Keary Taylor: The Ashes

I’ve packed up four of them when I hear the slightest sound. Like clothing brushing against something. My beam of light and the shotgun in my hand flashes back to the sleepers and I curse under my breath again.

There are only eleven bodies.

I click the flashlight off and I swing my new pack on, heavy but not as loaded as I’d like it to be. I silently start backing toward the front door.

There’s that sound again and it takes everything I have to not flip the flashlight back on. I’m only fifteen yards from the entrance.

My feet move quicker. I’m walking backwards, my back to the door, my shotgun leveled before my eyes. I feel totally blind.

The back of my heel catches something, and my finger accidently pulls the trigger. The blast nearly deafens me in the silent building and it feels like all of my internal organs disappear.

I hear them all wake to life and there’s the sound of shuffling feet. I make a full sprint for the door.

I just clear the glass, a jagged edge catching my left arm, ripping my skin open. I stumble over the pavement of the parking lot, struggling to keep hold on the shotgun. I hear crashing sounds as bodies slam into the metal framework of the doorway. They’re all trying to get through it at once.

The SUV seems ten times farther away that it is as I steady my sprint. I hear metal hit the pavement behind me and dare a single glance back.

Two of them have fallen through the door and are climbing to their feet. Their metal eyes are locked on me.

I push faster. My pack bounces up and down, one of the guns inside slapping against my spine painfully. I hear more sets of feet hitting the road as I reach the SUV and yank the door open. I shove the pack into the back seat and fumble for the keys.

The keys. I can’t find them.

In one heart-sickening second, I look out the door and see they’re lying about ten feet from the car. That first zombie robot is about twenty.

I fling the door open and start firing. I see tiny holes appear in the first man’s shirt and he stumbles when I spray him with bullets. I fire at the woman right behind him and knock her on her back.

My fingers close around the keys and I fire another shot at the first man who is recovering and fall backwards into the SUV. I feel like my heart is going to rocket right out of my chest as I yank the door closed behind me just as he slams into the door. His eyes gleam while I desperately try to get the keys into the ignition.

Glass sprays my face as the window shatters. I slam the butt of the shotgun into his nose, sending him sprawling backwards into two of the others. I yank the gearshift down into drive and stomp on the gas pedal. The front driver’s side wheel runs over a body.

I’ve just turned left back onto the road when I hear something collide with the car. The next second there’s something banging on the roof.

One of them is on top of me.

I slam on the breaks and hear the thing shift forward. White blond hair flips onto the front windshield and I stomp on the gas once again. The thing still hangs on.

I jerk the wheel to the right and then once again to the left. More pounding on the roof. The next second later, the window to the front passenger side explodes and a pale skinned hand is groping through the dark for my throat.

Stomping on the break, I jerk the wheel hard to the left. The thing sails off my roof.

I’m back on the on ramp not five seconds later.

I drive for another six hours before my eyes refuse to stay open. By now I’ve gotten to some fairly rural areas and I haven’t seen another moving being in at least three hours. I find an exit that looks safe enough and pull off. I’m so tired that I don’t even realize I won’t have enough gas to make it up the mountain pass I’m about to cross until I’ve gone past the last station. I’ll have to back track into town for gas when I wake up. But for now this small county road looks safe enough to rest on.

I pull a ways off the road into the brush. I grab my pack, sling it over my shoulder, then walk fifty yards from the busted up SUV. The vehicle feels like a beacon, announcing my location for anyone or anything that might come looking. It feels safer to sleep with some distance between us.

The sky is just starting to lighten. As much as I don’t dare sleep, I’m exhausted. I’d starved nearly to death for weeks and then had the most intense day I could conceive. My body is shutting down.

I rest my head on my pack, lying in the dirt, and close my eyes.

When I wake the sun is high. I can feel it burning my skin. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent any amount of time outside. I sit up gingerly and look at my arms. They’re already a healthy shade of pink.

I pick my pack up and start back toward the SUV. I’m trying to mentally calculate how far back it is to the town to get fuel. Shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to get there.

I realize I probably should have fueled up when it was still dark. At least the one’s I had run into had been sleeping most of the time. If there are any human tendencies left in them, they may still be more active during the daylight.

There is someone lying face down in the dirt right next to the driver’s side door. I pull out my new handgun and lock it in on the man. I debate with myself for just a moment.

I can shoot him right now.

I can simply walk away.

Or I can confront and investigate.

“Hey,” I say, my voice just loud enough for him to be able to hear me. “You need to get out of here. That vehicle belongs to me.”

The man doesn’t move.

“Something wrong with you?” I say. I take two steps closer. “Hey, can you hear me?”

He still doesn’t stir.

I cross the remaining space between us and kick his foot. He lies still as a fallen tree.

I’m not stupid enough to touch him with my bare hands, so I use my foot and roll him over.

The man must have been living in the wild the last few weeks. His skin is dirty, his hair tangled and filled with broken bits of leaves and twigs. And he looks half-starved. His cheekbones stick out in a gaunt way. His eyes are sunken.

He is definitely dead.

He’d been looking for food, I’m sure of it. I wonder why he didn’t just go inside the SUV. He would have found my box in the back of it if he’d just gone inside and looked. He must have collapsed before he got to that point.

I take a small stick, and with it, peel his eyelids open. The whites are still white, his irises brown. Still human. He hadn’t been infected before he died.

I still don’t want to touch him so I use my boots to push him out of the way of the SUV. I notice a pack ten yards from where he is lying. He must have dropped it.

Robbing the dead isn’t something I’d normally be okay with, but nothing about these past few days has been normal.

The zipper on the pack sticks and it takes me a few good tugs to get it to open. Inside I find a length of rope, a knife, and a thick book. I’m about to leave the book with the tattered pack when I realize what it is.

An atlas.

I take everything he had and put it in the SUV. I say a silent prayer for the man I could have helped if I had just found him a bit sooner, and pull back onto the road.

Re-entering the freeway, I start back toward the town.

I glance down at the gas gage. I’m a bit over a quarter of a tank, but I don’t know how far this mountain range is going to stretch, or if I can count on there being any gas stations on it.

When I look back up I slam on the breaks.

There are at least five of those things walking around on the road about three-quarters of a mile down from where I am. As I watch them a moment longer, I see two more walking up the on-ramp.