Undead Flesh

by Dennis McDonald

First gear groaned as the wheel threw dirt against his legs. Jack pushed with all his strength, and the tire nearly came free before dropping back into the hole.

  “Again!” he shouted above the eerie moans of the approaching undead mob.

  Doug slipped the truck back into gear and stepped on the gas. This time Jack dug his heels into the dirt and pushed against the bumper.

  “Jack!” Telia said from the truck bed. “Look out!”

  The chain saw went into high gear. A decapitated head suddenly bounced along the dirt road and landed near his feet, revealing the half-burned face of a blond middle-aged woman. Jack watched in horror as her lifeless eyes looked up at him and her mouth chomped one last time. The horrific sight gave him a burst of adrenaline, and he refocused all his strength on pushing the truck from the pothole.

  “Move, you son of a bitch!” He dug in and strained his back against the bumper. “Move!”

  Spraying a swath of sandy dirt, the tire lifted from the pothole and Jack grabbed hold of the tailgate. He glanced up just in time to see Frank Cooper closing in on him from ten feet away. Bloody slobber still dripped from his horrid mouth.

  “Go!” Jack yelled. “Now!”

  The truck slipped into gear and shot forward, but not before the undead horror lunged and grabbed the bumper. Jack looked down in shock to see Frank Cooper reaching toward him while being dragged down the road. He snap-fired the .38 at the undead thing’s head but missed. Frank Cooper gripped his right ankle, and Jack felt his hold on the tailgate start to slip. Desperate, he jammed the barrel of the .38 against the horror’s right eye and fired again. This time he didn’t miss. The bullet blew out a good portion of the right side of Frank Cooper’s face, and his body fell away into the road.

  Jack hauled himself back into the truck bed. The zombie mob had been left behind in the pickup’s dusty wake. He turned to say something to Telia but stopped upon seeing her face plastered with bloody pieces of flesh and bone.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I should’ve kept my mouth shut like you said,” she said with a grimace. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  She dropped the gore-covered chain saw and threw up over the side of the truck. She continued retching as Jack pulled her hair back from her face. For a moment, he felt like they were a couple of high school kids at an underage beer party. When she was finished, Telia sat back down on the wheel hub and wiped her mouth on her leather jacket sleeve.

  “Sorry about that.” She showed an embarrassed smile and picked a piece of bloody bone from her hair. “God, I must look like a fucking nightmare.”

  “Not compared to what I’ve seen today.”

  Telia kicked the chain saw to his side of the truck bed. “I’ll trade you.”

  “Can you shoot a pistol?”

  “I had a boyfriend who was an undercover cop. He taught me how.”

  “I’m better with a shotgun or a rifle.” He handed her the pistol. “Four rounds are left. Make them count.”

  “Will do.”

  “By the way, thanks for saving me back there. I owe you one.”

  She flashed another smile. “Just remember that when it’s my ass that needs saving.”

  “Is everybody okay back there?” Doug called out.

  “We’re fine.” Jack glanced at his wife and saw concern in her eyes. He gave her a thumbs-up and she nodded back. “How far are we from the farm?”

  “A half a mile,” Doug said.

  “Thank God.”

  “Yeah, but I hate to dump this on everyone, since we’ve made it this far. There might be another problem up ahead, yo.”

  “What is it now?”

  “We’re coming up on Osage Creek.” Doug pointed ahead. “There’s an old bridge running across it.”

  “Not another bridge,” Jack said. “So what’s the problem? You think the quake may have damaged it?”

  “It was rusted before the quake. The county has been promising to do maintenance on it for months.”

  “Great.”

  Doug pulled up to the Osage Creek bridge and slid the truck to a stop. Jack’s heart sank at the sight of it. Whatever condition the bridge had been in before the quake, it was now a ruined structure of bent iron girders with some of its wooden planks missing. There was no way the truck could cross it.

  “End of the road,” Doug said, shutting the engine off.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Everyone but Kerri piled out of the truck. Jack ran to the edge of the bank and was surprised to see that the creek was a brown stretch of muddy water roaring ten feet below the bottom of the bridge.

  “Have you had a lot of rain lately?” he asked Doug.

  He shook his head. “It shouldn’t be so high. We’ve been in near-drought conditions all year.”

  “Maybe the quake broke a levee upstream,” Telia suggested.

  “I bet the Salt Plains Dam broke. It would explain all the water, yo.”

  “Whatever the reason, it’s too deep and moving way too fast for us to swim across.” Jack turned his attention to the bridge, which stretched a hundred feet and was just wide enough for two cars to pass. The structure was old, rusted, and heavily damaged. Some of its steel frame had collapsed and stuck out of the raging water like the bones of a metal dinosaur. Making things worse were the gaps in the bridge floor where planks were missing.

  “What are we going to do?” Kate said.

  “We have to cross it on foot. It’s our only choice,” Jack said.

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “There’s no other way. We’ll climb over the missing parts of the floor by using the bridge girders.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “How’s our girl doing?”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood.” Kate looked back at the truck. “I don’t think she’s capable of climbing anything with her wounded hand.”

  “Then I’ll carry her on my back.”

  “Whatever you do, it has to be quick,” Telia warned. “We’ve got a pack of zombies breathing down our neck.”

  “I know.” Jack glanced toward the road. The mob was out of sight due to the dust cloud kicked up by the truck, but he had no doubt they were coming straight for them. “Doug?”

  “Yo.”

  “You go first and find the best way across. My family will follow. Don’t stop until everyone is safe on the other side. I wouldn’t want them to be caught on the bridge in case there’s another aftershock.”

  “You got it, Mr. G.”

  “What about me, Dad?” Brett said.

  Jack squatted and put his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Buddy, I need you to help your mother. Can you do that for me, champ?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good boy. Kate, you’re next. You follow Brett.”

  “I don’t like leaving Kerri’s side.”

  “I’ll bring her with me. You just worry about our son.”

  She nodded. “Please be careful, Jack. I’ll pray for God to help you.”

  “You do that,” he said.

  “Come on, Mom.” Brett took her hand. “You stay close to me. I’ll show you the way.”

  “All right, my brave little man,” she said and started across the shattered bridge.

  Jack turned to Telia. “You’re next.”

  She gave him a stern look. “I don’t think so. I may have signed up for this crazy tour, but I didn’t say you were my boss. Now grab your daughter and get your ass across the bridge. I’ll stay behind to hold off the zombies.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  She brandished the .38 pistol. “I’ll lay down some covering fire.”

  “Really? You only have four rounds left. That’s not going to be much covering fire.” “I’ll deal with it. Get moving.”

  He rushed to the truck’s open passenger door and leaned into the cab. Kerri sat in the front seat with her head back. Blood had soaked through her makeshift bandage and pooled on the floor.

  “How’re you doing, baby?” Jack said.


  “My hand hurts like hell, but I’m not a zombie yet,” she said in a barely audible voice.

  “You’re not going to be either,” he said. “We have to get out and across this bridge.”

  “Another freaking bridge—are you kidding me?” She slid out of the pickup and leaned against the truck.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “I don’t know if I can walk that far. I feel real dizzy.”

  “You remember the piggyback rides I gave you when you were six? Guess what—I’m going to give you another.”

  “You’ll carry me over the bridge?”

  “I would carry my baby girl through the fiery gates of hell.” Jack hefted her onto his back.

  “Yeah, but I’ve been a real bitch lately.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Plus, I’m a lot bigger then when I was six years old.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing blood out of her bandage and down the front of his shirt.

  “Not to me,” he said. “You’re always my little girl.”

  Jack carried her toward the bridge. The rest of the group had gone ahead and now climbed along the girder frame above a big gap in the floorboards. Kate shot him a worried glance and he knew what it meant. Crossing the bridge was not going to be easy while carrying his daughter.

  Telia fell in behind, holding the .38 with both hands. “I thought you killed that big zombie bastard,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you put a bullet in the brain of that big zombie in the plaid shirt?”

  “Frank Cooper? Hell, yes. I shot him right in the eye.”

  “Well, he’s back.”

  “No way.” Jack looked back down the road and spotted the zombie mob less than a hundred yards away. Leading the group was Frank Cooper with half his face missing. “Shit.” He shook his head in disbelief. “This can’t be happening. I shot him, but I must’ve missed the part of his brain keeping him alive.”

  “You get going,” Telia said. “I’ll fall in behind you.”

  “Bad choice of words,” Jack said, looking down at the raging creek through the gaps between the bridge planks.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  Holding Kerri on his back, Jack walked onto the bridge. A few boards shifted beneath their combined weight, but the planks held. He knew the fall wouldn’t kill them, but the rushing water would be very dangerous, even for a healthy swimmer. There was no way Kerri could survive such a swim in her condition.

  The moans of the undead mob increased in volume, signaling they were closing in.

  “I hear zombies,” Kerri said in a weak voice.

  “Don’t worry about it. You just hold on tight.”

  They reached the first large gap in the floor, a six-foot wide space of missing timber planks. Holding on to the girder frame, Jack swung across the open space and dropped down hard on the other side. Behind him, Telia’s pistol fired twice, the shots ringing out along the creek bank. He risked a glance in her direction. She stood in a firing stance at the mouth of the bridge as the zombie mob came around the pickup. She shot twice more, blowing out the brains of two walking corpses. She was a much better shot than he was, but Jack knew the gun was now empty.

  “Telia, get out of there!” he shouted.

  She darted down the bridge, took a running jump, and cleared the missing timbers to land on the other side like a cat.

  “Hooray for being a cheerleader in high school,” she said. “Let’s see those zombies do that.”

  “Pray they can’t,” Jack said.

  With Kerri on his back, he continued along the weak bridge floor until they reached a fifteen-foot wide gap. The others had safely traversed the obstacle and were moving along the rest of the bridge. Jack took a second to consider the best way to proceed. He decided to climb using the rusted girders on the structure’s left side and reached out to grab the beam with both hands.

  “I don’t fucking believe it!” Telia said behind him. “That big son of a bitch can climb!”

  Jack glanced back down the length of the bridge. Frank Cooper had reached the first gap in the floorboards and was climbing along the steel girders. The rest of the undead tried to follow his lead but lacked the physical ability. One by one, they slipped and fell into the torrent and were swept away until only Frank Cooper remained. The large zombie continued moving along the girders like some grotesque bloated spider. He reached the other side of the gap and dropped down on the bridge just fifteen feet from Telia.

  “This one’s a bad-ass, Jack,” she said, retreating. “I’ll keep him occupied. You get going.”

  “Watch yourself.” He then said to Kerri, “Baby, this is where you really have to hold on.”

  “I’ll try.” Her grip tightened across his shoulders.

  Jack swung out over the gap ten feet above the roaring creek. The rusted span provided only a four-inch wide ledge for the tips of his tennis shoes. Using his fingers and toes, he slowly inched his way along the beam with the weight of his daughter dangling off his shoulders.

  “Jack!” Telia shouted. “He’s headed for you.”

  “What?”

  Jack looked left. Frank Cooper was ten feet away. The bullet hole in the right side of his face gave him the gruesome visage of something out of a madman’s fevered nightmare. He showed bloody teeth while reaching for the same girder.

  “Goddammit,” Jack muttered , trying to move faster along the beam. “Hang on tight, baby. Don’t let go.”

  “Okay.” Her voice sounded weaker.

  Telia shouted at Frank Cooper, “Hey, you ugly bastard! If you got any balls left, you’ll come and get me!”

  The monstrous thing ignored her and started to heft his large body onto the beam.

  Telia picked up a piece of broken wood and threw it with all her might. It hit Frank Cooper squarely in the back. This time her plan to draw the big zombie’s attention worked. The monster let go of the girder and staggered around to face Telia.

  “I pissed this big boy off,” she said, backing toward the other side of the bridge.

  “Get away from him, Telia!” Jack said.

  “Don’t worry about me. Save your daughter.”

  She bent low and charged Frank Cooper in a diving tackle. Jack watched in shock as they tumbled together into the gap in the bridge floor and disappeared from sight into the thundering creek below.

  “Telia!” Jack shouted.

  The tip of his right sneaker slipped and he caught himself. He used all the strength left in his arms to lift himself back onto the beam. Knowing he could do nothing to help Telia now, he refocused on moving slowly along the length of the steel span, his fingers and toes aching from the strain. Fatigue set into his overworked muscles, causing his lower arms to cramp. Nearing the point of total collapse, he reached the other side of the gap and eased himself onto the bridge timber to catch his breath.

  “We made it, baby,” he said breathlessly to Kerri. “Daddy’s got to take a break for a moment.”

  “I … don’t feel …” She fainted.

  Jack caught her in his arms before she could hit the bridge floor.

  “Kerri?” he said.

  No answer. Her eyes were closed and her face looked ghostly pale. Picking her up like a broken doll, he carried her to where the others waited at the end of the bridge.

  Kate rushed to his side. “Oh, God, Jack is she …”

  He laid Kerri down and checked her pulse. Much to his relief, she still had one.

  “She’s just passed out. The climb was a big strain on her and she’s lost too much blood.” He unhooked his belt and slid it out of his jeans. “We need a tourniquet on that arm to stop the bleeding. This should work if we keep the pressure on.”

  He pulled the belt tight around her biceps.

  “I’m so sorry for what happened to that biker girl,” Kate said. “She was so brave.”

  “Her name was Telia,” Jack said and then noticed Doug and Brett watching something behind him.<
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  “Dad?” Brett said.

  “What is it, son? I’m busy right now.”

  “You really need to see this, Mr. G,” Doug said.

  Jack turned and blinked in disbelief. Frank Cooper still gripped the edge of the hole in the broken bridge floor and lifted his big body back onto the bridge. He staggered once more in their direction.

  “How can he do that?” Jack said. “None of the other zombies could climb like that.”

  “He must be some sort of superzombie,” Brett said.

  “Big Frank climbed oil rigs for a living, so maybe he still remembers how as a zombie,” Doug said.

  “Screw this!” Jack turned to Kate. “Keep the belt tight on her arm.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m tired of running from this thing.” He added in an almost primal growl, ”It’s either him or me.”

  She held the tourniquet tightly as Jack bent down and picked up a five-foot long piece of broken timber. Primitive white-hot anger pushed away all his fear, fatigue, and pain. He had only a single purpose now: He wanted Frank Cooper dead—again.

  Holding the piece of timber like a bat, Jack charged toward the zombie, who towered a full head and shoulders above him.

  “Stay away from my family, you fucking piece of dead meat!” he shouted.

  He swung the club with all his strength against Frank Cooper’s ribs. Bones cracked, but the blow didn’t stop the big zombie. He continued trying to grab him. Jack took another swing, and this time Frank Cooper managed to get his arm up and block the attack. For a brief second, Jack had the impression that he was fighting Frankenstein’s monster in some demented redneck remake.

  Emitting a demented moan, Frank Cooper lunged for his throat with both hands. Jack avoided the attack and kept beating the thing’s bullet-damaged face and head with the board. It had no effect. He started to realize that a piece of wood wasn’t going to stop Frank Cooper. The big zombie grabbed for him, again forcing Jack to step back. He tripped on a shifting floorboard and landed hard on his back, losing hold of his weapon. With blood and bone oozing out of the side of his brutalized face, the horror reached toward him.

  Jack screamed.

  A second later, Frank Cooper’s head exploded in a grisly fountain of bone and brains, accompanied by the sound of a high-power rifle shot echoing along the bridge. Jack watched in shock as the decapitated corpse tumbled backward and disappeared once again into the large hole in the bridge floor. He turned to where the shot had come from. A black Jeep Patriot was parked on a hill fifty yards from the bridge, and beside the vehicle stood a stout gray-bearded man dressed in camo jacket, hat, and pants. He held a scoped rifle.