Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Ryan, Nicholas

  I fumbled frantically for the Glock. It was wedged under the seat that had been wrenched off its runners and jammed against the door of the car by the impact. I clawed at the weapon and tugged it free, then braced my back and kicked the windshield out.

  I stumbled from the wreckage and my legs collapsed from beneath me. I went down on the sun-baked tarmac, sagging to my knees. I slumped against the hissing grille of the Yukon, and dragged myself around until I had the vehicle between myself and the roadblock.

  Another shot ripped through the still morning air and I flinched instinctively. A flash of metallic sparks was torn from the fender, not a foot from my head. I tucked myself into a ball. My hands were shaking, yet my mind was suddenly very clear, the reality very certain.

  I was going to die.

  I rolled my shoulders and stole a glance back along the freeway. I could see Jed, leaning over the hood of the red hatchback with the Glock in both hands, his arms braced to steady his aim. He was firing from just fifty feet away – firing from the crest of the rise. It was only a matter of time.

  I turned and stared ahead into the distance. The road fell away in a gradual slope for another wreckage-strewn mile, and then flattened out and widened into an extra lane in the shadow of a freeway overpass.

  The off-ramp to Pentelle.

  It was so close, yet impossibly far away.

  In desperation, I glanced sideways to the fringe of dense trees. I narrowed my eyes, judging the distance. They were about thirty feet away, across two lanes of open road and a narrow belt of dry tufted grass. The woods were deeply shadowed and thick with scrubby undergrowth. I screwed my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

  “I knew you’d follow me, fucker!” I heard Jed shout clearly in the stillness. “I knew you’d come after the girl. You’re a dead man!”

  I said nothing. I felt my heart beating like it wanted to break out through my chest, and an uncomfortable warm wetness across the front of my shirt that puzzled me. I checked the Glock had a round in the chamber and heaved myself into a crouch. My hands felt numb, my fingers swollen. I glanced down and realized the top of my little finger of my left hand had been severed below the first knuckle. Blood was oozing from the wound, the shock deadening the pain of the injury. I ripped my t-shirt open and used the long shreds to bind the stump and then used my teeth to pull the knot tight.

  “You’re insane, Jed!” I shouted out, buying myself a few precious seconds of time. “You’ve got a head full of faulty wiring. You’re a murderer!”

  There was an eerie silence and I used those moments to brace my back against the grille, ready to push off hard and make a desperate dash for the tree line.

  Thirty feet. The distance suddenly telescoped out before me and looked like a million miles. I knew I wouldn’t make it.

  “What did you say?” Jed snapped hotly.

  “I said you’re fucked up in the head!” I shouted back. There was another impossibly long silence – suspiciously long. I stole another glance around the edge of the Yukon.

  Jed was gone.

  Three shots suddenly rang out, three viciously loud retorts, and the air erupted around me. I flinched away, covered my head with my hands, and realized that Jed had crept around behind the Taurus and then climbed over the Jersey barrier to outflank me from the middle of the road. The bullets ripped into the grille, just inches from my head and shoulders.

  I sprang to my feet and fled towards the trees, weaving and jinking my body, running doubled-over at the waist with the blood pounding in my ears and every step on trembling fear-filled legs.

  Instantly the air around me erupted, hot against my cheek, buffeting me with the whiplash of gunfire.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  I reached the shoulder of the road. My feet crunched over loose gravel and then I hit the narrow belt of long stringy grass that grew in brown ragged tufts along the verge. I lifted my legs high, like I was running into a foaming ocean of breaking surf.

  Ten more feet.

  I ran with my jaw clenched tight, anticipating the next shot, the muscles in my back seized, awaiting the bullet that would knock me down.

  It had to come.

  It had to come now.

  I threw myself down into the grass. I hit the ground with such violence that the air was punched from my lungs. My teeth slammed together and I tasted the coppery tang of blood in my mouth. I rolled over, and then suddenly plunged into a narrow drainage ditch as bullets thrashed and beat at the grass with a sound like a bullwhip.

  I groaned. I was laying face down in a trench, like a shallow grave. The ground beneath me was muddy red clay. The trench was as wide as my shoulders and I edged my body round until I was lying on my side, gasping raggedly as I tried to suck in lungsful of air and stop myself from shaking. Sweat and blood trickled into my eyes. I scraped my hand down my face and wiped it on the tatters of my shirt, then slowly inched my head above the height of the drainage ditch.

  Through the long grass I could see Jed. He was kneeling behind the Jersey barrier with a clear shot to where I had fallen. He had the Glock held in a double-fisted grip. He was waiting.

  I moved in inches, ever so slowly raising the gun and aiming for the small blob of Jed’s head through the untamed tufted blades of grass. It was an awkward position for I had no way to support my head to sight the weapon without presenting myself as a target.

  I squeezed the trigger – a one-in-a-million shot – and saw the bullet strike the concrete barrier about ten feet to Jed’s left.

  “Fucker!” Jed threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Is that the best you’ve got?” he mocked me, shouting in rage and hatred. He opened fire and the grass around me was thrashed by the pass of shot. I ducked my head – buried the side of my face down in the damp mud and counted to five.

  “I should never have trusted my baby girl to you,” Jed shouted from the middle of the road. “I should never have relied on you to protect my wife. You’re not man enough – you never were!” his voice was enraged.

  I was pinned down. Trapped. I knew if I got to my feet and tried to reach the line of the trees, Jed wouldn’t miss.

  It was hopeless.

  “Susie wasn’t your child, Jed,” I cried out. “She was mine. She was my child, and Debbie was my woman.” Suddenly I couldn’t stop the words. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter any more. I had to tell him now. “We were in love. Your wife was leaving you, Jed. She was coming with me,” I shouted. “That’s why I picked you up from the bus station. I was driving you back so we could tell you.”

  There was a deathly silence – a silence that was heavy with monstrous shock. It lasted a full minute and there was not a sound in the world.

  “You’re… you’re lying!” Jed roared. “You’re a fuckin’ liar!”

  “No. I’m not.” I stood up, knee-deep in the ditch. I got to my feet slowly, my hands by my side and I was dizzy and swaying. My chest burned, and the pain in my left hand was a fierce throb – but I was calm and without fear for the first time in weeks.

  “No, Jed,” I said, and there was regret and sadness in my voice. “I’m not lying. Susie was my daughter, not yours.”

  I stared across the open ground, past the wreckage of the Yukon to where my brother was rising from behind the Jersey barrier. He was shaking his head in incredulous disbelief, and I saw the Glock in his hand waver.

  “Debbie…?”

  I nodded. We were about thirty feet apart. Too far for him to see the sadness in my eyes, too far to hear the heavy tone of my voice. The pain of losing her still ached within me like an open wound that would never heal. “We never meant for it to happen, Jed. We never meant to fall in love…”

  Jed turned away, then spun back suddenly. The gun came up, aimed squarely at my chest. “No,” he moaned. “No.” The Glock wobbled in his hand, then steadied. He glared over the weapon at me, his face cold and brutal and merciless. And then his hand fell to his side and he bent over at the waist like he was in phys
ical pain. “No!” he roared.

  I stood there. I didn’t move.

  Jed snapped upright and his arm shot out, the gun in his fist. There was murder in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve carried this secret for years,” I went on, shaking my head with regret.

  Jed’s gaze went dead, and the rage within him finally erupted. “Now you’ll take it to your grave!” he roared.

  He pulled the trigger, and I felt the bullet punch me hard in the chest, a little off center, with a force like a sledge-hammer. The impact hurled me round and I staggered backwards. I clutched at the pain – clamped my hand over the wound – and tumbled backwards into the long grass.

  I stared up at the blue sky. The sun was high, winking through the fringe of leafy green treetops. I blinked my eyes. My throat felt closed and my tongue seemed to fill my mouth – but for all that there was no pain. I felt numb, and there was a cold chill seeping through my veins. I turned my head and saw Jed striding across the freeway, gun swinging from his hand, his steps purposeful and determined. His silhouette bounced and wavered and then he was standing over me, blocking out the sun with the broad of his back so that my face was cast in shadow.

  I blinked again. My vision darkened, then came back. I licked my lips and tasted blood on my tongue. My skin felt like it was burning.

  Jed’s shape wavered and then came back into focus. My vision began to blur and mist, and the silence was filled with a loud humming sound like a garden of angry bees.

  I was laying flat on my back, arms out flung, the Glock somehow still in my stiffened hand.

  Jed glowered down at me. “I hope it fuckin’ hurts!” he spat.

  I opened my mouth to speak but the words were just an inaudible husky whisper. I could feel the ragged tear in my shirt, along the ridge of my pectoral muscle and welling blood oozing like treacle through my fingers.

  Jed crouched down on his haunches. “Got something to say?” his voice was cruel. “Another death-bed confession?”

  I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry, my lips felt thick and swollen. The taste of blood was stronger. I coughed, a spasm of pain that racked me, and turned my head until I was staring into Jed’s brutal eyes.

  “The girl?” I croaked.

  “Which one?” Jed growled. “My wife you were screwing, my daughter you took from me – or the Vice President’s snotty little bitch?”

  I closed my eyes as a sudden lance of pain ripped through my chest like a stabbing red-hot poker. “Jessica.”

  “She’s in the trunk,” he said. “The little bitch is a fireball. I had to slap her around to keep her quiet,” he admitted with rueful delight. “But she’s alive. She needs to be right? She’s my meal ticket out of this Hell and back to civilization.”

  I felt a sick, helpless flutter of revulsion. “Civilization would be better off without you,” I rasped.

  Jed’s temper flared. He pressed the gun against my forehead. I felt the steel of the barrel. It was warm. I felt the pressure of it against my skin. I took a shallow breath, and then my face twisted in the pain of sudden effort, as I summoned the very last reserves of my strength.

  Jed frowned down at me thoughtfully. Then he snatched the gun away from my forehead and leaned closer, pressing his face close to mine, so that his words were ragged and harsh and loud in my ear. “I’ve decided to let you bleed out,” he said maliciously. “I’m not giving you a quick death, fucker. You’re not worth another bullet. If the zombies don’t get you, the ants will – or the crows…”

  He started to rise, and as he got back to his haunches he realized too late that I had hefted the Glock in my out flung hand. I held my breath, groaned with the effort – and squeezed the trigger with the last trembling ounces of my strength. The bullet caught Jed in the side of his neck, and tore out through the other side of his head in a pink eruption of blood and a thunderous roar. The recoil slammed my hand back into the grass and then an instant later I saw my brother’s astonished lifeless eyes, as he toppled into the grass beside me.

  He was dead.

  * * *

  I closed my eyes and lay still for a long time, feeling the waves of pain rippling through my chest, growing stronger and more violent until I was writhing through gritted teeth and a groan of agony was ripped from my throat.

  Something nearby moved, padded away. I didn’t care.

  Then I heard the growl and whine of a dog. I opened my eyes and rolled onto my side. The German Shepherd was fifteen feet away, watching me hungrily from the line of the trees. Its eyes were fixed. Its mouth hung open, thick ropes of saliva drooling from its slack jaw. The dog snarled at me.

  It looked sick. Its fur was hanging from its scrawny body in clumps, its legs stained in dry blood. It rocked its head from side to side and took a cautious step forward, slipping out of the shadowed woods and into the sunlight.

  The animal stank; a putrid smell of rotting decay and death. It bared its teeth at me and they were yellow and wicked as razors.

  I felt for the gun. It was still in my hand, but my arm was numb so that it dragged limp across the ground and I could not bring the weapon to bare.

  The German Shepherd trotted in a wide wary circle around me, its eyes never leaving mine, until it was between my body and the freeway. I tried to shout, but my voice was nothing more than a weary croak. There was a froth of bubbles at the corner of my mouth. I heaved myself upright and screamed out in pain at the effort.

  The German Shepherd scampered away, then crept back until it was just ten feet away. It growled, and its eyes looked maddened with desperate hunger and starvation.

  Its long pink tongue lolled from the side of its mouth and then it suddenly sniffed harshly like it could taste the scent of my blood on the air. The dog’s head sank low on its shoulders and it took three bold paces towards my legs.

  I tried to raise the gun, willed it to move, frowning with the intense desperate effort of concentration, but my arm hung heavy in the grass and would not move. I reached across myself and snatched up the Glock into my left hand. It was shaking and unsteady. The weapon wavered. I closed one eye to focus, but my vision flared into an explosion of white bursting light and I groaned in weakened pain.

  I fired into the air and the dog fled across two lanes of the road, growling and yelping in confused terror, then turned back, suddenly more cautious, yet overcome by the ferocity of its hunger.

  It slinked to the edge of the grass and went down on its haunches, creeping forward in stealthy inches. I raised the gun again in my left hand, but the weight of the weapon was impossibly heavy, my fingers slick with my own blood. I felt the gun slip from my grip and I could not pick it up again.

  The German Shepherd raised its head and we stared at each other across the small space. Its ears flattened against its head and it came up from the ground onto its haunches, tensed like a spring. The dog’s jaw hung slack – and then it lunged.

  I screamed until the pain in my chest left me dizzy, yet made no sound louder than a ragged croak. The dog’s fierce teeth latched into flesh, just below the knee and it snarled ferocious and wide eyed with frenzy and madness. I beat my fist on the grass, but it was useless.

  The German Shepherd clamped its jaws into fleshy muscle and began to drag at Jed’s dead body, worrying its teeth and rolling its head from side to side, growling and snarling.

  In desperation and horror I reached across my body and picked up the Glock in my right hand. I had no feeling – no sensation other than pain. The arm was heavy as lead and I had to hold it steady with my blood-covered left hand bracing the elbow.

  I fired at the dog and hit it in the rump. The animal shrieked in terrible pain and let go of Jed’s leg. It went over in the grass, thrashing and yelping. I fired again – a gut shot – and the terrible noise was cut off abruptly.

  I looked about me dazedly. I was drenched in blood. It soaked through my shirt and welled in my lap. It mingled with Jed’s blood and that of the dog, and soaked into the gr
assy earth.

  Eventually the undead would come. Maybe it would take another hour – maybe another day. But I knew sooner or later one would pick up the scent and follow it to my body.

  I stared up at the sky. Was this how it was meant to end?

  Was I meant to merely bleed to death in the dirt?

  Was Jessica Steinman meant to suffocate in the trunk of a car?

  Or was I meant to die trying?

  I tucked the gun into the blood-soaked waistband of my jeans. I closed my eyes and dug down for every last scrap of strength. With a terrible pain-filled heave, I got to my knees. I felt myself trembling. I felt the agony of every ragged breath. I closed my eyes again and saw bright flashing lights of color. I bit down on my lip to stifle a scream, and heaved myself to my feet. My knees went from beneath me and I swayed perilously, like a drunken man.

  “Jessica!” I called, the words not more than a hoarse rasp across my throat. I lurched and staggered towards the freeway.

  The sun beat down on me, and the singing in my ears rose to a deafening crescendo. I felt my blood, warm against my skin, as it spilled down my waist and left a crimson spattered trail across the burning blacktop.

  I reached the wrecked Yukon and clutched at it to support my weight. I was slick with sweat and blood, and I heard myself making small mewing whimpering sounds as the tide of agony swept over me and crashed through my body in a torrent of pain. I looked over my shoulder, my eyes dazedly following the dipping freeway to where it flattened beneath the overpass, and to where I knew the off-ramp sign to Pentelle was, but the image wavered and rippled like I was peering through a heat-hazed mirage.

  I turned my head slowly and looked to where the Taurus was wedged against the concrete barrier. It was fifty feet up a gentle slope to the crest of the rise, but it stretched before me like the peak of Everest.

  I pushed myself away from the Yukon, took two tottering steps, and then got my balance. I staggered, clutching at my chest like a man in the grips of a heart attack, while every effort and every pace cost me blood and strength.