Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (46 page)

From my prone position, I shielded my eyes and winced in pain as the multiple explosions shook my very bones. The explosions literally sucked the air from my chest, leaving me gasping for air. Looking back in awe at the smoldering crater that was our safe zone only minutes earlier, my wobbling vision settled on a bright bouncing object rapidly heading my way. I grimaced in soon to be forgotten pain when I finally realized it to be a large burning truck tire, which seemed to have my name on it. At the last second the tire unexpectedly hit Jack’s corpse, sending it up and over my head so close I could read the lettering.

“
Firestone,” I mumbled. And what do you know, it didn’t have my name after all.

The breath I was holding escaped my lips in a loud sigh of relief, and I laid my head back looking up at the ceiling of the porch.

Maybe I got lucky for once. My thoughts were interrupted by the creaks and groaning sounds that wood makes when it is buckling under stress.

Lifting my head up, I realized with a glance that the truck tire had ripped away the support beams of the porch I was lying under as it passed over me. I was still looking at the sagging porch roof when, with a crack of breaking wood and protesting squeaks of nails, it gave way. I hadn’t even finished saying “fuck me” when everything went dark.

* * * * * * * *

Mattie picked herself up off the pavement where she’d landed when the shockwave from the blast hit her. She reached down and pulled a small flashlight from her cargo pocket and shined the beam around. Dust and smoke filled the air, mixing with the rain, which made it hard to get a lock on her location. Hearing a grunt of pain to her right, she looked and found Stephen sitting up and grabbing at his bad knee.

“
Are you alright, Stephen?”

“
Yeah, but I reinjured my fucking knee. I think a brick hit it.”

Mattie frantically checked her surroundings. “Where’s Mike? He was behind us when the explosion went off.”

Stephen hobbled upright looking for his friend, and she could see a trickle of blood on his forehead. “I’m not sure,” he said. “We need to find him fast. I’m sure all of the zombies weren’t wiped out in the explosion. We’ve got to get off the street!”

Retracing their steps, they discovered a body lying on the grass near a home with a burning tire stuck in a flower bed. Mattie’s stomach dropped as she feared it was Mike’s corpse with a large chunk of metal punched through his torso. Turning the body over carefully, she discovered it wasn’t Mike but Jack that was dead. She let out a sigh of relief, and knowing that Jack was with Mike, he had to be close. Moments later, she heard Stephen cry out.

“
Mattie, come quick, I found him!”

Hurrying over, she found Stephen struggling to pull large chunks of a collapsed porch off Mike’s unconscious bleeding form. They carefully dragged him out of the rubble, and Mattie checked to make sure he was still breathing. Relieved that he was, she then checked his wounds.

“
Other than minor cuts and bruises he seems okay, no broken bones,” Mattie said. “Looks like he got knocked out from that nasty lump on his head.”

“
Had to have been a nasty fall to knock out that fucker,” Stephen said. “His skull is mostly all bone. Had he been hit anywhere else it might have actually hurt him.”

Mattie slapped Stephen on the arm in frustration. “What are we gonna do?”

Stephen stood and grimaced when he found he could only limp painfully with his reinjured knee.

“
You’re going to have to carry him. I can hardly walk,” he responded. “I’ll grab his gear and attempt to provide some cover while you lug the Neanderthal.”

Mattie considered herself in very good shape. While not as strong as Mike or Stephen, she could hold her own in physical situations. She grabbed hold of Mike and tried to get him across her shoulders with Stephen’s help. She thought of Mike’s workout motto, “Pick up heavy stuff. Put it down. Repeat.”

Mattie giggled to herself and then groaned under Mike’s dead weight as she stood.

“
What’s so funny?” Stephen asked. He picked his rifle back up and hopped a little on his good leg.

“
Nothing,” she grunted. “Let’s get moving before any leftover zombies decide to have us for dessert.”

“
Roger that,” he replied. “By the way, this rain should keep that blast from burning the whole town down. We actually got lucky.”

“
Lucky?” Mattie muttered. “You guys are both hurt, and I’m soaking wet.”

Stephen nodded, wiped the water from his face, and shouldered Mike’s bag and rifle. He ran Mike’s lucky baseball bat through the handle on top of the bag and then hoisted the ballistic shield as well.

“
This shit is gonna get heavy quick,” Stephen said with a sigh and headed off away from the smoldering wreckage, followed by a staggering Mattie.

It was not their planned escape by any means, but one had to adapt to the hand they were dealt.

After about a block or two, Mattie collapsed in exhaustion.

“
I’m not sure how much farther I can go,” she said weakly.

Stephen looked around and spotted a large brick home. Turning back, he waited as Mattie caught up to him.

“
Surprised you made it this far," he responded. "I’m about done too. Let me check out this house and make sure it’s clear and securable. Maybe we can get out of the rain and get some rest. This has been a long fucking day.”

Mattie just nodded and laid Mike on the front steps as Stephen dropped all the gear into a pile by the front door. The front door had been left unlocked and Stephen waited and listened several seconds. Hearing nothing, he finally entered the home with just his rifle.

Sitting on the steps, Mattie stared out into the darkness. Several times her flashlight chased the shadows that danced all around her. She expected to see the undead at any moment as the minutes dragged by. She could sense their twisted faces just beyond the beams of light coming from her flashlight and was seriously freaking herself out.

“
Please wake up, Mike,” she softly begged. “I can’t take this anymore.”

What seemed like hours later, Stephen returned to the front door with a satisfied look on his face.

“
Looks like whoever left here did so in a hurry," Stephen concluded. "There’s plenty of food and stuff we can use while we’re here.”

Together they managed to drag Mike’s limp body into the house and fortify the front and back doors with some heavy furniture. Tossing Mike onto a plush leather couch, Mattie collapsed onto the nearby loveseat. Totally exhausted, she didn’t even know she had fallen asleep until several hours later when Stephen shook her awake by the shoulder.

* * * * * * * *

Weaving the bus through the dozens of abandoned cars that filled the streets, Dan slowed near the burnt shell of a minivan. Only a blind man could miss the several charred child-sized corpses contained within. Dan grimaced in anger at the sight of innocent kids meeting their end in such a horrible fashion.

“
That’s the fifth vehicle filled with bodies we have seen since we left the prison,” he said with dismay. “I can’t believe so many people got caught out in the open and seemed to go out without much of a fight.”

Chris just shook his head. “When the masses are in a frenzy to get away from something, it’s like a stampede. They have tunnel vision and don’t even think twice about who gets trampled or what’s coming up behind them.”

Dan hawked loudly and spit out the driver’s window. “Well I can only hope when it’s my time to go, I see it coming. I wanna stare down the ole Grim Reaper and make him earn it.”

Gunning the engine, Dan drove up over a curb and through what was once a well-manicured lawn. The small bus tore large gashes in the overgrown grass as he avoided yet another traffic accident.

“
We’re gonna need to clear these intersections eventually,” he said. “Wrecks clogging up damn near every one of them.”

“
Agreed,” Chris replied. “So what do you think that huge explosion could have been last night?”

“
No idea, brother,” Dan replied while lighting a cigar. “That was a nasty storm that blew through but something that loud wasn’t natural. It could have been a bomb of some sort. Hell, it could have been a ruptured gas line that blew. All I know is that Stephen always checked in at least once a day on the radio, and after last night there’s been nothing.”

“
Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Chris said. “The safe zone is only a few miles from here and the explosion definitely emanated from that direction.”

“
Yes it did,” Dan answered. “I’m just a bit concerned about what we are gonna find.”

“
At least the rain stopped,” Chis added. “We don’t need anything slowing us down.”

“
Hey, look up ahead,” Dan interrupted. “Our first targets today.”

Chris turned to look at what Dan pointed out and saw several zombies converging down the street towards them. These particular zombies looked like they were in real bad shape, however. Many were missing arms or legs; some even dragged themselves along on their stomachs with their entire lower half having been completely removed. At the sight of Chris and Dan, a loud wailing sound erupted from the group as it surged towards the small yellow school bus.

“
They look like they might have been near whatever that blast was,” Chris remarked aloud. “They look a little worse for wear.”

“
They’re going to be hurting from a major headache in about five seconds,” Dan said as he put the bus into park and slid open the bus’s side door. “Well… if they have headaches I guess.”

Dan calmly grabbed his suppressed AR-15 rifle and sat on the bus steps, taking aim at the disgusting monstrosities approaching them.

Chris watched the one-sided battle with a sick fascination as zombie after zombie fell from accurate head shots. The creatures that mere days ago were living caring people didn’t even try to protect themselves. The only thing they seemed to desire was living flesh. When the last one was silenced forever, Dan calmly stood and closed the bus door.

“
Always good to thin their ranks when you can,” he said, his teeth still clenching his lit cigar.

“
Target practice if nothing else,” Chris replied. “As long as we got the ammo anyways.”

It wasn’t long before Dan stopped the bus again with a curse and exited the vehicle with his rifle in hand. Chis followed closely, still scanning the surrounding neighborhood for signs of their friends. Both of them paused and stared at the huge smoking crater where just days before was a high school filled with hundreds of refugees. At the lip of the impact crater, Dan paused, removed his cigar and spit into the deep depression where the gymnasium once stood.

“
Well this sure as shit wasn’t from a gas main exploding,” he said pointing with the barrel of his weapon. “Look at the depth of this bastard.”

“
I’ve seen something like this over in Afghanistan several times,” Chris replied. “And that was after the Air Force would level a terrorist compound. Watch your step. If they used a cluster bomb, there might be unexploded ordnance about.”

“
Thanks for the heads up,” Dan replied, now poking around a little more gently. “That would make for a really bad day.”

“
The question is why the military would target a safe zone full of living people?” Chris mused.

Dan glanced over. “Maybe it wasn’t full of living people. Maybe they were overrun and someone with the means called in an air strike or something?”

Chris cursed loudly. “What about Stephen, Mike and Mattie?”

Dan turned and placed his hand on Chris’ shoulder. “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? This place is wrecked. I’m not sure we could even find their ambulance if it was destroyed in this mess.”

The short trek back to the bus seemed a lot longer than it actually was.

Once they had reversed the bus and exited the area, both were silent as they made their way back to the east side of town. They hit several side streets looking for any sign of their friends but didn’t have any luck. Finally, they started to gather a crowd of the undead and were forced back towards the prison.

Chris broke the silence after an awkward fifteen minutes. “Well, we’ll just have to assume they all got out and are trying to make their way back to the prison as we speak. And hope that they have the means to make it, even if it’s on foot. So I say we stop by a few businesses and load up on supplies and any tools that we will need to get the place up and running. I want them to see some serious improvements when they do show up.”

Dan was quiet for a few moments. “I like your attitude, kid. We have pretty much stayed in the prison since we first got there, minus that one excursion. Just cleaning that place up the last couple days has been a bitch.”

“
That one excursion,” Chris smirked. “You mean your beer run.”

“
It was whiskey, kid,” Dan snarled, “and we picked up a few other things too.”