by Bryan James
Several times before we reached the main gate, which we luckily found open, the car was forced abruptly to one side or another by a creature in the road. The car performed like a champ, engine continuing to run, imploded front and all.
As we got closer to the tree-lined street running perpendicular to the entrance, we encountered them more frequently, individually and in mindless, roving packs. Once, across the gardens that until today had been tended by those inmates well enough to do so, we caught sight of a one-sided chase, as an elderly man fleeing slowly from a pack of creatures on foot was overtaken. He stumbled in apparent exhaustion, or perhaps succumbing to an injury, and a group of perhaps twenty fell on him in ravenous victory, arms moving quickly up and down as if pummeling the unlucky victim. As the gruesome scene disappeared behind a storage shed as the car moved onward, I suddenly remembered the news reports. And A-team. Fuck.
“We have to slow down,” I said, already levering Erica’s body against the door so gravity would take her away from the car without much effort on my part. “She’s dead, and if the news reports are true, we don’t have much time until she… comes back.” I couldn’t believe I was fucking saying that.
Kate nodded, and the car slowed to a jogging pace as I reached the handle and pulled it toward me. The door came open and I pushed the body out of the car, Erica’s buttocks sliding jerkily across the cheap fabric, and her head flopping messily to the side. The body fell heavily to the ground, and I quickly pulled the thin metal door closed. Her blood, already drying to the upholstery, was all that remained of her membership in our small group. I turned, watching her get smaller in the distance. I saw her arm move against her body, whether the body settling to the ground or already reanimated I couldn’t tell, as her form became indistinguishable in the murky dark. I shuddered, and faced front.
We reached the street outside the facility, passing between the twin sentinels of stone that housed a now open but normally locked ten foot wrought-iron gate. A car sped by, too fast for the narrow space, risking collision with dozens of those things as it braked hard and hurtled away through the wooded area to the North.
Two helicopters flew by, low and fast, lights blurring in the sky, rotors thumping the air; in the dark, there was no telling if they were military or civilian. Row houses lined the street, parked cars intermittently abandoned beside overgrown hedges and a narrow, cracked sidewalk. Several houses’ doors smiled emptily onto the now dark avenue, a front of civility standing before leafless trees, branches swaying slightly in the dark air. Several corpses - could I still call them that? - alerted to our presence, moaned and turned toward our location. The street lights remained dark, a testament to our new world, as Kate pulled the car into the center of the street and took us toward the expressway.
Chapter 6
The Asylum was bordered on the East and North by Long Island Sound. Housing developments and neighborhoods were located to the South, and a small wooded area to the West, directly behind the row houses outside the entrance to the hospital. Recent development had encroached upon the trees, but most remained, guardians of a wilderness that had lost its battle of supremacy with the modern world.
Passing through the developed area immediately outside the institute, we turned South and drove slowly, keeping to the center of the road when possible. The hospital was far enough away from extremely populated areas to afford relative ease of movement, but as we had witnessed before, wherever there were people, there were zombies. The Park had, in the not so distant past, been somewhat isolated from the rest of King’s Point, but a shortage of land on Long Island had pushed development closer and closer, apparently resulting in the encroachment of row houses and McMansions, all occupied by the suburban elite.
Well, not any more.
It was probably a nice place to live; quiet and green, far enough from the city to be suburban, close enough to be a livable commute. Maria and I had a house not too far from here before. Now it was probably, like me, property of the state. It was a nice place too, on the beach, overlooking the ocean. All the bare necessities: four fireplaces, a bathroom you could play tennis in, and a kitchen the size of Lincoln Center. Even a boat. What a life.
And it’s all gone twice over, I thought, staring at the otherworldly dark outside the car.
Kate drove slowly, guided by the singular headlight, which illuminated living and dead alike. We dared not stop, even if we were inclined to do so, as we moved steadily toward the Expressway. There were so many people, some alive, most dead-all ambulatory. Too many to slow. It was our speed and momentum that kept us alive. To slow or to stop would be a death sentence. Creatures swarmed the few living we encountered. They streaked past the car, to the front and to the rear, in more numbers than I could count.
One young man-one of the few survivors we saw escape-dragged a duffel bag behind him. He had the headphones of some sort of music player hanging from his ears, and actually jogged beside the car for several paces before being diverted by three oncoming zombies, all wearing the uniforms of a high school baseball team. He sprinted off to the row of homes to the right, hurdling a fence and abandoning his duffel in the process.
I still have nightmares about the faces we passed in that time. It felt like each person we left behind was another soul we had personally condemned. It was a heavy burden to drag through the coming days.
We passed a used bookstore, windows full of gently used books that no one would ever read again. Ironically, the name placard showing the name “Read It Again” hung from one tattered chain, swinging fitfully in the wind. A small creature, probably female, crouched almost forlornly on the ground over a half-eaten carcass in front of the store, staring into the distance. A red smear on the cement in front of the store led deeper into the dark inside. Shadows moved within, slowly and deliberately.
Several blocks further on, a drug store sat on a corner, windows boarded up but with the front door hanging from its hinges. An advertisement for generic shampoo and conditioner still festooned the street sign, their black block lettering illuminated sadly in the gathering darkness.
Further on, an electronics shop, windows shattered and debris strewn in front as if looters had come and gone, was a testament to the initial misunderstanding of the true seriousness of the situation.
Amazingly, one television remained illuminated, showing only electronic snow to the few passersby. A solitary zombie stood before the window, head cocked to the side, staring at the snow. Its head moved as we passed, but its attention soon reverted to the window, seemingly fascinated and transfixed by the screen.
At the corner of two small streets running through a stretch of strip malls, and after carefully detouring around a crashed station wagon blocking most lanes of the road and slowly leaking gasoline on the concrete, we saw a door flash open behind us from a small office building and a young woman emerge, running fast and carrying a small object in both arms. She had bolted out of the door to a small insurance agency three yards ahead of two young men, both of whom were clearly members of the recently deceased and reanimated. More joined the chase as she streaked along the roadway, making a beeline for our car.
We kept moving as she fled, hoping she could outdistance her pursuers but unwilling to stop. We maintained our detachment as we moved away-right up until the time we recognized the baby.
Kate was the first to realize what the woman was carrying, slamming the brakes and turning her head.
“Sonuvabitch, she’s carrying a kid!” she said in dismay and frustration, eyes glued to the rear view mirror and slamming the vehicle into reverse. I followed her eyes and confirmed what we had missed at first glance. The woman was running toward us, her burden in both arms. Her eyes were filled with terror as her legs pumped feverishly to reach the car. We stopped as we reached the slowly burning overturned station wagon, wheels facing the sky like the legs of some gigantic metal beast.
“I can’t get around that thing in reverse!” Kate slammed her hands against the wheel in
frustration.
I jumped out of the car, knowing that we were surrounded; at least ten zombies were converging on our location, breathy moans barely audible over the crackle of burning paint and rubber. A window in a small convenience store broke to my left, and several creatures stumbled through the broken pane, ignoring the shards of glass that lacerated their arms and legs as they moved forward.
“Run, you’re almost there!” I gestured wildly, urging the young woman on. I moved toward her, thinking to help. From in front of the car, ten had turned to twenty, and more were shambling forward, not twenty yards from the car. I got as far as the trunk of our car before realizing that she had been cut off. Five or six zombies had emerged from a movie theater on the right, moving unknowingly between her and us. Stricken with helplessness, I froze.
Suddenly, from under a large SUV parked on the side of the street, a blistered, dirty arm snaked into her path, clutching wildly for her legs as she passed. Her foot caught in the twitching fingers and sent her sprawling to the ground. She twisted wildly in mid-air, desperate to cushion the impact for her child. I moved forward instinctively, although she was still fifty yards away. Any attempt to reach her was certain death, surrounded as she was by milling, shambling forms.
She came down hard on her back, knocking the air out her lungs. I could tell from where I stood that she was in pain. She struggled to stand, but collapsed in agony, her leg clearly injured. They were everywhere, and they moved with deliberate urgency. Hungry moans were in the air, and she knew she was doomed.
Her eyes met mine. I had nothing to give, and she knew it. We were separated by distance and circumstances, drawn together only by those last shards of humanity that had survived the initial outbreak of the disease.
A look of anger and determination crossed her eyes. Whether the anger was directed at me or at God is anyone’s guess. Her head turned slowly, taking in her fate. She was surrounded, and they were only yards away. I saw her take a deep breath as she pressed her baby to her chest, in a last protective, loving gesture. The child’s arms were moving slowly, as if weak with hunger or exhaustion. It cried once, meekly, and fell silent. As they neared her, a single tear tracked a line through the dirt on her cheek. Through a throng of undulating and shambling bodies, I could see her arms tense, as she held the child harder, its face buried in her chest. As the creatures neared her injured and desperate form, the child’s arms slowed. As they swarmed her under, covering them both with twisting, excited shapes, she sobbed once and the child’s arms stopped moving. She was weeping as they took her.
I fell against the trunk of the car, tears escaping silently from my eyes. Kate’s voice jarred me back to lucidity, my world having been temporarily converted to ashes. I stumbled back into the car, slamming the door as approaching creatures came within arms length from the vehicle. More were coming our way.
“Go.” I said it softly, my voice breaking.
“If she-,” she started to say.
“Go, goddammit!” I screamed in anger and frustration. She jammed the accelerator and we shot forward, barreling headlong into the horrid night.
Several times, we were forced to detour around cars left abandoned in the roadway, some burning, some with doors still open, lights still on. At the intersection of two small roads, a small foreign car was wrapped around a lamppost, blood staining the open passenger window and the door panel, streaks evidencing that the occupant had been pulled from the window. Several creatures bent over a shapeless mass on the pavement not far from the car, heads moving up to watch as we moved past, moaning but not moving from their meal. One of them, an older woman with graying hair and a turtleneck sweater, continued to watch us as we drove away, blood and other matter hanging from her open mouth, moan a gruesome accompaniment to a hideous sight.
When I look back on what happened next, I realize that our mistake was not fully comprehending the nature of people in crisis, without civility’s check on human behavior: both our own selfish nature, and the base desire of others. I think we all suspect that others are really animals at heart, harboring those most primal of instincts that are only curbed by the mantle of society, mostly because we know what we find when we look inside ourselves.
Ten long minutes after our detour for the young woman, we were met by a police car rolling toward us with lights revolving slowly atop the cab. Having not met, or for that matter seen, any authorities but for the occasional passing helicopter, we elected to slow the car to ask for instructions and information. I was a little wary, but couldn’t exactly speak up and reveal my unrest. Instead, I slid slowly down in my seat, mentally willing myself to be invisible.
For the moment, we could see none of the undead. We had made our way into a deserted access road serving several big box stores, including a Target and a linens store. However, the buildings obscured much of our visibility, and the path to the rear of us had born witness to several packs, less than a quarter mile behind, so we didn’t have much time. Our car came to a rolling stop at the crossroads of two roads. Ahead was an avenue leading forward, but the streetlights had yet to flicker on, and the path was obscured by the night and the imagined hordes of creatures that prowled the darkness. Trees slowly moved in the wind behind each of the stores, shifting the glare of the full moon with each breeze.
The police cruiser slowed to a stop, windows remaining up, lights revolving slowly, casting a bright red and blue beacon which was a boisterously out of place glow on the pavement and the hood of our car.
Kate rolled down her window, gesturing to the cop to do the same; No-Name leaned forward to peer to his left, apparently interested in the bright lights and the new arrival. Fred had his face pressed against the glass of his window, eagerly waiting to see what came of this encounter.
The driver’s window on the cruiser inched down slowly, revealing the crew cut, squared-off jaw of a state trooper, and black eyes staring hard at everyone in the car. Not a happy face, I thought.
“Where you headed, miss?” he asked, baritone voice staying even and slow, shifting his glare from No-Name, then to Fred, carefully observing the standard issue hospital scrubs on both. Despite my best efforts and total concentration on the task at hand, my cloak of invisibility failed me, and his last glance went to me, noting the janitorial garb. His eyes trailed off my clothing, past my face-that was key-and to the blood covering the back seat where Erica had expired.
“Where should we go?” Kate asked, her voice crackling with the competing emotions of tension and relief.
“We had heard the expressway was safe, thought we’d make for the maritime academy. Maybe some sort of shelter there? We were left behind at the hospital, and already lost one of our number to those things back on campus.”
He chuckled, eyes hard and unblinking. The smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Expressway’s no good,” he allowed, as his radio crackled. He slowly reached to his shoulder and depressed a key, silencing the intrusion.
He glanced back to the back seat, again passing his gaze over my face. The vestige of his smile slowly melted from his face.
Like a snake rising silently to strike from beneath a rock, a pistol muzzle appeared from his lap, the dark tip laying lazily on the window sill. Pointed toward the car. His hand was bandaged around the palm, a dirty brown stain having spread and dried on the dirty gauze.
“I’m not sure I need to be telling you where you might want to go,” he replied, in that same slow, deep voice. “Seems that we’ve had a heck of a time determining who might have been bit, and the orders came down a yesterday to do checks on people before sending ‘em up to the shelters.”
He grinned, his gaze traveling from Kate’s face to her lab coat, which was unbuttoned and lay open, revealing her blouse. Not good.
Back to her face, corners of his mouth turning up in appreciation.
No sir, not good at all.
“Why don’t you three,” he gestured with the muzzle of the gun, “go ahead and get on out of the car, come around to the
back. You stay right where you are ma’am.” Fred reached for the door handle, but I grabbed his wrist. No-Name was still staring at the officer, not comprehending, or not caring, about what was going down.
“We haven’t been bitten,” Kate protested, urgency flavoring her tone. She glanced into the rear view mirror, meeting my stare, and seeing her worry reflected back to her. “We’ve lost one to a bite, but no one else was hurt. We’re just trying to get to a shelter.” Fred’s wrist twitched in my grasp.
She was answered by the stiff metallic click of the gun being cocked.
She turned back to me, moving her head out of the window frame, and No-Name came into the cop’s line of sight.
The window behind No-Name shattered into a thousand pieces as his head disappeared in a cloud of red and gray. My face was suddenly wet, and Fred was screaming.
Kate cursed and curled instinctively over the wheel, the jerking of her body, out of sheer luck, causing her to slam her foot against the accelerator. The car was still in drive and it moved forward on command. Her head was still hovering over the center console, arms sheltering her head, not seeing the Dairy Queen sign ahead of us.
“Turn the wheel!” I shouted, reaching forward to do it myself, but knowing I was too late. She turned forward, hands reaching the wheel and foot shifting to the brake in time to veer the car from a head-on collision, but slamming our left side into the pylon supporting the large red advertisement. Fred’s head slammed into the window, shattering more glass; I slammed into Fred; No-Name’s body flew against Kate, an orgy of battered, confused bodies.
From behind us, the sound of more gunfire and a sudden explosion of taillight and Korean trunk. Kate turned the key in the ignition. Nada.
“We’ve got to get out of this car, we’re sitting ducks,” I said, struggling with my seat belt. Kate extracted herself from her own restraint, opening her door. Again from our rear, the squealing of tires, a gunning of cruiser engine. A thud. Then more gunning, but no more squealing. I looked back.
