by M. Van
“Do you see them?” I asked, peering through the rearview mirror. Ash craned her neck to look out the back. She shook her head.
“Nothing yet.”
Around us, the airport ground made way for trees, and the buildings had long since disappeared from view behind a wall of green. Ahead the road seemed to split into a left or right option. Without checking for traffic, I made a hard left turn. Ash slammed into her door even with the seatbelt snug around her body. This vehicle wasn’t made for a person the size of Ash. Her frail body almost disappeared in the enormous seats. She grunted some curse words and grabbed the oh-shit handle over the door.
“Where are we goin’?” she asked.
“No idea,” was the only thing I could say. Focused on the road I saw some lights coming from a building as it rose beyond the trees. We were entering the outskirts of town. It wouldn’t be long before we’d encounter the first soldiers. I didn’t know how far the extent of Dr. David’s power went. I had learned he led the Federal Mortem Defense Team.
The name was clearly new and so would be the agency or team backing it. I wasn’t entirely sure how these kinds of operations worked inside the US, or anywhere else for that matter, but I knew some agencies exceeded authority over the military in crisis situations. Given the agency’s name, I presumed this would be one of these cases. Dr. David would only need to claim we were escaped infection carriers, which basically we were. Not a general or other figure of authority within the military would deny him the opportunity to catch us. Anyhow, I expected the soldiers we encountered would have instructions to take us in.
The familiar sound of a jet-like engine and rotors cutting through the air reached me over the noise of the Knight’s engine. A glance at Ash told me she heard it too. She slid into the back without a word and started peering out the window.
“Do you see it?” I asked.
“Hang on.”
She maneuvered further down to the back window and popped up in my rearview mirror. “It’s a big one comin’ up behind us,” she yelled.
“Crap, crap, crap,” I muttered to myself. For once I would just have liked to catch a break. I hit the gas pedal harder and gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I was pretty sure this road would lead straight to the river, and we would have to find a way to cross it. As we sped along, the eerie feeling that soldiers would be waiting for us crept up on me.
First I heard Ash yelp, and then there was a thud as I hit the brakes.
“What the hell,” she bit out.
“Look,” I replied. She crawled to the front of the Knight and pushed herself up on the back of my driver seat.
“Oh, shit,” was all she managed to say.
As I had thought, the road had led to the river and a bridge crossing, but as I had feared, it turned out to be a dead end. There was an extensive roadblock on the bridge, and, because of the river, there wasn’t a way around it. Engulfed by massive floodlights, the entire bridge seemed green with uniforms. Trucks, jeeps, and even a tank blocked our way.
I turned to Ash, who had gone bone-white while staring at the uniformed men. The soldiers at the roadblock in front of us didn’t seem to have an interest in coming up to us. Either they didn’t know about us, or they didn’t care. For all I knew a bunch of them were boxing us in from behind, and then there was that helicopter.
Ash slid into the seat next to me and buckled in.
“The chopper hovers behind us at some distant,” she said, “as if it’s waiting for us.” I took in a deep breath. The pounding of my heart felt relentless inside my chest. The bridge wasn’t an option; being captured by Dr. David’s men wasn’t an option. I didn’t know the area, so taking a side street didn’t seem like a good idea. My hand slid to the gear shifter while my gaze fell on Ash.
“What do you think?” I asked. She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, trying to channel that indifferent teenager she pretended to be most of the time, but I could read the fear in her eyes. She turned her head so she could glance out the rear window in search of that helicopter. My eyes returned to the bridge where someone who must have been in charge started to wave his arms. It didn’t take long for their vehicles to be set in motion. Through the rearview mirror, several dots of light in the dark grew in size as they approached. Without waiting for an actual reply from Ash, I set the Knight in reverse and floored it.
| 12
I watched the monitor, so I didn’t even need to look out the back to drive the Knight in reverse. Ash gripped her seatbelt for added support.
“Is it even possible to make a U-turn with this thing?” she said. Her voice came out high pitched, which didn’t add to my confidence. I decided not to reply until I could answer her question. In front of me two jeeps closed in fast, and if we wanted any chance at all to evade them and the vehicles approaching from behind, I needed to turn the Knight around. Grass and bushes passed us in reverse as the Knight plowed on. None of the plants would have caused a problem for the enormous vehicle, but I couldn’t tell whether a ditch might hide in the brush cover.
The jeeps where nearly on top of us, while a truck full of soldiers followed them. A man dressed in green with a helmet on his head hung out of the window of one of the jeeps and waved at us to slow down. It occurred to me what we were driving. I wasn’t used to driving armor-plated vehicles like the Knight, and sometimes I needed a reminder of what this baby could withstand. Shooting at us wouldn’t do them any good. The bullets would bounce right off. I wasn’t even sure if that tank could make a dent in the Knight’s armor, but I wasn’t willing to find out.
When I noticed a parking lot coming up on our left, I didn’t hesitate. Without slowing down, I pulled the wheel and steered us in backward. Dust clouded around us as the wheels tackled the gravel littered on the ground. It wasn’t a perfect U-turn—in fact, it didn’t even come close as the vehicle came to a full stop.
Unfortunately, one of the jeeps crossed our path and tried to block our exit. It was the jeep with the man hanging out the window. He opened the door as the jeep came to a stop. I didn’t wait to find out what he wanted, but shifted gears and floored it. I headed straight for the jeep. The man pulled his leg inside with a pale complexion on his face right before the Knight slammed its bumper into the side of the jeep.
The smaller vehicle wasn’t a match as the Knight grazed its side. Ash gave another yelp when the Knight shuddered from the impact. I gripped the steering wheel even harder and then pulled it to the right. As I hit the road, the lights of the approaching vehicles nearly blinded me. It seemed that their drivers were as impressed with the Knight’s size as I was because they instantly dispersed to the sides of the road. Increasing speed, we headed down the road back the way we’d come.
Dumbfounded, I glanced at the rearview mirror to check if that had actually happened the way I thought it had. Red brake lights blinked in the night, followed by the white ones that indicated reverse. I blew out a breath, relieved we had made it this far, but my shoulders couldn’t relax—we still had a helicopter on our tail.
“Where’s that chopper?” I called out to Ash. She immediately went to find it as her gaze shifted through the different windows.
“Never mind,” I said as I spotted the thing hovering ahead, lights blinking in the dark. It was quite a distance out, and Ash hadn’t exaggerated when she said it looked as if it were waiting for us.
By this time, the Knight had reached about eighty miles an hour, and we were closing in on it fast. Behind us, some of the jeeps appeared in the rearview mirror, but they seemed to keep their distance. They kept in line with us but didn’t seem to be in a hurry to catch us. It could be they figured the helicopter would keep a visual on us anyway. They could easily follow us until we ran out of gas.
Ash glanced behind us, and it seemed she’d come to the same conclusion.
“Now what?” she said. I ran a hand through my hair. I had no idea what to do. In front of us, the helicopter tipped its nose. For a secon
d I feared heavy machine-gun fire might rain down on us, or even a rocket, but when I looked closer, the machine looked more like a transport helicopter than the assault kind.
The helicopter tilted to its side as a door slid open. Ash pointed a finger at it, and I peered into the darkness. A soft green light highlighted the inside of the cabin.
“What are they doin’?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” was all I could reply. A person dressed in an Air Force flight suit—helmet and all—stood in the opening and waved at us. What were they doing indeed?
I glanced at Ash, but she had a similar confused expression as I must have had. The person in the opening kept waving and pointing at the car. I just kept pushing the car along the road. There wasn’t any way of evading the chopper, and I didn’t know what to do. The person waved again, and this time held a hand signaling a phone to his or her helmet.
“Eh, what is he doin’,” Ash asked. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the vehicles that had been following us had backed off. Was the person signaling to them? But if he or she were why wouldn’t they just communicate via radio or something? My eyes fell on the dash where a red light blinked on the middle console, and I flicked the switch underneath it. There weren’t trying to communicate with our pursuers—they were trying to talk to us.
“Ash,” I said, “I think they want us to talk to them.” She looked at me curiously and then at the console.
“You want me to pick it up,” she asked. I checked our mirrors and then focused on the road ahead. It looked clear, but it didn’t seem smart to distract myself by talking on the phone with the same people who wanted to capture us. I nodded to Ash.
“Be careful of what you say,” I said.
She grunted a nervous laugh. “Wouldn’t want to give away our position.” She grabbed the mic and pushed the button.
“Hello.”
“Jeez, not-a-kid,” an exaggerated voice exclaimed, “took you long enough.” It took me a second to place the distorted voice over the microphone, but Ash didn’t even hesitate.
“Angie!” she exclaimed in reply. I looked up at the helicopter and, in the soft green light that came from inside the cabin, saw the person in the open door waving at us. At the realization it might be friendlies in that chopper, my heart lifted slightly, still perfectly aware of the small army of military vehicles following us.
“Listen,” Angie said without giving Ash any chance to interrupt. “We have come up with yet another plan to get your asses out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Hey,” Ash retorted, but I held up a hand to make her shut up. She gave me a disgruntled look but held her mouth. A muffled chuckle reached us over the mic before Angie came back on.
“Follow us. We’ll guide you into zombie-land,” she said. “And when the soldiers back off, we’ll pick you up.”
“Follow you where?” Ash said and then grunted as I grabbed the mic from her hand.
“Please explain that, and who’s ‘we’,” I said in a firm tone.
“Magsss,” Angie said, drawling out my name, “I have a very lonely FBI agent with me who is dying for some company.” As she said it, a head poked out the door and waved. Because of the helmet, I couldn’t tell whether it was actually him, but I felt a blush creep up my neck anyway.
Angie continued to explain that zombies had overrun a town not far from here. The zombies might keep the military from following and would give the helicopter a chance to pick us up. The mic stayed silent after that, which made me feel disappointed. This seemed stupid because jeeps were chasing us, along with a truck filled with soldiers who were looking to capture us, not to mention we were about to drive into an infected town overrun with zombies.
I glanced at Ash and could tell fear battled with relief inside her.
For some reason, the thought crept in my mind that stepping on to that helicopter would mean leaving the Knight behind. Again stupid, but this vehicle had been our home for the past several months.
Still, we had to get organized before we hit the town and that could mean a distraction for Ash.
“Why don’t you get back there and pack the stuff that we need?” I said. She gave me a wary look before she managed a reply.
“You think this’ll work?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. It had better work because I wouldn’t give myself up to Dr. David. I’d rather have a zombie eat me, I think.
“It’ll work,” I said determined. Ash managed a half smile and then made her way into the back. I heard her shuffle around as I followed the chopper onto a side road.
| 13
It wasn’t long until the town came into view. We knew the zombies followed their meals, tracking long distances across the country in pursuit of the uninfected. We had passed them, and they had overtaken us several times these past few months, but it hadn’t made me ready for what I was about to see.
Like most, this town had prepared for the zombies’ arrival. They thought they could ride it out. They had seen the news stories and the footage of New York or other areas but never thought it would get that bad in their neighborhood. They were always wrong.
The main road into town sat clogged with the moaning infected. They shambled across the road in their own private parade. You could see people watching from their boarded-up houses as zombies clawed at their front doors. Some houses stood better against the infected onslaught than others. However, deadbolts and a few boarded-up windows weren’t enough to keep the enormous number of zombies out of the family homes and shops. Glass shattered, cars crashed, and people screamed. You could see the uninfected running frantically to get to safety, but there wouldn’t be any to find. An old man tried to fend off a couple of zombies with a cane. A woman ran across the street, carrying a baby in her arms.
I rammed the pair of zombies following her. The Knight shook with the effort, but I knew it wouldn’t do her any good. Ash yelped from the back, and I saw her intention to get to the front.
“Don’t come out here,” I said in an urgent tone. “Just get our stuff ready, okay.”
She looked at me and then at the side windows. On the floor of the truck, her view was limited. She glanced back at me through the rearview mirror.
“Okay?” I repeated at a softer tone this time. She nodded and whispered a barely audible okay.
The chopper guided us deeper into the center of town. Behind us, I couldn’t see the military vehicles anymore. The plan seemed to work. I started to get my hopes up but hadn’t forgotten how much of a killer hope could be.
I maneuvered the Knight down a one-way street that, instead of cars, sat infested with the infected. These zombies had been wandering around for a while, and their bodies hadn’t held well against the forces of nature. Mere flesh over bone shambled across the road, but the Knight had no trouble plowing a hole through the mass of bodies. The ones we passed barely reacted. Usually, they threw themselves at anything that moved, but these zombies seemed to be to worn out, or their brains had turned even further into mush.
The chopper hovered ahead of us when I turned into what seemed like a marketplace. The open area sat surrounded with what used to be groceries, flower shops, and what not. In the middle of the square stood an old fountain that appeared to have seen better days. A zombie had fallen into it, and its arms and legs splashed in the water.
The mic crackled and I picked it up. Angie’s voice came back on.
“This is it,” she said. “We need to hurry.”
After I stopped the Knight underneath the helicopter, I turned to check on Ash’s progress when I heard shots being fired in the near distance. The rapid report of automatic gunfire pierced the night sky.
“Ash, you ready?” I asked as I maneuvered between the front seats. She gave me a sad look when I faced her.
“What?” I asked.
“We’ll have to leave everything we have,” she said as her eyes examined the stuff we had accumulated over the past months, including her trusted w
heelchair.
“It’s just stuff,” I said but felt a similar regret. Her hand brushed the frame of her chair. That chair I had brought back from a scavenger run in Bergen Beach, which had almost cost me my life all that time ago. Even so, I had a hard time saying good-bye to that thing; it had brought Ash as well as me a sense of freedom along with hope.
I grabbed my old backpack. It had been with me even longer, and I felt glad that I could at least bring that.
“Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said as a metallic voice screeched outside.
“Ash, Mags, get a move on,” Angie’s voice boomed over a loudspeaker. Combined with the automatic gunfire, I didn’t need any more incentive to move. I swung my old backpack over my shoulders and ushered Ash to the front of the Knight.
Hunkered down in the driver seat, I grabbed the mic, telling Angie we were on our way, and slammed my fist on the button to lower the window.
The closeness of the zombies milling at my window spooked me for a moment, until I realized they wouldn’t have to be a threat. Our genetic makeup would allow us to step outside without being attacked, as long as we didn’t arouse them too much. Still, there were a lot of them crammed against the car.
On her side, Ash had lowered her window and pulled her nose up at the smell of decay wafting in through the opening.
“We’ll never be able to get the door open,” she said in a concerned voice.
Another report of gunfire startled us both. The zombies, enticed by the noise, started to move in the direction of the sounds. They came from all directions and had to pass the Knight to get to the soldiers firing their weapons. Body after body slid by our windows. One or two poked their heads up, sniffed the air, and moved on.
“Let’s go,” Angie’s mechanical voice boomed over our heads. “We’ll have company any minute.”
Ash shrugged and pointed a finger at the ceiling.
