Wheels and Zombies (Book 2): Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies

by M. Van

  The internal lights of the white SUV blinked on as I opened the door and crept behind the wheel. I glanced at the mirror and grimaced. My cheek looked shredded but not as bad as I had imagined, although it stung like hell. My hand slid down the steering column. I was ready to release a joyful squeak when I found the key stuck in the ignition, but a low moan stole my thunder. I froze.

  “Crap,” I muttered. The noise came from behind the car. I jumped when a hand slammed the passenger window behind me, and I turned to see a face that was going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

  The face, missing its jaw and nose, came within inches of mine. I shuddered at the thought that this zombie would have a hard time chewing me down to the bone. I held my breath in order to withhold a gag. Its fogged-up eyes seemed to have a hard time focusing when it sniffed me, somewhat similar to the ones down at the airport. With a jerky motion of its head, it growled. A hole gaped where its throat used to be. It had one of those bicycle helmets on its head, and a bag strapped to its back. Without interest, it shuffled on with its head stuck in the air as if it was following a scented dinner into a kitchen. It took me a minute to catch my breath.

  A glance at the rearview mirror revealed the zombie had brought friends. Carefully, I lifted my backpack from the ground. I slid it onto the passenger seat, grabbed the handle, and eased the door shut. I hoped they might not see or smell me inside the car. At least a dozen shuffled by without being in a hurry. They shared a couple of the horror-movie features that one would expect from a zombie. Bloodstained clothes and lacerations exclaimed violent endings for most, although some barely bore a mark. They could have been mere victims of an accident if it weren’t for those milky white eyes. For some reason, the association with the undead felt unfair to make about them.

  I heard muffled voices followed by a gunshot. The zombies in front of me went berserk. They did a one-eighty, throwing their battered bodies in my direction. Lips snarled. They bared their teeth like a pack of rabid dogs. I gripped the steering wheel and closed my eyes. A few thumbs on the hood made me jump. The zombies ran past the vehicle and struggled up the shoulder to whatever the noise was. I cursed, placed the gun on the middle console, and turned the key. The Edge sprang to life without a hitch, and I hit the gas.

  I zigzagged around cars and bodies. From what Decks had said, the interstates were blocked off by the military, and there was no way to hit the mainland. So maybe I had gotten lucky by not coming across any checkpoints when I took the exit to leave I-678 behind and turned onto Atlantic Ave. It had been several hours since Mars had told me to avoid them. Things might have changed, although I wasn’t going to risk crossing any of the bridges, but where was I going to go? I didn’t know anything about this place except it could fit half the population of my whole country. I kept the doors to the Edge locked and established an I-don’t-want-to-get-carjacked pace.

  Red brick buildings rose around me and with them the chaos. With every street I took, the number of zombies seemed to multiply. They were everywhere. I pulled onto a wide avenue with brightly lit signs in different colors. Shops of all sorts hugged each other on either side of the street. Shattered glass sprinkled the sidewalk. A car sped by me and swerved across the street. It was one of those family-type vehicles. It spun in the middle of the road. I hit the brakes, but I couldn’t avoid hitting the car in its flank. Its side door buckled at the otherwise minor collision. A woman crawled out of the car screaming as she ran across the street.

  “No, no, no, stay in,” I said, more to myself than to the woman. She had the appearance of a typical soccer mom who managed a decent sprint before she got herself tackled and the flesh ripped from her bones. I closed my eyes. She should have stayed in the car.

  There was a thud at the front of the SUV. I opened my eyes to see a boy about eight years old trying to crawl up the hood of my new Edge. He had several bloodied scrapes on his neck and arms, along with those dreadful milky white eyes. A similar-looking boy crept out of the car I had rammed, and my eyes widened. They looked the same. Fists on my window made me jump. There was another one of them. The kid on the hood started banging his fists against the front window. I realized I was under attack by triplets from hell. No wonder the woman had fled from her car. Muscle memory made me hit reverse as the kid clung to my hood. I stomped on the brake, forcing the kid to smash its head into the front window. Blood splattered from its cracked nose.

  I changed gears when glass cracked at my side. Instinctively, I ducked for cover and went for the gun on the middle console. It slipped from my grasp and fell to the floor on the passenger side.

  “Fuck!” I yelled. In a struggle, I reached for the gun, but the damn seatbelt wouldn’t let me. My eyes filled with tears when the seatbelt dug into my injured shoulder. I shut them and wrapped my arms around my head in anticipation of the glass spilling over me and of the end. It took me a minute to realize there wasn’t any of that. I peeked between my arms like a little kid. The orange light from a fire filled the interior with a warm glow. Besides a crack in the glass and smears of blood, the window was clear. Across the street, an electronics store had caught fire. I glanced left where the triplets moved in on a man swinging a baseball bat. The kids moved like a pack of hyenas as they attacked. They had the man down within seconds.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I said. Heart pounding, I whirled my head in confusion. As the man’s screams died with him, the triplets from hell darted off into the night. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t come for me. Why would the zombies ignore me? My hand shook like crazy when I reached for the key. The car made a strange noise, and I remembered it was still running. I hit the gas and got the hell out.

  | 7

  A group of men had gathered in the parking lot of a hardware store. They looked armed to the teeth. Some of them carried baseball bats, others crowbars, and some had rifles. People prepared to defend themselves. They eyed me with suspicion when I passed them. One of them signaled me to stop. Mars’s words lingered in my mind. I ignored the man signaling and sped by. I needed to think, to figure out what to do. When I passed a pawnshop several blocks down, I hit the brakes.

  The car screeched to a halt. If I wanted to survive, I would need supplies. I had seen these places on TV. They carried all kinds of goods. I entered an alley that wasn’t suitable for an SUV this size. Nothing would get past the sides of the vehicle, and that suited me fine. I undid my safety belt, grabbed the gun off the floor, and opened the sunroof. I poked my head out to look around. Agonizing sounds filled the night, combined with the smell of burned rubber. I slid down the back of the Edge. The car beeped when I pressed the lock button on the key. I placed the key in my pocket as I gripped the gun in my hand. With care, I maneuvered to the front of the store and stepped inside through a smashed window.

  Two bodies with bullet holes lay on the ground. Blood smeared the white tiles. A trail of goods was left in an aisle all the way to the counter at the back of the store. All kinds of stuff packed the place. Guitars hung from the ceiling, clothes hung on racks, and display cases with watches, jewels, and knives lined the aisles. My eyes fell on the knives, wondering if they might sell guns in shops like these. A growl urged me to bolt until I saw the living corpse behind a fence. Iron bars enclosed the counter, forcing the hunched figure to stay put. I inched past a couple of shattered display cases and trashed racks. The zombie behind bars wore a hunting vest with two guns strapped to its waist. When I stumbled and knocked over a vacuum cleaner, it slammed its body into the fence and growled insanely. The bars rattled in return.

  It must have been the owner, who’d thought he’d be safely locked up behind his fenced-off counter to defend his store. The body flung at the fence, and I noticed the remainder of a bandage around his hand. The man must have been bitten before he locked himself behind the fence. The zombie sniffed the air as I moved closer. He growled but then fell silent. A hint of annoyance swirled in my gut; what the hell was so bad about me that even zombies didn
’t want me? The thing hovered in front of me, but it was as if it refused to see me. I aimed my gun between its eyes and squeezed the trigger. The remainder of its brain splattered against the back wall before the body slumped to the ground.

  It took me a while to open the fence. Eventually, I managed it with a baseball bat. With my empty backpack in hand, I climbed over the counter. There weren’t any weapons on display, but I didn’t even know whether pawnshops selling guns was reality or a movie thing. I moved to what remained of Hunting Vest to relieve it of its two handguns and the machete strapped to its belt. He reeked, but it wasn’t the putrid smell of the dead. On closer inspection, the dark smears on his pants explained the man had shit himself. I gagged on reflex while nausea settled in my stomach.

  Had this man been alive when I shot him? The dead wouldn’t shit themselves. Were they all still alive? Well, except for the mutilated ones. Thoughts piled up inside my head. Why did the zombies ignore me? I placed a hand on the shirt that covered my hurt shoulder. A virus could have strange effects on a body, for one it could be the cause of cancer, but all I knew of carriers, antibodies, and immunity came from what I had seen in the movies. I wasn’t a virologist, but it didn’t seem reasonable for me to be uninfected. Why wasn’t I affected? Emily had turned within half an hour and Elizabeth even quicker. I should have been gone already. I had been alone with Emily for at least twenty minutes. Why hadn’t she come after me? But then, why hadn’t the rest of them? Even Mangled Face had frozen in place as he stood in front of me, which would mean the bite had nothing to do with them not wanting to eat me.

  The things Mars had said about my condition that might save me popped in my head. Could it have something to do with my …? I couldn’t even think the word. The coward that I was pushed the thought into a deep, dark corner of my mind. I didn’t think I would ever be able to deal with my illness. My thoughts lingered on Mars. The intensity those jade eyes threw my way did something strange to my heart. The memory of him wanting to take me on a date heated my cheeks. I hadn’t been on a date for so long. The chance of it happening was something I didn’t want to think about.

  The crack of a gun outside returned me to reality. I had loaded the weapons into the backpack when my eyes fell on a shotgun hidden underneath the counter. I grabbed it and loaded it into the pack along with the boxes of shells and bullets sitting next to it. Another salvo of shots rang out. I peered over the counter to see a couple of figures run by. Others followed with flailing arms. The infected, I presumed. I kept hidden behind the counter until the sounds dissipated, and then I hopped over it. All kinds of stuff filled the shop, and I figured I should grab what I could.

  A couple of filled backpacks followed by two trips to the Edge left me with all kinds of camping equipment, knives, a compass, two dozen energy bars, and everything else I could get my hands on. I even loaded in a couple of bags filled with clothes and boots. Who knew? This apocalypse thing might be long term.

  I reloaded Mars’s nine-millimeter in the car where I placed it on the middle console. A look in the rearview mirror showed the dried blood that covered my face down to the neckline, and I grabbed a few paper towels. With some water, I cleaned it the best I could, but my face was a mess, and it hurt to touch. The black shirt I was wearing, although torn, didn’t immediately show blood, teeth marks, or missing flesh, but I zipped my jacket up anyway.

  People would start to figure out what they were dealing with, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d found out the infection could spread by a bite. Was that the reason Mars had warned me to avoid people? I shook my head to rid myself of the thoughts. They’d started to give me a headache.

  I supposed medical supplies were in order, but where would I find those? I remembered my phone in my pack and searched for it. After I had punched in some keywords, I smiled at the blue dot that indicated my current position.

  Exhausted, I took time to eat an energy bar and have a couple sips of water. An exchange of gunfire startled me. If the zombies were people gone crazy, then what remained of us wouldn’t be far behind. In these situations, it was all about survival, and people became desperate when faced with potential demise. At least the zombies acting weird around me gave me an advantage that I shouldn’t let go to waste, and I backed the Edge out of the alley.

  I drove past a Burger King on one corner and a Pizza Hut on the other. The lights were on, but the seating areas looked uncharacteristically deserted. Dark figures, moving too fluidly to be zombies, ran in and out of shops. Hands grabbed everything they could. Like me, people were getting themselves ready for the long haul, scraping supplies where they could. Or was it an opportunity to rack up stuff that had been out of reach in their previous lives?

  Unfortunately, most of the scavengers or looters seemed unaware and unprepared for the creatures that lurked in the darkness. Screams filled the night, and as I drove, the fluid movements caught my eyes less and less as shuffling bodies took the upper hand.

  I followed the directions given to me by my phone. Roadblocks of the zombie kind resulted in several detours. It took me about an hour to find the hospital. I parked at a secluded spot, watched the place for about another hour, weighing decisions that didn’t come easily. I didn’t want to leave the Edge. I was sure if left unattended someone would steal or loot it. It didn’t take long for my mind to make a detour to the aversion that I apparently posed to zombies. Was that reality or just my imagination? It could be related to what Mars had said, that my condition might save me, and I wished I could ask him.

  The hospital grounds spread out before me were a mess, as if they had been ground zero for the outbreak. It would be the first place people went, especially when word of an outbreak got out. Zombies hovered at the entrance. I imagined there would be a lot of them locked inside. So I sat in the Edge, weighing my choices.

  There was no use in searching out another place. It would surely be similar, and I didn’t want to waste fuel. I wanted to drag out dying as much as I could, although my time was limited as it was. The memories of my family had urged me to prove that I wasn’t a weak, fragile little girl. Imagining their reactions after I’d knock on the door plastered a grin on my face, even though I knew any chance of that had died. I considered the cut on my face and the bite on my shoulder. When my body had come down from the adrenaline rush, it honed in on every painful nerve it could find. I could use some painkillers.

  “Fuck it,” I said, starting the car. With the lights off, I drove to the building in search of underground parking. I found the fence open and drove down the ramp. The entrance looked accessible although cars were piled up at the exit. The back of my hand moved to my mouth as I drove past the bodies of zombies that looked dead for real. Gun casings littered the garage floor. From underneath a car, the leg of what must have been a uniformed soldier stuck out. As I neared the end of the lot, I noticed a small shed that I assumed had been a guard post or something. Bullet holes riddled the walls, and all the windows had shattered. The bodies of the infected lay everywhere. It must have been some battle that had ensued here.

  I parked close to the hospital entrance. Trying to ignore the carnage, I tucked one of the pawnshop guns into my waistband, filled my cargo pants pockets with bullets, and held Mars’s nine-millimeter in my hand. I decided to leave the shotgun. I was sure I would be able to figure out how it worked, but I didn’t have a clue how it would react. The recoil might knock me on my ass. I covered the backpacks and other stuff with an unzipped sleeping bag. With an empty backpack in hand, I locked the car. It beeped, and I winced at the sound.

  “Shit,” I muttered and listened. Moans bounced off the concrete walls. As they neared, I decided to try my luck higher up. I jumped on the hood of a hatchback, moved to the roof, and then climbed onto a van. Hunched down so I wouldn’t bump my head on the ceiling, I waited.

  Two zombies approached. They seemed to be security guards or maybe worked as parking attendants. They wore gray uniforms, and one of them had his cap on backwa
rd. The color of their skin matched their uniforms, but they didn’t look that battered. They stopped a few feet from the hatchback.

  Nervous excitement added to the adrenaline that coursed through my veins. The zombies growled with their noses in the air. I hesitated but couldn’t contain myself.

  “Up here,” I said and stomped my foot on the roof of the van. They flung their heads around, captivated by the noise, but as I waited, a lack of interest followed the growls. I tilted my head to a side as I watched them shuffle. I jumped onto the roof of the hatchback, and both of them lurched into attack mode. A moment of my silence returned them to standby. My heart raced, and I knew I was pushing it, but I couldn’t help myself. The gun shook in my hand when I stepped onto the hood of the hatchback.

  They seemed aware of me but didn’t care, as if I were one of them. I shuddered at the thought. Had I turned without knowing it? That just seemed like a cruel act of nature, but I guess everything about this was cruel. I jumped off the hood. The shock reverberated painfully into my shoulder. Startled, one of them snapped its head. I held my breath when it came face to face. Its milky white eyes bulged out of its sockets. It probably wasn’t a good idea to throw up on a zombie. I backed off without upsetting the thing any further and walked to the entrance of the hospital.

  Part Two

  Wheels

  | 8

  With this many people stuck in one place, it shouldn’t have taken long for zombies to overrun the hospital. Cautiously I moved through what I presumed had been white hallways. Brown layers of goo crusted the floors. Sludge that resembled guts covered every nook and crevice. Several zombies plowed the halls, some in nurse’s or doctor’s outfits, some in patient robes, and some in plain clothes. The smells of old blood, bile, and feces were unbearable. In an unsuccessful effort to mitigate it, I tied a bandana over my mouth. Avoiding sudden movements, I eased down the hallways.