Car crashes. As it was, the people were having a lot of small fender benders due to the tightly packed caravan. It made sense, they were scared. There’s no shame in it. I was pretty scared as well. If we were going petal to the metal…wow. Instead of small dents in the bumpers, we’d be dealing with rolled over cars. Not a good idea.
“I see your point.”
We had asked everyone in the caravans to refrain from shooting until I gave the order that shooting was necessary. Now, I didn’t plan on giving this order unless we were being attacked by a larger horde. However, when people get a bad case of the nerves and they’re holding a weapon in their hand, they tend to pull the trigger.
Twenty minutes into our journey, the shooting began. It was a small group of four zombies. A man, a woman and two kids, I’m guessing they were probably a family. Anyway, they came running out of a small brick house and headed straight for the middle of the caravan. Even though I was a little bit ahead of the group, I heard a woman scream. Then I heard a pause and all hell broke loose.
“What do you mean?”
Sounded like everybody with a gun started shooting at the same time. It was bad and it was loud. I didn’t want loud, loud attracted zombies. Loud was not a good idea.
I jammed the Jeep in reverse and peeled the tires on my way towards the trouble. The four zombies had all hit a large station wagon that was packed with people. They were banging on the windows and climbing onto the hood. The people inside looked terrified. The folks with the guns were still firing. It didn’t take long for bullets to start punching into the side of the station wagon. It was a miracle nobody inside was hit.
I yelled for a cease fire and got out of my Jeep. Somebody actually heard me yell and they repeated the command. It didn’t take too long for the shooting to stop. I walked over to the station wagon, just as the mother zombie noticed me and charged. I took off the top of her head. The man and the two children zombies didn’t notice me until I pulled them off the car. The man took a swing at me, which I ducked. I kicked him back to gain a little space and dropped the tomahawk into his forehead when he charged again. The two children were easy, at least in the physical sense.
I started to walk back to my Jeep and I felt it in the air. At first I thought it was just everyone staring at me. They were staring at me. Maybe they hadn’t seen any action up close and personal before. I’m not sure, but they stared at me like I was some sort of monster. Maybe it was the two zombie kids.
Anyway, the feeling I felt, it wasn’t all the people staring at me. It was something else. They had made too much noise. We had trouble headed our way. I was way too exhausted for this kinda thing.
I went to Dudley’s truck.
“Do you feel it?” I asked.
“I feel something,” he answered.
Then, the slight breezed shifted just right and we smelled the rot. It would take a large amount of zombies to cast out that kind of smell. We definitely had trouble headed our way.
“They know we’re out here,” said Dudley.
“And they’re headed our way,” I answered.
“You think they’re running or walking?”
“It was a lot of noise,” I answered after considering for a moment. “They’re probably running.”
I gave the order to move just as we heard the first of the moans.
I got on the radio.
“Georgie,” I said. “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, the zombies are coming.”
“It’s time to go to work. Lead them straight, let them shoot and don’t go too fast.”
He replied, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I was rushing towards the smell. I was rushing towards the moans. I was rushing towards all the zombies that we had led out of the Downtown area. I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take very long to find them. They were moving up Mesa Street at a run. There were so many of them, that they blocked the entire road. It was indeed the massive horde that we led out of Downtown. They’d moved a pretty impressive distance since I’d seen them last. I think I even recognized a few of the decaying faces…or at least some of the clothes.
“Did this group pick up any of the zombies that were already in the area?”
I imagine that they did. It’s impossible to say for sure, there were just so many of them. However, single zombies tend to join up with larger groups for some reason.
The biggest problem was that they were running towards a head on collision with Georgie’s caravan. You see, Mesa eventually just becomes Country Club road. There’s no turn off or anything, but as soon as Mesa hits the railroad tracks it then becomes Country Club.
“Okay.”
Well the Santa Teresa border is at the end of Country Club. It’s one straight road into the New Mexico border.
Our decided route led all over the place in order to avoid any large population of zombies that we knew about, but eventually the caravan would hit the railroad tracks right at the end of Mesa and the beginning of Country Club.
“Georgie was leading the survivor’s right into a mob of ten thousand zombies.”
Hence the collision course.
Dudley and Jack pulled up next to me. They saw what I was seeing. Neither one of them looked like they enjoyed the view.
“We need to get them to follow us,” I shouted.
“Yeah,” answered Dudley.
“Follow me, when I honk my horn have the guys in the back start shooting.”
I took off once again. I was headed straight for the horde. Of course they saw me coming and just in case they happened to be blind, the hungry screams made sight rather unnecessary. The vast horde knew that food was heading their way.
Dudley was right behind me. Jack was not. I searched the mirrors, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I let Dudley pull up next to me. We were getting closer and closer. I think I was doing about fifty mph. About forty feet from the horde, I hit the brakes and yanked the wheel. The Jeep spun dangerously, but after a couple spins, the wheels caught and I floored the Jeep in the opposite direction.
I was only hoping to turn the Jeep around, the spins allowed the zombies to get dangerously close before I regained control. I was too tired and it was too hot. I was making stupid mistakes. Luckily, Merrick was up to the challenge. She nipped at any and all fingers that grabbed onto the Jeep.
I was supposed to honk the horn, but in a surge of nervous energy, I blared the damn thing.
Dudley, after seeing me spin all over the road, eased off on the gas before he turned. Still, his turn was wide and he went over the median. His shooter almost fell out of the back of the truck, but somehow he managed to hang in there.
They both must have heard me blare the horn, because Dudley began to blare his as well and his shooter began to fire round after round into the rushing horde of the undead.
It was close, way too close, but we made it. The zombies were following us. Even though they probably smelled the caravan of survivors off in the distance as they moved through the streets towards the border, visual confirmation of our two little vehicles proved to be too much for them.
I guess it was just good luck, if you can call being pursued by that many zombies good luck.
With our adrenaline pumping so much, we created a little bit too much distance from the zombies. We had to stop and let them catch up a bit.
“What happened to Jack?” I asked Dudley after he pulled next to me.
“The pussy took off after he saw the zombies,” answered Dudley. “He didn’t even say a word to me. He just took off as fast as his truck could carry him. He knocked his shooter right out of the back of the truck as well.”
That’s when I noticed that there were two shooters in the back of Dudley’s truck. One of them was lying down; the other was on his knees over him.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I think he broke his leg when he fell outta Jacks truck.”
That was all the time we had
for chit chat. The zombies were coming and we were off again.
“How bad was it to once again have that many zombies chasing after you?”
I don’t think that it’s describable. I mean…we kept our distance, there was really no danger. Yet, it really sucked to know that there were that many zombies trying to eat you. I tried earlier to explain the sheer numbers, but I think that it’s really impossible to describe the scope. We were on a four lane road with houses on either side and the zombies took up all four lanes and most of the front yards of the houses as they tried to outrun each other. Yeah, it was bad.
I radioed Georgie after leading them away from Mesa and Country Club for about a half an hour.
“Georgie,” I asked. “You read me?”
“I’m here Jax. What’s up?”
“We’ve got the zombies following us. Where are you?”
“We just turned onto Country Club. Ran into a little trouble, but the shooters finally took care of things.”
“Can you see the border gates?”
“Oh yeah, I see um.”
“And?”
“Looks to be thousands of people.”
“Radio me back when you get to the gates so I can head over there myself.”
We led the zombies farther and farther into the suburbs. We took turn after turn and pulled a little bit farther away from them each time.
Dudley pulled up next to me and shouted through his open window.
“What the hell is taking Georgie so long?”
“I should hear from him any moment now I think.”
“Have you noticed that there aren’t as many zombies following us anymore?”
To be perfectly honest, I had not noticed that.
“Huh?” I asked.
“We’ve lost about half.”
Georgie picked that moment to radio me.
“Jax, are you there?” asked Georgie.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“They won’t let us through.”
“Even with all those people?” I asked.
“The people are getting pretty angry over it, but the military brought in reinforcements to keep them in order. Also, there were signs right before the bridge that said they’d open fire on any vehicles that cross the bridge, so we left our cars and went on foot.”
“Wait up a minute, what are they telling you at the gate?”
“Major Crass is telling us that we have to wait for the decontamination units to arrive before they’ll let us in,” said Georgie.
“Well that’s not exactly bad news Georgie. They’re gonna let us through, we just have to wait.”
“Yeah well, the bad news is that we’re sitting out here in the open in front of these gates, about five hundred feet from our vehicles.”
“Just keep cool Georgie. Most of zombies are pretty far away, so I can be there in a few minutes.”
“Jax, there’s something else…”
“What’s that?”
“Skie is here. She’s safe behind the gates. I’ve talked to her.”
“That’s your wife.”
Yeah.
He takes a moment before he begins where he left off.
“She’s okay?” I asked.
“Yeah man, she’s fine.”
“I’m on my way,” it was all I could say. I was choking back tears. She told me she was safe, I believed that she was safe, but to hear someone tell me that they’d seen and spoken to her…I can’t tell you the relief that was flooding through me.”
He doesn’t need to either. I can see his eye’s begin to well up just from thinking about it. He loves his wife.
I gave Dudley the thumbs up and we tore off towards Country Club. We tore off towards the gates that separated El Paso from Santa Teresa.
I thought about Tito. I wished we had another radio. I wanted to hear that he was safe and sound. I’d find out soon enough though. I’d find out that the other half of the survivors made it safely into New Mexico. It had to be that way, it had to be, because we took the dangerous route and we were almost free.
Most of all, I thought about Skie.
We hit Country Club road a little bit before where the caravan was parked. We took more than a few side streets to get there, we didn’t want to take a straight shot and lead any zombies to our people. If any dead things happened to give chase, we certainly lost them with all of our twists and turns.
We left our vehicles on the side of the road by the end of the caravan. Nobody saw us pull up, or if they did, nobody said anything. Merrick and I hopped out of the Jeep and walked over to Dudley’s truck. I was running on empty. Just trying to walk at this point was an ordeal. Merrick seemed happy enough to be out of the Jeep.
Dudley was helping his shooter take the man with the broken leg out of the back of the truck. The wounded man had an arm around both their shoulders and was bouncing on one leg as the four of us and Merrick began to walk towards the gates.
It was odd to walk past the caravan of empty vehicles. It reminded me too much of all those deserted cars filling up all those empty streets. It wasn’t like that now; these people were going to make it. We were all going to make it.
After we passed the cars, we saw the gates. The fence was impressive, as were the guard towers looming up high behind them. There were a lot of guard towers. It looked like they were spaced out about every one hundred feet or so. Inside each tower were two men with large machine guns. I wonder if they took that idea from our safe zone.
He chuckles at his own little joke and then continues.
As we reached the bridge over the Rio Grande, I could finally see just how big the gathered crowd actually was. It made our band of survivors seem extremely small in comparison. They were gathered behind the fence in a massive army, while our group was right at the entrance of the gate before them.
They were chanting.
“What were they saying?”
‘Let them in. Let them in. Let them in.’
All the helicopters had been grounded and I could see that the military presence was scattered amidst the crowd. I don’t think they planned it that way. I think the people just stormed past their designated spot, pushed their way to the fence and the soldiers were now surrounded and a little bit confused as to what to do.
I looked off the side of the bridge. The Rio Grande was still high and the waters were moving just as fast as that long ago day that Dudley and I watched as the zombies waded in after us and got swept away in the current.
I heard movement off to the side of the bridge where the concrete hit earth and the bridge ended. Kingsley and another man walked up the side of the embankment and waved at me. I wasn’t sure what they were doing under the bridge, but I was too tired to ask.
Slowly, the chanting began to die down.
One by one, every single face on both sides of the fence turned to look at us.
“It’s the General,” shouted a voice.
The announcement was repeated by someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else all the way into infinity.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Dudley and the two shooters stopped right behind me. It was a nerve racking moment. I began to wonder if all these people were going to try and stone me or something.
And then they began to cheer.
I laughed, in that tired sort of way where almost no sound comes out except for an exhalation of air. The people from the caravan rushed over to us. They clapped me on the back, hugged me, saluted me in that right fist over the heart thing that people do to me all the time. The crowd behind the fence was going nuts. The soldiers looked a little nervous.
It took awhile, but I finally made my way to the fence. The fence was beginning to bow a little bit from the force of all the people trying to get next to me. Georgie, Ivana and Lucy were waiting at the entrance gate. Georgie was smiling from ear to ear.
“Where is she?” I asked.
His smile got even bigger and he motioned with his head towards the cheering crowd.
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br /> The cheering began to die down almost immediately and the crowd began to part. Beyond the fence, someone was making their way towards me, but there were still people in the way and I couldn’t make out who it was. In the next second, I saw her.
It was Skie.
She was only ten feet away from me. She was wearing a little blue dress. Her big brown eyes were filled with worry. I took the few steps that were left between myself and the fence and grabbed the chain link. I smiled at her and she smiled back. I saw the tears begin to fall as she ran to me. We were separated by the fence, but her little hands reached out for my fingers through the holes.
“I want to hold you,” she whispered. Her voice was choked. She was fighting the sobs.
“I want to be held,” I said.
She began to laugh and sob at the same time. The crowd began to cheer all over again. The noise was deafening. The fence was wobbling as the many people shoved their way to a better look.
I barely even noticed them. I was with my wife. I had survived and so had the people under my care. My legs felt weak and I began to lean against the fence as if I could push back the weight of all those cheering people.
“I’ve got you baby,” said Skie. “Don’t you worry anymore, I won’t let go.”
“We’re getting there aren’t we?”
Getting where?
“The footage.”
Yeah.
Before this moment, the General was an almost mythological character. It’s easiest to think of him as some sort of modern Robin Hood or Zorro. The majority of the survivors trapped inside of El Paso believed that he existed. They believed in him without any hard evidence whatsoever, and some of them even left whatever protection they had in order to find him. They had the hopes of their survival pinned on this great man that refused to surrender to the horror. In truth, they simply wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that someone was out there fighting back. They wanted to believe that someone could stop the monsters.
However, a great many of the people who were safely outside of El Paso didn’t believe that he was anything more than myth. Some thought he was simply a fairytale being passed around in an effort to give heart to the trapped survivors. Some legend that would fade in time after nobody stood up to take the credit. Others believed that he did exist, but his tales were greatly exaggerated. They thought him simply an ordinary man on the run that maybe got lucky a time or two and helped a few people. Most of the people gathered at the fence that day came to find out what the truth really was. They wanted to see if the legend was real.
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