Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Ryan, Nicholas

  There was at least a hundred of them, drawn inexorably by the noise of the revving engine, shambling and staggering and convulsing in a broken tide of bodies that surged towards us.

  “Turn around!” I heard Walker bark.

  “There’s no room!” Jed snapped back. It was a typical suburban street. By the time he spun the car around in a three-point turn, the undead would be swarming all over us.

  “Then speed up!”

  “What?”

  “Hit the gas!”

  Jed crushed his foot down on the pedal and the sedan leaped forward. The space between the undead and us telescoped – reduced to nothing in an instant.

  “Wind your windows up!” Walker shouted a warning – and then he reached across the car and reefed down hard on the steering wheel.

  He caught Jed by surprise. The car swerved on tired spongy springs, and rolled like a big boat. We were veering towards the curb.

  “Keep going!” Walker shouted.

  “You’re a crazy bastard!” Jed shouted back. “Hang on!”

  The car mounted the curb with a bone-jarring crack that hurled us forward in our seats. I felt my head smash against something hard, and my vision shattered into a million shards of dazzling light. I tasted the warm coppery tang of blood in my mouth, and then everyone was screaming and shouting in panicked fear.

  I shook my head. We were bumping and jolting across someone’s lawn, the car’s tires churning up clods of muddy earth and flinging them high into the air. Jed was tugging at the wheel like he was wrestling a grizzly bear. We crashed through a bushy green fern and then the car fishtailed into the side of a low brick fence, but kept going. The sound of groaning grinding metal was a noise like the dying shriek of some terrible beast.

  There were half-a-dozen undead ahead of us. Their dark wretched shapes filled the windshield. The car ploughed into them and flung their bodies across the hood. I saw the figure of a woman bounced off the driver-side fender. She spun in a tight circle and then slammed into a power pole. Another of the undead disappeared under the front wheels. The car jolted and leaped and the engine screamed and strained.

  I clung to the seat with grim terror. Millie was sobbing. The car spun wildly then crashed through a mailbox and landed back onto the blacktop. Harrigan’s big body swayed and lurched from side to side, crushing the girl between us. Arms and legs went everywhere and the sound of our cries and panicked screams reached a terrifying crescendo. Then the tires caught traction in a howl of rubber and smoke, and we were suddenly skidding out of control towards the opposite side of the road.

  I saw Jed wrench the wheel. He was hunched deep in the driver’s seat, huge muscled forearms braced and his face rigid and grim. He caught the skid at the last possible moment. The car jounced up onto two wheels for an instant and then righted itself with a sickening thud and a mournful groan of metal.

  We were through the undead.

  There was only clear road ahead.

  We sped towards safety. Relief washed over me like a wave.

  And then two gunshots rang out – clear and piercingly loud, the sound of their retort echoing in the morning sky.

  The car lurched – dropped down on one side – and slewed out of control.

  “Jesus!” Jed shouted, and the raw fear in his voice frightened me even more than the sound of the gunshots. He slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel violently. The sudden change in the car’s inert weight was catastrophic. I felt the car gouge down on the passenger side, and then we were veering out of control.

  “Look out!” I heard Walker shout. The car hung over on two wheels and then miraculously righted itself, only to plough head-on into the back of a flat-bed truck left abandoned on the side of the road.

  The impact was like a mighty fist being slammed into the center of my chest. I felt my head snapped forward and for an instant I was weightless. The sound of crushing rending metal was like the blast of an explosion in my ears. Everything went black, then the world came swimming back into focus through dust and thick swirling smoke.

  There was a stunned silence that lasted long seconds. We had covered less than a couple of miles. The undead were out of sight, but I wondered for how long.

  I had lost my gun, and as I threw my weight against the crumpled door, I groped for it. I caught a glimpse of Millie’s terrified face. She was huddled down in the seat, and there was a thin razor-like gash on her forehead welling fat round droplets of blood.

  “Are you all right?”

  She groaned. Her hand went to her head in slow motion and when her fingers pressed against the wound she winced painfully. I glanced past her. Harrigan was slumped heavily in the corner of the seat, eyes closed, mouth agape. I reached past the girl and shook the big man hard. He groaned, and came awake like a boxer on the canvas struggling to beat the ten count.

  “Are you okay?”

  Harrigan groaned again. He sighed deeply and his eyes fluttered open, dull and unfocussed. I forgot about him and hurled my weight against the door.

  The air was thick with swirling tendrils of smoke, and the smell of gas was strong and getting stronger. The door creaked open and I had to use my foot to pry it the rest of the way.

  I got out of the car and staggered on unsteady feet. Everything seemed to spin and swirl around me. I clutched dizzily for the side of the sedan, and at that moment a gun opened fire. Bullets flailed the air around me, rattling and clanging against the car, tearing up fragments of stone and dirt and glass, ricocheting off into the distance. I ducked my head, made my body as small as I could and staggered to the sheltered side of the car.

  Harrigan’s face was pressed against the window of his door. I heaved against the handle, and the door flung open so unexpectedly that I lost my balance and fell backwards onto the sidewalk. Harrigan’s heavy body fell out of the car and he lay crumpled and groaning in the gutter. I crawled to him.

  “Come on, Clinton,” I said through clenched teeth. “I need you, man!”

  He staggered to his knees. I could see no obvious signs of injury – but I’m no doctor. The Glock was in the foot well behind the driver’s seat. I lunged for it and thrust it into his big fist.

  “There’s someone shooting at us from one of the houses across the road,” I said, almost shouting the words in his face to make them register through the haze of his disorientation. “I need you to cover me while I help the others.”

  Harrigan nodded, then glanced back down the street in the direction we had come. Nothing moved – yet.

  I helped him to his feet and he slumped over the car, holding the gun in two hands and resting his arms on the crumpled metal roof. He seemed a little clearer – a little more steady. I reached in across the seat and caught Millie’s arm. She was tucked up in a trembling ball, knees under her chin, her hands covering her face. She was sobbing. I didn’t have time for niceties. I grabbed her arm and heaved. I felt something tear in my chest and a flash of pain that exploded through the top of my head. I dragged the girl out of the car and pressed her down flat on the grass.

  “Stay there!” I hissed at her. “Don’t move!”

  I heard more shots ring out. One smacked into the car. I didn’t look up. I went to the driver’s door and peered through the window at my brother.

  Jed’s head was slumped over the steering wheel. The whole front of the car had folded in, driving the engine block and the dashboard into his body. I heaved on the door but it wouldn’t open. I tried again, straining with all my strength until I saw pinwheels of light burst into bright stars behind my eyes. The door had crumpled into the front wheel. I couldn’t move it.

  I climbed onto the back seat and reached around, groping for the driver’s seat controls. There were a couple of plastic levers. I lifted the first one with my fingers but nothing happened. I tried the other one, and the backrest of the seat fell down towards me. Jed groaned.

  I lowered the seat as far as I could. Jed rolled his head from side to side. I reached in and wrapped my arms
around his chest. As I started to heave him backwards, he let out a fierce cry of pain.

  I relaxed my grip and thrust my head through between the front seats. The front of the car was unrecognizable; a terrible mangled contortion of metal and plastic. I leaned over Jed and shoved my face close to his.

  “Are your legs trapped?”

  He groaned.

  “Jed!”

  He blinked his eyes open dazedly, and then winced in agony. I saw his eyes come into focus, hard and dark, but shadowed with pain. He spat blood down his chin and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Can you feel your legs?” I barked urgently.

  He nodded. I clambered back behind his seat and linked my hands under his armpits again. “Then if this hurts – too bad,” I said.

  I heaved. Jed cried out, but I ignored him. He slid back a couple of inches. I heaved again, turning him as I did so that I could drag him out of the car through the back seat. He came out in an awkward tangle of screaming pain. I stretched him out on the grass but he sat upright immediately.

  “What the fuck…?”

  I crouched over him.

  “Someone shot out a tire,” I spat. “They’re in one of the houses across the street.”

  He shook his head and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth like he was checking that he still had his teeth. “Zombies?”

  “Zombies can’t fire guns, dip-shit!” I said.

  Jed grunted. “Walker?”

  “I’m going for him now,” I said. “Harrigan is keeping us covered.”

  Jed looked pained again. He pushed himself to his feet and balanced tenderly, like maybe one of his legs was broken. “Where’s my gun?”

  I gave him the revolver. He leaned himself over the roof of the car beside Harrigan.

  I clambered back into the mangled wreckage of the car. Colin Walker was slumped against the backrest of his seat, his head turned to the side so that I could see his face was a mask of blood. The windshield had blown in on impact. There were thousands of tiny glittering pieces of glass across the man’s lap and in his hair, and across his bloodied chest. I snatched at his wrist. His pulse was weak and racing erratically. He didn’t move.

  I left him and backed out of the car.

  “Walker’s not good,” I said to Harrigan and Jed. I saw Millie’s head snap round and her mouth fell open into a silent scream. I ignored her.

  “I’m going to have to get him out through his door,” I said grimly. “You’ll have to cover me.”

  Harrigan shook his head. “You won’t be able to do it on your own,” he said. He stared at me. His eyes seemed clear. “I’m coming with you.”

  He gave the Glock to Jed and we hunched down together by the trunk of car.

  “Ready?”

  Harrigan nodded.

  I jumped to my feet and ran around the side of the car. I heard myself screaming, and felt a sudden disruption of air around me that fanned my face like a hot dry wind as a bullet ricocheted off nearby wreckage. My heart was racing, fear knotting the strings of my nerves. I reached the passenger door and Harrigan was close behind me. I heard the loud ‘blam’ of a gunshot and realized that Jed had returned fire.

  I snatched at the car door and heaved. It didn’t budge. Harrigan shouldered me aside and hurled his weight against the door. It came open with a rending groan. I ducked in through the door and at that instant the sound of the fire fight seemed to fade into the background.

  Walker had been thrown forward by the collision at the same instant the windshield had exploded in on him. There was a wicked gash right across his forehead, and a wet livid slab of flesh hung down from his scalp across his eyes. Blood was spattered over his chest and in his lap. I backed out through the door, crouching down to make myself as small a target as possible for the hidden sniper, and tried to shut out the terrifying sounds of passing shots.

  “Grab him,” I said to Harrigan.

  The big man reached in through the door and took hold of Walker’s arms. When he was half out of the car, I scooped up his leaden legs and between us we carried him back behind the shelter of the wreckage. Jed fired two more shots and then ducked down behind the car.

  “The fucker is in the brick two-story place,” Jed hissed. He had his back against the car. He ran his eye over the stretched out body of Colin Walker and his expression became somber.

  “He don’t look too good.”

  I shook my head. I ripped open Walker’s shirt and tore it into long strips. I pressed the loose flap of skin back against his forehead and bandaged it in place. His hair was matted thick with blood, and his face was pale, his lips turning a soft shade of blue.

  Harrigan dropped to the grass beside Walker’s prone body. The big man’s hands were shaking. For that matter, so were mine.

  He glanced over his shoulder, back along the empty street. I followed the direction of his gaze. The morning was hot, the land baking under a fierce summer sky. A heat haze rippled and shimmered off the blacktop. The road was empty – but the haunting sound of the undead we had driven through seemed to hang in the distant air.

  “They’re coming after us,” Harrigan said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Can’t see ‘em, but I can hear ‘em.”

  I could too. We all could – the noise ebbing and drifting like a pulse.

  Jed got up onto his haunches and narrowed his eyes in quick calculation. He pointed.

  The nature strip on this side of the street had been left behind and we were in a built up area with houses on both sides of the road. The flat-bed truck had been parked out front of a single story brick home, and I glanced over my shoulder at it.

  “We could get inside that house before they come,” he said. “That only leaves the redneck with the AK to worry about.”

  I thought about it. Walker was in bad shape. I didn’t think we could move him far. The undead were still out of sight, but not for much longer. If they crested the little undulating rise in the road and saw us, we were as good as dead.

  I nodded. “Check it out,” I said.

  Jed went at a running crouch, using the wrecked car to cover him from the sniper across the street. I watched him all the way to the front porch of the house, weaving as he went, while the air around him snapped with the roar of gunfire. I turned back and leaned over Colin Walker.

  “We’re going to move you soon,” I said. “We don’t have much time. I’m afraid it’s going to hurt, but there’s nothing I can do about it. If we don’t move soon, we’ll die right here.”

  Walker said nothing. His chest heaved, labored and shallow, and the breath in his throat bubbled and gurgled. I cast another anxious glance down the length of the street, and then back to the front of the house where I had last seen Jed. The door was open, swinging ajar. I saw Jed’s head and shoulders appear in the opening. He was smiling. He came back across the lawn, running awkwardly, bent-over at the waist.

  “It’s clear,” he said. He was panting and wincing against some sharp pain. He had one big hand wrapped across his chest like he was holding in a shirt full of broken ribs. “No bodies. No bad guys. No dead guys.”

  I decided. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  But it wasn’t that simple.

  Walker couldn’t be carried safely without anyone helping him standing upright and moving with his body slung between them. That meant exposing themselves to long dangerous seconds of fire. Even moving hunched in a bent-over crouch was risky. Sooner or later the gunman in the house opposite was going to get lucky.

  “Grab the bag,” I snapped at Harrigan.

  I had stuffed a blanket inside the nylon bag before we had left the safe house. Now I unfolded it and spread it out on the patch of lawn sheltered from sight by the car wreck. “We’ll get him on the blanket and drag him across the grass,” I explained. It wasn’t the best idea in the world – but it would be faster than two men trying to carry him.

  We sat Walker upright and slid the blanket beneath his back, but when I tr
ied to lay him down again, he clutched fiercely at my shoulder – his grip so intense that it startled me. His eyes came wide open – clear as a mountain lake – and he stared at me with cold intent.

  “Leave me,” he said. “Give me a gun. I’ll hold them off. You’ve got to get away from here. You’ve got to get Jessica to Pentelle. Nothing else matters.” A froth of bloody bubbles appeared at the corner of his mouth and he gave a great weary sigh.

  “Jessica? You mean Millie, your daughter…”

  Walker shook his head, swallowed hard like he was trying to choke down jagged glass. “She’s Jessica Steinman,” he said. “She’s not my kid. She’s Jessica Steinman – the Vice President’s daughter.”

  Nobody spoke.

  Everyone was too stunned, too incredulous, trying to make sense of Walker’s shocking revelation so that the silence stretched out for long numbed seconds. Gradually, slowly, we all turned our heads to look at the terrified teenage girl, seeing her now in a different light entirely.

  I blinked. I shook my head – and stared at the girl while pieces of the puzzle I had worried over since the helicopter crash tumbled silently into place.

  I frowned. “Is it true?”

  The girl nodded. “I’m Jessica Steinman,” she said. Her voice was shaky, choked, I suppose, with a myriad of emotions at that moment. “Mr Walker is my bodyguard. He’s Secret Service.”

  My eyes drifted to Harrigan. His face was blank and staring with astonishment. Then suddenly he twisted his head over his shoulder, like he had heard a new noise. He turned slowly back to me, and his face was drawn tight with alarm, his eyes wide and ominous.

  I heard it too: the sound of thumping, pounding footsteps. Hundreds of them – still in the distance but coming closer, and coming quickly – a rumbling noise like a stampede of wild animals. Surrounding the sound, surging and ebbing in waves, was a noise like a low vicious howl.