by Joseph Zuko
“Well, this is gross,” I try and find a dry spot on my sleeve to rub against my face and clean this crud off. Sara convulses. She is going to puke. She pushes herself as far back into the chair as she can. I finally notice what it is that has sent her over the edge. There is an eyeball in her lap.
“Don’t puke!” I beg her. “It is already disgusting in here! Don’t add to it,” she holds her hand over her mouth trying to keep down the bile. She can’t hold it any longer. Puke sprays out between her fingers. I am doused with Sara’s hot lunch.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologizes. I don’t want to look at her. I will lose my lunch too. I am a man in my mid-thirties. I have had my fair share of adult drinks and sometimes the night ends with a little vomit. As a father you also run into puke from time to time when the kids get sick, but that is your kids puke so it is not as bad. I have never had an adult throw up all over me.
I can feel my stomach turn. I don’t think I can keep it down. I hate puking. I fight to keep what is in my stomach, in my stomach.
We roll down a little back road that dumps us off at a large intersection. Fifty yards down the street there is an overturned Subaru. It looks like it was hit by another car and is up on its side. It sits in the direction I have to go so I head towards it. I am still fighting my stomach and about to lose the battle. I notice a chunk of hotdog on my sleeve and that is it. I lose it. The streets clear of infected people so I pull over next to the Subaru.
My stomach kicks out every drop of food and water I have had all day. I shake off the extra chunks from Sara. I am dry heaving when I hear the sounds of someone calling for help. It is from the overturned car. I quickly look around to make sure I am not about to be swarmed by a gang of infected. It is clear. It is all empty parking lots and deserted buildings around us. I step a little closer to the overturned car and there is an older woman trapped inside. She stands on her drivers side window and kicks at the windshield. Her car sits in the middle of an intersection. She is trapped.
“Guys, someone’s in this car,” I reach back into the Bronco and pull out the keys.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sara grabs the sleeve of my coat. I break away from her grip and pull the keys from the ignition.
“We shouldn’t stop!” Devon begs. I sprint back to the old lady.
“Oh, thank you!” she is pressed against the glass.
“You’re gonna be okay!” I tell her. I search the side of the road and find a big rock. It is the size of a grapefruit.
“Get down!” I yell at her. She squats behind her steering wheel. I chuck the rock as hard as I can. It smacks against the window and the safety glass splinters. The stone falls to the ground. I pick it up and throw it at a different part of the windshield. It smashes the hell out of it but I can’t get the rock to punch a hole through the glass. I need something like a bat or crowbar. I kick the glass a few times but I can’t get through it. Sara and Devon scream at me from the Bronco, but I can’t make out what they are yelling.
“Behind you!” The old lady yells. I turn and there is an infected. It has its hands reached out to grab me. I don’t have my spear and I don’t have time to pull my machete. It is almost on top of me. The guy was a big heavyset trucker. His flannel shirt is half torn off, exposing a massive wound. The fat from his stomach drips from the open wound and falls to the ground. I put my arm up and catch its teeth with the soccer shin pad that I have strapped to my forearm. He crushes me up against the windshield. Chunks of safety glass fall down the back of my jacket and into my shirt. It bites the pad over and over again, but it has not broken my skin. The pressure from its jaw on my forearm is incredible. I feels like it is about to break my bones. I can’t reach my knife and he is so heavy I can’t push him off me. He has me pinned between the glass and hood. Crunch! The tip of a knife sticks out from the infected monsters forehead. It falls to the ground. Sara got him with my spear. Thank goodness! When its big body hits the ground a squirt of blood shoots up into the air and splashes her. She lets out a disgusted squeal.
“Is that your first one?” I push myself off the hood.
“No,” she hands me the spear. I use it to smash through the glass.
The street we are on snakes south under a set of train tracks and connects with a major street. Around the corner a big rig has emerged. The truck driver has a lead foot and six infected punch and claw at the rig’s windows. I give the window a hard front kick. The hole in her windshield is only a foot wide. Sara pulls at me.
A monster at the driver’s side window mauls the man behind the wheel and rips out one of the driver’s eyes. He fights for his life, but he can’t see. The rig is on a collision course with the Subaru. I kick and kick at it. I reach in to her car and we lock arms. I try and pull her though the window, but she can’t fit. Sara pulls at me. We only have seconds to move.
“I’M SORRY!” I yell at the lady. I have to tear my arm away from hers. Sara and I dive for the side of the road. The semi crashes into the car and blows the back of the Subaru apart. Sparks fly as it grinds across the street. The Subaru hits the curb and blasts over a shrub that separates the street from the parking lot. Both the Subaru and the truck crash into a wall of stone. The Subaru explodes into a fireball and seconds after that the semi explodes into an even bigger fireball.
I sit up to readjust my backpack. I can feel the heat of the fire from here. How many more people will I see die today? I went my whole life never seeing anyone die.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t save her,” she dusts the asphalt from her hands. I stand up and give my back a quick twist to pop my vertebrae. Two creatures crawl out of the fire and I have a strong desire to take my spear and stab the hell out of them. We jog back to the car and watch the two charred and mangled bodies and I wonder about the science behind these things. They can have totally wrecked bodies and keep moving, but one stab to the brain and they are done? On top of that, how the hell does a dead person keep moving? Doesn’t the body need air? Science is not now, and never was, my strong point, but nothing about these things makes any sense.
I don’t want to but I get back into the disgusting blood and puke spattered Bronco. I feel deflated and tired. It has only been a little over an hour since that helicopter fell out of the sky, but it feels like I have been running a marathon all day. The thought of seeing this amount of carnage and destruction every day for the rest of my life is absolutely disheartening. When I think about my children witnessing this kind of brutality and loss it is beyond comprehension. Right now I have to put that out of my mind and keep moving. I get the Bronco rolling again.
“No more stops,” she spits venom at me.
“Where would you be if I didn’t stop,” I pull back onto the street.
“No more stops!” she says again. I get the feeling that she is the “last word in every argument” kind of girl. I step on it and head north. The busted out back window moves enough air in here to keep my wrecked nose from only smelling the puke and blood.
“How are you gonna get onto the 205 bridge?” asks Sara.
“We’ll take the on-ramp by the airport.”
“That’s a busy on-ramp. What do you think it’s going to be like today?”
“No one’s following the letter of the law when it comes to driving, so I’ll ride the curb if I have to. I’ll drive down the center pedestrian walkway if I have to,” I feel some blood drip down onto my upper lip.
“Can you look for some napkins in the glove box?” I ask her. She pops it open and luckily there is a handful. She hands me one. I run it over my upper lip, but the blood keeps coming. She takes one of the napkins and twists it.
“Here,” she hands it to me. I jam it up my nostril and grunt out in pain.
“Damn this nose,” I whimper. She twists another and I stick it in the other nostril. I look really cool. My nose is all red like Rudolph. It makes Sara giggle a little when I look over at her.
“I don’t normally get nosebleeds.”
She uses
some of the napkins to clean off the blood and puke on her, “What’s your wife’s name?” she asks. Devon reaches from the backseat for his own handful of napkins to clean himself with.
“Karen. My girls are Valerie and Robin.” Saying their names gives me a boost of energy. Sara looks back at Devon and sees that he’s dressed like me.
“What’s with the gear?”
“We looted some stuff from a sporting goods store,” Devon sits up to talk to her.
“They only had the one outfit?” she smirks. I peek a look back at Devon.
“No, this was the best they had...so that’s what we took.”
“Holy shit!” I yell. A mushroom cloud of black smoke rises in the distance. A few years ago Portland built a shopping center close to the airport. It sits right on the Columbia River. It is called Cascade Station. It has your typical bunch of shopping stores, a Best Buy and Oregon’s only Ikea. It is a popular destination in Portland. Right now it is on fire.
Steam begins to creep out from under the hood of the Bronco. The lady with the rifle put a hole in the radiator. Awesome. I am not looking forward to walking, but I will be glad to get the hell out of this chum bucket.
There is a very large field between us and the shopping center and the field is also connected to the freeway. It is only grass out there and it would be a huge shortcut if I drove across the field. I jump the curb and pop up onto the grass. The Bronco tears across the field.
“Where are we going?” Sara has cleaned most of the blood from her face.
“Shortcut,” I sound like a cartoon character with my nose all plugged up.
We get up onto a little ridge where we can see the shopping center, and to the west the Portland International Airport. Now we see where the smoke is coming from. A commercial airliner crashed. The plane looks like it hit the edge of the Ikea that sits the farthest east of the shopping center, and then slid across the massive parking lot that connects all of the stores. Half of the fuselage juts out of the Best Buy at the west end of the center. The smell of burning jet fuel fills the air. Along with what I guess is cheap Swedish wood and Chinese electronics. I stop the Bronco at the top of a small ridge so I can get a better look.
“What are you doing?” Sara asks.
“Let’s take a look,” I pull the keys and I get out of the car. I climb up onto the hood then the roof. We are in the middle of the grass field and there is no one around us so I feel pretty safe out here. The plane is a Boeing 747. The wings of the plane tore off during the crash and one ended up in a place called GolfSmith, the other in a Verizon Wireless store. The fuselage took out hundreds of cars in that parking lot. Most of them are on fire. People run in and out of the stores. Half of them are looting with arms full of discount clothing and cheap electronics. With their cars destroyed I wonder where they are going to put their new stolen property. The others are probably looking for their lost loved ones. Farther to the west is the airport and a few other planes have crashed onto the tarmac. The southern half of the tower that looks over the airport is missing, like it was cut by the world’s largest samurai sword.
There is gunfire coming from the airport. A National Guard station is nearby. I hope that they do better against the infected than the police. They have big guns and a bunch of Hummers at that base. I drove by it once on the way to a restaurant and it looked like there were at least thirty Hummers and other transport vehicles there. There are so many dead bodies. Between the airport and Cascade Station there are thousands of people and if they are not dead already they are about to be. This place is going to be crawling with the infected.
To my right is the 205 bridge that crosses the Columbia River into Vancouver and it is full of cars but they are still moving north and south. I scan the rest of the field and it is clear all the way to the 205 freeway. I jump down then I climb back into the Bronco and get it going.
“What’s going on?” Devon’s face has begun to swell up around his black eye.
“It’s biblical, man.”
“Oh,” he sits back and tries to rest.
“How did the bridge look?” asks Sara.
“Slow, but it’s moving,” I turn to the right and head east.
We head for a set of train tracks. It is the tracks to the mass-transit system that we call “The Max”. Most of the tracks are up on a raised brim of dirt, but there is a spot a little south of the tracks that is suspended. I aim for the suspended part and the Bronco fits under it easy. Steam is really pouring out from under the hood now and the temp gauge rests permanently in the red. The engine has a real nice knocking sound going. It has been a blessing while it lasted.
“What’s that noise?” Devon sits back up.
“We’ve overheated. It’s probably blown the head gasket,” I tell him. In my early twenties I owned a Mercedes-Benz. It was their starting model but it was still a Benz. I loved that car. It had leather seats, moon roof and power everything. At the time I didn’t have a very good job and I was not making enough money. I could not take care of it and I would forget to change the oil or add coolant. I would eventually overheat the engine, so I know exactly what those sounds are.
“What does that mean?” Devon’s head is right between ours.
“We don’t have much engine left,” says Sara.
“Really?” his voice cracks.
“Yep,” I concur.
The southbound lane of the freeway is pretty clear. A lot of people are like me. They live in Vancouver but work in Portland. The northbound lane on the other hand is packed. It is slower than a normal five o’clock rush hour. Vehicles are spread across the four lanes and into the two emergency lanes. They are bumper to bumper all the way up the bridge. It is a two-mile long bridge from Oregon into Washington. Closer to the Oregon side is Government Island, a large stretch of land in the middle of the Columbia River. It is covered with trees and the only way to get to it is by boat. I have lived here all my life and I have never set foot onto that island. I don’t know anyone with a boat and I have never had the means to own one myself. Plus the idea of spending all day on an island that has nothing on it but trees and no toilets doesn’t sound like a party to me. After Government Island the bridge takes a steep climb over the water to allow ships to pass below without needing a drawbridge. The bridge has four lanes in both directions and a small strip down the center for people to walk or ride bikes. There is no way this car will make it up the bridge in this traffic without overheating and stalling out.
“What are we gonna do?” Devon pats me on the shoulder. I pull the Bronco onto the southbound lane and head north. Cars zip by.
“What are you doing?” asks Sara.
“I’m gonna drive up the wrong side of the bridge,” I punch the gas. I stay in the emergency lane as cars race past me at over eighty miles an hour.
“This is outrageous!” Devon yells.
“We won’t make it otherwise.” Cars honk their horns at us as they pass. We approach the first exit off of 205, the one you would take to get to the airport. No one is going that way so we race past it.
We are now on the bridge. I hug tight to the concrete wall that lines the edge of the bridge. It is working. We are going to make it across. I sigh in relief.
“HOLY FUCK!” cries Sara. I try and see what she is looking at. It is another jumbo jet and it is headed right for the bridge. It drops out of the sky at three hundred miles an hour. The plane hits the bridge square on. Its left wing has dipped lower than the bridge so it cuts deep into the east side of 205. Then its body slams down onto the asphalt. It crushes all of the cars across all eight lanes. For a few terrible seconds time slows down. The plane explodes in a colossal fireball that engulfs everything in a fifty-yard radius. We are only a hundred yards away. The sound of the crash and the explosion is deafening. Even through the windshield I can feel the extreme heat. I slam down on the brakes. A car drives out of the fireball. Its front right tire has blown out and the driver loses control. The car is going to hit us head on. I swerve ou
t onto the freeway to avoid it. The car hits us and the Bronco spins. A truck hits our front end; we spin back around and start to roll. We smash around inside. My face is peppered with broken glass. My spear smacks around between the two front seats. Metal crushing, tires screeching and a hundred tons of concrete crumbling under the weight of the plane. I have never heard anything like it. This is it. We are dead. I know it. My head hits the steering wheel and everything goes black.
Chapter 10
I jerk awake. I am upside down in the Bronco. Devon lies on the ceiling knocked out. Sara is unconscious next to me in the passengers seat. I reach up and feel the gash on my forehead. I thought my head hurt before, now it is killing me. Between my broken nose, my neck injury from my first car crash, the back of my head smacking into the car during the fight with the blonde guy and now this deep cut on my forehead, I feel like quitting. There are screams in the distance outside of the Bronco. The reality of what happened and where I am sets in.
I have got to get out of here. We need to keep moving. I fight to get my seat belt undone, but I can’t get the button to release. I pull the knife from my hip and cut the safety belt. I fall down onto my head. Ouch. My hair mops up the blood on the ceiling as I fall on my neck and shoulder. My neck and ear grind into the glass shards. I twist and pivot and I get to my butt and sit upright. I take a drag of water from my pack then reach out and shake Devon.
