Ridgetown: A zombie apocalypse novel (12 page)

As it came within a few feet of landing on the truck, Luke was jerked back into reality as Allister violently swerved the truck. Luke grabbed onto the seatbelt that he had hastily connected around his waist and before he could adjust his weight properly, the truck violently swerved again, further in the same direction. Luke watched as the zombie crashed into the road where the truck had been and ragdolled into a car that had been abandoned at the side of the road. The impact crumpled the car's door inwards and for a second the zombie didn't move.

Before Luke could wonder if it was dead, it hopped to its feet and instantly began running towards the truck. The speed of it was mind blowing to Luke. He guessed they were doing at least thirty miles an hour and the creature was matching their speed. He heard noise behind him to his right and looked through the window to see Mark winding down his passenger window and readying a rifle he carried with him. He leaned backwards out of the window and gave Luke a smug grin.

"Don't worry," he shouted over the noise of the truck and the wind rushing over him, "I got this!" He gave Luke the biggest smile he could and brought the rifle up, looking through the scope.

Luke had seen Mark practice with a few different rifles, BB-Guns and paintball guns they had found over the months. Whenever he was lining up what seemed to be an impossible shot, a wave of calmness would come over him. Mark would enter a zone where nothing could distract him, Luke had seen Allister and the others try to put him off by shouting or dropping things to try to divert his attention but it never worked. Luke thought he did it by concentrating on his breathing, noticing how he would slow it down to the point of holding his breath. Now he watched Mark hanging out of a moving truck, focusing on some kind of super zombie with his rifle and he looked calmer than ever. For a few seconds, Mark was completely rigid apart from the wind blowing his hair.

Mark fired and the recoil from the rifle jerked his shoulder. Luke's attention switched from Mark to the zombie at the sound of the gunshot. He looked just in time to see the bullet tear through an area around its neck and jaw. Blood and chunks of mouth flew into the air and the creature was thrown completely off balance, spinning it three hundred and sixty degrees. Without missing a beat and now missing half of its face, the creature continued running towards them. Then it began to speed up.

Luke shot his glance back to Mark whose grin had turned into a stunned expression. Mark blinked repeatedly and looked between Luke and the zombie that was still chasing them.

"Faster!" He shouted, practically singing each syllable. "We need to go faster..." He quickly shuffled back into the truck and Luke heard him saying something to Allister in a hurried and panicked voice. The truck began to speed up but as it did, so did the zombie.

Luke didn't know what to do but felt like sitting there and doing nothing would end with him getting eaten. He looked at the pile of corpses in front of him and decided a bad idea was better than no idea.

He unfastened his belt and got up from his seat, instantly deciding it would be safer if he crawled on his hands and knees. He could hear Mark shouting something from the front of the truck but couldn't make out what he was saying. Luke was terrified of falling off the truck and breaking his legs, lying on the road unable to move while that thing got closer to him. He shook the thought from his head and concentrated on his current task, Mark had told him multiple times that it was okay to get scared. Being scared kept you alert as long as you didn't let it control you and the best way to do that was to concentrate on the task at hand. Mark said that the bravest people got scared but headed into danger anyway, that was what made them brave. At that moment, Luke would have traded being the bravest person in the world to stop feeling so terrified.

Luke crawled towards the corpses and looked for the strap furthest from him. He knew he was going to have to crawl over the bodies and looked at the arm that had fallen free earlier. He started to panic as he imagined crawling over them and one not being dead, grabbing at him and biting him. He tried not to think about it, he looked at the zombie that was still matching the speed of the truck and didn't look like it was getting tired.

Luke's breathing got quicker and shallower, he was panicking and it was going to get him killed. Before he could think about it any further, he forced himself to climb over the bodies. Almost instantly, he could reach the strap that was furthest from him. He grabbed the brass handle and squeezed it, loosening the strap and pulled it back to release it fully.

He let out a yelp as the corpses beneath him shifted at the release of tension holding them down, suddenly panicking they would release and he would fall off with them. He quickly backed up onto the bed of the truck and grabbed the handle for the second strap that held the bodies down. He had barely released the tension when the first corpse fell free from the truck, hitting the road and bouncing a couple of times. The zombie chasing them managed to sidestep it without falling but slowed down doing so.

Encouraged by the effect of one falling corpse, Luke pulled hard on the handle and released the second strap. The movement of the truck caused the bodies to slowly move closer to the edge of the flat bed and Luke barely had to push the top few bodies to create a chain reaction that saw them all tumble off the back.

Each corpse acted independently and erratically, bouncing in different directions and at different speeds onto the road. The chasing zombie jumped over the first two but caught its leg on another. It stumbled before being struck by another and was spun around, not even seeing another corpse strike it square in the back, sending it sprawling onto the ground. It became indistinguishable amongst the pile of corpses as the truck sped away. Luke assumed Allister and Mark had seen what had happened but was happy to sit back in his seat on the back of the truck and put some distance between them and the super zombie before they discussed what exactly that thing was and where the hell it had come from. Relief temporarily washed over him as he slumped down and Luke couldn't help but feel proud of himself. His plan had just potentially saved all their lives. He thought about how he would tell Helen later, or even better, let the others tell Helen about his bravery. No one needed to know just how scared he really was.

Liz watched Helen as she opened the air filter housing on one of the cars outside the house. She was less than gentle as she threw the old one away and started pulling out bits of plastic, dumping them just as unceremoniously.

After Helen had mentioned working on cars to Mark, the rumor mill had worked quickly. Mark had mentioned it to Liz who mentioned it to Ryan. Ryan had the most experience with anything car related even though he wasn't a mechanic. He was self taught when it came to fixing things and cars had been something he found fun and challenging.

Before the outbreak, Ryan had played around fixing his own cars when something went wrong because he hated paying for a garage to fix it. After coming home one day and giving his wife a list of reasons how the garage had ripped him off this time, she had finally told him to stop moaning and do it himself next time. Seeing it as a challenge, Ryan had told her he would. Sure enough, when his ten years old German saloon had started sputtering and coughing when he was driving it one day, he bought an owner's manual and got on the Internet to work out what was wrong himself. After a couple of hours research and a few attempts replacing the parts he thought were broken, he finally fixed it. It had taken a lot longer than a garage would have taken and it had cost him more in parts that he hadn't needed to buy, a new socket set and a manual but the sense of satisfaction Ryan got from fixing the car made everything worth it. From that moment on, he was hooked.

When the exhaust fell off his wife's car, Ryan fixed it. When the heaters stopped working in his neighbour's car, Ryan fixed it. People started bringing their problem cars to him to fix and Ryan loved it. He only ever charged whatever the part or materials cost but people would pay for any tools he needed as a thank you, allowing him to build up quite a substantial array of tools.

When cars didn't need fixing, he began to look for ways to improve them. He'd customise the interiors of people's cars if they wanted something practical adding to it like a phone charger fabricating into the glove compartment or monitors putting in the headrests so a colleague's kids could watch DVDs when they went on long drives. He began to look at ways to make his car faster, admitting defeat when he learned about getting his car's ECU chipped and realising he couldn't do everything himself. As his car got faster, he felt it was important to make sure it braked faster. Then he looked at its handling and the effect different styles of suspension had on cars.

In the space of four years, Ryan had gone from a complete novice regarding the inner workings of cars, to an oracle whose opinions and advice were sought after by people on the Internet. If the dead hadn't started coming back to life, Ryan might have evolved his hobby into a business. However, as the world became a place where people were forced into fending for themselves in order to survive, Ryan's skills had become invaluable. He and his wife had literally collapsed on the doorstep of the church in Ridgetown and been taken in by Mark and the others. His wife hadn't survived because they didn't have the right equipment to treat her, it wasn't the community's fault and Ryan had never held it against them. What he did do was to make sure that Ridgetown stayed stocked up with as many supplies and pieces of equipment as they could store and to do that, they needed vehicles, vehicles that needed to be tough and reliable. He made sure they were tough by constantly customising them as best he could, implementing as many new innovations as he could think of. Making them reliable meant constantly keeping them well serviced, so when he heard that Helen knew her way round an engine, he jumped at the chance to get some help.

Ryan had given Helen a set of spark plugs, an oil filter, an air filter and a bottle of oil and pointed at one of two cars outside Liz's. He didn't even give her any verbal instructions, wanting to know if she'd understand what he wanted her to do just by looking at what she was given. It was obvious that she did and she was quick at doing it as well. She didn't worry about carefully unfastening parts that she knew she could rip out and cast aside, that was something Ryan admired.

Helen was removing the grill from the front bumper when Mark, Luke and Allister returned in the flat bed truck. It was obvious from the look on their faces that something had happened. They pulled up outside Liz's house and disembarked. Helen stopped what she was doing and walked over with Liz and Ryan, Mark addressed her first.

"Hey, how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay, no injuries. Not bitten if that's what you were thinking?"

"No," Mark shook his head apologetically, "I wasn't implying..."

"Don't worry, it's fine. Liz and Ryan have been telling me about this place, it seems like you all look out for each other."

"Yeah, that's kind of our philosophy." He changed his attention from her to Liz and Ryan, "We've just had a run in with a zombie."

Liz gave him a confused look, "Just one? Isn't that a blessing after yesterday?"

Allister spoke up, "This one was different, it wasn't like anything we've seen before. It was huge, in a muscly type way. It looked like a zombie that had been hitting the gym since the outbreak."

Luke jumped down from the truck, "I managed to stop it." He didn't want to sound like he was bragging but he wanted everyone to at least be aware he had been brave.

Liz's confusion intensified, "What do you mean muscly? We don't know much about whatever this plague is, but one thing we do know is that it's degenerative. We don't see many fast ones because of how rapidly it affects new victims."

"Oh, you haven't seen fast like this." Mark began to explain how far it had jumped and the force it had landed with as well as how it had kept pace with the truck. He told how he had shot it in the face but it had barely had an affect, Luke interjected with how he had managed to stop the creature long enough for them to get away but felt like the shine was taken off his story when he had to admit that he hadn't killed it.

Helen listened to Mark's description and waited for a gap in the conversation to speak, "We call them Leapers."

Everyone looked towards her in shock.

"I'm surprised you haven't seen any before. We've also seen one that Dennis called a Screamer, ironic because it doesn't make a sound."

The others looked at each other in confusion.

"What?" It was Mark who spoke for them all, breaking the stunned silence.

"We were holed up once, overlooking a farm and saw what we thought was a woman wandering through a field. Her hair was long and disheveled and so was her clothing. Scott was going to shout out to her but Dennis stopped him, there was something not quite right about the way she was walking. Dennis looked through his binoculars and told us to look for ourselves. She was definitely dead, her eyes were a solid red colour and her skin was all shriveled. The weird thing was that she was walking along with her mouth wide open as if she was screaming but there was no sound coming out."

The others stared at Helen waiting for her to continue her story, eyes transfixed on her and hanging on her every word. Helen felt slightly uncomfortable about the attention but she continued.

"We watched her wander around the field in front of our house for about half an hour. Her movements were sudden and erratic. She'd take a few steps one way and then turn around and take a few steps in another direction, the whole time she didn't make a sound but kept her mouth open."

She shuddered as she thought about what had happened next.

"There was an old recluse that had been hiding in his house, further down the road from where we were. We didn't really interact that much, just kept out of each other's way. We saw him coming down the street towards the field, the woman was still wandering in her irregular circles. Dennis tried flashing his torch at the guy to get his attention but he didn't look up, he was being quiet. Real quiet. If it had been any other zombie, it wouldn't have heard him, but..."