You had to give Guy credit, Tommy thought. What he lacked in courage he made up for with danger awareness.
They returned to the car and hopped in. Tommy turned the key. The engine barked, wheezed. . . and did not start.
Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
Tommy tried again and again but it was no good.
“It might work with a little push,” Guy said.
“Everybody out,” Tommy said. “Again.”
They shoved the car backward with Tommy working the steering wheel. With no access to the brakes, they reversed into the side panel of a parked Honda Accord, ramming it in the side in the process. Tommy spun the wheel as the others changed position and pushed the car from behind.
The undead’s groans grew more voluminous. A tall man wearing rags that barely covered his modesty entered the flood of light first, the ringmaster of this particular troop, shuffling forward and growling under his breath.
“Uh, Tommy?”
Tommy followed Guy’s pointing finger. Straight ahead. It wasn’t another horde of undead or a team of wayward survivors looking to take advantage of their predicament, but a hill. Innocuous enough on most days, but today was different. Today they were on the run.
The hill began shallow, but within a hundred yards it sloped steeper. Already they felt the burden of gravity on their shoulders and it would be impossible for them to push their car to the top.
“Keep pushing!” Tommy bellowed.
He hopped inside the car, banged his shin, and turned the key. A cough and a splutter before the car turned over. The engine didn’t so much as roar as whimper. Tommy pressed the gas pedal. The engine caught and revved.
“Hahaha!” Tommy laughed like a maniac. “Everybody get in! Everybody—”
The car hit the steep angle of the incline and shuddered. The engine coughed, wheezed, and gave up. To top it all off, it then began to roll backward down the hill. The others leaped aside to avoid getting crushed. Tommy was the last to hurl himself to safety, rolling across the tarmac and throwing his leg out to stop, thankful he couldn’t feel pain.
The car gained speed, rolling ever faster, and careened into the undead creatures at the foot of the hill. It flattened a dozen before the combined weight and press of rotting corpses slowed the marauding Ford Fusion, and their torn body parts clogged up the wheels, and the car came to a sedate stop. It was enveloped by the festering undead as they crawled over the murderous car, smashing its windows and climbing inside. The horn honked and the upholstery ripped as the car was ripped apart inch by inch in their search for food.
Tommy limped over to the others. “Check the other cars. One of them has to work.”
Tommy bolted to a Nissan Altima and reached for the door handle. Locked. He peered through the glass at the ignition. The keys were missing. He growled and proceeded onto the next car and met the same story.
Guy stood up and peered down the hill. “Here they come.”
The horde was done with the poor little vehicle that’d served them so well the past three hundred miles. The creatures began their relentless shuffle up the hillside.
“Over here!” Emin shouted.
Tommy hustled over to the Nissan Leaf she motioned to and jumped in behind the wheel. The keys were missing again. He backed out and slammed at the underside with his heel.
“Guys, come help me with this,” Guy said.
The others followed him to a car slightly further down the incline. Guy smashed the window while Emin held the wheel steady. She released the handbrake as the car gathered speed and careened into shuffling creatures. It ran down the leading undead and slammed into the others who turned to face it at the last moment. Their comrades attacked it with vigor once more, but as the car raced further away, those newly promoted to the front ranks turned to face the nearer cause for interest: the Death Squad.
Tommy bit the wires he needed, pulled the plastic-rubber casing back and tapped the wires together. The apocalypse hadn’t started long ago, surely the car’s battery couldn’t be flat yet?
The car coughed and spluttered into life. The headlights blinked, having been left on by the previous occupant. “Get in!”
The others dove into the car as Tommy jammed his foot on the gas and—muttering a prayer under his breath—removed the handbrake. It worked, and they began to ease up the hill. Ease was the right word, as the car struggled to carry so many people without a long run-up.
“Everybody get out!” Tommy said. He was getting sick of saying that. He’d have been the first out of his seat if he hadn’t been the one in the driving seat. “Not you, Albert. The smell of you will drive them berserk.”
With Emin, Guy, and Jimmy out of the car, it rose more steadily up the incline. . . but not fast enough. Emin and the others braced the car’s weight and pushed.
Of all the cars they could have chosen, why did they go for this one?
Tommy mashed the gas pedal to the floor but the whine that escaped the engine only sounded pained. He glanced into the rearview mirror. The undead rose fast in the bright tail lights. They had mere minutes left.
Tommy scrubbed the steering wheel with his eyes, looking for a NO2 button like in the Fast and the Furious movies. There wasn’t one on the Nissan Leaf. It would be like strapping a rocket to a wheelbarrow. He didn’t know what else he could do. Their only option was to get out and run up the hill and find another car. . . Except it was a blind bluff and he recalled no cars on the other side. What other option did they have except to—
He glanced at the rearview mirror again, this time checking over the creatures’ heads. There. An automatic highway lamp blinked out—the last in a long line of six. Right where the traffic jam began. The entire horde was at their backs, roving up the hillside.
“Everybody get in!” Tommy bellowed.
They must have had questions, playing a post-apocalyptic version of musical chairs as they were, but they got in without question. Albert panted, exhausted with the manual labor. It was a lot for a guy who’d spent his entire life sitting around all day.
“Strap yourselves in,” Tommy said.
He hit the brakes and the lights lit up the undead’s ragged fingers and teeth—much closer than Tommy expected—as they met the little car’s paintwork.
Emin couldn’t hold back her questions any longer. “Tommy, what are you—?” Her eyes widened in shock with realization at his plan. “You cannot be serious.”
Tommy was very serious. He slammed the car into reverse and let the little car slip into gravity’s harsh hands. He peered through the rear window as he applied his foot to the gas. The wheels spun as the undead pressed in, bloody hands painting streaks down either side panel.
The red light switched to white as the reverse gear was fully engaged and the car’s wheels spun in place before biting down and finding grip as the car bolted backward. The first head struck the windshield and exploded like a watermelon tossed over the side of a tall building. It wasn’t the only patient. Cracked bones, torn ligaments, and busted skull fragments thudded the car’s body like someone was hurling bricks at them.
Emin removed her jacket and pulled it over Albert’s head. “Excuse me, but I need to keep you covered. If the window breaks and the blood gets in here—” The rest was lost to the continuous pounding of dead bodies.
The car jackknifed, the wheel arches filling with random body parts. Tommy turned on the rear windshield wiper to swipe the blood off the glass. An undead hand caught in the flimsy metal arm and snapped off. Tommy turned the wheel and straightened the car up, gauging his trajectory more by the outline of the forest trees on either side against the cloudy sky than the road. Through the blood and guts and God knows what else washing over the windows, it was difficult to make out the other vehicles on the road, but Tommy was aware of those they’d seen earlier and left a wide berth between them.
Gravity’s effortless power eased as the road flattened out, but instead of releasing the gas, Tommy press
ed it further into the floor. The car roared as it ate up the road and they zipped backward. The little car worried like it was afraid of working in reverse.
The thuds came fewer, more spaced out, and with less aggression. The last thing Tommy wanted was to stop and let the undead get the drop on them without a word of warning, which they most certainly would given a sliver of a chance.
Tommy used the one remaining side mirror to measure the distance to the cars sat behind them. Snap! The wing mirror broke off, leaving them in darkness. He was driving blind. With no other choice, he straightened his grip on the wheel and slammed the brakes.
“Get out,” Tommy said. “Now.”
He wasn’t sure if he was speaking to them or himself. He threw his door open and leaped out. His balance was off and he straightened himself up using the door. He cast around, the world still swaying, and located the undead staggering toward them from the mayhem he’d caused. A zombie who’d lost his legs rolled down the bloody streak in the middle of the road. A woman with half her head missing hopped on a single leg.
“Tommy! I can’t get out!” Guy’s door sported dents and buckles. The catch rattled against the frame as Guy worried at it.
“Get back!” Tommy scooped up a rock and hurled it in one smooth movement. The window imploded, and Guy climbed out an instant later.
“Come on!” Tommy led them down the endless winding corridors of the traffic jam. Despite the odds, they had survived. At least, for now. The vast remains of the wandering horde shuffled toward them. Groaning, pained, aggressive.
For a full hour, the Death Squad moved down those endless metal corridors, deviating between shuffling half-steps and a slow jog. The Death Squad could not feel tired and were hindered only by Albert’s exhaustion and Emin’s difficulty in moving. But each step they took was a little faster than their opponents’, and after several thousand steps, they were so far ahead that the automatic lights turning on in the distance were barely visible.
The traffic jam turned out to be perhaps the worst in human history. Why it formed here of all places, God only knew. If highways were the country’s veins and arteries, the nation would have suffered a cardiac arrest. Now, finally, it thinned, and Tommy made out the open road ahead. The team took to checking each car they came to.
One fit the bill, and Tommy bashed the underside dash panel and started the car. It had a healthy tank of fuel and none of them said a word as they climbed on board and took off down the road. Tommy drove for half an hour before it proved too much. He parked beside the road and joined the others in their deep sleep.
9.
SAM
Sam’s eyes leaked. It was too soon to call them tears of joy. She still had no idea who her rescuer was. She followed him wherever he dragged her and made out nothing but smudges and blurs.
Uhhhhhhhh.
Sam started, tripping on something and falling hard on her ass.
Her rescuer grunted with a “Huh!” and swung something so sharp it split the air and hissed. An undead body fell to its knees and toppled over. Its head hit a patch of tarmac two full seconds later.
“Climb!” her rescuer said.
“Climb what?” Sam was still half-blind from the tear gas.
The man took her hand and pressed it to a mound of rocks and breezeblocks. A building that’d collapsed. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled up it, the rough brick shards stabbing her hands and slipping beneath her boots. She didn’t stop, and kept kicking, forcing herself inch by inch up the incline.
A thick arm braced her around the waist and held her steady as he helped her down the other side. Her boot missed sure footing and her ankle twisted. She felt the crunch and screamed.
The man wrapped his hand over her mouth and hissed an aggressive: “Shhhh!” in her ear.
Undead grunts rose behind them, and then the stumbling crash of unsure feet on the rocky incline she’d already scaled.
Her rescuer led her into a room with good acoustics, their boots tapping on an expensive surface and bouncing off equally expensive furnishings. The sounds died when they entered another room.
“Stay here,” the man said.
“Wait. Please don’t go.”
The man had already gone.
Sam blinked, working as much juice into her eyes as she could. She squinted, using the liquid in her eyes as a lens to enhance the light of her surroundings. She made out nothing but varying shades of black, brown, and grey.
The sound of something hydraulic hissed shut, and a moment later, a thick door slotted into place, blocking out the light and turning the world dark. A wheel spun and a lock clunked into place. The silence that followed was so heavy Sam could hear her heartbeat. It thumped like African mining drums.
“Take a seat,” the man said. “Anywhere’s fine.”
“Are you sure it’s okay to talk? Won’t they hear us?”
“We could play Slipknot and they wouldn’t hear it.”
“I’m not sure I would call that music.”
“I see there’s a Philistine in my midst.”
Despite her racing heart, Sam smiled. “It’s hard to sit when I can’t see anything.”
“There’s nothing to sit on, so technically it doesn’t matter where you sit. One sec, though. I’ll put a light on.”
An ability to speak out loud, now turning on a light. Where could they possibly be inside the infected city of Austin and not have to fear repercussions of the undead?
The man moved about the room, able to do so with feel alone. A loud scratch and a hiss as a match was lit. It illuminated a face in the darkness. Even with her poor vision, she recognized a kind face. The man placed the match in a dirty gas lamp and lit it. He shook the match out and turned a tuner on the side of the lamp to increase the light’s glow.
Sam’s vision was already growing sharper but would take some time to clear up completely. The room was a little larger than her cell in the Architect’s base, made almost entirely out of metal, with small collections of bags and other survival items around the edges. It could have been a modern room anywhere, but it was the door that gave the game away. “We’re in a bank vault?”
“Safest place there is in the city. Plus, if someone gets the crackpot idea to drop a bomb, I’ll have at least some protection.”
The man opened a small tin box and took something out of it—so small Sam hardly recognized it. “These are—”
“Eyedrops.” Sam couldn’t believe her luck.
“That’s right. You worked in the medical profession?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Well, that explains it.” He handed the drops to her.
Sam received them gratefully. The little plastic bottle wasn’t just for her eyes. It was a thrill to hold something that linked her to her old life. At once, she was no longer someone struggling to survive on the edge of nowhere. She was a doctor again.
Sam removed the top, leaned her head back and gave herself two drops in each eye.
The man shook his head in wonder. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to administer myself those eyedrops?”
Sam blinked and held her head back for a few moments before screwing the lid back on the bottle and, with some resistance, handing them back.
“Keep them,” the man said. “You’ll need then again in a few hours.”
“Thanks.” Sam tucked them in her pocket.
Her eyes felt grateful for the extra lubrication and her world became clearer. The man sitting cross-legged across from her was short and stout, dressed in earthy tones that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a vagabond. A man ready for anything the world could throw at him, and in all likelihood, that was exactly what the world had done.
The man smiled and clapped his hands. “Now, are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
The man got to his feet and approached a small wooden dressing table he’d dragged in at some point. “I’ve got all the food and water I need in here. Well, as much as I need
to last a month or so. We’ll tuck into the fresher stuff, if that’s okay? It’ll only go off otherwise.”
Fresh food? Her mouth started salivating. “Sounds good.”
“A million undead could beat on this vault and they still wouldn’t get in. Say what you like about the old world, but we always know how to protect the most precious thing to us: money.”
Sam chuckled. “I’m Sam. What’s your name?”
“Where are my manners? My mother would be spinning in her grave.” The man wiped his hand on his soiled jacket and extended it to Sam. “The name’s Joel.”
“You saved my life. I don’t think your mother would be embarrassed with that.”
Joel smiled and turned to his drawer of fresh food and removed a pair of sandwiches. “Chicken or tuna?”
“Tuna, please.”
“That’s fortunate. I much prefer chicken.” Joel grinned and handed the tuna sandwich over. He sat cross-legged on the floor and stuffed the sandwich in his face. He brushed the crumbs out of his beard once he was finished.
Sam tried to eat but her stomach still roiled from having seen her life flash before her eyes. “Thank you. For saving me.”
Joel waved a hand as if waving away an annoying fly. “Think nothing of it. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”
“I would, not that I’d have been able to without a large army at my back.”
“A smoke bomb and mask are all that’s required. No army necessary. Besides, there were too many to deal with any other way. I would have decapitated them with trusty Pointy if I had half a chance.”
“Pointy?”
Joel leaned over and picked up a short-handled ax that leaned against the wall. “Strong, stout, quick and easy to kill with. And best of all, it’s silent. She might not look like much but she’s saved my life many a time.”
How could a man have survived in the city for so long? Was it even possible? Unless. . .
“Are you a Walker?” Sam blurted.
“What’s a Walker? I tend to run everywhere.”
“A Walker is half-human, half-zombie.”
Death Squad (Book 4): Zombie World Page 8
