by R. M. Smith
“No, take the onramp. There’s a Rent-A-Center up there.”
“A Rent-A-Center? What do we need from there?”
The onramp led up to a frontage road full of more crashed vehicles and more of the dead. They stood on the side of the road in front of the severely damaged Rent-A-Center. A fire truck had crashed through the front of the building.
Carmen took in a deep breath, shocked. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She said, “Park along the front here.”
“Why do you want to stop here? We need to get out of here! We need to go!”
“I work here,” Carmen said calmly. “There’s some trucks in the warehouse we can use as barricades. We can block ourselves in somewhere so none of these fuckers can get close enough to touch us or puke on us.”
“No! We need to get out of here! I don’t want to barricade myself in anywhere.”
“Listen…what’s your name?”
“Maria.”
“Maria. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get out of town. I’m betting most of the roads are unpassable, and I don’t think walking out there is going to do us any good – especially with my broken foot.”
Maria sighed, giving in. “Ok. Ok. What are we going to do?”
“Park next to the Rent-A-Center.”
She pulled up next to the building. “Ok. Now what?”
“You need to find the keys to the trucks. They should be in the manager’s office. Hopefully it’s not locked.”
“We could break the door down.”
“No, you’ll have to. I have a broken foot, remember?”
“Oh shit. My mind is so fucked up right now.” Her hand thumped on the steering wheel.
“You’re gonna have to go in there and get the keys for the trucks and then move all of them.”
“I don’t know how to drive a delivery truck!”
“It’s an automatic just like a car. It’s just a little bigger.”
“I don’t think I can do it...”
“Maria, you have to. We don’t have much time, look.” Carmen pointed down the street. A larger group of the dead was moving toward their car. A man near the front of the group was wearing a bloody fireman’s coat. He threw up in a steady stream as he moved toward them. A worm was growing out the side of his face.
“Oh Jesus, I don’t think I can do this.”
“You have to.”
Cautiously, Maria opened her door. Stepping out of the car she asked, “Where are the keys?”
“They’re in the manager’s office. It’s straight through to the back of the store. It’ll be your first door on the right as you pass the main counter.”
“I wish you could walk.”
“Believe me, if I could, I would be running right now. Please hurry!”
Maria closed the car door. Walking through the broken glass she disappeared into the store.
Carmen pushed the auto lock button on the door’s armrest. She slid down in the passenger seat. Hopefully they won’t see me, she thought.
Inside, the store was a wreck. Furniture had been thrown everywhere from the impact of the fire truck. Going around the side of it she had to step around a pool of vomit with billions of tiny worms layering the glass covered floor.
“Oh I can’t do this,” she cried, putting her hands to her face. “I just can’t do this. I deserve to die too. I can’t do this without you, Matt.”
On the ground, the worms leaned toward her as she stood there. Some were inches away from touching the toe of her tennis shoe.
A few seconds later she gathered her wits again, remembering the hurt girl outside was still in the car waiting for her. Maria took long steps, slowly maneuvering around the worms, watching her foot placement past the front counter.
She whispered, “The first right past the counter.”
Approaching the manager’s office, she found the door closed. Shattered glass littered the carpet even back here. Some small pieces had even leaned against the walls. A picture hung crooked on a paneled wall.
The handle on the door was clean. There was no puke on it or on the floor.
Carefully, she opened the door.
As she did, a peeling yellow hand reached out of the darkness to touch her.
Slowly driving through a tangled traffic jam on the highway, Nick said softly “It doesn’t look like people got very far.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
The road was crisscrossed with streaks of vomit.
“They must’ve driven out of downtown after they got infected or whatever it is and then crashed when the pain got to be too much.”
Janet said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry.”
She started crying again.
“We’ll uh…” Nick started. “We’ll figure something out, ok?”
She nodded sniffling.
Awkwardly he asked “What’s your name?”
“Janet Williams.”
“I’m Nick Carson.”
Suddenly, Janet hollered, “Go up that onramp, right there! It looks clear!”
At the top they were met by another wall of the dead. They had gathered around a car parked next to the front of a shattered Rent-A-Center.
Janet shouted, “Go around them!”
Passing, Nick glanced at the car surrounded by the dead. Through their standing bodies he saw a girl crouching down in the front seat.
“There’s someone alive in there,” he said. “They have her trapped.”
“Better her than us,” Janet shouted. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“She needs help! I can’t just leave her there.”
“Oh I can,” Janet said matter-of-factly.
Ignoring her, Nick sped past the car with the girl trapped inside. At forty miles an hour, he stomped the brakes while turning the steering wheel hard to the right. This caused his car to do a quick 180 spin. Impressed; but more surprised that he actually was able to pull it off, he pounded on the gas, speeding towards the dead surrounding the trapped girl’s car. He slammed into them throwing bodies up into the air. He jumped on the brakes, rolled down the window and shouted “Get in here! Quick!”
Having watched the whole thing from inside the car, Carmen slid over the center console, threw the driver’s side door open, reached across the vomit covered pavement and opened the back driver’s side door of Nick’s car. Painfully she stood up on the floorboard next to the driver’s seat and stretched her other leg out over the fouled pavement where her foot touched the floorboard of the back seat of Nick’s car.
Nick noticed Carmen wasn’t wearing any clothes. She had peed her underwear a little bit.
“Thanks,” she said as she eased down into the back seat. She slammed the door shut.
Nick sped away from the mangled group. He asked “You’re not one of those things are you?”
Out of breath Carmen answered, “No I have a broken foot and that hurt like a son of a bitch.”
“I seen piss on your underwear.”
“Like I said,” Carmen said as she leaned forward, noticing Nick’s long blonde hair. “That hurt like hell. Sorry, but I pissed myself.”
“It’s alright,” he said. “Just as long as you don’t got any of that infected shit.”
“I’m good. Can you go back to the store, please?”
Janet turned in her seat. “We ain’t goin back into that!”
“My friend’s in there,” Carmen nearly shouted. “She’s still in there!”
Nick slowed his car. “Shit, she’s probably dead. I don't want to go back after her without knowing for sure if she’s alive.”
Carmen yelled “She just went in there! She was getting keys for the trucks.”
Janet was staring at her. “What trucks?”
“The rental trucks! I wanted to set up a barricade with them.”
“A barricade for what?” Janet asked.
“To block the dead people. I thought we could park them somewhere and block ourselves in so they couldn�
��t reach us.”
“You mean like on that bridge there?” Janet asked as she turned back in her seat pointing to the bridge that the fire truck had sped across minutes before.
“Yes, just like that.”
“I see what you’re trying to do,” Nick said, “but I don't think it'll work.”
“I don’t get it,” Janet said.
“She wants to park the trucks on the bridge and block off either end so no one can get in the middle...”
“Yeah the trucks would have to block the whole road,” Carmen interrupted. “I was thinking about parking them nose to nose on either end of the bridge. Then we’d park a third one with the rear of the truck backed into the noses of the other two like a T.”
“There wouldn't be enough time to do all that!” Janet said. “Not with three people.”
“Four,” Carmen said quickly. “Maria's inside getting the keys, remember?”
Nick asked, “Where are the trucks?”
“In the warehouse in the back of the store.”
“And the keys are?”
“In the office. Maria should have them by now.”
“Ok, let's do it,” Nick agreed. “But we gotta be quick. Real quick.” Stomping the gas he drove back to the front of the Rent-A-Center.
“Explain this a little better so I understand, because I see what you’re saying, but wouldn’t it be hard to park the trucks like that? They’d be too big to get turned just right.”
Nick said “We’d have to use the third truck to push another truck in further. They’d look like a T, like she said. The top of the T would be two trucks parked nose to nose, the bottom of the T would be one truck facing away from the other two."
“Yes, exactly. And there would be a T on the other end of the bridge too with the other three trucks,” Carmen added.
“Well, we need to do this fast,” Nick said. “Let’s go, Janet.”
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Janet said, her eyes wide. “What if we get caught? What if there’s a bunch of those things inside? Come on, Nick, let’s just keep going.”
“You don’t have to help me,” Carmen said. “My friend is inside getting the keys. We can do it on our own, but it would be nice if you helped.”
Janet snapped, “We don’t know you! How can we trust you? We just met you. Maybe you’re wanting to rob us.”
Carmen couldn’t believe this. She almost smiled, but didn’t find it funny at all. “I don’t want to rob you, lady. I want to be safe.”
“Then why aren’t you in there helping?”
“Because I have a broken foot!”
As he started getting out of the car, Nick said, “Alright. Let’s help her set up the trucks, Janet. We can at least do that for her.”
Janet popped her door open without saying anything. She was not at all enthused by the idea.
Carmen added, “While you’re in there, if you get a chance, go into the employee break room. You’ll see signs once you’re past the counter. The door is to the left once you get back there. There’s some leftover food in a fridge, some bottled water and some aspirin. Please get the pills, ok? I really need to take the pills.”
Janet asked rudely, “Anything else? A foot bath? Some roses?”
Nick ignored her. He asked, “Are there any weapons in there?”
“There might be a gun in the manager’s office,” Carmen said, also ignoring the black woman. “I’m not sure though if there is…but, why do you need a gun?”
“To shoot these freaks around here. How else are we going to survive?”
“Gunshots won’t do anything to them,” Carmen said shaking her head. “They’re already dead.”
As they entered the demolished store, Janet carefully tiptoed behind Nick, following his exact foot placements as they crossed the glass littered floor.
Nick grabbed a thin strip of window frame sticking out of a flipped couch. Careful not to get cut on slivers of glass, he pulled it out. It was a three foot long by four inch wide sharp strip of metal. “I feel better holding a weapon,” he said quietly with a quirky smile. “Even if it really isn’t one.”
Going around the fire truck, Nick pointed at a pool of vomit on the floor with the short beam, his long hair blowing in the wind coming from outside the broken store. The pool of vomit had sprung short waving worms which were leaning toward them.
Janet asked, “Where’d she say the keys were?” Her hand was resting on his right hip.
“In the office? She really didn’t say where exactly in the office.”
As they passed the front counter, Nick asked, “It was the door on the left, right?”
“She didn't say.”
The door on the right was slightly open. The left one was closed. The door handle on the left side was clean. He turned it and slowly entered.
Out of the corner of her eye, Janet saw the partially closed door on her right slowly start to open. A woman with blown out eyes wearing a pair of blue sweats and a long t-shirt was slowly pulling the door open. Her mouth was opening. Janet heard a low strong rumble in the woman’s belly.
Nick turned around just in time to see a gush of vomit and entrails erupt out of her mouth. The entrails hung there. The vomit almost sprayed on Janet’s back.
Janet screamed. “No! Jesus! Oh God no! No you don’t!”
Using the broken window beam as a poking rod, Nick jabbed it into the woman’s chest, sticking her hard. He pushed her back into the room she had come from. Her shirt pressed back against her breasts. She had no bra on. Her nipples were visibly sticking out under her shirt. It was wet with vomit and bile.
Nick thought, her tits look like Kaylee’s. I wonder if she’s pregnant, too.
Quickly he grabbed the door handle and pulled the door shut, closing Maria in.
Janet, out of breath, said, “That was damn close! God, I don’t want to die.”
Scared, Nick grabbed Janet’s hand. He led her into the break room. Inside, he slammed the door shut, leaned his back against it, holding it shut.
Janet was looking at him wide eyed. “Where’s the keys?”
Nick tilted his head toward the other door. “In that other office. With that woman.”
“Shit! Now what?”
“Let’s see if we can find some of those pills. Come on, hurry.”
“Well shit, the fucking airport’s out,” Scott said as they came up to a huge traffic jam on the highway. “I hope my family made it. Now what?”
“Take the off-ramp,” Kim said pointing. “Maybe we can get around this and take the frontage road up there. Let’s go down a couple exits.”
Up top, the road was crowded with more of the sickened. “This isn’t going to be any better,” he said as he maneuvered around some crashed vehicles.
“There’s someone in that car,” Kim said. “A girl.”
“Let her be. At least it’s a distraction. She’s keeping the dead fucks at bay.”
Kim gave Scott an open-mouthed offended look. “Are you serious? Are you really that way? Would you really turn your back on someone just so you could escape?”
“Oh, you mean like you just did to your husband?”
“Fuck you.”
Frustrated, Scott said. “Where is she?”
“In front of the Rent-A-Center, asshole.”
“Damn, calm down, alright?” He stopped the car at the intersection past the Rent-A-Center. He honestly didn’t want to stop. Now that he knew that this frontage road was clear, he thought he might have a better chance of getting to his sister and dad. They were weighing heavy on his mind. Hopefully they had gotten to the airport already.
Getting out of the car, he yelled toward the dead, “Hey! Over here, dumbfucks.”
Some of them turned toward him. They began to walk in his direction. There were still several standing around the girl’s car.
“Ok, now what, sweetheart?” he asked, leaning down into the car with one hand still on the roof.
“The name’s Ki
m,” she said. “Just keep hollering at them. They’ll come over.”
“Yo! Dipshits! Over here!”
As soon as most of them had walked half-way over to Scott’s car, he jumped back in behind the wheel, spun the tires, and did a quick U-turn in the street. He drove over next to the girl in the car. He hollered, “Get in!” as he rolled down the window.
“God damn,” Carmen said under her breath. “Lots of people driving through here.” She opened her door and stepped across the corroded street the same way she had done minutes ago when getting into Nick’s car.
After she got in Kim asked, “What happened to your clothes?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “But thanks.”
Scott asked, “Why were you just sitting here? How come you didn’t run away?”
“I broke my foot,” Carmen told them. “Some friends of mine are inside. We’re gonna set up a roadblock with some of the trucks inside.”
Trying to remain as calm as she could, holding back anger as well as tears, she explained her idea of parking the rental trucks on the bridge again. As she told them, she started to have second thoughts. With Maria missing and the other two people gone, it didn’t seem like things were working out very well.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Scott said, “if you can do it fast enough.” He drove out of the gathering group of the dead. “Is there a back entrance to this place?”
“In the alley,” Carmen said. “The door’s probably locked though.”
“Who cares? We’ll bust it down. Who’s gonna arrest us? The sickies?”
He drove around to the back of the building. Carmen pointed out the back entrance.
Popping the trunk, Scott got out, grabbed the tire iron, and headed over to the back door which was locked. He started prying it open. No alarms sounded.
Suddenly, the back door was shoved open from inside. Carmen expected to see her asshole boss Norman stick his head out. Instead, it was the cute guy with the long blonde hair and the black woman with the attitude. They were alone. Maria wasn’t with them.
Stepping back with a surprised grin, Scott asked, “Jesus, how many people are in here looking for keys?”
“There’s a dead freak in the office,” Nick hollered to Carmen. "Some woman wearing blue sweats and a blue shirt. That your friend?”
