Voodoo Plague - 01 (5 page)

The heat and
humidity in the cab of the truck had become oppressive.  Sweat poured off both
of us, soaking into the upholstery and continually adding to the humidity. 
Both of us had slept off and on throughout the day, startling awake whenever
there was an aggressively loud impact on the truck from the crowd of infected. 
I didn’t think we had long.  We were both severely dehydrated and recently she
had started to cry out when her legs were racked with spasms from muscle
cramps.

The two women on
the hood had not moved all day.  Amazingly they had remained in the same
squatting position despite the long hours and growing heat.  They may have been
infected, but they still had human skin and both showed signs of a severe sun
burn, yet neither indicated that they felt any discomfort.  I on the other hand
had a left arm that was nearly blistered from the sun coming through the driver
side window.  However, with four more hours of direct sun on the cab of the
truck and surrounded by infected, this was the least of my worries.

“We’re going to
die in here, aren’t we?”  Her voice was a dry mumble, barely audible above the
constant snarling and banging from the infected.

I thought about
giving some upbeat answer, something to give her hope, but in the end decided
she deserved honesty, “Yes, I think so.  We likely don’t have much longer in
this heat.”

She sighed
deeply, the sound conveying her resignation to her fate.

“I don’t even
know your name,” she said.

I smiled.  Names
had not been at the top of my priority list.  “I’m John.  John Chase.”

“Very nice to
meet you, Mr. John Chase.  I’m Rachel Miles.  And I never thanked you for
saving my life earlier.”  Her voice gained a little strength as she talked, but
she was still mumbling and her face was shrouded with stringy, sweat soaked
hair.

“You’re
welcome.  Not sure I did you any favors.”  I looked out the windshield and met
the eyes of the woman directly in front of me.  She snarled but otherwise
didn’t move.

Rachel was quiet
for a long time.  So long in fact I was thinking about checking to see if she’d
passed out, then she started talking in a low monotone.  She told me she was in
Medical School and only a year away from graduating.  She told me about growing
up in North Carolina and moving to Atlanta after graduating from college.  Her
parents were both dead and she had no siblings or other family.  She talked
about dancing in the strip club and sleeping two hours a night so she had time
to study and attend class.  Then she told me the story of how she and I met in
a hotel parking lot with infected people trying to kill us.

I listened to
her talk, undoing my pre-conceptions about a woman stripping for a living.  She
had a job that paid the bills so she could do something better with her life. 
That was more than most people could say these days.  Then I wondered if there
was anyone other than us left to worry about careers and having a better life.

I happened to
glance at the ignition with the screwdriver hanging out of it while I had these
thoughts and my heart leapt in my chest.  From the back of the ignition switch,
hanging below the dash and barely visible were several wires.  These had to be
the wires that would start the truck.  After all what was an ignition switch
other than a device that mechanically closed an electrical circuit so the
engine would start and run?

I grabbed the
tool kit off the floor where I had dropped it and dug through until I found a
small pair of wire cutters.  Rachel picked up on my excitement and sat up
straight, adrenaline momentarily overcoming dehydration and muscle cramps.  I
reached under the dash and carefully clipped all the wires, then stripped about
an inch of insulation off the cut end of each wire.  Methodically I started
touching wires together; blue to white/blue, green to white/green, red to
white/red; the red to white/red finally lighting up the dash and the radio
started playing a country music CD.  I had found the equivalent of the ‘key on’
position of the switch.

Rachel grabbed
my arm in excitement and a small cry escaped her lips.  The two female Zombies
on the hood of the truck could tell something was happening and they became
agitated, bouncing up and down while snarling and slapping the windshield with
their hands. 

I firmly twisted
the wires together and picked the blue and white/blue to try first for the
starter.  I touched them together and nothing happened.  I fumbled as I grasped
the green and white/green wires, caught my breath and touched them together. 
There was a spark and I got a hell of a jolt of electricity that made me drop
the wires, but I was rewarded with a momentary whine from the truck’s starter.

To her credit,
Rachel kept her mouth shut.  She could have easily been one of those people who
have to offer an opinion or suggestion or criticism about everything, and I was
mildly surprised that she remained silent.  Obviously at some point in her life
she had learned the lesson of keeping your mouth shut if you didn’t have
something constructive to offer.

The women on the
hood became agitated and it spread like wild fire to the crowd of infected that
surrounded us.  Dozens of pairs of fists started pounding on the glass and body
of the truck.  I looked out the windows and noticed for the first time that the
crowd had grown sometime during the day to what I guessed was in excess of
150.  Maybe all the noise the ones that originally cornered us made had
attracted others and others and so on.

The truck
lurched side to side and I looked to my right to see the entire passenger side
of the truck lined with large males.  They were hitting and pushing on the
truck, and there was enough flesh there that if by accident or design their
efforts happened to coordinate they could flip the truck.  With a burst of fear
I returned my attention to the wiring, trying not to let myself be distracted
by the increasing range of motion of the truck as the infected rocked it side
to side.

Firmly grasping
the starter wires I made sure I was only holding them on the plastic insulation
and firmly touched them together.  The starter whined for a couple of seconds
then the big diesel engine in the truck rattled to life.  The starter continued
to whine so I quickly separated the wires that powered it and it went quiet,
the diesel settling into a smooth but loud idle.  I bent the wires away from each
other and sat against the back of the seat as one of the female infected on the
hood threw herself against the windshield with a screaming snarl.  The blood
dripping from her nose made a smear on the windshield that reminded me of a
Rorschach ink blot test, but I didn’t have time to look at it and figure out
what I saw in the shape.

The horde of infected
around us went into a fever pitch of snarling and slamming into the truck, and
now both women on the hood were repeatedly slamming themselves into the
windshield in an attempt to get to us.  In front of us was a crashed VW and
there was a small Toyota behind us with no room to steer around either one.  I
put my foot on the brake and shifted the Ford into reverse, the heavy duty
transmission going into gear with a satisfyingly hard thunk.

I said, “Hold
on,” and hit the accelerator.  The truck lurched backwards and crunched into
the side of the Toyota.  I kept feeding throttle and the oversized tires
grabbed the pavement and we pushed the Toyota back ten feet. 

One of the
female infected on the hood had lost her balance and fallen off when the truck
suddenly moved, but the other held to the lip of the hood closest to the cab
with one hand and pounded her fist on the windshield with the other.  The one
who had fallen off was on her feet and would have already leapt back on the
hood, but the crowd that had been on either side of the truck had flowed into
the empty space left when I had backed up and she was temporarily blocked.  In
the rear view I could see several infected that had been between the back
bumper and the Toyota that were now crushed.  What would have been mortal
wounds to a normal human, rendering them unable to move, seemed to have little
effect on the infected other than to slow them down because of damaged hips and
legs.

I shifted into drive,
turned the wheel to point us around the crashed VW, and fed throttle to the big
truck.  We moved and immediately started feeling thuds from the suspension as
the push bar on the front of the truck knocked infected down moments before we
rolled over them.  Large males held onto the mirrors on each side of the truck
and the females in the back of the truck began smashing their heads against the
rear window.  My adrenaline surged when I heard the rear window crack from one of
their impacts and I started swerving across the road to throw them off balance.

Our speed
quickly built to 40 and I kept swerving.  This kept the females in back
distracted just trying to stay in the truck and the males on each side held on
with a death grip, legs swinging almost horizontally every time I cut the
wheel.  The female on the hood was now holding on with two hands and smashing
her head into the windshield, but the thick glass was harder than the human
skull, infected or not.  She cocked her head back and launched a massive head
butt into the glass.  I felt as much as heard the impact, and watched the feral
light in her eyes die just before she went limp and slipped off the front of
the hood and under the big tires.

“Holy shit,”
Rachel said.  “Did you see that?  She just bashed her own brains out trying to
get to us.”

I was
concentrating on driving and keeping our unwelcome passengers occupied and
didn’t answer.  The males on either side of the truck started smashing their
heads into the side windows each time the momentum from the swerve brought them
back against the truck.  I risked a glance in the rear view mirror and did a
double take.  The two females in the bed of the truck had found a way to brace
themselves and were preparing to start attacking the rear window again.  I
turned my attention back to the road and slammed on the brakes, the big truck
skittering across the asphalt in protest.  The females in back slammed forward
into the back window, but not as an attack.  One of the males lost his grip and
tumbled forward, coming to rest 30 feet down the road and immediately lurching
to his feet and starting towards us.

I sat watching
him and watching the two women in back in the mirror.  The remaining male was
on Rachel’s side of the truck and he started pounding on the window with his
fists and smashing his head into the glass.  Infected were hurrying towards us
from surrounding parking lots and the horde that had previously surrounded us
was in hot pursuit about 200 yards behind us.

“What are you
doing?  Go!”  Rachel’s voice pitched up an octave on the last word and she
grabbed my right arm hard enough to hurt.

“Wait,” I said,
and kept my concentration on the mirror.

The infected in
front of us had just reached the push bar when I floored the accelerator and
stood on the brake pedal.  Diesels aren’t known for neck snapping acceleration
and I needed a sudden surge forward for what I wanted to do.  The big engine
quickly built to a roar and as the rear tires started to break lose I let off the
brake and kept my right foot hard down on the throttle.

The truck shot
forward, battering the male in front out of the way, but the best reward was
watching the two females in the rear tumble backwards out of the bed of the
truck.  I had timed it perfectly and as they were standing up the sudden
acceleration was like pulling a rug out from under their feet.  In the mirror I
could see them both hit the pavement, tumble, then gather themselves and start
pursuing us.  Not only were they more agile than the males, they were faster
too, moving at least as fast as a quick jogging pace.  Nothing short of a flat
out run was going to out distance them.

We were finally
free of all of our riders except for the male that stubbornly hung from the
passenger mirror.  Rachel shied away from the passenger side of the truck,
pushing against me as he started trying to break the glass with his head
again.  Ahead of us an abandoned delivery truck for the Atlanta Journal
Constitution sat half in the traffic lane.  I steered for it at 50 mph and lined
us up to drive right down its side with no clearance. 

The infected was
still holding on when we reached the abandoned truck, and I steered us to
neatly peel him off the side of the truck.  There was a thud and a splash of
blood onto the side window then he was gone.  I had managed to not lose the
passenger side mirror in the maneuver and looking in it I could see him lying
in an unmoving heap in the road behind us.  His head must have hit the back of
the parked truck at speed and judging by the amount of blood on our window it
had pretty much disintegrated like an overripe watermelon. 

I steered us
back to the middle of the road and reduced speed, making sure I would have
enough reaction time in case we needed to avoid an unseen obstacle.  Rachel
leaned over to the side window and peered out to make sure we didn’t have any
other riders.  My side was clear and when she sat back she looked at me and
smiled.

“That was pretty
quick thinking,” she said.

I smiled back,
hands shaking and stomach fluttering from the adrenaline that was still pumping
through my system.

I said, “Climb
into the back seat and make sure the bed is clear.  I don’t see anything in the
mirror, but all I can see of the bed is the last couple of feet and the inside
of the tailgate.”

“All clear,” she said a moment
later, crawling back into the front seat and resuming her position, pressing
against me.  I didn’t complain and I didn’t read anything in to it.  I had even
stopped noticing she was basically naked.  I was freaked out.  She had to be at
least as scared as I was.  Physical contact with another human was still part
of our animal instinct, and there was absolutely nothing erotic or sexual about
it.