The Road Trip At The End Box Set

by J N Wood

  ‘I thought you said it was underground?’ I asked, as we walked under the arches.

  ‘There is another level down,’ he said. ‘We’ve been staying in the security office down there.’

  Michael and Shannon were in front, leading us down a sloping ramp. Jack and I followed, with Gee at the rear. Ground level was full of burnt out vehicles.

  At first I thought Jack was holding my arm to help me, but I soon realised he was using me as a crutch.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘My ribs start to hurt if I walk any distance. I’ll take some painkillers when we stop.’

  Once we were all in the security office on the basement level, Gee closed the heavy door behind us.

  ‘Does it lock?’ I asked Jack, pointing at the door.

  Jack was rummaging through his bag. ‘Yes!’ he hissed triumphantly, pulling his hand out of the bag and shaking a plastic bottle of pills. ‘What did you say? Oh, the door. You can’t open it from the outside,’ he said.

  ‘Then how–?’ I started.

  ‘It was open when we found it,’ he quickly answered.

  Jack passed me a bottle of water and then opened his own. I thirstily gulped the whole bottle down, while watching Jack’s new friends removing their weapons and head gear.

  ‘I needed that Jack.’ I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Hey, time for proper introductions I think,’ Michael said. He was stepping towards me, his hand outstretched. I took his hand in mine.

  ‘Hi Chris, I’m Michael Presley.’ He stopped shaking my hand and gestured towards Shannon. ‘This is my wife, Shannon.’

  She smiled and waved. ‘Hi, again,’ she said, before giving her husband a quizzical look.

  ‘Hi everyone. You do know I wasn’t actually asleep when Jack introduced us half an hour ago?’

  ‘Just doing it properly, that’s all,’ Michael answered.

  ‘Yeah sorry, good to meet you all,’ I said. ‘And thanks for helping me back there. I was pretty fucking knackered at the end. Don’t think I’d have been able to finish off the last few zombies.’

  ‘No problem at all,’ Shannon said, laying her crossbow and bag on the desk in the windowless room.

  ‘I do not understand single fucking word he say,’ Gee said, in his stilted English. He was leaning against the door and pointing at me.

  ‘You don’t understand me?’ I asked him, dumbfounded.

  ‘What you say?’ Gee asked, his face still deadpan.

  ‘Come on kids,’ Jack said. ‘We all need to sleep. Chris, you look like you’re about to collapse.’

  Pulling my tired eyes away from the huge Lithuanian, I said, ‘Yeah okay. Could someone make sure Lurch doesn’t kill me in my sleep please?’

  ‘What he say?’ Gee asked, looking at Shannon. ‘I do not understand single fucking word.’

  Shannon shook her head, before stepping towards me. ‘I need to clean the wound on your face before you collapse,’ she said, briefly glancing at me before picking up her bag.

  I touched the left side of my face. It was tender, and a bit sticky around my eye and cheek bone. In my exhaustion I’d almost forgotten about my altercation with the tarmac.

  Shannon leaned in closer to me, inspecting my face. I awkwardly looked over her shoulder at a wall of blank monitors.

  ‘It looks like there is still some of the road in there,’ she said. ‘Sit yourself down and I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ I’d been really looking forward to sitting down all night.

  When I opened my eyes, Jack was sat in the only chair in the room, his unobstructed eye staring at the plain white wall behind me. It took me a couple of seconds to realise I’d been asleep.

  ‘Alright?’ I said. ‘What time is it?’

  Jack seemed to blink back to life. He looked down at me, then eased himself out of the black leather chair and crept over to sit by my side.

  Michael and Shannon were lying about four or five feet to my left, still fast asleep by the looks of it. The Lithuanian was slumped against the door, almost sat up straight. Every couple of seconds, an incredibly loud and angry sounding snore erupted from his wide open mouth.

  ‘It’s half three in the afternoon,’ Jack told me, after he’d made himself comfortable. ‘Shannon said she couldn’t believe you slept through your face getting messed around with.’

  ‘Oh shit yeah,’ I muttered, lifting my hand up to feel a bandage on my face. ‘I was pretty tired.’

  ‘It’s just some gauze to try and keep it clean. She keeps going on about things getting infected. She must say it to me twenty times a day.’

  ‘Is she a doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but not medical. Something to do with bioengineering, or biochemistry, or bio something. She seems to know what she’s talking about though.’

  ‘So?’ I asked

  Jack shook his head. ‘So what?’

  ‘So what the fuck happened to you? I couldn’t find you, I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Quiet Chris, they’re still asleep,’ he said, pointing at the other three.

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘Where were you? And who the fuck are Michael, Shannon and Lurch? How are you all together?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know what really happened. I remember being in the truck, and us getting slowly turned over by a load of zombies. Then I woke up in what I thought was a hospital, but it turned out to be a school.’

  ‘What school?’ I asked him.

  ‘Austin School.’

  ‘Where the fuck was that? I covered every inch of Austin looking for you.’

  ‘It’s on the outskirts, just after the graveyard.’

  ‘I didn’t see a fucking school on the outskirts,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t a fucking school Chris. It was just an ordinary school, for kids,’ Jack replied, a smirk on his face.

  ‘Yeah, very fucking funny. Honestly though, I thought I searched everywhere around there.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It was well signposted. I saw the signs for it when we headed back into Austin, which was also when we saw your messages.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ I muttered.

  ‘What happened to you then? And us I suppose?’ Jack asked.

  I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. ‘So, the truck rolled down a hill and we finished upside down at the bottom. I dragged you out through the broken windscreen, which I had to kick out by the way, and carried you to some buildings in Austin, but then I lost you.’

  ‘What do you mean? You lost me?’ Jack asked. ‘You just misplaced me?’

  ‘Well, after very carefully placing you in…’ I trailed off and gave him a sideways glance, before continuing. ‘And don’t forget the very carefully part. I very carefully placed you in a bin.’ I stopped and waited for a reply. He looked fairly nonplussed, so I carried on. ‘Then I climbed on top of a building to wait for the swarm to pass by.’

  ‘Yep, kind of knew about the bin,’ Jack said. ‘Michael and Shannon said they found me in a dumpster. I had no idea what they were talking about. I kept asking them if they meant a truck. They got very annoyed.’

  ‘I thought you’d be safe in there. I pushed it into a corner, but there were too many zombies. They smashed down a fence, and you and the bin just rolled away. I really am sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jack said. ‘It can’t have been easy getting me out of the truck. I’ll forgive you for dumping me in a bin.’

  ‘It wasn’t fucking easy. It was really fucking hard in fact.’

  ‘Seriously, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Shannon took care of me. I was out of it for a few days. By the time I’d regained consciousness and gone back into Austin, you’d left.’

  ‘What’s actually going on with your eye?’ I asked.

  ‘Shannon thinks I’ve fractured my eye socket. She told me I’ll be fine, but I think she’s just trying to keep my hopes up. It’s a
lright, I’ve got another eye.’

  ‘You were almost blind anyway,’ I said. ‘Losing your sight in one eye probably won’t make much difference to you.’

  Jack looked at me with a confused look on his face. ‘Surely it would be worse if I lost an eye? Rather than if someone with perfect sight went blind in one eye.’

  ‘Actually, yeah, you’re probably right. You’ll be fine though. I’ll get you a stick if not. Also, it means you won’t run out of contact lenses as quickly.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, with a grin. ‘What happened to you after Austin?’

  ‘Well, a few hours after leaving Austin, I bumped into a huge fucking swarm.’

  ‘Why were you out during the day?’ he asked.

  ‘I wasn’t. It was the middle of the night.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t during the day?’

  ‘What?’ I answered, giving him an incredulous look. ‘What the fuck? Of course I’m sure it wasn’t during the day. There was a big silver thing in the sky. Not a big yellow thing. Oh yeah, and also, it was fucking dark.’

  ‘Were you asleep and dreaming maybe?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you taking the piss? I wasn’t dreaming.’

  ‘Just a few hours ago, you were sleepwalking and talking about Russians attacking you.’

  ‘I didn’t fucking dream the swarm. It was real. Zombie parts were still on my car the next day. Unless I dreamt that as well?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I replied.

  ‘Shit,’ Jack slowly said. ‘We’ll have to tell everyone when they wake up. That’s really going to mess everything up.’

  ‘That’s the only one I’ve seen, I haven’t seen another one at night since then. I think that one just had too many zombies, so they couldn’t stop to sleep. Maybe.’

  ‘Yeah maybe,’ he said. ‘So what happened after that? How did you get here?’

  I told Jack everything, the night in the mechanics workshop after escaping the tsunami swarm, and my failed plan to find a snow plough. I described my meeting with Gurbinder and the racist duck hunters, culminating in them chasing me into the hills. Then the trek through the snow and witnessing the zombie clean-up crew on the other side. All the while Jack nodded and made agreeable noises. He said they’d also seen, and travelled through, the burnt remains of California.

  ‘And that was it,’ I said. ‘Piece of piss really.’

  ‘Yeah, sounds it,’ Jack replied. ‘You killed some people then? Actual people, not zombies.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe. I mean, I didn’t actually see them die, but maybe.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jack said, turning slightly to look directly at me.

  ‘What?’ I asked, leaning away from him.

  ‘No long term psychological effects? Even if they were racist rapists.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s not been long term yet. And the world is better off without those arseholes, if they are actually dead. And I never mentioned anything about them being rapists.’

  ‘The story sounded like it was heading in that direction, it was beginning to sound a bit like Deliverance,’ Jack said.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Your new chums, what’s going on with them?’

  ‘There were about forty new chums in the school.’

  ‘Forty?’ I asked, in disbelief.

  ‘A lot of them were from their local archery club in Austin.’

  ‘That explains the crossbows then?’

  ‘Yep. They turned that school into some kind of fortress. Michael, Shannon and Big Gee all said they wanted to go north, and agreed to help me. So here we are.’

  ‘Did Gee live in Austin?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’m not sure where he came from, obviously Lithuania originally, but I don’t know where he was when all this started. I’m not sure if Michael and Shannon know either. Apparently he just turned up a few days after the virus.’

  ‘That’s a bit suspicious, don’t you think?’

  ‘Chris, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing, just thinking out loud. How the fuck did you get here before me?’

  ‘I think we set off the day after you by the sounds of it,’ Jack replied. ‘Although we took the I-80, and until we made it to Sacramento, it was relatively easy. Relative to your journey anyway. You should have left me a more detailed message.’

  ‘The knock on your head hasn’t improved your sense of humour. I did wonder if I should go that way. Fucking hell.’

  ‘We had to dig our way out of the snow a few times, but there weren’t any burning airplanes, or racist rapists chasing us.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘And I’m almost certain they weren’t planning on raping me.’

  ‘Ask Michael about crashed airplanes, he’ll have something interesting to tell you.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, ask him. He’ll want to tell you it.’

  ‘Why can’t you just tell me now?’

  ‘Because it’s his fucking story,’ Jack said.

  ‘Go on, just tell me now.’

  Jack shook his head, saying, ‘No.’

  ‘Just fucking tell me,’ I said, drawing out the words.

  ‘For fuck’s sake. He saw a fucking passenger plane get shot down by American fighter jets,’ he hurriedly blurted out.

  ‘Hey, that’s my story,’ Michael sleepily said from the corner of the room.

  ‘Sorry Michael, he forced it out of me,’ Jack said, almost sheepishly.

  ‘That’s okay, you tell it so well,’ Michael replied. ‘Keep the volume down though, I’m going to try and get a few more hours sleep.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jack and I whispered in unison.

  I looked over to the still snoring Lithuanian. ‘Why did Gee come with you?’ I asked, keeping my voice down low.

  ‘Not sure, he mumbled something about Canada, and hunting. We were glad for the help though. He mostly keeps himself to himself. You’ll like him. I think the first English words he learnt were fuck, fucking and shit. Because that’s pretty much all he says.’

  ‘He certainly doesn’t like me,’ I said.

  ‘Nobody likes you. You’re a twat.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I think we should try and get more sleep,’ Jack said. ‘Big Gee’s snoring woke me up earlier, but I’m going to try again.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll try as well.’

  Jack crawled over to his makeshift bed and laid down.

  They’d done well to find this little hiding spot. And Jack had done well to find these people, well, two thirds of them at least. Talking of achievements, Michael was punching above his weight with Shannon. She was obviously very intelligent by the sounds, but also very attractive. I didn’t expect Michael’s clean shaven and round face after witnessing the crossbow guy easily taking down that zombie.

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t asleep?’ Michael asked me a few hours later.

  I lowered my head in frustration. ‘No, I wasn’t asleep, and ignore my sleepwalking earlier, that isn’t a regular occurrence. Unless I’m drunk.’

  ‘Were you drunk?’ Shannon asked.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Ignore my last comment as well. I wasn’t asleep, or drunk. A huge swarm was wandering about at night. But like I said to Jack, it’s the only one I’ve seen.’

  After Jack had suggested trying to sleep again, I stared at the ceiling and listened to Gee’s snoring. A couple of hours later everyone began to stir.

  Gee was now stood in the corner, just staring at me. Jack, Shannon, Michael and I were stood around the desk. We were all eating energy bars that Michael had retrieved from his bag.

  ‘If this is true,’ Shannon said, giving me the briefest of glances. ‘Then it could cause us huge problems.’

  I let out an exasperated sigh, rolling my eyes.

  If this is true. What the fuck?

  ‘We can’t let it change things now,’ Michael said. ‘Let’s stick to our nocturnal travel plans.’

  Why don’
t these arseholes believe me? Why would I make this shit up?

  ‘What is the plan?’ I reluctantly asked.

  Let them believe what they want. They’ll soon find out.

  Shannon produced a road map from her bag, unfolded it and placed it on the desk. Gee continued to stand in front of the door, while the rest of us leaned in.

  ‘To start with, we cycle back to the bus–,’ Shannon said.

  ‘A bus? Like a big tour bus?’ I asked, imagining the huge things with beds, and lots of space.

  ‘We found a school bus,’ Jack replied, smiling. ‘With a big snow plough on the front.’

  ‘Like in Road Trip?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep, but much better than that,’ Jack answered.

  Michael and Shannon looked at us with blank expressions.

  ‘It’s a film, Road Trip,’ I said, looking at them in turn. ‘Not seen it?’

  ‘We don’t have a television,’ Michael said.

  Shannon turned her attention back to the map. ‘So, after we get to the bus–,' she started.

  ‘You don’t have a TV?’ I interrupted. ‘How do you watch stuff?’

  ‘We don’t,’ Shannon replied. ‘We mostly read.’

  ‘We’re not gonna have much in common,’ I told her.

  Shannon shrugged her shoulders, saying, ‘Okay.’ She flapped out a baseball cap and placed it on her head, tucking loose strands of her curly hair behind her ears. ‘We cycle to the bus, and then the best route is probably this.’ She traced a route along the map with her finger. ‘Staying on the US-97 means we avoid Portland completely, and can go around Seattle. Everything takes a bit longer now, so three days tops, two if we get lucky.’

  ‘Erm…’ I raised my hand into the air. ‘I don’t have a bike.’

  Gee started to laugh scornfully from the corner.

  ‘What?’ I asked him, with an accusing glare. ‘I’m literally just finding out what the plan is.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Michael said. ‘Jack was adamant you’d be here, so we got you something. I’ll apologise now, it was the best we could find.’

  That doesn’t sound promising.

  It turned out Gee’s laugh wasn’t because I said I didn’t have a bike. I think he’d been laughing at the prospect of seeing me ride the thing in front of me.