Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) (17 page)

Revving the engine and driving hard at them, he plowed into the crowd with a teeth-chattering series of grisly thuds. Scarred faces, twisted in the fury of an endless violent death, appeared and disappeared in the truck’s windshield as it barreled into them. When the truck finally spun to a stop, there wasn’t a single one of the creatures still posing any threats. A couple were attempting to claw themselves along the pavement, dragging behind their shattered bodies. Worse still, from beneath the gory mess smeared over the bottom third of the truck, they could also hear above the engine’s settling voice some labored groans and scratching.

Jerry looked at everyone in the truck bed with the question in his eyes that everyone else had in their minds. He cautiously leaned over the side, moving with all the care of a boater peering into the depths of shark infested waters. There was a leg, well, the rotting, shattered partial remains of a leg, jutting out from the tire well. He said to no one in particular, “I think we may have a stowaway under the truck.”

Neil joked over his shoulder, “I thought for sure you were gonna say,
You’re gonna need a bigger boat
. Can you get it out?”

Jerry didn’t answer immediately, so Neil took the hint and instead said, “Well, so far it isn’t keeping the truck off the road, so we’ll just deal with it later. Keep an eye out for it though. I don’t want it to crawl out and surprise us.”

His voice showing the first signs of excitement, DB observed, “Speakin’ of surprises...,” and he pointed behind them at another oncoming and slightly larger crowd of undead. It was an eclectic group of former tourists, commuters, and all varieties of uniformed service workers.

Something dawned on Emma as she watched the lumbering pack of rotten hunters. Their skin had become very homogenized, with no clear distinctions remaining between bodies of different ethnic origins. All of the walking corpses had begun their nightmare maintaining the pigment signatures of their ethnicity; albeit with a nagging suggestion of death’s olive green creeping along as a slowly encroaching partner. That had changed. All of the beings on the road were simply gray of skin with only the slightest variation separating one from another. Truth be told, other than their clothes, the only thing that stood out to Emma as a way to differentiate one ghoul from the other was the pattern of darkened and still festering scar patches on their faces and visible fatal wounds on their necks, limbs, or torsos.

There was a pause, both in and out of the truck, as they all thought about what this meant and what options they had. They could run again. The new approaching mob was behind them and not lying between the survivors and their ultimate destination. Flight was likely the most prudent decision, but that was not what struck Neil as the right one. He was sick of running.

Neil took a deep breath, held it, and then pulled the truck around forcefully, spinning the tires into a belching, smoking cloud. They hurtled forward like a cruise missile, a wake of white smoke and greasy, spattering mortal remains trailing behind them. It felt to all of them as if they were riding a charging, snorting bull as it plunged into the ring.

With a stretch of open pavement beyond the crowd, Neil didn’t feel the need to restrain the truck and instead punched through the group at full speed. An arm, severed from its owner, corkscrewed out of the crowd, striking the window forcefully enough to crack the glass and then coming to rest in the gap between the windshield and the hood.

Those in the bed of the truck were fully engaged in battle themselves. Jerry and DB, steadied by Alec and Della respectively, swung their weapons wildly, striking anything and everything in their paths. Like two chariot riders in a Bronze Age battle, they wielded their tools of war trying to expand the carnage.

Once through, Neil swung the truck around. There was a sizeable gap separating the truck from the reeling mob. The destruction reaped upon them seemed to only excite the few still standing. Neil fingered the wiper control, immediately regretting not triggering the washer fluid first. The grisly mist covering the windshield streaked in heavy, brownish bands, all but obstructing their view. It took three quick applications of washer fluid to clear the glass enough to be able to see through it. In that time, the zombies had already started to close the distance to the truck.

Emma said flatly but nodding her head. “Hit ‘em again. This seems to be working.”

Neil didn’t need any other suggestions or urging. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and roared ahead again.

Meghan, sitting next to Neil, had reached her limit. She lowered her face into her hands and held her breath deep in her chest. Like the soothing voice from a dream, Jules spoke, full of calm and innocent reassurance. She said specifically to Meghan but all of them hearing and absorbing her words, “It’ll be okay. We can get through this. We always do. Don’t worry so much. It’ll be over before you know it.” All the while, she never looked up from the knotted string stretched between her hands in what was becoming a Jacob’s Ladder.

The serene and absurdly simple nature of her words and her message brought tears to Meghan’s eyes and stole away Emma’s breath. Jules knew that the situation was precarious, but such circumstances were becoming commonplace. Of course she was worried, and more than a little scared, but she believed Neil was very capable of finding the reputed light at the end of the tunnel regardless of said tunnel’s length. For her lone comfort, she leaned against Danny, who was wrapping himself tighter and tighter in his seatbelt.

For his part, Danny was more than a little bit concerned about his well-being, but he wouldn’t be able to deny a rising sense of excitement either. His rifle was at his feet. Though it was unloaded, the dark object on the floor of the truck emanated the power of an enchanted talisman; and it was his!

Most recently, Danny had been given something else which had elevated his mood. Shortly after their impromptu ambush on the highway, Neil found his way to be walking next to Danny. Neil smiled at him and told him that he was proud of how brave and sensible Danny had been. He didn’t use typical grownup talk in doing it. Neil used words that Danny and his friends would use. Neil could not possibly have known what his saying it or the manner in which he said it could have meant to Danny, but the boy was star struck. Neil had become a hero...no, he was more like an idol for Danny, so the praise was all the more welcome. After saying his piece, Neil took a small pistol from his pocket and gave it to him. Danny could not believe it. Now he had a pistol and a rifle. Neil explained that both weapons were of the same caliber, so it was easy to keep just one type of ammunition to keep both active. Neil told him that he felt like Danny had shown enough responsibility with his rifle and their need was such that Danny having the pistol and keeping an eye on the other kids made sense. Neil was entrusting Danny with being a last line of defense between those monsters and the kids. Neil knew that he could count on Danny to not treat the pistol as a toy because it wasn’t. Danny was instructed to keep the pistol in his zippered pocket. He was to always keep it unloaded to avoid any accidents. The boy readily consented to every condition, the glow of having a pistol making it all sound like music in his ears.

Now that pistol was pulsating on his hip as if it had a heart of its own. Danny patted it confidently and pulled again on his seatbelt as they lurched forward harder just before the collision.

On the final pass, the truck’s wheels lost their grip amidst the gore on the road. Neil tried to correct left but the truck instead spun right. Meghan and Emma were pressed against Neil as he fought with the steering wheel for control. It was a losing battle. In the front windshield passed a panorama of the bordering wetlands followed by a blur of stalled vehicles on the road followed by a different panorama of the opposite side of the bordering wetlands followed by a blur of empty road and back again to the bordering wetlands. They had spun a full circle and were now idling.

Neil’s heart was galloping at full bore, trying its best to leap from his chest. His hands were doing their utmost to twist the steering wheel into something resembling a Twizzler. And yet, he was the only one inside the truck who wasn’t screaming.

He immediately looked around to get his bearings. They were at a ninety degree angle to the road and the few remaining zombies who were closing with the truck fast. He grabbed his baseball bat from next to him and said to Meghan, “Hop on over here and get this truck turned around.”

“Where the hell are you goin’?”

Neil unlatched his seatbelt and slid out the open door. He kissed her lips quickly and then shut the door. Jerry and DB climbed down from the back and Emma joined them from her side. There were only five of the zombies still in front of them, but they were an intimidating sight...much more so than from inside the truck.

None of it seemed to faze Neil at the moment. He waded into the roadway with ill intent on his mind. He fought with reckless abandon. He had already beaten to motionless piles two of the monsters and was working on his third when the others finally caught up with him.

Jerry pummeled one who was dangerously close to grabbing Neil’s back while DB and Emma dispatched the last. It was quick, violent, and breathless for all of them. A few of the ghouls unable to do more than use broken arms to pull broken bodies along the dark, slick road were still trying to come at them, but Emma and DB were making quick work of them.

That wasn’t to be all though. From the tighter packed vehicles on the road in front of them, a familiar moan started to resonate toward them like a brewing storm. Neil knew what they needed to do but was hesitant to suggest it. He’d grown surprisingly comfortable with his sudden change in disposition but he couldn’t be certain about everyone else. He was ready. He wanted to take the fight to them for a change but what would everyone else want to do.

“Up for kicking some more ass?”

Jerry answered, “I’m in. Let’s move the truck up closer to us and clear a path as we go.”

Meghan was to stay in the truck in the driver’s seat and keep the vehicle ready to go. She was also to keep an eye on the kids along with Della, who had moved to the passenger seat. Claire was trying to stay warm and comfortable on her back while Alec and Duke were there to keep her company.

Neil, Emma, Jerry, and DB were all going to wade into the tangle of vehicles on a search and destroy mission. The mix of blunt and edged melee weapons helped their ragtag group resemble a peasant army of serf conscripts marching off to fight in their lord’s war.

Immediately running into trouble, the four of them split into pairs and set about their grim task. Neil finished off the first of the monsters in his path, then he and Emma switched positions, with Jerry and DB doing the same on their side of the road.

As they disappeared from view, Meghan could feel her anxiety rise and her heart rate increase. She hated it when Neil was away from her. She’d had similar responses when her former fiancé would be gone overnight on business trips, his absence compromising both her security and peace of mind. Her feelings now, however, were understandably much stronger and distracting. For a short while in the past, she used prescription medication to control the panic attacks and keep them at bay. She wondered what her therapist would have recommended to her for controlling the anxiety brought on by the coming of the apocalypse. Had Pfizer or Eli Lily developed some magical little pill to help during these extreme circumstances? She was sure that if there was money to be made, then a pill would follow, regardless of the world’s end.

It didn’t take long for her angst to build into nervous fidgeting, which quickly led her to get out of the truck. When she opened the door, Della shot her a direful look. Her eyes, more yellow than white, flashed a warning.

Meghan couldn’t ignore the signal. She said comfortingly, “It’s okay. I just want to get a better look. Maybe we should be stayin’ within sight, just in case.”

“I think you should just keep an eye out for the others. It’ll be okay.”

Alec was hanging half in and half out the rear window. Claire was asleep and under a pile of blankets and sleeping bags keeping warm, so Alec decided to do the same for himself in the warm air of the truck cabin. His athletic frame nearly filled the entire back window as he crowded himself into the warmth. The simple creature comfort was so deliciously inviting it produced a smile that tickled his body from head to toe. His comfort brought satisfaction to everyone else already in the truck.

Between Alec’s presence, Meghan’s distraction and their limited view, no one in the truck was paying any attention to behind them. In that yawning blind spot, there could have been a convoy of relief trucks or a regiment of Marines. As it was, there was none of that approaching from behind. There was, however, a pair of staggering, stinking terrors drifting toward them with all the intent and focus of moths to a flame, moving slowly and silently.

Meghan opened the door and hopped out, peering in the direction of the others. Because she couldn’t see well enough, she decided that she would move ahead a little more. She leaned back away from the path of the door and was surprised when something touched her extended arm. She was even more surprised, stunned speechless, when she turned and looked into the face of death.

She tried to find her voice but even her breath was failing her, and she could only utter a simple, “Huh?” As she was pulled backward by another set of hands from another of the fiends, she kicked forward and shut the door. In so doing, she both set a barrier between the undead and her friends in the truck and isolated herself from them in a single stroke.