by Ray Wallace
You want to put the pedal to the floor and get to the spaceport as quickly as possible. Instead, you force yourself to keep the truck under thirty miles per hour. The road is filled with debris - branches from nearby trees and random pieces of refuse - not to mention the occasional abandoned car. Since you've got plenty of time to reach your destination, there's no reason to drive recklessly and maybe end up in an accident or with a ruptured tire.
Ten minutes into your journey, you approach an intersection where a UPS van lies on its side, rear door open, weathered packages strewn across the road. The traffic lights hanging over the intersection are dormant, of course, their blank faces offering no instructions, indifferent as to whether you continue onward or not. You slow down as you approach the capsized vehicle, figuring it best to pretend the traffic light blinks yellow and proceed with caution. Nearing the van, a trio of zombies emerges from the back of it, two of them walking in the usual slow zombie way. As for the third one...
After emitting a wordless scream plainly audible inside the pickup's sealed interior, it runs straight toward you, much faster than its emaciated limbs seem capable of carrying it.
"Berserker," you say out loud as a frisson of fear races through your body.
You put the pedal to the floor, wanting to avoid what seems to be an imminent meeting with the mutant zombie. Just as you clear the intersection, you feel a jolt as something slams against the rear of the vehicle. Using the rearview mirror, you watch in disbelief as the zombie pulls itself up and over the tailgate and into the bed of the truck. It rushes forward and bangs its fist against the rear window of the cab, hard enough to cause a web-like pattern of cracks. You whip the wheel to the left then back to the right, trying to dislodge your unwanted passenger. The maneuver doesn't work, though, seems to only infuriate the zombie more as it screams again and pounds its fists on the roof.
The pounding and the screaming act as constant distractions from your driving. You take your eyes off the road to check the rearview mirror again. And that's when the front right tire slams down into a massive pothole, deep enough for the underside of the truck to scrape along the asphalt. Afterward, the steering wheel pulls hard to the right which can only mean one thing.
Flat tire. Great.
You slow down and park at the side of the road. Reaching into the duffel bag, you pull out the handgun while the berserker continues to hammer away at the roof over your head.
Throwing open the driver's side door, you hop out and scurry away from the truck. After ten feet or so, you pivot and walk backward, arm raised and gun pointed toward the figure standing in the bed of the truck continuing its assault on the roof of the cab.
"Hey!" you shout, trying to get the zombie's attention.
It works. The berserker ceases its attack on the vehicle then looks your way. The hunger, the pure malevolence visible in that emaciated visage makes you want to run away as fast as you can. But you don't. You stand your ground.
"If we're gonna do this then let's do it," you say, trying to sound a lot tougher than you actually feel.
The berserker needs no further prompting. In one swift motion it climbs down from the bed of the truck and with an ear splitting screech runs straight toward you, hands held out in front of it, fingers curled into claws.
You pull the trigger.
The shot hits the zombie in the face, just below the left eye, opening a hole in the decaying flesh there. It doesn't slow the creature's charge in the least. But the second shot does. The berserker's head snaps back and its stops screaming as it falls to the ground where it lies twitching on the pavement not three feet in front of you.
The sound of the gunshot echoes away into the distance. Then there's only the hum of the truck's idling engine along with the moaning and the low growling of the other, much slower zombies over by the UPS van. With a glance in their direction, you see they're headed toward you although they're still a good thirty feet away. Undoubtedly, the gunshots have gotten the attention of any zombie for half a mile in every direction. It's a good possibility that within the next couple of minutes the place will be crawling with them.
You take a deep breath to calm your racing heart then walk back to the truck, circling around it to take in the sight of the ruined tire. Cursing under your breath, you head back to the driver side door, lean in and grab the duffel bag and its cache of supplies. After killing the engine, you close the door and jog away from the scene, wanting to put some distance between yourself and the berserker's friends.
A couple of minutes later, you slow to a brisk walk and drink some water from one of the bottles in your duffel bag. Carrying the gun in one hand and the bag in the other, you try to figure out what your next move should be. Obviously, you need another vehicle. Sure, you could have stuck around and changed the tire on the truck but that would have involved more zombie killing, more unwanted noise and a further waste of ammunition. Not worth it. You're bound to find another working vehicle at some point. Or so you hope.
An hour later you're kicking yourself for not taking the truck's battery.
I wasn't thinking straight.
A run-in with a berserker can have that sort of effect on a person. But, still, it was stupid. Of the ten cars you've checked since abandoning the truck, three of them have had the keys inside but none of their engines would turn over.
You pass through another intersection, walk beneath another row of dead traffic lights. Crows sit along the power cables to either side of the street, cawing randomly as you walk by. The morning air grows increasingly warm, the daylight noticeably brighter the further you go. Now you wish you had some sunglasses and a baseball cap, maybe a bottle of sunscreen too.
Just past the intersection, you see a Walgreens off to the right. Across the street, behind a fire gutted Taco Bell, stands a strip mall with a Toys-R-Us and a Sports Authority in it. Inside the Walgreens, you may be able to find sunscreen. The sporting goods store offers the hope of a baseball cap.
And a bicycle.
Not a car, no, but it would sure beat all this walking.
CLICK HERE if you decide to head over to the Walgreens first.
CLICK HERE if, instead, you make your way to the sporting goods store.
"Don't you dare!"
The shout comes from outside and for the second time you're convinced the kid's going to pull the trigger. But he doesn't. The door next to him swings open and his sister tells him to get out of the truck.
"Both of you. Please. Let's talk this out."
You tell her you have no problem with this suggestion but, as it turns out, you're not the one with the gun.
"Guns, actually," says the kid next to you.
"Garrett..." His sister reaches in and gently grabs him by the arm.
The kid presses his lips together, obviously unhappy with this turn of events. Then with an "Oh, all right, fine" he removes the gun from your side, tells you to turn off the truck and exit the vehicle. "Nice and slow."
You do as you're told and a few moments later the three of you stand on the sidewalk next to the minivan, Garrett still aiming one of the two guns at you.
"I'm real sorry about this," says the sister, offering you a rueful smile. "Garrett's doing what he thinks is best."
The kid says nothing, just stares at you, shifting his weight from one side to the other, antsy and impatient.
"I can respect that," you tell her. "But there's really no reason for any of this. If you need a ride I'd be happy to give you one. Where are you headed anyway?"
Before she can respond, Garret interjects: "We don't need a ride. We need a vehicle. We have to keep moving, Nowhere's safe anymore. And no one can be trusted."
The kid's afraid.
Angry and afraid. And who can blame him really? He should be in school, hanging out with friends, playing the latest video games and maybe even falling in love for the first time. Instead he's out here, forced to grow up before he's ready, trying to protect his sister and her unborn child from the man
y dangers and horrors of a world overrun by the living dead. You wonder what kind of kid he'd been before all of this.
A much happier one, no doubt.
Back before the first city fell to the zombies... Back before the ill fated nuclear strike that spread the airborne pathogen outward on clouds of death...
"Not true," you say in response to the kid's last statement. "I know of a place that's safe."
"What do you mean?"
You raise your hand and point toward the sky. "It's safe up there."
He laughs. "Now you're talking crazy."
His sister walks over and stands next to him, places a hand on his shoulder. "Garrett, please." Her other hand rests on top of the bulging mound of her abdomen. "Tell us what you mean."
And you do. You tell them how for months now you've been listening to the radio every morning, hearing fewer and fewer voices speaking over the airwaves until only one was left, the one that spoke of God's wrath and mankind's fall from grace.
"Until this morning."
They stand there in silence as you tell them about the message. "One last shuttle flight. The woman said there are a dozen seats available. First come, first serve. I plan on getting one of those seats. You two can come along with me if you want."
Garrett shakes his head, the suspicion evident on his face.
"I'll prove it," you say. "Come on."
Back at the truck, you open the driver side door, lean in and use the key to bring the radio to life. Turning up the volume, you scan through the stations on the AM dial until you get to 910. To your relief the voice comes through loud and clear.
"...will depart the Tampa spaceport tomorrow morning. If the weather holds - and we have no reason to expect any change from today's clear skies - lift-off will occur at eleven AM sharp..."
You let the message play through to the end.
"My God," says the girl, eyes wide with wonder. "Can it really be true?"
You offer her a smile. "Only one way to find out."
"It could be a trick," offers Garrett.
You shrug. "Could be, I suppose. Not sure what the point of it would be, though."
You can see him thinking it over, fighting with the idea, weighing the pros and cons - more of the cons, most likely.
"And why should we trust you?"
"I stopped for you, remember? You're the one who pulled a gun on me."
His sister places her hand on his shoulder.
"Come on, Garrett, let's go find out if this thing's for real or not."
Just then you hear a terrible screaming sound from maybe a couple of streets over. Berserker. The telltale sound of one of the fast moving, mutant zombies. The threat of one showing up seems to help Garrett reach a decision.
He nods his head and says a bit reluctantly, "I guess having someone else to watch our backs for a little while might not be a bad thing. But I swear, if you try anything funny..."
You raise both hands and shake your head solemnly. "I won't. I promise."
Garrett moves toward the minivan, ducks inside and reemerges with two duffel bags of his own. After tossing them into the bed of the pickup truck, he climbs in the back seat, lets his sister sit up front.
You get in and start the truck.
Garrett still hasn't returned your gun and for the moment you don't press the issue.
The young woman next to you offers you her hand.
"My name's Lindsay, by the way."
You take it, give it a quick shake while telling her your name. Then you put the truck in gear and pull away from the curb, continue your journey toward the spaceport and the hope of leaving this dead planet behind.
CLICK HERE
"Okay, okay," you tell the kid as you reach for the door handle, give it a pull and step out of the vehicle. Yes, the truck is important but definitely not worth getting shot over.
The kid exits the truck and circles around to your side. "Now get out of here!" he shouts before aiming the gun toward the sky and pulling the trigger. It seems like a safe assumption he'll aim lower next time.
You run down the street in the direction from which you just arrived. As you reach the intersection at the end of the block, you slow to a jog and continue on toward the next stop sign, the one standing at the subdivision's exit. Along the way, you hear a very distinctive sound from somewhere nearby, maybe even the next street over. It's a certain type of scream you've heard many times before. The media even gave the thing responsible for the sound a name back in the early days of the Outbreak:
Berserker.
A palpable sense of fear washes over you as the full impact of being out here unarmed sets in on you. Just ahead, several zombies wander toward the street from around the side of one of the cookie cutter houses. This may be the pack the kid was referring to, the one he managed to escape before you came along and offered him a ride. The berserker screams again; thankfully, the creature itself has not yet appeared. And so you continue onward, eventually slow to a walk as you reach the stop sign, the shambling zombies safely behind you.
The street here ends at a four lane road. Left will take you westbound toward Tampa and the spaceport located there, your ultimate destination. So you start jogging in that direction, staying on the cement walkway off to the side of the road. A six-foot-high brick wall stands between you and the neighborhood you've left behind, offers some comfort as you realize the zombies you saw and the berserker you heard are now on the other side of it. During the solitary weeks and months spent trapped in your house as the zombie plague claimed the world outside, you did what you could to stay in shape, mostly regimens of push-ups and sit-ups, lunges and the like. And while this routine kept you fairly fit, it did little to prepare you for any long stretches of running. Five minutes into your jog, you decide to try more of a brisk walk. The morning air has already started heating up and you find yourself thinking about those bottled waters in the duffel bag you were forced to leave behind.
Every minute or so, you pass an abandoned car. You can only hope to find one that's ready to be driven but have no luck with the first several you come across.
Up ahead, maybe half-a-mile or so away, you see a group of figures milling around aimlessly. No major cause for alarm. If they're just regular old, run-of-the-mill zombies, you should be able to avoid them easily enough. But then you hear a certain dreaded sound once again: screaming, from behind you.
Looking back, you see a figure hurrying toward you, have to assume it's the berserker you heard a little while ago.
"Great."
You jog faster. It isn't long before you start breathing heavily. Just ahead, another vehicle sits near the side of the road, a black Nissan SUV with a crumpled passenger side door.
CLICK HERE if you decide to stop and check the SUV.
CLICK HERE if you tell yourself you can't stop, that you have to stay as far ahead of the berserker as possible.
The place has been ransacked. No big surprise there. In the early days of the Outbreak, when the fear began to spread like flames through dry grass, mobs had taken to the streets in order to fend off the rising zombie menace. And they had failed. Even the military couldn't contain the plague as it moved outward among the population, carried on the air and by the "howlers" - human hosts driven insane by the virus, intent on infecting as many others as possible before they dropped dead, only to be resurrected as zombies.
The one thing the unruly mobs did not fail at, however, was looting. The news covered most of it. Crowds of people pouring into stores and malls, taking whatever they wanted, sometimes killing those who tried to stop them. One particular incident, captured on a cell phone camera, went viral online. The video showed the owner of a bakery as he was dragged out of his store by a group of men, one of whom had a length of rope with a noose tied in the end of it. The rope was tossed up and over the outstretched arm of a nearby streetlamp, the noose went around the baker's neck and he was hoisted into the air, legs kicking as a throng of onlookers cheered.
You
can only wonder if any similar scenes of brutality took place here.
Most of the shelves are empty, a number of them pushed over from seemingly random acts of vandalism. Enough sunlight streams in through the open automatic doors and the windows along the front of the building - many of them broken - for you to navigate safely inside. Walking past the checkout counter, you see what looks like dark red paint spattered across the register and the countertop. You know it's not paint, though.
Okay, two minutes, you tell yourself. If you don't find what you're looking for in that time period it will be time to go.
You start to count:
One Mississippi... Two Mississippi...
You make your way deeper into the store, examining the plastic bottles scattered across the floor near your feet along the way.
Shampoo... A bottle of mouthwash...
A little further along, you see a can of Lysol and a few other cleaning products.
And there, a bottle of Coppertone sunscreen lying on the floor in front of you. SPF 30.
Perfect.
You grab it and stick it in the duffel bag then freeze in place when you hear the sound of something moaning.
A figure rises into view from behind the makeup counter about ten feet in front of you. The zombie's missing an arm, wears a filthy shirt hanging in tatters. You back away, not taking your eyes off the wretched thing as it makes its way to the end of the counter. With its remaining hand, it reaches toward you, fingers grasping, the moaning sound morphing into something more guttural, like that of a dog growling low in its throat.
Sixty-seven Mississippi... Sixty-eight... Yeah, screw this.
You hurry toward the building's entrance, pistol in one hand, duffel bag in the other. Before you get there, though, two moaning figures enter the store - a man and a woman, most of their body parts still intact. A breeze blowing in past them carries the unmistakable odor of rot.
You don't even hesitate, just aim the gun and fire. The first shot catches the man in the forehead, dead center, dropping him to the floor. The second shot misses the woman entirely. The third one hits her in the shoulder. With the fourth one, though, she joins the other zombie on the floor.
