by Dirk Patton
The woman sitting next to me was shivering. It wasn’t cold. The sun was well up and the cab of the truck was quickly growing hot and stifling. In normal times I would never have presumed to try to comfort her, but these weren’t normal times. I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to me and just held her while she went from shivering to outright sobs, the female infected squatting on the hood watching us like a cat watches a mouse hole.
When she got her emotions under control the woman straightened up slightly without breaking contact with me. She wiped her eyes with a grimy hand and sniffed back the last of her tears. Around us were now at least 50 infected, the men bumping into the sides of the truck and hammering on it with their fists and forearms in what seemed to be frustration. The women were what really scared me. Another woman had leapt onto the hood and squatted on the passenger side, staring at us through the windshield with her bloody eyes. Three more women had leapt into the bed of the truck and stared at us through the back window. At least ten more stood a few yards back from the truck, beyond the milling males, and just stared patiently.
“What do we do?” She sat up straight and I slowly moved my arm away from her shoulders. I found myself moving slowly because of some instinct that told me not to startle the women sitting on the hood of the truck. If any of them had enough intelligence remaining to find a rock to smash the truck’s windows, we were goners.
“Good question,” I answered. “But I don’t have a clue at the moment. It’s going to get real hot in here real soon, and I don’t think we’ll survive the day without water.”
I slowly turned my head and looked around the cab of the truck. Clean and organized. Nothing out of place. I carefully checked the glove box which only held the owner’s manual and a small flashlight. I slipped the flashlight into my pocket after making sure it worked. Under the back seat was a small tool case with an assortment of sockets, Allen wrenches and screw drivers in it. I held the tool case in my lap, considering my options, then pulled out the largest screw driver in the kit.
She looked at me, but didn’t question what I was doing as I leaned forward and inserted the tip of the screw driver into the truck’s ignition. When I leaned forward the woman on the hood leaned in until her face was almost touching the windshield and curled her lips back in a snarl I could hear clearly even through the heavy glass. Her teeth were stained red and there was debris, I didn’t care to think about the origin of, that was stuck between them.
Ignoring her I pushed down on the screw driver while twisting to the right and there was a sharp snap from the ignition. Unfortunately that was all that happened. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never stolen a car before, only seen episodes of COPs where some kid gets busted for grand theft and he got the car running by ‘punching’ the ignition. I had to try something. I didn’t want to die today.
7
The heat and humidity in the cab of the truck had become oppressive. Sweat poured off both of us, soaking into the upholstery and continually adding to the humidity. Both of us had slept off and on throughout the day, startling awake whenever there was an aggressively loud impact on the truck from the crowd of infected. I didn’t think we had long. We were both severely dehydrated and recently she had started to cry out when her legs were racked with spasms from muscle cramps.
The two women on the hood had not moved all day. Amazingly they had remained in the same squatting position despite the long hours and growing heat. They may have been infected, but they still had human skin and both showed signs of a severe sun burn, yet neither indicated that they felt any discomfort. I on the other hand had a left arm that was nearly blistered from the sun coming through the driver side window. However, with four more hours of direct sun on the cab of the truck and surrounded by infected, this was the least of my worries.
“We’re going to die in here, aren’t we?” Her voice was a dry mumble, barely audible above the constant snarling and banging from the infected.
I thought about giving some upbeat answer, something to give her hope, but in the end decided she deserved honesty, “Yes, I think so. We likely don’t have much longer in this heat.”
She sighed deeply, the sound conveying her resignation to her fate.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
I smiled. Names had not been at the top of my priority list. “I’m John. John Chase.”
“Very nice to meet you, Mr. John Chase. I’m Rachel Miles. And I never thanked you for saving my life earlier.” Her voice gained a little strength as she talked, but she was still mumbling and her face was shrouded with stringy, sweat soaked hair.
“You’re welcome. Not sure I did you any favors.” I looked out the windshield and met the eyes of the woman directly in front of me. She snarled but otherwise didn’t move.
Rachel was quiet for a long time. So long in fact I was thinking about checking to see if she’d passed out, then she started talking in a low monotone. She told me she was in Medical School and only a year away from graduating. She told me about growing up in North Carolina and moving to Atlanta after graduating from college. Her parents were both dead and she had no siblings or other family. She talked about dancing in the strip club and sleeping two hours a night so she had time to study and attend class. Then she told me the story of how she and I met in a hotel parking lot with infected people trying to kill us.
I listened to her talk, undoing my pre-conceptions about a woman stripping for a living. She had a job that paid the bills so she could do something better with her life. That was more than most people could say these days. Then I wondered if there was anyone other than us left to worry about careers and having a better life.
I happened to glance at the ignition with the screwdriver hanging out of it while I had these thoughts and my heart leapt in my chest. From the back of the ignition switch, hanging below the dash and barely visible were several wires. These had to be the wires that would start the truck. After all what was an ignition switch other than a device that mechanically closed an electrical circuit so the engine would start and run?
I grabbed the tool kit off the floor where I had dropped it and dug through until I found a small pair of wire cutters. Rachel picked up on my excitement and sat up straight, adrenaline momentarily overcoming dehydration and muscle cramps. I reached under the dash and carefully clipped all the wires, then stripped about an inch of insulation off the cut end of each wire. Methodically I started touching wires together; blue to white/blue, green to white/green, red to white/red; the red to white/red finally lighting up the dash and the radio started playing a country music CD. I had found the equivalent of the ‘key on’ position of the switch.
Rachel grabbed my arm in excitement and a small cry escaped her lips. The two female Zombies on the hood of the truck could tell something was happening and they became agitated, bouncing up and down while snarling and slapping the windshield with their hands.
I firmly twisted the wires together and picked the blue and white/blue to try first for the starter. I touched them together and nothing happened. I fumbled as I grasped the green and white/green wires, caught my breath and touched them together. There was a spark and I got a hell of a jolt of electricity that made me drop the wires, but I was rewarded with a momentary whine from the truck’s starter.
To her credit, Rachel kept her mouth shut. She could have easily been one of those people who have to offer an opinion or suggestion or criticism about everything, and I was mildly surprised that she remained silent. Obviously at some point in her life she had learned the lesson of keeping your mouth shut if you didn’t have something constructive to offer.
The women on the hood became agitated and it spread like wild fire to the crowd of infected that surrounded us. Dozens of pairs of fists started pounding on the glass and body of the truck. I looked out the windows and noticed for the first time that the crowd had grown sometime during the day to what I guessed was in excess of 150. Maybe all the noise the ones that originally
cornered us made had attracted others and others and so on.
The truck lurched side to side and I looked to my right to see the entire passenger side of the truck lined with large males. They were hitting and pushing on the truck, and there was enough flesh there that if by accident or design their efforts happened to coordinate they could flip the truck. With a burst of fear I returned my attention to the wiring, trying not to let myself be distracted by the increasing range of motion of the truck as the infected rocked it side to side.
Firmly grasping the starter wires I made sure I was only holding them on the plastic insulation and firmly touched them together. The starter whined for a couple of seconds then the big diesel engine in the truck rattled to life. The starter continued to whine so I quickly separated the wires that powered it and it went quiet, the diesel settling into a smooth but loud idle. I bent the wires away from each other and sat against the back of the seat as one of the female infected on the hood threw herself against the windshield with a screaming snarl. The blood dripping from her nose made a smear on the windshield that reminded me of a Rorschach ink blot test, but I didn’t have time to look at it and figure out what I saw in the shape.
The horde of infected around us went into a fever pitch of snarling and slamming into the truck, and now both women on the hood were repeatedly slamming themselves into the windshield in an attempt to get to us. In front of us was a crashed VW and there was a small Toyota behind us with no room to steer around either one. I put my foot on the brake and shifted the Ford into reverse, the heavy duty transmission going into gear with a satisfyingly hard thunk.
I said, “Hold on,” and hit the accelerator. The truck lurched backwards and crunched into the side of the Toyota. I kept feeding throttle and the oversized tires grabbed the pavement and we pushed the Toyota back ten feet.
One of the female infected on the hood had lost her balance and fallen off when the truck suddenly moved, but the other held to the lip of the hood closest to the cab with one hand and pounded her fist on the windshield with the other. The one who had fallen off was on her feet and would have already leapt back on the hood, but the crowd that had been on either side of the truck had flowed into the empty space left when I had backed up and she was temporarily blocked. In the rear view I could see several infected that had been between the back bumper and the Toyota that were now crushed. What would have been mortal wounds to a normal human, rendering them unable to move, seemed to have little effect on the infected other than to slow them down because of damaged hips and legs.
I shifted into drive, turned the wheel to point us around the crashed VW, and fed throttle to the big truck. We moved and immediately started feeling thuds from the suspension as the push bar on the front of the truck knocked infected down moments before we rolled over them. Large males held onto the mirrors on each side of the truck and the females in the back of the truck began smashing their heads against the rear window. My adrenaline surged when I heard the rear window crack from one of their impacts and I started swerving across the road to throw them off balance.
Our speed quickly built to 40 and I kept swerving. This kept the females in back distracted just trying to stay in the truck and the males on each side held on with a death grip, legs swinging almost horizontally every time I cut the wheel. The female on the hood was now holding on with two hands and smashing her head into the windshield, but the thick glass was harder than the human skull, infected or not. She cocked her head back and launched a massive head butt into the glass. I felt as much as heard the impact, and watched the feral light in her eyes die just before she went limp and slipped off the front of the hood and under the big tires.
“Holy shit,” Rachel said. “Did you see that? She just bashed her own brains out trying to get to us.”
I was concentrating on driving and keeping our unwelcome passengers occupied and didn’t answer. The males on either side of the truck started smashing their heads into the side windows each time the momentum from the swerve brought them back against the truck. I risked a glance in the rear view mirror and did a double take. The two females in the bed of the truck had found a way to brace themselves and were preparing to start attacking the rear window again. I turned my attention back to the road and slammed on the brakes, the big truck skittering across the asphalt in protest. The females in back slammed forward into the back window, but not as an attack. One of the males lost his grip and tumbled forward, coming to rest 30 feet down the road and immediately lurching to his feet and starting towards us.
I sat watching him and watching the two women in back in the mirror. The remaining male was on Rachel’s side of the truck and he started pounding on the window with his fists and smashing his head into the glass. Infected were hurrying towards us from surrounding parking lots and the horde that had previously surrounded us was in hot pursuit about 200 yards behind us.
“What are you doing? Go!” Rachel’s voice pitched up an octave on the last word and she grabbed my right arm hard enough to hurt.
“Wait,” I said, and kept my concentration on the mirror.
The infected in front of us had just reached the push bar when I floored the accelerator and stood on the brake pedal. Diesels aren’t known for neck snapping acceleration and I needed a sudden surge forward for what I wanted to do. The big engine quickly built to a roar and as the rear tires started to break lose I let off the brake and kept my right foot hard down on the throttle.
The truck shot forward, battering the male in front out of the way, but the best reward was watching the two females in the rear tumble backwards out of the bed of the truck. I had timed it perfectly and as they were standing up the sudden acceleration was like pulling a rug out from under their feet. In the mirror I could see them both hit the pavement, tumble, then gather themselves and start pursuing us. Not only were they more agile than the males, they were faster too, moving at least as fast as a quick jogging pace. Nothing short of a flat out run was going to out distance them.
We were finally free of all of our riders except for the male that stubbornly hung from the passenger mirror. Rachel shied away from the passenger side of the truck, pushing against me as he started trying to break the glass with his head again. Ahead of us an abandoned delivery truck for the Atlanta Journal Constitution sat half in the traffic lane. I steered for it at 50 mph and lined us up to drive right down its side with no clearance.
The infected was still holding on when we reached the abandoned truck, and I steered us to neatly peel him off the side of the truck. There was a thud and a splash of blood onto the side window then he was gone. I had managed to not lose the passenger side mirror in the maneuver and looking in it I could see him lying in an unmoving heap in the road behind us. His head must have hit the back of the parked truck at speed and judging by the amount of blood on our window it had pretty much disintegrated like an overripe watermelon.
I steered us back to the middle of the road and reduced speed, making sure I would have enough reaction time in case we needed to avoid an unseen obstacle. Rachel leaned over to the side window and peered out to make sure we didn’t have any other riders. My side was clear and when she sat back she looked at me and smiled.
“That was pretty quick thinking,” she said.
I smiled back, hands shaking and stomach fluttering from the adrenaline that was still pumping through my system.
I said, “Climb into the back seat and make sure the bed is clear. I don’t see anything in the mirror, but all I can see of the bed is the last couple of feet and the inside of the tailgate.”
“All clear,” she said a moment later, crawling back into the front seat and resuming her position, pressing against me. I didn’t complain and I didn’t read anything in to it. I had even stopped noticing she was basically naked. I was freaked out. She had to be at least as scared as I was. Physical contact with another human was still part of our animal instinct, and there was absolutely nothing erotic or sexual about it.
8
> The big Ford’s air conditioning worked well and within a few minutes we were both shivering from the cold air blasting out of the dash vents, but neither of us wanted to turn it off or down. We were dehydrated, hungry and exhausted. Adrenaline was keeping us going, but I knew we’d crash and burn as soon as it bled off.
As I piloted the truck down the road, slowing frequently to avoid wrecked and abandoned vehicles, infected continually appeared and shuffled towards us. It quickly became apparent that the rattle of the heavy duty diesel engine announced our presence and provoked a Pavlovian response from them. More often than I liked an infected appeared from behind an empty vehicle and stepped into our path, only to be smashed down by the massive grill guard mounted to the front of the Ford then pulped under the oversized off-road tires.
Finding the Ford was a blessing. Short of an armored car or a military vehicle it was about the best vehicle for our situation, and with the added benefit of a beefy four wheel drive system we weren’t restricted to pavement. I glanced at the dash and noted the fuel tank was over three quarters full. I also noticed a switch on the dash marked ‘fuel’ and realized the truck had dual tanks. I flipped the switch to change tanks and the gauge quickly swung all the way past the full indicator. God Bless rednecks!
