Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (27 page)

“I think we might have a
problem,” Greg comments, holding firm to the steering wheel as the front end
flops and bounces.

“Don’t tell me…” Johnny says,
tightening his mouth to reserve his frustration. “Will it hold?”

“Yeah, it should,” Greg replies.

“What is it?” Scarlet asks.

“We blew a front tire,” Greg
answers. “But it should be all right. We’re running on the flanges so we’ll
only need the tires when we’re off the tracks.”

“But we’re going to have to
eventually get off the tracks, right?” she asks.

“We’ll have to worry about that
when the time comes,” Johnny says. “We need a little more distance from
them
.”
He motions back to the bodies receding into the distance.

 “I want to go home,” Billy
cries.

Scarlet turns in her seat to
comfort him, but before she can speak, Emma hands over her stuffed bear over.

“Here, this will help,” Emma
says. “Whenever I’m scared, he helps me to calm down. Bears are very good at
that.”

Billy wrinkles his face and
takes the bear, hugging it into himself and presses tightly to the corner of the
seat.

As they get farther from the
train station, the sound of the flat tire recedes and pulls itself from the rim
before finally lopping down a steep grade to the right of the vehicle. Along
the mountain pass, the truck shifts itself down into a lower gear and works its
way up the slope.

“I’m going to have to change
that flat pretty soon,” Greg says. “Having to hold this tight to the wheel is
killing my arm.”

“Here’s as good a place as any,”
Johnny replies. “We’re in a secluded enough of an area.”

“I’ll stop once we’ve cleared
the grade and are on level ground,” Greg says.

On top of the crest, the tracks
descend and finally level out as the path begins to veer off to the left around
a towering mound of hillside. Greg begins to brake and stops dead center on the
curve.

With a twist of the key, he
turns off the engine and exits. He scours the pickup bed in search of the jack.
After a few minutes of searching, he returns to the passenger side window and
knocks on the glass.

“Need some help?” Johnny asks
after rolling down the window.

“I found the jack and the spare
tire is under the chassis, but I can’t find the lug wrench.”

“You’re kidding,” Johnny says.

“I wish I was.”

“How about I drive for a while
and give you a break?” Johnny asks.

“Thanks,” Greg replies. “Just
make sure you keep the wheel straight. I don’t want to jump the tracks. It’s
really not that bad, the flanges do most of the work, but with a flat, I’m
afraid the wheel will twist and pull us off.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep us
straight,” he says and opens the door. He glances at the blood splatters and
dents along the front quarter panel on his way around to the driver’s side.
“Damn, those things did a number on the front end,” he comments.

Bits of skin and bone trail up
along the bumper and cracked grill like a makeshift meat market. Thick trails
of brown extend along the hood, separating at the dents and grooves and course
along the windshield.

“Any more damage and we wouldn’t
have made it,” Greg replies.

Johnny keeps his hand nestled in
the center of the steering wheel, pulling it slightly to the right as he
drives. From along the pass, he can see the city below. Smoke bellows from
small fires that dot across the landscape, sending thin trails up into the hazy
sky. On some rooftops, handmade signs are stenciled along the peaks and across
the sides of buildings, their messages blurred from distance and time. Johnny
knows what they say. He’s all too familiar with their meaning. And the fact
that they’re forgotten and worn only adds to the memories.

Deep down, he knows what would
have happened if he had stayed in the apartment with April. Either way, someone
would have died. It was an inevitable pattern in the growing scenario of death
and rot that has taken control of the world he used to know. He feels broken
and battered as he considers the past. An existence among the dead has aged him
beyond his years and he’s afraid of what will come next. He glances in the
rearview mirror at the children sleeping in the back and hopes he can hold on
until they’re in safer hands.

With the desert of California
fading into the distance along a lonely stretch of highway, Scarlet watches as
the dead move around a traffic jam of aged vehicles. No matter how the
landscape changes, the occupants are always the same. Hundreds of bodies can be
seen wandering through the mass of cars. A forlorn look graces their withering
faces, smeared with blood and lackluster scowls.

She imagines the rest of the
country like this. All of the landmarks sentenced to rot along with the remainder
of the husks who built them. The only sanctuary will be dilapidated buildings
and a soiled infrastructure, destined to fall away with time.

She sees movement up ahead near
the train tracks. A pack of coyotes dodge and dart around a corpse who is
swinging wildly at the animals. One of the animals distract the corpse while
several others home in on the cadaver from behind, taking chunks of rot from
its legs. With small yelps, the animals bite and nibble away at the rotten
flesh until the body falls when there is nothing left to hold it up but useless
bone.

Scarlet keeps her eyes locked on
the scene as the truck passes and gazes over her shoulder as the coyotes fall
in around the corpse. She can’t help but to smile at the irony.

“Do you think that’s what will
finally get rid of them?” she asks Greg who is also watching the scene play
out.

He turns to her, disgusted with
the feeding. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m surprised they’re even bothering
with it. Animals generally shy away from the dead. They don’t tend to mess with
things that are unnatural.”

“But maybe they are,” she
replies. “Maybe they’re as natural as any other disaster that has fallen on
mankind.”

“Sorry, I can’t see them for
anything but the abomination that they are.” He shakes his head. “I can’t see
this as a progression of evolution.”

“Really,” her eyes widen, “we
don’t know what has happened to a lot of civilizations that have mysteriously
vanished over the ages. Maybe this sheds some light on the matter.”

“I doubt it,” he replies,
shrugging off the comment. “I would think there would be some type of evidence
left behind.”

“Like what?” she asks. “Bodies
eventually rot away so there wouldn’t be anything left to find. I mean, what if
this is how it has ended for civilizations like the Mayans and places like
Roanoke Island?”

“I’ve heard that the Mayans had
to abandon their cities because of climate change,” Greg replies. “And Roanoke
was thought to be decimated by Indians.”

“But they never found any
real
proof,” she counters. “I also heard a story about a little town in
Connecticut called Dudleytown that mysteriously vanished.”

“I guess, under the
circumstances, anything is possible,” he says. “Hell, I wouldn’t have thought
that one day I’d be running from reanimated corpses. At this point, I would
believe almost anything.”  

Through the vast expanse of
desert that sprawls out on either side of the tracks, leisure scenery comes
into view. Cacti dot the horizon, pockmarked between sage and brush and
tumbling weeds gliding along unrestrained by the hot winds that guide their
path. Faint rays of heat surrender upward from the scorched ground. Cracked earth
plays out along the surroundings from the floods that tore through last season.

Bottles of water pass up from
the rear, guided by small hands over the seat.

“It’s too hot,” Emma says,
wiping her hair from her eyes.

“Does the air work?” Scarlet
asks.

“I haven’t tried it,” Greg
replies, diverting his gaze from the sprawling desert. “I was trying to save on
fuel.”

“This might be a good time to
find out,” she adds, wiping her brow.

Johnny looks on apathetically,
catching Greg’s attention and motions toward the children.

“Eh, what the hell,” Greg says
and rolls up his window. With a click of the dial, the air conditioning comes
to life, blowing gradually cooling air into the cab. “If worse comes worst, we
can always walk.”

·19

From a bridge that extends over
the highway, Johnny watches a corpse in the front seat of a passenger car.
Bloated and writhing, the body is trapped inside, unable or unwilling to unlock
the doors. Its face is a smear of rot and maggots that hang gelatinous along
the protruding white of its skull and jaw. It laps its tongue out through a
blackened grin, caressing it dry lips as if in anticipation. With the slightest
convulsion, the cadaver leans forward and releases a mouthful of flies. The
insects swarm and stir, eventually landing in groups upon the windshield.

Johnny turns away, sick from the
sight and returns to steering the truck along the curving train tracks. He
glances back over his shoulder, looking at the children and Scarlet in the
back. He stares as he sees the same potential in their faces, he winces when he
thinks that they too could become like that.

“We’re going to have to change
that tire pretty soon,” Greg says. “It looks like the tracks lead straight into
Vegas.” He moves uncomfortably in his seat. “We’ll need to find a car and hope
it has a lug wrench.”

The tracks lope up alongside the
highway again, veering over the bridge and down along a slight grade before
leveling out. The highway is packed, bumper to bumper with cars for as far as
the eye can see. Many of the vehicles house the remnants of their former
owners, gaseous and dead, reanimated and cooking in the heat of the desert sun.
Noxious faces leer as the truck approaches, bumping here and there along the
tracks.

“Here’s as good a place as any,”
Greg says, pointing to an abandoned cropping of vehicles. “Do you want me to
guide the truck off the tracks?”

“No, I think I’ve got it,”
Johnny replies, nursing the switch to the hydraulics and releasing the flanged
wheels from the track.

The truck bumps heavy onto the
ground as the rim makes contact and shakes when Johnny steers the truck onto
level ground. The rime grinds on loose gravel as he negotiates through potholes
and passes a patch of sagebrush.

“Keep her steady and go as slow
as you can, we might need that rim later on,” Greg says, pointing the way.

“I’ll get it jacked up while you
find the wrench,” he replies and turns off the ignition.

Greg pulls off his tattered
security shirt and pulls at the neck of his undershirt, revealing a patch of
chest hair that gets caught up in the desert wind before vanishing back under
the sweat stained fabric.

“You almost look heroic,”
Scarlet remarks.

“Thanks,” Greg replies.
“Hopefully, I won’t have to be.”

He surveys the area and picks
several cars out of the lineup that may be carrying the tool he’s looking for.
He passes on a few compact cars on his way, knowing they won’t have the size
he’s looking for.

The heat from the asphalt drifts
up and lingers at his ankles, making him slide uncomfortably in the tactical
boots he’s wearing. He makes a mental note to see if he can find a change of
clothes after he’s secured the lug wrench and continues searching for a truck.

A few car-lengths down and he
finds what he’s looking for. A large, red Dodge sits at an angle on the highway,
positioned like the driver was about to leave the roadway, but thought better
of it and fled instead.

Bloody handprints appear on the
side window when Greg gets closer, wiped along at an angle as if someone had
used the door to support themselves before they fell from the truck. The key is
still in the ignition, pushed forward, long since out of gas and without a
charge. Dust and sand covers the interior, reminding Greg of some ancient,
previously undiscovered sarcophagus. He shakes his head at the daydream and
pulls a small bag from the floorboard on the passenger side and tosses it over
his shoulder as he pulls the back of the seat forward to see if there are any
tools to be had.

He twists his head when he hears
a scraping sound coming from somewhere down the road. He listens intently,
afraid to breath, afraid to make a sound. As he stands there, the noise refuses
to return, seemingly lost in that single fading moment.

Anxious, he moves to the back of
the vehicle and removes a tarp that has been fixed along the outer lip of the
bed and discovers a couple cases of bottled water and some boxes of food.

“Jackpot,” he says with a grin
and pulls the tarp the rest of the way off the bed. He waves back to the tracks
and Johnny catches his signal before Greg suddenly disappears below the lip of
the bed.