Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (30 page)

“Close it, Emma!” Johnny shouts.

The girl does as she’s told,
letting the hatch fall with a heavy thud and backs away toward the edge of the
roof.

Ron begins to slow the truck
down once he’s far enough from town. His mind is telling him to keep on going,
but his heart tells another story. His lips tighten as he swings the steering
wheel and make a u-turn in the middle of the road.

“You can’t leave them there,” he
tells himself. “You can’t let them die like that.”

He floors the gas pedal and
speeds back toward town, angry that his heart got the better of him.

He stays locked up in his
apartment for days, waiting for the internet to come back on. He can hear
shouting on the streets and gunfire as he watches the lights flicker and fade.
His neighbors left at some point, but he can’t place exactly when. He knows he
should go, but can’t bring himself to look out the window to see what’s
happening outside.

When night comes, he plugs his
ears with cotton and tries to drown out the noises, but nothing cancels out the
pleas for help. There comes a dull thud from the apartment below and he waits
silently, trying to place the sound. It is as if something has been dropped and
broken.

It is not until he can smell
smoke that he dares to open his front door. A thin mist builds in the hallway
and he can smell the wiring burning as the sounds of popping assaults his ears.

The farthest door down the hall
buckles and explodes outward and he is knocked to the floor from the explosion.
He shakes off the impact and looks at the fire building through the exposed
apartment.

He’s back on his feet as the
panic sinks in. The hallway is a whirl of smoke and orange glow as he runs,
looking back as the floor begins to buckle and collapse behind him. He takes to
the stairwell as the flames lick at the ceiling overhead.

He gets outside in enough time
to see the building rage in flames behind him. There are people everywhere,
stumbling around through the smoke. They see him and begin to approach. He
stumbles over something and falls from the sidewalk, landing on a body sprawled
out halfway onto the lawn. He turns on the ground and faces a corpse, a blank
stare shooting off toward the building, a clean hole where the man’s forehead
used to be. He kicks away and stands as the others come closer.

“Stay away,” he says, fear in
his voice. “Don’t come any closer!”

An old hunting rifle lies on the
ground next to the corpse, partially obstructed by the remnants of meat that
cling to the butt of the gun.

“Stay back!” He grabs the weapon
and shakes it to dislodge the decay. “I’ll shoot! I swear I will…” His voice is
quivering as the people get closer.

He can see the milk white of
their eyes through the smoke. Their stares are empty and encompassing like they
were trying to look through him. Their mouths hang slack as if they were all at
the edge of an epiphany.

He fires the rifle and hits one
of them before they are able to fully surround him. “I told you I’d shoot!” he
cries.

The woman keeps coming with the
same stare in her sunken sockets, a hole leaking out thick, dark blood from her
shoulder as she stumbles and jerks across the lawn.

“Get back,” he says, shuttering.
“Why won’t you get back?”

He takes off along the strip of
lawn, away from the bodies and runs as fast as his feet will carry him.
Everywhere he turns, there is nothing but destruction and death. Cars burn and
bodies litter the streets. He can smell charred meat in the air along with wood
and the same acrid electrical odor like back in the hallway of his apartment
building.

“Help me, please, God help me,”
a woman cries from the second story window of a house. “You there, catch my
baby,” she says, cradling an infant under its arms. “Please, he’s about to get
in.” She sobs. “Please, just save my baby.”

Ron shakes his head in fear as
his stomach sinks. “No, I … I …” he stammers and takes back to running. He can
hear her screaming as his feet slap against the cold concrete. Her shrill,
cackling voice cracks right before it is torn away.

A baby cries and then only the
battling sounds of chaos come like silence in war.

He’s hated himself these many
weeks as he has rolled over the scenario in his mind. Countless times, the
images assault him. He felt like a coward, but no longer. He can’t make it up
to the woman or her baby, but he
can
make it up to those people he left
stranded.

Cocking the steering wheel, he
veers across the road when he sees the gas station in the distance. He can see
the children pace along the edge of the roof. Through the battered windshield,
he can make out the alleyway that is blocked off by the fencing at the rear.
Somehow, it has managed to hold up against the onslaught from the dead.

“He’s coming back,” Billy says.
“He’s coming back for us!”

Emma looks to the road and can
make out the blur of the truck as it speeds closer. She runs to the hatch, but
stops short when she hears cries of pain and guttural howls coming from inside.
She staggers back as she hears the man crash into the light pole alongside the
building and braces herself for the impact.

 “Shit,” he yells from below, “jump!”
The light pole teeters and cracks. “You have to jump in the back.”

The children look down at the
truck. It seems farther down than they remember having climbed.

“I don’t think I can do it,”
Billy says.

“You have to,” Emma replies.
“Just hold my hand and close your eyes. On the count of three, we’ll jump.
Okay?”

“Hurry, they’re coming,” Ron
yells, watching the dead scrape at the fence.”

“One,” Emma says and grips
Billy’s hand. “Two…” She looks down at the bed of the truck. “Three!”

The children launch themselves
off the building and flail their legs on the way down, screaming as they fall.
With a soft thud, they land on the boxes of food and water, crushing them, but
effectively breaking their fall.

As soon as the children hit, Ron
hits the gas and sends up a cloud of dust as he backs up along the alleyway,
not daring to look behind the truck at the dead who were inches away. He puts
the truck into drive and grazes the light pole as he passes, breaking it loose
and sending it toppling over onto the roof.

A corpse clings to the tailgate
and Emma lifts her rifle in time to see its hazy stare over the trim of the
truck bed. She places the bead of the sight between the creature’s eyes,
directly above its nose, and pulls the trigger. The quiet snap of the .22 is
almost inaudible as the corpse’s head cocks backward gracefully as if it were
at the cusp of realization. It tumbles away, rolling as Ron makes a tight turn
and throws the children down to the bed of the truck. “Hold on!” he says after
the fact.

They can hear a crash from
outside and the muffled voices of panic before they hear a vehicle speed away.
There’s a thud on the roof and then only the rasps of the dead on the other
side of the door.

“I didn’t think it would end
this way,” Scarlet says as her face reddens from the force she’s exerting on
the door.

“It doesn’t have to,” Johnny
says, motioning with his head to a chair positioned against the wall. “Go get
that chair and we’ll wedge it under the handle.”

“You sure you can hold it?” she
asks, letting up on the door.

“Yeah, I’ve got it.” He nods.

Scarlet scurries to the chair
and drags it back.

“All right,” he says. “Now slide
it under the handle.”

She scoots the back of the chair
below the handle and it skids across the floor with a shrill scrape as the dead
thrash from the other side. Johnny places his foot under the legs and kicks it
into place.

They breathe heavy as they stare
at the buckling chair, held in position by the groove between the floor tiles.
The grout chips away, little by little until the leg of the chair finally
wedges into place and sets firmly.

“Now what?” Scarlet asks.

“We can figure that out once
we’re on the roof.” He climbs the ladder and pushes at the hatch, but it won’t
budge. He steadies himself and puts his back into it, but it still won’t move.
“It’s stuck,” he says. “There’s something blocking it.

“We’re trapped in here?”

Johnny sighs and climbs back
down. “That’s what it looks like.”

She shakes her head slowly from
side to side. “I don’t want to die like this, John.” She backs up against the
far wall and stares at the door. “I don’t …”

He reaches out and puts his arms
around her, pulling her closer and brushes the hair out of her face before he
hugs her tight against his chest. She begins to sob with slight convulsions
that he can feel vibrate all the way through to his spine.

“If they get through, just hold
onto me as tight as you can,” he says with a crack in his voice. He swallows
deeply and holds her for all he’s worth. He presses his head into the curve at
her neck as the door crashes open. He squeezes her tighter as the first bite
sinks in.

·21

Ron glances at the signs along
the frontage road and veers right onto an overpass, heading toward a rural
highway that bypasses the freeway he’s been driving along. There’s something
secured to one of the signs and he slows down to read it.

Refugee rescue is 5 miles ahead
on Hwy 93.

He stares at it for a long time
before the message finally registers.

“Hey, kids, I think we’re going
to be okay,” he says with a smile.

“We should just keep going until
we get to the mountains,” Emma replies, “like we were doing before we met you.”

“That sounds like a fine idea
and all, but I can’t keep looking after you two,” Ron says. “There are soldiers
there who can look after you better than I can.”

“We shouldn’t go there,” Billy
says. His face is stricken with fear. “The soldiers are bad.”

“Now, come on,” Ron says. “The
military is there to help us. I’ve just spent some of the worst weeks of my
life stuck in a gas station. It would be nice to have someone else protecting
me for a change.”

“We shouldn’t go there,” Billy
whispers to Emma.

“I know.” She nods.

For over an hour, Ron follows
the signs, weaving through the occasional wreck in the road and traveling
through the ditch when necessary. The bodies have thinned out since he’s left
town and only a few stragglers remain, lost to the pilgrimage of the damned.
Their moans remind him of why he never left the gas station, and chose to
remain a prisoner rather than have to face them.

Every few miles he sees a new
sign which brings hope of finding the base. The old street markers are covered
over with official stenciled lettering with an indication of how many miles are
left for any refugee that may discover them. Between the lines, the messages offer
freedom to Ron; they show that there is still some type of civilization to be
had. He smiles to himself and tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “Not too
much farther now,” he says to the children. “A few more miles and we’re home
free.”

In hushed whispers, Billy tells
his story to Emma. He tells her what happened to him back at the Anderson’s
house and of how the soldiers fired on him. His eyes are laced with tears as he
recounts the memories and he tries to push the emotions back so she won’t see
him cry.

“It’s okay,” she says. “If
anything happens, we’ll run. We’ll get as far away as we can. We won’t look
back.” She rubs his shoulder, trying to convince him as much as she’s trying to
convince herself.

“There it is, kids,” Ron says.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”

A double set of chain link fence
spreads out across the road, adorned with razor wire on top and cement
blockades in front. As the truck approaches, the bones that litter the road
begin to crack under the weight of the vehicle. Over a few fresh bodies, the
tread slops and splatters like ripened fruit exploding in the sun.

“Just cover your ears, it’s
nothin’,” Ron says, feigning a nauseous smile.

When the truck is within a
hundred yards, the bodies on the road become thicker and a voice comes loud from
a bullhorn.

“Stop where you are and turn off
the vehicle.”

Ron puts up his hands and nods
his head. He places the truck in park and turns off the ignition. The sweat
begins to bead up along his face as he nervously drops the keys on the seat.

“Now slowly exit the vehicle and
keep your hands above your head.”

Ron nods again and opens the
door with his left hand, keeping his right at the top of his head.

From two towers on either side
of the road, behind the fence, soldiers keep aim on Ron as he exits. Their
faces are lost behind gas masks and dull, flat black helmets. “You two stay
here while I work this out. I’ll have them come back for you,” he whispers over
his shoulder, not daring to divert his gaze from the soldiers.