It didn’t budge. I tried to reposition and pushed again. Daylight filtered down through a minuscule crack, but the lid dropped as soon as it opened, slamming down with a dull clunk.
“Did you see anything?”
“Not enough time,” I grunted.
“Damn. Think you can get it again?”
I tried to shoot him a glare, but just stared at my shoulder. “Sure. This asphalt-paved steel plate is light as a feather!”
“That a girl! Get it done. You can do it!”
I grimaced at my armpit this time. A laugh came from below.
I funneled my frustration at Sammy into rage to fuel me. Groaning under the strain, I shoved with all my strength. The crack reappeared, then a gap opened. Fresh, cool air wafted through the small opening with the hint of a foul stench on it. My voice cracked from strain as the weight of the lid fought my muscles, but it slid up and over the lip leaving a one-inch gap.
Holding my breath, I craned my neck to look through the hole.
“What do you see?” Sammy’s voice came a little too loud.
“Shhhhh!” I poured as much aggravation into that single sound as I could before pressing my face to the iron underside of the lid.
Nothing. I could see nothing. Not like there were no Goners outside the manhole. After all, I could hear them. But I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“I have to open this wider. All I see is the sky above.” I slipped the fingers of one hand through the opening and pushed with all my strength. Quarter. Half. Inch. Two. Four. More and more the lid slid open and out of the way until I had enough space to put my head through. I looked down at Sammy below. If I needed to drop fast through the opening, at least it would only be a few feet.
I stared up through the opening. Nothing but blue sky. With a heavy, deep sigh I steeled my resolve and popped my head through the opening.
Goners shuffled all around, moving about like a bunch of nursing home residents on pudding day. At first I couldn’t think to count how many shambled. But as the shock wore off, numbers became clear. At least a dozen away from my car. A handful near my car. A horde swarmed the entrance to the parochial school past my car.
“Damn!” I muttered the subtle word under my breath, but its sound alerted the Goners to my presence. Faces turned in my direction, glaring, mouths snapping the air, teeth clacking. Several of them wore habits. Some of the nuns must have escaped.
Like a swarm of bees, they moved in my direction.
“Sammy! We have to move. My car is right there and they’re coming!” I surged through the collar and onto the street, my feet pounding the pavement as I dug in my pocket for keys. I didn’t look back, but could hear Sammy’s labored breaths as he hoofed it behind me.
Yellow lights flashed as I pressed the button on the key fob. Banging into the car, I yanked the handle and threw myself into the driver’s seat. Sammy slid into the passenger seat beside me as we both slammed the doors shut.
My hands trembled like a leaf in a breeze, making it damn near impossible to get the key into the ignition.
“Come on!” he shouted at me as fists pounded on the outside of my car. Glass shattered and hands reached through the rear passenger window.
“Goddamn, Freakshow! Get this piece of crap started.”
I found the hole, cranked the key, and the motor roared to life, spitting exhaust. Slamming the shifter into drive, I pressed my foot on the gas pedal, not caring who or what stood in front of me.
“Get the hell out of the way!” I shouted.
“I don’t think they’re gonna listen,” Sammy called back.
Blood coursed down the inside of the rear window as the lacerated arms slipped back out again. Bodies stepped in front of the grill and a shriek escaped me as I plowed into one. The Goner folded over the hood, its face bouncing off the sheet metal and leaving a bloody streak. It clawed its way forward, pulling itself up by the windshield wipers. I flipped them on.
“I don’t think those are meant to clear people from your view.”
“Shut up, Sammy! What else do you want me to do?”
I felt the weight of his body slide next to me.
“Hey! Get back, you creep!”
He stomped his left foot onto my right. The motor whined and the tires spun. The car shot forward as the tires found purchase. More bodies folded over the front of my car, leaving pock marks on the hood and spidering cracks across the windshield.
“Just drive!” he shouted. And I did.
chapter four
People growing up in South Jersey generally held Philadelphia in high esteem. To them it was like Mecca, a place to which all must at some point travel. Not me. I hated Philadelphia. Don’t ask me why. I can’t really say. There is just something about the City of Brotherly Love, that seems hypocritical, and, let’s face it, just bullcrap. This is why, as I walked the streets of that waste of a city, I grumbled and groaned.
“You sensing something, Byron?” John asked, a spiked baseball bat leaning on his shoulder.
“Oh my god, what?” Evan’s squeaky voice followed. He carried a bolt-action hunting rifle with a scope. The further we kept him from the thick of the fight, the better.
“No. I just hate this place.”
“What? Philly?” John’s voice took on a quizzical tone.
“Mmm-hmm. With a passion.”
“Why? I mean how could you hate Philly? It’s the best city in the United States.”
I gave him a harsh glare. “Not to me.”
“Hey. It beats any of your stinking Jersey towns, hands down.”
“If you say so. I still don’t like it. It’s dirty. It stinks. And the people are ruder than in Manhattan, if you can actually believe it.”
“No way! Philly is awesome. You just haven’t gone to the right places, is all.”
“Not interested, John. Only reason I’m here is to help you find your parents and see if we can save them from the zombie horde gathering in New Jersey.”
“Uhm...Okay.”
“So which way do we go?”
He pointed down a road. “We follow this for a while. They live on Swain street, near Eastern State Penitentiary.”
My ears perked up. “Eastern State? Really? Think that place is as haunted as they advertise?”
John winked. “Once we check on my parents, we could go find out. May be a safe place to lay low for a while.”
“Yes, I know,” I replied. “Even though prisons were designed to keep people in, they are just as effective at keeping people out. Come on, haven’t you watched The Walking Dead?”
The Walking dead? What is that? The voices asked. They were the bane of my existence—the microorganisms that not only made me what I am, but also kept me alive. Sentient. Curious. And, unfortunately, vocal.
“Dammit,” I moaned under my breath.
Evan turned toward me. “Did they start talking to you again?”
I nodded. We know that means yes, Byron. You can’t avoid us. We are part of you now.
“Damn voices won’t leave me alone. And just when they’d gotten quiet for a while, too. I almost felt like I owned my own head again.” I poured a little Aw-Shucks into my voice.
We need each other to survive.
“Yes. I know that. But you don’t need to keep reminding me, like some hitchhiker from hell. Can’t you just keep quiet and watch? Why all the talking? All the questions?”
We are new to your world and want to learn. What’s more is we want to learn how to save our own kind from infecting humans like they have. We want to save both our species.
“I find that hard to believe. Otherwise you would never have infected our species in the first place. You would have infected cats, or dogs, or three-legged sloths.”
“Three-toed sloths,” Evan squeaked.
“Thank you! Three-toed sloths. You wouldn’t have infected the human race. But you did. And the result is that my head is no longer my own.”
The micro-organisms rattled on about motives
and goals and all manner of rubbish I didn’t care for hearing about, so I blocked them out as best I could.
I started walking. “So your parents live near Eastern States, huh?”
“Yeah. It was pretty interesting while growing up. Not exactly the best neighborhood of Philadelphia.”
“I’ll say. You live two blocks from a high-security prison.”
Evan cleared his throat. “Hey guys. How bad do you think this thing has spread through here?”
I looked up to the sky. “Not sure. I hope that the micro-organisms have found some kind of balance rather quick, otherwise we are in some tough crap.”
“I was just wondering if it has reached all the way to Ohio, or not.”
The atmosphere changed. Any levity among us flew the coop. “Evan, your parents are smart and resourceful. I am sure if anyone survived this thing, it would be them. I mean your dad is one of those doomsday preppers, isn’t he? Wasn’t he on that show?”
Evan nodded. “They featured him twice.”
“Well, don’t you think a person like that could survive some creepy dudes biting each other?”
A moan echoed down the road. I read the nearest street sign. We stood on the corner of N. Broad and Brown Street. Another sound followed the moan, one that surprised me—the scream of a car engine.
“What the hell is that?” John asked.
I stared toward the sound, using my micro-organism enhanced vision to see the car.
It had no grill. Large dents folded the front bumper inward like it had run into a horde of telephone polls. The blood-smeared dents on the hood and the cracks in the windshield told the true story. This car had been pulverizing the undead. I couldn’t make out the driver through the damaged glass, but the passenger appeared to be a dread-locked derelict, skin leathery from years in the harsh elements. Beyond the car, I could see a pair of Lords keeping pace. These people had attracted the wrong attention.
“Looks like we have some trouble coming our way. A car with two passengers is barreling toward us. May want to seek some temporary shelter.”
The whine of the motor grew louder, but did not relent in its strain. The driver pushed it to its breaking point. Rapid-fire high-pitched knocks and taps clacked as it approached. A flume of blue-white smoke erupted into the air from around the hood, enveloping the car.
“They just blew the motor,” John called.
“I don’t think they’re going to be able to control it,” Evan added as he moved toward the inset doorway of a nearby building. The car started to swerve, having lost its motor, and its power steering. “They’re going to crash.”
“And when they do, those Lords will be on them like white on rice.” My words chilled my own veins. I reached up over my shoulders and drew a pair of laser-sharpened katanas I had found at an Army Surplus store outside the city. The funny thing about Katanas—they always seemed flimsy and frail, but could, in fact, split a bullet fired from a .45 in half without taking a lick of damage. “You guys duck inside. I’ll take care of this.”
Evan and John did not need much more encouragement than that. In an instant, they squeezed into the same doorway as the nose of the car pointed right in my direction. So close, I could see the man in the passenger seat screaming at the driver to turn the wheel. The driver’s voice came back to me with the thanks of my enhanced hearing. It belonged to a woman, and she screamed. “It’s not turning, Sammy! Oh God! Am I going to hit him?”
~ ~ ~
Sammy reached over and wrenched the wheel from my grasp, turning the car in a tight arc back toward the center of the road. It overshot its mark, however, and headed straight for a storefront across the way. Something in the steering must have been damaged on our way through the city. With all the potholes, steel plates, and bodies we crashed through and over on the way here, it would not surprise me in the least.
“Brace yourself,” Sammy screamed in the seat next to me. I didn’t even have time to get my hands up in front of my face before we burst through the glass. A puff of white vinyl smashed into my nose, blinding me and snapping my head back against the headrest. The car finally rolled to a stop.
Powder covered everything, and I blinked to clear it from my eyes. “You okay, Sammy?” I turned to look at him.
He had braced himself, all right, wedging himself between the dashboard and the passenger seat. His back strained against the seat springs, while his feet pushed against the dashboard. The airbag leaked out of the top of its compartment, but Sammy’s feet held the cover in place and prevented it from inflating. He wrapped himself in the seatbelt like a Christmas ribbon.
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” I couldn’t help chuckling as I asked.
“I’ll ask you the same thing, Casper! Look in the damn mirror.” He let out a great snort, followed by some guffaws.
I did and laughed at my reflection. Even the purple and crimson highlights in my hair were powder-coated white. “I look like I should attend the Continental Congress.”
“When in Philly…”
Glass shattered and fell to the floor behind us. Crunch—Crunch.
Something walked on the debris.
“There’s something out there.” His voice quavered a little with the revelation.
I reached for my bat in the back seat. “I bet we just woke up every Goner in a five-block radius. Dammit!”
“Don’t be hard on yourself,” he said patting me on the shoulder. “That’s my job.”
I shot him a nasty glare as I slid my seat belt off, ready to burst through the car door and wallop the first thing that walked by.
Crunch—Crunch—Crunch.
It approached on Sammy’s side of the car. I used hand gestures to tell him to stay put, I would climb out my side and take care of our visitor. He looked at me with puzzlement and then flipped me off. With a great exasperated sigh, popped the driver’s door open and whirled, slamming the aluminum baseball bat into the roof of my car. The force rattled my fillings as the bang filled the air.
“Whoa, there!” A voice called from the other side. “Hold on now, no need for violence. You had a pretty bad crash. I want to make sure everyone is okay.”
From inside the car, I heard Sammy make a strange sound.
I blinked my eyes at the figure standing on the other side of the car. He was tallish and boyishly handsome. Clean-shaven with a neat, yet fashionable faux-hawk in his dark hair. An odd aura encircled the centers of his eyes—gold? Silver? I couldn’t tell. He gave me a warm smile, but it struck me as forced instead of sincere. His skin radiated a golden halo. But the most prominent feature of his appearance happened to be the pair of matching Katanas he held in his hands. One pointed right at me, the blade of the other lay against Sammy’s throat.
“You mind putting those things away, jerk wad?” I poured as much ice as I could into my voice to quell the shaking I felt inside.
In a flash, the swords disappeared under his long, black trench coat and the passenger door opened. He lifted Sammy from the car and set him down on the floor.
Something moaned as it came crashing through the gaping hole my car plowed through the storefront.
“Excuse me,” the stranger said as he leapt toward the Goner shambling through the opening, the swords in his hands again. With fluid movements, he fell the creature, severing its head from its body and dispatched two more following close behind it. I stood paralyzed with shock, it had all happened so fast.
“It’s not safe here,” he called to me. “You and your friend may want to follow us.”
“Us? Who’s us?”
Grunts and groans resonated through the air from outside the storefront. I stepped toward the opening and peered outside to witness two more strangers doing battle with a handful of Goners.
“There are a couple of Lords skulking about. They’re a little more difficult than these common guys.”
“Lords?” I asked, feeling foolish.
“Mean mothers. They can regenerate, move with impossible
speed, and are tough as nails. There were a couple of them following your car before you crashed. I lost sight of them. But they’re around here somewhere.” He scanned the streets and the rooftops.
The two strangers in the street finished their battle and headed over toward us.
“Byron, we need to get going. I think I saw one of the Lords on the roof over there.” The mousy-looking guy spoke with a nasal, squeaky voice.
“Oh, he’s up there, all right. Saw him zip by.” The burlier stranger added.
Byron looked at me and smiled again. “So what do you say? Travel with us? There’s safety in numbers.”
“Where are you heading?” I asked.
“To see if my parents are still alive,” the burly one responded.
“Where are you heading?” Byron mimicked.
“I am heading to see if my aunt is still alive,” I said.
“I’m just along for the ride, and to stay alive myself,” Sammy added.
“Great! Welcome aboard. Looks like we all have common goals.” Byron puffed up his chest, tightening his grip on the swords in his hands. “Now let’s get a move on before our friends decide to cause some trouble.”
~ ~ ~
When she leapt from her car, my breath caught in my chest. She had a unique style about her, but I could appreciate that. She had a natural, effortless beauty hiding beneath her gothic punk facade. From her polychrome hair, to her knee-high boots, to the cargo pockets, she screamed for attention. And from me, she got it.
“You big into Goth? Or Punk?” My voice cracked in an attempt to make small talk.
Your heart rate is accelerating, Byron. Does talking to this girl make you nervous?
I groaned under my breath. She turned her head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore your question.” She must have heard my groan because she shot me a nasty glare.
“Sorry here, too. The groan wasn’t directed at you. It was meant for…someone else.”
She scanned the group of us. “Oh. Right. Gotcha!” Sarcasm dripped from her crimson lips as she fired her fingers at me like a pistol going off.
Evan and John turned their faces away, but I could hear their snickering. “No, really. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time, or anything. My groan—”
Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2) Page 4
