A Good Distance From Dying

by David Carroll

  “And you think all of that would happen from us saying that we think Judy is infected and ask to see her leg?” Sass said not at all buying what Amanda had said.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I said. “Here’s a better question for you. Do we have time to find out either way? We are quickly running out of daylight. If we go back and do what you say we lose thirty minutes to an hour easy as the group debates what we should do. We won’t make it to Johnson City tonight. We will most likely have to find someplace here in Gray with those safe house crazies less than half a mile from us. You want me to give you an excuse to simply let things play out? Here it is. For the good of the rest of us we need to make it a minimum of six more miles down the road before that sun sets.”

  Sass looked at me and said nothing. The look held no anger or humor. The look simply said, we have finally unearthed the heart of the matter. It’s not some lofty moral dilemma. The entire thing boiled down to self preservation. Amanda and I were not about to put the life of a doomed woman ahead of ourselves. We had to get down the road so she was going to have to get down that road with us. What made him hate us, and most likely even hate himself, was that he agreed with us. Judy was already dead; there was nothing we could do about that. The rest of us, however, needed to find safety and it wasn’t here in the middle of the main road through Gray, Tennessee.

  “Okay, I can see your side. I agree with you to a point but, we need to find something that will allow her to travel with as little pain as possible.”

  “Agreed.” Amanda said.

  We cleared Pizza Hut on our left and what I saw made my eyes light up. Smiling, I tapped Sass on the shoulder and said, “It’s like Christmas.”

  Sass followed to where my hand was pointing. He smiled at me in return and said, “That’ll do pig. That’ll do.”

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - N I N E

  To our left was a closed White’s Grocery Store. Currently the building was nothing more than a blight on the colorful landscape of Gray. Even the old store logo was faded back into the blue paint of the building. It looked more like a ghost of the store’s name than anything else.

  It wasn’t the building that had drawn my interest. It was what had been parked in front of the building that had caught my eye. Sass had been intrigued by it as well. What the object of interest would end up being was an old Ford flatbed truck. Somebody had added big wooden side walls and a thick wooden removable tailgate to the truck’s bed. It was old and built like a tank. The faded red paint of the cab made it look like something that had been hauling around produce during the great depression. Overall the truck looked like something you would see in a movie, either loaded down with watermelons in the summer or pumpkins in the fall.

  What I was impressed with was the fact that the side walls of the bed stood a good eight to ten feet high from ground level. The only way a zombie would be able to grab somebody in the back of that truck was if the person was leaning over the side looking down at them. And even then, I doubted that the zombie would be able to gain enough leverage to hoist them up and over. This truck was made for hauling and pushing anything stubborn out of its way. I was in love.

  Sass hopped onto the front seat, which was a bench seat. Big Lou rose up on his back legs putting his front paws on Sass’s lap so he could look at the seat on the other side.

  “Keys are in here. Let’s just hope she starts.” Sass said unable to hide that undertone of excitement in his voice.

  Sass turned the key and the truck roared to life with a little hiccup and a backfire. Black smoke rolled across the parking lot behind the truck, and Big Lou barked in triumph.

  “The son of a bitch even has a half tank of gas.” Sass yelled over the noise of the engine with a bit of laughter.

  “Okay. Everyone in.” I yelled as I walked around the truck and opened the other door to let Big Lou jump onto the seat.

  Amanda climbed up into the back, and I jumped into the front beside Lou. I was overjoyed that something was finally going our way. Sass wasted no time getting the truck back down to where we had left the others at the overpass. Once we parked the truck I could see that three zombies were laying face down on the road. Shawn was standing watch over the group with his baseball bat at the ready.

  “About time,” was all he said as I helped Amanda lift the tailgate out of its track.

  Shawn and Daniel helped Judy into the back and then the rest piled in behind her. The bed of the truck was huge. It had to be at least ten feet long. Everyone had enough room to stretch out, and after we sat the tailgate back into its track, I gave Amanda a look that was meant to be taken as “keep an eye on her” before I jumped down from the truck bed and walked back around to the front. Big Lou was looking off towards Dairy Queen and started to do that deep growl before barking twice. I opened the side door and patted the seat just as two zombies staggered into view at the side of the road. I hopped in behind Big Lou and Sass took the truck back into Gray

  C H A P T E R T H I R T Y

  If you have never been to Gray, Tennessee, you really won’t understand it when I say you’re in town long enough to say “Hey, I’m in Gray!” then you’re not in town anymore. The businesses go by in under a minute unless you get caught by the red light. Since it seemed the end of the world was upon us we ignored any red lights that attempted to halt our progress through the devastated township.

  There were surprisingly few cars on the road so Sass was able to weave in and out of what clutter existed. There were two gas stations and a McDonalds yet to pass before we cleared the businesses and headed for the bridge out of Gray.

  “He didn’t burn either one of the gas stations.” I said, more to myself than anyone, but Sass nodded.

  “I was thinking the same thing. He would have had to come this way. I wonder why he didn’t burn these down.”

  “Maybe he’s not doing it to be destructive. The one that he burned at the crossroads forced people to come to the interstate, right?”

  “Yeah. What are you getting at Crackhead?”

  “Well, had he set these two ablaze he would have most likely burnt Gray to the ground. The hill slopes back into town. I don’t think he is after destruction. I think he’s trying to steer people towards a certain path. He wanted us to go toward the interstate, and now he wants us to continue to follow him.”

  “It’s a good thought. But how did he figure people would know which way to go once they made it to the interstate?”

  As Sass said this I looked right and saw the huge plume of black smoke rising out of what would have once been the city of Kingsport. There were now several smaller towers of black smoke rising into the sky as well. Eventually they all merged together with the large one that marked where the chemical plant had once been.

  “I’m pretty sure he thought people would be able to figure that out for themselves.” I said.

  Sass frowned at the black sky to our east, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  The ramp on this side of the bridge went towards Kingsport. The Johnson City ramp veered off the other side. As we slowly cruised around the few abandoned cars on the bridge I took a moment to look out at our surroundings. From the middle of the bridge you could see for at least a mile in either direction. Looking towards Kingsport I could see the road rolling away from me until it finally disappeared, bending behind a section of trees in the distance. The black smoke dominated the skyline, and I was positive that the explosion of the chemical plant had been far worse than I had imagined. I thought of my dad again, somewhere in Kingsport. Was he still alive or had he been taken down by the zombies? I thought about his doors never being locked and tried to assure myself that zombies don’t use door knobs. The textbook zombie method for entry into a building was to simply beat their way inside. If somebody started beating on my dad’s front door, would he go answer it to see what all the fuss was about? Yes, I thought he would.

  The other factor was that dad lived in the back section of a rolling suburb in the valley. How l
ong would it have taken the dead to filter through to that area? Would he have had time to see any reports about this on TV before anything weird happened? I would have easily said yes had all this happened ten years ago. Back then we were the last road in that section of the valley, but there had been new construction in the last ten years or so and now there were easily thirty or more houses surrounding the little split foyer I had grown up in.

  The explosion would have had some rather large consequences for the city as a whole, but I thought that the people hidden away in the valley wouldn’t be in much danger. The plant was a good distance away. There were also hills and mountains surrounding the houses which would take the brunt of any shock wave that may have tore through the city. I was almost positive that there would have been minimal damage to the houses in the valley.

  “That’s a lot of earth to get through before you could touch him,” I said to the large black cloud that was hanging over Kingsport. “Trees, rocks, and earth to stop your rage. Mother Nature was too strong for you. I know she was.”

  The cloud said nothing. It hung there like an omen from the dark ages signaling that evil existed in the land to our east. Evil ruled over the city of Kingsport now, and my dad, the last bit of family I had, was trying to survive under that gigantic dark shadow of death and loss. I felt powerless. I felt saddened by the thought of it. I also felt like I had to see it for myself. I wanted to leave everything else behind and make for Kingsport as fast as I could. I felt an unexplainable desire to go home. I had to know if he was okay. The desire almost overpowered me. If only one of us had a cell phone, I could have called his house and checked on him.

  I thought it was almost too amazing a set of

  circumstances that led to a group of eight people finding each other and not a single one of them having a cell phone. In this day and age that was almost unheard of.

  Mine had been squashed when the wall had fallen onto my machine. Sass’s phone was lost somewhere in the dark of the plant when the shelves had fallen over. Amanda didn’t carry a cell when on a mission. She had a radio that tied her into her handlers, but she said it had been quiet since before she met us. Shawn’s phone was still in his car hooked up to the charger. Veronica’s phone was somewhere in the strip club, she thought. The new kid, Jim, had left his at the Gray Safe House. Judy and Daniel said theirs was left in the wreck of their car. Judy’s in her abandoned pocket book and Daniel’s laying wherever it had fallen to when the wreck happened.

  I turned away from the side of the bridge facing Kingsport. Dad was smart. Dad was resourceful. Dad also knew how to shoot a gun, a skill that put him higher on the most likely to survive list than I was. I felt his chances of still being alive were good. I didn’t think that he would still be at his house though. His house would be a nightmare to try to defend. He would have moved on to somewhere more secure by now. Even if I had a phone at this point, I would have no clue where to call.

  I also had to remind myself that I wasn’t in this boat alone. Everybody else in our group, with exception of the Craigs, had no clue about their families. We were all in the dark and I think that was part of what helped bind us together. I couldn’t abandon my people now, and they were my family at this point. I couldn’t turn my back on them and go after my dad anymore than I could have supported any of them wanting to do the same.

  In the TV show Lost, the character of Jack had a big speech early on which had the line, “We either live together or die alone” as its big statement. Right here, in this world, in this time, there were no truer words that could be said. Good or bad we had to carpool with whoever picked us up. This was our family now. Judy was soon to pass away, and Daniel would explode. We would have to handle that and move forward as a group, as a family. I hoped that he would be rational and consolable, but I knew different. Would his fit be large enough to rip the group apart and weaken our chances of survival? I didn’t think so, but you never really know.

  I looked towards Johnson City trying to find a path for Sass to take that would help us make good time and get us to the city as quickly as possible. What I saw wasn’t great, but it was fairly encouraging.

  I could see all the way down the interstate to another overpass. There were cars and trucks littering the road but it wasn’t the locked down traffic jam that I had envisioned. I had originally thought that the interstate would be bumper to bumper all the way to JC. I had imagined that the drivers would have abandoned their cars realizing that they were never going to be able to drive to safety. Or worse, they could have abandoned their cars once the zombies found the interstate. Miles and miles of all you can eat, providing you could get your meal out of the shiny metal containers. Apparently, whatever had happened in those first hours of chaos hadn’t provided anyone enough time to create the nightmarish traffic jam of my dreams. Sass let the truck idle and he looked at me. I think he was getting first glimpse of just how tired and overwhelmed I was.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  “No. I’m far from okay. This is too much, I can’t do this.” I said.

  Sass got quiet. As he watched me. I wished that I hadn’t said anything. I wished that I hadn’t let him see my weakness. At the same time, I wished he would say, “Hey, no problem. I’ll take over for you. Cool?” That would have been very cool with me. Instead the hairy one gave me a tight smile.

  “We will be okay, Charlie. We’re halfway there.”

  “This is exit thirteen Sass. The first Johnson City exit is nineteen. That’s six miles before we even reach the city and who knows how far in we will have to go before we find safety for the night. We have maybe two hours before the sun is completely set. That’s an awfully long way to go in two hours.” I said.

  “True that Crackhead. Guess it’s time to kick the tires and light the fires.” Sass said with a smile. He knew I loved the movie Independence Day.

  “Listen Sass, more than anyone, you know me. You know how I am. Everything in my life that’s ended up being too hard, I quit. I keep telling all of you that I am not a leader, and I mean it. I quit, I procrastinate, and I give up when the going gets tough.”

  “I haven’t seen any of that today Charlie. You are a Crackhead, of that I have no doubt, but you’re not a quitter, not today. You’re starting to doubt our chances of making it to safety. You’re beginning to let yourself feel the fear the rest of us have been feeling all day. You want to give up because your mind tells you it’s hopeless. But you do have a choice. You can fight or you can quit. And today, Crackhead, I just can't see you being a quitter."

  My eyes slid back to the dark skies over Kingsport. Sass was still watching me, waiting on me. I felt my mask being put back on. My cocky little smile slide back into place. Safely hiding away all my fears I gave the Sasquatch a wink.

  “I just remembered why I love you so much, you big hairy bastard. Let’s get down this road.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears.” Sass said as he popped the truck into gear and drove us onto the interstate.

  I took one last look at Gray. All I could see was the big McDonald’s sign hanging in the air forever tempting hungry ghouls to pull off the interstate for the warm comfort of the dollar menu.

  Now only the interstate and Jonesborough lay in our path to Johnson City. Sass put it back into low gear as we put Gray behind us

  C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - O N E

  The truck sure did beat walking, even with our average speed being five to ten miles an hour at most. We had been lucky so far. None of the wrecks had blocked the entire road. At least, that was, until we came upon mile marker sixteen.

  It was a large sprawling wreck that ate up the entire interstate from the woods on one side of the road to the woods on the other. My best count was three eighteen wheelers, at least ten cars, a handful of trucks, a Greyhound bus and, of all things, a farm tractor. It seemed that vehicles had been flying down the road when suddenly they were confronted with a tractor in their path. Everybody freaked. People in the right lane attempt
ed to swing out into the left to get around, but there were already cars there. This led to high speed collisions that spilled out into the median. The cars bounced and bumped onto the other side of the road and the cars that were heading towards Johnson City found that they had nowhere to go. Just like on the bridge, everything began to stack up. The wreck grew, car upon car, as people attempted to swerve and found that there was nowhere to swerve to.

  I opened my door and stood on the metal step of the truck. I was trying to see if there was an area where the wreckage seemed to diminish. I looked over at the edge and saw a daycare bus sitting among the trees at the edge of the road. The entire front driver’s side area was gone. I don’t mean it was crumpled in by the impact of something heavy moving at an outrageous rate of speed. I mean it was gone. Amanda was standing behind me, in the bed of the truck, looking at the bus as well.

  “Please let that bus have been empty when whatever happened to it happened.” I said.

  “We can hope, but I think we both know better. We need to talk.” She said.

  She looked over her shoulder to where Judy was sitting then spoke in a whisper. “Her skin has taken a yellowish green hue. She’s no longer vomiting, but every now and then a series of dry heaves races through her body. Her eyes are bloodshot and her body is limp.”

  “I take it we need to do this on the ground.” I whispered to her.

  “That would probably be best.”

  I nodded to her and as she hopped over the side I told Sass to pull across the median and take the truck as close to the tractor as he could. The wreckage was much less on the far left of the road. If we were to try to make a hole or even give up and start walking that would be our spot.

  “Why not just walk around this mess through the woods?” Sass asked.

  I would not go through those woods. I would not risk that. Better to climb over a mountain of wrecked vehicles than