Alive! Not Dead! (2 page)

Traffic was at a standstill. 
Was there a wreck?
Down on the right side of the road a RV camper had tipped over on its side.  A little past it, cock-eyed on the highway, a jack-knifed UPS semi-trailer sat.  There was furniture, cardboard boxes, clothing, broken dishes, and household appliances all over the road from an over-turned moving van.  Loose papers flipped around on the road.

On my left there was a six car pile-up.  Most of the cars were burned beyond recognition.  Inside the vehicles burned passengers were slumped in their seats.  A little past them a fire truck was parked with its lights still on, flashing, but no siren.  Red lights spun round and around.

I looked back up the mountain.  Deep dark billowing smoke was visible above the shattered tree line.  I didn’t see any people…or wait,
zombies
following me.

They must have found something else to eat.

A large bent reflector highway sign
showed me that I was at the
Snoqualmie Pass
exit.  Snoqualmie Pass is in the western half of Washington state, so the plane hadn’t gotten very far before it crashed.  I was in the westbound break-down lane of highway I-90.  Further down the highway to the west I could see the caved-in red roof of a hotel.

Both lanes in either direction were motionless.  Cars and trucks littered the road here and there.  There were no bodies.  It looked like the vehicles had just been randomly dropped on
to the road.  Some cars were on their roofs, others were on their sides.  Some had long skid marks behind them on the cracked pavement.  I wondered if the horizon flip had done this damage.

Where are the people?
Did they try to eat each other here too? I need to find someone…what the hell is going on here?

I made my way toward the
smashed red roof of the hotel.  It was getting dark fast.  The fire on the mountain was putting out an eerie dark orange glow out above.  Clouds were moving in.

There was extensive damage at the hotel.  The front doors swung on broken hinges, squeaking quietly.  All of the windows had been shattered.  Inside, the place was a wreck.  On the walls large cracks ran from tiled floor to ceiling.  Water was pouring down from the ceiling in one spot.  The water was splashing loudly in the empty lobby.  Wet papers and trash littered the soaked carpet.  Furniture was tossed everywhere.  More large cracks lined the floor of the lobby.  There were no lights on.  It was getting dark fast.  I needed to find some
kind of shelter.  I knew it was going to get cold pretty fast after the sun went down.

I should really look for somewhere safer to stay
, I thought.  Instead, with the sound of splashing water echoing behind me, I walked down a darkening cracked hall out of the lobby.  I checked the first guest room on the right.  The door was unlocked.  It squeaked loudly as I pushed it open.  The room had two double beds.  Neither one was made.  The curtains were open looking out into the parking lot.  Several cars were out there, too, but no one was in or near them.

I closed the curtains and lay down on the bed closest to the window.  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep because I was so scared and confused.  I had no idea what had happened or where the people were or what
had caused the people to become zombies.

The next thing I knew, it was morning.

The smell of smoke was very strong as I woke up.  For a minute,
I thought the bed was on fire.

Coughing, I yanked the curtains back.  The vehicles outside were on fire.  The grass and trees beyond were burning, too.  As far as I could see, everything was on fire.

I quickly ran back down the hall to the lobby.  The water was no longer splashing down from the ceiling.  Outside I was met by thick smoke and cool summer mountain air.  The mixture of the two didn’t seem to make sense.

The fire was behind me.  I was running away from it, the hotel and the highway. 
Evidently, the fire from the plane crash had spread down the mountain overnight.

I needed to get away from here quickly.  I
needed to find somewhere safe.

Down a short embankment there were more parked cars. There were a few damaged houses a little further away, as well.  The fire hadn’t gotten to them yet.

I saw some people.  They were in a group.  Maybe they were making a plan – talking, trying to figure out what the hell happened here.  They were all at the end of the parking lot where some other cars were parked.  I waved to them.

“Hey!”

I put my hand down.  They weren’t people.  Well, they
were
, but they were zombies.

I needed to run. 
But where? The fire was coming down the mountain on one side.  Zombies were approaching me from the other.  Looking around quickly I saw that the fire hadn’t spread very far down the highway. I ran up the embankment and started running toward Seattle in the eastbound traffic lanes.

The fire was just on the other side of a moving van.  The van had done a 180 and flipped during its crash.  It had flung furniture and other household items all over the highway.  I noticed some golf clubs.  I decided that I needed a weapon to fend off any more zombies if I ran across one.  The group that had been in the parking lot was on my tail now.  I grabbed a 7 iron off of the gritty highway and stood there while I waited for them to approach.

They seemed more interested in the burning hotel.  They didn’t come my way.

I turned around to start making my way to Seattle, but was stopped dead in my tracks by a zombie that was no more than 3 feet away from me.  Half of its face had been ripped off.  It stood there, gawking at me.  He stood there for a second, almost as surpri
sed as I was.  He lunged at me.

I swung my 7 iron at him.  It cracked the side of his head.  The zombie didn’t slow.  I swung again, smacking the side of his nose, breaking it, sending skin off like a bad duff on the tee box.

He grabbed my left arm.  His grip was very tight.  I felt his broken fingernails dig into my skin as he dragged me toward his mouth.

Quickly I flipped the golf club around.  I jabbed him in the gut with the grip end.  He
ooofed!
Bile and blood washed out of his mouth.  His grip loosened a bit.  I yanked my arm free, then whacked him hard again across the head with the grip end of the club.

Another set of hands was on my back.  I was yanked back toward the van.  I expected teeth to bite into my neck, but the hands were softer but firm; not the itchy scaly hands of a zombie.

It was a man wearing a brown UPS uniform.  He rushed past me on my left as he took a stainless steel baseball bat to the zombie’s head.  After two good hits the zombie’s head split open.  It went down with a thud.

The UPS guy crushed the zombie’s head with 3 more strong smacks.

He turned to me “You gotta smash their heads.  That stops ‘em.”  He looked haggard.  “You alright?”

“Yeah thanks” I said, breathing hard.

“He bite ya?”

“No.”

The UPS guy looked me up and down looking for bite marks anyway.  “Anyone else with you?”

“No,” I managed. 
“Just me.”

“Alright,” he said, “let’s get out of here before we get eaten or burned up.”

We both ran down the highway, not speaking, just running.  I still held my golf club, he still had his bat.

About 200 yards down the crumbling highway, we both stopped running to turn to look back at the fire.  The whole hotel was now engulfed in flame.  Flames were shooting 50 feet into the air.  The mountain where the plane had crashed was also burning.  A huge column of white smoke covered most of the sky.

“Damn” I whispered.

“I saw you this morning coming out of the hotel.  I was like
that dude is gonna get burned
up
!”

“Yeah I was lucky to get out of there when I did.  The smoke woke me up.”

“You’re a lucky man,” he stretched out his hand.  “Name is Norm.  Norm Bennet.”

“Hey Norm,” I said with a shuddery laugh.  “I don’t know, maybe I’m on a lucky streak.  I mean, the zombies are scary as hell, but yesterday I survived the plane crash that caused all of this.”

“What? You survived a plane crash?” he asked me, one eye squinted.

“Yeah up in the mountain there” I p
ointed.  There was no sight of the plane wreck – the smoke was too thick up there.

“Holy shit!” he said, looking up at the mountain.  “I live around here and was coming home off my shift last night when I got bounced all over the highway.  I don’t know what the hell happened….what’s your name, man?”

“Dan Kingsley.”

“What do you think happened last night, Dan?

A sonic boom?”

“I have no idea,” I said.  “I think my flight got hit by another plane or something.  It was weird.  After we crashed I was looking
around for survivors and I saw the skyline of Seattle.  It looked like the horizon flipped.”

“I thought I saw something like that, too.  Then everyone started to crash on the highway.”

“Well you’re lucky too,” I said, smiling.  “I think we’re both lucky.”

“I agree,” he said.  “Did you hear any of that stuff they were talking about on the radio last night?”

“No, what were they saying?”

He stopped short.  He was staring down the road.  His throat started working like he wanted to say something, but no words came out.  His face was unshaven, his brown hair messy.  It looked like he hadn’t slept in
weeks.  He was frozen in place.

I looked at him, “What’s wrong?”

Suddenly he sprinted down the highway toward the fire.  I followed him, not really knowing what he was doing, but he ran as fast as he could.   He stopped by a small red car on the side of the road.  It was tipped up onto its left side.

“Norm you ok?”
I asked, out of breath as I caught up to him.

He bent down as he looked in the car
.  Quickly he stood back up.  He spun around to his left, smacking his back on the hood of the sideways car.  His bat clattered down onto the highway. “That’s Donna,” he whispered, tears in his throat.  “That’s my wife…”

“What...”
I looked into the car through the broken windshield.  A woman inside was dead, slouched sideways against the driver’s side window. Her body was chewed apart on the exposed right side.  Her hair had also been either eaten or ripped out of her scalp.

“You sure it’s her?” I asked.

“It’s my wife’s goddamn
car
!” Norm hollered.  “It’s my goddamn wife! I’d know my wife if I saw her, even if she was...eaten…”  He leaned forward putting his hands on his knees.  “I was out here all night looking for her…I knew she would be coming home from work about the time when
the whole
fucking world went ape shit!”
He leaned in to look at her.  “She was here the whole
time
...I missed her...I must have walked past this fucking car 50 times last night and I didn’t even
recognize
it…but now I
do
…”  He was hard to understand, his voice was crying.

“Jesus Norm, I’m sorry.”

He swallowed hard.  “Where’s Janey? Where’s my little girl?”

I looked back into the sideways car.  The backseat was difficult to see through the cracked windshield.  I thought I could make out the top of a child seat back there and maybe something that looked like a red
toolbox?
If Janey was in there, she would probably be on the floor of the car.

“We’ll need to push th
e car onto the wheels to see,” he said.

Norm nodded through his tears.  We both started to rock the car until it teetered and fell onto the tires.  Norm’s wife went with the rocking.  She fell over onto her eaten side when the car landed.  She sagged as she fell over onto the center console.

In the back, Janey’s car seat was empty.  Norm tried to open the back door on the driver’s side but it was jammed.  I ran around the other side, popped the door open.  Janey was dead on the floor.  It looked like the side of her head had been bashed in.

Norm backed up.  He fell over, crying.

“Jesus man,” I whispered.

There was a scuffle to my left.  A woman zombie in a bloody flowered dress came around the back of a pick-up truck.  Her face was covered in slimy fresh blood.  She was wearing high heels.  She swung at
me as she reached me. A bracelet twirled on her wrist.  I spun around with my 7 iron whacking her good in the jaw.  The force of the impact knocked a wig off she was wearing.

Norm picked up his baseball bat.  He went over to the zombie.  He slugged the zombie in the head so hard with his bat that I
heard its neck break.  The zombie went down.   Norm literally beat its brain in.  He continued to slam the bat down, over and over, until there was nothing but blood splattered on the cement.

I touched his shoulder.  “C’mon man, let’s get out of here.”