Bruce hurried over to the other man. “Be quick. We gotta get moving.”
“Get him out of there. This one’s still alive,” Rob said. The pulse was strong and the man had only minimal marks on him. He had a bloody nose, but it wasn’t gushing too badly, and there were already signs of what would be a puffy, bruised face later but, overall, the man seemed like he was in good health.
“This one’s suit is covered in something,” Bruce said as he pulled the much smaller man out of his own suit. This one wasn’t wearing camo, and Rob though he must have been some kind of doctor. Why else would he be there? That, combined with the pale complexion and the scrawniness, Rob couldn’t imagine him being anyone other than a lab rat. This guy didn’t look like he ever made it out into the sun.
“Ether…,” the man gasped. He was barely awake, but Bruce heard it and quickly looked down at the man. “The bottles broke. It’s all filled with-”
“Uh, Rob, I think we better get going. I don’t think we want to be around this thing much longer.”
Bruce was glaring at the vehicle, a worried look creasing his brow. White smoke was already coming from inside. Then Rob noticed some kind of liquid dripping from inside the vehicle, pooling on the grass, then starting to smoke.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here. Can you carry one of them?
“Can you?” Bruce shot back. He already had the scrawny guy tossed over his shoulder. Damn bastard must have noticed his limp, not that he was able to hide it. Rob grimaced at the man, but he bent down and hefted the soldier up. He couldn’t carry him the same way Bruce was carrying the doctor, but he thought he could walk the man as best he could.
“Come on. This would go a hell of a lot easier if you would just wake up,” Rob said through clenched teeth. To his surprise, the man’s head shook a little, and he could feel his feet actually trying to match Rob’s steps. “Come on. Just a little bit farther.”
Rob looked around. Bruce had moved past him and was hurrying towards the truck. There was only one of the things between him and the large eighteen-wheeler. Bruce was easily keeping his distance from it as he made it around to the passenger seat.
“Spiders…,” Rob heard the man gasp. His heart nearly beat out of his chest, then stopped. He nearly let the guy fall right there. There was no way he had gone through all of that just to save someone who was already infected. He had not come this far to go down now. He had not done everything he had to have some soldier get him infected with the things.
“Spiders… Do you see them?” the man gasped under his arm.
“No. Do you?”
He actually felt him relax a little, then the man started working his way out from his grip to hurry alongside Rob.
“No, thank god,” Westdale said, his breathing a little more relaxed. They both rushed to the truck, making it to the passenger door. As Rob pulled himself up, a large fireball erupted from the Humvee.
“I thought those things only exploded in the movies,” Bruce said as he pulled himself over into the driver’s seat. Rob felt the warm blaze slam against his back, and when he closed the door it only gave him some relief. The flame seemed to be spreading around the large vehicle.
“Vehicles don’t. However, all the flammable liquids we used do explode,” the scientist said from the back of the truck.
Rob turned to face the man as he went into a coughing fit, finding some paper towels in the sleeper. Rob noticed it wasn’t that bad of a set-up back there. The soldier and the scientist were sitting next to each other on the mattress.
“You okay?” Rob asked.
He heard a buzz and some loud beeping sounds, then an alarm ringing through the front of the truck. All three of them turned to Bruce, who was reaching down and cranking the key.
“What the hell is that?” Rob said, alarmed that their ride might not be able to get them out of there. The buzzing continued and the beeping seemed like it was getting louder, but Rob really couldn’t tell.
“What?” Bruce looked over at him in surprise, then back to the two in the back. Suddenly, the alarm registered with him, and a huge smile spread across his face. He had to force himself not to laugh. “Oh, that. This trailer has been giving me air leak issues since I picked it up. Nah, it’s fine. We just have to build up air. Give it a minute.”
“We don’t have much time,” the soldier said. He leaned forward, draping his massive arms over the back of the seats.
“Why do you say that?” Rob said. He looked around, trying to see what they didn’t know. He saw that the things were still near the bar, but they had stopped coming their way. It seemed like the fire kept them from coming closer.
He prayed that the girl, the baby, and the owner’s kid were going to be okay. They had been good people. None of them deserved any of this, and he sure hoped they had made it to the cooler.
“Incoming air strike. Tactical nuke. This town won’t be here in about ten minutes.”
“What?!” Rob swung his head to look back at the soldier. He couldn’t be serious. There was no way they would launch an attack on United States soil, would they? They couldn’t get away with that. The press would be all over it. It would be a disaster for the president. There was just no way. It could not be done, not in this day and age. If not the president, there was no way somebody would actually follow those orders.
Though, in this day and age, they didn’t need people to follow those orders. That’s what military drones were for. People were inconsistent and not reliable, but a machine would always follow your command.
“Okay, so let’s get out of here. Time to put the moose guard to the test.”
“Moose guard?” the scientist said. “What the hell is that?”
“You saw those large metal bars up at the front, covering the grill? That, my boy, is a fucking moose guard. This bad boy can fucking take out a moose at sixty miles per hour and barely get a scratch. What do you think it’ll do to these motherfuckers?”
Rob didn’t want to say anything, but he had a bad feeling Bruce was actually about to enjoy this. He thought he saw a trace of a smile at the corner of his lips.
“Well, let’s go.”
“Still building air. Got about another thirty seconds.”
Bruce revved up the engine, watching as the gauge on the dash slowly worked its way up to 50 psi.
“We got visitors. Three of the things trying to climb up the passenger side,” Rob called out as he heard the first slam from the thing outside.
“Do you think they can get in?” the scientist said in a high-pitched voice.
“Not sure. Here, this’ll help,” Bruce said as he pulled down his visor. Rob didn’t know what he was reaching for. All he saw was some paperwork and pens clamped up there. Then the large man slammed his fist to the upper area, an unexposed door popped open, and a sawed off twelve gauge shotgun seemed to fall into his arms. He quickly handed it over to the cop.
“Better not bust my balls over that later.”
Rob wasn’t even thinking about it as he turned and looked at the three things trying to break the window. Zombies. He didn’t know if he could ever really accept that the damn things were zombies.
“Okay, fine, but why do you even have the thing?” Rob asked as he started to roll down the window. He lifted himself up, putting his knee on the truck seat, and leveraged himself so that as the top of the window came down, he could poke the tip of the gun out and shoot at the first of them.
“You ever drive in Jersey? You do it once or twice, and then the third time, you carry a shotgun and whatever else you can hide.”
Rob didn’t want to think about that. He also didn’t want to think about how loud this was going to be in the closed cab.
“Here.”
He barely turned around to see that Bruce had forced a set of earplugs into his hands. The man really had thought of everything. He put the earplugs in. It was time to get these things down. They were already trying to get their fingers into the window and pull it farther down.
Rob fired the first shot. Even with the earplugs, the sound was like an explosion in the truck, reverberating through his skull. He was sure a few of his teeth had just come loose. The shot had hit one straight in the face, and the other two had both gotten a heavy part of the shot, as well. The middle one fell, taking one with him. The third one somehow hung on.
“Okay, let’s move it, people,” Bruce called out, then Rob heard a loud hissing behind him. Oh no, please let the brakes just not completely give out. That just would be how everything else was going today.
He felt his hope slip, continuing to fall into a darkness he had never known before, when the truck slowly inched forward.
“Okay, we can’t go forward, so hang on. I gotta try to turn this thing around in the grass. If we’re lucky, we won’t get stuck,” Bruce called out to all of them as the third zombie was back. It had steadied itself outside the window and was grabbing onto it with both hands.
Now that they were moving, Rob decided to try and just roll up the window. He doubted just one of them would be able to break through it. It was thick glass, and these things, while they were strong as a pack, didn’t seem like they were too strong alone. Not that he had actually had much time with any of them, but he just had to have faith.
He rolled up the window as far as he could with the thing still holding on. Its fingers kept it from going all the way up. It wasn’t going to let go.
“You have to get it away from us. It doesn’t have to bite you to infect us. It just has to get close.”
Rob looked back at the doctor. He had thought as much, but the doctor had just confirmed it. Just how much did he know? Once they got out of there, he was going to sit the man down and they were going to have a nice long talk. Depending on how Rob felt at the time, the shotgun may or may not be invited to the conversation.
Rob felt the truck picking up speed. He hoped Bruce had a plan on where they were going. He just had to trust him.
He rolled down the window just a little more, just so the thing’s fingers weren’t trapped. It could now pull away if it wanted to.
He was face-to-face with it. The grey eyes stared at him blankly, showing nothing. They were completely dead. The mouth that moved, opening and closing, trying to always bite down onto something. Only a part of the nose remained. The cheeks were gashed open. One ear was completely gone, obviously ripped off. It once had brown hair, although much of the scalp was exposed now, the hair and skin just ripped away.
He looked and saw that the person was wearing a name badge. It was barely fastened onto the torn shirt, just hanging on the strand, but he could see the name Billy. It had once been what looked like a younger man, probably the same age as the bartender and his friend.
Had it gone to school with them? That morning, it had still been just a kid, maybe a year or two out of high school. Who knows what it had been doing before this whole thing started. Was it going to college?
He could imagine how this boy had woken up that morning, enjoying that it was Saturday and that he didn’t have to drive the fifteen miles to the junior college. The boy may have been studying physics, or engineering, or computer programming. However, if he was from the area, he was probably studying at the trade center in the junior college and maybe learning about plumbing or air conditioning repair.
It didn’t matter because when the kid woke up that morning, he wasn’t worrying about school. He had been going to work. Maybe he had plans to go to a party afterwards. Maybe he would see a girl there that he liked, and they would have gone and gotten drunk, screwed, and enjoyed themselves.
When the kid had woken up that morning, he had been alive. He had a life. He had been living it, working towards a future.
“Shoot it!” the soldier yelled from the back.
It brought Rob back and he was looking at those dead eyes, no longer showing any sign of life. This thing wasn’t that kid anymore, and it sure as hell wasn’t alive anymore. Whatever happened today, everything had changed. This boy would never be able to go back to what he was, and all that was left of him was to be this thing that killed. That morning, the thing had been a man. Now it was just another one of the things trying to kill them.
He pulled the trigger. With another loud explosion, the window shattered outward, the massive buckshot of the twelve gauge hitting the thing full in the face, then it was gone. It hadn’t had anything to hold onto anymore, and it didn’t react fast enough to grab anything else. It rolled away, tumbling into the night.
EPILOGUE
(PART 1)
He could hear them out there. It hadn’t been loud at first, just one single pound against the door. He assumed it was a fist, but it could have been the zombies just slamming into it with their bodies. Of the ones he had seen so far, none had exhibited much control of their limbs. Either way, it had started with just one sporadic pounding. Still, that one pounding had told him what he needed to know. They had gotten in through the loading door. They were now in the little dock area, which meant they were now trapped in the cooler.
It was what he had meant to happen. They had run to the cooler. It should be safe for them to be in there. He couldn’t imagine those things being able to get in, and because of the broken door handle, they wouldn’t be able to accidentally open it. It took a special tool shoved into the door to open it, and Tina had grabbed it when she had first came in with the baby. They should be safe.
It was cold in the cooler, though. Not that he minded it, compared to how hot the day had been and how the bar had been stifling. When that cold air had hit his sweat-soaked body, it had felt like he was in an ice cooler. Like he was a fish that had been caught and thrown in, waiting to be carved up and served for dinner.
And they were dinner if those things got in there. They had the appetizer, the baby, then they could choose who they wanted to eat next.
They were sitting ducks until the military came in to save them.
“How ya feeling?” he asked Tina, seeing that she was shivering. He was trying to keep his own shivers down, refusing to take his eyes off the door.
“I’ll be okay,” she said in a quiet voice. She really hadn’t been saying too much since she had gotten back to the bar after fending off her ex-boyfriend at his mom’s house.
“Yeah, don’t worry. They’ll be here soon. We just have to wait.”
“How long do you think?”
“Not sure. They won’t want this to spread too far, but I can’t see them coming in at night. They’ll probably come in early in the morning.” He didn’t know why they hadn’t come in already, although he guessed maybe they needed to evaluate the situation first. There was probably some scientist out there who had been in control of whatever experiment that had gone haywire, and he was trying to fight to get it back. Either that, or the doctor had died and the military guys had to figure out what they were up against. He guessed that made sense, although he wished they would hurry the fuck up.
At least his mom was on vacation and didn’t have to deal with any of this. However, when she came back, he’d have to tell her Lucy was gone.
Lucy was gone. She was truly gone. He didn’t know if he was going to be able to tell his mom that. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to cope with it. Right now, it had gotten easy to push it out of his head. They had to get through this, so he couldn’t allow himself to focus on it. However, once all this was done and they were saved, how would he be able to function?
He had also lost his best friend, watching as a zombie ate him. In a fucked up, funny way, that was the way Sullivan would have wanted to go. He would have wanted to have gotten in a few spectacular kills first, though. Something worthy of a zombie movie.
Now Jason didn’t have anybody close. He wasn’t a social person. He had his little sis, and he had his zombie-hunting, dumb ass best friend. Today, he had lost both of them.
He felt another shiver run through him, and ran his hands along his arms to warm them up. He could feel the hairs rising on h
is skin, and they itched a little. He dug slightly, tearing away at the sensation.
The room around him seemed to warm a little, or that could just have been him trying to heat himself up. It was a cold floor and wall, and both he and Tina were sitting against the back wall, keeping an eye on the door. The things were still pounding against it.
No, the room definitely felt like it was getting warmer. The air seemed different, like it was getting thicker. Overhead, he heard the fan of the cooler whine, and a smell filtered in. It was a rotten smell. He knew his mother was never one to keep meat in the cooler because they didn’t serve food there on a regular basis. The little supplies they did have in the cooler were chips and crackers, candy bars, stuff like that. None of it would explain why the room suddenly had the stench of rotten meat.
“Do you smell that?” he said, looking briefly at Tina. She wasn’t looking at him. Her head had lowered, and it looked like she had fallen asleep. Her hands still twitched, running along her arms. He had thought she had been shivering, but she wasn’t. She was scratching, and the marks were getting deeper.
No, it couldn’t be…
He thought he saw a spider, but he couldn’t be sure. He blinked and turned to look away, focusing his gaze back on the door.
Movement caught his attention and he looked back at Tina. It wasn’t her, though. It was past her. A little hand was reaching out of the box they had put Nadine in. She was reaching up, her hand reaching past the lip of the box to a man standing over her.
How had a man gotten in there?
But he wasn’t really a man. He didn’t look right. He looked like he was clothed, but Jason couldn’t describe them and couldn’t focus on them. Everything about the man was dark, and Jason could only make out his faint shape from the light behind him.
The man was stooped over the baby and had reached down. Jason could see the outline of a finger reaching out, allowing little Nadine’s hand to grab him by the finger. It was kind of cute, as it reminded him of when Lucy used to grab his little finger when she had been small.
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