Highway to Hell

by Max Brallier

  Click here.

  ACTING PRESIDENTIAL

  The sun sets, a sprawling pink hue over the mountainous South Dakota horizon. In the distance, staggering zombies cast long, eerie shadows and you’re goddamn thankful you’re up here and not down there.

  You find cans of beans and skinned muskrats. You build a small fire and cook the muskrat and beans. The cavern quickly fills with smoke, and you and Iris laugh like old friends as you use blankets to wave it out.

  You try to eat slowly, but it’s not easy, and soon you’re shoving food in your mouth, and again the two of you are laughing.

  Iris finds the Sniper Scavenger’s moonshine. You take the thick bottle, go to swig it, but Iris touches your hand, stopping you, handing you a tin cup. You shrug and fill the cup. She finds a glass jar full of buttons, empties it, and you pour a glass for her.

  The moonshine is hot and thick and Iris nearly gags, but you don’t laugh at her.

  It’s a good meal. Freshly grilled meat washed down with burning stiff drinks. It’s what a last meal should be.

  When you’ve finished eating, you sip your moonshine and lean against the cavern wall, and Iris slides under your arm. Nothing sexual about it, but not like a father and daughter, either—something in between, like two strangers, forced into something more, with a single long last moment before they go off to most likely die.

  You sit and you stare out at the beautiful horizon—beautiful, despite the monsters with their rotting flesh and their tattered clothes, proof of previous lives that ended too early and too violently.

  “Why are you doing this?” Iris asks after a long silence. She sips her moonshine slowly and winces, but doesn’t choke so much anymore.

  “Because if I don’t, I die. Eigle saw to that.”

  She looks up at you. Her eyes are narrowed. She’s searching for something. “But why are you really doing this? Something’s changed.”

  You take a bigger gulp and light a cigarette. Your arm hurts and blood steadily oozes through a makeshift bandage.

  “I was a soldier.”

  “I know.”

  “My old man was a soldier, too. Growing up, as a kid, I never wanted that. He dragged us all around the country. Never made much money. I couldn’t understand that. Why put your family through that? I wanted to be—you’ll laugh—a short-order cook. Seemed simple. People need to eat. You serve them food. They go home happy, you empty the register, shut off the lights, and you go home, too. So simple.”

  You sip from your moonshine. Pacing yourself.

  “But then Dad died in Desert Storm. He was a good man. And he died in fucking Desert Storm. Damn near no one died in Desert Storm. It was an accident. On a base, some kid tripped, carrying a warhead. Blew himself up, along with my old man.”

  “I’m sorry,” Iris says.

  “Long time ago.”

  You drink some more. “I changed then. I figured, hell, he’s a good man—and he dies like that ’cause some kid didn’t tie up his laces? If life’s that flimsy, then you might as well do some good while you can. Make it count. So I joined up in 1991, just a teenager.”

  “Have you done good?”

  “No. I don’t know. No. Maybe. Sometimes I think no, sometimes yes—most times, I don’t think about it at all. I caused a lot of goddamn hurt and pain—”

  “Don’t,” she says. “The Lord’s name.”

  “I caused a lot of damn hurt and pain. I suspect, maybe, you try to balance all the bad I’ve done with all the good—and the scale’s gonna tip over to the bad side.”

  Iris knocks back a slug of her moonshine. “I know that feeling.”

  “So maybe this is my chance. Before it all went to hell—I drove. And I liked it. Finish line, you won. Didn’t make it, you didn’t win. Like the short-order cook, real simple. So this is my last drive. And if I’m lucky, it’ll be a final drive to tip the balance in my favor—over to the good. Y’know, just in case there is some big bearded man upstairs, maybe he’ll look the other way while I sneak under the pearly gates.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “Will I?”

  “Yes.”

  Iris knocks back the rest of the moonshine. She reaches, crawling over you, to the CB radio. Turning up the volume, keying the mic, she says, “Tanner.”

  You look at her, confused.

  A second later, Tanner growls, “What?”

  “This is Iris. The woman you’ve been trying so hard to kill. Just wanted to let you know—I’m gonna end your whole fucking existence.”

  And before he can respond, she hurls the radio over the side. You hear it crash to the concrete far below. Then you both fall asleep, you in her arms. One last good sleep before you go to die.

  Click here.

  THE BATTLE OF THE GOLDEN GATE

  “All right,” you say at last. “We’ll go in together. Get in. No point in waiting any longer.”

  You drive down the hill, car shuddering as you coast back onto the highway. You take a deep breath, then downshift, coming slowly around a bend, and then they’re in front of you: this godless gauntlet. Forty cars. Thousands of the undead.

  You stick a cigarette into your mouth, light it, and look to Iris. “Time to go raise a little hell.”

  Iris nods. “Raise it high, please . . .”

  You floor it, your boot heavy on the pedal, quick-shifting through second, third, and into fourth, and then it all opens up at once—hard, fast, deafening, heavy-metal explosive.

  Armored cars racing toward you, guns unloading like guns do, hot metal ricocheting off the El Camino’s thick, steel-clad hide, and the sound inside the car and sound inside your skull just a screeching mix of screaming bullets and shredding iron.

  You’re firing back, thumb down, slugs screaming and zombie flesh ripping and tearing and bursting. Tough to aim, peering out through the slice in the reinforced metal—but you keep your thumb on the trigger, laying waste, bringing pain, each shot like a tiny, hot, angry piece of your insides happily ripped out and flung forward.

  There’s Elwood, gumball sirens wailing, charging toward you in the old Monaco. Last you saw him was in Times Square. Boss Tanner sent him all the way out here to take you down and you almost feel honored as you wrench the wheel, swinging on the pavement, sweeping past him. Eyes to the side mirror, he’s turning, dust swirling, coming back around right on your tail.

  Ahead of you is the Panzer, the big main cannon looming and you charging toward it—fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards.

  “You do see that, right?” Iris asks.

  “I do.”

  At the last second, you twist the wheel, the tires locking, screeching furiously, and then the Panzer cannon BOOMS and the shell soars past you. An instant later, an ear-shattering explosion as the trailing Elwood and his squad car erupt in a ball of flame, white-hot scrap metal skipping across the dusty pavement.

  You trigger the rockets and two cars—not armed like the ones you saw in New York—burst, breaking, hoods popping and engines catching fire, raining shrapnel down upon you.

  Suddenly, two cars banging into you from either side: a souped-up Trans Am and a Ford Explorer. Jockeying against you, and you swerving, side to side, banging, bashing, metal crunching and sparking as you try to free yourself, finally wrenching the wheel hard left, the enemy Trans Am weaving, tires locking, body swinging and spinning off the highway in a swirling screen of dirt. And then you hit the brakes, seat belt punching like a baseball bat to the chest, Iris shrieking and gasping. The Ford Explorer tries to stop, but instead it just skids past you and then you have him, dead to rights, and you open up with the minigun, hammering the Explorer, firing, firing, until it flips, hopping the guardrail, sliding across the overgrown, grassy cliff ledge, dirt kicking up, and then it’s gone, dropping over the side, and you’ve turned the wheel, back at it even before it’s splashed down into San Francisco Bay.

  Ahead of you, the zombies still wait—an army so thick you see nothing but the rotting beasts.
You drop it into third and ease off the gas, letting the thresher hungrily consume the dead, leaving red paste in your wake.

  And then you’re there, crossing onto the Golden Gate Bridge, bursting through a wooden tollgate arm and plowing through a zombie in a yellow reflective jacket. You shift gears, speeding ahead, racing through them until the mass of undead bodies becomes so dense the thresher can no longer spin. Too many bodies, the El Camino slowing to a crawl, monsters slapping at the windows. Behind you, vehicles struggle to get through the tolls and continue their attack.

  Iris watches the monsters silently. She knows what you know—you’re not going to make it.

  You grit your teeth and shift it into first. You stomp the gas, let off, and hit it again—a pulsing sort of movement carrying you nearly halfway across the bridge, but that’s as far as she’ll go—the El Camino stops completely. Eyes to the side mirror: enemy vehicles, slowly but steadily, pushing through. You’ll soon be within firing range.

  And that’s when the big guns open fire from atop the massive wall on the San Francisco side of the bridge.

  Your saviors.

  The good guys.

  The San Francisco cannons continue the salvo: zombies are blown apart, hundreds destroyed in seconds, pulverized, and the chasing vehicles hammered and blasted.

  The radio zaps on. “Jimmy El Camino, this is San Francisco Defense Unit number two, clearing a path for you. Get to the end of the bridge, and we’ll open the big gates. See you in a few.”

  Your heart pounds, swelling, a rush of happiness like nothing you’ve ever felt. Dead one moment, alive the next. Iris’s fingers dig into your forearm, then she punches the roof, overjoyed curses rushing from her lips.

  The next heavy cannon blast shakes the bridge. Blows a small crater in it. A pack of zombies is vaporized.

  But as the cloud of red mist clears, you see him, at the very end of the bridge.

  No zombies between you. Just you and him.

  Mr. King, in his Lincoln.

  He’s been hiding there. Waiting for you.

  And suddenly, he’s charging.

  In Times Square, the first time you did battle, he won.

  So this is it.

  You flick the nitrous and the El Camino is launched into overdrive, the engine screaming, your head yanked back, the force tugging at you, pushing you down into the tattered leather seat as the El Camino tops 120 miles per hour.

  Mr. King charges toward you at an impossible speed.

  You grip the wheel. Iris screams.

  In seconds, there will be no turning back. If you collide head-on, you’ll be dead—all of you.

  So this is it: a single game of chicken, with, quite possibly, the future of all humanity at stake. The future of humanity in your hands—the hands that grip the wheel of the charging El Camino.

  What will you do?

  To stay hard on the gas, click here.

  If you’ll cut the wheel, hoping to avoid the head-on collision, click here.

  DINNER GUEST

  You follow the girl up the front steps. The door creaks open. The house is dim and smells of sickness. “They’re just through here,” she says.

  She pulls back a curtain, and the stench hits you full-on. Her family sits around a dining room table.

  They’re undead, all of them.

  A father, a mother, and a brother. The father is a fat, rotten thing, with one arm and no legs. The mother is bald and has a crooked nose, and its jaw hangs loose. The brother is no older than four or five, and it rocks and convulses, chained to the wall.

  You drop the food and reach for the sawed-off. “You said you needed food for your family,” you say, drawing the gun and turning.

  The girl is holding a massive shotgun, pointed at your chest, the weapon as big as her.

  “I did,” the girl says. “The food is you.”

  And then she fires.

  AN END

  ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  You squeeze the trigger and put a hard round through the head of the Klansman draped over Dewey. Another shot, through the nose of the Klansman clawing at Dewey’s retina.

  You wheel to your right, but it’s too late.

  Teeth are buried in Suzie-Jean’s scalp. She’s screaming. Tears rush down her face and she looks at you with wide, wet eyes.

  You fire twice more, into the girl. Her eyes, fast turning cloudy, stare at you, blaming you. And then she topples over.

  You fire two more shots, killing the monsters, and then the gun hangs at your side. “Walter,” you say, turning to the boy. “I—”

  You stop.

  Walter’s grabbed his sister’s rifle and is now pointing it at you. His eyes are narrow and his mouth is a hard, stiff line. “You shot my sister. Killed my family! They were worthless and awful, but they were my family!”

  “I had to.”

  “Not my sister! You could have shot the man! You could have shot Dewey!”

  “Walter, if I did that, there’d be no one to take care of you. Soon, you’d both be dead.”

  “You could have taken care of us! You could have brought us with you!”

  “I can’t do that. It’s not—”

  BLAM!

  The shot punches you in the gut, your knees buckling, and you stagger back onto Dewey’s green couch. Before Walter can reload, Dewey is stomping across the room, knocking the boy aside, yanking the gun from his hand.

  Walter falls to the floor. He looks up at you for a moment and then begins sobbing, full-body heaves.

  “You hurt bad?” Dewey asks.

  You pull up your shirt. There’s no exit wound—not a through-and-through. “Be all right. I need to go. Need to drive.”

  “Need to get that bullet out of you first, Jimmy.”

  “No. Wasted enough damn time,” you say. You grab a towel from the floor and blot the wound, then stuff fabric into the hole.

  Dewey cracks a beer and retrieves Iris’s now-legless body from the basement, and together you walk to the El Camino, stepping over and around the mass of Klansmen littering the drive.

  “Thanks for not shooting me like you did that girl,” Dewey says.

  Wincing, holding your side, you say, “Just take care of the boy.”

  “I will.”

  “Sometime later, let him know I’m not mad he shot me.”

  Dewey nods. “Good luck. Counting on you to save the world.”

  “Easy.”

  You slide into the car. Dewey places Iris into the passenger seat, and you lean over and buckle her in. You pull your flask from your back pocket and clink Dewey’s beer. And once again, you hit the road—this time, with Iris’s freeze-dried torso beside you and a bullet in your gut . . .

  Click here.

  PRETTY TIED UP

  You come to, groggy, head feeling like it does when a man that size puts his force behind a blow.

  You’re in the barn, sitting on a hay-covered floor, your back against a wooden beam. Your wounded arm has been bandaged and your wrists are tied tight around the beam.

  Iris is tied up, same as you, to a beam ten feet away.

  You hear choked moaning. You look up. Above you, hanging from the rafters, are zombies. Dozens of them, ropes around their throats, groaning and twitching and kicking.

  You turn to Iris. “You okay?”

  She has a big red mark on her head, fast beginning to bruise. Her eyes are spacey. “Not my best.”

  The man-beast steps out into the dim light. You see him fully now, and he’s a twisted take on Frankenstein’s monster. He appears to be constructed from bits and pieces of different men. One arm is thick and muscular and black, the other bony and white. His face is covered in scars and stitches. One leg is longer than the other, so he walks with a pronounced limp. His denim overalls are splattered and stained with old blood.

  He stomps through the hay, toward Iris. She closes her eyes and you see her shoulders tense—scared, but not panicking. Not once on your journey have you seen her panic.

/>   The monster reaches down and wraps his thick fingers around her wrist, lifting it, sniffing. His hand paws at her face. He strokes her hair, almost gently.

  “Henry!” a sudden voice barks. “Off!”

  A door slams shut and you hear footsteps on the hay. The monster—“Henry”—looks up at the entering figure. Henry growls, then reaches down, again pawing at Iris, now grabbing her exposed thigh.

  “Ah, hell, Henry!”

  The owner of the voice appears, stepping out into the center of the barn. The man holds a small buzzer, the size of a garage door opener. He presses it. Henry yelps like a hurt child and takes four quick, clumsy steps back, then turns and trudges to the corner of the barn. You see that a sort of shock collar is plugged into the monster’s brain, by way of a rough drill hole in the back of his head.

  “Please excuse him,” this newcomer says to Iris. “I’m afraid we don’t see a lot of live women around here. It gets him a little worked up. He can get, well . . . rowdy.”

  This man wears a butcher’s apron, cut down the middle to resemble a scientist’s laboratory coat. He’s covered in blood. Some of it fresh, most of it old and black.

  “What is it?” Iris asks, nodding to the monster.

  The man looks back. “Henry was Fred and Martha’s youngest. You saw Fred and Martha, out front. The nice old couple, just hanging around?” His terrible joke makes him chuckle. “A big hulking farm boy, Henry is. All-American! Isn’t that right?” the man continues, crossing the barn floor and slapping Henry on the back. He applies some pressure to his shoulder, and Henry reluctantly takes a seat on a milking stool. He looks comically large, perched on the tiny four-legged seat.

  “Henry was one of my earliest experiments,” the man says. “Two brains. While Henry was still alive, I removed the left cerebral hemisphere and replaced it with the cerebrum of one of these local zombie hayseeds. Henry is now half-and-half: left brain human, right brain undead.”