Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Ryan, Nicholas

  I couldn’t waste another shot. I ran for the Yukon and flung myself behind the wheel. I stamped my foot on the gas and the car leaped forward, racing towards the sunrise – racing towards the Interstate in pursuit of Jed.

  The clock was ticking in my head again, but it was no longer counting the passage of elapsed time – it was counting down like a time bomb.

  Chapter Seven.

  I drove east for a couple of miles, with my foot flat down on the gas pedal, hunched over the steering wheel and taking the corners with reckless desperation. The suburban streets were littered with abandoned cars and strewn with garbage. There were station wagons still in their driveways, their roof-racks piled high with camping gear and household possessions, and there were overturned wrecked vehicles, blackened and burned, or crumpled from collisions. And laying like litter on the streets were the bodies of those who had been savaged by the undead, tattered and dismembered, left out in the sun for the crows and rats to feast upon the carcasses.

  I swerved and weaved around the strewn wreckage and the Yukon’s big tires screeched in protest until I came to an intersection where three cars had been rammed by an out-of control truck.

  Suddenly I had to slow, and the initial surge of panic in me abated. I knew that Jed had an hour head start, but I also realized I couldn’t catch him if I wrecked the Yukon, or sent it careering off the hazard-strewn road. I eased off the gas and swung the Yukon through the crash site, my feet dancing between the pedals until I had the Yukon up on the sidewalk and then jolting back down onto the blacktop with clear road stretched out ahead of me.

  I cut my speed to twenty and concentrated on casting my eyes well ahead for signs of trouble or danger. It felt like I was crawling – it felt like I was losing time, but I resisted the urge to risk accelerating.

  I passed an intersection and then found myself driving into a messy tangle of streets that crouched ahead of me. It was a sprawling housing project, spread to the north and the west. There was a ragged little cluster of dark mean storefronts with their windows smashed. A couple of the buildings had been burned out and there were upended shopping trolleys on the sidewalk around a corner grocery store that had been looted. I drove past squat, dark brick buildings with narrow windows and past parking lots sprinkled with abandoned cars, their paintwork dewed with overnight rain. There was a basketball court, fenced in by high chain link and surrounded by brick walls sprayed with frantic graffiti.

  The morning was silent. The air was hot and damp. I wound down the driver’s side window, but the air was heavy with the putrid stench of rotting decay. Crows took to angry flight squawking in belligerent protest as I drove past, and then swooped down again to resume picking at the bodies.

  Over my shoulder, dawn was coming on quickly, the sun rising in the east behind banks of purple and grey clouds that were stacking up on the horizon. The sky changed to orange and the narrow streets filled with long uncertain shadows as the sun’s tentative light signaled a new day.

  The edge of the housing estate was marked by a couple of vacant lots overgrown with grass and bordered by low wire fencing, and then a gas station with a couple of weary pumps out front and windows that had been boarded over.

  I drove on past an old billboard and then a bar. The back of the bar was filled with wooden crates and metal beer kegs that lay scattered on their side like knocked down bowling pins. There were a couple of big trash receptacles in the parking lot and an old rusted out Chevy with blocks of timber under its brake drums.

  I cruised by slowly and then saw a tin sign on a post on the sidewalk, faded and pock-marked with rusty spots, pointing the way to the I-64. It was shaped like a shield, painted red and blue, with an arrow pointing left beneath it. I reached the next cross-street and swung the Yukon onto a wide stretch of level flat road – and had to slam down hard on the brakes.

  There was a black and white Crown Vic cop car slewed across the road, its nose in the gutter. The driver’s door was open. On the blacktop beside the vehicle were the remains of a police officer; his tan jacket torn to shreds. One of his shoes was a dozen feet away, the severed foot protruding from the leather. There was pump action riot gun on the road, and a mange-riddled black dog was standing over the body, gnawing on a bone. The dog looked up at the sound of the Yukon braking and it stared at me through the windshield with rabid wild eyes, its head sinking low between its shoulders as it growled.

  Beyond the cop car was a green compact. The front end of the little car had been shunted into a telegraph pole and the driver’s side of the vehicle was a mess of crumpled sheet metal. The windshield was shattered. There was broken glass sprayed across the hood of the car, shining in the sunlight like a thousand diamonds. The driver of the compact had been hurled head-first through the glass and his body lay sprawled across the bonnet. In his dead hand was a small black pistol.

  I could guess the tale of the tragedy by what was written in the bloody footprints that spread in confused patterns across the road and in the trampled grass beyond. I could imagine the cop running the compact off the road and the impact as the little car went head-first into the power pole. Maybe the cop had been injured – maybe shot in the seconds before the collision by the driver – and he had dragged himself from the cop car bleeding from his wounds and drawn the riot gun from between the seats. There were empty shell casings laying in the gutter where the officer had opened fire before being overwhelmed by undead ghouls that had spilled from the surrounding buildings and torn his body to shreds.

  The blood was dry, the cop car covered in a fine layer of dust.

  I glanced to the buildings on both side of the road, suddenly overcome with the sensation that I was being watched. I felt my skin crawl with eerie dread. The buildings on either side seemed to hunch over me as I nosed the Yukon up over the curb and onto the grassy shoulder. The big tires gouged into the soft ground and the suspension swayed as I crawled around the wreckage and then dropped back onto the blacktop. I stabbed my foot down on the gas and the Yukon seemed to leap forward with relief.

  The buildings became low rise and spaced further apart, then became lonely farmsteads scattered on the side of the road behind clusters of mailboxes. I drove for a couple of minutes and covered a couple more miles, then rode down a slight hill and back up again. There were more buildings in the distance, all of them built low to the ground, lit up from behind by the morning sun.

  I drove by another roadside sign for the Interstate, and then I was cruising past a diner and a Texaco gas station with a mechanic’s workshop attached. There was a dented and dusty pick up truck parked out front of the diner. It looked like some kind of a farm truck.

  I slowed to a crawl as I passed. The diner looked like the kind of place the local cops would stop for their morning coffee and doughnuts. There was a flat area of beaten down earth alongside the building with a couple of abandoned cars parked on the shoulder of the road. I glanced back through the windshield – and then a flash of wild movement caught the corner of my eye and the sound of a door slamming tore the silence apart. My head snapped round. There was a woman lurching towards the side of the road. She had burst through the front door of the diner. Behind her loomed a dozen dark shapes, swarming out into the bright sunlight, snarling with maddened rage.

  I slammed my foot on the brake. The Yukon dipped low at the nose and then lurched to a stop on squealing brakes. The woman was hobbling towards me, dragging one of her legs behind her, limp and crippled. She was young, her face a white mask of terror. She flailed her arms at me, shrieking for help, and I noticed there was blood at the corner of her mouth, spilling down her chin.

  I snatched up the Glock from the seat beside me and thrust the gun out through the window, aiming past the running woman at the undead. They were convulsing and writhing as they hunted her, cutting down the distance between them and their prey, and moving with alarming speed.

  “Come on!” I shouted.

  The woman was sobbing, her mouth twisted into a grima
ce of pain and desperation, her eyes huge. She wrenched her head round and glanced over her shoulder then screamed aloud. The nearest zombie was just a few feet away. It lunged for her with its fingers seized into claws, but the girl rolled her shoulder at the last possible second and the ghoul’s fingernails tangled in the fabric of her blouse. She tore herself free, but she was weakening now. Her next steps were exhausted and slow, her legs uncertain beneath her. She was gasping for breath. She turned back to me, her expression desperate and imploring. I fired into the mass of undead and one of the ghouls staggered and then dropped to its knees but the others swept past and the sound of their voices rose to a clamorous evil roar.

  I fired again and kicked my door open. I fired twice more with a double-fisted grip, and the recoil of the Glock slammed up through my arms to my shoulders. One of the shots went wide and the other hit an undead woman in the chest and knocked her stumbling to the ground. “Come on!” I screamed hoarsely. “You can make it! Keep running!”

  I thrust out my free hand – urging the woman on. She reached out towards me, her fingertips tantalizingly close… and then one of the zombies caught hold of her hair and reefed her off her feet. The woman was flung savagely backwards like she had been struck full in the chest by the blast of a shotgun. She landed on her back in the middle of the road, and within an instant the undead were swarming over her body. I heard the woman cry out once – a blood-curdling scream of agony and terror – before I let my foot slide off the brake and mash the gas pedal to the floorboards. The Yukon tore away in a screech of blue smoke and I had to throw down the Glock and snatch at the wheel to keep the car on the road. I got a hundred yards clear and slammed the car’s door shut, then braked again, keeping the engine revving high.

  In the rearview mirror I could see the undead dismembering the woman, fighting over the scraps of her flesh like vicious animals, their bodies drenched in her blood as the corpse was torn to pieces. Her head rolled across the road into the gutter. One of the undead scurried after it and was instantly set upon by the others.

  I drove away slowly, shaken and sickened. I was numb, my mind replaying the dreadful few seconds, haunted by the helpless panic in the woman’s eyes at the instant she had been snatched away from me. I might have covered another mile or two before I suddenly realized the blacktop had become wider and then went into a slow turning rise with iron guardrails posted on both sides. I gave the Yukon some gas and crested the on-ramp doing thirty, with the four wide lanes of the I-64 suddenly stretched out before me.

  I hung in the merge lane and touched the brakes until the Yukon was just crawling. The interstate ran straight as an arrow into the distance. About a hundred yards ahead was a framework of high girders mounted with huge green directional signs, listing the oncoming towns. I ran my eyes quickly down the list. Pentelle was 23 miles away – I figured that meant about twenty miles of interstate before I had to look for the off-ramp.

  Nothing moved on the road. Nothing at all. The sun had burned away the early morning clouds and now the heat beat through the windshield so that I felt a prickle of sweat down my back. I swung the Yukon into the nearest lane and gradually built up speed.

  The silence was eerie. There were abandoned cars in every lane, doors left open, the contents of the vehicles scattered like debris. It was like some dreadful battle scene – as if the air force had overflown the freeway and strafed the torrent of refugees fleeing east. The road’s surface was gouged and stained with leaked oil and spilled blood. I saw bodies scattered amongst the wreckage, but not many.

  I nudged the Yukon up to thirty-five then forty. On the wide open expanse of the freeway I felt more confident. Navigating the wreckage of abandoned cars was like steering a slalom course but visibility was good: the road was flat and straight and I had a clear view of what lay ahead well before I needed to take evasive action. The miles slid slowly by, and as I scanned the horizon my thoughts drifted to Jed and the girl, Jessica.

  Walker said Jed had hurt the girl. How badly?

  He was a brutal callous man, and I knew he was capable of anything – even murder. But I also knew he was cunning and resourceful. He was making a run for Pentelle, but he wasn’t doing it out of honor or because the Vice President’s teenage daughter was at risk. He was doing it to save his life – to barter her safety for his own. In doing so he had forsaken Colin Walker and abandoned me.

  Leaving me for dead I could understand. He had sworn he would kill me for the death of his wife and child. If he couldn’t kill me – then leaving me to die at the hands of the undead would be just as effective, if not as satisfying.

  Walker was Secret Service, and he had lied to us from the moment we had pulled him and the girl from the wrecked helicopter. In Jed’s mind, that most likely justified the slow painful death he had condemned the man to.

  I drove on until I passed beneath another green traffic billboard, with arrows pointing to an off-ramp and the name of the nearby towns written in big white letters. I glanced up at the sign.

  Pentelle: 12 miles.

  I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel. It was mid-morning. The sun was blazing through the windshield, and the early morning overcast had given way to a blue cloudless sky. On the side of the road grew dense thickets of trees and the freeway began to undulate up crests and then down into gentle green valleys.

  I edged the Yukon up to forty-five and swept around a long gentle curve as the road cut a path between two grassy wooded slopes.

  The Yukon came out of the curve and I touched the brakes cautiously. I was in one of the middle lanes, and up ahead, at the top of a gentle crest, I could see the debris of several cars and a truck, stretched across the road.

  A mile out I cut my speed to twenty. The road looked completely blocked. The truck was overturned on its side and slewed across two lanes. It had been carrying a load of scrap metal. The blacktop was cluttered with twisted pieces of iron and broken glass. There was a body of a man nearby, laying flat on its back. Crows were perched on the bloated stomach, feasting on the remains. Near the rear of the truck was a little red Japanese hatch. The front of the car had been completely crushed when it had been side-swiped by the out–of-control truck. The car sat hard down at the nose with both its front wheels broken from the axle. The passenger-side door of the hatch was open and there was a trail of thick swerving skid-marks burned onto the blacktop.

  I cut my speed to ten, the Yukon barely creeping forward, and I hunched over the steering wheel feeling a sudden cold hand of despair clutch at my heart and wring the last glimmers of hope from me.

  Parked up against the waist-high concrete Jersey barrier that divided the east and westbound lanes was a grey Ford Taurus. The car looked old and grimy. It looked like it was wedged between the wreckage of the red hatchback and the concrete deflector, like maybe it had tried to burrow through the narrow gap and become jammed. Both the driver’s side doors were wide open, and there was a body lying out on the road near the rear wheel. I crept closer, cursing bitterly under my breath. I considered backing up all the way to the off-ramp – but it was miles behind me and I knew if I did that I would never reach Pentelle.

  I threw the transmission into neutral and sat fuming while the big Yukon’s engine softly gurgled and bubbled. There was a gap between the front-end of the crushed compact and the tail of the truck – but not wide enough for me to drive through without risking serious damage to the Yukon. I glanced over my shoulder: the forest pressed close to the side of the road, dense and impenetrable.

  I stared hard at the fringe of undergrowth, and at that instant an unexpected movement caught my eye. It was the body lying by the wheel of the Taurus.

  I saw it move.

  It was a man. He was laying on his side, with one arm thrown over his face and the other close to his body. I saw the man’s hand move, and realized too late that it was clutching a gun.

  Time seemed to stand still.

  I saw the man begin to roll his body, his arm coming away from h
is face as he pushed himself up onto his knees. I heard the Yukon’s engine roar like a wounded beast as I slammed the selector into ‘Drive’ and crushed my foot down hard on the gas. I saw the man with the gun raise his arm, swinging it in a fluid arc until I was looking down the barrel.

  I saw the man’s face.

  It was Jed.

  The Yukon raced towards the tail of the overturned truck, swinging like a scythe as I fought to steady the wheel. I wrenched it over at the last moment and there was a flash of red across the windshield as the little compact disappeared under the nose of the Yukon and then the sound of a tremendous metallic bang that punched me forward against the steering wheel. Sheet metal tore and I was thrown violently against the door. My head cannoned forward then bounced back into the headrest as my hands were wrenched from the wheel and the car burst through the narrow gap, shunting the compact round in a crackle and shriek of metal that jarred my teeth.

  The tinted rear window suddenly exploded. I lifted my foot off the gas and tapped the brakes, then spun the wheel in a hard lock to the right. The Yukon swished her big cumbersome tail in a screech of blue smoke and went into a slide. But I was going too fast, the vehicle still swaying and rocking on spongy springs. She went up onto the off-side wheels. I had a split second to cry out in alarm and panic – and then the car rolled over onto its side.

  I was thrown across the cabin as the car slewed in a shower of sparks and thunderous noise. I felt my head crack against something hard and heavy, and for an instant everything went black. I blinked. I was bleeding – blood trickling from a gash in my scalp and running down my face.

  My head was pounding. The cabin filled with dust and smoke. Through the singing in my ears I heard another gunshot and an instant later the ricochet as the bullet zinged away into the distant morning sky.