by Oliver, Nick
He took another draw from his cigar. He nodded as the smoke billowed from his mouth and then tossed me the keys. “Take the truck. It’s got a full tank and 2 cans of gas in the back. Be careful, and watch your back.” He held his right hand out in front of me.
I dropped my bat and shook his hand, and pulled in for a hug. He didn’t say he was proud of me, he didn’t have to. I knew he was, and he knew I knew he was. He didn’t say he’d see me again, or see you later. Deep down we both knew that what was happening in the world wasn’t going to be over in a few months or even years. The world as we knew it was gone, replaced by destruction and chaos. And whether we liked it or not, we’d most likely never see each other again.
I hopped in the truck and placed my shotgun and bat within reaching distance, then turned the key to start the truck. I looked over at my dad one last time. He yelled out to me, “Good luck!” and clicked the button to open the garage door.
As the door raised slowly I could see the legs of about six Infected who were outside the garage door.
I hit the gas once the door was high enough and hit two of the Infected who were standing outside the door. Just as I passed the threshold of the garage door my dad hit the button again and fired a few shots into the remaining Infected who had the misfortune of being too close. I watched in the rearview mirror as the house went out of view, just as the garage door closed again. The last thing I saw of my dad was the orange glow of his cigar.
Chapter Five: Escape
6:00 AM, June 28
The highways were jam packed. I could see the glow of headlights and small fires illuminating the raised roadway. I was driving along a side street to avoid the traffic, but it wasn’t any less of a pain in the ass. There were dozens of fender benders, people outside their cars fighting off Infected with tire irons, crowbars, or anything else they could get their hands on. Every once in a while I saw a quick flash and a loud bang. Gunshots echoed from all over, but some were uncomfortably close. About a quarter mile up the road a car flew out of a housing development, going an easy forty miles an hour. He plowed through a mob of Infected, a fence, and finally into a support beam for the raised highway, exploding in a brilliant fireball.
By the time I was passing the burning wreck a few of the Infected that he missed had reached the door and were reaching through the burning wreckage for the now, almost certainly dead, driver. Two of the infected were wearing military uniforms, body armor and all. Hell, one of them still had his Rifle dangling behind it from a strap across his torso. So much for the military containing this. I couldn’t glance down a street without seeing the carnage that must now be sweeping the streets all around the world.
I had to slow down to barely more than idling so I could maneuver through some tightly packed disabled vehicles. It was taking much longer to get out of the Cleveland area than I thought it would. I knew the Highways would be useless, but didn't expect this much chaos in the side streets. There were most likely other routes I could have taken, but this was the only one I knew. I didn't have my phone's GPS to guide me, and I didn't have the luxury of pulling over to peruse a map to find them.
Suddenly, I felt a jerk on the rear of the truck. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a person grabbing one of my gas cans. I slammed on my breaks, causing him to lose his footing. While he was struggling to regain his balance, I floored the gas pedal. He dropped the gas can, tripped over the tailgate, and fell off the back of the truck. I turned back to face the road in front of me, and saw too late that I was going straight into another car. The truck slammed into the car, jerking me forward, and causing me to head butt the steering wheel.
I didn’t quite black out, but I was barely conscious, seeing blurs and two or three of everything dancing around my vision like a cartoon.
The world seemed to be moving in slow motion as I saw the driver’s side door open and something grabbed me and throw me out of the car. I tried to fight him off, at first thinking it might be one of the Infected, but I was too disoriented. I hit the asphalt pretty hard, oddly bringing me back to my senses a bit.
I don’t know how long I was on the ground, but I somehow I managed to pull myself together and get up. The man who attacked me was trying to start the truck, to no avail. The engine was puttering, but wouldn’t fire up. I grabbed him by his collar and punched him in the face as hard as I could.
Pain shot from my knuckles as they collided with his jaw. He let out a yelp of pain, and grabbed his now bloody nose. Before he could retaliate I threw him back out of the car. His body hit the asphalt with a dull thud. I leaned down and punched him repeatedly in the face. Hearing the satisfying crack of his nose breaking wasn't enough. In what I could only describe as a blind rage I continued to pummel his face until his blood was flowing from my fist.
His face was a mess of red, what used to be his nose was now broken bone and cartilage with torn flesh trying to hold it all together. He tried to fight back in spite of it all, but eventually he stopped fighting back and began trying to get away.
I climbed back into the truck and tried to start it myself. After a few tries I gave up, the crash must have totaled it. I'd driven this truck dozens of times, and the noises coming from the engine block were too rough, sounding more like a grinder chipping away at metal then a smooth spin of the cylinders. I strapped on my backpack, slid my baseball bat into it, and grabbed my shotgun. I only had about thirty shells. Hopefully I could score some out of a cop car or something if I started to run low. I had a feeling thirty wouldn’t be enough to last me all the way home.
The hijacker was still writhing on the ground, blood was still gushing out of his nose. I stared at him for a second. He wasn’t infected, and he didn’t have any bites as far as I could tell, but I had an overwhelming rage to kill him for what he’d just done. If he hadn’t tried to steal my truck, I would still be driving. I even had the sights aimed at his head for a few seconds. It would be easy, just place my finger on the trigger and pull. A raspy moan reverberated from behind me. I glanced back and saw several Infected from the crash a couple hundred feet behind us were now heading this way, after a fresher meal.
I didn’t kill him, I suppose I could have rationalized it as a mercy killing, or hell, even as an act of revenge. It wasn’t like I could get arrested for it. The cops were too busy trying to kill Infected. They wouldn’t notice one extra corpse.
I didn’t turn around to see if he got up to avoid the approaching Infected. He was practically unconscious from the beating I gave him, so he probably wouldn’t even notice he was being eaten until it was too late.
I continued on foot. The cars on the roads were so dense now that I would have had to abandon the truck to keep going anyhow. Most of the cars I saw were abandoned, though every once in a while one would still have an Infected inside, still buckled into seats, reaching out broken windows, trying to grab me, pull me in and take a chunk of flesh. I avoided those cars as best I could, climbing over them, or just giving them a wide berth.
There was a roadblock ahead, an odd assortment of police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and military vehicles. It looked like what a war zone must look like. There were construction workers using forklift trucks to stack up concrete highway dividers into a makeshift wall.
The police officers, soldiers, and even what looked like regular people with firearms were guarding the unfinished gaps in the wall. Paramedics were treating dozens of injured people, not even bothering to shuttle them to the already overcrowded, and in all likelihood overrun, hospitals. The sounds of the sirens were practically drowned out by gunfire, automatic rifles, shotguns and pistols were unloading on anything that looked remotely dead.
I knew staying on this street would be suicide. All these sirens and gunfire would probably just attract more Infected here, and with all the bullets flying I’d probably get shot.
There was an abandoned police car on the side of the road. Well, not necessarily abandoned, the cop was still in the driver’s seat, and he just had a
trickle of blood running down from his temple. There was a circular wound on his hand, the teeth marks were plainly visible. I pulled the pistol from his hand. I’d only fired a handgun a few times at a gun range, but I knew enough for it to be worth it. I also grabbed the clips he had on his belt, but didn’t have enough time to look in his car for more. Some officers at the blockade were staring at me. I took what I already grabbed and made my way out of there before they tried to do something about it.
I continued down a side street hoping to find a route a little less crowded. The scene was the same practically everywhere I went. It took me about an hour to find a street that was a little less high profile.
There was only one soldier there, which seemed a little odd to me considering the number at some of the other road blocks, though the concrete barriers were already up and in place blocking anything from getting passed. He was wearing full body armor and a gas mask, pacing back and forth along the wall.
I was holding my shotgun in my hands, safety off. It probably wasn’t the best idea to approach him like that. The moment he saw me, he aimed his M4 directly at me.
“Stop right there!” he ordered. His voice was muffled by the mask, giving him a Darth Vader like tone.
I froze. Luckily my shotgun wasn’t aimed at him, because otherwise he might have just shot me on sight.
“Go back to the city, the border is closed.” He looked almost like a statue. His entire body was covered head to foot with protective clothing, and the only shred of humanity left was his silhouette.
“My Girlfriend is south, so that’s where I’m going.” I may have bent the truth a bit, but saying, the girl I’ve had a crush on for as long as I can remember, but never acted upon, was a bit of a mouthful, and not quite as impacting as an established relationship.
“It’s not safe beyond these walls. The local shelter was completely overrun, and the Infected are all over the place.” He didn’t move at all, the only reason I knew he was still alive was the fact that he was talking to me.
“If you haven’t noticed, there are Infected all over the place inside the walls too,” I gestured to the smoke plumes rising slowly from the city. “It’s not like I’m trying to break in! I just want to leave.”
“My orders are clear.” He wasn’t relenting. “Nobody enters, nobody leaves.”
I thought for a second. His rifle was still aimed at me, so killing him wasn’t an option. The fact that thought even crossed my mind freaked me out, but he had a gun aimed at me, it would be self defense right? Even though he looked like a military robot, I tried to touch on his humanity. “Where are you from?”
He was taken by surprise, shifting a bit in his stance, the first movement I’d seen him make since he aimed the gun at me. “Macon, Georgia. Why?”
I sighed in relief, If he had been from around here this probably wouldn’t have worked. “Do you have a girl there?” I prayed he would at least be able to relate to me in some way.
His rifle lowered slightly, and with a nod he admitted, “Yeah.”
“Would I be able to stop you from going to make sure she was okay?” I challenged.
He pointed his rifle to the ground. “No.” He looked left and right, as though he were making sure nobody else was around. “Hurry, before I change my mind.”
I didn’t waste any time. I jogged up to the wall, and started climbing up. There were probably about thirty or forty bodies on the other side, all motionless, all having barely intact heads. When I reached the top, just before I descended down the other side, I looked him in the eyes, or at least, where his eyes would be if he didn’t have the mask on. “Thanks.”
He just nodded slightly, “Don’t mention it.”
4:00 PM, June 28
The streets outside the government quarantine weren’t any different from those inside. Though instead of seeing frantic military and city vehicles buzzing around, there was an eerie silence. Almost everyone had locked themselves in their houses, too afraid to go outside.
I say almost, because there were a few hunting parties going around. They were made up of five or six civilians with hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols bought for self defense. They drove around in pickup trucks, shooting any Infected they saw, hooting and hollering for each kill.
I would duck and hide whenever I heard one approaching. Sure, if they’d seen I wasn’t Infected they might let me go, but I didn’t want to risk getting shot by accident, or just shot by some psychopath who had no qualms with murder, especially now that society’s laws weren’t there to punish them for it. Besides, I'd already seen at least one of these hunters chugging from a whiskey bottle before he took a shot. Hardly the best state to be in when in this type situation. Though, I had to admit a part of me wanted to take a swig of that bottle as well.
The further I got from Cleveland, and from the suburbs surrounding it, the fewer Uninfected people I saw. It was slightly ironic. Hunting had always been considered a rural sport, done almost entirely in the wilderness. Now the hunting was being done in suburbia, right in front of people’s houses.
I’d been walking for hours. The sky was getting dark. But it wasn’t getting dark because it was the end of the day, storm clouds were covering the sky. I looked back at Cleveland, now several miles behind me. It had a creepy orange glow from the fires that were still raging. Headlights from cars, both abandoned and still driving around inside the “safe zone,” also added to the glow, but most, if not all of the house and street lights were out. I entered a small suburban development.
I had my shotgun’s stock pressed against my shoulder, ready to absorb the recoil from firing it. I walked a little slower now. The sun had dipped down over the horizon leaving almost no natural light for me to see with.
There were shadows dancing all over the place. Mailboxes and street signs seemed to move out of the corner of my eye. I almost shot a few of them, but managed to compose myself before pulling the trigger. Debris was all over the place, in the streets, in yards. A lot of windows were broken. A lot of doors left open. There was even one house with an SUV sticking out of the front of it and a few bodies littering the yard.
I stayed mostly to the middle of the street so I would notice anyone or anything trying to sneak up on me. Oddly though, it was the first time all day that I didn’t see at least one Infected stumbling around. I could hear distant moans still, as well as the occasional gunshot, but they were far enough away that I wasn’t too terribly worried.
I felt a few wet drips on my head and shoulders before a sudden rain began pouring all around me. I started running toward the closest house. The front door was locked, but I stayed under the roof overhang for a minute or two thinking about what to do. I looked down and saw there was a doormat.
“Could it really be that easy?” I thought out loud. I lifted it up, and sure enough there was a key sitting under the mat. I couldn’t help but smirk as I unlocked the door and let myself in.
The house was dark, so I pulled out my flashlight. It had a piece of red cellophane taped over the end so it wouldn’t impair my night vision. I didn’t remember where I heard about that, but it must have been from a movie. It made everything a bright hellish red.
It was an average house, probably occupied by an average family.
Suddenly there was a loud thud from down the hall.
I froze.
I held the flashlight and the pump of my shotgun in one hand, and the trigger in the other. I followed the hallway to a bedroom. The door shook with another pound. Not really thinking about it, I pounded back.
An almost inhuman gurgling groan echoed through my ears. I took a step back as the pounding on the door became more frequent. I leaned my shotgun against the wall, and pulled out my baseball bat. The door seemed to pulse as I took a few deep breaths, got into a stable stance and kicked it open. The door knocked him back, but he was still standing. He had on a blood stained shirt that said 'I kicked anorexia's ass,' which was a few sizes too small, a large belly hanging out from u
nder it. The guy must have weighed an easy 400. His lack of pants was immediately evident, though his swollen belly covered where any genitals would be, thank god.
“Son of a bitch,” I exclaimed, awestruck. The bat struck him in the shoulder, but it practically bounced off the thick layer of fat. He charged at me, but I dove to my left to avoid the hulking mess. He slammed against the wall face first, but it didn’t faze him at all, he just turned and continued to charge me at a brisk pace, not quite running or jogging, but fast enough to keep up with me crab crawling backwards on all fours. I realized too late that my shotgun was in the opposite direction of where I was going.
I kicked his legs out from under him, throwing him off balance. The hallway wasn’t very wide, so when he hit the ground he landed on my left arm. I squirmed and pulled my arm out from under him, and scrambled to my feet. He got up a little faster than I thought he would, but by the time he did I had reached my shotgun.
The blast was a lot louder than I thought it would be, considering I had never fired it indoors without ear protection before. The shell blasted a large hole in his chest, spraying bodily fluids on the wall and roof behind the beast and hit with enough force to make him take a few steps backward and almost fall over again. Except for the stumbling, his face didn't give any indication that he noticed he'd been shot.
I pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again. Chunks of skull and brain sprayed against the wall behind him as his head blew apart from the slug. His body fell limp almost immediately and collapsed onto the floor.
My heart was pounding and my ears were ringing as I stood over the corpse. I ejected the spent shell and smoke billowed out the ejection port. His body was still, no movement. I took a step closer and poked it with the barrel end of my shotgun. His body didn’t move, but I heard more crashing coming from down the hall making me jump a little. It sounded like at least two sets of arms pounding another door farther down the hall.