So there we were, trapped in the car: I looked over at Doc, ready to tell him how it had been a pleasure knowing him and that I wish we woulda met before the whole world turned upside down. But he had that look he sometimes got. His eyes darted from zombies making their way toward us to the road beyond them and I could almost sense excitement starting to rise in him.
“I got an idea, Carl. You still buckled in?”
“Yeah. What’s up? What you got in mind?”
Doc took the little cross that dangled from his neck and lifted the chain to his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment before kissing the pendant.
“It’s the bottom on the ninth, Carl. We’re down by one run and got one man on. No balls, two strikes, two outs. If I don’t hit a homer on this pitch, it’s all over…. ” With his eyes still closed, Doc reached for the ignition one last time. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second. “Please…. ”
The original freshy from the bridge was close enough now that I could see the rage in its eyes, that burning hatred that seemed to fuel its existence.
Leaning out the window, I pulled the pistol from the glove box and took aim. Two squeezes of the trigger and one sulfuric-smelling cloud of smoke later, the zombie’s head dropped with a wet smack to the concrete below.
Doc turned the key and the car rumbled to life; but it was a life sort of like the ones most of those things out there lead: sluggish, nothing more than an shadow of its former existence really, and destined to succumb to the ravages of wear and tear in a relatively short period of time.
“Hot damn! I think we can avoid those rotters.” Doc shouted, “But we gotta do something about the freshies or else this car starting doesn’t mean jack.”
I could tell he wasn’t so much talking to me as working out his thoughts, so I stayed quiet and let his mind work.
“You pick off those freshies quick as you can, Carl. If your aim is good and this works out the way I think it will, we just might stand a chance.”
Before I could respond, Doc threw the transmission into drive and stomped his foot on the gas. The car lurched forward and, for one sickening moment when I felt as though my stomach had just plummeted into some bottomless abyss, I was positive it was about to shudder to a stop again. The engine coughed and wheezed, sputtered, and then roared to life again.
We were speeding toward the next freshy as it continued its mad dash toward us, the distance closing with each passing second. Leaning slightly out the window, I tried to steady my hand and pulled the trigger.
Rather than shattering the damn thing’s skull like I had intended, the bullet slammed into its shoulder, causing it to spin around for a moment like some bizarre ballerina.
“Damn it, Doc, this car’s shakin’ too bad.”
The knocking from the engine was now so loud that I could barely hear the sound of my own voice and that dang corpse was so close that I could clearly make out the blood splattered Nike logo emblazoned on its shirt.
Doc slammed on the brakes, the tires squealing like a band of demons loosed from the gates of hell as the stench of burning rubber filled the air. Still leaning halfway out the window, I drew a bead, held my breath for a fraction of a second and pulled off another shot.
This time I hit my mark and couldn’t resist letting out a whoop as the god-forsaken thing slumped to the ground. Part of me wanted to take a moment to cherish the small victory, but I knew there were still two more barreling toward us, intent of exacting their rage before the rotters, who were just now beginning to shamble across the bridge, ever had a chance. Two more shots rang out, both as steady and true as if they were guided by the hand of God.
“That’s it for the fresh …”
But Doc was already laying on the gas again, his eyes narrowed into mere slits and jaw set in an expression of grim determination.
“Hold on tight, Carl, you hear me? Hold on!”
The crowd of rotters loomed before us like a wall of cadavers, packed so tightly together it was hard to see where one body ended and another began.
“We can’t break through ’em, Doc! There’s too many!”
The car thumped slightly as it bumped over the little ridge of asphalt where road turned to bridge. Fifty yards away now and I could smell the stench, sweet and greasy and sickening all at the same time, overpowering even the odor of exhaust and scorched oil, becoming trapped in my hair and clothes and nostrils.
The side of Doc’s mouth turned upward into a slight grin.
“Through? Who the hell said anything about through?”
He jerked the steering wheel sharply to the right and we were suddenly racing toward the waist-high wall of the bridge. I opened my mouth, to cuss or scream or maybe just to make some wordless sound of fear; but before the breath had even left my lungs, our car smashed into the wall and we were flipping, the rear end lifting up and over, forward momentum carrying us over the little wall with the screech of metal on concrete vibrating through my teeth.
And then we were falling, toppling, road maps and empty soda cans tumbling like weightless astronauts through the compartment. After a few seconds, my entire body felt a jolt like it had never known. Pain flared through every joint in my body simultaneously and I tasted blood, warm and salty, as I inadvertently bit through my lip. Everything still rolling now, but punctuated with bangs and crashes that whipped my head back and forth, pain shooting through my neck and shoulders.
We ended up upside down and I sat there for a moment, blinking and trying to make sense of exactly what had just happened, wondering where that high pitched ringing that was suddenly in my ears was coming from.
“Move!”
Doc had already slid free of his seatbelt and was scurrying through the twisted remains of the driver’s side window, kicking free the little clumps of safety glass that still remained. Though it hurt like hell to even breathe, I somehow found the strength to follow him and was soon crawling across grass and staggering to my feet. Doc had already regained his balance and had turned to look back toward the way we’d come, one hand pressed tightly against his side as if he were hugging himself with a single arm.
I turned to look as well. The rotters on the bridge, in their single minded pursuit of the living, had done the same thing as the zombie on the overpass. We watched them falling and toppling through the air, a seemingly endless waterfall of decaying flesh as they spilled over the side; their bodies hit the ground with dull thuds, the snapping of bones so loud that it was almost like the constant crackling of a fire hidden somewhere in their midst.
Doc slowly shook his head as if he were looking upon a mystery of nature.
“Crazy fuckin’ zombies… ”
I felt like an idiot standing there, grinning at my friend as wave after wave plummeted toward the ground: but the sun was warm, the birds in the forest behind us were chirping, and we were alive, by God, we were alive!
“New rule, Doc.” I said as I spat blood from my busted mouth. “Number twenty-two: Stay the hell out of the cities.”
Doc started to laugh then and I soon joined in, slapping him on the back as we began trying to salvage what supplies we could from the fallen remains of our once-proud chariot: I thought again how the sun was warm, the birds in the forest were chirping, and we were alive… if only for another day.
It was only later, as we limped through the woods with our supplies jangling and clanking in the “backpacks” we’d fashioned from a piece of tarp and bits of cord from the car’s trunk that my mind turned to the past. Maybe it was the way the sunlight dappled through the canopy of leaves overhead, the way the shadows danced over the forest floor as the wind rustled through the branches; or perhaps it was the smell of honeysuckle and pine mixed with that old vegetation smell that’s almost like mildew but not quite.
Whatever the cause, I grew quiet as we trekked through the wilderness. At one point in my life, I probably would have been appreciating the beauty of the leaves that had just begun turning into the brilliant yellows and oranges of fall. I would have found a sort of solace in the gurgling of the streams we leaped across and the way the squirrels scampered up the sides of trees in an almost corkscrew pattern.
As it was, though, my thoughts and emotions were as jumbled and twisted as that wreck of a car we’d left in our wake.
I was tired; so tired that I just wanted to lay down on the forest floor and sleep for a thousand years. A dreamless sleep, preferably, where the faces of those I had known and loved, or even those I had simply met in passing, didn’t haunt me with visions of a past that could never be recovered. And yet I kept walking, kept putting one foot in front of the other for reasons I myself couldn’t begin to understand.
After what must have been nearly forty minutes, I cleared my throat and glanced over at my companion. But it was only a quick look. I knew I would never be able to hold his gaze while I told the story I was about to share.
“Doc,” I finally said, “I ever tell you about the time I shot a kid?”