She gunned her engine, trying to force herself free but only made matters worse. Her tires spun until they smoked; the Suburban only inched forward. William’s heart sunk. He looked into his rearview mirror out of habit to verify there wasn’t any oncoming traffic. Of course, there was none.
If William had looked more closely, he would have seen movement of a different sort starting to stir. The sounds the vehicles were making were drawing attention to themselves from a relatively dormant presence in the city. Weathered sections of the landscape moved and shifted as nerves flickered and muscles responded eagerly. Statues slowly came to life, becoming walking nightmares.
Nakissha slammed her fists onto the steering wheel and shifted the truck into park. For a few seconds, no one moved. Nakissha’s door opened and shut quickly with a slam. She wandered around to the front of the truck and was quickly joined by two of the three passengers from her vehicle.
William watched for a moment, knowing what was expected of him but finding no comfort in those expectations. If he had any hope of getting them back on the move, he would have to go extricate the other truck from its trap. Looking around quickly, William reluctantly opened his door and took a breath. The familiar smell of the fall rot, a pungent odor created primarily by patches of unpicked berries decaying on the vine, swept at him and filled his lungs. He could taste the damp smell on his tongue when he exhaled. The strong odor hung as heavily in the air as the moisture that left every exposed surface moist with beads of water forming quickly. The temperature had dropped significantly as of late, helping to form his exhaled breath into a thin, white cloud around his head.
Now out of the security of his truck’s cabin, William cast a wary eye about. He still didn’t know what to expect but the complete stillness was not it. The city looked abandoned by everything in God’s creation. There were no lights, no voices, no activity. There were no birds, no dogs, and no people anywhere to be seen.
Stepping out onto the road, which was an uneven mixture of gravel and pavement, William was quickly joined by Danielle, Allen, and Sandra, all the passengers from the Blazer. They ran over to the front of the vehicle where they joined Nakissha and Gus, a stout, olive skinned man with more thick, curly hair growing on his cheeks and chest than on the top of his head atop which always rested a dirty, graying blue and white Dodgers cap.
They kicked and pulled at the lodged appliance with no luck. Allen even went so far as to use the butt of his shotgun as both a lever and a bludgeon but nothing worked. Prying the ovens loose seemed more reasonable to William but they needed the crowbar that he had left in the back of his big vehicle.
He turned and took one step toward his open driver side door and shouted, “We gotta gooooooo!!!! Nowwwwwww!!!”
Coming down the road toward them at a determined, if slightly stilted, walking pace was a crowd of ghastly, horrifying individuals. He was unable to focus on any single person. To him, it was an amorphous, swelling, reaching, gray-green wave full of eyes and snapping, hungry jaws. Much of the mob had already passed the Funbulance roadblock and was only a few horrible steps away.
Gus shouted, “What do we do?”
“Just put it into drive and hit the gas!” William shouted back. “We’ll push you!”
Nakissha tried her best to right her course through a combination of maneuvering with the steering wheel and using the horsepower of her V8 engine but was struggling to accomplish much of anything. When William’s Blazer hit her larger truck, Nakissha, as well as everyone else with her, jumped in their seats despite anticipating the collision. Regaining her composure, Nakissha tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried to keep them pointed down the road.
The smell of burning rubber coming from Nakissha’s tires filled the road but they were starting to make progress. A gap opened between the two vehicles and the horde chasing them. They crossed the halfway point on the Whittier Manor Estates apartments and started to feel like maybe they were going to be able to get away.
That was good news to Danielle, starting to see more of the abominations coming from around corners and out of doorways along the apartment complex. The creatures were everywhere all at once. As far as Danielle was concerned, they couldn’t get away fast enough.
The steady, vibrating grind of the metal appliances along the road, like nails across a chalkboard, was unbelievably nauseating and without respite. Danielle couldn’t stick her fingers deep enough into her ears to muffle the sound. The irritating buzz pounded in her temples and pressed itself through her chest. She worried if the sound didn’t stop soon, she might vomit. By the look on Sandra’s face, Danielle was not the only one suffering through the discomfort.
The smells, sounds, sights and kinetic activity were all threatening to boil over into an uncontrollable storm. Danielle would have screamed but she was afraid no one would hear.
And then all of it came to an abrupt, screeching halt. Nakissha pushed the ovens into a seam in the road, which stopped the two appliances cold in their tracks. Unfortunately, the Suburban did not get the memo that the parade was coming to a rest and continued on its way. As a result, the big truck drove up and over the now embedded barriers, lifting tires and all possibilities for forward momentum out of reach of the street below. William realized too late what had happened and only worsened the problem.
There was no time and no room on either side of Nakissha’s truck to drive around. With a quick look in the mirror, William said urgently, “Everybody out. Grab what you need.”
“What?” someone asked incredulously,
“We don’t have time. We gotta go now. C’mon!” William demanded of all of them as he threw open his door.
None of them wanted to but all of them felt compelled to look over their shoulders. The street behind them was filled to overflowing with ugliness and rage. Faces, arms, teeth, and eyes rolling toward them as a single entity. A horrible sound similar to that of a train preceded the throng and washed over Danielle and the others like a tidal wave. Its force propelled them all forward.
Nakissha and her passengers hurried out as well. The quick foray into and out of town was taking on a very different tone. It was suddenly a race for survival and the clock was quickly winding down.
With options few and far between, there looked to be only two ways out: straight down the road, running a gauntlet of ghouls crawling from the last few doors on their left or up the heavily inclined slope next to them which led up to Shotgun Cove Road above.
William had already considered the slope up and had dismissed it. The incline was too great to be able to make good time. He was worried they would be overcome too easily. He also wasn’t quite sure they would do once they did get up to the road. It was a long road back to Shotgun Cove; made all the longer if those things were trailing all the way.
For whatever reason, those things weren’t able to keep up much pace so he reasoned that if they could move quickly and put some distance between themselves and those things then they could hide away somewhere and let things quiet back down. Maybe if they disappeared those things would return to wherever they had come.
The simple reality was that if he and those with him kept running, they would be able to put those things behind them. Nakissha and two of the women with her decided on the other route. They ran to the slope but not before Nakissha fired a single round from the hunting rifle she was carrying. The first few steps up were smooth but the surface itself posed an unseen and unknown challenge.
It was like running on ice. The leaves were wet and as loose as the soil underneath that gave way with every slippery step. The crowd of zombies caught up to the three ladies as a result of their lost momentum but had no more luck ascending. They needn’t bother to chase.
Nakissha reached out for a thin, weak tree but lost her footing. She slid a couple of feet back down but using the butt of her rifle as a brake of sorts she halted her slide. Her fall had upset the footing of Charlotte climbing behind her. Charlotte fell flat on her face and, yel
ping piteously, slid all the way back to the foot of the slope and the scores of awaiting, thrashing hands.
The fiends set upon her without a moment’s hesitation. Her skin, so soft and white, was ripped viciously from her body and stuffed gluttonously into gnashing, hungry mouths. The sweet, soft organs from inside her body were harvested with all the tenderness of a meat grinder.
With the sound of wet chomping, smacking lips behind them, Nakissha and the other woman, Olivia, clawed their way further and further up toward the road above them. That was the last William, Danielle, or any of the others saw of the two of them.
The other passenger with Nakissha, Gus, a wiry and seasoned fisherman carrying an equally seasoned axe in his hands, had elected to join William’s group. He didn’t think he would be able to make the climb and he trusted William.
The vast majority of the horde was distracted by Nakissha’s escape attempt, which allowed the group to move further away. They ran hard and fast with no other option in front of them. The road was narrow, the slope’s incline was sharper, everything angled down in front of them as if they were being drawn in that direction.
There was a widening gap between William and his group and those things, watching hungrily as Nakissha and Olivia climbed.
They were getting away without incident when two of the gray-skinned creatures clambered from the open door of the last apartment. William unknowingly hit one of them with all of his size and momentum. Unprepared for the encounter, William, quite a bit larger than the person with whom he had become entangled, fell along with the person he had just sacked. Despite the size inequality, William’s smaller assailant managed to get the upper hand and roll William onto his back. The big black man was holding the person’s snapping jaws away from himself but he was struggling. Getting a hand free, William balled his fist and struck his attacker’s head. He hit it again and again, until doing so threatened his own hold on the thing’s neck, clutched tightly with his opposite hand. There couldn’t be any air getting through its windpipe but still it pressed its attack.
Gus swung his axe and struck the attacker who had found his way on top of William. The blade sank deeper into the decaying man’s back, splitting and crushing bones and organs. Unfortunately, the blow had no effect at all other than to force the creature further down onto William, struggling to hold at bay its chomping yellow teeth.
William pushed with all his might, but his assailant was too firmly set on his attack, its bony fingers were wrapped too tightly around William’s arms. Gus couldn’t extricate the buried blade from the thing’s back no matter how he tried.
Meanwhile, the other creature had spun about and was moving intently toward Danielle and the other woman with them, Sandra, who let out an involuntary scream when she realized she was in the beast’s crosshairs. Backing away, Sandra lost her footing on the still struggling William.
Not missing its opportunity, the ghoul still on its feet leapt forward onto Sandra and immediately sank its teeth into her shoulder. Its powerful maw tore through jacket, shirt, and flesh as it drove deeper and deeper, grinding back and forth like a powerful set of saw blades. Bright red blood spurted onto its cheek and Sandra’s neck in powerful geyser-like jets. Sandra continued to struggle but her efforts slackened as shock began to take its toll.
Thinking quickly, Danielle pulled a filleting knife from her belt and drove it into Sandra’s attacker’s temple. Dark, thick blood spilled from the wound onto Danielle’s hand, which she pulled away, leaving the knife where it was.
By that time, Gus had gotten the axe free and had sunk it into the back of the other’s skull, successfully silencing it as well. Poor William’s face and upper chest were spattered with thick, gooey blood and brain matter, trailing down his cheeks and neck in sticky clumps. William rolled the now motionless corpse from atop him and accepted Gus’ hand to help him get back to his feet. Wiping the gore away from his face, William gave Gus a glare that hovered between gratitude and annoyance.
The fifth member of their group, the tall gangly man named Allen, pointed down from where they had come. “I think they’re on to us.”
The crowd they had been avoiding had heard Sandra’s piteous yelp and was moving steadily toward them. The amorphous mass of moaning, reaching undead oozing gray rot caused Danielle’s heart to skip a beat. She had to stifle an urge to turn and run, leaving Sandra and the three men to their own devices. Danielle’s fear was threatening to paralyze her reason and sense of duty. Her breathing, shallow and quick, robbed her brain of oxygen, which made control of her emotions buzzing with fear harder to control still.
In a voice that started as a whisper but ended as a desperate scream, Danielle demanded, “C’mon goddamnit! We have to go! Nowwwwww!”
She could see the shock starting to settle deeper into Sandra’s eyes. Rather than stoking Danielle’s compassion, Sandra’s growing dependence only frustrated Danielle all the more until she wore the anger on her face like a mask. With each step, she was finding it more difficult to stay with them.
She could break into a sprint and use them as the distraction to allow her to escape. It wouldn’t have taken much convincing on her part. She was nearing that point with each painfully slow step. Sandra struggled to keep her head aloft, a steady flow of spittle dripping from her lower lip in a unending, gooey stream. To Danielle, it looked like Sandra had already given up; she didn’t look like she wanted to live.
The five of them finally cleared the last few feet of the long apartment complex and found themselves facing worsening options. In front of them sat a few rows of shipping containers stacked atop one another two or three high, forming an elongated maze.
They had to descend another slope, taking them closer to the waterline and a definitive dead end, before they were amongst the rusting metal hulks painted in flaking shades of light green, dark blue, and dingy white. From their vantage point, Danielle could see well into the maze and was thankful to see that there didn’t weren’t any of those things already there waiting for them.
She looked further out to her left. From her position, she could see into the harbor and all the fishing and pleasure boats still tethered to the stout piers. Her brother had lucked into one of the few coveted permanent slips in the harbor. His boat would be easy to spot. She had only a second to decide and her curiosity won out. When that single, indecisive moment quickly passed, she looked and immediately wished she hadn’t.
The other option they had was to hook around the front of the apartment complex and make their way the other direction, hoping that the fiends didn’t cut them off along the narrow road. It really wasn’t much of a decision for any of them. Looking over their shoulders one last time, they began the descent.
William, too, looked over at the forest of masts. He couldn’t see either of his boats. He knew they were there though. He did, however, see that the piers were overrun with the things stalking back and forth. It looked like an exceptionally busy day of tourism but something about the inorganic way the creatures moved stood out to him. He hadn’t the time to analyze the monsters because the sharp tilt of their path required his entire attention.
They ran into problems almost immediately. A lingering frost clung to the grass, turning the incline into a slippery slide. Danielle caught herself when she started to lose her footing but Gus was not as lucky. He slipped, and his right foot shot out in front of him. He fell onto his posterior with a thud and slid uncomfortably to the bottom, stopping only when his feet hit the gravel surface below.
Sandra lost her footing a couple of times, but William and Allen were able to catch her and keep her and themselves from falling onto their faces. Within a short few seconds, they were all down and starting to venture into the wide paths created by the shipping container walls.
Lucky for them, the undead were not adept at adapting themselves to the changing conditions caused by varying weather patterns. Their limited reasoning did not equip them to accommodate the frost on the grass. If Gus’ descent wa
s less than graceful, then the collective, rolling ball of arms and legs crashing down the hill, was a disaster. Limbs were crushed, necks were shattered, and their momentum was checked as they tangled together like a bucket of crabs.
Limping from his fall, Gus led them to the first intersection and turned left, heading them toward the water. Quickly they came to another cross path perpendicular to the way in which they had been running. He looked both ways but could only see more shipping containers. Gus led them to another intersection. This time, he looked at everyone else.
It was apparent that where he led, they would follow. The problem was that he had no interest in leading them anywhere. “Which way?” he asked breathlessly.
“Doesn’t matter,” William said, desperately trying to hold up the struggling Sandra. “Just keep running. I can still hear them behind us.”
They turned right and then made another right. Gus could hear those things behind them too. He was having a hard time processing what he was seeing. He hadn’t been out in the midst of the crowds in the first days and he obviously didn’t know what to expect.
He kept rolling through his mind images of driving his axe into that person’s back. That person...that thing didn’t even notice. That other one that had bitten Sandra was unhinged with rage. In all his years, Gus had never seen a wild animal attack its victim with such ugliness and disregard. Was it a human being? He couldn’t be sure. There wasn’t much that was human about it, especially when its face and teeth were painted in Sandra’s blood.
Gus wanted to run, but his legs weren’t responding to his brain’s commands. He leaned mightily but couldn’t bring himself to take a step. Danielle was not so encumbered. She stepped around him and started to run. Gus found it much easier to follow than to lead and so began to move again. William and Allen, with Sandra draped between them, did their best to keep pace.
When they emerged from the maze, they were at the exact point where they had started. The area at the foot of the incline was now empty of the creatures, all of which had followed them into and then become lost in the maze. On the ground in a heap were three of the fiends with bodies too broken to move but intact enough to hunger, the infection unwilling to release them from its grip.
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Page 9