by Jason Brant
“Hold on to your ass!” Lance floored the accelerator and jerked the steering wheel to the left.
The bearded man stepped out of the way as the truck hopped the curb. Tires spun on an overgrown lawn, kicking dirt at the men running behind.
Guns exploded all around them.
Bullets ricocheted off the reinforced exterior of the truck, denting the walls and chipping the paint.
Cass ducked behind the dash as the windshield spider webbed in front of her.
Lance lost most of the visibility out of that side of the truck as her window also cracked, but held in place. He ignored everything else around him as he aimed the truck directly at Ralph.
The old man locked his gaze on Lance. He spit a line of tobacco juice on the lawn as he raised his M4, taking aim at the front of the truck.
The windshield cracked in front of Lance from the impact of bullets. Despite his lowered visibility, Lance could still make out the back end of the truck and Ralph’s silhouette.
He pressed the accelerator to the floor and squeezed the steering wheel in a death grip, his hands grinding into the vinyl.
Ralph dove out of the way at the last second, flying by the driver’s side window in a blur. In the mirror, Lance watched the old man roll to a knee and take aim at the back of the truck. More bullets bounced off the steel.
The truck slid in the grass as it went around the tractor-trailer, missing a tree in the yard by inches. Lance spun the wheel and brought them back to the road.
Cass sat up again. “What the hell are these guys doing? They’re going to call a shitload of attention to themselves!”
“They’re crazy, redneck assholes!”
“No shit!” Cass unbuckled the holster on her hip and pulled the pistol out.
“What are you going to do with that? You’re holding a pea shooter compared to the goddamn arsenal they have.”
Dozens of cars were parked along the edges of the street behind the eighteen-wheeler. Men sat in lawn chairs around a fire in the yard of another home, weapons resting across their laps. Their heads swiveled around as the armored vehicle flew by, their shouts fading quickly.
More people, mostly men, flooded out of the houses that lined the street. The majority of them held rifles and shotguns and wore flannel or camouflage.
“How many of these crazy bastards are there?” Cass asked.
“Too many.”
Three or four tanker trucks were tucked away on the small road behind the houses. They were parked end to end, taking up most of the space beyond the small, fenced-in yards.
Another big rig with a fuel tank on the back, straddled the street ahead, effectively closing off the neighborhood. Two trucks, both jacked up with lift kits, swung through an alley, pulling in behind Lance and Cass.
The window beside Lance cracked at two distinct points and splintered outward.
“We’re going to be driving blind soon!”
Lance cut the wheel toward the lawns again, crushing a parked motorcycle with the grill. The trucks followed behind, mere feet away, men hanging out of the passenger windows with pistols in their hands.
Two guards stood by the tanker ahead, popping off shots as fast as they could.
Lance maneuvered around this barricade as he had the first, but he lost control when one of the tires slammed against a missing section of the sidewalk, jerking the wheel in his hands. The backend swung around, fishtailing through shrubbery separating two plots of land. The rear bumper crashed against a tree, tearing it away, jolting Cass against her seatbelt.
The armored truck ground to a slow crawl in an instant. One of the trucks following them, now visible through the passenger side window, accelerated toward them. Lance hit the gas and swung left.
The pursuing vehicle rammed them by the rear tire, rocking the entire truck. Lance’s head bounced off the window beside him, pain blooming behind his eyes.
Cass grabbed the handle on her door, pushing her other hand against the dash to brace herself. “Get us the fuck out of here!”
“Working on it.” Lance gritted his teeth. “These psychos are trying to flip us!”
In the mirror, Lance saw the devastated front end of the other truck. Steam rose from its grill. The men inside slumped against their doors, the seatbelts not connected.
Lance got them moving again, steering back to the road. A grinding nose came from behind Cass as they picked up speed again.
“What is that?” Lance asked. His attention was divided between avoiding obstacles in the road and swerving from side to side, trying to keep the other truck from passing them. He didn’t dare look anywhere else.
Cass jerked around in her seat, trying to see through her broken window. “I can’t tell. Might be something with the tire though!”
“Damn!” Lance moved them to the right side of the road, allowing their pursuers to pull even with them on the other side. “Hang on!”
He swerved as fast as he could, smashing against the lifted truck. The man hanging out of the passenger window, who had been shooting at them with a pistol, was caught between the large vehicles. He screamed as his ribs splintered in his chest, his arm rending at an odd angle.
The truck veered away as the driver shouted at his ruined passenger, not paying attention to what lay ahead.
They crashed into a tree at almost fifty miles an hour. The dying man, his upper body still hanging from the window, flew from the truck, landing in a driveway thirty feet away. He slid across the asphalt, leaving a gruesome trail in his wake.
Cass unbuckled herself and reached for her door handle.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lance grabbed her forearm, pulling her back.
She tore herself free. “I need to see what that grinding noise is. We can’t afford to stop and check, so I’m going to poke my head out.”
Lance didn’t like that plan. In fact, it felt completely moronic to him. She was right in one way though—they couldn’t stop. More of that maniacal group would be coming.
“Be careful,” he said.
The road opened up a bit, the amount of obstructions lessening. Lance wondered if the men had moved the cars away, giving themselves a faster way to come and go from their quarantined neighborhood. He would have loved to ask them where they hid every night when the Vladdies came out to play.
“Just don’t hit anything.” Cass opened her door, having to lean against it because of the wind rushing past. She stuck her head through the opening.
She pulled herself back inside and slammed the door, buckling herself in again.
“And?” Lance asked.
“The fender is bent into the tire.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, that tire is going to pop. Soon.”
“Damn!”
Daywalkers became more prevalent as they got further away from the militia camp. Most of them stumbled after the truck, crying out as they fell behind. A few moved quickly, their bodies already morphing into the terrors they would soon become.
Lance had to slow down. Obstacles became more prominent after a few hundred yards. The infected managed to keep up as he brought their speed down to just under twenty miles an hour.
A bridge came into view as they approached another bend.
The middle was blown out. Sawhorses blocked the entrance, just like the others they’d encountered.
“Wait a second.” Lance moved his head around, trying to find a spot of the windshield he could see through better. “I think that’s the West End Bridge.”
“So?”
“That means the stadium is close.”
“Thank god.”
“You can say that again.”
“Thank god.”
Lance’s nerves were too shot to laugh. “Bitch.”
“Dumbass.”
They reached another clear spot in the road and Lance coaxed the truck’s accelerator down, wanting to get some distance from the daywalkers.
The tire popped.
Incredible pres
sure yanked at the steering wheel, threatening to tear it from Lance’s hands again. He squeezed it as hard as he could, fighting to keep the truck on course.
His foot moved to the brake just as the other right tire blew.
The truck swung sideways, flipping onto its side, sliding down the street.
Lance flew into his seatbelt, the strap bruising his skin. Cass shouted something beside him that he couldn’t make out. Her blonde hair waved in the air as she clutched at the seat.
The windshield finally broke away, grinding under the truck as it slid on.
Sparks flew into their faces.
Dirt stung their eyes.
The truck collided with a sports car parked in the middle of the street, both doors open. The impact finally brought them to a halt. Lance was suspended in the air by his seatbelt, Cass leaning against her crumpled door.
“Ouch.” Blood rushed to Lance’s head, pressure building.
Cass pressed the button to her buckle, her hips falling to the door, landing on top of her axe. “Get moving—we’ve got two armies coming after us.”
Lance followed her lead, but grabbed onto the steering wheel as he freed himself. His legs swung out from under him, hanging beside Cass. He lowered himself to the door, careful not to fall on his injured foot too hard.
Cass ducked and stepped through the opening where the windshield should have been. She reached back through and grabbed her pistol from a pile of glass.
The machete that Lance had sitting beside him on the seat was gone. He searched the small area of the cab, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
“Let’s go!” Cass stood beside the truck, staring at the oncoming hoard of daywalkers. “Now!”
Lance stumbled from the wreckage, still disoriented from the crash. He pulled the hunting knife from its sheath and stepped beside Cass. His mouth went slack when he saw the riotous mass coming for them from down the street.
They ran, following the road around the bend. The bridge to their right had nothing to offer so they kept going.
Heinz Field came into view as they passed a group of trees, still a half mile away at the least. A helicopter rose into the air from the center of the stadium, banking away and disappearing as it flew east.
Lack of food sapped the endurance from Lance’s muscles. His breathing became ragged and shallow.
“I don’t think I can make it,” he gasped.
Cass didn’t slow. “You don’t have a choice.”
Though she was right, that didn’t give Lance any extra energy. His stride became sloppy, knees threatening to give out.
The pops of distant gunfire came from the stadium.
Engines roared behind them.
“Here come the marauders.” Lance looked over his shoulder and saw the daywalkers getting closer.
“The what?”
“The militia.”
“Geez, I thought that I gave a lot of things nicknames,” Cass huffed.
Hundreds of the newly infected clogged the street ahead.
Lance and Cass slowed to a stop, bent at the waist, trying to catch their breath.
Barbed wire-covered sawhorses and chain link fences blocked the street, running down to the river. Dozens of daywalkers, maybe hundreds, were caught in the razor wire, their flesh tearing as they tried to press their way through.
“My god.” Cass stared at the mass of death ahead, her head shaking. “This was a bad idea.”
Lance looked at the oncoming group behind them, hearing the engines of chasing vehicles. Time was running out.
A straggler, blue-veined and eyeless, weaved around an abandoned Hyundai Santa Fe heading for Cass. It loosed a glass-shattering shriek as it closed in on her.
Cass planted her heel and spun, the axe swinging in a wide arc.
The daywalker’s head separated from its shoulders as Cass finished the smooth movement. The lopped-off cranium bounced off the street as the body crumpled to its back, limbs twitching.
“You’re such a bad ass with that thing,” Lance said.
“Won’t do us a whole lot of good in about twenty seconds.” She placed the head of the axe on the ground and leaned against the handle, watching the infected close in from behind them.
Lance looked around in desperation, knowing they were knocking on death’s door.
A side street on the left had more of the daywalkers coming down it. Only the river on their right looked safe.
“The river! I hope you can swim.” Lance grabbed Cass’ arm as he ran by her.
“What?”
Lance pointed at the edge of the water. The last of the daywalkers stood a few feet in from the shore, caught in the barbed wire. “None of them are in the water!”
They hopped over a guardrail, landing in the rock-covered shoulder, and ran down the bank.
A foot-pedal boat floated fifty feet beyond the shore, lolling on the current. Lance pointed at it as they ran, a glimmer of hope welling inside. It was just far enough away that he didn’t know if he had the strength to make the swim.
Cass said, “Can you make it that far?”
“Gotta try. Drowning would be better than being eaten alive.”
Another of the sick, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, tore himself away from the barbed wire as they approached.
Cass severed his right arm with an overhead swing of her axe. They kept going as he screamed behind them, arcs of sanguine fluid shooting from the exposed socket.
They reached the shore, Lance splashing knee-high into the water.
“Hold on.”
He turned around. “What?”
Two trucks and a motorcycle roared down the road, coming in behind the swarm of daywalkers. The marauders had finally caught up.
“Help me get my axe in the holster.” Cass grabbed the blade, lifting it over her head and aiming the handle at her back.
“Fuck the axe! They’re coming!”
“No! Help me!” She high-stepped into the water beside him, eyes blazing.
Lance wanted to argue with her, but he knew they were out of time. He spun her around by the shoulders and grabbed the bottom of the axe’s handle, guiding it into the holster. Cass worked it the rest of the way in, letting Lance secure the flap that held it in place.
He didn’t waste any time as he waded further into the Allegheny River. When he was waist high, Lance submerged his chest and shoulders, gasping as the chilly water sucked his breath away.
Ten seconds of freestyle swimming told him that he didn’t have the energy to make it to the boat that way. He rolled over and tried the backstroke, letting himself float as best he could.
Cass pulled away with powerful kicks and fluid, graceful movements. Lance marveled at her endurance and athleticism.
He lifted his head, watching the mayhem on land.
The trucks and motorcycle skidded to a stop, tires screeching. Men piled out of the vehicles, weapons raised, bullets flying. They shot at the backs of the daywalkers that chased Lance and Cass, cutting a quarter of them down in an instant.
One of the men shouted, pointing toward the water. The others swung their guns around and shot at Lance.
“Swim faster!” Lance yelled, unsure if Cass could hear him or not.
Sprouts of water flew into the air in front of Lance as bullets zipped into the river. He urged himself on as cramps racked his back and hips. Agony tore at his muscles as he swam on.
The infected shifted their attention to the men as they stopped to reload. Their unintelligible shouts floated over the water. The militia returned their fire to the infected, spraying them with shotguns and automatic rifles.
Lance’s legs gave out. His head dipped under the surface, water invading his nose and stinging his eyes. Panic gripped him, his muscles quaking as cramps consumed him. He tried to relax, needing to let his body float.
He failed.
His arms splashed feebly as he watched the light reflecting off the surface of the water move further away. The tips of his fingers su
bmerged, his body falling into the depths.
Lungs burned.
Spasms took his body.
Eyelids drooped.
A shadow formed on the surface.
Water rippled as a hand reached in, gripped Lance’s wrist.
He was pulled up as his mind slowed, muscles finally loosening.
His head broke free and he gasped, inhaling air and water. Harsh coughs hurt his chest as he tried to breathe, struggling to clear his lungs. His shirt tightened around his neck, pinching the skin.
“Help me out here.” Cass grunted. “Kick your fucking legs!”
She pulled him against the edge of the pedal boat, guiding his hand to the edge. He held on for dear life, resting his forehead against it as he continued coughing up water.
Lance wanted to thank her, but he couldn’t spare a breath to speak.
Engines fired to life on the shore.
He grabbed the boat with his other hand and turned his head, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. The men climbed back into their vehicles and turned around, smoke trailing their spinning tires as they sped away. The growing group of daywalkers pursued them.
“Saved by some monsters,” Cass said. “Didn’t see that coming.” She looked down at Lance. “We need to work on your cardio. Didn’t you ever haul your dumb ass to the gym?”
Lance’s mind cleared little by little as he held onto the boat. “Didn’t see the point. Depression is a bitch.”
After another minute of rest, he struggled to pull himself out of the water. Cass leaned against the far side of the pedal boat, displacing their weight. It still dipped precariously close to the tipping point as Lance finally swung a leg over the side and rolled in.
“No more running. Ever.” Lance stared up at the blue sky, taking in big mouthfuls of air. “I think I was wrong—being eaten might have been better.”
“Stop whining. We’re alive.” Cass sat in one of the molded-plastic seats, having to sit on one butt cheek because the axe on her back made her shoulders rotate.
He looked over at her. “You’re sitting like you have a stick up your ass.”
Cass grappled with the axe and holster, managing to pull it free and lay it across the flat surface in front of their seats. “Does that suit your majesty?”
“Almost. I could use a sandwich too. And a beer. Cold beer.”
She socked him in the arm. “Dumbass.”
Lance slid into his seat with more difficulty than he liked. It felt like his body had blown a gasket.
They watched the shore, floating toward the stadium.
Chapter 22
