Chronicles of the Undead | Book 1 | Urban Gridlock

by Hernandez, Jaime

  They looked around at the pileup and the zombies. They were concentrated on the doors and windshield of the fire truck, where they knew a fresh meal waited inside. None of the dead stood at the rear of the truck.

  “If we can get the attention of whoever’s inside, we can pull up to the rear of the truck. If they can climb up top, they can get to the rear and drop down into our truck,” Max said.

  “I don’t think they can do it without opening the door,” Jesse shook his head. “It’s a water truck, no ladders. I’m guessing they ran into a mechanical problem or else they could have plowed right through the dead.”

  “I’ve got my Glock and two seventeen round magazines. If we pull around to the other side of the truck, I’ll take out as many as I can while you pull even with the windows. Whoever’s inside can jump down into our truck,” Vince suggested.

  “If the crowd on the other side is smaller, we might be able to do it without gunfire,” Jesse started.

  “No, I’ve been the one driving since all of this shit happened. If I just slowly roll up on the dead we’re going to end up slipping and sliding in a pile of bodies while the rest of them surround us. I have to go at it with some speed and Vince can take some of them out,” Max decided.

  “Yeah, no reason to worry about making noise right now,” Vince added. “The zombies are about to notice us either way.”

  “We got this bro,” Jesse said as Vince readied his gun and braced himself for a steady firing position.

  Max drove toward the fire truck and the mob of zombies under the bridge. Most of the dead remained interested in whoever was inside the fire truck, but a few started a slow shuffle toward their pickup. He drove around the rear and found far fewer of the dead on the other side. Before those zombies had fully realized that they were approaching, Vince started firing. He took out the most immediate threats closest to the fire truck as Max pulled the pickup alongside it as close as he could. He stopped the truck just past the windows and looked up and to his rear to see if anyone was going to climb down from the truck.

  A large window was broken out even before Max came to a full stop. Two figures in bulky gear jumped from the window to the bed of the pickup with a loud thump as the pickup rocked on its suspension. One of them slapped the top of the cab with his hand and yelled, “Go, go, go!”

  Max took a sharp right turn toward the far right lane then swung the truck around to move forward. He passed over a half dozen scattered bodies that had dropped when Vince had fired on them. With one eye on the speedometer, he brought the truck up to about twenty-five miles per hour. He needed to put some space between them and the zombies behind them before they could stop and talk to the two new additions in the rear of their truck.

  Once they reached a span of interstate that was relatively free of the dead, he brought the truck to a stop. He got his first real look at the newcomers. They had heavy firefighter jackets, pants, gloves, boots and gear; some of which they had been wearing and some of which they’d had in their hands when they made the jump. It may have been hot as hell outside, but Max and Jesse had learned early on that their own heavy construction clothes gave them a small amount of protection from bites.

  Max, Jesse and Vince all stepped out of the truck to greet the first responders, with Vince taking up a lookout position a few feet away in case any of the dead approached.

  “I’m Max, that’s Jesse and over there keeping watch, that’s Vince,” Max started the introductions.

  “Hell, I can’t thank you guys enough for what you did back there. We’ve been in that truck since it started. Name’s Frank,” said the man, sincere appreciation in his voice. He towered over them as he offered his hand. His face was nearly as dark as his close cropped black hair and his grin was quick and easy. He looked to be around forty.

  “Junior,” said the much smaller, Hispanic twenty-something. “Thanks man.”

  They were both sweating profusely and looked visibly dehydrated with chapped and peeling lips. It had to be an oven sitting inside that truck. Jesse grabbed a couple bottles of water from the backseat of the truck and the men accepted them gratefully.

  “It’s a hell of a thing to be sitting on a truck full of water with no way to get to it,” Frank said as he downed the whole bottle. “Thank you.” Jesse nodded and handed them each another bottle and a few protein bars from their rapidly shrinking food supply.

  “We don’t have any food or water, but we’ve got headlamps, an ax and a few tools. Some extra gloves too,” Junior said. The gloves were heavy duty, much higher quality than the construction gloves the guys had been wearing. They would offer much better protection from bites.

  “Incoming 4:00,” Vince said as he swung his hammer down on one of the dead that had wandered too close to him. The guys turned to see about a dozen or so zombies closing in on them less than a hundred yards away.

  “We’ve been watching the smoke from downtown since yesterday. Is the city gone?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, most of it is. The Terminal Tower fell a couple hours ago,” Max answered. “We’re headed west to Avon. My house is slightly off the grid and my family’s been reinforcing it. You’re welcome to come with us.”

  “We lost our family back at that pileup,” Frank said with regret, referring to his fallen brethren. “I don’t have any place else I need to be.”

  “Yeah, we’re with you guys,” Junior said gratefully.

  “Hey, we’d better get moving,” Vince called out. He’d been taking down the occasional stray zombie, but the group of dead coming up from behind them was getting closer.

  “Let’s all squeeze into the truck. Keep a weapon handy. Ax, hammer, screwdriver, whatever works for you. We’ll throw the rest of our gear in the back,” Jesse said. “They’re attracted to sight and sound, so Vince doesn’t usually fire that gun of his.”

  It was a large pickup, but it wasn’t really built to hold five grown men and with the exception of Junior, they were all on the tall side. Frank slapped his hand on Junior’s shoulder. “You get to ride bitch, son,” he laughed as Junior climbed into the small rear middle seat of the extended cab.

  “Pendajo,” Junior mumbled to the laughter of Max and Jesse.

  Chapter 22

  Day 2

  Max, Jesse and the guys drove a short distance before coming up on the next interchange. Traffic was nearly gridlocked. The dead shuffled about in groups of twos and threes throughout the immediate area, but the noise of the truck caused most of them to alter their courses to seek out of the source of the new sound.

  There were some accidents, but for the most part the vehicles they saw were simply abandoned. There must have been a big accident out of sight somewhere up ahead.

  “We’re not going to be able to weave our way through this mess,” Max said, shaking his head.

  “Then we go on foot, get ahead of it, and pick out a new truck on the other side,” Jesse replied.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Vince said. Frank and Junior agreed. They were new at this. From inside the fire truck they’d watched hundreds of people get bitten and seen hundreds of them die in the first hours they had been stranded, but they hadn’t had to kill any yet themselves. They trusted the three men who had saved them from what would have been their fate in the fire truck.

  They got out of the pickup and started going through their gear. A dead teenager was coming up to the passenger side, so Jesse quickly brought his hammer down on the kids head.

  “We’re going to run into some of the dead. It’s inevitable. You have to destroy their brains,” Max told Frank and Junior while motioning his hand at the few zombies that were slowly heading their way.

  “We’ve been using hammers and screwdrivers. Smash their skull into their brain or stab them through the eye or ear,” Jesse said. “We’ve got two or three more hammers and a few screwdrivers in the bags.” He dug through two of the bags and handed the hammers and screwdrivers to Frank and Junior.

  “There’s a crowbar if either of
you want it, but I think the hammers and screwdrivers work better,” Vince added. “Hang on,” he said as he reached for a dead man in a suit that was getting too close. The man was short, so Vince grabbed him by the hair and plunged a screwdriver through the man’s ear.

  “I’m cool with the tools. I’ve got an ax too,” Frank said as he watched the guys take out two of the dead.

  “Your gloves look good but ours are heavier if you want to try them,” Junior said, offering gloves to the three of them. The gloves felt cumbersome to Vince, but Jesse and Max accepted a pair. Vince didn’t want the gloves to get in his way if he needed to use his gun.

  Between the four backpacks that Max and Jesse had started with and Vince’s pack, they had five to carry. With their dwindling food and water supplies, they redistributed everything among the five. Each man was easily able to carry one bag on his back. Max and Jesse weren’t used to traveling so lightly but it was a relief, especially with Max’s sore shoulder.

  “Alright, let’s get moving,” Max said.

  They picked their way carefully between the cars and walked west down the interstate. They had a small following trailing behind them, but the group of zombies moved slowly enough that the men easily outpaced them. They were saving their energy for all of the dead they were likely to encounter ahead of them.

  There were smears of blood and bodily fluids along the sides of most of the vehicles they passed. Windows were broken here and there but the cars sat empty. It looked like a large procession of the dead must have passed through at some point. There were zombies walking slowly among the vehicles but they were spread out and often avoidable.

  About a quarter mile into their walk, Frank killed his first zombie. He was walking between an SUV and a van when a dead woman slipped out from in front of the van. He hesitated for a moment, taking in the sight of her bloodied long blonde hair, the dried blood around her mouth and the ring of bite marks that started on the side of her neck and ran down her shoulder to her lower arm. Her arm was hanging limply with torn veins, blackened bloody tendons, and bits of muscle hanging from tiny threads of flesh. Her light tank top was stained with dried dark blood. Her stilted movement drew his attention to her feet. She was barefoot and the skin was wearing down to the bone, her toes themselves nearly reduced to bones.

  Frank sighed then brought his hammer down hard on the top of her head. She immediately collapsed at his feet. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it was going to be. He knew that the dead were no longer people; he’d seen enough from the cab of the fire truck that he’d come to accept what they were. Now that he’d actually killed one of them, he felt better knowing that he would be able to do whatever he had to do.

  After about a half mile, they walked past two exits for the major interchange leading to the north/south highway. Traffic was gridlocked on the onramps as it was on the highway. The exit ramps were more of the same. Everyone who had been driving on this stretch of highway apparently got stuck somewhere.

  A bit further along they passed the last two exits leading to the other highways. As they got closer to the next onramp, they heard the telltale sounds of hundreds of shuffling feet and raspy moans of the dead. They were pouring onto the highway from the traffic jam on the onramp. The guys watched as hundreds of zombies pushing between the cars actually caused some of the cars to move. The cars only slid a few inches to either side but seeing that the pressure of hundreds of dead people moving forward could cause the cars to move was unnerving.

  “We’ve gotta get to the left and move faster. Put some distance between us and them,” Max said. They walked faster and veered toward the left shoulder as they wound between the static vehicles.

  The front of the crowd was already encroaching upon the highway. Junior got his first kill when a teenaged boy got close enough to reach for his arm. Junior grabbed the boy by his shoulder and stabbed a screwdriver through his eye. Hearing the pop of the eyeball followed by the sight of the milky white fluid mixed with blood almost made Junior lose the contents of his stomach, but he managed to hold it together.

  They got in front of the crowd and walked on the left shoulder by the concrete median. Picking up their pace, they quickly put distance between them and the hundreds of zombies behind them. The dead were strong, their grips incredible and their jaws unrelenting, but they were clumsy and slow. With about a hundred yard buffer, they continued to walk past the stopped vehicles. They were relatively in the clear at the moment, but if another crowd of zombies appeared somewhere ahead of them, they’d be sandwiched between two impossibly large groups.

  There were more zombies in this area than they’d experienced since they had first gotten on the highway. Between the five of them, they were able to take out all of the nearest threats easily enough. But it made them uneasy being around that many of the dead and there were just too many of them for them to kill all of them. So they continued to take out the zombies that stepped into their path or got too close while keeping an eye on the others shuffling about.

  They walked for about two miles before they saw what had caused the gridlock.

  A semi-truck had jack knifed about a quarter mile up ahead and the trailer had flipped on its side blocking all four lanes of traffic. Some drivers had tried to squeeze by on either shoulder only to get their cars wedged between the concrete and the truck. It was completely impassable by vehicle.

  As they got closer to the overturned trailer, they saw where a multitude of cars had crashed into it and each other. There were no first responder vehicles in sight. The accident must have happened after the dead had started taking over downtown and these cars were among the first to leave the city. Almost every vehicle was empty. Hundreds and hundreds of cars had blocked the highway, but the people were gone.

  “Do you think people ran away on foot?” Frank wondered aloud.

  “I think so,” Max replied. “We’ve seen plenty of zombies still strapped in with their seatbelts.”

  “My guess is they tried to run away. With so many empty cars, maybe some of them made it,” Jesse said. “We haven’t seen any living people.”

  They hoped that there had been a lot of survivors, but nothing they’d seen so far had given them any reason to hold onto that kind of hope. It was more likely that the living had run straight into the arms of the dead.

  They carefully walked toward the wreck, keeping an eye out for crawlers. The truck and the cars were packed so tightly at the point of the accident that the guys had to literally climb over a couple cars to get through the mess.

  On the other side, the highway was nearly empty of both vehicles and zombies.

  “Damn. I thought we were going to have our pick of trucks once we got past the wreck,” Jesse said.

  “We will. Just have to hoof it a little bit longer,” Vince replied.

  There were a handful of abandoned cars scattered about, but if they were abandoned here, then the cars probably had mechanical issues or had run out of gas. There didn’t appear to be any other reason that drivers would have gone on foot at this point unless the drivers were bitten and didn’t turn until they were on the road.

  “I say we check them anyway. The sooner we find wheels the better,” Max said. With the late afternoon sun beating down on them, between the walking and their heavy work clothes they were all sweating profusely. No one wanted to shed any of the heavy material regardless of the discomfort because the thick clothing and gloves added a layer of protection. They were getting low on water though and needed to find more before they all became dehydrated. If they let themselves get weak, the trek home would become a lot harder.

  “There are gas stations and mini marts on three of the four corners of that intersection down there,” Frank pointed over the guardrail past the bottom of the exit to their right. “We’re five miles out of downtown and there’s not a lot of dead activity here.”

  “He’s right,” Junior said. “We’re going to need more food and water. Even if we find a car, we may have to leave it and g
o back on foot again.”

  “It’s a heavily populated area though,” Max said. “Who knows what we’ll find if we walk down there. I mean, look at how many houses we can see from here.”

  “Yeah but think how many of those people were at work when all of this started. A lot of those houses are empty. Besides, we’ll steer clear of them and just hit the gas stations,” Jesse said.

  “I think we should risk it,” Vince offered his opinion. “We need food and water. We may even be able to grab a car at one of the gas stations.”

  Max knew he was the only one holding out and decided he had to put his trust in Jesse and the group. There were no easy solutions out here. “I guess it’s not going to get any less populated if we go further. Alright, let’s do it.”

  They started their descent down the exit ramp keeping a close look out in every direction. They were one short block away from the gas stations and mini marts, but it was one block on a street that normally saw a lot of traffic. They moved slowly and cautiously toward the intersection where traffic sat heavy and silent.

  A woman with a bandage on her hand shuffled toward them. She bore no other visible injuries or bite marks. Junior was closest, so he smashed her skull with his hammer. It took two swings of his hammer to take her down.

  There was a six car accident in the middle of the intersection blocking most of the traffic from three directions. Lines of cars that had been headed for the highway sat abandoned. Both streets had two lanes running in each direction with a left turn lane at the light. From a distance they couldn’t tell if the cars were empty.

  As they walked closer they saw that it had been a fatal crash. Two cars held the dead, still safely strapped into their seatbelts with airbags deployed. Their teeth gnashed and their heads turned at the sight of the guys. A closer look showed that the zombies had been bitten prior to the crash. In both cars, the dead had bandages on their arms.

  One driver hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt and the front half of his body had been thrown through the windshield and lay on the hood of his car. He must have been alive after the impact because huge chunks had been ripped from his neck and his arm showed several bite marks. As they watched, his head moved slightly while his teeth snapped at them.