Charley barreled down the road at a healthy speed. I sat swished in the back, between Jones and Brittany. “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
Charley looked through the rearview mirror to verify what I had said. His eyes went from Brittany to me to Jones. His forehead wrinkled, giving me pause. I wondered if something might be wrong that we didn’t know about, perhaps something with the car. “You sure?”
I saw him looking directly at me. “Yeah, I’m sure. How about you, you okay?”
“Better than you,” his eyes went to Jones. “How far is it?”
Jones leaned forward to look out the absent windshield. It looked strange, to be in a moving car with no windshield. Somehow we were lucky and there were no small pieces of glass to fly at us. All looked normal except for the windshield wipers that stood straight up, impairing the view. Twice Charley knocked them out of his way and they came back.
Jones didn’t consult his map. He looked out the window and read a road sign. “About forty-two miles straight ahead. Do we have enough gas to get there?”
“She’ll get us there with plenty to spare.” Charley talked about his love with pride. I only hoped he was right.
Jones sat back and closed his eyes. The rushing wind felt good. I followed his lead and leaned back. We were nearly there and for the most part in great shape. The ones we lost flashed across my mind and I allowed it. It wasn’t sad like I thought it would be, it was joyous. I can see all of them clapping for us because we made it. Who wouldn’t want someone else to make it if they couldn’t? I closed my eyes tighter and listened to the wind and the car. Sometime later, I fell asleep.
Movement jolted me awake. My body flew forward into the headrest of the seat in front of me. The sudden jarring sent me into a tailspin. I had no idea where I was other than in the car. I couldn’t tell up from down and was in the most unusual position I had ever been in. The chaotic voices around me came roaring into my head and made no sense at all. I put my hands to my head and did my best to drown out the noise and focus.
“Is he dead?” Brittany was saying.
“I don’t know?” Jones replied.
“I hope to hell he is,” shouted Charley. His voice had a quality I couldn’t place. “Did you see that bastard’s eyes?”
“What?” I managed, struggling to right myself.
“I can’t believe it,” said Brittany. “I’ve never seen them like that before. What do you suppose made it happen?”
“Did he leave your sight in the store?” Jones demanded. “Either of you?”
“What?” I tried focusing again. The cobwebs were clearing and I was seeing better now. We were all in the car. I sat up, I was on Jones, and he was bracing me. Brittany’s face looked horror stricken and Charley was up front. Thompson was missing. I straightened to look over his seat and he was not on the floor or hiding. Thompson was not in the car with us.
That is when the full picture came into view. Brittany was trying to open her door while talking but couldn’t. She pounded, pushed, and lifted but the door wouldn’t open. In the front, I saw where we were, or more precisely, where we weren’t— the road was gone.
We were off the road and directly in front of us, through the missing windshield, I saw steam rising from our smashed hood. The next thing I saw was a piece of bark hanging off a giant tree that we had somehow wrapped ourselves around.
Charley turned to me. “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay? Can you even hear me?” Charley waved his hand in front of my face as if I were a blind person.
“I hear you,” that much was true. Now that my hearing was back, I heard them all, I just had no clue what was happening and no one was explaining it to my satisfaction. “What the fuck happened?”
“Your buddy, Thompson,” said Charley, “he’s a fucking zombie. The motherfucker tried biting me. I lost control of the car and we crashed.”
“Charley?” Brittany shouted. “I saw you clear as day.”
Charley put his head down. Whenever Simon got in trouble, that was always his first response. In the beginning it was shame, but as he got older I came to realize it was a secret weapon and he was working me. Charley lifted his head and looked back at me. “Sorry. I kind of steered us into the tree, hoping to take him out. I didn’t have time for anything else.”
Before I could respond to this new information, Jones leaned into me and then kicked our door open. We got out of the car and waited for Charley to hop over the seat and join us. That gave me time to gather my wits and look around.
We were in a field or maybe it was part of a park system. Our wrecked car lay a thousand feet away from the road. I walked to the front to have a better look at the damage, the front left wheel lay flat on the ground. It wasn’t alone, part of the car and I can’t say which parts were lying with it, clearly snapped off at a jagged edge.
“My god, will somebody please explain this and make it make sense.”
Charley pointed in the distance. I looked and saw a crumpled body. It was Thompson. I looked at Charley for verification, he nodded his head. “That’s him.”
“What happened?”
“You and Jones were asleep.” He looked at Brittany, wanting to include her in the number. Her look said she would call him out if he tried. “We were going along all right and then Thompson turned and looked at me. Well, first I saw his hand was twitching. I thought maybe he was having a nightmare or he was reliving what we went through. Then he looked at me and his eyes, they were red.
“He reached for me and I hit him in the head. I lost control and the car went off the road. I don’t know what he was doing. He was grabbing at the steering wheel. We came in this direction and I saw the tree. I thought if I hit it, he would fly into it and the impact would kill him. It was the only weapon I had.
“I hit the tree and he flew out of the car and landed there. That’s it, the whole story.” He wiped his hands on his jeans.
I began walking to Thompson.
“Zee! What are you doing?” asked Brittany.
“I want to see for myself.”
Jones shouted, “What?”
“I need to see for myself.”
I continued walking. I never liked Thompson and if he were a zombie, good riddance. Still, I hated losing anyone to them. There were so few of us, he was one of our original members.
The others followed in silence. I guess they figured trying to talk me out of it was a waste of time, it was. I had to see him for myself. I have questions that I want answers to and this man held those answers.
When I reached him, he was lying face down. My hand slightly shook as I reached for him and gently touched him, he felt human. I gently turned him over and looked into his face. There were scars and gashes and bright-red blood was gently flowing from his wounds. I convinced myself Charley dreamed it all. Thompson’s blood was red, not greenish-black. If not for the blood, he might be sleeping.
Brittany came around the other side and knelt behind me. I wondered if she was thinking as I was. I turned to her warm smile, moral support. It gave me the courage I needed to open his eyes for the proof I needed. I faced the man, reached toward his eyes, and them sensing me, opened on their own.
Thompson’s eyes locked on mine and neither of us moved. His eyes transfixed me and I couldn’t break the stare. I tried, oh god how I tried, it wasn’t happening and never would. His eyes held me and I became his servant. If he had asked it, I have no doubt I would have done it.
I knew it wasn’t right and something was horribly wrong. I tried again and the same result occurred. Giving up on escaping, I tried something new, I moved my eyes from the blackness of his eyes to look at the white portion and see if it was red like Charley thought. When I did, I saw only white. Charley was wrong. I couldn’t stand this man, and if I could choose one of our number to fall, it would be him. He was human.
“Zee?” Brittany pushed me.
It did the trick, I was back. “What
?”
“You didn’t hear me talking to you just now?” Brittany’s face was a puddle of worry. “I thought I might have to slap you.”
“I’m fine.”
Of course, I was. Thompson was okay. If he were a zombie, he would have eaten me by now. I stood and faced Jones and Charley. “You were wrong; he is as human as we are.”
“Bullshit!” Charley went around me and looked for himself. “I saw them, damn it, I saw them. This fucker had red eyes. Why else would I crash the car?”
“You tell me,” Thompson’s reply was low.
“Oh shit!” Brittany said. She ran for the car and jumped into the back seat. Jones was behind her and then Charley. My reactions were slow. It took time before I saw what they saw. I rubbed my head out of curiosity and there was a lump there. That explains it.
They grabbed our bags. Zombies were coming from the road toward us in large numbers. I scanned the trees and saw a house and a pond. I sprang into action. I got behind Thompson and lifted him. Throwing his arm over my shoulders, I propped him up and we moved toward the house.
The others caught up and ran past us to the house. Somehow I was in this alone. Thompson was fine, I knew it. The others took Charley’s side. They were all wrong and would regret it. I hobbled along as fast as I could. It quickly became crystal clear that we weren’t going to make it to the house. These zombies were fast. There were a lot of them and the ones in the front were like athletes running a race and we were the prize.
“Go to the back,” shouted Jones.
I headed that way, but it was only me, the others stayed. Jones opened his bag and with weapons at the ready, they stood their ground. I kept going with Thompson. We could make it to the back of the house. I stole one last look at my team battling the zombies. So good so far, they were all on their feet.
We made it to the rear of the house when Thompson fell. I dragged him toward the back door. When I got to it, the door burst open and a zombie came out. While Thompson lay on the ground, I had no choice but to fight. The zombie was one of the slower moving ones, making me feel better. I kicked it back into the door and it fell backward. The zombie came at me again and with a swift kick, it was on the ground. My boot went through its soft head to finish it.
Withdrawing my boot from its skull was more than gross. The greenish slime covered my boot and made it fill heavier. I began shaking it off when a new zombie came at me from the doorway. Clearly, zombies occupied the house.
I launched into the zombie with my bare fists. I was angry and treated it like a human and smacked it several times. It kept coming so I went for the kill. I knocked it down and struck it squarely in its head with my slime covered boot.
I wasn’t waiting around for another zombie. No way could we stay there. I looked for a new house and to my right was the pond. Out in the center was a floating deck. It was perfect, so long as the water was deep. Instead of going into the house, I went behind Thompson, lifted him up, and headed for the deck. When I came out farther, I saw my team and they were battling several zombies. I was grateful none had fallen. With renewed strength, a dragged Thompson to the edge of the pond and gently laid him in the water. I put my arm around him and gently floated him on his back out to the floating deck.
Once there, I lifted him up onto the deck and then left. I wanted to check the pond’s depth. Three feet from the deck I stopped and went vertical, trying to touch the bottom with my feet. I was nearly six feet and my feet didn’t hit anything. Thank god. I swam back and hopped on the deck. I was a soldier first, and being at war, I searched my surroundings for weapons. The deck was clear except for a small tackle box. Inside the box I found hooks, strings, and the like, nothing useful. I sat down to collect my thoughts and form a plan.
My team was fighting without me. Thompson was safe and rather tame. I stood up to go back to help. I saw them coming as I readied to dive into the water.
“Brittany! Jones! Charley! Over here! Don’t go into the house, come over here!”
They heard me and were coming. From where I was standing, I could see they looked a mess. Zombie brains, slime, and blood covered them. One by one they dived into the water and swam to me with their bags in tow. I wasn’t worried about my team, we trained together. I worried about the new guy, we knew little about him and had no idea if he could swim or not. Relief swept over me when he dived into the man-made pond without hesitation and swam to us. I helped each of them up onto the ladder and our platform.
“Did you get them all?”
“Yeah,” said Jones. “But more are coming. There must be as many as were at the store.”
Brittany was huffing and puffing as she sat, then lay on the deck. “Maybe they’re the same ones.”
“You okay, Charley?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. We lost a bag in the fight. Maybe if they keep going we will have a chance to get it back.”
“We can use it,” said Jones.
“We seem to have enough.” I looked around at all the bags we had, there was plenty of food.
“I would like to take as much as we can back to the camp.” Jones said. “We have no idea what shape they are in and no matter what, I think what we have will be delicacies compared to what they have.”
“I thought they were self-sufficient, I mean wasn’t that the point of setting these places up and moving people into them in the first place?”
“You know that, Zee. I mean they have gardens, but who knows what they are able to grow and in what quantity? Those crackers you were eating this morning would be a luxury. If we can get stuff like that back to the camp, it could lift a lot of spirits.”
“Oh.”
No wonder Jones was our leader; he saw the big picture clearer than I ever would. I was about to praise him when we heard their roar and saw them coming. Zombies were coming at us like an army charging over a hill into a valley. I saw the ones up front, the fast and most deadly of the group. Behind them, most of the zombies fanned out. In the rear, the slow zombies lumbered forward. Parts of them were missing and they howled.
There was no time to panic. We were surrounded and every one of our group was in fight position, except for Thompson, who lie motionless on the floating deck.
Chapter Twelve