We Are Still Here

by Jimmy Bird

  Well, I supposed that we could try to find gas in some of the cars that would be abandoned on the highway, but I felt that it would be ‘hit or miss’ on most of those cars. After all, why would they be abandoned there in the first place? I mean, unless a few of the cars had broken down with gas in them, most had probably run out of fuel. Our only other option was to check out a few of the small towns or cities along the way and hope to find some. There was no way of telling what kind of condition the cars would be in.

  We got just outside of the city limits when we got to our first obstacle. I’m not sure how other state highways were, but in Oklahoma they were four lanes, two on each side with space and barrier separating the North Bound/South Bound and East Bound/West Bound lanes. The space was probably close to twenty feet which included grass and trees, with the occasional concrete divider. On the outside of the lanes was more grass and trees.

  Unfortunately for us, the whole thing was blocked with abandoned cars. I’m talking both lanes and the space between them. On the outside on the East Bound lane was a cliff that went up ten feet or so with trees on the edge. On the other side of the West Bound lane looked like a small drop off. I wasn’t sure how far it dropped, but I could easily see the top of the trees.

  My sister stopped the SUV, so I could get out and survey the area. The first thing that I noticed was that the cars were covered in dirt. It looked like they had been there awhile. Most likely from the beginning.

  The next thing that I noticed was that they looked like they were all heading West Bound, both sides of the highway. It was a massive pileup that looked close to a block long. Let me correct myself, not all the cars were facing west, some looked like they were heading east or angled. Upon observation, it looked like after the accidents on the West Bound lane began to pile up a few cars decided to use the East Bound lane and ended up hitting a few cars head on. A few emergency vehicles looked abandoned on the far side.

  Oddly, the front of the cars closest to us didn’t look too damaged, but the rear of the cars did. It was as if most of the cars on the West Bound lane had to suddenly stop and everyone just plowed into them from behind before trying to go around.

  From where I stood, it looked like most of the car doors were open. Which was good news because it looked like most people had successfully escaped. Unfortunately, a few car windows looked like they had old dried up blood stains on them. To be honest, I’m not sure if it was caused from the wreckage or from something else. It even looked like a few cars on the far end of the pile had even caught fire.

  A thought occurred to me. If the cars had been wrecked and had to be abandoned at the start of the apocalypse, then there was a good chance that some of them still had fuel in their tanks. Who knows? Maybe, they even had supplies in them.

  Let’s face it. We needed both, fuel and supplies. I figured that when we were finally done searching then we could start moving the cars out of our way. I wasn’t sure how safe we were and decided to bring both Bobby and Seth with me.

  “Seth, be careful. We don’t know what we were walking into.”

  After a quick debate, it was decided that it would be safer if we searched for signs of danger first before checking for fuel and supplies. I figured that I would search the middle area while Seth searched the area on my right and Bobby to my left. I thought that it would be the fastest and safest way to cover each other even though I was close to a half block from each of them. As I said before, the vehicles were pretty much gridlocked. Bumper to bumper, so to speak.

  With my machete in my right hand, I slowly walked up to the middle vehicle. It was an old beat up looking extended cab pickup that looked like it had a lift kit on it. I slowly dropped to my knees. I wanted to see if there was any immediate danger underneath the vehicle. Luckily for me, there wasn’t.

  My actions must have caught Seth’s attention because he yelled, “What’s going on Uncle Jimmy?”

  I turned my head to the right and to see him, but the tall weeds kind of blocked my view, “Nothing to worry about Seth. I figured that I would look to make sure that it was safe underneath the cars before entering this mess. You never know if a zombie or something else is under one of these vehicles.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I turned my attention back to the underside of the truck. When I didn’t hear anything, I kind of got up on all fours and turned my head in time to see Seth jump backwards.

  I giggled to myself as he commented, “It feels like something just touched my leg.”

  “It’s just your imagination.”

  I thought that maybe my comment had spooked him. I glanced back under the truck, but the tall weeds made it difficult to really see anything.

  I began to rise to my feet whenever Seth screamed out in fear and fell backwards. I turned and noticed that something was starting to crawl out from under the car towards him. It wasn’t good at all because it looked like that ‘something’ was a zombie and it was dragging itself out from underneath a very low-profile car.

  From where I was at, I could see the skin slowly being pulled away from the zombie’s back. I thought that maybe the skin had gotten caught on something, like the lower part of the bumper or radiator. Skin and hair appeared to be missing from the back of the zombie’s head.

  Seth grabbed his foot, “Help me! I rolled my ankle!”

  I was about to run to help Seth whenever Bobby screamed, “Help!”

  I quickly turned around and saw him struggling to free his arm from something under a truck. From his scream, I figured that it was most likely a zombie that had him.

  Reality of the situation slapped me in the face. What was I going to do? I just knew that I didn’t have time to save them both.

  I turned to look at Seth. He was trying to crawl backwards, away from the skinless bloody zombie. The zombie was a few feet from him. It was missing a leg but was moving pretty good with just it’s arms. From out of nowhere a thought occurred to me. Did the zombie lose his leg in all this mess of cars?

  I was brought back to my senses when I heard Seth scream, “Uncle Jimmy! Help!”

  I focused on him and noticed that Seth wasn’t moving his right leg. I wondered if he did more than just twist it.

  I heard Bobby scream, “Help!”

  I turned back towards him. It looked like the zombie had a death grip on his bad arm. It was the same side where he had gotten shot. Since hospitals were no longer around, we couldn’t get his wound to properly treated. Meaning, there was no way Bobby had enough strength to pull his arm free from the zombie or even fight the thing off.

  I turned around and saw that the zombie had reached Seth’s hurt right foot. Seth screamed out in a mixture of pain and fear.

  What was I going to do? If I didn’t help one of them soon then we were going to lose them both. Without giving it a second thought, I knew who I was going to help first. After all, blood is always thicker than water.

  Without another thought, I told Bobby, “I’m sorry! I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I turned and rushed towards Seth. I heard Bobby scream something that was intangible. I was hoping that it was something along the lines of “Go save Seth!” but I fear that it was more along the lines of “Go fuck yourself!”

  The sound of Bobby’s agonizing scream could be heard bouncing off the short cliffs. Even though I felt bad about my decision, I just hoped that it wasn’t loud enough to draw anymore unwanted attention.

  I made it to him just as the skinless zombie grabbed Seth’s foot with his second hand. Seth screamed out in pain as he tried to pull his foot back, but the zombie had a good grip on his shoe. I raised my machete and pointed the blade tip downward.

  I told Seth, “Stay still.”

  I drove the blade downward through the back of the zombie’s bloody and hairless head. The tip of the blade came out of the zombie’s opened mouth. Blood began dripping from its mouth.

  I pulled the blade as quickly as I could and turned towards the SUV to tell my sister that her
son was safe. I wanted to tell her that I now was going to go and help Bobby. Instead, I noticed that my daughter was in the vehicle all by herself.

  Confused, I began to look around for my sister and noticed that she was sitting on the ground with her back towards me. It looked as if Bobby’s head was in her lap. I could only assume that once she saw that I was committed to helping Seth, she had rushed to help Bobby.

  A sudden wave of guilt rushed over me for not helping Bobby first, but the feeling was quickly pushed aside when I heard Seth grunt in pain. I turned back around and looked down at my nephew who was rolling around on the dirt covered road in obvious pain.

  I bent down, “Seth! Seth. Calm down. I need to look at your foot.”

  I laid my machete down next to my right knee and picked up his right shoe with my left hand. I slowly and gently untied his shoe before carefully removing it. He grimaced in pain. Even with his sock still on, I could tell that his ankle was severely swollen.

  Seth had always worn the long crew style socks, only this time I bet that he wished that he wasn’t. I pushed his pants leg up towards his knee just far enough to grab the edge of his sock. He was in obvious pain and I knew that taking his sock off was going to hurt like Hell. I could see the worried look in his strained face.

  Before I even tried tugging on the sock, I informed him, “Seth. I’m letting you know, this is going to really hurt.”

  He didn’t say a word as he shook his head up and down to acknowledge me. I could tell from his pained expression that he wasn’t fully grasping what I was trying to tell him.

  I continued, “You know that you’re going to have to refrain from screaming or moving around, right?”

  Again, he shook his head up and down. Well, maybe he did understand what I was saying to him.

  I began to edge the sock down his calf muscle, but immediately stopped when Seth screamed out and awkwardly tried to pull his foot from my hand. I refused to let go as I held on to his foot which was hard to do. He was strong, but I knew that if I didn’t immediately look at it then he could mess it up even worse, if it wasn’t already.

  I spoke as calmly as I could, “Seth! Seth! Calm down. You’re going to have to control himself. We don’t need to draw any unwanted attention towards us.”

  He grimaced in pain as he once again just shook his head up and down. I felt bad for him because I knew what he was feeling. When I was younger and doing sports in high school, I had played a game of pickup basketball and severely rolled my ankle when I had stepped on someone else’s foot. My ankle quickly became the size of a softball and was bruised. It was bad enough that I had to have two people help me home, but I was on crutches for a week. Hell, to even get back to playing high school team sports, I had to be medically cleared first and that took me over a month to medically cleared.

  Unfortunately for us, we didn’t have the best environment to help him heal. We didn’t even have ice to help with the swelling. The only thing we could do was elevate his foot to help with the swelling and hoped that it was enough to help take the pressure off his ankle. If we were lucky, maybe one of these cars had an old school style sports ice pack in it. You know, the kind that you had to break in order to activate the icy chemical inside.

  I looked over to my daughter, who was still in the vehicle watching me and motioned her over. I was going to need help keeping Seth calm while taking his sock off and had a feeling that my sister wouldn’t be much help. At the thought of my sister, I looked over and noticed that she was beginning to rock back and forth. At the sight of her, my guilt once again began to show itself, but I forced the feeling back down. I knew that there would be plenty of time to find out what happened later.

  I looked back towards my daughter just as she walked up to us. Her face showed concern for her older cousin as she looked down at him.

  I spoke softly, “JoJo, I needed her help to keep Seth calm.”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes were on her cousin’s face.

  I spoke a little louder, in a more serious voice, “JoJo! I need you to focus on me.”

  Her eyes darted up from her cousin to look directly at me.

  Once I had her attention, I spoke softly and explained what I needed her to do, “JoJo. I need your help. I need you to keep Seth calm while I remove his sock. I need to look at his foot. By the size of the sock, his ankle may already be swelling which means that I need to treat it quickly. I need to pull his sock off before the swelling becomes worse. As you can see, he’s in a lot of pain and I can’t have him moving around or screaming out too loud. I need to know. Can you keep Seth calm for me?”

  JoJo nodded, “Yes, dad.”

  I sighed in relief, “Thank you. Now please sit.”

  She walked over to Seth and knelt next to the left side of his face. Her expression had that of concern on it.

  She commented, “It looks like he has a fever.”

  She then reached out to touch his forehead. She looked over at me with a shocked face and stated that he was cold to the touch.

  Concerned, she asked, “Why is he sweating?”

  “It might be because of his injury. His body is probably just fighting off the infection.”

  She frowned, “Infection?”

  “Yes. An infection. You see, our bodies fight off different types of infections, illnesses, and viruses in various ways. Like when you are feeling sick to your stomach and when you finally throw up, you start feeling better. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head up and down as she turned back towards Seth. I wasn’t entirely sure if she did understand what I had told her or was just done talking about it. I watched as she pulled her little knife out of her side holster and cut a piece of cloth from the bottom part of her shirt. She then used the cloth to wipe off his face.

  Seth had shut his eyes and stopped moving. For a second, I feared the worst. I thought that maybe he had just died, but that wasn’t the case. I could see his chest moving. The pain was probably so intense that he had just passed out.

  For some reason, the nagging feeling of me thinking that he had died kept eating at me. Why was it bothering me? I mean he didn’t die. I could see him breathing. I looked up at his sleeping, sweaty, pained face and thought that he was showing the symptoms of getting bit by a zombie. Wait! He didn’t get bit. Did he? No, I stopped that from happening! Unless? Unless, the zombie had scratched him when it grabbed his foot.

  I looked down at his swollen ankle. Please God. Please let it be anything other than that!

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. I needed to make sure that he wasn’t scratched. But, what if he was? Well, I was going to have to make a tough decision. Could I remove his leg and hope that it was enough to save him, or would I have to put him out of his misery?

  I shook my head to clear it. Stop thinking like that Jimmy! You don’t even know if he was scratched.

  I looked at my daughter and asked, “Are you ready?”

  She didn’t look like she was ready, “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m not sure how he would react to me pulling on his foot."

  She reassured me, “I’m ready dad.”

  Absentmindedly, I nodded my head, “Okay then. Here goes nothing.”

  I grabbed the back of the sock and began to pull. Seth screamed out in pain and started trying to kick me with his good foot. I immediately stopped and carefully laid his foot down.

  After he calmed down, I looked up and noticed that his eyes were still shut. I figured that his kicking at me must have been a response to the pain. If that was true, I couldn’t just pull off his sock. He would strike out at me to stop the pain again. So, how was I going to get the sock off to look at his ankle?

  The answer to that question hit me like a ton of bricks. It was so simple. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought about it before. I could just cut the sock off.

  I looked over at my machete blade and just knew that it wasn’t as sharp as it should have been. With all the cutting and hacki
ng I had recently done, it must have been duller than a butter knife. I figured that it still should work though. I just had to make sure that I was extra careful cutting around the ankle.

  I reached down and grabbed the machete with my right hand. I looked up and noticed that JoJo was staring at the long blade of my knife. She had a concerned look in her eyes.

  I told her, “Don’t worry, I’ve decided to cut his sock off instead.”

  With a relieved look, she turned her attention back to Seth. I grabbed his sock and pulled it out enough to allow my blade under it. I began cutting the edge of the sock and realized that my knife was duller then I thought. It wouldn’t even saw the material with the blade.

  I pulled the blade out from under the sock and placed it next to my right knee. I tried to think of another way to cut the sock. Instead, all I could think of was how much I really needed to sharpen the blade. At the thought of a sharp blade, an idea popped into my head. My daughter’s knife was still sharp.

  I looked up at my daughter, “I need your knife.”

  Without questioning or hesitating, she reached down to her holster and pulled out her knife. She didn’t even look over at me as she lifted her arm that had the knife.

  I carefully took it with my left hand and switched it over to my right hand. I knew that I needed to support his ankle as best I could and decided to lift his leg a little higher, so I could slide my knees under his foot.

  With his foot supported by my legs, I grabbed the tip if his sock and stretched it out again. I pulled it far enough, so I could easily slide the blade between the sock and his leg without touching either.

  I touched the sharp blade towards the sock material and pulled. It cut smoothly, like a butter knife cutting through butter. It was so smooth that I realized how dull my blade had become. I continued cutting until I got past his heel and was able to pull the sock off without any resistance.