He was already aroused with the sound of the approaching vehicle. His body was becoming agitated, quivering with spasms and violent tics. When his cesspool eyes caught sight of the large silver truck, however, he twisted his lips into a brown, toothy snarl. With gray, sore-pocked arms raised, he began to stumble and stagger toward them.
Meghan’s breath caught in her throat at first sight of the creature. “I guess I’ll never get used to seeing...” she trailed off.
Jules asked, still doing stars, cups and saucers, and cat’s cradles with her string, “Seeing what?”
Meghan looked up at the truck ceiling and said, “Nothin’ sweetie.”
“It’s another one of those bad people isn’t it?”
At first, Meghan wasn’t quite sure what to say. She didn’t know if she should try and protect her by hiding the truth. That seemed like the sensible thing to do. It’s probably what her mother and father would have done for her. And in that instant of considering her parents, her breath once again caught in her throat. She tried to answer...anything, but she couldn’t force any sound from within. She merely nodded a quiet, teary affirmative. “You kids keep your heads down.”
Neil didn’t hesitate. The engine’s purr became an aggressive growl as he pushed the accelerator and steered the truck right into the zombie’s path. The collision sent the rotting creature hurtling through the air and into the unforgiving side of an RV. The impact against the larger vehicle was loud and wet, the back side of his head erupting like an overripe melon. The lifeless corpse slid down slowly, leaving a streak of necrotic brownish fluid in its wake. They were all thankful for the muting effect the truck’s engine noise produced.
The threat neutralized, Neil slowed the vehicle again and continued them on their way. The traffic jam was rapidly becoming more and more dense, restricting Neil’s ability to thread the truck through the collapsing needle’s eye. It was nearly impossible to allow for any safe room between their vehicle and others. On more than one occasion, Neil was forced to use his truck’s bumper to nudge another vehicle over a bit to create enough room to pass. The sides of their truck, once pristine and polished, were soon dinged, dented, and scraped.
Jerry, Claire, DB, and Della were all up on their knees with axes, camping spades, and baseball bats in their hands as a precaution. The increasing number of motor homes, campers, tour buses, and other taller vehicles heightened the tension for all of them as their space became tighter and tighter. They looked like castle guards watching over the battlements for any evidence of their threatening foe.
It didn’t take long. Around the front of a Gray Lines tour bus, they happened upon a group of four of the ghouls loitering around a couple piles of clothes that appeared to be stuck in clumps to the pavement, likely the sticky remains of the devoured former occupants.
Neil said loud enough to be heard through the rear window, “No guns. We don’t want to—”
Jerry shouted back, “Way ahead of you, boss! Just keep moving. We’ll get whatever you don’t.”
Neil actually felt a smile try to find its way on to his face. They charged headlong into the crowd, a mighty war elephant plowing into the fray of battle. Neil ran over two of the beasts, their bodies crunching and breaking beneath the weight of their war steed.
The other two zombies, who both appeared to have once been adolescent girls, moved onto Jerry and Claire’s side. Jerry’s bat came down with a metallic thwack twice into the first monster’s head, the brittle skull imploding into the soft, gray ooze inside. With a gurgle and a grunt, the thing fell to the ground, tripping the other zombie as a result.
Unfortunately, more than just the walking shadow was caught off guard and tipped off balance. Claire was in mid-swing with the camping spade when her target suddenly disappeared from in front of her. Her swing carried through much further and harder than she was anticipating, sending her head over heels over the gunwale of the truck bed. She threw a surprisingly effective body block into the now recovering zombie, knocking it backward again, then spun away and came to rest a few feet from the off-balance undead creature. She was on her back and looking up at what should have been the roiling bruise of a sky. Instead, all she saw were stars and patterns of light exploding in her dazed vision. She reached blindly but couldn’t lay her hands on her shovel some yards away. She was helpless and had the wind not been cleanly knocked from her lungs as a result of her fall she would have screamed such to all within in earshot.
Temporarily blind, breathless, and helpless, Claire likely made an appealing target. She tried to roll onto her side so she could get to her feet, but the pain in her shoulder and back was too much for her. She was terrified to feel her foot being tugged violently and instinctively kicked blindly but was unable to discourage her attacker.
Jerry and Alec, meanwhile, rolled themselves out of the back of the truck and were sprinting the several yards separating them from the fallen woman. Jerry threw his bat, hitting Claire’s assailant squarely between the shoulder blades. It stalled the attack only briefly as the thing considered the threat and the interruption, but that was the only window that Jerry and, more to the point, Alec needed. The teenager, who likely wasn’t any older than what the abomination had been before turning, carried only his rifle. He knew better than to shoot for fear of drawing more of the things to them, instead he changed his grip so that he was holding the rifle’s barrel. His swing cut from east to west, slamming the monster in its side. It didn’t dispatch it, but it did send the demonic wraith sprawling away from the still stricken Claire.
Jerry grabbed Claire’s shovel and buried the stubby blade into the scabby creature’s cranium. All at once, everything seemed to stop. Jerry stood with his hands holding the shovel, which was holding the zombie in apparent suspended animation. It was quiet and still, but was still standing as if waiting. Jerry let go the handle and both the tool and the zombie fell away.
There was no time to wait. Jerry ran to Claire and Alec retrieved the shovel which stood upright like some sick version of the sword in the stone. Alec was forced to use his booted foot to pry the shovel blade from the tight fissure, resulting in a wet pop. He also found Jerry’s bat.
Claire was hurt, that much was certain. Jerry knew that moving someone after such an injury was unwise, but he also knew that those four wouldn’t be the last walking dead they would encounter and so getting back in the truck was of tantamount importance.
Jerry kissed Claire’s cheek. “Can you hear me honey?” he said calmly.
She nodded slowly.
“Can you speak?”
She clenched her jaw and answered through the pain, “Yeah, but if I don’t have to, well then...”
“We need to move you. Can you tell me what’s hurt? What did you hit?”
“At least my shoulder and my back. Landed pretty hard.”
“Okay, then. Alec and I are going to help you up to your feet, okay?”
Rather than using her voice, which sent pain arcing through her body like an electric current, Claire smiled and blinked her eyes, which were just starting to come into focus. With Jerry on one side and Alec on the other, they helped Claire to her feet and back in the truck.
Claire’s right arm hung uselessly at her side. The road rash on her shoulder throbbed and oozed, the gravel of the road and fabric of her ruined jacket mixing with her sticky blood and violated flesh. It felt as if her entire arm was on fire. Jerry was unable to detect any of the telltale signs of a fracture, but he handled her injured limb as delicately as possible.
The truck was back under way as Jerry got her into a reasonably comfortable position atop a soft pile of sleeping bags and backpacks. He leaned down and whispered to her again, “No more heroics from you. Okay? I don’t think I could handle any more scares like that.”
She smiled and answered coyly despite her pain, “You ain’t gettin’ no arguments from me. I’ll just stay home and make sure there’s dinner waiting for you when you get off from work, dear.”
&nbs
p; Smiling back at her but also with a few worried tears misting on the surface of his eyes, Jerry said, “I think I could get used to that.”
“Oh yeah? You may change your mind after you eat my cookin’.”
The kiss that followed was filled with warm emotion and relief but the tears, both his and hers, shining on her cheeks belied the fearful undercurrent of everyone’s mood. Despite the fear, or maybe because of it, Jerry was suddenly more convinced than ever that he was in love with this beautiful, sassy coed.
He delicately wiped away the mixed pools of tears from her face. “You just rest here for a bit. I’ll keep an eye on things while you get some rest.” He kissed her again and then pulled himself away from her.
23.
Neil was right to get them moving again. Their fracas had drawn the attention of several more of the walking nightmares who were stumbling down the road toward them. Like ghouls from crypts, they crawled and slithered from doors left ajar on vehicles. They also clambered up the shoulders of the road, having finally had some outside force recall them from a long ago feeding frenzy in the woods. Most, however, were simply standing, waiting, hungering in the middle of the road. Like the tickling sensations of a struggling moth to the spider in her web, the sounds of the tussle drew the attention of every zombie in the area. So far, they were out of sight, but when Jules complained to Neil that she could hear “that sound” again, Neil knew to be watching for them.
She hadn’t complained in quite some time which concerned Neil. It could mean that there was a larger group waiting for them further up the road. He had no idea the reality was that the group wasn’t waiting for them at all. They were converging on the unsuspecting survivors. Dozens of the scabrous, stinking wretches were closing in on them with every passing second.
“Oh shit!” Neil saw them walking stiltedly toward the group, seemingly ready and willing to eat the truck along with all of its passengers.
Emma, speaking for the first time since they had started driving, said, “Speed up.” She was calm, almost serene as she checked the load on her pistols. She caught Neil’s reproachful look. “Don’t worry. They’re only as last resorts,” and she showed him the blue aluminum baseball bat stuffed into some loops on the backpack at her feet.
He tried to smile through his clenched teeth, but instead turned back to the looming targets in front of him. Using the Dodge Ram hood ornament as a targeting sight, he lined up the truck so that he would be able to plow into most of them and still stay on the road. He counted at least ten of them and if he was able to work it his way, he would be able to get most if not all of them as new grill decorations. They were packed so conveniently tight that they were presenting him with a single target.
Revving the engine and driving hard at them, he plowed into the crowd with a teeth-chattering series of grisly thuds. Scarred faces, twisted in the fury of an endless violent death, appeared and disappeared in the truck’s windshield as it barreled into them. When the truck finally spun to a stop, there wasn’t a single one of the creatures still posing any threats. A couple were attempting to claw themselves along the pavement, dragging behind their shattered bodies. Worse still, from beneath the gory mess smeared over the bottom third of the truck, they could also hear above the engine’s settling voice some labored groans and scratching.
Jerry looked at everyone in the truck bed with the question in his eyes that everyone else had in their minds. He cautiously leaned over the side, moving with all the care of a boater peering into the depths of shark infested waters. There was a leg, well, the rotting, shattered partial remains of a leg, jutting out from the tire well. He said to no one in particular, “I think we may have a stowaway under the truck.”
Neil joked over his shoulder, “I thought for sure you were gonna say, You’re gonna need a bigger boat. Can you get it out?”
Jerry didn’t answer immediately, so Neil took the hint and instead said, “Well, so far it isn’t keeping the truck off the road, so we’ll just deal with it later. Keep an eye out for it though. I don’t want it to crawl out and surprise us.”
His voice showing the first signs of excitement, DB observed, “Speakin’ of surprises...,” and he pointed behind them at another oncoming and slightly larger crowd of undead. It was an eclectic group of former tourists, commuters, and all varieties of uniformed service workers.
Something dawned on Emma as she watched the lumbering pack of rotten hunters. Their skin had become very homogenized, with no clear distinctions remaining between bodies of different ethnic origins. All of the walking corpses had begun their nightmare maintaining the pigment signatures of their ethnicity; albeit with a nagging suggestion of death’s olive green creeping along as a slowly encroaching partner. That had changed. All of the beings on the road were simply gray of skin with only the slightest variation separating one from another. Truth be told, other than their clothes, the only thing that stood out to Emma as a way to differentiate one ghoul from the other was the pattern of darkened and still festering scar patches on their faces and visible fatal wounds on their necks, limbs, or torsos.
There was a pause, both in and out of the truck, as they all thought about what this meant and what options they had. They could run again. The new approaching mob was behind them and not lying between the survivors and their ultimate destination. Flight was likely the most prudent decision, but that was not what struck Neil as the right one. He was sick of running.
Neil took a deep breath, held it, and then pulled the truck around forcefully, spinning the tires into a belching, smoking cloud. They hurtled forward like a cruise missile, a wake of white smoke and greasy, spattering mortal remains trailing behind them. It felt to all of them as if they were riding a charging, snorting bull as it plunged into the ring.
With a stretch of open pavement beyond the crowd, Neil didn’t feel the need to restrain the truck and instead punched through the group at full speed. An arm, severed from its owner, corkscrewed out of the crowd, striking the window forcefully enough to crack the glass and then coming to rest in the gap between the windshield and the hood.
Those in the bed of the truck were fully engaged in battle themselves. Jerry and DB, steadied by Alec and Della respectively, swung their weapons wildly, striking anything and everything in their paths. Like two chariot riders in a Bronze Age battle, they wielded their tools of war trying to expand the carnage.
Once through, Neil swung the truck around. There was a sizeable gap separating the truck from the reeling mob. The destruction reaped upon them seemed to only excite the few still standing. Neil fingered the wiper control, immediately regretting not triggering the washer fluid first. The grisly mist covering the windshield streaked in heavy, brownish bands, all but obstructing their view. It took three quick applications of washer fluid to clear the glass enough to be able to see through it. In that time, the zombies had already started to close the distance to the truck.
Emma said flatly but nodding her head. “Hit ‘em again. This seems to be working.”
Neil didn’t need any other suggestions or urging. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and roared ahead again.
Meghan, sitting next to Neil, had reached her limit. She lowered her face into her hands and held her breath deep in her chest. Like the soothing voice from a dream, Jules spoke, full of calm and innocent reassurance. She said specifically to Meghan but all of them hearing and absorbing her words, “It’ll be okay. We can get through this. We always do. Don’t worry so much. It’ll be over before you know it.” All the while, she never looked up from the knotted string stretched between her hands in what was becoming a Jacob’s Ladder.
The serene and absurdly simple nature of her words and her message brought tears to Meghan’s eyes and stole away Emma’s breath. Jules knew that the situation was precarious, but such circumstances were becoming commonplace. Of course she was worried, and more than a little scared, but she believed Neil was very capable of finding the reputed light at the end of the tunnel regardle
ss of said tunnel’s length. For her lone comfort, she leaned against Danny, who was wrapping himself tighter and tighter in his seatbelt.
For his part, Danny was more than a little bit concerned about his well-being, but he wouldn’t be able to deny a rising sense of excitement either. His rifle was at his feet. Though it was unloaded, the dark object on the floor of the truck emanated the power of an enchanted talisman; and it was his!
Most recently, Danny had been given something else which had elevated his mood. Shortly after their impromptu ambush on the highway, Neil found his way to be walking next to Danny. Neil smiled at him and told him that he was proud of how brave and sensible Danny had been. He didn’t use typical grownup talk in doing it. Neil used words that Danny and his friends would use. Neil could not possibly have known what his saying it or the manner in which he said it could have meant to Danny, but the boy was star struck. Neil had become a hero...no, he was more like an idol for Danny, so the praise was all the more welcome. After saying his piece, Neil took a small pistol from his pocket and gave it to him. Danny could not believe it. Now he had a pistol and a rifle. Neil explained that both weapons were of the same caliber, so it was easy to keep just one type of ammunition to keep both active. Neil told him that he felt like Danny had shown enough responsibility with his rifle and their need was such that Danny having the pistol and keeping an eye on the other kids made sense. Neil was entrusting Danny with being a last line of defense between those monsters and the kids. Neil knew that he could count on Danny to not treat the pistol as a toy because it wasn’t. Danny was instructed to keep the pistol in his zippered pocket. He was to always keep it unloaded to avoid any accidents. The boy readily consented to every condition, the glow of having a pistol making it all sound like music in his ears.
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) Page 12