Pandora 2: Death is not an Option (10 page)

Seeing her hit the sidewalk and start into the street near a multicar accident, Steve started to slow down so he could intercept her. As she was clearing the wreckage, a zombie came out of the jumble of crushed metal and, tackling her, brought her to the ground. She was screaming and struggling with him as he bit her arms several times. The lead zombies that were in pursuit caught up as Steve’s Toyota neared. She turned and looked at him, reaching for the car. They locked eyes, her look pleading with him.

Knowing it was already too late for her, he stepped on the gas, not stopping but instead speeding away. The others followed him, cutting the arriving undead a wide berth. Steve knew that for the rest of his life, he would never get the look in her eyes out of his mind.

They made it to South Flagler without any more incidents. Weaving in and out of the now countless accidents strewn over the road, they found the number of zombies had also multiplied. Some were trapped
in their cars, pounding on the windows to get out, but an increasing number were wandering the road. All was going as planned until the wide road they were on connected with Okeechobee Boulevard. Where the two main roads intersected, the number of zombies doubled. Steve barreled his way through before the creatures could converge, as did the next five cars. When Mark started to make the turn, a zombie reached out and smacked his windshield as he passed. Momentarily startled by the ghoul, he looked away and jerked his foot down on the gas pedal. Mark’s Porsche shot straight ahead and slammed directly into a Buick Regal that was stalled, hood open, on the side of the road. Mark threw the transmission into reverse and tried to back out. He was able to disengage the two cars after a couple of tries, but steam was already gushing from his smashed radiator, and his right front tire was flat.

Gail, right behind him, saw this all happen. She pulled around and stopped ten feet ahead. She started laying on her horn to get Mark’s attention. His driver’s-side door opened, and he stepped out. The zombie that had smacked his windshield was on his way over. The creature had a twisted leg, probably from one of the many accidents on this road. His left foot, minus the shoe, was twisted completely around facing behind him. His left cheekbone was pushed in, giving half of his ravaged face a flat appearance. The teeth on that side of his face were sticking through his lip and cheek. The constant opening and closing of his jaws were shredding his face to bits.

Mark saw him and the rest of the undead closing in around them. Reaching in, he pulled Ginger over the console and out the driver’s-side door. She was screaming. Finally, they both were free and ran to Gail’s car. As Mark opened her door, Ginger yelled, “Oh no!” and skidded to a halt. Mark, halfway in Gail’s car, stopped and got out again to look for his wife. Ginger had turned around, and she was running back to the damaged Porsche. She climbed in and reached over the front seat. Struggling, she managed to back out, dearly
holding on to her grandmother’s jewelry box. She turned and took two steps forward, smiling triumphantly, and yelled out, “My jewelry!”

As her husband yelled, “Ginger, run!” the mangled zombie reached her. He grabbed her, and she stumbled and dropped the box. It hit the street and broke open, and all the shiny gold and gems scattered on the pavement.

“No!” Ginger screamed. With the strength of the desperate, she pushed the zombie away and onto his back. Instead of running, she dropped to her knees and frantically started picking up her precious treasures. Mark, looking at her incredulously from Gail’s car, yelled out, “Noooo!” and started running to her. He got to her at the same time as the rest of the moaning, growling zombies. As they reached down for her, he jumped into their midst and started wildly throwing punches at anything near. For a second or two, it seemed as though he might actually get away with it. However, as the number of zombies increased from behind, Mark was pushed back. The back of his knees hit the kneeling form of his wife, who was still trying to save her baubles while babbling hysterically, and he went flying, ass over teakettle, to land flat on his back. Smacking his head hard on the street, he lay there stunned. The undead pressed ever forward and washed over the two like a relentless tide.

Gail, seeing Mark stop and then run back, got out of her car also. She ran back, yelling at the mass of undead, as if that would make any difference. Not realizing that her previous horn blowing had drawn unwanted attention to herself as well, she now looked behind her and found herself cut off from her own vehicle.

Dan, whose car was idling twenty-five feet away, watched this whole series of events unfold. Not quite knowing what to do, he started blowing his horn. He thought the new noise would distract the zombies long enough for Gail to make a run for his car. Gail
looked over and quickly understood his plan. She started running past the shambling forms, but it was too little, too late. A couple of more recently deceased undead caught her less than halfway there. The growling herd fell upon her, grabbing and tearing.

Seeing Gail actually being ripped apart froze Dan in his seat. It was sickening, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. What did get him moving again was the sudden realization that all milky eyes were on him now. Between the undead and the two cars now blocking his path, he couldn’t get through to join the others. He threw the car into reverse, backed up, and made a K turn. With tires squealing, he quickly sped back in the direction from which he had just come.

Now way up ahead, the remaining five cars that had stopped to wait started up again. Grim and frightened, the survivors continued ahead on their journey.
My God
, they all thought,
we’ve just about started and have already lost almost half of our members
.

They dodged stalled wrecks and avoided clusters of grasping zombies. It was touch and go for a while. Five miles up Okeechobee, one zombie got too close and grasped the handle on Steve’s door. He had had to slow down to a crawl in order to get by a tipped-over delivery truck whose contents had scattered across the road. Steve had just made it through the maze when a big, bearded zombie with a stained and bloodied T-shirt grabbed the handle and smashed his hungry, yawning mouth against the front window. Steve hit the gas hard, and as the Toyota lurched ahead, the zombie fell, trapping his clenched fingers in the handle. They dragged that growling creature, which was hammering his other fist on Steve’s door, a quarter of a mile, until the slowly disintegrating body was abraded enough that the arm tore off.

They had left their condo building a little later than they wanted to, and the drive across West Palm Beach was more hazardous
and a lot slower than they thought it would be. At one point, they actually had to pull to the side and wait. Two vehicles, the second a pickup truck, came barreling down across the street. Passing through the intersection ahead of Steve’s group, they had four men in the truck bed firing automatic weapons at the groups of zombies chasing them. The men in the truck were whooping it up as if they were at a county fair. As they sped out of sight, all of the undead marched in their direction. When the road became less crowded and passable, the group started up again and sped through the intersection and away from downtown. By now dusk had just fallen. In the dwindling light, they made it to Interstate 95. Two hundred feet in, they pulled up to an abandoned school bus. Steve and Max got out. They cautiously went to the open bus door. Luckily, there were no zombies anywhere close to them. Steve stuck his head in and peeked around the entry partition. Both men were armed with handguns. The bus was empty. As the two men climbed on board, they could see some scattered books and toward the back were several bloodstains.

“What happened here?” asked Max, carefully looking between all the seats.

“It looks as if someone, probably a kid, turned in the back of the bus. They must have stopped, and the driver got everybody out,” said Steve.

Max looked out of the bus windows. “All right,” he said, “so where are the children?”

“I don’t know,” said Steve, “and I don’t think I want to know.”

Finding the bus empty, they gestured for Josh, Ana, Karen, and Luke to enter. Climbing the stairs and looking around, Ana asked, “So what are we doing here?”

“I figured we would spend the night here and then get an early start again in the morning,” said Steve.

“Why in here?” Ana asked, staring at the bloodstains in the back. “What’s wrong with staying in our own cars?”

“Well,” mused Steve, “this is higher off the ground, so no passing zombies will see us here. Plus, again, we are all together.” Seeing her discomforted expression he added, “You are more than welcome to stay out there in your own car if you want to.”

“Plus,” Max added, “We need to stay here to see if Dan makes it. He knows we’re going to 95, and he’ll see our cars parked out there. We have to at least wait and give him a chance to meet us.”

As the six survivors settled in, Luke went back out to his SUV and came back with a little food and water. As a group, they didn’t have a lot left but were hungry after their ordeal. They ate crackers and peanut butter, which they washed down with flavored water. The bus doors were now closed and barricaded with a suitcase Luke brought. They quietly talked and ate, each of them glad they were not alone out here. It was pretty quiet on the deserted highway. Every so often, they could hear the moans of the undead and once or twice the pop-pop of distant gunfire. The blackness of the night closed in around them.

Dan had backtracked his route and then tried to take other streets to get back to Okeechobee and to 95. He always seemed to choose roads that were either blocked by debris or crowded with zombies. He once even tried to take one of the bridges to Palm Beach itself. As he neared the entrance to the island, he saw a huge roadblock set across the road. He slowed and then stopped. Getting out of his car to take
a closer look, a bullet cracked and put a hole through his windshield. He ducked down and yelled, “I’m unarmed.”

“Turn around,” a gruff voice answered.

Dan carefully stood with his arms raised. “Wait, I’m unarmed. I just want to get through then—”

A second shot put another hole in his windshield, making spiderwebs in the safety glass.

“Turn around,” the voice repeated. “The next one goes through you.”

Dan ran to his door and jumped in the car. Quickly starting it, he suddenly realized that he had nowhere to go. As he sat in the driver’s seat with the car idling, his eyes started to water.

A third shot tore through the windshield again, narrowly missing his head. Dan swiftly got the car in gear, pulled a fast U-turn, and then sped back the way he had come. Eventually, when the night had fully fallen, he found himself back at the garage entrance to the Marina Palm Tower. He pulled his car in and parked in his usual parking space. When he emerged from his car, three zombies that had entered the wide-open gate chased Dan all the way to the stairwell door. He just barely made it through, slamming the heavy metal door in the snarling creatures’ faces. He slowly trudged his way up the stairwell to his fourth-floor condo and then entered.

Dan Roebling sat down dejectedly in his easy chair. He had a bottle of Tito’s vodka in his hand. It was his favorite brand. If it were only cold, it would be perfect. Taking pulls directly from the bottle, he sat in the dark thinking. His wife, Bonnie, had died of cancer ten years ago. His construction business had been going strong, and he practically lived at the office, using work to consume his time and try to
dull the pain and loneliness of his soulmate’s loss. When that didn’t work, he gave the business to his two sons who worked with him and moved to Florida for a fresh start. Maybe a new lifestyle would ease his melancholia. He enjoyed his life here, met new friends, even dated a few times. Nothing serious. No one would ever replace Bonnie.

Dan was a little startled to find that he had finished the entire bottle of vodka. He had been lost in thought and hadn’t realized that he continually had been drinking from the bottle. Oh well. He rose from his favorite chair and staggered a little over to the sliding glass doors. Stepping out, he closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
Rain
, he thought.
We are going to get some rain here soon
. It was still hot, but he could feel it getting ever so slightly cooler.
That would be nice
. He smiled and looked out into the night. He realized he was still carrying the bottle, and he put it down on the patio table. Climbing up on the railing, Dan Roebling thought,
Here I come, Bonnie
, and jumped.