Mark Clodi - About a Woman, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

Dora was veering towards the inside shoulder of the highway and immediately over corrected. Looking out through the ragged holes in front of her Dora could not see Andi on her hood anymore, but she heard the ceiling crumple as the zombie moved onto the roof. Glancing up she saw the girl's fingers crumple the roof beside the driver's side window, she had only a moment to ponder about the angle before the zombie's body slammed into her through the broken out side window. Dora was forcibly pushed over into the passenger's seat and lost control of the vehicle entirely.

Andi was screaming in rage as she attacked Cliff, beating him about the head with both of her arms, the bloody stump ended in bone shards that were tearing up the young man's face and neck. Just before the suburban started to roll Dora saw the girl put her remaining fist through Cliff's right eye.

Up. Down. The crunching was louder than Beth's screams as the vehicle rolled along the highway over and over. Abruptly the sounds from Beth faded away and only the crunching remained. Somewhere along the way Andi was thrown out of the car, the girl had grabbed onto the steering wheel to hold her position and seemed shocked when it broke off in her hands leaving her with nothing to hold onto. Dora's position was just as tentative, and she barely managed to hold onto the front seat and keep herself from being flung out as the vehicle rolled. The rolling suburban angled off of the road and into the median between the lanes of the highway.

In the end it stopped upside down, with Dora sitting on the ceiling looking up at her arms, they were entwined into the seat cushion. For a moment Dora just looked at them, both of her arms were punched all the way through the seat, disappearing into the leather seats. Her hands were grasping some unseen metal support near what was originally the bottom of the seat, Dora knew she would never have had the strength to reach through the seat, yet she was looking right at what she had done. Slowly she disengaged herself and tested out her other limbs, everything seemed to be working. Her hand came away with a little blood from the back of her head, it felt like it had been slashed open, but was now gummy and half scabbed over. The vehicle was empty, she was the only one who had not been flung out in the crash.

"I could get to like this 'Super Dora!' stuff." Dora said to herself as she felt the half healed head wound. She went to her hands and knees and reached for the butt of a shotgun that was laying under some of the supplies they had packed in the vehicle before they left. The gun looked fine, automatically her hand reached for the shells she had in her shirt pocket and she started reloading. Dora slowly crawled out of the window on the slightly down-hill side of the roof. Standing upright didn't improve her view any, there was nothing good to see on her side of the suburban. Creeping around to the front she peeked and saw that the three vehicles that had been following her were now stopped by the side of the road, their zombie passengers were out and gathered in two clumps by the side of the road. Dora saw one of Beth's hands briefly before a zombie clamped its teeth around the wrist and pulled it away.

"Dora." came a small voice, startling the woman. Looking down Dora saw Willy, his body was under the roof of the suburban, with just his head, right shoulder and arm not buried beneath it. His face was coated in blood, but his eyes still looked bright. "Get me out of here."

"Fuck. Sure I will just move the whole goddamned truck off of you, no problem, Willy."

"You're strong and you don't have to do much, just lift it a little."

Dora looked at the hood of the car, it was sagging, almost touching the ground, the frame of the suburban had bent extensively. She pressed her hand to the front of the bumper and lifted, the truck did not moved much, but it did move. Willy frantically tried to get out from under the vehicle.

"I can't get out." he said after a moment, "When you lift up it teeters on to my legs and I can't pull free. You'll have to roll it off of me."

Dora just looked at him incredulously, "Yeah, right short stuff, and after I do that I will gather you up and fly you out of here."

He smiled, "Okay."

Looking about Dora saw the spare tire from the suburban lying next to the side of the vehicle, she moved this over to Willy's arm and said, "Okay, I will try and lift enough, then you slide this next to you and when I push down we might be able to get it off of you. Are you all busted up under there? I really don't feel like seeing any other gross things right now."

"I feel fine." said Willy with a sort of empty smile on his face.

"Fuck. It is going to be bad then, just move the tire when I get this high enough." Dora had to circle around to the front of the suburban where she sat the shotgun on the bumper. Moving around to the front put her in view of the zombies and in seconds one of them spotted her and alerted the other eight or nine. "Don't look, lift!" she told herself, putting her legs into it. She heard Willy struggling with the spare, then glanced under, he had the tire about halfway into position, it might be enough.

"Zombies are here, gotta let this down." Dora said, lowering the hood, it did not go down as much as she thought it had before, so the tire must be supporting it somewhat, turning around Dora confronted the mob, one of whom still had Beth's arm in its mouth, nibbling on her pinkie finger.

"Stop right there motherfuckers!" To her surprise the zombies stopped, Dora instantly had a headache, one of the zombies, a big fellow dressed in overalls, shook his head as if to clear it and took a step forward.

"It almost worked lady…I felt, something, a pressure, but you don't have the touch, not like Andi and Mo, or even Sam does. I am afraid this is the end for you then, if you just kneel down I'll make it quick for you."

In answer Dora sprang sideways and brought the shotgun up off the bumper, shooting the overall wearing zombie just under the chin, his head rolled forward and fell off of his neck as the other zombie's howled in rage and pressed forward to attack. Dora backed behind the vehicle and then crouched down and pushed herself with all of her might through the window to go under it. The zombies rushed around to the other side where she had been. By the time the zombies realized where she was Dora had shot another one from behind at close range where it was standing on the overturned wreck.

'I am keeping up with them.' Dora thought to herself with more than a little confusion, normally any super zombies she ran into were so fast that she had to anticipate where they would be in order to shoot them and nine times out of ten even that didn't work. This combat was different, Dora didn't even feel tired, just energized. She leaped backwards, her off hand reaching for more shells to feed them into the gun from underneath as she did so.

The zombies turned on her, the looks on their faces were no longer just of anger, but also tinged with caution, when Dora raised the gun they all scrambled for cover instead of leaping towards her. Most went behind the suburban out of Dora's immediate sight, but two just dropped and rolled in the tall grass of the median. Dora fired into the grass to keep them honest, then dropped prone herself and fired through the open windows of her car, blowing off one zombie's foot just above the ankle and causing it to drop to the ground, where it rolled backwards and away from Dora's next shot.

Willy was struggling to pull himself from under the wreck, he had both hands free now, though his left arm was bleeding profusely. From somewhere he had gotten a long screw driver in his right hand and was digging quickly into the dirt with it, as if to tunnel his legs out from under the top of the vehicle. Dora rolled sideways on the theory that staying in one place for any length of time was probably a bad idea. Andi's leg came down out of nowhere when Dora woman was on her back, instinctively she brought the barrel of the gun up to block the attack, shoving the gun sideways as she did so. The zombie girl tumbled into the grass and Dora shoved herself to her feet with one arm and started to backpedal. Andi was already up and took two steps towards her before stopping and giggling.