by Jeff Strand
“At least they’re not maggoty.”
“Shut up. I mean it.”
“Samantha, Goblin is hanging up on the other side. Try to tear off his feet.”
“Say what?”
“They’re wheels! Do it!”
Samantha nodded and left, scooting along on her knees.
“This is wrong on so many levels,” said Roger, as we released the body. It fell to the floor, landing on its belly. Pushing as hard as we could, we managed to shove it to the ramp.
“Here they are.” Samantha handed me Goblin’s foot-wheels. I slammed one of the bloody spikes between the heavyset corpse’s shoulder blades and another into its lower back.
“We need more,” I said, pointing to one of the fallen corpses. “That one has wheels, too.”
Roger hurried over to it and tried to pry off the feet. “They won’t come off! There’s a metal band around them!” He glanced around and lifted the arm of another corpse. Its hand was a hacksaw. “You probably don’t want to see this.”
Moments later he returned. I pulled the meat off the wheels and tossed it aside, and then slammed the next two spikes into the corpse’s back.
Another explosion, this one spraying us extremely well.
The semi swerved violently and dangling burning corpse legs just narrowly missed my head.
“Let’s turn him over!” Roger, Samantha, and I all turned the corpse onto its back, and then maneuvered it over to the top of the ramp, head-first. It didn’t roll easily.
“No way in hell is this going to work,” said Roger.
“It’ll be fine,” I insisted. “We’ll just all hold on tight and go for a ride. You take the front, Roger.”
Roger climbed onto the corpse and sat on its chest.
“Oh, God… oh, God…” he said. “I can think of so many things I’d rather be doing right now.”
The semi swerved again, and Samantha and I momentarily lost our hold on the corpse.
It was long enough. The corpse rolled down the ramp as Roger frantically turned himself around and tried to reach for my arm.
“Shiiiiiit!” he cried, as the corpse rolled off the ramp and onto the freeway. Two of the wheels immediately went flying in opposite directions. Roger pressed himself down against the body as it slid across the pavement, its head bouncing up and down and its arms flapping.
The other two wheels popped out from underneath the corpse, but it continued to slide. Roger remained on top.
As the corpse slowed and we sped away, I saw that Roger was going to be fine.
Samantha and I were still screwed, though.
“Y’know, call me optimistic, but I think Corpse Surfing is going to be the next big fad to sweep the nation,” I said.
Samantha gaped at me.
“It worked, though, didn’t it?” I asked. “Let’s just find another cyborg and some more wheels and get the hell out of here, too!”
The semi turned slightly as we took an exit. This could either be really good or really bad, depending on whether or not Mr. Burke decided to slow down to a reasonable speed or to just plow through everything doing seventy.
Since I didn’t detect any reduction in speed, it appeared the latter was going to be the case.
“If we die,” said Samantha, “I want you to know I’ve always felt you were a really great person. Roger is lucky to have you as a friend.”
“I’ve always felt the same way about you, too,” I said, somewhat annoyed that my potential final words on this earth had to be a little white lie.
We took down another corpse. This one wasn’t as big as the first and was unlikely to provide as much padding, but we had to make do with what we had. With the thick smoke and dangerous flames, we also wouldn’t be finding any more wheels.
There was a huge jolt as the semi smashed through something. A moment later I saw it had been a thick wooden fence.
The pavement turned to grass.
The semi began to slow down.
We were saved! Even without a handy corpse for protection, we certainly could handle a jump onto grass. What were a few more bumps, bruises, and open wounds at this point?
I saw Mr. Burke rolling on the grass, obviously having leapt out of the vehicle. That probably wasn’t good.
Another huge jolt.
Suddenly our view of the grass became a view of the clear blue sky as the semi tilted at a forty-five degree angle.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SAMANTHA AND I SLID to the front of the semi, past the burning bodies , and smacked into the wall. The ramp dropped back into its chute with a loud crash.
The tilt of the semi increased. We hurriedly pressed ourselves into the corner as the burning bodies that had fallen slid down the floor toward us. I held on to the leg of the corpse strapped to the wall next to me and kicked the bodies away from us.
“It’s okay, no problem,” I said. “We’re just hanging over a cliff or something.”
The dangling corpses above us swung violently back and forth, and burning debris fluttered down on us. It hurt to look up through the smoke and I launched into a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
As Samantha tried to crawl up the slope, the tilt increased again, creating an almost vertical climb, and she tumbled back against the wall.
“It’s okay, really,” I insisted, when I could speak again. “They’ve got to have helicopters around, or maybe Roger flagged somebody down who has a rope, or maybe-”
“Andrew, stop trying to make the best of this!”
One of the hanging corpses came loose. It dropped and hit the wall with a thud that caused the semi to shift a few inches.
“We can still get out of this! We can… we can… we can climb the bodies!”
“What?”
“We can climb up the bodies that are strapped to the wall!”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! I’ll be right behind you.” I grabbed her hand and placed it on the waist of the closest cyborg.
Another body fell. This one felt like it knocked the semi back a couple of feet. A couple of rounds of what sounded like automatic weapon fire went off as it hit, but I didn’t feel any new holes in my body.
Samantha pulled herself up onto the corpse and I stayed behind her, trying to hold her steady. She screamed as she used her mangled foot to push herself up. I was worried the noise might have an avalanche effect and send the semi over whatever precipice it was hanging over, but I figured she couldn’t help it.
She climbed up onto the second body in the cyborg ladder. I followed.
Two bodies fell at once. The impact jolted the semi enough that I let out a scream of my own, but we both held on to the corpses and continued climbing.
“You know, people pay good money to go mountain climbing on vacation,” I said, hoping my sparkling wit would distract her from her agony and terror. “This is a lot better. This is going to be the new ride at Universal Studios.” Samantha didn’t tell me to shut up, so I figured that was a good sign.
Then she grabbed a cyborg part that wasn’t meant to have somebody climbing on it. It came loose and she lost her grip. She fell down to my corpse, grabbed it, failed to hang on, and crashed to the bottom.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Let’s just try it again.”
She didn’t respond, and I could barely see her through the smoke.
What if she’d broken her neck?
I climbed down and knelt down next to her. “C’mon, Samantha, you can do this.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t. He tortured me… I mean, he really… his knife… I just can’t do it. I’ve got nothing left. Get out of here. Please.”
“Not without you.”
“You can’t carry me! Please, we don’t both need to die.”
“Look, I don’t have time to get into the details, but one of the few possibilities for me getting a happy ending out of this is for me to bring you safely back to the love of your life. So we’re getting out of this together. Don’t argue.”
“How are we going to do it if I can’t climb?”
I considered that.
“I don’t know. I’m still sort of hoping we’ll be rescued.”
The semi shifted and moved back at least two more feet.
“Maybe it’s a really tiny cliff,” I said. “We may be stressing out over nothing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Burke jumped out so he could drive the semi over a really tiny cliff.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic.”
“Sorry.”
“If we can’t climb, we’ll just have to…”
I left that sentence unfinished for a long moment.
Fly out? Teleport out? Wake up from a bad dream?
Shoot our way out?
Which of the corpses was it that nearly shot my foot off when it fell? I searched through the burning bodies as well as I could, yelping in pain about eight times, and found an arm with a machine gun on the end. Sweet.
I also found an axe with which to lop it off.
I did so quickly. Then I picked up the machine gun, let out my ninth yelp, and dropped it. The damn thing was hot.
“Sorry about this,” I told Samantha as I took off my shoes and jeans. The next time Kyle questioned that whole “Make sure you have on clean underwear” parental command, I’d have an anecdote to share with him.
Using my jeans to keep my hands from getting burnt off, I picked up the machine gun, pointed it at the wall of the semi, and pulled the trigger.
The semi was filled with a deafening ratatatatatatat of machine gun fire and clangs as the bullets struck metal. Streaks of light burst through the holes.
I hate to admit it, but standing there wearing only my underwear, firing a machine gun, made me feel incredibly macho.
The bullets continued to chew away at the semi wall.
The semi slid backward.
I kept firing, hoping nobody was on the other side (unless it was Mr. Burke).
The machine gun ran out of bullets and I tossed it aside. We now had a really scary-looking opening with jagged edges that didn’t look large enough to climb out without slicing ourselves to ribbons, but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
The semi was still sliding. I looked through the hole and saw that we were indeed dangling over a cliff, that it was an extremely long drop to the ground, but that we’d smashed through a metal fence that was now twisted and within our reach. “You first,” I told Samantha.
She wasted no time. She crawled over to the hole and I helped her through, removing a long strip of her left leg in the process. She grabbed hold of the fence and scooted toward solid ground.
The semi slid again, taking the fence out of my reach.
I frantically began to climb the corpses.
“Andrew!” I heard Samantha scream on the other side.
I didn’t respond because that would have used up valuable climbing energy. I tried to think happy thoughts. Happy climby thoughts.
I climbed up the third, fourth, and fifth bodies. Only about a dozen left. No problem.
As I got halfway there, the semi picked up speed. So did I.
Helen, Theresa, Kyle, Roger, and Samantha were all alive, and damn it, I was going to join them. I climbed as fast as I could, eyes feeling like they were sizzling from the smoke, lungs burning, but not stopping.
I reached the second-to-last corpse.
Don’t lose your grip. Don’t lose your grip. Don’t grab anything detachable. Don’t grab anything detachable.
I reached for the top corpse, accidentally stuck my hand in its open, screaming mouth, but pulled myself up anyway.
And then I was at the top.
And then the semi fell over the edge of the cliff.
And then I jumped.
The semi smashed into the riverbank about a hundred feet below. I hung from the cliff face, holding nothing that felt remotely firm enough to sustain me. My fingers dug into the grass but I could tell I was seconds away from a nice long fall onto a semi filled with burning cyborg corpses.
Samantha thrust her hand at me. I grabbed it.
As she pulled, I tried to use my feet against the dirt cliff face to give myself some leverage. It wasn’t really working. But since I hadn’t died in all of the other times I’d vowed I wouldn’t die, I sure wasn’t going to die here.
With Samantha’s help, I pulled myself most of the way onto solid ground.
In the distance I saw Mr. Burke limping toward us.
I was pretty sure he was holding a gun.
“Samantha! Watch out!”
A shot rang out.
I tasted several drops of Samantha’s blood in my open mouth.
And then I fell.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Helen’s Side
I OPENED MY EYES to red and blue flashing lights.
“Whe re are my children?” I demanded, sitting up in a panic. I was on a stretcher.
“It’s okay, they’re both in the ambulance,” the paramedic assured me.
“My daughter was stabbed! You have to help her!”
“It’s under control. You’ve been in an accident, but the other driver wasn’t hurt, so just relax.”
“I can’t relax! My husband, have you seen him?”
“Ma’am, there wasn’t anybody else in the vehicle.”
“I know! He was in a semi.”
The paramedic’s eyes widened. “Okay, we’ve got police cars investigating that right now. But there’s nothing you can do, so just relax.” He gave me an injection. “Just relax.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SO HERE’S WHAT happened.
I didn’t plummet down onto the semi, shatt ering my bones into a million pieces and burning my flesh in the flames within. Instead I slid down the cliff face, scraping the hell out of my arms and chest, and managed to get myself steadied about halfway down.
It was way too steep to climb back up without the aid of a corpse ladder, so I was forced to stay there, helpless, until I heard vehicles approach overhead.
When the cops pulled me to safety, they were loading Samantha into an ambulance. I hurried over there as best I could, trying to see if she was dead.
She’d been hit in the shoulder.
Mr. Burke was nowhere to be seen.
I let them load me into the ambulance.
As we sped down the freeway, the paramedic gave me the news. Helen, Theresa, and Kyle were all being rushed to the nearest hospital. They were all alive.
Roger was also in an ambulance on his way to the same hospital.
“Will she be okay?” I asked, looking over at Samantha.
The paramedic nodded. “She’ll live. But what on earth happened to you people?”
I didn’t answer.
***
ROGER GOT RELEASED first, and his job was to bring us huge amounts of fast food instead of the crap they had available at the hospital.
Samantha regained consciousness in the middle of the second night. I got the news while I was sitting in Theresa’s room, staring at my daughter, hating myself.
Kyle sat in the room with me, his arm bandaged up. “She’s going to wake up,” he said, knowingly.
“Yes, she will.”
He scooted his chair closer to mine. “I know you didn’t mean to do it. I know they gave you drugs.”
“You’re right,” I said. “They did.”
“I’m never, ever, ever going to use drugs.”
I managed a smile. “Good for you, kiddo.”
He looked at me, his expression solemn. “Daddy, if you want to cry, it’s okay. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
I held him tight and did just that.
Theresa regained consciousness three days later and couldn’t remember anything that happened.
***
MR. BURKE GOT AWAY. He must have hitchhiked or stolen a car at gunpoint, but as I write this the police still haven’t caught him. Personally, I hope right now he’s making cyborgs in hell.
***
WITCH WAS FOUND sitting on the side of the road, muttering incoherently to herself. The last I heard, she still hadn’t spoken to anybody at the psychiatric ward.
***
MOST OF THE corpses were identified by their dental records, at least those who still had teeth. They’d been missing over a period of three years.
Roger had ridden to safety on a man named Herschel Eberhardt, whose family issued a statement saying how proud they were that Herschel had saved a life six months after his death.
***
SAMANTHA WOULDN’T TELL us exactly what Troll did to her behind the closed door in the lab, but of course the doctors told us about her injuries. You don’t want to know. Trust me.
***
THE DOCTORS ADMITTED there wasn’t much they could do to reattach a finger that had been flushed down the toilet. I kept trying to encourage a cool nickname like “Nine-Finger Mayhem,” but nobody embraced that idea.
***
JOE WAS PERFECTLY fine.
***
A FEW DAYS LATER, Samantha and Theresa were transferred to Chamber Memorial Hospital. Two weeks after the whole ordeal began, we had a huge “Welcome Home!” party for Theresa, which included balloons, cake, pug tricks, and fun for the entire family.
Helen stroked my arm tenderly as we sat on the couch, watching Theresa and Kyle fight over who loved Joe the most. I’d apologized to her approximately 1,837,612 times for what I’d done, and after a couple of days she seemed convinced I wouldn’t have a relapse.
That night, we lay in bed, sweaty from our lovemaking. It was the first time we’d had sex since before the vacation, and though we were forced to be extremely careful because of our injuries, it had been a wonderfully pleasant experience, even with that stupid pug scraping on the door the entire time.
“I love you so much,” she whispered. “I don’t want to ever lose you.”
“You won’t.” I kissed her gently on the lips. “I promise.”
Theresa screamed.
I threw on a bathrobe and we rushed into her bedroom. Theresa was sitting up in bed, sobbing.
“What’s the matter, sweetie? What’s wrong?” asked Helen.
“Daddy! Daddy’s trying to kill me!”