by David Rogers
As big as the SUV was, the pack of zombies was bigger still. Some were upright and close enough to either side of the vehicle as it drove over the bodies of their brethren to slam at it. Hands with grasping, clawing, clutching fingers pawed and thudded against the bodywork and windows as the SUV went by. Even through the soundproofing and heavy construction, the noise was audible and disturbing.
“Doing good.” Austin said as the SUV stopped losing speed. The ride was like being in a sadistic tilt-a-whirl, but Jessica clung to the wheel and kept the vehicle moving forward. She could see road beyond the gate. The end of the zombie pack was in sight; at least, there was pavement stretching off to the left that wasn’t covered in hungry monsters.
“Now—” Austin began as she neared the gate, then broke off as the SUV lurched. Jessica was already trying to correct, feeling the left side wheels getting hung up on something that was pulling them off a good line to fit through the gate. The vehicle lurched as she applied more power. The rear wheel ‘stuck’ for a moment, then spun on something she didn’t want to think about, then she was back to rocky, bumpy progress.
“The ditch—” Austin said quickly as she drove through the gate at an angle, but she was concentrating on not hitting the wall to either side and didn’t process what he was saying until she felt the SUV drop sickeningly to the left. Candice let out a scream as the driver’s side front wheel fell off the edge of the driveway spanning the drainage ditch outside the property’s wall. Jessica just had time to draw half a breath before the fall ended with a violent juddering lurch that flung her about despite her death grip on the steering wheel.
Several bangs went off as the airbags in the steering wheel and dashboard deployed, their sensors telling them the vehicle was having a wreck. Jessica blinked as the bag exploded into her face, snapping her head back as her chin stung from the impact and her ears rang from the noise of the deployments.
Austin was shouting something she couldn’t make out. She felt the left rear wheel drop off the driveway, and the SUV lurched again. It was pulling heavily to the left even as the rear end bounced on its shocks. The SUV was trying to climb out of the ditch as she kept pressure on the accelerator, but there was a lot of resistance. And the rear wheels were wasting a lot of time on poor – or no – traction as they lost contact with the ground.
As the bouncing finally stopped, Jessica gave up and put her foot all the way down. The engine roared powerfully, but the SUV didn’t catapult forward. Its pull to the left got worse, and she realized she had the steering wheel turned quite heavily to the right. Despite that, she was still barely keeping them heading in the direction she wanted, needed, them to go; toward the road.
The big vehicle came out of the ditch and onto the pavement. A horrendous screeching and scraping rose; metal on asphalt. She realized she was braced against the steering wheel to hold herself off it; the whole car was tilted badly forward toward the driver’s side front corner, and it was still trying to veer left. She had the steering cranked all the way over to the right.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Candice was yelling, her little voice high and thready with fear. Jessica could barely make the words out though; the ringing in her ears was making everything sound hollow and distant.
“Keep your foot in it!” Austin shouted as Jessica looked over her shoulder. The zombie pack was just behind them, easily in the hundreds. Some were down from having been run over, but even most of those were still moving or in the process of getting up. The ones still, or already back on, their feet were turning and shuffling, staggering, stumbling after the SUV.
“Jessica! Keep going!” Austin repeated.
“It’s on the floor.” she said loudly, looking at the speedometer. It was ticking between six and seven miles per hour. The scraping noise was still dominating, and she could feel the rear wheels trying to spin despite the SUV’s active traction control.
“Try to get to the end of the block.” Austin said, pulling back the charging handle on the MP5 to load it.
“What then?” she asked, looking over her shoulder again. The SUV was opening a gap between them and the zombie horde. Not much of one, but some. Facing forward once more, she saw the end of the block would give them maybe fifty feet of spacing between the zombies and the car.
“This thing is done.” he replied, reaching under the seat and pulling out the box of ammunition he kept there so it was handy. He started stuffing small cardboard boxes of bullets into his pouches and pockets.
Jessica’s face, already drawn with stress and fear, tightened further. She discarded several instinctive responses as her mind whirled. She didn’t know what was wrong with the SUV, but he was right. It was history. The immediate choice was to either shelter in it and hope the zombies eventually left, or get out and run for it. Sitting while the zombies clawed at the car didn’t strike her as an appealing option. But if they tried to flee . . .
“How fast can you move?” she asked Austin.
“Fast enough.” he said grimly.
“Okay.” she nodded. “Candice, get your seatbelt off. Make sure your shoes are tied.” Reaching down beneath the seat, she found her purse and managed to get it draped into place across her. She didn’t know why she kept hauling it around . . . all she really needed out of it was her wallet. And technically, really, only the pictures in it. The last things she had of everyone she’d lost. But she still had the purse, and if she was abandoning the car, she didn’t want to leave it behind.
At the end of the block, in the middle of the four-way intersection of two roads, Jessica didn’t even bother to brake. Simply taking her foot off the accelerator was enough to stop the car. In less than a second from releasing the throttle the SUV jerked to a stop. She looked around quickly, then opened her door. The shuffle of so many feet as the zombies headed for them was ominous; no panting, no breathing, no yelling, only the steady tramp and scrape of stumbling footfalls on pavement.
None were close, yet. But they were coming.
Jessica drew the Taurus and tugged on the rear door, but it was locked. She opened her mouth, but as she released the handle, she heard a click as the lock released. When she tried it again, it opened. “Let’s go Candice, out. Stay right with me.”
The girl slid down to the ground to land on both feet, looking behind them at the zombie pack even before she found her balance. It was a lot of zombies.
Jessica had already looked. She glanced instead at the SUV as she closed the doors. The front left wheel was canted inward at a severe angle, badly enough that the tire was jammed against the fender. The hubcap was in contact with the pavement, that’s how far bent the wheel was. She sighed; that explained what was wrong with the car. Next she resisted the urge to curse. Not only was it their only means of travel, but all their supplies were in it as well. Enough food to last for several weeks, containers for days of water, and all the hard found gas cans. Ammunition they didn’t have to collect in drips and drabs.
There was no way to bring even a fraction of any of it with them on foot.
“Yeah, that drop into the ditch did a number on it.” Austin said as he came around the front of the SUV.
“Damnit!” Jessica said, forcing herself to not cry. The frustration of having to abandon the SUV was intense, but the thing was shot. Beyond repair. Even if there weren’t a whole mess of zombies bearing down on them, they’d still have to leave it. The vehicle was finished.
“Get the key.”
“What?”
Austin wrenched open the driver’s door and pulled the key out of the ignition, then hit the button on the armrest that locked the doors. Slamming the door closed, he handed her the key. “Hang on to that. If we tap dance enough maybe we can get clear of this mess and come back with another car for the supplies.”
“Right.” Jessica said, stuffing the key into her pocket where she always put it. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Candice asked, hovering next to Jessica with one hand on her mother�
�s belt.
“That way.” Jessica decided, pointing to the west, down the left side of the intersection; away from the encroaching horde.
“Good as any.” Austin nodded. He started walking quickly in that direction. It looked odd to see him power walking like he was in the Olympics, but Jessica recognized it as a way to limit the impact stress on his healing injuries. Jogging and running put a lot of jolting stress on the body, and if he was forced to do that, it was entirely possible he’d be in real trouble.
Jessica caught up with him by jogging a little herself, falling into step on his right side. Now that Jessica was fully healed, she’d instructed Candice to always stay on her left side in situations like this; and the girl was doing that. This put her between Jessica and Austin, which suited Jessica just fine.
“Sorry.” Jessica said to Austin as they walked quickly away from the totaled SUV. His head was swiveling around steadily, methodically sweeping his eyes across everything in front of them. “I guess I screwed up.”
“It’s okay.” he said without pausing his scanning.
“At least we’re not hurt this time.” Candice said, though she sounded worried.
Austin smiled as Jessica glanced down at her daughter in wry amusement. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it Candy Bear.” she said after a few moments. The last time she and the girl had been in a car wreck, Jessica had been limping for weeks. She forced that memory out of her head quickly; too much to do to linger on old thoughts right now.
“Well, we’re not, are we?” the girl protested, glancing behind her at the pursuing zombies. Involuntarily, Jessica looked too. The zombies were stumbling around the corner, flooding across the grass and sidewalk, tripping over the drainage ditches, and staggering into the street as they followed the three humans. They were insistent and persistent, but falling back as the humans kept walking quickly.
“You’re right, we’re not.”
“She’s got a point.” Austin said. “As wrecks go, that one was fairly forgiving.”
“Now all we need to do is lose the zombies.” Jessica said, eyeing the horizon unhappily. The sun was getting very low; there couldn’t be much daylight left. She didn’t want to be getting chased around in the dark by a horde of zombies; but she didn’t want to go to ground in a siege situation either. “How much ammo do we have on us?” she asked.
Austin glanced at her. “Not that much.” he said.
Jessica opened her mouth, then hesitated. She thought back to the trip from Atlanta to Knoxville just after the outbreaks had started. That trio of people they’d rescued on I-75, who’d been trapped by a zombie horde because they were out of bullets for their guns. She knew she and Austin weren’t out of ammunition, but she didn’t know how much he might have crammed into his pockets before they’d bailed on the vehicle.
“While I’m thinking about it, here.” he said, reaching into one of his pouches and producing a box of bullets. “Keep these.”
Jessica took them and dropped them into the purse she had hanging in front of her waist. “That’s it?”
“No, have some more.” he said, producing several more boxes one at a time and handing them over. They were all nine millimeter, but at thirty rounds per box, in short order she had over a hundred more spare bullets on her.
“Sure we don’t have enough?” she asked, glancing behind them again.
The zombie horde was still spilling around the intersection; so many that they were continuing to round the corner even as the leaders and middle-of-packers came straight after the humans on the road. Some were not managing the shortcuts they tried to take over the curbs and through the ditches very well; tripping and falling flat on their faces. As usual, even when it was nose or forehead first into pavement, the zombies didn’t seem to mind the shocking damage the falls caused. All that happened was zombies behind them started tripping and falling as well. But not enough; there were too many that kept their feet and maintained the pursuit.
“I’m sure.” he said. “Unless you want to burn up everything we’ve got on this here, and be down to nothing.”
“No.” she said after a moment, shaking her head. “Let’s not go there unless there’s no choice.”
“My thought exactly.”
Jessica safed the Taurus and holstered it, then reached behind her and drew what was supposed to be her ‘backup’ pistol; a M&P Shield 9mm. Since she had less than two boxes of forty-five caliber bullets for the Taurus, she needed to stop thinking of the Shield as the backup. It was her first choice now. Racking the slide, she put the safety back on, then glanced around ahead of them. “Maybe we can cut through one of the yards?”
“And hop a fence?”
“Great minds. Can you manage that?”
“Yes.” he said. Jessica didn’t ask the clarifying question she wanted to. She gave him a lot of crap about it, but he really was a tough guy. His being hurt didn’t change that. He’d been an Army Ranger, and she knew that meant he’d proven – repeatedly – that when the going got tough he’d keep going. If he said he could climb over a fence or a wall with her, then he meant it.
He had to mean it. She just hoped it wouldn’t leave him so debilitated that he collapsed. Iron will was good up to a point, and then it just became academic when the body gave all the way out. It was like the zombies; they’d keep going with single minded clarity of ‘thought’; but if their bodies gave out, it didn’t matter that they still wanted to eat you. At that point they couldn’t do anything to actually get at you.
There was a limit. Everyone had a limit. She just hoped hers, Candice’s, and Austin’s weren’t going to be found anytime soon.
“Okay, that might be a good way to get clear.” Jessica said, trying to sound confident instead of worried.
“Just pick one.”
“How are we going to climb a wall?” Candice asked fearfully.
“Very carefully.” both adults said almost in unison.
“You’re trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?” the girl said in a brief moment of an almost normal tone.
“Yes.” Austin said.
“No.” Jessica replied right over Austin’s comment.
“Great.” Candice said, bumping into Jessica as she squeezed the hem of her mother’s shirt into her fingers in a tight grasp.
“Sweetie, just keep walking.” Jessica said, looking behind them again. Austin was making better time than she had when her knee had been banged up. The gap between them and the horde was steadily opening. Facing forward again, Jessica started eying the houses for a likely candidate as she absently patted her daughter on the back.
“That one.” she said, pointing with the Shield at a house that had a chain link fence enclosing it on two sides. The open style fence meant she could easily see the front and side yards, confirming they were empty of any zombies. At the back of the back yard, she could see a solid fence bordering the yard of the house behind it. It looked climbable to her; it wasn’t too tall.
Austin nodded. Jessica stayed in step with him, resisting the urge to ask him if he could go any faster. She knew it was just nerves that made her feel like she should be running. She’d been here before, on foot, being followed by zombies. Then she’d been less armed, less able, and in almost too much pain to keep moving. This wasn’t as bad. Austin was faster than she’d been in the same circumstance, and she’d learned a lot about how to handle zombies since then.
“We’re getting out of this.” she thought fiercely. “The hell we aren’t.”
Right as she thought that, she noticed movement at the end of the block they were proceeding down. Squinting a little, she suppressed a groan of frustration when she saw more zombies. She didn’t bother to count; it was dozens. Maybe not a full on ‘horde’, but more than enough to be a problem. And they were already headed in this direction; rounding the corner from two directions and aiming unsteadily right down the street at she and Candice and Austin.
“Come on.” Jessica said, tugging the gate o
pen and holding it from closing for Austin to go through. The big man didn’t stop; he just kept moving for the house’s back yard. Jessica shooed Candice in after him, then went through and tugged the gate closed behind her. Dropping the latch, she looked around quickly but didn’t see anything that she could use to help jam it closed. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. She hoped not anyway; they only needed to slow the zombies a little. And zombies were already slow as it was.
But there were so many of the persistent bastards.
“Contact, five, forward.” Austin said loudly. She turned from the fence just in time to see his first shot. She couldn’t see what he was shooting at – it was behind the house and she didn’t have the angle to spot it – but he fired several more times as he slowed to an even odder looking tactical walk.
The power walk he’d been using was fast and rolled his hips back and forth; this was slower, and involved him mostly bending from the waist and walking only from the knees down. His upper body was very stable, which let him fire smoothly and cleanly. She’d seen him do it before. As strange as it looked, she knew it worked. Unfortunately it was something she hadn’t gotten the hang of yet.
Jessica felt Candice’s hands fluttering around the left side of her belt as the girl jogged along next to her mother; heard the girl’s breath coming fast and high, making little panting noises of anxiety. Catching up with Austin, Jessica spotted the zombies. Two were down, and a third toppled as she stopped and raised her pistol. Her first shot missed, and the next two ripped a pair of ugly looking holes in the dead woman’s shoulder, but by then Jessica had calmed down and found her center.
The fourth shot snapped the zombie’s head back, punching through just to the side of the creature’s nose. A shower of things erupted from the back of its skull, but Jessica scarcely took note. It was down, and not moving. That’s all that mattered right now.