Highway to Hell

by Max Brallier

  You wait for the next bullet. But it never comes. At least not for you.

  More shots ring out. The surrounding zombies fall.

  You lie atop Iris, unable to move, covered in dozens of bites. You feel yourself begin to become feverish.

  Sometime later—maybe an hour, maybe five—you hear footsteps. You’re delirious, barely lucid. You look up to see a man carrying a sniper rifle. He wears rough jeans and heavy boots, and a hood covers his head. A large pack is on his back and numerous items dangle from a belt around his waist, clattering. A scavenger.

  He kicks a monster off you, shoots it, then looks down. His face is lean and covered in stubble. “Boss Tanner says hello.”

  You expect him to shoot you. Instead, he simply walks to the overturned El Camino, stepping over the bodies of monsters, and begins rooting through the car.

  He stuffs his pack with items, then walks away, leaving you to become one of the things.

  You lie there, changing, your body going hot, so fucking hot, like your insides are boiling and—for one last, quick, coherent moment—you feel sorry for the next poor sonofabitch to drive down this highway. Especially if that next poor sonofabitch happens to have made an enemy of Boss Tanner . . .

  AN END

  IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GENERAL

  At each cannon, one man fires and the other reloads—stuffing black powder, rocks, silverware, and anything else they can find down the barrel. Each dressed in Confederate grays manufactured in Taiwan or China. Jefferson Davis would roll over in his grave, and that’s a thought that makes you smile as you move in a crouch, along the small path between the Gettysburg visitor’s center and gift shop and the lines.

  “You seen him?” one “soldier” says.

  “Hard to see mucha anything with all them bodies. Few of them still walking. Not many, though, not many.”

  “Let’s fire another, for shits.”

  The second “soldier” begins stuffing the cannon as the other turns the crank, aiming it.

  You come up behind them with the ax raised. The soldier turns at the last minute, eyes going wide, mouth forming a final curse, as you slam the ax into his face, splitting it open.

  The loader looks up, says, “Shit! No!” as you leap toward him, tackling him. He tries to scream but you’re already up, slicing his belly, ropes of guts tumbling out.

  Two dead. Quick and quiet.

  You peer out from around the howitzer, and you spot the next two “soldiers,” fifty yards down the line, ducked behind the wall, looking out on the battlefield and trying to distinguish undead stumbling body from living man—from you.

  You eye the thirty-two-pound howitzer—the big wooden wheels and the short, powerful bronze barrel.

  Hmm . . .

  Still crouched behind it, you turn its large, rusty crank. Slowly, the cannon turns away from the battlefield, down the line, and toward the men. You yank the trigger cord and—

  KA—BOOM!

  The two soldiers turn just in time to see the shell coming at them. They explode in a mess of red and gray.

  Now to retrieve Iris.

  You move toward the visitor’s center and gift shop. No time to look for anything useful.

  You pull the sawed-off and kick open a wooden door at the end of the visitor’s center and gift shop. It’s a small room, maps laid out on tables. It’s been done up to look like a Civil War tent.

  Bones is standing to the side of a room, holding his pistol at his hip, pointed toward you.

  In a chair at the back is a man done up like General Lee. He looks the part, you’ll give him that. A thick, gray-and-white beard. His uniform is cleaner, sharper than those of the “soldiers” you killed earlier. He grips an empty scabbard.

  Iris is on the floor, beside General Lee. She eyes you—like she’s waiting for a sign to make a move, eager to kill the pair of ’em.

  It’s a warm welcome all around.

  You say, “Give me the girl, and we’ll be on our way. Don’t like that, I’ll kill you both and take her anyway.”

  Bones steps forward. His face is turning and you can see his jaw working overtime, teeth grinding. He blurts out, “Yankee coward! You ain’t dare fire any dern shot in the war room of the great General Lee!”

  You sigh, raising the Remington, squeezing as you pull it up, shooting Bones in the chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him back into the wall. He lands in an awkward heap, one leg sprawled out flat, the other tucked underneath him, ass in the air.

  You turn to General Lee, gun aimed at his chest. “Come on, Iris.”

  General Lee trembles, lip quivering, close to tears. “No!” he barks as he twists Iris’s hair, causing her to wince. “She will be my lady! Together, we will birth an army of fine young boys, to lead a new army! An army that will rebuild this great nation!”

  “Jesus Christ,” you mutter, jamming the sawed-off into its leather holster.

  You cross the room and slap the fake General Lee across the face, knocking him out of his chair. His scabbard clangs to the floor and he moans.

  You yank him to his feet, turn him around. His face is down in the dirt. You reach into his back pocket and pull out his wallet.

  “You are not General Lee,” you say. “You are”—you’re reading through the wallet now—“Bernie Muskovitz. You sell insurance for Pittsburgh Mercury Auto and Home Insurance—Go Local, Go Mercury. That’s who you are. You have an outstanding speeding ticket and you have some flimsy paper card that declares you an honorary member of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia Civil War Reenactment and Historical Authenticity Group. That’s who you are.”

  The man is sobbing now. “No, I’m a general. I’m a great man. I am leading us against the Union zombie uprising. A general. A great man.”

  Iris gets to her feet. She gives the bullshit general a hard kick to his throat—he wheezes and slumps over, gasping for air.

  “Do you want to kill him?” you ask Iris.

  Iris’s face is stone as she thinks. “No. Leave the sad bastard.”

  “You sure?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re not sure, don’t kill him.”

  She gives him another kick to the throat and he spits blood. “Then let’s leave,” she says, “before I get sure.”

  Walking back through the building, you see a plastic jar on the ground. Deer jerky. You pick it up. Pop the top and offer some to Iris.

  “What is it?”

  “Deer.”

  “Never had it.”

  “You’ll like it. Can’t imagine someone wouldn’t.”

  You take a piece and jam it into your mouth, and together you walk back to the El Camino—each of you chomping deer flesh.

  Click here.

  GOT YOURSELF A DEAL

  You take a heavy slug from the whiskey. “San Francisco is safe?”

  Eigle nods.

  “The whole thing?”

  “Much of it.”

  “I want a house there, in San Francisco. On the beach. Where no one will bother me.”

  Eigle shrugs. “You do what’s asked of you, that will be arranged. Our friends there can get you what you want.”

  You look to Iris. Pain is etched across her face, yet she watches you; staring at you like you’re the last man in the world she wants taking her anywhere. Hank has removed the rag and is now splashing her bloody arm with antiseptic. Iris grits her teeth, swallowing agony, as Hank begins stitching her up.

  Christ, you think, this girl’s one tough cookie.

  You look back to Eigle. “Well, why the hell not, huh?”

  “Good,” Eigle says. “Good.”

  “When do we go?”

  “Very soon. I need to prepare a few things. Hank, take him to the garage—I’ll finish tending to Iris.”

  Iris eyes you. “This is my life on the line—”

  “Mine, too,” you interrupt.

  “Listen when I speak,” she says, and you watch her blood dripping on the floor and
her torn flesh and you figure, fair enough, so you shut up. “This is my life on the line. Can you do this?”

  You take the whiskey bottle and stand up. Crossing the room, you stand over her. “Listen, I’ve been in a jail cell, alone, five years. This prick’s giving me a chance to drive for my freedom. So I’m going to do it. And I’m going to do a fan-fucking-tastic job of it, too.”

  “All right,” she says.

  “I’m not done,” you continue. “That means us driving together—in a car, long days. I don’t like to talk. I like to listen even less. When we’re out there, you do a lot of yapping, I drop you off on the side and you can walk the rest of the way.”

  She swallows slowly, then leans forward. Her voice is a growl. “I don’t yap. I say what I need to say, and that’s it—no wasted words, if I can help it. As much as you don’t want to talk to me, I want to talk to you even less. Just get me there alive.”

  “Deal.”

  With her good arm, Iris reaches into her pocket and fishes out two pills. She puts them in her mouth, takes the bottle from your hand, and washes them down. You watch her. “Vicodin,” she says, finally. “For the arm.”

  You nod and knock back whiskey. “Booze,” you say. “For everything.”

  Iris lies down on the couch and shuts her eyes. Eigle continues attending to her wound. You figure it wouldn’t be kosher if humanity’s last hope succumbed to gangrene. “Do what you all need. I’ll be sleeping off this pain,” she announces.

  You half want to kick Eigle out of the room, stitch her wound, lie beside her. But Hank’s calling, directing you down a long hall to the auto-body shop’s garage. You follow him. Halfway down the hall, you hear it. The rumbling of the engine. That purr.

  It can’t be . . .

  You step around the corner behind Hank and—

  Well, I’ll be goddamned.

  Your baby.

  Your El Camino. ’Sixty-seven. Right there, on the garage floor, rumbling away. You clap your hands together. “Sonofabitch.”

  She’s still a goddamn peach. Modified Big-Block V-8 transmission—baby kicks like a mule. M21 close-ratio four-speed transmission. Disc brakes. Dual exhaust. Added four-wheel drive. Forklift wheels. AM/FM stereo and eight-track. Bolero Red exterior, pretty as pie.

  Hank rests against the door and grins. “Whaddya think?”

  “I think you should stop leaning on my car.”

  Hank steps forward. “Right. Sorry, good fella,” he says.

  “How is this here? . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Eigle pulled it, set it aside when they brought you in all those years back. Loved it so much, planned to keep it for himself. But then the world went to hell. And now—well, here she is.”

  You plop down on a stool. You light a smoke and you just stare at her. Your better half. Your woman. Your El Camino.

  A few drinks, a few smokes, and a few hours later, you’re back in the front room. Iris is on the couch, stitched up, snoring lightly, while Eigle goes over the route. Maps of the United States are duct-taped to the shop’s cinder-block wall. Each map is covered in highlighter, traced over different routes. Each route connects New York City to San Francisco—some across the northern part of the country, some running south, some through the Midwest.

  “Routes are as safe as can be expected,” Eigle says. “Of course, everything can go to shit in about five seconds. Highways are bad, small towns are worse, and the cities all depend—some are like here, halfway civilized, some are just rats’ nests teeming with the undead.”

  “Highways are out?”

  “For the most part. Only Interstate 80 can be navigated, and she’s got highwaymen up and down. But the back roads come with their own dangers. It’s not just the undead. It’s the marauders, it’s the cannibals, it’s the animals.”

  “The animals?”

  Eigle nods. “Wasn’t just humans infected. Mammals of all sorts. It’s gonna be hell all the way there, Jimmy.”

  “Fun.”

  Major Eigle pulls a map off the wall, folds it up. He taps it against his open palm, like he’s thinking, then finally hands it to you. “If you run into trouble, just stick to the map. Something’s blocked, you find a different way. The map’s got location markers for friendlies—people who will help you. The car is stocked with local maps, too.”

  “What about communication?”

  “HF radio. Powerful transmitter in the El Camino. Hank and I will be in touch every step of the way.”

  Iris moans. Her lips smack together. She speaks softly in her sleep—but the words and the tone, even in whispers, sound like the stuff of nightmares.

  Eigle crosses to a big, green metal desk—the type your fifth-grade teacher sat behind. He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a bottle of good scotch. He takes out two heavy crystal glasses, pours some in both, then hands one to you.

  “To the future of humanity, Jimmy El Camino,” he says.

  You take it. “All right, then.”

  You knock it back. Eigle’s eyes flash as he watches you drink.

  “What?” you say.

  He shakes his head. “Nothing. Cheers.” He knocks back his.

  “I’ll take this,” you say, grabbing the bottle. You leave the glass.

  With nothing to do except wait, you walk down the hall, past Hank in the garage, through a heavy metal door, and up two flights of stairs. You step out onto a roof and stare out at the city.

  The sun is setting.

  You drink and you smoke.

  You could have been a star here.

  You could have driven and drank and whored your days away.

  But you made your choice. Now life heads in a different direction.

  As you stare out at the darkness, faces flash before your eyes. Men you’ve killed. Families you’ve destroyed. Lives you’ve taken in your hands—felt the breathing, felt the spark of life, the light, and then snuffed that light out.

  But now you’ve got a chance.

  A chance to get some of that back.

  A chance for just the tiniest bit of redemption.

  A chance for that house, your seat in the sand—a comfortable place to drink yourself to death, in peace.

  You toast to that, finish the bottle, and stumble back down the stairs. You collapse in the corner of the garage. The cold floor feels like your old cell. You sleep like a newborn . . .

  Click here.

  GOOD-BYE, BILLY

  What’s one life, factored against the future of humanity? The life of a small boy? It’s nothing, a drop in the bucket.

  You’re up on your feet, crossing the car, pulling at Billy’s feet as he struggles to wriggle through the crack in the ceiling.

  He cries out, “Help! Help! Mr. Ring! Help!”

  You yank him down, pulling so hard you feel his knee pop out of its socket. He continues crying and screaming until you slam him to the floor and his small head bangs and his eyes go dull.

  You get on top of him and wrap your hard, scarred hands around his thin neck and squeeze. Don’t even need to choke him to death—he’s so small, his neck so frail, that you simply crush his windpipe and he stops breathing.

  You roll off him and crawl back into the corner of the car. You drink. You drink and you observe his small body, lying there, unmoving. The boy’s eyes seem to watch you.

  You crawl to the other corner of the car.

  Still, the boy’s dead eyes watch you.

  In Newark, Ohio, they bring you out to fight.

  You’re so drunk that Louis has to take your hand to lead you from the car.

  In the ring, beneath the shadow of a building shaped like a giant wicker basket—one of the stranger things you’ve ever seen—a massive undead man comes at you. But you don’t see it, not really. Instead, you see Billy’s face, plastered onto that of the undead man. You blink, but it’s like Billy’s face has been seared onto your eyeballs.

  And you hesitate—just long enough for the monster to tackle you and sink its teeth in
to you. You don’t fight back. You just let it straddle you and hurt you and take your life, like you took Billy’s.

  AN END

  FLINCH

  At the last moment, speedometer clocking 120, you swerve, spinning past the Lincoln, drifting, and then the El Camino is up on two wheels.

  The car flips a dozen times, rolling through the remaining zombies, crushing them, bodies practically exploding. Your seat belt snaps and you’re thrown around the interior. Something sharp, the ax, maybe, cuts you open.

  When the El Camino finally skids to a stop, your body is going into shock. Your gut is split open, your legs are shattered. You won’t live. The El Camino’s doors have broken off, smoke pours from the hood, and the reinforced metal is crumpled. The car is upside down.

  But Iris is alive. She’s held tight by the seat belt. Blood streaming down her face, but alive.

  You manage, “Iris, go . . . Please, hurry. Go . . .”

  Iris releases her seat belt and slips to the ground. She grabs your hand. “I’m getting you to the end.”

  “Fuck you,” you choke out, laughing as blood comes from your mouth. “Go.”

  She gives you a long last look. Then she’s out, crawling away, staying low, pushing her way through the legs of the few remaining undead.

  You hear the engine. The Lincoln, turning, coming back. Gripping your stomach, holding your insides inside, you drag yourself out of the car, onto the bridge.

  You hear footsteps.

  You roll over, and you see Mr. King. His face is a twisted, scarred, burned thing, looking down, uncaring.

  “I win,” you say.

  He steps past you. Peers into the overturned car. “Where’s the girl?” he barks.

  Your head rolls to the side. And you point.

  You both see her. Iris is through the zombie horde. A man in a white coat hugs her. Others tend to her wounds. Soldiers, at the edge of the Golden Gate, guard the entrance to the city.

  Mr. King growls, and you begin laughing hysterically. “We won!” you say. “We won!”

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, you did.”