by R. J. Spears
Joni pulled into close to me. “What we going to do?”
If I answered truthfully, I would have replied, “Die,” but I thought better of it.
“I’m going to try to shoot a path in front of the driver’s door then jump down and get in,” I said, measuring our hopeless situation. “You grab whatever you can to stay on top until I drive far enough away to let you get down.”
“You’re just full of crazy ideas tonight, aren’t you?” Somehow, she managed to put a smile into the question.
“You got a better one?”
“No.”
“Then we go with mine.”
The undead were two to three deep around us, moaning and grabbing at our feet. I aimed into a concentration of them next to the driver’s side door and started firing. Crack went my gun. One headshot. Crack. Another headshot. Crack. A third headshot. Crack, a fourth headshot, and the slide came back on my gun.
I had lost track of bullets. Joni looked at me as if I was the stupidest person on the planet. Or maybe the most dangerously stupid person. Maybe I was. I turned my attention to the tiniest of openings I had made in the undead crowd below, deciding it was my best and only chance and readied myself for the jump. I tensed my muscles and started to leap when something strong gripped my ankle. It closed like a vice, knocking me off balance, and I slammed down hard against the roof of the cruiser.
I looked down and saw the biggest human I had ever seen in my life -- living or dead -- holding onto my ankle. In life, it could have been white or black, now it was just gray with reddish-black gashes gouged into its forehead. It reached out with its other hand and grabbed my other leg, starting to pull my calves into its waiting and hungry mouth.
With some effort, I pulled my leg free and slammed my foot into its face, hearing a bone jarring crunch as its nose broke. This stopped it for three milliseconds, but then it gave another yank nearly pulling me off the roof. Joni clutched at me, but she was no match for this behemoth’s strength. It was only a matter of time before I got pulled down into the undead masses. The giant pulled me forward as it got ready to chow down on my leg. It lowered its head, its mouth open, ready for a delicious meal of leg-of-human.
I prepared myself for the bite when the crack of a gunshot broke the night. The undead giant’s brains flew onto my legs as its grip went limp. It tottered for a moment and fell back into the crowd, taking down a half dozen zombies in its collapse.
When I looked up, I saw Joey standing a dozen feet away. He cradled his wounded arm in close to his body, but he had the other arm extended with his gun out, ready for the next shot.
“Get in the car, Grant,” he said.
“The passenger door’s locked,” I said.
“I’ll take care of that,” he said and half-walked, half-stumbled in an arc around to the driver’s side of the cruiser. Part of his neck lay open from an ugly bite wound which was oozing blood in a copious stream. A zombie broke away from the crowd and headed in his direction. As bad as a shape as he was in, his aim was steady and true as he took it out with a headshot.
Since he was making the loudest noises now, some of the zombies diverted their attention from Joni and me and headed in Joey’s direction. He finally positioned himself where he needed to be and nodded at me, started to shoot into the undead masses. Zombies fell one after the other, and the opening got large enough for me to jump down.
“Stay up here and hold onto the lights,” I told Joni. She nodded her head. She had no intention of jumping down into the zombie’s mosh pit surrounding the cruiser. Not for any amount of money or all the gold in King Tut’s tomb.
I took the leap, knocking one zombie to the ground with a punch as my feet touched down. A majority of the small throng was now heading towards Joey. That was their way -- always giving the squeaky wheel the grease.
I pivoted, grabbing the door handle and, thankfully, it opened. As I lowered myself into the driver seat, I caught a glimpse through the zombies to see Joey taking measured shot after shot.
He dropped a zombie with each trigger pull as the bodies stacked up around him. It was one of the most impressive displays of shooting I had ever seen in my life, but inexplicably, he stopped and paused a moment. I thought I saw him look at me and wink, but I couldn’t be sure. He brought the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger and went down, falling out of view. Where I had failed, he had counted, saving one final bullet.
I went back to business and found the keys dangling in the ignition. I turned them half-expecting the stereotypical action from any horror film and the car wouldn’t start, but it revved to life. Zombies pounded at the windows insistently. I feared that we’d get hung up on bodies if I floored it and plowed through them. Battling all my instincts to jam the gas pedal to the floor, I eased forward, knocking zombies aside. It took a good minute to make a way through the crowd as they smacked their hands against the side of the cruiser. One fell onto the hood and tried to take a bite at me through the windshield, exposing its blackened and broken teeth. It clung to the windshield wiper for a good ten seconds before being peeled away by the scrum of creatures clamoring around the cruiser.
As I hit the edge of the crowd, a few steadfast stragglers broke free and started following me. I honked the horn repeatedly making sure I was the center of attention. Easing away, I drew as many as I could away from the area. When I looked through my rearview mirror, I estimated that I was able to pull fifty percent of them down the block with me. It made me feel like the Pied Piper of the undead. Me and my little parade of zombies.
I began to sing, “76 zombies led the big parade, with 110 undead ghouls close behind.”
Sometimes I think there is something seriously wrong with me.
When I got three blocks away with my zombie friends still trailing along, I gunned the cruiser leaving them eating exhaust fumes. I headed down a side street finding only had a few of the undead shambling about. The streets were littered with bodies, some half eaten and some just parts, a leg here, a hand there. It wasn’t a pretty site.
Instead of heading directly to the bus, I took a wide loop around the downtown to give Joni the best chance to make it to the bus unmolested. After a couple blocks of seeing the carnage, I started to zone out, barely idling along. The city looked like it had been in an all-out war. Windows of buildings were shattered, glass glittering in the street. Burnt out cars sat silent, blackened and charred. A frightened dog skittered across the street directly in front of the cruiser. I barely missed it by inches when I slammed on my brakes, breaking my trance.
Getting back to the task at hand, I punched the accelerator, forgetting Joni was on top, but was reminded when she slammed her hand against the roof of the cruiser. I could hear her swear at me through the roof. I had us at the bus two minutes later. I jumped out and Joni climbed down. When she got both feet planted firmly on the ground, she proceeded to punch me in arm.
“You nearly threw me off! You asshole,” she yelled.
“Sorry,” I said. “In the excitement, I sort of forgot you were up there.” It was the best I could do. She has kids. I’m sure they tried the “I forgot” routine on her at some point.
She held up her index finger and pointed it as me, but was unable to say anything for a good 20 seconds. After a few scary moments (for me), she turned on her heels and headed directly for the bus.
“Hold on a second, we don’t know if anyone is on board,” I said. She got the message and we approached the bus cautiously. Its windows were smeared with reddish-black streaks from the inside. Not a good sign.
I went around to the trunk of the cruiser, popped it, and found a shotgun. “Thank you, God,” I said grabbing it and all the shells I could get in my pockets. “Now, I feel better about opening that door,” I said, pointing the barrel of the shotgun at the bus.
As we made our way down the side of the bus, a clomping sound came from inside. “I’m pretty sure that’s not a Flamenco dancer waiting for us inside,” I said. A slight thumping noise jo
ined the clomping. Whoever was on board was having a real hoedown.
My plan was simple. She opened the door and I blasted anything that came out. If only life went that way.
It took a lot of guts for her open the door, but she did it, despite her shaking hands. She pushed her fingers in a slight crack of the door, prying at it for all she was worth. It took about ten seconds of straining, and the door slammed open, nearly spilling her in the street.
I was reminded, in a very profound way, that you could never get used to the stench of the undead. The bus had been sitting in the sun for five days, baking whatever was left inside. A wall of wretchedness assaulted us and I stumbled back a step, my mouth filling with a little bit of vomit. I didn’t want Joni see me spit it out, so I swallowed it which was probably a mistake.
I called upon my manly gods and poised myself to shoot anything that came out, but nothing did. As I slowly mounted the stairs, the clomping noise grew louder.
When my head reached the floor level of the passenger compartment, I saw something that nearly made me drop the shotgun. Coming down the aisle was a legless zombie, pulling itself along by its arms. Somebody had shot it in the face. Most of its lower jaw was missing and one its eyes nearly completely gone, replaced by a blackish-red tender hole. Some sort of putrid goo leaked down its face from the wounds.
The thing must have been a weightlifter in life because its arms were massive. It was making impressive progress and was almost on me before I could react. The only thing that broke my trance was Joni punching me in the shoulder.
With only seconds to spare, I brought up the shotgun and put this thing out of our misery with a blast to the face. My gun did the job where the others hadn’t.
I made my way up the rest of the stairs and turned to Joni, “Shut the door and make sure we can get this moving. I’ve got to check out the rest of the bus.”
She moved to the driver’s seat as I made my way deeper into the bus. Streaks of blood ran the length of floor, leading to the back of the bus. The heat inside was oppressive and my skin become wet and clammy almost instantly.
Every seat was a possible hiding place. At any moment, I half-expected a hand to reach out and yank me off my feet.
I led with the shotgun, pivoting from seat-to-seat as I moved down the aisle, taking it a seat at a time. It was unbearably hot inside. Pinpricks of sweat broke out on my forehead and they swelled to a flood, leaving me nearly drenched in sweat by the time I was at the second row of seats. About a third the way back I came across someone that legless must have chowed down on. Whoever it had been, there wasn’t much left. It seemed that legless started with the feet and worked his way up. The corpse’s legs were riddled with bite marks and large hunks of meat ripped away, exposing bone.
Three seats back I came across another partially devoured corpse laying in the space between seats. It looked like someone had doused the area with a huge bucket of blood.
I continued on my trek and made it all the way to the back of the bus without further incident. I was about to head back to the front of the bus when I heard a scrabbling noise. As I turned around the bathroom door opened and a young boy of no more than eight or nine burst out. Well, he had been a boy before he got undead. My guess is “legless” bit him, but he got away and hid in the bathroom before the virus changed him.
The combination of the suddenness and the fact that it was a child caused me to falter. Despite weighing under a hundred pounds, the thing rammed into me, knocking me down into the aisle and onto my back. Before I could stop it, the zombie boy was on me, snarling and grabbing at me, teeth snapping.
The aisle was tight, making it impossible for me to maneuver. I had held onto the shotgun and that was the only thing keeping the small zombie away from me. I used it to batter the boy’s face, keeping him from biting any of my meaty spots. This would only work for so long, though, so I bucked my body once, sending the boy up into the air about two feet. I used this separation to bring the shotgun up, smashing the thing in the face. It rolled backward down the aisle, but was on its feet and coming at me a second later. Desperate hunger drove it on after five days on the bus with nothing to eat.
I scrambled backwards and was able to get to a sitting position as he charged. I aimed and shot the thing head-on, the blast knocking it ten feet. It didn’t get back up.
I hated killing the kids.
The bus roared to life. Yipee.
“I think I’ve got this,” Joni shouted from the front of the bus.
I made my way up the aisle. When I got to her, I asked, “How much gas do we have?”
“Half a tank.”
“Is that enough to get us out of town?”
“No clue, but it’ll have to do.” She paused for a moment as she reviewed the operation of the bus, her hand touching the gear shift and then the steering wheel. “So, what’s the plan?”
“First give me a minute to get the bodies off the bus,” I said, not really looking forward to the task. It took more than a minute and I only vomited twice, but I got the bus cleaned up as best I could. I knew the clock was ticking, but I couldn’t expect our people to come onto a charnel house, could I? Maybe we’d get points for set decoration.
After I finished, I said to Joni, “We need to leave this area and lead as many of the undead away as we can. Go four to six blocks in any direction then work our way back. Once we get about a block or so away, the rest of the group will see the bus. Hopefully, some of them will remember to go to the back of the chapel and make a ruckus. I’m hoping that will clear a path for you to drive right up to the front of the building. But first, I need you to drive up to that,” I said, pointing to a candy apple red monster pickup truck with a Confederate flag in the back window. Yee-haw, the south will never die.
“Why?” She asked in an incredulous tone.
“Because I need to on top of the bus to help people down onto the roof. That old Spanish lady...”
“Hispanic lady. And her name is Rosalita.”
“Sorry. Plus Oscar looks in pretty bad shape. And lastly, I can use the shotgun to blast away any of the dead that cause any serious problems.”
“How are you going to hold on up there?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, taking a look at my watch. “We need to get moving.”
Joni scratched a long gouge in the side of the monster truck as she maneuvered the bus as close as she could. I’m sure the owner would be apoplectic had he still been alive. As I climbed up, I noticed a lone zombie heading our way.
It took me a minute to get into position. I brought the shotgun up and tried to get a bead on it. Just as I was locking in my aim, the bus lurched forward, jostling me, and I nearly dropped the shotgun to the street.
Joni punched the gas. The next thing I knew, Mr. Zombie disappeared under the bus. I peered back over the side to see Mr. Zombie rolling in the street, its legs crushed to mush, but it still lived. Unfazed by the lack of useable legs, it flailed its arms at us as we drove away looking sad that it had missed out on its own private dinner party.
As Joni sped along, I found an air vent and held on for dear life.
It took her about two city blocks to get used to the girth of the bus. She only clipped two parked cars. Sure, she wouldn’t have passed her driving test, but not having to deal with government red tape anymore was one upside of the zombie apocalypse.
With that sort of positive thinking, no one could ever call me a glass half-empty guy ever again.
At the next intersection we came upon an abandoned car blocking our way. Joni gently rammed it, knocking it to the curb, and we went on our way. She seemed to be getting used to the new rules of the road.
The few undead roaming the streets perked up when we drove by, but we left them flailing along fecklessly. It was vital that we didn’t bring a parade of them with us back.
Joni brought the bus to an abrupt stop, sending me sliding as I lost my grip on the vent. The edge of the roof came at me fast as I envisioned flying
head first into the street. In a fit of desperation, I put my foot out and caught the vent, giving me just enough traction to stop my forward momentum.
I started to pound on the roof to send Joni a message, but looked up to find us at an intersection with the chapel in view. Zombies clamored around the building but their numbers were definitely diminished. I’m guessing many were out and about in search of us, while others had died in our escape. Our plan seemed to be working, but with mixed results. We had thinned the herd, but we lost Joey and who knew how badly Oscar had been burned.
The bus idled as we waited. I eased back to fully engage with the vent and watched, hoping that our colleagues inside the chapel remembered to cause a commotion to draw the zombies around to the back of the chapel.
They must have because about five minutes later, a few of the undead slipped away from the waiting horde to shamble around to the back of the chapel. After the first few, something broke in the throng and large sections shambled away from the front. The trick worked again. If these thing ever learned to think, we were in for some serious trouble.
There were at least thirty or forty of them still in front, doing their zombie thing, moaning and groaning, but the clock was ticking. I pounded the butt of my shotgun against the roof and two seconds later, the bus rolled forward.
Joni took it easy at first, crossing the intersection, then bumping over the curb, knocking me a couple feet in the air. It only took a few seconds for the zombies to register the sound of the bus, and a few of the wanderers started our way.
Maybe it was frustration or just plain vindictiveness, but Joni sped up as the undead walked into our path. She took the first one head-on.
In a contest of bus versus zombie, the bus always wins. Hands-down. With a solid, yet wet smacking sound, the zombie flew off the grill of the bus, did an ass-over-elbows flip, then had its head squished like a grape under the tires.
I felt the bus veer slightly off course and two more zombies were pulped under the wheels of the bus. One coming in at an in-direct angle and caromed off the front of the bus like a puppet who had its strings cut. It rolled across the pavement and didn’t get back up.
