by Max Brallier
“Where’s he shooting from?” Iris asks, catching her breath.
“Gonna find out.”
You wait three, four minutes until a zombie shuffles up and around the side of the van, arms out, fingernails dark and caked with dried blood. You swing the ax into its face, splitting it, and catch the body before it hits the ground. You prop the lifeless thing against the van, holding it there, your hand on its bloody throat.
“Iris, when I say, you kick the zombie. Right out into the open. Got it?”
She nods.
You press your face to the van’s window, squinting through it, watching the massive hillside and the four faces of Mount Rushmore.
“Now.”
Iris kicks the dead thing. It tumbles forward, then smacks the cement, nose breaking loudly.
You see the muzzle flash a moment before you hear the crack, just as the zombie is shot through the head.
The gunfire came from inside Lincoln’s eyeball. This sniper has made a little home in there—a cutaway in the side of Mount Rushmore. Probably picks off passersby, feeds on them.
A scavenger.
The Sniper Scavenger.
Ahead of you, a short road leads to a three-level parking garage. Beyond that, a large cement gate—like the entrance at Disneyland—and then a long walkway leading to gift shops and a visitor’s center at the base of Mount Rushmore.
Try to come through the front, the Sniper Scavenger will use you for target practice. You need another route.
Staying low, you and Iris creep down into the lower level of the parking garage, where you’re safe from the gunfire. You cross the garage, and you can see the mountain again, and you can see Lincoln’s eye, and you can see the reflection of the rifle’s sight swinging side to side as the Scavenger hunts for you.
“I can distract him,” Iris says. “Give you time to do whatever it is you plan on doing.”
You think that over, then pull the sawed-off from your side and hand it to her. “Count to a thousand. At a thousand, you fire into the air, okay?”
Iris nods.
You get down on your belly and crawl away from the garage, gripping your beloved ax. You move slowly, low, behind a long line of cars, toward the thick woods surrounding the monument.
When you hit the trees, you start running—looping around the large rectangular area beneath the mountain base, boring to the left, shoulder howling. Zombie tourists shuffle about, stumbling around the center. Their moans echo off the mountain walls.
Soon the monument is directly ahead, a nearly sheer cliffside. Sixty feet up, squinting, you can see the sniper barrel jutting out from Lincoln’s eyeball. A rope dangles down from the cutaway.
That’s when you hear the shot go off, the thunderous sawed-off echoing from the parking lot. Good job, Iris . . .
You watch the sniper barrel swing right as the Scavenger searches for the source of the shot. He’s distracted. This is your chance.
You grip the rope and begin climbing. Every pull is an exercise in pain. Your shoulder is on fire, blood pours down your side, your hands are slick with sweat, but your mouth is desert dry.
Hanging, catching your breath, you turn and look out at the parking lot and the mountains beyond it.
Shit.
Iris is out in the open. She’s struggling, fighting off a zombie.
Ten feet above you, you see the barrel go steady as the sniper focuses on her, about to squeeze.
You pull, fighting through the hurt, climbing, up, up, up, and then reaching, grabbing the barrel, and tugging it, just as the Sniper Scavenger fires.
You hear a man’s voice, a grunt, confused. The gun fires again, but by then you’re gripping the ledge, pushing the barrel up, into the man. Your wounded shoulder screams as you throw your hand over the side, grabbing the ledge.
With your other hand, you blindly swing the ax, up and over the ledge. You hear a shriek. The ax hit something. You release the ax and pull yourself up, into the hollowed-out cave that the Sniper Scavenger has built inside Lincoln’s stone eyeball.
The man’s foot is bleeding from the ax blow. You stand—there’s just barely enough room—and grab the ax again, swinging it into the man’s back, turning him. He howls, but it’s muffled behind a mask. Goggles, too, looking like he just stumbled out of a nuclear holocaust. Bleeding, screaming, he staggers toward you, swinging the rifle. His feet are caught up in a rope ladder. The ladder catches him, and he shrieks, then pitches forward, through the mouth of the cavern.
You lean out, one hand on the low ceiling, and watch the Sniper Scavenger plummet down sixty feet of near-sheer cliff face. Just before he hits the ground, the rope ladder pulls tight and there are two loud cracks: first, his ankle snapping, and second, his head splitting as it slams against the cliff wall.
Good night.
You take the sniper rifle, lie down, grab three deep breaths, and scan the parking lot. Iris is still fighting off the tourist zombie. You raise the gun, hold your breath, aim, and squeeze. The zombie’s head explodes and it collapses. Through the scope, you watch Iris step back, confused, then look up at you. She squints.
You wave your good arm, indicating you want her to stay put.
You lie there a moment, letting the pain in your shoulder turn less hot, sliding from a burning pain to a dull ache. Then you examine the strange cave-hut. It’s full of foraged items. Two dozen license plates, cigarettes, heavy jackets and hats, watches, boots, gloves, binoculars, edged weapons, and canteens.
Far beneath you, the Sniper Scavenger’s body swings from the rope ladder. Zombies feed on him. You grip the sniper rifle, get into a firing position, covering Iris, and wait . . .
It’s dusk when the zombies have finished with the scavenger’s body, picking the last bits of flesh, the villain now looking like the aftermath in a nature show about piranhas. The monsters have scattered, and you’ve shaken his skeleton free from the ladder. Iris climbs, and you help her into the cavern chamber.
“Some damn afternoon, huh?” she says as she comes over the side.
“It gets better,” you say. “Look.”
You hand Iris a piece of paper. Scrawled on it, in scratched, maniacal handwriting, are the words: 1 man, 1 girl, ’67 El Camino.
Iris looks up. “He was looking for us.”
You nod. “One of Tanner’s men.”
An HF radio sits in the corner of the cavern. Direct to Tanner, you guess. Iris sees it, too. “I want to call him,” she says. “Tell him to go screw.”
Not a bad idea. You pick up the microphone and key it. “Tanner,” you say.
A second later, his familiar voice comes on. “Is it done?”
“Sorry, no. I’m afraid I killed your man.”
There’s a pause. “Mr. El Camino?”
“Yes.”
“You still with that whore?”
You look to Iris. Her face is blank, unmoving.
“I’m with Iris, yes,” you say. “And we’re coming straight to San Francisco. You know my route now, and it’s not changing. Bringing the girl over the Golden Gate. So call your drivers. Call Mr. King. Build a great wall, all I care.”
Tanner snickers, but you hear something like fear behind the laugh. “Bullshit. Why would you tell me all that?”
“Because you don’t think I can do it. You said it when we met, back in your Times Square ivory tower—‘drunken bum,’ something like that. Iris said something similar. Time to prove you both wrong. Thirty-six hours from now. Dawn. You’ll see me coming, and you still won’t be able to stop me.”
“Jimmy—” he starts, but you’ve already turned the volume down.
You look to Iris. She’s smiling, eyes warm.
“So, what do you think he’s got to eat around here?” you ask.
Click here.
A VISIT TO FRED AND MARTHA’S FARM
Cannibals come for you in Indiana. They’re posted outside a huge statue of a martini-drinking elephant, and Iris is quick to tell you that it’s named just tha
t—the Martini-Drinking Pink Elephant—according to her Odd America book.
The cannibals line the side of the road, armed with rifles, wrapped in layers and layers of clothing belonging to men now dead. They hide behind the large elephant statue, firing shots at the El Camino. One darts out into the road, stupidly, and you slam into him and snap him in two.
The sudden jolt of the man causes Iris’s neck wound to open up and the bleeding to worsen. She finds a rag in the back of the car, presses it hard to her neck. No question now, she needs stitches.
Down I-74, past Indianapolis, you pull over and look at the map. A farmhouse is circled, indicating friendlies. Belongs to a couple named Fred and Martha.
Iris says, “Farmhouses are creepy as hell, huh? I’ve only ever seen ’em in horror movies, on TV, when I was a kid.”
“Horror movies,” you say, shifting the car into first and pulling out. “That’s a good omen.”
Two hours later, you’re steering the El Camino up onto the thick, tall grass in front of Fred and Martha’s two-story farmhouse. It’s past midnight and a full moon shines down on the farm like a spotlight in a stage production.
The farmhouse is barely set back from the road, and behind it is a large field, and beyond that acres and acres of corn. A metal wind pump towers over the house, rattling away. Fifty yards to the rear of the house you see a long horse stable, run-down, the wood rotten.
Iris gasps and points.
A large chestnut tree grows near the house. Hanging from the tree, swaying gently, are two bodies.
“Just the undead,” you say. “Probably a warning to cannibals, like the ones we saw earlier.”
But as you step out of the El Camino, you see they’re not zombies. They’re human. And the pained gasping sound and the smell of fresh shit and piss tells you they’re still alive.
An older man and woman. They hang from the tree by hooks driven into the flesh of their lower backs. A large turkey vulture—the carrion crow—picks flesh from the woman’s face. Much of her cheek tissue is gone, and you can see bloody gums and teeth. The vulture cocks its head, looks at you in annoyance, then flies off. You’ve interrupted his meal.
“Please . . . ,” the woman whispers.
“Are you Fred and Martha?” you say, standing in front of the woman.
“Help . . . ,” she chokes out. The man says nothing. He sways gently. Blood leaks from the hole in his back, down his ass, along his left leg, and then drips steadily off the heel of his boot. The blood gathers beneath him on the damp dirt, mixing with his feces. His eyes look nowhere, clouded in a pained, vacant fog.
“Are you Fred and Martha?” you repeat.
The woman manages a noise that sounds like “yes.”
The house looms to your left. From your position now, you can see a barn around back of the house, one hundred yards opposite the stables. A candle burns in a stable window.
“What happened?” you ask.
The woman tries to speak but you only get a wet whimper.
“Speak,” you say.
Mustering up energy, blood dribbling from her lips, her throat throbbing, she finally manages three words: “We . . . are . . . bait . . .”
Go. Now. Fast. If these two are bait, you’re likely to be caught by whoever set this trap. Click here.
If you want to stay and help these poor bastards, click here.
A NEW DAWN
You’re up before dawn, climbing down the rope ladder, crossing the parking lot, out onto the highway, and working to get the El Camino back on four wheels. Once the car has flipped, you steer the rattling, groaning thing to the upper level of the parking garage, far from any of the staggering dead.
The visitor’s center was under construction. Around the rear, you find a stick welder, acetylene torches, multicutter saws. A handful of painkillers from the scavenger’s den does just enough to numb the fire in your arm and allow you to work.
You find a pile of vehicles that belonged to men killed by the Sniper Scavenger, and you begin removing steel. Doors and roofs and hoods reinforce the front of the El Camino. You double-layer the inside, shielding the engine, then covering the windshield, leaving only a small space—the size of a license plate—to see through.
The sun is fully up and you’re sweating like a demon when Iris comes shuffling up the ramp. She hands you a cup of coffee. “Found some in the cavern. Made this.”
You take a long drink. The coffee is warm but not too hot. “Thank you.”
She nods.
“Good morning,” you say.
Looking at you, but not really, looking through you, at the mountain, and then turning to see everything else, she says, “Good morning.”
“A few more hours. Then we’ll leave.”
“Sure,” Iris says softly. She takes her coffee and walks to the edge of the parking garage. She sits on the ledge and stares up at the monument. She’s small, on the ledge. The sun is massive and the sky is open and endless.
You could watch her all day.
You finish repairing, reinforcing, and rearming the El Camino. It’s not as quick as it was, but it’s fortified with steel ten times over. The guns are fully loaded and it’s ready as it can be for a straight ride into the beating, revving heart of the enemy.
You light a smoke and cross the garage to Iris. “It’s time.”
“I know.”
“You okay?”
“Not really.”
You don’t respond to that.
“But even if I die,” she says, “whether we get there or not—I’m glad I got to see all this.”
“It’s filled with monsters.”
She turns and looks up to you. “But it doesn’t have to be. Not forever.”
You smile. “That’s your job.”
It’s a long drive and you barely touch the brake, gas pedal to the floor from South Dakota to California. Mercifully, you run into little trouble.
It’s over twenty hours of driving. You stop only to refill the gas tank and to piss. Your wounded shoulder, wrapped and rewrapped, hums with a steady, dull hurt.
You and Iris talk little.
You’re delivering this girl to her death. Best-case scenario, you push through the gauntlet that awaits you and you get into San Francisco and you’re cured of Eigle’s goddamn poison. And then some scientists, doctors, who knows what, cut Iris open and she dies.
So, really, what is there to say?
You light a cigarette and drink and you let her pick the music.
She finds an old Beatles eight-track. You were never a Beatles guy. But she puts it on and listens to “Here Comes the Sun” as she watches the highway and the undead monsters blurring by and you think, maybe, for a second, you see a slight smile on her face.
The Golden Gate Bridge links Marin County, and in turn, the rest of Northern California, with San Francisco—the last bastion of true civilization in the United States.
You take the Redwood Highway. It’s lined with lush, green, and now thickly overgrown hills.
When you see the sign that reads Golden Gate Bridge Ahead, you decide that’s close enough. You slip off at the next ramp, then pilot the El Camino through the tall grass, cutting the engine, coasting up one of the larger hills.
“What are you doing?” Iris asks.
“Not flying blind.”
You roll to a stop beneath a towering redwood, step out of the car, and look around. A few zombies stumble around the bottom of the hill—far enough away not to be an immediate threat. One has long blond hair, not all fallen away yet, and it shimmers in the morning sunlight.
You lift a pair of binoculars to your eyes. From your position, you see the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge, the six lanes of highway leading to it, and the sloping hills that line the northern side of the highway. The other side of the highway drops away, into San Francisco Bay.
It’s more than just a gauntlet waiting for you.
It’s a goddamn army.
Zombies, thousands of them, d
ot the hillsides and the highway. Thousands more fill the Golden Gate Bridge—so many that they don’t look like individual things, but instead, one thick mass of death, swaying together.
And then the cars.
You stop counting at twenty. They line the highway, three cars deep, blocking the bridge entrance. A few you recognize from New York. Stu Bean, in his Ford van. Buzzy, in his 1981 Chevy pickup. Elwood, in the Monaco. The Panzer tank found some new neo-Nazi to pilot it, since you liquefied the last one.
They must have set out immediately after you, taken I-80 straight—with amphetamines and no sleep, it’s less than a two-day drive. And it took you a good deal longer than that.
Other vehicles crowd the road. A yellow Ford Falcon, with a man leaning out the passenger window, holding a scoped rifle. A bus, armed to the teeth. An old station wagon with an array of rockets across the top. Motorcycles with Gatling guns fixed to the front. An ice-cream truck that appears to be aflame.
“Jesus Christ,” Iris whispers, stepping out of the car and walking toward you. Then whispering a quick Hail Mary.
She squints and looks up at you. Her eyes are heavy, tired, but you get a glimpse of something eager and hopeful there. “What if I said, let’s just drive to Canada—find a place, away from all this?”
You shake your head. “I’m dead in days . . .”
“So we swing around. Avoid this. What do you have to prove? There are other ways into San Francisco, right? There must be! They cure you—and we go someplace else. I don’t even have to die. Ain’t that a thought.”
“I’m going straight through the front door. But, Iris,” you say, “I won’t force you to go. I’ll take you someplace, get you a vehicle, you can go wherever you want. Anywhere. I won’t force you.”
“I should go. I know that. Just don’t wanna.”
Iris pours whiskey into the tin cup and takes a swig. Stands up straight. “All right, then. What’s the plan?”
“You’ll go on foot, toward the bridge. You’re not coming with me. You stay on the hills—don’t come down until you’re at the bridge entrance.”