Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse (23 page)

I edged the Yukon up to forty-five and swept around a long gentle curve as the road cut a path between two grassy wooded slopes.

The Yukon came out of the curve and I touched the brakes cautiously. I was in one of the middle lanes
, and up ahead, at the top of a gentle crest, I could see the debris of several cars and a truck, stretched across the road.

A mile out I cut my speed to twenty. The road looked completely blocked. The truck was
overturned on its side and slewed across two lanes. It had been carrying a load of scrap metal. The blacktop was cluttered with twisted pieces of iron and broken glass. There was a body of a man nearby, laying flat on its back. Crows were perched on the bloated stomach, feasting on the remains. Near the rear of the truck was a little red Japanese hatch. The front of the car had been completely crushed when it had been side-swiped by the out–of-control truck. The car sat hard down at the nose with both its front wheels broken from the axle. The passenger-side door of the hatch was open and there was a trail of thick swerving skid-marks burned onto the blacktop.

I cut my speed to ten, the Yukon barely creeping forward, and I hunched over the steering wheel feeling a sudden cold hand of despair clutch at my heart and wring the
last glimmers of hope from me.

Parked up against the waist-high concrete Jersey barrier that divided the east and westbound lanes was a grey Ford Taurus. The car looked old and grimy. It looked like it was wedged between the wreckage of the red hatchback and the concrete deflector, like maybe it had tried to burrow through the narrow gap and become jammed. Both the driver’s side doors were wide open, and there was a body
lying out on the road near the rear wheel. I crept closer, cursing bitterly under my breath. I considered backing up all the way to the off-ramp – but it was miles behind me and I knew if I did that I would never reach Pentelle.

I threw the transmission into neutral and sat fuming while the big Yukon’s engine softly gurgled and bubbled.
There was a gap between the front-end of the crushed compact and the tail of the truck – but not wide enough for me to drive through without risking serious damage to the Yukon. I glanced over my shoulder: the forest pressed close to the side of the road, dense and impenetrable.

I stared hard at the fringe of undergrowth, and at that instant an unexpected movement caught my eye. It was the body lying by the wheel of the Taurus.

I saw it move.

It was a man. He was laying on his side, with one arm thrown over his face and the other close to his body. I saw the man’s hand move, and realized too late that it was clutching a gun.

Time seemed to stand still.

I saw the man begin to roll his body, his arm coming away from his face as he pushed himself up onto his knees. I heard the Yukon’s engine roar like a wounded beast as I slammed the selector into ‘Drive’ and crushed my foot down hard on the gas. I saw the man with the gun raise his arm, swinging it in a fluid arc until I was looking down the barrel.

I saw the man’s face.

It was Jed.

The Yukon raced towards the tail of the overturned truck, swinging like a scythe as I fought to steady the wheel. I wrenched it over at the last moment and there was a flash of red across the windshield as the little compact disappeared under the nose of the Yukon and then the sound of a tremendous metallic bang that punched me forward against the steering wheel. Sheet metal tore and I was thrown violently against the door. My head cannoned forward then bounced back into the headrest as my hands were wrenched from the wheel and the car burst through the narrow gap, shunting the compact round in a crackle and shriek of metal that jarred my teeth.

The tinted rear window suddenly exploded. I lifted my foot off the gas and tapped the brakes, then spun the wheel in a hard lock to the right. The Yukon swished her big cumbersome tail in a screech of blue smoke and went into a slide. But I was going too fast, the vehicle still swaying and rocking on spongy springs. She went up onto
the off-side wheels. I had a split second to cry out in alarm and panic – and then the car rolled over onto its side.

I was thrown across the cabin as the car slewed in a shower of sparks and thunderous noise. I felt my head crack against something hard and heavy, and for an instant everything went black. I blinked. I was bleeding – blood trickling from a gash in my scalp and running down my face.

My head was pounding. The cabin filled with dust and smoke. Through the singing in my ears I heard another gunshot and an instant later the ricochet as the bullet zinged away into the distant morning sky.

I fumbled frantically for the
Glock. It was wedged under the seat that had been wrenched off its runners and jammed against the door of the car by the impact. I clawed at the weapon and tugged it free, then braced my back and kicked the windshield out.

I stumbled from the wreckage
and my legs collapsed from beneath me. I went down on the sun-baked tarmac, sagging to my knees. I slumped against the hissing grille of the Yukon, and dragged myself around until I had the vehicle between myself and the roadblock.

Another shot ripped through the still morning air and I flinched instinctively.
A flash of metallic sparks was torn from the fender, not a foot from my head. I tucked myself into a ball. My hands were shaking, yet my mind was suddenly very clear, the reality very certain.

I was going to die.

I rolled my shoulders and stole a glance back along the freeway. I could see Jed, leaning over the hood of the red hatchback with the Glock in both hands, his arms braced to steady his aim. He was firing from just fifty feet away – firing from the crest of the rise. It was only a matter of time.

I turned and stared ahead
into the distance. The road fell away in a gradual slope for another wreckage-strewn mile, and then flattened out and widened into an extra lane in the shadow of a freeway overpass.

The off-ramp to
Pentelle.

It was so close, yet impossibly far away.

In desperation, I glanced sideways to the fringe of dense trees. I narrowed my eyes, judging the distance. They were about thirty feet away, across two lanes of open road and a narrow belt of dry tufted grass. The woods were deeply shadowed and thick with scrubby undergrowth. I screwed my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

“I knew you’d f
ollow me, fucker!” I heard Jed shout clearly in the stillness. “I knew you’d come after the girl. You’re a dead man!”

I said nothing. I felt my heart beating like it wanted to break out through my chest, and an uncomfortable warm wetness across the front of my shirt that puzzled me. I checked the
Glock had a round in the chamber and heaved myself into a crouch. My hands felt numb, my fingers swollen. I glanced down and realized the top of my little finger of my left hand had been severed below the first knuckle. Blood was oozing from the wound, the shock deadening the pain of the injury. I ripped my t-shirt open and used the long shreds to bind the stump and then used my teeth to pull the knot tight.

“You’re insane, Jed!” I shouted out, buying myself a few precious seconds of time. “You’ve got a head full of faulty wiring. You’re a murderer!”

There was an eerie silence and I used those moments to brace my back against the grille, ready to push off hard and make a desperate dash for the tree line.

Thirty feet
. The distance suddenly telescoped out before me and looked like a million miles. I knew I wouldn’t make it.

“What did you say?” Jed snapped hotly.

“I said you’re fucked up in the head!” I shouted back. There was another impossibly long silence – suspiciously long. I stole another glance around the edge of the Yukon.

Jed was gone.

Three shots suddenly rang out, three viciously loud retorts, and the air erupted around me. I flinched away, covered my head with my hands, and realized that Jed had crept around behind the Taurus and then climbed over the Jersey barrier to outflank me from the middle of the road. The bullets ripped into the grille, just inches from my head and shoulders.

I sprang to my feet and
fled towards the trees, weaving and jinking my body, running doubled-over at the waist with the blood pounding in my ears and every step on trembling fear-filled legs.

Inst
antly the air around me erupted, hot against my cheek, buffeting me with the whiplash of gunfire.

I wasn’t going to make it.

I reached the shoulder of the road. My feet crunched over loose gravel and then I hit the narrow belt of long stringy grass that grew in brown ragged tufts along the verge. I lifted my legs high, like I was running into a foaming ocean of breaking surf.

Ten
more feet.

I ran with my jaw clenched tight, anticipating the next shot, the muscles in my back seized, awaiting the bullet that would knock me down.

It had to come.

It had to come now.

I threw myself down into the grass. I hit the ground with such violence that the air was punched from my lungs. My teeth slammed together and I tasted the coppery tang of blood in my mouth. I rolled over, and then suddenly plunged into a narrow drainage ditch as bullets thrashed and beat at the grass with a sound like a bullwhip.

I groaned. I was laying face down in a trench, like a shallow grave. The
ground beneath me was muddy red clay. The trench was as wide as my shoulders and I edged my body round until I was lying on my side, gasping raggedly as I tried to suck in lungsful of air and stop myself from shaking. Sweat and blood trickled into my eyes. I scraped my hand down my face and wiped it on the tatters of my shirt, then slowly inched my head above the height of the drainage ditch.

Through the long grass I could see Jed. He was kneeling behind the Jersey barrier with a clear shot to where I had fallen. He had the
Glock held in a double-fisted grip. He was waiting.

I moved in inches, ever so slowly raising the gun and aiming for the small blob of Jed’s head through the untamed tufted blades of grass. It was an awkward position for I had no way to support my head to sight the weapon without presenting myself as a target.

I squeezed the trigger – a one-in-a-million shot – and saw the bullet strike the concrete barrier about ten feet to Jed’s left.

“Fucker!” Jed threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Is that the best you’ve got?” he mocked me, shouting in rage and hatred. He opened fire and the
grass around me was thrashed by the pass of shot. I ducked my head – buried the side of my face down in the damp mud and counted to five.

“I should never have trusted my baby girl to you,” Jed shouted from the middle of the road. “I should never have relied on you to protect my wife. You’re not man enough – you never were!” his voice was enraged.

I was pinned down. Trapped. I knew if I got to my feet and tried to reach the line of the trees, Jed wouldn’t miss.

It was hopeless.

“Susie wasn’t your child, Jed,” I cried out. “She was mine. She was my child, and Debbie was my woman.” Suddenly I couldn’t stop the words. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter any more. I had to tell him now. “We were in love. Your wife was leaving you, Jed. She was coming with me,” I shouted. “That’s why I picked you up from the bus station. I was driving you back so we could tell you.”

There was a deathly silence – a silence that was heavy with monstrous shock. It lasted a full minute and there was not a sound in the world.

“You’re… you’re lying!” Jed roared. “You’re a fuckin’ liar!”

“No. I’m not.” I stood up, knee-deep in the ditch. I got to my feet slowly, my hands by my side and I was dizzy and swaying. My chest burned, and the pain in my left hand was a fierce throb – but I was calm and without fear for the first time in weeks.

“No, Jed,” I said, and there was regret and sadness in my voice. “I’m not lying. Susie was my daughter, not yours.”

I stared across the open ground, past the wreckage of the Yukon to where my brother was rising from behind the Jersey barrier. He was shaking his head in incredulous disbelief, and I saw the
Glock in his hand waver.

“Debbie…?”

I nodded. We were about thirty feet apart. Too far for him to see the sadness in my eyes, too far to hear the heavy tone of my voice. The pain of losing her still ached within me like an open wound that would never heal. “We never meant for it to happen, Jed. We never meant to fall in love…”

Jed turned away,
then spun back suddenly. The gun came up, aimed squarely at my chest. “No,” he moaned. “No.” The Glock wobbled in his hand, then steadied. He glared over the weapon at me, his face cold and brutal and merciless. And then his hand fell to his side and he bent over at the waist like he was in physical pain. “No!” he roared.

I stood there. I didn’t move.

Jed snapped upright and his arm shot out, the gun in his fist. There was murder in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve carried this secret for years,” I went on, shaking my head with regret.

Jed’s gaze went dead, and the rage within him finally erupted. “Now you’ll take it to your grave!” he roared.

He pulled the trigger, and I felt the bullet punch me hard in the chest, a little off center, with a force like a
sledge-hammer. The impact hurled me round and I staggered backwards. I clutched at the pain – clamped my hand over the wound – and tumbled backwards into the long grass.