“Where are we going?” Sully asked. His voice sounded muffled and rasping in his own ears.
“Out of town,” Bannon was grim. His hands were white-knuckled on the wheel. There were dead bodies littered across the blacktop. He kept his foot down, squeezing the gas pedal until it felt like it was pressed hard against the firewall. The car crunched over the corpses like they were speed bumps.
“If we can get across the bridge, we might have a chance,” he said. He flicked his eyes to the rear view mirror. The burning foreshore was gradually dwindling in the distance, pillars of grey smoke spiraling into the hazy sky.
Bannon felt the racked tension ease momentarily – enough for him to at last despair.
“Maddie didn’t make it out,” he said with a heavy voice.
Sully shot him a hard look. Bannon was shaking his head.
“She would have taken this car,” Bannon went on. His tone had an air of finality. “When I saw her car in the parking lot, I knew. I knew she never made it out of town before… before everything went to hell.”
Beside him, Sully had the rifle resting across his lap. He lowered the passenger window and thrust the barrel out, as though he were riding shotgun on a wild west stagecoach.
“She could be hiding,” Sully offered.
Bannon shook his head again. “There’s nowhere to hide, Sully. You saw those things. They’re relentless. I can’t think of anywhere that would be safe from them.”
The township of Grey Stone was an isolated oasis community that had sprung up around the early fishing industry. A wide river spilled into the harbor, meandering through miles of wooded valley contours as it journeyed down through the mountains. Bannon’s last hope for his own survival was that the bridge on the fringe of the settlement was still intact…
He held his breath. The car went round a long sweeping bend, past isolated homes set well back from the road and a sprinkling of trees.
The bridge was still there.
Bannon saw the arched hump of its shape rise in the far distance, ethereal and remote through smoke haze. He gritted his teeth, feeling the tension come back into his muscles. The hatchback was speeding along gamely, juddering around the corners on old tires and then pouncing forward again every time the road straightened. The car nosed down a dip in the road and as it climbed up the far rise, the clouds of smoke opened up before them like a vast curtain.
The road was clogged with destroyed and abandoned vehicles that stretched for a mile back from the bridge. Bannon slammed his foot down hard on the brakes and stared through the windshield with a crushing weight of despair.
He could see wrecked vehicles of every shape and size. Some of them had been burned out. Others had simply been abandoned. Car doors were flung wide open, swinging eerily in the sudden wind. Black crows wheeled in the air, their cries like a harsh gloat.
Some of the cars were still smoldering. Others had roof racks piled high with family possessions. There was glass and debris and clothing scattered across the roadway.
And bodies.
Hundreds of bodies.
They were bloated ugly shapes, distorted and hideous with gases. The figures were blackened, burned by the merciless heat and the fire that had scorched through the carnage. The grass on either side of the road had been turned to scarred ashes. Bannon covered his mouth and nose with a hand. The vile sickening stench of death was nauseating. As he watched, a big dark bird winged delightedly down and landed on the stomach of a dead child, laying by the side of the blacktop. It was a girl. Her legs were splayed wide, her arms stretched out so that it looked like she had been staked out in the sun. She was wearing a pink dress. The bird hopped onto the girl’s chest and craned its neck forward to feast on the soft flesh of her face.
Bannon got out of the car and stood gaping at the carnage like he was living through a slow-motion nightmare. The closest car was a big black sedan. There was sleeping bags and camping gear stuffed in the back seat. The rear window had been smashed and there was spattered blood on the trunk.
The vehicle had collided with the car ahead of it. The front of the sedan was horribly crumpled, and there was the lingering smell of oil and gas still in the air. Everywhere he looked there were horrific scenes of panic, and desperation.
And death.
Bannon heard a car door creak open slowly and turned to see Sully clambering out of the hatchback. The big man moved stiffly. Sully stared at the bridge and then turned until he was looking back towards Grey Stone.
“Do we walk from here?” Sully asked.
Bannon nodded. There was no other choice.
Sully frowned. He narrowed his eyes like he was concentrating and Bannon became instantly alert. He recalled Sully’s expression back at the apartment complex parking lot. It was as if he had sensed the danger of the maddened dog’s presence, well before it had appeared from around the side of the building. As Bannon watched the big man’s tensed grey face, he felt a shudder of eerie superstition.
“You hear something?”
Sully said nothing. He turned slowly in a full circle and then closed his eyes. It was as if he was feeling at vibrations in the air. His eyes flashed suddenly wide open and they were filled with urgency.
“They’re coming,” he said with an air of finality. His voice was bleak and flat, lacking any inflection of fear… which made the warning all the more chilling to Bannon. “The undead. They’re pouring out of the town. I can hear them – hear their breathing. They’re coming for us.”
A rash of dread crept up Bannon’s spine. He peered back past where Sully stood, staring fixedly into the dense writhing smoke. He could hear nothing – nothing at all.
“Are you sure?”
Sully’s expression darkened. His lips stretched taut into a savage grimace and his voice was edged with spite. “Do you want to wait around to find out?”
They ran.
The road to the bridge was a tangled maze of dead, ravaged bodies, mangled cars, and debris. Both men ran doggedly, jinking around obstacles, their plodding feet slapping hard and heavy on the blacktop. The bridge seemed to come no closer. Bannon felt his lungs begin to burn and his breath saw painfully across his throat. He ran with the despair and desperation of the hopeless and the hunted.
By the time they reached the foot of the bridge, Bannon was a lather of sweat. He collapsed against the hood of a wrecked car and hunched over, retching air and gasping to refill his lungs. Sully had fallen paces behind him, the bigger man’s steps unnaturally heavy and stiffened. Bannon threw his head back and stared up at the afternoon sun. There was at least a couple more hours of light before dusk.
Sully reached him. The man’s face was grey, made all the more pale by the peculiar yellow blaze of his eyes. He barely drew a breath.
“I’m leaving the rifle,” Sully said. “It’s too heavy. Throw the pistol away. Anything that doesn’t need to be carried gets left here. Right here.”
“I must keep the pistol,” Bannon protested.
“Then you’ll die within the hour,” Sully snapped with a brutal flare of impatience. “They will run us down.”
Bannon hesitated for long seconds of indecision. He peered back at the curtain of heavy smoke that hung like a veil across the road. The tendrils of grey seemed to writhe above the ground, changing shape and darkening into ethereal coils that crept towards the bridge, gradually engulfing the mangled wreckage that was strewn across the road.
Bannon could see no sign of pursuit… but there was blurred sound in the air: a vague hum of noise like the buzzing swarm of bees that was so indistinct it had no definition.
He threw the pistol reluctantly over the roadside guardrail. Then they began to run again.
They went up the incline of the bridge, Bannon running stiffly alongside Sully. The bigger man moved with a shamble of legs and arms that was uncoordinated and awkward, but measured into a relentless cadence. Bannon matched the bigger man’s pace, no longer sprinting with panic, but controlling his stride �
�� and his fear.
At the arch of the bridge, Bannon slowed and then came to another stop. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he could feel a heavy weariness in his legs that made them tremble. He slumped against the side of an abandoned car, sucking in deep breaths. He looked back from the rise.
“I think they’ve given up,” he sounded relieved, peering back down along the road into town and the heavy pall of smoke that hung over the harbor.
“Maybe,” Sully did not sound convinced. He stared back along the way they had come for several minutes before he suddenly gave an angry grunt and pointed.
“There! Coming through the smoke about a hundred yards before the bridge. Can you see them?”
“Shit!” Bannon hissed. A wavering dark line of shapes began to materialize in the haze. The line was undulating, writhing… and coming closer, gaining definition with every moment they stared.
“How many do you think?” Sully asked. He had sensed them – knew how close the undead were – and yet curiously he could not see them with clarity.
Bannon hawked a glob of thick slimy phlegm onto the ground at his feet. “At least a hundred,” he guessed. “Maybe more.”
Sully nodded, said nothing.
Bannon took several deep breaths, and took stock of himself. He was a lather of sweat, and there was cramping fatigue in his legs. He wasn’t accustomed to running. There wasn’t much call for it on a fishing boat. His mouth was dry and gummy with saliva. More than anything, he wanted a drink.
There were wrecked cars cluttering both lanes of the bridge. The vehicle closest was a small blue Japanese sedan. All four doors of the car were wide open and the trunk hand been sprung. The windshield was cracked and smeared with blood. He went to the vehicle and rummaged around on the back seat. The car had been piled with family possessions – blankets, clothes, and a cardboard box of tinned food. He found a can of soda. It was warm. He drank thirstily, then carried the can back to where Sully stood.
“We need to go,” Sully said, without taking his eyes from the dark line of undead that were in pursuit.
Bannon nodded. He handed the soda to Sully but the big man shook his head.
“They’ve sensed us,” he said bleakly.
“Are you sure?”
“Take a look for yourself,” Sully grunted. The line of undead had reached the foot of the bridge, breaking apart like a wave around rocks, as the chaos of crashed and mangled vehicles fractured the line into small clusters of undead. About a dozen of the pursuers had torn free of the horde, running with more purpose than the others.
“They’re probably the fresher ones,” Sully guessed. Bannon frowned curiously. He watched the knot of blood-covered shapes come closer until he could see detail and definition in every figure. Most of the pursuers were men.
“How do you know that?” Bannon snapped. His sense of panic was beginning to rise again. Their lead had been squandered away by the need to rest. Now the pack was perilously close.
Sully didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and gazed at the road ahead.
They were standing on the humped back of the bridge. The slope down was a gentle fall, and then the road ran in a straight line all the way to the horizon. Along the black ribbon was the littered carnage of destruction. On either side of the road lay undulating lush green farm fields, speckled with small dark lumps that were bodies.
“We need to go,” Sully said.
They ran again, their steps given momentum by the gentle undulation down the back of the bridge. Their feet slapped in unison on the blacktop, slipping into a monotonous rhythm. When they reached the bottom of the bridge and the road flattened out ahead of them, Bannon lengthened his stride, feeling a renewed fearful need to gain distance.
Sully barked at him. “Slow down!” he spoke in broken pants as they continued to run. “You’ll burn out if you push too hard. Keep a rhythm.”
Bannon restrained himself. He fell back into stride with Sully, running with his mouth open, his jaw slack and gulping for air until his arms and legs began to lose co-ordination and he felt himself beginning to stumble. His calves were cramping. He winced in pain, screwed his face up against the biting agony… and then went tumbling painfully to the road, rolling over and barking skin from his elbows and knees.
“It’s no use.” It took Bannon a full minute to gasp out just those few words between ragged shuddering breaths. He felt himself on the verge of collapse. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky as it filled with the first colors of sunset. The cramp in his leg knotted and he grimaced. He curled up his toes and then snatched at his knee, grunting.
Sully stood over him, hands on hips, his eyes open but his expression somehow vague and vacant. He turned back to face the bridge and stood rigid.
“They’re closer,” he said darkly. “Can you see them?”
Bannon sat up. He blinked stinging sweat from his eyes and peered back at the crest of the bridge. He saw wavering movement.
“Yes,” he said. “They haven’t given up.”
Sully nodded. “They won’t.”
“Then we’re fucked. It’s just a matter of time.” Bannon heaved himself to his feet. Long shadows were stretching across the ground and a gentle breeze carried on the air, chill against his sweat-drenched shirt. “I should have kept the pistol,” he said bitterly.
Sully shook his head. “If you had, they would have caught us already.”
“If I had,” Bannon snapped, “We could have fought our way out of this instead of running. There are only a dozen of them. We would have stood a chance.”
Sully turned his jaundiced eyes to Bannon. “There are at least a hundred more behind those chasers,” he reminded.
Bannon looked longingly at the abandoned cars jamming the road. “Let’s take our chances in a car,” he growled. “I can’t run any further.”
Sully looked incredulous. “The fucking road is jammed!” he seethed. “A car is useless without clear road.”
Bannon nodded absently, but he wasn’t listening. He limped to a nearby car and peered in through the driver’s side door. It was a yellow Lexus. The keys were in the ignition. Lying slumped back in the passenger seat of the vehicle was a young woman. The body was limp, arms dangling across her lap. The woman’s eyes were open – wide and staring, her head turned slightly to the side, chin resting on her chest. There was a single bullet hole in the center of her forehead, and a thin trickle of blood had run down her face. Bannon opened the driver’s door, and the sudden rotting stench of the corpse made him recoil and retch.
“Get in!” he choked at Sully.
Sully stared, defiant. He flung his arms. “The road is fucking blocked!” he flared. “What’s the point? You’re going to drive twenty feet and then what?”
Bannon shook his head. “I’m not going that way,” he glanced down the road. “I’m going that way.” He turned his head and stared at the open fields. Cross country.”
Sully shook his head. “No good.”
The embankment at the shoulder of the road was raised several feet above the level of the surrounding fields. A drainage ditch, overgrown with grass and mud, ran alongside the blacktop like an ancient moat.
“You’ll tear the guts out of the car before you even reach the fence line,” Sully said.
“Maybe,” Bannon said grimly, “but I’m going to try.” He shot a furtive glance back to the crest of the bridge. The undead were coming on relentlessly. Two of the ghouls were running ahead of the others, narrowing the gap quickly. Both of the undead chasers were men, their features contorted infernally. One of them wrenched up a keening shriek of fury, and the sound carried clearly to where Bannon stood. He flung the driver’s door of the Lexus open, and then paused for one last instant. “You coming?”
Sully said nothing.
His face had become blank, the gaze sightless, so that for one terrifying split-second Bannon thought the big crewman had finally turned and become another one of the undead. Then the yellowed eyes opened slowly,
and they were clear… and somehow still human in the grey death-like face.
“A helicopter,” Sully said. “Coming this way.”
He turned, and then turned again. He was frowning with deep concentration, his head bowed but his body alert and quivering with some sensory strain.
He stabbed a sudden finger into the air. “There!” he shouted.
Bannon stared up into a sky that was becoming golden with the first colors of sunset. Hanging low, suspended above a distant forest, he saw a small dark speck. He gaped. He could hear nothing, but as he watched the dot grew in size gradually as it came closer.
Only then did he hear the very distant thwack-thwack of rotors beating at the air.
Bannon forgot the car. The helicopter was skimming the contours of the ground, rising and dipping as it hopped over hillocks and wooded clumps. It was coming in fast from the north, sunlight reflecting off the cockpit canopy.
Bannon started running.
“Come on!” he cried hoarsely to Sully. He scrambled across the road and slid down into the drainage ditch. Thick mud sucked at his boots as he waded back up to firm ground. There was a farm field ahead of him. He ducked through rusted strands of barbed wire fencing and ran into the open grass, waving his arms frantically over his head.
Sully was behind him, moving stiffly, on limbs made awkward. Bannon streaked ahead.
For long agonizing seconds the helicopter flew on a straight course that would take it directly over Grey Stone. Bannon could see the shape of the chopper clearly now – see the harsh angles of the hull and the bulbous nose of the beast. It was military – blotched in camouflage paint and bristling weapon pods beneath short stubby wings attached to the fuselage.
Dead Rage Page 8
