by Raymond Lee
“Don’t forget to grab more gas!” Hal yelled as Cruz jumped out of the truck and ran full speed into the house where he headed straight to the pantry and pulled open the secret door.
“It’s me!” he yelled as he ran down the stairs. “Open up.”
The door at the bottom of the stairwell opened and Raven appeared, her eyes wide. “What happened? Where’s Hal?”
“He’s in the truck,” Cruz said, zipping past her. “Everyone get your shit and get out there, guns out and ready to shoot.”
“What’s going on?”
Cruz opened the door to the room the generator occupied and grabbed two containers of gas as the others quickly snatched their already packed backpacks and started up the stairs.
“We ran into some hostiles,” he explained to Raven as he ushered her along, stealing a last glance behind him to ensure they’d taken everything they needed. They wouldn’t be coming back to the underground haven that had kept them alive through the winter’s best effort to kill them. “Hal got in a good shot and they lost control of their van but we’re sure they’re the same group who were after us the day we lost Carlos. By now they should have radioed someone else to find us. We gotta go.”
They ran up the stairs and into the kitchen. Raven gasped, seeing it for the first time since she’d entered the panic room. The group after them had destroyed the place searching for them, busting out everything breakable and turning over any appliances and furniture they couldn’t break.
“Yeah, they did a job on the place, and we have no clue what they did to Carlos’s body. It’s gone. Let’s go.”
Raven followed him outside to the waiting truck. Pimjai and Janjai had already climbed into the cab with Hal while the rest had piled into the back. Cruz handed the two gas cans over to Damian and helped her into the back right before the sound of screeching tires made their enemy’s presence known.
“Fuck.” Cruz jumped into the back of the truck and slapped the side. “Go, go, go!”
The truck revved as Hal floored the gas but it didn’t go anywhere. The tires spun, not gaining traction.
“Don’t fucking tell me it’s stuck!” Cruz growled as a red SUV appeared in the alley.
The truck lurched forward, knocking them all onto their asses as Hal sped out of the yard, taking a sharp left turn at the end of the alley, a hail of bullets following them.
“Now you know why I was perfectly happy staying in the panic room eating my Ho-Ho’s,” Damian said.
“That was your last box,” Raven reminded him, “and we’d cleaned out the pantry and were about to have to dip into the food stash in our backpacks.”
“Less bitching, more shooting back,” Cruz ordered, aiming for the driver as the SUV started gaining on them. A burly, bearded man leaned out the passenger window and took a shot at him, forcing him to drop down to his stomach before he could get the shot off.
“What the fuck is that?” Damian asked, nodding his head toward the cans next to Cruz as he crouched down in the truck bed, trying to make himself less of a target.
“Gas,” Cruz answered, trying to keep from rolling as Hal drove in a zig zag pattern, making it harder for their enemies to hit them.
“You fucking serious?” Damian’s eyes widened. “Motherfuckers are shooting at us and you thought you should bring two containers of highly flammable gasoline in here with us?”
The pit of Cruz’s stomach felt like it fell out. “I didn’t really think about that, we just knew we’d need gas to get to Nebraska.”
“We have to get out of Kansas alive first,” Damian snapped, kicking a Coke bottle that had been rolling back and forth in the truck bed.
“Cover me, guys,” Leah yelled, grabbing the bottle and one of the gas cans. “I have an idea!”
Cruz shot toward the SUV driver again but the vehicle swerved, avoiding the hit.
“What’s she doing?” Raven asked, crouching next to him as she lined up a shot.
Cruz took a quick glance back at Leah, seeing her rooting through Elijah’s backpack as the kid shielded her, firing back at the SUV chasing them, before a bullet whizzed past his ear.
“Sonofabitch,” he snapped before returning his focus to the people after them. “I have no idea but I hope it’s something useful.”
“You had to get a truck, huh?”
“It’s the first vehicle we found that we could get to run,” he defended himself. “Kill these bastards and you won’t mind being back here, I promise you.”
They continued ducking and shooting while trying to maintain their balance as Hal sped along the street, zigzagging and taking sharp turns in effort to try to shake their tail.
“Everybody down!” Leah yelled, standing.
“Get down!” Damian yelled at her. “What the hell are you—”
They watched, slack jawed, as Leah threw a bottle with a lit piece of cloth over their heads. With the arm of a quarterback, she projected the deadly object through the windshield of the SUV where it ignited, turning the vehicle into a fireball.
“Sweet mother of pearl!” Damian exclaimed.
“Sweet mother of pearl?” Cruz questioned.
“I say random dumb sounding shit when I’m extremely surprised,” Damian said, frowning. “Don’t judge me.”
Laughing with relief, Cruz turned toward Leah, who was already being cheered by the others. “That was fucking awesome, Leah. How’d you know how to make that?”
“I’m a writer,” she said as if that explained anything.
“Everybody all right back there?” Hal called back to them.
“Yeah,” Cruz yelled back. “You might get some vomit if you keep zigzagging but nobody’s injured. Everybody good up there?”
Hal laughed. “We’re fine. I promise no more zigzags as long as those people stay out of my rearview mirror.”
“Good deal.” Cruz lowered himself into a sitting position, leaned his head back against the cab and let out his breath, relaxing just a bit for the first time that day.
“Rough morning?” Raven asked, taking a seat at his side.
He laughed. “Yeah, just a little bit. Guys, this is a good time to reload. The people in the van from earlier are still out there somewhere. Let’s not get too relaxed.”
The group dug into their packs for bullets, except for Leah who didn’t have one, and Cruz who’d left his pack in the cab. Raven passed bullets to both of them before reloading her own gun.
“So how long do you think it will take us to get to the base?” she asked.
“Four hours, maybe, if we don’t run into any problems.”
Everyone in the group looked at each other and smiled, except Elijah who sat by himself staring back at the neighborhood they were leaving behind.
Raven crawled over to him and sat at his side. “Hey.”
He glanced at her. “Hey.”
“I didn’t get to bury my sister. In all the chaos, there was just no time. Some things are beyond our control.”
Elijah nodded but continued to stare longingly in the direction of the last place he’d seen his parents alive.
Raven squeezed his shoulder and moved back to sit between Cruz and Damian.
“He going to be all right?” Cruz asked.
“With time.” Raven nodded. “It was hard after I lost my parents, and then after I lost Sky. There are things you’d swear would destroy you, and maybe they do destroy parts of you, but humans are survivors. We go on.”
“Do you think they’ll have Twinkies at the base?” Damian asked.
Raven laughed. “You’ve turned into a junk food addict. You’re starting to get a gut.”
“This is not a gut,” Damian said, offended, as he rubbed his belly. “It’s a fuel tank for all this sexiness.”
Everyone laughed, even Elijah managed a small chuckle, and they settled in for the trip to Nebraska, thankful for the clear roads, a vehicle to shorten their journey, and friends they could call family along with them for the ride. As the sun shone down on them, warming their
skin, they looked forward to finding the base and finally being able start new lives somewhere safe.
“We’re slowing down.” Raven stood as the truck slowed to a stop and turned to look out over the cab. The others joined her, groaning as they saw the roadblock before them.
Several cars had been abandoned on the expressway, others had wrecked before being left behind. They stretched out over all four lanes and due to the high wall separating one side of the expressway from the other they couldn’t just drive north in the southbound lanes either.
Hal stepped out of the truck and threw his hands up in frustration. “It’s the Red Sea, and I don’t have a staff to part it.”
“We’re just going to have to get off this and take a longer route,” Cruz said, dejected. “It’s happened to us before. Nothing is ever easy in this mess.”
Hal climbed onto the hood and stared out over the sea of vehicles. “Pimjai needs a safe place to rest before giving birth and our medicine supply is running low. We can’t afford a longer route.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Raven advised. “This isn’t exactly a monster truck. We can’t just drive over these cars in the way.”
“No, but we can walk over them,” he said, turning toward them. “There has to be a front to this blockage. We just trade in the truck for whatever we find up there.”
“These cars have been here all winter,” Cruz argued. “We don’t know if any of them will even run and if you haven’t noticed, there’s dead people in some of them.”
“Uh, guys.” Damian pointed ahead of them.
They looked in the direction he pointed to see a lone figure approaching them from near what they could tell was the beginning of the blockage. Its awkward gait suggested injury or a distinct case of moving death.
“Moving kind of fast for a zombie,” Damian said, peering closer. “You see a weapon?”
Raven shook her head. The figure was just a black blob, silhouetted by the sun behind it. She made out a head, a torso, two arms… “Hal, get back in the truck now.”
“He might need help,” Hal replied. “It’s just one person and I don’t see a weapon.”
“Do you see the way its hand is dangling by a tendon? That’s not a person.”
“The infected don’t walk that fast,” Hal said, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as the figure sped up, its awkward walk turning into a limping jog.
He dropped his hand and Raven saw the moment realization dawned in the horrified expression on his face.
“Well, call me Whirly Shirley and fuck me sideways, they can run now,” Damian said as he aimed his gun on the approaching zombie and pulled his trigger.
“Thanks for ringing the damn dinner bill, Whirly Shirley,” Cruz growled as more figures crept out from in between vehicles. “Hal, get this damn thing moving!”
Hal quickly jumped back into the truck and put it in reverse before laying on the gas pedal. They shot backward so fast Raven lost her footing and started to tumble over the side. Cruz grabbed her around her waist and pulled her back.
“Everyone hold on!” he yelled, crouching down as he gripped the side of the truck.
“How the hell are they running now?” Damian asked. “They never did that shit before.”
“It’s a mutation,” Leah said, her tone almost excited. “The Russians put the virus in their women and designed it to where it could spread without activating until they wanted it to. This must be something else they planned for.”
“What are you talking about?” Raven asked. “They designed it so they would get faster after a certain time period?”
“More specifically, after a certain event. They were frozen. They must have designed the virus to mutate at a certain temperature and when these infected people were frozen, it was like a cocoon. They came out faster. It’s brilliant!”
“I’ll remember to marvel over the genius of it when they quit trying to eat us!” Damian yelled.
Hal slammed on the brakes and they fell forward, then jostled backward as he drove the truck down an off ramp.
“Well, there is an upside to it,” Leah said. “The newly turned should still be slow. It’s just the ones who’ve frozen and thawed out we have to worry about outrunning.”
“Yeah, because the original version of these bitches weren’t bad enough,” Raven said, turning to see where Hal was headed.
They were off the expressway and in a subdivision. The streets were fairly clear, although they did pass the occasional stranded car and sometimes had to reroute due to wrecked cars blocking their path.
“How long do you think it will take us to get there now?” Raven asked after they’d traveled the city streets for an hour.
“Too long,” Cruz said, disgusted, as they watched an infected woman run after them. “Too damn long.”
“I’m going to try the expressway again,” Hal yelled back to them as he drove the truck up an on ramp.
“Think that’s a smart idea?” Elijah asked.
“It’s a lot quicker,” Raven answered, “and if we come across another blocked section he’ll just back us up to the nearest off ramp. I think he’s seen the problem with his idea to walk over the cars.”
“Thank goodness we didn’t latch on to that idea,” Cruz said.
“I’m hungry,” Damian announced.
“Seriously?” Raven asked. “You just ate a box of Ho-Ho’s this morning.”
“That was breakfast. It’s lunch time.”
“How can you even think of eating right now? We’re in the back of a truck and there are running dead people.”
“Would you rather I think about how bad I have to take a whiz? I have to do that too and I’m honestly about to just unzip and go over the side—”
“I will honestly shoot you if I hear that zipper come down,” Cruz warned him. “No one wants to see that.”
“Can’t handle this much black and sexy, huh?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Cruz muttered. “I’m going to stab him in his black and sexy face.”
Raven laughed, grateful she could still find humor despite the fear gripping her heart like a vise.
They traveled down the expressway for about twenty minutes before Hal slowed to a stop and stepped out of the truck.
“We need gas,” he explained, reaching up for one of the gas cans.
Cruz passed one over and joined Raven in scanning the area while Hal filled the tank. The lanes around them were clear which made sense as they were passing through a rural area. This section of the expressway wouldn’t have been as clogged as one winding through a heavily populated city.
“I really need to go, man.” Damian hopped down from the truck.
“Be careful,” Raven warned him. “Don’t go too far.”
“I’m going far enough you don’t get your dirty eyeful of my goods,” he called back as he walked toward the wooded area lining the road.
“Don’t go into the woods!” Raven warned. “You don’t know what’s in there.”
“I gotta go!” He called back. “Don’t be yelling and drawing attention if there’s something out here.”
Raven muttered a curse as he disappeared behind the tree line. “We should have just let him piss off the side of the truck.”
“And take the chance of the wind blowing it back in your face?” Cruz asked, grinning. “I think we all would have taken a turn killing him then.”
Hal replaced the cap on the fuel tank and passed the gas can back to Cruz. “We got off course when we got off the expressway back there but now that we’re back on we should be able to get there in about two and a half hours, maybe less, if we don’t have to take any more detours.”
Two gunshots rang out from the woods, prompting Hal to quickly jump back into the truck and turn the key in the ignition.
Damian came running out of the tree cover, holding his unzipped jeans up with one hand while he shot blindly behind himself with the other.
“If they don’t kill the dumbass, I
’m going to,” Cruz muttered as he aimed his gun on the trio of infected people running after him.
“We got you covered!” Raven called out to him so he would focus on running to them instead of trying to shoot at what he couldn’t stop to aim at.
Damian tripped but quickly rolled back onto his feet just as Cruz shot a zombie that had nearly been on him.
“Come on, Damian!” Raven yelled.
Damian sped up, outrunning the group of infected that had continued to come out of the trees behind him, and jumped over the side of the truck, rolling onto his back with a clumsy thump.
Hal floored the gas and they sped off, causing Raven and Cruz to fall onto their knees hard.
“That dead bitch…” Damian huffed, struggling to get his breath back under control. “That dead bitch came up out of nowhere while I was pissing and tried to do an oral Lorena Bobbitt on me. I ain’t never let a woman get that close to my thang and I’m not about to start with dead ones.”
“Zip your damn pants up,” Raven snapped. “I told you not to go out there.”
“Well, you should have let me piss off the truck, you prude.” Damian snapped back as he zipped his jeans and sat up. “Damn, they still following us.”
Hal slammed on the brakes, resulting into them slamming against the cab. “We’re going to need major painkillers by the time we get to the base,” Raven complained.
“I’m going to need a barf bag,” Elijah said, turning green. “Never was good with long drives, especially not with this much jostling.”
“Aw, shit,” Damian said, looking ahead of the truck.
They turned to see the left and right lines lined with vehicles and beyond them, a good sized group of infected headed their way. Hal looked back and Raven caught the fear in his eyes as he realized the group that had chased Damian out of the woods was approaching them from behind. They were about to be sandwiched by them if they didn’t do something fast.
“Hang on,” Hal called back to them as he floored the gas again and they sped down the open lane, straight toward the zombies coming at them.
“Is he going to try and plow through them?” Raven asked.
“Looks like it,” Cruz answered.