S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (82 page)

“The hell with this!” someone shouted, and Lyssa realized there were at least a dozen other people standing at the rail with them. A man a few feet away swiveled from the edge and hurried toward the semi. He yanked open the door and stepped up into the cab. “I ain't sticking around for this shit,” he shouted. “And I suggest you don't neither! Now get in yer car before I push it off the road!” He slammed his door shut and started his engine.

“We can't just leave,” Ramon said, clutching the rail. “Someone's hurt down there.”

But Lyssa was tugging at his sleeve, pulling him away. She whipped around when he wouldn't come, and hissed, “Cassie's in the car! I am not sticking around so we can be attacked either!”

But still he resisted. The trucker laid into his horn and shouted at them through the windshield. She didn't need to hear him to know what he was saying.

Ramon looked at him and gestured at the next car ahead, an opalescent white Volkswagen. Like the Audi, the VW's door was flung wide open. The driver was nowhere in sight, presumably one of the people who'd gone down to investigate after the first scream. “I'm blocked,” he shouted. “I can't go anywhere!”

The truck's bumper touched the Audi and began to push forward.

“Hey!” Ramon yelled. He jumped onto the running board and tried to bang on the passenger door, but the trucker revved his engine and pushed harder. The Audi's tires screeched on the pavement. “There's people down there that need our help!”

“I am not going down there,” Lyssa yelled. She pulled him off the truck. “Not again!”

“Lyssa, we—”

“You heard the same thing I did. Something's attacking those peop—”

Another scream rose from the creek, different from the first two. Then thrashing sounds and several loud snaps. It sounded like tree branches breaking. Then tearing sounds. Finally a chorus of screams.

“Something's down there killing them,” Lyssa said, pleading. “Something wild. Please, Rame, we have to leave
now
!”

Ramon raised his hand to the trucker, gesturing at him to back off. “Let me at least move the car
before you mess it up!
”

He ran for his door as Lyssa pulled hers open. Just before she slammed it shut behind her, she heard a different sound coming from below. It wasn't a scream. It was something else, something distinctly human. And yet, at the same time, not human at all.

Moaning.

She felt it in her skull, a low groan which seemed to resonate in her bones, and it beckoned images of wind passing through tombstones in an old cemetery. She felt a shiver work its way up her spine.

Ramon wrenched the key in the ignition and started the car and yanked it into gear. He edged forward, carefully nudging the Volkswagen into the car beyond.

It was apparently not quick enough for the trucker, who blasted his horn again, then rammed them. Lyssa let out a quick scream and felt blood flood into her mouth. She'd bitten her tongue.

“Goddamn it, asshole!” Ramon shouted. He rolled his window down and flipped the trucker off.

The trucker responded by revving his engine and pushing even harder. “Get yer ass outta the way!” he shouted out his window. He blasted his horn again.

Ramon had no choice. He took the steering wheel hard, grimacing against the stiffness and pain in his injured hand, gritted his teeth, and started pushing against the VW. Beyond it, Lyssa could see the driver of another small car trying to move the last two empty vehicles off the road. He, too, was having little success fighting the parking brakes. Smoke rose from its spinning tires and the back end of the car was fishtailing.

“It's no good,” Ramon said, letting off on the gas. The trucker rammed them again. This time Cassie let out a shout and Shinji barked.

“Sonofabitch!” Ramon reached for the keys.

“Don't you dare get out of this car! Don't you dare leave me and Cassie in here.”

“I have to stop—”

The car jerked forward again, this time with a sickening crunch and the tinkle of shattering glass and plastic.

“THAT'S IT!”

He pulled his arm away from Lyssa and slammed his shoulder against the door, popping it open. He was out in an instant, running back toward the truck.

“Daddy!” Cassie screamed. “Daddy, stop, Daddy!”

Lyssa stared, her body frozen, as Ramon grabbed the trucker's door handle and stepped up onto the running board. “What's wrong with you, you fuck? You trying to kill us? You trying to kill my little girl?”

The trucker was yelling back, gesturing frantically with his hands at his windshield. He'd shut his window as soon as Ramon got out of the Audi and wouldn't open it despite Ramon's demands that he do so. “Get out of the truck! Open up!”

The truck suddenly jerked forward again, throwing Ramon to the road. Both Lyssa and Cassie screamed, but Ramon jumped right back up and began to pry at the door again. The trucker was cranking his key, trying to restart his stalled engine.

“Get out here!” Ramon yelled. “Look at what you've done to my car! I pray to God you've got insurance, because—”

The truck engine rumbled to life. Smoke belched from the stack behind the cab.

“I said get your ass out of there!”

The driver jammed the transmission into gear, then reversed. The unexpected change in direction threw Ramon against the side mirror. He had to twist around and grab it to stay on his feet. The cars behind them started honking. There was a squeal as the truck's back end rolled onto the hood of the next car.

The trucker reached down. The gears crunched and ground angrily. He slammed forward again, climbing the back of the Audi. Lyssa was thrown against her seat, then forward into the dash. Ramon's door slammed shut.

Dazed, Lyssa tried to blink away the stars. She could hear Shinji barking. She could hear Cassie shouting and crying with fright, begging for her father to come back.

Ramon pounded on the trucker's window, slamming it with the side of his injured fist, ignoring the pain and the bloody streaks he left on the glass.

The trucker tried to gain more running room before ramming them again, his engine straining as it pushed against the cars behind. The back of the trailer rose several inches, and there was another unearthly screech of metal. Once more the gears crunched and the engine revved. Lyssa threw out both of her hands to brace herself. She shouted to Cassie to hold on.

But the truck didn't move, not at first. She glanced up at the cab. She saw the driver lean forward until his face came into the light. The horror she saw in his eyes made her turn.

They were coming from the trail at the end of the bridge, the people who had gone down to help. They staggered onto the road without regard to what was happening or where they were going, as if they had been dazed by what they'd seen. They turned and began to stumble toward them.

Their clothes were drenched in blood. It painted their skin. Six of them, men and women both, their ashen faces splattered bright red, their eyes as black as night. Blood spewed from gashes on their heads. It poured from their necks and arms. They lurched forward, arms dangling limply or partially raised. Their mouths opened as if to scream. But no screams came forth, only moans.

Movement at her window caught Lyssa's eye. Someone was running from somewhere behind them, a man. He was running toward the bloody people!

What's he doing?

She watched as he skidded to a stop in their midst. She watched as they fell upon him. For a split second, she thought he was trying to stop them from falling, as if all their strength was suddenly gone from their bodies. They descended upon him, but not because they were weak. They grabbed the man with their bloody gloves and pulled him down. They leaned forward and opened their mouths.

Lyssa screamed as the first one tore away flesh from his neck. The scream died when a second ripped off his scalp. The man fell screaming to the roadway and disappeared beneath his attackers.

So frenzied was their feeding that a red mist rose into the air and a lake of blood sprung onto the cement.

The car slammed forward again. Lyssa fell against the dash. A moment later, Ramon was climbing into his seat, releasing the brake, starting the engine. “We've got to get out of here!”

He turned the wheel to squeeze past the car in front. The bumpers snagged and both cars began to angle toward opposite sides of the bridge. “No, no, no! It's too narrow!”

He struggled to keep the Audi straight, but the truck was pushing too hard. The VW's tire caught on the curb. Ramon pushed the accelerator, no longer heeding the damage he was doing to either car. The hot stink of burning rubber filled the car's interior. The Audi slid and became wedged against the right-hand rail.

“Damn it! I need that idiot to stop pushing me!”

He shifted into reverse and tried to pull out, but there was no place to go and the rig was too heavy to push.

Two of the bloody attackers rose from the dead man. They began to walk toward them. Strips of flesh dangled from the mouths, dripping fresh blood down their shirts. Lyssa was unable to look away. Her mind had frozen in shock.

Metal screamed as the truck backed up against the cars behind. Once more the gears rattled as the driver shifted and began to edge forward.

“What's he doing?” Ramon screamed.

Lyssa snapped out of her trance and turned.

He was trying to squeeze past them on the left. The front end of the semi hove into view beside them. The Audi's fender squealed and buckled. He gunned his engine and nudged forward some more. Ramon was shouting, leaning into the horn. “He's going to push us over the edge!”

They were right up against the rail. Lyssa turned and gasped when she saw the metal bend outward.

The truck's engine roared and, dragging the Audi along with him, he rammed into the side of the VW. It lifted off the ground a foot on two wheels. The railing yielded even more against the pressure. Bolts popped. Ramon was screaming. Cassie was screaming. Shinji was barking. But Lyssa heard none of these things. All she was aware of was the railing, the thin strips of metal holding them back from falling to the creek below, and the horrifying visage of the people lurching toward them.

There was another loud ping and the railing broke free from the bridge's foundation behind them. The back of the car swung several inches to the right.

“Mama! Daddy! No!”

The truck pressed forward, smoke spewing from the exhaust stack, the engine screaming beneath the hood.

“Back up! Back up, Ramon!” Lyssa screamed.

Another
POP!
and the Audi jolted even further to the right. The back tire fell off the surface of the road. Cement crunched beneath them. Now there was nothing below Lyssa's window, just the stunted trees and the false promise of the canopy's cushion. Forty or fifty feet below waited the rocky bed of the stream.

“What are you doing?” she screamed at Ramon. “We're going over the edge! Go!”

“What the hell do you think I'm doing? We're stuck!”

The semi lurched forward again, dragging them along with it, wedging them even tighter against the bridge's railings where they were still attached.

The truck engine revved and shook the car. Tires squealed. Ramon smashed the fist of his uninjured hand on the horn, but nothing would draw the driver's attention. The cab was too high up, the roar of the motor too loud.

Now the front tire dropped off the side, forcing the railing to bend nearly perpendicular to the road. It began to sag beneath its own weight. More bolts gave way. One of the metal bars snapped and fell into the abyss. Lyssa screamed as the car slid another six inches, raking the Audi's bottom on the roadway.

But the release created some room. The truck leapt forward now and passed them in a roar. The VW flipped onto its right side. The front bumper, caught on the opposite rail, was forcing it back. With the sound of several shots being fired, it popped free of the car's chassis. The car crashed onto its roof, spun, and slid over the side.

Without anything blocking its path, the truck skidded forward and rolled onto the next car ahead. The cab leaned right, over the Audi, blocking the sun. Smoke streamed from the tires still on the road.

“He's going to tip over on us!”

Ramon jammed the car into reverse, but with both right wheels off the road, they were stuck.

Over the car the truck rode, leaning even more precariously to the right. And then it happened. It tipped beyond its center of gravity.

Ramon floored the Audi and they managed to move back several inches. The cab crashed down in front of them, slamming into the right rail and crushing the two bloody victims. Its front end hung out over the edge.

The truck's brake lines popped, whipping the coiled cables at the Audi's windshield, cracking it. The trailer followed the truck's path and began to tilt right. Ramon screamed and leaned toward Lyssa. But she was pushing back, trying to get away from the edge of the bridge.

Finally, gravity took over, pulling the cab over the crumbling edge of the road. The movement pulled the trailer ever closer to the Audi. The roadway began to give way beneath the cab. It hovered for a moment, then began to tip forward. The hitch strained, threatened to snap. Now the trailer was less than a foot from crushing them.

With a great mechanical groan, the cab dropped ponderously into the gap.

The trailer was moving, dragged along, leaning closer. Metal scraped and pressed against the top of Ramon's door. The Audi jerked to the right another foot.

The back corner of the trailer slid past them and slammed to the road. It caught the hood of the Audi, jolting them into the air and twisting them clockwise. The rear tires came down on solid ground. A moment later, the trailer was gone, along with several feet of concrete and nearly all of the railing.

The truck exploded beneath them. Seconds later, the air darkened with smoke.