Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories (15 page)

"Back off, man. Just back off," the driver shouted, glancing at Keith with hatred filled eyes.

"You need to stop right now. Pull over," he replied, still able to hear Janet in the back of his mind telling him he was crazy and not really able to disagree. No sane man would do what he was doing.

"You're ruining everything; don’t you know what you're doing? They deserve to die.” The driver was ranting, muttering to himself as he gave Keith's car another aggressive nudge into the barricade. Keith however, ignored it. He was looking at the road ahead.

A car had broken down, its hazard lights flashing where it had pulled up half on the footpath ahead. The driver, a brown haired woman, was on the phone. She was paying no attention to her seven-year-old daughter who was wandering around behind the car.

Keith and the driver of the eighteen-wheeler locked eyes, and, this time, no words needed to be exchanged. They both knew they were going to hit the woman and child.

Sometimes, decisions are made on instinct and without thinking. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to act and deal with the consequences later. This was the brief thought that flashed into Keith’s mind as everything played out in horrible slow motion. He could see in the manic look the driver of the truck had that he had no intention of stopping, and Keith was blocked in and would not only be left behind when his car slammed into the stranded woman's, he would likely kill both her and her daughter. He took a second to think of Janet, his spouse for more than thirty years. He thought he knew her enough to understand, and that if he were about to die, she would understand what he had done and why he had done it. Decision made, Keith slammed on the brakes, and turned the wheel towards the truck, aiming for the gap between the cab and trailer and hoping he wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

Everything happened in perfect clarity. The screech of tires on asphalt, the sickening adrenaline as his car angled under the trailer, the wheels seeming to be incredibly large so close up as they obliterated the front of his car, the impact jarring his neck as he was thrown back against the barriers. The silent horror as the trailer, its wheels launched by the front of Keith's car, was lifted and flipped onto its side, dragging the cab over with it, the rear set of wheels hitting Keith’s car from the back as they slid, by, throwing him into the steering wheel face and chest first and knocking the wind out of him. Glass shattering, steel crumpling and bending, tire smoke filling the warm morning air. The sight of the trailer and truck sliding along on its side, skewing into the oncoming traffic. More glass breaking, more shrieking of metal, then impact, as another car hit Keith from behind, flipping his car over onto its roof. Then, silence.

THREE

He blinked, the taste of blood thick in his throat. He could hear Mick Jagger in his head speaking to him. He blinked again and coughed, the taste of blood intensifying.

Mick wasn’t talking to him, he was singing. The sound was coming from the radio which, despite the impact, was still working.

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black

With flowers and my love both never to come back

I see people turn their heads and quickly look away

Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day

I look inside myself and see my heart is black

I see my red door I must have it painted black

Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black

Paint it Black. One of Keith's favourites and in his opinion one of the best Rolling Stones songs of all time. He was lying on the roof of his overturned car, his shoulder hurting, his neck sore, but alive, somehow miraculously alive. As Jagger continued to sing his tale of depression and the bleak future of mankind, he recalled what had happened. The clock display on the dashboard was still operational too, and although upside down he could still read it. 8:18 AM. He couldn’t quite believe so little time had passed, and knew he must have blacked out for at least a few minutes after the impact. Fighting the pain, he climbed out of the shattered window onto the bridge, crawling through the glittering broken glass and getting to his feet, fighting against nausea. He looked around at the chaos, trying to make sense of what had happened. Cars were strewn across the bridge, more than should have been there from the accident. He was confused. His own car had come to a stop just ten feet from the one which had broken down, its hazard lights still blinking, but of the woman and child, there was no sign. It was then that it hit him, the problem with the scenario. There had been a major road accident in a public place which was filled with traffic and commuters went to and from their workplaces, and yet, there wasn’t a single person in sight. Keith looked at the cars on the bridge behind him and saw a sea of vehicles abandoned, doors left open. Nobody checking if they were alright, nobody offering assistance. The bridge was deserted. He limped towards the overturned trailer which was on its side and skewed across the length of the bridge. For a moment, he thought he was going to throw up, and had to lean against the dirty, exposed axle underneath the vehicle, but it passed and he was able to continue. His blue shirt was stained with blood, but the pain was secondary to him. It was a distant thing to the utter confusion he felt at the lack of activity and people on the bridge. He moved to the cab, making his way to the front, the massive chrome grille hot to the touch on his right side. The cab windows had been blown out, the driver on the ground a few feet from it. A blood trail led from the cab where he had been dragging himself on his belly away from the vehicle. Keith limped towards him and turned him over, grimacing at the mess. His face was a bloody mask, skin sheared away from his cheek and exposing a white point of bone beneath. His fingers were bloodied, the flesh raw where he had been dragging himself along the road. One of his legs was badly broken, the bone piercing his jeans and staining them a deep red.

The driver screamed as he was turned over, flinching away from Keith then relaxing when he saw who it was. "You...this is all your fault," the driver said, blood streaming from his nose and ears.

"My fault? You were driving like a maniac. I had to stop you. You're crazy you-" he stopped speaking. He looked at the driver, and something clicked into place. He had seen that expression earlier when he was chasing him down. Keith had mistaken it for madness or anger. He saw now that it was fear. The driver was terrified.

"You don't understand. I was going to drive it off the bridge. I figured it would be safe when it was underwater. Now....you killed us," the driver muttered.

"We're not dead. We're still here and everything is fine. We'll be alright."

"Everyone is gone. Don't you get it?" the driver said. The words chilled Keith. He had noticed, and to hear someone else vocalise it made it all the more real to him.

"Gone for help maybe," Keith said, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. The idea that everyone had gone for help was ludicrous. The driver coughed, more blood slipping onto his cheeks. "We were lucky, we didn’t run, so they didn’t get us. Everyone else...." He drifted off and started to sob. "Why didn’t you just let me drive the thing over the edge?"

Keith looked over his shoulder at the trailer, then back at the driver. “What was in the trailer? What was it you were carrying?"

"I tried, I wanted to stop it....you shouldn't have gotten involved. You killed us all."

Keith glanced over his shoulder then stood. "Stay here. Try not to move, I need to go take a look."

"Don't go back there, you need to run, get out of here."

"Shut up and sit still," Keith said. He glanced around, hoping to see someone else to take charge of the situation, then realising the two of them were still alone, limped towards the rear of the trailer, his stomach knotted in fear of what he might find there. One of the rear doors was open and lay on the tarmac. The other was still closed and swinging loose against the frame. There was blood on the ground. Keith crouched and looked inside the trailer, almost vomiting at the smell. He knew that smell. He once found an old forgotten chicken breast in the fridge after weeks of trying to trace the awful smell. This was the same but amplified a thousand fold. A thick, ammonia-like smell that burned the nose. It was the smell of rotting flesh. Flies buzzed around in excited urgency around the rear of the trailer, as drawn to the smell as he was repulsed. He crouched and looked inside. The trailer was empty as far as he could tell. The light didn’t quite penetrate into the furthest reaches of the container. Part of him wanted to go in and investigate, but he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t willing to put himself through it yet. Instead, he returned to the driver, who was back on his belly and trying to crawl away. Once again, Kith flipped him over, and once again the driver shrieked until he recognised who had a hold of him.

"I told you to stay where you were. Where the hell do you think you're going to go with your legs in that way? You need to stay here until the police come," Keith said.

The driver laughed, his eyes rolling in his head as he checked his surroundings. "You don’t get it, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Nobody can help, nobody is coming." As he said it, an explosion mushroomed into the sky from the city. Keith watched it roll into the air. "What the hell is this?"

"It's the end. They're infected. They died and then came back."

"What are you saying? You had a truck full of zombies? This isn’t the movies. This is real life."

The man grabbed him by the shirt, smearing more blood onto the material. "That's exactly what I’m saying. Exactly," the man said.

Keith wanted to give him a million reasons why it couldn’t possibly be true, and even more why nobody would believe him when another explosion came from the city.

"See? It's started. Nobody can stop it now. Infectious. They're infectious."

Keith looked from the man to the city, to the deserted cars all around him. "Let’s say I believe you. What were you doing with a truck full of zombies?"

The man grinned, an expression that looked horrific with his teeth covered in blood. "I’m just the driver. Transportation. I didn’t believe either, I thought it was all bullshit, just like you. I had to look, had to see then-" he held up his bloody hand. There was a bite mark, the perfect indentation of an upper and lower jaw on the wrist. "I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, I just wanted to stop them before I... Before I...."

"Before you were turned too," Keith said.

The man nodded. "I can feel it, man. I can feel it changing me. You have to help."

"You were trying to kill yourself," Keith said.

The driver nodded. “So I could stop it. They said these things hate the cold, so I was going to take the truck to Canada, leave it in the wilderness somewhere."

"Who told you this? Who gave you your orders to transport these things?" Keith said, now believing the man without question.

"That isn't important. None of it matters now anyway. I was hoping to get to Canada, but then I started feeling sick, started bleeding out of my nose, my ears. The bite...it hurts. It really hurts. So I decided I’d get on the bridge then take the whole thing over the edge. The waters cold, right? I figured that would do it, it would keep it contained."

"Until I came along," Keith mumbled.

"Exactly."

Keith looked at the blood trail leading from the cab to where the man lay on the ground. "You were heading for the railings. To throw yourself over," he said, looking at the driver.

"I don’t want to be one of them. I can’t."

Keith looked over towards the city and the black plumes of smoke curling into the air. Helicopters buzzed around in the sky and he could hear the distant whine of police sirens.

Janet.

The thought of her being back there with whatever he had unleashed was frightening. He looked at the driver, who was staring back at him, letting him figure it out for himself. "I can’t go back, can I?"

"No. You'll die if you do. You'll probably die even if you don’t."

"I have to. I've got people back there. Family."

"This isn’t like the movies. These aren't slow things that shuffle around. They are fast, more like animals than people. The way they spread and infect....It can't be stopped."

Keith didn’t want to hear that. Not when Janet was still at home alone. He hobbled back to the car, searching for his phone and the earpiece so he could at least call. The earpiece he couldn't locate, the phone, however, was in the foot well. It was damaged, the screen cracked. He tried to power it up, growing increasingly frantic. In the background, he could hear the distant rattle of gunfire from the city - his home which was now under assault from whatever he had unleashed. As he watched, another fireball rolled into the sky, the sound reaching him a few seconds later. He tossed the phone on the seat and went back to the driver, intending to ask him more questions. He walked around the turned over eighteen-wheeler and saw he was too late. The driver had found a jagged piece of steel from the crash, and used it to slit his own throat. He stared at the sky, eyes wide, blood pooling under him. He now realised he was alone and at a literal crossroads. He could go back to where the city was in obvious chaos and try to find Janet or he could go on to Canada, try to find help there, professionals who could give him the assistance he needed. He looked down at the dead driver, and considered that there was a third option, but that was one he wasn’t prepared to take. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon, then realised there was little point until he knew what he was dealing with. Instinct told him that these were not the creatures he had grown accustomed to watching on television, but something new, something uniquely dangerous and potentially life threatening. He would aim to reach Janet, but that was the end goal. First, was to make it off the bridge. After that. He would see how the lie of the land was. He started to walk, hobbling towards the fire and the screams.