I took a few minutes then got to my feet. Dudley had found something, and he wanted to show it to us. So we walked back to the now working gate, exited El Paso, and stepped back into the path of destruction and fallen soldiers.
We didn’t need our flashlights. The still burning fires gave off enough illumination for us to pick our way through the debris.
“You’re not going to believe this shit,” Dudley said after we had followed him behind a broken building.
With a flourish, he pulled an old tarp from one of our armored Jeeps. The vehicle was undamaged. Nick ran his hand down the black matted paint and approached the driver’s side door.
“Looks like the Monster wants you to drive safely,” Nick announced.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He left you a note on the steering wheel,” Nick said.
He handed me the note.
“Welcome home Guardian,” I read aloud.
“The word “home” is underlined three times,” Dudley said. “You think that’s an invitation?”
“We’re about to find out,” I answered.
“It’s bound to be a trap,” Nick said.
“Of course it is,” I replied, “but we know the area. We can get in there, check things out, and bring their little trap down upon their heads.”
We spent about thirty minutes investigating the Jeep. We didn’t want the damn thing blowing up on us when we turned the key. Still, I think we were all a bit nervous when the engine hesitated a bit before turning over.
We drove through the rubble carefully. We didn’t want to run over any of the soldiers. Nick jumped out at the gate and let us through before closing it up tight behind him.
There were more zombies in the area. This wasn’t a problem for us. If one of them got too close for comfort, Dudley shot him down from the backseat.
We entered through the Northeast side of town. I’ll be the first to admit I am relatively unfamiliar with that side of El Paso. I spent most of my time in the Westside and Upper Valley. Nick, however, had spent a lot of time over there so he was able to show us the easiest route to Trans Mountain Road.
“Can you tell me what Trans Mountain Road is?”
Between the Northeast and the Westside of El Paso is a mountain range called the Franklin Mountains. This mountain range has a long winding road that cuts right through it known as Trans Mountain Road. It saves people a lot of time because without that road they would need to use the freeway and drive all the way around the range. We already knew that the freeways on the Northeast were impassable due to abandoned cars. So we headed for the mountain.
“How did that go?”
It went pretty badly right from the beginning. Before we even got there, we encountered numerous roadblocks and had to find alternate routes that ate up both my time and patience. We had a really nifty GPS in the Jeep. It didn’t just show us directions; it had a feature that was able to show us the width of the road and where we were on it. That thing came in handy once Dudley explained to Nick how to use it.
Eventually, we found our way to the stretch of road that marked the first leg of ascension. Things looked pretty easy going at that point. The road was clear of the abandoned and wrecked vehicles that normally slowed us down.
The part of Trans Mountain Road we were traveling is right before the actual mountain, and therefore a miniature desert of flat land lies on either side. The night was dark. We had left the lights of civilization behind so we had no idea that the living dead littered the desert around us.
At first, only a few of them came running up behind the jeep. Dudley took care of them pretty easily. A sharp zombie scream would pierce the quiet night. All of us would scan our surroundings for the culprit, and Dudley would take aim at the shadowy figures running madly towards us once we found them.
That’s how things began. That’s what the first few minutes looked like. We weren’t worried. An occasional group of four or five zombies could be expected. Halfway up that first stretch of road, things took a turn for the worse.
The groups of zombies became larger, and they appeared more frequently. Dudley eventually stopped shooting at them. He didn’t want to run out of ammo like he did when we were stuck in that building downtown. By the time we hit the first curve of the road, we had a pretty decent horde running behind us.
We were a little nervous about that, but things weren’t all bad. All I had to do was drive fast enough to keep them from grabbing onto the Jeep. That wasn’t a problem, let me tell you. Nothing motivates you to step on the accelerator more than a horde of screaming zombies so thick that they fill up the entire street.
I was driving pretty fast. I wanted to create a big enough gap between us and the horde for when I had to slow down on the turns. You really don’t want to haul ass in a Jeep and then hit a sharp turn. The last thing we needed was to flip our wheels with all those ravenous corpses Hell bent on catching up to us.
The very next turn was a descent into madness.
The zombies were waiting for us. No, that’s not right. There were zombies there. They weren’t actually waiting for us with wide-open arms or anything, but they were there. Groups of them were spread out across the road.
Their numbers were nowhere near as impressive as the horde chasing after us but there were enough of them to force me to slow down considerably. Still, we fought our way through. Dudley began firing his weapon once again, and Nick even joined in to lend him a hand.
I ran over any shambler that was brave enough to step out in front of the Jeep, but I wasn’t dumb enough to hit them too hard. I didn’t want to damage our wheels. Even with the large reinforced front bumper, a vehicle can only take so much.
The next turn was a descent into Hell.
We had driven right into another horde and were trapped. The mountain rose up on each side of the road at this point. The zombies were so thick, we could see nothing beyond their headlight illuminated forms. They rushed immediately. They must have heard us coming from a long way away with all those zombie screams following us up the mountain. It looked as if they were on edge and actively looking for the reason behind those screams well before we rounded the bend.
I slammed the Jeep in reverse and hit the gas.
One of them still managed to jump onto our hood despite my frantic retreat. Nick had to reach for it over the windshield and push it off the side. Then, we almost lost Nick as well when I smashed the rear bumper into the shins of the fastest zombies from the following horde and slammed on the breaks causing him to slam into the front windshield.
He gasped for air as the breath was knocked from his body.
I didn’t ask him if he was okay. I didn’t have the time. We were surrounded and had only a few seconds to spare before the rotting faces with their gnashing teeth filled the vehicle. Instead, I grabbed Nick’s arm, and yanked him back into his seat. I yelled for Dudley to get down and hit the lever next to the four wheel drive stick.
The armored top shot up and out, instantly wrapping the three of us in its protective cocoon. Dudley began to laugh from the backseat. It wasn’t a real laugh, mind you. It was just his way of getting rid of all the tension.
Clawed hands scratched at the windows. Rotting bodies crawled onto the hood. I could see ruined faces peering at me through the safety glass. I could hear their teeth grinding against the armor.
“Now what?” Nick asked.
“We need to keep moving forward,” I answered. “There are too many of them. They can flip the Jeep if we stay still too long.”
I pressed my foot on the accelerator; the Jeep inched forward. The shamblers pushed back. The tires began to squeal against the asphalt. The rear left corner began to lift into the air, and then something gave and we moved forward into the mass of undead.
Corpses banged and thumped against the front of the vehicle. Dead flesh slapped against an unyielding bumper straight out of a Mad Max movie. Legs were broken; skulls were crunched under the tires. The dead did their
very best to hold us back but the big ass, souped-up engine on our Jeep would not be denied.
“You need to move faster,” Nick shouted in my ear. “You really, really need to move faster.”
“I can’t,” I replied.
“Why the Hell not?” Nick asked.
“I can’t see where I’m going,” I answered.
The dead were just too thick. The stretch of road was too narrow. We were fish attempting to swim upstream with the bears trying to grab us.
“I can’t even see the damn mountain side,” Dudley shouted in agreement.
The Jeep began to rock back and forth as the zombies pressed and shoved against it. I saw the face of a young woman pressed up against my window. She was probably an attractive girl when she was alive. Now, her features were distorted with rot and hunger. Her neck had been savagely torn open. The grayish skin on her face was blistered and cracked. She couldn’t be reasoned with. She couldn’t be satisfied. Only a thin piece of armored glass kept her snapping jaws away from me.
We were moving forward but slowly, way too slowly. We were blind, and I was afraid to drive off the road, or crash into the rock of the mountain side.
Then a glow from the dash caught my eye.
“Nick!” I shouted. “Use the GPS.”
“Do what?” Nick asked.
“Use the GPS to see our position,” I shouted.
Nick immediately began to play with the GPS. I could tell he was having problems concentrating with all the noise. There were zombies banging against his windows. The screams threatened to split all of our skulls, and I’m not even gonna tell you how bad the shamblers smelled.
“Keep going straight,” Nick said.
I did as he asked, and picked up the speed.
“Turn to the left a little bit,” Nick said. “You’re getting too close to the rocks.”
I obeyed his directions.
I still wasn’t able to drive very fast but our pace had definitely improved. As a result, the Jeep was no longer in danger of being tipped to its side.
Eventually, the left side of the mountain dropped off and faded away. The road ahead opened up; therefore the zombies were more spread out. I picked up a lot more speed at that point. I wasn’t about to win any races, but I was able to maneuver in and around the charging corpses and make up a bit of time.
Yet, all too soon the mountain rose up again, and we headed into another canyon of rock. For whatever reason, this canyon was even more packed with zombies than the last one. Even from inside the vehicle we could feel the pressure against the front bumper as the Jeep pushed against them. The resistance was immense but I pressed down even harder on the gas pedal, and inch by inch we found our momentum.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Dudley grumbled from the back seat.
I looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He was hunched over in the middle of the backseat. His eyes were focused gloomily on the front windshield, and the corpses were banging against the windows on either side and behind him.
With Nick giving me directions, we parted the sea of dead. It wasn’t an ideal position for us to be in but I was confident that we were going to make it out in one piece. Eventually the canyon of rock would open up, and we’d have enough space to pick up some speed. When that happened, my plan was to push the pace. I wanted to leave them far behind as we made our way down the other side of the mountain. As things were, the zombies were ruining my plans. I didn’t want to fight them. I didn’t give a shit about zombies at that particular moment. I wanted to fight the Monster.
“Turn a bit to the right,” Nick said. “Too much, back off just a bit, there ya go.”
CRUNCH!
The front of the Jeep slammed into something immovable but we couldn’t see what it was for a few moments due to all the hungry dead on the hood of the vehicle.
“What did we hit?” I asked.
“No idea,” Nick answered.
“Did you run us into the fuckin’ mountain you asshole?” Dudley demanded.
“No,” Nick answered. “The little arrow on the GPS says we’re in the middle of the road.”
A number of zombies moved in just the right way and I was able to see that we had run into the rear end of a semi-truck trailer.
“We just hit a semi-trailer,” I announced. “I’ll back up, and we’ll go around it.”
Secretly, I was having flashbacks about the time that vampire chick was chasing me down, and I got my front bumper stuck on another car after I ran into it.
The Jeep tipped obscenely to the left as I was having that thought. The dead had finally gotten a good grip on us. Dudley screamed out from the backseat and slid into the side window. Nick was fortunately buckled into his seat or I would have been smooshed beneath his bulk.
I slammed the shifter into reverse and floored the gas pedal. Tires met flesh, and zombies were thrown away from the wheels. It was the moment I needed. Not all of the shamblers had been thrashed by the tires but the ruckus weakened them just enough that we reversed out of their grasp.
We didn’t go far, mind you. Almost immediately we crunched and shattered the shin bones of the dead behind us. I kept going, though. I backed into them relentlessly. I probably gave myself about ten feet of distance from the semi-trailer, and then I punched forward once again.
I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was the sudden lurch in speed but most of the zombies weren’t being smacked out of the way. Instead, they were being sucked under the tires. The ground beneath us suddenly became squishy and soft.
I wanted to go widely around the semi-trailer, but I didn’t have enough control with the bumpy, loose corpses underneath the tires. The side of the Jeep ground against the metal of the trailer, and we sparked our way down its side.
Nick was screaming.
He was worried that his window was going to break away. The screeching sound was horrendous. It was louder than the zombie screams. It was louder than Nicks screams. Under better circumstances I would probably have been laughing at him.
Then we were free of the trailer. We were over the mass of corpses. The tires met road with a satisfying forward jerk of traction, and we were once again on our way.
I was going just a bit slower than before. I didn’t want to meet up with another abandoned vehicle. I was too worried about getting stuck and giving the zombies enough time to flip us.
“How much more of this shit do we need to go through?” Dudley asked.
I didn’t answer. I was more familiar with Trans Mountain Road than he was. I didn’t want to tell him the bad news. Instead, I just kept driving. I just kept moving forward. Never stopping, stopping was bad. Stopping would get us killed.
We pushed and pushed. The zombies in our windows became a blur of forgotten faces. In our minds for a brief moment and replaced by a hundred more the next. All in all, the drive took about three hours. We scraped some more cars along the way but we never hit them hard enough to require any backtracking.
The drive was scary. It would make an incredible ride at an amusement park. Drive through the zombies in an armored vehicle, ten dollars a ticket. See if you can make it across the mountain.
The horde began to thin out on the final downward slope.
We picked up speed immediately. I could finally see the road ahead of us. Nothing was going to hold us back. There were only a few cars in the road ahead and going around them gave us no problems.
I kept peeking at my rearview mirror in order to watch all the rotten faces become smaller and smaller. They did their best to keep up with us. I’ve gotta give them that, but it was still pretty easy to leave them behind.
“They’re still chasing after us,” Dudley said as we pulled farther and farther away.
“Let them,” Nick replied. “Not like they’re gonna catch us now.”
“Well,” Dudley continued. “We just led thousands upon thousands of zombies to the Westside. We need to be on the Westside. Am I the only one thinking there might be a problem?”
Dudley was, in fact, the only one thinking that. All those zombies would be pouring into the same side of town we needed to be on. To make matters worse, my old house was located in the Upper Valley, and the Upper Valley isn’t really all that far from Trans Mountain Road.
Not good. I wasn’t thinking ahead. I was charging blindly into danger. I needed to start using my brain before one of us got hurt.
I slowed down immediately. I couldn’t take the chance of them infiltrating my old neighborhood. I needed to lead them in the opposite direction. So, I took the first left turn we came upon.
“I’ll lead them to the desert past our old Safe Zone,” I said. “Then we’ll take Redd Road back to my house.”
Getting zombies to follow after you is a really easy thing to do. All you have to do is let them see you. Dudley and I were pretty used to it, but it still had some sort of weird effect on us. It probably always will. I’m not sure how to describe it, except to say that it’s chilling.
I led the horde away from the Upper Valley. In fact, I led them back in the same general direction we had all come from; I was just using a different road. This time, however, I also had the option of using intersecting side streets if I needed to change course on our long journey to the desert. I waited until I had a massive group following in the right direction and I hit the gas.
I left them far behind as we headed towards our destination. When I was finally out of their line of sight, I honked the horn just so they would be able to hear that we were still ahead of them and would head towards the sound. I had to take a few turns but I eventually got to a place where the roads ended, and the desert began.
We made a lot of noise once we had gotten there. We honked the horn, and we screamed out the windows. Then, we listened. The night was quiet, so we began making noise again.
We had to do this about five times. It wasn’t much really. Zombies don’t need all that much. On the fifth time of making noise, we finally heard them. They were far away but they were coming. We sat there listening to them for a few minutes. We needed to make sure they didn’t get distracted.
Broken (Book 3 of The Guardian Interviews) Page 15
