“DON’T
LEAVE!!”
“WE
HAVE TO HELP HIM!” Devon wails from the back seat.
“WE
CAN’T!” I turn back and look at Bill. “I’M SORRY!” my throat tightens. Tears
well up in my eyes. I slam my door shut, force the key into the ignition and
start the car. I could not save him. Bill fights but it is too late. They pile
on top of him and peel the meat from his big belly.
“PLEASE,
PLEASE, PLEASE!!! HELP ME!!!”
I
put the car into gear and hit the gas. The tires screech as I make a U-turn. We
circle around Bill. The terror and fear in his eyes I know will haunt me for
the rest of my life. Hot tears make it hard to see. I am wracked with guilt.
Bill was not just my manager, he was a friend. I loved the man and I left him
to die.
“What
are we going to do?” Sam whispers.
“I
have to get home,” I can barely get the words out over the large gulps of air I
am taking in. I am not a religious man but I am praying for my family. Over and
over I repeat in my head. “Please let them be safe. Please let them be safe.” I
turn onto the road and head for home.
I
hammer through the gears in my car, a mid two thousands Mitsubishi Lancer. I
try my best to get my emotions under control. My hands shake uncontrollably. I
grip the wheel tighter to get them steady. My eyes sting. I look in the rearview
mirror; they’re bloodshot and wild. My breathing is erratic. I have what my
wife calls the snubs. That is when a child is so upset, that they cry so hard
they take in large breaths and then short breathes. I have the snubs bad.
I
have never seen a human die before. Never witnessed anything like this. I am in
full-blown shock. I am covered in sweat. My skin feels cold and sticky. I rub
my eyes. Looking at my passengers, I don’t have to ask; I know they feel the
same. We will mourn Bill later, now I have to focus on the road.
I
am only blocks away from my store and I have already seen cars blow through
stop signs, crash into each other, run over and destroy pedestrians on the
sidewalk. One car launched itself through an intersection, lost control and blasted
its way through someone’s garage door. We are passing over a major highway,
Portland calls it Highway 84. It looks like a concrete corridor cut into the earth.
It runs from one side of Portland to the other. It’s the main road to travel
East or West. It has eight-foot brick walls that line the highway. If you are
down in it, you are stuck. Only the on and off-ramps can let you out. I take a
quick glance down at the gridlock nightmare. Cars have forced themselves into
the small median, pinned between the concrete divider and the cars in the fast
lane. Vehicles are on fire. The lights of a police squad car and a fire truck
flash in the distance. Gunshots ring out down there in the trench. The report
on TV sounded like the areas around the hospitals will be heavy with the
infected. Right now those officers are only a hundred yards away from
Providence.
I
am almost to an intersection when a logging truck blows the red light. I jam on
my brakes, the tires skid and the car slides to a stop just in time. My front
bumper is clipped and torn off. I hear tires screech behind us. I sink down in
my seat. My eyes catch a glimpse of something big in my rear view mirror. It is
a big Dodge truck barreling right for us. I brace for impact.
SMASH!
It destroys my trunk and folds the bumper into nothing. Sam’s head hits the
passenger window and it spiderwebs. Luckily, the logging truck has passed us
because we are forced into the intersection. I do not want to get out and check
the damage. My neck is killing me, but I grab the stick and force it into first
and hit the gas.
I
pull away from the Dodge. Steam rises out of the grill of the big truck. My
back bumper drags on the ground and after a few feet it tears off and falls to
the asphalt. Several seconds later the airbags blow. What the hell? That was a
little late! It scares the shit out of me and I let out a scream. It sounded
like a gun went off and the hard rough fabric scratches the hell out of my
forearms. The passenger airbag hits Sam in the face. It knocks his glasses off
and gives him a bloody nose. I have swerved into oncoming traffic so I jerk the
wheel back into my lane. We start to slide. I tap the brakes and try to correct
our course. An oncoming car clips into my rear quarter panel. It helps
straighten us out at least.
I
make a hard right. I am trying to get back onto Sandy Boulevard, because it is
a straight shot all the way to the Oregon/Washington border. Sam picks his
glasses up off the floor and sees that they are broken, snapped right in half.
“Oh
no,” he grumbles. I know it is a big deal. He is almost blind. Sam needs these
glasses. I remember I have duct tape in my glove box. I reach over his lap and
pop the door open. I grab the tape and toss it to him.
“Here,
can you fix them?”
“I’ll
need another set of hands,” he says.
“Pass
them back here, we’ll do it,” Tracy speaks up from the back. Sam passes the
glasses back with the tape. I am coming up to the Sandy intersection. There are
shops on both sides of the street and people are looting. Why would they risk
going out to steal a pack of socks, toilet paper or a six-pack of beer if it
meant you could die? Humans act so weird when the shit hits the fan.
“Where
are we going, Dude?” asks Devon.
“Home.”
“My
pad is in West Lynn,” he says slowly.
“My
kids are in Lake Oswego,” Tracy pleads.
“I
can stop here and let you out if that’s what you want,” I do not mean to sound
like a dick, but my emotions are running hot. “You hopped in my car. I can’t
drive to West Lynn right now!”
The
intersection looks clear so I gun it and hang a left onto Sandy heading east.
The second I enter the crosswalk someone runs out in front of me. He slams hard
onto my hood, rolls up and destroys my windshield. His bones snap, skull
cracks, and joints fold backwards. He flies off the roof and lands face down in
the street. This guy is all jacked up. I hit the brakes and come to a stop. We
look out my back window at the body on the ground. He is really hurt but not
infected.
“FUCK!”
I punch my deflated airbag. Seconds later a pack of infected are on him.
“GO!
GO!” Devon and Tracy yell from the backseat. Again I slam into first gear and
gun it.
My
windshield is completely busted. I can’t see out of it. I roll down the window
to stick my head out. Normally this would seem insanely dangerous, now it feels
like suicide. We are getting close to the hospital. I know this because I have
lived here my whole life. Besides being a native of Portland, I could tell we
were close because of the amount of infected on the street. I swerve to miss
them more than the parked cars that litter the road. I drive quickly, close to
fifty in a thirty-five zone with my head out the window. My brain works
overtime trying to process everything it sees.
I
am a lucky man, living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest; I have not gone to
war, lived through a natural disaster or seen death up close before. The most
exciting thing I have every done, where my life was slightly in danger, was a
visit to Six Flags in California. I rode a coaster called the Goliath and I
screamed until my voice went hoarse. I am sheltered, pampered and soft. I am
not used to seeing skinless humans eating other near skinless humans.
As
I speed down the road I witness unbelievable violence and destruction. A blue
sedan drives head on into a gas station and it explodes into a fireball. A
nasty pack of infected humans tear the arm off an old woman. A pickup pops up
onto the sidewalk and takes out a family trying to get into a clothing store. A
torso crawls out into the street; its intestines and spine dangle from its
severed waist. A man stands in the street with a rifle, opening fire on
anything that moves. He must not hear anything because he is obliterated by a
Portland City dump truck. A live human runs across the street while he is on
fire. An infected digs into a baby stroller. The worst, the worst is the people
falling. People are falling from the high-rise buildings on my left and right.
It is raining bodies. I can’t tell if they are infected before they hit the
ground. They could be committing suicide. Jumping to avoid changing into one of
them. Jumping because they think they might make it. Jumping because they think
this world is over. Who knows, all I know is a person should not have to see
this kind of gore. One of the jumpers lands on the road right in front of us
and my car goes over what is left of the body. It sounds and feels like I hit a
speed bump at fifty miles an hour.
“What
the hell was that?!” Sam can’t see five feet in front of us.
“It
was a person! They’re jumping from the buildings!”
“Why?”
“I
don’t know!” I yell at him.
I
finally get past the high-rises. There are no more bodies falling to the
ground.
“Here,”
Devon hands Sam’s glasses to him. They have a good amount of duct tape on them.
Now Sam really looks like a nerd. I turn away from the road and look at Sam.
The glasses should work and he even gives me a smile. I can’t imagine all of
this and not being able to see on top of that. I would go nuts. My head is
still out the window so I can see. I know I should not have looked at Sam. I
don’t know why I needed to see how bad he would look now with half a roll of
duct tape on his glasses, but I did. At the same time Sam’s giving me a smile
for his fixed specs, a large van hits us on the passenger side. Everything goes
black.
I
wake up to Devon screaming. My neck hurts like hell. I might be seriously
injured. My head was still out the window when we got hit. Even louder than
Devon, the van’s horn is blasting. The driver must be laying on it dead. I get
my eyes open. My side of the car is smashed up against a brick wall. I think it
is the post office, I can’t see from here. The passenger’s side is caved in. I
look back to see what the hell Devon is carrying on about and my neck can
barely turn to look. Devon has his back up against his window. His leg is up in
the air with his boot against Tracy’s face. She has a large chunk of metal
through her chest and is covered in blood. She must have bled out while I was
knocked unconscious. She has turned and is trying her best to get a bite out of
Devon. Sam’s glasses have been knocked off again and his eyes are closed. Blood
pours out the back of his head.
“Sam!”
I yell.
“Get
me out of here!” Devon panics.
Tracy
pushes on his leg and his foot almost slips off her face but he readjusts and
gives her cheek another good kick back against the grill of the van. I look
back at Sam and his eyes are open. He bares his teeth. His eyes are black. He
is gone. Before I say anything his arms reach out for me. His safety belt is
the only thing that saves me; it is caught around his neck. When he lurches
forward it stops his progress and gives me the second I need. I grab Sam by the
throat. He is stronger now than before. I have a hard time keeping a grip on
him.
“Sam,
stop it!” he is not listening. He has changed. This is not my friend anymore. I
grip his throat. The horn on the van stops blaring. The driver is awake or he
is turned. I squeeze his throat and readjust my hands. My fingers slip into the
base of his skull. I can feel his brain.
“Sam,
please!” I know he is not there but I love this man. He was my best friend for
the last ten years. He was the best man at my wedding. He got me the job and
taught me sales. I squeeze, twist and push his head up and back. The bones snap
in my hands. His body goes limp. He is gone.
“I
killed him.” I whisper. I can’t breathe. Why? No! No! My brain screams while I
can only whisper.
“Dude!”
Devon’s voice pulls me out of my downward spiral. I have got to keep moving.
I
pop the trunk of my car and grab my keys out of the ignition. I remembered that
I have my tool belt in there from when I helped my mother-in-law put up a fence
in her backyard. It is a very tight fit between the roof of the car and the
brick wall. I fight to get out of my window and up onto the roof of my car. The
driver of the van has turned. It looks right at me while punching the
windshield. I climb down the back of my car. The trunk is smashed in and jammed
shut. I pull up on it but it is stuck. The driver has punched its way through
the windshield, the glass ravages its hand, and flesh strips away and hangs off
the bones. It crawls through the glass. I step back and give the trunk a hard
kick right on the lock and it pops open. I dig and find my tool belt, grab the
hammer and pull it out of the metal loop.
My
dad gave me this hammer when I got my first house. I am not super handy and do
not build that much. The hammer looks new even though it is ten years old. I
climb back on the trunk of my car and hit the back window with the hammer. I
keep hitting the window until it smashes out.
“Devon,
push her over here!” He forces her head towards me. Tracy was so pretty. Now
she is a wreck. I swing down into the car, and my hammer gets her right in the
forehead. I have to work the nose of the hammer back and forth to get it out of
her skull. Behind me the van driver has pushed his head and shoulders through
the window. The sharp glass has scalped him and exposed his collarbones. I get
the hammer out of Tracy’s skull and turn fast and deliver a killshot to this
motherfucker that killed my friends and wrecked my car. Its head caves in. I am
sprayed with blood. Devon climbs out the back window and joins me on the roof.
“That’s
disgusting,” he rubs the tears from his eyes. “Now what?” All of my clothes are
sopping wet and now my face is coated in blood. We climb down off the roof of
my car. I have to kick the back of the trunk again to get it to open. There is
not much in there. An old busted football, some dirty socks, a tire pump, one
old dress shoe and a boom-box radio from the late eighties. It is all junk.
Crap I should have thrown out years ago. Why the hell am I holding onto this stuff?
The weirdest thing in there is a crinkled up Playboy from the nineties. I don’t
remember who was on the cover because it was torn off years ago. I am not sure
why I kept it. I have owned a smartphone for a couple years now and that is my
main source of female nudity. I grab my tool belt and pull out the two largest
screwdrivers. I tuck them both into my pants.