Anything But Zombies (12 page)

The Greyhound thundered toward the highway, churning up dust.

“Watch the bus,” Steve warned.

“I
am
watching the bus.”

Through the cloud forming ahead, Callie did her best to keep the Trans Am on a straight path. The coach loomed large in the view ahead. She waited for the crunch of metal against metal, but it didn't come. As the dust cloud dissipated, she found herself trailing behind the gray behemoth by some twenty yards. The
thud-thud-thud
of tiny bodies bumping against the windows matched her racing heartbeat. She could see the heads of the bus passengers in the dirty glass windows, looking back at them. The bus was full.

What do I do?
she wondered.
Try and overtake and keep the shoal with them, or slow a little, let these people get away?

Before she could make a decision, the swarm suddenly lifted away from their car, rising in the desert air like a giant vampire bat where it hovered, thinking, deciding . . .

Then the shoal descended, pushing ahead with a sudden and frightening burst of speed. The cloud of dark bodies swarmed along the near side of the bus. Only then did Callie realize that the Greyhound's entry door was open. The passengers were exposed. The cloud of creatures swam through the air toward the opening.

“Oh, Jesus,” Callie whispered. Wishing for more speed, she remembered her earlier trick and reapplied the accelerator. The engine growled, a satisfying sound. The Trans Am ate up the road, pulling level with the front of the bus.

The bus driver was a gray-haired man, bulging stomach pressed against the wheel. He looked out at them through the open door with an angry expression.

“Close your door!” Callie shouted.

“What?” the driver said.

“Close the door!”

The driver shifted his gaze to the right-hand mirrors. Only then did he see the swarm crawling along the side of his vehicle. The angry scowl melted away, replaced with bone-white fear. He looked back at Callie and Steve.

“I can't,” he said. “It's broken.”

A hollow pit opened in Callie's stomach. All her hopes for those people dropped into it. The door was open, the shoal was coming. What else could they do?

What else could they do?

The sea of dark bodies rushed in through the open door, filling the interior of the Greyhound like a deathly cloud. Callie and Steve watched as the windows of the bus began to discolor, jets of dark red blood darkening each panel. A chorus of screams sounded above the roar of engines. She saw a woman's face appear at one of the windows, squirming bodies attached to her. Her mouth was stretched in a dark oval, hands tearing at the floating bodies, but failing to remove even one. The bus driver fought against the invading swarm, batting the ravenous bodies away with surprising vigor, but before long, he was overwhelmed. He stumbled toward the open door, his upper body lost in a swirling vortex. He tumbled forward, hitting the highway blacktop and lost in a spray of red mist. The Greyhound veered into the path of the Trans Am. Callie tried to keep the car on the road, but the sheer size and weight of the bus sent them into the dunes. The wheels shuddered against the rough terrain.

“Slow down!” Steve screamed.

He was right. There was no way they could outrun the runaway Greyhound. She stabbed the brake with her left foot. They fell forward as the car rapidly dropped its speed.

Everything seemed to slow down, all sound dropping to a whisper. The front wheel of the bus hit a boulder and the entire fuselage crumpled and buckled. The sound came to them seconds later, the screeching sound of complaining metal. The Greyhound rose up in the air as if it was about to take flight but the body twisted in the air, turning over. The bus slammed down hard on the desert floor, on the door side, and then began to slide. The vision was lost in a dense cloud of brown dust. Callie had to concentrate on keeping the Trans Am on the highway but found it hard to tear her eyes away from the tragedy unfolding in the dunes. The Greyhound came to rest as they rode past it. Callie watched the unmoving vehicle, a terrible ache in her heart as she imagined the horrors taking place within.

“We should . . .”

“What?” Steve said.

She stared at the bus.

“There's nothing we could have done, Callie. There's nothing we can do now.”

She hated him for saying it, but she also knew he was right.

“Drive,” Steve said. “Let's just . . . drive.”

Callie pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. The ache grew bigger the farther they traveled up the highway.

The invasion came out of nowhere.

One minute the entire world was going about its usual business—waging religious wars and petty civil skirmishes, ignoring the poverty-stricken while the one-percenters masturbated over their own insane wealth—and the next minute everyone—
everyone
—was in the same boat. Suddenly everything about the human race became childish and absurd as only one thing counted . . .

Survival.

The shoals appeared all over the world, in every country, every town, every corner of the globe, eating up every piece of living matter in their path. Animals, humans, even birds fell prey to the new threat. The shoals swarmed across the planet like a plague, devouring, consuming, leaving nothing but bones in their wake.

Where had they come from?

There were various theories, but everyone was so busy running for their lives no one had a chance to investigate, consolidate, or even evaluate them.

There had been a meteor shower two days before the first shoal attacks. That was a fact. A
huge
meteor shower, all over the globe. So what did that mean? Aliens? An attack from beyond the stars? And if so, what did that mean? If this was humanity's extinction, what did it actually
mean
?

No answers. Everyone was running.

thud

thud-thud

“What is that?”

Callie looked in the rearview mirror. Steve looked over the passenger seat and surveyed the back of the vehicle.

thud-thud-thud

It came from behind the rear seats, down low.

“Can't be,” Steve whispered.

“You said the windows were all closed,” Callie said, fear rising in her voice.

“They were!” He glanced around. “They are!”

“Then how did it get in?”

“I have no goddamn idea!”

“Wait,” Callie said. She looked across at her brother's terror-stricken face. “At the gas station. Did you replace the fuel cap?”

Steve's eyes bulged. “Oh shit.”

thud-thud

thud-thud

He unbuckled his belt and climbed into the back. He bent down into the rear seat foot well, trying to locate the source of the banging.

thud-thud

Steve sat up. “But if it got into the gas tank, it can't get through to us, can it?”

Callie scowled at him in the rearview mirror.

“I mean, the walls of the tank are metal, right?” Steve said. “They can't eat through metal. Can they?”

Callie pressed her lips tight together. She hoped he was right, but something, some dark, cynical voice spoke in the back of her mind.

“If it senses there's food in this car,” she said, “if it knows we're here . . . who knows what it's capable of?”

Steve looked down, horrified. “How far to the Fort?”

“No idea.”

thud-thud

“Drive faster,” Steve said.

“Doesn't matter how fast I drive, Steve. If that thing gets through . . .”

thud-thud-crack

“Oh Jesus,” Steve said.

Thud-crack

Thud-CRACK

“It's comin' through!”

Callie closed her eyes for just a moment, tightened her grip on the wheel. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be how it ended. So close to safety. Life couldn't be that cruel, surely?

Life is cruel, girl.

The voice.
His
voice.

Life is shit and then you die.

“Shut up.”

She opened her eyes and studied the long straight road ahead. Could they make it? It couldn't be too far now. Once they reached Fort Leavenworth the army would protect them, they would have ways to keep safe from the worldwide threat.

Survival. That was everything, wasn't it?

SURVIVE.

Behind her, the space beneath the rear seats exploded in a shower of splinters. Steve screamed. The interior of the Trans Am became a whirling, swirling storm of chaos. Callie caught a glimpse of the invading body, a fat thing with long, jagged fins and oversized teeth. It bashed into the windows, the dashboard, the roof, delirious success after breaking out of its prison. Then it froze in the air to Callie's right, hissing like a snake. Its dead, alien eyes fixed on her. Its jaws spread wide.

You deserve this.

No.

No.

NO!

Callie twisted the wheel hard to the right. The car went into a spin. Everything after that was a blur.

Her head struck something. The creature bounced into the seat behind her. Stevie was little more than a scarecrow floating around the cabin behind her. Sound and vision became indistinguishable. Muted noise and blurred images.

The car flipped.

bang

rolling

bangbang

rolling

bangbang

The car skidded along its roof, metal screeching on the asphalt. Sparks. The smell of burning. Skidding and skidding.

Then the car came to rest and silence fell over everything. Callie opened her eyes, blinking. She coughed. She was upside down. Her seat belt dug into her breasts. She glanced around the car, looking for Steve and . . . the thing.

No sign of the creature.

Only Steve's arm was visible, stretched out along the backseat. Bloody smears. No sign of movement.

“Stevie?” she said.

No answer.

Where's the creature?

She looked around hurriedly. No sign of it inside the car.

Something trickled into her mouth. She put her hand to her lips and came away with bloody fingers.

Before she could look up, the pain rushed in. Unbelievable pain.

She screamed.

“My leg!”

More blood dripped into her face. She craned her neck, trying to look up (down) at her leg. She knew it was bad. In the maelstrom of the crash she had sensed that some part of her had been broken, but it was a subconscious thing. Everything seemed surreal, dreamlike.

“Stevie?”

His fingers twitched, flexed.

He made a sound halfway between a groan and a cry.

“Stevie, are you okay?”

“I . . . I dunno,” he mumbled.

“I think my leg is broken,” she said, sounding surprisingly calm and rational under the circumstances. This news spurred Steve into action. He sat up, and that was when she saw the gash in the side of his head. His golden-blond hair was stained crimson. His eyes looked misty, unfocused.

“Broken?” he said. “Like, really broken?”

She considered a sarcastic retort but it felt wrong. “Yeah, really broken,” she said.

“Where are we? How far are we from the Fort?”

Callie looked out through the windscreen. Dusty highway stretched ahead, but she thought there was a bump on the flat horizon. A town? Leavenworth?

“Close,” she said. “I think.”

Stevie clambered through from the backseat, undid her seat belt, and took her weight as she fell. His arms were surprisingly strong. He had grown up so much since they had set out on the road. The kid brother she had fought to protect was turning into a young man.

She hissed at the pain flaring in her damaged leg, but allowed Steve to ease her out of the wrecked car onto the warm asphalt.

“Wait,” he said. “Where's that thing? Where'd it go?”

“Crushed, hopefully,” she said, gasping against the bolts of agony.

Stevie laid her down gently. As he looked her over, blood from his head wound trickled down his face but he didn't appear to notice. He glanced at her leg, frowned.

“Do you think you can walk?” he said.

“No.”

“It's not far. I can support you.”

In that moment she loved him more than she ever had. It had always been her job to look after him, now he was trying to return the favor.

“I bet you could,” she said. “Thing is, the shoal is coming.” She raised her head slightly, looking down the highway. “They can't be far behind.”

“So . . . what?” Stevie said. “What do we do?”

“You can walk. Run. You can get to the Fort, get help. I'll wait here. Wait for you.”

Horror sparked in his eyes. “No way. What if those things come?”

She looked into his deep brown eyes, narrowed her gaze. “Run fast.”

The realization settled in his face. He raised her hand and kissed the back of it. “I love you, sis.”

He stood up, his jaw tight, set in determination.

“Love you, Stevie. Now run.”

She rested her head on the road, staring up into the clear blue sky as Stevie's footsteps retreated into the distance. Smoke drifted overhead, the acrid smell of smoldering upholstery biting the lining of her nostrils.

Then she heard the hiss, the long exhalation. Turning her head, she saw a dark shape crawling out from under the hood of the Trans Am. Like her, the creature was badly wounded. Its undulating fins on one side were shredded. And yet, still it forced itself on, inching across the asphalt toward her, jaws snapping.

All she could do was wait, watch it come closer, closer . . .

More smoke belched from the rear of the Trans Am, accompanied by a sharp bang. Flames jetted out into the air. Sparks flew.

The sparks hit the blacktop around the creature and its fat body was suddenly engulfed in fire. It screeched. Its body bucked.