Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel (18 page)

Doc asked, “Mutt, did you see them go back in? Did you see them go back in the store around us? Did we miss them? Did you see?”

He reached up around the steering wheel and then looked back at me. He still had the backpack with the dead goose inside and his rifle strapped on his back.

Doc said, “Oh, God in Heaven, David has the damned keys.”

The truck began rocking from side to side on the shocks. It started slowly and then picked up violently. The truck lifted a few inches off the ground on the driver’s side and then dropped back hard enough to feel metal on metal somewhere in the wheel wells.

Doc said, “Arm up, Mutt. We are going to have to make a run for it.”

I shook my head harder than the truck was rocking. Doc went past me. He pulled the sword out and set it on his aluminum bar in the floor. He pulled out two more rifles and bags of ammo. He shoved a machete in my hands ignoring me shaking my head. I dropped the hunting knife in the floor. He pulled out two handguns. He made sure they were loaded and the safeties were on before he shoved the guns barrels first into my waistband. One of the barrels came to rest on the side of something I didn’t want to have shot. He grabbed another and did the same in his own waistband. He picked up my hunting knife and put it back in its sheath on my belt. He grabbed my chin to stop my head from shaking.

“Mutt,” he shouted in my face, “We didn’t come this far to be done here like this. We are going to get our shit together and we are going to make a hole through middle of them so we can get out alive.”

He let go of my face. He started shoving ammunition into his pockets and his pack. He started arranging other pouches on the floor next to the two rifles lying there.

He whispered, “We are going to pretend there is hope until there is.”

He pulled out another hunting knife from the back and took the time to undo his belt, loop the sheath on, and then buckled it back in place.

Doc said, “If we get to the point that I’m using this on zombies, we are in real trouble.”

I looked out at the hands pawing and pulling on the grills all the way around the truck. I had difficulty imagining what more trouble might look like.

He picked up one of the rifles and looked at me again. He put it in my hands and then picked up the other. He pointed at the ammunition pouches at our feet.

Doc said, “When this one is empty, trade me for that one and reload fast. When that one is empty, switch with me again. Repeat until we escape or we’re eaten. If you have a problem with my plan, say something now.”

I shook my head again.

Doc nodded, “I’ll take your silence as full support. I’m glad I picked you for my team, Mutt.”

 He stepped past me and ripped the plastic cover away from the back driver’s side window. He placed the barrel against a snarling head and fired. The sound stabbed into my ears inside the closed cab of the truck. As one fell away, another stepped in its place.  He fired again and again. He was careful to place the muzzle between wires in the grill before firing. He switched guns with me and kept firing. I reloaded with my ears ringing painfully. We switched again and then again. My eyes were burning and my nose stung when I inhaled. The truck lifted on the passenger’s side and dropped again. I couldn’t hear the shocks anymore. After we switched again and I got ready to reload, I felt the pouch was empty except for two shells. I tapped Doc’s shoulder and showed him. He nodded and yelled over the ringing in my ears.

He said, “When this one is empty, we go. Keep your nose in my ass.”

He fired until the rifle clicked empty. He dropped it. He grabbed up the sword and pole off the floor and pushed the door open. It went three inches and then stopped. He threw his body against it rocking the truck more, but it refused to give.

Doc spit. “The damned bodies are blocking it. Follow me out the front.”

He ran and unlocked the door. He looked back and saw I was still standing by the partially opened door. He reached back and grabbed a fist full of my shirt before pulling me into motion. We stumbled out the driver’s door and kept going without closing it.

***

They had hold of his pack immediately. He pulled free keeping the pack, but one of them came away with his rifle as we ran away. I looked back and saw a blistered woman trying to bite through the stock of the weapon. I hoped that she would catch the trigger and blow off the top of her own head or one of the others.

The pile of bodies by the truck looked like a wall against it. Others were crawling over the twisted bodies to get at us inside. One was on the roof trying to claw through the metal as we ran.

Doc swung the sword into the neck of the first body in our path. It sliced halfway through before it wedged on the bone. The zombie tried to swallow on the blade twice as it pivoted out of our path still reaching for us. Doc lost his grip as the zombie stumbled into the ones behind us. The point skewered into another zombie’s bare chest. They pulled against one another as they circled away from us with the sword.

Doc brought the pole around in time to knock one over. It hit the ground hard, but started crawling after us. I pushed Doc’s pack to get him to run faster.

We rounded the corner of the building into the arms of a larger crowd. Doc grabbed my shoulder behind him and pulled me sideways. He tried to head out into the parking lot, but they closed ranks as they moved from the storefront around us. He pulled me again as he fought his way along the side into the monsters that were forming a super pack around the Super Max.

The bar rang against the hard bone of the zombies in our path. Doc tripped and tried to go back the other way. They were clawing at my back. I could feel them through my shirt. I started pumping my legs and pushed him sideways toward the back of the building.

Doc yelled, “No, no, no!”

He pulled his pistol and started shooting the ones in front of us. He tried to jam the empty gun back in his pants, but dropped it. He reached back and pulled out one of mine. He thumbed off the safety and fired it empty too. This time he got it in his waistband without losing it.

He said, “I can’t believe I dropped it.”

We rounded the building trying to run along the back. We were about halfway down the length of service doors before the mob rounded the other corner. They were shoulder the shoulder from the building to the fence. I looked back to the same scene approaching from the way we had come. Doc started pounding on one of the service doors.

He yelled, “David, Shaw, let us in, if you are in there. Open the door!”

The door burst open. Doc took one step forward and then jumped backward when the body tumbled out after him. I brought the machete through the air in a harsh arc catching the top and side of the skull. The blade wedged in deep and the zombie dropped away from my hand taking the machete with it. Three more crowded each other as they forced their way out the door after their fallen friend.

Doc grabbed me and pulled me toward the mob coming from the other end of the building. I didn’t know what he planned to do, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Then, he pulled me in the direction of the fence. He pressed his body against the gate pushing it as far as the rusted chain and lock would allow.

I went through. On the other side of the gate was a line of railroad tracks cutting through the thick woods and bushes. Doc’s pack got hung in the space, but he pulled through tearing the material a little on both sides.

We crawled up the slope of white rocks until we stood on the wood cross ties. The other side of the tracks was solid green with vines and thorns between the tree trunks. We looked up the curve of the tracks toward the road and the broken cross bar. Some of them were stutter stepping down the line toward us already. The first of the store mob began clanging through the gate below us.

We started walking down the tracks the other way.

Doc huffed. “Keep a steady pace, but save energy. We can’t afford to tire out or turn an ankle. God, I can’t believe I dropped it. Damn it all!”

I pulled out my pistol and held it out to him. He shook his head and held out his empty hands. I didn’t get it.

He said, “I dropped old faithful, Mutt.”

He was talking about his pole. We should have felt bad for Chef and Short Order, but I understood his loss too. I put my gun back in my belt away from my front parts.  Doc reloaded his from his pockets as we walked.

I glanced back. They weren’t close, but the ones following along the base of the slope were keeping pace. Some tried to climb, but fell and slid on the loose rocks. Others made it up and joined the line coming after us on the track.

One near the front of the group on the tracks behind us tripped on the cross ties. His face landed on the rail and came up with a dent through the length of it as wide as the iron. He started to get up and then got kicked on to his face again by the ones behind him. He tried again and got shoved off the tracks into the rocks on the wooded side of the tracks.

We kept going carefully as we left the store and went into deeper woods along the tracks. Something was crashing and thrashing in the brush as we passed.  We were beyond it before it ever came out of the cover. As I looked back, I saw a lanky, white corpse snap its ankle below its torn pants leg between the rail and the wooden tie beam. He pitched to the left and tumbled down the slope until his body vanished into the leafy vines below us. The others kept coming without him. I decided to keep my eyes on where I was walking.

The trees on our left began to open up revealing a neighborhood. Dead bodies began to emerge from doorways and out of open car doors. Others sat up in the grass or rose out of water gathered in various areas. Their skin was glossy and loose on their bones. A few that were already migrating down the street after the gunshots at the store or the moans on the tracks behind us turned and walked through the trees when they saw us.

As we walked away from the approaching neighbors on our flank, I saw one standing on the roof of a split level. He was looking out through the woods over the tracks.  His skin was rotten and torn. It was scarred and festering around the bleached strands of hair on his scalp. He turned and looked as we moved away from his rooftop home.  He leaned at us, but his feet would not follow. The tar and shingles under him tore loose from the boards and paper. They were stuck to his feet as he tumbled down the slope of the roof.  His skin was unraveling around his ribs as he rolled. Two small bones were left behind as he fell on to the railing of his deck. His body broke apart with the impact. Hunks of flesh and hard organs fell away on each side of the railing. I lost sight of the head so I didn’t know if he was still looked for us once he lost his body. I refused to believe he had been on that roof since the zombies rose, but it was hard to imagine another possibility.

The woods thickened on the left again, but opened up into a gulley on the right. Beyond that a road ran parallel to the street. A scattering of the dead were walking down the road in the direction of the store. The zombies calling and falling behind us on the tracks drew their attention. The ones on the road began dropping and sliding down the side into the gulley.

The deep bowl of land between the road and our railroad crest was full of thick, bushy kudzu vines. They began waving on the ends near the road. The furry leaves started whipping from side to side and the motion was traveling across the vines faster than I liked. The first few tore through the foliage and began clawing at the rocky hill right below us. I was shocked at how well they had targeted us blindly through the vines.  They had green vines wrapped so tightly around their necks and arms that the flesh was tearing under them. They sneered up at us with their eyes bulging.

As the creatures dogged us from behind and clawed their way up the side, we began to approach a road that crossed over the tracks ahead. There was a rusted, flatbed truck across the gap speared into the side of a delivery truck and an upturned, compact car. The signs on the sides of the trucks were rusted away through the paint and had deep holes open into the sides of the vehicles. I could see one severed, skeletal arm lying on the foot board of the tractor section of the flatbed.

Some of the dead from the road had hooked around ahead of us. They were milling past the taillights of the trailer section and were stumbling over the rail ruts across the wooden cross-base of the tracks and the road. I started to wonder if they were getting smarter or if we were so dumb that we were being outsmarted by mindless ghouls.

Doc pulled out his gun and aimed forward. Somehow the ones behind us were catching up. He fired once hitting a spotted woman in her dry, brown shoulder. The skin burst out from the joint of her left shoulder. The arm dropped to her side and swung forward and back loosely where the ball joint had dislodged, but the strings of flesh were still holding. He fired again furrowing along the side of her crusty face.  Her features on the left side sagged down in stroke fashion. Her left ear flapped down horizontally. She continued to walk forward as others exited the road and joined our path between the rails.

Doc said, “Damn handguns!  Pull your gun, Mutt. We’re going to have to get closer. We have to get under the flatbed and keep going. The roads are screwed.”

I pulled the last pistol out of my pants. I held it at my side as we approached the brown woman and her one, good arm. They were filling in from the right too quickly. Off to the left they were approaching the crossing from the backyards of the neighborhood we had passed. I was not thrilled with our path down the tracks, but there was nowhere to exit.

Doc raised his gun again, “Make every shot count. We just need to get under the truck and keep going. Watch your ankles. Be sure the safety is off, Mutt.”

I looked at the side of the gun beneath the slide near the butt of the weapon and thumbed it off. Doc walked up to her face as she closed her fingers around his forearm. The back of her head exploded out in a wet paste that matched the color of her dry skin. Her hand spasmed open and then dropped away as Doc kicked her brittle hip stepping over her on the tracks.