by R. J. Spears
I gave in and looked at my watch. “We don’t have time for all this backtracking. The clock is winding down.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Joni said, feeling the full weight of being the driver.
“Ram our way out,” I said.
“If we knock the axle off the bus or bust the engine, then we’re stuck,” she said.
“Then we’re walking,” Gentry said.
“No, then we’re dying. If the zombies don’t get us, the bombs will,” I said.
“What I am supposed to do?” Joni said, her voice cracking.
“You see those two cars,” I said pointing to two small compacts sitting nose-to-nose, products of a head-on collision. They were on the left side of the mass of cars. “That’s the weakest point. If you can get those to split apart, then we can bash our way through.”
“Gentry, what do you think?” Joni asked.
“It’s a plan,” he said.
“That’s some endorsement,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Well, okay,” Joni said. “Tell everybody to brace themselves.”
I stood and did just that. More than a couple of them looked up to the front of the bus with moon-sized eyes. To their credit, none of them bulked at the plan, though. Then again, they also knew they were just along for the ride.
“Don’t be overly cautious,” I said to Joni as I sat back down. During our brief exchange and my directions to the other passengers, a few zombies shambled into the intersection and started heading our way. The sound of the bus acted like sweet music telling the undead that there was food inside.
Joni pushed the transmission from park to drive and we started forward.
“Give ’em hell, Joni,” Sammy shouted.
The bus started picking up speed quickly. A large male zombie in a bathrobe that flopped open in the breeze exposing things none of us wanted to see made the mistake of walking into our path. I could swear Joni chose that moment to goose the gas pedal. The bus was doing twenty five when it hit the zombie and the impact was both intensely satisfying and grotesque as the thing broke into many pieces. A few of those pieces ended up on the windshield.
The two compacts came up quick. I braced myself for the impact and hedged my bets by leaving one eye open and one eye closed, hoping that at least one of them saw something good happen or avoided seeing our imminent demise.
The collision was deafening. The sound of metal-on-metal resounded around and through the bus. I think I felt the fillings in my teeth shake, but the two cars parted like the Red Sea and we were past them in a second. Joni had her foot to the floor. One of the tiny compacts grabbed the side of the bus with its bumper in a desperate attempt to be rescued, but it only hung on for about half a block before shaking loose.
Joni kept the bus floored for another two block until I reached forward and gently placed my hand on her shoulder. “You can ease off now,” I said.
It took another ten seconds before she let up on the gas pedal and we slowed to a gentler pace. Audible sighs filtered up from the back of the bus.
“Way to go, mom,” Martin shouted. “You rock!”
Joni’s face relaxed with a slight smile. “Moms of the world, you don’t get to hear that too often,” she said. “Where to now, Gentry?”
“Just head south. I think we’re home free,” he said and I wanted to punch him. You can’t call a game until the thing is over. It was far from over. Very far. We learned how far about a minute later when a deep rumbling sound start in our direction.
“What’s that?” Someone in the back of the bus asked. Someone else said it might be thunder. They were wrong, of course.
I knew what it was. It was a small fleet of jets. Specifically, jets loaded with enough incendiary bombs to burn San Antonio to the ground. I looked through the front windshield and counted six heading our way in the distance.
“What now?” Joni asked.
“Just drive,” I said in a near whisper. “But a little faster, okay?”
She nodded and gave the bus a little more gas.
“Grant, what are they going to do?” Sammy asked from behind me.
I was no military expert and had no idea, but I felt that the crowd needed some assurance. I stood and turned to the back of the bus. “They’ll probably start at the center of the city and work their way out.”
That is, unless they decide a carpet bomb approach starting with the outside and working their way in, which was a better plan, and then we’d be burnt to a crisp any second now.
“We’re well past the center now, so we should be safe.”
“Are you sure of that?” Mack asked.
“Yeah,” I said in a Grinch-like fashion, thinking up a lie, and thinking it up quick. “I work in D.C. and there’s a lot of interagency cooperation. While we never talked about zombies, there have always been plans for contingencies like this. It called for a center-out approach.”
Mack didn’t take it any further. I thought if I survived this, maybe I should run for some political office?
I leaned into towards the windshield and watched as the jets zoomed our way. They were coming faster than I could calculate, so I surrendered us up to the fates and just watched their approach. But how much do any of us really allow the fates to have that much control? Sadly, I had no Jedi mind tricks to play, so I just threw out a silent prayer.
As they got closer, I could tell they were descending slightly, getting closer to the ground. That was a sign I didn’t like.
At whatever speed they were moving, the gap between us was only seconds. “Keep going,” I said to Joni, my voice sounding distant.
All eyes except hers were on the jets speeding our way. If the phrase, ‘You could cut the tension like a knife’ applied at any moment, it was right then. You could cut it with an axe, a sword, or whatever sharp implement you had at hand. I think collectively we held our breaths in those last few seconds as the sound of the jet’s engines got increasingly louder.
The jets whooshed over us and five seconds later, downtown San Antonio burst into a massive fireball. The first of the explosions wiped away the sounds of the jets. What was once the rays of twilight, were now bright as noon. After a few seconds, the shockwave hit the back of the bus, shaking it just a little.
“Drive faster,” I said finding my outdoor, big boy voice. “Faster!” I had no idea if another set of jets was coming or if a part of the first sortie was coming at us from a different angle.
Joni floored it. Any trepidation about hitting cars blocking our way completely disappeared as she made no efforts to weave or avoid them. Instead, she battered them out of the way like they were children’s toys. Each impact jolted through the bus and brought yelps from the passengers, but Joni was undeterred. If she showed no mercy to the cars, zombies had no chance at all and got churned under the tires of the bus.
I don’t know if was my imagination, but I thought I could feel the heat of the inferno behind us and the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand on end.
“Gentry, is there any water around here?” I asked.
He gave me a vacant look.
“Lakes or rivers?”
“There’s the San Antonio River,” he said.
“That’s not deep enough,” I said.
“Once you get past the mission, it widens into a lake that can get as deep as fifteen feet,” he said.
“Give Joni directions there,” I said.
“You have some sort of half-assed plan?” Gentry asked.
“Sort of.”
He just shook his head and gave Joni directions. We bashed through two more abandoned cars and knocked a zombie thirty feet off the road into a picket fence where it was impaled.
“There,” Gentry pointed. “Double back up Padre Drive and onto Padre Parkway.”
Something in me said we were running out of time and we didn’t have the luxury of following the streets any longer. “Cut through that field,” I said pointing to an open field just across the
road.
“Grant, I’m not sure about this,” Joni said.
“Are you crazy?” Gentry asked.
“Just do it! The clock is running down,” I said. “I can feel it.”
“You’ve got us this far,” Joni said as she cut the wheels to the right and the bus went left of center. When we bounced over the curb, the bus jumped a couple feet the air, sending nearly everyone into a frenzy of screams. She cut the speed as we bounced across the field. We came out of the field and back onto a two lane road. The lake was on our right.
It wasn’t much of a lake, being no more than 100 feet across, but I always compared every lake to the one I had grown up next to which was Lake Superior. It was never a fair comparison as it was the largest freshwater lake in the world, but it was my litmus test for lakes. Who said life was fair?
An alarm boomed in my head telling me to get the people out of the bus and into the water, but an equally loud voice was saying that I needed to save the bus. These voices fought a pitched battle when a third voice came in and started a chorus. This voice strongly encouraged me to stick with the bus and just get the hell out of Dodge. This was the voice of my rational mind, so naturally, I ignored it.
My battle of wills lasted only a few seconds. We were only on the road for a few hundred feet when I spotted a sign for Hernandez Construction pointing west.
“There,” I said, leaning over Joni and pointing to spot on the road just across from a parking lot. “Cut across that field.”
“What?” Joni asked in a shocked voice.
I couldn’t wait to explain myself and jumped into the driver’s pit, grabbing the steering wheel, jerking it to the right. For the second time in a matter of moments, the bus and its passengers were subjected to the punishment of bouncing over a curb. It also smashed its way through a small line of shrubs dotting the side of the road. To make matters worse, Joni hadn’t had time to cut the speed when I did my little emergency diversion and the bus titled awkwardly to the right. The back tires lost their purchase in the loose dirt and the balance of the bus went awry for about a second. I sensed the wheels on the left side of the bus leaving Terra firma as the bus titled to the right.
Once again, a great deal of screaming ensued, but I ignored it as I yanked the steering wheel back to center and all sets of tires returned to the ground.
“Grant, you crazy son of a bitch. You’re going to get us killed,” Gentry said behind me, but I didn’t turn to look.
“Drive back to that building,” I said. There was a one story, rust colored, corrugated metal building just across a short field just over a hundred feet ahead of us. Joni followed my orders but shook her head as she did it.
“What are we doing, Grant?” She asked.
“We need to get the people out this bus and into the water.”
“What?”
“I don’t think we’ll make it far enough out of town and that water may be what protects us from the next set of bombs.”
“What if they drop bombs on the lake?”
“Then we’ll boil like Larry the lobster in a pot.”
She looked to me with her mouth open and her eyes wide for a good five seconds but then recovered. “And what about the bus?”
“I want you to put it into the building. It may survive the fire bombs and we’ll need something to drive out of the city,” then I lowered my voice and added, “if we make it.”
“You’re giving me such a high degree of confidence,” she said.
“Another set of bombs are coming, I just know it.” We shared a look for a moment and then I turned to the people in the bus. “We need everyone off the bus and into the lake.”
A resounding “What?!?” came from the passengers in unison.
“I don’t have time to explain it all, but I think there’s another set of bombers on their way. Like I said, they’re working their way from the center out. It’s only a matter of time before we get caught up in the next set. I think the water will be what protects us.”
“You think!” Mack said standing up.
“Anyone got a better solution?” I asked. A few of them looked at each other, but then they went silent.
“Why don’t we just run for it with the bus?” Mack asked.
“Because an F-22 Raptor has the max speed of Mach 2. This bus can do 80 mile per hour.” Once again, I found myself in a staring match with Mack.
A voice broke the stalemate, “I’m getting off the bus.” It was Sammy.
“Me, too,” Rosalita said, as she stood. The impasse broken, the other passengers left their seats and headed up the aisle towards the front of the bus. Mack reluctantly joined them but made a point of bumping my shoulder as he passed by. I had no time for a testosterone laden schoolyard fight, so I ignored him.
“I’m getting off,” I told Joni. “Get the bus in the building as fast as you can.”
The “building” was more of an over-large storage shed, but it had a large opening for the workers to large construction vehicles into. I only hoped it was tall enough for the bus.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, I heard a distant rumble roll our way. I looked at our group and found them ambling around the dusty hard packed soil in front of the storage building. They weren’t getting the gravity of our situation. I made my way to Sammy.
“Sammy,” I said, leaning in towards him. “I’m staying until Joni gets the bus inside. Can you get the people into the water? And I mean fast. They don’t have to go in deep, but just be ready to.”
“Sure, Grant,” he said and started directing the people towards the field.
From the door of the bus, Joni shouted, “I don’t think it’s going to fit.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Drive it in anyway. The bus will survive or it won’t. We have bigger fish to fry.” I regretted the metaphor as soon as it left my mouth, but I was never known for my eloquence.
She shrugged and closed the door.
As I waited, I looked back to the skyline of what was once San Antonio’s downtown and saw only fire and black smoke. I could make out some of the taller buildings as the inferno tried to devour them. It made wonder if this was what the people of Dresden saw when they were fleeing their city when the British firebombed the place in World War II?
I was brought out of my reverie when the bus moved slowly forward. As soon as the roof of the bus impacted with the roof of the building, Joni hit the brakes. I couldn’t tell if she was looking at me through the tinted windows or not, but I pin wheeled my arms in a gesture to tell her to go ahead and drive.
She must have gotten my message because the bus started forward again. The metal roof rubbed against the corrugated metal of the building making the most mournful scraping noise I’ve ever heard in my life. It made me think of the cries of a dying dinosaur. When the bus was about five feet in, a section of the building’s roof popped back in place, but tore out a long, T-Rex bite-sized section of the roof of the bus, sending the piece of shredded metal at me like a missile. At the last millisecond, I ducked and rolled. If I hadn’t, I would have surely been decapitated as it sailed over my head.
Once the bus was safely within the building, Joni shut off the engine and got out.
The rumbling that I heard just moments earlier started getting louder.
“Joni, we’ve got to make a run for it,” I shouted. “The next set of jets are coming.”
She didn’t need a second urging and started sprinting toward the field faster than I expected a middle-aged mother of two could run. It took me ten seconds to catch up to her.
Between labored breaths, I asked, “Where’d you learn to run this fast?”
Without too much effort, she responded, “I run marathons every month.”
The rumbling grew louder and I took a look over my shoulder to see six more jets speeding our way. They were still high enough in the sky that I knew they weren’t ready to drop their payload, but it wouldn’t be long. Ahead of us I could see Mack and Sammy helping people ove
r the bank and out of view. They were the last two to disappear.
The tenor of the jet’s engine’s changed and I sneaked a peek over my shoulder again. They were dropping for the final run.
“They’re coming,” was all I could choke out and we both started a full-out sprint. Our feet kicked up small plumes of dust with each footfall and I felt my mouth go dry.
The roar of the jet’s engines got louder, making me think of an ancient and angry dragon was about to overtake us in a giant gout of flame. The lake was coming up fast and I started to pull ahead of Joni. I slowed my pace to match hers because I knew I would feel guilty if I made it into the water to safety and she didn’t.
The explosion was deafening, roaring like a thousand cannons. I had no idea if the bomb hit directly behind us or a mile back, but it didn’t matter.
The light reached us first, enveloping our bodies in its yellow and orange brilliance. It was so bright that I had to close my eyes to prevent from being blinded by its intensity. The temperature in the air around us started noticeably rising and I felt my exposed skin tightening.
We were twenty feet away from the bank and I could feel my heart thumping like the drum in a speed metal band. Something was racing towards us from behind. It was a tornado, hurricane, and volcano wrapped into one horrible and destructive package. And it was hot. Almost unbearably so. Small bits of debris pelted my back and particles of dusted rushed past my face, obscuring my vision.
Instinctively, we knew we couldn’t waste time climbing down the bank. Instead, we just leapt off the top, propelling ourselves into the air in a final surrender to the fates, hoping we could make the distance needed to reach the water and not end up breaking our legs on the rocky bank. I don’t know what came over us, but just as our feet left the ground we both reached out and took each other’s hand, like lovers jumping over a deadly waterfall together.
Things slowed down, milliseconds getting extended both terribly and beautifully, as we went airborne. Joni looked radiant as every part of physical being strained forward for the lifesaving benefit of the water. The surface of the lake shimmered yellow, orange, and white like an intense surreal painting.
