by Jones, K. J.
“Shiiit,” Phebe hissed.
A man jumped on the hood. Half of his head blown off by a gun. Another one missed an arm and blood pulsed out of the wound.
“Work, goddamn you!” her voice husky.
A woman jumped up on the roof and bounced up and down, rocking the whole car.
“Phebe!” A man head rammed Syanna's cracked window, shattering it. His terrible face came in at her.
A teenage girl came at Phebe's window, punching it, causing cracks as she broke her hands. More of them kicked at and jumped on the back window. More on the roof. A riot on the little car. The rearview mirror fell on the floorboard from the windshield. The car shook like it was caught in Gail force hurricane winds.
Syanna’s ear-piercing scream. The man pulled her by the hair out of the window. Her seat belt tug-a-warring with him for her. Her gun went off.
Phebe worked the grinding gear. Tears streaming down her face. “Come on!”
The back window shattered. They crawled through into the backseat. A man came straight at the windshield with his head. The spider-webbed glass disintegrated from the impact, showering glistening particles down. Hands reached into glassless windows.
“Help us!” Phebe screamed to whoever’s deity would answer.
The gear stuck. She flattened the pedal to the floor. Tires screeched and smoked. The car bucked into reverse.
The monsters held on.
Sweat beads dripped down Phebe’s sides and slid from her forehead into her eyes. She wiped at her eyes to see. Her breath a pant. Heart so fast that the beats merged.
Faster and faster the car sped backwards. The smell of burning rubber from the tires dissipated. But the ghoulish faces remained. Syanna opened fire at them with her pistol, knocking the nearest away.
At the intersection with another small street, Phebe whipped the front end of the car around. So hard that the ones on top flew off. Another hubcap.
Into first, she slammed the pedal down. Second gear. Third. They fell off. Syanna shot a woman holding on to the windshield frame.
Phebe felt a touch on her neck of a hot hand - they weren't all gone. Syanna turned around with the gun. She opened up, causing a high-pitched ring in Phebe's right ear.
“Die!” Syanna screamed. She fired until the gun clicked empty. Dropped the spent mag and slapped in the next one.
The Honda was at sixty-eight miles per hour, running stop signs. The wind blew in from every direction. Their hair whoosh around their faces.
Phebe saw the next attack taking place ahead. “Hold on!” She banged a U-turn in the street. Tires skidded sideways. The G-force threw Syanna against the door. The last hubcap rolled away.
They sped back from where they had come. Seventy-eight MPH.
A big front grill came out of nowhere, filling Syanna’s side window view. A pickup truck came out of a side street, speeding, running the stop sign. It T-boned the little Honda with a smash. Tires screeched sideways. Hard plastic broke. Metal groaned.
Phebe felt overwhelmed by the abrupt sensation of conflicting G-forces. Her ears filled with the sounds of things distorting and shattering. Syanna screaming, her own scream. Pain rocketed through her body.
Blackness.
4.
The GMC Jimmy and the Black Beast pulled up at the curb in front of the girls’ house. Matt stared in disbelief at the wreckage.
The radio crackled. “Matt, amigo,” said Julio from the Beast behind him. “There are zoms all over the place. Over.”
“They didn’t make it.” Matt tried to restrain the tightness in his voice to not show emotion. “Over.”
“You don’t know that. What’s that hanging out of the windows? Looks like some kind of rope. Over.”
“Phebe’s car is missing.” Matt sighed with relief. They made it out. “Why would they take that hunk of junk and not one of the good ones? Over.”
He scowled, realizing they were out there, on their own.
“We gotta go,” said Julio. “This place is hot. Over.”
5.
A gang of wilding adult male chimpanzees chased Phebe through the corridors of the Arts and Science Building. The six kids from the intro class, Tucker, the blond, the redhead, and the three sick ones, shuffled towards her. They whispered, “We tried to warn you about Zombie.”
“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I didn’t understand.”
The floor opened. She dropped into a pit of snakes. Her father stood at the edge of the pit, looking down at her. He said from above, “I told you the liberal arts was a mistake.” The snakes turned into clawing hands, everywhere. Living dead zombies, in various states of decay. Bone exposed. Eyes covered by a white film. They scratched her skin. They ripped her hair. The pain excruciating as they tore into her body.
“Daddy, help me!”
Phebe bolted awake behind the Honda's steering wheel.
Pain shot through her. It came from multiple directions and merged into a chorus. She couldn't tell where one ended and another began.
“You will be late for school, honey.”
“I’ll get up, Ma,” Phebe said. “Just five more minutes.”
Phebe drifted back into darkness.
The sun shined. Her grandmother gathered ripe tomatoes from the garden. Phebe saw the back of the house she grew up in. An old, big house in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Grandpa Kelly read a newspaper under a lawn umbrella. His quintessential Irish pale skin burned easily. He smiled to Phebe. “Child, you need to wake up. Monsters are coming.”
She turned back to Grandma Kelly. A tall woman for her generation. Willowy in her build. A beautiful face, even in her late seventies. Intelligent brown eyes. Grandma smiled lovingly to Phebe. “You’re troubled, sweetheart. Wake up.”
“Can’t I stay here?”
“No, love. It’s not your time.”
“But I’m scared, Nana.”
“I know. Because monsters are real.”
“You said monsters aren’t real.”
Gentle Grandma yelled at Phebe’s face, “Wake up!”
Phebe opened her eyes.
Her head hurt like hell. Her eyes caked and sticky, difficult to open. She rubbed at them.
“Nana, help me. I can’t see. My head hurts. Ma, where are you?”
Eyes cleared a little, she tried to look around. But recognized nothing. Trying to move, she sucked air from a pain in her neck.
More work on her eyes, something warm and sticky kept filling them. The sticky was all over her face. She rubbed at her face and looked at her hands.
Blood.
Panic struck.
“Somebody help me!” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Get up!” Grandma demanded. “They’re coming.”
Using the sleeve cuffs of her sweatshirt, she wiped at her eyes until she could see.
“Monsters are real, Phebe.”
“I know, Nana.”
Looking around, she recognized she was in a car. A smashed-up car with no windows. Wincing at the pain in her neck, she looked to her left. Something weird was against the glassless door window. She reached a shaky, bloodied hand out and touched brown roughness.
A wave of nausea struck. She leaned her pounding forehead against the steering wheel, willing her stomach not to puke. The pain in her head spider-webbed in pulses through her skull.
“Get out of the car,” Grandma ordered.
She lifted her head, wincing again at her neck. She wondered where Grandma was.
Turning her torso to avoid the pain in her neck, she looked to her right.
Somebody with a lot of golden curly hair was crumpled up in the seat next to her. She reached the shaky hand out and touched the girl’s pink sweatshirt clad shoulder. The body was warm.
“Hello?”
There was something familiar about the girl.
She shook her again.
“Hello? Are you all right?”
The girl’s head rolled back. Blood caked the right side of her head, turning her hair
into a sticky mass of dark red. A cinnamon brown, pretty face, it looked familiar. A groan from the girl. She was alive.
“Wake up.”
The girl’s eyelids did not open.
Phebe forced herself to look in the backseat and cried out in pain
The back window was empty of glass. Glass shards glittered in the sunlight all over faded blue upholstery. Door windows also empty of glass.
She realized that to get out, she would have to get into the backseat. Use the backdoor. This would hurt. She held her breath and reached between the bucket seats.
Nothing happened. She panicked that she was crippled, unable to get her legs up and out from under the steering column.
Sitting back down, she moved her feet. They seemed fine. So what was the problem?
An examination of her body showed that she had a seatbelt on. She snapped that open and tried again.
Screeching in pain, she collapsed on the backseat. Glass shards crunched under her.
She reached up to the door handle, pulled it and shoved at the door. It opened. Gritting her teeth, she pulled herself out, and fell onto the street.
Laying there, panting, she rolled over, and looked at the sky. Beautiful blue with cotton ball clouds slowly floating by. A cloud looked like a duck. Another appeared ship-like.
A sound disturbed her sky gazing. A moment of concentrating on it, she realized it was a male voice far off in the distance. She squinted her eyes to hear what it was saying.
Something that sounded like martial law declared.
“Syanna, turn down the TV. Becks, come on, I’m trying to work.”
Her lids slid shut, and she drifted back into blackness.
From the depths of the pitch, a face emerged. Growing larger and larger, until it jumped out at her. The decomposing face of student Tucker. Bone revealed beneath rotting skin. White film over his eyes. He came at her, opening his broken-teeth mouth.
She startled awake, laying on the road.
What had happened flooded into her conscious mind. The virus. Escaping the house. Horrors happening everywhere. Syanna had been sitting beside her.
She sat up, wincing at pain.
The passenger side front door was smashed in. The driver’s side was pushed into a big tree.
“Syanna.”
Standing up was a new experience in nausea and dizziness. Her legs trembled as she walked to the side of the car.
Remembering the mortal danger, she turned her body around to check if any of the monsters were near.
“Syanna.”
She reached in through the window opening. Syanna’s head was injured and bleeding. Her pulse was still strong, though, and she breathed.
Phebe pulled at the handle. The smashed-in door didn’t budge.
Panic begged to rise as she thought of how she would get her friend out. She looked around again for danger, no longer noticing the pain in her head and neck. Her body remembered the adrenaline and terror. She pulled harder at the door. A groan of metal against metal, but it held fast. She freaked out and pulled spastically at it. “Come on!” She banged her first on the top of the car.
Peering in, she spotted the radio caught between the seat and the console. With half her body inside, she reached over Syanna to it. While pulling back out, she spotted the gun on the floorboard by Syanna’s feet. Standing, her stomach somersaulted. Deep breaths. She stowed the radio in her pocket, looked around. She reached in and pressed the seatbelt button, releasing Syanna’s unconscious body.
“Okay. Let’s see what kind of Xena I can pull out here.”
Another scan around, she inhaled and exhaled several times, pumping up her heartbeat. She dove in and grasped little Syanna under the arms and pulled. She groaned with the strain. Her thighs and hips pushed against the door as leverage counterweight. She tugged and tugged as Syanna’s body caught on things.
Syanna’s head rested on Phebe’s shoulder. Her torso came clear of the window, then her legs. Phebe fell backwards onto the street. Syanna on top of her, still out cold.
Phebe rolled her over. A scan around, then back to her friend. She straightened Syanna out on the road. A bone stuck out of Syanna’s right thigh jeans.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
But Syanna kept breathing. No blood spurted out of anywhere.
“Stay here.”
Sweating, Phebe got up and trudged back to the car. It took going upside down over the door window to reach the floorboard and gun. She stood and swooned, stars and blackness threatening. Bowed, holding on to the car, she vomited.
Bolt upright. She heard a Gollum-bark. Monkey survival brain squashed all head trauma symptoms. She raised the gun and scanned.
A bedraggled preteen girl staggered towards her, dragging her injured leg. The handle of a steak knife stuck out of her forehead.
Phebe lined up the front and back sights. Since the girl seemed to have no ability to run, Phebe took her time. Knowing she was new to shooting, she walked towards the girl, closing the distance. The girl reached her hands out. Her disgusting mouth chomped. Her dirty hands went beyond the gun as if it was not there.
Phebe’s mind retrieved the human anatomy memory from classes. Visualizing layers of soft tissue, lifting them off the infected girl’s body and seeing the layer beneath, like an MRI. Until she identified the most potent vital areas and pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the girl’s voice box and Adam’s apple and sliced through the spinal cord at the bottom of the brainstem.
The girl dropped dead on the street.
Phebe stared down at her, feeling nothing but the amazement for what she had done. The power washed over her. “I beat you, monster. I ended your existence. You can’t make me afraid anymore.”
She looked at the gun, wondering about its components and the remainder of bullets. She discovered the release button to the magazine. Two bullets left. She went to Syanna and searched her jean pockets, finding more magazines. A moment of wondering whether to use the two bullets, she chose a full mag. Then slid the nearly spent one in her pocket. In the movies, they slapped in the mag with the heal of their hands. So she did that, banging it in.
A scan around. All clear.
She went to her unconscious friend, sprawled on the blacktop. The leg worried her. In the movies, they yanked the leg to snap it back into position. Then placed two solid boards to either side. Bones sticking out were always bad. But a femur sticking out–that took some big impact to break the biggest bone in the human body.
Time to go. She didn’t know where but hanging out in the middle of an intersection begged trouble.
She pulled at Syanna’s right arm. It felt funny. A look told the arm was broken. Phebe repositioned herself to Syanna left side.
A scan around. Still clear.
She squatted down. “Here we go.” She lifted Syanna by the left arm and dragged her feet along.
They reached the base of a live oak. Phebe tumbled down with Syanna. Dragging wasn’t working.
Noises plentiful on surrounding streets. She could hear the distant voice proclaiming martial law. A scan of the sky. She saw a helicopter flying low. The voice was coming from it. Maybe that’s where all the monsters had gone, to follow that sound.
She pulled out the radio and turned it on. Voices of men crackled through. The guys were looking for them. She pressed the lever and said, “This is Phebe. Over.”
“Oh thank God. Over,” Matt’s voice said.
“Where are you? Over,” the Boston accent demanded.
“Uhm, we’re at … hold on.” She got up and walked to a street sign laying on the ground. It’s bent pole still held the green car that hit it. The driver inside appeared dead. “Looks like we’re somewhere on Twelfth Street. The cross-street part isn’t attached to the pole. Over.”
“Are you in a car? Over,” asked Peter.
“No. The car is gone. We’re injured. Syanna’s unconscious. She has a bleeding head wound and her femur is sticking out. But she’s alive. I’
ve been hit in the head, but I think I’m okay now. Over.” She left out her visit from her dead grandparents.
“You are on foot with an unconscious girl? Confirm. Over,” demanded Peter.
“Confirmed. Yes. Over.”
6.
In the front seat of the Suburban, Peter said, “Oh God.”
“That’s not good,” said Mullen beside him.
“You know that area? Twelfth Street?”
“Uhm, yeah,” Mullen answered. “Pretty well, I guess. What part of Twelfth Street? It’s kind of long. Running north and south. Are they north or south of Dawson?”
Peter pressed the lever, “Phebe, are you north or south of Dawson? Over.”
“Uhm, I’m thinking south,” she responded. “It got pretty hairy. But I think Dawson would have been obvious. It’s been all smaller streets. Like, neighborhood streets. Hope that helps. Over.”
“Phebe, this is Chris Higgins. Can you make your way north? Over.”
“I have to carry her. Over.”
“Can you do that? I can head south on Twelfth to meet you. Over.”
Peter smiled to Mullen. “See, he comes through in the end, the big meathead. He hates women but can’t stand them in peril.”
Phebe’s voice, “I’ll try my best. How do I recognize you? Over.”
“I’m big and wearing ACUs. I’m armed. I’ll find you. Git going now, girl. I’m heading out. Higgins, over and out.”
“Good luck, Phebe,” Matt’s voice. “Keep strong. Gleason, over and out.”
“I’m heading to Twelfth Street, people. Everyone else, head to Higgins’s house. Sul, over and out.” He said to Mullen, “Direct me.”
Only two police cars followed when he turned left.
7.
If Syanna had a spinal or neck injury, she was screwed. There was no choice but to fireman carry her. She weighed ninety pounds soaking weight holding a brick.
But to Phebe, she felt nine hundred pounds. Sweat poured off her as she carried her friend. The t-shirt beneath her sweatshirt stuck to skin. Hair flattened to her head. Her breath came fast and shallow as she trudged.
