Evolution of the Dead

by R. M. Smith

  Carmen was struck by another vision. She saw Nick lying on the ground. His face was badly beaten.

  “I’ll run for it,” Nick said. “I’ll run to the truck behind us. I’ll open the fucking door.”

  “That will kill you” Janet shouted.

  He pulled his shirt off. His chest was covered in Roman numeral 4 and 5 tattoos. “I’ll use my shirt to open the door. It might be enough protection.”

  “What if they spit on you?” Kim asked wide eyed.

  “Then I’ll be gone. This is the least I can do for fucking up. I’m sorry.”

  He opened the overhead door.

  Right outside, the top of their heads barely visible, six dead children stood looking up at the truck. Immediately they started to spit. They were too short. The spit was hitting the bottom side of the truck.

  Nick leapt over them. He landed in the bloody spit, nearly lost his footing, got back his balance and ran to the driver’s side door of the truck behind them. Using his shirt, he pulled the door open.

  Throwing his shirt to the side, he started the truck. Closing his eyes, he turned on the windshield wipers. He shoved the truck into gear. Slowly he drove forward.

  The front of the truck crushed the children’s heads.

  “Oh God,” Kim mumbled.

  “They’re already dead!” Scott shouted.

  “Now what do we do?” Carmen yelled.

  Nick backed the truck up. He started to turn it so that the rest of them could get in the passenger side.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Carmen yelled. “I’ll never be able to walk across this.”

  “You have to,” Scott yelled. “Just forget about the pain. You have to do it!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes you can!”

  Kim yelled, “There’s no way we’re all going to fit in there!”

  “Some of us are going to have to stay behind until we figure something else out,” Scott yelled.

  Nick had the truck sideways on the bridge. Bloody spit was flying everywhere. The windshield wipers were on full speed. He reached across the seat shoving the passenger side door open.

  Scott helped Kim jump across. She got in next to Nick safely.

  She hollered at Scott, “Come on!”

  “We’ll be back for you,” he yelled at Janet and Carmen. He jumped over to the truck and got in. He slammed the door shut.

  “Those sons of bitches,” Janet said quietly. “They’re leaving us.”

  Carmen started to cry. She reached up and pulled the door down.

  Nick drove forward to the side of the bridge. Turning, he backed all the way up so that the back of his truck was against the other two on the far end of the bridge.

  “Hold on,” he shouted.

  He popped the truck into gear and stomped the gas. The back doors of the truck flew open. Norman and several boxes of his prepper gear dumped out onto the bridge including his shot gun which was coated in vomit.

  Nick got the truck up to 15 miles an hour before it slammed into and shoved truck number two out onto the frontage road. It gave them enough space to exit the bridge. He drove over next to his car.

  “I’ll go back for the other guys in my fucking car!” Nick shouted. He shoved the truck into park, got out, and jumped into his own car.

  Scott slid over to the driver’s side of the truck. Kim slid over next to him. They waited for Nick’s return.

  Nick drove back onto the bridge. He helped Janet down onto the dry cement. She screamed when she saw Norman. Quickly she got into the front seat on the passenger side.

  He was slowly working his way to a standing position in the center of the bridge.

  Now only Carmen was left in the back of the truck.

  Nick ran over to her.

  He whispered, “You’re going to get us all killed. But not me and not the rest of us. We’re not fucking cripples.”

  Carmen whispered, “Don’t leave me here, you asshole.”

  He stepped up onto the back bumper of the truck, reached up and pulled the overhead door closed.

  Carmen screamed.

  Nick hurried back to the car.

  “What about Carmen?” Janet asked, her eyes wide.

  “She just got hit by Norman’s spit,” he lied. “When I reached to grab her, some of his fucking spit hit her. She’s gone.”

  “No. God no. Not Carmen.”

  He drove around to the back of the Rent-A-Center. Scott followed in the truck.

  Carmen needed to get out of the truck and off the bridge before Norman and the rest of the dead got her.

  Scott and the rest of them were gone by now. She heard the roaring of the bastard’s car as he drove off and the rumbling of the truck as it followed.

  It was so easy for him to fool them into thinking I was dead, Carmen thought.

  It’s not your fault, the voice in her head said.

  She ignored it. She needed to get to Scott’s car. It was still inside the Rent-A-Center garage. She hoped he had left the keys in the ignition.

  Her foot was swollen. The pain was throbbing. It was either take the pain and run off the bridge or wait inside the back of this truck until the dead got her.

  It was a no brainer.

  She needed to get out of here now.

  Using her back as leverage, she pushed up along the wall of the truck to a standing position. Her bare legs were cold.

  Bending down, she lifted up the overhead door. Outside, the bridge was full of the standing dead.

  Norman was only steps away.

  At one time, all together in unison, they made ready to spit on her.

  Quickly she pulled the door back down.

  Now what the hell am I going to do? The candles!

  With pain begging her to please sit down, she hobbled to the back of the truck and opened the cardboard box full of Christmas candles.

  “Ok foot, don’t let me down,” she said as she hobbled back to the rear of the truck. She pulled the mattress that she had been laying on up onto its side.

  Carefully she reached around the side and awkwardly pulled the overhead door open. Spit started to hit the other side of the mattress. Norman was right outside the door.

  Ducking down, Carmen lit the edge of the mattress on fire with the candle. She let the whole mattress catch fire before pushing it out of the back of the truck. It landed on Norman, catching him on fire.

  Hurrying, she stooped down and lifted up the second mattress as more spit flew past her. Standing behind it, she lit the edge of it on fire, too and pushed it toward the back of the truck.

  Outside some of the dead had caught fire. Norman was burning, flames licking up the front of his body as he stood there with his hands reaching, his mouth open ready to spit again.

  As far as Carmen knew, if she faced the front of the truck, the truck parked on the right side of the bridge didn’t have any dead people near it. The only thing stopping her from running to the truck on that side of the bridge was the wet spit covering the road.

  She only had socks on. The socks would not be enough protection. Once the bottom of the socks got wet, the infection would pass through the cotton and soak up into the bottom of her feet.

  She knew what she had to do. She had no choice. Limping back to the last mattress, she lit the edge on fire, pushed it to the rear of the truck, and slung it out the back around the left side of the truck. She hoped that when it landed it would catch the worms on the ground on fire.

  Norman was now lying on his back. Flames were rolling up the sides of his body.

  The dead people on the left were now all burning. Carmen backed up all the way into the back of the truck. The last thing she could use to burn was the box of candles.

  The truck shook.

  No. It wasn’t the truck. For a second Carmen thought there was an earthquake.

  A deafening snapping crack echoed up from below the bridge.

  The truck began to tilt. Carmen watched out the back of the truck as the horizon be
gan to tip.

  She didn’t know what was going on. It was confusing to her. Her stocking feet started to slide on the floor of the truck. She looked around for anything to hold onto. Some rubber shipping straps had been hung loosely from some of the beams along the ceiling. One of them flipped down onto the floor.

  She thought the dead people were trying to push the truck over onto its side.

  But it couldn’t be just the truck.

  Carmen realized the whole bridge was being pushed. The dead were going to collapse the bridge!

  Below, on the silent highway, thousands of the dead were pressing against the cement support pillars of the bridge, crushing one another against them, exerting tons of pressure on the cement.

  Trying to think of any means of escape before the bridge collapsed, Carmen grabbed some of the loose shipping straps and tied them together around one of the truck’s wall supports.

  More thundering cracks echoed up from below as one of the support beams gave way. Out the back of the truck, the bridge started to bounce and buckle. The two trucks on the opposite end of the bridge started to skid sideways toward the center. Dust and powdered cement began to puff into the air. More loud booms were followed by a large crack that opened in the center of the bridge behind the truck Carmen was trapped in. The center of the bridge caved in.

  The back end of Carmen’s truck dropped hard. Her feet left the floor for a brief second as the truck dropped. She screamed.

  Hundreds of the dead were right below her through a hole that had opened in the road. All of them were pushing harder and harder on the support beams even as other parts of the group were being crushed by falling cement.

  Carmen saw Rita among the dead below. She was pushing on the pillars, too.

  The bridge behind the truck collapsed. Dust and dirt went billowing up into the air. The two trucks on the other end of the bridge slid sideways and fell down onto the highway below, crushing cars and more of the dead.

  Carmen screamed as her part of the bridge caved in.

  She lost her grip on the shipping straps. She slid out of the back of the truck and landed on part of the smashed bridge. All around her the cement was upturned and crumbled, covered in a fine coat of dust. Above her pieces of cement hung on bent iron bars. Part of the bridge railing stuck out over the collapsed bridge like a hooked finger.

  All of the dead that had been pushing on the pillar supports were crushed by the collapse of the bridge, including Rita.

  Carmen managed to get to her feet. Her whole body was covered in pulverized dust. She wiped her eyes as she tried to figure out what to do next.

  Off to her right she saw the sun glinting off roofs of cars as the dust began to settle.

  Something was moving above her.

  She looked up just in time to see one of the Rent-A-Center trucks about to roll off the bridge above her.

  Scott drove up to the open bay doors behind the Rent-A-Center warehouse.

  He wanted to switch vehicles. The truck’s radiator had gotten damaged when Nick crashed his way off the bridge. It was blowing steam.

  Scott got into his car and rolled down his window. He backed out next to Nick as he pulled up. Janet rolled her window down, too.

  Scott asked, “We all good?”

  “All good,” Nick said without meeting his gaze.

  Kim was getting a headcount in Nick’s car. She asked, “Where’s Carmen?”

  Scott counted, too. “Hey, where’s Carmen?”

  “She didn’t make it,” Nick said without turning his head.

  Scott hammered his steering wheel. “Fuck!”

  Kim asked, “How did she die?”

  Nick brushed some of the hair out of his face. “She didn’t make it, I said. She got spit on.”

  Janet didn’t say a word.

  Scott asked, “How the hell did spit hit her? She was in the back of the truck! None of the spit was hitting the rest of us – and we were all in the back of the truck!”

  “It was Norman,” Nick lied. “He must have fell out of the back of the truck when…”

  “You left here there, didn’t you, you son of a bitch? You left her there to die.”

  “The bitch was going to get us all killed,” Nick said angrily. “She was slow. She had a broken foot.”

  Scott pushed out of his car. He ran around to Nick’s side. He pulled Nick out of his car, grabbing him by the throat. “You’re going to go back for her, understand? We’re not leaving anyone behind. Go back and fucking get her.”

  “Fuck you,” Nick said, his throat tight.

  Scott shoved him backward. He fell onto his ass. Scott yelled down at him “Get the fuck out of here! We don’t need you!”

  Janet got out of the car. “Nobody’s leaving. We stick together.”

  “He left her for dead,” Scott shouted, pointing at Nick. “He’s only in this to save his own ass.”

  “You don’t know that!” Janet screamed. “He saved me!”

  “Then you go with him. We don’t need your fucking ass either!”

  “Scott!” Kim yelled.

  He gave her an angry look. “Fine! I’ll go after her my fucking self! Fuck all of you!” He ran back to his car. He revved the engine. He yelled at Kim, “Are you coming or not?”

  “I’m coming.”

  Just then a loud thundering noise shook the whole area around the Rent-A-Center. Dust billowed over by the highway.

  “What the fuck was that?” Janet asked, her eyes wide.

  “Did something explode?” Kim asked as she grabbed Scott’s arm.

  Nick got in his car. “Janet, get in. We’re leaving.”

  She got in. They drove off.

  “Assholes,” Scott said as he watched them drive around the corner of the building.

  Another loud bang echoed off the buildings around them. More dust billowed out by the highway.

  “What the fuck is causing that?” Scott asked. He drove around to the front of the Rent-A-Center.

  The bridge over the highway had collapsed. The truck that Carmen had been in was gone.

  With her foot clanging in pain, Carmen quickly and carefully made her way to the side of the demolished bridge. There were still many more dead on the other side of the collapsed bridge.

  They simply stood there. They acted like they were stunned. None of them were spitting.

  Careful of her steps and her hand placements because spit was covering different spots on the upturned cement, Carmen hurriedly stepped down onto the cracked highway. Cars were backed up as far as she could see. Above her, the truck squeaked loudly as it tilted and then fell down right where she had been only seconds before. More dust billowed up as the truck crashed down.

  Six lanes of highway ran either direction thirty feet below the bridge. The three lanes outbound from downtown were packed with stalled cars. Beyond an eight foot cement divider wall, three lanes travelling into the downtown area had very little traffic.

  She couldn’t go back the way she and Maria had initially come. There were too many dead people lining the highway back that way.

  She was going to have to walk to the next off-ramp which was…oh shit; on the other side of Hanscomb Tunnel.

  “Fuck,” she whispered as she walked using cars around her as crutches. “That’s a mile long tunnel.”

  “Carmen!” Scott yelled down at the smashed truck. “Carmen, are you in there?”

  “She’s not there,” Kim said as she leaned over a guard rail bordering the highway below.

  “I don’t think she is,” Scott said quietly. “I hope she didn’t get crushed.”

  “No, not Carmen. She’s too smart for that.”

  To their right, along the frontage road, a large group of the dead were regaining their feet after Nick and Janet had plowed through them in his car.

  Below them, to their left, thousands were barricaded by the collapsed bridge.

  “I think she’s down on the highway somewhere in the middle of all those cars,” Scott said
. “She’s hurt and she’s alone. She’s not gonna make it alone through the tunnel.”

  “Oh shit that’s right,” Kim said. “That thing’s a mile long – and it will be dark.”

  “Yeah, so let’s go help her,” Scott said.

  “Ok. How?”

  “Climb down.”

  “Where?”

  “We go the same way Carmen probably did. Slide down the bridge.”

  “It’s full of spit!”

  “Ok, how about jump down to the top of that truck?”

  A Moving Van Line truck was parked in the outside lane, close to the side of the road. The rear end had either been pushed over closer to the wall by an accident or the driver had swerved to miss something on the highway. The roof of the trailer was right below them.

  “That’s still a long way down,” Kim said as she studied the drop. “You sure if would be safe to jump to?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Scott said. “Besides, we’re running out of time. The dummies are almost within spitting distance.”

  The group was closing in on them. Several of the dead were already launching blobs of wormed flesh into the air.

  “Ok, here goes,” Kim said. She backed up a few steps, ran and leapt over the guard rail. She dropped squarely onto the trailer’s roof. It banged loudly when she landed. “Come on!” she shouted. “It’s easy!”

  Scott backed up a few feet and jumped. He easily landed next to Kim. “You ok?”

  She nodded.

  They both climbed down the front of the trailer on ladder rungs.

  Carmen stood at the entrance to the tunnel. It was completely dark inside. A slight wind was coming from deep inside.

  “A mile in the dark,” she whispered to herself with a shudder. “No. Wait.” She opened the driver’s side door of a car next to her. There was no blood or worms inside. She reached down and flipped on the headlights. “There we go. That won’t be so bad.”

  She started heading in, occasionally stopping to turn on a car or trucks headlights for light.

  Tunnel Rats, Darling

  “Someone’s been here,” Scott said. “Look. That car’s headlights are on.”

  “Someone might have left them on,” Kim suggested.