by J N Wood
‘He stop bleeding much because his heart stop,’ Gee explained.
There was a stunned silence. I looked up from Gilberto’s face. Everyone stared in shock at the horrific scene playing out on the floor of the bus.
‘No, he can’t be,’ Steve muttered.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Shannon said, now holding Gilberto’s uninjured wrist, checking for a pulse. ‘Gee is right. They must have sliced through the femoral artery in his leg.’
‘Can’t you fix it?’ Theo called out. I could just see his bruised face poking through between Steve and Pete.
‘I’m sorry,’ Shannon said.
Gee stopped applying pressure to Gilberto’s leg, and rose to his feet.
‘I’m not a medical doctor,’ Shannon added. ‘I wouldn’t…I didn’t…I didn’t know.’ She slowly and gently removed her belt, and then got to her feet. She slumped backwards onto an empty seat.
I carefully placed his legs back onto the floor. A river of blood flowed down the aisle, running under my boots and down the steps to the doors.
‘Why did you leave him?’ Theo sobbed, now staring at Steve.
‘I didn’t,’ Steve said defensively. ‘He told me to go. He said he was right behind me.’
‘You should have taken care of him,’ Theo cried.
‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ Steve managed to splutter out.
‘It’s not Steve’s fault,’ Pete said, taking charge as the eldest of the three brothers. ‘I was driving. I crashed. It’s my responsibility.’
‘The dead appeared from nowhere,’ Theo said, slowly backing away, tears streaming down his face. He stopped when Sandra took him by the shoulders. She turned him around and hugged him.
I turned slightly to face forwards, and said, ‘Stop when you get the chance please Michael.’
‘No problem,’ he quietly replied.
A few minutes later, Michael brought the bus to a complete stop. Nobody had moved. We were all in the same positions.
After what felt like a long time in silence, Michael spoke up. ‘Right everyone, we’ve stopped.’
Nobody responded. I looked down at Michael and shrugged. He looked at a loss for what to say.
Pete eventually broke the silence, saying, ‘I need a spade.’
I turned to see him step forward and lay a hand on Ali’s shoulder. She was still cradling Gilberto’s head on her lap.
Shannon’s questioning eyes met with Michael’s. He slowly shook his head. On seeing her husband’s response, she closed her eyes.
‘No spade Pete,’ I said. ‘But we’ll help you. Jack, get me your big axe.’
I leaned under the front row of seats, and came back out with two of the torches. I flicked one of them on and asked Michael to open the doors. I had a good look around to make sure there were no dead humans wandering about, or big live bears.
At first it was just me, with Jack’s big axe, and Jack with my little axe, doing all the digging, but soon enough, everyone was out and helping. People used whatever they could get a hold of, rifles, my baseball bat, and even using their bare hands.
I wasn’t too happy when I noticed Steve using the Brooklyn Smasher to scrape the earth out of the grave. I would have looked like a complete arsehole if I’d asked him not to use it though.
The hole was about three feet deep, and I was pretty sure everyone wanted to stop, but nobody wanted to be the person to say it.
Luckily for us, Pete rose to his feet and told us we’d done enough. ‘Steve, Theo, let’s get our father,’ he said stoically.
‘Do you need a hand?’ Michael asked, as the three brothers started up the steps.
‘No, thank you,’ Pete replied.
They soon emerged, carrying Gilberto’s ravaged body out of the bus, and gently placing him in the shallow grave.
Pete slowly looked at us all stood around his father’s body, before saying, ‘Could you please help us cover him? Then, if you don’t mind, our family would like some time alone. Don’t worry, we won’t be long.’
‘Take as long as you need,’ Shannon told him.
Everyone got down on their knees and scooped, or pushed the broken up soil onto Gilberto, eventually covering him entirely. There were a lot of loud sniffs and sobs.
‘Thanks guys,’ Sandra said, wiping her face and rising to stand up.
We took that as our cue to leave, and climbed back aboard the bus. Sandra followed us in, before heading back outside with all three of the kids in tow. Thankfully, the blond kid that had been in the crash looked relatively uninjured. The Rodriguez brothers on the other hand, all looked bruised and battered.
Jack sat down on the row behind me, wearily saying, ‘Fuck.’
‘Yep,’ I replied.
‘You didn’t like it when that Steve guy was using your bat did you?’
My head snapped around to face him. ‘Why, what do you mean?’
‘You were staring at him, and you looked really pissed off.’
‘Shite, nobody else noticed did they?’
‘Nah, don’t think so. Everyone else is normal, so they were worried about Gilberto being dead.’
‘Good.’
A few minutes later, Ali entered the bus, and started walking up the aisle. Sandra and the kids were next, followed by Theo, Steve and Pete bringing up the rear. They were all silent as they passed, and seemed to avoid making eye contact with us. Nobody tried speaking to them as they made their way to the back of the bus.
Michael closed the door and turned the engine back on.
‘Right, let’s get going then,’ he said quietly.
‘We’re not going to make it to Snohomish before it gets light,’ Shannon told her husband. ‘We’ll need to find somewhere soon. We still have a lot of built up areas to pass through before we get to the border.’
‘Once we get a bit further away from that last swarm, I’ll find somewhere suitable to pull over,’ Michael replied.
‘Okay,’ Shannon said, leaning forward and squeezing Michael’s shoulder. He placed his hand on top of hers.
It wasn’t long before the bus was parked up in a rest area on the side of the road. Bedtime was a bit more chaotic with eight more people on board. After we had taken shifts going for bathroom breaks, as Shannon likes to call them, and made sure people were protected during those breaks, everyone was more than ready for sleep.
I’d given up my sleeping bag for the kids, so I wasn’t been expecting to sleep much.
Also, my face hurt. I could feel the skin around the puncture wounds tightening.
DAY SIXTEEN
Chapter 6: Barbie
I was wrong. I’d slept like a dead man.
Maybe that’s a phrase I shouldn’t be using at the moment.
I’d been pretty exhausted after yesterday’s events, so my excellent sleep shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise.
Everyone had been deathly quiet when I woke up.
Fuck’s sake Chris. Stop thinking in death terms.
The Rodriguez’s were still occupying the back of the bus. Gee also seemed to be just waking up, only two rows away from me. I had no idea how I wasn’t kept awake all night by his snoring.
At least my face wasn’t aching as much.
‘Afternoon,’ Jack said.
I looked over to see him sat on the row opposite me. ‘Fucking hell,’ I blurted.
The bandage around his head had been removed, so his injured eye was visible. The bruising around the eye looked awful. Every different shade of purple must have been on his skin, and the white of his eye was a very vivid red.
‘It might look bad, but I can see,’ Jack said, a huge smile on his face.
I sat upright and leaned against the window. ‘That’s good, but can you not cover it back up? It looks fucking disgusting.’
‘No I can’t. Shannon said to leave it uncovered.’
‘I think you’re back in the lead in the most fucked up face awards.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jack said. ‘Your face will soo
n be back to normal, so you’ll leap back into first place.’
I forced a smile and stuck two fingers up at him. ‘Food?’ I asked.
‘Nothing cooked I’m afraid. Michael and Shannon don’t want to risk it when we’re so close to freedom. They’re worried about the dead smelling our beans.’
‘Can zombies smell?’ I asked.
Jack just shrugged.
‘They do smell. They fucking stink,’ Gee said, sitting down behind me, his face showing no emotion whatsoever.
‘Was that a joke Gee? I asked, with a smile.
‘Maybe,’ he muttered, still keeping a straight face.
But then, just for the briefest of moments, a smile touched his lips. It was just a little bit, but I definitely saw it.
‘I think it was a joke,’ Jack said. ‘Hey Shannon, Michael. Gee just told a joke.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ Shannon said, packing clothes into a bag. ‘But maybe today isn’t the day to turn into a comedian.’ She nodded towards the back of the bus, and the grieving Rodriguez family.
Breakfast turned out to be another energy bar and a can of Diet Pepsi. I couldn’t wait to get across the border and eat some proper food. I’d been having cravings for sausages, mash potato and gravy since Gee had served me his tinned sausages.
‘We have a long wait until it gets dark,’ Shannon said, after we had moved to the front rows of the bus, just to give Ali and her family a bit more space. ‘The sun set at around eight o’clock last night,’ she continued. ‘So that’s about five hours we have to wait.’
I raised both my thumbs, saying, ‘Great.’
‘Hey guys,’ Ali said, startling us after managing to sneak up on us all.
‘Hi Ali,’ Shannon replied, in a hushed and sympathetic tone. ‘How are you all doing back there?’
She shrugged. ‘Not great. Theo’s not doing well at all. He’s blaming Steve. And we’re all squashed into a bus together, so it’s all a bit shit to be honest.’
‘We’re all really sorry about what happened,’ Michael said.
‘Thanks. We’ll get through it, no choice is there?’ She looked towards me. ‘Hey Chris, just wanted to say thank you for getting my uncle onto the bus.’ She forced a small smile.
I shifted uncomfortably on my seat. ‘That’s okay. Just wish it’d turned out better, obviously.’
‘Thanks for trying.’ She sat down next to Jack, briefly glanced at him, and then did a double take. ‘Whoa Jack, your eye looks terrible.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Jack replied flatly.
Ali let out a little chuckle. ‘Sorry, but it does.’
Apart from Jack, everyone at the front of the bus joined in with her laugh, even Gee.
‘Chris, I think you could probably do with taking your gauze off,’ Shannon stated. ‘Let it breathe a while.’
‘Ha,’ Jack sneered. ‘You can look fucking terrible too.’
After Shannon had peeled the gauze off my face, she handed me a little make-up mirror. The scrape didn’t look that bad actually. It was healing really well. I just had a very red stretch of skin from just below my hairline, down to my cheek bone. It still looked disgusting, but it had shrunk a lot in size. I still had the stupid little circular plasters dotted all over the other side of my face though.
The afternoon passed by slowly. The Rodriguez family understandably kept to themselves at the back of bus. Occasionally two of them would pass us to use the exit. I think we all tried speaking to them, maybe not Gee actually, but we’d only receive the odd word here and there.
I was more than relieved when it had finally been time to set off. I’d sat myself in the driver’s seat at seven o’clock, staring out through the windscreen, willing the sun to go down quicker.
We were soon heading north on the WA-9. The excitement amongst the people sat at the front of the bus was definitely noticeable. I could almost feel it in the air.
‘It’s only about an hour and a half, maybe two hours from here,’ Michael said, shining a torch onto the road map.
‘What do you think the border is gonna be like?’ I asked him.
Michael took a long breath before answering. ‘I honestly don’t know. I just want there to be a border. If it was overrun at the beginning, and all this has spread further north…’ He paused for a few seconds, before continuing. ‘Well, let’s just say it’s a long way back down to Mexico.’
‘The last time I heard anything from my wife, she emailed saying Canada and Mexico were building walls.’
‘It would be very impressive if they got a wall up this quickly,’ Michael said.
‘I think you’d be surprised what people can do to survive,’ I said.
‘I’m not sure if there will be an actual wall, but I’m feeling confident Chris. The border will still be there.’
The roads north of Seattle had been quiet. We drove by Arlington, and decided to take the WA-534 so we could get onto the I-5. We hoped that would take us all the way to Blaine, the small town just before the Canadian border. Michael said that route would avoid most of the bigger places. Unfortunately though, it would take us right through the middle of Bellingham. After a brief discussion, we put it to a vote. We unanimously agreed to stick with the route Michael had decided on.
Bellingham had been empty, eerily quiet in fact. The city had been well and truly abandoned. It wasn’t long after leaving the city limits that we started seeing the signs.
Every road sign near the Bellingham airport had either been spray painted over, or messages had been painted onto white sheets and then draped over them.
15 MILES TO BORDER
STAY QUIET
NO NOISE
NO VEHICLES
SILENCE PLEASE
As soon as we’d passed the no vehicles sign, I started to slow us down, stopping in front of another sign that read, 14 MILES TO BORDER.
‘What the fuck do we do now?’ I asked.
‘We can’t walk fourteen miles with the kids,’ Shannon said. ‘It’s too risky.’
‘There must be a reason for the sign though,’ Jack said.
‘Hey guys,’ Pete said, after joining us at the front. ‘We saw the signs. What are you thinking?’
‘I think we try and get a bit further in the bus,’ Shannon said. ‘Just a bit. Take it slowly and see what happens. There doesn’t seem to be anything around here.’
Sandra had made her way up to stand behind Pete. ‘I don’t want to take the kids outside if I don’t have to,’ she said. ‘But we’ll do whatever everyone else wants to do.’
‘It’s okay Sandra,’ Michael said. ‘I agree with Shannon. Let’s just drive a bit further.’
‘Yep, it’s decided then,’ I said, and slowly started accelerating. I kept the bus below fifteen miles an hour. Everyone stared out of the windows, looking for any danger.
The ‘no vehicles’ and ‘keep quiet’ signs continued to appear in the darkness, and the miles signs slowly counted down. There were no people, no zombies, no anything of note. When we reached the three miles sign, I stopped the bus again.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘There isn’t anything here,’ Jack said.
‘I don’t think we are three miles away from Canada,’ Michael said, looking up from the road map. ‘I’d say it’s more like four or five, maybe even six miles.’
We all sat, or stood, peering out through the windscreen.
Shannon broke the silence, saying, ‘How about we get to the outskirts of Blaine and then walk the rest of the way.’
Everyone agreed, so we carried on driving. We passed the two miles sign, still there was nothing. Then we rolled by the one mile sign, and still there was nothing happening.
‘The border can’t be one mile away guys,’ Michael said. ‘We’re further away than that.’
A few minutes later, not long after crossing Dakota Creek, I stopped the bus in front of a very confusing sign. A banner was stretched across the entire width of the road, held up by metal poles on either side. In
huge red letters, it simply said BORDER, with a big red arrow pointing to our right.
‘Does that mean we can’t cross the border up ahead?’ Jack asked.
‘Maybe we just have to drive east,’ Shannon suggested. ‘The border might be closed here.’
‘Fuck knows,’ I sighed, and turned the engine off.
‘Can you here that?’ Ali asked. ‘Sounds like crickets or cicadas.’
I leaned forward in my seat and tried to listen.
She’s right, it does sound a bit like crickets, but it also sounds like a shitload of zombies.
A shockingly loud and high pitched screech came from our right. We all swivelled around to find the source.
‘What the fuck was that?’ I asked.
Before anyone could answer, a loud boom echoed around us, followed by the crackling and popping of fireworks. The sky was suddenly lit up in green and red. An engine in the field next to us roared to life. It seemed to be coming from a blue shipping container in the middle of the field, now illuminated by the fireworks.
A squeaky voice called out something over loud speakers, something about being a cheerleader, and being ugly.
I looked to Jack and we made eye contact. His face was screwed up in disgust.
‘Is that Daphne and Celeste?’ he asked me.
‘Yeah I think so.’
The song continued, very loudly.
All of a sudden, while the lights of the fireworks slowly drifted to the ground, we heard popping noises, followed by the fizzing and whistling of more fireworks squealing into the air. The explosions when they reached their desired height were incredible. The sky was filled with a kaleidoscope of different colours.
‘What is happening?’ Shannon muttered.
The top half of a person suddenly popped out of the top of the shipping container, maybe to watch the fireworks.
I pointed the person out to everybody, and we all just watched the bizarre spectacle. After a few moments, the person seemed to notice our bus, and started to wave, before banging on the top of the container. Some of us actually waved back.
That was when the zombies appeared. They were running from the direction Canada was supposed to be, obviously drawn to the fireworks and horrific music.