by R. J. Spears
The chapel was coming up fast. Joni and I had discussed how to make the best approach. We had to be careful not to roll over too many of the zombies directly in front or the bus could get stuck. I knew there had to be a temptation squish the shit out of all of them, but it was one she had to resist.
She did and slowed when she hit the mass of undead. A few went under the wheels and others did body slams with the bus and rolled away. The majority of them retained some primal respect for large on-coming objects and got the hell out of the way. The bus acted like a ship parting undead waters.
There were still too many zombies on the ground to attempt an exit out the main doors, so Joni had to get in tight to the front of the chapel. Even though she had maneuvered the bus in close as she could, there was still a scarily large gap due to the overhang on the front of the building. People were going have to jump from the building onto the roof of the bus and I’m sure if everyone inside was up to it.
My thoughts went to Rosalita and Oscar. How the hell were they going to make that jump? That was a bridge to cross when we got there.
“Grant, you ready for us to jump down?” I looked up and saw Mack looking down from the chapel’s roof.
“I guess,” I said, not oozing the confidence the situation needed. “This roof is slick. Have everyone aim for the inside edge.” I pointed at the roof of the bus closest to the front of the chapel. “Get the kids down first.”
Joni’s son, Martin, and daughter, Jessica, stood at the edge looking down at me with looks of terror. The gap was around four feet, but the drop down was closer to ten.
Martin was seven and had watched a lot of G.I Joe, but nothing in his life had prepared him to jump over a chasm filled with walking dead.
“Martin, don’t look at the zombies. Look at me,” I said. “You can do this. It’s just like on the playground at school.”
He wasn’t buying it. I guess his playground wasn’t filled with zombies.
Jessica was nine and she leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Three seconds later, he leapt onto the bus and into my arms. The impact of his body knocked me off balance and I fell onto my back, but I held onto the young boy’s body for all I was worth. I ended up with my head dangling off the side of the bus.
“Good job, buddy,” I said. “That was a hell of a jump.”
“You cussed,” the boy said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“That’s okay.”
“Hey, what did your sister say to you to get you to jump?”
“She said she’d tell all my friends back at school that I was a big chicken if I didn’t do it.”
I laughed for about ten seconds before I remembered that all his friends were probably dead.
“We gotta get this show on the road,” I said, rolling him off me and directing him to move toward the back of the bus.
Jessica came down next. I was able to grab her and maintain my balance this time. I sent her back to sit with her brother when Rosalita came to the edge of the roof.
“Dios mio,” she said as she genuflected. She made the mistake of looking down at the undead teeming around the bus and she swooned slightly. Sammy caught and held her up.
They spoke in rapid fire Spanish for a few seconds which I didn’t understand a word of, but didn’t need to. Her body language spoke volumes. There was no way she was jumping. Not in this lifetime.
Sammy applied the pressure, cajoling and scolding at the same time. The debate lasted about a minute. I looked at my watch and knew we were losing valuable seconds.
“There’s no time for debate, folks,” I said.
“We’re coming down together,” Sammy said.
I didn’t see it working, but who was I to protest?
They stood at the edge, then backed away out of my view. A second later, they bounded over the side. Sammy was doing all the work with Rosalita in his arms. He was a young strong kid, but lifting himself and another hundred and forty pounds was a tall order.
I also had the challenge of preventing that hundred and forty pounds plus all of Sammy from going over the roof into the hungry mouths below.
They hit me like a defensive lineman in a salary negotiation year. Hard.
I leaned into their combined bodies at the last possible millisecond, hoping to offset their momentum, but their impact was too much for me to stop. I pivoted my body slightly as we started on our way down, hoping to direct them in a perpendicular direction from their original course.
It worked for them, as they rolled toward the back of the bus, but the strategy failed me. I fell, trying to act like a magnet on the top of the bus, but my magnetic abilities were in short supply. All my momentum was backwards rather than sideways towards safety.
I was on my back and sliding towards the edge of the bus at “escape velocity.” I shot my hands out onto the roof hoping to gain any sort of traction to slow down my slide. It worked to some degree, but didn’t prevent the top of my body from going over the edge. My torso was heavier than my legs, so inch-by-inch, I started slipping off the top of the bus. I tried to dig my fingers onto the roof, looking for any purchase, but came up empty.
I attempted to curl my body up and away from the open space above the waiting mouths below, but gravity was having none of it. My hips edged over the roof and I could feel my head dipping back into the void above the waiting crowd.
Had I been a rock star, these adoring fans below would’ve taken me in their hands and transported me along the top of the crowd and back onto the stage. Seeing as I couldn’t carry a tune and had the musical ability of a deaf/mute, my singing career was restricted to 80’s rock ballads in the shower.
These adoring fans wanted nothing more than to devour me whole. An eagerness broke through their gray, murky eyes as they reached for me, hands outstretched and mouths moving in anticipation of the meal I was about to become.
My hip slipped toward the edge and the speed of my descent increased exponentially as my body flipped into a perpendicular position with the ground. The faces below were coming up fast when I felt a pair of hands grab my left ankle and my head swung along the hands of the waiting zombies. My back slammed into the bus, and I felt the air leave my lungs.
The world dimmed for about a second, but I was still aware of the eager faces of the zombies. I could swear I saw disappointment in their expressions. They started to make little hops to grab at me. One zombie with bones sticking through the ends of its fingertips combed those boney fingers through my hair just before I was hoisted up back onto the roof.
“You were about a goner there, Grant,” Jenkins said. “I saw Rosalita and Sammy go into you and you went back like a shot out of cannon. I knew I had to do something and jumped down, fell flat on the roof, and grabbed for whatever I could.”
“Thanks,” I croaked out, the air making it back into my body.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I guess we have to get the rest of those people out of here, huh?”
“You can run with that,” I said, still gulping in air.
With the extra sets of hands on the roof, they were able to get the rest of the people down without incident. Well, almost everybody.
“We’re not coming,” Minnie said looking down at us from the roof.
“Yes, you are,” Mack said, his voice quivering in frustration.
“We can catch you,” Sammy said.
“Please come,” Jessica said. Oscar and Minnie had been like an adopted set of grandparent for the kids during our five days in the chapel.
“Oscar’s hurt too badly. I can’t move him,” she said with resignation.
“Okay, okay,” I said, stalling for some idea. “He’d want you to live.”
“Yes, he would,” she said. “But I wouldn’t want to go on living without him.”
“Come on, Minnie,” Rosalita said, her eyes tearing up.
“The decision is made. Oscar and I are leaving this world together. You people need to get going. You don’t have much time to get
out of the city.”
She was right and I knew it, making me have to be the cold hearted bastard to end the debate.
“We have to go,” I said, but not liking it. “Everybody find a place to hold on. I’m signaling Joni that we need to move.”
“But...” Mack started, but I cut him off.
“There is no ‘but.’ We’re out of time.”
I looked but at the people on the top of the bus but most refused to meet my stare. They knew the clock was ticking and we had an appointment with eternity if we didn’t start moving.
I instructed them to grab the air vents or lay as flat as they can because it was going to be a bumpy ride. Sammy and Jenkins took positions on each side of the kids. I took my position at the front of the bus and banged the roof three times. It was time to drive.
I don’t know if it was necessary, but I hung over the window and aimed the shotgun into faces of undead below. Knowing it was a waste of shells, but doing it anyway, I fired off three quick shots, blowing away heads and brains and whatever I could.
Joni hit the gas pedal and started rolling into and over the rest of them. Again, some primal self-preservation instinct kicked in and many of them got out of the way of the metal behemoth rolling their way, but some didn’t.
As we passed through the largest mass of zombies, I turned my head and looked back to the place that had sheltered our little group over the past five days and saw the silhouette of Minnie against the yellow and blue twilight. She hugged herself tightly.
I knew I wouldn’t miss the place. Not at all.
A small parade of undead attempted to follow us, but they got smaller and smaller as Joni put distance between us and them.
Joni expertly maneuvered the bus between abandoned vehicles as she headed us back to the monster truck. She also took out a few of the wandering undead on the way. I’m sure she took distinct pleasure in doing so.
She eased the bus along the side of the monster truck and we started our descent, using the truck as a stepping stone to the street Jenkins led the charge down, his fear of heights exhibiting itself again.
As soon as he hit the ground, he was in trouble. In his haste to get down, he didn’t survey the area for undead. I watched in horror as a hand swept from under the truck, knocking Jenkin’s legs out from under him. He fell onto his back like a turtle in its shell and started screaming.
The zombie that Joni had rolled over on our way to the chapel chose that moment to crawl from under the truck. Jenkins lay nearly paralyzed with fear as the thing grabbed at his legs.
“Kick it,” I yelled, as the thing clawed its way onto him in an hand-over-hand, crawl it broken and useless legs leaving a bloody trail in the street reminding me of a slug.
Sammy echoed my words as he worked his way off the truck to street level. The others chimed in, too.
I tried to get an angle on the zombie with the shotgun, but there was no way I wouldn’t hit Jenkins. He was on his own until Sammy got down to the ground.
Jenkins failed to take our advice. Instead of kicking, he tried to roll over to crawl away. The zombie grabbed Jenkin’s calf in both hands, sunk its head, and took an expansive bite, coming back with a mouthful of skin and muscle.
Jenkin’s scream went up several octaves. Rosalita joined in with him. I dropped my aim with the shotgun. The damage was done.
Sammy still leapt onto the back of the zombie, grabbed it, and flung it off Jenkins into the open street.
If salvation wasn’t in my cards at that moment, then maybe I could draw down on some revenge. With two blasts, I turned the zombie in a pulpy mess of blood and bone.
Sammy knelt next to Jenkins trying to comfort him as the rest of the group silently made their way off the roof. Several of the women were crying. Joni jumped out of the bus and embraced both her kids. Randell helped Rosalita down. Our final cop, Gentry, took up a defensive position watching for any undead. I was the last one down.
In all my years in witness protection, I had never lost a client. Being caught up in a zombie apocalypse wasn’t an excuse for me. To me, the Marine oath best fit my mission, “Never Leave a Man Behind.” Now, I was going to have to do that very thing. Or worse.
Looking down into Jenkin’s grimacing face made me feel like shit. We both knew what was going to happen.
“Sammy, I got this,” I said.
Sammy gave me a lost look for a minute, but then stood and left the two of us.
“How bad is it?” I asked, filling in the silence.
“It hurts like a bitch,” he said, trying not to whine and not succeeding.
“Yeah, I expected that.” I looked up and watched our people moving onto the bus, then down at my watch. “We’re running out of time. How do you want to handle this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play stupid,” I said with too much heat in my tone.
“I want to go with you guys.”
“You know you can’t do that.”
The myriad of expressions that played over his face in those next few seconds were a lifetime of experiences. He had the hurt face of a child betrayed that morphed into youthful anger, then quickly into the resignation of old age.
“Yeah, I guess not.” His voice coming from a faraway place. “Help me up, will you?”
I lowered a hand and he reached up and grabbed it. Putting my back into it, I had him back on two feet, albeit a shaky two feet.
“Let’s not do this in front of everybody else, okay?” He asked, lost in a thousand things he’d never do.
I nodded my head and pointed to an alleyway just a few yards away.
“Can I lean on you?” He asked.
I wrapped arm around his waist and he reached around my shoulder. After several stutter steps, we were enshrouded in the shadow of the alley where he stepped away from me.
Trying to hold his shit together, but not doing too good of a job, he asked, “You want me facing you or away?”
“Up to you, I guess.” I didn’t want to shoot him in the face. I guess he didn’t either because he turned away from me, bracing himself against the wall with his arm. His body was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
My first attempt to bring the shotgun into a shooting position failed, but I got it up and aimed at the base of his skull.
I had no practice at executing people so I asked, “You have anything you want to say?”
“No.” He took a moment then added, “Nothing that would matter, other than this wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t buy it and my eyes clouded with tears. The shotgun faltered in my grip, but I brought it back up, my finger tense on the trigger.
“Okay, listen this is hard on both of us so why don’t we skip it?”
“What?” I asked.
“Skip it,” he said not looking at me. “You guys will be on the bus, and I’ll be here. The bombs are on their way and they’ll finish the job. You don’t have to.“
It felt like I was getting off the hook and I didn’t deserve it, but it was his life and not mine.
“Besides, maybe I’ll be immune and then find a hidey hole...like a bank safe or something and I’ll ride out the firestorm there.”
“Maybe,” I said. A desperate man will grab at any rope dangled his way and I didn’t know who was more desperate at the moment.
“Okay, so I’ll mosey on down the alley and you’ll go get on that bus, right?”
“Yeah.” I let the shotgun drop as he made his first faltering step away. I think he still thought I’d shoot him. A part of me felt the pull of that obligation -- allowing him to transition from this world to the next in a dignified manner, but I was just too tired. Plus the bombs would make that choice for him anyway.
He was halfway down the alley when he said, “Go on, Grant. Get those people to safety. I’ll see you on the other side.” He nearly fell, then start bouncing on his good leg with his arm extended for balance. Three pogo steps later and he slipped around the corner.
When I w
alked onto the bus all eyes were on me. I didn’t say anything. They had left me the seat just behind Joni. I avoided eye contact with any of them.
“We ready?” She asked.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.
No one said anything for the next five minutes. Joni negotiated the tangled streets, clogged with crashed and abandoned cars. A few of the undead took their turns at flopping their hands against the side of the bus, but we left them wandering along.
“Gentry, what’s the fastest out of downtown?” Joni asked.
Gentry sat across from me in the right front passenger seat. “The fastest way would be to head north, but with Austin that way, that means more people. Which means more traffic jams. I’d say head south.”
“Should we get on the freeway?” Joni asked.
“If we want to die,” Gentry said.
“Not helpful,” she said.
“The highways are completely clogged with cars. We’d be better off taking surface streets.”
“But won’t that take longer?” I asked.
“Believe me, the highways are going to be jammed. If someone asked me to take the choice between no option and an option, I’d take the option every time. Unless it was the choice of getting married again.”
“Well, you be the navigator, and I’ll be the pilot,” Joni said.
Gentry started giving Joni directions as I fought the urge to look at my watch. We made good progress for about ten minutes until we hit a snarl of burning cars in the middle of an intersection. Bodies of the former living and the undead laid charred in the street. Joni shouted back into the bus for her kids to cover their eyes. I looked back and Jessica had followed the order, but Martin was all eyes.
Gentry suggested we cut over to another street and that got us around that mess but within ten minutes we reached another tangle of cars blocking our way. Joni stopped and sighed loudly.
“What now?” She asked Gentry.
“We could double back to the last intersection and try to go left,” Gentry offered up, but there wasn’t a lot of confidence in his tone.