by Lowry, Chris
The Z collapsed and tore the handle out of my sweaty hands.
I don't remember much of what happened next.
The Z's kept coming.
I kept poking and jumping and running. They weren't fast but there was so damn many of them. Z to the left of me, Z to the right of me.
I jogged past a neighborhood with a nine-foot brick wall around it. A herd of a couple of dozen Z trailed a hundred yards after me.
The entrance streets had been blocked with an overturned school bus and a garage door on wheels. I wish I'd thought of that.
Of course, I had to be in my neighborhood to do it, and my neighbor had kicked me out with a shotgun to the face, or ran me out rather since a shotgun to the face has a more lasting effect.
He'd probably killed me anyway just by me coming out here.
I glanced over my shoulder at the shuffling horde behind me.
Then I turned right on Hwy 1792.
"Damn it," I screamed.
No point in being quiet now.
Attracted by the noise of the horde behind me, another was building in front of me. I had a football field distance between me and them, and another football field distance between me and the ones behind me.
That's when I noticed Brian and Peggy.
They were ducked down and waddling between cars as they tried to hide from the horde chasing them.
"Great," I thought.
I normally have better luck. I mean before the Z-geddon.
Peggy spied me and shouted.
"Hey!"
"SShhh!" I hissed back.
"What?" she screamed.
I ran to them.
"Shut up!"
"You have to be quiet," Brian said. "They're attracted to noise."
"I know they're attracted to noise that's why I'm telling you to shut up."
"I wasn't screaming at you," he shot a look at Peggy.
"We can blame each other later," I said. "After we get out of this."
Brian glanced over my shoulder.
"I see you brought your own horde," he shook his head.
Now maybe it's just me but I knew right then I was going to like Brian. If we survived. Any kind of guy that can be just a little sarcastic in the face of being overrun by about a million Zombies is the type of man I'd like to share some beers with.
Suddenly I was craving an ice-cold beer.
"Check the cars, find some bottles," I said.
To his credit, Brian didn't ask why, he just hopped to do it.
While he tore the door open, I sprawled under the Honda and pulled out the carving knife.
I jammed it into the reinforced plastic that was the gas tank, but it couldn't penetrate the shell.
Peggy leaned down to watch me.
"Try the corner," she offered.
"Watch my feet," I growled.
I didn't want a Z to start gnawing on my toes.
I pressed the tip of the blade into the tank seam and worked it back and forth.
The Zombie moans grew louder.
Brian plopped down with two empty water bottles from the car.
"Got them," he huffed.
"Rip off your shirt."
He peered under the car.
"I don't usually do that on the first date," he scoffed.
I could hear the sound of ripping cloth. The knife tip sunk in through the plastic.
"Bottle," I screamed.
"Don't scream," whispered Peggy.
She passed me a bottle. I filled it with a trickle of gasoline from the tank, then the other and passed them back.
Brian stuck the rags down into our Molotov cocktails and held one out to me.
"Can I borrow your lighter?"
"I don't have a lighter!"
A Z rounded the front of the car. One of the hordes was here.
Peggy shrieked. Or maybe it was me.
I jammed the broomstick spear into the Z and it fell over the hood of the car. I looked through the window of the car.
"Find a lighter!"
Brian lifted Peggy up and searched the car beside our hiding spot.
Another Z slammed into the open door and tried to reach me through the glass. I shoved the door open with my foot and held it against the rising tide of Z's that filled in behind it.
"Got one!" shouted Brian.
A flaming arc lobbed over the windshield and splashed against the Z's. The bottle slid down between them.
I jumped out of the car and up on the trunk.
"Follow me!"
I didn't want to see if Brian and Peggy followed. I started across the cars and leaped from trunk to hood, trunk to hood. The Z's saw the movement and surged against the cars.
The Molotov cocktail exploded when we were three cars away.
It was a very disappointing tiny "wump" sound that spread flames across the ground and started burning ten or fifteen Z's from the feet up.
"That was helpful," deadpanned Brian.
Seriously, I liked this guy. I hoped he wouldn't die.
We were five cars away when the Honda exploded. Flaming debris rained down on us and on the cars surrounding it. The explosion took out a big chunk of remaining Z's.
I pulled Brian and Peggy up short in the back of a big Pickup Truck jacked up five feet off the ground.
"Now that was helpful," I said to Brian.
The car next to the Honda exploded. Then the car next in line exploded.
Ever seen those cartoons where they lay out the line of gunpowder? That's how the cars were, lined up and led directly to us.
I climbed over the cab of the truck and raced along the tops of cars, trucks and vans. Brian and Peggy clunked and grunted behind me.
The heat and flames of each blast made it faster for the next car. The explosions got closer together, the heat even faster as bang after bang chased us up the Highway.
I hit a slick spot on a car roof and careened off to the side of the road.
"Good idea," shouted Brian as he jumped down beside me.
I sputtered dirt and grass as he helped me up and we limped across an empty parking lot.
The cars kept exploding all the way to the Interstate.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NOW
Private Buck stood on the inside of the tent flap and looked out while Melissa screamed. He didn't hear me walk up behind him, he didn't make a sound as I grabbed the bottom of his jaw from behind and jerked his head up as I planted a knee in his back.
He squirmed under me as I rode him down, bowing his spine backward in a direction it wasn't meant to go. This is what the rage can do.
His arms scrambled for purchase against my wrist while his legs spasmed.
I bent him like a bow, until his throat crushed under my fingertips and something snapped in his lower back.
I don't think I broke his spine, but by that time it didn't matter. He couldn't breathe, his body twitched. I rolled him over and squeezed his trachea tight until his eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped breathing.
Peg wiped tears off her cheek and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Melissa," she whispered.
I took his rifle, and stripped him of his ammunition. I tossed a K-Bar knife to Brian, and motioned for him.
"Strip it of what we can use, then follow me."
He nodded.
The blood in my ears thrummed, like a drumbeat of my racing heart. Nausea wracked my stomach, my vision narrowed. It was a chemical reaction to all of the adrenaline dumped in my system a part of me knew. Regret threatened me. That boy was the first live person I had killed. I knew there would be a backlash to it, because no sane person can be so casual about ending a life.
I shook it off and quelled it inside. I didn't have time for it now.
The tent flap was still open. I peeked around the edge. Grumpy was watching something off to the side. His vision was fixed, his mouth open, a half smile on his face.
I almost left a note on his body.
"Now I've got a machine gun.
Ho. Ho. Ho."
But I couldn't be sure if they'd get the reference, and I didn't want to hunt the Bandit's in Nakatomi Towers. I was just glad to have upgraded from the Glock. We still needed more weapons, and I wanted to take one of the Humvees. We could cover more ground in it, but it didn't make sense to take the risk, unless one was unguarded.
I glanced at what Grumpy was staring at. Four soldiers had Melissa pinned over a table. One held each arm, Brushy Beard pressed her face down against the plank, while the fourth raped her from behind. She screamed again.
I lifted the rifle to my shoulder and sighted on Brushy Beard's face and pulled the trigger.
It clicked. I didn't click off the safety.
Brushy Beard heard the click and looked up.
"Ambush," he screamed and backpedaled. The two men holding Melissa let go and fumbled for their weapons.
I clicked off the safety and squeezed a shot. My aim was off, but it made them duck.
The soldier behind Melissa waddled back, his BDU's bunched around his ankles. She lashed out with a leg and kicked him in the groin.
He howled, and collapsed. She turned around and stomped on his face. Melissa kicked him again and again.
"Melissa!" screamed Scott.
I jumped at the same time he did. He was right beside me holding Julie's hand.
Melissa looked up from her assault. A pink mist erupted from her forehead and she pitched over the soldier's fallen body.
"Run," I shouted.
I pulled the trigger four or five time's wildly and didn't bother to aim.
We ran toward the row of Humvees and Trucks. Brian climbed into the lead Hummer and fired it up. The others piled in behind him.
"Our gear is here," screamed Peg.
I stopped and shot out the front tire of the other Humvee. I aimed at the truck tire, but a bullet whizzed by my head. I ran and leaped into the back of the Hummer as Brian floored it. We fishtailed around and rocketed up the road. Bullets pinged off the trunk.
"They still have the truck," I said.
"She's dead," Harriet sobbed.
"Hold it in," I said. "Hold it in until we have time for it."
She sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
Brian wheeled around a car crash in the road. We couldn't make much speed, twenty or thirty miles an hour at most or we ran the risk of hitting a wreck.
"Not too fast," I warned.
"Backseat driver," he scoffed. But he slowed down a little.
By the time we made the bridge, we slowed down a lot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEN
We made it into Sanford, about ten miles from where we started, when I called a halt. The rush up 1792 had been quiet. We huddled between cars when we could or ran alongside them. The acrid stench of burning gasoline, rubber and plastic washed over us in spurts and gales as the breeze shifted toward or away from North. It smelled toxic and dangerous and had an added benefit of cloaking us in its stench.
"Where are we going?" asked Brian.
Dirt and grime smudged his face where sweat had dried.
"1792 cuts West under Lake Monroe before taking a jog back in a Northern direction," I huffed. It was tough to draw a full breath.
"There are two bridges that cross there, one of the River, one over the lake. I think we have a good shot at one of them being clear enough to make it. across."
"I'm Peg," said Peg. "This is Brian."
I nodded.
"What's North?" she kept going.
"It's away from here. Which way were you going?"
"We were roaming," said Peg.
"We were locked up in a safe place, good fences, good walls," said Brian. "We had three families in a big house."
"Food," sighed Peg.
"Enough food," Brian added. "Water from a pool, plus pools all around."
"What happened?"
"One of the kids got sick. Died in his sleep. He bit four more before we all got out."
"Sad," added Peg.
"Sad," I agreed. "Why didn't you kill him?"
"He was just a kid," she said.
"A zombie kid."
"Is that what you're calling them?" Brian asked.
I looked around the edge of the car. Our way was clear of Z's and we still had some ground to make before nightfall. I remembered a couple of strip malls along the highway in Deltona or Debary. We could make them and hole up for the night, if we hurried.
"Zombies. Z's. What else would you call them?"
"I don't believe in Zombies," said Brian. "That's just make believe."
I studied him for a moment. Sure, I liked the guy. He was a smart ass, and who didn't appreciate that. But I had to decide if he was crazy, and not in the good way. If he was out of his mind, delusional, then he was a liability.
"What he means," said Peg. "There's no such technical thing as a zombie. In science. There's no precedent for it. Zombie is a made-up term from the movies, so they're not real."
A moan echoed across the street from somewhere carried on the wind.
"That's not real?"
"It's not a real zombie. There's no such thing as zombies. These are people."
"Were people," I said.
"Were," Brian agreed. "I don't know what they are now."
"They're dead. They're back to life. They're zombies. Or Z's."
I hopped up and started moving again. The road was clearer here. That wasn't a good thing since we would be missing a lot of cover.
"Z's," said Brian as he trailed after me.
"Z's," agreed Peg. "Works for me."
"I don't give a damn what we call them," I said. "Just kill them if they try to eat us."
"Z agree," said Peg.
Brian snickered. Maybe I would like her too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NOW
We were making good time when it happened. The Army truck roared out of a logging trail on the left side of the road and smashed into the Hummer. It caught the rear left panel which sent us spinning with a screech of metal and the scream of rubber on the asphalt.
Brian fought the wheel as we threatened to roll. The vehicle spun around, bounced off an abandoned station wagon and completed an almost three hundred sixty degree turn. The nose rested just off the road.
"Everyone alright?" Brian gulped.
A bullet shattered a back window. I threw open my door and spilled out, reached back to drag Peg and Julie out. They dropped and scooted behind the station wagon.
I jerked Scott out and shoved him after Julie. I grabbed Deb by the arm and pulled. A bullet slammed through her chest and knocked her to the ground beside me. Harriet and Dena scrambled over her body toward the others.
"Damn it," I shouted.
Another bullet pinged the door behind me.
Brian shimmied across the console and fell out of the passenger door beside me. He fumbled the rifle my way.
I racked the bolt and sighted in on the Truck.
Brushy Beard and three soldiers had their heads above the hood, but their bodies were hidden. They didn't have quite a straight shot on us, more like an angle due to the way we hit the tree.
But one of them would figure out they could reach us by laying down cover fire while they flanked us from both sides.
They just didn't do it yet.
Seriously, I got this from reading books about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm just glad this enemy was illiterate.
And the books didn't tell me what to do, just what they should do.
"Damn it," I muttered again.
"What do we do?" Brian was on the edge of hyperventilating.
I was hidden behind one wheel, he was hidden behind the other. The rest laid behind the station wagon.
"They're going to flank us," I said to Brian.
"What's that mean?"
"They're going to come up one side and shoot us while we're trapped here."
"Then we need to move. We can go through the woods."
; "Too open," I pointed. "They'll mow us down before we reach the trees."
"Well we can't blow up a line of cars for this one," he said.
I still liked this guy. I didn't want him to die. I didn't want anyone else to die today. Not by these Bandits.
I checked the safety on the rifle and racked the bolt. Then I lay down on the ground and sighted under the bottom of the Hummer. I had at least eighteen inches of clearance so there was plenty of room. The Truck was just as high up, and the soldiers were concentrating on their position on top of the hood. They ignored their legs.
Like I said, smart, but only when someone was giving them orders.
I lined up the sight on a leg, then moved from one to the next without firing. I wanted to practice the move because when one fell, if one fell, the others would catch on quick. I might not have a second chance at this surprise.
I pulled the trigger, moved to the next target, shot and moved again. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Click. I was out of ammo.
Two soldiers fell screaming. The other two sets of legs disappeared behind thick tires.
"Think that will hold them?" asked Brian.
We heard the rifles start firing in rapid succession. But they weren't firing at us.
I looked past the truck at a group of Z's that lumbered out of the woods, drawn by the gunfire and the screaming. Brushy Beard and the other survivor were focused on shooting the Z's.
"That will," I said to Brian and motioned him to follow.
I led the rest of the group to the opposite side of the road so the embankment would provide a little cover. We ran down the road and away from the ambush as the screaming soldiers went quiet and all we could hear was the rat a tat of two guns blazing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEN
Scott was average height and an average face, but had a voice like a velvet fog. We heard his song drifting out of a fenced enclosure, soft but beautiful. We would have missed it had we been twenty feet away.
The fence was behind a trailer off of the road. The trailer itself looked abandoned the metal covered in years of smog from the passing roadway and sticky grime from dripping trees. It had once been powder blue but the color only appeared in streaks now.
