The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  “You good?” Doug yelled over at her. “Ready to do this?”

  She nodded her head, but didn’t move, her eyes were tightly shut and they could see she was breathing in short little gasps.

  “Crap,” Jessie thought. “She’s afraid of heights.”

  They tried to talk her over it, to get her to move, but she was stuck in place, couldn’t commit to another step higher, and the irreversible bending of the tree that it would bring.

  “I need that tree,” Jessie croaked out, his voice nearly gone. They’d only had a few sips of apple juice each in the last couple of days. “Go back down,” he whispered as loud as he could, and she nodded again, slowly inching her foot back toward the thicker branches.

  Doug’s voice was no better and he finally just reverted to hand signals, pointing to himself then the lake. He was going to go first. He had at least one tree to get to, maybe two, before he was close enough to ride a branch down into the water and he started his final ascent to the upper level of his tree.

  The water. So close, but so far away. “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” Jessie thought, wondering where he’d heard that from. If he hadn’t understood what it meant before, he did now. They were dying of dehydration, tongues starting to swell, lips cracked and chapped, and just a hundred feet away was millions of gallons of cool, crisp, life-giving water.

  Sheila was halfway down the tree, the thicker the branches got, the faster she climbed and Jessie decided he wasn’t going to wait to see if Doug made it or not. He would die today if he didn’t get to the water. Either from sheer exhaustion causing him to fall out of the tree and into the waiting arms of those things below, or simply from dehydration.

  If Doug didn’t make it and he had to listen to him crashing through the branches, then being torn apart, he might lose his nerve, might just belt himself to the trunk, fall asleep, and never wake up. It was go time and he drew on his inner strength, hoping it was enough, and climbed another ten feet, the top of the tree leaning slowly at first, then picking up speed.

  His back was toward the pine and he let his legs dangle, holding on only with his hands, a hundred feet from the ground and swooping quickly now. The tree top was tender and green and had a lot of bend in it, more than was needed, he hoped, before it would snap. He looked over his shoulder and saw he needed more distance and reached hand over hand a few more feet toward the top of the tree.

  Gravity had taken over and there was no turning back, it would bend until it broke and it was a long, long way to the ground. His stomach was in his throat and he knew why it was called a rollercoaster now. He heard a snapping, not a complete break, like old dead wood, but the slow letting go of fresh growth and he fell toward the pine tree’s branches.

  He let go of the maple and it whipped back as he used his entire body to fall across the pine’s prickly limbs, grabbing for a handhold wherever he could. He crashed down through a few layers, hearing Sheila’s scream below him, before he got a good grip and jangled to an abrupt halt, splayed out over two different branches, bending precariously with his weight.

  He held on tightly, not caring about the myriad of cuts and scrapes. Not feeling anything except his heart thudding against his ribcage. He opened his eyes and looked to see if Doug had made it. To see if he was sprawled out in a tree, hanging on for dear life, or if he had missed and fallen. Neither. He was standing on a branch laughing and giving Jessie the thumbs up.

  “Show off,” Jessie croaked out, flipped him the bird, and started pulling himself to the trunk of the tree so he could do this all over again. One more time, then he would be trying to drink up the whole lake.

  30

  Jessie

  Day 3

  The Lake

  He and Doug had both made it to the trees closest to the water, the undead howlers screaming up, below them. This particular section of the lakefront was undeveloped because it was a low-lying area. It was prone to flooding during the rainy season, mosquito infested and swampy the rest of the year.

  There were no boats or private docks nearby, and neither boy wanted to continue to risk tree swinging down the shoreline until they came to one. Both had come dangerously close to plummeting all the way to the ground, in their barely controlled falls between trees. There was a swimmer’s dock a few hundred yards out and down-shore, maybe a quarter of a mile.

  “Let’s just hope Zed don’t swim,” Doug had said, judging the distance to the platform.

  “What if they can?” Sheila had asked, far down below them, in the thicker branches of the pine.

  Jessie didn’t answer, just looked at the distance he had to cover and started making his way out on the branch that hung the farthest over the water. There wasn’t a choice. Staying here equaled one hundred percent chance of death. Risking the water equaled a fifty-fifty percent chance, as far as he figured.

  As fast as they were on land, he was sure he couldn’t outswim them if they did have the ability to tread water. If they didn’t, if they could only try to run underwater in the muck and mud, he was pretty sure he could outdistance them. Maybe they would get lucky and those things wouldn’t even go in the lake.

  But they did.

  They followed him out on the branch, staying underneath and waiting for him to fall. They kept their blackened eyes on him, arms outstretched, as the branch got thinner and thinner and he started dipping toward the surface. This wasn’t going to work. They were only chest deep and he couldn’t get out past them.

  They were still moving around even though the muck was sucking at their feet. Slower than normal, sure, but if he jumped in now, he was fairly certain they could move well enough to get to him before he put the ten or twenty feet between them and deep water. He started scooting back toward the base of the tree. He would have to come up with a different plan.

  Doug had been watching from his vantage point near the top of the poplar tree he was in. He was going to ride his tree down like he had the others, getting over to it. Another hillbilly rollercoaster ride. The height and closeness to the shore would put him way out in deep water. Jessie didn’t have that option. He was in a huge old tree, but the top wasn’t bending in the right direction, it was leaning back the way he came. That made it easy to get to it, but impossible to make it take him to the lake.

  “Can you get a run on the branch, just dive off the end past them?” Doug rasped at him.

  Jessie had made his way back to the trunk of the tree and was leaning against it, trying to figure something else out.

  “I’m not that coordinated,” he managed to croak out. “It’s small and I’d be bouncing it every step. I’d just slip and wrack my nuts.”

  He was so thirsty. The water was only a few feet away. He’d drink anything right now, even the murky bug-filled swill pooled here and there on the ground.

  “Maybe when Doug goes in, they’ll chase after him,” Gary said from his tree.

  “It looks like they’ve zeroed in on each one of us,” Sheila said. “You notice the ones from your tree followed you over and these on my tree haven’t left, they stay right with me?”

  Jessie looked down, really looking at who was below him for the first time. He hadn’t wanted to identify them, it was easier when he was high up and they were just figures far below, just “them,” not actual people. Now he looked and saw who they were. These had been his classmates. There was Tyreese, still in his letterman’s jacket, one of the starters on the football team.

  Sharon, the mousy girl who never said anything, now snarling and reaching for him. Porsche, the light skinned girl whom he’d had a bit of a crush on for months now. He didn’t know all of them by name, but he recognized them. Every one of them. Even one of the ladies that worked in the office, missing a lot of her hair and nearly topless, her blue-veined skin dully shining on her exposed breasts.

  Jessie looked away, closed his eyes. There were at least twenty down below him. People he had known, joked with, been annoyed with, teamed up on class projec
ts with, ate lunch with, and cheered on at the pep rallies.

  Now all of them were screaming for his blood. Something his old man had said during one of their sparring practices came back to him. He was explaining how people got themselves beat up or killed. How women got raped, or used as punching bags. He had said it wasn’t because they were helpless, it was because they didn’t have the killer instinct in them, anymore. It had been forced out by years of civility. Jessie had argued that a hundred pound woman didn’t have a chance if some big bruiser came after her. His dad had disagreed and then had started showing him ways to kill people with anything.

  An ink pen. Car keys. An empty soda can. Your fingers. He had said even though someone was hurting you, maybe even killing you, most people wouldn’t fight back. It was almost as if they were afraid of injuring their attackers. They were victims with a victim’s mindset. They were sheep, he had said dismissively. They wouldn’t stick their fingers knuckle deep in someone’s eye. They wouldn’t go for an artery with their teeth and rip it open.

  Just look at all those videos of ISIS chopping people’s heads off, or the Germans executing the Jews. The people just sit there and take it. Instantaneous Stockholm Syndrome or something, he had said.

  Jessie had never hurt anyone. About the worst he’d ever done was bloody Kyle’s lip. He daydreamed about kicking his ass, but he knew he’d never actually do it. He needed to be more like his old man, wished they would have kept up with the sparring. They hadn’t been getting along very well the past few years and he really didn’t know why. They just seemed to get on each other’s nerves so easily now.

  He knew his dad had killed people. He wasn’t supposed to know about it, not any of the specifics, anyway, but sometimes Army guys would come over and hang out. His old man was in some group that was supposed to help vets, but mostly it seemed they would just come over and barbecue, then go in the garage. They would drink beer and mess around with that old Mercury he’d been working on for years.

  They lived in a bi-level and the garage was adjacent to his room. If they didn’t have the classic rock station cranked up too loud, he could hear them talking. Late at night when he should have been asleep long ago and he knew they were a whole bunch of beers into it, he would hear them telling stories. About shooting people, about getting shot. About friends who had died. When they didn’t think anyone but themselves could hear, they talked about some really horrible stuff. Jessie had heard them talk about killing women. About a guy who got killed by a little kid asking for candy. About killing people you thought were going to kill you, and then finding out they were just farmers carrying shovels.

  Sometimes he had heard men crying, apologizing to long dead people for the things they’d done, or things they hadn’t done, but should have. Once he thought it was his dad sobbing, talking about getting everyone on his team killed, but he’d been half dozing. It must’ve been one of the other guys because his dad didn’t cry. It was a little ironic, these guys riding Harleys and wearing leathers and looking like they’d kill your mamma for a quarter were some of the nicest guys he’d met.

  Even when he was little and was probably pestering them to death, they never yelled at him to go play and leave them alone. Those guys were serious badasses. It was almost like they had done so much violence in their lives, they went out of their way to avoid it now.

  But they weren’t sheep. They hid their inner monster well, but it was there, just below the surface, ready to come back out if it was ever needed. Now he had to decide if he was like them and would do whatever it took to survive. If he had a monster inside. A lot of them had nightmares and regrets later, but they were alive to have them. He glanced down over the branch, at the mass below him. There was no second guessing required.

  He wouldn’t be mistakenly killing someone who just happened to get in the way. Every one of them was trying to kill him. To rip him limb from limb with their bare hands. Did he have it in him? Could he kill them?

  Yes, he thought he could. No problem.

  Would it give him nightmares?

  Maybe. But at least he’d be alive to have them.

  He had an idea.

  When he looked up again, Sheila was hissing at him, “Hello! Hey! Did you fall asleep? Doug’s getting ready to go!”

  He shook his head and watched Doug as he started his final climb to the top, leaned over toward the lake and held on. Gary and Sheila tried yelling the best they could, maybe distract the creatures around his tree, but they only had eyes for him. When he started on the downward rush, picking up speed as he plummeted toward the water, they splashed into the lake after him, ignoring everything else.

  Doug had been near the very top of the tree, swaying dangerously on the tiny branches that far up. He had hoped to ride it gracefully to the water, but when he was still a good thirty feet in the air, it snapped off and he flailed the rest of the way down, trying not to land on his back and hoping the water was deep enough he didn’t bury himself in the mud.

  Aside from the drawn out, “Ohhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,” that was cut off abruptly when he hit the surface with a resounding splash, it was an uneventful fall from the top of a giant tree. They waited anxiously for him to pop back up, not knowing if he’d been grabbed underwater. The dozens of undead that ran out after the meal falling from the sky were gone from view, none of them floating, but they could see dark swirls of muddy water bubbling to the surface that made their path clear.

  When he came back up, sucking air, he was a long way from where he went in, and stroking furiously toward the floating dock.

  He made it. It took him two tries to pull himself onto it and once he did, he just lay there panting, one arm raised with a thumb up in the air.

  They all cheered. The prospects of surviving this had just gotten better. Jessie looked up his tree until he saw what he needed, then started climbing. He would do what it took. He would be a survivor. He would not be one of the sheep. Even if Doug came back with a boat, he’d never get near enough to shore without being swamped by those things. He should have thought of this two days ago, he chastised himself. Maybe he wasn’t ready then. His inner monster had still been sleeping.

  Maybe he wasn’t desperate enough then, and his mind just wouldn’t even allow the thoughts to form. But he was now. He was tired, thirsty, ate up with mosquitoes, and getting pissed off. He let the anger build as he snapped off a half dozen dead branches a little smaller than his forearm and five or six feet long. He tried to get them to snap to a point, like a spear. They wanted to play? He was going to teach them a new game. Poke a hole in the zombie's head until it was dead. Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen. Everyone can play. Winner gets to live, loser gets to die.

  He made his way back down to a big branch, just a few feet out of their reach and lay out on it, making sure his feet could curl around something solid to help hold him in place. He wove the extra spears into leafy branches so they wouldn’t fall, then readied himself, still feeding the anger to get into a killing frame of mind.

  He heard Sheila and Gary hoarsely yelling at him, asking him what he was doing, but he ignored them. Gary couldn’t. Sheila wouldn’t. It was up to him. He looked down, straight into Porsche’s black eyes. She was three days dead, her skin gone grayish, old blood around her mouth and chin, her hair matted and tangled. She was wearing that Hello Kitty shirt he liked, the one that was about three sizes too small and showed off her lovely assets. It was torn and dirty. Blood stained. Her assets were sagging, looking empty, somehow, and not so lovely anymore.

  She was a mess, gnashing her teeth and jumping for him, broken fingernails clawing just feet below where he lay. He wondered if there was any of HER left inside of the monster trying to kill him. Did she know what she was doing and couldn’t help herself? Did she care that it was him? Did she remember those stolen kisses and all the times they’d shared lunch? If he tried, could he bring her back from what she is, to what she was?

  He closed his eyes, another one of his ol
d man’s stupid sayings coming into his head, “A wolf doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep.”

  When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t to see friends and acquaintances. He wasn’t looking through the glass, darkly. He was seeing clearly, through the eyes of a wolf. His inner monster was awake and angry. The wolf in his head was pacing, wanting to be freed. He drove the spear down hard, through her eye and directly into her squirming brain. She fell in a heap and was quickly replaced by his 4th-period teacher.

  He used her fallen body to get another foot closer, leaping and clawing for flesh. Jessie shoved the spear into his open mouth and through his spine, then jerked it back to drive it into the next screaming zombie to reach for him. He plunged it in and out, blood and brains making it slick. They kept coming and he kept stabbing. The bodies piled higher. He thrust his homemade spear into eyes, hearing them squelch.

  Through soft noses, hearing the cartilage break as he drove it deep into their brain. When the stick snapped, he reached for the next one and kept on killing. When it was so coated with his classmate’s blood that it pulled out of his hands, he grabbed a third. He was a machine. Thrust. Kill. Repeat. Thrust. Kill. Repeat. Thrust. Kill. Repeat.

  It became a mantra and the monster inside screamed at the monsters below. His arms were covered in blood. Gore splattered his face. He raged at them with uncontained fury. Punished them for making him become something less than human. He climbed a branch higher as they got closer, standing on the scores of dead.

  He didn’t think beyond the immediate, didn’t see the piles of corpses stacking up, and the undead faces looming ever closer to his. Didn’t see the horrified looks of Sheila and Gary as he lay waste to the undead. Didn’t hear his own snarls and guttural curses. Didn’t feel his seared and parched throat, the blood trickling down his face from cracked and bleeding lips.