The Acura was being attacked from both sides. Eva lay in a tight huddle between the front seats, the transmission stick pressing deep into her thigh. Everyone had gone crazy, transformed suddenly by a spectacular explosion, turning them from normal unassuming bystanders into raging lunatics, and now they surrounded her.
She began to scream.
The car shook violently.
The man in Lycra, who was only minutes ago contentedly filling his bike tires, now sprawled over the hood slamming his face against the windshield. His nose had been reduced to a red, pulpy lump, and the wraparound sunglasses he wore had shattered, lodging a wedge of plastic lens into his left eye. A few more head-butts and Mr. Lycra stopped moving. His bloodied face plastered against the windshield stared back lifelessly at Eva.
Horrified and disgusted, Eva turned away and crawled into the back seat. On the floor, holding the tire iron close to her chest and gazing at the dome light, she tried to imagine she was surrounded by a high wall made of stone, where no one could touch her, but the banging and shouting of the turned could not be blocked out, and so she wept.
7
Drew threw the door open, climbed inside.
Someone grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull him out.
It was the blonde woman with the ponytail and gray sweatshirt. Her strength was incredible. Drew felt as though a cable attached to a motorized winch was pulling him.
He wriggled out of his jacket, pivoted and delivered a powerful kick that sent Ms. Ponytail, who was still clutching his black leather jacket, hurtling backward. She crashed into the front row of a horde rushing toward the pickup, affording Drew precious seconds to close the door.
When the zombie wave struck, the truck canted to the right causing the shock absorbers to groan in protest before leveling out again.
Drew pressed the button on the key fob to locked himself in. The locks failed. He tried again and again. Zombies struck the passenger-side. With zombies attacking from both sides, the pickup rocked violently. He pushed the lock switch built into the armrest. It took a couple of tries before he heard the synchronized clicks of the latches.
He then tried slotting the key into the ignition but the jostling and pounding threw his aim off. His light blue t-shirt, which was stained with the blood of the maniac and the store clerk, was now soaked in sweat.
Finally, he jammed the key in place, and with one foot on the brake, cranked the ignition.
The engine whirred, stopped. He tried again. The engine only whirred. As he kept trying, he fought the urge to pump the gas, believing that pumping the gas would drown the engine.
He turned the key.
It sounded close to firing up.
He tried again.
“C’mon, c’moooooon! You can do it!”
And again.
Now the engine rose to a high-pitched braying, reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh, reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.
Fuck it! He pumped the gas.
The engine rose and fell. Rose and fell.
Reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh, reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh, reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.
“COME OOOOONNN!!!”
Reh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.
So many zombies surrounded the pickup that the cab was covered in the darkness cast by their shadows.
The windows rattled, threatening to shatter Drew’s concentration.
The engine shrieked as if gripped by its own panic.
And then, finally, the big V-8 roared to life.
Drew threw the truck into gear.
The F-150 pitched forward and rear-ended an SUV before he could break.
Zombies fell away from the truck like loose confetti. Those unfortunate few who stood in front of the truck were taken for a very short ride before being crushed. Of them, it was one of the road crew, still wearing his ConEd safety helmet, who suffered a particularly gruesome demise. The upward force of pressure on his body was so great it caused his helmet to pop off like the cap of a shaken bottle of soda and then his head exploded.
The impact threw Drew forward and back, knocking him momentarily unconscious.
After several seconds of floating in limbo, he slowly returned to full consciousness and noticed a grayish fog blanketing his vision. He found it hard to breathe, felt something pressing against his face. Pulling back he saw what the gray fog really was; the airbag had been deployed.
There was a clang on his left, followed shortly by a clang on his right. It felt like the Ford was being pelted by rocks. It wasn’t rocks but the sounds of fists and heads pounding against every side of the truck.
He tore the shriveled airbag away from the steering wheel, threw it onto the passenger’s seat.
The next thing he noticed was the blood and bits of gore splattered across his windshield - a parting gift from Mr. ConEd. He pushed a button and jets of cleaning fluid sprayed the windshield and the wipers did the rest, missing only the outer edges where the blades couldn’t reach.
Although relieved to discover the engine still idling, Drew was reluctant to throw the gear directly into reverse lest he kill the engine. Instead, he slipped it into park.
Slowly applying pressure to the gas, the engine revved smoothly; there were no unusual noises that might indicate damage.
His lifted his foot off the pedal and the engine slowed to a soft, steady purr.
At last Drew dropped the truck into reverse, and as he backed away from the crumpled SUV, felt the muffled thuds of zombies being struck by the tailgate.
After bringing the truck to a bouncy stop, he threw it into drive.
He veered around the SUV and made a tight left turn at the end of the gas station island toward the food mart. He stopped a few feet behind the Acura.
The zombies closed ranks around the truck again like a swarm of army ants.
He sighted Eva climbing over the front seats to the back.
The zombies’ attack was causing the windows of the Acura to crack.
Eva was about to die.
8
As she lay on the floor between the front and back seats, shaking, crying, clutching the tire iron in two sweaty fists, Eva heard something pop. It was followed by a crackling sound. Tilting her head at the sound, she gaped in horror. What began as a thatched pattern of tiny hairline cracks resembling a spider’s web became an opaque circle. The rear window began to sag.
Then pebble-size shards of glass rained down on her legs.
Drew gunned the Ford in reverse and rolled quickly away from the ravenous mob, but also away from Eva. He continued backing away past the station’s property line, over the sidewalk, until coming to a full stop in the middle Pratt Street, about fifty feet away. He threw the Ford back into drive and held for a moment. Several zombies sprinted after the truck, but many others went back to the Acura.
Surveying the space ahead between the food mart and the Acura, he took a moment to visually plot a trajectory that he hoped would brush the truck up alongside the Acura without crashing into it.
It was a risky maneuver made riskier by doing it at full throttle, but he had no choice: the zombies were in the way. They had to go.
He hit the gas.
9
The two-ton truck slammed into the rabid mob.
Like human bowling pins, bodies flew in all directions. With precision that would make a stunt driver jealous, Drew brought the Ford to an abrupt stop within inches away from the passenger-side of the Acura. The gamble paid off. Now he just needed to get his wife into the truck.
He rolled down his window and shouted, “Eva!”
Upon hearing his voice she bolted up.
“DREW!” she screamed, waving. “HELP ME! PLEASE!”
Seeing that he was aligned with the right-side front passenger door, she climbed over the seat.
There was a loud shattering sound.
She turned around.
The back left window where her head had been seconds ago, collapsed. Several arms began poking through the glass.
Turning back towards Drew, she t
ried opening the front door but got only as far as a few inches before it bumped into the side of the Ford pickup.
“I can’t get out!”
“Get back! I’ll try kicking in the window!”
Undoing his seatbelt, Drew turned, pushed himself up and coiled his leg back getting ready to deliver a kick.
Realizing she never let go of the tire iron, Eva raised it up so Drew could see it.
She felt fingers hook into the back of her sweatshirt. She swung the tire iron batting away the arms that had nearly seized her. They belonged to another one of the road crew. The ConEd hardhat he wore acted as a battering ram that enabled him to breach the window. The Hispanic man’s formerly mocha skin had turned so ashen as to appear almost blue. Eva swung the tire iron in a backhanded motion knocking off his hardhat, and then brought the heavy bar down on the crown of his head. He slunk down half in and half out of the back window.
Other arms were trying to work through the window, but the bulk of the Hispanic road worker’s body was blocking the arms from getting past elbow’s length. Eva brought the tire down once again, this time with the sharp edge pointed downward, burying the tire iron deep into the road worker’s brain, killing him instantly.
The one-man blockade bought her time though only measured in seconds.
In the next instance there was an explosion and Eva found herself covered in tiny fragments of glass. A denim clad leg poked through the front right window, and then disappeared.
Reaching for her, Drew screamed, “Hurry!”
She started to climb out of the window, paused. “I can’t!” She pointed at the jagged edges around the frame, “Too much glass!”
Using the tire iron, she knocked residual glass off the frame. As she was doing this, Drew reached behind him, returned with the deflated airbag, and tossed it to her.
“Use this,” he said.
After placing the tire iron beside her, Eva wrapped the airbag around her left arm and cleared the debris.
She reached across the five-inch gap separating the vehicles.
They locked arms.
As she pushed with her legs Drew pulled.
Halfway through Drew grabbed around her waist and pulled her the rest of the way into the cab.
They embraced and held each other for a moment before pulling away.
“We’d better hurry,” Drew said at last.
Eva climbed over into the passenger seat, buckled up. Drew closed the window, fastened his own seatbelt and threw the truck into drive.
CHAPTER 6
NO MAN’S LAND
1
As the truck sped away, zombies spilled out from every direction. The Ford pickup headed eastbound on U.S. 1. The Fairwoods were on their way home.
But would it still be home?
Home wasn’t only about brick and mortar, picket fences and streets with quaint names like Cedar Drive, Acorn Road, or Maple Street. Home was also about your neighbors and the sense of being a part of a community.
Not sure what they will find back home, worst-case scenario they would want to collect a few mementos, photo albums, jewelry, clothing, and other items of personal importance, to find closure. It was foolish, crazy, stupid and deadly all wrapped into one, but it was hard to let go, especially since everything had gone to shit practically within a blink of an eye.
“For the great day of His wrath has come; and who shall stand?”
A quote from Revelation, 6:17 (King James), his father used to recite casually from his La-Z-Boy chair, gin martini in hand, whenever something disastrous came on the news, a tsunami, a volcanic eruption, a terrorist attack, almost as if the bleak son-of-a-bitch couldn’t wait for the world to end.
If only he were here now, Drew thought bitterly. He’d be the happiest man on earth. Strike that. He wouldn’t be happy, he’d be a zombie, a thing not much different from the creature he was. “The more things change…”
His thoughts then drifted to his mother, his Aunt Ginger in Reinbeck, and his other relatives - not to mention Eva’s family, her parents, Candace in New Mexico.
Best not to think of them now. Discouragement was something neither could afford. Stay focused on the road ahead, he advised himself. From now on life will have to be taken with baby steps, one goal at a time.
2
They wound past smoldering pileups and curbside crashes. There was no oncoming traffic, no one to deliberately block passage with car or truck.
As they passed each crash site, the Fairwoods noticed, with feelings of pity and despair, that many of the vehicles still had passengers trapped inside, thrashing and banging the windows to get out - many cars containing children.
It wasn’t until they reached the business district in the heart of Branford where things got more challenging. Here, U.S. 1 narrowed down to two lanes and traffic lights lined the iconic highway on every other corner. When the explosion hit, many of the traffic lights had been on red, others on green so the roads were clogged with not just bumper-to-bumper traffic, but bumper-on-bumper traffic.
Driving through these mazes required a lot of zigzagging, veering onto sidewalks, and unfortunately rolling over bodies.
As the truck continued, zombies appeared from every gap, broken window and open door, and gave chase, but the pickup had little trouble getting past them.
3
The severest smash-ups were around areas of heaviest traffic, such as the intersection between U.S. 1 and Main Street. There was a noticeable increase in the number of mangled corpses strewn about: bodies under cars, motorcycles, sprawled across car hoods, crushed against walls and through storefront windows. Out in the open, rotting under a mossy green sky, the drains ran thickest with the blood of the dead.
Amongst the injured, many barely alive, none were capable of recovery, if not for the injury itself then for the fact that they had all been turned.
Eva suggested they try to help anyway, but Drew only took this as perfunctory. She was too good a person not to say anything. Her conscience simply would not allow it. It really didn’t matter to him anyway. If it would help her sleep easier, so be it.
There was a clearing in the road. Drew coasted along at a steady 25 miles an hour, taking advantage of the afforded downtime before the next obstacle.
“There’s nothing we can do for them,” Drew said. “I think it’s safe to say that every facet of infrastructure in our society is gone, kaput, adios amigos. That means no more ambulances, no paramedics, no doctors.”
Eva stared at him, dejected.
The truck rounded a three-vehicle pileup involving two cars and an SUV. Orange flames licked the sides of their crumpled hoods and black smoke billowed in a thick sooty column. Flopped over the driver side door of the SUV like a neglected Raggedy Ann doll was a woman who looked as dead as road kill, until the Ford approached. At that point she lifted her head and threw her arms out in an effort to grab the passing truck, her face twisted in a fierce snarl. As she reached for them, the shoulder strap slipped down to her waist, keeping the woman from sliding completely out the window.
As they continued to roll slowly down U.S. 1, the truck continued to attract zombies.
The idea of going home for Drew was becoming less and less like a viable option.
“We can’t do this,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Go home.”
“Why not?”
“Too many of them. If they keep coming at us, I’m afraid we’ll eventually get stranded on a pile of bodies. We’ve got to get to open road.”
Eva felt a wave of sadness wash over her but didn’t argue.
“Where would we go?” she asked.
Drew shrugged. “Away from here for starters while we still can.”
“Well,” she added, “we could turn around and get on the service road. That’s a pretty desolate road. Probably why the maniac chose it.”
Drew nodded in agreement and was mildly taken aback by the irony of it. The road that once provided the perfect hun
ting ground for a rifle-toting madman was now perceived as a post-apocalyptic safe haven - or so he hoped. So they both hoped. In any event, he couldn’t imagine the service road being worse than the way things were in town, and probably a whole lot better.
4
The street they turned onto looked heartbreakingly familiar: tree-lined, well-manicured front gardens, mowed lawns, smoothly paved streets and picture-perfect houses. It looked like home.
There were but few zombies here. Staring thoughtfully out the window, Eva could only assume the low head count was due mostly because the residents had been away at work, either in town or in the cities such as Hartford or New Haven, when the explosion hit. As she looked on she began to notice something about them, something different in their already hideously transformed appearance. Over the past hour and a half or so their condition had changed. It had worsened. Now, along with the gray, chalky pallor of their skin and sunken eyes, the zombies had developed what she could only describe as dark purplish lesions spotting their complexion. She failed to recall ever seeing those before. She glanced at her own arms, found none, thankfully, turned to her husband, scanned him with a careful eye, saw none on him, as far as she could tell. For now, she kept quiet about it, deciding it was better not to distract Drew from driving. He looked so tired, and they still had a lot of driving to do. But then he spoke, startling her out of her thoughts.
“Are you okay,” Drew asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Just little cold.”
“I can turn on the heat.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. It’ll get stuffy,” she said.
“I’ll turn it off again.”
“No. Really. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to have to roll down the window for any reason.”
He nodded. “Right.”
They made a right on the next corner.
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