free from in here."

There was nothing Garrett could do fo
r Steve's wife and the issue of zombies would have to wait for the moment while they focused on getting her free from the wreckage. Garrett raced to the passenger side of the truck and peered inside the window, Kimberly was face down with the side of her head leaning against the door and the rest of her body pushed at an angle towards Calvin in the driver’s seat. The door was unlocked and gave a little when he pulled on the handle, but then reached a point where it rubbed up tight against the bent frame of the front of the truck. Garrett saw that the door frame itself was wedged several inches into the passenger compartment and he imagined that part of the door must be holding Kimberly's legs stuck against the seat. Grabbing the door handle with both hands and planting his feet firmly on the ground Garrett was able to pull the door open just about ten inches to a point where Calvin yelled out that he had Kimberly's legs free.

As gently as possible
, Calvin slid the girl’s limp and unconscious body across the seat until he was able to get her leaning against the inside of the driver’s door. Garrett came around to the driver’s side of the truck and saw that Calvin seemed to have the situation under control. Turning back towards his townhouse he spotted Steve still in the same spot he had left him several minutes earlier when he was preparing to face off against his crazed wife. Steve was now completely prone on the ground and from where Garrett stood it appeared that the man's condition was getting much worse, he could see that his skin had paled a great deal in the last couple of minutes and that he had managed to puke up even more bloody vomit. He was concerned about what may be happening with Steve if the zombie scenario was accurate and running the same course as fiction movies and novels most often portrayed. In the meantime he agreed with Calvin that getting inside with both Kimberly and Steve was a priority at the moment, he wanted to keep trying the emergency lines to see if they could get some medical assistance and also to find out exactly what Calvin knew about their situation.