Evolution of the Dead (14 page)

“Hold on,” she said.  “Scott, do you see that?”

He set her down.  “What? Where?”

“Back where we came from.”

Squinting, he leaned forward, trying to understand what he was seeing.

“Oh my fucking God,” he whispered.  “Oh shit.  Run you guys, fucking run now!”

The dead were running full speed at them.

“Alright.  Yes, I left her there!
Yes
she was alive and
no
she didn’t get hit by spit.  I just…wanted us to be safe, you know, and she had a broken foot, so –“

“So, you left her there for the dead.  You’re a sick bastard.”

“
You
wanted me to drive by her when we
first
saw her.”

“I did not.”

“Yes you did.  You said
better her than us
.”

“I never said such a thing.”

Ok whatever.  I’m not gonna argue about it anymore.  It’s done.”

“It’s
not
done!”

"God damnit, I'm sorry, alright.  Damn, what do you want me to do? How many fucking times do I need to say I'm sorry?"

"To
me
? Not anymore. But to her,
yes
.  You need to apologize to
her
.  She didn’t do a god damn thing to you, Nick."

They were quickly speeding along the frontage road.

“You want me to turn around and go back to
apologize
to her? What are you, nuts? I’m not going back into that shit.”

“Fine then.  Let me out.  I don’t want to be near you anymore.”

He slammed on the brakes leaving long tire treads on the pavement.  “Get out then.”

“What? I was just kidding! I don’t want to get out.  Come on, let’s keep going.”

He stared at her.  He didn’t keep driving.

“Please.  I don’t want to be out there alone!”

Cruelly he said, “Better you than me.”

“Oh Nick,” she cried.  “I won’t make it alone out there.”

He shoved the car into park.  He unlocked the doors.  “You can go.”

“Nick, I…”

He yelled, “Get the fuck out!”

Crying, she fumbled with the door.  Her hands were shaking.

“My fucking God,” he yelled.  He slammed out his door, ran around to her side, yanked her door open and pulled her out of the car.  She stumbled, falling down in the street skinning her hands.

She was crying.  “Nick, please.”

He went back to his side, opened the back door, reached in and pulled a wrinkled t-shirt off the back seat.  Putting it on, he slammed the door and got in the front seat.  He put the car in drive.  Spinning the tires, he drove away.

Janet laid on the road, crying.

Two blocks down the road, Nick muttered, “Fuck her.”

He slammed on the brakes.  The car spun around to face the other way.

Janet was crouched down in the road as he approached.  She was crying, trying to stand up.

She turned when she heard his car coming back.  Maybe he was going to let her back in.  He knew how frail she was.  She’d never make it out here alone.

He ran her over.

Her body thumped under the car’s wheels.

“You’re weak,” he said.  “You won’t make it.”

At the Rent-A-Center, the dead all turned to face him as his car approached.

He drove around the back of the store.  Inside the parking garage, more of the dead stood motionless.

“Where the fuck did they go?”

He drove back around to the front of the store.  Dead people were crushed under his wheels like cheap plywood.  They had no weight, no resistance as he slammed through them.

Weak like Janet
, he thought. 
I need to be with the strong.  People like Scott.  And Kim.  But not that Carmen bitch.

Scott’s car was parked near a barrier next to the highway.  Nick jumped out of his car.  As he looked over the edge; to the left he saw the destroyed bridge and crashed Rent-A-Center trucks.  “Jesus,” he muttered.  “What the hell happened here?”

Behind him, vomit splashed on the ground.  Turning, a group of the dead closed in on him.  A large glob of spit flew past his head.

With no time, Nick gripped the top of the barrier and slung himself over.  He hung there for a few seconds, wondering why the hell he did that when he could have easily run back to his car.  With nowhere else to go but down, he let go. Luckily he didn’t break an ankle.  Brushing the hair out of his eyes, he quickly ran into the center of the crowded highway.

Realizing it would be hopeless to get past the demolished bridge, he turned toward the dark entrance of the tunnel.

Did they go in there? Where’s Scott?

Globs of spit started to hammer the ground around him.  He needed to find protection fast.

Subconsciously covering his head with his arms, he ran away from the rain of spit.  He ran into the open darkness of the tunnel.

“These cars have headlights on,” he said to himself as he ran through.  “They must have used headlights to see where they were going.  Good idea, Scott.”

“Get up here,” Scott said, straining to pull Carmen up onto the roof of a smashed car.  Kim was already far ahead using her penlight as she climbed over the tangle of wrecked vehicles at the exit of the tunnel.  Daylight was bleeding in.  A few more cars to climb over, a bus to skirt around, and they’d be out of the tunnel.

“I’m trying,” Carmen gasped.  “My arms hurt so bad! God.”

“Just deal with it a little more,” Scott said out of breath.  “We’re almost out of the range of their spit.”

The dead were shoving themselves into the tangle of crashed cars, trying to push through the metal, much like they had pushed on the concrete to destroy the bridge.

“Hurry up you two,” Kim shouted.  “I can see daylight.  We’re almost out.”

Scott pulled Carmen up onto the hood of another car.  “They can’t reach us now.”

Carmen moaned, “Can we please just stop? I’m so tired! My foot is killing me.”

“Just a little more,” Scott said as he pulled her up onto the roof of a minivan.  “We’re getting close.  Then you can relax.”

“Come on you two,” Kim yelled.

Frustrated, Scott hoisted Carmen over his right shoulder, stepped across the crushed hood of a minivan, and hopped across onto the hood of another car.  Their weight together dented the hood in.  He stepped down onto the road, hopped back up onto the hood of a different car, jumped across it and into the bed of a pickup truck.

“You should have carried me the whole time,” Carmen said, her head and legs bouncing as Scott walked.  “Would have been much faster.”

“Didn’t think of this ‘til right now,” he said as he jumped across another hood.  “But you’re right, we’re gaining ground on those freaks.”

Nick stopped running.

Were his eyes playing tricks on him or were there hundreds of dead people ahead of him in the tunnel? It was hard to tell, but it sure looked like it.

He took a step closer.

Yes, they were dead people.

Several of them slowly turned toward him.

Nick took a step backward.  He ran back toward the entrance of the tunnel.

There had to be another way out of here.

Back out in broad daylight, he looked for a way over the highway center divider.  The fucking freaks were gaining on him.

He hopped up onto the hoods of cars, looking for anywhere he could get over the dividing wall.  If something was high enough, he might be able to jump over; or at least jump onto the divider and then pull himself over.

“Doesn’t anyone drive trucks in the fast lane,” he asked as he ran, dodging through cars.  Soon, he would be back to the destroyed bridge.

“There
has
to be a way over!”

A pickup truck with a camper sat next to the divider wall.

“It might be just tall enough,” Nick said skirting around the front of another car, nearly jamming his knee between it and the one behind.  He put his foot up on the bumper of the truck, stepped up onto the hood, and climbed up onto the camper top.  He was high enough now to jump over the dividing wall. Taking a deep breath, he jumped.  He landed hard on the cement, fell onto his side, skinning his elbow and knee.

The road on this side was empty other than a few vehicles stopped here and there.

There was only one way to go.

Back into the tunnel.

It looked like a dark eye, unblinking, a tiny peephole of light at the far end.

Nick ran toward it.

Scott grunted as they crawled through the tangle of crashed vehicles.  He groaned, “Aw fuck, is that bus blocking the end of the fucking tunnel?”

“It’s sitting at an angle in here,” Kim said, resting her back against the side of it.

They were right below the windows of a Metro bus.  Its front end was jammed, caught against a guard rail; the back end wedged against the other side of the tunnel.  Cars had crashed against it, cramming it harder and harder against the tunnel wall.

“We’re gonna have to break a window or something to get in,” Scott said leaning against the side of the bus, too. “Let’s do that.  Then we can climb up and walk right through the damn thing.”

Carmen asked, “Can you lift me a little higher? I can almost see inside.”

Grunting, Scott lifted her into the air with both hands.  Her legs were swinging slightly above him as he lifted her.  He smelled urine.  His hands were on the bare skin of her belly.

“I can’t see anything.  The windows are tinted.”

He set her down.  “Damn.  Kim, let’s look around for something to throw through the window.”

Dim daylight was coming through the windows of the bus.

“It’s so cramped in here,” Kim said looking through a crushed car.  “This place is jammed.”

Scott found a short two by four block of wood in the back of a pickup.  “Let’s try this.  Carmen, stand back.”

She limped to the side.

“Ok, cover your eyes.”

He threw the piece of wood at the windows.  It hit between two of them.  The block clattered to the ground.

“That wasn’t a very good throw,” he chuckled.  “One more try.  The window should pop out if I hit
it hard enough; they’re designed that way.”

His second throw hit the center of a window head on. The glass popped out of the frame landing inside the bus on the floor.  Light came pouring out.

“Good throw,” Kim said her hands on her hips.  Her back was covered in sweat.

Scott grabbed Carmen again.  Lifting her, he said, “See if you can see what we got going on inside.”

She pulled herself up holding onto the edge of the window.

No one was in the bus.

The aisles and seats were clean.

“It’s clear,” she said back down to them.  “No one’s in here.”

Carmen let go of the window.  Scott lowered her down quickly.  He said, “Kim, you’ll have to go check it out.  Carmen can’t walk and I can’t get up there by myself.”

“I don’t want to leave you guys,” she said.

“You’re not leaving, dummy,” he said.  She smiled crookedly.  “I don’t want you to go anywhere either; but we need to know what’s going on outside the tunnel.  Are there more freaks or what?”

She hugged him.  “I’m scared.”

He held her.  “We are too, honey.  Just go look, ok? If it’s bad, come back down.  We’ll be right here.”

“Alright.”

He lifted her up into the window.

She pulled herself up.  She disappeared inside.

Thirty seconds later, Scott raised his head up to the bus.  “Kim?”

Carmen looked at him with concern in her eyes.

He asked, “Where the fuck did she go?”

“I thought she’d be right back.”

“Me too.”

“Lift me up,” Carmen said.  “I’ll see if I can see her.”

He hoisted her back up.

Half-way through the tunnel, Nick stopped running to catch his breath.  He bent over, putting his hands on his knees.

Light was reflecting in a wet splotch on the cement a few feet ahead of him.

“Just oil,” Nick whispered.  “Maybe a car radiator...”

The water started to bubble.

“The hell?”

Curious, Nick slowly walked up to it.

It wasn’t water.

It was
blood
.

Abruptly, a single bubble on a strand of blood slowly rose out of the puddle up into the air even with Nick’s chest.  Light glinted off the wetness.  Blood dripped from it.  It hovered in midair for a second and then popped.