MZS: D. C. (Metropolitan Zombie Survivors Book 4) (4 page)

It always happens this way. The thing I was waiting for happens right after I’ve given up on it.

A woman is running from the building and she is holding up a small child, but we are already rolling in reverse.

Amidst the gun fire and the screaming I can focus only on her face. Her lips are clear and the words she’s saying are easy to see.

“Please take my baby!” The woman screams.

Her chest explodes and the baby falls and tumbles along the pavement. Neither the woman nor the little ragdoll object make any movement.

The truck comes to an abrupt stop and my head slams back against the seat. Apparently reversing at full speed without looking or trying to steer results in an accident. I’m sure the guys will make all kinds of woman driver jokes.

“You have to put her out of your mind,” Patrick says, speaking into my ear. He’s so close I can feel his warm breath.

I shove the gearshift into drive and pull forward. It’s hard to put her out of my mind when I can’t stop staring at her body.

“Wrong way!” Todd screams from the turret.

The brakes are applied and the gear is shifted back to reverse, and still I can’t look away from the body of the woman in the parking lot. She is my age but I can’t even imagine how she ended up with a baby in this building, with these people.

While I stare, I can see her head lift off the pavement. I can’t see her eyes from this distance, but something tells me they are cloudy and white. Her hand moves next and she is clawing her way forward, toward the body of her baby.

My brain has enough control to know that I don’t want to see what I expect is about to happen. Averting my eyes to the side mirror, I stomp on the gas pedal.

The delay between my action and the car’s reaction worries me. Did I break it when I crashed into the security hut? When the power finally arrives at the rear wheels, we rocket backwards. I have to steer frantically to direct the large vehicle through the gap between the fence and the guardhouse that is mangled but still obstructing my path.

The driver’s side caroms off the tiny brick building and I notice that Todd is no longer firing the machine gun. He’s probably holding on for dear life.

There is a line of cars behind me on my left. A quick glance to my right reveals open road, the way we came in. I guess some choices will be made for me.

“Terri, I need you!” I scream at her again while throwing the car back in drive.

“Terri! … Terri!” Patrick screams.

I’m afraid that I might push the gas pedal through the floor. The Humvee does not accelerate quickly but soon it is traveling at a good clip and I realize I have to control the momentum.

“Do I go back the way we came?” I ask no one and everyone at the same time.

The guys in the back are helpless. With the exception of Todd they cannot even shoot at our enemies. I can’t even hear Parker, Tucker or Cupcake. Patrick and I are responsible for all of them.

Pops and tings are less frequent but they are definitely still shooting at us.

“No, that takes us back around the building. They set this up on purpose; they want us to try and go that way,” Patrick says, finally answering my question.

“Then what?” I ask.

Patrick leans forward between the two front seats. His mouth hangs wide open while he sucks in breath. I can’t see his eyes but I let myself believe they are searching for an answer, a way out.

“There.” He points to a car on the side of the street.

The car he’s identified is older and green. There is space in front of it and behind it but not enough for the Humvee to fit through. It looks kind of sporty to me but I can’t even imagine what he wants me to do with it.

“Go through it?” I am confused.

“No, you can’t smash through things. Pull up to the front. We’re going to make room to get through,” he explains.

“What!?” He can’t seriously be planning to get out of the Humvee.

Patrick is no longer between the seats. I don’t know how he’ll be able to move a car without using our truck.

“Todd! We need a little covering fire. Parker, we’re going out your door. We need to get in the green car, put it in neutral and roll it backwards. Are you ready?” Patrick is speaking loudly enough to make sure the guys hear him.

Before the Humvee is at a full stop, the machine gun roars back to life and the rear passenger door is thrown open.

Out on the street Parker runs to the front of the green car and Patrick hurries to the driver’s window. The tire iron that Cupcake used to smash zombies now destroys the glass. With the window gone, Patrick is able to open the door and climb inside.

Parker starts straining against the front fender before Patrick is back on the street. The two of them start the car rolling and the space between cars grows wider by the second.

“Terri. We all need you. You can climb into a bottle later when we are somewhere safe, but right now you need to give me directions out of here,” I say. I try to speak calmly, but it’s not really close.

“I can’t! I don’t do outside,” she screams in a shrill voice.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means but you have to help us right now. We need your map and you need to tell me what’s on it.” My attempt at calm has turned into stern insistence.

“I haven’t left my apartment in over three years! Open spaces, outside, terrifies me. I thought I could do it, but I can’t I just want to go back to my apartment!” She’s wailing like a baby.

“GO!” Patrick screams before Parker can even get the door closed.

There is no road in front of us, just the green grass of a small park and a few trees. I can’t floor it like I did back in the street. We roll forward slowly and I can hear the sound of metal scraping against metal so I stop.

“Don’t stop!” Patrick says, exasperated with me.

“I thought you said I couldn’t smash into the cars.” This is probably not a time for arguing but I don’t want to make a mistake with our most precious possession.

“You can’t smash things with the front end. It could damage the radiator and then we would be toast. A little rubbin’ and scrapin’ is fine. Now GO!” he yells back.

I accelerate again and we scrape between the cars. The opening between the trees is wider so I know that we will fit. I’m not a bad driver. I think that any normal person would struggle to drive perfectly with all this commotion.

Once we’re through the trees, there is open space in front of me. I jam on the gas and feel the back end fishtail a little as the tires tear up the turf.

“Where am I going?” I ask back to Patrick.

“Head for the Capitol and go around it. Hopefully we can get to the other side and be far enough away from those guys that they won’t be able to keep shooting at us,” he answers, bringing his volume down slightly.

“What if they follow us in their own Humvee?” I didn’t see any but it’s possible.

“Then we don’t stop, I guess. You guys are all smarter than me; why do you keep asking me what to do?” Patrick suddenly sounds exhausted.

He doesn’t give himself enough credit. His ideas, his actions, and his reactions are a big part of why we keep surviving. I wouldn’t be surprised if his intellect was the same as the rest of us, but his instincts are proving to be superior.

“It’s a good plan. I didn’t see any vehicles in their compound so I doubt they have the means to follow us,” Parker chimes in.

“Terri! Does this road lead us to the Capitol?” I ask her.

Instantly I know it’s a stupid question. Out the front window I can see the dome of the Capitol building rising into the sky. I don’t need directions. I can navigate by sight.

Patrick leans up and forcefully pries the tablet from Terri’s hands. She doesn’t fight him so much as just not letting go.

“I came here on a school field trip and they made us walk from the Lincoln memorial to the Capitol building. We called it a death march, but I can remember that the National Mall was wide open,” Patrick comments.

Ahead there is a sign that says “Library of Congress” and we will need to decide if we go left or right. I’m leaning toward right, but hopefully Patrick will give me map directions before I have to turn.

“I’m turning right up here,” I say. My statement is not confident: it’s actually a thinly veiled question.

“Whatever. I’m still trying to figure out where we are on this map,” Patrick replies

“We’re at the Library of Congress! Turning right onto Second Street. How hard can it be to find?” I shouldn’t be angry with him, but so far he’s not doing much better than Terri.

“Well the screen’s not refreshing very quickly and Terri had it on somewhere in fucking Tennessee. Give me a break, okay,” he hollers.

“Sorry,” I snap back at him.

I suppose I should be more surprised that we’ve been getting along so well than I am at our snippiness. We’re generally strangers in the midst of a terrifying ordeal. It would be more remarkable if we clicked perfectly and could finish each other’s sentences.

“Detour coming!” I yell.

There is a tank blocking the intersection ahead. I’m going too fast to stop so I have to swerve left onto the sidewalk to avoid it. Further ahead are more tanks and what look like armored cars. The street is blocked, forcing me to turn left.

We’re now heading directly at the United States Capitol building. I’ve slowed down some but I’m sure we’re technically speeding.

“Hey, there’s the Supreme Court,” Parker says, like we are on a sight-seeing tour.

“Tanks to your right. Go left.” Patrick is back to leaning between the two front seats.

When I turn he loses his balance and falls backwards into Parker’s legs.

“You okay?” I glance over my shoulder.

“Eyes on the… Holy shit.” Patrick pulls himself back between the seats.

Ahead of us the plaza in front of the Capitol is teaming with undead. It’s a combination of business suits and army fatigues. There are no bodies lying around, but I get the occasional glimpse of what I think are bones in small piles.

The pillars protecting the plaza are designed to keep a car bomber from attacking the Capitol. I’ve seen enough news reports to know this means we need to keep detouring.

Habits are hard to break and I instinctively check out my window for the street sign—“First Street.”

“We’re going back the way we came. Take your next right,” Patrick says. He’s climbed back between the seats.

We’re approaching another intersection and the Library of Congress is on my left. Making that first right turn was a bad decision: I should be careful with my criticisms of Patrick.

Independence Avenue is eerily quiet. There is no gunfire, no tanks, and the zombies appear content to mill about in the plaza.

I slow the truck to a more reasonable and manageable speed. We’re rolling along comfortably when the tremors strike. First my hands, then my legs, and soon my entire body is shaking.

I’m ready to quit.

Let’s just leave the Humvee and go off for a nice quiet walk. When the undead attack, I’m not going to fight back. They can eat me; I just hope it’s quick.

Why is McLean stopping the Humvee?

Terri is still moaning and crying in her seat. I don’t understand what the hell is wrong with her but it’s not just woman shit. She is a totally messed-up individual and I’m not sure if she thinks she’s dealing with her issues, because she’s not, they’re dominating her.

The guys are all silent in the back of the rig. We feel whatever it is too, but tears aren’t coming for us.

“Give me your gun,” I order Parker.

He hands his gun over without argument. I can tell from the look on his face that this was the first time he’s ever killed. And not only was it a kill, it was a living human. The same should be true for Cupcake and it is for me as well. Though I don’t know if the guy I stabbed is dead or just badly injured.

I have no experience with firearms. They don’t seem like complex tools, though. Instead of letting myself be intimidated by it, I approach the thing with confidence.

The trigger is what makes it fire and I can be aggressive with it as long as I avoid that area. After pressing various circles and sliding the slide back, I find a button on the side. From the bottom of the handle pops a magazine, and I easily pull it out.

There are nine bullets inside, and I can see where they slide out at the top. Pushing a bullet out is more difficult than I expect and requires substantial force from my soft thumb. Doing it the way I’ve seen in the movies, I slide the top bullet out and into my waiting palm, repeating the process six more times.

I hand individual bullets around the cab. Each person gets one, except Todd, who is up in the turret.

“If you’re the last person left, this bullet is to use on yourself. If the movies are right, put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Seems to make more sense than the classic temple shot,” I explain.

“Will the bullet work in any gun?” Parker asks me.

Silence.

The two gun terms I know are “nine millimeter” and “magnum.”

“It should work in most of the handguns we would find these days. These are nine-millimeter rounds, and most modern cop weapons use them. If the gun looks old or the bullet doesn’t fit, it probably won’t work,” Cupcake speaks up.

Cupcake was supposed to be cut out for this shit, though I realize that was Tucker’s claim and not Cupcake’s. He knows about hunting and survival. We have the Humvee because Cupcake learned how to hotwire cars in case of a disaster. Now, when we’re falling apart, he’s cowering in the back of the truck, dripping out details that will help us commit suicide.

“Is this what you hunted with?” I ask him.

I want to give him a chance to snap out of it. If he starts talking about hunting and survival skills, maybe it will remind him that he knows what to do.

“No. We had a small twenty-two rifle and a twelve-gauge shotgun. All we hunted were birds and squirrels,” he explains, shaking his head.

Food is not a problem yet, but it will be. Cupcake may have hunted a little, but he doesn’t have experience killing anything big enough to feed the whole group. We could sure use some help from Terri’s prepper friends.

“Do we know how the process works to become one of those
things
?” Parker asks, shifting topics.

“If you die and your brain is still intact, you turn into a zombie. Pretty simple actually,” Tucker chips in.

“But like if you get scratched or bitten by one, you don’t automatically turn into one or anything crazy like that. Right?” Parker presses on.

Again silence.

Honestly I cannot envision a scenario where you get bitten but not completely eaten. If they get their teeth on you, they don’t let go. There was something the news guy said about bodily fluids, but I can’t remember what it was. Could that really have been only three days ago?

“It’s an infection, maybe a parasite,” Terri says from the front, suddenly reengaged with the rest of us. “If you get bitten or ingest any of their blood, you are going to turn into one of them.”

“Could we put on a tourniquet to stop it from spreading?” Parker asks, thinking critically.

“In some of the first threads on this topic, they tried everything, including immediate, like within seconds, amputation. One guy said it worked when his wife bit him on the hand right after she turned. Guess he didn’t know she was infected,” she answers.

“So a guy chopped off his own hand and then wrote a post about it on a discussion forum?” Tucker asks, shocked by this idea.

“Yeah. Preppers share data and solve problems. They just do it for shit that matters, not stupid sports statistics and leaked sex tapes,” Terri says, dismissing our interests with disgust.

She must have checked out the archives of Barstool Sports.

“Different strokes, baby,” Tucker says, not offended by her insult.

“Idiot. Anyway, it looks like the age of the zombie affects how fast the infection spreads. The infection from a newly turned zombie moves relatively slowly; if you get bit by an older zombie, the infection moves lightning fast,” Terri explains.

“And if you just die, it happens fast, too,” McLean says. Her voice is hoarse.

How she knows this, I’m not about to ask. My personal belief is that it depends. There are probably a million factors that impact how you get infected and how fast you turn.

Are we all infected, I wonder? If I die from a heart attack, will I turn into a zombie? I don’t really understand how it all works, but I’m not the guy to be looking for a cure anyway. My job is survival.

I can’t quit or give up. There is a little something deep inside of me telling me to survive. It’s not just for me, either; it’s for everyone in this vehicle.

“So let’s recap,” Terri says, rudely. “Blow your brains out if you’re surrounded, bitten, or just too tired to keep going. McLean’s going to step in front of the car and demonstrate. Go ahead, sweetie.” She’s gone back to arrogance.

I need to keep going for everyone in the vehicle… except Terri, who is a colossal bitch.

A large splat of blood falls from the turret. By the time I realize what it is, a second drop falls. It takes me another few moments to realize that it’s coming from Todd, who has not come down from his perch since we stopped.

The fear of having one of us turn inside the rig is unspoken but clear. We Chinese-fire-drill out of the Humvee. When we’re all standing on the sidewalk, my heart starts beating again.

“Todd? You okay up there?” I finally ask.

Crickets.

“Todd?” I ask again.

“Someone has to get up there and check him out,” Cupcake ultimately decides.

None of us wants to move. We probably shouldn’t be standing still on the sidewalk, but there aren’t many other choices.

Eventually all eyes fall on me. I’m holding one of our two guns and the bullet reserved for Todd.

“I guess I’ll go,” I finally say.

I feel brilliant for climbing the outside of the Humvee instead of trying to tug on his shirt from inside. Standing on the hood, I can see that Todd is slumped backward in the turret. There is no movement or sound coming from him, so I will have to get close to assess his status.

The metal beneath me dents loudly as I walk towards the windshield. No noticeable zombie-type reaction from Todd has me feeling pretty good. Hopefully he just hit his head and is out cold.

“Todd?” I call cautiously as I place my knee on the roof.

My hand instinctively goes to the barrel of the machine gun for balance but I can feel the heat before I grab it. Instead I reach up to the top of the turret and grasp it firmly.

Now that I can see down into the turret, I truly believe that Todd will be okay. His face, neck and head are all clean, with no signs of injury. It could be that our diet of booze and junk food caught up with him and he just passed out.

Before his cloudy eyes register with me, his face is flying forward. The wide-open mouth comes directly at my hand. At the last second, I release my grip and pull away. Todd’s’ teeth smash into metal and bite ferociously.

“Son of a bitch,” I declare.

“Is he okay?” Cupcake asks.

“No. He turned. Tried to bite me, too,” I answer, a little too loud.

From my elevated perch I can see a good distance. The area looks too quiet for such a wide avenue. If the military was able to clean the undead out, why did they leave the ones by the Capitol building and the bank-turned-female-penitentiary? More importantly, why aren’t they here picking us up and whisking us to safety?

Dealing with Todd is a new challenge. So far none of us have had to kill anyone we know. Shoving my hockey stick in the eye of some random zombie was hard, but was getting easier.

Suddenly I worry that there will be some weird transference up the aluminum shaft. If my stick penetrates Todd’s eye socket, I’m going to
feel
something. Not a vibration or a temperature change, but an emotion. I don’t want that.

I don’t even have my stick; I left it in the car. That’s not a habit I want to develop, so I better remember it next time.

My mind drifts back to that first zombie I knocked over in the alley. He was lying there on his back and I thought that I should kill him just to learn what it was like. I didn’t and later regretted not taking advantage of the perfect learning environment.

Right now I can learn to shoot a gun and take care of the undead guy in our ride.

Steadying myself to prepare for the recoil, I aim at our former friend’s head. My finger moves to the trigger and I brace my shoulders for a kick.

“Might want to cover your ears,” I say down to the others on the sidewalk.

Squeezing on the trigger with all my might yields nothing. It won’t budge. Apparently I broke the gun when I was pressing things and looking for the magazine.

I find the button to release the magazine again—it’s easier to find when you’re holding the gun like you’re going to use it—and it pops out the bottom.

Everything looks fine when I look closely, but it’s still foreign. Seeing no obvious problem, I slam the magazine back into the handle like an action star in a summer blockbuster.

Before moving my finger to the trigger, I check the safety and casually flip it off and then take aim.

BANG

The noise happens quickly and the recoil is far smaller than I expected. Unfortunately, I missed.

This time, more carefully, I aim right at Todd’s nose and pull the trigger.

BANG

The teeth stop chomping and the eyes roll backwards. Our zombie passenger is no more. Sadly neither is a solid guy who was going far beyond simply contributing.

After hopping off the hood of the Humvee, my friends surround me. There are no words to exchange, but we share looks.

We need to get his body out of the turret and get underway. The way things stand right now, I don’t want to find another group or follow another lead. I want to get to a farm or a campground and just hide out. Maybe after a long rest I’ll want to go fight zombies or join forces with another group, but for now I want to lay low.

The buzzing arrives first. From in front of the Humvee and to our left, the start of a horde appears. It flows like water and there are more bodies in the front row than I can count.

“Get in the rig!” I yell.

Our small group scrambles around the Humvee and climbs in hastily. My friends have been kind enough to leave the driver’s spot for me.

The engine rumbles to life before all the doors are even closed. Forward momentum swings my door and slams it shut.

It is entirely possible that the horde will get across the street and cut off our path before we can get past them. The engine strains at its maximum revolutions and I worry it will explode.

I let the truck drift to the right of the street and pray that we clear the horde.

As we draw parallel to the side street they came out of, the front fender clips the outstretched arm of an undead and sends it flying. There is blood and tissue covering my side window, but we got around them.

Ahead of me the street is clogged with more tanks, Humvees, and what look like armored cars. We can’t keep going this direction.

I’m able to navigate to a cross street and take a left at the National Mall, directly onto the grass.