by R. J. Spears
He moved back another half step, rose up about a foot, peered out the side windows, and saw the SUV bearing down on his juggernaut, only a few feet away from impact. He quickly moved his finger back over the button and readied himself to press the button.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the motion of something flying through the air and coming through the bus window. It hit with a heavy thud on the floor and rolled down the aisle toward him, ending up just a few feet from his legs. His mind slipped away from reality for a couple milliseconds, trying to comprehend what this thing was, but was unable to immediately take it in because it was so preposterous. Denial was his mind’s first response, “This thing simply cannot be here. Not here. Not Now!” But reality is reality, and there was no denying the grenade on the floor. His rational thought processed quickly caught up, and he got it.
His survival instinct kicked in and took precedence as he quickly went into motion. He jumped down the aisle and then into a seat, hoping it would shield him from the blast. In his desperate escape from the grenade, he never depressed the detonation button .
The colossus nearly filled my vision when a bolt of light blasted my brain, nearly incapacitating me. This wasn’t a physical light at all and didn’t come from the external world, but from some internal source. It was metaphysical or supernatural as my consciousness was spirited away from the here and now to a different plane of existence. This new world was completely white with only one exception. In giant thick block letters, hanging in the air (if there were air in this place) was a single word -- TURN. Like a billboard, it was unavoidable and in my face, yet cryptic.
In this new plane of existence, I sensed there was no time as we knew it. Milliseconds, back in reality, were milliseconds, but in this place they could be centuries. How I knew this I couldn’t tell you, but I accepted it as the gospel truth.
This plane was tranquil and soothing. Something inside me relaxed more deeply than I had ever relaxed in my life. Heaven, Nirvana, Shangri-la, whatever it was, I knew if I could spend the rest of my existence there, I would, forsaking all others. If I had time to weep with joy I would have, but there was no more time because I was ripped from this place of perfection back to my reality behind the wheel of a speeding SUV.
The giant zombie was still in front of me and so close to the grill of the SUV that I felt it might be sitting on the dashboard. The smart thing would be to proceed and ram the son of a bitch into the next county, but there was no denying the message from my vision.
Almost against my will, I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left.
Time in this reality slowed down, but not like in the other one. It was like being in super slow motion, but I also I knew that physics was at work, and inertia wanted to flip the SUV and crush us cruelly against the pavement. I heard Kara gasp behind me as the wheels on the right side of the SUV left the ground. The truck tilted to such an extent, my center of balance felt as if it slipped off a cliff. Greg slid against me and nearly dislodged my grip on the steering wheel.
Through the side window, I clearly saw dirt and road grit on the pavement as the SUV balanced on the two left tires. Through the windshield, a parked car began to fill my field of view as I used all my strength to push the steering wheel to the right. It was as if I were steering the Titanic on that fateful night in the cold, dark ocean as it bore down on an iceberg. Nothing was happening fast enough. Still, I pulled the wheel for all I was worth.
At the last possible second, the SUV tilted back down, and the tires on the right side slammed to the pavement, bouncing all of us inside a foot in the air. The SUV started in an uncontrolled spin to the right as the backend kicked out to the left, bouncing off the parked car, nearly rattling my teeth out of my head. The impact knocked us back to the center, and I saw our escape path past the bus just ahead.
The path would take us off the street and over the sloping front yard of the last house before the intersection where the bus sat. It seemed altogether doable. I jammed my foot down on the gas pedal, and that’s the last thing I remembered for several minutes.
Anthony tried to cram all of his body into that impossibly small space between the bus seats. He was all about getting away from that damned grenade. In those final seconds, he looked down to see his right foot sticking into the aisle and wondered if he had time to pull it back. Then his mind flipped back to the task at hand, and his fingers felt across the buttons, searching for the detonator. Like a safe home, his finger found it again and depressed it.
Initially, he wasn’t sure if the explosion was outside the bus or inside. He found out the explosion was inside as he felt the shrapnel tear into his foot and he saw the interior of the bus fill with a fierce yellow and orange light. He never saw what happened outside since a river of red-hot, searing pain overwhelmed his senses.
Russell watched in amazement as the SUV, which had swerved away from the zombie at the last possible moment, nearly topple over as it slid on two wheels past the zombie. By some sort of miracle, the driver righted the vehicle, but it spun out of control into a parked car.
Russell would have stayed focused on the plight of the SUV, but things got really interesting with the giant zombie. A fountain of light exploded from the inside of the zombie like the bloom of a brilliant star, spreading out from the zombie as its body ripped apart, throwing off pieces of flesh and bone wrapped in angry flames. The concussion sound of the explosion quickly followed. The heat of the blast bowled into Russell and toppled him backwards as he watched the back of the SUV lift off the ground.
On his way to the ground, Russell reached up a hand and grabbed Paige who stood gaped-mouth at what was going on. His hand managed to grasp her coat at the waist. Involuntarily, she followed Russell in his descent as he tugged her down. Before they hit, the grenade went off inside the bus, filling it with an intense bright light, looking like a supernova.
The next thing I remembered was a face appearing in my window. It took a few seconds for it to come into focus. I was so stunned from whatever just happened behind us that I didn’t even care if the face belonged to the living or the dead. Once my senses cleared, I could see the face belonged to one of the living, a young guy, maybe sixteen, maybe twenty, but it was hard to tell because he had a baby face. But that didn’t make me feel any safer since the living had just been shooting the living shit out of us just seconds ago. He carried a rifle, the barrel aimed at the ground. If he wanted me, he had me dead to rights.
He pushed his head in the window and asked, “Are you all right?”
I must have looked as if I didn’t understand because he asked again, only much louder. This volume increase bored into my aching head like a rusty nail shot from an industrial strength nail gun.
“You look okay,” he said, “but the guy next to you doesn’t look so good.”
I slowly swiveled my head and looked to Greg who was crumpled against the passenger door, one eye open, the other squeezed shut, presumably against the pain.
“How about the people in the back?” he asked. “They okay?”
People in the back? People in the back! Then fear shot through me like a lightning bolt. Kara! I jerked around just in time to see Kara rise up from behind my seat, her nose bloodied and her right eye starting to swell.
“You all right?” I asked.
“My nose hurts a lot,” she said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said as I reached out to touch her shoulder.
A woman’s face appeared in the backseat passenger window. She looked familiar, but my brain was still rattled.
“Paige?” Kara asked.
The woman responded, “Kara?”
Then it came to me. Paige. She was Roger’s daughter.
A loud explosion sounded in the direction of the bus. When we looked that way, we saw a large fireball consuming the front of the bus.
“Who was on that bus?” I asked.
“A real son of a bitch,” the man said. “I called him the Lord of the Dead because he
controlled the zombies.”
“What happened to the humongous zombie?” I asked.
“He exploded.”
“Oh,” was all I could say.
“What? Who?” Travis asked while shaking his head. A massive black and blue goose egg was swelling on his forehead. His eyes looked partially glazed.
“Where’s your dad?” Kara asked.
Paige’s face broke, and she looked away.
“Listen, I’m sorry to break up this reunion, but there’s a whole shitload of zombies coming down the hill,” the young guy said. “We really need to be going.”
Again, as a group, we looked back up the street and, indeed, what we saw looked as if every zombie at the hospital was coming down the street. The mass of them was like a slow motion river of decaying flesh with arms, legs, and teeth.
“Can you fit us in?” the guy asked.
“Well, let me see if it starts,” I said. I turned the key in the ignition, and unlike the other times, the engine came to life immediately and without protest.
“Get in,” I said.
“I need to make sure he’s dead,” Paige said.
“There’s no time,” the guy said.
A series of small explosions started on the bus. There must have been ammunition on board.
“Hey, he’s right,” I said, “what’s your name?”
“Russell,” he said.
“Well, both of you get in because this train is leaving town. Like now,” I said.
Russell didn’t hesitate and jumped in beside Kara. Paige was caught in indecision, her feet leaning toward the bus, but also stepping toward us.
“Paige, we have to go,” Russell said.
Tears streamed down her face. This did not bode well for our friends at the church, but after what we had just been through, I didn’t have to courage or energy to ask.
“Paige,” Russell said again, “please.”
The zombies were only thirty feet away, and the clock was counting down. The fire roared on the bus, filling the passenger compartment. She took in the bus one more time and then turned and climbed into the SUV beside Travis who still looked out of it.
Her door was barely closed when I slammed down the gas pedal. I looked over my shoulder as we drove away. Zombies swarmed over the scene we had just vacated, but skirted around the bus, which was now an inferno, fully engulfed in fire. The flames reached thirty feet in the air lighting up the now dimming sky.
Chapter 47
All Over But the Crying
Greg came to when we left the city limits, but his face was pale and drawn. Kara repacked his dressing with some sterile gauze that we had in our emergency kit. She learned that the bullet was still somewhere inside Greg, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it until we got him to Doc Wilson.
It was a somber trip back to The Manor as Paige and Russell recounted the attacks on their home and the church and gave us the story on the man in the bus. He sounded like a real evil bastard.
Mercifully, we didn’t encounter any more zombies on the way home. The night sky was dark when we started up the long drive to The Manor. I honked the horn to get the attention of the guards, we had called ahead, so I knew they were expecting us.
People poured out of the front door when I pulled up. Doc Wilson was one of the first to get to us. “How badly has Greg been shot?” he asked. Several people gasped when they saw the condition of the SUV.
“It’s not good,” I said. “He’s bleeding pretty badly.”
Brandon appeared at my door and asked, “Who are these other people?”
“There’s no time for that,” Doc Wilson said. “I need help getting Greg inside. Someone get me a stretcher.”
There was a commotion, and a minute later, two guys pushed a gurney out the door, and Doc supervised Greg’s transfer from the truck to the gurney. Greg gritted his teeth as they moved him but didn’t moan or groan. I’d be crying like a baby.
A hand grabbed my arm and spun me around. Naveen stood in front of me, tears coming down her face. “I thought you were dead,” she said.
“No, no,” I said as I reached out and hugged her. “There’s no way I was leaving you alone to take care of all of this.”
Several people recognized Paige and embraced her. She tried to talk, but the emotions of the day overwhelmed her, and she broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.
Kara and I were beside the gurney as it was rolled inside. I told Naveen to go to her room and I’d be up later. The people’s faces inside looked ashen as we went by them. Some looked utterly stunned. Having Greg injured like this was a big blow to the group’s morale.
Because of all the help, we had Greg down to the Doc’s infirmary in no time. As soon as we entered, I saw that Jason and Hub were still side-by-side in different beds. Hub looked sweaty and delirious again, and Jason seemed as if he had taken a few steps back in his recovery. He looked weak and shrunken, his pallor white.
Doc Wilson demanded that all the people leave the room with the exception of Kara, me and the other leaders. Kara was nearly dead on her feet, but she went to work preparing what the Doc would need to remove the bullet from Greg’s chest and to do whatever repairs were needed.
Travis stumbled over to Hub’s bed and sat down in a chair. He took his dad’s hand and said,” Hey, Pop, we got the stuff that we need to help the Doc get you better.”
Hub didn’t stir or react at all. Travis continued to hold Hub’s hand and started praying.
I pulled the Doc aside as he prepped himself and asked, “How bad is he?”
“He’s bad,” Doc said in a low voice as he snapped on some rubber surgical gloves. “He’s lost a lot of blood. His BP is almost non-existent. We’re low on saline, and I have no idea what his blood type is if he needs more. Joel, I’ve got to get to work.”
Doc moved over to the bed where Greg lay and started arranging the medical instruments he’d need for the surgery. Kara handed him some scissors, and he started to cut away Greg’s shirt to get better access to the wound but stopped when Greg raised a hand and motioned for me and the others to come over.
I don’t know how he did it, but he found the strength to talk. “Okay, we need a plan if I don’t make it.”
I cut him off. “You’re going to make it.”
“I don’t have the strength to debate you,” his voice weak and broken. “If I don’t make it, Joel, you’re in charge.”
What? That was all I could think. There’s no way I can lead these people. I can barely lead myself.
“But what about Travis or Brandon?” I asked.
“There’s no time for discussion. I don’t have it in me. You do think outside the box but are completely devoted to these people. You’re the best choice.”
Doc Wilson raised an arm and waved the group back. “The decision’s made. Now, everybody get back. I have work to do.”
The group did move back, and I felt the events of the day sweep over me. This was compounded by Greg’s revelation that I would now be in charge. I felt a wave of dizziness sweep over me, and I backed into a chair and sat down.
The surgery took hours. It seemed that Doc was in a battle of his own, fighting the bleeding, maintaining Greg’s blood pressure, and keeping him alive. I sat off in a corner and watched helplessly. The rest of the leadership team stayed in the room as the Doc did his work. Somewhere about 4:00 AM, I drowsed off but woke up to hear the Doc shouting.
“He crashing,” Doc said.
Kara ran over to cabinet to get him something. I was groggy and didn’t hear what it was, but Kara’s expression was near panic. She ripped the cabinet open, got a medicine bottle, and a very large syringe, and brought it back to the bed.
The Doc loaded the syringe and held it poised over Greg for a few seconds, caught in a dilemma that I couldn’t figure out. He committed himself and jammed it into Greg’s chest. He flung the syringe aside and started CPR. This went on for several minutes as he frantically pushed down on Greg’s chest over and o
ver again. Kara watched on, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I stood and started toward the bed, but Kara held up her hand to ward me off.
“Come on, dammit Greg. Fight,” Doc said as he climbed onto the bed and straddled Greg’s body. He cursed several times and called Greg’s name as he frantically kept performing CPR.
I don’t remember how long this went on. I felt a coldness seep into my body, a hopeless dread.
The Doc worked like a man possessed, but things were sliding away. After a couple more minutes, Kara stepped up next to the bed and put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s over.”
“No, it’s not,” Doc shouted and continued the compressions.
“He’s gone,” Kara said. “You can’t bring him back.”
The Doc stopped and looked around the room blankly like a child lost in the woods, his arms dangling at his side. Kara reached out and tugged gently at the Doc’s sleeve, urging him to get off the bed. It took a few seconds, but he complied and moved to a chair where he sat with his head in his hands.
I felt tears coming down my cheeks.
Chapter 48
Like a Dark Phoenix
A searing pain shot up from what was left of his right foot. Pin pricks of pain dotted his legs and back. The stench of his charred clothing and flesh almost made him gag, but he pushed the impulse down.
He lay on his back in the dew-covered grass. The moon hung silently over him, sitting placidly among the stars, flat as a plate.
His memory was fragmented. He remembered the explosion. Someone hit his foot with a red-hot sledge hammer. The bus was safe; then it wasn’t as fire filled the driver’s area.
He had to move, but the pain in his foot overwhelmed him. He nearly blacked out and woke up thinking someone was shooting in the bus. The fire had ignited his spare ammunition. He came back to full consciousness and found the cabin filled with a thick, choking smoke.
