The river was just ahead. There were signs.
“Everyone doing okay back there?” I asked.
“Melissa is kind of a mess. She’s still on a bunk, her back to us,” she said. “And Michelle is hanging in there. Your daughter has kept up on cleaning the wound.”
“We’re going to have to get that bullet out,” I said. “Can’t leave it in there.”
“You keep saying that,” she said. “We’re going to need to stop to do that.”
“I know, but not yet.”
“When?”
I didn’t want to stop. Stopping exposed us to danger. If it wasn’t zombies, it was motherfucking bandits. There were seven of us now. Seven. If we were going to stop, it had to be somewhere safe. I didn’t know the area, had no idea where it was safe. “I don’t know.”
“Want me to drive?”
I shook my head. “Maybe in a few hours. I’d like to stick with it for a bit. Thank you.”
“A few hours,” she said. I didn’t reply and knew she was not happy with my silence. “You need anything?”
“Big Mac, fries? Maybe an icy Coke?”
She laughed. “I’ll see if I can dig you up a bottle of warm water.”
“Mmmm. Sounds perfect.”
I saw the sign for the Hernando de Soto Bridge. I knew that it stood just over a hundred feet from the water, and spanned 20,000 from end to end.
I slammed on the brakes. The bus came to a screeching halt. Tires had to be kicking up black-rubber smoke.
“The fuck, Chase,” Dave said.
“Chase?” Kia said.
Dave came up to the front. He rested a hand on the dash. “What is it?”
“Look.”
The “M Bridge,” as it was often called, was overrun with zombies. Six lanes, three in each direction, were swarming with walking dead, littered with disabled vehicles, and looked damned near impossible to cross.
“Holy shit,” Dave said.
“Now what?”
“Charlene, you have that map?”
Paper ruffled. “There’s another bridge just south of here, Route 55 goes over it,” she said, my navigator.
“Do we turn it around, head for Route 55?”
No one said a word. I wanted input. I did not want this to be my call.
“We can plow right through them.” I turned around. Melissa was directly behind me, her hands on the back of my seat. “Gene made this thing so that it would cut through anything.”
I bit my lip. She was in mourning. She missed her man. This was Gene’s bus and I was worried she just felt like there was something that had to be proved. There wasn’t. No one doubted the validity of this bus. It was a monster.
“I say we go around,” Kia said.
In the oversized rearview mirror, I saw Melissa stare at Kia, as if she’d just unleashed a string of obscenities. “Dave?” I said.
The zombies didn’t seem to notice the bus yet. There was time for us to discuss the decision this time.
“We plow through them,” he said.
“Go around,” Andy said. “We don’t need to hurt those things.”
Charlene stared at Andy like he might be out of his fucking mind. “Give it some gas,” she said.
I didn’t know the temperature, but sweat beaded on my brow. I felt it drip from under my arms. “We go around, we could easily encounter the same thing, or worse. I’m inclined to just keep moving forward.”
Andy shrugged. Kia moved out of my sight, toward the back of the bus.
“You should all buckle in,” I warned. For the most part, I’d used the cow-scoop to gently push vehicles out of the way, to clear a path on the road for us to pass. I’d hit zombies. No second thought given, at the time.
I didn’t even attempt a head count; there had to be over a thousand. They prevented us from reaching the next state, were a barrier keeping us from getting to Mexico. That was what I told myself as I gently pressed my foot down on the gas pedal. The things were halfway across the bridge. It wasn’t that they came at us, as much as they just seemed to mill aimlessly about.
As the bus approached, we gained interest among the herd. They turned toward us, arms out, as they stumbled forward.
“You’re going to have to gun it,” Dave said. “There are so many, we could risk getting stuck.”
“Buckle in,” I said.
“You want me to get us across?”
“I have this.” I stomped my foot down on the pedal. The engine let out a whine as it picked up speed. Gene must have tweaked things under the hood. This bus had some serious pick up.
I held the large steering wheel in both hands. I switched from the center to the left lane. Seemed like less disabled vehicles, as if most drivers had tried to pull over to the side before turning into zombies. How very thoughtful.
I sucked in a deep breath and held it.
The bus gained momentum. The speedometer indicated we were going nearly fifty. I looked at the road.
The cow-scoop was made of steel. It came to a nice point. It would plow these monsters easily out of the way. I braced for impact.
They looked up at me. All of them. The bus barreled into them, but I saw it happen individually.
The front of the scoop sliced into a woman who’d looked too thin, dressed in clothes that were tattered and worn. Loose skin hung from her face in jagged flaps. Large yellow pus boils oozed on her forehead. Both congealed eyeballs, white, cloudy and lifeless, stared up at me as her body was split in half.
The man next to her was shredded. The scoop caught his feet, knocked him onto his back. I imagined the steel peeling back flesh off his legs, and gut. With a bump, he was gone, under the scoop.
The rest of them I saw differently.
I saw lawyers and doctors. There were construction workers and waitresses. I ran over coworkers, peers. I was crushing fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. There were grandparents. Friends.
I couldn’t keep doing it. The screams filled my head; resounded like hollow echoes inside my skull. My mouth was open. My jaw ached.
I was screaming, too.
I know I was. I heard me. My voice mixed with the lost voices of all the beings I ran over.
All the lives coming an end.
They may have been dead already. Monsters. Zombies.
No. They were dead. Dead, and gone.
I cut the wheel to the right, and avoided an SUV, and a VW. I knocked more creatures out of the way. They fell under the tires. The bus bounced over corpses. We lost the road many times, riding solely on limbs and torsos and innards.
And I screamed, but I had it. I kept control of the bus. We were safe inside, safe as I decimated the herd, the horde of zombies. Destroyed them.
“Chase! Don’t stop.” Dave was beside me. He braced both hands on the dash. “We’re almost there. We’ve just about made it!”
My foot must have come off the pedal. Subliminal, or something. I wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t. This was a curse. It would be a part of me forever. I knew I’d never be able to bury the memory. Instead, I finished watching the destruction unfold. I would never forget it. These were more images added and burned to memory; more material that would wait to play out in nightmares destined to keep me from ever again getting a full night’s sleep.
I used my forearm to wipe away tears, as I punched the gas pedal. The bus picked up speed, climbing back toward fifty miles per hour.
Chapter Twenty-Five
2227 hours / 305 miles to go
Any time I think of Waco, all I can remember is the Branch Davidian shoot-out. It took place in 1993. Four ATF agents and six members of a cult were killed. What followed was a fifty-day standoff that the entire world watched. I recall being riveted to my television at home, and it was on at work, even though little to nothing happened during those days, just a ton of views of the infamous compound at Mt. Carmel. It came to a head as the explosive climax erupted for everyone to see. A fire was started and David Koresh, the cult leader, along with
seventy-three of his followers, including men, women and children, perished.
It seemed fitting that this was where the bus broke down. Waco, Texas.
Steam spat from the radiator. We’d been riding the bus hard for over a thousand miles. The few stops we took along the way did little to let the engine rest and recoup, if, in fact, engines rested and recouped. Andy, Dave and I stood at the front of the bus with the hood lifted and played flashlight beams over a broken engine.
“Overheated?” Andy said.
“Seems like it.” Dave shook his head. “We just add water?”
“I guess,” I said. “We should let it cool down before we remove the cap.”
“Where’s the cap?” Andy said.
Dave pointed. “That it?”
I shrugged. “Could be.”
Melissa stuck her head out of the driver’s side window. “How we doing?”
“Have it running in no time,” Andy said. Dave and I looked at him. “What? We can fix it, can’t we?”
I bit my lip. I knew shit about vehicles, and even less shit about repairs. I could put gas in the tank. Air in the tires. Wiper fluid in the reserve. “I hate to use up the last of our water.”
“We have three hundred, three hundred fifty miles to go, still. I’d rather be a little thirsty on a bus for the next six hours
“Well, this is the radiator right here in front,” Dave said. “The cap is, it’s . . . there it is.” His light caught a cap on the side of the radiator. “We let it cool down a little, add a gallon of water or two, and we should be good.”
“If it is just the radiator,” Andy said.
“It’s just the radiator,” I said. “Let’s close the hood and get back on the bus.”
We were already on Interstate 35. This road led right to the bridge at the border. Three hundred and some-miles was tasteable, that’s how close we were. It was near impossible not to imagine getting across the Rio and into Mexico and everything just being rosy and wonderful.
It wouldn’t be.
I wasn’t stupid. It just helped to think that way. It helped keep me focused, I guess. Helped keep me motivated to move forward. I had mourning that needed to be done. Desperately. I was holding off as best I could. I wouldn’t be able to hold off much longer. My heart felt shredded.
“Back on the bus, then?” Dave said.
“Yeah.” I switched off my flashlight. We didn’t need to attract attention. For the most part, we were stranded. Sitting ducks. I think we all knew it. No one said it though. Seemed if you left things unsaid, they couldn’t possibly be true. Apply liberal sarcasm, but it is what it is.
Once on the bus, we closed and locked the door.
“What’s going on?” Charlene sat near the front. She kept the folded map in her hand. “You can’t fix it?”
“We need to wait for the radiator to cool down. We’ll add water to it, and be on our way,” I said.
“How long until it’s cool?”
It was warmer in Texas than it had been in Pennsylvania, but it was night time. The sun was gone, so it was still somewhat cold out. “Shouldn’t be long.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” Melissa sat in the seat behind my daughter.
“Maybe relax,” Andy said. It was a lovely thought. Wouldn’t happen. Like I said, we were fucking sitting ducks.
“How is Michelle doing?”
“She has a fever,” Melissa said. “Kia is back with her now. She’s lost a lot of blood. This trip isn’t helping. There’s still a bullet in her leg somewhere. We’re going to have to get that out. If we don’t, she’s going to die.”
I didn’t want to see anyone else die. We’ve all suffered horrible losses. I didn’t know how Melissa was holding herself together. For that matter, I didn’t know how I was.
We’d traveled a long distance in a short period of time. “We could look for a hotel, or house, and try to operate on her,” I said.
Dave sighed. He didn’t say a word. I knew what he was thinking, or thought I did. Three hundred miles. We were so close.
“Or we keep driving,” I said. “We get across the border and let a doctor help Michelle.”
“A doctor?” Andy said. “I don’t think crossing the border is going to just fix everything, Chase. I know this is the plan. I can’t help feeling like going to Mexico is just something to…do. We could just as easily be headed to California or Oregon, but we’re not. We’re going to Mexico. I’m sorry. I am. I just don’t think anywhere is going to be that much different from here, or anywhere else. I mean, I saw the chaos on the news last week. This is global. This outbreak is everywhere. Those things, those zombies are infecting everyone, man. The few who didn’t get vaccinated, or the fewer still that were immune to the vaccination were far and few between. Far and fucking few between. The monsters are fucking spreading the disease. Biting people. Swapping fluids. Who knows how else the virus spreads, but Mexico? Mexico isn’t an answer, or a cure, or a safe haven. It’s a fucking different country with fucking zombies. That’s what it is. That’s all it is. And what is worse is no one is working on a cure. No one is out there trying to find a way to turn this mess around. We’re on our own. A wall at a border isn’t going to mean shit if the apocalypse is raging on the other side, too. And it is. You know it. We all know it. We’re all just either going to fucking die like Gene, or we’re going to become fucking zombies. Those are the choices, Chase. Those are the only two choices we really have.”
Melissa sobbed silently. Her shoulders shook. Charlene reached over the seat back between them and set a hand on her shoulder. I doubt it helped, but at least she was trying, at least she showed empathy and sympathy.
Now it had been said. There was no unsaying it, no unhearing it.
Andy wasn’t wrong.
# # #
While it felt like hours dragging by, the engine had cooled considerably in just fifteen minutes. Dave removed the radiator cap.
“Andy can’t have those outbursts. Not in front of everyone. You want me to say something to him?” He said. “I think we should say something. He’s going to freak everyone out. You know that.”
I held the flashlight in place, and stuck a funnel into the radiator. “We’re all feeling the stress. I know he’s worried about Michelle and Melissa. Those are his people. He wants to take care of them. I respect that. I’m keeping us on the road. He wants to remove the bullet.”
“We should remove the bullet.”
“Do you know how to do that? Because, I don’t know if I can.” I twisted open a plastic jug of water. “I watched them work on Cash, Dave. I watched the bullet get pulled out of my son, and he still died. He fucking died.”
“But Michelle won’t stand a chance if we don’t try. She’ll die for sure if we leave it in her. It’s been in there a long time, man. We’ve got to do something.” Dave took the jug and started pouring water into the radiator. “Hold that light steady.”
“I don’t think I could do it.” I thought of chopping off Alley’s arm. All measures to help people have ended in death. “You think I should give it a shot?”
“I think someone has to,” he said.
“But not you?”
“No way. Not me.”
I almost laughed. The situation was too dire. “Fuck it. Fine. I’ll try it. But we can’t do it on the bus. There’s going to be a lot of blood.”
“I don’t see how. She’s lost so much. She might need a transfusion.”
I spun around. “I mean what the fuck.”
“I need the light.”
“Dave, I don’t know shit about a transfusion.”
“I’m not saying you do. I’m saying she lost a lot of blood. She’s going to need more,” he said.
More blood. It felt like we were planning out a way to feed a suffering vampire. “We cut into her leg, fish around for a slug, she’s going to bleed more. God forbid we nick something and can’t stop the bleeding. Do we just run a line of blood from one person to her? What makes the blo
od syphon off the right person and flow into her? We need to watch a fucking YouTube video, like Gene did, or something.”
“I really need the light. I can’t see shit.”
I steadied the light on the radiator. Dave finished pouring the first gallon. “That look like enough?”
“Maybe a little more. The water should come to the top, right?”
“I think that is only if the engine is on.”
“Forget the transfusion,” Dave said as he opened the second gallon of water and tossed the blue cap onto the street. “The slug, we’ve got to do something about.”
“She’s going to die,” I said. “We operate on her, she won’t make it.”
“You think we should wait?”
It was a decision I didn’t want the responsibility of making. “I think we wait. We find someone who can help us. Right now, I’m worried more about her infection. And mine.”
“Yours?”
I lifted up my shirt, and shined the light on my side. “This isn’t looking good.”
Dave winced. “Fuck. You have an infection.”
“I just said that.”
“The skin is so red around that cut.”
“It’s more than a fucking cut,” I said. The stitches were all pretty much missing. Gene had done a great job sewing me up, but there just wasn’t the luxury of resting to let it heal properly. “My skin is hot as shit, too.”
Dave put the back of his hand on my forehead. I pulled away. “Stand still, asshole.”
I let him feel my head. “Well?”
“You have a fever. A bad one, friend.”
“I’ve taken aspirin. I don’t want to use up the whole supply.”
“Aspirin isn’t going to cut it. You’re past that. You need antibiotics.”
“Thank you, Dr. Dave.”
Dave laughed, and pushed me. “Go fuck yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Waiting for the radiator to cool and adding water did nothing. The engine still did not start. I turned the key and pressed the gas pedal.
“You’re going to flood it,” Andy said.
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