Surge (48 page)

Not only those who look like scared bunny rabbits in the back, but Cory and Leonard who are in even more in danger being the last car. Cory’s car is being rocked by the wheezers who are running straight into the sides to the point that I think if any more of them hit it, it’s going to flip. And then there’s Olivia’s car with her and Tommy in it, but I can’t even see the cherry red BMW through the mayhem. The only thing keeping me from panicking, is that the wheezers haven’t veered off course for the easier prey, so I know that both of their cars are still moving; and not crashed in a ditch right now.

But what is going to make me flip my shit, is the bitch in the back who won’t shut the fuck up. I remove one hand from white knuckling the steering wheel, to whack John.

“Get back there, and knock her out if you have to,” I hiss. “Just get her to shut her fucking mouth, or we’re gonna crash!”

John immediately unbuckles his seat belt and climbs to the back, leaving me to grip the steering wheel like my life depends on it. And it does, along with at least eleven other people’s lives; including my baby sister and best friend. Kelly won’t have to wait for the wheezers to eat her if we wind up in a ditch, because I’ll go out strangling that bitch with my last breath.

“Stay the hell away from me, Jonathan!” Kelly shrieks. I don’t hear his response, but I sure as hell hear hers. “So, she’s charmed you too? Fucking dick sucking w....”

Her tirade is muffled by whatever John’s doing to her. Whatever it is, it brings me blessed silence that allows me to concentrate. I don’t even look in the mirror, because a single glance away from the road could prove  fatal. It isn’t necessary to look anyway, I can still see and feel more wheezers running into the sides of the van.

No, they can’t run that fast. Those ones are the new additions running from somewhere beyond the breakdown lane. I can see them out of my peripheral vision, hopping cars and scrambling to join the chase. I’ve seen at least a dozen of the new mutations. They’re easy to spot with their hairy faces, running on all fours, and climbing cars to jump from roof to roof like a bizarre game of hop scotch.

Like this fucker, who’s now clinging to the side view mirror. His ugly mug is dripping drool on the driver’s side window, so I swerve to try and shake him. The hairy bastard screeches louder than Kelly, but clings on, and gives the window a punch with his blood covered fist. Several screams ring out from the back. Trying one more time, I give a quick jerk of the wheel, before righting it. A flash of black is all I see when he falls off, but I’m breathing a little easier now that the clingy asshole is off my damn van.

My relief is short lived when some hairless naked chick, at least I think it’s a chick from this angle, dives on top of my windshield. How that didn’t kill her when I’m going sixty miles an hour, is a mystery to me. The ugly bitch pounds her gnarly knuckles on the windshield; luckily she’s on the right side, or we’d be fucked right now. I try the same method of jerking the wheel to try and knock her ass off. No luck there, she’s clinging to the windshield wiper. Since that’s her lifeline, I flip those on high. Her gnarly fingers follow the blade, smearing blood across the glass.

“Fuck!” I shout.

My visibility is now limited to the left side. There are people shouting and screaming in the back, but I pay them no mind as I try one last maneuver to shake the bitch. Swerving left, then right, I see her falter and recover before slamming back down on the windshield. The glass cracks with a long split, and a couple of hairline fractures crisscrossing in a spider web pattern. More screams pour from the back, and I’m freaking the fuck out. If this bitch breaks through, or cracks the glass anymore, then we are so fucked. There’s no fucking way that I can navigate through this shit, bump off grabby wheezers, and kill those that get in, all at the same time.

“Someone get the fuck up here!”

One of the twins’ shorn heads pops through to separation in the front, and bounces on the seat. Judging by the knives in his hand, I know it’s Carlos, because Oscar prefers clubs. Carlos, the crazy bastard, is wearing the softball helmet I gave Oscar from Hal’s, gloves, and his bomber jacket. I’ve never seen him wear such an outfit, but I can see why, when he rolls the window down half way; stabs two wheezers that are close, and leans out. I keep the car steady as Carlos’s gloved hand grabs the wheezer bitch by the arm, and rips her off. As soon as she’s bouncing down the highway, he climbs back in, stabs another wheezer; whose arm follows him inside in an attempt at pulling him out, and he closes the window. The whole thing probably took thirty seconds at most, but it felt as if it were played in slow motion to me.

I flip the wipers back on and give it a squirt of fluid to clear away some blood. It does a decent job considering half of the blades are gone, but my visibility is still limited to the left. The right side is still blood smeared, some of it is even leaking onto the dash through the cracked glass. I ignore it, but it makes me painfully aware of our vulnerability.

“Carlos, you are one crazy bastard,” I mutter and he laughs. “And a ballsy fuck, hanging your ass out there to tease them like it’s a T-bone steak.”

“Hey, it worked,” he replies and I nod.

And it continues to work. No more get to cling on with Carlos there to knock them off, but it’s still another three miles of congested driving, before we’re cleared to tear up our engines. A quick glance in the rearview mirror shows Cory’s Jaguar is battered, but moving ahead of the disappearing crowd left in our dust. With the final car’s safety ensured, I look ahead to what should have been our least affected car, but am proved dead wrong. Olivia’s car has a bloody bullet hole out the back window, with a wheezer hanging halfway out of the moon roof. I can’t see inside, but it doesn’t appear to be alive, so the bullet must have taken care of it. Still doesn’t ease the utter panic I’m feeling.

Neither does it seem appease Cory, since I see him swerve around me, and gun it to ride alongside Olivia’s car. Whatever he sees, he doesn’t like, because Leonard motions for them to pull over. In response, Olivia revs her engine and speeds off the next exit ramp. Seeing her immediate response, my heart beat triples to the point that I fear I might go into cardiac arrest and crash this bitch, therefore killing us all.

I’m going a hundred-ten and have to screech off the exit at sixty, to keep up with the Jaguar. We’re pretty far from the city before our caravan of cars slows down, and I see the cherry red BMW swerve off the road. I’m already running before I see Olivia jump out, and run toward the trunk of her car. Digging through, she tosses bags left and right, before slamming the trunk shut and abandoning it to run in my direction.

Cory, Leonard and Tommy; all unharmed, are chasing after her, but she keeps running by the Jaguar and straight past me. Olivia rips the trunk open with her left hand, and that’s when I see her holding her neck with the right. There’s blood streaming through her fingers and down the front of her jacket, but that doesn’t stop her from ripping apart the van’s trunk.

“She’s fucking infected!” Kelly screams.

“She’s n-not fucking inf-fected,” Tommy snaps. His fists are balled and he’s glaring at the bleached bimbo, who is gaping over the head rest from her position in the back seat.

I think that his panic over Olivia’s injury overcame any anxiety he had about his stutter, because he doesn’t even flinch when he does it. Tommy’s attention is completely on the blood gushing from Olivia. Me, completely forgetting about her no touching rule, grab the hand holding pressure, and pull it away from her neck so that I can see her wound. Please don’t be a bite, please don’t a bite, I repeat it like a mantra as I pull back the collar of her jacket to get a better look. She’s rasping out short breaths, and I don’t know it’s from being touched, or the huge fucking piece of glass that’s sticking out of the ridges in her turtleneck.

“Akio, get the fuck out here!” I shout through my panic, and wrap my hand carefully around the glass. Olivia slaps her free hand over my mouth, and darts panicked eyes at the woods. I grip her hand and give her palm a reassuring kiss, before removing it to talk. “Twins, watch the woods.” I see two bodies climb out of the van before Olivia calms a little.

“Livs?” Cory’s voice asks and it cracks with worry. Olivia removes her hand from mine, to grab Cory’s, but keeps her terrified eyes locked with me. The blood is still flowing heavily through my fingers, when I feel someone grab my wrist. I growl at whoever the fuck it is.

“Jared, move your fucking hand,” John orders. “The Doc needs to see it.”

Gently prying my sticky fingers away, I step to Olivia’s other side and grab hold of her bloody hand with my own. You can tell how stressed she is, when instead of ripping hers away, she threads her fingers through mine and squeezes.

Akio adjusts his glasses and peeks at the injury. Making a tsking noise, he orders for his backpack. Someone hands the pack through the slider, but I don’t care to look who, since I’m busy watching Akio rummage through his supplies. He pulls out a modified first aid kit. I call it modified, because instead of things to treat minor wounds; he replaced children’s character band-aids with stitching materials, Tylenol with prescription grade painkillers, and added IVs along with ace bandages.

Akio snaps a pair of blue gloves on, before threading up a needle for stitches. Olivia waves off the shot of morphine, so Akio shrugs and gets to work. Or tries to, because Olivia breaks contact with both Cory and I, shoves Akio away, and dives back for the trunk.

“Olivia, what the fuck are you doing?” I demand and go back to stop her from rummaging through the bags. She slaps my hands away from her arms, and just about bares her teeth at me as she continues searching, even while there’s blood trickling down her coat front. I look to Cory to see if he understands her refusal.

“Livs, what are you looking for?” Cory asks, and even he looks baffled. In answer, Olivia comes out with a first aid kit and digs inside. “We already have one.”

Olivia shakes her head and pulls out her own sewing kit before running over to the passenger side mirror. Lifting her shaking hands, she begins tearing her turtleneck, and I think I understand her problem. She doesn’t want anyone touching her, regardless of her injury. But that’s fucking nuts, she could bleed out by the time she tends to her own wound.

“Olivia, please let us help you.” I’m not above begging at this point, because the amount of blood that’s already streamed from the wound; along with the puddle that’s forming at her feet, is pretty damn alarming. Olivia looks at me with panicked eyes and shakes a finger at Akio. “Why don’t you want his help? I know he’s an asshole, but he’s still a doctor.” Olivia visibly flinches at the word
‘doctor.’
Okay then, she has a fear of doctors, just great.

“Fine, let me do it,” Cory orders.

Olivia immediately hands over her equipment to Cory. So, it’s not that she doesn’t want help at all; it’s just that she doesn’t want Akio’s. I know there’s a reason behind it, and I’ll have to figure it out later, because obviously Cory’s going to need help on account of his hands being pretty shaky too. Stepping forward, I see that Cory’s already cut the rest of the turtleneck away, and is observing the glass. The fucker went in at a vertical angle on the right side of her neck, so I wouldn’t know how the fuck to remove it without causing more damage; and from his worried frown, neither does Cory.

“We’re wasting time,” I snap and look at Olivia. “You have to let Akio help, or you’re gonna bleed to death.” Her whole body starts shaking. “I know that you don’t want him touching you, but Cory’s right here, and he won’t let anything happen to you. Do you trust him?” She gives me an offended look that screams,
‘Are you for real?’
“Good, then trust me too, because I won’t let anyone hurt you, alright?” Olivia nods slightly and winces when it shifts the glass. “Let’s do this, Doc.”

Akio steps forward with his own kit. He was observing the scene with a blank face, but I could tell that he was offended by her refusal to allow him to treat her, since there’s a tick in his cheek. Setting the kit on the driver’s seat, since I never closed the door when I bailed from the car, he digs through his tackle box of equipment and pulls out his already prepared stitching materials.

Stepping toward Olivia, I see her flinch with each step he makes in her direction. I take hold of her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. In response, she gives me one that almost has me screaming
‘Mercy!’
But I refrain from the acknowledging the pain, since she obviously needs something to brace herself on. Lifting his still gloved hands to the torn area of the turtleneck, I see Olivia give Akio a deathly glare, of warning maybe? I don’t know, but the Doc ignores it as he continues toward the glass. Olivia’s whole body tenses when his gloved fingers make contact with the flesh around the glass, and grips it.

“It’s alright,” I try to reassure her.

Olivia gives my hand another strong squeeze, maybe to tell me to shut the fuck up with the generic bull shit, or maybe in thanks? I’m hoping the latter, but I’m guessing that it was the former. Watching Akio work diligently, I see the glass make a slow exit from the wound. The pointed shard is about three inches deep, and half an inch wide, so more blood than I thought possible comes streaming out when it’s finally loose of her skin. Olivia starts stumbling, so Cory wraps an arm around her waist when I’m about to. Pissed that he got there first, but more worried about the beautiful girl fighting to stay conscious, I let it slide.

“Why’s she passing out?” John’s worried voice asks.

“Most likely from blood loss,” Akio answers with his doctor tone and doesn’t stop working. He’s currently cleaning the area with a sterile wipe in prep for stitches. “This is pretty deep, but I’m more worried about what this means on top of the scarring.”

“And what is that?” Cory demands. “She can’t breathe? Talk? What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Akio says with a shrug as he digs the first stitch into her skin.

Olivia doesn’t make even the slightest flinch from the pain, and I don’t know if it’s from her high pain threshold, or her semi-unconscious state. A glance at Cory shows that he looks to be prepared to beat the fuck out of the doctor, unless he gets some answers that he likes. Knowing that Olivia would be the one calming him if she were able to, I step in.