Revelations - 02 (44 page)

“Let’s go!” Kevin grabbed the bag and stood, resuming their northerly trek.

“What about them seeing our silhouette?” Heather asked as she fell in at a brisk walk.

“They’re busy,” Kevin said over his shoulder. “Too busy for us. But all their noise is bringin’ the zombies out in these parts. We need to keep movin’.”

“We’re still going to The Basket?” Heather stopped walking. “You can’t be serious! There’s no way in hell you can still hope to pull off some crazy sort of rescue.”

“No, that’s over,” Kevin conceded. “Like it or not, it’s just the two of us now and we are gonna see my original plan through. We’re headed for the wide-open spaces of South Dakota. But…I am going to try and take as many of those bastards down as I can on the way.”

“How?” Heather folded her arms across her chest, cocking her head and jutting out her left hip in a full-body pose of female skepticism.

“We’re going to go
into
Newark.”

“Did you ever see
The Empire Strikes Back
?”

“No.” Heather glanced nervously to the right. The small cluster of zombies were still a good distance away, but they were now bee-lining straight for her and Kevin!

“Well…” Kevin shook his head. “Wait! Really? You never saw it?”

“Uhh…no!”

“What the hell is wrong with kids today,” Kevin sighed. “Anyways, Han Solo leads these Imperial ships into an asteroid belt, and when Leia and Threepio say that he’s crazy to go into an asteroid belt, Han replies they’d be crazy to follow us.”

“I don’t get it,” Heather shrugged.

“We lead these yahoos into Newark, make certain that they follow, then find a place to hide and wait them out, let the zombies thin ‘em,” Kevin explained.

“In a few days, they’re gone…or dead…and we can move on. I may not be able to rescue the Bergman’s, but I can at least try and wreck the bastards that took ‘em.”

What he didn’t say out loud was that he’d been hoping to catch a glimpse of Shaw. He only needed one shot. Turning, he led the way along the railroad tracks to where they ran along behind a residential area not too far away from an open field and what looked like the burned out remains of a school. Even passing near the fence, he could smell the overwhelming stench of death. Countless corpses lay rotting on the ground, some of them obviously military.
The government was nothing if not predictable,
Kevin mused. This was likely a Rescue Center. In reality, it was little more than an open-air buffet for zombies. This close to a large population, hundreds had come seeking refuge, some likely infected. The undead massed up on the perimeter, eventually in numbers too great for the fences to hold back. Then…one day the dam burst. An absolute nightmare that probably made the climatic Mall Scene at the end of
Dawn of the Dead
seem tame by comparison.

“How are we gonna get anybody to follow us?” Heather asked, coming up beside Kevin.

“I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

The opportunity to explain was eliminated as a hand suddenly closed on Heather’s ankle. The girl tumbled, landing hard on one of the canteens. A loud exhale ended with a squeal of pain. Kevin spun to discover a dried-blood-covered torso of what might’ve been female at one point dragging itself to the downed girl’s boot-clad ankle, jaws clicking in anticipation of biting into a living victim. Raising the shotgun, he brought the butt down on the back of the skull. The face smashed down hard into the rocky ground sending out a spray of gravel, teeth, or a mixture of the two—it was impossible to tell in the dark—skittering away. He brought the makeshift bludgeon down twice more until hearing the familiar and satisfying crunch.

Heather kicked her leg free, an act that took a bit more effort because of having the wind partially knocked from her. Kevin pulled her to her feet, slinging her right arm over his shoulder. They stepped over the truly lifeless half-corpse and continued on until reaching the torn down back fence of a neglected, wildly overgrown back yard of a modest two-story house with no intact windows remaining on the ground floor.

Skirting the edge, moving past a variety of faded plastic children’s toys and play structures, they slipped along in the shadows of the side of the house. Kevin kept them a bit further than arm’s length from the busted windows…just in case. Reaching the corner, they peered out front and up the dark, deserted street.

“There,” Kevin whispered, his finger extending towards a white Suburban. “That thing is basically a tank on wheels. Let’s hope it’ll start…that, and that we can find the keys inside somewhere.”

“Who needs keys.” Heather gave a playful poke at Kevin’s still-too-sore ribs and took off into the shadows.

She looked both ways, then, in a crouch, scrambled across the street and up alongside the huge, white SUV. Kevin held his breath when an interior dome light flicked, then went out. He heard a loud ‘pop’, then a grinding chug. A puff of bluish smoke belched from the tailpipe, rising into the clear night air.

Kevin hurried from the shadows as the driver’s side door slammed shut. He saw dozens of dark forms pulling out of the shadows up and down the street that had, until seconds ago, been empty. As if in answer to the heavy thrum of the Suburban’s engine, moans and raspy groans of the undead sounded.

Reaching the idling vehicle, he tugged the front passenger side door. Nothing. With a quick rap of his knuckles—that he tried to not make sound frantic—Kevin indicated that the door was locked. Heather scrambled over and flicked a button.

“You realize that there’s probably a driver’s side master switch to lock or unlock all the doors,” Kevin said as he shoved the large bag into the back and climbed in. “Oh…and when did you learn to hotwire a car?”

“Churning butter wasn’t the only thing he showed us at Girl Scouts.” Heather beamed.

“What the hell kind of meeting’s did you go to?” Kevin shook his head. “Well, let’s get moving, and keep the headlights off.” He opened the glove box and began digging around.

Heather shifted into reverse, backing into and over the first zombie to reach the rear bumper of the massive SUV. With a frustrated sigh, Kevin climbed over and into the backseat, then, into the rear cargo area. Heather brought the wheel around and stepped on the breaks. A muffled curse followed a heavy thud.

“Sorry,” Heather called, glancing at the rearview mirror.

“Ah-ha!” Kevin exclaimed from the back of the Suburban. With an awkwardness that was a mixture of actual lack of coordination as well as a result of the pain and stiffness he felt from head to toe, he climbed back into the front seat with a plastic box.

“Whatcha got?” Heather asked as she swerved just enough to miss the two zombies stepping out from behind the car they were driving past.

“Bigger jackpot than I’d hoped for.” Kevin opened the box and produced what looked to Heather like an orange, plastic toy gun. “I figured that I’d find road flares at best!”

“That’s a flare gun?” Heather glanced over, but only briefly; there were lots of zombies coming out from the yards and open doors of the dark houses of the dead neighborhood as she was trying to find her way out of it.

“Yep.” Kevin looked up from his prize in time to see a nightgown-clad woman with a few curlers still in her hair lurch out at them. He winced at the sound of the front bumper clipping the zombified housewife, sending the body spinning away. It took a double whammy as its back connected solidly with the grill of what he thought might be an older Volvo, bending at an awkward angle as the back of its head came all the way down to slam into the hood. He glanced over his shoulder to see the unnaturally folded body tumble to the road and begin squirming as it tried to figure out how to move in its new configuration.

“Which way?” Heather asked, leaning forward over the steering wheel as if it would help her see better.

Kevin took a good look at her. He could see the whites of her knuckles, actually a greenish tint in the light from the driver’s display. Her shoulders were bunched up, her neck seeming to be trying to retract in between them. The tip of her tongue was poking from the corner of her mouth and her eyes were squinting.

“Well…” Heather paused, the look on her face condensing even further as she considered the question. “I’ve driven my uncle’s tractor, and there was a few times Mister Stanley let all us girls drive his truck out in the pasture when he was dumping hay bales.”

“Okay,” Kevin nodded. “but how many times have you driven a car…on a road?”

“Counting this time?” Heather shot a quick glance Kevin’s direction. The Suburban swerved just a bit in unison with her. She immediately turned back to the road and the vehicle mimicked the adjustment.

“No…just Shaw’s men rolling up on us,” Kevin quipped. “You gonna be okay if we need to take off and end up in a high-speed chase?”

“Good point.” Heather goosed the accelerator and got them to the intersection.

Both of them unhitched seatbelts, then did a bit of front seat tango. Once behind the wheel, Kevin handed the box with the flare pistol in it to Heather. “When I tell you, you’re gonna roll down your window and fire that thing into the air.”

“Really?” Heather asked.

“Sure,” Kevin nodded, “we’re a team.”

Heather sat back as the Suburban rolled forward into a cluster of zombie school children. She clutched the box to her chest, a big smile creeping across her face. It was the first time Kevin had referred to them as part of the team. Looking out her window, she could see the hint of pre-dawn light creeping into the sky.

They rounded an easy dog-leg and could see the off-ramp that would take them to West Main Street. A long, arched overpass would take them up to a vantage point where Kevin could get a better look around. Light was seeping across the landscape, darkening shadows in some places, but illuminating their surroundings at the same time.

“We need to hurry,” Kevin said as he floored the SUV’s accelerator. At the top of the overpass he came to a stop. “Now!” he turned to Heather and nodded.

Hitting a button, she rolled down the window and climbed halfway out. Aiming the orange pistol skyward, she fired. There was still enough gloom for the flare to create a very visible blue-white ball of phosphorescent light. The brilliant glowing beacon slowly began to drift west with the morning breeze as it floated towards the ground. Heather ducked back inside.

Kevin was looking around, getting his bearings. Straight ahead was a huge cloverleaf intersection (well, a three-leafed clover anyways). But the overpass he was on was as far as he could go on this road. The sign above told him he was on Highway 79. The problem was the bridge immediately ahead, prior to the distant cloverleaf. Or…more accurately, the lack of a bridge.

“We’ll use the on-ramp there and double back down onto Main,” Kevin said.

Looking east, he could see a city skyline in the distance. It wasn’t terribly impressive, but it was still a city. His mind flashed back to Pittsburgh. His idea to swing through there as a tribute to George A. Romero had been poorly planned and executed even worse. This time, he was rolling into a much smaller city. But he also had a plan. As if on cue, he caught movement in the rearview mirror.

“There they are,” Kevin announced, and slipped the Suburban back into drive.

“So you think they saw us?” Heather asked, craning her neck to try and get a look.

“Pretty sure!” Kevin instinctively flung his right arm across, grabbing Heather’s shoulder as he slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel to the right. “Big, white Suburban sitting all alone atop an empty, elevated overpass as the sun rises, catching every piece of chrome on this beast and turning it into a giant reflector? Yeah, they saw us.”

“That’s why you pulled up there and waited?”

“We need them to follow us.”

“Do you have any idea how we’re gonna get out of here?” Heather was surprised at how empty the streets were. Everywhere she looked, she saw bodies, many of them had bloated and burst long ago. There was garbage; lots and lots of garbage. But as far as zombies…she didn’t see—

“Oh my gosh!” Heather breathed. Up ahead was a sign: Main Street Bridge. Dangling from every single light-post was at least two, often more, zombies. Somebody had taken the time to string them up. Littering the ground were several headless bodies, as well as bodyless heads. That meant that eventually, the strain was too great and the head probably popped off like she’d done to countless dandilions as a little girl growing up.