Sam gave the signal while the other two got ready with their shotguns. They didn’t have time to be fancy with pistols right now. They would use street sweepers for this next part.
I drove forward to the closed gate leaving just enough room to open it. Once ready, Sam shouted and opened it. Our two guys brought their guns out and loosed a shot each about head high through the open gate. They actually caught three Zeds right in the face. The guys fell back fast, and I drove through all the way to no man’s land. Once outside the gate, they sealed it back up as fast as they could. I felt confident that not one of those nasties got in to my home. I was relieved for a second. Then I realized that I was all alone, and no one could help me.
Once outside, I turned sharply left and drove forward. I was immediately hit with a dozen of those things that threw themselves on top of my vehicle.
They straight away started to pound on my hood and windshield to get to me. I ignored them and drove toward the front gate. I put the car in four-wheel drive and kept a steady speed. More and more of those things jumped on top of the SUV. The pounding increased exponentially. I felt like I was inside a huge steel drum. The pounding was getting inside my brain. I could feel the thumps in my chest it was so damn loud.
I put in my ear plugs and the sound decreased to tolerable levels. Then I turned on the music. I was actually proud of myself for this one. Years ago, we turned our home into a haunted house for Halloween. We bought a CD with just screams to scare kids. I had grabbed it just before I got into this car and put it in the player. I blasted it. Screams came out of all the speakers.
I saw the screaming had the desired effect. Universally, all of those Zeds turned to my car and lunged for me. They thought I was a wounded animal. They were coming in for the kill. It was freaking awesome. I went from having a dozen of those things on my car to having over a hundred. The pounding kept getting louder and louder. I took off my t-shirt and wrapped it around my head. It only worked to keep the noise out a little bit. Oh well. I wouldn’t be around long enough to be driven insane.
I turned and vomited again. I looked at it. The mucus looked black. That didn’t look too good. I don’t ever remember seeing vomit look like that in medicine. I ignored it.
I started to talk louder and louder into the radio speaker in front of me. I drove with my head right at the steering wheel and hoped the radio would transmit the sound of my voice and not the other noises. I yelled out everything I needed to say and kept a steady narrative of events going.
I accelerated fast till I got to the front gate. Then I turned right as hard as I could, knocking dozens out of my way. It didn’t stop the Zeds whatsoever. They kept coming at me as hard as they could. I was surprised by the beating the SUV was taking. I thought for sure that the windows should have shattered by now. I wouldn’t complain about that just yet. I guess I was lucky that the Zeds didn’t have any weapons. They relied solely on their hands, and they didn’t have the strength to crack the glass.
I heard gunshots coming from outside the vehicle. My people were under strict instruction to ignore the ones on my car and concentrate their fire only on the ones that were threatening to enter the compound. I hoped that was the case.
I looked through the ones on my windshield and saw that the fires I created were still lit. The cars before me were still ablaze and were channeling the Zeds forward through that narrow corridor. It was good for defense but bad for my current state. I had to get past that area as fast as possible without igniting. I couldn’t take the chance of my car exploding this close to our house.
I put the car in neutral and gunned the engine. When the RPMs got above 5000 I put it in drive and took off like a shot. I jumped forward and ran over dozens of those things. I heard the crunching of bones underneath my tires. I felt like I was in a bowl of rice krispies. Snap, crackle, pop rang out from underneath me. I jumped forward with my car about fifty feet.
The things on top of the SUV flew off. Some went forward, some back, and some flew into the fire as I passed it. Most of those calmly stood up and came back at me until the flames popped their heads into pulp. I would have vomited again if I had anything left in my stomach. Even so, I was very queasy.
I stopped the car away from the fire and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. Any of those things that could jump up on top of me did. The pounding started again.
When I had enough of them on top of me and following me, I started up again. I drove downhill slower this time. I kept my foot off the brakes and just coasted down. Only rarely did I hit the accelerator, and that was just to get by the occasional Zed that managed to wedge himself into one of my tire wells. Nobody said they were smart.
By the time I made it down to the bottom of the hill, I had probably over half of them following me. It would have to do. I hoped my people would be able to take care of the rest much easier.
I stopped and waited. More and more of those things kept piling on. I had a visual of buses running through India overflowing with hundreds of people on top going through my head.
None of the Zeds were able to break through the windows, thank God. But I did feel that the tires under me were beginning to compress. I hoped it was just a feeling that I was six inches shorter, but I doubted it. I do think the weight of these creatures was pushing me down.
I waited for another two minutes and just rambled into the radio. I started to see spots in front of my eyes. I got dizzy, and then I got incredibly nervous because I had no idea where I was. I suddenly remembered and almost freaked out. I was in a tin can, and the monsters were trying to get at me. I yelled out for my mom and dad to save me. I almost wet myself I was so scared.
Then I woke up. I was as lucid as could be. I realized I had fallen asleep. I looked at the radio clock and saw that I had been asleep for about ten minutes. I shook my head to wake the Hell up.
I put the car in drive and moved forward. I just wanted to sleep. I felt more and more tired. I looked at my skin on my arms. It was looking yellow and bruised everywhere. My platelets must have been almost gone. I would start to spontaneously bleed soon. It scared the crap out me. I was becoming one of them. I breathed as deep as I could and started to cough up mucus uncontrollably. I was doubled over by the coughing and the pain in my abs, as I retched from the pain.
This was really bad. I couldn’t control even my basic bodily functions anymore, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep.
I started to take short even breaths and looked forward into the eyes of a demon on the windshield. I focused on her as she pounded her fist over and over on the outside of the car. She was angry and demented and needed to feed for some reason. She was why I was here. I couldn’t let this happen. My family needed me.
I accelerated quickly. I jerked forward spraying Zombies everywhere and took off down the street. I ran into a lot of them head on and took them all down.
I slowed down again to let them catch up yet again. When they hit the car, I drove forward not letting them jump on this time. I sped forward yet again and then slowed to a rolling stop. I did this over and over in a lethal game of cat and mouse. Let them catch me, get away, and piss them off. I must have done this twenty times. I was beginning to enjoy it.
I looked back out the rear window and saw a huge stream of those assholes following me. They were jerking around as they walked falling all over themselves to get to me.
I guessed I was doing my job right. I dictated what I saw more and more. I just hoped I was coherent. I wasn’t sure that I was technically sane anymore. I just kept talking manically more and more into the radio hoping that someone, anyone could hear me.
And then it hit me again. I was going to die all alone. There was no one human around me for as far as I could see. I turned to look up at my home hoping for any sign of the people I loved. Nothing. I really was all alone. I always pictured myself dying at home surrounded by my family. Never in my wildest dreams did I think my final moments were going to be spent in a moving smelly bomb
surrounded by mutants. A feeling of dread overcame me as I cramped up all over. I kept whispering to myself, “I’m all alone.”
I finally stopped feeling sorry for myself for a second and moved forward. I saw my final target. I drove forward as slowly as I could, allowing those things to chase me.
It was getting darker and darker outside. It was odd because the sun was shining. But it really was getting darker outside around me. I had no idea why.
I looked outside again and saw that the sky was moving. And for some reason the clouds were all dripping mucus and had teeth. It didn’t make any sense at all.
I coughed. I was coughing alot- so much so that I couldn’t catch my breath. It made my chest hurt. All of me hurt actually. I was in so much pain. All I wanted was to take some pain meds and go to sleep. I couldn’t afford to do that. If I closed my eyes for even a second, I was sure that I would fail. I knew that I would never wake up. The thought sobered me. I shook off the pain and confusion and sat bolt straight in my uncomfortable seat.
I looked out the windshield and realized that it was now coated with Zeds from top to bottom. They were smearing their decay everywhere and were pounding trying to get inside.
I pushed the accelerator and inched forward. They stayed with me this time. Unless I sped up quickly, they weren’t going anywhere. But that was ok. I only had a little further to go at this point.
I had no idea if I was being remotely coherent, but it didn’t matter. I talked and talked into the radio hoping that the recorder was hearing me. It was the only thing that was keeping me going. I was fixated on the sound of my voice. I focused so hard on it, to block out the sounds of the Halloween screams coming from the speakers.
I mentally kept going in and out. One second I felt normal, the next I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I had to speed this up, or the job would never be completed.
I made a decision. I really couldn’t wait any longer. I had to finish this now or I risked failing in my mission. I looked up at a couple of Zombies on my windshield and floored the accelerator. The car sped up quickly, and I roared at the gas pumps in front of me.
My target was an old gas station that had not been upgraded. It was situated on a wooden strip mall that was surrounded by old homes on three sides.
I sped over a couple of speed bumps and the curb. I went right over the sidewalk and hit the pumps at an angle. There was a furious grinding of metal as the car hit the pumps. My head hit the windshield in front of me. The glass splattered into a massive cobweb. Blood from my head now matched the gore on the outside of the glass. Blood from my forehead dripped down into my lap and ran into my eyes, stinging them.
I felt dizzy and nauseous. Surprisingly, my first thought was of the two-way radio. The device was perfect. Thank God. It was a strange thought. I had so much to worry about, and all I could think of was the radio.
I looked out the side windows. Gasoline was pouring onto the ground and onto the car. Surprisingly, it worked. Zeds were streaming toward me every second. I saw hundreds and thousands of the things coming at me. The front ones all were splattered by spraying gas. The sight actually made me smile. They were all too stupid to get out of the way.
I laughed hysterically. The entire thing was absolutely hilarious for some reason. I smiled and held myself through the excruciating pain.
The damn things were launching themselves at me now. Somehow, they knew I was even more vulnerable than before somehow. I was a cornered animal with no place to go. They threw themselves at the car from all sides. They climbed over the car from every which way and pounded on the hood, the trunk, and the windows.
I watched and I waited. I was no longer afraid. I knew what I had to do. I wanted to wait till the last moment. More and more of those things dragged themselves to the car. After a few minutes, I was surrounded on all sides by the things. There was easily over a thousand of them, maybe more. I couldn’t tell anymore.
What I was most worried about was the front windshield. The cobweb pattern increased more and more from the weight of these things as well as the pounding. It would soon come crashing down on top of me with all the furious anger that these Zeds could muster.
I was finished. It was time.
I turned around and unsealed two of the gas cans that were on their sides. Gasoline splashed all over me and the inside of the car. I opened the valves of a couple of the propane tanks. It was the best I could do. The smell of the gases immediately gagged me. I was sure the damage would be irreparable to my lungs and mind. The thought made me laugh again.
I didn’t want to go out this way, but I really could think of no better way. I thought good and happy thoughts that I promptly spoke into the radio.
I wanted to go out thinking only of my family. I gathered the lighter into my hand and prepared to strike it as soon as I finished speaking.
As the pounding increased and the windshield began to splatter inward onto my body, I said as loud as I could into the radio mic,
“I love my family. Without them I would be lost.”
WHOOOOOSH
Epilogue
My name is Maria Miller, and I miss my father. It’s been ten years since he’s died. He saved us all.
Last month in the midst of giving our home of over fifty people the best spring cleaning possible, I looked under the mattress of my parents’ bed and saw the weirdest electronic device. I picked it up and thought that it was one of the kids’ toys that they had forgotten.
I went to peel the tape off it and saw that two devices were stuck together in a weird configuration. I cut the tape off and pulled the CB radio away from this very small digital recorder. I recognized it immediately and started to cry. It was my dad’s recorder. He used it for years at work, dictating all his charts. Before his death, he had it on him constantly. Every couple of actions, he would sum up what just happened and then put it away. I couldn’t remember a time that he didn’t have it. We kids used to make fun of him for it all the time. Even my brother, who was five at the time would talk into a play phone in his low droning voice trying to be just like dad. We used to laugh at the imitation all the time. I wasn’t laughing right now.
I really missed my dad. Every day I think of him and what he did for us. He sacrificed himself to keep us alive. I started crying again. I went to turn on the device and couldn’t. I pulled out the batteries which had leaked and corroded the terminals. I spent the next hour cleaning them off and managed to find some old batteries which surprisingly worked.
I started from the beginning and listened all the way through to the end. It took me hours. I was horrified by most of it. Some of it made me laugh. All of it made me miss him beyond belief.
When I was done, I got my mom and explained what I found. We listened to it all over again. And then we did it again and again. We spent the next several days in a funk because of it.
Finally, I came to a plan. I would write down everything he said. It took me over a month to do. I also put everything in the right order. My father had a tendency to redictate things he forgot to mention before. I put the words in the right order.
And finally, I had to completely edit his final three hours. About half of what he said during that time made no sense. We assumed it was because of the disease in his body that was ravaging his mind. I kept everything I could understand. I discarded the rest. It was just too painful to hear him mumbling incoherently. I preferred to remember him as lucid and loving a father as he could be.
The next part is my own writing. I added this part to explain his final hour of life as fully as possible. What he wrote was what he could see and feel from inside his car.
********************
After my dad told me what happened to him and the Zed biting him, I went to my room and lay down on the bed. I sobbed uncontrollably. I couldn’t imagine life without my father. He was always there to protect us from the first day, and I thought he would always be there to the day I died. It was the thought of a kid who thought their f
amily members invulnerable. My world just collapsed. I cried for my father, and I cried for myself. Life was unfair. My father always said that to me, and now I had been slapped in the face by it.
After an hour of this, I realized I didn’t have much time left. I jumped up and went to the living room to see him with the rest of my family. I tried to stay upbeat and failed miserably. He saw through me immediately. He hugged me, told me he loved me, and then went outside for the last time. I so wanted him to stay, but I knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk exposing us to his disease. We hugged each other for the final time instead. And then he walked out of our lives once and for all.
All around us were the sounds of the undead and the sounds of bullets flying at their targets. Shotguns, rifles, and handguns fired at everything that was trying to get into our compound. I looked around at the other kids. They had gotten so used to the sounds that they just ignored the noise. I couldn’t. I knew what they meant.
After a few minutes, I saw my mother return and head upstairs. I thought she looked as nervous as I’d ever seen. I thought she needed help. I went upstairs to lend a hand.
She was out on the balcony with one of her friends staring outward. I made my way outside to her. She immediately tried to get between me and the view to block it.
I hugged her immediately with tears in my eyes. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop that. She hugged back for dear life. We stayed that way until I opened my eyes and looked over her shoulders.
I gasped at the view. Stretching from the bottom of our driveway were literally thousands of decaying Zombies trying to get at us. It was a mass of writhing, rotting flesh that had only one purpose- to destroy us utterly. I cried in despair at the sight. My mom squeezed me tighter while I stared out in medieval horror. We had become the poor villagers trying to protect ourselves from the invading hordes who were intent in killing every last one of us. It was a horrifying look into the darkest pits of Hell itself, and it had teeth. I cried out loudly as my mother held me. It was what she didn’t want me to see, and now I understood why. I closed my eyes in the vain hope that it would all go away. When I opened them again, the death and devastation was still there. I thought to myself over and over, ‘we are doomed.’
My Last Testament Page 20