“Let’s load up on some supplies, just a few bits, we should look to get moving as soon as we can.” Dwayne gave the order, and watched as everybody reacted to it.
People returned, carrying arm-loads of canned soup and other products. Divvying up the supplies across the two cars, again, thinking about what would happen if they split up, they were loaded and ready within twenty minutes.
Dwayne took the Jeep, along with Samantha, Jared, and Ian, while Ronnie drove the Chrysler with Jack, Leah, Julie, and Abby.
“Follow me, we need to stick together as much as possible. It would be great if we could find some way to stay in touch with one another, but right now, we’ve got nothing, so just stay close.” Dwayne spoke through his open driver’s window, to Ronnie, who had swung the Chrysler around to be able to speak in the same fashion.
“Got it. What happens if we meet anybody along the way?” Ronnie asked.
Dwayne flinched. We keep driving. Don’t stop for anybody.
“We play it by ear. There will be good people out there, but we cannot trust blindly,” Dwayne said.
“Got it,” Ronnie answered, giving a mock salute.
Dwayne laughed. It felt strange but good.
“You guys ready?” he asked, aware that he was stalling for time.
Nobody replied, but six eyes stared back at him, silent through fear and relief. They had survived something none of them had ever expected to be caught up in but had lost one of their own in the process.
Pulling out of the factory lot, they turned to the right and followed the road. The scattering of cars was minimal, and with some careful maneuvering they were soon on the motorway around the city, and eager to put everything behind them.
“Where are we going?” Samantha finally broke the silence.
Dwayne took a deep breath, composing himself before he answered. “I don’t know.”
“We should look to get out of the city, put as much open space around us as possible.” Ian took the chance to speak. He and Jared sat on the back seat, and from the nervous glances Ian continued to throw his way, it was clear that he did not feel comfortable sitting beside a man he considered unstable.
“We should look to find a place to hole up,” Jared spoke, looking at Ian. “Rich boy is right, somewhere out of the city, with enough land to fortify. A farmhouse or something would be perfect. We can unload our supplies, lay low and decide on our next move.”
“That settles it then, we keep moving until we find a place to make camp,” Dwayne said, his sentence ending early as he tried to swerve out of the way of a lumbering, bloody husk of a man who appeared from between a cluster of four crashed cars. With not much room to move, given the guardrail on the other side of the road, Dwayne managed not to hit the creature head on, but rather, caught it with the front edge of the vehicle.
The thing’s body exploded in a mushy mess of black gore. The driver’s side window was covered in the smeared remains of the undead balloon that had just burst against it.
Dwayne kept driving, mowing down a second group of the zeds, who disappeared under the car, and burst without giving the suspension a workout. Behind them, the second car had a much cleaner run, once the Jeep had cleared the path for them.
Suddenly the road opened for them. Two lanes became three, and not much farther, three became four. Each lane was open, with not a car to be seen. Dwayne put his foot down, letting the powerful engine stretch its legs a little.
“Got to let the beast free, every now and then.” He laughed, looking across to Samantha, who sat in the passenger seat with a smile stretched across her face.
She lowered the window and let the air blast against her face.
Suddenly, the Chrysler was beside them, and both drivers were hollering as they swung from one lane to the next, enjoying the freedom.
“I think we should slow down a little,” Ian said, his voice raised to combat the howl of the wind at the window.
“Oh, loosen up, Richie Rich,” Jared said as he stuck his head out of the open passenger window.
“I mean it, don’t you think it’s strange that the cars just vanished?” Ian persisted.
There wasn’t time to answer, and they were going too fast to discuss it anyway. The wall of cars appeared on the horizon and continued to draw closer to them, even after Dwayne planted his foot on the brakes.
The Jeep screeched as its wheels locked up, the rubber burning on the concrete as everybody inside braced themselves for impact.
Two lanes farther over, the Chrysler was also heading for disaster, heightened when Ronnie yanked the steering wheel and put them into a spin. The long body swung across the lanes and for a few moments, launched itself onto just two wheels, teetering on the verge of overturning, before it seemed to catch its balance and come crashing down again.
Both cars came to a stop just short of the constructed barricade, but it took several minutes before anybody found the strength to get out of either vehicle.
“Holy shit that was close,” Julie finally spoke as she took off her seatbelt and opened the side panel door.
She stood up on legs that felt like jelly and immediately turned to face the other car, where her friends were all sitting, staring at the car wall before them.
“What do we do now?” she asked, her words swallowed by the wide-open space of the otherwise empty road.
The presence of the man-made wall was oddly chilling, and none of the group felt comfortable in its presence.
“Who made it?” Leah asked as she rapped her knuckles on the roof of an old olive-green sedan.
“Well, I doubt it was the dead,” Jared answered, his words lacking his usual barbed edge. If anything, he was more distracted than the rest, walking up and down the structure, running his hands over it, as if he could somehow feel a way through.
A wind ran along the street, hitting the cars to create a hollow, empty-sounding cry; mother nature herself, weeping at the blockage placed in her path.
“Can we go over it?” Ronnie asked.
“Probably, but we would lose the cars and the supplies,” Julie answered.
“It might be our only chance,” Dwayne replied fast.
“Let’s check it out,” Samantha said, looking at Ronnie. “Your plan, your lead.”
Both she and Ronnie made quick work of the climb. It took a moment to find a starting point, but once Dwayne took out the driver’s side window of a partially crushed minivan, it gave them the step up they had been looking for.
The cars had been piled four high, with no real semblance of order. They were merely stacked in the order they arrived. It had to have been machine driven, there was no way anybody could have lifted the cars this high.
“Do you hear that?” Ronnie said as he reached the third level.
“Yeah, what is that?” Sam answered, straining to get a good ear for the noise.
“It sounds like static,” Ronnie said, peering into the car he held on to. “Maybe a radio station or something.”
“Could be, but it doesn’t really sound like a radio.” Sam’s words trailed off as she made the step up to the top level of the metal wall.
No sooner had she reached it, and she turned around and vomited over the edge, narrowly missing Ronnie with her guttural expulsion.
“What is it … oh good God,” Ronnie wretched, answering his own question as he reached the top of the wall.
On the other side lay a field of bodies, several deep in some places. The bloated corpses were burst open from exposure, freeing the rotting remains to flood over the road. The tarmac shimmered in the afternoon light as the sea of flies, which had been the source of the noise, jostled and bounced against one another, each bloated body eager to further indulge themselves on the presented feast.
“What happened?” Samantha asked from behind her hands.
“I have no idea, but look, there are guns and shit down there too.” Ronnie pointed down to the ground, where an assortment of blood-drenched weapons
lay scattered. Some still clutched in the hands of the men and women that wielded them, while others still had a hand gripping them, but the hand itself was fully detached from the body it belonged to. Many more lay where they were dropped, as the wave of death made its march toward the city.
“Looks like they tried to set a trap for the dead,” Ronnie spoke, forcing the words out quickly, to minimize how much time his mouth had to be open.
“What’s going on, what do you see?” Dwayne called up, making a move to climb the wall to join them.
“Stay there, we are coming down,” Samantha called down to him, her voice near panicked at the thought of anybody else joining them.
“Holy shit,” Ronnie’s shout made Sam spin around so fast, she slipped in the trail of her vomit and almost fell, her arms cartwheeling as she tried to keep her balance.
A gasp from below completed the moment. Ronnie reached out and grabbed Sam by the wrist and pulled her back into the middle. “Sorry,” he added sheepishly.
“What did you see?” she asked, trying hard to bring her racing heart under control.
“Down there, look. They are not all dead.” Ronnie pointed to the mass of bodies.
Samantha peered for a moment, taking in the ghastly scene with a near fascination. “Jesus wept,” she cried out, the minute she saw the body crawling through the bloody mess.
The figure tiny, its frame torn open by bullets, the holes could be seen peppering its body like open sores. The sun and elements had decimated its body, yet still, the creature clawed its way over the dead that surrounded it. Uninterested in their rotten flesh, it had caught the scent of a far more succulent meat, and now its hunger would never end.
“What do we do?” Samantha asked, taking a step closer to Ronnie, enjoying the feeling of protection his company provided.
“We get back down and find another way.” His words were calm and matter-of-fact.
Sam knew he was right, but something made it difficult for her to turn away.
“Whatever that thing down there is, it is not the person it used to be,” Ronnie spoke gently, as he crouched down and swung his legs over the side of the wall.
Sam looked down at him and nodded. He was right, and she knew it, but the human condition was something that she could not just turn off. Lingering thoughts of what if or maybe we could just echoed around inside her mind. They were distracting to the point that Sam was on the ground before she realized she had even begun her descent.
Dwayne wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. For a moment, she didn’t speak. She found a solace in his arms, and in his scent, which, even after everything they had been through, still held the lingering fragrance of his deodorant and aftershave. The spice and heat made her head swim, and the feel of Dwayne’s hard body pressing against her, protecting her, made Sam’s head spin.
“What did you see up there?” he asked, looking down at her without breaking the embrace.
“The dead. Whoever set this up did so with fighting on their mind, but they bit off more than they could chew,” Ronnie answered, as he stood in a near identical position, with Leah clinging to him, the same way Sam stood with Dwayne.
“Great, so now what?” Julie asked. She, Ian, and Jack stood a few meters back, closer to the cars, while Abby stood between them, looking more like one of the dead than ever. Her face had paled and sunken significantly in the time since they got into the cars.
“Now, we need to find another way out of Dodge,” Jared said, walking toward them. Never one to stand with the group, he had been pacing the highway, looking for a new means of escape.
The highway they had been racing along was the tail end of a flyover, and as such, a short drop below them, a series of three other roads sprouted away with varying destinations advertised on the blood-smeared boards. The traffic littered highway was also scattered with zeds. They meandered mindlessly through the traffic, walking into as well as around the vehicles that stood abandoned. A few miles down the road, a larger congregation could be seen gathered around a toppled truck, which had been transporting livestock from one of the local farms. The squeals of the pigs had long since died down, but there could be no mistaking their carcasses that lay flung over the road.
As they watched, something moved among the cars. It was quick, disappearing beneath the long body of a school bus which stood with the doors open and windows broken.
“Did you guys see that?” Leah asked, pointing toward the yellow bus.
“I saw something,” Dwayne answered, squinting.
“So did they.” Jack pointed down to the gathering group of zeds that had all turned toward a single communal goal.
The pig appeared again, emerging from beneath the bus, crawling through the tight gap, desperate to escape and enjoy its freedom.
The moment didn’t last long, as the hungry half of a broken zed caught the creature as it paused to survey its surroundings. Despite the most haunting of protestations, the pig was done for, even before the hungry jaws closed around its flank, tearing away a thick strip of raw bacon.
In a final moment of the fight, the pig, greased by blood, escaped the death hold and ran away, leaking thick sausage-like links of intestine from the fresh hole in its gut.
“We can’t go down there,” Sam said, staring as a group of zeds found the pig, which had collapsed, but continued to squeal, as every movement produced a fresh wave of agony.
The dead collapsed on it, obscuring the creature from view, and finally ended its pain.
“We can’t stay here,” Ian said.
“We could take the cars back and find another way out of the city,” Julie spoke up.
“There’s a lot of them down there. Could we really make it through?” Dwayne asked, watching as the dead seemed to appear out of thin air.
Suddenly, the street was filled with them. They moved in droves across the road, sweeping like a flood of decaying flesh, leaving destruction in the mindless wake.
“Is that a fire?” Leah pointed across the road, along the edge of the city, which rose to their right like the urban jungle it was.
Nobody spoke, while all eyes focused on the flames that billowed on the horizon.
“It looks like it,” Dwayne said.
“That would explain why they are coming this way like that,” Jared said, watching the dead with a look of near fascination. “We need to move. Get in the cars, head back to the city. Best plan we have is to settle down for the night and move on again.”
When nobody raised a better idea, they split off and got back into their cars, returning the way they had come, very much with their tails tucked between their legs.
They drove in silence, watching the city loom over them. What had once been a thriving, budding metropolis had become nothing more than a prison, and the guards were ruthless and vicious.
The long shadows cast by the tall buildings and the setting sun, stretched along the roads like bars on the window of their future.
Dwayne pulled the car over to the side of the road, just short of the last exit ramp before the city proper. He left the engine in neutral and leaned forward to rest his head on the wheel. “This just cannot be happening.” His words were only intended for him, and the others, realizing this, said nothing in return. They were all thinking the same thing or at least minor variations thereof. The world had gone to shit so soon. The rules of life had changed, and nobody had the chance to read the rules.
“Why did we stop?” Sam asked, placing her hand on Dwayne’s shoulder.
“Because they did.” He pointed back to the second car, which had stopped a hundred or so meters behind them.
Reversing up beside them, Dwayne lowered the passenger-side window and leaned forward, talking across Samantha, who sat back in the chair as if somehow needing to avoid the conversation.
“Jack says that he lives down in the suburbs here. Said his grandparents’ house is there also. Big enough for all of us to hide out.”
“That’s the closest
thing I’ve heard to a plan all day,” Dwayne said, nodding. “You take the lead, and we’ll follow, but keep your eyes peeled. Once we get off this highway, who knows what we will find.”
Ronnie nodded, closed his window, and drove away. Dwayne looked through the car, his eyes stopping on each passenger in turn. None offered any resistance, and so he pulled away, watching as a long figure shambled up the road toward them.
The figure, a man, was covered in blood and walked with both a pronounced limp, and a lively gait.
Dwayne swallowed hard but said nothing. The others were too nervous to pay attention, and as they turned down the off ramp toward the road to residential paradise, the figure broke into a stumped run, his arms waving about his head.
Dwayne knew the man was human, or alive, they were all human, but he knew that the risk he posed was too great for the group, and so left him behind. He watched the man for as long as possible before he faded into the distance. Dwayne knew it was an act of murder to leave the man alone, but he had to think about the safety of the group. In a world where second chances were not given freely, every decision counted, and the tough ones needed to be made quicker and quicker.
They drove in silence, all eyes on the world beyond the car doors. The minute they pulled off the highway, the dead appeared. They moved through the streets in groups, and while the dead seemed content to let them pass through, the question of moving from the car to the house, whenever they reached it, weighed heavy on their minds.
“I hope this works,” Ian said as they pulled up behind the lead car, outside a large, suburban home.
It looked like something out of a movie, far too grand to be a house belonging to an older couple, yet totally believable at the same time. An old, family home, which had stood the test of time, having witnessed the birth of all the dwellings around it; very much the king of the neighborhood.
There was no fencing or boundary wall that would act as a deterrent, other than a white picket fence, which promoted the same feeling of security as a Chihuahua as a guard dog.
ZPOC: The Beginning Page 16
