“Is there a magic button I don’t know about that starts cars?”
“She’s from Preventasis,” Marty says, placing the woman’s lifeless body in the road, closing her eyelids with his palm. “Musta hit her head in the crash, trying to make it upta the dam. You know how many survivors gotta be out there, trapped, waiting for help that ain’t coming?”
“Like us, at the camp on the island,” Sami says, looking up and down the road enough times to make me dizzy. “Mom just kept saying they’d be here to save us soon, but she didn’t believe it, or even know who they was.”
“Got it!” Maxwell shouts from inside the car. “Everyone step back, just in case.”
“Does that mean she found the car’s g-spot?” Felecia asks, nudging me as we move away from the pile of motionless bodies.
“That all depends on whether it gets turned on or not. Get it, turned on, I’ll shut up. Could also be the self-destruct button. I can only assume they have those as well.”
The engine turns for a few seconds longer than normal before it roars to life. Holy shit, the car really does have a g-spot. How’d she do that? I think the only way to legitimately explain it is, well, Maxwell is a government trained wizard. She’s Harry Potter with an automatic rifle for a wand.
“Fuckin’ A man,” Marty says, jumping to his feet in excitement. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“Oh no,” Sami squeals. “They heard the car. They’re coming!”
CHAPTER 24
“Son of a bitch,” Marty grumbles, leaping into the driver’s seat as Maxwell scooches out of the way, still leaned over the middle console. “Dammit, we need a push! The wheels must be too far off the ground. Sami, how far out are they?”
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?” she squeals in a panic, opening the back door. “Really close, they’re running! Downhill!”
My plan was to pull body parts out from under the car, once they were all re-deaded. Is that right, re-deaded? Because they’re already dead and now they need to be dead again? Yeah, re-deaded. But apparently that won’t be happening.
Without a word exchanged between us, Felecia and I race to opposite sides of the car and push, using the frames of the backdoors for leverage. There’s more of them under here than I realized, she must have had the pedal to the metal, hoping to blast through a crowd of infects. The back tires aren’t even touching, at least not on my side. We’re jacked up on what looks like a chest, maybe a leg on top of it. Everything’s just a mess of blood and organs.
“Guys, get in, hurry, they’re right there!”
Those were not the words I wanted to hear come out of Sami’s mouth. She couldn’t have maybe said the ice cream truck was rolling through? Leave me alone, I’ve been wanting ice cream for days now. Or that it was a false alarm and they weren’t zombies running towards us but maybe, I don’t know, a flock of cuddly bunny rabbits who wanted their ears played with while their noses did that adorable twitching thing? Anything other than they’re right there!
Streams of blood and mangled flesh pelt the side of the car as Marty attempts to gun it in reverse. It’s like getting stuck in mud, except instead of mud, it’s human remains, and they are splattering all over my pants right now. It’s okay, pretty sure I peed in them already. I’d say it’s about time they get retired to the rag pile.
We’re out of time, when they get close enough that you can feel their footsteps through the pavement, it’s time to get the hell out of here. But where? We can’t exactly abandon ship and run downhill, we’ve seen how these bastards handle that, they’ll be tripping and falling down the road right after us. And if we jump in the car right now and close the doors, we’re trapped with no way out. We become that pussy of a pilot who’s flying away in our chopper as we speak.
The car moves! It moved, it just rolled backwards. Not much, but we’re off the bodies, the back wheels are touching! We did it!
The headlights illuminate the hillside, not what I wanted to see. It looks like a damn marathon, they’re everywhere, singles, couples, clusters and orgies of them, those are the ones that are too close so they touch and trip each other.
I didn’t realize it was this steep on our way up to the dam. Without windows to look out of, all I knew was we were tipped back like it was the first hill on a rollercoaster. It didn’t matter how steep it was, I was never going to see this place ever again.
“In! In!” Marty shouts in his manly man scream, so loud his voice cracks, as if we need to be told.
He hits the accelerator so hard it sends plumes of smoke into the air before the car even starts rolling backwards. He has no choice. When Sami said they were right there, she meant they were right fucking there, but probably didn’t want to use the f word again and risk us tattling on her.
The first two launch themselves at the hood. One of them overshoots, I can tell by the fact that our roof just dented in with a bang that could be mistaken for a gunshot. And that cracking sound coming from the windshield can’t mean anything good.
I leap into the backseat like a finalist in a belly flop competition. No choice, the car’s moving.
Squealing tires cover the sound of my girlish scream as I try to find something to grab hold of. Anything. My legs aren’t even in the car.
What’s that? I’ve got something. Nope, no I don’t, that’s just Sami. She’s trying to pull me in but Felecia’s doing the same thing on the other side of her. She’s got one hand on each of us, holding on for dear life, I can tell by her panicked squeals.
The seat divider on the floor, the only thing that kept my little brother from sliding his feet onto my side. I have never been so happy to see this thing in my life, and we drove all the way to the Rockies in fifth grade.
My hand lands on the scratchy fabric, snagging on every cut and tear in my skin. It feels like one of those stupid afghans that Grammy has all over the house.
My other hand grips something hard, the seatbelt latch? It’s gotta be the little latching piece the seatbelt hooks into.
Felecia’s fingers slam down on my hand in between the seats, trying to grab onto something.
“Hold my wrist,” I shout over Sami, barely able to see Felecia as Marty flies backwards downhill with an infect clinging to the hood. How the hell is he able to see where we’re going? Those little rear lights are not nearly enough. Please tell me he’s got a backup cam, one of the big ones that takes up the whole console.
Felecia wraps her hand around my forearm, sliding down until meeting resistance on my wrist. I don’t know how long we can hold on like this, legs flailing out the backdoors as we screech down the hillside in reverse.
Did Sami’s stomach growl? Please tell me she’s hungry and my face is just close enough to her belly to hear it. Her frightened wail means either her stomach grumbled so loud it scared the bejeezus out of her, or that wasn’t her stomach. Please just be hungry.
It wasn’t her stomach. The growl came from behind me, from the open door. It’s the asshole who dented our roof, he must have held on. He’s still up there, trying to wiggle himself inside as Marty swerves left and right in a failed attempt at knocking him loose. We’ve seen them swarm cars before, they give new meaning to the word persistent. Think Neil was bad trying to get Felecia to date him all those years? He’s got nothing on these guys.
I look back for a split second, all I can manage from this position. He’s crawling in, strands of saliva gushing from his mouth as the wind assaults his face. How fast are we going right now?
Sami’s trying to figure out how to hold him back while Maxwell pokes at the one on the hood with a sword. It’s not working, on either of their parts. I can tell Sami’s thinking about going for the sword strapped to my back but if she lets go, there’s a good chance one or both of us are tumbling out of these open doors.
My fingers are slipping. I’m losing my grip on the seatbelt thingy, it’s too slippery against my sweaty hand. I need something else to grab hold of, this isn’t gonna work a
ny longer.
“Everybody hang on, I’m spinning us around! Hang tight!”
“Shit shit shit,” Felecia mumbles to herself, tightening her grasp on my wrist, echoing my thoughts exactly. I don’t know, maybe I said it too, if so, jinx.
“Your other hand,” I shout, fumbling for it, letting go of my death grip on the seatbelt latch.
Our palms meet, her fingers wrapping around mine like the day this all started, when I pulled her up from the window. Peace washes over me. Knowing we’ve been here before, and survived, it makes the moment we’re in feel like a memory.
The tires lock up, spinning the car in circles as we glide down the mountainside at breakneck speed. Our interlocking hands press against Sami’s back. She’s pushing as hard as she can into the seat while grabbing onto each of us with one hand, screaming her ass off, trying not to get thrown through the open doors. Our only saving grace here is the fact that the force of the car doing a spinout is pushing us against the backseat.
We come to a stop what must be half an hour later, my every muscle clenched so tight I’m not gonna be pooping for a week. Of course not counting what I just did in my pants ten seconds ago. Am I breathing? I don’t think I am. Have I been holding my breath this whole time? Judging by my gasping, yes.
My bladder feels funny, did I wet myself, again? Or is it just that feeling you get when you crest a hill too fast and your butthole shoots into your stomach? It doesn’t matter, these pants are so far beyond ruined.
I squeak out a high pitched breath that sounds more like a whistle, unable to move. I might be permanently stuck to the seat. And there is a strong possibility Felecia’s hand and mine have merged into one, which is going to be really awkward for Sami because they’re wedged between her back and the seat.
“I will never not wear my seatbelt again,” she mutters, her voice a jumble of quivering wheezes. “Mom was right, I’ll just wear it all the time. And my bike helmet too. And kneepads. And elbow pads.”
“Everybody alright?” Marty asks, wiping nervous sweat from his brow. “I’m gonna take your silence as a yes. Can we close those doors now? This damn dashboard won’t stop dinging at me. Now that we’re alright, I can safely say I had no fuckin’ clue where we were going. Man, they need to start putting headlights on the back as well. Them little glowing bulbs don’t do shit. Speaking of, one of you crap your pants? I smell–”
But before he can finish, the ugly roof ornament slings himself over the edge, peering in through the still open door. How the hell did he hang on? We barely did and we’re inside the vehicle.
I latch my foot onto the door handle and yank it shut, slamming it on his head. It tries to bounce back but I hold on, wishing for something more substantial to pull it by. My awkward positioning doesn’t exactly make this easy.
Sami pries her fingers off my bulletproof vest, one at a time like they’re singed onto it, and grabs the door handle from my foot. She slams it shut, snapping his neck between the door and the frame.
But it’s not enough to stop him.
She does it four more times in quick succession, crunching the bones that hold his head in place a little more with every shot, turning his sickly groans into gurgles as blood oozes from his mouth.
The door clicks shut, so why the hell is he still snarling at us? The door closed on his neck, like, the bones are grinded down to nothing. And he’s still trying to get to us. His head is inside, his body is on the roof, draped over the edge, what do we have to do to convince this stubborn son of a bitch it’s over?
Marty hits the gas, sending us in spirals like the kids who insisted on doing doughnuts in the parking lot because it was thrilling to their itty bitty peabrains. You know how many hours of detention Blake had to serve for doing just that? He didn’t either, because he couldn’t count that high. You know, because he’s a jock. Was, you can thank Felecia for that, asshole.
The roof clinger holds on as long as he can, but the second rotation gets him, sending his body toppling over the edge. He slams against the door with authority, his elbows smashing off the glass before he hits the–
He’s still there. He didn’t hit the ground. His body’s flapping in the breeze like a flag as we cruise down the road, his head trapped on this side of the door. He’s just dangling there, limply, making pathetic attempts to grab at us through the closed window, like he doesn’t realize there’s a pane of glass there. He may as well be a sweater sleeve, caught in the door. His upside down face is still staring at us, growling, blood trickling from his mouth and neck, coating the window in a slimy red cascade.
“Felecia, sweetheart,” Marty coos, “I’m gonna need you to shut your door. This dinging is giving me a headache, not to mention the little blinking red light is gonna give me a seizure at any second.”
She peels her fingers from mine, trying to reply with something witty I’m sure, but unable to find the strength, or breath, to do so. Hey, look at that, our hands are no longer attached to Sami’s back, we’re not going to have to spend the rest of our lives as Siamese twins, or, well, triplets I suppose.
“Atta girl, you got it. Wooo, that, was a close one.”
“They let you drive a schoolbus?” Maxwell croaks, prying her fingers from the dashboard.
“I know, beats the hell outta me too. Used to drive monster trucks, I guess they figured, close enough. They’re both big, kinda meant for kids.”
“So, uh,” Sami mutters, “are we just gonna, you know, ignore the head trying to bite us right now? And his body flopping off my door?”
“Angh, he ain’t gettin’ ya,” Marty says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You could always open it and let him fall out, but there’s a good possibility his head’ll end up rolling around at your feet. Probably better off where he is. Alright everybody, eyes peeled, we gotta look for hospital signs.”
“He’s growling at me,” she whines, scooting as far from the errant head as possible.
“You go sit on that side,” I say, finally able to catch my breath, pointing in Felecia’s direction. “We’ll all sit on that side.”
“I call Noah’s lap,” Felecia wheezes, flashing me a smile.
“Okay, gross,” Sami groans, “I know what that means. I guess I’ll sit in the middle. But I’m leaning into you guys around every corner, so no funny business.”
“Don’t you make me pull this car over,” Marty says in his authoritative dad voice. “Because I really can’t, we’ll get eaten alive, so everybody get along. Huh, still got it, it’s been a while since I’ve been a dad.” He looks at Maxwell with a grin and a wink. “Hey honey, you want to uh, hold the stick shift while I steer? Okay, okay, judging by that look you’d probably break it off. Fine, tough crowd, I see this is gonna be a quiet ride. Geez, you’d think we almost died or something. Next stop, Sonny Valley Medical Center.”
CHAPTER 25
“Guys, look,” Maxwell says softly, pointing out the window. “Roof of the hospital, it’s there, that’s our medevac chopper.”
“How fast do those go?” Felecia asks, still sitting on my lap to avoid the creepy noises coming out of our window decoration’s mouth.
“Oh these babies cruise,” Maxwell says proudly. “As long as I can figure it out. Depending on the model, we’re talking like 100 at worst, 200 at best.”
“Hold on.” I put my hands up in shock because, what did she just say? “You mean, we can be flying down to the airstrip at two hundred freakin’ miles an hour?”
“Bet your ass we can. Make up for a little lost time. They’re busy fighting off infects to refuel, we’re zipping through the skies.”
“Holy shit,” Felecia winces, like the revelation slapped her in the face unexpectedly. “No, guys, you know what that means? We really have a chance here. That’s twice as fast as they’re going, weighed down like they are. Yeah, we’re a few hours behind, but at that speed… Just so everyone’s aware, Shane is mine. I am kicking him so hard in the balls he gags on them. You can fight amongst yours
elves for the others. But my vote goes to Noah getting Paul.”
“I like being alone,” Sami says wistfully, staring out the window as the hospital disappears behind a building. “Not alone alone, but, with you guys, and not my family.”
She doesn’t need to say it for us to understand. She likes being away from her brother. But how do you say something like that? It’s one of those thoughts you can think in privacy, but the second you say it out loud, it makes you a monster.
“When I was little,” Felecia says so quietly I’m not sure if it’s meant for us to hear or if she thinks she’s only thinking it, “I had this kitten. My parents let me get it from the shelter, as long as I took care of it. And I did. Even if just to prove them wrong. I even did the litter box. But he got sick. He was so much work. I had to feed him by hand near the end, and he’d always throw it up. He couldn’t hold anything in. But I took care of him, because he was my Mittens. When he died, I was heartbroken, but… kinda relieved. And I felt horrible for feeling that. For those times when I was cleaning up after him, wishing that he would just give in already.”
I pull her closer to me, wishing I could wipe away the tears I know are forming in her eyes, unable to reach from this angle.
“I love him,” Sami whispers, rubbing Felecia’s leg, “but I think it’s only because I have to. I’m a horrible person.”
“No, you’re not,” Felecia assures her in a voice that leaves no room for argument. “You were given a responsibility that was never yours to begin with. You were supposed to be his little sister, not his babysitter. It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling. Remember, this is our world now. All those things they wanted us to think before, we don’t have to anymore. He is not your responsibility sweetie, you are your responsibility. No one else.”
Maxwell nudges Marty and whispers, “you ever feel like they’re the adults and we’re the kids?”
“Every fuckin’ day.” Are we stopping? It feels like he’s coming to a stop. “Ladies and gentlemen, Sonny Valley Medical.”
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 15