Highway to Hell

by Max Brallier

  You spot Bones, pulling Iris, knife blade glinting in the sun.

  Hope this car is as tough as Hank said . . .

  You spin the wheel, driving through the cemetery. The heavy metal thresher plows into headstones, cracking them in half, ripping them from the ground.

  The skinny Confederate reenactor weaves through the cemetery, using the larger monuments to keep you from getting too close. Iris is quiet—no screaming for her life, no begging for help.

  Bones lets out a howl—a banshee shriek. Ah, hell. A rebel yell, you realize.

  And then they’re coming over the short hills and from the thick woods, swarming like roaches. Undead reenactors by the thousands. They hear Bones’s yell, and they come for him—but it’s you they see first.

  They rush, staggering with that telltale hobbled gait—slow, usually, but quicker than shit when they smell human flesh.

  And, Christ almighty, the man leading the charge is atop an undead horse, strapped across the broken animal. The animal’s flesh is rotted away and its rib cage visible, but it still gallops.

  It’s a zombified Major General George Pickett reenactor, you realize, and this is Pickett’s Charge. The entire army of Northern Virginia is coming for you. This is your own personal battle of Gettysburg.

  Pickett’s Charge failed spectacularly, near ended the war for the South—and this isn’t gonna end well for these undead bastards, either, you think.

  Bones, currently ducking behind a headstone, waits for the army to pass, then yanks Iris to her feet. He drags her toward the memorial museum and gift shop—a long building, beyond the headstones.

  You flip open the trigger block on the gearshift, pressing your thumb onto the firing button.

  Northern hell is unleashed.

  The M134D minigun is deafening, pumping round after round of thundering fire.

  Bullets punch fist-sized holes in the monsters—wet globs of flesh and chipped bone splashing headstones. Pickett’s horse goes down first—the animal’s head opening, then the legs chopped apart by scorching rounds. Gray uniforms jerking, convulsing as the minigun deals death at four thousand rounds per minute.

  You lay off the gun then and grip the wheel tight, the El Camino screaming into the charging army. Replica rifles drop from the monsters’ hands as they’re mowed down, chewed up, chopped apart by the thresher.

  KRAKA—BOOM!

  The ground ahead of you erupts, an explosion tearing open the earth, chunks of dirt splashing.

  What the . . .

  You wrench the wheel, the El Camino slicing across the field. Through the thick horde of reenactors you glimpse four men—living men, like Bones the skinny Confederate. They’re manning two rusted howitzer guns, cramming them with homemade ammo.

  Another earsplitting bang and a dozen Confederate zombies are liquefied. Bodies burst, muscle and tissues and brain matter spraying the cracked windshield.

  You try to steer left, away from the guns, but—

  SLAM!

  A headstone plays roadblock, greeting the El Camino, throwing you into the wheel, punching the wind from your lungs. The headstone is cracked, but not pulled from the ground. Another headstone snags your rear right tire.

  Pickett’s undead men coming from all sides. Reaching through the window. Clawing at your face. Climbing onto the car.

  You jerk the stick, throwing the El Camino into reverse, but the tires just spin, kicking dirt, and the headstones grind against the car’s undercarriage. And all around you, the moaning of the hungry dead . . .

  Abandon the El Camino? Click here.

  If you’ll continue trying to get the El Camino free, click here.

  DEATH FROM ABOVE

  The float, advancing slowly down the packed street, will pass your location in six, maybe seven minutes. That gives you just enough time.

  Up the block is the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Balconies jut out over the street. You take the ax from the El Camino, hop a guardrail, and creep toward the hotel.

  Zombies crowd the sidewalk. You hug the wall, moving past them. One of them smells you, turning, and you see its skin rotted away to nothing, its face almost entirely skull—only yellow eyes and a few strands of hair making clear it’s something alive. Quick as Doc Holliday with his Colt revolver, you lash out with the ax, splitting open the monster’s head.

  Three more turn, rushing for you, but you’re already stepping into the hotel.

  The lobby is crowded. Full of undead sorority girls and rotting frat boys.

  You hack apart three of the things, then push through to the stairwell. At the second floor, you peek your head out the door. The hallway is choked with the undead.

  You have better luck on the third floor. Only a dead housekeeper bumping into a wall. You kill it, then try the handle on a Bourbon Street–facing room. The door is locked. You kick it in.

  The room smells of death. Stale and exhausted.

  Somebody was having a helluva good time when the apocalypse began. Drugs on a glass table, along with half-empty bottles of expensive vodka.

  The door to the balcony is open. A breeze blows the curtains and pigeons flap about.

  It takes a moment for the two undead monsters in the room to notice you. When they do, they come hard and fast.

  The first is a man in a suit, his face sunken and skeletal. A pigeon flutters, then squawks as the monster steps on it. The monster’s ankle rolls, and it falls through the glass table. You bury the ax in its head before it has time to get up.

  Stumbling behind it is a disgusting undead thing that once—years ago—was probably a very attractive woman. Topless and thin.

  You need to keep it alive.

  It trips over the undead man but regains its balance. You hit it with the blunt side of the ax, knocking it to the floor.

  You step over its body and out onto the balcony. The float is rolling down the street and will pass underneath you any minute. The man in the tracksuit’s hate-filled voice floats up.

  Time to interrupt his speech, you think as you step back into the room, grabbing the topless zombie by the shoulders, holding the thing’s mouth away from you—its teeth snapping. With one strong toss, you hurl the moaning monster over the side.

  The topless zombie lands on the wife, hitting her like a ton of bricks. She’s screaming, falling backward, trying to kick the zombie off, but the thing is already gnawing her leg.

  Rattail yanks the topless zombie away, kicking it back so the zombie tumbles over the side of the float. The wife continues screaming.

  The appropriate amount of chaos has begun, so you jump—one hand on the railing, leaping over.

  The float gives a little when you land, breaking your fall. You’re up in a flash, burying your ax in the belly of Sunglasses as he raises a rifle.

  The wife, blood pouring from her leg, spins, raising an old pistol, but you’re already swinging, slicing off her hand. She shrieks and watches, bewildered, as her hand drops onto Bourbon Street.

  The old man drops his bullhorn, curses, stomps toward you. At the same time, Rattail comes from the other side.

  You stick the sawed-off in the old man’s face and hold the ax against Rattail’s throat. The wife is on her side, wailing while blood pumps from her wrist like it’s a garden hose.

  To the old man, you say, “Shut that woman up. Or I shoot her.”

  She stops sobbing then, and starts whimpering.

  Above you, the young girl looks on, holding her comic book and not seeming much impressed, shocked, or scared by the sudden violence.

  “Now,” you say loudly. “To the man beneath us, driving this float. It is now mine. Honk if you understand.”

  Silence, for a moment, and then honk.

  “Good. Drive it to the hospital up here on the right, and stop.”

  “What do you want?” the old man says.

  “Your help,” you say, a moment before you slam the ax into the wife’s head, ending her before she transforms into one of the undead.

 
; When the driver of the float steps out, you’re surprised to see he’s a young boy, seven years old at the most.

  You’re in the hospital’s storage garage. You sit the boy down beside Rattail, the old man, and the girl, and hold the gun on the four of them.

  “You two,” you say to the old man and Rattail. “You’re going to load these four generators up onto that float.”

  Rattail and the old man move slowly. It takes them near an hour just to use a big hunk of wood to build a ramp up to the float. Then another hour to get the first generator up.

  You drink and watch. The boy and the girl sit beside you.

  “That your brother?” you say, raising your flask in Rattail’s direction.

  The boy shakes his head. “Cousin. I think.”

  “And the old man’s your grandfather?”

  “Our dad,” the girl says.

  “Awful old to be your dad,” you say.

  “But not too old to be awful,” the girl says.

  You look down at the boy and girl. They seem generally unaffected by the whole situation. No shock at the death of their family. No anger. Either they’ve seen so much hell for so much of their lives that they’re completely numb, or they just don’t much like their family.

  Three hours later, you’re good and drunk and Rattail and the old man are finally loading the fourth generator onto the float. They stumble down the ramp, soaked in sweat. “Now what?”

  “What are the kids’ names?” you ask. You’re not sure why you care, but the words just tumble out. You’re slurring now and the “s” comes out with a lisp.

  The man shakes his head. “You filthy drunk. You should know what the Lord said about alcohol. ‘And do not get drunk with wine, for that is a great debauchery, and you should be only filled with the Spirit of our Lord and—’ ”

  “Tell me the names of the children!” you shout, your voice booming in the tight, low garage.

  Neither the old man nor Rattail says anything.

  “Suzie-Jean,” the little girl says at last. “I’m Suzie-Jean.”

  The boy looks at Suzie-Jean like she just gave away the location of his Halloween candy stash. But she glares back and he finally looks up and says, “My name’s Walter.”

  “Thank you,” you say, then take a deep gulp from the bottle. “Suzie-Jean, Walter—please go sit in my car and cover your ears.”

  “You don’t tell them what to do!” the old man shrieks. “No one tells my li’l darlings what to do!”

  You glare at the children until they go and squeeze into the passenger side of the El Camino, Walter piling on Suzie-Jean’s lap.

  “You covering your ears?” you ask.

  “Yes!” they both call back.

  “If you were covering your ears you wouldn’t be able to hear me asking you. Cover them for real. Like you’re trying to cave your head in. You know what that means, cave your head in?”

  “Yes!” they both call back.

  “Good, now do it.”

  They place their hands on their heads.

  “You covering your ears?” you ask again.

  No answer.

  “Good.”

  You shoot the old man first, in the chest. Then Rattail is running at you. He’s quick, athletic. Probably played high school ball. You shoot him next.

  The father doesn’t die immediately. He crawls toward you, dragging his bloody body across the garage floor. “Please,” he says. “Please don’t kill the children.”

  “I’ll try not to,” you say.

  Then you finish him off.

  When you slide into the El Camino, Suzie-Jean says, “Did you think we wouldn’t hear gunshots with our ears covered?”

  “No. But I didn’t want you hearing them yell or cry.”

  “You killed our family?” Walter asks.

  You nod. “I did. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “Why did you do it, then?”

  “Because I’m doing something very important. And they were in the way.”

  “We weren’t in the way?”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “If we were in the way, would you have killed us?”

  You light a cigarette. “I’m not certain.”

  Walter looks you up and down. He looks at the ax on the seat beside you. He sits up and looks out the windshield, down the hood at the thresher in the front, and then he examines the strange buttons on the dashboard.

  “Are you like Batman?” he asks finally.

  “No.”

  “Are you like another sort of superhero?”

  “No.”

  “What’s so important, then?”

  “I’m trying to save the world.”

  “That’s what superheroes do,” he says.

  Lighting a cigarette, you say, “Well, I guess I am a superhero, then.”

  Walter smiles at that. Suzie-Jean does, too, just slightly.

  “I like Batman,” Walter says. “Suzie-Jean likes Captain America. She thinks he’s cute.”

  Suzie-Jean elbows her brother.

  “There are superhero movies,” Walter says. “But we never saw them. We never saw any movies.”

  “You never saw a movie?” you ask.

  “No. Movies weren’t allowed.”

  “They made a Captain America movie?” you ask.

  “Yep! Lots of them, I think. I’ve seen the posters and stuff. All the posters. You’re old. Didn’t you see the movies?”

  “I was in jail for a little while. I remember something about a Batman movie. But I never liked movies much. Just Westerns.”

  “What’s a Western?”

  “You wouldn’t like them.”

  The three of you sit in silence for a while. You take a drink. “I’m sorry I killed your parents,” you say. “But like you said, I’m a superhero. Kind of. And I need your help to save the world. Will you help me?”

  “You don’t need our help,” Suzie-Jean says. “You’re just saying that because you feel bad.”

  Smart kid. “That’s not true. I need it badly. Will you help?”

  They look at each other, thinking it over, Walter getting excited. At last they say, “Okay.”

  You stick out your hand. “Superheroes.”

  They take hold of your hand, all three of you shaking together. “Superheroes.”

  You exit the garage, using the El Camino to tow the float. You take back roads, avoiding the undead wherever possible.

  “What’s this?” Walter says, pointing to a red button.

  “Don’t touch it.”

  Walter touches it anyway. There’s a loud KRAKA-BOOM! and a rocket launches from the side of the El Camino. It spirals through the air, into a roadside bar, exploding the front of the building in a fury of brick and fire.

  Walter and Suzie-Jean both say, “Holy shit.”

  It’s a long, slow drive. Outside Woodmere, you spot an army of undead Klansmen in bloody white sheets. Bunch of good old boys probably took the zombie apocalypse as their cue to rise again, get the whole Klan back together. It’s like the apocalypse gives people an excuse to be just as damn awful as they always wanted to be. You run one over. The rest come after the El Camino, following you around a corner, stumbling fast, before you lose them.

  You’re approaching the turnoff when you recall something you passed earlier. You turn hard to the right, nearly flipping the float.

  The kids scream.

  “Sorry,” you say. “Thought of something.”

  You round a corner and see the small video store. Run-down. Windows shattered. A sign on the front, hanging off, reads One Video Place.

  Pulling into the small parking lot, you say, “Stay here.”

  “Where are you going?” Walter asks.

  You don’t answer. You climb out and step closer to the store. The door is half off the hinges. You kick it open and raise the gun. A rat skitters out, over your boot.

  Inside, it’s like something left over from the late nineties. DVDs on shelves. Piles of VHS
tapes. Candy racks, overturned, all the food gone.

  You do a circle through the store. Coming around the comedy aisle into the drama aisle, a zombie jumps out at you. Once a pimply-faced kid, no more than fifteen. Its jaw is rotten away and its skin is mostly gone, but pockmarks still dot its forehead. You throw it to the ground, then reach up, grab one of the big hanging TVs, and rip it down, squashing its head.

  You find the movies in the action aisle. Something called Batman and something called Captain America: The First Avenger.

  You shove the DVDs into your back pocket.

  On the way out, you rip another TV from the wall, along with a DVD player.

  “What did you do?” the kids ask as you walk back toward the El Camino, carrying it all.

  “We found a generator—you can watch movies now.”

  They grin.

  When you return, Dewey’s waiting out front. “Hell took you so long?” he calls. “Thought you went and got yourself killed! And what in hell are you towing there, a float?”

  “Never mind it,” you say.

  And then he sees the two kids. “Wait. Jesus hell. What the . . .”

  “C’mon, Dewey, help me with these generators. Need to hurry.”

  “No shit you need to hurry. Girl’s body’s starting to turn to cheese.”

  Dewey rolls a dolly out from his junk collection. It takes some work, but you’re able to get the generators down off the float and together, you wheel them around the house.

  Dewey hooks them up and you go down to see Iris.

  Standing over her legless body, you pour a tall drink. “I’m sorry about this, Iris. I’m sorry you’re dead. I’m sorry you’ve got no legs. I’m sorry we have to do this strange thing.”

  “Hurry, hurry, need to hurry,” Dewey says, racing down the steps and yanking open one of the tubes. “Put her in.”

  You lift her body. She weighs no more than seventy pounds now. You slide her into the tube. Feels like putting yesterday’s steak sandwich into the microwave.

  Dewey slams the tube shut, punches in a few numbers, then turns it on. It hums, loud as hell.

  “That’s it?” you say, practically screaming over the rumbling.

  “That’s it!” he calls back.