by Sue Edge
9
I exchanged an alarmed look with Emma. Quickly, I moved to the front of the caravan and risked a look around. My stomach dropped as I saw three young children, a boy and two girls of about ten years old, running as fast as their young legs could take them. In their wake, a horde of about forty zombies. For all of their lack of coordination, the zombies as a group covered a lot of ground and seemed to be closing the gap.
I could see the children’s terrified faces. They weren’t aware of us but, nevertheless, they were bringing the zombies straight to us. I pulled back, pulse pounding and heart aching. They would be on us in seconds. What to do, what to do?
“Quick! Under the caravan!” I whispered urgently as I fell to my knees and, pushing the bat in front, scurried under the van. Emma and Lucas speedily joined me. A few seconds later, the children’s feet flew past the caravan. Crawling forward, I watched in horror as the scene continued to unfold before me.
As the children ran towards the exit, I had a moment of hope that they would escape. They were young and fast; if they kept their heads, they might just make it! Then, coming from the playground side of the park, another group of zombies moved towards the children. Their trajectory would soon block the children’s escape route. Dammit, dammit, dammit!
The taller of the girls spotted the second group closing in on them. For just a few seconds, she faltered. I watched helplessly as the most agile of the following zombies succeeded in wrapping his fingers around her arm. She screamed in terror and tugged in a desperate attempt to escape his clutch. But within seconds, she was sucked from sight into the horde. For several seconds, her terrified cries rang in my ears. Tears streamed down my face as I turned my eyes away.
The boy swung away and headed for the pool with the girl in tow. Yes, I silently screamed in excitement, get inside the gated area! The boy struggled to reach the magnetic lock on top of the gate as the zombies neared them. Come on! Suddenly, the gate swung open and the two children fled inside, slamming the gate shut behind them. They clutched each other as they waited to see if the zombies could get in.
The creatures gathered around the pool gate, arms pawing through the gate as they tried futilely to reach the children. The kids were safe for the moment.
Shaken, I whispered to the others. “I think we’d better keep under the vans. There are just too many zombies around.”
They nodded nervously. Checking first, we kept low as we made a dash for the next caravan and threw ourselves under it. In this manner, we made our way to the edge of the caravan park. There, across the large paved courtyard, stood the front office.
Just as Lucas had indicated, in the car park across from it, were several jeeps with the resort’s logo emblazoned across the sides.
Two zombies banged on the windows of the office. Someone still alive in there!
“What’s the plan, Lori?” Lucas asked.
“We run for it.” I replied.
Silence followed. “You know, Lori,” Emma said in a conversational tone. “You really need to make new plans. This one is getting really old.”
****
We scrambled out from under the van and raced across the paved area to the door. The zombies at the window immediately lurched towards us. I grabbed the door handle and turned. It was locked. “Hey, in there!” I called softly but urgently. We didn’t need to attract attention, if we could help it. “Let us in!”
I shook the door handle to reinforce the fact that there were people out here. Nothing. Only silence greeted us. I guess I was mistaken about someone being in there.
Lucas readied his bat as the zombies stumbled up the wooden stairs. He looked nervous but determined. I moved across to a window and peered inside but I couldn’t see any movement. Nothing for it but to break the window, I decided reluctantly. That was bound to attract unwanted attention.
A grunt behind me drew my eye and I saw Lucas and Emma slam their bats into the faces of the two zombies, sending them flying off the stairs. From their uniforms, they must have worked at the resort.
Using my bat as a battering ram, I broke the window glass and cleared it away from the frame. We only had a short window of time before other zombies came to investigate the noise. Gesturing to the others, I clambered through the window. There was a counter with brochures in the right corner and a door just beyond it which, I assumed, was an office.
Where would one keep car keys, I wondered. As Emma and Lucas climbed into the room, I raced behind the counter and started searching the drawers. Emma passed me, headed for the office, while Lucas nominated himself to keep a lookout.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?!” The enraged voice came from a large, red-faced man standing in the doorway of the office, waving an angry finger at us. “You think you can steal from me?! I’ll kick your bloody arses, all of you, if you don’t get the hell out of here now!”
Startled, Emma backed away to stand next to me. I straightened up slowly and talked soothingly to the belligerent man. Presumably, he was the owner or the manager of the resort. “I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t know you were here. We’d really appreciate it if you would give us the keys to one of your vehicles.”
It did not occur to me that he wouldn’t be willing to help us in these extraordinary circumstances. I was wrong.
“Oh I bet you would, missy.” He sneered. “Well, you can go back to your looter friends out there and tell them that I’ve called the police. They’re on their way now.”
He gestured at the two zombies who had picked themselves up and were banging at the door. Thankfully, they hadn’t yet discovered the broken window.
I exchanged a surprised look with Emma. “Looters? That’s what you think is going on?”
Lucas suddenly spoke up. “You might want to hurry this up, guys. We’ve got company.”
Shit! I looked at the large, blustery man in front of me and anger started to blossom within me. All the screaming and mayhem going on in his park, and it was clear this man had not so much as stepped foot outside this office to assist his customers.
I pulled out the parang and held it up, noting with satisfaction the sudden widening of his eyes. “Look, mister,” I said, oh so calmly. “I’ve already killed a lot of people today, and, frankly, I am quite happy to add one more to the list. Give me the keys to a car right now or I’m going to start chopping pieces off you until you do.”
He swallowed hard, which surprised me a bit. I must sound very convincing.
“Guys…!” Lucas sounded a lot more urgent. I stepped forward with the parang, holding the man’s eyes.
He backed away and threw his hands up. “Okay! Take the bloody keys. They are on the pin board in the office.”
I nodded at Emma and she skittered past him into the room. “There are about a dozen car keys here! Which one do we take?”
I cocked a questioning brow at the man, whose face was becoming more flushed by the minute. He scowled but answered. “The orange one belongs to the closest jeep.”
Emma hurried out, clutching the keys. “Got it. Let’s go.”
I nodded and backed away, grabbing my bat as I passed the desk. As we joined Lucas at the window, I paused to look back at the man. “Those aren’t looters out there, mister, and I’m pretty sure you had no luck reaching the police. I would suggest you get out while you can.”
He glared at me contemptuously. Shrugging, I clambered out of the window. Not a minute too soon, either. The paved courtyard was full of zombies, all with only one thing on their simple minds. The three of us. The front ones had already reached the office stairs. In silent agreement, we jumped off the verandah and flew across the pavers to the car park where the jeeps were stationed.
Lucas and I jumped into the first jeep as Emma stilled her trembling fingers while she tried to place the keys in the ignition.
“It doesn’t fit!” She squealed in dismay.
Anger coursed through me and I felt a moment of intense regret that I hadn’t chopped a few pieces off t
he miserable bastard! He might have cost us our lives, I thought, as zombies flooded around and in between the vehicles in the car park.
“Try the last vehicle!” I yelled at Emma as I leapt out of the jeep and swung my bat at the nearest zombie. He bounced off a car and collapsed onto the ground. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lucas ram his bat into the stomach of a zombie and push it violently back into the creatures behind it. With the tiny bit of breathing space we had gained, the three of us backed away and ran down the line of parked vehicles until we reached the last jeep.
Lucas and I held our bats at the ready as Emma shakily stuck the keys in the ignition. Please God, let this be the one.
Relief made me weak in the knees as I heard the wonderful sound of the car engine starting. The jerk turned out to be pretty predictable in his thinking, after all.
Emma scrambled over into the passenger seat as Lucas hopped into the back. Throwing the bat on the backseat, I jumped into the driver’s seat and sent the jeep into a screeching reverse, cutting a swathe through the huddle of zombies immediately behind us.
As I threw the jeep into first gear, a zombie succeeded in grabbing Emma’s arm. Emma screamed as the zombie brought its mouth towards her bare skin. Viciously, Lucas jammed his bat into the creature’s mouth and held it at bay as, with a squeal of wheels, I sent the jeep charging forward.
Ahead of me, blocking our exit from the park, was the boom gate. I placed my foot down on the accelerator.
“Lori, you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?” squeaked Emma, clutching her doorframe.
I smiled grimly. “You’d better duck.”
I crossed my fingers mentally, closed my eyes and sent the car crashing through the barrier. The light wooden pole splintered into many pieces and I roared out of the park onto the highway.
On the highway, horns beeped and tires screeched as drivers desperately tried to get ahead of others. The calm on the road of only half an hour ago had rapidly deteriorated into anger and fear. I braked sharply to avoid hitting a car as it cut ahead of me and crawled past two cars that had collided minutes earlier as the owners harangued each other.
“This is mayhem.” Emma muttered anxiously, her eyes darting from car to car. “We should get off this road as quickly as we can.”
Unfortunately, the first turnoff was at least a mile away. If we could make it there, though, it would take us straight to my sister’s. I prayed that this madness had not reached there yet. Fear surged through me as I wondered if Roy and the kids had reached the house safely. I shied away from the thought - there was nothing I could do about that at the moment.
I fought the chaos successfully for another half-mile or so before movement came to a standstill. The horns beeped futilely and drivers cursed and yelled in vain. None of us were going anywhere.
“What do you think is going on?” Lucas asked, standing on the back of the jeep to get a better view.
I shrugged, trying not to let my anxiety show. “An accident blocking the road, probably.” Maybe, maybe not. My ears strained to hear anything that would give me a clue. With all the honking and yelling, it was hard to separate the different sounds. Still, that whine I could hear above the general noise seemed to be getting louder…
Too late, I realised the sound was not a whine but cries - the cries of hundreds of people fleeing. They poured towards us through the stalled vehicles like ants fleeing a fire.
10
I looked around me desperately for a way out of the traffic jam but we were hemmed in on all sides. “Let me guess!” Lucas yelled. “We run for it?”
“We run for it!” I scrambled out of the vehicle and made for the side of the highway. Around me, people were craning their heads, trying to see what was happening. For all I knew, it could be a fire or a chemical spill, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out, if I could help it.
The flood of panicked people poured past us. I struggled to push past them but it was like trying to fight through a storm surge. For every foot of progress I made, I was pushed back two. I looked around anxiously for Emma and Lucas. Several feet away, they were clearly in the same boat. Emma looked at me helplessly.
An agonised scream shot through the confusion. Jerking my head around, I saw a woman thrashing on her car boot with a man tearing at her stomach. Another terrified cry on my left: a teenage boy was being pulled through the back seat window of his car even as his mother clutched desperately at his legs. Pandemonium broke out as people realised that the zombies were amongst them.
I was sickened as I realised that this traffic jam would offer up a smorgasbord for the zombies. The living didn’t stand a chance. The stalled cars offered no protection as the zombies’ hammering hands soon broke through the thin windows. On all sides, I saw people kicking and screaming as they were dragged out of car windows. Panic-stricken, others abandoned their cars to make a run for it but found themselves struggling to move through the congested gaps between the car. We were hemmed in on all sides. Through the mass of people around me, I saw, with something close to panic, the pallid faces of zombies closing in on all sides. We were sitting ducks.
Desperately, I caught Emma and Lucas’ eye. “Under the cars!” I mouthed. With a judicious use of elbows, I created enough breathing space to wriggle down to ground level and roll under a car. Peering around me, I spotted Emma and Lucas crawling up towards me, one car across.
The terrified screams of the people around us flooded my ears. The zombies picked them off like sharks at a feeding frenzy. People started scrambling over cars and shoving people over in a frantic attempt to escape the death that surrounded them.
A few feet from me, a young longhaired woman in t-shirt and jeans collapsed to the road, blood gushing from a ragged hole in her throat. Two slack-faced zombies fell upon her. As she struggled weakly to rise, they tore with bare hands at her bare stomach. My gorge rose as they pulled away chunks of flesh. I closed my eyes and turned the other way.
A child of about four years was lying on his belly between the cars. His big brown eyes met mine for a long moment and then he was gone, swept from view by a stampede of feet.
Swallowing hard, I waited until I could catch Emma and Lucas’ eye. I pointed forward. It was going to be a long and uncomfortable crawl but, as far as I could see, our only option was to make our way to the front of the traffic jam. The other two nodded their understanding.
On elbows and knees, I commando crawled from one car to another. For once, I was grateful for the Australian tendency to drive bumper to bumper. Emma and Lucas kept pace with me in the row of cars a few feet away.
Around us, death poured down on the drivers and their passengers like oil on fire. Bodies fell to the ground, blood pouring from raw wounds, only to rise and attack the people around them. The cries of pain and terror were unending and unbearable. I tried to block it out, tried to focus on just getting out of here alive, but every scream shot through my body like a knife. After fifteen minutes of travelling this way, seeing unbearable scenes of suffering, my body started to shake uncontrollably.
As I paused to rest my arms, I heard the family in the car above me fall under attack. The mother shrieked as her children were dragged out of the car. “No, no, no! Leave them be! Let my babies go!” The pain in her voice was unendurable as the children’s screams abruptly ended. Blood splattered to the ground around me. The mother’s sobs became a gurgle and then stopped.
For a moment, my throat was so tight with tears, I couldn’t breathe. I looked across at Emma. Her eyes looked back at me with compassion and reassurance. You can do this, they said. I swallowed and smiled briefly at her. I’m okay. Taking a deep breath, I crawled on.
Five minutes on, I began to notice a diminishment in the amount of people - and zombies-around me. I must be getting near the front of the line, I thought gratefully as my body screamed in protest.
As I dragged my trembling arms along the length of another car, a body on my left sti
rred. His intestines lay strewn across the bitumen. I froze as his eyes blinked open. Then, slowly, he turned his head and looked straight at me. I stopped breathing as our eyes met for a long moment. Without blinking, he pushed himself to his knees and moved towards me. Shit! I scurried forward as quickly as I could, trying to put some distance between us. The zombie continued to crawl alongside the cars, never taking his eyes off me.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Emma and Lucas keeping pace with me. A hand closed suddenly around my ankle. I gasped and kicked out desperately with my other leg. It connected with the zombie’s face as he inched under the car towards me. A second head appeared under the car and another zombie started to crawl laboriously towards me.
Trying to stay calm, I reached back and, pulling my parang out, hacked fiercely at the hand clutching me. It was hard to get much momentum with so little room but, thank God, the sheer weight of the parang did most of the work, cutting half way through the wrist on the first swing. Trying not to panic as the second zombie came closer, I swung again and succeed in severing his hand. With a shudder of revulsion, I shook it off my leg. As the other zombie’s fingers brushed my pants, I rolled away and scrambled into the open. My limbs ached in protest as I stood up.
A couple of cars down, two zombies emerged from cars, attracted by the noise. Then another three, no, four, popped their heads up from between the vehicles. Everywhere I looked, zombies turned towards me. Oh, this is not good, I thought with a touch of hysteria.
The persistent zombie and his companion started pulling themselves from beneath the car beside me. Oh no you don’t. Stepping forward, I placed a foot on the back of the closest one and, hoisting my parang up, lopped his head off. As it rolled away from his body, I moved to the next zombie and, pinning its head with my foot, proceeded to remove it, too.
Looking up, I could see an empty highway not thirty feet from me. The road ahead was blocked by a pile-up. Four smashed cars stretched across the highway, forming a tangled metal barrier. I felt Lucas and Emma coming to stand beside me while I tried to assess our options. They looked pretty bleak.