by Nick Cole
“Anyone... uh... know how to drive this?” asked Holiday over the silent ether as they all listened in stunned silence, overwhelmed by crushing fatigue.
He’d told the kid, thought Frank to himself. You’re on your own out there. He’d told him that!
This was why.
This was why Holiday didn’t fit, roared Frank inside his head. Sure the kid was good. And he was a drunk... like Malloy. Eventually he’d get someone killed. Frank holstered his guns as more zombies tore themselves away from the gate. Only twenty or so remained down there now, unable to pull away from the figures in silhouette at the top of the shifting containers. Their fist-pounding was now pathetic, compared to the ringing chorus of the entire day.
“Drum circle from hell,” Ritter had joked at one point when it had grown into a deafening football game roar.
Now it was a mere trickle compared to what it had once been.
Silence. Really. Even the dead down the street seemed gone to another world as they were no doubt surrounding Holiday’s giant truck.
Holiday would either get it started or...
They all waited. Waiting for the walkie-talkie to tell them what was going on.
Nothing.
“Frank, don’t give up on me.” Holiday’s voice sounded lonely and lost over the walkie-talkie. “Please.”
Ah hell, thought Frank as he pulled up one of the ladders. Everyone else had already sunk to the hot metal floor of the gate, never minding the blood. Everyone except Cory who just stood there shifting from one giant foot to the other. They were too tired to stand if they didn’t have to. Now that the zombies were peeling away to chase the truck, they could rest for a moment.
“What’re you doing?” asked Ritter tiredly as Frank lowered the long ladder to the other side.
“He’s trapped,” said Frank. Then he stood, drew, and fired at the nearby zombies.
“Keep ‘em off me until I clear the entrance,” he said, handing one of his guns to Ash. And then he was going down the ladder, breathing heavily.
And before anyone could stop him, so was Cory. Whispering a soft and breathy monotone, “na na na naaaaaaaa na...”
Whispering his Batman theme.
“Cory, no!” shouted Ash, then shot a dead guy making for the bottom of the ladder below, waving his scrabbly claw-like hand for Frank.
“Get back, kid!” yelled Frank up at Cory, as he shuffled down the ladder. In his mind, he knew someone was about to die. Him. The kid. Holiday. This was how someone got killed, he raged!
He made the bottom of the ladder and stumbled away from a zombie closing in on him. A cop with a missing arm swiped and missed with the other, falling into the wall. Frank took off and found himself immediately cut off by three other zombies getting up from the pavement.
Cory hit two in quick succession, his heavy-duty gloves smashing faces and caving in skulls. Frank shot the last one point-blank with his other pistol, and brains erupted out the back of the guy’s head.
“Cory!” Frank yelled. Cory turned to face two more.
He tried, “Batman!”
Cory turned.
Other zombies were lumbering at them from every direction. Even some turning back from the cement mixer. They were already getting cut off from the ladder.
“Stay with me, Batman!”
It was the only way now, thought Frank. I’ll have to take him with me. Maybe everyone doesn’t have to die today?
Please.
Maybe today could be an “every day” instead of that day? That worst day we are all so afraid of. And maybe even have lived through. Maybe today isn’t the end of the world.
He ran, hoping Batman-Cory was following. At the top of the street, looking downhill, he saw the zekes clustering around the massive cement mixer that had rolled downhill and crushed a car into a wall along the street.
It suddenly started, and lurched forward, crushing more of the dead clustering around the massive hood, and then stalled again. But the dead crowded in once more, heedlessly smashing at windows and becoming stuck under the giant tires.
Frank turned to Cory and placed one finger over his mouth. He led them along the wall of the castle, and they quickly turned up the street, following the western wall of the castle, away from the stalled truck.
Then they dashed across the street to the wall that guarded the other neighborhood Holiday and Ash had run through. They hid behind a parked car farther down the street, away from where the truck had come to rest.
“Can you climb, Batman?
Cory nodded, and pushed his rubber mask aside to wipe away a river of sweat.
Frank climbed to the top of the wall. On the other side was someone’s backyard full of dead grass. Cory raised his fist into the air and made a “Bhuuwwuuuush!” sound. Then he levered himself up, and Frank knew there was a high probability that Cory would fall. His girth and awkwardness seemed the opposite of what was needed to balance and walk along the wall. And yet, the big kid climbed up and stood next to Frank, his cape moving in the barest of breezes as the sun sank hot and burning into the west, touching the tip of the horizon.
Frank moved forward, arms out, steadying himself. When they made the back of the cement mixer, he tried to get Cory to wait on the wall. But even that seemed dangerous. If the truck started, stalled again, and rolled back into the wall, he could be crushed.
The zekes raged at the front of the truck, heedless of their presence.
“Follow me, Batman,” whispered Frank above the cacophony of moaning zombies clustering around the front of the truck.
Frank reached up, caught the top of the mixer and climbed onto the bulbous curve of the hull. Then he turned and guided Cory up. Cory slipped and Frank reached out for him. “Frank!” he suddenly cried in his off-tone bellow. A plaintive wail they’d all heard in the night. They cry of a frightened child. Frank grabbed Cory’s arm, holding onto it, which was all he could do while Cory grunted, struggling to find purchase with his feet.
Don’t let him go, thought Frank, sure his arm was about to be ripped from its socket. He’s someone’s Marie.
He grunted and didn’t let go. And shortly, Cory made it onto the back of the mixer.
They slithered down the bulbous cylinder to the roof of the cab.
Holiday cracked the window and yelled out, “Frank?”
“I’m here, kid.”
“Frank, I have no idea how to drive this thing and now we can’t get it started. It’s hotwired. I think we’ve got the wires messed up!” Holiday sounded worried now. In over his head. And in that moment, Frank remembered that he was just that. Holiday was just a kid. A good kid really. He tried hard. He just couldn’t handle the booze.
Frank had stolen his fair share of cars back in Chicago. He could do this. He had to do this, he told himself.
But how to get in the cab?
“There’re too many of them by the door. We can’t get in!” shouted Frank above the din of hush-roaring whisper-moans from the crowd surrounding the front of the truck. Gray dead faces forever aghast in horror and wounded rage, shattered mouths opening and closing mindlessly all around, stared greedily up at them. Promising a horrible ending.
Frank was just about to tell Holiday to move aside and that he’d shoot into the front window, when suddenly Cory jumped down into the press of zombies near the driver’s door.
“No!” shouted Frank, knowing Cory was dead and that Ash would never forgive him. And that somehow Marie would be gone again. And that was something he just couldn’t take. Not again.
Cory was instantly swinging. Dealing out devastating lefts and rights. Brutal haymakers and uppercuts sending the dead flying back into the rest of their mass. In a moment, a very brief circle was created near the door. And it wouldn’t last. Already, the dead were pushing back in at the big kid, desperate to tear his flesh from his body. Abh
orring the vacuum they didn’t fill.
Frank could hear Cory’s breathy grunts from beneath his rubber superhero mask as he dealt out ponderous, almost too slow, blows. The corpses closed in, suddenly ravenous at the sight of Cory’s fleshy arms.
It’s a window! Thought Frank. He’s giving you a window. Do something with this. Now!
Frank jumped down and Holiday had the door open. Instead of sliding to the side, Holiday fell out next to Cory, stumbling to the ground and scrambling to his feet. He came up swinging a matte-black shotgun.
Frank slid behind the wheel, seeing Jesus both smiling at him and in terror at the dead surrounding them. Holiday and Cory waded into the crowd of Zekes and Frank knew one of them was going to die. Knowing this was the only way to get the zekes, as Ritter called them, away from his castle. And his friends. He could save some of them. But not all of them.
Every day was just every day.
Do something with this! He screamed at himself again, as he desperately fumbled for the wires beneath the steering wheel.
Holiday came up with the high-tech automatic shotgun and swung it again like a club. His first strike knocked one of them in the jaw and sent it spilling back into the crowd. He was keeping them away from Cory’s back as the big kid caved in chests and demolished faces with violent impacts from his gloved fists. His blows were slow, but utterly devastating.
Like Batman.
Frank found the problem with the wires and got them straightened out, not even bothering to cast a quick glance at the cherubic Jesus, whose eyes were shut tight and whose frantic murmur-mumbled prayers filled the cab of the truck, drowning out the hush-roar of the dead all around as he pleaded for mercy for all.
The truck started and Frank shifted into gear.
He’d driven heavy equipment before.
He grabbed the driver’s side door, pulled it back and then pushed it forward, smashing a dead guy in the face. The dead guy went stumbling back to the pavement.
“Batman! Holiday! Climb up and hold onto the door!”
It was all he could do. It wasn’t a guarantee that one of those things wouldn’t bite them as they drove through the crowd. Or drag them off and down into the insane crowd of cannibal dead. And who knew if Cory hadn’t already been bitten. Several of them had grappled with him before he could shake them off.
Cory stopped what he was doing, turned and climbed onto the running step as though he were a little boy being told what to do by a stern parent. That playtime was over. He simply held onto the door and looked down.
Holiday smacked a zombie in the head, then raised the weapon over his shoulder and brought it down on another. He stepped back, vaulted up next to Cory, held onto the handhold behind the door and yelled, “Go!”
Frank punched the accelerator, balancing the clutch and gear, hoping to knock as many zekes out and away as he could from the front and sides of the cement mixer.
The big truck belched and shot forward, mowing down zekes and pulling free of the press.
Mindlessly they chased after it.
The ones that could.
By the top of the hill, at the intersection leading to the Market Faire, the dead were following. Hundreds of them still. Even more coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.
Frank gunned the engine and blasted the horn once more.
Aaaarrrannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk!
Then he led them away from the castle.
Cory hung onto the door, smiling and suddenly giving a shy, honest awkward laugh as the wind cooled the face beneath his mask. Laughing suddenly when the wind took his breath away. Like he had when he was a baby and his mother had breathed life into his face, if just to get a reaction from her baby boy who seemed so different and silent. She had blown into his chubby face and he had involuntarily gasped and smiled. And she had laughed with delight, hoping that everything would be okay. That her worst fears were just that. Just fears. That he would be strong and true like his father. That...
But that is a story for the end of things that will come.
Holiday looked behind them, making sure the zekes were still following. Looking up at Frank. Waiting. Waiting for approval. Or a smile. Amazed that they had survived. And he too laughed because he knew he should’ve been dead. Except he hadn’t thought that at the time. Only now. And he laughed.
Jesus was rejoicing. Laughing and crying with a smile bigger than any Frank had ever seen. An honest smile. A true smile. A joy for the joy and safety of others.
“Muchas Gracias, Muchas Gracias, Muchas Gracias, Gracias, Gracias...” he repeated over and over, again and again.
They led the dead away for miles, back down the hill to Irvine Boulevard. Then a few quick turns, and they lost them and returned to the castle as the sun sank into the last of the west.
Night was falling when they finally returned to the front gates.
***
“By...” the thing croaked up at Braddock mechanically from the ruined remains of the tollbooths. “Nightfall, Captain Braddock. Or else I burn your world.”
The thing opened its mouth and closed it as though it were laughing at him.
Seven miles to Objective Iron Castle.
Braddock scanned the vehicles all around. Everything had been destroyed in the blast.
He checked his watch.
Two hours until nightfall.
The temperature was well over ninety degrees. He began shucking gear. He’d only take his pistol. And water.
He picked up the torso and head of the thing that was Mr. Steele and threw it across his shoulders.
Then he began to run.
The standard for the Expert Infantry Badge was twelve miles in two hours with a full ruck and rifle.
Braddock would take the five mile break he was given via his memory of the map. With busted ribs and all. He’d run.
Beyond the toll road was a long grade leading down into a rocky valley through which the highway cut. Heat and shadows mixed in the still buzzing late afternoon silence as he ran, regulating his breath, making small adjustments to his load.
All about him, the rock and scrub was turning to a burnt orange.
He could hear the thing on his back. Could hear its joints and servos articulating, moving ever so softly and constantly as though the thing on his back was continually scanning the world.
What is it? What is it really?
Don’t think about that.
How far have I gone?
“You don’t mind, it don’t matter,” some drill sergeant had once told him. He heard it now, again. Agreed, and continued on.
At the bottom of the long grade, the road stretched off into the west and he could see Orange County’s tallest buildings in the distance. He knew these were close to the coast and that he didn’t have to go much further.
Just follow the toll road all the way to Bake Parkway. Then it was all downhill to the objective.
His lungs pulled at the hot dry air as he ignored the burning pain in his shoulders and turned off the numbness in his feet.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you get there, he told himself as he crossed a burning landscape of sun-bleached rock and vast silences where only his boots and breathing could be heard.
At the end of the long stretch into the west, the toll road curved to the left and passed under some bridges as it began to climb between two tall hills of dead brown grass.
He stopped, breathing heavily as he watched the thing on the ground stare up at him with its one remaining electronic eye, a red dot of intelligence somehow glaring at him.
The sun was getting close to the tops of the coastal hills in the distance.
Today could be the last day, Darling. For everyone.
Braddock ignored this, shouldered his burden and set off at a jog again. His legs felt stiff.
>
Forget them.
His feet were stumps.
Forget those too.
You don’t mind, it don’t matter.
The world will go up in a moment if you don’t make it.
Don’t forget that.
When his legs turned to jelly halfway up the tortuous climb, he began to shout in ragged gasps, berating himself. His voice echoed out across the lonely toll road no one would ever drive again.
At the top he didn’t stop. From here it was all downhill. And the sun was sinking fast into the west.
He passed silent orchards and long slopes where no one ever came, even before the world had ended. Below him, all of Orange County’s bedroom cities spread away, dark and lifeless, seeming somehow normal at this distance. He was sure that up close, on the streets of those places, things would be much different. Dead and quiet. Rotting into nothingness.
Or gone in a nuclear blast just after dark.
An ocean breeze came up as he watched the sun descend behind the coastal hills, beginning its long sink into the ocean as possibly the last night of mankind came on. He urged his legs to move faster even though they didn’t want to move at all now.
He forgot about everything.
Everything that once was.
The people he’d known and loved.
None of that was important. Only that the world had to go on and that the thing on his back had promised to end it all if its demands weren’t met.
Why don’t you think about them, Darling, she asked, as his body seemed to shake and tremble with each step. He wasn’t sweating as much as he had before.
Which was bad.
“Because they’re probably all dead,” he told her as though she were standing right in front of him. That redhead he’d always imagined she was but never knew for sure. “You too. You’re probably dead, too.”
“And if I think about it,” he grunted, ignoring a painful cramp in his gut.
If I think about it... then I’ll give up. Because...
Stop!
He continued on. A mile ahead, he saw the off ramp for Bake Parkway.