Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse (22 page)

I braked hard out front of the house and revved the engine. Exhaust smoke hung heavy on the air, drifting in tendrils past the glaring lights. The street ahead was dark and deserted. I could feel the racing thump of my heart as I snatched expectant anxious glances at the shadowed front door of the house, and then into the rearview mirror.

“Come on!” I growled. I thumped the steering wheel with impatience and then planted my palm down hard on the horn again. “Come on, dammit!” Nothing happened.

I thrust the flashlight through the Yukon’s window
and aimed the bright beam at the house. The door was still closed, and the house stayed dark and silent as a grave.

Chapter Six.

I counted to five and then swore bitterly. I left the engine running and flung myself out of the Yukon. I ran across the lawn and threw open the front door.

“Jed?” I stormed into the living room, my voice rising in anger and frustration. “
Jessica? Where the hell are you?”

I hunted down the hallway and stood for a moment in the kitchen. I was breathing hard. My hands were trembling. I felt a surge of white-hot rage, and it was like a solid lump in my chest.

“Jed!” I called again. I burst into the bedroom growing wild with panic – and froze in the doorway.

Colin Walker was
crawling across the floor, propped up on his elbows, his legs dragging heavily behind him, and his face a rictus of horrible pain. There were deep lines of agony cut into his forehead and at the corners of his mouth. His skin was ashen. He was drenched in sweat, the flesh from his forearms raw and bleeding. The bed sheets were tangled like a rope around his ankles from where he had thrown himself from the mattress. He looked up at me and his eyes were black and haunted.

“Jessica,” he said. “Y
our brother took her.” The words were torn from him through ragged, exhausted gasps. He rolled onto his back and stared blindly at the ceiling. I dropped to my knees beside him. His chest was heaving, yet each breath was a shallow stab of pain reflected in his eyes.

“Where? Where did he take her?” I asked, not yet
realizing the dreadful reality – not yet understanding. “Are they hiding somewhere?”

Walker shook his head and swallowed. “
Pentelle,” he said. “He left us.”

I
stared blankly, the monstrous enormity of it dawning slowly through a heavy fog of disbelief. “You mean he kidnapped her?” I gaped at him.

Walker nodded.

I sat back on my haunches and stared dumbly paralyzed with shock. It felt like the walls were closing in on me.

The anger came like a wave, a terrible heaving surge of fierce animal rage
, hating Jed for his betrayal with an intensity that staggered me, wanting to thrash and tear at him until his blood splashed and his bones shattered beneath my fists.

“How long ago?” I asked, and there was ice in my voice.

Walker coughed – a wretched sound of pain. “Ten minutes after you left,” he said. “Jessica tried to get away from him, but he hit her. He hurt her, Mitch. Then he dragged her by the hair out the front door.”

Almost a full hour’s head start. It was a lot.

I shook my head. “They left on foot?”

Walker nodded. “To find a car.”

There were clothes scattered across the bedroom floor. The wardrobe doors were wide open. I snatched up the first t-shirt I could find and pulled it on. My eyes searched the rest of the room quickly. The nylon bag was missing.

“I tried to stop him…” Walker said weakly. “He took my gun. There was nothing I could do.”

I nodded. The pain in his eyes wasn’t just physical. He was Secret Service, and he had been unable to protect the person whose safety he was responsible for.

I eased Walker up into a sitting position, with his back propped against a wall, and his legs stretched out in front of him. He clutched at agonizing pain in his chest and blinked away sweat and tears from his eyes.

“I’ve got a car outside,” I said hastily. “But we have to move right now.” As I spoke I was hunting through the nearest wardrobe for leather belts. I found two and knelt by his feet. I looked up into Walker’s eyes. He was shaking his head mutely.

“I’m going to strap your legs together,” I explained. “I think they’re broken. But if I can bind them, I can carry you out to the car.”

“No…” he flapped his hand in a weak gesture of dismissal. “I can’t. I can’t make it. Leave me here. Getting Jessica back is all that matters.”

I lifted his legs carefully and slid the first belt under his ankles. I tightened the notches until the
strap was firm and Walker was biting down hard on his lower lip to stop himself from screaming.

“You’re coming with me!” I said. “You can make it!”

He shook his head once more. He seemed to be getting weaker by the minute. I raised his legs again, slid the second belt beneath his knees, and cinched the buckle tight as I dared.

Walker groaned. His breathing was shallow. His head lolled to one side and he stared at me from under heavy drooping eyelids.

“I can’t…”

“You can!” I insisted. “I need you, Walker. Jessica needs you.”

Precious time was seeping through my fingertips. Every wasted second put Jed and the girl further away – and brought every undead ghoul within a mile inexorably closer. In less than an hour it would be sunrise.

“Okay,” Walker said weakly. “But give me your gun. You can’t carry me and fi
ght off zombies at the same time. I’ll cover us until you get me into the car.”

That made sense. I put the old man’s gun in his hand and wrapped his fingers around it. He looked down at the weapon, his movements lethargic and uncoordinated. He frowned. “This isn’t your gun,” he said
, turning the weapon over in mild surprise. “It’s a Glock 19. Where did you get it?”

“From a dead man,” I said grimly, and then explained. “From the man who murdered Clinton
Harrigan – the same man I took the car outside from.”

The gun hung in Walker’s lap. I crouched down to heave him to his feet so that I could carry him, but he held his hand up suddenly. “The water bottle,” he pleaded. “It’s on the other side of the bed.”

I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t see the water bottle. “I’ll find you another one.” I said. I was on the verge of panic. It felt like hours had passed since I had discovered Walker, even though in reality it could only have been a few minutes. I imagined the night beyond the house filling with undead as they began to drift away from the burning house in search of fresh prey, and others closer were drawn to the sound of the Yukon’s horn and idling engine.

“Please…” Walker pleaded again.

I got to my feet. I was irritated. I hunted round the bed. I pulled at bed sheets, kicked clothes out of the way. I couldn’t see the bottle. I dropped to my knees and glared under the mattress.

Then I heard a groan
.

I looked up. My eyes went straight to Walker.
His head was leaning back against the wall, but his eyes turned in their sockets so that he was looking at me. His mouth was wide open, and the barrel of the Glock was thrust into his mouth.

We stared at each other for just
a split-second – long enough for me to realize with horror what he was doing and to understand why, but nowhere near long enough for me to move, or even cry out.

He pulled the trigger, and the bullet blew out through the back of his head, spraying the wall with blood and gore. His body slumped sideways like a falling tree, the gun still gripped in his lifeless hand.

“Christ no!” I swore in the agony of bitter frustration. But I didn’t scramble to Walker’s aid. There was no point. He was dead, and there was nothing I could do. I stood over his body, paralyzed for more seconds than I could spare, and then I went down on my haunches and gently prized the gun from his fingers while fresh blood pumped from the wound and seeped into the carpet around my feet.

Walker had sacrificed his life to buy me time – time to escape in the Yukon
to pursue Jed and the girl. He knew the gunshot and blood would draw the undead to the house. I dared not waste what small chance he had given his life for.

I ran through the
house, back out through the front door. I paused on the grassy shoulder of the road for a split second and cast my eyes towards the east. The night sky was lightening – the faintest, softest glow of a new day about to dawn through a veil of dark purple clouds.

All around me, the night seemed to be alive with
dangerous movement and sound. I saw drifting shapes like ghostly apparitions appear at the end of the road, and then I heard a sudden snarling growl from over my shoulder. I spun on my heel and threw the Glock up in an action that was purely reflex. A figure lunged for me – the body of a huge fat man, its skin withered and dry, its features desiccated and shriveled. The sound in the ghoul’s throat became a keening wail of triumph. It was so close – towering over me like an avalanche of rage – close enough to smell the rank fetid stench of its breath and hear the hiss of air across its throat. At the last possible second I pulled the trigger and the recoil of the gun was like a liquid pulse that jolted up through my hand and the muzzle blast beat thunderously against my ears.

The shot tore a ragged hole in the ghoul’s forehead and punched it backwards into the grass. I swung the gun in an arc. Behind the zombie
was another figure, its body spasming as it burst from behind a dense garden bush. It had been a woman. Now it was a shriveled emaciated ghoul with a wiry tangle of black hair, its arms and legs thin as sticks, its skin dry and dusty as parchment. I fired twice. The first bullet missed completely. I heard it ricochet away into the night. The second shot hit the zombie in the shoulder and flung it round in a tight circle. It teetered like that for an instant and then dropped to its knees, glaring hatefully over its shoulder at me, still snarling with venom.

I couldn’t waste another shot. I ran for the Yukon and flung myself behind the wheel. I stamped my foot on the gas and the car leaped forward, racing towards the sunrise – racing towards the
Interstate in pursuit of Jed.

The clock was ticking in my head again, but it was no longer counting the passage of elap
sed time – it was counting down like a time bomb.

Chapter Seven.

I drove east for a couple of miles, with my foot flat down on the gas pedal, hunched over the steering wheel and taking the corners with reckless desperation. The suburban streets were littered with abandoned cars and strewn with garbage. There were station wagons still in their driveways, their roof-racks piled high with camping gear and household possessions, and there were overturned wrecked vehicles, blackened and burned, or crumpled from collisions. And laying like litter on the streets were the bodies of those who had been savaged by the undead, tattered and dismembered, left out in the sun for the crows and rats to feast upon the carcasses.

I swerved and weaved around the strewn wreckage and the Yukon’s big tires screeched in protest until I came to an intersection where three cars had been rammed by an out-of control truck.

Suddenly I had to slow, and the initial surge of panic in me abated. I knew that Jed had an hour head start, but I also realized I couldn’t catch him if I wrecked the Yukon, or sent it careering off the hazard-strewn road. I eased off the gas and swung the Yukon through the crash site, my feet dancing between the pedals until I had the Yukon up on the sidewalk and then jolting back down onto the blacktop with clear road stretched out ahead of me.

I cut my speed to twenty and concentrated on casting my eyes well ahead for signs of trouble or danger. It felt like I was crawling – it felt like I was losing time, but I resisted the urge to risk accelerating.

I passed an intersection and then found myself driving into a messy tangle of streets that crouched ahead of me. It was a sprawling housing project, spread to the north and the west. There was a ragged little cluster of dark mean storefronts with their windows smashed. A couple of the buildings had been burned out and there were upended shopping trolleys on the sidewalk around a corner grocery store that had been looted. I drove past squat, dark brick buildings with narrow windows and past parking lots sprinkled with abandoned cars, their paintwork dewed with overnight rain. There was a basketball court, fenced in by high chain link and surrounded by brick walls sprayed with frantic graffiti.

The morning was silent. The air was hot and damp. I wound down the driver’s side window, but the air was
heavy with the putrid stench of rotting decay. Crows took to angry flight squawking in belligerent protest as I drove past, and then swooped down again to resume picking at the bodies.

Over my shoulder,
dawn was coming on quickly, the sun rising in the east behind banks of purple and grey clouds that were stacking up on the horizon. The sky changed to orange and the narrow streets filled with long uncertain shadows as the sun’s tentative light signaled a new day.

The edge of the housing estate was marked by a couple of vacant lots overgrown with grass and bordered by low wire fencing
, and then a gas station with a couple of weary pumps out front and windows that had been boarded over.

I drove on past an old billboard
and then a bar. The back of the bar was filled with wooden crates and metal beer kegs that lay scattered on their side like knocked down bowling pins. There were a couple of big trash receptacles in the parking lot and an old rusted out Chevy with blocks of timber under its brake drums.

I cruised
by slowly and then saw a tin sign on a post on the sidewalk, faded and pock-marked with rusty spots, pointing the way to the I-64. It was shaped like a shield, painted red and blue, with an arrow pointing left beneath it. I reached the next cross-street and swung the Yukon onto a wide stretch of level flat road – and had to slam down hard on the brakes.

There was a black and white Crown Vic cop car slewed across the road, its nose in the gutter. The driver’s door was open. On the blacktop beside the vehicle were the remains of a police officer
; his tan jacket torn to shreds. One of his shoes was a dozen feet away, the severed foot protruding from the leather. There was pump action riot gun on the road, and a mange-riddled black dog was standing over the body, gnawing on a bone. The dog looked up at the sound of the Yukon braking and it stared at me through the windshield with rabid wild eyes, its head sinking low between its shoulders as it growled.

Beyond the cop car was a green compact. The front end of the little car had been shunted into a telegraph pole and the driver
’s side of the vehicle was a mess of crumpled sheet metal. The windshield was shattered. There was broken glass sprayed across the hood of the car, shining in the sunlight like a thousand diamonds. The driver of the compact had been hurled head-first through the glass and his body lay sprawled across the bonnet. In his dead hand was a small black pistol.

I could guess t
he tale of the tragedy by what was written in the bloody footprints that spread in confused patterns across the road and in the trampled grass beyond. I could imagine the cop running the compact off the road and the impact as the little car went head-first into the power pole. Maybe the cop had been injured – maybe shot in the seconds before the collision by the driver – and he had dragged himself from the cop car bleeding from his wounds and drawn the riot gun from between the seats. There were empty shell casings laying in the gutter where the officer had opened fire before being overwhelmed by undead ghouls that had spilled from the surrounding buildings and torn his body to shreds.

The blood was dry, the cop car covered in a fine layer of dust.

I glanced to the buildings on both side of the road, suddenly overcome with the sensation that I was being watched. I felt my skin crawl with eerie dread. The buildings on either side seemed to hunch over me as I nosed the Yukon up over the curb and onto the grassy shoulder. The big tires gouged into the soft ground and the suspension swayed as I crawled around the wreckage and then dropped back onto the blacktop. I stabbed my foot down on the gas and the Yukon seemed to leap forward with relief.

The buildings became low rise and spaced further apart, then became lonely farmsteads scattered on the side of the road behind clusters of mailboxes. I drove for a couple of minutes and covered a couple more miles, then rode down a slight hill and back up again. There were more buildings in the distance, all of them built low to the ground, lit up from behind by the morning sun.

I drove by another roadside sign for the Interstate, and then I was cruising past a diner and a Texaco gas station with a mechanic’s workshop attached. There was a dented and dusty pick up truck parked out front of the diner. It looked like some kind of a farm truck.

I
slowed to a crawl as I passed. The diner looked like the kind of place the local cops would stop for their morning coffee and doughnuts. There was a flat area of beaten down earth alongside the building with a couple of abandoned cars parked on the shoulder of the road. I glanced back through the windshield – and then a flash of wild movement caught the corner of my eye and the sound of a door slamming tore the silence apart. My head snapped round. There was a woman lurching towards the side of the road. She had burst through the front door of the diner. Behind her loomed a dozen dark shapes, swarming out into the bright sunlight, snarling with maddened rage.

I slammed my foot on the brake. The Yukon dipped low at the nose and then lurched to a stop
on squealing brakes. The woman was hobbling towards me, dragging one of her legs behind her, limp and crippled. She was young, her face a white mask of terror. She flailed her arms at me, shrieking for help, and I noticed there was blood at the corner of her mouth, spilling down her chin.

I
snatched up the Glock from the seat beside me and thrust the gun out through the window, aiming past the running woman at the undead. They were convulsing and writhing as they hunted her, cutting down the distance between them and their prey, and moving with alarming speed.

“Come on!” I shouted.

The woman was sobbing, her mouth twisted into a grimace of pain and desperation, her eyes huge. She wrenched her head round and glanced over her shoulder then screamed aloud. The nearest zombie was just a few feet away. It lunged for her with its fingers seized into claws, but the girl rolled her shoulder at the last possible second and the ghoul’s fingernails tangled in the fabric of her blouse. She tore herself free, but she was weakening now. Her next steps were exhausted and slow, her legs uncertain beneath her. She was gasping for breath. She turned back to me, her expression desperate and imploring. I fired into the mass of undead and one of the ghouls staggered and then dropped to its knees but the others swept past and the sound of their voices rose to a clamorous evil roar.

I fired again and kicked
my door open. I fired twice more with a double-fisted grip, and the recoil of the Glock slammed up through my arms to my shoulders. One of the shots went wide and the other hit an undead woman in the chest and knocked her stumbling to the ground. “Come on!” I screamed hoarsely. “You can make it! Keep running!”

I thrust out my free hand –
urging the woman on. She reached out towards me, her fingertips tantalizingly close… and then one of the zombies caught hold of her hair and reefed her off her feet. The woman was flung savagely backwards like she had been struck full in the chest by the blast of a shotgun. She landed on her back in the middle of the road, and within an instant the undead were swarming over her body. I heard the woman cry out once – a blood-curdling scream of agony and terror – before I let my foot slide off the brake and mash the gas pedal to the floorboards. The Yukon tore away in a screech of blue smoke and I had to throw down the Glock and snatch at the wheel to keep the car on the road. I got a hundred yards clear and slammed the car’s door shut, then braked again, keeping the engine revving high.

In the rearview mirror I could see the undead dismembering the woman, fighting over the scraps of her flesh like vicious animals, their bodies drenched in
her blood as the corpse was torn to pieces. Her head rolled across the road into the gutter. One of the undead scurried after it and was instantly set upon by the others.

I drove away slowly, shaken and sickened.
I was numb, my mind replaying the dreadful few seconds, haunted by the helpless panic in the woman’s eyes at the instant she had been snatched away from me. I might have covered another mile or two before I suddenly realized the blacktop had become wider and then went into a slow turning rise with iron guardrails posted on both sides. I gave the Yukon some gas and crested the on-ramp doing thirty, with the four wide lanes of the I-64 suddenly stretched out before me.

I hung in the merge lane and touched the brakes until the Yukon was just crawling. The interstate ran straight as an arrow into the distance. About a hundred yards ahead was a framework of high girders mounted with huge green directional signs, listing the oncoming towns. I
ran my eyes quickly down the list. Pentelle was 23 miles away – I figured that meant about twenty miles of interstate before I had to look for the off-ramp.

Nothing moved on the road.
Nothing at all. The sun had burned away the early morning clouds and now the heat beat through the windshield so that I felt a prickle of sweat down my back. I swung the Yukon into the nearest lane and gradually built up speed.

The silence was eerie.
There were abandoned cars in every lane, doors left open, the contents of the vehicles scattered like debris. It was like some dreadful battle scene – as if the air force had overflown the freeway and strafed the torrent of refugees fleeing east. The road’s surface was gouged and stained with leaked oil and spilled blood. I saw bodies scattered amongst the wreckage, but not many.

I nudged the Yukon up to thirty-five then forty. On the
wide open expanse of the freeway I felt more confident. Navigating the wreckage of abandoned cars was like steering a slalom course but visibility was good: the road was flat and straight and I had a clear view of what lay ahead well before I needed to take evasive action. The miles slid slowly by, and as I scanned the horizon my thoughts drifted to Jed and the girl, Jessica.

Walker said Jed had hurt the girl. How badly?

He was a brutal callous man, and I knew he was capable of anything – even murder. But I also knew he was cunning and resourceful. He was making a run for Pentelle, but he wasn’t doing it out of honor or because the Vice President’s teenage daughter was at risk. He was doing it to save his life – to barter her safety for his own. In doing so he had forsaken Colin Walker and abandoned me.

Leaving me for dead I could understand. He had sworn he would kill me for the death of his wife and child. If he couldn’t kill me – then leaving me to die at the hands of the undead would be just as effective, if not as satisfying.

Walker was Secret Service, and he had lied to us from the moment we had pulled him and the girl from the wrecked helicopter. In Jed’s mind, that most likely justified the slow painful death he had condemned the man to.

I drove
on until I passed beneath another green traffic billboard, with arrows pointing to an off-ramp and the name of the nearby towns written in big white letters. I glanced up at the sign.

Pentelle
: 12 miles.

I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel. It was mid-morning. The sun was blazing through the windshield, and the early morning overcast had given way to a blue cloudless sky. On the side of the road grew dense thickets of trees and the freeway began to undulate up crests and then down into gentle green valleys.