by A. R. Wise
“I know,” said Annie without me even having to say anything. “If you don’t want to go, I can do it by myself.”
“Annie, you know I’m not going to let you do this alone.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the mountains to the west, and at the sun that was about to disappear behind them. “We’re not going to make it before it gets dark,” she admitted with palpable sadness.
“We can try,” I said, mimicking what she’d said to me earlier. I reached across the center console to take her hand, and then drove up onto the highway.
Denver was about sixty miles south of where we were, and more than ninety miles from the rehab center. The roads weren’t in good enough condition to allow us to go as fast as the Jeep could, but I still tried to go as fast as possible. Without maintenance, several parts of the highway had cracked and shifted, and some of the overpasses had crumbled over the decades, forcing us to get off and then back on again after passing the destruction. We were just reaching the outskirts of Denver when the orange blaze of sunset started to fade.
“Last chance to back out of this,” said Annie.
“I’m in it for the long run, beautiful,” I said while keeping my eye on the road. That’s when I spotted something far ahead. It started as just the reflection of the sunset on the road ahead, too small to be a mirage, and there was a dark shape beside it. I pointed ahead and asked, “Do you see that thing on the road? What is that?”
We were approaching a lazily rising hill, and the object on the road was near the crest. Annie got out her binoculars and stared ahead until she was able to see it clearly despite the way the Jeep bounced on the cracked pavement. “It’s a body. Still bleeding.”
The reflection I’d seen was the setting sun’s light glancing off the pool of blood.
“Zombie?”
“Looks like it,” said Annie as she lowered the binoculars. We were getting close enough that she didn’t need them anymore.
“Maybe some raiders tried driving through here ahead of us,” I said, trying to ignore the more likely possibility that the military had been headed in the same direction we were. Annie didn’t offer a response, and I knew she was worrying about the same thing I was.
It was impossible to ignore the truth when we reached the top of the hill. Stretched out before us, for as far as we could see, was an ever-increasing massacre. The road ahead was littered with corpses, all of them torn apart by bullets, their limbs ripped away and laying behind them. There was so much blood that it had started to roll away from the road and fill the ditches at the bottom of the hill, and the road looked like a deep scar in the otherwise brown landscape. But the worst thing was the way the massacre still quivered. The creatures weren’t all dead, and they pulled their ruined bodies through the blood, reaching out to us as their milky eyes stared and their mouths drooped.
Annie encapsulated my feelings with two words, “Oh fuck.”
I slowed to a stop so that we could consider how to proceed. “We can make it through,” I said, although my lack of confidence showed through. “Whoever went through here did the hard work for us.”
“It was the military,” said Annie. “It had to be.”
I agreed, but didn’t confirm as much. “We can drive through this.”
“It’s not these I’m worried about, but what we’re going to find over the next hill.” The slaughter ahead of us stretched down the hill, and then up another. We had no way of knowing what lay beyond. “They must’ve made a shit load of noise to attract this many Greys. This is just the backend of it. There’s no doubt that somewhere ahead we’re going to run into the stragglers that couldn’t keep up with the caravan. Ben, if we drive through this then I guarantee we’re going headfirst into a massive horde. We’re not even in the downtown part of the city yet.”
“What about taking one of the highways that goes around the city?” I knew there were other routes that, while far from safe, might be better than the one we were on.
“To the east we’d be headed right towards the airport where the military’s at,” said Annie. “To the west there’s the trader’s route, but that’s where Jerald had set up the traps before. Even if we went that way, we’d lose time trying to clear the road.”
“So we either try to sneak by the military or charge straight through hell.”
“Or we take the slow way home and find somewhere to camp for the night,” said Annie. “That’d be the smart and safest thing to do.”
“Are we being smart and safe?” I asked with a smirk. “I thought we gave up on that already.”
Annie wasn’t as amused as I’d hoped. She was deep in thought, glancing down at the map and biting her lip as she tried to figure out the best plan. “It’s too risky.”
“I’ll do whatever you think, Annie.”
“I don’t know what to do.” Her exasperation tortured her, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I know I should play it safe, but the thought of just sitting here while my friends and family are in danger…” She shook her head and reached up to grab at her hair. “I can’t do that. I can’t. If the military is headed out their way… If they know where the camp’s at… Ben, what should we do? What can we do? What if we get there and it’s true, and we watch as the Rollers are loaded up in trucks? What the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Whatever we can,” I said, trying my best to offer whatever support I could. “I’m with you, Annie, no matter what.”
“You’re with me even if I say that I want to drive through Denver? Even if I say I want to drive headfirst into what could be the biggest horde either of us have ever seen?” She asked as if she didn’t believe me.
I answered succinctly and without a pause, “Yes.”
“Then you’re a lot dumber than I gave you credit for.”
“Does that mean we’re driving straight ahead?”
Annie looked at me, and then out at the road ahead before responding, “If you’re willing to be an idiot alongside me, then fuck it. Let’s do this.”
25 – Bodies and Bridges
Annie Conrad
The Jeep bounced over the bodies of the massacred horde. Their brittle bones snapped as their pitiful moans filled the air. They held up their hands, sprouting like buds of growth in spring from the black and bloody road, and Ben drove as fast as the terrain would allow.
We crested the hill, and saw our difficult future spread out before us, the wrecked skyscrapers of Denver standing as a warning that the worst was yet to come. We were leaving the comparably sparsely populated suburbs and entering an area where, in the Red world, space had been at a premium. This was where homes were pressed against each other, barely a foot between, and the taller the building could be made, the more money the developer could earn.
The doomed settlement that had been known as Fort Denver was located in the bones of this city, where the buildings towered high above, providing a sense of security to those that made their home here. The lower levels were gutted, and battlements put in place to protect the citizens. Refugees from all over the state learned of the burgeoning community, and had flocked here to live in the safety promised by the people that were guarding the area.
Fort Denver rose to prominence after Reagan had died, and after the military in this area seemed to disappear. I’d still been young then, and don’t remember much about Fort Denver other than the discomfort I felt when staring up at those buildings. When the Greys arrived, they didn’t come crawling over the hills and descend upon the settlements, they came from within. A new disease swept the large settlements, wiping out the majority of the Reds that had survived the apocalypse. It had been the Rollers’ preference for mobility that had saved us, and it took a while before anyone else was willing to attempt to build a new settlement. Word among the traders was that the Grey virus only appeared in communities that had planted their roots somewhere, and that was how the nomadic lifestyle that dominated many of the Green days had been born.
People like
Beach and Bonnie had eventually decided it would be worth the risk to try and build new settlements, and that was the genesis of places like Juniper, Vineyard, and Hanger. To everyone’s surprise, the Grey virus never appeared within their ranks, and they flourished. The Rollers and The Department worked to clear the area, and to maintain trade routes, turning this area into one of the safest anywhere in the neighboring states.
However, we all knew to stay away from Denver. Those skyscrapers were monuments to the tragedy of Fort Denver; gravestones that marred our horizon, always warning us of how quickly our lives could fall apart, just like the poor souls in those towers, trapped as the virus raged around them.
And now we were headed straight for them.
I’d taken one of the M-16s from our supply in the back, and placed a box of ammunition between my feet. We had three pipe bombs, six smoke grenades, and a box full of what Abe called ‘Screamers’ that were a type of firework that blazed bright red and emitted an ear-piercing wail that would draw zombies to them. I had a feeling we’d need all of it if we were going to make it through to the south side of the city.
Around us, the carcasses of the old world encroached. They were burned out edifices of brick and stone, their windows long ago shattered, black scars rising up their sides from fires that had withered them, and they were pressed up against the highway. In the suburbs, the buildings were set back from the highway, allowing a sense of safety by revealing so much space. Within the city limits it felt like we were charging into an open maw, with buildings for teeth, and the demon was slowly closing us in. To make it worse, the highway had been packed with vehicles at the onset of the apocalypse, and it still was even two decades later. The residents of Fort Denver had cleared a two-lane space on the west side of the highway, but the rest of the vehicles were still resting where they’d been for so many years, packed nearly bumper to bumper and decorated with the blood, bones, and decay of this new world. And to make matters even worse, the section of road we were currently driving through was lower than the rest of the city, with walls of cement on either side, like an emptied, man-made river bed that wound through the city.
I dropped one of Abe’s screamers out of the window, and then a smoke bomb shortly after. My hope was that the Greys would be attracted to the firework, and that the wall of smoke would mask us as they flooded the road. It was a dangerous ploy, because if we had to turn around we could be swarmed, but Ben and I were already in deep shit as it was, and we needed any advantage we could get.
The carnage we’d seen earlier lessened, with only ten or twenty bodies lying splattered in our path instead of the hundreds we’d plowed over before, but now we were finding the ones that hadn’t been shot down by the military. These Greys had wandered to the highway from the city after hearing the commotion, and we were their new target.
Ahead of us was an overpass that drew an arch over the highway, with a fence to protect pedestrians from falling onto the road. The fence had been bent forward and was buffeting from the crowd that had gathered. A thick horde of Greys had massed above, their fingers protruding from the fence as they gnawed at the wire.
“Annie,” said Ben, and he didn’t need to say anything else. We both knew that fence was about to fail.
“Go faster,” I said, hoping that we could make it under before the Horde rained down on us.
Ben had already been driving fast through the carnage, but he stepped on the gas and sent us speeding through the ambush we’d set ourselves up for. Unfortunately, we’d already run out of luck.
The fence bowed out, and then snapped free of its rusted anchors, sending a tidal wave of dead flesh down over us just as we reached the bridge. Their bodies slammed into the Jeep’s hood and roof, denting it and cracking the windshield as their stench blew in through the vents. Their black blood smeared the windshield as they clawed and bit at us. The Jeep did an admirable job of continuing forward for several yards, but the mound of flesh was too much to overcome. The tires squealed, spinning through a swamp of flesh and faces, sending jets of decay shooting out behind us. The sunset was muted by the glut of death that had washed over us. Every window was blocked by the snarling faces of the victims of the virus that had ruined the Earth.
Ben tried to go in reverse, and the Jeep jerked back a few feet before getting caught again. He put it in drive, and tried to carve a new path through the horde, but we moved forward less than we’d retreated as the zombies crushed in around us.
He tried to say something, but the cacophony around us drowned him out. All I could hear were the pained howls of the dead, and the sound of their fingers clawing at the Jeep. The hard-top roof had become concaved from the impact of a body, and the evidence of that death was leaking down the windshield and dripping through a gap to plop onto our dash.
A grim thought came to me, ‘This is it. This is how I die.’
“Fuck that.” My curse was lost in the din of screaming creatures. I was determined not to be eaten alive, like my father before me. If anything, I was going to go out like Kim.
I got one of the pipe bombs out of the bag at my feet. The black fuse was long and looped, designed to give the user time to light it and flee, but we wouldn’t need that. There was nowhere to run.
The creatures at Ben’s window were pounding so hard that I could feel the vehicle jostle from their strength. Ben was leaning in my direction, aware that the horde was trying their best to break in, and he was still trying to force the Jeep to carve a path in the swarm around us. He didn’t see the bomb and the lighter in my hand, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. It might be better for him to never know that death was at hand until it was already over.
We’d tried, but in the end, we would just be two more casualties of a heartless world.
I held the fuse near the metal cap of the pipe bomb, and held the lighter just a few inches from detonation. No sense prolonging the inevitable.
I lit it.
As the creatures pounded on the side of the Jeep, their howls silencing everything else, I flicked the lighter’s wheel and sparked the flame that would end us. The fuse ignited, burning in two directions before it split in two. The slack fell in my lap while the other end burned down, sparking its way to obliteration.
Ben’s window didn’t crack or give any other warning before it suddenly shattered. Miniscule fragments of glass fell in on him, littering his lap and the seat, as the horde’s arms reached in to grab him. Their faces lunged forward, biting and screeching, and he responded with gunfire. His pistol’s blast deafened me as I watched one of the creatures jerk backward, a chunk of its skull now blown out. The zombie fell away, leaving an open space where light shined in on us. Despite the hundreds of creatures that had surrounded us, a brief window of light had broken through.
The fuse neared the end of its journey, and without a second thought I flung the bomb out of the window. Time seemed to crawl as I watched that long cylinder spin its way through the tiny gap in the horde. I didn’t see it land before the horde swelled to block my view.
I never heard the bomb explode. Instead, the blast deafened me completely, and I was plunged into a silent world of wreckage and horror. The blast tore apart the creatures on Ben’s side, and shattered the rear side window as well. The entire vehicle shifted, sitting only on the two wheels on my side for a moment before falling back down again. Fluid covered me, though I wasn’t sure from what, and the concussion had dazed me. Something had fallen into my lap, and I looked down at it in wonderment inspired by my addled brain.
A human face stared up at me. The severed head of a Grey had landed on me. Both of its eyes were missing, somehow a victim of the blast, and the gooey sockets looked like they were crying blood as I lifted the withered head and then let it drop between my legs. I was soaked with blood that had spewed into the Jeep from the victims outside, spraying across the interior along with chunks of flesh and bone.
The excess fuse was still sparking at my feet, beside the other bombs, and I snatched it
away before it had a chance to light anything else. I tossed it out of the broken window beside Ben.
There was no sound, not even a ringing. The world was silent as I started to piece together what had happened. I looked at Ben, but he was slumped down, only held aloft by his seat belt. Fresh, bright red blood wet the side of his face, and I knew it had to be his. No Grey has blood like that.
I screamed his name, but I didn’t know if my voice produced any sound. The horde had been decimated by the blast, but there were still plenty of them on my side of the Jeep, relentlessly pounding and clawing to get in. I was trying to see how badly Ben was injured when my window shattered. I didn’t even realize it until the creatures were grasping at my hair. They pulled me back, and forced me to look up. That’s when I saw that the Jeep was moving.
The blast had pushed the Jeep out of whatever it had been stuck in, and Ben’s foot was still on the accelerator even though he was unconscious. We weren’t going fast, but if we could just get out from under the bridge I knew we had a shot at surviving.
I wasn’t hampered by a seat belt, but the creatures pulling at my hair were dragging me backward. My pistol was lost, probably dropped after the blast, and I struggled to think of a way to escape the clutches of the zombies that were walking alongside the Jeep, determined to eat me.
I pulled the knife from my belt and reached back to grip a large chunk of my hair. It took three slices to cut myself free, and all those fuckers got was a handful of greasy red hair to remember me by.
Ben was over the center console, and I pushed him back as I leaned over to slam my foot on the gas pedal that his foot was just barely touching. The Jeep’s wheels ground through a mess of flesh and bones, but we catapulted forward. Unfortunately, at the same moment that I thought we might be free, grey smoke started to pour in through the vents. It stank of burning plastic, and choked me as it filled the cab.