Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel (19 page)

I didn’t quite get as close to the quivering monster behind her before I fired. His head was wobbling from side to side with some sort of palsy that I hadn’t seen on a walker before then. Even though it was a moving target, the head was very large.  Maybe that is why he couldn’t hold it steady. From my lower angle, my shot drove up through his nose and out the top of his head. With the bits of brain and skull, the bridge of his nose twirled up into the air above him as he collapsed to his face over the rail.

I walked around him on the outside and slid on the rocks twice. I staggered back up on the tracks as the vine covered zombies scrambled into the space below me on the slope of the rail bed waiting for me to fall into their mouths.

Doc tried to reach for me as a creature with an open chest reached for Doc.  Its exposed ribs popped as its arms closed together. Doc slapped its hands away, but it reached again. A black lump fell inside the cage of bones and caught at the bottom. I thought it might be the zombie’s heart, but I couldn’t tell.

Doc fired a few inches from its head, but the shot went low. It blasted through both cheekbones sending teeth and smoke flying out the other side and the front. The eyes sunk back into the head leaving dark beads looking out at us. It kept reaching, but the body had been whipped out facing the woods. Doc kicked it with the flat of his boot instead of using another bullet. It fell off the tracks and slid on its knees, but not as far as I would have liked. It folded back and grabbed for Doc again. Its fingers stroked his pants leg as we walked by it.  He started crawling after us.

I fired and rocked a bearded man backward to bounce his emptied head on the rail. I had to stutter step over him. Doc took the top off a rail thin woman’s head with his next shot. She folded up on the ties between the tracks. Doc stepped on her arm above the elbow causing the bone in it to crumble and crack. I fired into the skull of the next and we hurtled it.

There were too many coming in from both sides of the crossing and we were not close enough yet. We alternated fire until Doc’s gun was empty.

He yelled, “Keep going.  Fire in the middle.”

Two more shots emptied me and the middle was still full. Doc pushed ahead and began striking the dead on their skulls with the butt of his pistol. The zombies were unimpressed with his attack. He kept pushing as they grabbed and bit. He shoved them aside, but we were surrounded again.

Doc screamed, “Under, Mutt, go under and keep going. Go! Go!”

I crawled ahead and under the flat bed. I could feel their fingers and breath as I went. I came out the other side and kept going as I watched my feet. I remembered my mother screaming as I left her behind the same way. She had told me to be quiet and everything would be fine. The monsters had found me under the bed anyway.

He grabbed my shoulder and pulled. He kept pulling me forward.

Doc said, “Keep going, Mutt. Hand me your gun so I can reload it.”

We made our way down the tree-lined tracks until chain link fences rose up on both sides. The bed of the tracks dropped down level with the ground coated in pine needles on both sides of the fences. The needles started filling and covering the space between the rails as we walked. They were slippery and hid the gaps between the wooden crossties of the tracks making the path more difficult.

The zombies behind us were having more trouble than we were, but they were persistent. They kept getting up and they were not getting scared or tired.  More closed in on us from the sides out of the woods. They grabbed and bit at the chain link on both sides and followed us along the fences waiting for a break I was hoping would not come.

We rounded a bend and saw where the chain link ended ahead of us. This was going to be a problem. The fences on both sides ran up to the edge of the cliff that dropped off into a canyon. I could see the tops of tall trees peeking up over the lip along the length of the tear in the Earth traveling out in both directions. The bridge drove out through the opening several feet across to the other side where the fences picked up again at the end of the rail bridge on the other side of the canyon.

I wanted to turn around and head back toward the train of zombies behind us.

Some of the dead headed us off at the edge of the fencing. They walked around the edge of the fence and dropped right off the side. They vanished without a sound. One on the right held the chain link as he walked around the end. The movement was very deft and coordinated.  I stumbled a bit watching his progress. His bare foot came around and rested on the iron rail where the tracks became a bridge. He held on to the fencing leaning back like a climber. He sneered at us as he swung around. Then, he dropped to his chest on the collapsing dirt just shy of the track. He clawed at the bridge staring at us as he slowly slid away. Dust rose up at the end of the fence as he drifted out of view.

I stopped at the edge of the bridge and stared down into the forest from above between the wood block sections. The spaces between the boards that crossed beneath the track in mid air seemed too far apart. This was not meant for pedestrians.

***

I looked down at the dusty trail through the air from the coordinated zombie’s fall, but his body was out of sight.

Doc grabbed my shoulder roughly and pulled me off the ground and forward over the blocks down the center of the bridge. I started taking steps on my own to get him to let go. He did and I nearly froze again as I swooned from being set loose in the air. He didn’t reach for me again and I stayed near his hip.

The first zombie reached the end of the bridge a few feet behind us. He stepped out without breaking stride. His lack of fear filled me with more and I was motivated to move faster across the gaps. He made two bars before his foot went through the space between the second and third ties. He dropped right through slamming his crotch against the edge of the wood. I saw the remains of him there explode on impact as I turned back forward. He continued to pull himself forward as if nothing had happened.

We couldn’t afford the same injury. We took a step at a time. The bridge was steady, but I felt the world wobbling around me.

Doc tapped my shoulder and started pulling me toward the side over the rail on his side. I tried to pull back to the center. He waved his hand ahead and I saw it. There were three broken ties that had fallen through in the middle of the bridge. It was just open to empty space in the middle. The rails continued across of both sides of the opening. The supports along the sides and beneath the rails held the broken ends of the ties at sickening angles.

I was ready to head back into the zombies bobbling along the bridge behind us. The space would be an easy jump on flat ground. I could probably step across that distance. There was something different about being a couple hundred feet above the ground.

We started walking along the edge. The tie ends shifted from side to side under the rail. The main supports held, but it wasn’t easy to balance on the rail with zombies closing in behind us.

Through the gap I could see the distinct rough edging of the oak leaves on the branches just below the bridge. I wondered if it was possible to grab hold of them if we fell through the space. The trunk receded away from us down into the rough floor of the canyon. There was a sliver of a creek running through the white rocks.  There was a tire looped over a jagged corner on one of the boulders near the water. What was left of a mattress was bent and wedged between two others near the far wall.

Bodies were scattered and broken near the canyon wall. A couple were still twisting and clawing between the rocks below us.

It looked like the river had been much higher in past seasons. There might be a drought striking the canyon and the regions upstream, but if we fell, a little more water wouldn’t make much difference.

One of them grabbed the material on the back of my shirt as I neared the end of the balance beam. I leaned forward, but the fingers held the stretched the back of my shirt. The shirt didn’t tear. If he fell following me across, he might pull me over with his fingertip grip.

Doc walked a few steps ahead without looking back. I pulled against the fingers with my body weight, but the creature just followed me forward. I felt his other hand stroke the back of my stretched shirt searching for purchase. If he got me with both hands, we were liable to fly for sure. The broken board under my back foot shifted toward the hole in the bridge and so did we.

Doc was still going. I stared at the knob on the back of his head under his mess of white hair. I pulled the gun out of my belt and turned around.

The creature was not the one with the maimed crotch. I couldn’t see that one in the mass of bodies staggering over the ties or crawling along between the feet of the others. One fell out of the crowd on my side of the bridge and tilted head down as it dove for the canyon floor. There were no trees in the area where he fell. I didn’t see or hear him hit over the moans echoing out behind us.

My zombie was slightly taller than me and broader. He would carry a lot of anchor weight, if he went over the side still holding my shirt. The shirt might rip before he pulled me over, but pulling me off balance would be bad enough.

His face was sloughing off his cheeks. His belly and chest were slashed open in three long gashes. Ribbons of flesh looped out from the open torso. The lungs had white, hairy growths around deep, black sores. They still expanded and contracted with hissing noises from the sores around the dark, silent heart. The stomach hung loose at the bottom of the open belly. It was necrotic and full of round holes along its gummy surface.

I held the gun up and he grabbed my wrist hard. I felt something pop or crack. Numbness flooded my fingers as acidic pain burned up the inside of my arm. I lost my grip on the gun as the zombie pulled my hand toward its mouth.

The butt of the gun hit the top of the rail underneath us. The gun fired and propelled itself spinning down into the leaves waving below the bridge. The sound exploded out through the canyon like a canon blast. The bullet rocketed up at our faces. On its way, it obliterated the zombie’s bent knee. I had no idea where it went after that.

He started to topple to the side of the bridge as his leg folded under him. He kept pulling my hand into his mouth unconcerned with the heights.

I grabbed his arm that was holding my shirt twisted around under my armpit. I held tight with both hands as he bit down on his forearm still gripping my wrist. He was still trying to fall, but I pulled steadily until he was upright and safe again.

He was still holding my throbbing wrist as I reached for my hunting knife. He leaned down to try to follow the hand with his open mouth. He started tilting toward the hole in the center of the bridge. I brought my hand back to his arm to steady him again. I tried to pull him forward with me away from the balancing beam section, but he threatened to fall again on his one functioning leg. As he snapped at my fingers gripping his arm, I pushed him back upright again. I slid my numb fingers under his arm and elbow just as he bit into his own sleeve on the warm spot where I had just been holding. He pulled on his sleeve with his gritted teeth as he pulled the back of my shirt with the arm I was holding tightly.

The wind sheered up over the exposed bridge. I heard the leaves on the branches under me whipping first before it starting flapping my abused shirt and the loose flesh around my attacker’s open body.

He tilted again against the wind blowing to the outside of the bridge. I couldn’t keep him upright. Another one was crawling into the back of my filleted zombie’s good knee. We were all going to go over.

The first one from the mass of bodies attempted to step over the gap toward me just a few feet away. He wasn’t even close. His leg pumped once in the air as he fell forward like a board. His chin slammed into the edge of the tie on my side of the gap. His lower jaw and teeth disappeared in an explosion of white powder. He folded in half backward as he collapsed through. I heard him hit three branches with crisp cracks as he fell through the tree.

Another stepped right off and dropped through feet first. He was still trying to walk on air as he fell through the leaves racing the other to the rocks. One began rocking along the other rail and looked like he might make it. He fell backward grabbing one that was lifting his foot over the gap. They flailed through the hole together. Their combined weight snapped the oak branch right off leaving a scarred hunk of wood projecting from the trunk in its place. The grand tree rising in the shade of the rail bridge wouldn’t be the same after this. I was probably going to miss the branches completely when I fell to my death with a gnarled zombie still trying to bite me as we flew.

His head exploded back into the eyes of the monsters behind him. They didn’t blink. My ears rang too loudly to hear the roaring echo traveling out and back around us.

He fell harder now pulling me along. I realized I was still holding his arm tightly.  I let go as his hand fell away from my agonized wrist. He still had my shirt. I twisted with his weight getting dragged down to my knees and then to my butt in time with his collapse off the side. His fingers went slack and slid loose from the grimy wad of my shirt as he spun off the rail alone.

He twisted again in the air causing his ulcerated stomach to float and whip behind him out of his belly on the connections of lifeless intestines. He seemed to be stress free as he dropped away with arms and legs floating out relaxed.

The zombie with the damaged crotch was crawling across the rail looking directly into my eyes. He stretched out his arm to grab hold where the last one had let go.

My wrinkled shirt was grabbed from behind again as I sat there dazed. I was pulled away. Doc jerked me up to my feet and away from the edge.

He said, “Damn, Mutt, you need to say something when you need help.”

A few more stepped through the gap as others were pushed off the side by the bunching up of the dead around the gap. One tall zombie in jeans, boots, and a ruined, silk shirt managed to step across. The pointed toe of his boot slid forward on the smooth wood of the crosstie. He started tilting back into the gap. One behind him fell through and bumped him back up straight. As the helpful zombie plummeted through the bent branches of the tree, the tall zombie’s boot slipped again. He started to step, but tilted backward again.