Max finds it odd that she is looking for a doctor for her husband but appears to be alone in the vehicle.
As the cars have come closer together Brooke can’t help but notice that the brunette looks to have had some cosmetic surgery –the eyes that seem hard to blink and forehead stretched as tight as a drum are usually a dead giveaway- and is probably closer to forty-five than thirty something.
Obviously disappointed by Max’s response the brunette continues, “We were camping on the beach and he let out this god-awful scream like he was passing a kidney stone,” as she relays her story, worry lines become apparent on her forehead and betray her age, “now his skin has gone pale and I don’t know what to do. I stopped to ask for directions but it’s like a ghost town. The only person I saw just ran away from me as soon as they saw him. Where is everybody? It seems too early for it to be so quiet.”
Max answers, “Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”
“I tried but it’s all dead air. I think my radio is on the fritz.”
Max notices for the first time that he can’t see a passenger side headrest, possibly indicating that the seat is lying down.
“Ma’am is your husband with you in the…”
Before he can get the words out, a deranged looking man in his fifties with graying short blonde hair and a khaki button-down shirt pops up from the passenger seat. Blood is trickling from the corners of his mouth. The yellow tint of his eyes is unmistakable even at their current speed and distance from the convertible. His chiseled features and muscular shoulders indicate a high level of fitness but contrast his sickly gray pallor. Still, even in the flash of a second that Max has to look at him, something in his face seems all too familiar. His wife is still hanging on Max’s last words and takes no notice of her fully infected husband sitting erect behind her and preparing her dismemberment.
Brooke is only able to get out the ‘look’ part of ‘look out’ before the brunette’s husband bares his teeth and buries them in his wife’s right arm. Blood fills his mouth and sprays from between his teeth as he bears down harder and harder. His wife –inexplicably without screaming- turns her head toward her husband just in time to see and feel him withdraw his head. His teeth remain clenched and he takes a sizeable portion of arm muscle complete with tendons and skin with him. Since this is the arm she’s driving with, she immediately loses control of the vehicle and before Brooke can react the convertible slams hard into the right side of the Audi. The vehicle’s metal side panels crunch with an agonizing groan and the Audi is sent careening toward the center divide rails on the left shoulder of the southbound lanes. It hits them with crushing force and all three passengers are flung sideways and forward upon impact. Vinny’s left arm clashes with the plastic door panel and his shoulder cracks. The sound it makes is muffled by his cries of agony. Brooke’s head flies into the glass of the driver’s side window previously splintered by Steve. The glass gives way and takes the brunt of the impact, sparing Brooke’s head from injury in the process. Max gets off the easiest since he’s sitting on the right and has nothing on his left with which to collide. The pain and soreness of whiplash is undoubtedly in the mail but he could have been much worse off.
Two loud pops can be heard in succession followed by a whoosh of compressed air escaping the tires. Metal grinds hard beneath the car and friction born sparks fly as the Audi comes to an abrupt stop against the center divide.
After rebounding off of the Audi, the convertible has the adverse reaction and punches almost headfirst into the k-rails on the right shoulder of the freeway. The brunette -who had foolishly been riding without a fastened seat belt- is instantly ejected and flies head first –and again without a sound- over the k-rail and down several stories to the pavement that awaited her below. Her descent is far less than graceful, and upon impact, her body spreads open like an insect on a windshield. Her thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-four physique is reduced to a roughly twelve inch high sack of bone, flesh and fluids. Ironically, her husband, who had his seatbelt securely fastened, is still firmly planted in the front passenger seat with his face buried in a deployed airbag.
The overwhelming smell of burnt rubber lingers in the air. The only things audible are a light whimper from Vinny and heavy breathing all around. If Brooke had not insisted that everyone wear his or her seatbelt then it would be a far grizzlier scene.
“You two ok?” Max is the first able to speak.
“My shoulder is killing me!” Vinny responds through clenched teeth and evident distress.
Max unbuckles both he and Vinny’s seat belts and reaches to the front to touch Brooke’s arm. Though she was moving, she hadn’t responded.
“I’m fine, check out Vinny,” her voice has a trimmer but Max hopes it is more due to shock than injury and turns his attention back to Vinny.
He pulls the collar of Vinny’s shirt toward his injured shoulder and sees that the bruising has intensified.
“Do you think you can walk? Your car is screwed.”
Vinny never answers that question but asks one of his own instead, “Do you smell that?”
“What, rubber?”
“No, it smells like gas.”
Max is suddenly aware that the Audi is still running. The automatic fuel shutoff apparently has malfunctioned and they are not only leaking high-octane fuel, the car is also quite hot. If a spark from the engine ignites the gas or it reaches any number of red-hot pipes beneath the car, then they will certainly be burned alive. The need for escape is urgent.
“We’ve got to get out of the car! It could catch fire!”
Max turns to the door and finds himself face to face with the yellow eyes of the brunette’s husband. Now that he stands outside of the convertible, his figure seems even more imposing. He’s at least six-three and his thigh muscles can be seen straining against the fabric of his gray Dockers. Sooner than Max is able to react, the enraged fiend reaches through the open window with one large and powerful right hand and grabs him by the neck. He pulls Max from the car like a rag-doll in the hands of a hate-filled child and tosses him to the pavement yards away from the Audi. Given Max’s own size and weight, this should have been an impossible task. Max tries to soften the blow with the pavement by rolling out of his landing but is only halfway successful. The wind is knocked out of him and his vision darkens a bit.
Back at the car, the biter turns his sights on Brooke. Vinny, who has pushed his back up against the crumpled interior door of the Audi, is attempting to gain distance from the open window while fumbling for his magnum with his one good arm.
The infected reaches for the front passenger door handle. The door is locked and the handle breaks loose under the strain of his superhuman grasp. Rather than shattering the window in further pursuit of Brooke, the infected turns on Vinny who offers an easier meal in the open back seat. In an unexpected move, he reaches through the window and opens the door from the inside, which completely exposes Vinny leaving him naked to the biter’s powerful clutch. The raging beast reaches out with a left hand that’s just as impressive as his right and anchored to a sturdy arm with so many bulging veins that it resembles a road map. With it, he grabs hold of Vinny’s left leg and pulls him violently to the open door. Vinny –now stretched out- finds it easier to free the freshly loaded magnum from his waistband and begins firing at will. In the confined space of the car, the crack of the gun is almost deafening. The first two shots strike the biter in his lower abdomen and hip. The brute doesn’t cry-out in pain or even change his Nicholson-like expression (eyebrows raised at the outer corners and a sadistic half grin chiseled across his face). He does however withdraw back through the door, without relinquishing his hold on Vinny’s leg. Consequently, Vinny is jerked along the seat, which causes his third shot to go awry.
Max struggles to regain his breath as well as his footing as the attack on his friends unfurls before his eyes. As soon as Vinny begins to shoot, Max becomes conscious of the fact that he is directly behind the monster. He dives out of the
line of fire and covers up. Vinny’s last shot hits the pavement and sparks fly. The pool of gas beneath the car is instantly ignited in a yellow blue blaze, thus beginning a deadly countdown.
Vinny lands hard on his back with his captive leg still up in the air. The pain of his shoulder hitting the pavement is mind numbing and he looses his hold on the handgun. He doesn’t try to retrieve it because from his peripheral he glimpses something better. Just at the edge of the Audi and under the open doorway from whence he came lays Max’s shotgun. It had apparently fallen from Max’s lap when he was tossed from the vehicle. Vinny reaches for it just in time as the biter gives his leg one last tug to pull him away from the Audi. Vinny whips the shotgun around and hammers the infected center mass with a round of double ought buckshot. A plume of smoke and blood sprays forth from its chest and it falls squarely on its rear.
Vinny breathes a momentary sigh of relief as he again has control of his extremities and sees that Max too is rising to his feet. However, the relief is short lived when Vinny realizes hat the Audi has caught fire, and worse than that, his attacker -against all reason- is also rising to his feet. With one arm still in a sling, he has no chance of cocking the gun for another shot before the biter is on him. He tries to scramble to his feet and prepares to use the shotgun as a club.
Max bares witnesses in horror. The car is aflame with Brooke trapped inside, desperately trying to kick out the shattered glass of the driver’s window with little success. Vinny is still on the ground making a feeble attempt to get up without use of either his injured arm or the one busy holding the shotgun. Max has no time to consider options. It’s time to act. He burst into his best forty-yard dash, trying to pick up as much momentum as possible in the few yards between him and the car. The biter is still focused on Vinny and doesn’t hear Max swooping up from behind until Max hits him at full boar. Driving his shoulder into his back, he scoops at the back of the infected’s knees, lifting him up in the air without ever slowing down. Caught by surprise, the infected thrashes about, not quite knowing what has happened or what to do about it. He has suddenly and inexplicably found himself horizontal and staring confusedly at a starry sky. Max puts his head down and charges directly for the rail. All he can think is ‘this thing is going down, even if I have to go with it’. Max reaches the rail and slams on the brakes, but not before he bends his knees and heaves the beast over, plummeting through the freeway overpass-divide to the ground below. The monster hits the ground with so much force that the sound of breaking bones is audible even several stories up.
With no time to waste, Max returns to the vehicle, relieves Vinny of the shotgun and using the butt of it shatters the front passenger-side window. Brooke shrinks away from the glass fragments as Max clears a big enough hole in the safety glass through which to pull her. Max sets Brooke on her feet and yells at her to run while he pulls Vinny who was busy retrieving his magnum from the ground.
Max, Vinny and Brooke run and limp from the wreckage of the Audi as the fire swallows it whole and burps up several small explosions. Once they’re a safe distance away they all turn and watch the blaze. Each of them are wearing varying degrees of remorse on their faces; Vinny’s due to his sadness over the loss of his most prized possession, Brooke’s because of her gratitude for the car’s assistance in her earlier escape, and Max who couldn’t care less about the car but the backpack full of weapons and ammunition in the back seat will surely be missed.
“This fire is going to draw a lot of attention. We need to get off the freeway,” Max says hurriedly while giving Vinny and Brooke a quick once-over, looking more for signs of bleeding than anything else.
“Can you walk?” he asks of Vinny.
“My legs are fine.”
“Then let’s do it.”
After taking stock in what little ammunition they were able to salvage from their pockets, they head down the nearest off-ramp and point themselves in the direction they believe will be most fruitful. The plan is still to find a phonebook and get Vinny looked at. Hopefully there will be something in walking distance or perhaps they can find a suitable vehicle along the way. As they begin their walk, none of them take notice of a fourth companion that’s joined their journey but is keeping quietly to the shadows.
Chapter 10 - The Streets
The streets surrounding the off-ramp are ghostly vacant. Max, Vinny and Brooke are beginning to feel like the last people on Earth. Though there are no houses in the immediate vicinity, it is still surprising that no other living thing stirs in the night -surprising and a bit of a relief. Just over twenty-four hours ago, this area was probably bustling with happy and oblivious people just going about their day, clueless to the horrors that awaited them. Soon their worlds would be forever changed. Some would succumb to the infection and be compelled to slaughter their loved ones, while others would be forced to defend themselves resulting in the same unfortunate end. Was this ancient and wicked disease called up from the bowels of the earth as punishment from the heavens? No doubt humanity has gone astray from what God had intended, but was this virus to serve as the tool of the apocalypse laying waste to all of humanity like a flood of destruction? Was this the endgame for the human race? Soon would the world be wiped clean of our kind to make space for God’s next, less flawed, creation? Perhaps our existence here –in the end- would merely have been a failed beta test from which the creator would gleam the necessary data prior to moving onto the next phase in development.
Could the adverse also be possible? Could this virus merely be an isolated incident that has reared its ugly head around the globe from time to time over the centuries, bringing with it a tirade of death and destruction only to vanish just as suddenly leaving behind speculation and conjecture? It was an obvious fit for the lore of the vampire and its virility would explain the lack of first hand accounts that sounded like anything more than the ravings of a lunatic. But surely, if a catastrophe of this magnitude had previously transpired there would be a written record documenting the event. Had the virus mutated over the years to become the harbinger of death that laid waste to the masses here and now? Would anyone be left alive to document this event for posterity?
Time would tell.
***
Max, Vinny and Brooke, after walking for what felt like an eternity but in reality was closer to thirty minutes, have had little luck finding what they’ve searched for. Their first priority –a medical facility- was nowhere in sight. As for a phonebook, they hadn’t fared any better. They searched every gas station phone booth and grocery store public phone that they saw but were batting zero. Either this town’s phone company did not provide phonebooks for payphones or other people had come up with the same idea as Brooke.
“This is a waste of time,” Max speaks impatiently, his concern for Vinny building as the walk has grown increasingly difficult for him, “There has to be another way to find a phonebook.”
Vinny shakes his head, “Let’s just break-in someplace and take one.”
“In case you forgot, breaking and entering is a crime punishable by imprisonment in most places on Earth.” Brooke says with a pseudo-sarcastic tone in her voice.
Max interjects, “No, Vinny is right. The time to pussy foot has long past. Besides, we threw the law out the window when we stole a bag full of guns from the sheriff station. Anyway, the law does allow for desperate measures during desperate times.”
Vinny smiles and slaps Max on the back with his good arm, “A hustler turned would-be cop, we’ve got the best of both worlds right here in you.”
“There’s a strip mall ahead. Most of those businesses will have a phonebook and the shops are notoriously easy to break into.”
***
Across the street and trailing a block behind, their unseen attendant slinks about the shadows being very careful not to be noticed and biding its time.
***
Now, in the parking lot of the strip mall they begin assessing the easiest targets; a coffee house, a bagel joint, a used sp
orting equipment store, and a delivery-only pizza parlor.
Brooke takes a break from nibbling her thumbnail to say, “My vote is the pizza place,” she whispers so low that she can hardly be heard, even though the parking lot is bare without another sole in sight, “They use the white pages to look up people’s addresses sometimes…. don’t they?”
“Good call,” answers Max, “and since cash on site is small, security measures should be low.”
Vinny is sitting on the curb and trying to find a comfortable position for his shoulder in the sling.
He looks perplexed, “Who gives a flying fart about security measures. Smash the fucking window and get the book. While you’re in there grab me some pizza. I’m so hungry I could eat an inside-out asshole.”
Vinny’s volume had escalated, causing Max to put a finger to his lips and make a shushing sound.
“Hey, right now we’re alone here but if we start making too much racket those things might be all over us, not to mention the police, if there are any left. Now maybe you two have nothing to fear from the police, but I’m a young black male with a shotgun that’s about to commit breaking and entering. For a cop in the area where I grew up that’s the trifecta. I’ve seen this episode and the black man dies first. So if you don’t mind I’d prefer to do this quietly.”
In truth, Max is less concerned about what the police might do to him and more concerned with how they would react to Vinny. It was Max’s experience that most police were fairly cool under pressure, but it only takes one that’s a little too twitchy to see Vinny -covered in blood and looking like stomped shit- to start a shooting frenzy that could get all three of them killed.
Max approaches the glass front of the pizza shop and gives the doors a rattle. This is his high-tech way of testing the fortitude of the dead bolt and to determine if any other locks are in place. He peers through the window and takes inventory. The shop is small. Not much bigger than a dorm room in the front with a kitchen maybe three times that size in back. The lobby is tight and populated by three armless chairs for waiting customers. On the counter he can see a cash register, a stack of coupon fliers and a sign that reads, ‘BUY ONE LARGE ONE-TOPPING PIZZA GET HALF OFF THE NEXT!’. There’s an upright glass-front refrigerator to the right facing the door and he is disappointed to find it empty. Satisfied that the place is vacant he traces the inner doorframe looking for magnetic alarm contact points and spots one at the upper left corner on the hinged side of the door.
One Blink From Oblivion Page 10
