by David Rogers
“Mr. Carter.” Tyler’s voice sounded a little tired.
“Can you drive this thing?” Austin asked abruptly.
Jessica blinked as she realized he was talking to her and not Tyler. “Uh, sure.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “It’s an automatic. I’ll be fine.” She hesitated a moment, then searched his face. His expression was still fairly neutral, but now she detected something in the back of his eyes as he looked at her. He seemed . . . she wasn’t sure. Angry wasn’t it. Neither was frustrated. Motivated? Jessica summoned the best serious expression she could and nodded again. “I’m sure.”
“Okay, we’re going to stop and I’ll help you over the console and get you settled here, then I’m going to get on the roof.”
“The roof?”
“The roof!” Candice blurted in unison with her mother.
“I’m going to run a couple of lines between the doors so there’s something to hold on to.” Austin said before the radio interrupted.
“Mr. Carter, what’s the problem?”
“Dam—” Austin cut himself off before he could complete the oath. “Mr. Morris, you can hold everyone else back. I’ll take my vehicle up and handle it.” He tapped the brake pedal several times in warning, then swung out to the center of the two-lane highway and brought the SUV to a halt.
Jessica saw Vanessa gesturing sharply to her husband as Austin set the parking brake and lifted his MP5. He got it looped across himself and settled as he liked, then looked quickly around his side of the car. “Girlie-girl, keep an eye out on your side for me, okay?”
“Okay.” Candice said, and Jessica glanced back in alarm when she heard the seatbelt clicking.
“No!” she said sharply. “Keep your seatbelt on.”
“But—”
“No buts.” Jessica said firmly. “Seat belt on. Watch from the seat.”
Candice hesitated a long moment, then obediently put the buckle back into its slot. She looked a little confused, especially when Jessica took hers off, but she didn’t protest as she turned her head to look out her window at the landscape outside.
Austin opened his door and got out. He stepped up on the running board and looked around, then came down and leaned into the car. “Okay, nice and easy.” he said, stretching his arms across toward Jessica.
She gripped his shoulder and pushed herself up off the seat. Austin assisted as she shifted closer, letting her use him as support, until he was able to get his arms properly around her. His right curled around her waist, gripping her hip while his left slid under her thighs. She was startled when he lifted her clear of the console between the seats without any apparent strain. She knew he was strong, but while she wasn’t what could fairly be called fat or heavy, she knew she wasn’t a waif-like model either. Yet he handled her with ease, moving her slowly across to the driver’s seat.
He took it carefully, letting her have plenty of time to angle her nearly immobilized left leg to fit across without unduly bumping it. She stopped trying to do more than manage her leg and just hung on as he got her over and down behind the steering wheel. When she was on the seat, he reached beneath it and pulled out the metal case of bullets and put it on the passenger seat.
“Seat adjust is down here.” he said as he straightened, pointing at the little panel on the side of the seat, next to the door.
“Got it.” Jessica said, reaching to thumb the little four way slider to start the seat moving forward. The motor was well shielded; she couldn’t even hear it as the seat powered forward slowly. It was going to take a while; he had it quite a ways back.
He reached into one of the pouches on his gear and pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle of black cord. When he had several feet unwound he shut the door on it, leaving the length spooling in her lap. She watched as he threw the bundle across the top of the SUV, then moved around the front quickly. His head swiveled around as he walked, taking in the surroundings, but except for the zombies up ahead it was clear. He opened the passenger door and reached for the loose end of the cord. Jessica preempted him, handing it across helpfully.
“Thanks.” he said, reaching up to a knife he had sheathed upside down on the right of his chest. His thumb unsnapped the catch holding it in place, and he used a quick slicing pull to sever the cord before laying the knife on the seat and starting a knot.
“What’s the plan?” Jessica asked as the seat continued moving forward. She could almost reach the pedals comfortably.
“You’re going to pull up to maybe a hundred feet or so, slowly. I’ll bang on the roof when you’re close enough. Then hold there while I do some shooting.” Austin said as he pulled the cord tight and knotted it again for tension. He was using some sort of complicated knot that she didn’t recognize and had no idea how to duplicate, but his fingers were moving with brisk assurance. “Hang on.”
He grabbed the knife and a few boxes of bullets out of the metal case before closing the door. Looking around quickly as he moved back, the big man opened the rear passenger side door. “Here girlie-girl, hold this for me.” he said, reaching across with the free end of the remaining cord. Jessica couldn’t see her daughter sitting in the seat directly behind her without adjusting the mirror, but she must have taken the cord because Austin shut the door with the cord at the top of the door and moved around the back of the vehicle. Jessica saw him tucking the bullets away in one of his many pouches and pockets.
He opened Candice’s door and started another knot. “I’ll do some shooting, try to thin the horde out. When I’m happy with how things look, I’ll give you the signal. You’ll need to pull up and put the side of the SUV as close to the trailer they’re on top of as you can, okay?”
“Okay.” Jessica said as she finally got the seat adjusted properly.
“Don’t worry about scratching the paint or anything like that, just roll up and turn so you’re right next to that trailer. Try to angle it so you can curve in and get it positioned without having to back and fill, but if you need to back and fill then go ahead.”
“Okay.” she said again.
“I’ll bang once for go forward, twice to stop, and three or more times for get out of there.”
“One forward, two stop, three get out, got it.” Jessica said.
“Now, this vehicle is da—uh, really tough.” he continued. “The windows aren’t glass, so don’t worry about anything short of a bullet or an explosion breaking through them, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Same goes for the doors and all the bodywork; it’s armored and can hold up against a crowd beating on it. As much as you can, just stay calm and don’t do any sudden maneuvering or fast accelerations. I’m not so much worried about you spilling me off the roof, but those guys up there might not be as good at holding on as I am.”
“No sudden moves.” Jessica nodded, proud at how even her voice sounded. Her heart was hammering away in her chest as she looked at the zombies before them. There were a lot. She kept repeating what he’d just said over and over in her mind. The windows aren’t glass. The SUV is armored. Nothing’s getting through. “Right.” she told herself as she took a deep breath. There were a lot of zombies up ahead. Especially for one gun to deal with.
“You got it.” Austin said. “You’ll do fine.”
“Be careful.” Candice said.
“Always.” Austin said, and did something with his face that made Candice giggle while he replaced his knife in the sheath. The door closed, then he was stepping up on the driver’s side running board. The SUV swayed on its shocks as Austin pulled himself up on the roof, and some more as he shifted around and got himself settled. Jessica waited, the engine humming faintly as it idled, then a solid sound thump sounded almost directly above her.
Taking another deep breath, Jessica shifted into drive and took her foot off the brake. Nothing happened, then she kicked herself. She leaned forward awkwardly and tugged the release for the parking brake. When it clicked free, the SUV began rol
ling forward. She applied a bit of pressure to the accelerator, then a little more after a few seconds, until she saw the speedometer ticking past ten miles per hour. She held it there, holding the steering wheel in a white knuckled grip.
Dividing her attention between the speedometer and her breathing, Jessica held the SUV straight along the dotted line between the two southbound lanes and tried to relax. The zombie horde continued to ignore them, locked into their futile attempt to reach the people atop the trailer. Jessica began to be able to pick out more detail about the trapped people.
Two women and a man. She saw a long shape in the hand of one of the women that looked an awful lot like a weapon of some kind, and her brow furrowed a little. If they were armed, why weren’t they able to get themselves out of the jam? And it looked like both women were wearing body armor. She recognized the vests. They were watching the SUV as it eased closer, though the woman without the gun seemed a lot less calm about the zombies below than her companions. She kept looking down at them, and stayed close to the armed woman. The guy just watched the SUV approach, his hands hooked in his pockets, while the brunette with the gun kept glancing over her shoulder at the southbound side of the wreckage from time to time.
Jessica’s nervousness was starting to spike by the time two thumps came from above her. They seemed very close to the back edge of the horde. A few of the upright corpses had noticed them and were starting to shuffle around to head their way. She made herself brake slowly and steadily, then sat with her hands on the wheel and her foot firmly on the brake when the vehicle came to a halt.
The first gunshot made her flinch quite badly, but she took a breath and tried to relax. “Nothing can get into the car. The car is safe.” she told herself as Austin started a steady rhythm of firing up on the roof. He was good, she saw as the shots rang out. Zombie heads were snapping back as bullets went into foreheads and faces and necks, but the gore wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d feared. Bad, yes. But not horrible. Except for the ones that hit low on the faces or necks. A couple of those made the heads flop around in a way that made her stomach twist uneasily within her.
“Candice, you okay back there?”
“Yes.” The girl’s voice sounded a little tight, but otherwise steady. Jessica glanced behind her, but found Candice was paying attention to the windows on either side of the SUV rather than craning to look forward through the windshield. It wasn’t like Candice hadn’t already seen some bad things, but Jessica couldn’t help herself when she thought to try and keep her daughter from seeing something like this if it wasn’t necessary.
There was a pause in the firing that stretched out for several seconds, then it resumed. Already more than a dozen zombies were down, only two still twitching. The rest lay motionless while Austin continued shooting at the others. Jessica tried to let her gaze unfocus so she couldn’t catch the graphic details, but she still saw sprays of things that were supposed to be inside heads erupting despite her efforts.
The shooting continued until only the horde had been considerably thinned out, with maybe a few handfuls of zombies still on their feet. The asphalt was littered with corpses, most of them all the way dead. Some were still flopping and flailing around, but they didn’t seem to be able to regain their feet. Jessica was waiting for it, and when the single thump came she didn’t startle. Her foot came off the brake, and she started forward. A thought occurred to her, and she glanced down at the door armrest long enough to thumb the lock button.
The door locks clicked, and she spoke without turning. “Candice, keep your seatbelt on, but stay away from the doors. Don’t touch them at all.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t know if the SUV had child locks or not, but as long as Candice didn’t try to operate the door handles everything should be fine. “Everything’s going to be fine. Nothing can get in.” she told herself again as she turned the steering wheel slightly to drift the SUV over to the left side of the Interstate.
“This is going to be bumpy, so be ready.” she told Candice as the SUV neared the wreckage. She hugged the breakdown lane next to the guardrail as they closed on what was left of the horde. Having something to do was helping, she realized as she caught herself eyeing the trailer and trying to pick out the best line for her final approach. A slight smile appeared, but she quickly banished it as she judged she was about where she wanted to start curving in.
The SUV rocked as it rolled over bodies, and she winced as her injured knee protested the bumpy ride. She was hanging onto the steering wheel as tightly as she could, trying to keep her arms locked to prevent the back and forth of the SUV from causing her to let it start meandering. The people on the trailer were watching the vehicle as it closed in, then they vanished when she lost the angle. Jessica turned the wheel more, then some more.
The front end of the vehicle swung around to the right a few feet from the edge of the wrecked cars. The trailer was right in front of her, along with the remaining zombies still on their feet. She kept the steady pressure on the accelerator and drove right into them without pause. Only a couple of the zombies bothered to look at the SUV as it ran them over, the front bumper knocking them down as the vehicle’s mass carried it through them.
Two thumps came from above, and Jessica braked, a little more sharply than she felt she should’ve. She winced, half expecting Austin to appear on the windshield and hood as she braced herself against the steering wheel, but instead she heard his feet on the roof as he stood up.
“Come on.” he was saying, loudly enough that she could hear him. “Can you make it down?”
The SUV rocked as more feet thumped down on the roof. Jessica glanced around nervously, eyeing the mirrors and looking over her shoulder to see out the windows. Behind her she saw a pair of zombies starting to regain their feet. She happened to be looking out the passenger window when a mottled hand smacked against it.
“Mom . . .” Candice said warningly as a man’s head, the hair tousled and dirty and the face pale and bloodstained from the nose down past his neck pulled himself up.
“It’s fine. We’re okay.” Jessica said as the zombie clawed at the window. It didn’t seem to be trying to get inside the SUV. She realized after a couple of seconds it was focused on whatever was going on up on the vehicle’s roof. “It can’t see in through the window tint.” Jessica said, not sure if she was trying to reassure Candice or herself.
“Is it going to get Austin?”
“No, Austin’s fine.” Jessica replied, though she wondered. The SUV was a big vehicle, but it wasn’t so tall that the roof wasn’t completely out of reach. She saw the zombie’s arms going up, then a leg wearing a black boot and black trousers appeared from above, kicking at it strongly. The zombie collapsed back out of view, and Jessica almost laughed. “Austin’s fine.”
“I hope they hurry up.” Candice said.
“I’m sure they’re going as fast as they can.” Jessica said, then a gloved hand appeared in the top middle of the windshield and knocked on it three times. Austin was the only one she’d seen who was wearing gloves in the Georgia late summer, so she knew it had to be him.
“Okay, here we go.” She took her foot off the brake and reminded herself to take it easy as she shifted over to the accelerator. The SUV rocked slowly as its wheels rolled over bodies. She heard some faint thumping from below, which caused her to frown in puzzlement, but the SUV kept moving without a problem. She curved slowly around to the right and finally got clear of the field of bodies. The ride smoothed out, and she steadied their course up, headed north.
The convoy was waiting right where they’d left it. As they pulled up, she saw doors opening and people started emerging, guns in hand. Not everyone, but enough to cover the convoy. The hand appeared in front of the windshield again and knocked once. She brought the SUV to a halt, looked around, then shifted into park and set the brake. As the Eagle people stood watch, mostly eying the sides of the road, she felt the vehicle rocking and caught motion in the driver’s si
de mirror. Then she turned her head and looked over her shoulder.
Austin was climbing down, his weapon slung at his side. He reached back up and helped a woman down. It was the blonde, and she was definitely wearing a body armor vest. And a pistol was holstered on her belt. The blouse and slacks she wore beneath the armor looked fairly stylish, but were showing signs of considerable wear. More than a little dirt, with the blouse especially looking like it had been in use for several days.
She was shaking badly, and she was sobbing as she literally fell into Austin’s arms. He steadied her and said something quietly that didn’t carry through the windows. The woman nodded, but her crying continued. Austin walked her a few steps away from the SUV and tentatively let go, letting his hands hover as if he expected her to collapse. But she kept her feet, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand as she looked around.
The man sort of slid down the side of the SUV, stumbling when he hit the ground, but he didn’t fall. He turned and helped the other woman, the brunette, down. She used his hand for balance but hopped down mostly on her own. She had a bright green neon and purple backpack on that was at odds with the black body armor and weapons. A bulky gun that Jessica only recognized as some sort of shotgun – maybe – was in her hand, and she had a pair of pistols on her belt; one on the side and the other at the small of her back.
“Are they okay?” Candice asked.
“I think so.” Jessica answered as she looked around. The area seemed clear, and there were a lot of people with eyes and guns watching, so she hit the buttons that lowered the window and unlocked the doors. It hummed down to admit the blonde’s sobs as background for other voices.