“Oh my god,” he whispers as Holly turns on the windshield wipers and smears ooze and blood across the glass. We've stopped moving now are sitting in the midst of a hundred broken cars and a thousand slobbering DeadBorn. There's an entire army of skeletons, some with little bits of flesh dangling from their bones and others who've been bleached white by the sun. Alongside them is a whole host of gray skinned corpses grinning back at us with missing lips and shattered heads and police uniforms. From the cop cars on both sides of the road, to the lack of incoming vehicles, I make the guess that there'd been a road block here. Helicopters sound overhead and I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Are those mummies?” Martin asks quietly, pointing at a cluster of bodies behind the necromancer. I ignore him, certain that I don't give a shit. There's already enough to worry about.
The woman in the cloak begins to walk forward and the horde shuffles along beside her. They're still groaning and whimpering, but none of them are running or trying to tear us to pieces. I want to say that it makes me feel better, but that would be a lie.
When I hear Dawson praying behind me, I know that we're going to die. Holly, though, has other ideas. Not even a legion of the undead can phase her. She puts the car in reverse and starts to back away. We can't go very fast as there's a wall of bodies behind us, shoulder to shoulder, a sea of rotten flesh and weeping eyes. I listen very carefully for the sound of helicopters that I hear in the distance, wondering if they'll get here while the zombies are tearing us apart or afterward, when we've joined them in death. Maybe they'll mow us down with machine guns and burn our corpses in the street?
“Do you think that's a rescue crew?” Martin asks as if nothing in the world is wrong, but when I smell urine, I look back and see that he's pissed himself. We meet eyes and in his, I see my own mortality glimmering back at me from glassy brown. I spin back to Holly and see that she's focused almost entirely on the woman in the black cloak. As if she can sense my girlfriend's thoughts, the necromancer raises her hand and the DeadBorn behind us part like the Red Sea.
“What the fuck?” Dawson whispers, voice quivering as he presses his fingers to the window and stares out at the empty faces around us. We continue in reverse until we hit an exit. Holly then puts the sedan into drive and presses her foot to the floor. We haven't even begun to accelerate when one of the fire faces steps out from behind the crowd of lopers and vomits magma onto the road with a piercing screech. It spews flames into the air like a circus performer and then turns its attention on the DeadBorn around us. When the heat hits the rotting flesh, a stench like no other sweeps into the air vents of the car and slaps us all in the face. I can even taste it on my tongue, like burnt skunk and the sweet tang of rancid meat.
Dawson and I both vomit which only makes things worse; Martin screams at the top of his lungs like a wounded baby and Holly, the only useful one of us all, puts the car back into reverse, spins us around and rockets us down the highway. I roll the windows down just in time for Martin to puke and close my eyes against the images that are assailing me from every corner of my brain. The flames melted the zombies like candle wax, boiled their flesh and split their faces open like grapes.
“Look!” Martin screams and I reluctantly turn around in my seat so that I have a clear view out the back window. Black choppers are spinning through the sky like Frisbees. Attached to them are DeadBorn with rotten, boney wings. They're exploding into lumps of flesh, sliced into pieces by the rotor blades, but it doesn't stop them. They smash through the windows of the helicopters and tear the pilots into pieces. Guns are exploding and bullets are peppering the crowd of undead in random bursts that shake them but don't drop a single one.
Arms and legs come spinning off, and one even cracks the back windshield. Holly swerves a bit but doesn't stop, not even as the arm grasps onto the trunk with writhing fingers. Blood trails out behind the car like a row of bread crumbs, but I don't care. I can't stop watching the carnage in the sky, watching any hope of getting out of this alive go down in flames. Some of the choppers are trying to run, but they aren't getting any further than the ones that have already hit the ground behind us. They're exploding in rushes of heat that knock the DeadBorn down and catch some of them on fire. The necromancer watches this passively, as if she isn't frightened that one of the helicopters could come down on her.
Holey, gray wings flash and the sky turns dark as a horde of them come up from behind the overpass, take over the sun, and turn the day to night.
***
Eight Hours and Twenty-One Minutes After …
“I want to kill myself,” Dawson says when we pause at a rest stop and try to clean up the vomit and the piss from inside the car. It's almost unbearable in there now, even with the windows rolled down and Holly driving a hundred miles an hour. The stench of the flaming corpses has stuck to the upholstery and to our clothes. I'm in the middle of a nose bleed and sitting shirtless on the curb when Dawson makes his announcement. I keep the smelly tee pressed to my nostrils and watch Holly slap him in the face.
“Don't ever say anything like that again,” she commands, taking the position of leader very seriously. There are other people at the rest stop, mostly truckers, some families, but none of them look worried yet. Nervous maybe, yeah, I think some of them look nervous but none of them are scared. They might've seen the choppers or heard the sirens, but they haven't seen the DeadBorn, not yet. I want to warn them all away, scream at the top of my lungs for them to go back the way they came, but I'm not that stupid. None of them will listen to me. All I'll do is draw suspicion to the four of us. “Life isn't something you just throw away, no matter how hard it is. Even if you don't want it, you should live it for those who can't have it.” Holly tears up, but she wipes her arm fiercely across her face and marches into the bathroom. I think about following her, but I know that she has her father's revolver tucked into her sweatshirt and that she's more capable of taking care of herself than I am.
Martin digs around in the back for a pair of clean pants and also disappears. Dawson sits down beside me and stares blankly at the pavement. I can see that Holly's words have done nothing for him. He still wants to kill himself, and I don't blame him. The fear of dying is worse than the actual act. Or so I think since, of course, I can't possibly know that for sure. I'm also a bit of a wimp when it comes to pain. I imagine that slitting my wrists and going quietly would be a lot better than being melted by a fire face or a spitter. I haven't even seen one of those yet and already, I'm terrified. I scan the sky with my eyes, certain that at any moment one of those horrible rotten angels will come flying overhead. Death from every angle and in every form. What a nightmare.
“What now?” Dawson asks as he stands up and wrinkles his nose at the dried vomit on his shirt. He takes it off and tosses it into a garbage can, ignoring the stares of the people around us. They hardly matter. The longer I sit there, the more they fade into the background, become as significant as the trees around us. They'll know what's happening soon enough and then they'll join us in this mad dash until either somebody figures out how to kill these things or we're all dead. I think the latter is much more likely than the former, but I keep that information to myself, certain that Dawson is about to lose it completely, go off the deep end and kill us all before he kills himself.
“Don't know,” I say as I wipe the rest of the blood from my face and toss the shirt into the same can that Dawson used. “I'm waiting for Holly to tell me.” Dawson scoffs and flips off a couple of older women that are staring at us with nervous eyes. Maybe it's the smelly car or the blood on our clothes or the ooze and gunk on the hood, I don't know, but I think that any of those are reason enough to stare, so I pull his hand down and try to smile an apology.
“So you just do whatever Holly wants, huh?” I stare at Dawson staring at me and wonder what he thinks about my relationship with his ex. They barely dated, according to Holly, so I can't imagine that he's jealous, but he seems judgmental. It kind of pisses me off.
<
br /> “Do you have a better idea?” I ask him as he gives me a careful once over. We're so different, Dawson and I. He's short and pale with dark hair and oval eyes. I'm tall and blonde with round, blue eyes like Holly's and a cautious smile. Dawson looks like he could kick my ass any day, but then, that's why I've got Holly at my back.
“Good question, Dawson,” Holly says as she steps between us and wedges her butt on the edge of the curb. “I know a country back road that will get us to the refuge. There's food and water there, a generator, and even some guns at the main office. What's your plan?”
“And do you have a key?” Dawson snarls, like a grizzly bear. He's gruff and unpredictable right now, not someone that I want around in a crisis. Holly shakes her head, but she doesn't look worried, so I don't get worried either.
“There's a trailer nearby where one of the interns lives. We'll get it from him.”
“And if he doesn't want to give it to us?” Dawson asks.
Holly looks up, stares him straight in the face and says, without shame, “We shoot him.” I don't know how to respond to that, but we're all shaken and disturbed and frankly, the world is essentially coming to an end, so I leave her comment alone, convinced that she could never shoot an innocent person. I think she's just trying to shut Dawson up.
“Where's Martin?” I ask as I stand up and stretch my arms over my head. I wonder if maybe he's ashamed about pissing himself and decide to go into the bathroom after him. “I'll be right back,” I say as Holly pulls the little bit of money we have out of her pocket. We raided it from my mom's purse which was sitting on the coffee table completely undisturbed. I don't think about why it was there or where she could've gone without it, and make myself more concerned with the amount of gas in the tank and the horde of DeadBorn at our backs.
I walk into the bathroom and wrinkle my nose at the smell. It starts to bleed again as if the sewage stench in here is as bad as the flaming corpse flesh. It isn't, but I search around for paper towels anyway and am frustrated to find that they only have those stupid hand dryers.
“Martin,” I say as I move across mustard yellow floor tiles stained with mud and into one of the stalls. The toilet has overflowed onto the floor and I have to stop short and balance against the sides of the stall to keep from falling over and stepping into the brown water that sits in the dirty grout lines. The toilet paper roll in this one is empty anyway, so I back up and keep going. “Are you in here?” Nobody answers, but I keep going in search of something to mop up the blood that's trailing across my lips and down my bare chest. The next stall is much cleaner and has plenty of toilet paper, so I grab a wad and press it to my face as I continue my search. I find toilets filled with pee and vulgar slashes of graffiti, but no Martin. When I reach the end of the room, I raise myself up on my toes and try to peek out the dusty, cobweb filled window. The glass is frosty and impossibly to see through and I'm forced to give up and go back outside to find Holly waiting impatiently for me.
Dawson is standing beside her in one of my T-shirts, the yellow one with the upside down smiley face that says, Perspective is everything. Holly got it for me when my dad died, and I wore it for a week straight. I loved it that much. Either she doesn't remember or doesn't care about things like that anymore. I keep my mouth shut, very aware that Dawson's parents are dead and that materialism will be on its way out, too, if the zombies have their way with things. Holly throws me another shirt, a black one with a tiger face that I barely recognize, and demands that I put it on.
“Where's Martin?” she asks and I shrug. “He's not in there?”
“Nope,” I say, voice muffled by the fabric sliding over my head. I try my best not to get blood everywhere since there's already so much of it crusted on my pants and my skin, but it happens anyway and even drags bits of the toilet paper off and sticks them to the inside of my shirt.
“He probably took off,” Dawson says as he stares at the trees that tower over us like giants. They feel secure, like a wall against pain, but I know that's a lie. Some lopers could come galloping through that break right there and tear off my face. I'm aware that it could happen, but it isn't easy to swallow. I go back to pretending that the forest is keeping us safe.
“I don't think so,” I say, thinking of Martin's Walking Dead shirt and his supposed zombie knowledge. “He said group cooperation is tantamount to survival.”
“Fuck you,” Dawson says and then he turns around and marches back to the car, leaning his hands against the passenger side window. There's questionable goop smeared there, but he doesn't give a shit about anything anymore. That's becoming pretty obvious.
“Maybe we should check the girls' bathroom?” Holly thinks aloud as she reaches down and grabs my hand. “I didn't see him, but I wasn't really looking either. Come on.” I follow Holly's dirty blonde head into the other bathroom and see that the tiles in here aren't mustard yellow but instead are a gray-blue that hides the dirt better, but are just as unflattering and depressing to look at. There's a pair of women at the sinks who glare at me but say nothing, so I follow Holly down the row of stalls as she bends down and checks beneath each one. “Martin!” she shouts, much louder than me. Her voice echoes around the room and makes some of the ladies grumble.
The stall at the end, the big one that everyone always wants to use, opens and Martin steps out, face pace and kind of blotchy.
“I can't stop throwing up,” he tells us as he watches us walk towards him and doesn't move. “I just can't stop.” I have no idea what to say or do, but Holly does. She steps forward and wraps her arms around Martin. I lick my lips unconsciously and taste blood then force myself to stop swallowing until I spit it out in the nearest toilet. I know that Holly says these creatures aren't diseased, that they're magic, but I don't know how that magic works or how to keep from turning into one. I'm not talking any chances.
Holly and Martin are still hugging, but I don't get jealous since I know she isn't attracted to him. Besides, in a situation like this, there isn't time for new feelings to pop up like that. If things keep going like this, Holly and I will be together forever. I want to imagine that we'd have been anyway, but I really have no idea.
“Come on,” she says to him as she takes each of our hands in hers and starts us back towards the parking lot. “We should get out of here before the DeadBorn come.”
Truer words were never spoken.
CHAPTER 7
Abscond
Nine Hours After …
It doesn't take long to get to the wildlife refuge which sort of bothers me because I feel like we're not far enough away. When I tell this to Holly, she shakes her head and grumbles. I don't press because I know this is her way of telling me to shut the fuck up. Obviously, she's aware of all the same things I am and then some.
The turn off is this little gravel half circle that looks like a parking lot only there are no cars there. Signs litter the area near the trees with plastic bins half filled with brochures about geese and invasive plants. It's situated at the bottom of a rise and Holly overshoots it, cursing and snarling as she struggles to find a place to make a u-turn on the narrow country road.
“This is great,” Martin gushes as he presses his hands to the window and beams like a kid in a candy store. “I mean, it's far enough away from the city that if they, like, decide to napalm it or something we'll be okay. They might nuke it, but then again, that's way harder to cover up and besides, I don't think we could get far enough away in time anyhow.”
“Do you ever stop?” Dawson asks as he slams his forehead against the glass in a way that looks excruciatingly painful. I don't comment and turn back to the road in front of us. It's bumpy and covered in little bits of gravel that ping off the sides of the car like rain. Trees surround us on both sides and above, their branches tangle and block the majority of the summer sun from hitting the ground in front of us. We haven't seen a single other car since we left the highway, but I can't say if that's because of the zombies or because we're in the middle
of nowhere. I don't ask Holly because I'm afraid of the answer.
“One thing at a time,” Holly says randomly and I smile. I love when she does that. Usually she just likes to give me random bits of trivia. I wonder if she'll keep doing that now that her dad (and probably her mom, too) are dead. I decide that if this changes her that I'll love her anyway and sit up in my seat, determined to make the best of things. I haven't been much use since I got up this morning, and it's time for me to prove myself. If I can keep Holly distracted, time should help heal her wounds. I know it did mine.
“Are those bird-watchers?” Martin asks as we approach the end to the trees and come up on several open fields and a small lake. There are women lined up along the side of the road near the water. At first, I think they're wearing summer dresses, but then we get closer and I see that they're all drenched, dripping in gowns that trail from their bodies like filaments of spider web, holey and broken and ethereal. When we get close enough that they turn to look at us, I see that their faces are pale and ashen. Their skin is wrinkled and wan and their mouths are all open wide, in perfect ovals that stretch their chins in a way that seems like it could be normal but that you can tell definitely isn't. When the breeze ruffles the golden grasses across from them, whispers over the hood of the car and hits their mouths, they moan like a chorus of broken flutes.
DeadBorn Page 5
