“They’re back and it’s too soon. No... no... no!” Wilson wailed, shaking his head vehemently and slamming his hands on the wheel as if his disagreement could change the reality of their situation. With Marty Feldman eyes and mouth agape, he froze in mid breath and his chest convulsed violently. The dry throaty rasp that came out when he coughed sounded like a dog fighting to expunge a hairball. Sasha gasped and pinched her nose tight, trying to deny the noxious air entry into her lungs. The odor preceding the zombie horde was an invisible wall of eye-watering stench like nothing they had ever inhaled before.
“Drive, Wilson, it’s staring at me,” Sasha said with a nasally-sounding twang. Her hands palsied as she clumsily unbuckled her seatbelt. The lithe teenager scrambled over the center console and squeezed her small frame into the back seat, where she cowered on the floor trying to escape death’s gaze.
***
“Good Lord, that smells awful,” William exclaimed. He hitched his shirt over his nose and tried to breathe only through his mouth.
“William, lock your door!” Ted screamed over the din of the approaching zombies. Then he cursed the slow moving car blocking the road in front. “Fucking piss or get off the pot,” he muttered. “The first chance I get, I’m going to pass those two,” he warned William. Self-preservation was first and foremost on his agenda.
“Take this.” William thrust the shotgun, pistol grip first, in Ted’s direction.
“What do you expect me to do with it?” Ted asked. His grip on the steering wheel was white knuckle tight; there was no way he could pry a hand off to accept the offering.
“I don’t like guns... they scare me,” William whined.
“Do they scare you more than those rotting corpses?” Ted arched an eyebrow. “Listen. I can drive... or I can shoot. I cannot do both at the same time. As much as I’d like to think so... I’m not Mad Max.” Ted sensed that William was losing it. He pried his attention from the steadily encroaching mob while he addressed his partner. “It’s time to put on your big boy pants.” Ted patted the shotgun on the ribbed pump. “You just pull on this to chamber a shell, point the gun, not in my direction though, and shoot. Rinse and repeat.”
William examined the weapon with a skeptical eye. After a moment of careful consideration he turned it around and took hold of the pistol grip, then tentatively pulled the slide chambering a round. The resulting metallic clack made him jump.
***
Wilson wheeled the truck in between stalled cars and around a large cement planter that had been fractured into several jagged pieces. Brilliant red and yellow pansies lay trampled, their colorful petals scattered amongst the spilled black soil. A multitude of dirty footprints leading down the street drew his attention to his battered Mustang. The old girl’s rear bumper lay directly in the Suburban’s path. Without thinking twice he rolled over the top of the obstacle.
“We’re almost to the freeway Sash. Check and see if Ted’s car is still behind Megan’s friends.”
Sasha looked through the smoked rear windows. “James’ truck is too big, I can’t see anything beyond it,” she replied anxiously.
“Once we get up this elevated onramp you should be able to see everything behind us. Hopefully it’ll be safe enough for us to wait and let them catch up. First things first. I have to get this boat between those cars; it’s going to be a tight squeeze. If you hear a crunch... don’t worry... it’s a rental.” Wilson’s attempt at humor flew miles over his sister’s head.
The sign above the freeway entrance read “I-70 South, Denver International, and Colorado Springs. Right Lanes Only.”
Wilson eyed the onramp, lamenting the tiny sliver of a lane he was going to have to negotiate in order to access the much wider four lane tollway. He stole a glance in the side mirror. Ted’s blue Subaru popped into view. Two of the wheels hopped the curb and it sped up, quickly overtaking the two middle vehicles. To Wilson, it looked like a slow motion NASCAR move as Ted tucked his Subaru into a tight drafting position between the Suburban and James’ Tacoma. Wilson noticed the reason for Ted’s aggressive driving. The zombies had caught up to the slow moving caravan and now the walkers were about to overtake the white Honda.
Megan’s friends are toast, Wilson thought as he watched the little car spurt ahead. For a moment it appeared that Lance was going to escape the walkers.
“Straighten it out...” Wilson found himself backseat driving. “Watch out for the...”
Lance was driving with only half an eye on the road. He was so spooked by the number of dead in pursuit that he lost control and veered into a row of abandoned cars. After a moment of gnashing body panels the Honda ground to a halt. In the blink of an eye the car containing Cheryl and Lance was fully enveloped by the dead.
***
“James, stop, you’ve got to pull over!” Megan screamed hysterically.
James stopped the truck so that he could safely risk a quick look.
The phalanx of zombies choked the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. James stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the lurching tide of bodies filling Proctor Boulevard as far as the eye could see. The small car was completely engulfed. There were intermittent flashes of white, the only evidence that the Honda had been there at all.
“Oh my God...” James said, one hand nervously clutching and simultaneously kneading his ball cap.
They watched the horde pull Lance, kicking and flailing, through the car’s broken window. There were so many zombies clutching for a piece of him that he was propelled over the top of them. It was the first and last time he had ever crowd surfed, and in seconds the grasping hands pulled him under the carrion sea.
“They are dead and we have to go now!” James bellowed, never taking his eyes off of the advancing throng.
While the pack’s attention was focused solely on consuming Lance, Cheryl crawled out of her window and wormed her way onto the sedan’s roof.
James took his foot off of the brake and let the Tacoma roll forward.
“Wait,” Megan yelped. “Cheryl is on top of the car.” Pleading with James, she placed her hand on the steering wheel. “We have to go back and try to save her.”
No sooner had the words slipped from Megan’s mouth than the ghouls wrapped their clawing hands around her friend’s ankles. Cheryl involuntarily performed the splits. A half-second later her legs were ripped from her body and carted off in different directions. Cheryl’s trunk pitched forward; like a warm rain, her blood pulsated from the meaty stumps onto the excited zombies.
Megan gnawed on her fist as she watched her friend disappearing into the crush of rotten bodies. She was near enough to the grotesque scene that she could read her dying friend’s lips: Cheryl mouthed the words, “Help me,” over and over until she slipped from view.
“Cheryl!” Megan screamed. There was no answer--Cheryl was lost forever. The crimson blood trails painting the top of the white car were the only evidence that the carnage had taken place. After the undulating mass greedily devoured the two warm bodies, they flowed around the white Honda, made a small course correction, and surged towards the meat in the silver truck.
***
James’ booming voice snapped his wife back to the present. “They’re both dead and if we don’t get going... we’re next!”
It was difficult, but Megan forced herself to look away from the feeding frenzy, turn in her seat, and focus on the road ahead. Her stomach instantly went into free-fall when she realized the other two vehicles were already a block away.
James glanced into his side mirror. The monsters were now within arm’s reach of the truck’s tailgate and closing. He jumped on the accelerator, coaxing a little chirp from the rear wheels, and wrenched the steering wheel to avoid the piece of Wilson’s Mustang lying in the middle of Proctor Boulevard. The maneuver made the left front tire roll over the jagged shards of the shattered cement planter. The resulting gash in the sidewall was the beginning of the end. The shrill hiss of escaping air was drowned out by the raspy calls o
f the dead. James, unaware that the beefy tire was seconds from being entirely flat, noticed the steering becoming sluggish and soon it became nearly impossible to make the truck go where he wanted it to.
Megan watched as her husband fought to keep the truck moving in a straight line. “What’s wrong?” she inquired frantically.
James ignored her and engaged the four wheel drive. He hoped to get enough traction from the three good tires so he could power steer the truck and catch up with the others. Unfortunately for them, the four wheel drive didn’t help. No matter which way he steered, the truck insisted on going in the opposite direction. Instantly the gravity of their situation became obvious. There wasn’t enough time to change the tire--the truck was fucked and so were they. “Get out now!” James screamed at Megan.
The sight of his friends being ripped apart was burned into his brain and he didn’t want to suffer the same fate. Running for their lives on foot was their only option. James threw his door open and leaped out of the truck, directly into a zombie’s waiting arms. He looked over his shoulder and screamed at Megan, begging her to run. Like most agnostics facing death, James said a quick foxhole prayer and hoped there was a God listening. The weight of the clawing creatures pulled him to the ground, while greedy hands tore into his stomach and played a game of tug-o-war with his entrails.
Megan gaped as her husband was eaten alive. Her hands shook so violently the simple act of unlatching her seatbelt had suddenly become a monumental task. After taking a couple of calming breaths she finally managed to free herself and hastily kicked open her door. The momentum carried her out of the truck and into the road where she landed, catlike, on her hands and knees. On the periphery of her vision she perceived the shuffling feet of approaching zombies. In a moment of absurd clarity, she caught a glimpse of a pair of shredded feet complete with chipped fire engine red nail polish and ornate silver toe rings, and suddenly remembered she had missed her pedicure appointment yesterday. The shaken woman tried to stand so she could run, but her trembling limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Megan became aware of the monster’s jagged teeth a second before they ripped a blood-spewing chasm into her neck. The army of moaning zombies yanked her to the asphalt and tore into her squirming body, their gnarled fingers stripping off long ribbons of skin and flesh. Like a mother’s loving embrace, Megan sensed an all-encompassing warmth wash over her body. Despite the penetrating daggers of pain, she was oddly at peace. At last the muting dam of fear finally broke; Megan drew her final breath and exhaled a blood curdling shriek.
***
Wilson watched the melee with cold detachment. The violence didn’t seem real, it was almost like he was at a drive in theater watching a George Romero movie and soon the credits would start rolling and life would return to normal.
After the zombies finished feeding, they resumed their relentless march up the onramp.
A series of clown car beeps made Wilson jump.
As she climbed back into the front seat, Sasha stated the obvious. “That was our gay neighbors trying to tell us something. You should probably drive or they’re going to end up like the others.”
Silently, Wilson cursed his neighbors for owning an SUV the size of a school bus. On the upside, in small numbers, the zombies had little chance of stopping the truck, but the utter lack of maneuverability was already a major issue on the clogged tollway near the big city.
After successfully negotiating the onramp to I-25, Wilson found the road so crowded that he could only drive the behemoth a scant five to ten miles per hour. The Subaru, with Ted and William safely ensconced inside, was small enough to follow in his wake as he steered the Suburban like an icebreaker through the sea of cars. The multicolored scratches and dents, combined with the gore-smeared exterior of the slab sided vehicle, would be a testament to how utterly terrifying their flight from Denver had been.
Wilson contemplated taking a side road and waiting to see if the walkers would bypass them and continue their march down I-25, but thought better of it after seeing the corpses of the unfortunate people killed by the infected while they waited in their cars stuck in the miles-long traffic jam. Nearly every one of the stalled cars had unmoving half-eaten corpses or putrid sunbaked grabbers trapped inside. The scenes of carnage chilled Wilson to the bone; he had to warn Sasha to close her eyes more times than he cared to count. She finally listened to him and retreated to the back seat after seeing one too many of the graphic displays of death. Wilson was grateful that he no longer had to divide his attention between driving and babysitting, because threading the truck between the stalled cars while trying to avoid the hungry walkers took all of the concentration that he could muster.
Chapter 6
Outbreak - Day 8
Schriever Air Force Base
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Duncan’s fist was clenched, but the intended knock went undelivered as the thin aluminum and glass door whipped inward. A bony hand darted out, grabbed a fistful of the aviator’s ACUs, and pulled him the rest of the way inside the darkened room. As quickly as it opened, the exterior door slammed closed behind his back and Duncan found himself standing in the dark anteroom face to Adam’s apple with the enigma named Daymon.
“Knock-knock,” Duncan drawled. He fancied himself a comedian, and in his book even a bad joke could soften anyone up.
“Who’s there?” Daymon forced a sterile thin smile and released his grip on Duncan’s uniform, then backed away, slowly lowering the machete to his side.
Duncan’s eyes narrowed and his characteristic mischievous grin appeared. “Boo!”
Daymon, still riding an adrenaline high, hadn’t been able to sleep since he had slinked back onto the base. Still, he played along, but only because the southern boy had grown on him. “Boo who?” he asked flatly.
“Don’t cry, everything will be OK.” Duncan recoiled theatrically, clearly expecting a negative reaction from the bigger man.
“I’m too tired for your wannabe comedian shit... and why are you here so goddamn early?” Daymon laced his hands behind his neck and stretched, popping every vertebra in the process. His black tee shirt hiked up, revealing the numerous blazing red furrows scribed vertically up his abdomen.
“I was trying to disarm you with my wit to keep from being cleaved in two... I’ve seen your work. Plus I have good news.” Duncan produced a wan half-smile, wondering why Daymon was behaving like a surly teenager. “Don’t kill the messenger,” he continued, poking himself in the chest with his thumb. “Because you’re going to need him to fly you home.” The aviator loitered in the shadowy doorway, waiting for his words to register with the dreadlocked man.
Daymon yawned and pinched the bridge of his nose, mining the sleep from his eyes. “I ain't going back to Utah, my Moms is dead and gone. And I sure as hell don’t want to go and find out she got bit and is one of them now.” He shook his head rapidly side to side, his dreads whipping his cheeks. “Nope... not gonna go back,” his voice choked off as he looked back into his billet.
“I’m not a vampire, it’s safe to invite me all the way inside,” Duncan drawled. He wanted to lend an ear in case Daymon needed to talk about his loss. Also, he couldn’t help noticing the fresh wounds, and he was somewhat concerned. The last thing he needed was a zombie strapped into his helo raising hell all the way to Eden.
“Can you take me to Driggs? I used to live there before Moms and Pops moved to the Salt Lake ‘burbs.”
“It depends. Where exactly is Driggs?” Duncan eyed the bulging backpack and high tech crossbow lying partially concealed under the low slung bunk.
“It’s on the west side of the Teton pass in Idaho. Driggs is where all of the po’ folks live. The money stays on the other side of the pass in Jackson,” Daymon replied, his words muffled as he struggled to pull another shirt on over his dreads.
“Cade told me he was greasing the skids and trying to get me a bird. You wouldn’t know by the way he carries himself, no swagger, no bullshit buffoonery, but he�
�s seen a lot of shit and been right smack dab in the middle of it. He’s a good man... he’ll come through.” Duncan said, weighing whether he should ask Daymon about the goody bag on the floor, but what he really wanted to know was how the man received his new injuries. Duncan quickly decided that later would be a better time to try and pry out the details behind Daymon’s apparent tangle with Freddy Krueger. “How bout we get some chow? I’m buying,” Duncan joked.
“Sure thing old man.” Daymon gestured toward the door with a regal flourish. “Age before beauty.”
Duncan was out the door first. Age is only a number, he thought.
Chapter 7
Outbreak - Day 8
Schriever AFB - 50th Space Wing Command
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Airman Davis opened the door for Captain Cade Grayson. With a barely perceptible tilt of his head, the newly promoted captain ordered the airman to fall in behind him. The men entered the room, filled in the two spots nearest the door and stood with their backs against the wall, waiting for the briefing to commence.
General Mike Desantos made eye contact with Cade, crowded Colonel Shrill over a few inches, and nodded toward the newly created opening.
Message received. Leaving Airman Davis behind, Cade made his way, as inconspicuously as possible, to his mentor’s side.
Mike Desantos offered his right hand to his dear friend and teammate, pressing a folded piece of paper into his palm. Cade quickly unfolded the half sheet of legal pad and covertly scrutinized the scribbled words.
Cade stared laser beams at Davis until the airman finally glanced over. He then motioned with his head to have the young airman join him.
After threading his way through a sea of rank much higher than his, E-2 Davis stood at attention and saluted the very intimidating row of officers.
In Harm's Way: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 5
