William Rose - The Dead & Dying

Part of me had expected the Interstate to be virtually clear of the dead, but they were everywhere. The rotters shambled along as quickly as their decomposing tissue would allow and tended to cluster in small packs; the freshies, however, were a different story. Once they’d broken through the initial rigor mortis, they still pretty much had control of their muscles. They ran behind the car like a pack of wild dogs chasing down a rabbit: zigzagging through overturned buses and multi-car pileups, leaping over barrels that had fallen from trucks, crashing through clumps of rotters….

To make matters worse, the sound of our engine was like a beacon for the bastards. They scrambled up embankments and fought to break through the glass of the cars they had died, and subsequently become trapped, in. Every ramp we passed was already congested with a rush hour of rotting flesh by the time we got there and I began to taste that metallic tang of fear in the back of my throat.

“This ain’t looking good, Carl. This ain’t looking good at all.”

Even though Doc was practically standing on the pedal, the car was beginning to lose speed. Every few seconds it would shimmy and lurch as the gears whined in protest; something that smelled like a cross between burning rubber and ozone flooded through the vents, causing my eyes to water and the little hairs in my nostrils to tickle as if I had to sneeze.

“Come on, come on damn it, come on!”

We weren’t going to make it. The certainty of this hit me like an cold fist in the gut. Our car was going to shudder and die. And within moments we would be overtaken.

An image flashed through my head of ants clambering over a crust of bread that I had dropped onto their hill as a child. I remembered how quickly they had descended; how, for a moment of two, not so much as a speck of white could be seen through the densely packed bodies that swarmed over their prize. And then they began ripping and tearing at it, carting away jagged little pieces….

We’d dropped to about thirty miles per hour by then and the little icon of an engine was flashing red on the dashboard while this bell chimed out over and over.

“We had quite a run, huh Doc? I just want you t’ know…. ”

“Don’t you talk like that, Carl! This ain’t over, my friend. Not by a long shot.”

We were coming up on an overpass and by now were going so slow that I had time to notice the lone zombie standing up there. Strangely enough for a second or two I felt this wave of sadness wash over me. As if this walking corpse with his missing left arm and tattered clothes were looking out over the Interstate like the Indian in those old commercials from the seventies: surveying all the damage that had been wrought as a single tear slid down the oozing flesh that had once been his cheek. In my mind, I heard this voice, this narrator, say in a deep baritone: “People start pollution; zombies can stop it.”

I felt a laugh bubbling up within me and knew I had to fight to keep it down. I was afraid that if I started with even the smallest chuckle, it would keep right on growing to the point that I wouldn’t be able to stop. I could all too clearly imagine them tearing and biting and gouging while I continued to cackle like some exile from the loony bin.

Doc was so focused on the labyrinth of twisted metal and decaying bodies that he didn’t see what happened next. I’d already been watching that zombie on the overpass, though, so I saw everything as it played out. It couldn’t have been more than just a fraction of a second, but time seemed to kind of slow down; it was almost like I were a character in a movie and someone who knew what was coming up had decided to hit the slow-mo button on the remote.

The freshy on the overpass looked as if it jerked to attention, almost like the roar of the engine below had startled it from a state of reverie. Without a moment’s hesitation, it vaulted over the concrete wall, launching itself into the air as if it would be able to soar like a bird of prey on the wind currents. Gravity had other plans, though, and I remember noticing how the shredded shirt covering its body flapped in the air like streamers as it fell.

“Doc, look ou…. ”

The falling corpse smashed into our windshield, releasing a spider web of cracks through the glass. It’s one remaining hand sought for purchase, clawing at the smooth surface as if it thought it could dig its way in; but then it’s entire body slid off the car and tumbled across the pavement. At the same time, Doc had lost all control: the car spun in circles for what could have been an eternity or merely the amount of time it took to blink an eye before a bone jarring crash stopped it’s momentum.

Doc blinked his eyes a couple time and shook his head as if trying to get the world around us to stop spinning.

“Son of a bitch!”

The engine had died when we smashed into the side of an overturned tanker and Doc frantically turned the key in the ignition. It whined in protest but tried to turn over none-the-less.

“Start damn it start…. ”

For a moment, it caught and the car sputtered to life.

“Hot damn!”

Doc slapped the transmission into reverse and, as he did, the entire car shook like we had suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an earthquake. There was a loud pop from under the hood before the car flooded with the smell of gasoline and died again.

“Shit shit shit !”

Through the shattered windshield, I could see a small cluster of corpses about half a mile away, shambling toward the bridge that stood between us and the next off-ramp. From that distance, they looked to be mostly rotters.

“What the fuck happened?” Doc’s normally deep baritone now bordered on a squeal and dark stains had begun to spread around the armpits of his t-shirt.

“Zombie. Jumped off the overpass to try t’ get us when it saw us comin’. We hafta get out of here, Doc. We hafta get out of here now!”

A freshy had burst through the pack of rotters on the bridge, toppling several and leaving others reeling in the wake of its enthusiasm. Though too far away to actually see its eyes, I had no doubt that they were solely focused on our wreck of a car.

“Damn it, Carl, you think I don’t know that? Shit!”

A quick glance over my shoulder caused a chill to settle into my body so completely it was as if I’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

“Doc, we’re in it deep my friend.”

The interstate behind us was swarming with the dead we’d already attracted. They were practically shoulder to shoulder, packed so densely that the freshies among them had to claw and climb their way over the top of the throng.

Doc stole a glance and what little color he had left drained from his face. He was silent for a moment as he gnawed repeatedly on his lower lip.

“Well,” he finally said, “there’s definitely no turning back.”

Ahead of us, more and more corpses joined the slow march toward the bridge. Two more freshies were fighting their way through and the original one had closed half the distance between them and us.

“Just a matter of minutes, now.”

I pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in my pocket and studied it for a moment. I looked at the little tears in the paper, the dark stains where it had gotten wet and then been allowed to dry again. Doc may have thought I was trying to play it cool, but in reality I was wondering if my hands would stop shaking long enough for me to actually light the damn thing.

“These things will kill ya, Doc. Be glad you never took up the habit.”

“Son of a bitch, that bastard’s still kickin’.”

I rose up in my seat a little so I could look out the window at whatever it was Doc had noticed.

“I’ll be damned…. ”