by TW Brown
The rest of the interior was in fantastic shape. I tossed all my stuff on the passenger’s seat and climbed in. Closing the door carefully, I stuck the key in the ignition and held my breath. I didn’t think that enough time had passed for batteries to lose their juice, but I still had to worry all the way up until the engine turned over.
This baby didn’t disappoint. It ran so smooth that I initially thought nothing had happened. Of course, I saw all the zombies in the vicinity stop and turn in my direction if I had any doubts. I could still smell them, but I didn’t see any that were so close that I might hit them.
I put the vehicle in reverse and backed out of the driveway. I had to swerve to avoid a single zombie when I reached the intersection and the left turn that would take me out of this place. I was up the slight incline and at the tee-intersection when I realized that the map I’d located was folded up and in my bag.
Checking the rearview and the side mirrors, I saw that I had a few moments before the closest one would be on me. I coasted to a stop and reached down, plucking the map from my pack and opening it to find the traced route I’d marked. What would’ve taken hours on foot and been like trying to navigate a minefield would only take a few minutes in this vehicle. Even better, I could load it with plenty of supplies. I could be useful all the way to the end.
I cranked the wheel and turned right onto Mt. Scott Boulevard. Out of curiosity I turned the knob on the radio. Static was all I got, so I hit the ‘SEEK’ button. It skipped through the entire FM band before I even got a block. I tapped the button for AM and again engaged the ‘SEEK’ feature.
Two things happened at almost the exact same time. The first was that a partially garbled voice came through the static as the numbers on the dial froze at 1550AM.
The second was a strange grinding noise followed by the sudden jerk of the vehicle, next was the sound of at least one of my tires exploding and the Durango starting to skid to the right. I hopped the curb and the nose of the maroon-colored SUV collided with the trunk of one of the many trees that lined the side of the road.
3
Who Can I Trust?
I wasn’t going that fast. Despite that, my collision still activated the airbags. It was like being punched in the face. Not wearing my seatbelt probably made it even worse. I imagine if you were going fast enough that death was likely, and the airbag exploded and busted your nose, you would be thankful. A busted nose is way better than being dead, I guess.
I flopped back in my seat. The bag was deflating in a whoosh and I was doing my best to see past the stars dancing around my head. I glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw the blood streaming from both nostrils. Still no dark tracers in my eyes, though.
“That sucked,” I said, my swollen and clogged nostrils making me sound like a goon.
My brain started screaming that maybe I was in danger. If somebody shot out my tires, then it made sense that the next bullets would be slamming through my window. I laid flat on the seat, hoping that I was not visible from the potential sniper’s vantage point.
I fumbled for my Glock and checked it to make sure it was ready to shoot. Lying on my back as much as I could with the armrest, shifter, and cup holder between the two front seats, I got my breathing under control and listened. Realizing that I would be somewhat hampered with all the windows up, I reached over my head and hit the button on the passenger’s side. Since the key was still turned, the electrical system of the Durango was still active and the window whirred as it lowered. Once it was down about half way, I let go and returned all my attention to being as silent as possible as I listened for the crunch of somebody walking up to the truck. I wasn’t going to pause for even a second. I kept telling myself that it would be okay to kill anybody that poked their head into this vehicle.
I waited.
And I waited.
It seemed eternal, but nothing happened. Were they waiting for me to get out? Had they seen me flop down?
Another long period passed, and at last I heard the approach of feet. The unsteady dragging noise led me to believe that this was not one of the living. Perhaps that had been the plan of this sniper. They would let the zombies flush me out or kill me.
A hunched over figure limped past the driver’s side window. Definitely one of the undead. It kept walking. I saw no reason to draw attention to myself and stayed as still as possible. Eventually, it disappeared from view. I let out a sigh of relief and risked a peek up over the dashboard.
I could see the back of the zombie as it continued along its way. Looking back the way I’d come from, I didn’t see any zombies close. There were a few on the road almost all the way back by where I’d exited the graveyard. Over in the other cemetery, there was nothing.
I scanned all the way around my surroundings, but I still didn’t see anything that might be my sniper. I tried to keep my eyes peeled for any possible reflection off of metal. After all, wasn’t that how snipers were always detected in the movies?
Still nothing.
I sure as hell couldn’t just stay in this truck forever. I would have to climb out sooner or later. Having run off the road, I couldn’t tell which side had the blown tires. I decided to get out closest to the trees that shielded the neighborhood that I’d left. That meant exiting from the passenger’s side.
I twisted around in the seat and eventually wormed around so that I could open the door. I eased it open slowly, still worried about exposing myself to the mystery shooter.
Crawling forward, I saw the right front tire was destroyed. Craning my neck around, the back one was flat as well. The smell of the undead drifted up my nostrils, and I decided that being on my belly, and hanging partway out of the door of this vehicle, was not going to enhance my chances of survival. I slid out and managed to get to my hands and knees with very little difficulty.
I still had my Glock in my hand and used it to assist as I scanned my surroundings. The undead back up the road were closer, but not so close that their stench should be that prevalent.
When I glanced to my right, I could see underneath the carriage of the Durango. And that was when I discovered my mystery shooter.
Of course, my first reaction was to scoot away from the vehicle, my hands and knees getting all gouged up by the sharp gravel barely registering on my consciousness.
“How the…” I gasped, my voice trailing off.
As best I could tell, the child had crawled under the Durango. His clothing had gotten snagged on something and then managed to get caught in the drivetrain. Most of his right side was just gone. It had been ripped away in the violence of being jerked and dragged along under the vehicle. I could see what looked like a piece of bone embedded in the rear wheel and had to assume that I’d discovered the culprit behind my two flats.
A shiver rocked me and I moved away from the useless vehicle. It was done for just as much as that pathetic creature underneath. My last image of the child was its head rotating towards me slowly, its mouth opening and spewing some sort of dark sludge. It might’ve not actually been black, but since the zombie was underneath the vehicle, everything had a darker hue.
I got to my feet and slung my pack over one shoulder. The zombie that had walked past had obviously heard all the ruckus and had turned to face me. I had my axe in my hand as I approached and gave him a single strike to the face. I snapped my arm back reflexively and paused long enough to wipe my blade off on a patch of grass beside the road. It wasn’t long before I passed by a lone house on the left. I stopped cold in the middle of the road. If the last home I’d been in was luxurious…well, to put it plainly, this place made that one look like zombie scrapings.
This house had a massive wall that I had to assume surrounded the property. The driveway was barricaded by a sturdy iron gate, which was shut, and an old, beat-up pickup truck was parked just inside. I saw a lot of what looked like garden tools in the back of that truck. I didn’t find that too crazy; after all, many of your common yard implements made pretty good weapons for k
illing zombies. What did strike me as peculiar was the body of the naked man that was impaled on the spikes that topped the entry gate to this place.
Since the slumped over figure wasn’t moving, I was confident that he was simply dead. As I drew near, initially out of that same curiosity that used to cause us to slow down when we passed a terrible accident on the road, I was also convinced that this guy had been thrown onto this fence while he was still alive. There was a lot of dried blood splatter all over the driveway that looked like it came from somebody who had thrashed about quite a bit.
I reached the body and knelt down to look up at the man so I could see his face. The eyes would still have the tracers if he had been one of the infected. Sadly, I wouldn’t get any help here; the eyes had been plucked or gouged out. However, there was a large wad of cloth stuffed in this guy’s mouth. That was strangely fascinating. It had soaked up a good amount of blood and then dried so that it almost acted as a seal for this man’s open mouth.
I got up and was trying to decide what to do when something hissing arced over my head. I ducked instinctively, then I jumped when a loud series of pops and bangs sounded from behind me. I spun just in time to see the last of a strand of what was easily a few hundred firecrackers going off in a storm of blue smoke and paper shreds.
“Lagarté, pinche vato!” a male voice called. “Los muertos están llegando.”
“And me without my English-to-Spanish dictionary,” I muttered.
Looking up, I saw a short man standing on the balcony of the second floor. The man had black hair that looked like perhaps it hadn’t been washed in a while. It was matted to his forehead. He was easily a hundred pounds overweight, so maybe walking all the way to the balcony had worn him out. He was leaning on the rails for support, and I now realized that his voice had sounded just a bit strained.
I looked around. Sure enough, coming up from what was apparently another entrance into that neighborhood that I’d just left behind were a small mob of the undead. They were about the equivalent of a half a block away and turning in my direction. Back from the way I’d come, the road was still sort of clear, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“You speak English?” I called.
“Yes…just not to you, now go,” the man replied, surprising me.
I really wanted to argue with this guy, but there wasn’t time. I considered just climbing over the fence. He must’ve seen the intention in my eyes, because the man pulled out a wicked looking shotgun and laid the barrel across the rail of the balcony. Sure, a shotgun was crap from distance, and I had my Glock, but I wasn’t ready to get into a firefight just yet.
I resorted to giving the man the finger before I took off at a jog back in the direction that I’d come from. I heard him laugh, and I admit that it felt sort of good when I heard his laughter fall apart and become a series of painful sounding coughs.
I was now halfway between the two roads that led down into the neighborhood that I apparently was destined to never leave. That was when several zombies began to appear in that direction. So now I had them in front and behind me. Glancing over at the open vista of the Willamette National Cemetery, I even saw a few stragglers coming from that direction.
My only choice was to make it over the wrought-iron fence and then vanish into the trees that acted as the border to this place. I was pretty sure that I would come out in a backyard. It would suck that I’d have to go back into a house and repeat my search for keys once I located another car, but it couldn’t be helped.
I was almost up and over when I heard a scream back in the direction of that nice house with the not-so-nice Hispanic man and his shotgun. I briefly considered returning. I credited that feeling to the part of me that still survived from the Old World. How long would that part of me have been able to survive if I wasn’t on borrowed time? I wondered.
I threw one leg over and prepared to jump into a currently empty backyard so that I wouldn’t be ripped apart and eaten alive by the two approaching zombie mobs. Another piercing scream clawed its way into my ears. I stopped. I was confident that I knew the sound of a young person’s screams versus those of an adult. I’d just walked away from one poor defenseless infant. Those shrieks still rang in my ears, even now. While this was no toddler, it still had a younger sound to it. Could I make the same decision twice in as many days?
“Nope.” I reversed my position and dropped back down onto the road that was becoming very crowded with the undead at an alarming rate and jogged back to that closed gate.
The height was an issue that I could work out, but the main problem was in the spiked tops of the wrought-iron. I really hated what I was about to do. Grabbing hold, I had to rely heavily on my good arm to pull myself up. As soon as I could, I threw one leg up, planting my foot in between two of the spikes, using the cross bar that ran the length as my support. Next, I hauled my body up the rest of the way, using the corpse that was impaled on a series of those spikes as a bit of a buffer so that I would hopefully avoid the same fate.
I was amazed when I landed on the other side and appeared no worse for the wear. I scooted along the side of the truck, my eyes glued to that balcony where I’d been warned away.
Another scream sounded, and I was certain it belonged to a man. And when I heard that same scream hitch for just a moment and change into the scream that I now knew so well, I hurried to the front door.
I tried the knob and cursed when it proved to be locked.
“So much for the element of surprise,” I grumbled as I used my axe to shatter a window just to the side of the door. This one was actually about the size of the living room picture window of my old house. On this place, it looked deceptively small. The noise quickly reminded me that I was acting like an idiot as glass cascaded down in a sheet of potential pain and suffering. I danced back out of the way until the last large shards tumbled free, then I moved forward and cleaned off the bottom of the pane so I could climb in. I gave a quick inspection to ensure that I wouldn’t end up being stabbed by a glass stalagmite…or was it stalactite? I never could remember which was which. My college geology professor would be very disappointed in me right now.
It’s funny how the mind works. All these random thoughts were whizzing by in my head as I climbed into this gigantic home in the hopes that I might be saving somebody.
Naturally, the first thing that hit me was the stench. Only, there was more than just undead funk going on. I got whiffs of sweat and human waste mixed in. Also, there were other smells that I could not nail down. But it was as if somebody had collected the worst funks possible and created a massive scratch-and-sniff.
I gagged and threw my arm across my nose. That might help in fiction, or less stinky places, but it did very little for me in the here and now. I decided that the gate out front was going to have to serve as protection from the walking dead and stuffed my axe back in its little loop on my belt.
I drew the Glock and ensured that I had a full magazine ready for firing. I wouldn’t be screwing around.
Another terrified scream came from upstairs. The problem was that there were two staircases that I could see that made their way to the second and third floors. One of them was a wraparound job that left me wide open to any attack from the extensive walled landing above. The second set was this retro-cool spiral number that offered almost no room to maneuver, but was also at least mostly obscured until my head would emerge on the next floor.
I chose the spiral one and tried to be as quiet as possible while I climbed the steel steps. A few stairs from the top, I paused.
I could hear muffled sobs as well as whispered dialogue. It sounded like it was all in Spanish, so it did me little good even if I could overhear what was being said. There was also an irregular thumping sound. I was already pretty certain that I knew what that would prove to be.
I continued my ascent and stopped again as soon as my head came up to floor level. From this vantage point, I discovered that I was in the middle of som
e sort of upstairs rec room. A pool table was to my left, and on one wall were three classic pinball games. It was strange, but I’d always dreamed of owning my very own actual pinball machine. Not some cheesy one-off, but an actual arcade-style classic.
The exit to my left led down a hallway. On the bad side, all the doors along its length were shut. That made it a very dark corridor. Also on the bad side was the lone zombie that was clawing at the door just about halfway down the hall.
She was a short, portly woman. Her hair had been in a bun when she died; but that bun was coming loose and long strands of hair floated around her head as she tried to gain entrance to whatever waited on the other side of that door.
Of course, I could also see that lone zombie as a plus. One zombie wasn’t that tough to take down. That was always one of the issues I had with zombie films. Groups would run into one lone zombie and get all crazy-scared. Maybe I was becoming desensitized already, but to me, a single zombie was no real threat. Of course, if they sprinted a la Danny Boyle or Zak Snyder, then I imagine things would be much worse and a single zombie could truly be a threat.
I climbed those last few stairs and paused to draw my trusty hand axe. If I struck quickly, maybe I would have a moment to actually catch my breath and figure out what the hell was going on. At least that was what I told myself as I started up the hallway towards that single zombie.
I was a few steps away when it realized that I was there. It turned to me and opened its freshly bloodstained mouth to let loose with a low mewl. Something wet and meaty dropped from its open maw and I lunged forward. My axe struck her just to the right of the center of her forehead. The force of the blow was enough to crash through the bone and partially dislodge the eyeball from its socket.
