by Tristan Vick
At the top of the overpass sat an abandoned semi-truck directly in their line of approach. With a loud crash, the bus smashed straight into the large truck and rebounded off it. Veering in the other direction, the bus slammed up against the opposite guard railing and the force of the rebound caused the vehicle to flip over onto its side.
As the bus scraped sideways along the guard rail, a fury of sparks spat out until the bus finally grinded to a halt.
With the bus snagged on the overpass railing, the bus teetered back and forth. The slightest bump would send it over the edge of the overpass.
Josh looked over at Lindsey, who was hyperventilating. Luckily, they were both wearing their seat belts and weren’t too badly banged up. Reaching over, he took her hand in his. “Don’t worry. It’ll be—”
Suddenly a large duffel bag dislodged itself from the overhead baggage rack above the seats and fell past everyone and then crashed down onto the floor and slid toward the windshield at the front of the bus.
The bag’s extra weight was just enough to shift the bus forward a few inches, and a few inches was all it took. Suddenly the entire vehicle lurched forward and then, as the balance shifted, it slid off the bridge.
“Shit!” Lindsey cried out as the large white vehicle careened over the edge of the overpass.
The bus nosedived straight into the pavement below with a metallic crunch of twisting metal against unforgiving concrete. Then, slamming down on the engine block, the bus flipped over and landed upside down on its roof. The windows shattered on impact and glass fragments shot everywhere, like confetti poppers going off at a party.
Shaken, but alert, Josh unfastened his seatbelt and fell to the floor with a thud. Reaching up, he helped Lindsey out of her seat and gently set her down.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied.
Heading to the back door, Josh pulled down on the red handle to the emergency exit, but it was bent and wedged in such a way that it wouldn’t open. Instead, Josh kicked what remained of the half-broken glass out of the rear emergency exit and just crawled out instead.
Without warning, Josh quickly reached back inside the bus, grabbed Lindsey’s hand and jerked her out of the bus. “Come on, we have to go. Now!”
“But the others!” Lindsey protested. “We have to help them get out. We have injured and—”
“There’s no time!” Josh said. He dragged Lindsey behind him and they ran up the street. All around them the Walking Dead were drawing near – attracted to the sound of the crash. There were at least thirty or more.
“Wait for me!” a voice called out.
Looking back, they saw a rotund black woman squeeze out of the bus. It was Dorothy Wilcox, a woman of deep faith in the Lord almighty. She was the woman who’d sang Amazing Grace during the long bus ride. Her beautiful voice helped sooth everyone’s weary souls after the harrowing escape out of the underground military research facility known only as Sector-22. But poor Dorothy’s God had forsaken her, and she turned and ran straight into the snapping jowls of a roadside construction worker with white eyes and a florescent orange vest.
Dorothy screamed and fell to the ground. The construction worker dragged her back by her heels. Rolling over, the woman kicked with all her strength and sent the construction worker staggering back. But by then another three more zombies were already bearing down on her.
The three Biters tore into her abdomen and began pulling out her vital organs. Dorothy screamed throughout the whole, blood curdling ordeal.
Lindsey had to look away. It was simply too horrific to bear the sight of. But if they didn’t get a move on and get the hell out of there, they’d certainly be next.
Running for their lives, Josh and Lindsey headed one direction then the next. But everywhere they turned there were more white eyes, snapping teeth, and ashen and gnarled fingers to greet them. Zombies were virtually everywhere. There was no escape.
More stragglers were coming up the highway, attracted to the screams and the noise of the crash. Every way they went they were cut off by the numbers of undead, so they turned back again.
“It’s no use,” Lindsey cried. “There’s too many of them.”
“Over there!” Josh shouted, pointing up at the bypass.
“If we can just make it to the bridge, we might have a fighting cha—”
“Aieeee!” Lindsey’s scream silenced Josh and forced him to look back. One of the zombies, an automotive repair mechanic in two-tone gray overalls, had reached out, pulled her back, and bit into her shoulder.
“No!” Josh screamed out. He kicked the zombie off her, then grabbed her hand and towed her along behind him as they made a mad dash toward the underpass.
That’s when the shrieks of the rest of the bus’s passengers rang out. A host of hungry monsters had finally reached them.
After the last screams died down, Josh and Lindsey stopped dead in their tracks and looked at one another. Right then and there they both came to the same terrible realization. They were likely the only survivors of Sector-22 to get out alive. But it was all for nothing.
“Don’t look,” Josh said. “Just keep your eyes on me and don’t dare look back.”
Lindsey smiled and placed her hand on his cheek. Then, as a tangle of white hands stretched out for them, she leaned in and kissed him.
PART 8
JAPAN
AOKIGAHARA FOREST
NEAR MOUNT FUJI
42
Forest of Shadows and Revelations
Somewhere Near Mount Fuji, Japan
Even though her lungs felt like they were on fire, Kana kept on running and didn’t dare stop for anything. Dry leaves and branches crunched under her feet as thorny twigs and jagged rocks sent sharp pains rushing up through the soles of her shoes and into her feet. But, still, she couldn’t afford to stop. Stopping meant certain death. So, she pushed through the pain and did what Kevin had told her to do. She ran.
As she stumbled on the uneven terrain, unexpectedly her foot snagged on the upturned root of a tree, and she plowed face-first into the foliage. Kana sat up with a mouth full of dirt. Her teeth caked with black grime, she spat out leaves and muck. She shook her head, regained her bearings, and looked around for Kevin.
“Kevin?!” she shouted. “Kevin?!”
But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Getting back onto her feet, she felt her chest fill with panic. She looked every which way but there was no trace of him. Somehow, somewhere, in the mad dash they had become separated.
The pit of her stomach bottomed out and felt as though it had suddenly turned to lead. Kana’s wobbly legs threatened to give out from under her, and she slowly sank to her knees. They hadn’t even had time to discuss where to meet up if they became separated. There was no back-up plan. Nothing. Now she was lost in an endless forest of green with a host of zombies stalking her.
“KEVIN!” she screamed out in desperation, tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes. Behind her a twig snapped, and she jolted in the direction of the sound. Peering into the bamboo, she looked for him. “Kevin? Is that you?”
There was no reply. She pulled out her buck knife and opened it. “This isn’t funny, Kevin. If it’s you, say something.”
Ambling into view was the stiff and sinewy form of a raggedy man. His pallid skin peeled off in patches, muscles and tendons were visible from where large chunks of flesh had been torn from him, and he looked at her with those terrible white-frosted eyes. Hungry eyes.
Her hands trembled as she rose to her feet. She raised the knife and steadied herself. Just as she felt the nerve to try to face the monster on her own, another one suddenly stepped into view. Kana covered her mouth and muffled her scream at the sight of the two of them. It just wasn’t her day.
Having heard her screech, the two monsters looked over at her, practically drooling all over themselves at the sight of her meaty and voluptuous form. They clacked their hungry teeth and chomped at her as the
y loomed nearer.
Kana’s screams shot through the forest as she scrambled to get away. Running for her life, in her state of panic she didn’t pay much attention to her steps. All she cared about was getting as much distance as possible between her and those things.
Thorny branches scratched her skin as she pushed her way through the thick vegetation. As she ran aimlessly, her foot hit a rock and, with a shriek of pain, she rolled her weak ankle. Instantly she crashed down, face first, into the dirt. Her knife flew out of her hand and landed in some bushes nearby. Coddling her ankle, she rolled over and cursed, “Kuso!”
Frustrated at her clumsiness, she let out another grunt. There was no way in hell she could outrun those things now. Not on her goddamn useless ankle. Also, to make matter worse, her knife, her only method of protection, had slipped out of her hands.
Crawling on her hands and knees, Kana searched for where she thought she saw the knife land. But it was nowhere to be found. “Goddamn stupid cow!” she cursed, blaming herself for her ineptness.
“Kevin?!” she hollered again, hoping he’d hear her and come to her rescue. “KEVIN BENJAMIN RUSSELL!”
But her screams were only met by the hungry moans of the two monsters that trailed after her, one sloppy step at a time. Soon they’d be upon her, tearing into her swollen abdomen, ripping out the living child that was inside, and feasting on it as if it were a delectable mutton.
Kana rolled over and pushed herself onto her feet. “No,” she told herself. Not this way. She wasn’t simply going to let her unborn child be an appetizer for a ravenous pack of flesh-eating monsters.
Kana took two steps, then, wincing in agony, crumpled back down to the ground. She had nursed her sprained ankle for weeks, and now it came back with a vengeance. She was practically crippled. Even so, she was determined to fight through the pain and keep going. She’d cut her damn foot off if that was what it would take—although it would prove to be a rather difficult task minus her knife. “Hetta-kuso!” she yelled, angry at herself.
Using a large bamboo trunk as support, she clawed her way up it. She glanced over her shoulder only to see that the two shambling zombies had managed to cut their distance in half.
Kicking her ass into gear, she hopped to the next bamboo stalk. Hobbling from tree trunk to tree trunk, from bamboo stalk to bamboo stalk, Kana tried to keep ahead of the monsters. It didn’t seem to do much good though, because they were still closing in on her at an aggravatingly slow pace. The fact that she wasn’t any faster than they were frustrated her so much that she couldn’t even find curse words adequate enough to express how she felt.
“Kevin?!” she hollered. “Anytime now would be great. I could really use a nice piggy-back ride right about now.”
As she talked to herself, she began to worry that Kevin might not have made it. Maybe he had turned back to fend off the throng of monsters to give her a fighting chance. Maybe she was on her own from here on out.
Straining her ears, she listened for his reply, but the only one she received was yet another hunger-filled moan from the two gluttons stalking her. Kana turned back to see how she was doing on distance, when suddenly her feet went out from under her.
Due to the length of the bamboo stalks, many which grew over a hundred meters tall, she hadn’t even noticed the sudden drop. It seemed to her as though the ground stayed even, but it didn’t. It emptied out into a considerable ravine. Without warning, she slipped through the leaves and tumbled down the side of a steep gorge, flopping and cartwheeling out of control until she crashed down into the basin.
Kana landed face first in the dirt and tried to push herself up, but couldn’t. Somewhere during the violent somersault down the hill she had bashed her head against a rock and received a nasty concussion. Now she simply fought to stay conscious.
Opening her eyes to blurry movement, she tried to vigorously fight through the fogginess of her concussion and checked her head where she had hit the rock. Recoiling from the sting of her own touch, she found that was bleeding profusely from her head wound.
“Get up, get up,” she muttered to herself, and tried to stand. But as she began to stand up the forest suddenly spun out of control as a severe bout of vertigo overcame her, and she crashed back down to the forest floor and took a mouthful of leaves and dirt.
Rolling onto her back, she looked up at the sunlight beaming through the leafy bamboo canopy and glimpsed the two creatures standing on the cusp of the hill looking down at her.
She could see them contemplating, with whatever minimal brain power they possessed, whether to go forward and follow her down or find another way. She hoped they would choose another way around.
Suddenly a body crashed down beside her. Then another. Slowly, the raggedy man looked up at her with a menacing snarl and bared its bloodstained teeth. Its pasty hand reached up and clawed at her. Its fingers drew lines in the dirt as it tried to pull its bent and broken body toward her.
Kana let out another shriek and started crawling on her hands and knees through the leaves, sticks, and mud in a desperate attempt to get away. Before she could, however, grime-infested fingers with cracked nails latched onto her bum ankle. Kana screamed and was quickly dragged backward toward clacking teeth and chomping jaws.
Squirming with all her might, she had a bit of fight left in her and continued kicking, as if she were pedaling a bicycle, to get herself free. “Get off me!” she yelled, as the man’s relentless grip held tight.
Turning toward the beast, she smashed her bad foot squarely into its face. She kicked it again. And again. Each blow made her want to cry from the pain. But every blow was absorbed by the dead, unfeeling meat and bones of the zombie. It clearly had the advantage over her. Her pain practically crippled her, but the Biter’s pain hardly even registered with it. This made it unrelenting.
Kana continued thrashing her legs, trying desperately to tear herself free, but her injuries prevented her from doing so. She simply couldn’t tear herself away. With that realization came the terrifying prospect that this truly was the end.
Slowly the second monster reared up over her, rising up onto its wobbly legs. It steadied itself and bared its gruesome teeth. Kana closed her eyes and called out his name one last time. “KEVIN!!!”
Just as the zombie was about to spring and sink its teeth into her, she heard the swooshing sound of the wind.
No. Not the wind. Something else.
Kana opened her eyes just in time to see the monster’s head fall onto the ground in front of her. She screamed hysterically as its blood sprayed across her chest and face. The remaining zombie relinquished hold of her ankle and was clumsily rising to its feet when suddenly a dark figure appeared directly behind it.
Finally, thought Kana, he’s finally found me! As the figure stepped into view, Kana gasped. To her dismay, it wasn’t Kevin. It was a woman she’d never seen before.
A breeze parted the mysterious woman’s hair and unveiled her eyes. They were cold and hard as tempered steel. She had on a well-worn trench coat and gripped an elegant katana with both hands. Honestly, Kana didn’t know whether to be relieved or afraid.
With a fluid motion the woman raised her blade, which flickered white hot in the dim light beneath the forest canopy. Using the blade to flash light into the monster’s eyes, the woman drew the creature’s attention toward her and off Kana.
It worked too. The monster moved toward her, and then the woman suddenly leaped into the air. There was a hot flash of her blade as she flew past the creature. Landing on the ground just behind the zombie, the woman slowly stood up, flicked the blood off from her blade, and sheathed it.
The zombie tottered momentarily on faulty legs, and then its head rolled from its shoulders and tumbled to the ground, where it landed next to the first severed head. Then the woman took her sword and stabbed each head with a quick prick to ensure the monsters stayed dead.
The mysterious woman turned around and looked at Kana with her unsettling cold, hard gaze
, but said nothing.
“W-who are you?” Kana asked of her inexplicable savior.
“You’re too noisy,” the woman stated matter-of-factly. “The more you scream, the more you will attract them.”
Kana turned her head away in embarrassment. She knew that, but in her moment of panic she had forgotten everything Kevin had taught her. “Sorry,” she apologized.
“Do you know how to build a fire?” the woman asked.
“Yes. My boyfriend taught me,” Kana replied. Admittedly, she was perplexed by the specific nature of the question.
“Good. Build one here then walk three or four kilometers in the direction of the wind, but be sure to keep within the confines of the forest.”
“Why?” Kana asked, sounding confused.
“You need to create a diversion. Draw them away from you—especially since you’re injured. Then you need to get downwind so more of them don’t catch your scent,” she said, nodding her chin at two zombies she’d just dispatched.
“Oh,” Kana said, brushing her hair back. “I see.” She squinted and took a long hard look at the young woman.
Without saying anything further, the raven-haired girl turned and started walking back toward the thick of the forest.
“Wait!” Kana called out. “You’re not just going to leave me here, are you?”
The woman paused but didn’t answer her. Then, without any further hesitation, she disappeared back into the shadows of the bamboo forest the way she had come.
43
Eve’s Rib
Somewhere Near Mount Fuji, Japan
Worried out of his mind, Kevin frantically searched the woods for Kana Fujiwara. She couldn’t have been more than fifty paces in front of him when they got split up. Now she was out there, all alone, with a host of walking dead stalking her.