by Oliver, Carl
Tyler found himself sitting in a stiff chair in the middle of a small, dark room that he recognized. There were levers and dials covering a complicated looking control panel. The panel, like the room, was dark, but he could sense that he wasn’t alone.
“Wh...Where am I?” He let the question out in a whisper, a little afraid of what his whisper might awaken. He heard a young, female voice respond.
“On your way. The same as always.” Tyler felt confusion at the answer to his question.
“On my way to where?”
“Now, that is a better question.” The voice answered. The owner of the voice leaned forward, and her face was caught in a sliver of sunlight that came through a window to Tyler’s left. It was Elizabeth. Tyler recognized that he was back in the train again. He was dreaming, or was this something else? He remembered being surrounded by zombies.
“Am I…” Tyler let out the question that popped into his mind, but Little Lizzy finished it for him.
“Dead?” Liz didn’t react to the word, but Tyler felt himself flinch in response to it. “Don’t know...to be honest.” Liz’s gaze turned to the window where the light was coming from, and she fell silent again. Tyler turned to look out the window with her. The sun was just barely visible over the horizon. He couldn’t make out much, but he could see the shadows of trees and fields in the distance. A question came to mind that seemed strange to Tyler, but he felt like he had to ask it.
“Is this a sunrise, or a sunset?” Tyler was a little surprised when Liz didn’t answer him. He turned to look at her, but she kept her eyes focused on the scene outside. The sun either setting or rising. Tyler waited for a full ten seconds without any response.
“I think it’s a sunrise.” Tyler heard himself say, continuing to watch her face to see how she reacted. But she didn’t, her lips curled into a small smile.
Tyler waited for her to say something. For her to give him some kind of direction or cryptic message, but she simply sat and looked at him. Frustrated, Tyler got to his feet and walked the two steps to the window overlooking (what Tyler had decided was) the sunrise. He felt a little tickle at the back of his neck, and an idea of what he should say next.
“It’s going to be a good day.” He spoke in almost a whisper, but the words still seemed to hang in the air like a fog. He watched out the window, seeing the sun creep up over the horizon, and the scene before him starting to brighten. He waited for what felt like a minute before Liz responded.
“It’s not going to be easy.” Tyler felt himself become more sure of his words.
“Nope.” He turned away from the window. “It’s not.”
“You might get hurt.”
“I might not even survive.” Tyler felt his heart begin to beat faster.
“That’s true.” Liz gave a little frown as she spoke, but it went away as she continued. “But if you do, it really looks like it’s going to be a great day.”
“A good day to be alive.” Tyler whispered. In his mind, he said goodbye to Elizabeth for the last time.
****
It felt like someone was pitching his left shoulder with needle nosed pliers.
Tyler opened his eyes, and was confused for a moment when he couldn’t see anything. Just darkness. As he twisted to relieve whatever pressure was on his shoulder, he realized that he couldn’t see anything because someone was on top of him.
Tyler pushed hard through his right arm, pushing the body on top of him just far enough for him to spin around and get his legs beneath him. There was no way of knowing just how long he had been out for, but he could still hear Brooke’s handgun going off, so he knew it couldn’t have been for that long.
With his feet below him, Tyler was able to push off and rise into a crouching position, pushing away the bodies of zombies that crushed in against him. His mind continued to race, but this time he let it. He didn’t try to formulate a plan, but just reacted to what his instincts told him to do.
First, he crouched lower and began to push and shove in the direction of the handgun he heard. With a lower center of gravity, he was easily able to push through and around the five zombies that were between him and Brooke.
Brooke was facing away from him, firing into the crowd of zombies that were closing in. Tyler was confused when he saw that she was only firing in two directions, leaving her backside open, and the zombies there were only a foot away now. Tyler continued his crouched charge, barreling into the group and pushing them back.
“Brooke! Follow me! Down low!” Tyler shouted as he continued his charge. He paused for only a moment in order to glance back to see that she was following. He saw that she had a few gashes covering her arms, but there wasn’t that much blood, yet.
Bite wounds.
Tyler remembered his left shoulder and looked down to see it covered in blood as well.
One thing at a time.
Tyler continued charging forward. He realized it was much easier to move this way through the zombies. When crowded together, they couldn’t see much, and if you crouched low they couldn’t see you at all until you were right in front of them. And they were so slow to react that Tyler was already a few feet past them before they reached for him.
This would have been helpful to know two minutes ago, Tyler felt the thought race by before he continued charging forward.
“Where are we going? Our friends are back that way!” Brook shouted from behind him. Tyler only shouted one word in reply.
“Truck!”
Altogether, it probably only took a minute to crouch crawl their way through the zombies to where the dump truck was parked, to Brooke it felt like an eternity. She still had her pistol in one hand, although she couldn’t remember if she had one or two rounds left in the clip.
When they pushed their way through the final throng of zombies and reached the truck, Brooke was surprised with how large it was up close. The tires each came up past her waist. She would have marveled at this for longer, but Tyler was grabbing and pulling her to her feet. He pointed and helped her climb up onto the truck and into the back end, which had been tipped back up after depositing its load of zombies.
This wasn’t too difficult, she felt cold hands grab at her ankles once or twice, but they were easy to pull away from. In another ten seconds she was pulling herself over the edge and into the hard, metal interior.
She was surprised with how cold it felt, despite the fact that it had been full of squirming zombies. She looked up and saw Tyler peek over the edge that she had just fallen over. She expected him to fall in beside her, but he was apparently just checking that she made it safely, before he disappeared again.
The interior sides of the dumptruck were sloped, so it was easy to climb up to peer over the edge to check on what Tyler was up to. When she looked, she saw that he had opened up a toolbox that was built into the frame of the truck and pulling out something small and dark. He hefted it in his hand a few times, and Brooke was able to make out that Tyler had found a small sledge hammer.
Father O’Connell watched in the side mirror of the truck as the young group of miscreants began moving through the crowd of God’s chosen. They just couldn’t help themselves, they had to destroy more of God’s good work. He felt himself becoming nervous when they continued coming toward the truck. They were halfway between the wrecked cars and where he sat with the truck idling when he saw them stumble and fall.
Father O’Connell felt glee fill his chest when he saw the crowd of God’s chosen swarm around them. They would be smothered in God’s love. He watched for thirty seconds before he was satisfied the job was complete. His work here was done.
Closing his eyes in prayer, Father O’Connell took a deep breath and waited for God to come and take him as well.
Halfway through his prayer, he felt God begin to take him. A ear-splitting crack rang out and Father O’Connell felt his heart overwhelm with joy. This was it, this was the moment. He could feel a cool breeze cross his cheek, which he knew was impossible, in the stuffy interior of the cab.
This was his moment. He felt tears of joy begin to run down his face.
Then a voice called out to him. God was actually speaking to him.
“Hey! Fuck you! Guy!”
Father O’Connell began to open his eyes as he felt his shirt being grabbed tightly and pulled. Father O’Connell saw that it wasn’t God. It was one of the young men. He had broken in the window and was pulling Father O’Connell from the cab of the truck.
With seemingly inhuman strength, Father O’Connell was pulled free and thrown from the truck and onto the pavement of the street. His shoulder struck the ground first, with a loud crack he felt his collarbone break. Father O’Connell could taste blood in his mouth from biting his tongue. His vision was blurry, but he could make out moving shapes, God’s chosen, mingling around him.
He was too confused to cry out, to do anything. How could this have happened? Why had God forsaken him?
These thoughts raced through his head as Father O’Connell felt the first pair of teeth sink into his broken shoulder, tearing the skin and causing a rush of pain around his upper arm.
There were more bites to come.
In the cab of the truck, Tyler wasted no time. He turned the ignition and threw the truck into reverse, backing into the crowd of zombies that he had just fought through. He felt his stomach turn when he heard the first ‘pop’ of a skull being crushed beneath the heavy tires, but he kept his foot on the accelerator, trying to reach his friends before it was too late.
He backed up ten yards, then twenty, then thirty, then he began slowing down, not wanting to run them over accidently. He felt himself giving up hope when he saw a pile of zombies. At a distance it looked like a pile of bodies, and up close it was clear where his friends were. Under that pile.
Tyler pinned his foot on the accelerator and spun the wheel, aiming to back up only a few feet away from his friends, determined to save them. To help shield them as they loaded, Tyler backed up alongside the pile, coming within only a foot or two on one side.
Tyler threw the door open and jumped into the fray, knocking down a half dozen zombies as he threw himself from the cab.
****
Brooke watched from the rear of the dumptruck, transfixed at the scene before her. Tyler had jumped from the cab and began braining one zombie after another with the hammer he found in the toolkit. He worked quickly, too quick for any single zombie to bite him.
As soon as he had cleared a space around himself, he began pulling zombies from the pile that surrounded their friends. Brooke could hear him shouting “I’m here guys. We’ve got the truck. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” She felt her heart sink when there was no immediate reply back.
“About fucking time!” Brooke knew the voice instantly, Amy’s snarky tone. Almost all at once, the scrum of zombies lifted, and her friends crawled out. Brooke realized what happened. When they fell,they killed the zombies that had climbed atop them. Instead of pushing the zombies off, they just killed the next wave, causing more and more to pile atop them, creating a turtle shell of flesh to hide themselves.
Tyler helped pull them free, lifting Justin, Chris, and Jessica into the back of the dumptruck with herself, before taking Scott and Amy into the cab of the truck.
They had survived.
A week and a half later, they were driving across the Golden Gate bridge, first at the breakneck speed of 5 miles per hour. Brooke was driving, and she insisted that everyone roll the windows down and feel the cool sea air on their skin. The Iowa incident had put them all a little on edge, and nobody wanted to be in tunnels, canyons or bridges anymore, if they could avoid it. In this case though, Brooke had insisted.
This slow crawl across the bridge seemed to take away all the tension that had built up since Iowa. Wounds had begun to heal, and their frayed nerves would as well, in time.
Halfway across the bridge, Brooke stopped the car. Everyone climbed out and took a long look around. It was a sight that not many people had a chance to enjoy, as the bridge was normally full of traffic going both ways. The crisp sea air cooled tensions further, and the sound of the water moving hundreds of feet below brought a sense of peace.
Tyler thought about how strange this was, to feel so peaceful standing hundreds of feet in the air over freezing water. Thinking further, he realized this wasn’t all that strange. Stopping in the middle of this bridge was the perfect metaphor for their situation. Each one of them had a life they had left behind weeks ago, but hadn’t yet reached the next stage of their lives. He knew that this stage, running around drunk and acting like a kid on a shopping spree, wouldn’t last forever. There was no chance they would ever make it back to the way things used to be. Too many people had died, too much had changed. They had inherited the wealth of the world in what many could consider the prime of their lives.
Tyler genuinely thought about how lucky they all were that they were over the angsty teen years. They could have had a serious issue on their hands in terms of lovers’ triangles and hurt feelings. As it was, they all seemed to be handling things very adultly. Jessica and Scott had been building a relationship more and more since Iowa, and spent more nights together alone than with the group as a whole. Amy and Chris seemed to get along, which was a little comical when Amy revealed that she had decided to kill him a month ago when they first met. The only reason she hadn’t taken the shot was that Jessica had stepped in the way. Brooke and Justin seemed to be growing on one another more and more on this cross country trip.
None of this had really bothered Tyler. Knowing that there were other survivors out there, he knew that he would find a special someone someday. He hoped he would find her when they were on these adventures, so they could share in some of the stories that his group of friends were creating, but if he didn’t find her until he reached the edge of his bridge, that wasn’t so bad either. For the first time in his life, Tyler was completely and utterly at peace with the world. He breathed deeply, inhaling the salty cool ocean air into his nose, and let it out slowly.
Tyler was broken out of his daze by a shout from the car, it was Brooke’s voice.
“So we still need to find some sports cars. But this is going to be the starting line.”