by Jeff Strand
Rusty spat out some goo. "Get the boards in place!"
"Okay!"
"Take the quills out first!"
"I know!"
"Don't get bit by any snakes!"
"I won't!"
Rusty wasn't sure if he should start whacking the creature with the axe handle or not. The heads weren't actually attacking him right now, and he didn't want to anger them. But he'd just chopped one of them off, so a beating didn't seem like it would make things worse.
The creature began to move forward, meaning some of them moved forward and some of them moved backward, but it came closer to Rusty, who walked in pace with it to keep himself from getting bitten.
He glanced down. Wow, his leg really was bleeding badly. Like, "creating a countdown to his death" badly. Once he got out of the nightmare circle, he'd have to not worry about the germs and wrap something around it to slow the bleeding. At least he wasn't...actually, he was feeling a little dizzy, now that he thought about it.
The creature—one hog head and one fox head, specifically—kept moving toward him. Rusty stumbled as he tried to remain in the center of the circle.
If he were in this position twenty-four hours ago, he might've been able to leapfrog over one of the fused animals. Now? No way in hell. He'd be lucky if he could...
Crawling under them might not be a bad idea.
Yeah, he'd get trampled. But it wouldn't be the combined weight of all five bodies. It wouldn't be any worse than being trampled by one of them. The hog would be heavier, but the fox would have sharper claws.
Mia, who thankfully didn't have any snakes dangling from her arms by their fangs, had wedged both planks underneath the back tires of the truck. Now they could gain traction. Now they could drive out of the mud, then enjoy a leisurely road trip out of this forest, waving at undead animals through the window as they passed.
Rusty had to accept that there really was no way out of this predicament except under their legs.
And once he accepted this, there was no reason to wait.
He dropped to his knees, splitting open his leg wound even worse, and then hurriedly crawled toward a set of legs. He'd chosen one of the foxes.
Maybe he could squeeze past them without getting trampled.
He couldn't. Rusty was moving like a fifty-year-old man with burnt-up legs and a chainsaw gash, and the creature changed direction, so one of the cloven hooves of the hog came down on his left hand. He hadn't necessarily broken all of the bones in that hand, but he'd broken many of them.
He continued to crawl forward, a process made more difficult now that he had a broken hand. The hog's foot landed on the same hand in almost the same place. Rusty didn't even shriek, he just silently opened his mouth as wide as it would go.
Through the legs, he could see Mia crouched down on the other side. "Give me your hands!" she said.
Rusty didn't want to give her his hands, but he didn't want to get stomped to death, so he reached for her. She reached for him and grabbed him by the wrists. With her pulling on him and Rusty crawling, he was able to scoot out from underneath the creature and only get stepped on a few dozen times.
He kept crawling even after he was clear of the monster.
Mia tried to pull him to his feet, but he waved her off. "Fuck it," he said. "I'll crawl." Though he didn't think he'd broken anything except his hand, he suspected that the non-bruised parts of his body were now a minority. Everything hurt. Okay, his tongue didn't hurt. Every part of his body except his goddamn tongue hurt.
The truck wasn't that far. He could make it.
He crawled and crawled, but the creature followed, moving at the same pace.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rusty had forgotten about the snakes.
He was not fearful of them under normal circumstances, but normal circumstances did not include crawling along the ground where they were lurking. True, he was more concerned about the mutant beast that was pursuing him, but the idea of crawling over snakes to get to the truck held little appeal.
One particularly large one was slithering toward him now.
What kind of venom would an undead snake have? Would it be better or worse than getting bitten by a live one? Rusty hoped to remain blissfully ignorant on this issue.
Mia kicked the snake out of the way.
Another one was right behind it.
Rusty didn't need to look back to see how close the hellspawn was to catching up to him. He could tell that it was right freaking there, and that if he slowed down to avoid an encounter with a snake, he was screwed.
One of its paws or hooves—he didn't look back to see which—landed on his foot. Rusty pulled free and kept moving forward. The truck was close. So close. So very close that it would be impossibly cruel for him not to make it.
Mia kicked another snake out of the way and stomped on a third. Plenty of snakes remained, and they were clearly undead ones. Normal snakes would not all be slithering straight at Rusty as if hoping to feast upon him.
A snake slithered over his broken hand. He used his good hand to brush it away. It came right back. He grabbed the end of its tail and flung it out of the way.
The hog heads had not quit squealing.
Rusty reached the mud that had been the source of so many of their recent problems. Without this mud, they would have been able to say, "Goodness, the animals in this forest are behaving in a rather quaint manner. Let us proceed to our motor vehicle so that we might drive to a safer location." Fuck mud.
The mud was more like soft deep dirt now, but it was going to make it more difficult to crawl away from the monster that was still right behind him.
Mia opened the truck door. Rusty realized that he was whimpering as he was crawling, which was kind of embarrassing but he assumed he'd get over it. The monster stepped on his foot with a hoof—definitely a hoof this time—and it sunk into the dirt a bit.
He pulled it free. Adrenaline. Oh, how he loved adrenaline. A nice little burst of adrenaline would make everything all better.
Instead, he had Mia.
She grabbed his arms and yanked him to his feet. An intense bolt of pain tore through his body, and he knew she messed up some stuff inside of him, but the alternative was to leave him to get devoured by snakes in the mud, so she'd made the right call.
Mia pushed him toward the open door. Rusty did his part by scrambling into the vehicle.
Mia lost her balance.
Rusty grabbed her before she fell.
One of the fox heads chomped down on her arm.
Then a hog head did the same. A gout of blood sprayed over its porcine face.
The burst of adrenaline kicked in. Rusty pulled Mia into the truck. With him already in the driver's seat and the steering wheel in the way, there wasn't much room to maneuver, but she managed to get on top of him, accidentally honking the horn.
Rusty tried to slam the door shut. It slammed on one of the hog heads, making it squeal even louder. He pushed on its forehead, trying to shove it out of the way, but though it was just one head it had the body strength of five animals, and it wasn't going anywhere.
Mia climbed into the passenger seat.
Rusty punched the hog in the snout.
"Give me a gun!" he said.
Mia opened her backpack and rummaged through it.
Rusty slammed the door twice more on the hog's head, hoping it would take the hint. It didn't. It lunged even further into the truck, trying to take a bite out of Rusty's side.
Mia handed Rusty a pistol.
He pressed it between the hog's eyes and pulled the trigger.
Bone, flesh, and rancid goo exploded from the back of the hog's head. It pulled back.
Rusty slammed the door shut.
The hog bashed its face against the door. Rusty didn't mind a few dents in the truck.
He realized that nothing hurt anymore. Either he was so excited that they might be safe that his brain had called a temporary halt on pain sensors, or he was dead and it didn't ma
tter.
He patted his pocket. No keys.
There were a million opportunities for him to have lost them.
No need to panic. He kept a spare in the glove compartment.
He reached over and popped open the glove compartment. Lots of papers and other assorted items spilled out onto the floor. Mia immediately bent down to start sifting through them to find the key.
The monster kept bashing against the door.
"Here it is," said Mia, handing Rusty the key.
He slid it into the ignition. As he turned the key, he was ninety percent sure the truck wouldn't start, because that was the way things had been going in his life recently, but the engine started right up.
Now he had to get out of the mud. This would be much easier if Mia were standing outside to guide him to make sure that the truck stayed directly on the wooden boards when it backed up, but somehow he didn't think it would be very respectful to ask that of her at the present time.
"Keep your fingers crossed," he said. They weren't completely, irreversibly, unspeakably screwed if the truck remained stuck, but they were pretty damned screwed nevertheless.
He put the truck into reverse.
Rusty placed his hands on the steering wheel. Placing his broken, now-swollen hand on the wheel brought back all of the pain that had disappeared. So he wasn't dead. Good.
He very gently pressed down on the gas pedal.
The truck didn't move.
He pressed a little more.
Still nothing.
The monster continued to bash its head against the truck door.
Rusty gave it a little more gas.
The truck began to move backwards.
Traction! It had traction! Sweet, glorious, beloved traction!
He needed to stay calm. He didn't want to mess this up by being over confident or in too much of a hurry to drive away from this nightmarish demonic blasphemous monstrosity. Just keep backing up slowly until they were completely out of the mud. No rush.
He kept backing up until he could see the boards in front of the truck.
The monster walked after the vehicle with its twenty legs.
Rusty put the truck into drive.
He wanted nothing more than to floor the gas pedal, smashing the truck directly into the monster at high speed and sending pig and fox parts flying everywhere in a beautiful display of blackish yellow slime. But that would be unwise. The monster would get stuck beneath the undercarriage and he and Mia would be trapped.
Instead, Rusty swerved around it, and then drove off at a reasonable speed.
* * *
"I think we made it," said Mia.
"We might have," said Rusty. They still had eleven and a half miles of dirt road to go, which was plenty of time to find a giant zombie grizzly bear blocking the path, but he couldn't deny that he was feeling pretty good right now.
"What do you think we'll find?"
"Doctors, hopefully."
"I mean...do you think this is...you know, a really big problem?"
Rusty sighed. "I would like to believe that there are two victims in this mess: you and me. Everybody else in the world is just going about their regular day."
"But is that what you do believe?"
"It doesn't matter what I believe. Either we're going to drive into a zombie-laden hellscape or we're not. We'll deal with it when we get there."
"All right." Mia reached for the visor.
"Don't," Rusty told her.
"What?"
"Don't lower the visor."
"I want to see my—"
"I know what you want to see. Don't look in the mirror." He tilted the rear-view mirror away from her.
"I can always look in the side-view mirror."
"Seriously, wait until you get your face cleaned up. You don't want to see it now. It looks worse than it is."
"Okay." She picked up a napkin off the floor and wiped her face. "Should I go with a patch or a glass eye?"
"A patch would look pretty badass."
"I agree. How's your hand?"
"It's like every single nerve is screaming in pain."
"How are your legs?" Mia asked.
"They hurt, too," said Rusty. "How's your leg?"
"Excruciating. How are all of your bites and scratches?"
"Not as bad as my hand. How are all of your bites and scratches?"
"Not as bad as my eye."
Rusty chuckled.
"I think the world is going to be fine," said Mia.
* * *
A squirrel ran out in front of the truck. Rusty flattened it and continued driving.
* * *
He became more and more optimistic as he drove. No zombie animals had created a barricade in the road. Maybe the world had indeed transformed into an apocalyptic nightmare, but at least they'd get to find out instead of dying in the forest.
* * *
They reached the end of the dirt road.
Rusty turned onto the paved road, and they were immediately struck by another truck speeding in the opposite direction.
* * *
"Crazy stuff," said the old man. "Crazy, crazy stuff."
Their truck was totaled. The old man's truck was damaged but still drivable, so they were riding with him. Rusty and Mia had both been injured in the accident, but what were a few more bruises, a few more lacerations, and another broken bone in the grand scheme of things?
"They tracked it to this long stream," the old man explained. "The animals drink from the stream. They die, kind of. Their blood dries up and they rot. They go full-on predator and suddenly you can't kill them unless you run 'em over with a steamroller. Crazy stuff. Can't believe how fast it happened. Somebody said they saw two deer stuck together like Siamese twins, if you can believe it."
"How are they going to stop it?" Mia asked.
"If it was up to me, they'd drop a nuke on the area. But it's not up to me. Which I guess is good, because then you've got radiation poisoning and people start oozing and stuff. Instead, they're going to burn it. Burn that forest to the ground. Wipe out everything in it."
Rusty nodded. That sounded reasonable.
* * *
Rusty sat on the examination table in his boxer shorts.
"I guess I don't have to ask if you were bit," said the doctor.
"Nope."
"That's going to mean close observation like the others who were bit, but I'm sure you knew you weren't going to be released today anyway."
"Is there any evidence of...?"
"People turning into zombies?"
"Yeah."
"Nah. Better safe than sorry, of course, but so far there's really no indication that these are worse than any other wild animal bites. Wild animal bites can carry their own set of diseases, of course, but we don't believe you will rise from the dead to feast upon the flesh of the living."
"Well, that's a relief," said Rusty.
"Indeed. But we'll have a more concrete update for you in seventy-two hours."
* * *
Seventy-three hours later, Mia sat next to Rusty's hospital bed. The doctors had not been able to save her eye. Right now the socket was covered in gauze, with a badass eye patch to follow, and she was in good spirits.
"So I've been thinking about how I was going to send you off to experience life," said Rusty. "My thought is, now that our cabin is gone, along with all of the forest surrounding it, I might come with you."
"I'd like that."
"I mean, I still have to be released from here, which isn't going to happen anytime soon, and we'll get more out of the experience if we wait until we can walk again, but at some point we'll go to a big city and do big-city stuff."
"It's a deal."
"I'm not saying I'm going to become a city dweller. As soon as I can, I'm finding a new forest and building a new cabin. It's going to have a chainsaw in every room."
Mia smiled and gave Rusty a kiss on the cheek. "I'll be proud to live there."
The End
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Tod Clark, Donna Fitzpatrick, Lynne Hansen, Michael McBride, Jim Morey, Rhonda Rettig, and Paul Synuria II for their zombie-riffic assistance with this novel. They did not read these acknowledgments, which is why "zombie-riffic" was not cut.
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