The gunshots attracted the attention of the man, who spun around just as the lead zombie tripped over something and fell into a half-dive for the man’s legs. It came up a few feet short, and he managed to shoot it in the neck before it got back up.
That left one more zombie. It had been right on the heels of the one that tripped, and was now navigating around its friend toward the man. Jack was the first to train his gun on it, and he fired.
He missed. His bullet just grazed the right shoulder of the man, making him drop his gun. He cried out and raised his left arm to his shoulder just as the zombie reached him. In its eagerness to get to the man, it reached arms first, and the two toppled to the ground.
The man shoved against the zombie’s neck with his good arm, trying to keep it away. Mickey, who had been running toward the man since Jack’s shot, knew he was out of time to run any closer, so he aimed and fired.
It was a successful shot, entering the back of the zombie’s neck. It pitched forward, collapsing on top of the man, who seemed to take a second to realize what had happened.
He cried out and pushed the zombie off him, scrambling backward on his good arm. When he finally realized he was alive and there were no more zombies heading toward him, he fell back again, lying on his back. He laughed breathlessly twice, then raised his left arm to the air and screamed at the sky.
Mickey and Jack watched his celebration at life for a moment. Finally, they stowed their guns and started to move toward him. The man heard their arrival and scrambled up, retrieving his gun.
“Who are you?” he asked, raising his gun toward the two. It wasn’t pointed at them, but it was at an angle that was close enough to make both men stop. The gun was held in his left hand now, and that left hand was unsteady.
“Take it easy,” Jack said. He moved his hand toward his holster, which didn’t go unnoticed by the man.
“Don’t!” he said. He pointed the gun toward Jack, who stopped his hand in midair. “Who are you?” the man asked again.
Mickey took a step forward, which caused the man to turn his aim toward him. “My name is Mickey Lewis,” he said. “This is my son, Jack.”
“Where are you going?” the man asked.
“Bucksport,” Mickey said, slowly. “Got a friend up there.”
The man looked at both of them for a moment. “Clothes off,” he said.
Mickey nodded. It was only fair. He had no way to know what the two had been through before their meeting, and a strip-search was standard operating procedure in the zombie world. Mickey undid his belt and unbuttoned his pants. Jack, though, didn’t move.
“Both of you,” the man said, pointing back to Jack.
“It’s okay, son,” Mickey said, dropping his pants to the ground and stepping out of them. “He just needs to see that we’re not bitten.”
Jack stared back at the man for a moment with hate-filled eyes. Finally, he started unbuttoning his shirt.
The two worked in silence for a moment, until both of them stood there naked. They stepped out from their piles of clothes, raised their arms and did a circle.
The man squinted at them and moved forward, appraising their bodies. Jack’s was easy — he was in shape, younger, with relatively smooth skin on which imperfections would be noticeable. It took an extra few seconds for Mickey’s old body, as age by itself had created some marks that could resemble zombie scratches without closer examination.
“Satisfied?” Jack said coldly.
“Just a second,” the man said. He had moved forward as he checked them, and was now standing only a couple of feet from the two piles of clothes. He pointed the gun at Jack and knelt down. With his right arm, which took him considerable effort to use, he snapped up the men’s two guns from their clothes, one at a time, and tossed them back behind them. Then he moved back himself.
“Son of a bitch,” Jack said. With the man’s gun trained on him, he couldn’t move to stop him, but Mickey knew his son was already plotting how to get back at the man.
“I’m not a bad person,” the man said. “But I’m also not stupid. If I’m the one with a gun, I’m the one who gets to make the decisions. And I want to be the one to make the decisions.”
“Okay, Mr. Decisions,” Jack said. “Can I get my damn clothes back on now?”
“Sure thing,” the man said. “And my name’s Nathan, if that helps.”
Mickey and Jack got their clothes back on as quickly as they could. Nathan’s gun never moved off Jack, though his eyes spared the occasional glance at Mickey. Jack’s eyes, though, stayed locked on Nathan. The new man hadn’t made a friend.
“Okay,” Nathan said. He slowly picked up the other two guns and slipped them into the back of his pants. “Now, we aren’t going to Bucksport. Not yet, anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Jack said.
“We,” Nathan said again. “You, me, your dad. I don’t have a car. I’d like to hitch a ride. If you’d rather, I can just take your truck and leave you here, but I know I’m going in the truck. Whether you do or not is up to you, I guess.”
Mickey put his hands up in a calm-down gesture. “We can give you a ride,” he said. “I know this area better than anyone. Where is it you want to go?”
“Great Moose,” Nathan said, naming a lake about twenty minutes north of where they were. “Got a cabin up there. Always thought, if this happened again, I’d hide out there. Didn’t expect that it would all come down right after my engine shit the bed.”
“So,” Mickey said slowly, “we give you a ride to Great Moose Lake, you’ll stay there, and we can be on our way?”
Nathan looked at both of them for a moment, as though he were thinking it through. “I think so,” he said at last. “Definitely not going to invite you two in with me. Seems your boy there and I wouldn’t be the best pair for hanging out and waiting it out. Yeah, you give me a ride to the lake, we can part friends.”
Jack’s back arched at Nathan’s last word. “‘Friends,’” he snorted back at the man.
“Sorry,” Nathan said, “but who shot who here? I appreciate your help with those sons of bitches, but I’d appreciate it just a little more if I didn’t feel like my right arm’s about to fall off.”
“Okay, okay,” Mickey said. “Great Moose Lake. We’ll go there. That’s fine. Let’s go.”
He turned to walk back to the truck, and Jack followed. A second later, Nathan started moving, too, then stopped. “Let me ask you,” he said, “before I get in a truck with a guy who looks like he wants me dead. You guys got any rope?”
Chapter Four: Something Else We Can Do
Brandon had shot himself only a foot or so from Celia, and the sound was still ringing in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything as Simon and Erik jumped toward Brandon to try to help him, or as Stacy and Michelle cried out from the front seats. His blood was splattered on the window next to where he had been sitting in the back.
In fact, the only thing Celia was really aware of, even as Brandon died, was that the zombies at the end of the bridge were getting closer.
As the ringing cleared out and she could hear again, the first event inside the Humvee that Celia really registered was Erik unnecessarily saying, “He’s dead.” Celia looked around at the aftermath. Erik and Simon were folded over upon themselves trying to deal with Brandon’s body, now flat in the back space of the vehicle. His blood and other various insides were now sprayed across the ceiling of the Humvee.
Stacy, even with the gunshot, hadn’t stopped the vehicle, and was just getting to the end of the bridge. They were no longer passing over the water, but the hill on the side hadn’t yet risen all the way to meet the road, so there was still a dropoff with an old guardrail on the side. The guard shack on their right at the end, had been erected right next to the road with little else in the area. The old guardrail along the side boxed them in despite the Humvee’s off-road capabilities.
By this point, all the zombies were heading toward the vehicle, leaving the pick
ed-apart bodies of the guards where they were. There had to be 30 of them at least.
Stacy kept pulling to the left, trying to avoid the biggest group of them. She reached the end of the bridge, aiming for the far left side of the road. As she did, one of the zombies collided against the passenger’s side of the car. Another leapt onto the hood of the vehicle and began scrabbling at the windshield, just in front of Michelle’s face.
Stacy cried out at the first of them and hit the gas. The truck lurched as its left side started grinding against the guardrail, a few yards shy of where the barrier ended. The hill had a bit more to rise after the end of the guardrail before it was at the road level. The Humvee continued this way for a few seconds until the front left tire left the road altogether and the vehicle stopped.
“What happened?!” Erik asked from the backseat.
“Edge of the road,” Stacy said, leaning forward and looking at where the tire left the road. As she did, more zombies collided with the right side of the vehicle, and even more leapt onto the hood. “Tire’s down below the road against the guardrail.”
“Just hit the gas!” Erik said. “This thing can get out of a ditch.”
“I can’t see!” Stacy said, angling her head to try to peer through the windshield full of zombies. They were both shouting. The vehicle was sturdy enough to resist the zombies’ physical attack, but it wasn’t soundproof, and as more and more of them climbed on the vehicle in an effort to break in, Celia found herself already longing for the moments after Brandon shot himself when she couldn’t really hear anything. But Stacy continued to yell. “If I don’t angle out of the ditch, we’ll fall all the way off the road and be stuck.”
“So crank it right,” Erik said, sounding like the answer was obvious.
“There’s a guard’s body only a few feet that way,” Michelle said, peering through a tiny space in the window. “There’s still enough of them there that we could get stuck on the pile if we go that way.”
“So we just stay here?” Erik asked. “They’ll get through eventually.”
“No,” Michelle said. She was still leaning in every direction, trying to see through the mass of bodies trying to get in.
“Then what?” Erik said. His voice was getting more anguished.
No one spoke for a minute. Simon was sitting in the back with Brandon’s body, while Erik, Michelle, and Stacy kept looking for an opening.
Celia watched all this. After a moment, she turned to look out her own window, which by virtue of being against the guardrail and overlooking the dropoff, was clear. Celia leaned up and looked to the front of the vehicle, where the zombies were piled. They were primarily on the right side of the windshield with just enough presence on the driver’s side to block Stacy’s vision. But they weren’t all the way around the truck. They weren’t in a position to get to Stacy’s or Celia’s doors.
“I can do it,” she said after a moment. She said it too quietly. Against the pandemonium going on outside the vehicle, no one even acknowledged she had said anything. So she rotated in her seat and said it again, louder, projecting her voice over the cacophony.
The passengers in the Humvee all stopped and turned to Celia.
“Do … do what?” Simon asked.
Celia opened her door a crack. “The guardrail doesn’t come up to the door. I can get out, move to the front, push the zombies off the windshield. Just enough so Stacy can see.”
No one spoke for a moment. Finally, Simon slid forward. “No,” he said. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“You went outside the Wal-Mart to move a truck, and this is too dangerous?” Celia asked. “Everyone has to help. I’m the only one who can get to the front.”
Simon put his hand on her arm. “They’ll get to you.”
“Maybe not,” Michelle said from the front. She had moved back to her job of peering through the window openings. “Maybe we can help her.”
“How?”
“Brandon,” Michelle said, turning to the back of the vehicle. “His body. We feed it out the window, it’ll attract the attention of some of them. Enough, maybe.”
“But … don’t they always prefer live meat?” Stacy asked, echoing what Mr. Lowensen had told them before. “Wouldn’t they ignore Brandon if they know we’re still in here?”
“We duck low,” Michelle said. It was the one lesson she appreciated from Peter Salvisa. “These windows are tinted. Hard to see through. Brandon’s body is still going to be warm. They’ll see it and that’ll be enough, as long as some of them can’t see us very well.”
Simon shook his head. “There’s got to be something else we can do,” he said.
“I don’t know what it’d be, kid,” Erik said.
“I don’t either,” Celia said and pushed her door all the way open.
The action silenced everyone again; like Celia's opening the door had flipped a switch. On the other hand, the door being open let the moans and cries of the Z’s outside in, making it all even louder. Celia looked back at the others as though she were daring them to stop her. She figured that was actually what she was doing, but she didn’t actually know if she wanted them to stop her or let her go.
“Get the body!” Michelle said, snapping everybody out of their trance and telling Celia that she wasn’t going to be stopped. Simon and Erik immediately pulled Brandon’s body to the second row of seats, and Erik started to lower his window.
Almost immediately, hands started reaching into the opening as the zombies saw an access point. Erik pulled Brandon’s gun from his hands and started cracking fingers with the butt, which did nothing to dissuade the zombies’ vigor for the people inside. Finally, Erik turned the gun around and started shooting the ones whose faces he could see through the tiny space. The open window on one side and open door on the other meant that the shots weren’t as painfully loud as the one Brandon used on himself, but everyone in that car was going to have ringing ears for a while.
The gunshots actually helped a bit, drawing more of the zombies to that side of the car and clearing a little more space for Celia. But this was going to have to be fast — a window open enough for a body to go out was big enough for other bodies to come in. After the first few Z’s were hit, falling out of sight of the window, some space opened up before the others could get there. Erik lowered the window further, and he and Simon started pushing Brandon’s body out the opening, ducking as low as they could in the meantime. Stacy and Michelle slunk as low as they could in their seats, too, making them look almost invisible to any of the zombies that weren’t already against the window trying to get in.
The zombies took the bait. The ones at Michelle’s window moved back and the ones trying to add to the group on the hood headed that way as well.
Celia sat still in her seat as this happened. Finally, after the Z’s started moving back, Michelle turned to her. “Now’s your chance,” she said, her voice barely audible over everything else.
With her gun in one hand and the crowbar in the other, Celia climbed out of the vehicle and onto the running board. She pushed the door closed and started moving toward the front: slowly so as not to attract the attention of the zombies.
Some of the zombies were still moving toward Brandon’s body, but a couple saw Celia and started to circle the vehicle. She could practically feel everyone else urging her to hurry.
Celia moved along the running board. As she did, the first zombie made it around the front of the car. It tried to climb onto the guardrail to get to her, and she raised her gun. Before she could fire, though, the zombie slipped from the narrow guardrail and fell down the embankment, well out of reach.
A second quickly followed suit, but more were coming, and Celia knew eventually they’d have better luck getting to her. She navigated her way around the driver’s side rear view, to the front windshield. The first zombie noticed and scrabbled toward her, slipping as it did.
Celia raised her gun. She had hesitated the day before, scared to take a shot, but this time she d
idn’t, hitting the zombie between the eyes. It slumped down, but another jumped up to take its place.
Celia shot two more zombies, creating a barrier between her and the ones that hadn’t yet been shot. She raised the crowbar and jammed it underneath the nearest zombie’s body and jimmied it, as though it were a piece of wood she was prying loose. The Humvee had a flatter hood than most vehicles, but it was at enough of an angle that the extra pitch added by the crowbar caused the zombie to slide down the front of the vehicle.
That was enough, even for a second, for Stacy to see through the windshield. She turned the wheel slightly to the right and hit the gas, and the Humvee lurched forward. Some of the zombies slid off and fell aside as the vehicle moved.
The movement took Celia by surprise, and she nearly slipped off the running board before catching herself on the rearview. Stacy cracked her window as she moved forward. “Get back in!” she cried to Celia.
“Just go,” Celia said back. She wanted to be fully clear of the zombies before they stopped the vehicle again and there was no immediate danger to her.
Stacy did. Most of the zombies fell aside, and Erik and Simon took out most of the rest from through the open window. One zombie remained on the hood of the car, trying to get enough of a grip of something to make it to Celia. Her gun still in hand, Celia shot one more time. With the bouncing of the vehicle, her aim wasn’t as true as the earlier shots, but it was effective enough, catching the zombie in the side of the head. The zombie wasn’t going to stop moving permanently, but the shot caused it to lose its balance, and it slid off the hood and fell aside.
As Stacy drove, Celia looked behind them. The zombies that had fallen down the embankment were scrambling back up. The ones that had fallen when they started moving were trying to get back up as well. Several of them were chasing the Humvee.
But a big pile of them were back to their original job, and were crouched over a body, chowing down. It took Celia a moment, but eventually she realized what she was seeing. Brandon. The zombies were piled on top of him, feasting on the young man’s body.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 9