by David Smith
Then, one afternoon, the droning silence of the dead was broken by the sound of diesel engines out on the highway. Our ears had grown so sensitive, we heard them five minutes or more before they reached us. Your Dad grabbed a gun and went to one of the windows that overlooked the front yard and the road. Daddy went to the other and told me to watch out the back. The engines grew closer, slowly. Gunshots sounded off arythmically and echoed through the trees as they approached. It sounded like a small army. When they reach the road in front of the house their brakes squealed slowly to a stop and I could hear one voice barking out orders. Shots kept popping off and you could hear the footsteps of the dead quickening, getting...agitated.
"Three troop carriers and an armored humvee." Your dad said. "It's the 857th engineers from here in town, national guard. The dead are surrounding them."
I could hear them beating on the windows of the humvee, dull thuds against the thickened glass, and the more echoing sound of them pawing and slapping the sides of the bigger trucks. A gunshot or a fleshy thud would ring out every time one was strong enough to climb and get itself put down. Then there was a voice over an PA.
"Sergeant Sampson. We're here to rescue you and your wife and bring you to safety."
"They're here to rescue us?" I asked.
"No! Stay there!" Your Dad barked. "It's a trick. That's Captain Jennings. If there was a safe place he'd be there, not out with the team on rescue operations."
"It's getting pretty hairy out here." He said, his voice a little shaky. "If you're in there give us a sign of life and we will rescue you."
Suddenly there were two men out back, in full combat fatigues. They ran up to the house through the yard, hacking the few remaining dead with machetes on the way, their assault rifles hanging tightly against their chests.
"Two guys back here!" I said.
A few more zombies were drawing closer to the back porch, in gradual pursuit of the two soldiers as your Dad came in a crouched run to look out the window. We couldn't see what they were doing on the porch because of the roof but in a moment they came running back out, knocking down two of the dead who were in their way. Then we smelled smoke.
"Well son, what do we do now?" Daddy said in as calm a tone as was his usual way. He had called your Dad 'son' from about two weeks after we started dating. He had never had a son, just myself and two sisters, and he was always the straightest judge of character. So when he met your Dad for the first time, he knew right away, the kind of man he was. They went hunting and fishing together. Your Dad worked with him around the farm any time he had the chance. He even went golfing with him, although I suspected it was just to close the deal as his son-in-law. From the moment they met, they were thick as thieves and even though Daddy never served in the military, he was as proud of your Dad's service as he could be. Daddy had missed the draft in Vietnam by a year and to hear him tell it, he had always wished he had joined after. But the truth was, as hard of a man as he seemed, he didn't even like watching movies where people were killed, the good guys or the bad. He was shrewd but really was a kind soul.
Your Dad answered him. "We can't go outside. Best case, they want to take us captive and punish me for deserting. Worst case, we get eaten alive before they can even get to us." The smoke was already starting to fill the attic. "Follow me."
We followed him down to the first floor and into the utility room attached to the back of the house, on the far end from where the fire was set. The floor there was concrete so he grabbed an ax he used to use to split wood and rushed back up the steps and into the kitchen. He started chopping at the floor frantically with big overhead swings. By the time he had a hole big enough for Daddy to fit through, flames were running across the ceiling above our heads and the smoke was almost too thick to see through, much less breathe. He pushed me in first and Daddy followed. "Go to the far corner!" He yelled as he came down last.
The ground was cool and the air clean and we all took in large gulps of air, wheezing and coughing out the smoke. As we crawled, we could hear the gunfire intensify out front. By the time we made it to the end of the house, and to a place where we could look out through the fake brick skirting, the dead were tearing into several men just outside the back of the last truck. More had made it into the cab and were eating what was left of the driver and co-driver. The men in the second truck fought to get to their aid but quickly disappeared beneath the crowd as well.
"Son, maybe if you go help them, he'll go a little easier on you."
Your Dad stared for a long moment, thinking it over. Just as he looked as if he was about to charge out there, the humvee cranked back up and tried to move. The crowd around it was so thick that it stalled the engine. They tried forward, then reverse again...nothing but a short budge. It lurched back and forth, the front tire sawing left and right, trying to find a weakness but nothing gave. Suddenly, a hatch opened at the top and two men fought back the climbers to get out and stand on top. They opened fire, trying to clear a path as the Captain closed the hatch behind them. They took down a few before the second man was pulled down onto the hood and torn in six different directions. The other looked back and realizing the hatch was closed, knelt to pull at it, still firing his weapon with one hand to keep them back. The ones he had killed plus the ones that were climbing up to him made the crowd just thin enough in the back for the humvee to push its way free. It roared backward, bouncing and rumbling over bodies. The ones on top scattered and fell, taking the man with them off the roof. Then he just sped away, leaving every one of them behind.
The last of them, the men from the third truck, were still fighting but it wasn't long before they were overwhelmed. Blood was smeared everywhere; on the highway, on the trucks, down the ditch bank.
It started to get hot and I suddenly realized I could hear the fire roaring and popping, not far from where we lay under the floor. I shook your Dad's arm, as he was stuck in an eyes and mouth wide open stare, watching his friends and brothers being eaten alive.
"Son, we gotta get out of here." Daddy tried to wake him. "Charles!"
The only thing that worked was when the other end of the house buckled and collapsed, sending sparks and flames shooting at us. He jumped then said, "Go! Run for the first truck!"
I let Daddy go first because I thought, with his age, he might be the slowest. I had never even seen him run and was surprised when he grabbed my hand and took off, pulling me faster than I was prepared, jumping over and juking around those lying dead and those kneeling to eat. A few of the more recently resurrected noticed us and stood to chase but the more rotten ones didn't, thank God.
You Dad beat us to the truck and grabbed by its ankles, one that was on the drivers side, bent over and eating the driver whose one leg was still twitching. He drug it out, its face bouncing off the top step as it fell the six feet to the asphalt, landing flat on its bloated stomach which split at the sides, blowing blood and devoured flesh out in a pattern like snow angel wings. He grabbed the ax from where he had hastily leaned it against the truck and, before it could turn over, swung it down, splitting the back of its head all the way to its face.
Daddy was turned the other way, standing a few feet behind your Dad making sure nothing came up behind him. As the first of the three less rotted ones came near, he blasted it in the chest with the shotgun and it fell backward, flat, and immediately started getting back to its feet.
"Shoot it in the face!" your Dad yelled as another one lunged for him from the passenger side. He stepped back and let it fall out head first then chopped its head almost completely off with one swipe.
Daddy shot the second one, a girl I recognized as a cashier from the grocery store. She was in her late teens or early twenties, a pretty girl, from Chalmette I guessed by the sound of her accent. Her hair was light brown with blonde highlights and her eyes, a dark blue. They sparkled in her cherubic face, that was a naturally tan complexion. She was the kind of girl who did more than just hand you your change and say, 'Thank you' with
out ever looking up from the end of her nose. You could tell she recognized and remembered you by the way she spoke, always ready with a compliment or appropriately personalized comment. By her perkiness I imagined she was a cheerleader and by her intelligence, probably the president of her high school beta club or debate team. She had probably envisioned herself going to college, joining a sorority, marrying her high school sweetheart and become a congresswoman or a pediatrician. That was all gone now. Her eyes were a lighter blue and dull. A chunk of her hair and scalp was missing and dried blood covered half her face. She walked, face first, toward the end of the barrel of the shotgun, arms reaching, fingers grasping. Daddy fired when she was just inches from it and the bottom half of her face, upper part of her neck and the back of her head disappeared in a red explosion and the top of her skull flipped forward and away, her eyes bulging out from the sockets.
I put my hands over my face and crouched down in front of the truck to the sounds of the shotgun cocking and firing repeatedly, then your Dad yelling. "Climb up on the hood! Kaylee, Climb!"
Finally I got up the nerve to open my eyes and the mob that had been eating finally noticed us, I guess because of the commotion of the shotgun. As I climbed up I could see your Dad, shoving the last occupant of the front seat out the other side and slamming the door. Daddy was having so much fun that he had to grab his shirt, pull him to the truck and shove him up into it. I felt a dead hand bump my ankle as I pulled myself up onto the hood and I scrambled toward the windshield to get away. As they started to slowly climb up after me, I felt the rumble of the engine through the hood, coming to life and the truck lurched forward, knocking them back down.
We ran over them and out of the herd, all of them turning to follow us, a few of them falling down clumsily as they tried to hang on. A half a mile up the highway we turned into the parking lot of the skating rink and I climbed into the truck through the window, over Daddy and sat between them. I still remember the way the blood from the canvas seat felt, soaking through my shorts.
We turned around and headed south, back through the herd from the house, the truck jarring as the tires rolled over them. Your Dad's face was hard in concentration, seeing them but not looking at them, looking past them, further down the road. As we rolled slowly past the house I took one last look to see it engulfed in flames that rose up into the limbs of the pine trees standing near it as they too started to burn from the top down. Your Dad and grandpa kept their stares fixed down the road, brows lowered, eyes hard, mouths drawn into tough and determined frowns.
We drove slowly towards town, swerving around a few wrecks and running over several of the dead as they heard us coming and walked straight into the front of the truck. They were everywhere; in the road, standing in people's yards and business' parking lots, hardly fifty feet between any two of them.
The few miles of highway between our house and the city limits were lined with thick woods, a couple of gas stations, a few houses, an auto repair shop, a discount grocery store, an old motel, a long ago shut down drive in movie theater that had been converted to a scrap yard and, a pool hall that only served beer and all were surrounded by pine trees with thick undergrowth. When we got to the city limit sign, I knew they had taken over the whole world.
This place was the up and coming area of town. There was a new gas station where another road converged with the two lane highway. Large swaths of land had been cleared to make room for more construction but nothing had been built yet and small saplings were growing up through the red clay. Two lanes turned to four with a turn lane in the middle just before the intersection of the road to the new hospital. The office of a new mini-storage was the tallest of the buildings. It and the mini-storages themselves were styled like a Mexican villa, complete with fake terra cotta roof tiles and tan stucco walls.
The empty lots, the spaces between the buildings and the roads were all covered with infected dead as far as I could see. They walked in groups of five to twenty or so with even more stragglers walking alone in between the groups and all were generally heading south. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of Woodstock or some other outdoor music festival but in slow motion and exponentially larger. The ones in the road that we didn't run over, and near enough to it for us to catch their attention, turned toward us as we passed by and followed, reaching out and quickening their steps as much as the rigor of their legs would allow. I knew then that the entire world was just like this, why wouldn't it be?
There was a multi-car pile up at the one red light on the north end of town, which was still flashing red in one direction and yellow in the other. The dead were packed into the area, pushing each other, waving their stiffened arms wildly. We turned in to the grocery store parking lot just before the intersection to bypass the wreck. As it panned past the side window I saw what the zombies were trying to get at. Through the bloodied windshield of one of the cars, I could see a survivor. She was sitting in the middle of the back seat, her hands over her face, sobbing.
"Look! In that car!" I yelled and your Dad stopped the truck, the brakes squealing to a halt.
"What?" He asked gruffly.
"There's someone alive, in the back seat."
He looked for a moment, squinting his eyes and focusing then scanned the wreckage. "I don't know if we can get to her in time."
"We've got to try." I argued.
"The only way we could get to her would be to push all those cars out of the way with the truck and run over as many as we can doing it. But that's going to burn a lot of fuel, probably leave us stranded before we get where we're going."
I folded my arms and glared straight forward, sulking.
He spoke again. "Dad, what do you think?"
Without hesitation he said, "I think you're gonna end up doing the right thing and longer we discuss it, the more fuel's being wasted."
Your Dad shook his head and gave a half grin as he wrestled the wheel to the hard right and punched the throttle. The first car we hit was a big SUV, smashing a few of the dead between us and it. This was good because we hit it hard and fast and their bodies probably absorbed some if the impact. It slid easily, its back tires screeching on the pavement. After about fifty feet the tires blew out with a loud, long sigh and we stopped. When we backed up there was faint white smoke rising from two dark black tire marks on the light gray asphalt.
"Maybe take it a little easier next time." Daddy chuckled. I had never seen him having so much fun.
The next in our path was a big, old, four-wheel drive Chevy. It was lifted high and had tires wider than and as tall as ours. "Damn, I hate to do it." Your Dad said.
He then eased into it and the bumpers matched up as the dead were starting to beat on the sides and doors of our truck. He pushed the throttle down and the truck raised up as the wheels tried to turn. The engine struggled and the turbo spun faster and faster but the Chevy, which was much lighter but had too much traction, refused to move.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Must've had the four-wheel-drive locked in when they wrecked."
He backed up several feet, far enough to knock down some and thin out the crowd around us. He threw it back in gear and punched it again. It took off slow but got up speed enough to bump the Chevy into motion, the tires barking in a low tone every time the they landed as the whole truck bounced up and down violently. After about ten feet, the drive shafts or something broke with two loud, metallic pings and it rolled freely, running over and crushing several more of the dead.
We backed up again and turned toward the next car which was facing toward the wreckage. It was an old, big bodied Cadillac or Lincoln, I could never tell the difference no matter how he tried to teach me. We had to try to push it broadsided or we would've been pushing it in towards the center of the pile up where the woman was. He hit it hard but a little easier than the Chevy and it worked at first, the car rocking and bouncing as the tires on the opposite side lost and regained traction. On the third or fourth bounce it got caught under
bumper, the tires digging in and it started to lift up on our side. It lifted the front of the truck up and all I could see was sky before your Dad slammed on the brakes. He backed off of it and the front of the truck slammed down, all of our knees banging against the metal dashboard. He bumped it again and all of a sudden we must've caused a spark. With a loud, fast, deep whoosh the entire scene went up in flames. Underneath our truck, under the Cadillac and all the way to underneath the woman's car, the fire spread in a flash.
With a cuss, your Dad slammed it in reverse and backed up far enough to be out of the fire, running over more dead on the way. He reached down in the floor quickly and picked up a rifle, left behind by one of the dead seals. He quickly ejected the magazine and it was empty. He cussed again. The front window was hinged at the top with a latch at the bottom so he pushed them both open and tightened the screws that held them.
"What are you doing?" I asked, panicked.
"Dad," he said. "Keep them off me with that shotgun as well as you can."
Your Dad was indecisive sometimes, overanalyzed every situation but when he made up his mind what to do, there was no turning back. It was do or die.
He crawled out the front window with the ax in hand, jumped down to the ground and ran, making his way around the fire to the hood of her car, chopping down any that got close enough to reach with the ax. Blood splattered with every swing and Daddy shot everything that was far enough away from him that he wouldn't get hit. It a few seconds he had made it up onto the hood of the first car and ran over the top of them, wiping blood and sweat from his face with his sleeve. He jumped down off the top of a van onto her hood, ran over the roof to the trunk and started chopping out the back window. It seemed like a hundred dead hands were reaching up, grabbing at his legs and he just kept kicking and swinging that ax. Just as he reached down to pull the woman out of the back window, one had gotten a grip and pulled his foot out from under him. He fell and it was just about to sink its teeth into his calf when Daddy fired. Most of the load hit the back of its head and it went limp but your Dad screamed out in agony as some of the shot went into his lower leg.
