Dead Life (Book 4) (11 page)

                                          “We need to get out of here,” Gina said. “All that gunfire was like ringing the dinner bell for these son-of-a-bitches. They're coming from around the truck.”

                                          “I don't think he has any broken bones,” I said.

                                          “He survived us dragging him out of there,” Al said, looking around. “There's lots of them heading our way. We don't have a choice. We have to move him.”

                                          Al and I got Rick in between us in an upright position and each threw one of his arms over our shoulders. We drug him over to where Gina stood firing into the ever mounting number of zombies.

                            “Clear us a path little girl,” Al said. “Let's move out.”

              We worked our way back to the truck, Gina firing non-stop to the front and back of us. The only thing that slowed us down was having to stop so she could slap in a new magazine each time she ran out of bullets. Fortunately the truck wasn't far and by the time we got there Gina had the area cleared.

              Shouldering her rifle Gina opened the lift gate to the truck and the two of us hauled Rick into the back. Al started to climb in with us when from out of nowhere two sprinters came around the side of the truck and grabbed him. He was able to get his forearm under the chin of the first one to him just as it tried to bite down on his shoulder. I pulled my pistol and shot it in the chest, knocking the three of them to the ground. The force of my shot hitting it dislodged it from Al but he still had the other to contend with. He had both hands around it's throat and didn't seem to be having too much trouble keeping it's teeth away from him. The zombie I'd hit in the chest was in the process of crawling back over to Al, it was in the clear so I shot it in the head. Then I jumped down from the truck,  walked over to the other one, and drug it off of Al. I pushed the creature forward then pulled it back to me to keep it off balance then threw it to the ground. Before I could do anything Al jumped up and stabbed it through the eye with his knife.

              “Gina you drive. Steve we've to get him woke up. Hopefully he knows who took Cindy,” Al said, pulling his knife from the zombies eye. He wiped it on the zombies shirt then walked over and climbed into the back of the truck.

              “What makes you think somebody has her?” I asked.

              “First, the seat to the truck was still moved forward. Cindy was driving. Second, Rick was shot That wasn't the accident that took his ear off, it was a bullet. They were probably trying to get away from someone when it happened. Third, I don't think there is anyway Cindy would have or could have walked away from that accident. If she was in good enough shape to crawl out of that mess she wouldn't have left Rick there like that.”

              “Which way should I go?” Gina asked, as she started the truck.

              “Take us further down the road. Drive slow and keep an eye out,” Al said.

              “For what?”

              “I don't know, something, anything.”

              “Alright Al,” Gina said, as she pulled slowly away.

Chapter 9

              Lily and Edgar were waiting for us at the Kia. She had just got back from getting his pack from the house and was frantically searching for the keys, which I had liberated from her during the night. I held them up and shook them as I approached. “I'm driving today.”

              “No you're not,” Lily answered.

              “Oh yes I am. I sat in the back all day yesterday.”

              “We don't have time for this. You two need to get this shit settled,” John said.

              He was right. The mob was getting closer. In a few minutes they would be on us. “Just get in,” I said.

              Lily came over to me and whispered to me. “Did you have a good time last night?”

              “You know I did,” I answered.

              “If you want that to happen again,” she whispered, “you'll give me those keys.”

              I handed her the keys and went around to the passenger side and got in the front seat.

              Lily threw Edgar's bag in the back and got in the Kia. John got in the backseat and we all sat there staring at Edgar, who still stood outside the SUV.

              “I have to get to my wife and kids,” he said.

              John leaned across the seat and opened the door. “We're going to take you to them. Just get in.”

              “Do you know where they are?” he said as he got in.

              “Yeah, they're at the farm,” John said.

              “That's great. Do you know how to get there?”

              “No,” Lily said, “but I bet you do.”

              “It's about fifteen miles due east of here,” Edgar said, pointing in the direction of the rising sun. “This road turns into a two lane highway about five miles from here. The farm is right next to the highway.”

              Edgar was pointing down the road that the horde had traveled down last night. Unless something caused them to change direction they would be to the farm sometime today. Lily stomped on the gas and turned down the road.

              “Edgar, is there another way to the farm?” Lily asked.

              “Yes, but this takes us right to it. We can be there in less than half an hour. Especially if you keep driving like this.”

              I didn't see any reason to panic Edgar so I lied. “The road is washed out ahead. We'll have to go around.”

              “How far down is it washed out from here? I can probably get us around it. There are several side streets we can take.”

              “I need one that takes us a few miles from this road and gets us closest to your farm,” Lily said.

              “Just tell him,” John said.

              “Tell me what?”

              “There's a horde of zombies in front of us. They moved through here last night. If we hurry we can beat them to the farm,” I said.

              “Can't we just drive through them?”

              “Edgar, I want you to listen very closely to me,” Lily said. “Did you notice that the big Elm tree that was in front of your house was gone?”

              “Come to think of it I don't remember seeing it. With everything that was going on though I could have missed it and there were a lot of dead zombies all over the place. Why'd you smash them like that?”

              “Take my word for it. The tree was gone. There were so many of them moving down your street it was torn from the ground. Then it just got pushed along with them as the horde made their way down the street. The zombies are the ones that smashed all those bodies. The ones that can't keep up get trampled by the ones following behind.”

              “Turn right here,” Edgar said.

              Lily was right on top of the street that Edgar referred to so she slammed on the brakes and made a hard right. “How close can you get us to the farm?” she asked.

              “About three miles. Like I said though there are a bunch of side roads we could take. Only they don't get as close to the farm.”

              “Does it add much time to the trip?”

              “About twenty minutes is all. Is that too much?”

              “Let's hope not.” I said.

              It was pretty quiet in the car for most of the trip. We talked to Edgar for a while in an attempt to calm him down some. We could tell he was worried so we did our best to keep him occupied while Lily sped down the deserted side streets. He told us he had gone to check on his mother, she lived in a nursing home a few miles from their house, but was unable to get there. He had been forced to hold up in a deserted house the past two days. Finally the zombies that surrounded the house lost interest or were attracted to something else. When he woke up this morning and discovered they were gone he tried to make it back home. On the way he was forced to swerve to avoid two of the undead walking down the middle of the road and had crashed his car. He had been on the run ever since. At first only the two zombies he had avoided running down pursued him. The further he went the more zombies fell in behind him. By the time he reached his street he had attracted the runners and had been forced to pick up his pace. At this point of his story he finally thanked John and me for intervening.

              After several turns and a few near misses at running over the few stray zombies we encountered on the trip, Edgar told us we were almost there. We came out of a heavily wooded area and were now passing by open fields. In the distance I could see the horde we'd been trying to beat to his farmhouse. They were already past the intersection we were headed for. Lily stopped and we sat in the middle of the road. The horde stretched down the road for as far as the eye could see in both directions.

              “Is there another road we can take?” John asked.

              “This is it. Can't we just drive through them?”

              “There's no way we'd make it through,” I said. “What about something that goes past the house?”

              “There's only one other way.”

              “Tell me how to get there,” Lily said.

              “You have to go through that intersection.”

              “You're telling me I have to drive through that horde,” Lily said.

              “That's the only way. There's a road just on the other side of that ridge that runs parallel to the highway. It'll take us a mile past the house then we can circle back.”

              Lily turned to me. “What do you think?”

              I didn't know what to say. The horde could already be to the house. It may have gone right past. Or his wife and kids could be dead already. “John, what do you think?”

              “We need a tank, is what I think.”

              “Please, I'm begging you,” Edgar said.

              I reached over and took Lily's hand. “Do it.”

              “Holy shit,” John said.

              Lily started the Kia moving forward. The horde was packed in pretty tight in front of us. The main body was about forty feet wide. The highway ran through farmland and at one time barbed wire fencing had bordered each side of the road. I could only assume this because I could see that when the horde came to this intersection they had spread out onto the road that we were on. The fencing closest to the main body was gone but as we got closer to the intersection zombies were hung up in the fencing that bordered the stretch of road that we were on.

              As Lily got closer to the intersection she slowed our speed and moved into the left hand lane. By now the zombies closest to us were moving in our direction. We weren't even to the main body of the horde and had already had at least twenty jarring impacts with the undead. The zombies began to close in around us. They were beating on the sides of the SUV and pounding on the windows. We sat high enough off the ground that only a few bodies were thrown up onto the hood of the Kia. Most slid off and the ones that didn't were eventually knocked off by the next to be catapulted onto the hood. Then we hit the main body of the horde. I could tell because our forward progress nearly stopped. We were no longer running into zombies. Instead it felt like we were trying to push through a solid wall. Lily gave the Kia more gas. I could hear the tires squealing. Still our speed through the horde continued to drop. Lily cut the wheel hard to the left, trying to compensate for the sideways push we were experiencing to the right. This helped a little but still we slid to the right. She cut the wheel hard right and we lurched forward; then our progress slowed again. The front of the Kia started to point in the direction the horde was going so Lily cut the wheel hard to the left again. The nose of the car started to come back around and we started our sideways slide down the highway again. Not only were our tires squealing as we tried to move forward they also made a dragging sound as we were pushed sideways. One of the windows in the cargo area exploded in. John started firing through the broken window. As our forward momentum slowed again Lily cut the wheel hard right. Once again we lurched forward and started moving with the horde. Lily responded by turning to the left again. By repeating this left, right, back and forth motion we were actually making headway. Lily broke through the main body of the horde, ran over about twenty or thirty more zombies, and we were free.

              We sped down the road until we came to the side street running parallel to the highway. Lily made a hard right and slammed on the brakes. There was a three car pile-up blocking the road. Drainage ditches ran down both sides making it impossible to go around. To make matters worse we had split the herd. Soon thousands of zombies would be on us. We all got out of the Kia and stood in the middle of the street, hands on hips, surveying the situation.

              Two of the cars had hit head on. Their damage was so severe there was no way we would be able to just push either of them out of the way. The third looked to have been following too close behind one of the two cars involved in the head on collision and had hit the back of the car on the drivers side when it swerved to avoid the pile-up. The driver was still trapped in the mini van, securely buckled in. She stared at us through opaque eyes trying to grab at us from her broken drivers side window.

              “I think we can push that one out of the way. Do you think she'll mind?” John asked.

              I pulled my pistol out and shot her in the head. “Not now.”

              There was no way to get at the minivan from the drivers side so John opened the passenger door and started to climb in. Black blood and the goo that at one time had been her brain covered the door, window, and seat. This was obviously from me having just blew her brains out. John pulled back and gave me a dirty look. I just shrugged my shoulders. Instead of climbing into the van he carefully reached in and put it in neutral.

              “You're going to have to get in there and steer,” I said.

              Somebody did need to steer but from the look on John's face I could tell that he thought it should be me. There wasn't time to discuss the matter so he took a deep breath and crawled in. Once he was in John didn't waste any time undoing the seat belt and dragging the body out of the van. We all got in front of the van and pushed while John steered. We had to back and forth a few times to get the van free from the other vehicles but were able to do this fairly quickly which was good because the horde was almost on us. Lily had even had to stop pushing a few times to shoot down the runners that were getting too close to us. We pushed the van out of the right lane, leaving just enough room to squeeze by, and got back in the Kia.

              With all the shooting we had just done an even larger number of the horde turned their attention towards us. When we made our way past the wreckage the drivers side of the Kia drug across the bumper of one the wrecked cars. For a minute I didn't think we were going to make it then the rear quarter panel tore free and we lurched forward. We could see the horde moving down the highway only a few hundred yards away just on the other side of a field separating the two stretches of road. As we drove down the road Lily continuously honked the horn, trying to draw the attention of the mob. This worked somewhat to draw some of them toward us but the main body continued down the highway.              

              Edgar told us we were only about a mile from his house and we still could not see the front end. Less than a minute later the roof of a house appeared on the horizon. It was the farmhouse. At the same time we reached the front of the horde. They were less than a quarter mile from the house. Lily stopped the Kia and we all started firing from the car into the horde. We had no delusions of being able to kill them all. We just wanted to turn them away from the house. Like the horn, this worked to a degree. Some of the horde began to cross the field and head in our direction. The main group continued on. It was if they had somewhere to be and nothing was going to deter them.

              We gave up on trying to turn the horde and took off down the road again. When we came to the house again Lily stopped the car. It sat a few hundred feet off the road and we could see two cars parked out front but could see no activity from the house. Surely with all the gunfire they had to have heard us. I fired my pistol into the air in an effort to draw Jenny's attention. A man carrying a rifle came out onto the porch and started shooting at us. Lily stomped on the gas and sped off. We'd just have to try and beat the horde to the house.