LZR-1143: Evolution

by Bryan James

  I canted my head to the side, effecting a curious glance. “How do you know so much about diverting fuel?”

  She smiled as she turned toward me, face inches from my own. I took in a deep breath self-consciously, enjoying every second of the physical proximity.

  “I didn’t always pay for gas as a teenager. We all have our rebellious stages, right?”

  She didn’t wait for a response, but instead dropped down into the cabin to grab her rifle and check out the tanker. I smiled to myself and shook my head. There was something new every day about this woman. I couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky to have found her in the midst of all this insanity.

  She had kept me sane throughout, and kept me alive more than a couple times. She was a pretty incredible person, I was rapidly coming to appreciate.

  “You coming, or you just going to stare at the corn all afternoon?”

  I sighed once and dropped into the interior of the truck.

  Yep.

  Pretty damn incredible, all right.

  Chapter 19

  I grabbed my rifle and checked the clip. There were no spares in the Humvee and I had wasted too many rounds firing into the air like a moron. I had very few rounds left in the rifle, so made a mental note to use the ammunition wisely. I tightened the laces on my boots, holstered my pistol, and followed Kate out the hatch and toward the tanker.

  The weather hadn’t noticeably improved and while it wasn’t raining, the wind continued to blow under an overcast sky. The dry, dead husks of unharvested corn swayed with the gusts, making a permanent whisking sound as the dead plants rattled against themselves. My mind wandered to a horror flick I had seen once, involving creepy little bastards that hid in the cornfields and murdered fun-loving innocent folks like myself. I shuddered as I realized that such things could come true in today’s world. Our visibility was piss-poor, and unless a herd of those things came at us from one of the four roads, we wouldn’t have much warning of an approach.

  Kate was walking quickly, making a bee line toward the leaking seam. I shouted out to her as she got closer.

  “I’m going to check out the cab. See if there’s a CB radio or anything useful up there.”

  She turned, waving acknowledgement. As I turned toward the cab, she shouted out.

  “Just be careful! Something made this thing jack knife, and I don’t see another car around here.”

  I stopped, realizing she was right. Something had caused the driver to jerk the wheel suddenly and flip the truck, but with no other vehicle to blame the accident on, it was anyone’s guess as to the cause. I pulled my pistol from my belt and moved toward the cab cautiously.

  It was a bright red tractor, fairly new by the looks of it. It lay on its left side, partially crumpled. The fender and grill were intact, and showed no sign of impact, seeming to confirm Kate’s theory that it wasn’t an accident with another car that caused the flip. The windshield and the passenger side windows were intact, but they were fogged from the inside. I paused, realizing that something inside the cab was causing the windows to fog, possibly a decaying body.

  Carefully, I moved to the back of the truck, scanning as best I could into the thick corn field. The dead husks simply stood there, moving softly with the wind, singing their same boring song over and over. I grimaced as I started to climb the bottom of the truck, finding foot and hand holds amongst the axels and brake lines, covering my hands with old grease and dirt, caked with oil.

  I reached the running board and lifted myself up, perching precariously on the red panel door. Realizing that I couldn’t open the door while I was standing on it, I took the easier route and simply smashed the butt of my pistol against the window, shattering the glass into small shards that rained into the dark cabin below. I leaned back, just in case there was a waiting creature inside.

  Nothing appeared, so I cautiously leaned forward, pistol held in front of me. Peering inside the cabin, I almost vomited.

  A horribly decomposed head lay on the broken glass of the driver’s side window, a dreadful laceration to the forehead evidence of the cause of death—and the reason for the lack of subsequent animation. Below the head, a dull, yellowed protrusion that led to a mangled and dirty pile of clothing. I quickly named the protrusion the unlucky bastard’s spine, as I followed the gore along the door and to the bottom of the cabin. Only pieces of the body remained intact, the majority of the flesh having been consumed.

  The remnants of tissue and blood smeared the entire cabin, and the stench of rotting meat slammed into my nostrils like a freight train made of limburger cheese. Behind the seats, I heard the slow movement of what I knew had caused the damage.

  A female head emerged from the sleeping area behind the seats, strands of coarse hair matted with blood and refuse stuck to the forehead, while the broken teeth of a cracked and rotted mouth were exposed in a rictus grin. The dead white eyes stared at my face as it hauled itself laboriously from its resting place.

  As it moved forward, I realized the vastly distended stomach pushing against what must have at one point been a tight, provocatively cut, Harley-Davidson tee-shirt. Now, the grossly misshapen stomach of a long dead ghoul having consumed an entire human body over the course of weeks protruded even farther than the still-perky, silicone breasts underneath the gore-stained shirt.

  In a weird way, it was quite the advertisement for breast enhancement. Augment now, and your chest will survive the zombie apocalypse, even if you don’t!

  The creature moaned once as I stared, a tooth falling into its open mouth and lodging in the yawning throat. It coughed, sending the rotten tooth flying into the cabin as the moan continued.

  Yeah, okay. Not much of an ad, I guess.

  I pulled the gun to eye level, and aimed for the head, taking it through an eye and dropping the beast quickly. A quick scan of the interior gave me what I had come for. The CB had been smashed when it apparently dislodged from the housing in the crash; the rest of the cabin was too gore spattered and rotten for me to search, and nothing inside this cab could be worth wading through that gore-mangled mess.

  Jumping down from the cab, I jogged quickly to the rear of the trailer, taking vast gulps of clean air in a vain attempt to clear the smell from my sinuses.

  “I’m not sure we can make this work,” Kate said as I approached.

  She was staring up at the valve on the side of the trailer—now on the top of the trailer, as it lay on its left side. “With the leak, it’s not going to be pressurized, and the only release valve is on the top of the tank. Unless we had some sort of pump to get it from the tank into the gas canisters, we don’t have a way to get it out of the tank.”

  I followed her stare, seeing the difficulty.

  “Find anything back there?” she asked, looking over my shoulder. “I heard the glass breaking. You all right?”

  “Yeah. Let’s just say that eating while driving can definitely cause accidents. Oh, and on the plus side, I think I found the answer to the question of whether these things actually digest what they eat.”

  I shivered, still grossed out by the image.

  She gave me a quizzical look before shaking her head and declaring, “I don’t think I want to know.”

  She turned back to the truck as if to say something else, when I heard a different sound. It came from the West, and wasn’t natural—it was the sound of a vehicle moving on the road, and it was getting closer. We looked at each other and started around the back of the trailer to run back toward the Humvee, which was an uncomfortable distance away.

  We rounded the corner of the tanker and I looked to the West, searching for evidence of the sound. In the distance, I saw the unmistakeable outline of a pickup truck, and the equally unmistakeable outline of someone standing in the bed, holding a long object that looked like a large gun.

  “Shit,” I murmured, and then shouted loudly to Kate.

  “Kate, take cover. They’ve got a gun!” We both sprinted to be hidden by the thick corn several feet
away, even as the pavement puckered in several places. Bullets were striking the ground yards away from us. We had been spotted, and these were definitely not friendly survivors.

  “God damn it! What the hell is it with people in Delaware?” I shouted, unshouldering my rifle and trying to peer through the corn.

  We were separated from the Humvee—and its comforting armor and machine gun—by the Western-leading road upon which the truck was approaching.

  More bullets peppered the corn above our heads, showering us with dead leaves and pieces of dried corn husk. We flattened ourselves against the ground as the truck’s engine got louder. I could hear loud shouting, as if the driver and the shooter were yelling back and forth to one another.

  “What if they thought we were zombies?” asked Kate, her voice a harsh whisper.

  I shook my head. “No way. They saw us sprinting before they opened fire. They’re coming for the gas.” I cursed and slammed my hand against the ground.

  “And now they get a free Humvee, too,” she said, finishing my thought.

  Not if I had anything to say about it.

  I peered through the corn toward the Humvee. It sat far enough away that it might survive, and I knew the truck wasn’t close enough to see the leaking fuel yet.

  “Get further into the corn,” I said, pulling her to her feet and urging her into the field. “I’m right behind you.”

  “What are you doing, Mike?” she asked, voice uncertain.

  Then her eyes shifted to the rifle in my hands, the crazy look in my eye, and the large amount of gasoline sitting on the roadway.

  “Oh, hell no. You’re insane. That amount of gasoline would light this area up like a damn propane Christmas tree.”

  As she finished talking, another burst from the truck shot through the corn. We both ducked, and I detached her hand from my arm.

  “We don’t have a choice. Those assholes are going to find the Humvee, and keep looking for us. We can’t let them have the vehicle or its gun; given their current behavior, we can’t trust them to use this fuel for the betterment of mankind, and I’m sure as hell not going to try to talk to them. Parallel this road,” I said, gesturing to the Northbound lane to our left, “And I’ll catch you up. Promise.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer as I ran into the street and started to sprint away from the wreck on the road. I figured I had maybe twenty seconds to gain enough distance from the truck before they got there and saw me on the road running away from the tanker to the south. I ran as fast as I could, getting maybe a hundred yards before turning around. I saw the corn move to my left and hoped it was Kate.

  I kneeled down, placing my rifle carefully against my shoulder. Through the basic sight of the barrel, I could see the corner of the tanker, where the fuel was leaking slowly from the seam. I aimed high, looking to light a spark from the steel exterior.

  From the Western road, the truck was rapidly approaching. More bullets flew into the corn, and I could hear laughter now. Then, the sound of tires screeching to a halt.

  I pressed the trigger, and the rifle cracked against my shoulder.

  The shot went wide, flying into the corn field beyond the tanker.

  I heard a shout as the truck driver and gunner realized that we were armed. The engine of the truck revved and the wheels squealed again as they tried to move away from the tanker and locate the shooter.

  I pulled the trigger again.

  The shot fell short, slamming into the pavement nearly twenty feet in front of the fuel.

  The pickup truck rounded the end of the tanker, and moved parallel to the massive fuel tank. Suddenly the man in the back gestured and turned toward me, seeing me crouched unprotected in the street. He laughed, and raised his rifle, as if celebrating the easy pickings. Even from this distance, I could sense the triumph as he crouched low on the roof of the cab to line up his shot.

  I took a deep breath and pulled my trigger one last time.

  I heard the shot strike home and I was slammed against the pavement by a massive wave of air. My ears were ringing as I suddenly realized I was staring at the sky. I pushed myself up quickly, still dizzy from the blast.

  Nothing remained of the fuel tanker. A charred, black husk sat close to the melted and burning pavement, jagged shards of steel pointing to the sky. The remains of the attacking truck crumpled against the road, barely discernible as a former vehicle. Pieces of metal fell to the earth, clattering loudly when they hit the pavement.

  There was no sign of the bodies of the driver or the gunner, but I sat up slowly, unworried. A blast of that size, from that close, wouldn’t leave a normal body intact or recognizable.

  I looked around anxiously, realizing that Kate hadn’t emerged from the corn yet.

  “Jesus Christ, Michael,” I heard her voice from behind me. I turned, smiling as she walked out of a thick patch of brush on the opposite side of the ditch. She hopped the narrow, shallow ravine and jogged up.

  “You okay?” she asked, voice concerned; her eyes searched my face and body for obvious wounds.

  I shrugged, trying for nonchalant.

  Yeah, sure babe. I do this shit all the time.

  I wished I knew a look for that statement.

  Instead, I nodded cavalierly.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I said, smirking like an idiot.

  “Good,” she said, face implacable. She moved as if to walk past me. As she did, she slapped my lightly on the side of the head, speaking as she walked away.

  “Don’t ever pull some shit like that again, okay? I don’t fancy being alone out here with the living dead; even hanging out with the idiot living is better than that.”

  I simply grunted, rubbing my head as we moved toward where the Humvee sat, barely visible on the opposite side of the charred heap of twisted metal and concrete.

  Chapter 20

  It hadn’t survived. The bulk of the vehicle was in operable condition, but the front had been too close. It was torched, and the extreme heat had damaged something in the motor.

  We tried to start the engine, but it flat lined. Since neither of us was a mechanic, it left our options fairly limited. We scavenged what we could from the vehicle, thankful that at the least, the yahoos in the pickup hadn’t gotten hold of the formidable weaponry on board. As we left, I grabbed the remaining ammunition for the machine gun, and took it a hundred yards into the corn field, burying it underneath a thick patch of stalks. Never hurt to be careful, I thought, as I scooped dirt over the large bullets, and laid a few dead stalks over the freshly turned earth.

  From the Humvee, we took one medical kit and two flashlights. I still had nearly a full clip in my pistol, but was down to only a few rounds in the M-16. Kate’s rifle had a few more rounds than mine, and her pistol was still full. We brought the rest of our water supplies—we had managed a meager amount from the rest area—and a few candy bars, also from the rest area. Finally, we grabbed our most important asset: the map.

  We walked to the intersection as the sun moved away from its zenith, and started toward its inevitable descent to the West. It was past noon and, as I looked at the map, I realized we very much wanted to be somewhere secure overnight. The crossroads was roughly ten miles from the nearest town, but it was sizable enough to be a concern—especially if all the inhabitants had turned to zombies. We resolved to stay on course and try to find some shelter in an outlying farm or other outbuilding.

  As we walked, we warily watched the horizon. It concerned us that there were apparently roving bands of survivors willing to kill on sight. While not surprising in a world where violence always lurked so close to the surface of society, it was still shocking. The road was decently maintained, but in a country sort of way. It faded from smooth asphalt to gravel on the edges, and large cracks caused by heat and cold fluctuations sometimes spiderwebbed across the lonely stretch. We passed several farmhouses far off in the distance, large barns standing desolate in the fields. A flock of geese startled us as we passed over a small creek
as they blasted into the sky, likely unused to the interruption in the last few weeks.

  “I’d order a double quarter pounder with cheese and a super biggie fries,” Kate said, trudging around a small pothole roughly two miles into the walk. We had been conjuring up imaginary orders from imaginary restaurants for the last five minutes. We were both starving and, while it didn’t help the hunger, it was a fun game for the imagination.

  “No shit?” I asked, glancing over at her. “You’re a cheap date.”

  She smiled and kicked a stone absently. “Only on the first date. I lure you in with the promise of cheap meat and potatoes, and before you know it, I’m in to diamonds and fancy hand bags.”

  I sighed theatrically. “Oh well. I suppose I’ll have to walk into a deserted department store and grab you a few hundred of those some time soon.”

  She laughed. “Right now, an expensive date involves a hot bath and real toilet paper, so you may have it harder than that.”

  She squinted into the distance as the sun sank lower, bright in our eyes despite the overcast as the storm faded in the east.

  “You think this town will be safe?”

  I thought on it for a moment before replying. “It’s hard to tell. Seems like the zombies are grouping together, so it’s logical to think it’s feast or famine, you know? Either you find a thousand or you find none.”

  I readjusted the straps of my small pack, containing a little water and our meager supplies.

  “Humans...well, that’s another story. Who knows where these marauders are based and where they operate from. Maybe they’re connected, maybe we just had two separate, but equally negative encounters. Unrelated, you know?”

  She was quiet for a minute. “Yeah, I know. I’m just worried. We need to get this to someone who can help, but we need to be smart.”

  I knew what she was thinking. Her daughter was on the West Coast, in Vancouver, Canada last she heard. If there was a bright light at the end of the tunnel for Kate, it was the thought that her daughter was alive, and that she could deliver a cure to this plague.