Inception_The Bern Project

by M James Conway

  Linda jumped on top of him, eyes closed, and started clawing at his face.

  “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

  John maneuvered his head to dodge her strikes, grabbed a wrist with each hand and squeezed. “Linda.” She didn’t stop. “Linda!”

  She stopped but kept her eyes closed.

  “Linda. It’s me. John. Are you okay?”

  Linda slowly opened her eyes until she saw John. She took a few breaths and said, “Oh, John, thank god! What the hell is – ”

  Linda disappeared from view to John’s right, and, as he followed her with his eyes, he felt a tremendous force land on top of him. John turned back and was face to face with a large Polynesian man, his face down towards John’s neck, teeth bared, blood dripping down onto John’s forehead. His eyes were bloodshot and distant, and veins were bulging out of his neck and forehead. Unfortunately, this was one of those big-boned muscular Polynesians and not a fat one. John was strong, but this man was overpowering him.

  John held up his hands, interlaced his fingers and pushed up and away on the man’s forehead, creating some more room. He lifted his legs and placed the bottoms of his shoes on the man’s hips. He would have to time this right, because if it didn’t work, it would bring the man closer down towards him.

  With the newly created space, John turned his head to the left and the right to find his gun. He saw it lying about five feet to his right between him and Linda. He caught a glimpse of her and saw that she was fighting as best she could against an equally large Polynesian female. He wanted to help her, but in order to do that, he had to get this man off him first. He scooted on his back and tried to work his way to his right so he could get to the gun, which was just out of reach.

  He kept both hands on the man’s head and pushed with all his might. He looked over and saw the gun was where he could grab it now. He did the math in his head. Let go with right hand, tilt head, grab, push, fire.

  Linda screamed and John moved. He let go with his right hand while keeping pressure on the man’s head with his left and tilted his head to the right. He grabbed the gun and pushed off with his feet, throwing the man into the air, while he brought the gun up and fired three quick shots into the man’s head. John closed his mouth and eyes as the man’s head disappeared in a cloud of bloody mist, to keep the blood from getting in his eyes or mouth. No telling what would happen to him if he got infected with this man’s blood.

  Linda was still screaming. John worked his way up to his feet. He brought the gun up to fire, but not before the woman sunk her teeth into Linda’s neck, ripping out a mouthful of flesh. Blood spurted out and Linda instinctively threw her hands to her neck to stop the flow. The woman reared her head back and yelled at the sky. John took aim and fired two shots to the side of the woman’s head, throwing it sideways, with her body following. He ran up and pushed the woman off and looked down at Linda.

  Her eyes were glazed over and she stared at the sky, her body moving and her legs kicking at the ground.

  “Oh, Linda. I’m so sorry.” And he was. If he could have gotten there sooner…

  Linda turned her head and made eye contact with John. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. He stared at her as she mouthed, “Please.”

  John nodded. He knew what she was asking. He stared down at her for a few more seconds. A look of sympathy and sorrow crossed his face. He did his best to make sure the last face she saw had compassion and some sort of emotion in it instead of the cold and indifferent look he was so accustomed to.

  He raised the gun and fired.

  John said a quick prayer and then took off running southbound through the park. He dropped the spent magazine out of his gun, slapped in a new one and chambered a round. Several people who hadn’t been attacked yet were still running around, some in circles. The infected were up on the street searching for prey.

  Groaning metal and screams were heard behind him. Several people running south stopped and turned towards the loud noise, as did John. The fence line at the railroad tracks was falling hard under the force of the infected clawing their way up the concrete embankment. John and the people near him watched in horror as the infected climbed and clawed over each other up the embankment and into the park. Ten made it up and started running south toward the people in the park. Ten became fifty. Fifty became one hundred. One hundred became five hundred.

  John didn’t wait. He took off at a sprint, passing people who were staring with their mouths open. Fight, flight or freeze. John was a fighter, but he wasn’t stupid. Forty-five rounds versus five hundred were not good odds. Others caught on and took off running as well, most of them with pleas for help that went unanswered.

  One woman tried to grab onto John as he ran. “Help me!”

  John pushed her aside and told her to follow him. Her cries receded as he continued south.

  He worked his way toward the middle of the group, having to maneuver his large frame around slower runners. The crowd ran toward the end of the park. John passed a teenage kid standing with his back to the park, holding up his cell phone over his head, taking a selfie. John shook his head and continued on, coming up to a fountain. On the other side, a heavyset white woman was straddling a teenage kid with dark skin. He was screaming on the ground and the woman was biting at his face, blood cascading down his neck.

  John looked back and saw the horde was now a football field’s length away. He slowed and walked up to the woman, put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. She toppled over, exposing the bloodied teenager. His face and neck had chunks of skin taken out of them. There wasn’t anything anyone could do for him now, but John didn’t want to waste a round on him, as cold as this was. Forty-four rounds left.

  John turned his head, pumping his arms, his legs burning. He saw the horde fifty yards away. He could hear the other survivors screaming and falling down as the zombies caught them, dragging them down to the ground and biting. One after the other, they fell, each victim closer in proximity to him.

  He reached Western Avenue and continued running down the street, passing the many piers that lined the coast to their right. He stole a glance back. The horde had fallen behind, seeming to be happy with the numbers they were devouring. But yet, some still pursued.

  John turned and ran backwards, aiming as best he could and firing, half his shots making their mark. Three of the infected fell flat, their heads contorted in black and crimson, chunks of skull missing. A few kept coming and lunged at John. With his lungs aching and his body weakening from exhaustion, he did his best to crouch and duck as he fired at the remaining zombies. He aimed and fired, hitting one in the head and missing the other. It ran and dove headfirst at John, leading with its open mouth and bloody teeth. Exhausted, John parried to the left and threw an inside left uppercut, hitting the infected man square on the jaw. It caused him to stumble and fall, but he came up and was ready to attack again. That bought John the few seconds he needed. He aimed at the man’s head and fired, hitting him square in the face. The man fell like a marionette with its strings cut.

  An odd sound emanated from behind them in the east: twisting metal mixed with squealing rubber. As the noise grew in intensity, John recognized the sound. He remembered, from when he was growing up, his grandfather’s beloved 1967 Shelby Mustang, which he never drove due to the weather. Every Sunday though, his grandfather would sit in the car and rev the engine for several minutes to keep the juices flowing. He would let it idle, with a thrumming and purring sound coming from the engine as it stayed alive inside the garage.

  John heard that same noise now, and, through the horde, saw a black vehicle barreling down the road, full throttle, its large engine letting everyone within earshot know that it was coming.

  Flashes of sunlight gleamed off the chrome blower resting on top of the hood. As the vehicle came into view, John could see a man at the wheel, dice on the rearview mirror and either a child or a female sitting in the passenger seat.

  Several zombi
es were attracted to the sound and ran into the car’s path of travel, finding themselves thrown through the air.

  This was John’s ticket out of there.

  He dropped his magazine and loaded another one, racked the gun and started firing. He placed shots at the infected nearest the vehicle’s path, doing his best to make their way to him easier.

  Fifty yards out, the car passed John and he waved his arms in the air. “Hey!”

  The black two-door Dodge Charger came to a screeching halt, the passenger having opened the door before the vehicle came to rest. “C’mon there, boy! Get on in!”

  John fired a few more shots at the crowd, hitting one woman and dropping her, causing those behind her to stumble, buying them a few extra seconds.

  The woman in the passenger seat was leaning forward, having adjusted her seat to let him in. John dove headfirst into the back seat and seemed to glide across the slick and treated leather, to smack his head on the back driver side panel.

  He heard the car door slam as he sat up in the middle of the seat and was thrown back and down as the driver slammed the car into gear and pushed the pedal down. He felt his body shake from the torque of the car as the chassis twisted a bit, the front end lifting up as the force of the engine threw the late sixties muscle car down the road. He looked over his shoulder and saw a cloud of smoke enveloping the infected, some breaking through but receding into the background.

  “Hit it, baby!” the driver yelled.

  The woman in front hit a button and the disco-like sound shot out at John from the back panel as the speakers came to life. He looked out the windshield and saw people running everywhere as they got closer to the stadium.

  He tried to talk but couldn’t hear himself speak over the music. An odd sound, it was.

  It reminded him of an old school disco bar, yet the music was familiar.

  Looking through the window, John saw the football stadium straight ahead. He used both hands to cup his mouth and yelled, “Turn left onto Edgar Martinez! After the second stadium!”

  The man had his left hand on the wheel and was using his right hand to slap the dashboard, keeping beat with the music. He threw his head from side to side and yelled, “Man, can you feel that shit? God, I fucking love ABBA!”

  The driver continued singing along with ABBA, something about an S.O.S., as if nothing was wrong with the world, oblivious to the chaos around them. The woman was equally naïve or just plain didn’t give a shit. She was slouched down in her seat, right foot up on the dashboard, fingertips of both hands brushing across the velvet ceiling, left to right, swaying with the vehicle. Or the music, for that matter.

  John kept losing his seating, his khaki pants sliding across the slick polished leather as the vehicle threw him from side to side. Every once in a while, he would catch a glimpse of the driver: a white guy in his mid-forties, shaggy blond hair tucked under a green and white trucker baseball cap and wearing an old torn multi-colored, though faded, flannel shirt. He had that old weathered and ropy look, like most people had when they spent most of their time outdoors.

  The driver looked back over his shoulder towards John, still steering through the chaos. “Where to, friend?”

  “Left on Edgar Martinez Drive after the second stadium!” John yelled from the right, then from the left, as he slid across the seat, feeling like he was in a clothes dryer.

  The driver turned back and faced the road. He now had both hands on the wheel, easing John’s anxiety. “I copy that. I remember watching that boy hit when he came to Arlington to play my Rangers. Ooh, boy, could he hit. Chubby little fella would just scurry around those bases, turning a double into a single, you know, because he wasn’t that fast, right?”

  John nodded. He never watched baseball, as he didn’t give a shit about sports. He looked through the windshield and saw Edgar Martinez Drive coming up. He glanced down at the speedometer and saw ninety miles per hour. The turn was about fifty yards away. He was about to point that out when the driver yelled out to no one in particular, “Hold the fuck on! We’re going sideways!”

  The female passenger, who hadn’t said anything up to this point, said, “K, baby.”

  John went to grab onto the headrest of the driver’s seat, but the driver pushed in the clutch, spun the wheel with his left hand while putting his right on the chrome skull gear shift and downshifted, causing the Charger to fishtail, throwing John to the right, his shoulder slamming into the leather paneling again, the pain a reminder of running into the pillar of the breezeway.

  Halfway through the turn, the driver spun the wheel back to the right, threw the gear into second, released the clutch and accelerated, smoke wafting up from the back of the car. He accelerated up Edgar Martinez Drive, reaching the onramp to eastbound Interstate 90, the rumble of the engine echoing off the stadiums on either side.

  “Woo! Best thing to come out of Sweden since IKEA!” the driver said, with Dancing Queen blasting through the speakers. “Does ABBA not get it right? Hot damn!”

  “ABBA’s great, baby,” the woman said.

  Cars were scattered on the freeway and some people were running on the shoulder, heading east. John looked back and saw a smattering of the infected coming up the ramp. Those that were running would soon be overtaken. He glanced over towards the stadium and saw some people climbing the scaffolding of the stadium, trying to get to the top. Where they thought they were going, John had no idea.

  On the other side of the freeway, a multi-level parking garage had people being chased by the infected as they ran up the ramps toward the roof level. Again, no escape.

  The city was overrun now.

  They had reached Lake Washington and John marveled at how well the driver had done, maneuvering in and out of traffic. The farther east they went, the less chaos they encountered, which was virtually non-existent right now.

  Heading over to the lake, the driver made eye contact with John through the rear view mirror and said, “Well, that was fun, huh? By the way, my name is Boogie.” He nodded to his right. “And that purty gal to my right here, is Cindy.”

  “Pleasure,” she said, as she looked over her shoulder.

  “Nice to meet you both. My name is John.” John scooted more to the middle to get a look out the windshield. “How far you willing to drive?”

  The driver took his hat off and wiped his forehead. John saw a glare through the rearview mirror, the sun now at their back as they headed east. “Well, pretty much anywhere. We had a little dive motel downtown that we was staying at for the weed party, but…purty sure that’s messed up six ways from Sunday about now, you think?”

  John nodded. “I live in North Bend, about thirty miles east of here. If you take me there, I can pay you.”

  Boogie gave a noncommittal wave and said, “Nah, it’s no big deal. We can head out there. Anywhere east is better than back west, you know?” Nobody spoke for a few seconds and he continued, “By the way, that was some nice shooting back there. I was just waiting for one of them bullets to smack me in the head. Thanks for not shooting the shit out of me.”

  John smiled. “It’s no problem. Thanks for not running me over.” He leaned back against the seat as the road became less chaotic. He didn’t imagine that Boogie would have to do any offensive driving. “Boogie, huh? Interesting name.”

  “Well, I go by Boogie. It’s not my god given name. My name is Scotty Simpson.”

  “Where did the name Boogie come from?”

  “Well, you see. Funny story – ”

  Cindy cut in. “Actually, let me tell it. You’ll fuck it up like you usually do, baby.” She turned to face John. “See, Boogie here…well…both of us are from west Texas, right? Well, technically, he is from there, I’m from Oklahoma. But anyways, Boogie here is a roughneck, or what you might call an ‘oil worker.’” She used finger quotes, then continued, “Well, in west Texas, I shit you not, there ain’t shit to do. Like, at all. So Boogie, in his spare time, races rally cars. He also fixes up cars, including
this one you’re riding in right now. ”

  “425 horsepower!” Boogie yelled.

  Cindy continued, “Yeah, that, whatever. Anyways. He races cars and is really good. He throws that car all over the track, passing other racers and whatnot. Even owns some short track records. Anyways, people would always watch him drive and go, ‘Look at that boy dance all over the track,’ or, ‘He sure can boogie down that track,’ things like that, you know? And ‘Boogie’ just stuck. They been calling him that ever since.”

  John smiled. “What are you guys doing in Seattle?”

  Cindy replied, “We came up here for that weed festival ya’ll have every year. Now that it’s legal in your state, we came to have some fun. Of course, we weren’t expecting that.” She pointed over John’s shoulder to Seattle.

  John looked back and saw smoke and flames emanating from several of the skyscrapers and a few small black dots in the sky. The city was in complete disorder and the mayhem seemed to be spreading in all directions.

  Cindy was shaking her head. “I can’t believe people were all rioting and whatnot. Seemed like someone handed out some bad Flakka or something, made people go crazy. Attacking and killing and all that.”

  She’s not too far off, John thought. He didn’t want to share what he saw with the boat and that redhead guy yet, not without Morgan and everyone else around. He just had to figure out a way to explain it to make it seem believable to everyone when he did tell them. Instead, he said, “Well, we’re away from it now and it looks calmer the further we go.” He nodded toward the east.

  He wondered if Morgan and Frankie had made it back okay. He assumed they had, since they took off right before the boat hit the park. Most people would worry about their friends in a situation like this, but most people weren’t friends with Morgan. He had no doubt that Morgan and Frankie were back home, awaiting John’s return.

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out his cell phone. He’d gotten so caught up trying to just survive that he hadn’t even thought about the burner phone. He opened it up, thumbed it on and saw what he thought he would. No bars. He tried calling Morgan and got the familiar voice telling him all circuits were busy. He put the phone away.