by Jeff Strand
Helen had fallen back, so I waved for her to drive closer again, and then motioned for her to roll down her window. “I need the keys!” I shouted.
Helen stuck her head out the window. “What?”
“Keys!” I made a key-turning-in-a-lock motion. “I need Medusa’s keys!”
I wasn’t sure if Helen knew who Medusa was, but she nodded her understanding and went to work, presumably detaching the limo key from the rest of the keys on the ring.
She held up the key ring. “Throw it!” I shouted, reaching out with one hand while holding on to the semi with the other.
Helen got as close to the semi as she could without ramming it again, and then tossed me the keys.
I caught them.
And they bounced out of my hand.
I lunged for them, momentarily losing sight of the fact that I was hanging off the back of a speeding semi truck, and fell forward. I caught the keys as I fell and both of my hands slammed onto the front hood of the limousine.
Now I was stuck between the two vehicles in a push-up position. Nice.
We hit a bump, and my feet slipped off the back of the semi. My shoes scraped the ground, and for a second I was terrified I was going to be pulled underneath the limo.
Helen slowed down.
My shoes scraped against the dirt road a few more times as I frantically struggled to climb onto the hood of the limo. With the keys in my right hand I couldn’t get a solid grip, and my hand slid down the front hood, scraping the paint job along the way.
I let go of the keys and got a better grip. As the keys slid toward me, I slammed my face against the hood and caught them in my teeth.
I got my feet back safely on the hood and gave Helen a thumbs-up sign. She gave me an incredulous look.
She picked up speed again, and I did another leap onto the back of the semi. I bent down, took the key ring out of my mouth, and tested the first key of about fifteen.
Nope.
I tested the second key.
Nope.
I noticed she had a keychain depicting Medusa from Clash of the Titans. Cool.
The third key didn’t work, either.
The semi took a sharp turn that forced me to grab hold with both hands, but I didn’t drop the keys. The woods were thinning to my left, and I realized we were about to enter the freeway.
The semi picked up speed. I regained my balance and tried the fourth key. Nope.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh keys didn’t work, either.
The eighth key slid in perfectly.
And broke off in the lock when I turned it.
The semi merged onto the freeway and picked up speed.
I tried to turn what was left of the key, but there was no way that was going to work with just my fingers. I needed pliers or tweezers or nail clippers.
Helen probably had nail clippers.
I motioned for her to drive up close again. I leapt back onto the front hood, ignoring the horrified expression of the elderly woman in a red Saturn next to us, and crawled up to the windshield.
“Fingernail clippers!” I shouted.
She picked up a red purse from the seat and tossed it into the back, saying something to Kyle I couldn’t hear. I waited less-than-patiently for a few moments, and then Kyle passed something up to Helen. She reached out the window and handed the fingernail clippers to me.
I jumped back onto the semi, feeling like a professional at this point.
We had to be doing about seventy by now. If I lost my balance and fell off, I’d be a nice long smear across the pavement.
I opened the fingernail clippers, managed to get them around the broken key, and turned. The key began to turn… slowly… slowly…
Success!
I stuffed the fingernail clippers into my pocket in case I needed to clip somebody with them, and then pulled on the handle to release the sliding door latch. This time it moved.
I grabbed the handle on the door, strained for a few seconds, and then raised the door a couple of feet, hoping all of this hadn’t been for nothing.
I pushed it up all the way and was met with a blast of freezing cold air. I looked inside.
Corpses galore.
There were dozens of them. Some were strapped to the walls of the semi, while others dangled from a huge contraption running along the center of the semi like clothing at a dry cleaners.
All of them were cyborgs. There were corpses with guns for hands, corpses with body armor, corpses with flashing lights on their bodies, corpses with robot heads, two corpses welded together like Siamese twins… a huge horrific variety.
Some of them seemed relatively fresh. Others were mostly rotted away.
Troll was running toward me.
I moved out of the way just in time, grabbing onto a cold and clammy dead arm to keep from falling out of the semi.
I ran past the dangling corpses toward the front of the vehicle, which was lit from above. At the far end, my heart leapt as I saw Roger and Samantha, seated side-by-side, strapped to their chairs, both of them alive!
Samantha’s face looked unharmed, but her clothing was marked with spots of blood. Lots of them.
“How stupid are you?” Troll demanded from behind me. I spun around and saw him coming toward me with his trusty knife. “You could’ve been home free. Let me tell you, buddy, I spent some quality time with that bitch, and she’s not worth saving.”
I clenched my fists.
Troll rushed at me again. I pushed through a pair of dangling corpses into the aisle on the other side then looked around for something to use as a weapon.
Well, hell, there were plenty of possibilities.
But Troll found one first. He grabbed the wrist of one of the cyborgs and pointed it at me. I ducked back into the row of dangling corpses as a gunshot went off.
These corpses were loaded!
He fired again, hitting the arm of a corpse next to me and sending a squirt of what I assumed was formaldehyde into the air. I grabbed the closest corpse arm, but it was outfitted with a calculator that didn’t look especially helpful.
I ran toward the rear of the vehicle. The limousine was no longer behind us.
I looked at a corpse strapped to the wall. Half of its face had been hollowed out and replaced with an abnormally large steel-toothed grin. Its eye sockets were empty. Its hand was a small cannon.
Before I could unstrap its arm, I heard the roar of a motor. Troll burst into the aisle, pushing a cyborg corpse on wheels. One of its arms was entirely metal, extended in front of it, and contained a running chainsaw.
Troll rushed toward me at top speed, the chainsaw severing various protruding corpse body parts as it rolled down the aisle.
I pushed my way into the other aisle, watching as the corpse rolled out of the back of the truck and landed on the hood of a Volkswagen behind us. The car swerved away as the chainsaw blade tore through the hood, sending up a shower of sparks.
Troll pushed his way into my aisle. I used a good old-fashioned corpse fist to punch him in the face.
“Ooooooh,” he said with an excited grin. I really, really hated Troll.
I dove at him and we both hit the floor, inches away from the open rear of the semi. Troll rolled me over, and we found ourselves underneath several dangling corpse feet, one of which had metal shoes lined with razor blades.
We rolled again, into the other aisle. I put my hands tightly around Troll’s neck, trying to strangle him. With my luck, the sick freak was into asphyxiation, too.
I squeezed hard, hoping his eyes would pop right out of their sockets.
I’d forgotten he still had his knife, but I saw the flash of the blade an instant before it would have plunged into my side. I released his neck and rolled off of him. Troll slammed the knife toward me, the tip striking the floor of the semi.
I kicked him in the face with a corpse foot.
Troll got up and unfastened another dangling corpse. I took that opportunity to push back into the other aisle and hurry toward Roger and
Samantha. “Any suggestions?” I asked.
They both shook their heads.
Troll appeared at the end of our aisle, holding a corpse in his arms. Well, half a corpse. This one was gone from the waist down. It had been a woman. Her hands were comprised of several blades, each about half a foot long, arranged like propellers.
The blades began to spin.
I reached over and unfastened the nearest corpse, which dropped into my arms and was a hell of a lot heavier than I expected. I managed to keep it in an upright position, and slid it down the aisle toward Troll.
Its head lolled back, looking at me upside-down. I pushed its head forward again.
“Cyborg corpse fight!” Troll shouted gleefully. I lifted my corpse’s arm, which was a standard-issue dead arm, and tried to punch him with it. The arm went into the blades and within seconds was gone up to the elbow.
Troll thrust his corpse toward me. The blades ripped through my corpse, chopping through flesh and bone. As the blades came through to the other side I released my hold on my useless cadaver and got the hell out of the way.
Troll cackled with laughter, but stopped as he realized my corpse was wedged on one of the blades. He had to put both bodies on the floor and brace mine with his foot to get the blades out. They popped free with a shower of embalming fluid.
I made a move toward the other side, but realized that Troll’s next act might be to use the blades on Roger and Samantha. I freed another corpse, this one with metal plating on its torso.
It was way too heavy to keep upright and I dropped it to the floor. I briefly reflected upon the fact that I was showing some severe disrespect for the dead, and then proceeded to show more disrespect for the dead by unlatching another cyborg.
I pressed a button on its back. An electronic voice boomed: “Suicide sequence initiated. Twenty seconds to self-destruct.”
“Get it out of here!” Troll screamed. “I’ll help you!”
Together we dragged the corpse to the rear of the semi. Two cars were behind us. “Get the hell out of the way!” I shouted, waving for them to move.
The cars moved.
We tossed the corpse out the back. It exploded as soon as it struck the pavement, sending body bits twenty feet into the air and covering the automobiles in the other lane.
“Don’t press any more buttons,” Troll told me.
“I won’t.”
Troll tackled me, and we smashed into one of the corpses still strapped to the wall.
“Suicide sequence initiated,” boomed an identical electronic voice. “Self-destruct in twenty seconds.”
“Get it out of here! Get it out of here!” Troll shouted. We hurriedly unfastened the straps, dragged the corpse to the edge, and shoved it over the side.
That explosion was red and much more disgusting. Apparently it was a fresher corpse that hadn’t been embalmed. A nearby car’s windshield was drenched, and the vehicle scraped against the center divider for a few seconds until the driver regained control.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Goblin strapped to the wall, next to the corpse with the hollowed-out face.
I punched Troll in the chin. “Are any more of these rigged to explode?”
“Six, I think.”
I punched him again, knocking him back several steps. Then I grabbed the cannon hand of the corpse with the hollowed-out face, took aim at Troll, and pulled the trigger.
A huge stream of flame jettisoned from the cannon, missing Troll but hitting an entire row of the dangling corpses. As their dead bodies caught on fire and the back of the semi began to fill with smoke, I decided this had probably been another one of my less-than-completely-desirable moves.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Helen’s Side
AFTER ANDREW MADE it inside the semi, I swerved into th e next lane and sped up alongside the front of the truck. The driver looked down at me and nervously stroked his goatee.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do at this point. It wasn’t like I could ram the semi off the road. The best I could do is keep up with it and be ready to help out when it finally came to a stop, or when Andrew (and hopefully Roger and Samantha) were ready to jump back onto the hood of the limousine.
I hated feeling so useless, but what else could I do?
“Kyle, how’s your sister?” I asked.
“She’s breathing funny.”
“Theresa, can you hear me? How do you feel?”
“I hurt…” Theresa groaned, so softly I could barely hear her.
“It’s okay, sweetie. We’re going to get you help. I promise.” I tilted the rear-view mirror so I could see her. “You’re being very brave. I’m very proud of you.”
This news didn’t seem to make Theresa feel any better.
I reached over and picked up the cell phone. If I let the police know exactly where we were, maybe they could-
“Mommy watch out!”
I swerved, slammed on the brakes, and tried to remember if I’d fastened my seat belt. Like a television with its electrical cord yanked from the outlet, my world shut off.
Chapter Twenty-Five
BURNING CORPSES IN the back of a semi: Not good.
Not fragrant, eithe r.
Troll was on the side with Roger and Samantha, so I hurried to the front, expecting to find him hovering over them, knife raised, face contorted into a sadistic grin.
Which is exactly what I saw.
I’d gotten to the point where rushing at a knife-wielding maniac didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I grabbed his maniacal knife-wielding arm and slammed him into another of the corpses strapped to the wall. This one didn’t inform us that it would be self-destructing.
The semi swerved abruptly, knocking Troll and I back into the aisle with the burning corpses. Sparks flew from several of them.
“You’ve ruined it all!” Troll shouted. “Mr. Burke is gonna shit a brick sideways!”
He slashed at me with the knife, missing completely. The smoke was starting to burn my eyes and it had to be affecting Troll as well because his next two slashes were further off the mark.
He screamed in frustration and flung the knife at me. I heard the thunk of the blade hitting dead flesh behind me.
Troll coughed.
The flames grew larger and more intense. Letting Roger and Samantha burn to death after surviving this hellish ordeal was simply not an option.
I let out a howl of primal rage, or what I figured was primal rage, and ran at Troll. I punched him in the face with my good hand and then my bad hand, not feeling the pain.
Troll seemed to enjoy the first punch. The second punch, not so much.
I punched again and again, doing the primal rage howl thing with each one. I pummeled him with force I didn’t even realize existed inside of me.
Troll spat out a large mouthful of blood. “Truce…?”
I grabbed him by the collar and rushed down the aisle, dragging him along the burning corpses as I did so. This son of a bitch was taking a leap out of the back of a speeding semi. Troll cried out in protest and struggled, but he couldn’t get away.
As we reached the edge at a high rate of speed, I let him go.
No witty comment was necessary.
Troll didn’t fly out onto the pavement as planned. As he fell, his foot wedged behind one of the metal steps and he pitched forward onto the freeway.
He tried to use his hands to break his fall. It was not pretty. Troll found himself being dragged face-down behind a semi going about seventy miles per hour, and not much more needs to be said about that.
No cars were behind us to witness the gory sight. Presumably other drivers didn’t want to linger behind a smoke-billowing semi truck.
I returned to the front, wincing as a particularly nasty shower of sparks got me in the arm. I could barely see Roger and Samantha through the smoke, but I felt my way over then removed Samantha’s gag.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, as I unfastened the straps.
“Better
than I was ten seconds ago.”
“I don’t know if this will help,” I said, “but Troll’s face is currently marking out a new lane divider.”
“That does help.”
“Good.”
After I freed her, I went to work on Roger. “I bet you thought I wasn’t coming back for you,” I said.
“No, I thought you’d be here sooner.”
“Sorry. I got distracted.”
“What happened after they took you away?”
I stabbed my daughter and tried to kill my wife…
“Nothing.”
Samantha helped me unstrap Roger from his chair, and before long they were both free. Roger scooped Samantha up in his arms and the three of us hurried to the open end of the semi. The fire had spread and engulfed all of the hanging corpses in the center.
“I’m, uh, sure you’ve got a splendid escape plan,” said Roger.
I knelt down, yanked Troll’s foot out from where it was wedged, and set what was left of his body free. “You haven’t had anything to do for the past few minutes. Didn’t you think of one?”
“Extend the ramp,” said Samantha.
I unlatched the metal ramp and Roger and I pushed it out to its full length. It scraped against the pavement with a sound even more hideous than the smell of burning flesh.
“This isn’t going to work,” Roger insisted. “Even without the fall, if we hit the pavement going this fast we’ll be killed!”
“We can’t stay in here!” I gestured to the burning corpses. Where the hell was Helen when I needed a limo to leap upon?
One of the corpses exploded behind us, causing several others to drop to the floor.
“This whole truck could blow up!” Samantha shouted.
“We can get off this thing,” I said. “We just need some kind of padding.”
“What kind of padding?” Roger asked.
I looked at the corpses strapped to the wall.
Roger shook his head. “Oh, no way!”
I stood up and unhooked the corpse of a heavyset male with crossbows for hands and numerous wires protruding from his skin. “You look for some fluffy pillows. I’ll take down the dead guy.”
Instead of arguing, Roger helped me take down the corpse. “Oh, jeez, this is gonna be sick.”
