Judgement

by Eric A. Shelman

  “It does,” I said.

  “Is it moving?” asked Danny.

  “Get the binoculars out of the glove box,” I said. “Quick.”

  Lilly did, and put them to her eyes. Her mouth fell open, but nothing came out.

  “What is it, Lil?” I asked. “Speak up.”

  “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Now, CB! Turn around!”

  I rolled down my window at the same time Georgie grabbed the radio. As I twirled my finger in the air and applied my brakes so everyone behind us didn’t plow into our rear end, Georgie said into her radio, “Everybody, turn around. Now.” Her voice was calm and steady.

  “It’s a wall of them,” Lilly said. “I can’t tell how deep. It looks almost solid. Shifting side to side, coming fast.”

  “Where the hell did they come from?” asked Danny.

  “Wait!” said Lilly. “There’s something in front of them.”

  I turned the wheel right, avoiding a Volkswagen Beetle on its side. What looked like a dead girl was behind the wheel, and I saw why she didn’t change into a skinwalker, as Tala called them. There was a long piece of something metal sticking out of her forehead. I wasn’t sure if someone hadn’t killed her after she turned, or if during the accident something had impaled her.

  Either way, she wasn’t bugging me as a driver or as a zombie.

  Danny had a second pair of binoculars out, one that he carried in his bag. “Oh shit,” he said. “That’s two chicks on goddamned scooters!”

  “What?” I asked. “Should I stop?”

  “No!” shouted Lilly. “CB, they’re probably the reason those things are coming!”

  “That’s no reason to let them die,” I said. “Georgie, tell Garland and Lulu to drive up here. Everyone else, jam back the other way and get off at the first clear off-ramp.”

  “This is stupid, CB!” said Lilly.

  “It wouldn’t be stupid if that was you on that scooter, would it?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” she said, grabbing my DP-12 from the floorboard. “They better peg those 50cc pieces of shit.”

  “Looks like they’re windin’ ‘em out,” said Danny. “They’re puttin’ some distance between them and that horde, slow but sure.”

  I’d pulled the truck sideways, and now Garland pulled his truck up to our passenger side. “We spotted that horde,” he said.

  “Did you see the two girls?” asked Lilly, who was right next to Garland.

  “No,” he said, sounding disappointed in himself. “Lulu?” he said, turning toward her.

  She held up her binoculars, and her mouth opened. “Well, would you look at that,” she said. “They look scared to death.”

  “Scared of death, more like,” said Lilly.

  “Yep,” I said. “I think they’ve got a good lead on ‘em, but we’ll give them the option to get in the back of the truck if they want. Garland, follow us in case we cut it close.”

  I punched it, flooring the pickup, driving straight for the two scooters with the horde bearing down on them.

  Beside me was Garland, but as I neared the closest scooter, he smartly cut in behind me so my wide, arced turn wouldn’t result in an accident.

  The girls, seeing us charging toward them, now seemed to believe they had a second enemy. One held up a gun and looked to be pointing it right at us. I started flashing my headlights, waving my arm out the window, palm open and empty.

  She got it. Tucking the gun away, she angled toward us. When she was about 100 yards ahead of the horde and thirty yards from us, I spun it around and Garland did the same, right behind me.

  She pulled up. Freckle-faced, determined and serious. “You a friendly?” she asked.

  “As they come, but they’re not,” I said, pointing at the oncoming horde. “Get in, and hurry! Call your friend over.”

  She didn’t hesitate. “My sister,” she said. She hopped off her scooter, pulled the makeshift saddlebags off, and tossed them in back of the pickup. There was so much other shit back there she had to tuck it in, but she let her scooter drop to its side and was in the bed herself before I could do a double-take.

  The other girl did exactly the same thing at Garland’s truck, seeing the back of mine was stacked with provisions. They both settled in, tucking into the other supplies as the horde drew to within 75 yards. The hairballs were already rolling by our tires when we punched it.

  The girls clung to whatever they could to hold on.

  Flooring the accelerator, we cranked a hairpin U-turn, screeching the tires in an arc as we slid onto what was intended as an on-ramp, but since it was closer than the entrance to the off-ramp and traffic was at a minimum, it would do.

  When we made the turn we saw everyone else was waiting down at the bottom, prepared to turn toward the west.

  “What the hell are they waiting for?” Danny asked as I hit the brake.

  Then we all saw it. Tumbling over the guardrail from the freeway above, bodies were raining down in our path of exit, leading west. Rockaway Street was one-way at that point, and heavy, steel railings guided us directly into the waterfall of rotten humanity.

  As we watched, helpless, the five or ten plummeting bodies became dozens. They smashed into the ground in every possible way a human body could; some were maimed with broken legs, others landed squarely on their skulls, killing them instantly.

  The lucky ones – if that could be said about any of them – landed on the cushion of their brothers’ and sisters’ bodies, and simply scrambled back to their feet to come at our stationary caravan.

  Because Garland and I had taken on the rescuing of the two girls, we were in the rear; I saw Micky’s truck at the head of the line, still not moving.

  The bodyfall now blackened out the view of the distant mountain peaks, with what must have been hundreds of them. Some got up with thrashed arms or broken bones jutting through the putrid black meat.

  Others, with faces only half-bashed in, their brains spared and their mobility intact.

  “What the hell are we waitin’ for!” I shouted, and it must’ve been so loud that Micky Rode heard me in his head.

  Punching it off the line, he smashed into four of the creatures, the loaded weight of the Toyota enough to knock them back, with the help of Garland’s fabricated pusher.

  Without hesitation, the next vehicle, which I knew was occupied by Jimmy and Carla, followed the exact path, but as the bodies kept falling it was getting more difficult to clear them. I know these pickups weren’t four-wheel-drive, but the way the fabricated skid plate worked, together with the snow tires Garland had decided to put on all the trucks, we’d had no problems navigating any of the conditions we’d encountered so far.

  Tank leaned out the window with his own DP-12 and looked like he was at a carnival shooting gallery, aiming for heads as they dropped. The scatter on the shotgun blasts appeared to be helping, but there were just too many of them.

  They were past them, and the next vehicle pushed in.

  The Toyota’s big tires rolled up a hill of bodies, angling so sharply I was hoping somebody would lean out of the opposite window like a goddamned sailing crew. Just as I held my breath, the right-side front wheel came back down and the truck straightened out and rolled down the other side.

  The skid plate had pushed a flat path and the next pickup punched it through the same path, the big, knobby tires spinning and throwing up black blood and skin as it propelled forward.

  By the time we were able to go, with Garland just in front of us, we had maybe eight feet between the growing, shifting pile and the sharply angled, concrete embankment running up to the underside of the bridge.

  I could see the other vehicles beyond, now stopped with doors open, keeping an eye on us to see how we were fairing. There was nothing they could do; either we made it or we didn’t.

  Garland punched it. He’d chosen his vehicle first, and I now knew why. All of a sudden, a plate pivoted down from beneath his front end.
r />   “What the hell is that?” asked Georgie, using a rare curse word.

  “Looks like his skid plate,” I said.

  It pushed straight down, then began pivoting backwards, pushing his front-end forward, essentially dragging the rear wheels over the piles of bodies beneath him. When he gained four or five feet, it quickly retracted, and he gassed it, the front tires now finding purchase on black, bloody asphalt.

  “He didn’t mention that crap to me,” I said, looking for some switch on the dash I hadn’t noticed before.

  There was nothing.

  “Danny, slide open that window and tell our rider to hang the hell on, now!”

  Danny turned and slapped the glass. When she crouched near the window, he slid it open. “Lay low, hold on tight!” he said.

  “Roger that!” she called as he closed the window again.

  I didn’t fuck around. I said, “Hold on!” and angled the truck sharply toward the concrete berm on the south side of the underpass.

  “Dude, you ain’t gonna make that!” Danny yelled. “Too steep!”

  I heard my own voice, high and shrill, call out, “I’m kinda counting on that, and we don’t have a choice!”

  I floored it.

  The Toyota shot up the berm at a sharp angle, and I immediately felt it tilting to the right. I knew it would, but I was counting on momentum to turn this shitty idea into one that might save our lives.

  If I were cockier, I would tell you this was all planned and calculated and a sure bet. It was planned – at the last second – but I didn’t really think it would work. Yes, I was pretty sure the other members of our crew would’ve saved us, but that was way in the back of my mind.

  As we began to tip, I worked the steering wheel, trying to keep it straight. When we went into our full, clockwise rollover, the right side of the pickup landed on a cushion of bodies, their dead faces pressed against the windows, and I’m sure freaking Lilly out good.

  “Everyone, press your hands hard against the ceiling and lock your arms!” I yelled, and now I let go of the wheel, too and followed my own instruction.

  To do it, we all had to tuck down in our seats, but I hoped it would keep us from all tumbling when we flipped. The sharp angle of the berm had thrown us into a faster roll than I expected, and I just hoped it would stop when we were in the right position. I tried to hedge my bet by jamming my foot down on the accelerator as we went fully upside-down, then continued to roll onto the driver’s side.

  Just one … more … roll. C’mon! I thought.

  It was mushy and shifting and about the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced, with the ravaged, dead faces mashed against the front windshield as we rolled over what Tala called the skinwalkers.

  The name alone gave me chills.

  As we dropped back onto our wheels atop the shifting bodies, the winding engine felt new resistance as the snow tires dug into the soft flesh, pushing us forward as it rooster tailed blood, skin, eyeballs, ballsacks and whatever the hell else the knobby tires came in contact with behind and beneath us.

  The Toyota slid forward over the living dead humanity by virtue of its skid plate, reaching the end of the writhing human forms. We dropped off the edge of the bloody pile.

  Hitting terra firma, the plasma-coated tires slipped for a second or two before finally gripping and shooting us forward, reminding me to remove my foot from the gas.

  “Son of a bitch!” shouted Lilly. “CB! That was amazing!”

  “Thanks, sis, but 90% of that was luck,” I answered, breathing hard.

  “Shit, 99% more like,” breathed Danny, patting my shoulder hard. Beside me, Georgie started picking up all the supplies that had flown around the cab during our roll.

  “You okay, Georgie?” I glanced at her and saw the doubt in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, turning away. I saw a tear run down her cheek, and I knew.

  She was wondering what would’ve happened if we would have died. These tears were about her daughter, not our situation. I wanted to reunite them as soon as possible.

  I made a vow – not that it was anything new – that I would keep the woman beside me alive. It’s how I needed her to be. So did her daughter.

  The second I’d emerged from beneath the overpass, the others, parked maybe thirty yards west of us, drove on. I stopped for a moment, listening to the hum of the motor as I watched in the rear-view mirror, seeing dozens of bodies still plummeting from the overpass behind us.

  “Engine sounds solid, CB,” said Danny. “Roll, man.”

  I patted Georgina’s leg, gave her knee a squeeze, and drove.

  As we passed a side street, still keeping our eyes on the caravan ahead, I spotted something off to my right.

  A truck. A pickup truck with a freckle-faced girl layin’ in the back.

  Garland’s truck.

  “Was that –” I started to say.

  “Yes, it’s Garland.” Georgina picked up the radio.

  “Garland? Come in, Garland.”

  “I got my ears on,” he came back. “Saw somethin’ I need to check out. Call it nostalgia, but I’ll find y’all. Leave me a marker at the right exit. I’ll take care of this scooter girl for now.”

  “Garland!” shouted Georgia, but he didn’t answer.

  I shrugged. “He’s a big boy.”

  “If he’s doin’ somethin’ dumb I’m sure his passengers will set him straight.”

  Ω

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Henomawi Indian Reservation

  Alturas, California

  A day and a half had passed since they escaped the Hintoka Reservation. Now, with the sun obscured by darkening clouds in the overcast sky, he was home.

  Walking among the homes and deserted streets within the walls of the res, Magi felt a sense of loss.

  They walked down the center of the deserted streets as they made their way toward his house, with Tommy beside him and Tala on the other side of his only remaining tribe member; he did not want to go to Wattana’s home – that was where his Angeni rested, her body torn to bits by the skinwalkers.

  On the streets around them, the dead bodies lay deteriorating everywhere; many were people with whom he had been friends, and he didn’t have to see their ravaged faces to know that. He was vaguely aware he had become accustomed to the ragged smell of decay.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was overwhelmed with emotion. Magi felt his legs collapse beneath him, and he staggered to his knees, catching himself with his hands on the sand-blown pavement. The heavy sobs racked his body and he let go, crying for all that had been lost, not only by him, but by all of his people.

  After a few moments his tears began to subside, and he felt arms grip him from behind, lifting him up. He turned to thank Tommy, but realized it was not him, but Tala who effortlessly brought him up to his feet.

  He stared at her. “What else did that ceremony do to you?” he asked.

  “It is part of the reason my father must be stopped. He is powerful in more ways than you know.”

  “But … he’s so old.”

  “He could kill you with one hand.”

  Magi stared at her. “Could he … kill you?”

  Her eyes shifted away from him, and he saw doubt register there. “Before now, I never considered he would try. I would be a match for him, for while not his equal, I am younger. I am hoping there is a way to end this without ever seeing him.”

  Magi wiped at his reddened eyes and nodded, then began walking again, turning right at the next street. In another 200 yards, they reached his home. He stopped for a few moments, staring at the tall, dead grass. Just another indicator of a world that had also died.

  “Will you tell me of his plan? He didn’t just kill everyone for the sport of it.”

  “Once by your fire, I will share what I know and what I have guessed. As I said earlier, he never shared everything with me. He knows me well, which is why I fear he may have searched for me the night he tr
ied to kill you all.”

  Ω

  The many reminders of Angeni Dancing Rain stung at his heart, and each time his eyes fell on another – her scarf, her tube of lip balm, her hairbrush – he turned away. Life had gone from nearly magical to horrifying in the blink of an eye.

  He and Tommy set to work, taking wood from his small shed in the back yard and carrying it into the living room to stack in the fireplace. They would be warm tonight, despite the falling thermometer mounted on the post outside the kitchen window.

  The propane-powered stove allowed him to heat water and cook what food he had in the house – which consisted of cans of beef stew, chili and pork-n-beans, bags of ramen noodles, boil-in bags of white rice, and other easy things to prepare. In the freezer he dared not open, he knew there were the remains of frozen dinners that never made it to the microwave.

  As for water, the well ran on electricity, but he had four 5-gallon bottles of spring water in the garage.

  With cups of hot coffee in hand, a simmering pot containing three cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew beef on the stove, and a crackling, sparking fire that Tommy had started, they would need only to develop a plan.

  Or learn what Tala’s plan is, he thought.

  For the moment, they sat in silence; he watched her face, marveling at her youthful appearance at over 60 years of age. If age really was just a number, she was living proof of it. But he was sure her maturity and her wisdom was far beyond that of a girl of 27 years.

  “You’re staring,” she said, a slight smile on her face.

  “I know … I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s that … well, this is a strange question, but maybe not so much considering everything.”

  “What is it?” She sipped her coffee.

  “You said you were sixty-three, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does … do you still … can you get –”

  He felt his own face flushing, and it only got worse when she laughed, almost spilling her coffee.

  “Are you asking if I can still get pregnant?”

  He put his own coffee cup down before he spilled it, and saw Tommy stand up quickly and occupy himself with the fireplace poker, jabbing at the logs.