“The red one!” Colin pointed to a small bright red sedan. “Everybody get in.” The front door of the car wasn’t lock. The car didn’t have automatic locks, and he frequently forgot to lock the doors manually when he closed them.
Colin slammed into the car and yanked on the handle. The door remained closed. He frantically yanked on the handle a few more times. When the door didn’t open, he desperately shoved his hand in his pocket. His fingers wrapped around the jagged edges of the keys. As he jammed the key into the lock, relief flooded through him.
He threw open the door and pulled up the lock to the rear driver’s-side door. Eric hastily climb in, setting Rotna down on the seat next to him. Colin leaned over and pulled up the lock to the front passenger door just as Alex grabbed ahold of the handle.
As Colin reached for the handle of his own door, he saw Charles sprinting towards him with frightening speed. With a quick pull, he slammed the door closed. A second later, Charles slammed into the side of the car, screaming and pounding furiously against the window. In the back, Rotna sobbed, begging Charles to stop.
His hands shaking, Colin jammed the key into the ignition and started the car. He backed out of the parking spot, Charles clinging to the rearview mirror. Once out of the spot, he slowly started to pull forward, hoping to dislodge the man without hurting him. As the car picked up speed, the man began to run, still clinging to the mirror.
Suddenly, he fell out of sight. In the rearview mirror, Colin watched him roll across the asphalt. After a brief second, Charles began to stir and pick himself up.
Colin swung the car around to the end of the mall. The parking lot was oddly designed, like most of the mall itself; there were only two exits, both at the front, and close enough together that one large exit probably would have been enough.
The sight of the parking lot made Colin slam on the brakes. Ever since it had opened, the mall had not been doing well. The relatively small parking lot usually remained less than half full. The chaos was horrific. People ran across the black asphalt, dashing for their cars. Fights had broken out between the crazed and those trying to escape. Cars had collided as the drivers tried to escape and ended up crashing into one another. Those fortunate enough to have made it to their vehicles were now jamming up the exits.
Three people ran and tackled a couple to the ground as they reached their car.
“What do we do?” Colin was dazed as he looked out over the scene. People were everywhere. If he were to maneuver around them, it would be slow going.
How had this happened so quickly?
“Just go!” Alex shouted, his voice too loud for the small confines of the sedan.
Colin rolled forward, swerving this way and that around the skirmishes. He winced as he watched the struggles. People’s faces, contorted in fear, passed slowly by the windows as they fought for their lives. A few called out, begging for help. Colin tried not to make eye contact with the desperate people as the car rolled by. His gut roiled. He felt ashamed for ignoring their pleas. They should be helping these people, not leaving them to die.
The faces of the crazed were terrifying. Missing eyes. Missing ears. Missing cheeks and lips. Some were even missing limbs. Their faces and bodies were splattered in blood, both their own and that of those they’d attacked. Their fingers were so stained with blood it looked like they were wearing gloves.
Shrieks and deep guttural moans cut through the air. Suddenly, people were pouring out of one of the exits from the shops.
Not people. The crazed.
Their heads whipped about frantically as they searched for a target. Their teeth gnashed impatiently. Dozens of them flooded into the parking lot, filling the roadway in front of Colin’s car.
He slammed on the breaks as the horde continued to fill the streets. His head whipped about, looking for someplace to squeeze through.
“Anybody see an opening?” He could hear the panic creeping into his voice. He didn’t want to abandon the car. The car felt like a gigantic suit of armor. Leaving its safety would mean becoming vulnerable, but staying could just as easily make it their coffin.
Some of the crazed people noticed the idling car. Their heads turned as their jaws opened, emitting screams and moans. Their sound attracted the attention of the others. Colin felt the hair on the back of his neck raise as dozens of heads turned in their direction.
As the figures began to run towards the car, Colin slammed his foot on the gas. The car lurched forward and quickly gained speed. Colin’s knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?” Alex was gripping the door handle.
Colin didn’t say anything. Just gripped the wheel tighter.
The car hit the first zombie head on, jolting violently as it collided with the man’s body. He slid up the hood to the windshield before tumbling off the side of the car. Colin pushed harder on the gas, his fingers locked around the steering wheel. The front right corner of the car clipped a woman, who spun around before falling to the ground.
Before Colin could process it, the car struck two more and plunged into the heart of the mob of crazed people. The car rocked and the steering wheel tried to jerk out of his grip as people fell beneath the wheels. Faces smashed against the windows as they were thrown onto the hood. As a man rolled across the hood of the car, he smashed into the windshield, causing the glass to erupt in a vast array of cracks.
Colin’s heart raced when the car began to slow as it pushed through the thong of snarling faces. He hadn’t thought about what would happen if they didn’t make it through the crowd.
He couldn’t see where he was going anymore. The crazed snarled at him through the cracked glass. They clawed at the windshield, trying to get in, their fists pounding on the windows.
The rocking of the car as it rolled over mutilated bodies grew sporadic, and the rocking of the car stopped. On impulse, Colin stomped on the brakes. The tires squealed as the car finally rocked to a halt. Eric and Rotna in the back were thrown against the front seats.
“What the hell?” Eric complained.
Just as they had been thrown forward, the crazed people were thrown forward and off the front of the car. The crazed had left the windshield smeared with gore, but Colin could see again. Directly ahead, the road was clear and Colin mashed down on the gas, not willing to let the gap close up.
The path didn’t lead to one of the exits. Instead, at the end of the asphalt was a grassy swath that bordered the mall and its parking lot. A curb did not separate the two sections of land. Colin wasn’t sure how well his little sedan would hold up off-road, but he had no other option.
The car bumped and jolted as it hit the grass, and a dull roar filled the car as the grass licked at its sides. Colin fought to keep control of the vehicle over the uneven terrain. With a quick jerk of the steering wheel, he pulled onto a narrow bike path. The path wasn’t wide enough. The car jerked about as the tires continually slipped off the paved lane only to jump back onto it a few seconds later.
As the mall fell away behind them and open fields replaced it, Colin eased off the gas and allowed the car to slow down. The bike path ended abruptly in an open field full of tall wild grass, dotted with large oak trees. Colin pulled to a stop. They could see the highway and the cars on it as tiny dots on the far side of the field.
For a moment, he stared at the cars. Not one of the distant vehicles moved. The usual hum of the traffic was gone and the air was left heavy and stagnant in the silence.
Liv had fled just such a place. Fled on foot with their daughter in tow. She had cried and begged him to believe her when she said zombies were on the highway. And he hadn’t.
His stomach churned. Liv had never been one to lie or make up crazy stories. Though he had known something was wrong, he hadn’t believed her wild claims. The reality of her claims and the guilt of his failure to her were crushing.
The car was quiet. Rotna had stopped crying. Eric and Alex sat like statues.
“Does
anyone have any idea where we should go?” Colin finally asked when no one else spoke.
“What?” Alex said after a moment, his tone flat and emotionless.
“Your house,” Colin said, frustration creeping into his voice. “It’s nearby, right? How do we get there?”
“I’m not really sure how to get there from here unless we want to hoof it, but it’s probably not more than a mile.”
Colin nodded slowly. “How do we get there?”
Alex pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s only one exit up and I usually take the highway to work, but…” Alex’s eyes flicked back and forth as he looked over a map in his mind. “The outer road doesn’t go all the way to the exit. There’s a dirt road that follows the highway, but it dead-ends at the creek. There’s a bike path, though, that runs parallel to the creek and under the highway. If we can get on the other side, we can find a way around to my apartments.”
Colin’s stomach knotted. He didn’t want to head away from the river. Liv was on the other side of it, and he needed to get to her and Elli soon. The further away he went, the harder it would be to backtrack later.
He needed to call Liv and let her know it would take him a bit longer to find her. Colin patted down his pockets, looking for his phone.
Empty.
Panicking, he began to pat them down again but stopped. His phone was sitting on the counter in the store, where he had left it when the mall had descended into chaos.
Colin slumped into his seat. “Does anybody have their phone?”
Alex hung his head. “Mine was charging on the back counter.”
“Fuck,” Eric swore. “I left mine on the desk during lunch.”
“I dropped my purse in the bathroom when Charles attacked me,” Rotna’s voice was barely a whisper.
Colin sighed and ran his hands through his hair. Not one of them had a phone.
“Do you have a laptop at your apartment, Alex?”
Alex nodded.
“Good.” With a laptop, Colin could communication to Liv through the Facebook messenger app. “Let’s get going then.” Colin shifted the car into drive and angled towards the small service road just off the highway. It would take them within fifty feet of the stagnant traffic. More frighteningly, it would take them close to dozens, if not hundreds, of the crazed people that roamed between the cars.
The small sedan rocked and bumped its way over the grass. It was only a few hundred feet to the service road. As they got closer to the highway, Colin’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Figures moved among the cars. Some of them took notice of the sole moving vehicle and began to sprint towards it.
Making a sharp turn, Colin pulled the car onto the paved asphalt of the service road. He stomped on the gas and accelerated down the narrow road.
Traffic on the highway was backed up as far as he could see. Colin fixed his eyes forward as a dirt path loomed up ahead, used by farmers to traverse the outer edge of the field beside it.
He slowed the car down, surprised to see he had been going almost seventy miles an hour, and continued on to the unpaved road. It wasn’t long before the trees that bordered the creek rose up ahead on them. Colin pulled onto the narrow bike path. Even Colin’s little compact car didn’t fit on the path, but the ground was level enough that it was drivable.
“Where should I go from here?” he asked Alex as they passed underneath the highway.
“Uh.” Alex looked around. “This path crosses Baxter Road just a little further down. I would just follow it there and turn left on Baxter.”
Just as he said, the bike path opened on to a road. The road was eerily quiet. No cars passed by, but there was no sign of the chaos that had enveloped the mall or the highway. It was as if they had awoken from the nightmare and suddenly stepped back into reality.
“Take the next left.” Alex stared out the window.
Colin wondered if perhaps they had overreacted at the mall. His stomach roiled as he thought of how they had left. He had killed two people with a hammer that sat bloodied at his feet. And he had run over dozens as they fled. Dozens. They had left dozens more behind. How many had they condemned to a horrible death by simply refusing to help?
Fear gripped him as he followed Alex’s directions. The terror at the mall seemed so far away and baseless as they drove down the quiet street.
“Turn left when this road dead-ends.”
Would he go to jail? How would he not? He had killed people.
But something had been wrong with them. Those people had seemed almost rabid. They had been vicious, brutally attacking others for no reason. Certainly, what they did would be seen as self-defense.
Wouldn’t it?
Colin shook himself. The consequences of their actions would have to be dealt with later. For now, they needed to find someplace to calm down and assess their situation. He needed to get ahold of Liv. He needed to make sure she and Elli were safe.
As Colin neared the road, he slowed down. Two cars had smashed into each other at the cross street. The driver’s-side door of one vehicle stood open. In the other car, the driver was slumped over their steering wheel. In the street, near the cars, lay a body. It lay motionless on the pavement. Its limbs tangled into a distorted heap.
Colin’s heart began to race once again as the semblance of normalcy was shattered.
“Do you think we should stop and check?” Colin’s mouth was dry as he slowed down at the intersection. He didn’t want to get out of the car. He didn’t want to go near the bodies. “See if they’re still alive and need help.”
“Are you crazy?” Alex’s voice took on a slightly hysterical tone. “Those people might be like the freaks at the mall.”
Colin nodded.
“I think we should keep going,” Eric agreed more levelly. “It doesn’t look like these people need help anymore.”
Without another word, Colin turned left onto the street, passing the accident and leaving the bodies behind.
“Just follow this for a while…” Alex started to give the next set of directions, but his words trailed off as another accident loomed up ahead.
Just before the next stoplight, an eighteen-wheeler lay on its side splayed out across the road. A car lay crushed flat underneath its bulk, its rear end peeking out beneath the truck’s body. On each side, other cars that had been taken out when the massive vehicle had toppled dotted the roadway. The road around the vehicles was littered with scraps of metal and other debris.
Colin stared at the mess. No police officers were directing traffic. There weren’t any medical personnel tending to the wounded. There weren’t even any Good Samaritans trying to pull survivors out of the wrecked vehicles. The wreckage just sat in the road, a silent testament to the chaos descending on St. Louis.
“Where do we go now?” Eric was the first to break the stunned silence that had fallen over the car.
“We can turn around and backtrack some.” Alex scratched his head nervously. “The back way goes through a bunch of neighborhoods. It’ll take a while, but there probably won’t be as many people.”
Colin put the car in reverse and began to turn it around.
“Wait!” Eric shouted, nearly making Colin jump out of his skin and startling the others. “Someone is still alive.” He pointed toward the overturned truck. A figure walked around the back end of the truck, leaning heavily on the metal side of the eighteen-wheeler. At the sight of the idling vehicle, the figure perked up.
Even through the closed windows, they could hear the scream as the person dashed towards the car. Other cries answered. As Colin back the car up, more people came around the wrecked vehicles and began to sprint towards them. Just seconds before, the road had been empty of people, but now it was quickly becoming a snarling, writhing mass of bodies.
Finally able to turn around, Colin jammed the car into drive and took off in the opposite direction. He maneuvered around the two-car accident at the intersection and sped off down the street.
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“Um,” Colin said a bit shakily, “my cousin Sammy lives out here. We could see about hunkering down at his place for a while. At least until we can come up with some kind of plan.”
“Where does he live?” Eric asked.
“Uh, he lives in apartments over here somewhere…but I’m not exactly sure where.”
“There are two apartment complexes close by on this side of the highway and two more on the other side of the highway.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s right around here.” Colin hadn’t seen Samuel since Easter. As children, they had been very close, but as they got older they drifted apart and rarely saw each other outside of holidays anymore.
“Turn here!” Alex said suddenly, and Colin jerked on the steering wheel, taking the turn a bit too fast.
“What if he isn’t there?” Eric had been quiet for a bit in the back seat.
“I have a key to his place,” Colin replied. “He went on vacation just after the New Year and needed someone to pick up his mail and check on the place while he was away. When he came back, he told me to keep it just in case he ever locked himself out.”
“The first set of apartments is coming up soon on the right,” Alex cut in.
Colin slowed as they approached. Large brown apartment buildings sprawled out to their right. They weren’t fancy but they were nice. The apartments had been built back in the eighties, but they had been renovated three years ago. The buildings were three-story tan structures. In the center of each was a stairway bordered on each side by patios. The grass was green and neatly trimmed and large trees bordered the parking lot and areas around the complex.
A car was crumpled into a telephone pole at the entrance of the complex, and Colin swerved around it as he pulled into the parking lot. The parking lot held a smattering of cars but was mostly empty as Colin drove around towards the back of the complex. In the back, a number of parking spots right in front of the building were vacant. They all had numbers for the corresponding apartments, but Colin pulled into one of the assigned spots anyway. Getting a ticket for taking someone’s parking spot was the least of his concerns.
Death & Decay (Book 2): Divided Page 2
