Zomb-Pocalypse 4

by Megan Berry

  The truck is a lot closer now. I hold my gun out the window and fire randomly, peeking the top of my head up to see what damage I’ve done. The truck has backed off a little; they probably thought we ran out of ammo.

  “You guys still okay?” I hear Ryan’s voice crackle through the radio. Dad reaches over and throws it to me. I duck in the seat and hold the button down.

  “Megan’s been shot,” I tell him. I hear Ryan suck in a worried breath on the other end.

  “Jack says you need to get around us, use the trailer as protection,” Ryan’s voice crackles through.

  I look to my dad and he nods.

  “Okay,” I tell them as Dad presses the accelerator and swerves out into the oncoming lane. Jack slows down so we don’t have to go too crazy on the icy roads.

  We are just about past when the truck behind us pulls out and starts to chase us. “They’re following us!” I scream into the walkie, not that they can’t see for themselves.

  “Just hurry up! Get by us, and Jack will do the rest,” Ryan yells back.

  My dad presses the accelerator even harder. The truck fishtails a little, but he gets it under control after two terrifying swerves, and the truck finally punches clear of the tractor trailer.

  I look back in time to see Jack crank the wheel. The trailer starts to rock, side-swiping the truck that’s still passing. I have to swallow a strangled yell when the smaller truck starts spinning and takes a nosedive for the ditch. It crashes through a bit of fence and the front end is caved in by a tree.

  Jack steadies his truck and pumps the brakes. My dad does the same, pulling the truck over so he’s protected from any shots that might still be fired from the crashed truck. He jumps out and opens the back door to take a look at Megan.

  I watch as my dad’s face turns even whiter, and I’m torn between watching him check for a pulse, something I haven’t been able to do in the last ten minutes, and watching Jack and Ryan jump down from the big rig and run towards the truck with their guns up. Jack reaches the crunched cab first and doesn’t wait for Ryan as he raises his gun and fires rapidly, two times at the occupants.

  My stomach dips nauseously as I watch Jack speak to Ryan quickly before turning around and jogging towards us. Ryan stays behind and pries the back door of the truck open. I squint at him, wondering what in the hell he’s up to.

  “How’s our girl?” Jack yells when he gets close enough, and I can see he’s drenched in sweat. So am I. This is hands down one of the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been in, and I live in a zombie apocalypse! I honestly think I’m starting to prefer the zombies over other human beings.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood,” my dad calls out, and Jack looks grim. Dad moves out of the way to let Jack have a look.

  “I don’t think this can wait till we get home, Hal,” Jack tells my dad after he’s removed the belt and examined the wound. His fingers are covered in fresh blood, and now that the excitement of the car chase is over, I feel a bit like swooning.

  “Smarten up, Jane,” Jack barks at me. “Take deep breaths.” His tone startles me into taking a deep breath, and I feel a little better. Zombie gore I can handle now, but seeing a living, breathing person bleeding all over the place is still not something I’ve gotten used to.

  “We need to take her out of here, but we have to be careful not to jostle her too much. That bullet is still inside her and we don’t want a spinal cord injury—if it isn’t too late,” Jack says, standing up and surveying the area.

  “What do we need?” Dad asks, snapping to action.

  “A board of some kind, so we can move her with minimum impact on her body,” Jack says, and in that moment I can really see the military man coming out in him.

  I scan the area and run over to the fence that the truck just catapulted through. I keep my eyes on the ground, scanning the salvageable wood, and purposely don’t look towards the truck where an accidental glance already exposed me to a blood-splattered windshield.

  I find a chunk of fence that still has a couple five-foot long boards nailed to it. It isn’t sanitary by any means, but it’s what we have. Dad sees me struggling to pick it up and runs over and grabs an end.

  “Good eye, Janey,” he tells me as we carry it through the snow, out of the ditch, and up to the truck. Jack nods his head like we did good and motions for us to hurry.

  “I need you two here to hold the wood steady and I’ll go around to the other side and start to slide her on,” he says as he moves around the truck.

  Ryan comes running over with an armful of weapons and booze, but he drops it all when he sees what we’re doing. He moves in to help us hold the board steady.

  “Jane, you crawl over and get on the seat and help to guide her,” Jack says, changing the game plan when he sees Ryan is back. I nod and scramble up into the seat. Megan looks deathly pale now. For a minute I’m scared we are too late, but then I see the shallow breaths she’s taking as her chest rises and falls.

  Jack places one hand underneath her neck to stabilize her and his other hand between her shoulder blades. I wince when I see the wound on her chest bubble fresh blood at the movement. “Grab her hips and legs and put your back into it,” Jack advises just before he starts a countdown to three.

  I pull so hard I can feel my face turning red, all the while trying hard not to make too many sudden movements. And finally, after about ten torturous minutes, we get Megan on the board. Jack runs around and helps Ryan and my dad carry the load, and I spring out the other side and run to the back to drop the tailgate.

  “That’s quick thinking,” Jack murmurs to me as they gently slide Megan in feet first, so her wound is close to them. Jack takes out his knife and slices the collar of Megan’s shirt, revealing an angry, puckered hole in the skin that is weeping blood. “Bring me that vodka,” Jack calls out, and all three of us dive for it, wanting to be helpful.

  Ryan gets it first, and we all return to the truck to watch as Jack smashes the top off and drops his knife right into the nearly full bottle.

  “Someone start a fire,” Jack growls, and I take off running for the fence to gather pieces of wood. Ryan joins me. When we drag everything back to the road, my dad pours gasoline straight from our extra tank, right on top of the wood, and then drops a match, starting it with a loud crackle.

  “Who has something to boil water?” Jack asks. Thanks to Silas’s tutelage, I do. I dig in my bag, pulling things out all over the place, until I find the small enamel pot Silas found me at the camping store. I scoop fresh snow from the ground and toss it on the fire. As it melts, we add more handfuls of snow until it’s finally boiling.

  I also find some hand sanitizer and pass that over to Jack.

  “We need to move quickly. I’d like to get this bullet out before she wakes up. There is also a risk that this wound could become sucking and collapse one of her lungs,” Jack tells us, terrifying me even worse—which I didn’t even know was possible.

  I watch, not even allowing myself to breathe as Jack fishes his knife from the alcohol and then gently begins prodding Megan’s wound with his fingertips. “I can feel something…” he confirms, his fingertips disappearing inside Megan’s chest just as her eyes flutter open and she unleashes an unholy scream.

  “Jesus Christ, someone hold her down,” Jack barks out, and Ryan and my dad both move forward to pin her down.

  “I really wish you would’ve stayed out for this one darlin’,” Jack says in way of apology, but I don’t think Megan can even hear him right now. Her eyes are as round as a pair of quarters, and despite how much blood she’s lost, she’s fighting them tooth and nail, which is only making her blood pump out faster.

  “Ah, damn it,” Jack curses as he raises his fist and lands a punishing blow to Megan’s jaw. Her eyes roll as her head snaps back, and we all gape at him in horror

  Chapter Four

  “What in the hell did you do that for?” my dad screams at Jack. I can tell it’s all he can do not to reach over and kno
ck Jack on his ass. The only thing stopping him is that Jack still has one hand on Megan.

  “Hal, I know what you’re thinking, but you have to believe me. That punch is going to hurt a hell of a lot less than being awake for what I’m going to do next,” Jack explains calmly, and in a messed up way, he makes sense.

  “You should’ve warned us,” Ryan hedges, and Jack lets out an annoyed huff.

  “Are we going to get this done, or are we going to screw around until she wakes up again? I didn’t exactly enjoy punching a teenage girl in the face, you know!” Jack shouts in exasperation, and that decides it for me.

  I reach over to where Jack tossed his knife back into the alcohol when Megan started struggling, and I hand it to him.

  “Do it,” I tell him, putting my complete trust in him—it’s not like we have a lot of options.

  Jack looks to Ryan and my dad to make sure they aren’t going to be any trouble. They both shake their heads and take a step back. Jack washes up again and uses the hand sanitizer. Then he begins gently prodding at Megan’s wound with his fingertips until he finally locates the bullet. “I don’t think it’s too deep…and it doesn’t feel like the bullet exploded on impact,” he tells us with a sigh of relief. “We got lucky—I don’t think it hit anything vital.” I can’t help myself, my jaw drops. Silly me, here I’d thought the worst thing about this situation was Megan getting shot. I didn’t even know bullets could explode once they hit you.

  I’m doing pretty well, up until Jack starts using his knife to dig the bullet out. I’m not proud of myself, but I have to turn away. I scan the horizon instead, anxiety gnawing a hole in my stomach. I’m worried about Megan, even though she’s sometimes a know-it-all. And I’m terrified that more of the bad guys are going to show up looking for their friends, and we’ll just be standing here in the middle of the road, easy pickings.

  I glance towards the wrecked truck not that far away and feel sick. Today was supposed to be fun, but I guess I was deluding myself. I don’t honestly think fun exists anymore, not since the zombies.

  Jack starts stitching Megan’s wound closed after he tosses the bullet out onto the tailgate. I walk over and scoop it up out of morbid curiosity, ignoring the bug-eyed look my dad sends me. It’s mushroom shaped and mostly covered in Megan’s blood, but I can also see traces of copper and lead visible through the gore. I carefully wrap it in a piece of gauze and slip it inside my jacket pocket for safe keeping.

  Megan is still unconscious and so pale that she honestly looks kind of dead. I resist the urge to check for a pulse. Jack has everything handled, I remind myself.

  “That should hold until we can get back to the cabin,” he says finally, stepping back and rinsing off his bloody fingers. “We need to get her back inside the cab and warm her up. The cold probably helped slow the bleeding, but we need to get this girl warmed up now,” he says as he gently leans in and scoops Megan up in his arms. I run ahead and open the door. He lays her down across the seat, taking off his own jacket and using it as a blanket. “Will you ride back here with her and make sure she doesn’t fall off the seat?” Jack asks me, and I nod, climbing in and perching myself on the tiny bit of seat that’s left.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m riding with you guys,” Ryan says firmly, already climbing into the front seat even before Jack nods his permission. “If we get attacked again, you guys are going to need someone who can cover you,” he explains as Dad climbs back into the driver’s seat, and I force myself to swallow my irritation. It’s true, I’m not the best person with a gun, but I’m getting better every day, and I think I did okay in a pinch.

  Jack throws the makeshift wooden stretcher off the end of the tailgate and slams it shut on his way back to the tractor trailer that’s been idling for the last hour and a half, and then we are off again. We have to keep the heat cranked up as high as it will go because of the holes in both the back window and the windshield. The cold air whistles through the cab no matter how high we have it, and I tuck the jacket more firmly underneath Megan’s chin.

  Twenty minutes into the trip, the wind starts howling even harder, whipping up snow and making it almost impossible to see the road. “Could this day get any worse?” I mutter, watching my dad with his nose practically pressed to the windshield. Snow is swirling into the cab and landing all over Megan and me, and I rush to brush it off—even though it just keeps coming.

  “I’d say it actually just got a lot better,” my dad says, surprising me, and I shake my head.

  “How do you figure?” I demand, looking down at Megan. I know if she could talk right now, she’d be telling me the answer. I press my hand to her cheek just to be sure she’s still warm. It’s cool and damp from sweat. I brush a little snow from her cheek and pull her thick wool hat down a little lower.

  “I was worried that our tracks in the snow might lead these guys back to the cabin,” Dad confesses, and I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. That thought didn’t even occur to me.

  “Are you sure they will cover?” I ask, craning my head to look back behind us, but I can’t see much more than the dim lights of Jack’s truck through the wall of snow. Ryan points ahead of us. We can’t even see the road anymore—

  “I think it’s safe to assume this snow will wipe out every trace,” he confirms, and I allow myself to breathe again.

  “We’ll have to be more careful from now on though,” Dad says, and Ryan looks grim as he nods.

  “There was a time I would’ve given anything to see other survivors in the area, but I don’t feel like that anymore,” Ryan confesses, and my dad nods his head again.

  “Amen.”

  It takes us nearly three hours to get back. The wind is kicking up snow so bad that when Dad stops the truck, Ryan and I both stare at him in confusion.

  “You have to lower the bridge,” he tells Ryan, and I’m a little shocked to find out we are so close to home. This trip felt like it would never end.

  “Oh— yeah…” Ryan says with a small grimace, and I don’t think he realized where we were either.

  “How did you know to stop for the bridge?” I ask my dad once Ryan gets out and wrestles his door shut against the wind.

  My dad points to a tree out the window. It’s kind of a weird-shaped tree, located right beside the driver’s window, growing two large trunks out of one base. The branches are practically touching the window. “I recognized that tree,” he says simply, and I swallow. If he hadn’t recognized that quirky tree, of all the crazy things, would we have driven into the pit?

  I don’t ask though, because I’m not sure I really want to know how close we just came to a nosedive into a deep pit filled with wooden stakes sticking up out of the ground.

  Ryan appears in front of the truck and starts waving my dad across, walking in front of the vehicle to make sure we aren’t getting too close to the edge in the white out.

  “You’re all good,” Ryan says, popping his head back through the door and giving us the thumbs up. “I’m going to stay back and guide Jack across…I’ll catch a ride up with him,” he tells us, giving me a small smile before he slams the door again and takes off without waiting for us to answer.

  Staring out the back window, I can just make out the outline of Ryan walking back across the bridge, illuminated in the headlights of Jack’s truck.

  “We’re in the home stretch now,” Dad murmurs as he kicks the truck back into gear and we get moving again. It’s slow going still, with practically zero visibility. The truck keeps spinning in the snow, even though we’re in four wheel drive…but I finally begin to feel a small shred of hope. Only a couple more minutes now…

  I stare down at Megan and see that her eyes are open, though her forehead is scrunched in pain. It startles me and I nearly squeal like a little girl, but I get myself under control just in time. “Are you okay?” I ask, instantly wanting to kick myself for asking such a dumb question.

  Megan blinks up at me in confusion and opens her mouth l
ike she’s trying to say something, but nothing comes out… or maybe her voice is just too quiet that I can’t hear her over the roar of the wind whistling through the cab. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, lifting the jacket up a little higher and tucking it underneath her chin. “We’re just about home.”

  We don’t even get the truck into park before the backdoor is wrenched open. Catching in the wind, it slams open with a creak of springs and I wince, stifling a scream. Silas is staring at me with a dark scowl on his face that melts into one of concern when he sees Megan sprawled out on the seat.

  “What the hell happened?” he demands, switching his gaze back to me.

  “She’s been shot, son,” my dad answers for me as he comes around the side of the truck and claps Silas on the back. “Give me a hand getting her in the house.”

  Silas doesn’t say another word as he reaches forward and gingerly picks Megan up in his arms, leaving my dad to flutter around them, pointing out her wound and begging him to be careful.

  I sigh and reach down, slinging my pack onto my back before racing out ahead of them to get the door.

  I should’ve known I didn’t need to bother. My mom is standing in the doorway with the door wide open. Regg, Abby, and Jack’s sister are crowded in behind her. I feel silly worrying about it in such a serious situation, but I can’t help but feel a small stab of annoyance that they are all just standing there with the door wide open letting all the heat out. The colder the room gets, the more wood it takes to get it back up to temperature, and that means more wood that I am going to have to cut… and now Megan is out of commission. I push the thought from my mind and give Mom a quick hug, even as I use the hug to start backing everyone up.

  “Let’s let them in the door,” I call out, and the crowd shifts a little.

  Mom lets out a small cry when she sees Megan hanging limply in Silas’s arms. “What the hell happened out there?” she demands before turning just about as pale as Megan. “She wasn’t bitten was she?” she asks, and my stomach shifts as I think about Sunny.