by Jason Offutt
Doug slipped the CDs one-by-one out of their sleeves and sat the stack in Terry’s hand. Terry hit a button on the driver’s door armrest, the window rolled down and he dropped the CDs onto the highway.
“Hey,” Nikki said, slapping Terry on the back of the head. “I actually like Abba.”
“Sweetheart, you are probably the only person on the planet who can say that.”
***
“Slow down, Terry.” Doug leaned forward in the passenger seat of the Prius. To get a better look? Jesus, I’m only 37. Since when did I need the large print apocalypse? The last road sign he saw read “Elm Creek: 3 miles, Kearney: 15 miles, Omaha: 200 miles.” They had to be close to Elm Creek by now. What the hell went down there?
“What is it, Doug?” Jenna asked, leaning over his shoulder.
“Smoke.”
“I don’t see anything, boss,” Terry said, taking his foot off the accelerator, the Prius quickly slowed from 80 mph to 50.
“It’s just a trail. Pretty faint.”
“I see it,” Nikki said, pointing over Terry’s shoulder. “It’s a gray line.”
The faint finger of smoke was somewhere ahead of them; it could have been a dissipating jet contrail, but it was too low. “You think it has anything to do with our friends from yesterday?” Terry asked.
Doug shook his head. “I don’t know.” Where there’s smoke there’s people. “Could be. But if it is because of them and those birds, they didn’t start that fire. They couldn’t have.” He pulled the Hipsters’ Nikon out of its case and put it up to his face, the 300mm lens brought the smoke to him. “Looks like a semi caught fire.”
“But how could that happen?” Jenna asked, her voice tense.
“I don’t know,” he said, “except that it didn’t happen on its own.”
Terry pulled the Prius to a stop a mile and a half later behind a Jeep Cherokee and the smoking semi blocking the road. Bodies lay in bloody lumps across the highway; the white and blue trailer of the Fleming Foods truck smoldered, smoke from its load of hamburger buns and whatthehellever rolled into the Nebraska sky. “And it’s a mess. You see what I see, boss?”
Doug nodded. “There was a hell of a fight here.”
“Who won?” Jenna asked.
A man in a camouflage John Deere cap lay closest to the Prius, a bloodstain pooled beneath him. “Not the good guys.”
“Dibs,” Terry said as he opened the door and stepped out onto the highway.
“Where are you going?” Doug called after him. Dibs? “And dibs on what?”
Terry stuck his head back into the Toyota. “That rifle.”
“I’m going, too,” Doug said. The passenger side door clicked as he pulled the door handle.
Jenna put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, no you’re not. You can’t even walk without help.”
A smile crossed his face. “Well, honey, you’re just going to have to help me.”
The three joined Terry on the highway, Doug’s arm around Jenna’s waist as they walked toward the truck, the rifle slung over Terry’s shoulder. It was a slaughter. Three men, large chunks of flesh ripped from their bones, lay in a wet mess behind the Cherokee; one body still held a 9mm pistol, an M1 lay next to another, the third man had a baseball bat. The rotting corpses of zombies lay strewn among them, the jagged tear of bullet holes in the head of each. But Doug only counted ten zombies – still hate that word. There were more on the highway yesterday. A lot more.
“Dibs on the pistol,” Terry said, handing Nikki the deer rifle and tiptoeing around the bodies; he reached over and pulled the pistol from the dead man’s hand. “Hey, there’s a lump in his pants. You think it’s another clip, or is he just happy to see me?”
“Inappropriate,” Nikki said. “And gross.”
Terry grinned, pushed his hand into the man’s pocket and came out with a full clip. He picked up the M1 and handed it to Jenna. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked.
Terry shrugged. “Shoot zombies.”
Doug stood leaning into Jenna in the strangely silent morning, Nikki held a deer rifle, Jenna an old fashioned M1 Garand military weapon; fear crawled over his back. Something was wrong here. Something more than the ordinary wrong, you know, where people turn into zombies and the world comes to an end. He felt like this when they went into Allenville to save Herman Munster’s life, unsure, unsteady. People died that day. Doug waved a finger toward the Fleming Foods truck.
“We need to clear this thing out of the way. We’ll never fit the car between the truck and the Jeep and the shoulders are too steep to drive on.” He pushed a flat, dirty Walmart sack stuck to the highway through the pool under the guy with the John Deere cap. “We need to go fast. This blood is still wet.”
“On it, boss,” Terry said. “Looks like they set the fire in the trailer. Maybe hoping to scare the things off.”
Jenna spat a humorless laugh. “It didn’t work.”
“The tractor looks fine,” Terry said. “If it’ll start, I’ll move it and see if there’s anything else I need to push off the road.” He walked around the rear of the smoking trailer and into a horror movie. The shoulder of the highway that sloped down to a ditch was black with crows. The big, fat birds pecked and tore at the meat of the festering zombie corpses strewn across the grass; grizzly bullet wounds decorated their flesh.
“Fuck me,” spilled from Terry’s mouth. He swung his head around to a sudden movement near the cab of the truck. A zombie stood near the open door holding a leg with a boot on it, a strip of bloody flesh hung from its lips. Terry mounted a shooter’s stance, leveled the 9mm on the monster’s forehead and gently squeezed the trigger. The pistol jerked slightly and a crack broke the mid day’s silence. The zombie’s head flew backward and the once-human thing dropped to the pavement.
Crows, thousands of them, flapped into the sky, their beating wings and piercing caws pounded Terry’s cries to “run” out of the air. He thought he heard Nikki scream his name, but he couldn’t tell. Terry flailed his arms at the murder flapping around him as he forced his way to the driver’s door of the Peterbilt. A crow struck the side of his head and almost sent him to the ground. What was once a teenaged girl, her blue Kearney Bearcats T-shirt stained with blood, stepped from around the front of the truck and lurched toward him. Shit. He swung the cab door fully open and caught the girl with blond ponytail in the face. It went down in a wet slap. Terry scrambled into the truck and shut the door.
The keys weren’t in the ignition.
“FUCK,” he screamed.
The apocalypse had come quickly and deadly enough most people forgot their keys were in the ignition, or it just wasn’t important anymore. What the shit? He threw open the glove box. Tissues, first aid kit, rubbers, a .38-caliber pistol, beef jerky, everything a trucker needs. He pulled down the sun visor. Nothing. Then dropped his hand to the floor, his fingers ran over an empty potato chip bag, something sticky, thumped into an empty convenience store coffee cup, then grazed a loose pile of metal. It jingled. Keys. Terry pulled himself vertical behind the wheel, fit the key into the ignition and looked at the road ahead. “Oh, no.” A wall of zombies, some as decayed as Miss Havisham’s cake, some as fresh as a Cinnabon roll, walked toward the truck, the cloud of crows blacking the sky. “Please, God,” he whispered. “Please make this thing start.” He pushed the clutch to the floor and grabbed the keys, the South Park keychain dangling under his hand. He turned the key. The Peterbilt rumbled to life. Terry knew in a few months most vehicles in the world wouldn’t start without coaxing, but now– “Thank you.” He shifted into first and slowly released the clutch. The truck ground forward, two zombies dropped beneath it. He grinned as the Prius appeared in the side mirror, Nikki behind the wheel, Doug and his broken foot sat shotgun with the M1. Is that possible? Sitting shotgun with a rifle? And Jenna? He caught a glimpse of red hair flashing between the front bucket seats. They all made it. Terry shifted into second, birds slapped against the windshield like he was in a g
oddamned Hitchcock movie; he popped it into third. Damn. There are a lot of cars on this road. He caught a zombie on the grill and smashed it onto the rear of a brown Suburban. The monster, flesh starting to rot off its withered purplish face, stared at Terry with white, dead eyes, grinding its teeth and pawing at the hood like it wanted to climb into the cab.
“Fat fucking chance, Fester,” Terry said, then laughed. “Whoo-hoo. Catch the Zombie Express.” He reached up his left hand and pulled down a cord; the air horn cut a loud path through the day. Although it wasn’t daylight anymore, it was twilight under the black cloud of crows. He turned on the headlights just before the Suburban hit a Kearney School District bus that sat sideways in the road, the driver lay slumped in his seat, a yellow spore stain across the windshield, the high school band, in uniform, pawed at the windows; the Peterbilt’s headlights shown off their cream-colored eyes, their bloody teeth tore at the glass. The impact jerked Terry in his seat as the Peterbilt peeled vehicles off the road, rolling them both over the shoulder and down the embankment. “Whoo-hoo.”
The afternoon sun suddenly broke through the eye of the hurricane of whirling crows, the small town of Elm Creek north of the highway, the grain elevator and white and blue water tower bright in the sudden sunlight. Terry only saw Elm Creek in passing. The highway ahead locked his eyes forward. A score, maybe a hundred once-human creatures, stood on I-80 swaying back and forth waiting for him; a teen in a Burger King uniform stood in front, along with a young mother, her right breast swollen and purple exposed from her nursing bra; she held her infant by one arm. The baby in a Natty Light onesie dangled from its mother’s grip, chewing at the air with its toothless mouth as Terry slammed into it. Terry tried to swallow the cotton in his mouth, but his throat was dry as a Nebraska summer. He shifted into fourth gear, the Peterbilt growling as Terry pushed it further into the throng, bodies thumped against the semi’s grill like he drove through a cornfield. Wipers spread the blood and gore that splattered the windshield, blue wiper fluid cut it just enough for Terry to see his way.
“Dear Lord in heaven,” he whispered. “What am I doing?”
Eleven miles east of Elm Creek, the weak Prius horn blaring as loud as it could, Terry pulled the Peterbilt to a stop on an empty stretch of highway, put his forehead on the steering wheel and cried.
***
The skies over Omaha were blue and free of noise; the white airplane contrails that crisscrossed middle America gone. A United Airbus 320 at Lincoln Airport had been visible from the highway when Nikki drove through the hometown of the Nebraska Cornhuskers; the plane that took passengers on short jumps to Kansas City, Missouri and Chicago would sit there forever. Nobody mentioned it and fifty miles went by, the cab of the car as quiet as its electric engine. Terry sat as if asleep, but his bloodshot eyes were wide open.
“What I wouldn’t give to see an airplane fly again,” Jenna said, as they approached Omaha under the shadow of an Omaha Storm Chasers billboard.
“We did,” Terry said bluntly. “In the Community.”
“I mean one that’s not trying to kill us, jerk.” She winced as the words came out.
“I want to see a train.” Doug looked out the window, counting down the mile markers. Omaha was closing in, vestiges of the suburban sprawl popped up in subdivisions and strip malls with Starbucks and Runza Restaurants, stared blankly at the highway. “I remember as a kid in Paola, my dad used to take me up to the railroad tracks just to watch the trains. I loved it. I used to carry around a penny Dad put on the train tracks once. Took us forever to find it.”
“Where is it now?” Jenna asked.
A sad grin pulled at Doug’s mouth. “Taped onto the glass frame of the first dollar I ever earned back at my muffler and brake shop.”
“Sorry to break this memory lane thing up,” Nikki said. “But I don’t remember where the hospital is. I didn’t really pay attention to the roads after the soldiers took us.”
“Seriously?” Terry asked, his face drawn and pale since they dumped the truck.
“Seriously. Kind of embarrassed about that,” she said. “But right now I need directions.”
A big green road sign approached, 126th St – 3/4, 275/92/L St – 2 1/2, Junction 680 – 4. “We’ve got a ways,” Doug said. “I think it’s on 42nd.” He leaned into the back seat and slapped Terry on the leg. “We all saw what happened back there, man. You saved our lives. Thank you.”
Tears formed in Terry’s eyes. One broke free and slid down his stubbly cheek. “But that woman had a baby and I could see it gnawing, gnawing on nothing. But it was a baby. Just a—”
Doug squeezed Terry’s leg hard. “It was a zombie.” Zombie. “It wasn’t a baby. It wasn’t even alive anymore and if given the chance it would have eaten you.”
Terry wiped away the tear. “It didn’t have any teeth.”
A grin crossed Doug’s face. “Then things would have gotten ugly.”
***
A trio of giraffe walked north on 72nd Street as the Toyota drove overhead. The landscape of the continent would change dramatically if those animals became fruitful and multiplied. Doug doubted the animal rights nut who let all the animals out of the Henry Doorly Zoo was the only person to think of that and as a thank you the bear had eaten him. The thought of the bear hit Doug like a punch in the stomach. He remembered running from the gigantic brown bear and diving at the H3, the 800-pound beast slamming into the door, crushing the bones in his lower leg. Jenna pulled him inside and into the passenger seat. His last memory before passing out from the pain was the great, snarling face filling the window, snot and saliva smearing the glass. He stared quietly as the giraffe bobbed down the road and wondered how many other nuts out there had released zoo animals and how long it would take to fill North America with lions and chimpanzees.
“Sixtieth coming up,” Nikki said through a mouthful of the beef jerky Terry had rescued from the Peterbilt.
“Pull over,” Doug said.
“What? Now?”
Doug nodded and pointed at a car. “Yes, pull over right there.”
Nikki guided the Prius to a stop beside a green Dodge Stratus and put it into Park. Doug looked at the Dodge, no sign of a driver, no sign of passengers. The sun glinted off something in the side mirror; Doug’s eyes shot to the mirror, but nothing moved. Jenna rested a hand on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
Doug took a deep breath. “This is my plan—” he began.
“Mine, too,” Nikki interrupted.
“—so nobody has to go with me.” Jenna started to protest, but Doug put up a hand. “Please, honey. The idea of doing this scares you and Terry’s in no shape to go through with this.”
The snap of a beer can opening filled the cab. “I’m better.”
“Nikki and I can take that Dodge and you two can just sit here and wait for us.”
“Bad idea, boss.”
Jenna cupped Doug’s stubbly chin in her strong, smooth hand and turned him around to face her. “Doug Titus. You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“That’s right,” Terry said. “If one of us does something stupid, we all do something stupid.”
Nikki put the car back into Drive and kept going. “Hey,” Doug protested.
“Sorry, honey. You’re outvoted,” Jenna said, leaning into the front seat and kissing his cheek. “But when we get there I might not get out of the car.”
***
Nikki stopped the Prius at the corner of 42nd Street and Dewey Avenue, black birds, silent and watchful, lined the electric wires along the crossroads, a swath of the 12-foot-tall chain-link fence the Army built to keep the zombies at bay, lay flattened inward. The hospital grounds were silent, blank windows looked over empty M35 cargo trucks, Humvees with mounted M2 heavy machine guns and the carnage on the asphalt at their wheels. Hundreds of zombies lay torn to shreds under machine gun fire, the bodies of soldiers amongst them ripped into indistinguishable piles of bloody meat.
“I’m not getting o
ut of the car,” Jenna whispered.
“I don’t blame you.” Doug searched for any sign of movement, but there was none. Birds lined the roof of the hospital and the canopy entrance to the emergency room. The machine gun nests at the top of the three-story parking garage were unmanned; crows perched on the .50mm Browning machine guns.
“Looks like there were too many of them,” Terry said. “The Army didn’t have a chance.” He looked into the front seat at Doug. “Still going in?”
Doug nodded. “I have to. Let’s go.”
Nikki put the Prius in gear and went forward slowly, the wheels thumped over the shredded corpses of the zombies. “I’m going to throw up,” Jenna wheezed from the back seat.
“Don’t throw up, honey.”
“Shut up, Doug. I’m going to throw up.”
“We’re almost through the worst of it.”
The front wheel rolled over a zombie in a brown UPS uniform. “It’s coming up.”
“Okay,” Nikki hollered. “Now.” She stepped on the brake and the Prius squeaked to a stop. Jenna threw open the door and emptied the can of cold ravioli she’d eaten in the car near Grand Island, Nebraska, onto the pavement.
Terry patted her back. “You going to be all right?”
Jenna nodded and sat up, wiping her mouth with a Starbucks napkin from the floor. She hit Doug’s shoulder. “Thanks for being there to hold my hair.”
***
A warm breeze glided across the parking lot as they stood on the pavement outside the front entrance to the hospital; shards of blood stained glass lined the frames of the wide, sliding glass doors blown inward by the horde of hungry dead. They all wore pistol belts peeled off the massacred soldiers, Beretta M9s in the holster, spare clips in the pouches, flashlights clipped to the side. Doug and Nikki both held an M27 infantry rifle, Doug’s lashed over his shoulder. Jenna’s sat propped against the Prius, the closest a hybrid ever got to seeing some kind of action.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?”
Jenna nodded at Doug. He grabbed her and pressed her closely to him. “I love you, you know?”
