One Blink From Oblivion (9 page)

The screeching is no longer in the distance. Max is surrounded by it. The teen and crooked-neck are both close enough to take him at any time. The example he’d made of the deputy is the only reason they haven’t torn he and Vinny to pieces already. These creatures may be a lot of things but mindless doesn’t seem to be one of them. Lucky for Max a shotgun gives no outward sign when empty. The bluff will probably only last him a few seconds but he will take all he can get right now.

Max wonders if he can get a shell out of his pocket and into the shotgun before the creatures can reach him. He’s almost positive that he can’t but sees no other recourse. After doing his best to balance Vinny on his shoulder Max lets go of him and jams his hand into the top left pocket of his cargo pants. Before his fingertips can even tickle a single shotgun shell, Crooked-neck begins his approach. It moves its entire body faster than Max can move his hand and Max knows that he is not long for this world.

The sound of a racing engine and blinding headlights draw Max’s attention to his left and moments later the infected is being dragged under the back wheels of Vinny’s Audi. Brooke skids to a halt between the Taurus and Max. She scrambles through the separation in the front seats, reaches into the backseat and pulls the door-handle while pushing the door open as best she can. Max takes over and swings the door open wide. He tosses Vinny into the back seat and dives in on top of him. The teen –still fixated on his original prey- has now arrived at the car and is reaching for Max’s leg still dangling precariously outside of the door. Brooke hits the accelerator just in time to prevent Max’s leg from being ripped off. As they speed away, the teen angrily flings the contents of his other hand at the car and a bloodied cat leaves its imprint on the rear windshield. Beyond the blood-smeared glass, flames can be seen rising in the distance.

“Damn, it’s good to see you!” Max cannot contain his joy over their narrow deliverance from the jaws of death.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, the car was out of gas and then Steve almost got me. I didn’t know…” Brooke’s stream of consciousness is interrupted by a muddy and weary voice.

“I love you too man, but could you get the hell off of my nuts?” Vinny was finally awake.

***

They reach the freeway in ten minutes, including a brief stop to remove the feline remnants and the gas pump nozzle from the vehicle. While Brooke drives, Max goes about the task of loading all weapons. He opts to alternate standard buckshot and shredders in the shotgun in an effort to conserve the few explosive rounds he has left. Once that job is complete, he begins instructing Brooke and Vinny on the use of each firearm. Brooke regards Max’s extensive knowledge on the subject with some trepidation.

“And you know all of this how?”

Max does not raise his head to reply but offers simply, “My father always told me to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. I believe this situation qualifies for the worst. Anyway, I wasn’t always a model student,” Max flourishes this remark with a sarcastic grin, “I got my early education in places that most people only go to die or get high.”

Max had always felt quietly ashamed of his past, but now for the first time he found himself thankful for it -at least the aspects that could help him and his friends to survive this most unlikely situation.

When Max is done giving his seminar on modern weaponry, he turns his attention back to Vinny’s shoulder.

“How are you holding up?” he asks.

“I’ll survive,” Vinny turns to Max with a raised eyebrow and continues, “Hey man, I don’t know how but you saved my ass. I was sure as shit that I was going to die alone in that cell.”

Max replies, “You wouldn’t have died alone. Lisa was there with you.”

This draws a chuckle from Vinny that is quickly abbreviated by Max’s elbow in his side. Max instantly feels like an insensitive ass. In the rearview mirror, he can see Brooke’s eyes filling with tears. In all of the commotion, he had neglected to mention that the perpetrator of Vinny’s crippled shoulder had been the infected Lisa. And that he had splattered her about the cell walls with no hesitation and surprisingly little remorse.

He often wondered, if Brooke knew the things he was capable of would she even want to know him. This thought was partly to blame for the distance he kept between them. Max was good at reading people and had indeed known for some time how Brooke felt about him, but between his past and Vinny’s crush on her he saw no alternative to just remaining friends.

Noticing an overturned hand basket in the front passenger seat and judging that now was not the time for an explanation to Vinny or Brooke about what transpired in the cell, Max deftly switches topics, “What’s for dinner?”

Brooke wipes away her tears with the back of her hand and tosses an assortment of junk foods and energy drinks into the back seat along with an apology.

“That was all they had, sorry.”

Vinny ate what he could but had little appetite. More than anything, he was physically and mentally exhausted.

“Can someone tell me please what the hell is going on?” asks Vinny with obvious frustration.

The energy drink is apparently kicking in and he is beginning to think straight again.

Brooke regards Vinny in the rearview mirror but says nothing.

“Hey, if you know what’s going on someone damn well better clue me in,” his words begin angry but trail off in a flush of pain.

Max speaks up, “Calm down, the first thing we need to do is find you a hospital. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

“My shoulder will be fine. Let’s get home,” Vinny says, doing his best to put on a game face and mask the pain.

“Vinny, it’s extremely important that you tell me the truth now. Did Lisa bite you?” Max asks trying to mediate the level of concern in his voice.

“No man, I never gave that bitch a chance. I unloaded my magnum in her gut after she fucked up my shoulder, and the next thing I knew I was in the car with you grinding on me.”

“That’s good news!” Brooke can’t suppress her relief.

“That is good news.” Max is a bit more reserved.

“I’m glad everyone’s happy that my shoulder’s broken, but who gives a dry hump if she bit me? And while you’re explaining that could you please tell me how Lisa went bat-shit like Vanessa?”

A hard expression comes over Max’s face, “This won’t be easy for you to believe but…”

***

After some time on a surprisingly ghostly freeway, the road signs indicate that they are approaching Ventura. The only other cars they’ve seen on the road were pulled over to the shoulder or stopped dead in the lanes. Twice they past full-on accident scenes where the possibility of survivors was damn near impossible. In the unlikely event that anyone had survived, Max, Brooke and Vinny could only hope that the lucky party still possessed the ability to walk –or run as the case may be- since they had no intention of stopping to investigate. The risk was just too high.

After a short debate about what to do next, Brooke convinces them that since they have no familiarity with this area the best thing to do is find a phonebook and look up hospitals, clinics or anyplace that might be able to help Vinny -despite his pleadings to the contrary. The front of every phonebook contains the address of every major hospital nearby and the back usually contains a simple map of the area. Given the situation all such places were probably overrun but they had to do something for him, at least for his pain. No one could argue with this logic, but the prospect of facing more biters makes Max uneasy. He and Vinny narrowly escaped last time, and though she hasn’t filled them in on the details –judging by the condition of the car and flames in the sky behind them as they fled- Brooke had encountered her own fair share of trouble. Truth be told Max didn’t argue this course of action because after almost writing Vinny off and taking his life back in the holding cell –even if no one knew but him- he was in need of a little redemption. Getting Vinny some help would ease that burden.

They begin to check exits, looking for the most industrialized area they can find and hoping to avoid densely populated neighborhoods that could be teaming with the infected. They pass the next exit-ramp. A brief survey of the surrounding area revealed too many houses. As they approach the onramp from the same street, they’re surprised to see another car coming to join them on the freeway.

It’s a red convertible, with an attractive thirty-something brunette behind the wheel. Her hair is up and being held by a seashell comb. She’s wearing a three-button yellow crew neck top. On her left wrist, she’s sporting what looks to be a diamond tennis bracelet. Being near an exit-ramp affords them some light from tall amber colored streetlamps and a look of concern can be seen on the brunette’s face but comes as no surprise given the situation. Her expression softens when she notices them coming up beside her. She is obviously pleased to see someone else free of infection. This reaction tells Max more than he wants to know about how wide spread the infection is.

She begins to yell something at them, but at their current speeds, she may as well be a mime. Brooke motions to her to slow down and Max rolls his window down hoping to inquire about the nearest hospital. If she is a local then she could save them precious time.

Now traveling at about thirty mph they can finally hear what the brunette is saying, “Do you know where the hospital is? My husband needs a doctor.”

Max answers, “We were hoping you were going to tell us.”

Max finds it odd that she is looking for a doctor for her husband but appears to be alone in the vehicle.

As the cars have come closer together Brooke can’t help but notice that the brunette looks to have had some cosmetic surgery –the eyes that seem hard to blink and forehead stretched as tight as a drum are usually a dead giveaway- and is probably closer to forty-five than thirty something.

Obviously disappointed by Max’s response the brunette continues, “We were camping on the beach and he let out this god-awful scream like he was passing a kidney stone,” as she relays her story, worry lines become apparent on her forehead and betray her age, “now his skin has gone pale and I don’t know what to do. I stopped to ask for directions but it’s like a ghost town. The only person I saw just ran away from me as soon as they saw him. Where is everybody? It seems too early for it to be so quiet.”

Max answers, “Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”

“I tried but it’s all dead air. I think my radio is on the fritz.”

Max notices for the first time that he can’t see a passenger side headrest, possibly indicating that the seat is lying down.

“Ma’am is your husband with you in the…”

Before he can get the words out, a deranged looking man in his fifties with graying short blonde hair and a khaki button-down shirt pops up from the passenger seat. Blood is trickling from the corners of his mouth. The yellow tint of his eyes is unmistakable even at their current speed and distance from the convertible. His chiseled features and muscular shoulders indicate a high level of fitness but contrast his sickly gray pallor. Still, even in the flash of a second that Max has to look at him, something in his face seems all too familiar. His wife is still hanging on Max’s last words and takes no notice of her fully infected husband sitting erect behind her and preparing her dismemberment.

Brooke is only able to get out the ‘look’ part of ‘look out’ before the brunette’s husband bares his teeth and buries them in his wife’s right arm. Blood fills his mouth and sprays from between his teeth as he bears down harder and harder. His wife –inexplicably without screaming- turns her head toward her husband just in time to see and feel him withdraw his head. His teeth remain clenched and he takes a sizeable portion of arm muscle complete with tendons and skin with him. Since this is the arm she’s driving with, she immediately loses control of the vehicle and before Brooke can react the convertible slams hard into the right side of the Audi. The vehicle’s metal side panels crunch with an agonizing groan and the Audi is sent careening toward the center divide rails on the left shoulder of the southbound lanes. It hits them with crushing force and all three passengers are flung sideways and forward upon impact. Vinny’s left arm clashes with the plastic door panel and his shoulder cracks. The sound it makes is muffled by his cries of agony. Brooke’s head flies into the glass of the driver’s side window previously splintered by Steve. The glass gives way and takes the brunt of the impact, sparing Brooke’s head from injury in the process. Max gets off the easiest since he’s sitting on the right and has nothing on his left with which to collide. The pain and soreness of whiplash is undoubtedly in the mail but he could have been much worse off.

Two loud pops can be heard in succession followed by a whoosh of compressed air escaping the tires. Metal grinds hard beneath the car and friction born sparks fly as the Audi comes to an abrupt stop against the center divide.

After rebounding off of the Audi, the convertible has the adverse reaction and punches almost headfirst into the k-rails on the right shoulder of the freeway. The brunette -who had foolishly been riding without a fastened seat belt- is instantly ejected and flies head first –and again without a sound- over the k-rail and down several stories to the pavement that awaited her below. Her descent is far less than graceful, and upon impact, her body spreads open like an insect on a windshield. Her thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-four physique is reduced to a roughly twelve inch high sack of bone, flesh and fluids. Ironically, her husband, who had his seatbelt securely fastened, is still firmly planted in the front passenger seat with his face buried in a deployed airbag.