by S. Ganley
Kyle stood the rest of the way up, swaying unsteadily as his head continued to swim from his collision with the ground. He had dropped his rifle when the girl had collided with him and now reached over and retrieved it from inside a nearby bush. When he turned back around towards his patrol car he saw that the brief struggle and roaring blast from the shotgun had alerted the undead at the far end of the parking lot to their presence and they were now racing towards the two survivors already covering almost half the distance in just a few seconds. Kyle grabbed Shellie by the back of her arm and roughly pushed her forward down the sidewalk as he broke into a sprint in a mad race to reach the car.
They reached the cruiser and jumped inside only seconds before the first four zombies covered the distance and propelled themselves onto the hood to immediately begin pounding on the windshield. The third blow sent a spider web of shattering glass streaking across the windshield and it was clear that one or two more hits and it would implode into the passenger compartment. Kyle cranked the engine while popping the car into gear at the same time resulting in a spine tingling grinding sound as the transmission roared back in protest. His foot slammed down on the accelerator before the zombies on the hood could deliver the next blow to the thin shield of cracking glass. The sudden forward movement of the accelerating car tossed the four zombies off to the sides and clear of the tires as Kyle spun the wheel hard to the right aiming for one side of the entry drive that looked like it was less congested with the creatures as they raced across the pavement towards them. Even on that side of the drive he was still colliding with zombies every few feet along the way. Pushing his speed up to close to thirty miles per hour he hoped that the extra power he was trading for safe driving would better propel them over and past any bodies that fell underneath the car. The added speed compared to when they were escaping from the fire house and running down zombies along the way was making it a much more difficult ride. Each impact with the steel guard along the front bumper pushed the car slightly to one side or the other and that rocking motion was threatening to put them into a spin or simply send them off over the concrete curbs marking the boundary of the drive. Shellie screamed as a face suddenly loomed directly against the glass of her window, the zombie managed to get a single punch towards her face before he dropped out of view behind them, leaving behind a dirty smudge stain on the glass in the shape of a fist.
The end of the drive was approaching must faster than Kyle had anticipated, he had sped up to almost forty miles per hour along the last stretch of the parking lot and had been focused more on dodging zombies and keeping them facing straight ahead instead of judging the distance and preparing for the turn. The corner going to either the left or right out of the drive and onto Lewinsville road was constructed on a significant grade that had exiting cars pointing uphill as they stopped at the sign and prepared to make their turn. The road in either direction was also fairly narrow right at the entrance to the sports center, making it a difficult exit even under the best of conditions. Kyle braked and turned the wheel hard to the right at the same time to swing them onto Lewinsville road towards Spring Hill road so they could take that quick right and escape into the rural countryside leading to the outskirts of Mclean. The combination of speed, aggressive turning and the upward grade tested the laws of physics and in this case the patrol car failed that test. Two wheels left the ground for a split second and when they once again returned to earth the car had partially turned making them hit the ground and slide sideways. Kyle overcompensated for the change in their direction and inevitable spin and sent them careening into the soft mud on the shoulder of the far side of the road. Had only two tires hit the mud the powerful engine with a police package to include twice the horsepower of a civilian car would have had no problem pushing them through it and back out on the road with only a coating of mud on the body of the car. Unfortunately for Kyle and Shellie, all four tires hit the mud and drove them an additional five feet further off onto the shoulder. He knew what was coming as he felt the heavy cruiser sinking into the mud but tried desperately to use their last little bit of inertia to continue driving straight ahead in the hopes of reaching a patch of grass that would give the wheels a little something to bite into and maintain traction. Their forward motion stopped fast enough to throw Kyle hard against the steering wheel and to send Shellie smashing face first into the glove box. Kyle hit the wheel with his chest and was mostly uninjured save for what would later develop into an ugly half-moon shaped bruise. Shellie was not as lucky, her head bounced off the glove box trailing a shower of fresh blood from a broken and crooked nose. She slumped down in her seat against the door unconscious. In an added twist of just pure shitty lucky the engine sputtered and died a second after they came to a complete rest.
Kyle realized they were in a much worse spot now than they would have been if they had just sought a hiding place inside the sports center. The zombies he had raced to avoid in the parking lot were already rushing headlong towards them and would be on top of the car in seconds. The car had stalled and would take at least another minute of gently working the gas pedal and bumping the ignition to fire it back up and then even after that, he was still faced with the fact that they were stuck in the soft mud that probably came half way up each tire. Given enough time he might be able to work them loose by easing forward and backward repeatedly, but he didn't think the zombies running towards them would be willing to sit back and let him work in peace to get them unstuck. They could have made a run for it, but the closest place to go was back to the sports center, after that the only other source of shelter was a subdivision of high end houses at least a hundred yards away. Between them and the houses there was a field that was overgrown with weeds chest high in places and no doubt full of hidden ruts and other ankle breaking surprises. Assuming they managed to make it through the field without injury, they would then have to scale a tall wooden privacy fence that he guessed was fourteen to sixteen feet high with no sign of a nearby gate or entry into the housing area beyond. With Shellie out cold and bleeding, if they were to make a run for it he could have to carry her or leave her behind. He dismissed that last part instantly, there was no way he would ever consider leaving someone behind like that. Trying to outrun that many zombies through the obstacle course he would have to navigate while also carrying Shellie over his shoulder was just not going to be possible. He resigned himself to staying put and continue trying to get them moving again, as futile as it was he knew that if they died here in the next few minutes he would go to his gave knowing he had given it his all. Pulling his pistol from its holster, he set it on the seat between them, one thing that he knew for certain, if it became clear that zombies were going to reach them, he was going to put a bullet in each of their heads before they suffered the unimaginable horror of being eaten alive.
#
Garrett found that the further back on the secondary roads they got from the main routes in town the easier it was to navigate. They had seen nothing in the way of a police presence or other form of government interaction. A single abandoned police cruiser parked alongside an intersection had been their only sign of any authorities so far. They had come within two blocks of a small medical center on the east side of town, but the place looked as though it had suffered a significant fire on the inside and they had seen a lot of zombies walking around the grounds in front of the buildings. The tangled mess of cars and ambulances strewn around the building had been a testament to the rush on emergency services that Calvin had reported hearing about. They passed by the facility without slowing, fearful that they would attract the zombies already in that area.
Garrett knew that the larger hospitals in the area where situated even further into the more congested parts of town. Reaching them would put them even more at risk of getting stuck in the tightly packed snarl of abandoned vehicles they kept encountering on the primary roads. Even in the less populated areas of town where the roads were easier to navigate they kept seeing a heavy zombie presence as
the creatures moved out of their houses and took to the yards and streets of neighborhoods. Everywhere they saw them it seemed that they were flocking together and forming crowds ranging from a handful to some that pushed close to fifty at a time.
They all decided that for the time being it was going to best if they headed to less populated areas where they was a better chance of them finding somewhere to lay low for a while. Kimberly needed the chance to rest and recover if she was going to pull through and the more they kept driving aimlessly around, the better chance they had of coming into a situation they couldn’t get out of. Garrett offered up the idea of crossing into the Great Falls area. It was an upscale town with houses most often set a good distance apart. The park on the edge of Great Falls would offer them a place to rest for a time, it was well separated from any significant population center and there were a couple ranger stations where they could find medical supplies and shelter.
He pulled them onto the far end of Lewinsville road with the intention of connecting up with Spring Hill road that would then dump them out on Old Dominion and a straight shot into the outskirts of Great Falls. The more he thought about the park and wilderness area out there adjoining a narrow stretch of the Potomac River the better he liked the idea. It was about as far from any built up areas that you could get in this county and since the outbreak hit the hardest over a Sunday night it was likely the place had been deserted ever since zombies started appearing.
"Trouble ahead," Garrett said as he pulled to the road on the outside of a bend just before the intersection with Spring Hill road.
They had just pulled into an area where there was a long stretch of open and overgrown field between them and a large neighborhood on their right hand side. On the opposite side of the bend and almost right at the intersection where they needed to make their turn, he saw a vehicle on the side of the road that was about to be completely overrun with zombies as they raced across the road towards it from the parking lot of a sports center just past the intersection with Spring Hill road.
"Damn, looks like a cop car. Do you think someone's actually inside there?" Calvin asked.
Garrett could think of no other possible reason that so many zombies would suddenly be so interested in a single car unless there was something inside that had their interest and the only thing they seemed to have interest in were survivors like themselves. It looked like the car had become stuck in a strip of soft mud along the shoulder of the road that had probably formed when cars used that spot over time as a turnaround point to enter the sports center if they overshot the road. Since it was shaded by brush and on the downward side of a slight slope, rain water would naturally run into that spot and over time had turned it into a marshy mess that was now like a fly trap for anything driving into it without rugged tires and four wheel drive.
"I think that if those zombies are that interested in the car, then there is someone inside." Garrett replied.
"Oh my god, we have to help them!" Exclaimed Miranda from the back seat as she leaned forward and watched as the horde of zombies descended on the trapped car and its helpless occupants.
Garrett spotted a stream of mud shooting up into the air behind the car and saw it slip a little sideways towards the driver’s side. The driver was working hard and gunning it to try and drive them straight out of the mucky trap that was holding them firmly in place. Unfortunately it looked like all he was accomplishing was a back and forth slide as the tires spun uselessly in the slick mud but could not bite down on anything that would provide enough traction to let them move forward. That flying mud and the slight motion of the car cinched it for Garrett, someone was definitely still alive inside that car and fighting for their life. Zombies were all around the car but the mud was also creating a difficult barrier for them as well, they would slip and fall while those coming along behind would simply step on the backs of the ones who fell in front of them and move a little closer. In the short time since they had spotted the cop car, three zombies had made it through the mud and climbed out the trunk clambering quickly up towards the roof. The car lurched again as the driver gunned the gas and two of them lost their footing and flew off into the mud on the passenger side, the third was knocked to its knees but managed to hold on and continue moving forward onto the roof. Two more zombies were pulling themselves up from the mud near the trunk and also working hard to pull themselves up onto the back of the car. There were now so many zombies either already in the mud near the car or just on the outskirts that Garrett couldn't even begin to put a number on how many he was seeing.
"What have you got in mind?" Calvin asked as he observed the determined look that had come over Garrett's face and his fingers tightening on the wheel.
"Just buckle up, hang on and keep your fingers crossed." Garrett replied as he checked his own seat belt and turned back to see that Miranda and Kimberly were as tightly secured as they could be. His eyes met Miranda's for just a second but in that time she must have seen in his eyes what it was that he was planning, her eyes twinkled back at him and she dipped her head in an approving nod.
Garrett once again switched the truck into four wheel drive and turned them off into the surrounding brush and took them on a wide bumpy ride around the side of the stuck police car until he reached a point past it where he could turn around and line up on a straight path to the rear bumper of the car. As he passed by the police car he cast a quick glance towards the vehicle and for a moment he made eye contact with a uniformed police officer behind the wheel, when Garrett had first spotted him through the dirty glass of the windshield he had could have sworn that he saw him holding a pistol in his hand and pointing it towards the passenger seat. The truck had bucked for a second as the bounced over a rivet in the dirt and when he again looked towards the officer, the man’s hand was out of sight and he was looking towards Garrett with a look of hope creeping across his face. Garrett nodded quickly towards the man and then turned back to concentrate on driving as smoothly as possible through the bumpy field.
Keeping his speed slow but constant, Garrett eased into the mud twenty feet behind the cruiser, five zombies at the edge of the mud pit rushed towards the side of the truck but before they could reach them, the truck passed from solid dry ground into the slippery muck. As the zombies followed along they started slipping and falling as they lost traction along the edge of the mud. Garrett ignored them and continued pushing ahead. Two zombies were just pulling themselves up from the mud onto the back bumper of the patrol car when the truck crushed them between its bumper and the soft metal of the car’s trunk. For almost a solid foot the bumper crushed zombie and trunk forward into the car until finally striking a solid cross beam along the rear quarter panel and began pushing. One of the zombies that had been trapped between the two vehicles had turned its upper body towards the truck just before the impact and was clawing towards Garrett trying desperately to reach him. As the trucks bumper pushed into the car’s hood the zombie was ripped in half with everything below his belt line dropping out of sight into the ground up muck between the truck and police car. The separation of his upper half freed him from the point of impact that was holding him in place and he now began to claw his way onto the hood dragging a stringy trail of gray and brown entrails behind him up and onto the hood. Miranda screamed in horror at this sight and looked away from the grisly remains that had just hours before been a banker, accountant or other business professional judging by the tailored suit jacket and smartly arranged necktie. With the truck now connected to the back of the police car and using its energy to push the car slowly forward inches at a time, there was no real motion or rocking to throw the remains of the zombie clear of the hood and as improbable as it was to both Garrett and Calvin staring at it from only four feet away it was actually making progress across the hood towards the windshield.
"That is just fucked up." Calvin said in utter amazement as he watched the crawling figure work its way closer to them across the hood, the entrails had slipped off to the side
and were hanging over the side of the hood and dripping a green and brown substance down the side of the truck that neither of them was willing to venture a guess as to what it might be.
With both hands tight on the wheel and his concentration focused on keeping them lined up on the patrol car and moving forward so they both didn't end up stuck, there was little Garrett could do about the obscenity approaching them across the hood of his truck. "Get rid of the damn thing!" he shouted at Calvin.
"How is that possible!?" Miranda cried out from the back of the truck.
"Yeah, that’s one other thing about these damned things. They are almost impossible to kill unless you hit their brain." Garrett replied matter-of-factly without taking his eyes off the connection between truck and car.
Lowering his window, Calvin pulled his pistol free from his belt and leaned out just enough to draw a bead on the half man crawling over the hood, his first shot was high and wide as the truck lurched forward just as he pulled the trigger. Miranda squealed and flinched at the roar of the shot and then pressed both hands over her ears and lowered her head towards Kimberly still laying unmoving across her lap. The second shot scored a hit in the zombie’s neck and blew away most of the front of its throat. Even with that additional damage it continued to make progress closer to the windshield.