The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  This had to be done. They died, or he died. He couldn’t spend another day trapped in a tree. He stabbed and swung until his arms were exhausted and trembling, then stabbed and swung some more. He cursed and spat at them. He let the bodies pile up and the things get closer, so he wouldn’t have to reach so far to kill them. He hated them with every fiber of his being.

  Every time he thought he was nearly done with the butchery, more would run over from Gary or Sheila’s tree. How many had he killed? Forty? Fifty? He couldn’t keep it up. If he only had something to drink, his mind kept telling him. Then he could carry on for a few more minutes. His throat was raw from sucking in air through the dry passageway to his lungs, and he kept spitting out blood.

  It felt like his tongue was so swollen it would cut off his windpipe, but he kept swinging and stabbing. Always the face. Sometimes clean thrusts into the brain, sometimes glancing blows that shattered teeth and ripped off cheeks or lips. The pile of bodies got so high they were using it to scrabble up into his tree and leap for him. They didn’t have the coordination to hang on to a branch, or watch where they were stepping, and as soon as they managed to get near him, he would swing and they would slip and tumble back down. Sometimes not moving again as they landed on their heads, sometimes never being able to climb again with their broken legs and arms.

  Jessie kept stabbing. A berserker frenzy driving him beyond caring about exhaustion and pain. A Crusader swinging his sword at unending masses of heathens. A Viking striking ceaselessly with his battle axe.

  A Knight slaying his way through the armies of his enemy. His hands were raw and blistered and bleeding, from the constant shoving motions on the rough spears. His face was on fire from a deep gash, spouting blood. He had to stop, to climb a little farther up and rest, but they wouldn’t let him. They kept coming and the pyre kept getting higher. Their screams never stopped and he answered them with a hoarse roar, blood spraying from his raw throat. They thought they were so close to having him, they could taste his blood as it splashed from his snarling mouth and down on their faces.

  He stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, the pointed end of his stick brutal in its simplicity. Impale. Withdraw. Find another face. Impale. Withdraw. Find another face. He continued until he couldn’t anymore, then continued anyway. They threw themselves at him and he stacked their bodies on a gory altar of death.

  When the horde finally stopped coming at him, he was surprised and disappointed that there was nothing left to kill. He let his last stick be pulled out of his bleeding hands and it fell to the ground some twenty feet below, stuck in the eye socket of Cody from 3rd period. He was done. His chest heaved. His heart raced. Sweat poured from him and blood dripped from his flayed-open cheek. He stared listlessly at the few that remained, as they tried to climb the pile of bodies and get to him.

  They were all broken. All had made multiple attempts to lunge at him and had fallen, flailing, to the ground. Legs were dragging at odd angles, shattered arms refused to pull them up the pyramid of dead.

  Jessie leaned back against the trunk, balanced on a wide branch. The monster in him was retreating, its taste for destruction had been sated. If one of them made it up to him now, he didn’t think he would even have the strength to open his eyes, let alone try to fight it off. He was through. Maybe if he could get his arms to stop shaking, get a little feeling back in his legs, he might try to run down the mound and into the water.

  But then what? He knew he didn’t have enough left in him to make it to the swimming dock. It was too far. He wasn’t thinking clearly, his brain in a fog. He needed to take a short breather.

  He rested. His ravaged hands throbbed with every heartbeat. His face hurt from where it had been torn open. He didn’t even know how it happened. One of them rake him with their claws? Caught it on a branch? Stabbed himself in the frenzy? He was too weary to care. Too weary to move.

  31

  Jessie

  Day 3

  Home at Last

  Jessie awoke with a start. Had he really dozed off? He looked down toward the ground, at the thunking sound he was hearing and was surprised to see Doug with a baseball bat, crushing the heads of the all the broken zombies that were clawing their way toward him. He couldn’t believe it. Doug was back and he had a Jon boat pulled up on the shore. He was cleaning up the mess that Jessie had started. When had all this happened? He thought he’d only closed his eyes for a few seconds.

  Jessie half tumbled, half climbed, down the tree and slid down the bloody pile of his classmates and headed directly into the water, splashing out a few feet, then diving in head first, trying to drink the whole lake. He drank until he came up for air and then vomited it all back out again. He didn’t care, he dove back under, swam a few yards and started drinking again. Dirty pond water never tasted so good.

  Then he remembered the zeds that had followed Doug into the lake and disappeared under its murky surface. Crap. Did something just brush his ankle? He sprinted for shore as fast as he could in the waist deep water, only to meet Doug and Sheila settling Gary in the boat and staring at him. They all had bottles of water and were drinking greedily from them.

  Doug had blood splatters on his face from the gruesome task he had just finished. They all looked a little freaked out at what had just happened. And they wouldn’t stop staring at him. Jessie’s ripped cheek and hands were still bleeding, dripping on the churned up earth. He reached over to the water and tried to rinse them off, but they remained bloody and dripping.

  “We need to go,” Gary said, finally looking away from Jessie and at the huge pyramid of undead that towered ten or fifteen feet tall.

  They started pushing the boat back out into deeper water.

  Jessie hustled over and climbed in, grabbing one of the paddles and getting some distance between them and the shoreline. When they were far enough away, he grabbed one of the bottles of mountain spring water from the half dozen still floating in the warm water of the cooler. He chugged it down, still trying to hydrate himself, not caring that it smelled of fish. Everyone was quiet, still sneaking glances at him and each other. Doug lowered the trolling motor down into the water and flipped it on. “Which house is yours?” he asked, spinning the little boat away from the bloody carnage of what used to be their friends and teachers and classmates.

  Jessie pointed across the lake at a bi-level house about a half mile away, set a few hundred yards up a hillside from the lakeshore.

  As they got closer, the problems defending the house against a horde of the undead became apparent. The whole top floor was all glass fronted, affording a view of the lake. The deck was easily accessible, with the wide stairs leading up to it from the dock area.

  “I don’t know, Jester,” Gary said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence. “If those things get up on the deck, not much stopping them from busting through the windows.”

  “Yeah, but if we knock the deck down, they can’t get up to them,” Jessie said. “And on the other side of the house, it’s all garage, and there’s only one window in the kitchen. We can nail some plywood or something up over it. The entry door is pretty stout, so it should hold if we brace it.”

  “You have any wood there?” Sheila asked. She was also trying to forget what she had just seen. For a minute, she had been more afraid of Jessie than she had of the zombies. He had been a complete maniac. Screaming and hurtling ugly curses like a man possessed. Coated in blood and brains, and he just kept stabbing and killing and snarling like a rabid animal. He had killed about a hundred people, just now. Not people. Zombies, she corrected herself.

  “I know there are some sheets of plywood in the garage, up in the rafters,” Jessie said, joining in with the chatter and trying to put the last three days behind him. “The old man had me help him put some up there a while back so he could store car parts. Fenders and stuff for that old rust bucket he’s working on.”

  “I am soooo hungry,” Sheila said, rubbing her stomach and bringing all their minds back around
to their bellies. They were already forgetting the nightmare, or at least pretending to. “I hope there’s loads of food that hasn’t gone bad.”

  Jessie finished his water and started scanning the shore for danger.

  “No worries there,” he said. “There’s a ton of canned stuff in the basement. My parents weren’t exactly survivalist types, but the old man would always go to Sam’s Club and buy everything by the case.”

  As they neared the dock, Jessie told them all to wait while he went up the hill and got the house unlocked. He grabbed the baseball bat with his bleeding hands, wincing a little, but ignoring it. He patted his pocket, making sure the keyring was still there.

  It was.

  “I’ll give you an all clear if I don’t run into any trouble.”

  He didn’t.

  Within five minutes, they were all locked inside the house, raiding the cupboards and eating everything from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to cold cans of soup. Jessie wrapped his hands in dishtowels so he would quit splattering blood everywhere and Sheila taped his cheek back together with duct tape. They would fix it better after they ate, they said.

  They talked about proper ways to secure the house as they stuffed themselves and had every intention of doing it, but once they started washing days of sweat and blood and dirt off of themselves and sat down on the comfortable recliners and couches, they were through. Within minutes they were asleep, the last three days of panic, terror, and pain sliding off of them as they each dropped off into a heavy and much-needed slumber.

  32

  Lacy

  Day 4

  10th Floor

  Morning found Lacy in her office, using the small paring knife from the kitchen to cut the carpet into strips. She brought a bunch of them into the break area as everyone was nervously drinking what may be their last cups of coffee.

  “What are those for?” Phil asked.

  “You ever been to the Medieval Dinner Theater?” she asked.

  She got blank looks from everyone.

  “You know, the knights do battle and all that while you eat with your hands?”

  There were slow nods as they understood the question, but not why she asked.

  “Knight’s armor,” she said proudly, indicating the carpet strips and roll of duct tape. “Those nasty things won’t be able to bite through this!”

  Suddenly they all got it and were excitedly trying it out, wrapping it around their forearms, creating makeshift gauntlets.

  “Good idea, Mizz Lacy,” Phil grinned at her. “I’m starting to feel like one of those gladiators.” He had wrapped both arms and was helping Mr. Sato wrap his.

  “There’s a place off Maple that sells costumes for the Renaissance Faire crowd,” Carla said. “Quality stuff, real thick leather.”

  With the last of the coffee finished and everyone armored up, Phil stood and the room got quiet. “We all know the plan,” he said. “It should be easy. Remember, we don’t come back here to the 28th floor, no matter what. There’s no food. We’d die of starvation if we get trapped here. If the stairs are jammed, we find another floor to get on, hopefully one with more food hoarders than these guys were. They can’t get to us if we’re in any of the offices, the doors open out into the stairwell and they don’t seem to have enough sense in ‘em to pull them open.”

  He looked around at the other men and women listening to him. At their makeshift armor and weapons. At the grim determination on most of their faces. He saw the ones who would fall. He knew the type. The weak ones. The ones still hoping to be saved by someone, not realizing that person would have to be themselves.

  He’d never been in the military, but he’d been big all his life. He’d been a boxer for a while, then a bouncer, and finally worked his way into security. He knew a fighter when he saw one and Mr. Sato had grit. So did Mrs. Meadows. Some of that Army life had certainly rubbed off on her. The others, he wasn’t so sure about, but he’d do his best to keep them all safe. It was his job. And they had become his friends.

  “This is gonna get bloody,” he said. “You ladies stay back and try not to faint.”

  There was a quiet titter of laughter from one of them and Lacy asked him, “You ever had a baby, Phil?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “No. Why you asking that?”

  “You don’t know blood like we know blood,” she said and led the way to the pile of office furniture to start dismantling their blockade.

  They left one door completely jammed and stacked the overturned desks and bookcases against the other one, leaving about a foot that could be opened once it was unlocked. By now, with the noise they had made, the slavering lunatics outside had resumed their attack on the doors, trying to get to the warm bodies only a few feet away. Lacy was going to unlock the door, but the sharpened claws she had taped to her hands were in the way and she was having a hard time turning the latch. “You do it,” she finally said to Phil. “I’ll take this first one.”

  They switched places and she drew her fist back, tightening her already white-knuckle grip on her untested battle blades. The screams in the hallway were getting more intense as they sensed their prey nearby. She heard the click of the lock and the door burst open the full foot they had allowed it, easily shoving Phil aside.

  A keening, snarling, thing had forced itself halfway through the opening and was reaching for her. She plunged the makeshift blades deep into his eye sockets and felt the shudder as they stopped at the back of his skull. He fell instantly, and she was glad she had taped the blades to her hands. She would have lost them if she hadn’t. The next one was clawing her way over the man as he fell, and Phil rammed a sharpened golf putter straight through the side of her head with a mighty grunt.

  It came right out the other side and stuck deep into the wooden bookcase. She hung limp, like a lifeless doll, effectively blocking the doorway from any more of them being able to enter. “Don’t let your end go!” Lacy shouted at Phil over the howls of the undead as he held the bloodied woman there like an oversized shish kabob. She had freed her spikes and was looking for another target when Mr. Sato politely yelled, “Allow me!” as he shunted her aside.

  He swung a big driver over the dangling woman’s corpse and smashed down into another woman’s face, imploding her skull and sending blood and brains splattering for yards. She collapsed, taking the driver with her, still stuck in her head. Mr. Sato stepped back to get another club and Lacy thrust her fist into another gnashing face, aiming for the eyes. The natural shape of the skull guided her right into where she wanted to be. She was quick to pull out this time and already had her left fist flying for the face of the screeching woman missing a large portion of her hair.

  The days had been rough on her, Lacy noticed. She must have been fighting with the others to get in, because she was horribly misshapen, one eye already gouged out in the frenzy to feast. She fell and that was the last of them, but there was still screaming. Lacy looked back. The annoying woman had her hands on the side of her face and was getting ready to suck in another breath when Alex slapped her. Not hard, but hard enough to get her attention.

  She was hyperventilating. “How the hell did she ever make it all the way up here?” Lacy wondered.

  “You’re going to get us all killed,” she said. “Maybe you should stay here. We’ll send help up. How’s that sound?”

  The woman just nodded rapidly. Yes, yes. She would stay. She couldn’t go back out there. She had been on the third floor when she had heard the screaming. That’s when she had been caught up in the mad flight to this level, pushed into the elevator as she stood in the hallway, trying to see what was happening. She didn’t belong with these savage people. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She had enough food hidden away from them, she could last a while by herself, until help came.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Mrs. Meadows,” Mr. Sato said, but stopped from saying more when she turned to face him. Her arms were covered in gore and blood, brain matter dropping off o
f her spikes. Her face was hard and speckled with red drops.

  “If she screams like that out there,” she said, and pointed with a dripping hand toward the stairwell “We’ll all die. She’ll bring them running, if they already aren’t.”

  “No, it’s okay,” the woman hurriedly said, before they tried to make her go back out there. “I want to stay. I’ll be fine here.”

  “Block the door after we’re gone,” was all Lacy said as Phil pulled the spike out of the woman’s head and she fell to the floor. Part of him didn’t really want to leave Mrs. Dawson from third up here, he knew she would die if they didn’t make it down, clear a path, and send help back up, but she would wind up bringing those things running with her shrieks.

  She hadn’t even been in danger, she had been behind a wall of furniture, and behind everyone else who had stood ready to jump in. Part of him had already written her off as one of the weak. Lacy climbed over the pile of bodies and squeezed herself through the opening. Phil needed to clear a few more feet out of the way before his big bulk made it through.

  There were sets of stairs on either end of the building, and as they gathered in the hallway in front of the banks of elevators, it was a toss-up which way to go. There had been more of the creatures three days ago, so they had managed to push against the doors and wander out onto the stairs. Once in the stairwell they wouldn’t be getting back in, though.

  They all wondered how many had been trapped there, endlessly wandering up and down. What a nightmare. “If we had to have a zombie outbreak, why couldn’t we have the slow-moving shamblers?” Lacy asked and noticed, with some satisfaction, that no one drug the bodies out of the doorway for the silly woman. She would have to get her hands dirty if she wanted to lock the doors leading into the tomb she was building for herself.