by Arthur Stone
“Since you began telling us this, I’ve been feeling rotten. Is there any way to avoid the infection?”
“If there is, I don’t know about it.”
“You are a woefully insufficient source of information, you know that?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Either way, we need to go west. Our lady in the back here looks in bad shape and should see a physician as soon as possible. As for the rest of us, hopefully we will find some people who know what to do.”
“How are you doing on gas?”
“Not bad.”
“The filling stations here don’t work, but you can siphon gas from abandoned cars and fresh clusters.”
“Boiler, you were right about your hands. Here’s your gun.”
“Are you serious?” the young man gasped.
Boiler ignored his outburst, but expressed his indignation nonetheless. “What am I supposed to do with this? I only have one round, and it looks homemade at best. I guess I could shoot myself.”
“You might have to,” the captain said, coldly. “We don’t have any decent guns at all. So I will take this rifle of yours since I know I can shoot well, and I honestly have no idea how you can shoot. Can you drive?”
As Boiler nodded, the captain froze, her mouth open, staring at a point off in the distance. She recovered after a prolonged silence, suddenly sounding very old.
“I’m assuming that’s a yes. You drive behind us with these two—the husband is overcome with worry, as you can see, so he is too distracted to operate a vehicle. He can sit in the back with his wife, while you follow us, not too close but not far behind either. If you see anything attacking, signal us by beeping your horn.”
“These beasts can hear from very far away. They hunt primarily based on their senses of hearing and smell.”
“Then use your head lamps.”
“It’s still light out.”
“I realize that, but evening is approaching rapidly. Do these things become more dangerous in the night?”
Boiler shook his head. “I’ve told you everything I know. Hold my balls to a fire and I still won’t know any more. One night I spent under a bridge, and the other night I spent hiding inside the house, so I have no idea.”
“You know nothing, Boiler, and that is quite unsatisfactory. But what other option have we got? Let’s get moving.”
Chapter 17
Boiler didn’t see a black sunset that night, even though he spent it staring at the western horizon. Not that they drove straight west the entire night. After crossing the stable—the one that Boiler had already crossed twice before then—they encountered a lovely four-lane highway and accelerated to cruising speed. But it soon took a sharp turn to the south, so they exited the highway and took a smaller road west which led them to another stable.
This was the worst stable of all, difficult to describe without using language inappropriate for children, and even for most adults. The road was a nightmare, but they hoped they would make it through somehow.
They didn’t.
Soon they were stuck in the marsh, and the police officer had to attach a cable between the two cars and pull Boiler’s out. Thankfully, the literal hitch did its job without a figurative one. It was then, wallowing around in the mud, that Boiler got his chance to admire a sunset wholly free of dark spots.
They had to backtrack and seek another way, just as the last light was fading from the sky, and they found a workable option before long. But the new road was narrow and poor, so they made slow progress. Overgrowth pushed in from both sides, sometimes obscuring the sky, and at one point a jumper leaped up at them as Boiler barely managed to avoid striking him directly. Its fearsome nails scraped along the car windows, but they were too weak to break through. The beast soon gave up pursuing them.
Annoyingly, this spectacle repeated itself every five minutes or so after that. The sound of the car’s engine traveled far and drew the ghouls like hippies to a campfire. The first time it happened, it shook the police officers up so much that they stopped about a mile further to talk about it. But after that, they showed no additional reaction, just driving around the zombies whenever possible and never slowing down.
Boiler didn’t like this nocturnal race. The bike had been much safer: it made virtually no noise and never attracted ghouls.
Plus, he couldn’t shake the memory of that Jeep with its door torn off from his mind, nor the nightmares he still had of that manmincer he had killed with the crowbar. If one of those appeared in front of the car, there would be no running it over. Driving into the jaws of inevitable, excruciating death, the remainder of life reduced to the time it took for the car to be ripped to shreds. His pathetic weapon would be worthless. Even a top of class sniper rifle might be no aid against a beast with speed, powerful armor, and a minuscule number of weak spots.
And that was just a manmincer. He had no desire to picture a fight with an elite.
His list of problems didn’t end there, either. The rapid changes that were occurring in the captain’s behavior heightened his apprehension. She had been just an ordinary British cop, but then she suddenly, even recklessly, accepted his story. With no resistance, no reservations. Her young partner still doubted all of it, reluctant to trust a prisoner unable to answer even the most basic questions about what was going on.
The captain had even given Boiler a weapon, right after she ordered his handcuffs be removed. She’d hit him with a string of questions, but none of the most important, like how to kill the zombies. That should have been one of the first ones on her list, but she passed it over. Furthermore, she didn’t ask what would happen if one of them were bitten by an infected, which Boiler assumed would be her second concern, if not her first.
Her voice had changed, and sometimes she gazed off in the distance, as if lost. Suspicions ripened in Boiler’s mind. The captain would not be herself for long now. Something was seriously wrong with her, and she would sooner or later try to take a couple of tasty bites of her junior partner—or one of the people in this car. He would have to keep an eye on her.
As if this place wasn’t dangerous enough without new infecteds in the equation.
A dark figure flew past, soaring high above the road. In less than a second, it slammed down onto the roof of the car ahead. The headlights revealed crooked paws nourished by a tangle of pulsing veins, unnaturally powerful muscles, and blunt wrist spines. The car’s brakes squeaked, then its engine revved up to maximum—and then stopped, as if the driver, seized by absolute panic, were mashing pedals indiscriminately. The car skidded and turned part way around, its roof now plucked off like the lid off a can of sardines. A pistol shot rang out, and the growling creature dove inside, disappearing from sight.
Boiler saw nothing more after that. He floored the gas, whipping around the decapitated police car as fast as his vehicle could move. Arthur, whose name he had managed to learn despite his animosity, had noticed nothing. When Boiler hit a small pothole, the man decided to try his hand at a bit of backseat driving. “Take it easy, okay?”
“That’s not in our best interests right now.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I’d like to survive the night, so we have to get out of here.”
“What the hell are you—wait, where are they? Where are the cops? Stop this instant! I said stop!”
“The cops are gone.”
“Where did they go?”
“To the bottom of that beast’s stomach.”
“What? How?”
“You didn’t see that? It just happened.”
“What just happened? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“God only knows. The creature jumped right on top of them, big as an elk, its paws four feet across. It ripped the car roof off like the tab off a soda can. One cop managed to get a shot off, but pistols are no use against something like that. Our police friends are gone.”
“How could that be?”
“That’s how it is here, so s
tart getting used to it.”
“But...”
“Let it go—our escort is gone. And we’ll be gone too unless we get out of here. I bet that thing runs faster than anything I’ve seen yet.”
“How can you talk about this so calmly?”
“That’s just how I talk. Besides, in this world it’s better not to worry about anything, or you’ll worry about everything, all the time. And worry can kill you.”
“But maybe they fought it off. You said you heard a shot.”
“Impossible. I have only seen one way to beat a creature that big: reach the top of something very tall and take it out before it reaches you. If it gets within reach, you’re dead already. Do you know how to shoot?”
“Well enough.”
“Good. But we don’t have anything to shoot, so our only option is to run. Pray that thing doesn’t have time to catch us and hop onto our roof.”
“Is this stable of yours far away?”
Boiler gritted his teeth and the man’s self-inflicted amnesia. “Like I’ve said a thousand times by now: I don’t know where to find this stable, or any stable. I’m not even sure they exist by this point.”
“My wife is dying. She needs help now.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that. Looks like we’re going the wrong way, anyway.”
“We’re lost?”
“This road has been twisting and turning the whole way, and we don’t have a compass in this car. If you can tell me which way is west, please do.”
“Why not use the stars?”
“Well go ahead then, Copernicus, roll down the window and have a look. Be careful not to shit your pants in shock.”
The night before, Boiler had felt so terrible that he hadn’t paid any mind to the sky. But he had on this night. There were no signs of the familiar planets, and the stars were even stranger. Fewer than a hundred were visible, but the sky didn’t look empty, since many of them loomed large, luminaries of assorted colors that were as big as peas or even cherries. Though they hung in tattered shrouds of ominous glowing clouds, their light granted better visibility than the full moon had in the old world. The clouds, meanwhile, possessed some indiscernible detached quality, something of the astral plane rather than the earthly.
“Well, Mr. Sagan, what do you think?” Boiler asked, with a touch of gloating, as Arthur began to close the window.
“Where is this place?”
“How the hell should I know? The only thing I can say for sure is that we are very far from home—as if I needed the stars to know that.”
“My God.”
“Come on, you should be happy.”
“What? What for?”
“You have the time to notice how strange the stars are, which means you’re not getting eaten just yet.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t trying to be. Be glad you can see the stars at all. I guess at least that means we are somewhere in the universe, not in hell or devil knows where.”
“Lily? Hey, Lily, you all right?”
“Don’t wake her up. She needs her sleep.”
“But… I’ve never seen anybody sleep like this!”
“She seemed fine twenty minutes ago, even alert. Take her pulse.”
“I’m trying, but she doesn’t have one. Come back to me, Lily! Wait, I think it’s back. Yes! Her heart is beating. But, but… Lily!”
A blood-chilling scream sounded out from the back seat, followed by a muffled grumbling sound. The hairs on the back of Boiler’s neck stood straight up, and he slammed the brakes without pressing the clutch pedal, forcing the engine to stall and the car to skid uncontrollably down the flat, slick road. Before the vehicle had stopped, he flung open the door, jumped out, and try to roll along the road, slamming his knee painfully. Thankfully, his furry tailed friend owned enough grace for both of them. De-vehicled, the cat whirled around, arched his back, and began hissing at the stopped car.
In three bounds, Boiler was at the back door. He yanked it open, grappled Arthur, and wrenched him out of the car.
The man screamed at him. “Have you gone off your rocker?”
Boiler slammed the door closed and jumped back, drawing his shotgun. “I’m fine, but your Lily isn’t. In fact, that’s not Lily at all. Not anymore.”
“You’ve snapped! She just woke up when I touched her arm to get her pulse, that’s all.”
“So why did you scream like that?”
“That wasn’t me that screamed, it was her. She’s in pain.”
“No, Arthur, she hasn’t woken and will never wake again. She’s different now, a completely new kind of creature. But she is no longer in pain, so don’t worry about that.”
The door rattled then slowly creaked open, and two hands stretched out from the darkness of the car’s interior. The rest of her followed. Lily, with astonishing vigor considering her wound, scrambled out onto the pavement as she secreted those sickening rumbling sounds that were by now so familiar to Boiler.
Damn, what bad luck. Other than that cop and some zombies, this was only the second women he had seen here. Both of them had been zombified while sitting wounded in a car. More coincidental an occurrence than he would have thought possible.
“Stop, Lily, where are you going?”
Boiler barely managed to grab Arthur by his shoulders and keep him from running towards her. “Enough! Look at her, really look at her, and think about it. Is that really your Lily? It’s time for you to wake yourself up. There is no more Lily! Not anymore.”
“Let me go!” Arthur wailed, committing enough decibels for the whole cluster to hear. Some unknown beast close by roared like a starving dinosaur. Boiler had only one shot for his gun, and it was an unreliable shot, at that. Worse, Arthur could hardly be expected to provide meaningful aid in a fight against anything more serious than a kindergartener.
“That’s it. You yelled, and they heard you. Stay here with your precious Lily if you want, but I’m getting out of here. I’m not about to die for some idiot!”
“Wait!”
“What now?”
“We have to take her with us.”
“Are you nuts?”
“I can’t just leave her! Come on, Boiler, like you said, we have to hurry.”
“If you can stuff her in the trunk in five seconds, do it.”
“Give me your knife.”
“Why?”
“Just do it! I’ll be quick.”
“I don’t have a knife. Those cops took everything I had. There’s an ax in the trunk that can finish a zombie off with one good blow to the head.”
“No. No axes. Don’t even think about it.”
Arthur ran to the car, flung open the passenger door, and went for the glove compartment. Boiler sincerely wanted to kick the heir to Lily’s corporeal form in the head while the man was looking away, but he decided otherwise. Arthur was going too far, but that didn’t mean he should treat Lily like all of the other ghouls. She was just alive a bit ago. We all cared for her. He should be the one to do this, so he walked a few steps away, leading her to crawl after him. The wound she had endured during her life somehow affected her after her transformation, too, leaving her noticeably weaker. He had run into this type before, the most incapable of all. Some were unable to ambulate at all, instead dragging themselves along with their hands.
Arthur emerged from the car holding some torn-up seatbelts. “Give me a hand, Boiler. We’ll tie her hands and feet and throw her in the car.”
“I can’t believe this. Have you gone mad?”
“Come on, time is ticking. I’m not about to ask again!”
He should have gotten in the car, hit the gas, and squealed the tires on his way out of here. This mismatched couple wouldn’t mind enjoying some alone time, surely. But for some reason, Boiler helped bind the ghoul’s hands up tight, knotting them every which way despite Arthur’s protests. The immense roaring beast was undoubtedly drawing close, agitating the pace at which they worked.
>
“Into the trunk.”
“We can’t throw her in the boot. She’s hurt!”
“Give it a rest! Why me? Why do I have to be stuck with a crazy man? You want to ride with a zombie in the car with us?”
“Please, just not in the boot.”
“Go to hell! Fine, put her in the back, and you sit back there too. Don’t let your guard down, or she’ll chew your face off.”
He slammed himself into the driver’s seat as if mounting a moving motorcycle, and was surprised to see Charcoal sitting in the passenger seat, showing no signs of being upset or excited, besides hissing at Lily like she was a wicked dog. Boiler started the car and took off. Faster and faster he went. Something shattered the rear window—perhaps a brick had struck it or somebody had swung something at it. He considered shifting gears but promptly discarded the idea, unwilling to reduce his acceleration for even an instant.
Come on baby, faster! The car engine roared like a jetliner as Boiler fought to keep it on the road around turns. He was ruining the engine and the clutch, but now was hardly the time to think about maximizing the lifespan of the car. Arthur was maintaining a wild, sustained scream. He had spotted something through the broken rear window, something ruinous to his already unstable state of mind.
The cat hissed so loudly that Boiler almost instinctively covered his ears. He spun the wheel, more by instinct than by intent, and the car turned sharply as something slammed into its back.
The car’s speed continued to grow, and they no longer felt any tiny potholes along the road. Five seconds passed, then ten. Nothing happened. “Where is that thing?” Boiler yelled.
“It’s huge!” he heard from the back seat, followed by a scream and, in an offended tone, “Why are you doing that, Lily?”
“Ignore her, look out the back! How far away is that fucking beast, God dammit!”
“I can’t see a bloody thing! Plus, Lily almost bit me.”
“Get used to it. That’s just the new direction your relationship is heading.”
“Don’t even joke like that, Boiler.”
“Joke? You think I’m joking? Wake up, man! Look at that beast following us! You’re in a whole new world now!”
