by Mark Clodi
Sometime during that long black-out period he was aware of a car stopping. He tried to come back to consciousness, struggled with it, like a nightmare he couldn’t wake from. John vaguely remembered his body being moved, then everything went dark again.
He woke to the feeling that he was inside a plastic bag or some sort of bubble, he struggled feebly with his hands, striking out at the bag and trying to escape from it, the consciousness returned as he tried kicking the bag. John's own scream as the bones in his leg grated together shocked him fully awake. He immediately stopped moving, the pain eased and he could not see. His open eyes saw only darkness, not even the night sky. Reaching up with his hands he felt a plastic sheet that was lying loosely around him. It was a cheap blue tarp. Moving carefully, he pulled the thing away from his head.
The night air came as a cool relief compared to the condensation and heat from his breathing. It was dark out. He was laying in the grass. There was a barbed wire fence about three feet off to his left side that he could barely make out. He realized where he was as a car hurled by on the highway forty feet above him. He was at the bottom of the slope, just down from the shoulder of the road.
‘Why? Why would someone move me here?’ he answered himself with the thought that whoever put him here must have thought he was already dead. LPA 4C3. His family, he had to get to them. A rational part of his brain told him he was already too late. If anything had happened to them, it had happened hours ago. However, he had to go; he had to get to them. He checked his leg. He could not feel any bleeding, nothing wet. His bandages were still securely fastened; if anything they were tighter than before from the swelling.
Crawling the forty feet to the top of the shoulder, John couldn't see anyone. No more cars were coming. He spent the next few hours crawling along the side of the road. It was an hour before the first car passed him; one of the people in the car fired a gun at him. After that, whenever he heard a vehicle coming he would crawl four or five feet into the grass and lay quietly until it had passed.
Up ahead he saw the outline of another wreck. He could smell the oil and gas from the wreckage underneath the smoky burnt smell of rubber. In the near darkness he could see children's toys and a large doll that began a rubbish stream that ended at the car. When he had crawled twenty feet further on, his suspicion that the lump ahead of him was not a doll was confirmed. A baby, a toddler left lying on the side of the road.
John didn't want to approach it. He veered off a bit into the grass to be as far away from the corpse as possible. As he angled by he glanced at it just enough to ensure that it was a corpse and not a living being. Even with no training John would have helped the baby had he seen any indication it was alive. With sweat pouring off of his face he made his way up to the car, which was rolled onto its top; half on the shoulder and half in the grass. Dead. There were three others in the vehicle, a white male, a Hispanic female, and someone who was obviously their son, still strapped into his car seat in the back. The kid must have been four or five, and of the three he had suffered the least trauma. The car had not really burned, in the dim light John could see one of the tires was down to the rim and a large section of grass was burnt down to the fence, where some glowing embers indicated it was not fully out yet. The couple’s possessions were scattered about the wreckage, both inside and out of the vehicle.
Thinking pragmatically, John edged his way around the car and over to the woman's side, where the window had broken out. Crawling carefully on the broken glass John looked inside for something to drink and something he could use for a bandage. The glove box was closed. He opened it and several bottles of prescription pills tumbled out. He recognized some antibiotics as the same that he had taken for his strep throat last fall. The bottle was almost full. He also found a medicine he didn't recognize, that had instructions to take as needed for pain, no more than four pills every twenty four hours.
He discarded the other bottles and looked for something to drink. A half-finished Diet Mountain Dew bottle was lying on the ceiling of the vehicle. The bottle came away reluctantly as he picked it up, it had settled in a sticky pool of half coagulated blood. Looking around more, John found a diaper bag. He grabbed the large puffy thing and retreated from the car, heading down the road slightly until he came to clean grass, where he started retching.
When he was finished he opened the diaper bag. Sure enough it was well stocked with baby-wipes and diapers. Plus it held formula, bottled water, extra baby clothing and some children's toys. Taking the baby-wipes out John used them to clean off the bottle of Mountain Dew. Even though it was ‘Diet’ he felt he needed the stimulation of caffeine. At the same time, he cleaned up his hands, which were still flecked with dried blood from when he had fixed up his leg. Finally, everything was clean again. He twisted the cap off of the soda, took two of the antibiotics and one of the pain killers then lay back on the grass, waiting for them to take effect. In no time at all he was asleep.
The cool air woke John gently. His shivering pulled him towards consciousness with agonizing slowness. Then a peal of thunder broke the silence of the night. John shuddered and shook himself the rest of the way awake. It was still dark, and the wind had picked up. Lightning flashed over-head several times, illuminating his situation abruptly. The overturned car was twenty feet down the road from him and his leg oozed pain. He had intended to clean it up before he continued on to his family...
The first fat, cold drop of rain hit his head. There was no other cover available and John crawled quickly back towards the overturned car, dragging his diaper bag behind him. Fighting back the gore rising in his throat he shook his head and kept moving to the car. This was about survival; hypothermia could kill him just as quickly as blood loss.
He was not soaked through by the time he got to the rear door of the mini SUV, however if he didn't take cover quickly he was going to be. He propped himself up on his knees and tried the back door. It would not open. Reaching past the dead woman, pain shot through his leg, but he was able to get the rear door unlocked. As he turned to open the door he saw the little boy staring at him. Stifling a cry, John fell back into the rain, Zombie!
The boy didn't move, didn't reach for him, nothing. He is dead-dead. John thought. He reached out to open the door, it swung open easily. Half crawling inside he clicked the seatbelt of the kid’s safety seat and pulled the boy, car seat and all outside. John sat him upright outside the door.
There was a little debris on the ceiling of the car, not enough to cover the pool of blood. John knew he couldn't bring himself to sit in the puddle of blood, no matter how cold and wet he got. Scrounging around John gathered the family’s clothing and piled it into the car to absorb and cover the blood. He didn't bother to use the clothing to wipe the blood up; he just kept piling more in until he couldn't see blood anywhere. Finally he was able to pull himself and the diaper bag into the car and out of the rain and wind.
John was being watched. The feeling wouldn’t go away; someone was out there, sending chills up his spine. Looking outside through the rain he saw the boy staring at him through the closed window. The rain splattered the boy’s face, running down like tears. Opening the door John stretched out with his good leg, he was barely able to touch the base of the car seat with his toes. Slowly he nudged it around until the child was no longer facing towards him. The door closed and the car seat now only looked like the shadow of a tombstone in the dim light.
John pulled open the diaper bag and pulled out the wipes and some diapers. Then he pulled all of the napkins and other bandages off of his leg. The wound was still bad, but only a trickle of blood was seeping out of it now. John cleaned it off with the wipes. Inside the bag he found some zinc oxide and some prescription baby ointment for rashes. Thinking it couldn't hurt, he smeared this concoction onto his leg wound, then bound two diapers around his leg. The diapers had small, sticky tabs that seemed to hold them onto his leg well. John didn't trust them to last with a lot of movement, so he secured the diapers
with the cords of blue jeans again. Finally, his task done, John looked around for something to eat.
A cooler had overturned in the car. The lid had come off and the contents were scattered about the car. Light was a problem, it was hard to see in the dark space, and it was not like bandaging his leg, where he could mostly take care of it by feel. His luck changed for the better when he found a flashlight, a small LED wind up light, with which he was able to ferret out the various pieces of food that were scattered about. He left the sandwiches alone, but grabbed all of the pre-packaged food he could find, including five bottles of soda. He cracked one of these immediately and used it to pop back another pain pill and two more of the antibiotics. He also checked his leg again now that he had a light. His leg was red and swollen, but he didn't see any streaks of red going up or down from the wound, which he hoped meant he didn't have an infection...yet.
Waiting out the rain was difficult for John. He wanted to get moving, even though his thoughts were telling him that his family had probably moved on already. Finally by four in the morning the rain trickled to a stop. John had transferred everything useful from the diaper bag to the backpack he had found; this included a small bit of food, the remaining soda bottles, the diapers and the rash medicine. He kept the anti-biotics and pain killers in his pants pockets. During the hour of rainfall John had also found a roll of duct tape and using that he had wrapped his leg more firmly, taping the wound soundly until it resembled a large bulge, he didn't know if it would behave as a splint, yet.
Scrambling out of the car John rose unsteadily to his feet, trying not to look at the dead baby, sitting on the wet pavement in front of him. He put weight on his wounded leg and the pain came back. It was broken, it had to be.
John popped another pain pill and looked around for something to help splint his leg. His eyes fell on several items; the cooler lid, the baby's car seat. Then he saw a long piece hard plastic that had broken off of the body of the car. That would have to do.
He pulled the piece of wreckage over to him. It was about three inches wide and about three feet long. With some effort he was able to break it in two. He had two slightly uneven pieces to bind on either side of his leg. John was not frugal with the duct tape. He used about half the roll on his splint until he could not see any part of his leg underneath. He had rested the bottoms of the splint along the top side of his shoe and had placed extra padding around his ankle so it would not rub against it too much. His next attempted step was still painful, but due to either the pain medicine or the splinting job, it was bearable. He set out at a pace much faster than crawling would have been, but still slower than walking.
Making better time John marched towards the amber promise of the sunrise. After two hours he had to take another pain pill, but was sure he was almost to his car. Another two hours after that he knew he had passed wherever the car had been. There was no sign of his car anywhere, no wrecks, and thankfully, no bodies.
Only one vehicle had passed him in the early morning, a sedan driving like a bat out of hell heading east. Around nine in the morning John saw a wreck off in the distance; it was the sedan that had passed him earlier. It had barreled into another vehicle that was pulled across the road. John looked and saw that both lanes had vehicles across them, as did the other side of the highway. As he continued to approach the barricade John could see people moving beyond it. Finally a bull horn called out to him, “Raise your hands above your head and approach the barricade slowly!”
Relief flooded through John as he saw a mix of police, military personal and civilians manning the barricade. They did not look very friendly, but they did look like authorities and not like a band of thugs who would shoot him out of hand. He heard several murmurs of 'Zombie', but no one fired at him.
“Stop!”
John stopped moving forward.
“What happened to your leg?”
“A guy in a black SUV, license plate LPA 4C3 shot me, stole my gas can and left me for dead. One of them was named Tom. And..and they had a couple of women in handcuffs with them.” John called back.
“Liar!” called out a different voice. “He's lying!”
“Put a cork in it Tom. Someone put a bead on him and go get his friends up too. Get their girlfriends away from them, see if there is any truth to this. You!” this was directed back at John, “Pull that bandage off so we can see your wound. Come a little closer, about five feet.”
John moved until he was about five feet away from the speaker, who got up on the automobile hood to watch.
“It’s duct-taped real good. It might take me awhile to undo it. I think my leg is broken too.”
The man on the hood raised his shotgun and pointed it at John's head, “It'll be the second to last gunshot wound you ever have unless you show it to me.”
John was halfway through getting his leg unwrapped with another man scrambled over the hood. The first man said, “Doc! Doctor Newman, please!”
The new man waved him off saying, “If it’s a bite let’s see it. Right now he is not acting irrationally. He is speaking to us for God's sake, and the zombies can't talk! I'm going to help him and you are going to cover me. Now mister, you lay back there and let me do this, okay?”
John did as directed and Dr. Newman asked, “What's your name?”
“John Trevor Clark.”
“Hm, that so huh? Well Mr. Clark, you will be happy to know we sent your wife and kids on towards Lincoln this morning. They were fine. A passerby stopped and gave them enough fuel to get to the next exit and we intercepted them here. They were not infected or wounded, but on account of the kids we made them drive on to the safe zone we are setting up further east at North Platte.”
The doctor finished unraveling John's leg, then looked up, “Gunshot wound, probably a thirty eight. Looks to me like the leg is broken. Harlin tell the boys to get a stretcher and to bring the ambulance around.” He looked back at John. “We'll get you up to the clinic. You're lucky, you made it, and your family is safe.”
The sheriff ordered one of the cars pulled back out of the barricade and several men came out with a stretcher and loaded John onto it. John gave the medicine he had to Dr. Newman, who looked at it and then told him it had probably kept him moving. As they brought John along to the ambulance Harlin, the sheriff, stopped them.
“He got time to identify these people, to give us his story?”
“No. He is exhausted, his leg is broken and he walked on it for what? Fifteen miles? Plus he has blood loss and it looks like the start of an infection. So no he doesn't have time. Do this later.”
“We do it later we might not get around to it at all. He's awake. He doesn't seem to be delusional. Let’s get it over with. The women were handcuffed to the bumper of the car when we went to fetch Dumb and Dumber here, so that part of John Trevor Clark's story holds up pretty well, plus there were four gas cans in the back of his SUV and the plates match. You said it looked like the wound was caused by a thirty-eight, well, lo and behold look what caliber pistol Dumb here had on him, a thirty-eight! I just want John to look them over, then look me in the eye and tell me he wasn't lying about them. You can do that John, right?”
“Damn straight I can.” John said with less force than he intended. He was getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
A mixed group of civilians and military men held the three men who had robbed John at gun point. Two of them were only wearing boxers and one of those men, the one who had shot John, had a bloody nose and a rapidly blackening eye.
“Were these the men who robbed you, shot you and left you for dead?”
Looking Harlin in the eye John said, “Yeah, that's them. I don't want you to do nothing...”
“Thank you Mr. Clark. We will handle this from here. Take him away, Doc.”
The men shoved John into the back of the ambulance and shut the door. The Doctor got in beside him and gave him a worried look. “You'll be fine. Don't worry about it, you will be okay.”
The driver started the vehicle while the doctor put an IV, none too gently, in John's arm, “Sorry, I’m out of practice. Most of the time the nurses start these things. You'll be feeling fine in about…ten seconds.” The doctor started the pain medicine dripping into John's veins.
As the ambulance started to pull away John heard a volley of shots ring out. The Dr. Newman looked him over, gave him a wry smile and said, “We won’t have to worry about that lot anymore. Welcome to the new world order, Mr. Clark.”
Cruising
Chapter 1
Tom didn't get off of the cruise ship when it docked in the Bahamas three days ago. He had been feeling a little sea sick and decided not to fight the crowd as they disembarked, even though he had kind of wanted to make landfall. That was two days ago and they were now at sea again and Tom was even happier that he had stayed on board. Apparently some sort of bug was going around on the island and several of the passengers had brought it back with them.
They had confined themselves to their rooms voluntarily, but Tom was starting to avoid the places most people hung out on the ship. The liner was so large that finding quiet spots was possible, whether it was out on the basketball court or in the kid’s arcade. He also ate at 'off' times, there was food available twenty four hours a day, so he just moved his eating times back a few hours and he hadn't gotten sick yet. This was part of the reason he was up near the 'aft' of the ship at midnight when things went all to hell.
The only food being served now was the ice cream soft serve machines and the pizza shack. Tom was waiting, plate in hand for the next pizza to be put out, there was no one else in line with him and he would have first shot at an uncontaminated pizza. He was not picky, pepperoni, supreme, cheese, whatever came he was snagging three pieces and retreating to a table up on the nude sunbathing deck, which was guaranteed to be empty in the middle of the night.