by Bryan Way
Mel screams when the plow scrapes the k-rail and emits a shower of sparks. The Humvee slows considerably, allowing one of the bodies to crawl over the plow and tumble over the bridge into the freezing water below. Panic finally sets in when I realize that a concrete divider is the only thing separating us from a similar fate. “Edge it to the left!” Rich screams over the radio. I jerk the wheel repeatedly, but we resume speeding forward wedged against the right guardrail no matter what I do.
“Brake, brake!” Mel shouts. “Can’t, we’ll get stuck, we need to get over…” She looks back and whines in fear, grabbing the dashboard. I look in the rearview mirror and brace myself for the oncoming bus, which slams into the Humvee hard enough to knock us free, diverting us toward the opposing k-rail. Half a dozen bloody, mangled bodies flop out to the right shoulder an instant before our back tires deflate them. I hit the brake before we can punch through the divider, releasing the remaining quagmire of mushy corpses from the plow. I grab the back of Mel’s headrest, looking over my shoulder to catch sight of the ruined cadavers clawing at the bus as I reverse.
I pull forward into the lanes again, sending a few more stiffs tumbling off the plow into the dividers, but this time I leave enough space to avoid a jam. The bus leaps up behind me, only to drop back a moment later as it runs down a body. “Almost out!” I shout, approaching the start of the steel guardrail that signals our passing the river bank below. It’ll be much easier to knock the bodies over here. “They’re still comin’!” Mel shouts, and I can only steal a glance at the thickening cluster of shambolic corpses ahead; they’re sparse enough to be nothing more than glorified traffic cones.
I inadvertently shout as the next corpse pops off the plow, pings off the guardrail, and gets slung under tires on the right side. The axel grinds to a halt as the Humvee fishtails toward the right. “God dammit!” I turn the wheel hard over left to correct our course just as Rich slams into us from behind. The entire chassis shakes as the Humvee crunches directly between two I-beams supporting the guardrail, but gravity abandons us when the vehicle leaves the bridge an instant later.
I uselessly jerk the wheel as the view from the windshield goes white; an earthquake impact vibrates through my entire skeleton when the passenger’s side slams down, jerking my helpless body toward the ceiling. Mel screams as I yank the wheel again and again just as an aftershock pulls me down toward her. The vehicle settles a moment later, and I finally realize that my eyes are pinched shut.
A moment of confusion inspires me to open them, as I can’t tell if the sense that we’re still moving is a result of my brain being jostled. The engine ticks as I swing my head around, finding light in the driver’s side window and darkness in Mel’s; the Humvee’s on its side and sliding forward. With the plow bent up in front of the windshield, I have no idea where we’re headed, but I start hyperventilating when I remember how close we are to the river.
“Get out! Get out!” I scream, wrestling out of my seatbelt and grabbing the steering wheel to keep from falling on Mel. I open the door with some difficulty, wedging my feet in the wheel for leverage as I push my shoulder into it. I look back toward the river; it’s well behind us, and we’re sliding away. We aren’t moving particularly fast, but I can feel the Humvee tilting back toward my side. I freeze; do I jump off, or get back in? “Hold on to something!” I manage as the fall accelerates. I get my foot on top of the steering wheel in enough time to push off when the driver’s side tires blast into the snow. I roll away from a monochrome haze, barely pulling my leg free from the path of the rear tire.
I verbalize the pain in my left side with a groan as I prop myself up on my left arm, watching the plow dig into the dirt and finally stop the damn Humvee fifty feet ahead of me. “MEL?!” I shout. “I’m alright…” She replies almost immediately. Her hand pops out of the driver’s side door in a half-hearted wave before she tucks it back in to pull herself free, slithering into the snow like a newborn calf. When I push myself up further, I feel an acute pain in my hip and look down, realizing I landed on my katana’s hand guard. My legs jutting out in front of me, I sit up and clutch my forehead before shaking the snow off my face.
It only takes a few more seconds for me to hear the din of the bus engine. I look up and to the left to see Rich continuing along 80 with Alan poking his torso through one of the skinny bus windows. Alan shouts something unintelligible back inside while I roll on my right side to avoid the pain in my hip. I struggle to stand, eventually making my way toward Mel and the Humvee with a noticeable limp. When I get close, I can hear the CB screaming over the thunderous wind. Unsurprisingly, it’s Rich. I grab the receiver, still struggling to catch my breath.
“Jeff, is Mel alright?! Come back!”
“…are you?” I ask her.
“Fuck you.” She spits.
“…she’s fine, over.”
“Thank god. Can you get that thing back on the road, over?”
“Dunno yet… I’m fine, by the way.”
“…you’re walking, aren’t you? Over.”
I look back to see Mel checking herself. She’s got an open wound on her right leg and she keeps rotating her left arm. I reach out to help her up and she accepts my hand. “Think you can check the other side? I need a minute.” She dusts herself off before replying. “Pussy.” I look back toward the site of our accident, seeing that the valley between the east and west lanes saved us; it looks like the right side of the vehicle landed on the hill first, keeping us from flipping over as it slid forward. I don’t even need to look at the plow to know it’s been destroyed, as I’m certain one or both of us would be dead if we’d been going any faster.
“Tires are bent.” Mel states bluntly. Holding on to the hood for support, I make my way around the Humvee to gauge her understatement; both the front and back tires are at 45 degree angles. “I don’t mean to rush you…” Rich barks over the radio. “But we’ve got a situation up here, over…” I jaunt back over to the receiver.
“Humvee’s done.” I start.
“Can’t wait up, they’re gettin’ thicker… over.”
“What do you suggest, over?”
“Move your ass to the exit, over and out.”
I look forward between the two parallel bridges to see the valley gently declining toward a set of railroad tracks perpendicular to the highway, but the hill grades up just beyond, rising in height until it joins another overpass. I drop the receiver and open the rear door, grabbing my backpack and uninjured rifle. “Get your shit.” I say to Mel, who is already reaching into the passenger side. Once she has her backpack and rifle, she starts toward the tracks, having shoved her crowbar in the base of her backpack straps. “Wait up!” I shout after her, freeing my walkie-talkie from between the seats. She turns back and watches me hobble toward her.
“Can you walk?” She asks.
“Yeah…”
“Then hurry up.”
“My hip is killing me…” I grunt.
“If you can walk on it, it’s not broken, so move it.”
I don’t bother to explore her logic, so I push on. A few steps later, I get the sense that she may be on to something. It does feel like a hot knife is being twisted into my waist, but it’s not as though I can’t handle it, and having a sore hip beats getting eaten alive. As we descend toward the tracks, I hear a soft impact above us and turn just in time to see a body careening off the overpass before it slams to the ground a few feet to my left. “What the fuck?!” Mel shouts, leaping away from the impact crater; it’s a Zombie, and his pulverized spinal cord has splintered through the skin of his collapsed neck.
I glance up and see Alan still halfway out the window, taking potshots at the dead with his crowbar as they pass alongside the bus. I consider yelling up to him, but I instead grab my inhaler and press on as he knocks another one down. I wince with the impact, and for obvious reasons, I recall a memory of Alan during one of our many sojourns to our friend Drew’s condo in Wildwood, where Drew would drive us aro
und late at night to shout at pedestrians for no good reason. On one occasion, Alan spied a group of scantily clad young women, leaned his entire body out the window, stretched his arm out and screamed ‘DON’T TAKE LESS THAN A FIVE TONIGHT, WHORES!’ In that moment, I imagined him being cut in half by a stop sign and deserving it.
The bus advances past us as Mel and I press through the bluster. As we approach the train tracks, I notice that the snow has been cleared from the rails uniformly, giving me a notion that a train passed through recently. Another ping snaps me out of this momentary daze as I look up ahead to see Alan continuing to beat the corpses along the bus as it traverses the overpass; a few sets of undead hands eclipse the guardrails in a desperate attempt to stop him. “KNOCK IT OFF!” Mel screams up at him, seemingly to no avail.
His next blow glances off a head and he releases one hand on the backswing; as he does, a Zombie grabs the end of his crowbar. Alan’s hips clear the window frame as he tries to wrest control of the weapon, but his would-be victim falls with the crowbar in a death grip, and Alan’s legs slip through the window. His back strikes the center of the guardrail, his limbs flailing as he slams into a tree, sending out an explosive burst of snow as his body cascades through the branches and thuds to the ground in front of us. “OH CHRIST!” I shout.
A fresh injection of adrenaline allows me to run faster than the pain previously did, seeing me traverse the tracks and bound up the hill until I find Alan covered in snow, branches, cuts, and tiny droplets of blood. “Alan, Alan!” His eyes are closed, but he’s still taking in quick, panicked breaths. Mel clears some of the snow and branches away from his legs, letting out a gasp before she steps away; his right tibia has cracked and split through his jeans, marked by an increasing blood stain that spreads around the fractured bone. His eyes are slightly open and glassy, but he’s either not trying or not able to focus. I run my hand over his poorly cut hair, taking in his feeble body.
“Come on, let’s go…” I mutter, grabbing his arm.
“Jeff, Jesus, you can’t move him!” Mel shouts.
“We don’t have a choice! Either we leave him or we take him with us, and I’m NOT leavin’ him!”
A burst of snow up the hill indicates something moving, made clearer by the rustling branches that obscure my view. Mel rips the rifle off her shoulder and sights up as I fight to my feet. A young woman trips through the snow, wincing as she pushes herself up. Mel lowers the rifle; it’s Heather. “Oh my gosh, is he okay?! Alan, Alan…?” She gasps when she sees his leg, then starts sniffling as she crawls over to him. “Hey, hey!” I shout. “We gotta move, now!” Heather shakes her head and turns as another wisp of snow kicks up alongside the abutment. “We can’t, there’s…”
A Zombie pops out from behind a branch falling forward on its knees, his stained, putrid mouth slamming into my face. “OH FUCK!” I hold my elbows out and press my fists together under its jaw as I go spinning down the hill with it on top of me. His fingers paw at my shoulders as he bites, heaving an ungodly stench through another cold spray of snow. Once we’ve skidded to a stop, I press my foot into his waist and kick him off, rolling over the pain in my hip as I try to stand. I reach for my .45 just as it disappears from my holster.
I turn back to see Heather lifting it and dive out of the way as she tries the trigger, but she didn’t turn the safety off. She looks at the pistol as though it betrayed her and tries the trigger again. I glance left and see Mel kicking a corpse’s head into the concrete abutment before turning back toward Alan, who remains helpless and undisturbed. My previous charge has now righted himself and started toward Heather, who kicks him back as she continues playing with my gun. I pull the katana and free him of his melon as Heather throws my pistol at the ground.
“What the fuck?!” I shout, but she’s not listening as she scrambles up the hill toward Alan’s crowbar, which I failed to notice. “Jesus, look out!” Mel shouts as a corpse rolls down the hill next to Heather; Mel sights as though she’s going to shoot, but hesitates as Heather grabs the crowbar. “Shoot, shoot!” I shout, looking up the hill to see the undead still gravitating toward the bus. “We need a clear path!” I continue, but Mel looks at me as though I have two heads as she rushes toward Heather. “Will you cover him?!” She shouts.
I retrieve and holster my pistol before scrambling up the hill toward Alan, who is thankfully still breathing and unmolested. I look up to see three Zombies heading down the hill, one exhibiting the loose-limbed flail of a runner whose joints are wearing out. “Three, incoming!” I look over to see that Mel has shouldered her rifle in favor of her crowbar as she lays into the skull of Heather’s would-be assailant. “You wanna get us out of here?!” Mel asks, bolting up the hill to attack the next one. I look back, sheathing my katana as Heather crawls toward me on her hands and knees.
“What do we do? Is he okay?!” She screams.
“I dunno, I dunno!”
“Can he move his legs?”
“Need a little help!” Mel shouts from the other side of the tree. Just as Heather starts getting up, Mel shouts “Incoming!” A thud accompanies a Zombie losing his footing, and while I shield Alan, the next impact comes from the corpse slamming into Heather, sending them both spinning down the snowy embankment. She screams, kicking wildly as she grapples.
“The neck! Get your arms under his chin!” I shout, looking up the hill to see Mel sliding back as she swings at another one while I shove off to help Heather, whose next scream warbles as it rises in pitch, and I know at once that she’s been bitten. Leaving Alan, I slide myself down the hill to see Heather crawling away with a fresh, bloody bite mark on her left thigh, just under her butt. “HEY!” I shout, skidding to a stop as I pull up my Colt.
The offending Zombie looks up long enough for me to steady the shot and rip off a round that shatters his cheek and paints the snow with his brains. “JEFF, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Mel shouts down. I jog down the hill to grab Heather by the arm, but she fights back against me.
“Get up!”
“No… no, no!” She cries.
“NOW!”
Weighing the seriousness of my tone, she scrambles to her feet, reaching back to hold her wound as she limps up the hill. “This is where we die, Jeff!” Mel shouts down, backing up around a tree as she fights off another corpse. “Grab an arm!” I shout back. Once Mel throws her opponent to the ground, she lodges a crowbar under Alan’s left armpit and starts pulling him up the hill. “No, down, under the bridge!” I shout back. “Get that crowbar!” I shout at Heather, and she obliges. Following Mel’s lead, she hooks the crowbar under Alan’s right armpit and they begin dragging him down the hill.
I rush out ahead of them, holster my pistol, and then look back up as Mel and Heather descend with Alan. Spotting at least five bodies already on the hill with more in tow, I pull up my walkie-talkie. “Rich you still with me, over?!” I watch Mel and Heather pass along the corner of the abutment before he responds.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Did the fire draw ‘em? Over.”
“They’re headed down, what are you doing?!”
“We’ve gotta buy some time…”
“How long do you need? Over!”
“Not long…” I wheeze, jogging ahead of Mel and Heather. “Comin’ up the left side…”
“I’m backing up… I’ll pull forward when you’re at the guardrails.”
“Have someone ready to bring him onboard, over and out.”
I rip my katana free and trot to the other corner of the abutment, looking up the long, snow-swept hill to see nothing other than a concrete wall to the right and snowy underbrush to the left. I look back at Heather and Mel. “You got him?” Mel glances up and nods while Heather continuously winces in pain. I let her get alongside me and look down as the blood trickles over her jeans. Pushing ahead again, I steal a wild glance at the dense brush to our left, praying that we won’t be attacked through the dead, snowy foliage. It’s hard to hear anything over my pou
nding heart to the point that I can’t tell what’s around me. As I focus, I hear the bus engine ahead and to the right, just beyond the guardrail.
“Jeff, they’re taking the bait… get to the onramp. Over.”
“Thanks… get a first-aid kit ready. Over.” I huff.
“What’s the situation? Over.”
“Alan’s hurt bad… Heather took a hit…”
“Bitten?”
“…’fraid so… over and out.”
I confirm that Heather overheard when I look back and find her sobbing. Mel swallows hard when I divert my gaze to Alan. Karen stressed the importance of keeping someone with a spinal injury still, but we didn’t have a choice. Will he end up confined to a wheelchair? I trudge up to the guardrail and find the bus slowly edging forward from the overpass. “Here, up here!” I shout back to Mel and Heather.
I climb over the guardrail and flag Rich down; he accordingly shifts the bus toward the unplowed left lane, bringing us a few feet closer to the passenger door. I kick my feet through the snow, leaping back to help pull Alan beneath the rail. My breath goes ragged in excitement when I realize that this ridiculous strategy is working. I hear someone approaching and look back to see Nick stomping through the snow with Rich’s pistol. “Hey…” I sputter, turning back to Alan. “See if there’s a backboard…”