The Road Trip At The End Box Set

by J N Wood

  ‘You’re not gonna turn us around are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope, I’m going to keep it in reverse until they’ve fucked off. I’d just end up messing it up and we’d die.’

  The distance between us and the chasing zombies was steadily increasing.

  ‘Okay, fair enough,’ I said. ‘Just don’t crash us into anything please.’

  It was only another couple of blocks before Jack felt like he was able to comfortably turn around.

  If, and when we got separated, we’d all arranged to meet up with Mo and Hunter on the road heading out of town.

  ‘Did they get away alright?’ Jack asked. ‘I didn’t see. I was looking behind us.’

  ‘The last time I saw them they were driving away. They only had two or three zombies still on them. It didn’t look like their windscreen was blocked anymore.’

  ‘So we’re sticking with the word zombies are we?’

  ‘For the time being at least. Don’t worry, I’m finding this as hard to believe as you are,’ I replied.

  We started to approach the edge of town, and I still couldn’t see them. When we re-joined Main Street, we slowed down to make sure they hadn’t been forced off the road by their unwelcome guests, but there was no sign of their large, easy to spot, vehicle. I was beginning to think we should have taken some more time to have a second look. Just as I was gonna suggest we turn around, I spotted the Humvee in the distance, parked on the side of the road. As we got closer, I could see both the soldiers were out of their vehicle, standing over something shaped like a body on the ground.

  Mo looked our way as we left the truck. ‘Hey fellas, thanks for the distraction back there. Where have you been? We were almost thinking about starting to worry about you.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jack replied. ‘Must be getting embarrassing having two English civilians save your lives all the time.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll take it wherever we can get it.’

  I pointed to the body at their feet. ‘I see you caught a zombie, I’m assuming he’s dead? Or more dead? Deaded?’

  ‘Yeah, very much deaded,’ Hunter replied, and kicked the corpse in the ribs.

  Mo screwed up his face and shook his head. ‘I’m not calling them zombies. Not just yet anyway.’

  ‘We’re sorry about Abel and Lassie by the way,’ Jack said, solemnly. ‘Did you, you know? Get their…’ He trailed off.

  The soldiers shook their heads. ‘There wasn’t…’ Mo paused briefly. ‘There wasn’t much left.’

  ‘Staff was a real good guy. Best boss I ever had,’ Hunter said sadly. ‘Lassie was a bit of an asshole, but he was our asshole.’

  It felt like we’d spent a long time with these guys, but we’d only known them for a few hours. Lassie hadn’t come across as an arsehole to me, but I obviously didn’t really know him.

  Mo stared at us intensely for an uncomfortably long time. I was beginning to wonder what was going on. I looked to Hunter for some kind of clue, but Mo finally decided to speak up.

  ‘After we left Denver, when everyone was dead, me and Hunts got talking about going down to Florida. We both got parents down there you see. We didn’t want to let Staff down, so we did what he wanted. He said we’d be signing our own death warrants if we headed south.’ He paused for a few moments. ‘We don’t want to disappoint you boys but…we think that’s what we’re gonna do.’ He looked at Hunter. ‘Ain’t it Hunts?’

  Hunter looked genuinely guilty. ‘Yeah sorry, you helped us out a couple of times today and we’re really grateful. Even though it probably is a suicide mission, we’ve got to at least try and get down there. I know Staff said you could come with us to Salt Lake City, but we’ll be heading off in the other direction.’

  Jack responded first. ‘Seriously, you don’t need to apologise, we completely understand. You’re American soldiers. You should probably be protecting Americans anyway.’

  ‘Well…’ I tried to scratch under the bandages on my head. ‘You live in America now Jack so…’

  Jack shook his head.

  Mo laughed. ‘Yeah we knew you guys would understand.’

  ‘Well, it would have been nice to have an armed escort for a bit longer, but we obviously understand,’ I said. ‘It would be weird if you chose us over your families. Which way do you go from here?’ I pointed ahead and then behind us down the road.

  ‘Back the way we came unfortunately, obviously trying to avoid those things we just fought with,’ Mo replied. ‘We could do with getting as far as we can before nightfall. We have a long drive ahead of us.’

  ‘Are you setting off right now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes sir,’ Mo replied.

  ‘It’s a bit shit you’ve got to go now,’ I said. ‘But if you need to head straight off, good luck to you both. You never know, we may meet again at some point.’ I tried to do my most masculine wave, and probably failed.

  Mo walked towards me with his hand outstretched.

  ‘Whoa!’ I raised my hands and backed away from him. ‘What about the no physical contact rule?’ I joked.

  ‘I’m not taking my gloves off, am I?’ Mo replied, with a big smile.

  I laughed and shook his hand.

  We watched as they drove away from us, towards a town full of fucking zombies. I didn’t take my eyes off the departing Humvee.

  ‘Mother fuckers. Can’t believe they just fucking abandoned us.’

  Jack laughed and snorted, and then laughed even harder. ‘Yep, they’re twats. It’s fair enough though. They’re only doing what I’m doing.’

  ‘Yeah whatever,’ I said, and spun around to climb back into the Raptor.

  ‘Wrong side Chris!’ Jack shouted. ‘I’ve done enough driving for today.’

  Pointing at my bandaged head, I said, ‘What about my concussion?’

  ‘You don’t have fucking concussion, get around the other side.’

  I sighed and walked to the driver’s door. ‘Okay, that is fair enough. And less of the I, it’s we.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said “what I’m doing”. It should be what we are doing.’

  ‘Beth isn’t your family though.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You’re not doing it alone. I’m doing it with you.’

  ‘Gay,’ Jack said.

  Once we were both in the truck, I turned to Jack. ‘Right, it’s getting late. We need to figure out somewhere to stop for the night.’

  ‘Yeah okay, but before that, we need to talk about the sick people, or the zombies. I really need to talk about them. I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough, I know your defence mechanism is to take the piss out of stuff but—.’

  ‘Defence mechanism?’ I interrupted. ‘You’ve definitely been living in America for too long.’

  ‘Okay, thanks for proving my point.’ Jack was shaking his head. ‘If there are now zombies in this world.’ He pointed over his shoulder towards the town behind us. ‘And that lot really did look like fucking zombies. Seriously, what the fuck are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m honestly taking it very seriously. I’m absolutely shitting myself.’

  ‘How do we confirm if they are zombies or not?’ Jack asked, running his hand through his hair. ‘Because we’re going to have to kill some of them, and I don’t really want to kill people who are just infected with something that turns them crazy.’

  ‘I don’t think it makes any difference,’ I said, pointing behind us. ‘If that is also happening across the rest of the country, then they’re all gonna be trying to kill us. We’re allowed to defend ourselves. Also, depending on which film you see or what book you read, zombies are people who have been infected with something that turns them crazy.’

  Jack looked at me accusingly. ‘You haven’t read a book.’

  ‘An audiobook is still a fucking book. It’s just that someone reads it to me. And I obviously have read a book.’

  ‘So not only do we have to contend with a killer
virus, we now have virus infected zombies chasing after us.’ Jack leaned back into his seat. ‘And they’re fucking 28 Days Later zombies as well.’

  ‘Why have they only just appeared?’ I asked. ‘Some people must have been dead for a couple of days by now.’

  ‘Don’t know, maybe it just takes a few days for them to reanimate...’ Jack paused briefly before laughing. ‘Fucking reanimate, that sounds so ridiculous. Are we awake?’ he asked, before punching me in the arm.

  ‘Thanks dickhead.’ I rubbed the part of my arm his fist just connected with. ‘And yes we are awake. I did think the exact same thing earlier though. To be honest it doesn’t really matter, we can’t do anything about it. We still need to be somewhere.’

  ‘Yes you’re right. She better be okay.’ He sighed and paused for few moments, before getting the map out and studying it. ‘Fuck’s sake, we’ve hardly gone anywhere.’

  I looked at my reflection in the rear view mirror. The bandage on my head was starting to feel too tight. Memories of the partially melted woman flashed through my mind.

  ‘The woman in that little town,’ I said. ‘The one whose head was covered in blood. She was probably dead wasn’t she? Her head was barely there.’

  Jack furrowed his brow and pursed his lips for a few moments. ‘Yep probably. When was that, the second or the third day?’

  ‘Third I think. Why haven’t we seen more of them since that one?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’m just glad we haven’t seen more,’ Jack said, and then looked back to the map on his knees. ‘We can’t avoid all the towns but we can try and go around the biggest places.’ He traced out a possible route on the map with his finger. ‘Skirt around the edges of Spanish Fork, then around the south side of Utah Lake. That way we avoid Salt Lake City. Easy.’

  ‘What about tonight?’ I asked. ‘Shall we just drive until we find somewhere suitable?’

  Jack looked confused. ‘What does somewhere suitable mean?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I dunno, somewhere with no zombies.’

  ‘Yep, sounds good.’

  ‘Another thing,’ I added. ‘Well, a couple of important things. We need weapons, and some kind of gear to protect us.’

  ‘As well as the guns you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve already figured out they are attracted to noise, thanks to Blue’s foghorn. So the guns are gonna be too loud most of the time.’

  ‘Talking of Blue, she’s pretty loud,’ Jack pointed out.

  ‘Can’t do much about that, all cars are loud. Suppose we could find an electric one, but I don’t fancy charging it all the time. Any idea how long the electricity will last?’ I asked.

  ‘All depends if the power stations are still running. I have no idea though Chris,’ he replied. ‘Let’s stick with Blue for now. She’ll be able to drive through them anyway.’ Jack affectionately patted the dashboard this time. ‘And protection, you mean condoms right?’

  ‘Yes, I was obviously talking about condoms,’ I replied dryly. ‘We basically need riot gear, the kind the police use, or as close to that as we can find. We also need to be able to run away from them though, so maybe we can’t wear all the riot gear.’

  ‘So you don’t really know?’

  ‘No, not exactly. I just know we need to get shit. We definitely need heavy and blunt weapons, something that will do damage to the skull, but won’t get stuck in a person’s head.’

  Jack screwed up his face in disgust. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Yep, we also need to be able to carry these weapons easily enough.’

  ‘Baseball bat?’ Jack suggested.

  ‘Yeah something like that, will that be a bit too big though? I was thinking of a crowbar maybe.’

  Jack definitely looked troubled. ‘Well, wish me luck the first time I have to cave somebody’s head in with a crowbar.’

  ‘I’m not really looking forward to that either.’

  We soon hit more civilisation, and drove through Craig, the name of the town, not a zombie, I don’t think. I did have to shunt a few zombies out of the way using the truck, so one or two of them may have been called Craig. Some were more than shunted. You could say squashed.

  I wasn’t looking forward to killing a zombie with my hands. It was kind of easy to separate myself from killing them when I was behind the wheel. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to kill one literally with my bare hands.

  We found a sports shop, and managed to get some baseball bats. Mine was called a Brooklyn Smasher. The bat’s packaging claimed it was unbreakable. In no particular order, we also got two sleeping bags, a portable stove, two Leatherman multi tools, two compasses, two axes, two emergency fire starter kits, two torches, and two first aid kits.

  We found the sports shop whilst I’d been trying to convince Jack there was no point in risking our lives to try and get into an archery shop. Three zombies were shuffling around in the shop’s entrance. Neither of us had ever fired an arrow with any kind of weapon, so I thought it was a stupid idea. I told him if we found an archery place somewhere safer we’d have a look.

  The town had been relatively clear, nothing like the pack of zombies in Steamboat Springs. Apart from the few we hit with the truck, and the three archery fans, the inhabitants seemed to have skipped town.

  We drove for another two hours after leaving Craig, and compared to the afternoon’s activities, it was pretty uneventful. We did see more zombies, but they still hadn’t been in Steamboat packs, so it had been very easy to manoeuvre around them. Even so, my heart was still in my mouth every time we saw one, especially if it started to emit the terrifying hissing noise. I kept imagining hundreds more appearing. Some gave chase, but most didn’t move a muscle. If any of them did start to hiss, I tried to give them a little nudge with Blue.

  It was all a very surreal experience. Adding zombies to the equation had definitely upped the surreal factor.

  I had no idea where to stop for the night, houses meant people, and people meant possible zombies. But then I spotted a possible solution.

  After nudging Jack, I pointed at a sign on the side of the road for the Dinosaur National Monument. ‘Visitor Centre, what do you think?’

  Jack had been nodding off, but now looked fully alert again. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘We can try it.’

  I turned us off the main road, and onto the long car park. There was a row of trees leading to the Visitor Centre at the end. I parked the truck directly in front of the path that led to the glass double doors. There were no other vehicles in the car park. We'd hopefully found a Visitor Centre with no visitors.

  ‘All looks clear,’ I whispered.

  ‘Yep, let’s give it a go.’ Jack opened his door and stepped out.

  I made sure I had my gun this time, and followed him. The front doors to the building were locked, but we didn’t want to break in that way. It would mean smashing the glass out completely, and leaving us open to the outside. We crept around the building until we found another door. This one looked like a fairly solid wooden one, but it was also locked.

  ‘Right, move out of the way.’ I stepped back and placed my hands on the sides of the door frame, positioning myself so I could slam the heel of my right foot into the door, but Jack spoke up.

  ‘Wait, shall we knock first? If there are people alive in there they might let us in, and if there are any zombies, they might make that hissing noise.’

  I stood up straight and tried to give Jack an infuriated look. ‘Okay then,’ I said.

  I knocked on the door, lightly at first, but after hearing nothing from inside, I tried again, a lot harder.

  ‘Don’t think there’s anyone in, can I try the kicking way again?’ I assumed my kicking stance.

  ‘Yeah go on then.’

  I kicked the door with all the strength I had. The sharp pain that reverberated from my heel all the way up to my hip was immense. It took everything I had not to scream in agony. The door didn’t budge at all, it barely even wobbled. Holding my knee, I collapsed backwards onto
the floor.

  Through the pain I managed to say, ‘That door is really fucking hard.’

  Jack watched me with an almost satisfied look on his face. He spun around and walked away, still following the outside of the building.

  ‘Chris,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a window here, we should be able to squeeze through.’

  I rose to my feet painfully and hobbled towards him. The window was at head height. He had literally meant a squeeze. It was about three feet wide but only one foot high. He used his gun to smash the glass, and then scraped away all the broken shards. We waited in silence, and tried to listen for any noise. All I heard was the sound of my own heartbeat.

  Jack shone his torch into the room beyond. ‘It looks empty,’ he said.

  ‘I hope you had a look with the torch before you smashed the window?’

  He looked shame-faced. ‘Erm…yes, yes of course I did.’

  Jack climbed through first, while I waited outside. After a few unnerving and silent moments, his face appeared at the now unglazed window. ‘There’s nobody in here, and there’s a lock on the door that leads to the rest of the building, it’s some kind of office. It’ll be perfect.’

  I passed our bags through to him, and then dragged myself into our new bedroom for the night.

  As well as having a key lock, the office door also had two deadlocks, which I swiftly slid in to their locked positions. There were some free standing shelves under the window we had just climbed through, so I just piled some books up to try and keep out the cold night air.

  Just as I placed the last book down, I remembered about my full bladder.

  ‘Shite, I need a piss,’ I exclaimed.

  ‘I better have one too actually,’ Jack replied.

  We took down the books and both crawled back outside.

  DAY FIVE

  I didn’t want to open my eyes.

  The hard and uncomfortable floor of the office made me instantly aware of my whereabouts. My new sleeping bag had been very impressive. I hadn’t felt the cold at all.