by Gary Chesla
Mike would swerve, but couldn’t manage to avoid hitting all of them. So far he had managed to limit most of the contact to the sides of the car.
Enough to keep from damaging the radiator or the small engine, but not enough to miss them all together. The loud crunching sounds against the door and fenders, along with the dull thuds against the windows still was enough to scare the hell out of Kelly and Kimmy. They nervously screamed and gasped at each noisy contact.
He was doing his best to avoid them but more importantly he had been able to successfully avoid seriously damaging the car. He couldn’t damage the car.
There didn’t appear to be many options to replace the Prius on this small winding road.
Occasionally he would see a car parked by a little house back off the road. If he had to find another car, trying to take a car parked next to someone’s house could end up getting him shot.
He wasn’t sure how many people were still alive out here, but there was a better chance out this way there could still be an armed living person hiding in one of these houses.
He was sure most of the residents were staggering around out on the road trying to get at his car, but he hoped to avoid finding out.
Driving twenty-five miles an hour might help him avoid damaging the car, but it would take forever to get home. He could probably live with the slow pace, but he didn’t know if all of them could survive the trip with their sanity at the constant sound of the dead bouncing off the sides of the car.
If the dead managed an unlucky collision with the radiator, they could soon find themselves in deep trouble.
Either way, the trip home would leave them changed forever.
They had already changed in many ways.
Seeing what they had seen the last few days would change anyone.
Their future had become a possibility of two bad options.
Their worst case option would be that they would die, probably a horrible death.
Their best case outcome would be that they would live, but what kind of life would they have?
It wouldn’t be a life, it would be a continuous struggle to stay alive. A life of relentless pursuit by the dead. If Dave’s information was accurate, this madness would continue on long after they were gone.
Their dreams of watching Kimmy grow up, graduate, get married and give them grandchildren to enjoy during their retirement years were probably not going to happen.
The best they could look forward to at this point was to live another day.
If all went really well, they might live long enough to see Kimmy grow up. But grow up to what?
What would the cost be to their morals, to who and what they were, to live that long.
What kind of people would they become in order to survive?
Was it worth it?
Right now their best hope, was the idea that they were wrong. That Dave was crazy or at least wrong.
That whatever this nightmare was, maybe it would all end soon.
Mike had always been told that all good things must come to an end.
His dog King was his best friend when he was growing up.
King got old, became ill and died. Mike was crushed when King died. But he had to accept that all things eventually died. All good things came to an end.
When he got his driver’s license, his Dad gave him an old 1959 Chevy Impala.
He liked the big fins and the cat’s eyes tail lights. He spent a lot of time visiting the local junk yards to find parts to keep the old car running.
Eventually the old straight six cylinder engine just gave out. Between the engine dying and the body rusting to the point it became too expensive to keep patching the holes in the floors and fenders, he had to let it go.
Ever since, whenever he bought a new car, he always thought fondly of his first car. Of course compared to his old car, the new cars had become so technically superior to that old Chevy it was unbelievable, but they could still never come close to the memories he had of that old Impala.
All good things had to come to an end.
Mike hoped the reverse was also true. All bad things would also have to come to an end.
He only hoped he had the will power and ability to keep his family safe until they reached that point.
Hopefully they would find some enjoyment in what life would be like until that time.
The other horrific option was enough to keep them pushing forward.
At least for now.
Mike slowed the car to a crawl. He looked around. For now the road ahead was clear. The fields on either side of the car didn’t appear threatening.
The dead on the road behind him was far enough back to not worry him too much.
Mike stopped the car.
“What are you doing?” Kelly asked nervously. Her eyes fixed on Mike.
Mike pulled the map Dave had given him out of his pocket.
“It looks like Route 182 intersects here with Route 1. I think we have to turn here. I just want to check the map.” Mike replied.
Kelly looked around and was nervous when she saw the dead coming down the road behind their car.
“Hurry Mike. They’re coming.” Kelly pleaded.
Mike looked in the rearview mirror. “Those ones don’t worry me yet.”
His eyes darted off to the sides of the car. “It’s the ones we don’t see that I’m worried about.”
“They all worry me. I just want to keep moving.” Kelly said.
Mike studied the map.
“Here we are. Yes, we have to turn right and go south on Route 1. It will get us down to Route 23.” Mike said.
“Do we have to go through anymore towns?” Kelly asked. “God I hope not, not after that last town.”
Mike quickly glanced at the map and followed Route 1 down to Route 23. “It looks like there is a place called Webville along Route 1 before we get to our next turn. Most of the towns have a big dot next to their names, but Webville doesn’t have anything next to it. Whatever it is, it mustn’t be very big. Hopefully it’s nothing.”
“What kind of name is Webville?” Kelly asked. “It doesn’t sound like a place in Kentucky. Moonshineville, Hickorynutville, or pickuptruckville maybe, but not Webville. Maybe it was the first place in Kentucky that had an internet connection so they could get on the web?”
Mike half smiled. “Or maybe Paw Kettle was delivering some moonshine down that way and ran into a cobweb and decided to name the place Webville.”
Kelly looked behind the car at the approaching dead that were slowly catching up. She looked at Mike. “Smartass! Can we start moving again, please?”
Mike folded the map and put it back in his pocket. He pulled out, turning right and slowly drove south on Route 1.
Route 1 didn’t look any different than Route 182. The route took them up steep hills and down the other sides. The road was a small winding two lane road surrounded by wooded hills and an occasional field.
It was difficult with all the twists and turns to see very far as the trees hid what was around the next bend.
Mike continued on at the same slow pace.
They still saw the dead moving around along the road, but Mike began to notice a pattern.
The dead were mostly in the small valleys at the bottom of the hills.
Any of the dead walking on the hills were going down the hill and not up.
“It looks like they can’t go up the hills.” Mike said. “We need to be careful at the bottom of the hills. It seems like they get in the valleys and stay there.”
Kelly looked worried as the descended another hill.
At the bottom of the hill, a half dozen of the dead rushed out at the car.
Kelly screamed as they bounced off the front fenders.
As soon as they were past the dead now scattered around on the road, Mike sped up to start up the next hill. He looked in the mirror. The two that he had managed to avoid tried to follow but didn’t go very far before they fell.
“I don’t thi
nk they can follow us up the hill.” Mike said. “Dave was right. He said if we had a problem to get someplace high because the dead can’t climb.”
“That’s good.” Kelly said. “Too bad we have to keep going back down the other side of these hills.”
“Yea!” Mike sighed. “But at least we know when we have to stop for a break or for the night, we need to stop on a hill.”
Kelly shuddered at the thought of spending the night anywhere out here in the middle of nowhere.
For the next ten minutes the road wound around through the trees on an upward climb. They saw a few dead try to come out onto the road to get at the car, but over all this part of the trip had been less eventful.
The tension Mike had felt in his neck and shoulders eased.
For few minutes, Mike felt that maybe the trip to get home just might be manageable.
“If the road stays like this for a while, we might just be able to get somewhere today.” Mike said.
“That would be nice for a change.” Kelly said. “How far have we been able to travel in the last two days? Twenty miles?”
“That sounds about right.” Mike said. “But it is twenty miles closer to home than we were this morning.”
“That still leaves us about two hundred and eighty miles to go.” Kelly sighed sounding frustrated.
“If we would have gone to Sarasota this fall like we had talked about, we would still have twelve hundred more miles to go.” Mike said.
“With all the dead out there, it feels like a million miles.” Kelly said as a tear ran down her face.
“Think positive!” Mike smiled, looking a hell of a lot more optimistic than he felt. Even if he felt like this trip was going to be impossible, he wanted Kelly and Kimmy to at least believe they could make it.
He felt helpless with everything he had learned. He needed them to be hopeful. If they felt they were on a suicide mission, it would crush his spirit. They were the only thing that was keeping him going right now.
They were his only bright spot in a vision of horror, death and doom.
The road soon began to level out as they reached the top of the mountain.
“Keep an eye on your side of the road. It looks like we might be on level ground for a while. There will probably be some of those things out here in the flats.” Mike said.
“Yea and what goes up must go down!” Kelly said sounding worried.
Mike slowed down again as they drove on.
So far things were quiet. Mike hoped there hadn’t been that many people that had lived up this way. The less that had lived here, the fewer of the dead they would have to worry about.
He didn’t know much about this area, he just hoped it was as sparse as Dave had said. If he was going to make it home, he could use a little luck.
Kelly grabbed his arm. “Mike, up ahead!” She said loudly. “What’s that?”
Mike focused on the road ahead. About a quarter mile ahead, something was happening on the road. Whatever it was seemed to have both sides of the road blocked.
Mike slowed down and hit the EV button. The little engine stopped as the car continued moving forward. The low whine of the electric motor was the only sound coming from the car.
When they were two hundred feet from the roadblock, Mike stopped and stared at what was going on in front of him.
“It looks like a car is stopped on the road.” Kelly said nervously.
Mike stared at the dead that surrounded the car. They were banging against the windows on the car. Some thrust their faces into the windows.
“There must be someone in the car the way they are going at that car.” Mike said.
“Can we help whoever is in the car?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t know?” Mike replied. “We need to get closer to see who is in the car. It might be too late.”
“Too late?” Kelly asked not sure what Mike meant.
“If whoever is in the car has been injured. They might already be infected.” Mike answered. “If they look like they are infected we can’t take the chance. It would be better if we just got out of here.”
“How will we know?” Kelly asked as she watched the frenzy going on around the car.
“They haven’t noticed us yet.” Mike said. “We have to knock a few of them out of the way to get past. I’m going to try to sneak up on them before they see us, then I’ll try to knock down the ones on the left side of the car. You look to see who is inside while I try to get by the car.”
“OK.” Kelly said as she turned sideways in her seat so she could get a better look inside the car as they got closer.
“What if they look OK?” She asked.
“If they look like they aren’t infected, I’ll stop and try to back over the dead. We can’t chance hitting them with the front of the car.” Mike said. “That’s all we would need is to bust another radiator.”
Kelly stared. The bloody gray creatures gave her the creeps as they edged closer.
As he got close to the car, Mike hit the gas enough to kick the Prius into regular engine mode.
The dead still didn’t seem to notice.
Mike drove at the back of the car then swerved to the left trying to hit the dead with the passenger side of his car.
As he swung by the stopped car, the dead on the left side of the stalled car bounced off of the side of Mike’s car and into the car they were attacking.
The creatures fell to the ground. The dead flailed around on the ground, looking like wild animals that had been hit by a passing car, not dead but in agony.
Kelly stared at the windows of the car as they drove by. Two faces from inside the car pushed against the cracked windows. The look in their frightened eyes pleaded for help.
“Mike there are two people inside that car. It looks like a young couple.” Kelly screamed. “They look OK to me.”
“Are you sure they are OK?” Mike yelled.
“I can’t say for sure, but they look scared to death.” Kelly answered.
“Where any of the windows broken? Did they look like they were bleeding?” He said loudly as he stopped the car twenty feet in front of the motionless vehicle.
“The windows are cracked. There is all kind of blood and stuff on the windows.” Kelly said as she swung around in her seat to look out the back window. “I can’t say for sure, but they didn’t look like they were hurt. We have to help them!”
Kelly looked at Mike pleading.
“OK, I’ll see what I can do. Hold tight.” Mike said warily. “I’m going to back up and see if I can disable those other three.”
Mike threw the car into reverse and started back at the car. He swung the Prius to the right and rammed the dead that were hammering on the passenger’s side of the stalled car.
The little Prius bounced up and down as it made contact with the dead and then ran over them.
They could hear the bones breaking over the sound of the small engine as it strained to drive over the bodies.
Mike stopped the Prius next to the stalled car and looked in through the blood and guts that covered most of the window’s surface.
The face of a man, about eighteen years old look out at him.
“Daddy!” Kimmy screamed.
Mike looked at Kimmy and saw her terrified face staring out through the windshield.
Mike quickly turned to see what she was looking at.
Kelly screamed as she saw it.
An ugly gray toothless face began to crawl up over the hood of the Prius. The arms flailed against the hood of the car as it moved closer to the windshield.
Mike threw the car into drive and hit the gas.
The dead body began to slide down off the hood as the car jostled them around in their seats as Mike crushed the creature with the front tires before it could get at the windshield.
Mike saw the creature, mangled on the road behind the car in the rearview mirror.
Mike stopped the Prius and turned facing the front and began to swear as he saw the small spray o
f steam shoot into the air at the end of the hood.
“Damn it!” He yelled, slamming his fists against the steering wheel. “We knocked a hole in our radiator.”
Mike was fuming as he thought about what had happened to the RV earlier today. They were screwed.
He looked in the rearview mirror. The boy in the car behind him had jumped out and was hitting the still agitated bodies around the car with a hammer.
Kimmy was terrified, not only with what had happened but also by Mike’s outburst.
Mike turned. “I’m sorry Kimmy. You’re fine. Daddy isn’t mad at you. I just lost my temper because I broke the car again.”
Kimmy jumped up and hugged Mike as she sobbed. Mike could feel her tears falling on his bare arms.
Mike hugged her. “Here you keep Mommy company for a few minutes while I go back and make sure those people are OK.”
Kimmy nodded and quickly moved over and began to hug Kelly.
“Stay in the car and lock the doors.” Mike instructed. “I’m going to go back and see if all of this was worth it!”
He shot Kelly a frustrated look then turned and got out of the car.
As Mike walked to the stalled vehicle, he saw the boy helping a young girl get out of the car. She couldn’t have been older than twelve. She looked horrified as she looked at the bloody scene around their car. Tears ran down her face and her entire body appeared to shake.
The boy led her around the dead on the ground. He tossed his bloody hammer to the ground as they walked towards Mike.
The young man lowered his head as he approached Mike.
“Thank you Mister.” He said humbly. “You saved me and my sister’s life. Another few minutes and they would have got in through the window. It was cracked and was bending into the car.”
Mike looked them over. He was looking for bites or scratches but they didn’t look like they had been injured.
“Are you two OK?” Mike asked. “They didn’t bite you or anything?”
“No Sir!” The boy replied. “That old Dodge kept them out just long enough.”
“What happened to your car?” Mike asked.