Elements of the Undead: Fire (Book One) (15 page)

The tragedy had been covered in the Denver Post the next morning. The driver, a man of about Jack’s age, had been on his way back from a family reunion in Las Vegas, New Mexico, when he fell asleep at the wheel and encountered a stray cow shortly after midnight.

Jack swallowed the memory away.
If that happened now, if we were to hit an animal or if we were to hit anything, there would be no one to call for help
… He let out a nervous laugh.
It’s just a sign
, he told himself.
It doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Something moved on the side of the road.

“Hold on!” He tensed up. He didn’t have time to put his hand out to stabilize Becka before the creature darted into their path. It was a runner, one of the irradiated ones from Albuquerque, and it was moving fast, almost sprinting.

A man. One arm. No skin on the side of his head.
These images were burned into Jack’s mind as the creature plunged into the scrub on the opposite side of the road. He feathered the brake.
The undead never traveled alone
. He was right. A second creature appeared as if summoned, and raced into his lane. Jack swerved, but not enough.

The second zombie plowed into the right front corner of the bus, causing its body to explode into a greasy mist of gore. The old VW shuddered and jumped left a few inches as the steering wheel was torn from his grasp. He gripped the wheel and tried to bring it back to straighten the bus.
Bang
! They slewed violently to the right.
Tire!

Jack put every ounce of strength he possessed into straightening the van, but the top-heavy vehicle had its own plans. Time slowed. He felt the tires on the left side of the bus lose contact with the road. They went airborne. A second later, the earth reached up and yanked them back in a vicious embrace. Glass exploded around him in a million glittering fragments. Twisting metal screamed in his ears. Hot sparks peppered his face, minute pinpricks of heat that felt oddly comforting.

And then everything went black.

~~~

Consciousness seeped into Jack’s mind with agonizing slowness. The first thing he noticed was the temperature. It was much colder, almost freezing. He was shivering, his entire body quaking uncontrollably. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His hips felt
torn
, as if some enormous creature had taken hold of either side of his body and wrung him like dish rag. He tried to open his eyes but his lids wouldn’t budge. Glued shut.

“What the hell…?” His head pounded. Blood thrummed in his ears, the rushing
boom boom
drowning out everything around him. Stretching the muscles of his face, he finally managed to open his eyes. He let out a surprised cry. The world was upside down. No. Wait.
He
was upside down.

The pain in his hips was from the lap belt digging into his waist and cutting off his circulation. He hung there for a moment and stared. With his right hand, Jack felt for the roof and discovered it was only an inch from the top of his head. Windshield glass lay scattered below, tiny stars twinkling at him from a false night sky.

He groaned. His head was thick, full of itchy wool. His mind tripped over itself, trying to piece together the events that had put him here. It all came back in a terrifying gut-wrenching rush.

“Becka! Ellie!” he shouted. He twisted in his seat, searching for them. Becka wasn’t there. He couldn’t turn far enough to see into the rear. “Becka! Ellie!” he called again.

As he twisted, a lance of pain raced up his arm and into his shoulder, flooding his mind with an agony beyond any he had ever experienced. Bile tumbled down his throat and dribbled onto the roof of his mouth. He vomited an explosive torrent of steaming fluid that gushed back into his upturned nose, choking him.

Looking at his arm, he discovered the source of the pain, a jagged shard of glass, embedded in the meaty part of his upper bicep. Protruding at an obscene angle, the glass was lodged deep inside the muscle, grinding against bone every time he moved. His vision went gray around the edges. He realized he was about to black out. He fought it, wrapping his mind around the wispy tendrils of consciousness as they sprinted away from him, reeling them back in and gathering them close.

Becka. Ellie. Got to find them.
Gritting his teeth, Jack grasped the shard with his good hand and tugged with all his might. He couldn’t hold back a scream as the glass slid free. Blood welled up from the wound, then splattered on the roof of the van. Reaching for the belt buckle with his good arm, he took a deep breath and pressed the release.

Although he didn’t have far to fall, the impact still knocked the wind out of him. It seemed as if every square inch of his body had been pummeled during the accident. He lay still for a moment, panting, trying his best not to black out again. Free from his bonds, Jack rolled over and began searching for his family.

They were gone. He crawled to the front passenger seat and took Becka’s seat belt in his hand. Panic welled up as he fingered the ends of the straps. They were torn and shredded, as if something had gnawed through them.

He crawled into the back. It was empty as well. The windows had all imploded, compressed beyond their engineering limits when the bus landed on its roof. A chill desert breeze flowed through the empty frames. He flicked the switch on the dome lamp between his knees.
Dead.

His stomach sank. Blood coated every surface, congealing pools soaking through the knees of his jeans and coating his hands as he turned in frantic circles.

Zombies
. He sat back on his haunches to consider the situation.
This doesn’t make sense. If zombies took them, then why am I still here? Why didn’t they take me, too?

Maybe they had been ejected from the bus as it rolled. Jack’s hopes soared. But no. That wouldn’t explain Becka’s seat belt. Or the blood in the rear.
Ellie’s blood
. Hell, he couldn’t even remember if Ellie had even been buckled in.
Probably not
. She hated seat belts.

Jack kicked open the door and crawled onto the desert floor. The sand was cool under his palms. The moon rode high overhead.
Midnight, maybe later
.
I wasn’t out for long.
A wave of nausea assaulted him as he struggled to his feet. He put his hands on his knees to stabilize himself and retched, burping up foul acid. He spit.

Mangled beyond repair, the bus lay at the bottom of a shallow wash. Their supplies, ejected during the crash, charted their unexpected departure from the freeway like a trail of enormous breadcrumbs. There was a sleeping bag at his feet, and their Coleman stove lay a few yards beyond. He found his pistol half-buried in the sand a few feet from the bus.

 But no Becka. And no Ellie.

Jack scrambled up the embankment, the loose sand crumbling beneath his fingers with each frantic grasp. Finally, he made it to the top. The remains of the ghoul he had hit twitched mindlessly on the shoulder, his muscles contracting and releasing like some mad perpetual-motion machine. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark, he realized he could see for miles. The desert glowed as if lit from within.

Jack cupped his hand around his mouth and yelled. “Becka! Ellie!” He listened. Seconds ticked by with no response. Crossing the road, he repeated his call. He waited again. Nothing.

Something
snapped
behind him. Something brittle. Near the bus. Jack sprinted across the road to the lip of the arroyo and peered in. A ripping sound, like Velcro, split the silence.

Jack’s hopes soared. “Becka?” There was no answer. Jack plunged down the embankment, imagining Becka with a life-threatening injury, unable to answer.

 
“Becka! Ellie!” he shouted as he dashed around the bus. There was no one there. Jack skidded to a stop. He looked around, puzzled.
Where’s it coming from?

His answer came a moment later, when another, louder ripping sound split the night air. It was coming from a few dozen yards farther down the wash, near the corpse of a monstrous cottonwood.

He checked his weapon, ensuring the safety was off. “Becka?” he said in a low voice. “I’m coming…” As quietly as he could, Jack made his way through the arroyo. His heart raced and sweat poured from his forehead despite the cool breeze.

He approached the tree. How a tree this large had been torn loose baffled him. It was easily three feet across, with bleached-white limbs stretching towards the night sky like a spurned lover.

“Becka?” The ripping sound came again. Something moved just a few feet in front of him. Despite the moonlight, Jack wished he had a flashlight. He couldn’t make out any shapes through the jumble of shadows. He stepped forward.

From beneath a tangle of branches, Becka stared up at him, a rictus of agony stretched across her face.

“Ellie. No.”

Ellie was crouched to one side, chewing vigorously on her mother’s limp arm. At the sound of his voice, her head snapped up, and she locked eyes with Jack, the milky-whites seeming to penetrate to the bottom of his soul. Jack took a step back and raised his hands, his gun pointing at the sky.

Ellie leaped to her feet. She growled. Becka didn’t move.

Jack swallowed. Cold washed through his body. He shivered uncontrollably. His teeth began to chatter, causing him to nick his tongue, sending a flood of coppery-tasting blood into his mouth. He swallowed hard.

Ellie stepped over her mother and began lumbering toward him. One leg was obviously broken, twisted and shattered into a useless sack of bone and flesh. Yet, she still came.

Jack centered his pistol on her forehead. And then he pulled the trigger. The shot hit home, and Ellie collapsed to the ground. Silence returned. But he wasn’t done. Becka would rise as well. Maybe in minutes, maybe in hours, but she
would
come back.

Jack made his way to his wife’s body. He kneeled down beside her and touched her left cheek. It was still warm. He tasted metal in the back of his throat. Cold and antiseptic, bitter. Almost oily. With a quick swipe of his thumb and index finger, he closed Becka’s eyelids. He put his pistol against her forehead.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

He pulled the trigger.

Twenty-Three

The parking lot was empty.
Or, more accurately, it
appeared
empty. Megan scanned the storefronts one by one, plumbing the depths of the dark shops lining the strip mall, wishing she could see through the walls to spy the creatures that surely lurked within. The whole day had been this way, with very little undead presence to speak of. That bothered her. Typically, when you didn’t see them coming was when they would pop out of a dark corner and take a chunk out of your ass. She had seen it firsthand, had almost been dinner herself on more than one occasion.

Something about this food raid was making her jumpy, like she felt when she had left the house and forgotten to turn off the oven. She turned to Cesar. “Do you—”

Cesar shushed her. “I know. I feel it too. Something’s off...” She looked over her shoulder at the new guy, Kevin. He was going car to car, checking for trapped ghouls and ensuring the doors were locked.
He’s thorough,
she decided.

It was silent in the grocery store parking lot, since all of the engines were stopped. That was often the worst part. The sounds of the heavy diesel engines would sometimes bring the undead out en masse, forcing them to abandon a raid. She and Cesar had experimented with using a decoy vehicle, sending it ahead to pull out the lurking ghouls and lead them away, but it seemed that no matter how many were collected, there were always more left behind.

“Mo, you and Rich,” Cesar said, addressing the drivers of the chase vehicles. “I want you guys out here.” He turned to Kevin. “You, too. We’ll be quick.”

The men nodded in agreement and set up positions on either side of the entrance with their weapons pointing out.

Entering an abandoned building was one of Megan’s least favorite activities. Together, she, Cesar, and Pringle forced the front door as quietly as possible and crept inside. Despite the brilliant daylight only a few feet behind them, her eyes couldn’t penetrate the gloom of the interior.

“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath.

“Yes. Fuck,” Cesar agreed. Cesar wasn’t given to cursing, even in the most difficult situation, and that one word told her volumes about how he felt.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.

“
Sí
. Yes. The next one is three miles to the South. I don’t want to go that far into town. Not today.”

“Okay then.” Megan took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with.” Hauling her arm back, she lobbed a fist-sized rock deep into the store.

The response was immediate. A cacophony of moans, the call of the undead.

“Come to Mama,” she said under her breath. One of the creatures came blundering into her vision, getting hung up on an overturned shopping cart for a moment before knocking it aside and vectoring straight toward her position. It looked to have been a soccer mom in its former life. Thirty-something with a cute pair of yoga pants and nearly new running shoes, she was perfectly preserved except for the gaping cavity in her abdomen where all of the internal organs were supposed to be. The soccer mom staggered between a set of cash registers, bumbling and tripping, spinning around in its desperate rush to reach food.

Megan felt the muscles in her neck tense, her jaw ached and her teeth ground relentlessly. She flexed her fingers and forced herself to breathe, to relax. She hefted her mattock, taking comfort at its solidity. At a little over five-feet-long, the device was one of Cesar’s finest creations, a cross between a shovel handle and a traditional mattock. Quick, quiet, and deadly effective at close range, it was the most practical way to dispatch the undead without the siren song of gunshots. Cesar had come up with the idea after a harrowing raid in which they had accidentally attracted half of Tucson’s undead. The blade of the mattock was perfect for slowing them down, removing limbs, and chopping them off at the knees. The spike was custom-built for the head. It was large and heavy enough to penetrate all but the thickest of skulls, able to drop a zombie with a single strike.