I sat there, watching through the back of the truck, as we drove over roads that should be teeming with everyday life but were now occupied only by the undead. The eerie silence of what should have been a normal, loud day was occasionally touched by the sound of gunfire. The world unfolded in reverse, creatures appearing from the left and right, eyes already focused on the truck as it passed, and dead gazes unerringly shifting to me as we moved away, staying with me until we were out of sight.
In stark contrast to last night’s sojourn, where every detail was wreathed in shadow and uncertainty, I could now clearly see the destruction that this plague had wrought in a very short time. The world was unreal, roads littered with stalled and abandoned cars, buildings either burning or marked by violence, windows shattered or pockmarked with bullet holes. There were bodies lying about, some half-eaten, some untouched by the zombies, clearly having been killed by human acts. Apparently they didn’t eat the ones that were dead already. Must be something about the living, maybe the blood or the tissue.
We passed City Hall, which apparently housed the local police station, and observed first hand the results of mass hysteria. Bodies littered the stairs leading to the building and bullet holes peppered the exterior frontal wall. The doors to the hall were broken; jagged shards of glass littered the ground. A dead police horse lay near the entrance, a cloud of flies discernible even from a distance. I gripped the handle to the open door and stared back at the large building, imagining the scene.
Scared people, looking for authority. Authorities, just scared people trying to deal. Fear permeating everything. A shot is fired, and then another, and then more. Pandemonium takes hold, and fear takes over. I shuddered, turning away as the building disappeared around the corner.
The gray morning air did nothing to alleviate the surreal setting, as we passed increasingly heavy zombie concentrations. The truck was large, and moving quickly, every so often shuddering with an impact or a bump. Groups of them reigned the streets, roving at will, some upright, some bent over. Those that must have been attacked by their own kind before turning bore larger, more severe wounds, often to the extremities. Legs, arms, hands, feet-often completely missing or severely mauled.
No class seemed unaffected. I witnessed a small group, feasting on what appeared to be a large beast of some sort, although it was unclear whether it was an animal or a very fat person. The group was composed, in true multicultural fashion, of a white construction worker, a Hispanic woman dressed in dress slacks and a sweater, and a small child, whose face was smeared with blood and refuse. Finally America had achieved a truly classless society, I thought wryly, shaking my head. And all it took to reach this equanimity was the shared desire for undeniably tasty human flesh.
As the truck inexplicably slowed, I looked around me for the first time, wondering what we were hauling.
“Hold on, we have a problem” came the muffled shout from up front, as the truck slowed even more. The streets looked newer here, more maintained, with wider and more numerous lanes. Had we reached the expressway already? Something about the cop’s comments last night intruded on my thoughts, but I had no more time to consider as the truck came to a stop. We were stopped.
Shit.
The boxes occupied about half of the length of the relatively short cargo area, leaving me closer to the open door than I was comfortable with. I ripped into the box closest to me, looking for a weapon, as the head of a large black man appeared around the corner of the truck and turned toward me. Eyes widening slightly, most likely a physical reaction rather than a psychological one, he immediately moved in my direction, grasping for me from the edge of the truck, but lacking the coordination or ability to hoist his body to my level. One cheek was gouged deeply as if cut or scratched; his black, curly beard was matted with blood and gore. His checkered flannel shirt was open at the neck, revealing a stained t-shirt; his hands and arms pounded against the floor, mouth opening and closing as a low, deep moan escaped his throat.
The truck jolted as it was thrown into reverse, and I fell suddenly onto the floor, legs flying out from under me, feet splayed close to the door. His hand brushed my shoe, and I reached up, over my shoulder into the box and withdrew an item from within, swinging it hard at the creature’s head as it’s finger caught in my shoelace.
The large, purple teddy bear hit him square in the face, thoroughly confusing me as a diminutive squeak erupted from the large toy, but fazing him not at all as he reeled my foot toward him, along with the attached leg. An absurd beeping suddenly sounded from the cab, as the truck moved into reverse. I was suddenly and painfully jerked toward the open door as my assailant disappeared under the truck, the pressure on my foot suddenly releasing, leaving me with an arm, attached to a finger, attached to my shoe.
I was still holding the large purple teddy bear, which I held up in front of me briefly and then discarded, laughing despite myself. I stood up quickly, kicking my foot rapidly to dislodge the grotesque gift he had left me, shuddering involuntarily as the curled finger finally released the lace of my shoe. I reached for the handle to pull the door down, but it refused to move. As I checked the frame, I realized my weight coming over the edge must have warped the housing just enough to jam the mechanism.
Wonderful.
“Hold on,” Kate’s disembodied voice floated back to me, as the truck slowed again. This time, a rolling stop, as Earl shifted into drive, and shot forward again. As we moved away, I could see what our obstruction had been and realized why the cop’s comment came back to me.
The entrance ramp to the expressway was a metal avenue of car roofs and hoods, potholes of broken glass and bodies interspersed the melange of broken, discarded and motionless vehicles. The ramp curved up to the expressway itself, located twenty feet above the street level, and I could make out the bobbing and slowly moving heads of creatures shambling directionless on the highway, half hidden from view by the concrete barriers lining the medians. The roofs of several large, yellow school buses peeked over the edge, the only vehicles visible from below. Some creatures, having seen our aborted attempt to gain access, moved down the ramp even as we sped away, hopeful in a mindless way of jogging off the highway for a quick bite.
A helicopter moved quickly across our path behind us, flying low, but clearly with no intention of stopping or landing. I moved to the doorway, grabbing the frame with one hand, and waiving with the other, expecting nothing but knowing I had to try. The chopper bore unfamiliar markings, and I couldn’t quite recognize the make.
Strange, I thought, given how many movies had required me to ride in, pilot, or blow up such vehicles. I was familiar with lots of makes and models, the Apache, the Chinook, the Blackhawk, even the Sky Crane, having once been dropped fifty feet from one on a zip line for a scene in “Reaction Man”. Stunt double couldn’t do it because they needed a constant shot of my face as I came down, and it took me a while to gather the courage for the shot. I focused on the landscape outside the truck as the chopper disappeared from view, and the surroundings again became more rural.
I wish I had my stunt double now.
We were moving back the way we had come, but more Westerly, maybe back toward the water. I pounded on the side of the truck, and raised my voice.
“You know, as exciting as it is back here, I’d love to join you all in the cab!”
“We’re going to try to stop up ahead-hold on,” was Kate’s reply, as the truck slowed, and turned slowly to the right. Few creatures were in sight, but there were always some. Jesus this thing had spread fast. A truck blasted past us heading the opposite direction, bed loaded with boxes and an old hound dog, who barked feverishly from the tailgate at the creatures it saw as they moved on. More gunshots sounded, seemingly from somewhere ahead of us, but hard to triangulate from the three-walled cabin of the cargo area.
The truck came to a stop and the engine shut off. I checked outside, realizing we were at a gas station but seeing only a few creatures in the distance. I quickly jumped off the back, rounding the side toward the cab. Kate was getting out of the passenger’s side.
“We need gas. This thing is on fumes and this place looked clear. Watch those behind us, Earl’s gonna pump.” She reached back into the cab and pulled out my ax, tossing it to me. I caught it by the handle, fumbling it slightly and almost braining myself in the process. I looked up self-consciously, trying in vain to effect “cool” and look as if nothing had happened.
She smiled and moved to the front of the truck to watch for more attackers.
Earl cursed from the driver’s side as I reached the back of the truck again, looking for more of those things anywhere close to us. Only the few that were still more than four hundred feet away, moving slowly but steadily toward us along the two-lane road, past a grocery store and a burning yellow sports car.
“The fucking pump is off,” Earl screamed, kicking the side of the yellow and red metal box, as if expecting gas to start erupting from the nozzle in fear of his wrath.
“Pump controls are in the station,” I responded, trying to keep my voice calm, “Should be behind the counter, near the register. Likely they turned them off before leaving to keep people from stealing gas.” I worked in a gas station as a kid, and got beat once by the horse’s ass of a manager for leaving the pumps on one night. I wonder if he had been eaten. Dreams are free, I suppose.
Earl’s nasal voice interrupted my daydream.
“I’m not going in there, there could be things in there,” he whined, as he looked toward the station, where the windows revealed no movement, but afforded only limited visibility. It was a full-on convenience store, not just a normal station. Looked like it even had some sort of fast food place attached to the far side.
Yes, my fat, chicken shit friend, there very well could be things in there.
From the front of the truck, Kate shouted “More of those things, coming up from the other direction. Maybe about ten or twelve, and they’ve seen us. I figure about four minutes till they’re here.”
Fred’s head stuck out from the cab, looking at me and then at Earl. He pointed definitively toward the road with his frying pan. “Pancake!”
Did I have to do everything?
“I’ll fucking go,” I said, secretly hoping I’d get points for it from Kate. “Earl, you watch for those things coming from behind us, unless you’re too gutless to do that” I looked in that direction, realizing as I did so that four more of them had appeared behind the initial group of three.
“If I’m not out in three minutes, you guys get out of here,” I said as I backed away from the truck, sounding a lot braver than I felt.
“No problem there, pal,” he responded sincerely, staring at the approaching creatures from behind the truck.
What a prick.
I spared a look to the front of the cab and nodded at Kate, who watched me, saying nothing, simply nodding in return. I jogged to the door, and pulled on the handles, which were locked. The ax head went through the glass quickly and loudly, an alarm sounding from within. Nothing to be done about the noise, I reached in, unlocking the deadbolt and opening the door.
The register was against the back wall, next to a wall of coolers fronted by a display of chips and snack foods. A hot dog warming machine stood to my right, rows of candy to my left. Through doors on the far left wall, a fast food roast beef place, advertising an extra large pile of stacked meat on white bread for only 2.99.
Feels like I should have that sign around my neck, I thought, the voice in my head chuckling but saying nothing. I moved slowly but cautiously, checking behind each aisle as I moved toward the register. The shrill whine of the alarm prevented me from hearing anything, and I relied on my vision as the light faded toward the windowless rear of the store.
I reached the counter, and jerked as I caught my reflection in the panel of coolers, and reactively raised my ax to chest level. Feeling foolish, I turned back toward the register, moving behind the counter and checking for panels or switches that would activate the pumps. From outside, Kate shouted.
“We’ve got company!” Her voice was shrill and loud, but relatively calm. Over the whine of the alarm, I heard Earl curse loudly.
There it was! Beneath the lottery tickets, a line of switches marked 1-6. Not knowing which was ours, I turned them all on, and heard an electric response of some sort kick on. I sprinted outside, finding that we were no longer alone.
The ones we had marked before were still at least a minute away, shambling forward as quickly as their bodies could take them, feet shuffling, arms swinging stiffly. Three others had apparently rounded from the back of the store, maybe alerted by my window breaking and the consequent alarm. Kate was backed up in the cavity of the open door, pistol drawn as two of them made toward her. Her bat was nowhere to be seen. From the cab, Fred could be seen looking anxiously out toward Kate. The last creature was almost on Earl, who held his ax up and over his right shoulder as if the creature could appreciate the threatening gesture.
“Get in the truck!” I yelled at Kate. Instead of jumping inside, she raised her gun, leveling it at the chest of the closest zombie. From the back of the truck, I saw Earl swing his ax forward. It struck the creature in the chest, lodging somewhere near the sternum, the blow causing it to stagger backwards, hands grappling briefly at the polished wood protuberance now caught in its torso. It moved forward again, pushing Earl back.
From the cab, a gunshot sounded. The creature closest to Kate flinched as if slapped, a burst of air and cloth from its shirt flying into the air between it and Kate, causing it to pause only momentarily.
I reached the second creature. I heard me only as I was bringing my ax down. It struck at an angle, cleaving through most of the gray-tinged neck and the spinal column. I felt the jolt of bone vibrate through the handle as the creature simply collapsed as if deflated.