by Smith, S. L.
*****
Isherwood tapped on the cab of Jerry’s red truck and raised his hand to slow the trucks behind him. They stopped just past the last stoplight before leaving St. Maryville. The road ahead was completely empty, except for a couple cars abandoned here and there along the side of the road. Probably, Isherwood thought, with a zombie still seat-belted in the backseat, reaching and groping at us as we pass by. Likely, a person that was bitten and never quite made it to a hospital.
Everybody in all the trucks turned backward to watch for the zombies. Justin’s boy and girl leveled their .22 rifles along the railings of the truck bed. For several moments nothing happened. Justin starting laying on his horn, and the other trucks joined in. It worked.
There were thick stands of trees on either side of the roadway they had just turned from. They couldn’t see at first what was still following them. The intersection was still empty. Their eyes were fixed on the narrow gap where the road exited the trees.
“Like waiting on the floats at Mardi Gras,” Patrick said leaning out his window. His wife tried shushing him.
“Yeah,” Justin answered. “Parade from hell.”
In the still that returned after the trumpeting of horns, they first heard a slapping sound. They saw it was a younger man in cargo shorts. One of his flip-flops was gone. The other was clinging to his left foot. The bare soul of his right foot and the remaining flip-flop slapped down hard against the asphalt as he staggered into view.
Justin honked a few more times. They watched as the young man swung his head towards them. Even Isherwood winced at the sight. The far side of his face was little more than a hole. The white of his cheekbone was clearly visible and his eye was gone.
It was a curious trick of sound that they were able to hear just the slapping feet of this zombie, because he had nearly an entire city of the dead behind him. Several zombies seemed to crash through the trees and into the shoulder at once. Some of the horde had apparently left the roadway and were slowed as they struggled through the underbrush. In moments, the lone zombie in cargo shorts had been joined by several hundred more.
Not long after the first wave of zombies stumbled into the intersection, they all had locked clouded and scratched eyes onto living flesh. They jerked their heads up the roadway and started moaning in the direction of the three trucks. Their rotting teeth and jaws started snapping at them, even though they were still another hundred yards or more away.
They could again see the gray fog spilling across the horizon in the distance behind them. It would all soon materialize into the staggering shapes of the walking dead if they waited long enough.
Isherwood leaped down from the bed of the truck and walked over to the driver’s sides of the trucks. “Hey, do y’all mind if we scout ahead to the bridge. With you all minding the horde, I’ll, I mean, Jerry and I will probably have time to clear out any stragglers on the bridge and hotwire and move vehicles out of the way. Then y’all will arrive at the head of the zombie snake and we’ll lead it over the bridge together.”
“Zombie snake, huh?” Justin chortled. “You idiot.”
“So not keeping ‘zombie parade’?” Patrick asked rhetorically. “But yeah, buddy,” Patrick nodded, jutting out his bottom jaw, and confirming with his wife. “We can handle that.”
“Yeah, sure.” Justin smiled. “We got your back. Right, Chelsea?”
“Yea …,” Chelsea started, before choking and having to swallow, having found that her throat had grown dry. “Yeah, Isherwood. We’re good. It’ll give the kids some good target practice. They’ve been hounding us since this thing started, you know.”
“Keep them just in range, okay?” Isherwood asked. “Not too close. I’m not about to lose you guys now that we’ve just found each other, alright?”
They nodded to each other, letting their brave faces slip momentarily. “Patrick, you feel free to break off and warn us, if something changes. Wish to God we all had radios!”
“Your wish is my command,” Justin laughed, slapping his forehead. “I should’ve mentioned these as soon as I saw you. My bad. Look, station four … okay, everybody?” Justin handed Isherwood two black rectangular radios, fully-charged with a shining green battery meter to prove it.
“Dude,” Isherwood said, looking at the two radios in his hands as if they were gleaming bars of gold.
“Got one!” Patrick said, as Isherwood tried handing him a radio. “We’ve been working together for a few days now, once we realized we were probably all that was left of our neighbors.”
“Patrick, what about Ms. Cathy?” Isherwood asked, knowing that Patrick had lived next door to his mom and dad. Patrick just shook his head and looked away.
“Okay, guys.” Isherwood said, somberly stepping away from Patrick’s beige Tahoe. “I’ll be seeing you again in about twenty or thirty minutes. We’re gonna use the concrete divider separating the north and southbound lanes of the bridge to our advantage. We’ll funnel them in, one long zombie snake, northbound. Then, we’ll turn around southbound and haul butt, before they have a chance to turn around or spill over the divider. All that’s left will be barricading the bridge behind us.”
“Shouldn’t we take them a little ways up US-61? You know, toward St. Francisville, before we turn back?” Justin asked.
“I thought about that, but there’s only a grass median dividing US-61, not like the concrete divider that runs the three miles of approach bridges on the other side. I don’t think we could get past them before they blocked the roadway. Besides, I think they’ll scatter in time among all the rough terrain over there, making sort of a no man’s land on the other side of the bridge, if case they’ve got the wrong sort of survivors over there.”
Justin leaned over and opened his glove compartment. “I’ve got a map in here, somewhere. I’ll line up some roads, just in case.”
Isherwood initially tensed up, feeling uncomfortable with the loss of control. He relaxed by degrees as he realized his friend was right. “Isherwood?” Justin asked. “You looked far away there for a sec. You cool?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Isherwood said, shaking his head to regain his focus. “No, that’s a good idea. Thanks, buddy.”
“Solid plan, brother,” Patrick agreed. “Let’s do it before flip-flop back there starts nibbling on my bumper.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE APPROACH
It’s a ghost town, Isherwood,” Jerry said, as he pushed his gear shaft down into neutral. They had arrived at the foot of the bridge. “Looks like a good’un. This fool idea of yours might just work.”
They got out of the truck, slamming the doors shut behind them. The sound echoed through the warm, humid air. There was only a slight note of rot drifting along with the wind across the open expanse of green fields and blue sky. Nothing, no businesses or buildings of any kind, had yet been built up around the bridge approaches. The bridge was still only a few years since completion. Isherwood had worked as a civil engineer on the project, though had left before its completion to teach for a stint at the local high school.
Upriver from the bridge beyond some stands of trees and more open green fields rose the smoke stacks of Big Cajun Power Plant. On spring day such as this, one would expect to see white puffy clouds of vapor rising from the plant, but the plant had not been fully automated and lay dormant, likely never to run again. Rust would soon overtake the metal structure, eventually falling in on itself after wave upon wave of hot, humid Louisiana summers. The massive pile of coal that lay beyond it, however, could provide fuel for the newly-christened Kingdom of St. Maryville for two generations or more to come. There were also ample supplies of timber to supplement it.
Beyond the river, on the St. Francisville side, lay a much more worrisome power plant, the nuclear power plant. River Bend Station. The enormity of the problem hadn’t yet occurred to Isherwood, nor any of the others, who rarely, if ever, thought about what lay beyond the mile-wide Missisippi River at their backs.
“Look at that,” Isher
wood said. A radiant smile was spreading across his face. He was pointing to a stranded vehicle along the roadway. It was an eighteen wheeler. A crane stood perched above the trailer.
“That’s no good, boy. It sits too high.”
“What? What d’you mean?”
“The trailer. It won’t block the bridge. See how it sits over three feet off the ground? They’ll just crawl under it.”
“Unless we tip it over,” Isherwood frowned.
“Tip it?” Jerry howled. “Ain’t got no chains, and this truck ain’t powerful enough for that, neither. Maybe we could just shoot enough of them to clog it up when they start trying to squirm on under.”
“Yeah, that could work. Or, if I drove it fast enough and turned the wheel fast enough at the last second, I could jack-knife it. It would wedge between the side of the bridge and the divider.”
“You’re crazy, kid. Might just shoot out the tires. It’ll be sitting pretty low by then.”
“Even so, that’s still only one half of the bridge blocked off. Two of our trucks could finish the job, I bet, turned sideways and overlapping. Think you could hotwire that truck? Get it ready for the return trip?”
The older man muttered a string of curse words under his breath, but nonetheless cranked his truck back into drive.
*****
Jerry was standing beside the door to the cab of the eighteen-wheeler. He had asked that Isherwood cover him as he swung open the door to the cab. There was a bloody handprint running vertically down the cab’s windshield. That pretty well satisfied them that there would be trouble within.
Sure enough, a ghoul came tumbling out of the cab as soon as Jerry swung the door open. It fell forward and out of the cab in a perfect nose dive, splitting into several desiccated pieces as it smashed into the concrete deck of the bridge. Its skull, remaining intact, was still staring up at Isherwood when Jerry crushed it under a boot heel.
“Thing must’ve mummified sitting in the heat of the cab all this time,” Jerry observed grimly. “Blood must of all nearly evaporated out of it or something, but it was still coming. Stinkin’ filth.” Jerry gave the thing’s skull another good kick. “Let me see if I can hotwire this thing.”
“Might not have to,” Isherwood said. He was rummaging through the remaining pieces of the zombie. “If this was the driver, the keys are still probably around here somewhere.”
“Or still in the ignition!” Jerry said triumphantly. He gave the keys a tentative turn, expecting to hear the click-click of a dead battery. Instead, the huge engine roared to life. “Hot damn,” the old man yelled above the heavy purr of the engine. He got out of the vehicle a few seconds later after checking out the rest of the cab. As he fell back to the ground with an arthritic wince, he said, “I’ll just let her run for a little while, making sure the battery is good ‘n charged.”
“How much gas in the tank?” Isherwood asked before tapping the drum beneath the driver’s seat.
“Almost half a tank. Plenty.”
“Yeah, but if I try jack-knifing it, I might go up in smoke.”
“Well, let’s get it in position up top then.” Jerry said. “We’ll try the plug-the-holes-with-zombies plan.”
From atop the bridge, Isherwood and Jerry could see practically all of the stretch of roadway leading from the last stoplight, nearly three miles of straight roadway cutting through the violent wash of green. They watched as the horde gradually darkened the roadway in the distance. Isherwood caught glimpses of his friend’s two trucks as, ever so often, they came over a rise and the sun glinted off their windshields. Carrion birds were starting to swarm atop the horde, as well, marking the advance of the long and ragged gray snake.
“How much farther do you think?” Isherwood asked.
Jerry squinted into the distance. “Eh, I can’t see too good. Can you tell if they’ve made it to the bridge over that railroad spur?”
“Why didn’t I bring binoculars, or at least a rifle with a decent scope?” Isherwood complained as he stared intently into the distance. “Nah, I think they’re just about to make it there, though.”
“Probably another twenty minutes.” Jerry said.
“Let’s run down the road and see if we can grab an extra car, what d’ya say?”
“I don’t know, kid.” Jerry hesitated.
“One longish car could plug a big hole under that semi.”
“Alright,” Jerry grunted, rubbing his neck. “Let’s go.”
The old red truck growled its way back down the St. Maryville side of the bridge and curled away down underneath the approach bridge where the exit ramp met the River Road. They followed the road downriver, southward, toward a line of homes that gave way to a collection of sprawling neighborhoods called Waterloo.
“Look,” Isherwood called out. “Let’s stop there. There’s even a four-wheeler.” He was pointing toward a home at the end of a long driveway. Two cars were sitting in a carport. “Older-looking cars. Probably an older couple that died at home.”
As they pulled into the driveway, they didn’t see anything moving. Moments after slamming the doors, however, Isherwood heard tapping and scratching coming from inside the house. He was covering Jerry while he crawled under the dashboard of a late 90s Ford Taurus.
“There’s a couple zombies in the house, tapping the windows at us, Uncle Jerry. No harm. I’m not gonna shoot them, but I thought you should know.”
Jerry grumbled something resembling discomfort from under the dash. Isherwood kept moving and scanning the general area around the carport until the car’s engine roared to life.
“How’re we doing for time?” Jerry asked as he groped back to his feet, rubbing his back and knees.
“Just about ten minutes left.” Isherwood answered.
“Good, let me see that,” Jerry said putting his hand out for Isherwood’s pistol. He handed it over without explanation, and watched as Jerry shoved the carport’s screen door open and went inside the old zombie couple’s home. He heard two quick shots and the zombies dropping to the floor. Jerry came barreling back out of the broken door, and handed Isherwood back his pistol, offering no explanation for his actions. Isherwood guessed that maybe Jerry had known the two people. They didn’t seem much older than he was.
“Turns out we didn’t need to hotwire the thing after all,” Jerry said, still not looking at Isherwood, but holding up two sets of keys.
“A two for one special,” Isherwood cried out happily, forgetting the solemnity of the moment.
“But let’s get the Taurus first, anyway. It’s longer than the Focus. These people sure loved their Fords.”
*****
They spent the time they had left rearranging the few abandoned, or mostly abandoned vehicles, that were strewn around near the base of the bridge. Isherwood had realized the hole in his plan at some point and was hustling to correct it. They needed to funnel the horde into the northbound lane at the beginning of the concrete divider. If they didn’t a fair number or even a very large number of zombies would be trapped in their exit corridor. They would be painting themselves into a corner.
Problem was, this couldn’t be the place where they barricaded the southbound lane, because it was too far inland. Also, the barricades in both lanes needed to be side by side, if they were going to be effective. They had enough cars to make the funnel into the northbound corridor, but they would need even more to continue the barricade beside the eighteen-wheeler.
A minute or so later, they were back atop the bridge, and Isherwood was parking the Taurus behind the eighteen-wheeler. He put the keys between the visor and the soft cloth ceiling and closed the door, leaving it slightly ajar.
“No, you’ll have to close the door,” Jerry yelled over the din of his diesel engine. “Or else the dome and door lights will drain the battery. Roll the window down a little, instead.”
Isherwood nodded and corrected his mistake, turning back to the old red truck. “Oh, my God,” he said, frozen where he stood. Jerry turned
around in the driver seat, looking back across the bed of his truck. “Ain’t that a hell of a thing,” he muttered.
As they watched, Justin and Patrick’s vehicles were accelerating up the approach to the bridge. Maybe a quarter of a mile behind them, starting with a narrow trickle, like the snake’s forked tongue, and quickly broadening to fifty or seventy-five abreast, the dead were following after them. It was an entire city of the dead. The gray, ragged snake of zombies was over a mile long, maybe two, reaching nearly all the way back to the last stoplight. The three or four hundred from Main Street had been joined by nearly three times that many from Hospital Road and maybe Parent Street, as well.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BRIDGE
The Audubon Bridge had been built without any great expectation of high traffic flow, at least not for several years, but it was needed as a hurricane evacuation route and as a third major artery connecting east and west between New Orleans and Natchez. It was truly ironic that only now, at the end of all things, was it experiencing its first traffic jam.
The occupants of the three trucks had waited as long as they could at the top of the bridge, honking, catcalling, and carrying on, before they had jumped back in their vehicles and started their descent across the Mississippi River. As near as they could tell, the whole horde was staying on target.
“We must have nearly all of St. Maryville behind us,” Justin’s voice crackled over Isherwood’s radio. “You’ve done good, you massive idiot, click-shhh.” The radio crackled with Justin’s screechy laugh and then dissolved into static.
“Yeah, guys.” Isherwood answered the radio, noting that the sun was starting to get low in the sky. “I think my plan might be working a little too well, unfortunately. That’s too long a line of zombies for us to just double-back up the bridge, click-shhh.”
