by Jay Brenham
A child’s street hockey net stood to one side of the road, another relic of humanity forgotten in the onslaught of infection. The houses on this street were large and stately, many of them more than a century old. If he didn’t look too closely, everything appeared normal. But a closer inspection revealed gaping front doors, exposing interiors that were in disarray from where the infected had purged the living.
The road began to bend and, out of habit, Sam drove down the right hand side. Realizing this, he moved into the left lane, which gave him better visibility as he made a right turn. If he was right about this road he could take a series of small turns and lose the infected, then cut across Hampton Boulevard and get Gloria before the infected had a chance to corner them.
The truck crept along the residential street, pulling the growing crowd of infected in its wake. Lawns were still mowed short and cars sat in their driveways waiting to be driven across the bridges and tunnels that defined the Seven Cities. This was one of the nicer areas of Norfolk and Sam eyed the unused luxury vehicles. How many times had he thought about driving to work in heated leather seats? His practical side had always won out, something he regretted now that he might never have the opportunity to indulge again. Then he shook his head. All the trappings of wealth couldn’t help his current situation.
The infected were getting closer. Sam gave the truck some gas. A woman in a nightgown sat leaning against the front door of a house, her eyes wide and unseeing. The right side of her face was untouched, as pristine as a mannequin, but as the truck passed, Sam saw a large exit wound on the left side of her head. Blood had dripped and pooled onto the ground. Why hadn’t the infected feasted on this woman like they had on the driver of the sports car, he wondered. Did they only like fresh meat?
The infected pursued him tirelessly, as if the sight of prey supplied them with endless reserves of energy. Sam couldn’t decide if they were like a pack of wolves on the hunt, or more like lone wolves that happened to be packed together. It was a question for social scientists, at some later point when this was only a violent memory. For now, it was enough to know they were on the hunt and that Sam was their prey.
Gloria should have been nearing the end of her swim by now. He needed to make sure he was there or she was as good as dead. He slowed to an almost-stop, allowing the closest infected to get within a few body lengths before he pushed on the gas pedal. The leader lunged for the truck but the action threw him off balance and he was quickly trampled by his followers. Sam continued to wind through the neighborhood blocks, his turns slow and deliberate.
At a straight away, he took his opportunity, pressing the pedal to the floorboard in an effort to put more distance between himself and the infected before heading toward Gloria. He turned again and again, rounding as many corners as he could to pull out of their line of sight.
He crossed back over Hampton Boulevard, toward the point of land where Gloria should be, then made an immediate right to stay out of sight of the horde that followed.
Large waterfront homes sped by on his left. In the space between two of them, Sam saw Gloria dragging herself from the water. He angled the truck across the beautifully landscaped lawn. An infected woman was running ahead of him, her attention focused on Gloria, so Sam sped up and nudged her with his front bumper until she stumbled and fell beneath his front wheels. The truck skidded to a stop, tearing a wide swath of Bermuda grass off the lawn in the process.
Sam exited the driver’s side door with the Glock in hand. The infected woman had broken both legs but she seemed not to notice. She crawled towards him, using her arms to move with surprising speed. Not wanting to waste a bullet, he got back in the car and ran her over a second time. Sam stepped out of the vehicle to check his handiwork. He had run her over from her crotch to the middle of her back. The contents of her stomach and what looked like her digestive system had been pushed up through her mouth. Sam kept his eye on her for a moment, but she just laid there, unmoving.
Sam stood on the far side of the truck, ready to shoot if another infected came running. Still panting from the swim, Gloria stumbled toward him and climbed into the cab.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to calm her breathing. “For coming, I mean.” Sam hadn’t missed the look of relief that had passed across her face when she first caught sight of the pickup.
“I said I would,” he said, shifting the truck into gear.
“I wasn’t sure you would make it when I saw those two grab onto the back of the truck.” Gloria wiped a strand of wet hair out of her face and glanced back to the dock where she’d started her swim.
A crowd of infected milled there, either hoping she’d return or unable to think of a logical next step. Sam counted four bodies of drowned infected floating, log-like, in front of the dock. The others seemed to have no interest in jumping in, as if some unknowable instinct told them the placid river water would be their undoing.
“It was close for a few minutes, but I shed them. Why’d you run to the end of the dock?”
“Sorry.” Gloria glanced at him. “I thought you were going that way too.”
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t want to lose the truck. I guess I should have yelled louder. We have to stay together next time.”
#
What had seemed like a quiet neighborhood just a few minutes before had come alive, either because of the sound of the engine or the sight of the pickup. Infected openly scoured the neighborhood, looking for those who remained untouched by the virus. The main roads of the neighborhood had been wide open when Sam crossed them before, but now they churned with infected.
Sam rounded a corner and plowed through a group. Two deflected off each side of the truck and one fell underneath, but the fourth, a girl clad in a torn blue and silver Old Dominion University hoodie, was a direct hit. She struck the front of the car, coming over the top of the hood and into the windshield. The college girl’s face hit the passenger side of the windshield, leaving behind a spider web of cracked glass. Her hip bone struck the center of the windshield and another spider web exploded there as well.
The infected girl remained on the hood, clawing and pounding at the glass. Sam leaned to one side, trying to see around her. More infected were coming in their direction. A new spider web appeared below the girl’s fist and Sam hit the brakes hard. The girl flew off the hood and skidded across the pavement like a stone skipping across water. Splotches of blood materialized on her exposed skin as the pavement tore the flesh away.
Unwilling to damage the undercarriage of the truck, Sam swerved to avoid hitting her again. In his rear view mirror he saw her get up from the ground, blood gushing from her gaping skin flaps.
The windshield was broken but he could still see through it as long as he didn’t look directly through the spider webbed sections. A mob of infected was sprinting toward the car. Sam accelerated and dodged past them, alternately braking, accelerating, and turning at the last minute as he tried to avoid another head-on collision that might disable the vehicle.
If he could only make it back to Hampton Boulevard he thought they would be relatively safe; it was a wide road and not easily clogged. Numbers were never Sam’s thing, but he found himself playing the odds.
As he approached another road he slowed and began making a sharp turn.
Gloria yelled at the same time he saw the mass of infected. “Don’t! There are too many!”
Sam grunted, correcting his course just in time. There must have been hundreds. Just down the road was another group of infected and behind them, a third group followed. Sam did the only thing he could—he followed the road in the direction of the water. Roads flew by so fast that he had trouble keeping track of the names. The needle on the speedometer crept up as he passed a side road full of infected. They lunged at the speeding truck, homing in on the roar of the engine on the quiet street.
Sam was so busy watching the infected that he didn’t notice he was running out of road. Gloria screamed and Sam looked ahead to see the str
eet end in a T-shaped intersection. He slammed on the brakes, leaving a trail of black skid marks. The Tacoma veered left and Sam hit the accelerator again, fishtailing as he came out of the skid.
To his left rose the buildings of Old Dominion University. It was June; he hoped that meant the buildings were mostly empty and there would be fewer infected around.
He turned left onto a sidewalk and headed through campus, hoping to connect with Hampton Boulevard on the other side.
On either side of the truck the university buildings stood tall and proud, tucked behind their green aprons of grass. There were none of the blood-smeared doors or broken windows Sam had seen elsewhere in the city. The campus was still and redolent with potential, a clip from a university promotional magazine. All that was missing were a few middle class parents, dabbing their eyes and waving proudly to their teenage sons and daughters.
That was the dream, right? To watch your children have a shot at becoming more successful than you were. Would he ever get to see Grant off to school? Hell, would there even be schools left for Grant to attend?
“It’s so empty,” Gloria said.
“It’s ominous,” he said.
She nodded. “I feel like any moment we could turn a corner and run into another group.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s so damn quiet. Feels like the other shoe is about to drop. Like the infected are about to overwhelm the car and rip us limb from limb.”
Gloria winced.
Behind them, hundreds of infected moved in the direction they’d seen the vehicle go. Sam slowed down but he didn’t dare stop as they lurched along the sidewalk.
“We need a plan,” he said.
Gloria peered out the window, her fingers tapping nervously on her leg. “These buildings look like they haven’t been touched. Maybe we could get inside one and wait for the infected to pass us by.”
“I was thinking about that too, but who knows which of these buildings is unlocked. We can’t exactly park and try all the doors. And if we break a window then the building isn’t secure anymore.”
“And there’s no way to know what’s inside until it’s too late,” Gloria whispered.
Sam nodded without taking his eyes off the sidewalk. “If the infected saw us go into a building they wouldn’t stop until they got inside or until they were distracted by someone else. And, judging by what we’ve seen so far, it doesn’t look like there are a lot of distractions around campus today.”
“We could still get a kayak or a canoe. Go to Hampton or Newport News. Stick with the original plan,” Gloria said, her voice hopeful. “Almost all of the houses along the water have docks. They probably have canoes sitting there waiting to be used. Maybe even a boat with the keys left in it.”
“So, what? We search each dock while we gather more infected groupies? The last dock nearly got us killed.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’d rather go to another marina. At least there would be lots of boats in one place. Maybe not with keys left inside, but if we concentrate on smaller boats this time we might be able to push one into the water and float away from the infected.”
“Like where? The only other marina I know about is next to the Little Creek Amphibious Base.”
“That’s the one I was thinking of too,” Sam said.
“But that’s all the way across town.”
Sam grimaced. “There are a lot of main roads that lead there. That means less of a chance of getting trapped by infected.”
A blur of movement dragged his attention to the rearview mirror. Infected were pouring out of an alley they’d just passed. The pack leaders turned left when they saw the car moving slowly up the sidewalk, the change in direction making them slow just enough that they were immediately trampled by those behind them. None of the infected paused or even swerved to avoid trampling their brethren. They kept moving forward, their eyes on the pickup and their legs churning beneath them.
There would be no hiding in one of the buildings now. The decision had been made for them: they would head to the marina or die trying.
Up ahead Sam could see Hampton Boulevard, devoid of its usual traffic. He pulled the wheel right and took off through an empty parking lot toward it.
Hampton Boulevard was one of Norfolk’s main thoroughfares. It had two lanes in each direction, separated in some areas by a carefully landscaped median strip that had suddenly been rendered unnecessary.
The truck tires screeched as Sam turned right at the convocation center. Like the rest of the college, it looked relatively untouched by the previous days of chaos.
The feeling changed when they reached the outskirts of the campus, as definitively as if someone had hit a switch. What had been a calm oasis in a ravaged city disappeared. Cars sat burned in the street and corpses littered the ground. A burned body hung limply out of the driver’s side of a charred SUV. The road was so clogged that Sam was forced to drop his speed to avoid the abandoned vehicles. A single lane road would be blocked by these conditions but thankfully he had four lanes in which to maneuver.
Behind them, the mob of infected surged onto the main road. Their pursuit was relentless. Sam was suddenly reminded of a documentary he’d once seen on British fox hunts. He was the fox.
The only thing he could think of doing was trying to get out of sight by making multiple turns. This was easier said than done in the part of the city that utilized the grid system. Even if he turned and lost the infected briefly, they would likely see his car driving down the road at some other juncture. It might have been easier in a city like San Francisco or Seattle, which had hills, but Norfolk had been built on a swamp; a person could see all the way down a road until it turned or ended.
Maybe he could make a quick turn and pull into a driveway. He and Gloria could shut off the truck and lay low until the threat passed by. But even that seemed like a bad idea. What if there was an infected in the house or the backyard where they stopped? They would be attacked and possibly trapped when the others heard the commotion.
No, the only option was to stay ahead of the crowd. They were going to leave the city, not wait for a rescue that would never come.
Sam turned off Hampton Boulevard, but the side roads seemed even more impassible. He slowed imperceptibly as they approached West 38th Street, which would eventually take them to the Little Creek marina…if it was clear. Both Sam and Gloria peered hopefully toward the intersection, only to feel their hope quickly die. A military convoy of desert tan Humvees sat in the street along with an MTVR, a type of large truck used by the Navy and Marine Corps. Infected ran amongst the vehicles and Sam saw the signature marks of a military uniform on a number of them.
The camouflage-clad infected seemed focused on the MTVR, clambering onto its hood and roof. It sat much higher than the rest of the vehicles, so Sam could easily see into the windshield. Inside sat a man in a camouflage flak jacket, protected from the outside mob by thick glass windows and metal doors. Why didn’t he start the vehicle and drive away? Like all military vehicles the MTVR utilized a master switch and not a set of keys. When the man saw Sam and Gloria he waved frantically.
For about the hundredth time Sam looked in his rearview mirror at the wave of infected that followed in their path.
Gloria looked at Sam. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I saw him.”
Gloria gave him a pained look, saying everything he was thinking with her expression.
“There’s nothing we can do, Gloria,” he said, but the words were as much for himself as they were for her. “You saw the convoy that was stopped there. I’m sure they had more fire power than us. We have three bullets. Even if we had more, I don’t think it would do any good.”
“He’s surrounded. All alone. We can’t just leave him. That’s……” Gloria trailed off, but Sam could tell by her tone that she knew he was right.
Wordlessly, Gloria swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Behind them a few of their pursuers peeled off, apparently more interested in the mili
tary convoy than the pickup.
“If we get out of the city, we can make contact with the military and tell them where he is,” Sam said. “We know his location. Hopefully they’ll be able to make a rescue or something. We can’t risk ourselves when there’s not even a chance of success.”
A rescue was impossible. They didn’t even have a decent weapon for themselves, let alone the means to perform a rescue.
He’d already rescued Gloria. He couldn’t save everyone. Besides, getting the word out about survivors was everyone’s best chance, right? For Jack and for the man in the vehicle.
It was sound reasoning, he told himself. The only logical solution. But sound reasoning and logic weren’t enough to dampen the gnaw of guilt.
#
Norfolk’s Ghent neighborhood had a reputation for being the young, trendy part of town, the place to go if you wanted to hang out in a coffee shop or a wine bar. Train tracks delineated the beginning of the neighborhood. Just north of those tracks, the area where Sam and Gloria now drove, was a rougher part of town, marked by graffiti and boarded windows. A group of infected still followed at a distance, but many of them had abandoned the chase in favor of attacking the military vehicle.
The only way to get into Ghent was to follow the road as it dipped beneath a train trestle. On the other side of the bridge the road rose again, obscuring the view of what lay beyond.
Sam hesitated. The area just beyond the bridge might be crawling with infected. Wasn’t it better to see what lay ahead? He didn’t think the infected had the mental capacity to lay a trap, but this seemed like an ambush point if he’d ever seen one.
He jerked the wheel left, sending them down West 24th Street toward Granby Street, another main thoroughfare.