The dead heard their SUV coming, but they were out of sight before the zombies could alter their course. Some of them started to cross the median and spread out in the eastbound lanes in pursuit of the SUV. It was a slow process as they clumsily maneuvered over the concrete divider, but soon the zombies were spread across the entire highway.
“If something else doesn’t get their attention, that horde is going to follow us right into the suburbs,” Max said.
“They’ll follow, but I don’t think they’ll leave the highway. Not unless something big and loud changes their course,” Frank replied.
Max was thinking of his house in relation to the highway. If the zombies kept on as they were, his house was far enough away that the horde wouldn’t be an issue. If they started exiting the interstate, they would have a whole new problem. To their right was a solid mass of slowly moving corpses and static cars. Far behind them was a growing horde that had started following them. They were well out of reach and could only hope that the horde would stay on the highway when they got off.
“Accident up ahead,” Vince said suddenly. All eyes shot forward to see what he was talking about. Another car that had been traveling west in the eastbound lanes had hit an abandoned car head on. The accident was new, as smoke billowed from under the hood of westbound car. It had caught the attention of the zombies across the median and there was already a small crowd headed for the car, blocking the road in front of them.
“Can anyone see inside that car?” Frank asked. No one could. They would have to get closer to see if anyone had survived the crash.
“I can’t just drive right up, or we’ll be surrounded,” Vince lamented. Instead, he drove closer then made a sharp left turn so that he was parked perpendicular to the car, with his foot on the gas ready to make a quick retreat.
“I’ve got this,” Junior said, and he jumped out of the SUV. His shorter, wiry frame was well suited for these kinds of situations. Within seconds he was at the driver’s side door. A woman sat stunned behind the wheel with her airbag deployed. The white powder from the airbag slightly clouded the window. Junior pulled the door open then stepped back. The woman wasn’t stunned, she was a zombie. She must have turned while driving. A large, bloodied bandage covered her forearm. Just as Junior was about to slam the door shut, his eyes caught movement from the backseat. There was a dead toddler strapped into a forward facing car seat. Its mouth was ringed with dried blood. A large purple bite mark swelled from its left arm. Cowering behind the driver’s seat was a dark haired little boy that was probably no more than five or six years old. The crying boy had been bitten but hadn’t turned yet. The small size of the bite on his hand made Junior think that his toddler sibling had gotten to him.
“Fuck,” Junior swore to himself. All he could think of were his six little nieces and nephews. He imagined them being attacked, being bitten and dying an agonizing death at the mouths of the dead. Just the thought of it made him choke up. He wouldn’t want them to suffer. The little boy sat there shaking, his big brown eyes wet with tears. He’d seen his mother turn into a zombie, his little brother had bitten him, the car had crashed, he was in pain, and he was scared to death.
The little boy was going to turn but not before the approaching crowd of dead tore into his flesh. There was no saving him because the bite was a death sentence. He couldn’t take the little boy with him because it would just delay the inevitable and the boy could be just minutes away from turning. The zombies had closed in and were nearly upon them and the car. Junior looked at the young boy and thought of his nieces and nephews. He hoped they were safe, and if they weren’t he hoped that they didn’t suffer. Thinking of them and of the horrible fate that awaited the little boy from the encroaching zombies, Junior gritted his teeth and came to a gut wrenching decision. His eyes began to fill with tears as he reached for the little boy’s head. “Sorry mijo, everything will be ok. I got you.” he said as he thrust his screwdriver through the little boy’s ear.
Chapter 31
Day 3
Junior dashed back to the SUV and told Vince to drive. They didn’t know what had happened, but Junior’s face was pale, his eyes were wet, and his demeanor changed. A glance back at the car showed that the zombies had fully surrounded it. Vince turned the SUV to head east in the eastbound lanes, taking them in the wrong direction. They had no choice but to backtrack to the next exit.
“Hey, you okay Junior?” Frank asked, fearing the worst. “You weren’t bitten were you?”
“No,” Junior replied simply, while lost in his own thoughts. He kept replaying the scene in his mind. It had taken all of maybe twenty seconds from the time he’d opened the driver’s side door to him killing the little boy. His head told him he did the right thing, that he’d saved the child from a fate that would have been much worse. The boy was infected, he was going to die. That was a certainty. He was about to be fed on by numerous zombies and likely get torn to pieces, an excruciating death. Junior knew that he had done right by the boy, but it didn’t make things any easier.
All of the guys had seen a lot, so they were genuinely curious about what had gotten Junior so shaken up, but they left him to his thoughts. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.
Vince continued backtracking toward the next exit. In the distance they could see the horde of the dead they’d left behind earlier slowly shuffling toward them. The westbound lanes were still full of zombies walking slowly but steadily forward. Behind them the dead gathered, and the group got larger as more of them had headed for the site of the accident. The zombies were now on three sides of them although they weren’t crowded in yet.
Vince took the exit and followed the ramp as it curved around to meet a main road. There were three lanes westbound and three lanes eastbound. Instead of a left turn lane, the center of the road was mostly filled with a grassy median. Young trees had been planted throughout and patches of flowers grew in between. About every thousand feet or so, a small, paved space would open up for U-turns.
Max suddenly spoke up. “We don’t need to worry about the highway anymore,” he said. “There are so many different routes we can take from here. At least six or seven north/south and five or six east/west main roads and I don’t know how many shortcuts before things get a little tighter. All of the north/south roads are only two lanes though, so we’ll have to be careful there.” His face lit up. “We’re only twenty minutes from home, at least under normal circumstances,” Max said. It was the first they’d seen him truly come out of his funk since last night.
Frank and Junior both lived on the east side of downtown, so they knew very little about the area. Almost everything was unfamiliar to them. Vince and Max had both grown up on west side of town and lived there their entire lives so they both knew the area well.
“Just keep it slow and steady, Vince,” Frank said. “We’ve been using the highway the whole way. Our only experience with the suburbs so far had us nearly surrounded back at those gas stations.”
“I’m going twenty-five, easy enough to come to a quick stop if needed,” Vince responded as he watched the road ahead of him carefully. They quickly came up on what would normally be a busy intersection. A few cars were crashed, and a few others were simply abandoned. Quite a few zombies were shuffling around the intersection with no clear path in sight. They took a few steps, turned, took a few more steps, and turned again.
“That’s new,” Max said. “Most of what we’ve seen so far, they pretty much look straight ahead and walk in the direction they’re looking.” He was puzzled by the behavior until they coasted a little bit closer to the light. At least two of the wrecked cars held the dead inside of them. Those zombies kept thumping their heads and hands against the windows. The thumping sound was confusing the walking dead, causing them to change direction with each thump they heard.
“Let’s get in front of this group,” Vince said as he slowly veered closer and sharply to the right then back to the left once past them. They looked to see if th
e zombies were going to follow them. The dead had lifted their heads, and several moved as if to follow but then it looked like they were drawn right back to the thumping noise again. “That shit was strange,” Vince said, shaking his head. So far the zombies had been predictable, and he liked it that way. He wasn’t a fan of seeing them behave differently.
Max was thinking along the same lines. He was in no hurry to approach any more of the dead, but he was curious about what their behavior might be like.
They drove nearly a mile before the road started to get cluttered with both vehicles and zombies. They were close to a freeway off ramp, so it seemed to make sense. A look to the north at the intersection showed the road completely blocked at the ramp and almost all the way to the intersection they were passing. Most likely people who’d fled downtown for home but never made it.
Vince carefully weaved through the jumble of cars at the intersection but was unable to avoid hitting a few zombies. They all grimaced when several bodies hit the front of the SUV. One flew up and over the SUV out of sight. Another glanced off the front passenger side before being thrown to the side. Still another hit the hood then slid under the car. Their luck held when all four tires missed the corpse’s skull.
Max pulled a water bottle from his pack and downed it in two gulps. His action seemed to remind the others that they were thirsty, and everyone dug out bottles of water. Max handed one to Vince and pulled out a bag of beef jerky. The road became less crowded and more easily passable again.
They drove for about half a mile before seeing a huge multi-car pileup at the next intersection. At least a dozen cars, apparently coming from every point of the intersection had smashed into each other. Some cars were overturned, and a couple had literally driven up top of one another. A small car sat totaled in front of a city bus and the bus was stopped at an angle blocking all three eastbound lanes. All of the vehicles had caught fire and parts of the bus were still smoldering. The entirety of the accident had blocked off the entire intersection.
“That’s some crazy shit,” Vince said, looking are the charred skeletal remains of the vehicles. There were quite a few zombies in the vicinity, two of which must have come from the accident. What remained of their flesh was charred black and flaky, their eyes appeared to have been burned off and their ears were just nubs. But they still moved about, achingly slow, as they snapped their jaws in search of food.
“You know a way around, Vince?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, no problem. Just gotta back track a block and cut up to another street,” he answered.
“Pretty much everything’s going to be two lane from here on out,” Max said. “Even the main roads.”
Vince backed up then made the first right. The small side street took them north toward the highway again. He didn’t want to get too close if he could help it, so he took a few turns down various side streets while edging westward. There were a few dead scattered about but none in large groups.
The drive was fairly quiet for a few minutes and Max couldn’t help but start to feel excited about seeing his family soon. That thought was immediately dampened as he thought of Jesse. Jesse’s family should be at the house by now. He dreaded having to tell Michelle what happened. He rolled down his window and lit a cigarette. Anna was going to kill him for smoking. That thought brought a grin to his face. She was feisty when she was angry. He passed the pack to the other guys and soon smoke hung in the air in the SUV even though everyone’s windows were open. No one minded.
Seemingly out of nowhere, there were a bunch of zombies straight ahead. Hundreds of them. It didn’t make any sense that they’d find so many on a little side street. They filled the street and covered the lawns and sidewalks. Vince backed up and made another turn only to see hundreds of zombies in that direction as well. Another couple of turns and they figured out that the dead were coming from the south. They’d have to move further north to avoid them but that meant keeping fairly close to the interstate which they knew was full of zombies.
“It’s not looking too good in any direction,” Frank said from the back seat. “One way or another, we’re probably going to have to drive through some of them.” Max just shook his head. Every time he felt like they were getting close, there was some kind of setback.
“What do you want me to do here, Max?” Vince asked with the strain in his voice clear. He was trying to leave a little housing development because there were so many dead behind them but if he turned onto the main road there were both zombies and discarded vehicles to fend with.
The dead were getting pretty thick on the main road and they were quickly running out of options. How the hell they had gone from having so many routes to being nearly trapped, none of them understood. It was as if all 40,000 residents of the suburb had turned into zombies all at once then all decided to go for a walk together. The numbers were incredible.
“Son of a bitch,” Max swore. “Get your backpacks together, boys, it looks like we may have to go for a run.”
Chapter 32
Day 3
The guys put their backpacks on and had their weapons ready. Vince slipped his on as he drove at a snail’s pace. “I’m going to turn around and go to the end of the cul-de-sac,” Vince pointed at two enormous houses that sat at the end. There was an open area between the two houses and the houses backed up to a track of woods at the rear of a large park. “There are nature trails through the woods, jogging paths, a couple ponds, a creek,” Vince said for the benefit of Frank and Junior who weren’t familiar with the park. They’d never been so exposed before, but if they didn’t make a move now, they weren’t going to get another chance.
Vince drove right up the curb between the two houses. They all jumped out and started running toward the shadow of the trees. On their way, several zombies fell from hammers crushing down into their skulls. The dead were on the roads, sidewalks and front lawns but hadn’t spilled into the wooded area yet. Their hope was that the uneven terrain, labyrinth of trees and waterways would trip the zombies up and slow them down.
Max took the lead and after about two minutes, slowed to a sustainable jogging pace. He glanced back to make sure the guys were good and saw that they matched his pace and stayed close. A little further into the park they had a good lead on the dead, so he slowed down to a walk. If the zombies had followed them into the woods, they were probably still back near the start of the tree line. Regardless of all else and no matter how many dead were following them, the fact remained that zombies were slow and clumsy.
“Where to now?” Junior asked as he took a long pull on his water bottle.
“Well, we can use the park to move west, but we’re about out of trees to hide behind. There are some around the border and some tall shrubbery here and there, but this is about the end of the woods right here,” Max started. “If we go north, we’ll come up on a few restaurants, little shops and gas stations. No telling how many dead might be around there, but it might be a good place to find another vehicle.”
“I’d rather not stay on foot,” Frank said. “Not if we lose the cover of the woods and not with that many zombies out there.”
“We’re not that far from my place,” Vince said. “It’s only about a mile and a half northwest of here.” He told Max his address and the closest intersection.
“Seems like we should head to Vince’s place. If there are too many zombies when we leave the park, we’ll try for a car in that area I was talking about,” Max said.
They started at a brisk walk and quickly came to a creek that ran through the park. The dead weren’t coordinated enough to maneuver the rocky, slippery little stream, so the guys crossed it. As they arrived at the far corner of the park, they moved silently. The dead they had left behind still had to be pretty far back. They hadn’t seen or heard any of them. They weren’t sure what they would find as they left the outer reaches of the park for the street.
They carefully kept low to the ground and tried to see what was on the street ahead. They were
about a block from an intersection and to their surprise there wasn’t any kind of horde here. There were dozens of zombies shuffling down the road and through parking lots, but dozens seemed like nothing compared to what they had just faced.
“We’ve got to cross that bridge over the highway,” Vince said motioning ahead. The road briefly widened to six lanes to accommodate the on and off ramps before gradually cutting back down to two lanes. Max was frustrated because they were headed away from his house, but the hordes of zombies that they’d left behind gave them no choice.
They didn’t expect Vince’s house to be overly safe, but it was a known destination that they could plan for. Vince knew how to get in and out quickly and would be able to tell if it still sat empty well before they walked up to the door.
“Frank, do you still want to try to find a car here?” Max asked. “We can run a solid mile or two depending on how many dead we find, or we try to find a ride in one of these parking lots.” Max gestured to the gas stations and restaurants that sat a block ahead at the large intersection just before the bridge and the highway on and off ramps.
“I say we try looking for a car. If there are too many dead or we just don’t have any luck, then we start running. There’s a hell of a lot to avoid on that bridge up there,” Frank answered. The bridge held a number of vehicles and a lot of zombies, but not as many as they were used to seeing around highway exits.
“Those ramps are all inclines with huge looping curves,” Vince said. “We know the dead like to follow the path of least resistance, so it only makes sense that most of them aren’t exiting the highway there.”
Chronicles of the Undead | Book 1 | Urban Gridlock Page 23