The Great Wreck

by Stewart, Jack

  Harriet put the shuttle into gear and eased the heavy machine forward heading out of the parking garage and towards the east gate. No sooner had she began moving, then the screams of the dead behind her began in earnest. Doc could see the fear in her face and put a hand on her shoulder, “Never mind them, you just focus on getting us to that gate. We get through that, and thirty seconds later it will shut the dead in, OK?”

  Harriet nodded and gripped the wheel tightly as they rolled out from the garage and down the quarter mile stretch of road that lead to the east gate.

  Birch’s voice came over the radio, “Uh, Doc?”

  Doc picked up the CB handle and responded, “Yes, Birch?”

  “We might want pick it up a bit. Take a look out your rear view mirror.”

  Doc looked back at his side mirror as the south wall collapsed entirely. Then he saw the hundreds of sprinters screaming and tearing their way towards the two shuttles. If the shuttles didn’t speed up, the sprinters would be here in seconds.

  “Harriet, hit it!” Doc yelled.

  Harriet hit the gas and the shuttle lurched forward, its wheels squealing along the pavement, the back end fishtailing dangerously across the road.

  In the second shuttle, Birch watched Harriet’s vehicle swerve all over the road and come close to tipping over. He held his breath as it leaned to the left and then far over to the right before settling down and hauling ass towards the east gate. He glanced in his side mirrors as he let out a long sigh and got his shuttle up to speed. The dead were closing in fast, “Get ready folks, they’ll get to us before we can get to the gate.

  In the back I watched the dead closing in on the back of the shuttle and took the safety off my rifle. Marti leaned over and put her hand behind my head pulling me to her. We kissed for a moment, then got back to our guns. The sprinters were pushing past their slower dead compatriots and were soon breaking free.

  “Thomas! Marti! Wait until they close in, just before they leap! Head shots only!”

  I smiled at Marti, “He thinks this is my first rodeo!” I yelled over the screaming of the dead and the howling of the engine, “Just hold the shuttle steady, Birch and we’ll do the rest!”

  I zeroed in on the first batch of sprinters, waited for them to close in on the back of the shuttle and popped off a few rounds. The first couple missed but the next took at two sprinters getting ready to leap. I squeezed off a few more and another sprinter fell. Marti joined in and we began to systematically take out the leading edge of the sprinters. Above me I heard Allen begin to let off with the .50 caliber in nice controlled bursts as the dead began to close in on the back of the shuttle.

  Up in the driver’s seat Birch watched as Harriet passed through the east gate. The dead were hard on their heels and some would make it through the gate before it closed up again, but they could handle that. Birch was worried that the dead would start to flood over the fences they had put up once they heard all the noise form the shuttles and the gunfire. Birch passed through the gate and watched as it began to close up, the automatic timer they had installed doing its thing. Then the gates stopped closing.

  Birch glanced back and forth to the road ahead and the gate behind willing the gate to close up the last five feet but to no avail. It was stuck and the dead were now pouring through, “Doc, we’ve got more trouble,”

  “More than usual? More than we are in now?” Doc replied incredulously.

  “’Fraid so. Gate’s stuck open.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Doc said. Birch had to laugh. Getting Doc to swear was one of his favorite past times. Doc hated to swear so it was a good day to get him to drop the F-bomb. And on any other day than this, it would set Birch off laughing.

  “Nice one, Doc. We still have our Missouri Surprise,” he said thinking to himself, if we make it that far as he watched as Harriet weaved around the military vehicles that were still in the road. His heart leapt up in to his throat again as she clipped the edge of a semi-truck jackknifed in the street. He looked in his side view mirrors and saw the dead were pouring through the gate and beginning to closing in, “Harriet, you dump that rig baby, and we’re all dead.”

  He could hear Harriet in the background reply, “Tell that loud mouth motherfucker to shut the hell up and let me concentrate.”

  Doc laughed in spite of the situation they were in and said, “Harriet thanks you for your concern. Furthermore she thanks you for your keen observations and advises you shut the hell up.”

  “I’m shutting up,” he said and watched as James expertly mowed down the dead that were starting to close in from the left and the right. He guessed Thomas had made the right decision to bring him along after all. But that was one crazy mother fucker. He was screaming and yelling in a weird mix of joy and rage, like he loved every fucking minute of this. Birch jerked the wheel to the left to avoid the edge of a large school bus that had snuck up on him while he was watching James.

  Marti yelled back up to him, “Eyes on the road mister!”

  “I’m watching! I’m watching!” he replied and focused on the street ahead. The fence was about a five miles long and made several sharp turns. The idea was the turns would get the vans momentarily out of sight of the dead and maybe be able to shake them off there tail. They hadn’t planned on an entire city of dead chasing after them when they had built this, though. Now the dead were coming over the fence from every direction and it didn’t matter if they turned left or right, they wouldn’t be shaking the dead off their trial anytime soon. It would have been better the just have a straight shot and they might have out run them but instead they had to slow way down, make the turn then speed up again letting the dead get closer and closer each time they did.

  The Missouri Surprise was a risky, last ditch effort to escape the dead. They were headed down East Idaho right now and had two more turns to make before they hit a long, straight stretch of road. At the end of that road was a cluster of small buildings around the overpass of I-25. Birch and his crew had spent weeks wiring those buildings and the overpass up with enough explosives from the warehouse to blow an entire city block. In just a few minutes, they’d hang a right on South Solano Drive and then a left onto Missouri avenue. The road from Missouri to the I-25 overpass was a straight shot completely cleared of wrecks. They’d hit Missouri and gun it down the road, pass under I-25 and blow the explosives collapsing the buildings and overpass down and cutting off the dead. That should give them enough time to reach Dripping Springs Road that would take them all the way out east to the foot hills of the San Andres Mountains. There they had sealed off a police armory depot. They would get in, seal up tight, and wait for the waves of dead to taper off. If they ever did.

  Birch had just a second to glance to his left and see a wave of sprinters clear the fence and leap onto the shuttle, “They’re on us!” he said as he heard the dead scramble along the sides trying to keep hold of the madly swerving vehicle. A second later he heard Allen scream and the sprinters got him, then saw his legs disappear up and out of the shuttle as they dragged him out, “Fuck, they got Allen! Someone get up there!

  * * *

  I heard Alan scream as three of the dead grabbed hold of him and yank him free of the shuttle. I ran to the open hatch and climbed up the two step poking my head out. There were half a dozen sprinters clinging to the sides and trying to get up on top. I pointed my rifle at them and removed their heads one at a time until the shuttle was clear, then set my rifle on the floor and took over the .50 caliber. I could see James up ahead. He had managed to keep his shuttle completely clear of the dead. I swept the gun back and forth keeping the closest of the dead out of our path and off of the sides of the shuttle. I glance again at James, he waved at me and then slowly, ever so slowly turned those big guns on me. I should have known he would take the first chance he had to kill me. I dropped like a sack of lead bricks just as James opened fire.

  A spray of bullets swept the shuttle, “Jesus Christ!” Birch yelled, “Any
one hit?! What the fuck was that!? Doc, your boy is hitting us!”

  I popped back up just as soon as the firing stopped intending to grab the gun and take James out. As I did, James had already returned to fire at the wall of dead swirling around the vans. I glanced back just in time to see two dead bodies minus their heads where James had shot them, tumble off the back of the shuttle. I glance at James and he threw me a kiss.

  Doc came on the radio, “James just took out a couple of sprinters that had come up over the back. Anyone hurt?”

  “No, no one hurt but fuck a duck, Doc!” Birch said, “Thomas! When we turn onto Missouri, I want you to seal up. We’re going to be hauling ass trying to lose the dead, OK?”

  “OK,” I said as I laid down a steady stream of fire. The shuttle hung a sharp right and I caught a glimpse of a road sign that said South Solano and felt the shuttle speed up. We were putting some space between us the dead so I used up my last rounds and grabbed my rifle to clear off any that might latch on before we hit Missouri.

  “Get inside, Thomas!” Birch said from up front, “Marti! Get ready to hit the button on your right! That will blow the overpass and all the nearby buildings cutting off the dead.

  I stepped down into the shuttle, closed the hatch behind me, and made my way to the back of the shuttle with Marti. She sat their looking at the wall where a large remote had been duct taped.

  “Birch, we have another problem!” Marti called back.

  Oh fuck, what now? Birch thought, “Tell me.”

  “I don’t think the detonator is going to work,” she said.

  “Why not?” Birch yelled back.

  “Because it has a giant hole in it,” Marti replied putting her finger through a huge hole that had been blown in the remote. I looked and saw where the round had come in from the right side of the van and exited through the remote when James had sprayed us. Just an inch or two more to the left and that hole would have been in Marti’s head. I wrapped myself around her and held her close then heard Birch cussing up a storm.

  I made my way up to Birch, “What was that remote for?”

  Birch told me. I quickly went to the back. We had put a little over a quarter of a mile between us and the masses of dead but they’d be able to see us and they would follow us all the way to the warehouse. I went back up front again, “Birch. Do you have a manual switch?”

  “We do. It’s in the floor of an office building right on the east side of the freeway. Why?”

  “I can set it off manually. Let me off in front of the office and then drive to the other side of the overpass a safe distance. I’ll set off the explosives and catch up.”

  Birch thought about it for a second then said, “Get ready, it’s coming up on the left. Take the radio there with you.”

  We watched as Harriet’s shuttle passed beneath the underpass and sped up clearing the last of the fenced in area and heading towards Dripping Springs Road. Birch pulled the shuttle to a stop and opened the doors. I leapt out scanning the area around me. The pre-dawn light made everything fuzzy and indistinct that the dead could be anywhere but I didn’t have time to check out every place they might hide so just I ran towards the office building Birch had pointed out with my rifle, flashlight, and radio in hand.

  Birch gunned it as I ran across the street and into the building. Before I went inside I looked back the way we had come. The dead were maybe a half a mile away racing down the road towards me. I went inside the building looking around for the manual switch and any dead that might be hanging around. The front office was empty but the box that was wired to the explosives was supposed to be was nowhere to be found. I frantically searched the area around the front reception area desk with my flashlight and spotted the box on the floor.

  Relieved, I set down my rifle and radio next to the box and then stopped. The wires that lead from the box to the explosives had been torn out. The box was useless.

  I pressed the send button on the radio, “Birch, you there?”

  “Yeah, Thomas, what’s up? Make it quick guy because the dead are closing in fast.”

  “The box is broke.” I said simply and began to gather my things to get to the shuttle. We’d just have to hope the dead didn’t follow us all the way to the warehouse.

  “What!? How?”

  “The box must have fallen off the counter top. All the wires are pulled out of it,” I said.

  There was a second of silence on the radio and I readied myself to sprint back to the shuttle.

  “Thomas, you can fix it.”

  I thought for a split second of the absurdity of it all. I, a kid with no experience at all, could, MacGyver-like, fix the detonator to the explosives.

  “Really,” Birch said as though reading my mind, “All you have to do is open up the front of the control box and connect two wires to the terminal on the inside. It’s easy. All the other wires are for timers and shit. Just connect the read and the blue wire to the matching terminals, rotate the timer knob for thirty seconds, and hit the ‘start’ button. That’s it.”

  I dropped to the ground, pulled out my pocket knife, and undid the screws that held the front plate on the controller. Inside, just as Birch had said, were two metal terminals: one red, one blue. I grabbed the box and set it on the counter and yanked the wires to me. I found the red one and quickly screwed it to the terminal but as soon as I attached the blue one, before I could even reach the detonate button, the whole world exploded.

  Boom.

  * * *

  From the shuttle Marti watched as the freeway overpass detonated with such a force that it actually lifted the back of the shuttle up and then dropped it down tossing her back on her behind. She scrambled up to see what had happened and saw the buildings on the other side of the overpass exploding shooting up huge columns of fire and debris. The sound of the detonations went on for nearly a full minute one after the other with the explosions sending thousands of tons of concrete, steel, and debris down into the streets.

  When the dust cleared, Marti could see that the overpass had not only collapsed, but the explosive concussion had taken out all of the surrounding buildings as well.

  “Thomas, can you hear me?” Birch said getting out of the shuttle, “Thomas!?” he yelled into the radio, jumped out of the van, ran back towards the collapsed overpass.

  Marti climbed out of the side door and was running to catch up with him. They reached the edge of the blast zone at the same time as the wind blew away the smoke and dust from the explosions. The building Thomas had been in was almost completely gone.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t hear anything.

  I must be dead. Hooray for me!

  But if I was dead, where was the bright tunnel of light? Dudes in robes? Angels maybe?

  Maybe this was Purgatory. If so I’d just sit back and relax until someone came along and told me what to do.

  Then I felt something shift above me as the pale light of dawn trickled in revealing that I was not in Purgatory or even dead for that matter. Dammit. I was alive and trapped under the debris of the office the detonator was in.

  And lucky, lucky me, the dead had found me.

  “Thomas!” I head Marti yell from above, “Thomas can you hear me?!”

  So, not the dead after all. I tried to call out but I was so tired and it felt so good just to lay there. No running, no shooting, no dead. At least, no dead yet.

  More light streamed down as Marti and the others cleared the rubble that had buried me. Soon the hole above me was large enough and I saw the vague outline of a head above me, “Here! He’s here!”

  Others joined the effort and soon they had the debris of the building off of me and were pulling me from the wreckage. I looked around and spotted the two vans a few hundred yards away, the wreckage the explosions had created and the collapsed overpass to my right, “The dead?”

  “Stopped cold,” Birch said handing me a can
teen full of water, “But we need to get a move on before they get interested again and try to find a way around.”

  I nodded and Birched helped me to my feet. We slowly walked towards the vans. I spotted James sitting on top of the front shuttle smoking a cigarette. He saw me a tipped his head, put out his smoke, and dropped down into the shuttle. Birch helped me up into the passenger’s seat and we slowly drove towards the Organ Mountains.

  The sun broke over the sharp, rocky ridges of the mountains just as we hit Dripping Springs road and the final leg of our escape to the warehouse. Marti was still at the back of the shuttle watching for any of the dead following after us, “Anything?” Birch yelled back.

  “Nothing. A few have climbed to the top of the overpass rubble, but none seem to have spotted us,” she replied.

  “Great! Doc,” Birch said into the radio, “Looks like we’re in the clear.”

  “Thanks be to God,” Doc replied as we made their way down the single lane road clearing the outskirts of the city. There we sped up and were soon coming up to the base of the mountains. Along the road I started seeing signs that read “State Police Armory: Authorized Personnel Only,” and “Restricted Area: Keep Out,” then a sign that said “New Mexico State Police Armory; 5 miles.”

  We pulled up to the armory a few minutes later. It looked almost identical to the armory I had found outside of Phoenix: it was ringed by a heavy, metal fence that looked like it could withstand an armored tank attack, had multiple vehicle barriers that could be raised up, and the warehouses were made of concrete looking like munitions bunkers in the early morning light.

  I saw the heavy gate roll back as the first shuttle drove in. We followed as the gate shut behind us. Birch stopped the shuttle, got out, and walked over to a small security station while Harriet walked around the shuttles to ensure no dead had clung to the undersides then followed us in. Inside Birch flipped a switch and two large concrete barriers rose up on either side of the closed gate clamping it shut for good and Harriet called out to Doc that the vehicles were all clear.