~~~
Consciousness seeped into Jack’s mind with agonizing slowness. The first thing he noticed was the temperature. It was much colder, almost freezing. He was shivering, his entire body quaking uncontrollably. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His hips felt torn, as if some enormous creature had taken hold of either side of his body and wrung him like dish rag. He tried to open his eyes but his lids wouldn’t budge. Glued shut.
“What the hell…?” His head pounded. Blood thrummed in his ears, the rushing boom boom drowning out everything around him. Stretching the muscles of his face, he finally managed to open his eyes. He let out a surprised cry. The world was upside down. No. Wait. He was upside down.
The pain in his hips was from the lap belt digging into his waist and cutting off his circulation. He hung there for a moment and stared. With his right hand, Jack felt for the roof and discovered it was only an inch from the top of his head. Windshield glass lay scattered below, tiny stars twinkling at him from a false night sky.
He groaned. His head was thick, full of itchy wool. His mind tripped over itself, trying to piece together the events that had put him here. It all came back in a terrifying gut-wrenching rush.
“Becka! Ellie!” he shouted. He twisted in his seat, searching for them. Becka wasn’t there. He couldn’t turn far enough to see into the rear. “Becka! Ellie!” he called again.
As he twisted, a lance of pain raced up his arm and into his shoulder, flooding his mind with an agony beyond any he had ever experienced. Bile tumbled down his throat and dribbled onto the roof of his mouth. He vomited an explosive torrent of steaming fluid that gushed back into his upturned nose, choking him.
Looking at his arm, he discovered the source of the pain, a jagged shard of glass, embedded in the meaty part of his upper bicep. Protruding at an obscene angle, the glass was lodged deep inside the muscle, grinding against bone every time he moved. His vision went gray around the edges. He realized he was about to black out. He fought it, wrapping his mind around the wispy tendrils of consciousness as they sprinted away from him, reeling them back in and gathering them close.
Becka. Ellie. Got to find them. Gritting his teeth, Jack grasped the shard with his good hand and tugged with all his might. He couldn’t hold back a scream as the glass slid free. Blood welled up from the wound, then splattered on the roof of the van. Reaching for the belt buckle with his good arm, he took a deep breath and pressed the release.
Although he didn’t have far to fall, the impact still knocked the wind out of him. It seemed as if every square inch of his body had been pummeled during the accident. He lay still for a moment, panting, trying his best not to black out again. Free from his bonds, Jack rolled over and began searching for his family.
They were gone. He crawled to the front passenger seat and took Becka’s seat belt in his hand. Panic welled up as he fingered the ends of the straps. They were torn and shredded, as if something had gnawed through them.
He crawled into the back. It was empty as well. The windows had all imploded, compressed beyond their engineering limits when the bus landed on its roof. A chill desert breeze flowed through the empty frames. He flicked the switch on the dome lamp between his knees. Dead.
His stomach sank. Blood coated every surface, congealing pools soaking through the knees of his jeans and coating his hands as he turned in frantic circles.
Zombies. He sat back on his haunches to consider the situation. This doesn’t make sense. If zombies took them, then why am I still here? Why didn’t they take me, too?
Maybe they had been ejected from the bus as it rolled. Jack’s hopes soared. But no. That wouldn’t explain Becka’s seat belt. Or the blood in the rear. Ellie’s blood. Hell, he couldn’t even remember if Ellie had even been buckled in. Probably not. She hated seat belts.
Jack kicked open the door and crawled onto the desert floor. The sand was cool under his palms. The moon rode high overhead. Midnight, maybe later. I wasn’t out for long. A wave of nausea assaulted him as he struggled to his feet. He put his hands on his knees to stabilize himself and retched, burping up foul acid. He spit.
Mangled beyond repair, the bus lay at the bottom of a shallow wash. Their supplies, ejected during the crash, charted their unexpected departure from the freeway like a trail of enormous breadcrumbs. There was a sleeping bag at his feet, and their Coleman stove lay a few yards beyond. He found his pistol half-buried in the sand a few feet from the bus.
But no Becka. And no Ellie.
Jack scrambled up the embankment, the loose sand crumbling beneath his fingers with each frantic grasp. Finally, he made it to the top. The remains of the ghoul he had hit twitched mindlessly on the shoulder, his muscles contracting and releasing like some mad perpetual-motion machine. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark, he realized he could see for miles. The desert glowed as if lit from within.
Jack cupped his hand around his mouth and yelled. “Becka! Ellie!” He listened. Seconds ticked by with no response. Crossing the road, he repeated his call. He waited again. Nothing.
Something snapped behind him. Something brittle. Near the bus. Jack sprinted across the road to the lip of the arroyo and peered in. A ripping sound, like Velcro, split the silence.
Jack’s hopes soared. “Becka?” There was no answer. Jack plunged down the embankment, imagining Becka with a life-threatening injury, unable to answer.
“Becka! Ellie!” he shouted as he dashed around the bus. There was no one there. Jack skidded to a stop. He looked around, puzzled. Where’s it coming from?
His answer came a moment later, when another, louder ripping sound split the night air. It was coming from a few dozen yards farther down the wash, near the corpse of a monstrous cottonwood.
He checked his weapon, ensuring the safety was off. “Becka?” he said in a low voice. “I’m coming…” As quietly as he could, Jack made his way through the arroyo. His heart raced and sweat poured from his forehead despite the cool breeze.
He approached the tree. How a tree this large had been torn loose baffled him. It was easily three feet across, with bleached-white limbs stretching towards the night sky like a spurned lover.
“Becka?” The ripping sound came again. Something moved just a few feet in front of him. Despite the moonlight, Jack wished he had a flashlight. He couldn’t make out any shapes through the jumble of shadows. He stepped forward.
From beneath a tangle of branches, Becka stared up at him, a rictus of agony stretched across her face.
“Ellie. No.”
Ellie was crouched to one side, chewing vigorously on her mother’s limp arm. At the sound of his voice, her head snapped up, and she locked eyes with Jack, the milky-whites seeming to penetrate to the bottom of his soul. Jack took a step back and raised his hands, his gun pointing at the sky.
Ellie leaped to her feet. She growled. Becka didn’t move.
Jack swallowed. Cold washed through his body. He shivered uncontrollably. His teeth began to chatter, causing him to nick his tongue, sending a flood of coppery-tasting blood into his mouth. He swallowed hard.
Ellie stepped over her mother and began lumbering toward him. One leg was obviously broken, twisted and shattered into a useless sack of bone and flesh. Yet, she still came.
Jack centered his pistol on her forehead. And then he pulled the trigger. The shot hit home, and Ellie collapsed to the ground. Silence returned. But he wasn’t done. Becka would rise as well. Maybe in minutes, maybe in hours, but she would come back.
Jack made his way to his wife’s body. He kneeled down beside her and touched her left cheek. It was still warm. He tasted metal in the back of his throat. Cold and antiseptic, bitter. Almost oily. With a quick swipe of his thumb and index finger, he closed Becka’s eyelids. He put his pistol against her forehead.
“I’m sorry, honey.”
He pulled the trigger.
Twenty-Three
Fire: The Collapse Page 23
