by Mariah Lynde
I had to watch, horrified and fuming as the boneheaded male beside me handed over a card and paid for everything. Struggling to draw in air, I watched the scene with a look that I am sure would have caused a planet to wither and die. Despite that, not once did the grip around my waist lighten to give me a chance to breathe or react, if anything it got tighter. The change was obvious enough that even Christian protested in my favor.
“OW! Squeezin’ too tight!” Rexy the plush dinosaur was brought up, bonking Cal square in the face and leaving the clerk to watch mildly amused. This time it was Cal’s reaction that would make or break our little ruse.
“Sorry, Little Man. I’ll make it up to you.” Cal chuckled and peered down at me, looking for some kind of intervention.
Go take a long walk off a short pier. My mental reply was enough to leave me smiling as I tilted my head back to look up at Cal. While his grip had loosened, it remained locked about my waist and all the air I took in was being used to keep me from passing out.
Knowing full well that he’d be getting no assistance from me, especially since I had to focus on staying lucid from lack of air, Cal looked to the boy settled on my hip. Internally, I had already begun to rejoice in my victory. If he was looking to Christian to take his side or help him in this situation, he would soon find himself sadly mistaken.
In perfect childlike innocence, the boy settled on my hip pushed his bottom lip out in a little pout. Looking for all the world like a child done wrong. However, I should have counted on the basic positives of bribery…or how well it worked with little children.
“Welllllllll…you could get me chick’n with one of those space toys.” Christian chimed in while that plush dinosaur began to jump from side to side. Suddenly my self-assured notion of winning began to fizzle. Oh, no.
“I tell you what, if you want chicken we will head out when we leave here and I’ll get you some.” Cal’s words were like a bane to my very existence.
For something that brought so much joy to the child settled against me, those words seemed to set my whole world aflame. I couldn’t believe I was being sold out for a chicken happy meal. Then again, to be young was to be short sighted; I don’t suppose I could blame the little guy. After all, it had been the one thing he’d been focused on so far today.
Unable to really protest, when Christian began his celebratory cry, the cashier seemed more than pleased by said reaction. I remained locked against Cal’s side, held in place by that offensive arm while he paid for the purchases and gathered the bags quietly from the man behind the counter. I swear to you, I could almost taste blood from biting my tongue as the two exchanged information before Cal grabbed the key to the lock for the trailer.
If it were possible, I’d have created a scene like no other. An idea, it seemed, that Cal was more than aware of as he refused to relinquish his hold on me until we’d made our way back outside and were standing near the Explorer once again.
Despite the fact I had Christian with me, the danger of full on nuclear explosion happened to be pretty high. Honestly, I was proud of myself that I made it to the car and as far as getting Christian in his seat with the door shut before turning on Cal like a wild animal.
In a mere few moments I would come to regret my decision for theatrics over paying attention to the world around me. At that moment however, I can admit my pride was bruised and my irritation had taken control. I just had no idea how costly that would be until later.
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Bang, Bang…
“What the hell did you think you were doing in there?” The minute I shut the car door to get Christian safely inside, all thoughts of playing it cool and safe faded. “Do you honestly think it’s the wisest idea to piss off the person you’re trying to group up with?”
“You wanted the trailer we got the trailer, I don’t see the problem.” Cal shot back with a healthy amount of irritation.
“By pretending we were an item? Really?Who’s benefit was that for?” I groused. Why it had irritated me so much I didn’t even know, but at the moment, I was too flustered to care. “Don’t ever do shit like that again and leave the kid out of it.”
“The kid wasn’t in it!” He yelled back and my head whipped around so that I could narrow my gaze on him.
“Ah, is there something I can do to make up for it, buddy?” I snorted, “Puh-lease! Anyone with half a brain could have seen through that little display.”
“That happened to work didn’t it? Why are you so pissed off about it?” Cal stared at me almost as if I had grown two heads. To be perfectly fair, he was probably right that this happened to be an over-reaction of grand proportions. This had been and would remain a personal hang up of mine and I may as well start owning up to it.
“It is how you went about it. Next time don’t touch me. Or let me know beforehand so I don’t lose it. A situation like that where you’re telling an obvious lie, is only believable if I play along. I’ll do better about that with some forewarning.” I shrugged a little and moved to wave my hand over at the trailer sitting across the parking lot, “We should get that trailer hooked up so we can head out.”
For a moment, I thought Cal would open his mouth and say something absolutely horrendous. One brow arched as I waited for that tell-tale sign of stupidity. This time, it seemed the better angels of his nature intervened and he simply nodded before speaking softly, “Go ahead and back up the Explorer, I’ll head over to get it unlocked so we can get it hooked up.”
Just like that, without a word or a single explanation, Cal moved away and left me standing dumbfounded at my car. For a brief moment, I realized just how crazy it sounded. I despised the man opening his mouth to say something stupid as hell, yet when he didn’t, I almost felt disappointed in him.
Could it be that I had appointed Cal my personal court jester? Had I somehow subconsciously accepted that he would be a lasting figure in my life for the foreseeable future?
This thought, while disturbing, seemed to bring with it a kind of clarity. In some ways, I had already accepted that Cal would be with me and had come to expect his rather…idiotic statements as a form of normalcy that served its purpose of keeping me on my toes. Knowing that I had somehow adapted to this unexpected circumstance also proved that perhaps I had not given up on humanity completely. It also meant that as of yet, I hadn’t written him off as being completely useless.
It took a moment for me to register that Cal had already begun to fiddle with the trailer, so I hurriedly threw the purchases from the store into the back of the Explorer before climbing up into the driver’s seat to start the Explorer. That whole time, my mind remained occupied with this new complete about face over the man in question. Most times he seemed to want to argue or be at odds with anything I said, but all of those moments were peppered with small ones like this.
Much as I wanted to sit and consider those instances, now did not happen to be the time or place to indulge in such thoughts. Shifting the car into reverse, I carefully maneuvered the SUV back away from the building and across the parking lot. Coming to a stop when I viewed Cal giving me a waving hand motion to do so, I slid the gear shift into park to wait while he got the trailer hooked up. Troublesome as I believed my acceptance of Cal’s presence to be, mulling over it while out in public where I lacked control over my environment would not be conducive to my continued survival.
A fact that was further supported by what I saw when I dared to peer out of my windshield to the scene up on the road in front me. That accident that I had been so interested in earlier but forgotten due to my little pique, had become something a whole lot more gruesome. The child in the backseat was momentarily forgotten as I stared at the accident scene with a kind of shocked horror.
While Cal had busied himself in hooking the trailer up to the hitch, I had zoned in on the accident scene playing out on the road. While it looked like one car had swerved into oncoming traffic there were some things that I saw which just didn’t add up. The damage appeared to be mi
nimal, so why were there so many people crowded around on one side.
Looking at the back of the car nearest to me, I vaguely registered the vanity plate that read ‘INOU812”. While normally I could have appreciated a good salute to a U2 album, I found myself squinting to try and understand just what I was seeing. The windshield of one car, faced the opposite lane of traffic, with the other vehicle in the accident facing me. The woman of the other car was screaming bloody murder while the onlookers seemed to just point and stare at the car closest to where we sat.
Letting my gaze roam over the frame of the blue sedan, I paused when I saw a flailing head move just over the roof of the car. Leaning forward in my seat and gripping the steering wheel, I drew in a sharp breath as I realized just what seemed to have so many people staring in horrific shock.
The head I had seen just over the roof of the car, was that of the person currently entrapped in the windshield of the car. It registered in my brain that said victim had likely been unbuckled in the backseat and on impact had been launched through the glass. Sadly, their body didn’t fly forward, but more rubber banded against the sloped windshield of the minivan that the car had swerved into.
From the waist up, the poor bastard was shredded with bits of glass protruding from different places all about their upper body. I assumed that the person had once been a female considering the rather long blonde hair that I could see sticking out at odd angles and matted with drying blood.
Admittedly, the whole scene looked like something out of the grotesque mind of a serial killer. If I were to be honest though, that small part of me that thought like an EMT, still danced in glee at the sight. I admit, it is kind of sick, but you have to think that those of us who trained in such jobs had to like this stuff to some degree. Then again, we were buzzkills when watching horror films because we are the ones scoffing and pointing at the screen saying stuff like, ‘That would never happen’. Such is the way of things.
By the same token, on some level seeing a body reanimated while it was hanging through a car windshield was just kind of neat, at least for me − not so much for the line of people hanging around the accident scene in horrified confusion. I watched while the former woman’s arms flailed wildly at the people she couldn’t reach just a few feet away and I had to admit that the scene held a certain abject fascination. Each jerking movement from the zombie had the glass of the windshield snapping and sending small shards pinging to the ground in almost melodic fashion.
Still, I remained fixated on watching the tearing of flesh as the glass of the windshield bit into the zombie’s form every time it tried to move. Idly, I wondered if the creature would become benign if it’s body were severed in two, but realistically I already knew the answer. I could not stop myself from playing through the series of ‘what if’ scenarios that flowed through my mind. A train of thought that became a distant memory with what I observed next.
While entranced by the human-turned-zombie hood ornament, I had neglected to take notice of the rest of the scene. A fact I would curse myself for later. One of the first things that they drilled into your head when you trained to be an EMT was that your own safety should always be a priority.
That meant having a good assessment of all the risks and dangers involved in entering a scene to treat a patient. Personally, I normally applied that philosophy to my everyday life.
This time, I’d been so caught up in the chain of events that had taken place during the day I had neglected to keep my eyes peeled for possible variables that would make this all more difficult. One such variable made itself known to me now.
The driver of the car that held my little zombie puppet show, had been slumped over the wheel of their car and unmoving. Considering the accident scene and the way the cars looked, air bag or not, said driver would have likely been killed or paralyzed on impact. That particular point happened to be exactly why the movement that I currently bore witness to became particularly important.
One arm twitched, shooting up against the driver’s side window only to drag down across the glass sluggishly, leaving a trail of dark red on the surface. What really caught my eye about the whole motion was not only the fact it came from the driver’s side of the car, but that fact that dark red stain spread across the glass happened to have small congealed parts that looked almost like chunks of meat. As if that weren’t enough of a hint that something was ludicrously wrong, I watched as the drivers head slowly peeled up off the steering wheel only to fall at a ninety degree angle so that the creature’s forehead rested on its shoulder…literally.
All I could think when I noticed that was so much for my theory. Any thought I had about just severing the spine to kill zombies or render them useless immediately flew out the window as I watched the driver reanimate. It seemed that I and everyone else in the immediate area were going to receive a crash course in real life zombies.
“Don’t do it.” I muttered softly as I watched one of the bystanders making their way towards the driver’s side of the car. Despite the fact that I knew this could only end badly, I couldn’t look away from the disaster playing out right in front of me.
“Don’t do what, Angiel?” The sound of Christian’s voice from the backseat shook me out of my horrified observation.
Suddenly it came to me, an imminent feeling of doom. This particular feeling happened to be one that I was becoming far more acquainted with than I cared to admit. Tearing my eyes away from the accident just as one of the onlookers approached the driver’s side door and opened it, I answered Christian in as even a voice as I could manage.
“Nothing about you, buddy. What do you say we get out of here and head home?” As the question left my lips, my finger had already moved to press down on the button to roll down my window. What I knew to be only mere seconds seemed like lifetime. Just as the window came to the halfway point, I heard the sound I had been dreading. A panicked scream came from up on the road where onlookers had moved in to try and be good Samaritans. Unfortunately for them, they were about to learn just how costly such a thing could be. Moving to lean up in the seat, I hissed out the window, “Cal!”
“Angiel, wha’s wrong?” Whether I wanted to admit it or not, the child that I had been given guardianship over was far more intuitive then most. While he may have no idea what exactly seemed to be happening, he had some kind of insight that something was very wrong.
“Nothing really, buddy. Just tryin’ to get Cal’s attention so we can get out of here.” Offering what I hoped was a reassuring smile, I peered at Christian in the rear view mirror before moving to lean out the window a little, “Calhhhhhhhhh!”
Not that it did any good − the commotion up on the road had me shaking my head a little. The sound coming from the scene of the accident would definitely drown out any subtle whisper I tried to use to get Cal’s attention. If I wanted to get us out of here before all hell broke loose in our direction I needed to act quickly. The time for subtlety had passed, now I needed to throw caution to the wind and resort to drastic measures. I only hoped that what came next wouldn’t get us all dead.
Lifting my hand, I slapped the center of the steering wheel, causing the horn to blare out loudly. On top of that, I lifted myself up and dropped back into my seat hoping that the shifting weight would cause the car to bounce enough that the man currently at the back of my vehicle would realize I was trying to get his attention.
Soon enough I had my answer, as I saw his hand slap the back glass even as he leaned up and cried out, “What the hell are you doing, trying to get me killed?”
Scowling, I stuck my head out of the window, “Oh yes, I’m subtly trying to kill you by hopping around in my car. You jackass.” Lifting my hand I pointed up at the road and waited for his gaze to move in that direction.
It didn’t take a genius to recognize the expression that crossed Cal’s face. He moved from pissed off to shocked before finally settling on abject fear. I didn’t have to say a word at that point. Cal was already moving around the
back of the Explorer and ripping open my passenger side door to hop into the seat.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” He yelled, his right hand lifting to move in a fluttering circular motion to indicate movement.
“Is the trailer hooked up?” The question slipped out of my mouth without taking a moment to think about just how screwed up it sounded.
“Seriously…” Cal stared at me.
“Yes, seriously.” There was no backing out now. I’d asked the question, I may as well get an answer. Waiting to hear his reply, I was already pulling my seatbelt down and across my torso to snap it into place.
“It should be secure enough for us to get back to your apartment. Can we go now?” Gray eyes widened in disbelief as he watched me put on my seatbelt. I could tell that he seemed ready to jump out of his own skin and I chuckled softly. Taking a moment to peer at him with a smirk, I noticed he was white knuckling my dashboard and this time I outright laughed.
“Pansy. They’re all the way over…” My words were interrupted by a sudden thump against the front quarter panel of my car. The sound which accompanied that was pained groan as I looked up to see a bloodied woman spreading her hand over the hood of the Explorer.
“Help me…” The voice rasped and in a fit of panic, I flipped up the right side control near my steering wheel and turned on my windshield wipers even as I yelled.
“Son of a bitch!” Muttering, I tuned out the sound of Christian in the back seat giggling.
“Angiel said a bad word!” He chimed out even while the man beside me in the passenger seat threw in his two cents.
“You see now!” Cal screamed back at me.
“Shut up!” I snapped back, throwing my hand out to slam the gear shift down into drive. Not even thinking about the fact that Christian might have thought I had screamed at him, I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal to send the SUV lurching forward.
There was a subtle, muted thump from the body that suddenly rolled off the top of my Explorer as I peeled out of the parking space. In that split second the whole of the world moved in slow motion as I saw her shoulder roll up against my windshield. Her moaning wails were the least of my concern as the front glass was smeared with a trail of red while I got an up close and personal view of the haphazard oval shaped bite that adorned her body.