by A. M. Geever
“M-m-m-m-motherf-fucker.”
She forced herself to stand and walked on unsteady feet. The cold was knit into her bones so deep she would never get warm again. Could she walk as fast as a zombie? There were lights farther down the palisade. People would be at the lights. Maybe. Maybe everyone at LO was already dead. Maybe it was full of zombies. Maybe she should quit trying.
Light flared in her face. She couldn’t raise her arm to shield her eyes. She squinted into the light, but it was too bright to see.
“Help me.”
It came out a whisper, not the shout she had intended. The light moved away, then back. She tried to lift her arm, but its weight was too heavy to bear. She looked back to the zombies pursuing her. They were gaining ground.
The ground felt hard beneath her ass. She didn’t remember sitting. Her jaw ached from the constant chattering of her teeth. Pain throbbed through her shivering body. The zombies were only minutes away, and she was tired, so tired. Too tired. She curled into herself, knees tucked, arms wrapped around them. Like a baby, she thought drowsily, which made her think of Mario. It took what felt like forever to figure out why.
A baby… That’s right. I won’t have to tell him.
She heard a distant crack, then another. And another after that, but they did not concern her. Approaching zombies were the last thing Miranda saw before her eyes slammed shut.
20
“I am open to suggestions,” Rocco said. “Because as far as I can see, we’re fucked.”
Doug turned three hundred sixty degrees on the cab roof of the truck they perched on. Apart from the south, the direction they had come from, everywhere around them was quickly becoming wall-to-wall zombies. South was going to look the same in a matter of minutes. Doug could see the palisade through the early morning mist that the sun was slowly burning off. LO was half a mile dead ahead, at most, but the zombies swarming ahead of them looked too thick to drive through, forget about reaching the main gate. They had to get the equipment in the truck back to LO, or the sound defenses might never be fixed. And if they weren’t, the chances that LO would eventually be overrun went up—a lot.
They had to get back.
Skye stood next to him, shaking her head, as flummoxed as Rocco.
“We’ve got a two-ton Peterbilt dump truck,” Doug said. “Radio them now. Tell them we’re driving straight down, what is this, 160th? We are crashing into the trench, and there better be people to help get this shit unloaded.”
Skye looked at him like he had lost his mind. “The zombies will use the truck as a bridge. With this many, they’ll rip down the chain-link fence, and then they’re at the palisade.”
“How about we work the problem in front of us?” Doug snapped.
Skye flinched. There were already zombies approaching the truck. They had to move—now.
“Let’s do it,” Rocco said.
Ten seconds later, Doug dropped through the truck cab’s open passenger window. He finished buckling up as Rocco hung up the radio.
“Your window open, Doug?” Rocco asked. “We might not have both sides to count on when we get there.”
Doug nodded. “Yeah. It’s down.”
Skye sat between him and Rocco, grim determination wrinkling her brow and tightening her jaw. The engine revved, then the truck jerked, thumping over the curb—or maybe the first zombie.
First zombie, it turned out, because the thud was followed by another, and then another, and then more at once than Doug wanted to think about. They picked up speed. Every thud was a zombie that might get tangled up in an axle or damage the hydraulics that lifted the truck’s bed.
The gravel track road ahead of them looked like a crowded dance floor. Doug laughed, despite the sweat-drenched terror that gripped his gut and made his breath feel tight.
Skye said, “What’s fun—”
A loud bang made Doug jump. The upper half of a zombie flew up onto the hood of the truck. It smacked into the windshield with a loud crack.
“Fucking hell,” Rocco cried.
The truck picked up more speed. The zombie against the windshield writhed, its rotting face smearing the glass. Its brown-gray skin was covered with cuts and bites, and its broken teeth scraped against the cracked windshield.
Skye cried out, “The glass is cracked! Watch—”
She just had time to get her hands up before the broken windshield collapsed into her lap. She pushed against the top of the windshield frame and six inches of jagged glass still attached to it, trying to keep the zombie from falling completely on her. The driver’s side had pulled free of the frame, shattered glass studding Rocco’s raised arm. The windshield in front of Doug had not broken free, but glass spiderwebbed inside the bending frame.
He broke out the cracked glass that was blocking him from helping Skye. Rank air gusted into his face. Rocco had, if anything, sped up. The constant thump-thump-thump of zombies being crushed under the truck’s huge tires jostled them violently. The zombie writhing on the remnants of the windshield squirmed and tried to twist closer to Skye. She pushed herself back against the seat, leaning into Rocco. Doug could hear the crisp snap of the zombie’s teeth.
He reached for the zombie to pull it free of Skye and shove it out, over the side of the truck’s hood. The engine revved deep, black smoke from the forward exhaust stack blowing through the cab.
The truck jerked sharply, then tipped forward, and what felt like a two-by-four hit Doug’s body from right shoulder to left hip, and from left hip to right, all at once. He gasped for air, suddenly suspended from his seatbelt, looking straight down at dark earth. The zombie that had crashed through the windshield had been thrown back through it. It squirmed on the ground at the end of the truck’s hood, disoriented by its new location. Or maybe just hungry. It was a zombie. Anthropomorphizing was never a good idea.
“You guys okay?” Rocco asked, sounding stunned.
The truck stood on its front grille and bumper, held upright by the trench walls. Skye pushed back from the dashboard. Blood ran down her nose from a cut on her forehead. The truck had lurched into the trench so violently that Doug had no idea how she was still conscious after hitting her head on the dash.
“I’m okay,” Skye said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Doug held on to the outside of the truck door, positioning his feet on the dash. Here goes nothing, he thought, pressing the button to release his seatbelt. If his footing wasn’t good enough, he would fall through the missing windshield onto the zombie below.
He didn’t fall, so he instead climbed out until he stood outside the cab, his feet on the door in the open window. The truck shifted and creaked, like distant thunder, and Doug froze. Then he scrambled over the hot exhaust stack as quick as he could, arms shaky from adrenaline, to get behind the relative safety of the truck bed’s high sides. He hunkered down immediately behind the cab, the part of the bed that would tip up and back to dump a load if the truck was upright. Some of the equipment they had gotten from the audio supply warehouse was still in the truck bed.
Doug dropped to his knees to reach a hand down to Skye. From farther down the trench came a moan. A zombie, twenty feet away, staggered toward them. More followed.
Skye looked up to Doug, hand outstretched. The cut on her forehead had almost quit bleeding, so the cut itself wasn’t serious. Pieces of glass stuck in her silvery-blond hair, and blood that had run from the cut across her forehead crusted along her hairline. Soot from the truck’s exhaust that had blown through the cab smudged her cheek and chin. In the early morning sunlight just beginning to work its way over the lip of the trench, it was easy to believe that her light-blue eyes were the only points of color in a washed out, gray-and-brown landscape.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “There are zombies down here! Help or get out of my way.”
Doug grasped her hand. She scrambled up past him, and he helped Rocco climb up as well. By the time he straightened up, Skye had climbed the high sides of the bed that n
ow pointed skyward and hopped off to solid ground.
“A lot of the equipment is up here. It was thrown clear when we crashed,” Skye said, looking toward the palisade. She turned back to the truck. “Pass it up—”
Her eyes widened, as big as dinner plates.
“Get up here now! They’re coming!”
Then Doug heard the growing rumble. He hadn’t noticed it before with all the noise of the crash and the creaking of the truck. He looked at Rocco, then they started to climb. It wasn’t hard, with the square indentations of the high sides of the truck bed. Skye was already running over to the chain-link fence when he pulled himself out of the trench, carrying boxes of audio equipment under each arm.
“Holy shit,” Rocco said.
Thousands of zombies were closing in. They would fill in the trench and reach the chain-link in minutes.
“Get the equipment,” Skye shouted. “They’re coming down to help.”
Doug picked up the two closest boxes of equipment and ran for the chain-link fence. A rope ladder hung over the jagged top of the palisade, people already climbing down. A stretcher, the kind that had been used by helicopters to pluck shipwrecked survivors out of the sea, was being lowered from a winch.
Doug picked up more equipment and kept on doing it. By his third dash to gather up the components that had been strewn across the area between the trench and the fence, the leading edge of zombies were steps away from tripping into the trench. A woman cut the last link for a hole in the chain-link fence as he approached. Equipment components were thrust through, then carried and dragged and loaded onto the stretcher by the people who had climbed down to help.
A blur caught the corner of Doug’s eye. Zombies were already inside the fence, moving toward them from the north. They had breached the fence somewhere else. Soon, the buffer between the fence and the palisade would be a churning horde of the undead.
They had to leave. Now.
“Did you see the master equalizer?” Skye asked, her eyes filled with desperation.
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “This has to do. We need to go.”
She shook her head and dashed for the truck.
“Skye,” Rocco shouted.
Doug sprinted after Skye. Zombies poured into the trench, a putrid, reeking flow of moaning death. When he reached the truck, he saw that the zombies falling into the trench were stacked almost to where the back of the cab met the truck’s bed. One’s head was split cleanly in two by what had to have been Skye’s machete. A smear of black blood started just beside where Skye rooted through boxes and ended where she had pushed the zombie into the trench.
“Skye,” Doug shouted. “We have to go!”
She ignored him.
“Goddammit,” Doug swore, jumping down into the truck. “What are we looking for?”
“Look for equalizer on the box.”
Doug shoved boxes and small crates aside as the banging on the sides of the truck bed got louder. Beyond Skye, on the other side of the truck, a zombie tumbled into the trench. But instead of disappearing from sight, it landed level with the back of the cab. Nothing blocked it from crawling onto the high back of the truck bed that curled over the top of the cab. The zombie lifted its head, cloudy eyes looking straight into Doug’s. Its mouth opened, moans lost in the din of all the others, and started to wriggle and squirm their way.
“Got it,” Skye shouted.
Doug’s heart sank. The box was five feet long, about three feet wide, and two feet high. Not cardboard, but a wooden box—a shipping crate. And heavy as hell. He remembered moving it before.
“We can’t—”
“Just push it up to me,” Skye said, levering the crate up on its short end to lean against one of the reinforcing beams that lined the trench. She looked over to him, her eyes blazing. “You can do this.”
She’d had the truck bed to use as a fulcrum to lever the crate, which made its weight easier move. Doug wouldn’t. He was just about to tell her that when she scampered up the side of the truck and out of the trench like she climbed things every day—because she did.
“Fuck,” Doug almost shouted.
He squatted low, getting both hands under the box, and pulled, screaming with the effort. The box moved an inch, then another. When it was high enough, he dropped to his knees to rest the end of the crate against his chest. Then he twisted and shoved his shoulder underneath it.
The cloudy-eyed zombie reached for his foot.
Thighs burning—from running and climbing and squatting—Doug pushed his trembling legs straight.
The zombie’s hand wrapped around his ankle.
The box weighed two hundred pounds if an ounce. It stuck eighteen inches above the lip of the trench. Not enough to pivot it up. Skye leaned on it anyway.
The zombie was on its knees, one hand around Doug’s calf. Another zombie slithered in behind the first. And another banged into the truck bed on the other side, behind him. Doug got his hands under the crate and pushed up, the most important press up of his maybe soon-to-be-over life.
Doug felt the zombie’s teeth close on his pant leg as the crate lifted from his hands. He turned, slamming his fist into the side of the zombie’s head, hard enough to shove its head sideways and kick his leg free. In two steps, he was hoisting himself up the side of the truck bed. Rocco’s meaty hand gripped his and pulled. Doug crested the lip of the trench onto solid earth. Skye and three others were already on the far side of the chain-link fence, almost trotting despite the weight of the crate they carried between them like pallbearers.
The horde of zombies along the palisade were just fifty feet from the stretcher.
From Skye.
Doug sprinted, his long legs carrying him past Rocco, through the hole cut in the fence. He reached Skye and the others, slipping his hands under the crate to help carry it.
The zombies were forty feet away when they reached the stretcher.
“On three,” Skye said.
Doug wanted to say that three was too long a count, but it would only slow them down.
“One, two, three.”
They all heaved, the zombies ever closer. The crate thumped onto boxes already on the stretcher. Doug thought he heard the metal cable attached to the stretcher creak. Rocco reached them, grabbing some straps to help them tie everything down.
“Get out of here,” Rocco shouted to the others.
Fifteen feet, the depth of the trench. The leading edge of the horde was only fifteen feet away. The rope ladder was another ten feet beyond the stretcher.
Then Rocco’s arm lifted above his head, his upstretched hand whirling in a circle from his elbow. The stretcher lifted, smooth and steady.
“Let’s go,” he said, pivoting to the ladder.
Doug glanced at the horde, so close now that he could see the clouded gray eyes and flaky sores, hear the teeth snapping along with the moans. Skye pulled him along.
Everything about her was in crystalline focus. Her lips were so pink, her face flushed and filthy, smeared with soot and dirt and blood. Her eyes were the same shade as the lightest blue sapphires. Even now, she was beautiful.
The scream of twisting metal cut through the noise of the horde like a knife. The chain-link fence was down, and zombies stumbled over it.
Rocco was almost halfway to the top of the palisade when they reached the ladder. The rails were rope, but the rungs were wood, which would make it easier to climb. It twitched from the motion of those climbing ahead of them.
“Go,” Skye said.
Doug shook his head. “You first.”
But she didn’t move. She stared at him, then glanced at the horde less than twenty feet away. She pointed to her leg. Her leather pants were torn. Doug could see the fabric of the layers beneath it, pulled out through the tear.
“I’ve been bitten, Doug. Go.”
Doug couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. The zombie he had seen when he followed Skye back to the truck. She had killed it, but it ha
d killed her, too. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t paused in her frantic effort to save LO and the people she loved.
Doug stared at her ripped pant leg, denying the proof of his eyes.
It couldn’t be true.
He wouldn’t let it be true.
“I don’t see any blood,” he protested.
“I can feel it running down my leg,” she said, her voice trembling. “Go. Please.”
The horde tripping over the downed chain-link fence to their east was almost as close as the one behind them. Doug looked into Skye’s blue eyes. She began to shimmer through the tears filling his own.
He held his hand out to her and said, his voice cracking, “Come die with the people who love you.”
“There isn’t time for us both to get up the ladder! You have to go!”
Resolve flooded Doug’s body like a jolt of electricity.
“I’m not going without you. You climbed El Capitan. Climb the fucking palisade.”
Skye’s incandescent fury almost blinded him. She opened her mouth, then her fighting stance melted away.
“You’re impossible!” she snapped at him.
She turned away, tugged off her boots, and wriggled her sock-clad toes into an almost non-existent space between two of the vertical tree trunk logs of the palisade.
Doug grasped the ladder. Skye’s fingers gripped the rough bark of the logs. Her muscles flexed, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed as she looked for the next handhold.
Doug climbed the first two rungs of the ladder. Impotent rage at these mindless monsters who had stolen the fearless woman climbing the palisade just feet away from him detonated in Doug’s chest. He wanted to jump off the ladder and kill as many as he could, pointless as it would be.
Instead, he climbed.
Skye was eight feet off the ground when the first zombie hit the palisade below her. She wriggled her toes and hands into the tiniest crevices of the vertical palisade logs. She reached and pulled with her arm, climbing another foot. She felt for a toehold so small Doug couldn’t see it and pushed herself up another two feet. She moved with a fluid grace, unhurried and deliberate, as if there was nothing below her but grass and earth.