The Dead & Dying: A Zombie Novel (4 page)

You killed me....

How do you say “I'm sorry” for something like that?

I was supposed to be their protector, their shining hero in a world gone to hell; and look what happened. Shit, in the end I couldn't even keep myself safe, could I? And, despite what Doc always told me, I can't shake the feeling that I deserve this. Maybe this is what Josie's karma is really all about: I killed a little boy and his mother and now am paying the price.

“That,” I hear Doc say in my mind, “is so much bullshit.... ”

He was the only one I ever told about the boy. After that, I kind of locked it away in my head. I thought if I pretended it never happened then maybe I would be able to convince myself that it had all been some sort of dream. But, as much as you wish it did, it just really doesn't work that way.

I still remember the day I told Doc what had happened as clearly as if it were only a week or so ago; but we were actually several months into the infestation by then. Long enough to know that once the corpse's muscle tissue started breaking down they weren't quite as fast as the ones freshly dead. Long enough for our society to have collapsed entirely with no hope of it ever rising from its ashes like a silver winged phoenix. By then we knew that we were utterly alone. The military, FEMA, the Red Cross... no one was coming to save us. We only had each other and what meager supplies we could scavenge to see us through.

Fifteen miles out of Bloomburg, the engine started sounding as if one of those damn corpses had crawled up under the hood and was pounding away with a hammer. About the same time, that 'ole temperature gauge started creeping up and threatening to ease its way into the red. Doc eased up off the gas for a fraction of a second as he slammed a fist into the steering wheel, causing the horn to overpower the growl of the engine for the same amount of time it took him to curse. But then both hands were back on the wheel again, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white as bone.

“Can't stop now!” he yelled over the sound of the engine. “We'd never stand a chance out there.”

He was right. Though most of the scenery was nothing more than a blur, it was all too obvious that those people out there weren't bored locals who just up and decided to take a leisurely stroll down the interstate. And this late in the game I didn't have to actually see them to know what they looked like: I was more than familiar with the festering wounds that even maggots wouldn't touch; I'd seen bones jutting through flesh, little kids with half their faces looking like the skin had been peeled back, refugees from a burn ward staggering along as bits and pieces dropped off. After a while, your mind kind of goes numb and you really don't think too hard about that old man with a screwdriver sticking out of what used to be his eye or that pretty young girl dragging her intestines along behind her.

“Bout ten more miles or so and we should be outta the 'burbs.” I yelled back.

Personally, I wasn't quite so sure the old Chevy would make it another five miles, much less ten. It'd taken quite a beating when we tried to force our way through the downtown district. In the movies, you could always just plow your car through small groups of them and they would go flying and rolling off the hood. In reality, a person – even a dead one – does quite a bit of damage to a vehicle. There's this thud that you feel all the way in the pit of your stomach and the hood just kind of crumples up. Sometimes they do bounce off the top of the car but more often than not they just kinda disappear a fraction of a second before there's a bump in the road that wouldn't have been there otherwise. I could tell 'ole Doc was having a hell of a time trying to keep the steering wheel from jerking right out of his grasp but I was only seeing that out of the corner of my eye. Mainly, I was watching the plume of steam that had begun rising from the buckled remains of the grill and cussing myself for talking him into coming this way.

By the time we hit the on-ramp, the notion of just busting our way through anyone or anything that stood in our way had been left with our front bumper back at the corner of Oak and Swanson. So I just braced myself against the window with one arm as Doc swerved in and out of the mangled hunks of metal that used to be cars.

Part of me had expected the Interstate to be virtually clear of the dead, but they were everywhere. The rotters shambled along as quickly as their decomposing tissue would allow and tended to cluster in small packs; the freshies, however, were a different story. Once they'd broken through the initial rigor mortis, they still pretty much had control of their muscles. They ran behind the car like a pack of wild dogs chasing down a rabbit: zigzagging through overturned buses and multi-car pileups, leaping over barrels that had fallen from trucks, crashing through clumps of rotters....

To make matters worse, the sound of our engine was like a beacon for the bastards. They scrambled up embankments and fought to break through the glass of the cars they had died, and subsequently become trapped, in. Every ramp we passed was already congested with a rush hour of rotting flesh by the time we got there and I began to taste that metallic tang of fear in the back of my throat.

“This ain't looking good, Carl. This ain't looking good at all.”

Even though Doc was practically standing on the pedal, the car was beginning to lose speed. Every few seconds it would shimmy and lurch as the gears whined in protest; something that smelled like a cross between burning rubber and ozone flooded through the vents, causing my eyes to water and the little hairs in my nostrils to tickle as if I had to sneeze.

“Come on, come on damn it, come on!”

We weren't going to make it. The certainty of this hit me like an cold fist in the gut. Our car was going to shudder and die. And within moments we would be overtaken.

An image flashed through my head of ants clambering over a crust of bread that I had dropped onto their hill as a child. I remembered how quickly they had descended; how, for a moment of two, not so much as a speck of white could be seen through the densely packed bodies that swarmed over their prize. And then they began ripping and tearing at it, carting away jagged little pieces....

We'd dropped to about thirty miles per hour by then and the little icon of an engine was flashing red on the dashboard while this bell chimed out over and over.

“We had quite a run, huh Doc? I just want you t' know.... ”

“Don't you talk like that, Carl! This ain't over, my friend. Not by a long shot.”

We were coming up on an overpass and by now were going so slow that I had time to notice the lone zombie standing up there. Strangely enough for a second or two I felt this wave of sadness wash over me. As if this walking corpse with his missing left arm and tattered clothes were looking out over the Interstate like the Indian in those old commercials from the seventies: surveying all the damage that had been wrought as a single tear slid down the oozing flesh that had once been his cheek. In my mind, I heard this voice, this narrator, say in a deep baritone: “People start pollution; zombies can stop it.”

I felt a laugh bubbling up within me and knew I had to fight to keep it down. I was afraid that if I started with even the smallest chuckle, it would keep right on growing to the point that I wouldn't be able to stop. I could all too clearly imagine them tearing and biting and gouging while I continued to cackle like some exile from the loony bin.

Doc was so focused on the labyrinth of twisted metal and decaying bodies that he didn't see what happened next. I'd already been watching that zombie on the overpass, though, so I saw everything as it played out. It couldn't have been more than just a fraction of a second, but time seemed to kind of slow down; it was almost like I were a character in a movie and someone who knew what was coming up had decided to hit the slow-mo button on the remote.

The freshy on the overpass looked as if it jerked to attention, almost like the roar of the engine below had startled it from a state of reverie. Without a moment's hesitation, it vaulted over the concrete wall, launching itself into the air as if it would be able to soar like a bird of prey on the wind currents. Gravity had other plans, though, and I remember noticing how the shredded shirt covering its body flapped in the air like streamers as it fell.

“Doc, look ou.... ”

The falling corpse smashed into our windshield, releasing a spider web of cracks through the glass. It's one remaining hand sought for purchase, clawing at the smooth surface as if it thought it could dig its way in; but then it's entire body slid off the car and tumbled across the pavement. At the same time, Doc had lost all control: the car spun in circles for what could have been an eternity or merely the amount of time it took to blink an eye before a bone jarring crash stopped it's momentum.

Doc blinked his eyes a couple time and shook his head as if trying to get the world around us to stop spinning.

“Son of a bitch!”

The engine had died when we smashed into the side of an overturned tanker and Doc frantically turned the key in the ignition. It whined in protest but tried to turn over none-the-less.

“Start damn it start.... ”

For a moment, it caught and the car sputtered to life.

“Hot damn!”

Doc slapped the transmission into reverse and, as he did, the entire car shook like we had suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an earthquake. There was a loud pop from under the hood before the car flooded with the smell of gasoline and died again.

“Shit shit
shit
!”

Through the shattered windshield, I could see a small cluster of corpses about half a mile away, shambling toward the bridge that stood between us and the next off-ramp. From that distance, they looked to be mostly rotters.

“What the fuck happened?” Doc's normally deep baritone now bordered on a squeal and dark stains had begun to spread around the armpits of his t-shirt.

“Zombie. Jumped off the overpass to try t' get us when it saw us comin'. We hafta get out of here, Doc. We hafta get out of here now!”

A freshy had burst through the pack of rotters on the bridge, toppling several and leaving others reeling in the wake of its enthusiasm. Though too far away to actually see its eyes, I had no doubt that they were solely focused on our wreck of a car.

“Damn it, Carl, you think I don't know that? Shit!”

A quick glance over my shoulder caused a chill to settle into my body so completely it was as if I'd been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

“Doc, we're in it deep my friend.”

The interstate behind us was swarming with the dead we'd already attracted. They were practically shoulder to shoulder, packed so densely that the freshies among them had to claw and climb their way over the top of the throng.

Doc stole a glance and what little color he had left drained from his face.  He was silent for a moment as he gnawed repeatedly on his lower lip.

“Well,” he finally said, “there's definitely no turning back.”

Ahead of us, more and more corpses joined the slow march toward the bridge. Two more freshies were fighting their way through and the original one had closed half the distance between them and us.

“Just a matter of minutes, now.”

I pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in my pocket and studied it for a moment. I looked at the little tears in the paper, the dark stains where it had gotten wet and then been allowed to dry again. Doc may have thought I was trying to play it cool, but in reality I was wondering if my hands would stop shaking long enough for me to actually light the damn thing.

“These things will kill ya, Doc. Be glad you never took up the habit.”

“Son of a bitch, that bastard's still kickin'.”

I rose up in my seat a little so I could look out the window at whatever it was Doc had noticed.

“I'll be damned.... ”

The freshy that had leaped from the overpass in the throes of homicidal zeal looked as if it had been attacked with sledgehammers. Jagged shards of bone poked through just about every part of its body; both legs were splayed out in angles never meant for the human form to experience and the left side of its face looked as if it had caved in. But, even so, it was wiggling its way across the asphalt, inching closer and closer to the side of the car.

“Crazy fuckin' zombies . . .”

I lit the cigarette and took a long, slow drag. The smoke scratched my throat and tasted like oven-baked shit, but I would be damned if I was going to die without one final puff.

CHAPTER EIGHT: JOSIE

But I didn't die; not then, not there. As I swung the tire iron and squinted into the brightness of the doorway, a deep voice echoed through the silo.

“Whoa, missy, easy there. We're alive... we're living!”

The figure looming before me was still nothing more than a blurry silhouette but as I tried to blink the stinging away I began to realize that it was holding both hands in front of it, palms outward. For a moment I thought of a mime in the beginning stages of a Trapped In A Box routine and my mind rapidly filled in the details: black and white striped shirt, a bowler hat, face painted as white as the gloves he held up before him. And I began to laugh.

In fact, I began to laugh so hard that the tire iron thumped to the ground as I hugged my stomach with both arms. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and I tried to speak but every sound that began to pass through my lips seemed to become the most hysterical thing I'd ever heard.

At some point, I dropped to my knees and what had started as a laugh had somehow morphed into crying; at that moment, kneeling inside an abandoned silo in the middle of snow-blanketed fields that stretched as far as they eye could see, it really hit me:
everything was gone.

Everything I had ever loved, everything that had comprised the brush strokes in my portrait of reality... a wave of mutilation had crashed down upon it all, leaving nothing but ruined reminders and artifacts amid the flotsam of rotting flesh. The world had changed in every conceivable way and there was no going back now.