The Great Wreck (3 page)

He’d smile and tap.
Usually the driver would ignore him. He’d smile and tap again and if the driver
cracked their window, launch into some crazy-ass story. Sometimes this yielded
some change from the driver, sometime a few bucks. Most of the time, the driver
did as I planned to do: put their car in gear and move away from the oncoming
social wreck of an animal stumbling in their direction. Poor fucker.

           
Then I heard a scream. It split the
hot air like a razor through flesh. It rose high into the hot, metallic air
bouncing off the store walls and asphalt drilling into my ears like madness. It
was joined then by a dozen more, then a hundred more.
 
Every single person’s head in the parking
lot, drunk crazy dude included did a hard snap towards the location of that
terrifying sound. For a second, everything was still. Even the hot, pissed off
breeze died down, waiting to see what would happen next.

           
And what happened next I would never
be able to get out of my mind. What happened next was seared into my memory
with a blow torch and would wake me screaming from my sleep every night until
the day I died. Around the right side of the supermarket, they came. Hundreds
of them, bloody, torn, gaping, mad with whatever disease had infected them, and
screaming like banshees at the top of their lungs. A few people had been
exiting the market and were immediately swarmed by the mass of people. I could
not comprehend what I was seeing. Three badly mutilated people dived onto a
small girl holding a shopping bag and began to…well, to feed. They smashed into
her so hard they knocked her out of her shoes, like three tight ends making the
tackle. They bit, and tore, and ripped in such a fury that the girl never had
time to scream. More of the others descended on the girl’s now torn corpse and
in a few minutes, the body of the girl was gone. Two others who had been near
the little girl suffered the same fate. It was like watching human piranha at
work.

           
That was enough for most of us
watching from our cars. In an instant, nearly everyone tried to move at once.
The crazy bum suddenly found alacrity and focus running in the opposite
direction of the screaming horde but he had only taken two steps before someone
in a Cadillac ran him down first crushing his pelvis, then his head in their
haste to escape the oncoming rush of death. A few of us, like myself and the
pretty young lady next to me, were frozen in terror. Not trying to escape the
parking lot probably saved my life by avoiding all the cars making a mad dash
towards the street. Too many of those fleeing smashed into other cars and the
swarm of infected descended on them jamming themselves into the now shattered
windows of the wrecked cars and devouring those within. The screams were
overwhelming and reached the magnitude of a jet engine.

           
Not moving may have saved my life
but it surely did not save the life of the girl parked next to me. The horde
began to flow around the cars trying to break into any that had occupants. A
group spotted the girl in the coup next to me and zeroed in. She screamed as
she saw one of the infected peel off and race towards her. It crashed against
the passenger side her car and she instinctively tried to pushed away, rotating
her legs away from me preparing to kick the thing away if it breached her car.
The thing smashed against the door again and again, then against the window to
no effect. Had he door been locked she might have survived, she might have
gotten control of her fear, started her car, and bagged ass out of that parking
lot. But her doors were unlocked and the thing’s thrashing hand finally found a
purchase. The passenger side door popped open and the thing was on her in a
flash. It didn’t even pause, but scrambled in and tore after her in a blink of
an eye.

           
She screamed even louder, a high
pitched, piercing sound that drove deep into my lizard brain. She tried to kick
the thing away, but it was strong and was on top of her in a second its hands
tearing madly at her. Its torn and bloody fingers found a purchase at the top
of her tank top. Her white tank top, so tight and alluring was ripped from her
body. I could see her pure white skin as her tits burst out of her bra as the
thing tore at her and tried to get its teeth into her skin. She must have
known, deep in her subconscious that the gig was up but she fought like the
devil, her screams replaced by a determined grunting. She twisted away from the
thing somehow dodging its bite and managed to open the driver’s side door. She
slide halfway out, got her hands around the edge of the car frame, and nearly
escaped but the thing gripped her by the hem of her shorts and pulled her back
with such strength that it blew out the button and zipper and tore her shorts
down around her hips. She kicked and kicked the thing repeatedly in the head
but to no avail. The thing grabbed again and tore her white, blameless panties
down. Her ass shook violently back and forth as she tried to break the thing’s
grip. Then it landed its first bite on the back of her upper thigh. She
screamed so loud that she must have ruptured her vocal cords. The blood shot
out so fast and so violently that the thing must have bit down deep into an
artery. In a flash she had twisted back around and broke the things mouth from
her thigh. Now nearly nude with only the tatters of her cloths handing off of
her, the thing, mouth full of her flesh moved deep between her legs pinning her
for good this time. I watched in horror as its teeth bite into her again and
again, rocking her back and forth. It was like watching the most violent sex I
had ever seen. Her head and shoulders hung out of the driver’s side of the car
arching her back up and forcing her hips against the thing’s mouth as it
jackhammered its teeth into her over and over again. She screamed as she tried
to force it off of her and grab something that she could use to pull herself
away but the thing was rapidly removing chunks of her flesh in great gaping
bites and she was bleeding out fast. By now, her screams had attracted the
attention of others close by and they descended like legion to the driver’s
side of the car. In a second, three were on top of her, eating and eating. Her
body was arched out of the driver’s side of the car, her eyes looking at me
with such horror that I puked all over my dashboard. She was still screaming
with great gouts of blood running out of the car and onto the parking lot until
finally, mercifully, she bled out and was gone.

           
I sat there stunned as the things
ripped what was left of her body to pieces and scatted her broken bones around
in a fury to eat every last scrape of tissue she had. Then one spotted me. My
doors were locked, but my windows were open. It let loose with one of those
ripping screams and I broke from my paralysis. I cranked on my old truck that
miraculously started on the first try, slammed it into reverse, and peeled away
just as the thing impacted with my side door. By piss blind luck I didn’t smash
into another car as I peeled backwards. As soon as I was clear, I slammed the
old girl into drive and mowed down a dozen more of the things as they descended
on my truck knocking them away like rag dolls. I speed towards the front of the
store and saw my little girl step out in to the madness and carnage. She was
standing there holding a bunch of plastic shopping bags, looking around in
total shock as these things whizzed around her. Three of the things spotted her
at once and began their mad dash towards her. She stood rooted to the ground as
I gunned it. I smashed the back ends of cars, crushed another clump of infected
as they ate some other unfortunate soul, and smashed into the three infected
just before they reached my little girl. She threw the bags of groceries in the
back, yanked the door open, and jumped in as another wave of dead, for that was
surely what they were, poured around the corner.
 

           
“Seatbelt!” I screamed as she rolled
up the window on her side and I looked into my rear mirror just in time to see
two cars smash into each other and block out exit, “Fuck!”

           
“Daddy!” she screamed as the things
rounded the back of our truck and reached for my open window. I nearly threw
out my shoulder working the handle to my window and got it up just as the first
thing reached my side. I looked around frantically for a way out as the things
began to climb into the bed of the truck and bang against the back window. Ahead
of me was a small plaza between the supermarket and a row of shops. It was
tight but clear of cars or any other major obstacle. I gunned the truck sending
the infected flying out the back or under the monster tires I had on the old
girl. We smashed our way across the plaza and out on the street which had
filled with the infected, smashed cars, and dead bodies. I twisted and skidded
all over the road trying to keep control of the truck and not smash into
something immovable. Stopping now would mean a very quick but brutally painful
death. By some miracle of statistics, I managed not to ram into anything and we
found ourselves racing down the onramp to I-40 East. Here the traffic was still
rolling smoothly as though the horror that had swamped the supermarket had
never happened. I switched on the radio and slowed down a bit not wanting to
get into an accident now that we had escaped the immediate threat.

           
I looked into the truck’s rear view
mirror and saw a semi-truck come crashing down from the overpass we had just
left blocking all the traffic behind it. Another car spilled off of the
overpass and cars already on the highway veered left and right creating a
pileup that completely blocked the eastbound lanes behind them. We had made it
without a second to spare.

           
“What the fuck were those things!?”
Georgie cried looking out the back window at the carnage piling up behind them.

           
“Language,” I said in a daze as I
bucked up and focused on getting us back home, “Infected or something. The
thing that’s going around. I didn’t think it would be this bad, not this far
from the city center,” I said watching the side roads for anything that might
indicate that things were falling apart. I saw cop cars and fire trucks racing
across the overpasses as we zoomed under them heading east to the foothills of
the Sandia mountains where, far back up in the hills, our little ranch was.
Soon I spotted smoke rising up on both our left and right, then behind us.
Whatever was happening, it was spreading and getting out of control fast.

           
Near the turnoff for our ranch, I
pulled into a gas station looking around for anything that might tell me the
things were close by. It all seemed quiet. People getting their gas, picking up
a snack and a soda, getting on with their lives with no idea of the horror
spreading across the Rio Grande valley, “Listen, Georgie,” I said putting my
hands on her shoulders and turning her towards me, “Go inside and get as much
water as you can while I fill up, OK? Just water. Then get back in here as fast
as you can.” Georgie nodded as I handed her one of my credit cards and bolted
from the truck. I took the other card out, the one I only used for emergencies
and topped the old girl off, then filled the four spare cans in the back. It
came to nearly two hundred dollars, normally an astronomical sum, but I had a
feeling I wouldn’t have to pay it back. As I topped off the last can, Georgie
came out pushing a small cart nearly overflowing with cases of water.

           
“The man asked me if we expected a
drought,” she said as she threw the cases in the cases, “I told him a flood was
coming and he looked at me like I was crazy.”

           
We jumped in the car and looked
around: still no sign of the infected, then pulled out on to the quiet rode and
headed up to our farm.

           
We pulled of the highway at the next
exit onto the frontage road, then down a few miles and turned left onto Matisse
Road. Matisse ran for just under a mile then turned into a dirt road that
would
 
take us up to our ranch. Georgie
got out as we pulled up to the gate and opened it to let us in. I drove through
the gate and watched her in the rear view mirror lock the gate shut then jog
back to the truck. It won’t hold them if they get this far, I thought, they’d
get over or push through it if enough of them came up this way. I could tell
Georgie was thinking the same thing as we made our way up to the main house
nearly a mile from the fence.

           
We got out and loaded our supplies
into the house without a word. Inside I began pulling out tools from cabinets
and said to Georgie, “Go get all the guns and ammo. Bring them up and lay them
out on the kitchen table. If anything happens, you scream, OK?” Georgie nodded
and disappeared down into the basement where we kept our stock of firearms.
Then I went out the back of the house to the old barn there.

           
When the ranch was doing good
business, we had bred and sold horses, Georgie, her mother Arli, and me. But
the market crashed and Ali died a few years back leaving Georgie and me with a mound
of debt and a hole that just couldn’t be filled. We sold off all the horses,
most of our gear, and all of the surrounding land except the main ranch house
to keep up with the endless medical bills that had piled up and eaten
everything we had just as the cancer had ate my wife and Georgia’s mother.

           
I rolled open the old barn doors. It
smelled of hot hay and old animals in the heavy heat. To the left was piles of
lumber I kept for fixing the few fences that I hadn’t replaced with wire,
grabbed a small cart, and began loading it up with two by fours. I then grabbed
the nail gun, tossed a few boxes of nails on top of the wood, grabbed my hand
drill and more boxes of screws, then headed for the house. Inside I called out
to Georgie who promptly answered from the kitchen. We’d do this for the next
few hours just to make sure nothing was going on, that everything was all
right. Or at least as right as they could be with what was going on in the
city.