by Kirk Allmond
I started the truck, and as the engine roared to life, I realized that even with the loss of Candi, the probable loss of all of my friends, my job, my life how it was, I was grateful. “Max,” I said, “I love you. I’m so happy you’re okay.”
I looked up into the rear-view mirror, Max was already fast asleep.
Driving back up the hill to Route 15, I made the left past where I’d blown the zombie known as Penelope’s brains out. I saw the large blood spot on the road in the dim light of my one headlight, but there was no corpse. There’s no way anything could have survived a point blank 44 magnum round to the head. Someone or something must have dragged the body off the road. There was something else around.
Not wanting to waste any time, I nudged the brush guard on the truck against one of the cars, and slowly accelerated. With a growl, the loaded down, v8 powered SUV pushed the car backwards into the guard rail. I backed up, jockeyed for position, and pushed the other car back towards the guard rail, this one screeched sideways, I had to back up and push it the last couple of feet with my bumper guard centered between the passenger side doors.
There was just enough room to squeeze through the cars, once across the bridge I was in Virginia! I had miles and miles of farmland before reaching Leesburg, Virginia. The city was home to Dulles International Airport, as well as three major federal government facilities. Given how the rest of the trip has gone, I needed to find a way around Leesburg. Route 15 runs right through the middle of the city. I turned on the display, and zoomed out the GPS. Just before the city, I could hang a left on a small state road, and bypass most of the city. It took me miles out of my way, but I’d encountered resistance at every obvious point along the way, and couldn’t afford any more delays. I set the GPS end-point a few miles south of Leesburg, and lined up alternate routes, trying to familiarize myself with the back-country roads as I drove past mile after mile of horse farms.
After about an hour, the GPS told me to - Turn left in one thousand feet- I eased off the gas and slowed down some. This was a tiny gravel road. Faithful in my GPS I made the left, and headed down the gravel/dirt track. Off the main road and in the heavy trees, I felt safer turning on the roof mounted off-road lights. Four high power halogen lights over my head lit up the road for several hundred feet in front of me. I almost felt like whistling as I headed down the road, feeling confident. 2.4 miles later, I turned right onto a paved road, and shortly after that I entered a subdivision of McMansions. Two Acre lots, most of which was covered by the footprint of the half-million dollar, four thousand square foot houses. Many of the houses had lights on; a couple of them had lumber nailed over the bottom floor doors and windows. One of them had a whole pile of dead zombies in the front yard, and I think I saw someone up in a second story window. I suppose it could have been a zombie up there, but I’ve always had a feeling that guy was a survivor.
“Turn left, two-hundred feet,” sounded off from the truck’s speakers, and I put on my turn signal. As I made my left, I saw a woman running out of a house. I slowed to a stop, with my lights pointed towards the house. She turned, and drew a machete from a holster on her hip. A man came stumbling out of the house.
“Max! Wake up, cover your ears!” I slammed the truck in park, hit the automatic window button, picked up the rifle from beside the door, and hopped out. I braced inside the door of the truck and lined up the crosshairs on the target.
“Ma’am, get down!” I yelled
“No!” she yelled back, “This one is mine!” The zombie closed the distance and she brought the machete overhand down, like swinging an ax, splitting its skull in half. It collapsed in a heap in the grass; she pulled her machete free, wiped it off and holstered it like a sword.
She turned to me, and started walking towards me.
“That’s far enough,” I said quietly, “How do I know if you’re one of them?”
10. Skirting the City
The woman came to a halt a few feet in front of me, the door of the truck and my rifle between us. She was not threatening, standing with her empty palms outward. She was wearing a tan tank top with the logo of a setting sun over a pile of skulls, with a green flag in the foreground. Black cargo pants, and a backpack with a patch of the same logo. She had a pair of thin batons sticking out from the small of her back, and a large machete strapped to her thigh. The machete, which was more like a sword in her hands, looked just like the ones Alice used in one of those Resident Evil movies. Her long dark hair was pinned up in a bun, one strand of hair hanging down.
“My name is Leo,” she said. “The zombie there was my mate John. I owed it to him to do it myself.” Her accent was fairly thick, Australian or maybe New Zealand.
“I understand,” I replied. “What are you doing outside? You’re the only living person I’ve seen in three states.”
“We were running, looking for a place to hold up for the night. John got bit by one we missed.”
“Daddy, she doesn’t have bugs. She’s nice. We should take her with us,” I heard from the back of the car.
“My son Max,” I said “Max, this is Leo. I’m Victor Tookes, but everyone calls me Tookes.”
“Leo, I don’t know what your plan is, but we’re headed towards a farm house about an hour south of here. It was built in the 1700's, it’s defensible, it’s well provisioned, and we have plenty of room.” I continued, “Max likes you, and given how screwed up our day has been today, I’m inclined to trust his judgment.”
“My other mate is still in that house; let me go get him, would it be okay if he came along too?” She asked.
“Fine, but we have to move, I need to get there as soon as possible; I have family there.”
Just then, a man came walking out of the house, dressed much as I was. Black and gray camo cargo pants, boots, T-shirt and vest.
“John,” Called Leo. “This is Tookes. He’s headed down to a safe spot in Virginia, it’s just him and his son; I think he could use our help, he seems pretty clueless. He was going to waste a bullet on old dead John there”
“Bloody Americans,” John said. “Always shooting first and thinking later.”
“Better than you Aussies, you know the difference between Australians and yogurt? After 200 years, yogurt developed culture”
“HA! Leo, I’m gonna like this bloke,” said John.
“In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you both. My wife Candi is in the back of the truck, she was shot in an ambush just above Frederick Maryland.” Talking about it brought it all back to the front, and once again I was wracked with guilt and sorrow.
“Oh, sorry for your loss mate,” Leo said.
“I’ll mourn when there is time, right now I have to get Max to safety, and the middle of this street wasting gasoline isn’t getting me any closer. If you’re coming, grab your gear and let’s go.”
They both ran inside, I got Max a snack, and they were back with their packs just that quick. Just like that, there were four of us. John and I took the front, Leo in the back next to Max. I was learning to trust Max’s knowledge, however he got it, but we knew nothing of these people. I kept the pistol on my leg, just in case. The thought of shooting a living human was absolutely terrible, but no harm will come to Max.
I followed the GPS instructions all the way around Leesburg, winding through the back roads, bypassing a roadblock I’m certain was there, but never saw a sign of it. After one final turn off a gravel road, I was back on Highway 15, heading south towards safety and security for Max. I hadn’t pulled my phone out since all of this started, I couldn’t bring myself to call or text. I couldn’t bring myself to even look.
The next, final town before the home-place was Culpeper, Virginia. It’s the smallest town, along the way, but I was worried that there would be another trap there. For the next hour in the truck I wracked my brain for where I thought I would set a trap. There were so many places, so many bottle necks. The farther south into Virginia I drove, the taller and steeper the embankments on the
side of the road got. By the time I made it to the edge of Culpeper I’d worked myself into a panic.
“Guys, I’ve been through two road blocks today. Both were controlled by a handful of zombies. The last one had four smart ones. Every time it was at a choke point in the road. I’m sure there was one in Leesburg, but I avoided it by taking the back roads and running into you two.” I said.
“Smart ones?” They both said in unison, “There are smart ones?”
“And fast. The last one I killed moved so fast she was a blur. She spoke to me; she is after my son for some reason.”
“Tookes, what have you gotten us into?” Leo said.
“John, have you ever fired an AK?”
“No mate. We don’t have anything like this in Oz. I’m a crack shot with a .22 though,” he said.
“Okay. Turn it over. On the other side is a lever that goes from the receiver past the trigger. That’s the safety lever. The weapon is currently safe. See?”
“Yea,” he said.
“Push it up with your hand. In front of that sticking off the side is the bolt. Pull it back to insert a round into the chamber.”
“Got it,” he said. I heard the sound of a round entering the chamber and the bolt sliding home.
“Leo, have you ever shot a pistol before?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, you’re going to be Max’s last line.” I said. “If we run into a roadblock, and get stopped, don’t let anything near him,” I directed. “Max-monster, are you awake?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Buddy, if we have to shoot badguys, it’s going to be loud. I want you to cover your ears, and don’t look.”
“Okay Daddy. But you should stop here. Penelope is just ahead,” he said. I stopped just as we approached a curve in the road. I knew from making this drive so many times that the State Police headquarters was just ahead.
11. Culpeper
“Max, is anyone with her? Are you hiding from her?” I asked.
“I am hiding. She doesn’t know I’m here. Lots of bad guys Daddy.”
This was not an option. I had enough ammunition, but not enough rifles. The element of surprise only works if you can kill them while they’re surprised, and if Penelope lived through a .44 magnum through the jaw, I had to re-think my strategy. This was not a force I could overcome with my current resources, and that meant evasion.
I threw the truck in reverse, turned off the headlights, and backed back around the curve in the road. If I hadn’t had warning from Max, we would probably be dead.
In my head I started making a list of assets and liabilities.
“Guys, this is going to get way uglier before this is over. This isn’t your fight. If you want I can help you clear out a house to crash in for the night. I have to get to my family, staying the night isn’t an option for me.” I said, trying to convince them to stay.
Leo spoke first, and she took some time to consider her words. “Tookes, there’s something about you that tells me I need to be here. I’ll stay.”
John followed with “There’s something special about Max, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if you’re being entirely forthright with us, but I’m not sure I would be in your place either. I’m with you.”
“It appears that they have a tactical advantage here. They don’t seem fazed by injury, the smart ones heal very quickly, they are faster than any human, and there are a lot more of them than us.” I continued, “But, this is my turf. I grew up riding horses through all these farms when I was a kid, I know the fields and woods as well as I know the roads.”
I zoomed out on the truck’s GPS, re-centered it on the farm, and marked a way-point. “If anything happens to me, you have to get Max here. Promise me.”
In unison, both of them said, “I promise.”
I was pulled over at a low spot in the bank. I cut the wheel hard, and nosed the truck into the hill, pressed down on the accelerator and felt my all terrain tires bite into the dirt as the truck strained to climb the hill. At the top of the hill was a corn field, the corn was almost seven feet tall here. It is tricky to navigate and easy to get lost in corn taller than my truck.
Once inside the corn, I made an immediate 90-degree left turn, drove about thirty feet, and then a 90-degree right. If I drove straight into the corn, anyone walking by would see my path heading straight in to the field. This way, only a few stalks bent over would blend in with the standing corn a few feet back, and disguise the trail.
Back perpendicular to the road now, I headed straight for the middle of the field. I knew this field had a dry creek bed that ran south through the next three farms, and would get me past Penelope, and that was my primary goal. Even if she found me at the homestead, as long as I got there before her I could start creating a defensive plan.
I turned down the creek bed, and started the final push towards home. We were going just above an idle, trying to keep the engine noise down to a minimum. We’d gone about a mile down the creek bed, when Leo opened her door and bailed out of the truck. She hit the ground running, passed the truck, and leapt up out of the creek bed. She was fast; in the middle of her leap she drew her machete and swept it downward like a golf club. A severed head flew into the creek bed just ahead of the truck and was smashed under the tire.
“Go!” She yelled, “It’s a trap!”
In one easy motion John slapped the bolt back on the AK-47 I’d given him, flipped the safety up and climbed half way out the broken passenger side window, sitting on the door. He fired one shot off into the corn field, just as a handful of zombies appeared out of the corn seventy-five yards in front of us, heading towards us. Suddenly both sides of the creek bed were lined by zombies, a hundred feet down both sides.
“Hold on John!” I yelled.
I smashed the accelerator of the truck, steered up and over the bank and started plowing down zombies on the right side of the creek bed. Body parts smashed up into the windshield, Max screamed. On the other side of the creek bed, John was systematically killing zombies, one at a time, each shot landing perfectly square in the middle of the forehead, despite the bouncing of the truck.
All the sudden Leo burst out of the corn, covered in gore. She blurred forward, moving like Penelope back at the bridge, down the creek bed, machete in one hand, steel baton in the other. I saw her leap into the air, and then she disappeared over a small hill. The last thing I saw was her coming down with both weapons arced over her head.
“Magazine!” yelled John over the roaring of the engine, which was starting to sound rough. I’d lost my other headlight, the only thing lighting the path were the lights on the luggage rack. I reached in the center console, and tossed him the other magazine. He caught it with one hand, ejected the spent one, and slapped the fresh mag home in one movement. His thumb flipped the AK to full auto. He fired the entire magazine, and zombies fell like dominoes. I crested the hill, and slammed my foot down on the brakes. Leo was locked like a pro wrestler with Penelope.
I opened my door and drew a bead on them with the scope. From this range, it was an easy shot, but I couldn’t risk hitting Leo.
They both blurred, rolling and flipping around on the ground. When they finally stopped, Leo had Penelope on the ground, pinned by a baton on her forehead, and the blade of her machete pressed against Penelope’s neck.
“Tookes! Give the revolver to John!” She yelled. I passed it over to John through the car, and continued to watch, rifle ready.
“Ready John?”
“Ready.”
With one sweep of the machete, Leo lopped Penelope’s head off. She picked it up, and threw it up into the air. In what sounded almost like one shot, John emptied all five rounds into the flying severed head, the remnants of which rained down in a fine pink mist coating Leo in bits of brains and an even layer of blood.
12. Home
“We’re close, and I want to get home! I want to be done with this trip, and I haven’t eaten all day.”
Leo
ran around to the door, and started to slide into the seat next to Max. Her face covered in the remnants of Penelope, bits of skull and brain matter forming lumpy mats in her hair, which had fallen out of its bun during the fight.
I thought better of her jumping into my truck immediately. Even though my truck was wrecked, I didn’t want that much zombie near Max. “Hold on Leo,” I said. I opened the rear door, grabbed a liter of water and a tee shirt out of the back of the truck and handed it to her.
“Rinse off with that, I don’t want to run the risk of you getting infected.”
She dumped about half the bottle of water over her head and face, and I tossed her my shirt. She pulled her top up over her head, tossed it and her blood covered bra on the ground, and rinsed off her face and chest, and used my shirt to dry off.
“Do you mind?” she asked, making me realize I was staring at what had to be the most perfect breasts I’d ever seen.
I quickly stammered, “Oh, sorry!” as I turned around and got in the front seat of the truck I thought to myself, ‘Tookes, how, in the middle of all of this, having just lost your wife, could you even be the slightest bit interested.’
I glanced up into the rear-view mirror; Leo dug into her bag and pulled out another tank top, identical to the first one she had on. She slid it over heard head, and pulled it down leaving a slight gap at her midriff before hopping back into the truck.
“Thanks, I feel much better.” She said, closing her door.
We were less than two miles from the house now, I started my battered, dented, gore covered truck, and we started off back down the creek bed. The clock on the dash board read 1:00 am. It had been around ten yesterday morning when I saw my first zombie. Fifteen hours later, my wife was dead, my life was irrevocably altered, my son was different, but still the same sweet, easy going boy I loved with every cell in my body and every ounce of my spirit. I could identify with my truck, I’ve been beat up, shot at, robbed of everything, but I’m still running, undeterred from my mission of getting Max to relative safety.
