Evolution of the Dead (10 page)

Rita was bent over holding her face.

Now more of the dead group were leaning back.  The group had evolved.  Now they could spit.

Norman and Rita were pelted with hundreds of airborne specks of flesh and blood.  As Norman’s body went into convulsions, he pulled the doors to the truck closed.

“Sons of bitches,” he cried in pain.  “You had this planned! I know you did!”

Rita stood up, spread her arms, wailing in pain.  Her whole shirt was covered in blood.  She hobbled to the side of the bridge and deeply threw up over the side.  More globs of spit spattered up onto her legs from below.

On the other end of the bridge, more of the dead began to spit.  Below the bridge, all of the dead looked up at the same time and started to spit into the air, attempting to lob their dead bile over the edge of the bridge above them.

Scott held the two women close, pressing his body close to them, wrapping his arms around them, trying to shield them.

The spit couldn’t reach them.

Inside the truck, Carmen started to cry as she watched the spit spattering across her window.  Nick was looking around nervously as the spit started to accumulate on his side.

They were stuck.

Rita fell face forward over the bridge railing.  Her body slammed onto some cars below.

Nick started the truck.

“What the hell are you doing?” Carmen screamed, shocked.

“I’m going to drive us out of here.”

“No you’re not! You’ll run over those guys!”

“
We gotta get out of here
!”

“You’re
not
going to run them over! Honk the god damn horn! Let them know what you’re doing!”

Nick put the truck into gear.

“Honk the fucking horn, asshole!”

He looked her up and down, pissed, scared.  He didn’t give a shit what she was saying.  “Why don't you shut the fuck up?”

Carmen grabbed his forearm.  She drug her fingernails across his skin.  “You honk the horn and let them know what you’re gonna do, Nick! Don't run them over!”

He yelled, “God dammit!” He honked the horn.

Scott looked up over the hood at him.

Nick yelled, motioning with his hand, “Walk backwards! I’m driving forward!”

Scott understood.  He told the girls, “We need to walk backwards.”

As slowly as possible, Nick drove forward out of the range of the rain of spit.

In the center of the bridge, they were in the clear.  Nick opened his door.

Scott came around to the driver’s side.  He waited until Nick opened the door.

“Thanks,” he said, careful not to touch the exterior of the door.

Kim was crying.

“Now what are we gonna do?” Janet asked.

Angry, holding his arm, Nick said, “There’s not room enough for all of us in this cab, but we need to drive out of here.”

“Norman is in the back of this truck,” Kim said, wiping tears away.  “We need a different truck.”

Instead of asking Nick, Carmen asked Scott, “How’s the one on the other side?” She didn’t want to talk to Nick anymore.  He scared her.

The truck in the center on the other side of the bridge was facing toward the Rent-A-Center.  The only thing clear was the back end of the truck.  Both sides were covered in spit.

Scott walked over to the back of the truck closely followed by the girls.  He unlatched the overhead door which opened upward.  Inside there were three king size mattresses leaning against the wall, a wooden bedframe, a dresser with the drawers stacked on top, a detached mirror, and a couch with missing cushions.  The cushions were stacked on the other side of the mattresses next to a sealed cardboard box.

“We can use the mattresses as protection,” Kim said.  She pulled the penlight out of her pocket and clicked it on.  She flashed it up at the mattresses.  “We can block the spit with them.”

Scott said, “No.  Let’s get in the back of the truck and close the door.  Maybe the freaks will forget about us.”

Kim climbed in.  “Scott, here.”  She pocketed her penlight and tossed him a cushion.  “Get Carmen up here.  Give Carmen the cushion to block any spit.”

Scott caught the cushion.  He went around to Carmen’s side.  He almost grabbed the door handle by mistake.  Luckily he didn’t or he would have been dead like Norman and Rita.  Carmen pushed the door open.  Scott lifted her out and carried her to the back of the other truck.

Kim threw the dresser drawers outside onto the pavement.  Nick stood by the back of the truck, debating whether or not to stay with these people or not.  Carmen had pissed him off.  She had hurt him.  Blood was running down his arm where she scratched him.  He gave her a dirty look as Scott helped her up into the back of the truck.

Kim was having a hard time trying to move the dresser.  With a sigh, Nick climbed up into the truck.  He helped Kim shove the dresser to the back of the truck.

Kim asked, “What happened to your arm?”

Nick said, “I scraped it getting into the truck.”  He jumped back out of the truck.  He helped Scott set the dresser on the ground.  They both shoved it off to the side.  It slid over the wet cement and crashed into the guard rail on the passenger side of the truck.

Kim knocked over the mattresses.  They fit nicely laying down flat.  Nick set the mirror down on the ground.

Kim said, “Um, you guys?”

Everyone stopped what they were doing.  They looked at her with questions on their faces.

“The spit.  It’s growing worms where it lands.”

Nick and Scott quickly jumped back up into the truck.

The bridge was now covered with thousands of splotches of bloody flesh.  Worms grew out of each splotch, reaching for them.

“Come on, get inside,” Scott said.   He reached down to help Janet climb up into the truck.  Once everyone was inside, he reached up and pulled the overhead door closed.

In the quiet darkness, Carmen said, “It seems like these dead people are evolving.”

Janet asked, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.  How would they know to spit? Have any of you guys seen them spit before now?”

“No,” Kim said.  “They just stand there reaching for us.”

“They do move around,” Scott offered.  “But yeah, once they can’t go any further, they just stand there reaching.”

“So they’ve evolved into the ability to go beyond a reach,” Carmen said.  “They can spit now.”

She was sitting up on the mattress closest to the door with her back against the wall with her legs stretched out in front of her.  Nick and Janet were sitting on the mattress next to hers facing her with their backs against the other wall.  Kim and Scott were facing one another sitting on the next mattress.

The interior of the truck was getting darker and darker.  They were quiet, all lost in their own thoughts.

Finally, Kim broke the silence.  “I wonder what brought this on.  Why all of a sudden did this sickness take over?”

“It could have come from anyone or anything,” Scott said quietly.  “Maybe it was a mosquito bite or something in someone’s food.”

“Do you think it’s worldwide?” Janet asked.  “I mean, it spreads so fast.  I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“This is instantaneous death,” Nick said, breaking his own silence.  His arm was aching.  “Whoever gets touched dies immediately.”

“Or even if you touch something that has been touched by one of the dead people…you die,” Carmen added.

“I hope my girlfriend’s ok,” Nick said quietly.  “We just found out we’re pregnant.”

“Oh, congratulations,” Janet said.  She put her hand gently on his shoulder.  He nodded his thanks.

Carmen asked, “Has anyone called for help? Does anyone even have a cell phone?”

“I didn’t call anyone,” Janet said.  “I was with Nick.  I didn’t have my phone on me.  It was charging at work.”

“My phone’s in my car,” Kim said.  “But I don’t know where my car is.  My husband dropped me off and went to park someplace.  He didn’t like me to have my phone.  He didn’t trust me with it.”

“Why?” Scott asked.  “Were you having an affair or something?”

“No,” Kim said in disgust.  “He just didn’t trust me.  He thought I would call some guy or others guys would call me when nothing like that was even happening.  We didn’t have a very good marriage.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Carmen offered.

“Mines in my car,” Nick said.  “I had it on the charger.  My car’s over by the Rent-A-Center.”

“I left mine back in the building where my meetings were,” Scott said.  “I didn’t think I’d need it so I left it on the table.”

“Mine’s on a park bench down by Eola Lake,” Carmen said.

Nick asked, “Why don’t we just get my phone?”

“I wouldn’t want to take the chance,” Scott said.  “Not with all of the spitters out there.  I think we should just wait in here – overnight – and see what first light brings.  Then again, who knows, they might all move along and leave us alone if they can’t see us.”

Janet asked, “
How
can they see us? They don’t have any
eyes
!”

“Yeah I don’t get that, either,” Kim said.  “How can they see us?”

Carmen said, “It’s like they’re being controlled by something, like they’re robots.  They all move at the same time, they all reach at the same time.  Something has to be controlling them.”

Scott said, “I want to see what’s in that box.”  He stood up, stepped over to the cardboard box along the back wall of the truck and tore it open.

“Please let it be clothes,” Carmen whispered.

Nick looked at her cleavage then down at her crotch.  She didn’t notice.

“Here use this,” Kim said.  Reaching into her pocket, she handed Scott her penlight.  She asked, “What’s in there?”

Scott clicked on the light.  “Nope.  It’s a bunch of Christmas candles.”

Christmas candles
, Carmen thought.

“Great,” Nick sighed.  “Now all we need is matches.”

“I’ve got some,” Kim said as she reached back into her pocket.  “My husband was a smoker.  He always forgot his lighter.”

Scott took the matches from Kim.  He handed her penlight back, struck a match, and lit one of the candles.  Immediately a scent of mistletoe filled the truck.

Mistletoe!

Kim asked, “Aren’t you guys scared?”

Carmen stared at the candle.  “Of course we are.”

“Yeah, I’m scared,” Scott admitted.  “I’m scared shitless; and I’m scared for my family.  I hope they’re ok because these spitters aren’t messing around.  I think, for some reason, they want us to be like them.”

“But for what gain?” Janet asked.  “They want us dead so we can stand around or spit at the next person who comes by that isn’t sick?”

“I told you I think this sickness is evolving,” Carmen said as she shifted nervously against the wall of the truck.  “I mean, look, at first, when this sickness took over, all it did was force all of the blood and liquids out of a person’s body.  Then, it got people who died to stand up and walk after other people who were still alive – so it became mobile.  When it couldn’t t move anymore, it shoots the sickness out of dead people’s mouths.”

Janet asked, “So what’s next?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really want to find out.  What we need to do is think of a way to either out-think its next move or find a way to hurt it so it won’t come after us.”

“Or we just get the hell out of here,” Nick said.  “Why are we sitting around in the back of this truck waiting for
them
to make the next move?”

“Maybe because we’re
trapped
in here?” Janet asked.

Scott asked, “Do you think they can see us in the dark?”

“I don’t think they can see at all,” Carmen said.  “Maybe they sense motion – or maybe it’s a sense of smell.”

Nick asked, “How do you know?”

He was getting anxious.  He wanted out of here.  Sitting around trying to make up theories about the sickness was not sitting well with him.  He said to Carmen, “You seem like you have some kind of knowledge about what’s going on here.”

“No.  I don’t have any idea what’s going on,” Carmen said.  ‘No idea at all.”

“Then how do you know they can sense us?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“A feeling,” Nick repeated.  “Well I feel like getting the hell out of here.”

“Where would you go?” Janet asked.  “They’ve got us blocked in here.”

He thumped his back against the wall of the truck.

Carmen said, “I knew something bad was going to happen.”

Kim asked, “You
knew
? How?”

“I saw it in a vision.”

Nick muttered, “Oh Jesus...”

Carmen said, “My boyfriend always kidded me about having a sixth sense because sometimes I can sense when something good or bad is going to happen.  It doesn’t always come true.  Sometimes nothing at all happens; but this one time I had this weird feeling that something bad was going to happen.  I didn’t know what it meant or what would happen, but later that night on the same day, my mom called and told me that my twelve year old cousin broke his neck playing football.”