The Great Wreck (39 page)

“I’m
shutting up,” he said and watched as James expertly mowed down the dead that
were starting to close in from the left and the right. He guessed Thomas had
made the right decision to bring him along after all. But that was one crazy
mother fucker. He was screaming and yelling in a weird mix of joy and rage,
like he loved every fucking minute of this. Birch jerked the wheel to the left
to avoid the edge of a large school bus that had snuck up on him while he was
watching James.

Marti
yelled back up to him, “Eyes on the road mister!”

“I’m
watching! I’m watching!” he replied and focused on the street ahead. The fence
was about a five miles long and made several sharp turns. The idea was the
turns would get the vans momentarily out of sight of the dead and maybe be able
to shake them off there tail. They hadn’t planned on an entire city of dead
chasing after them when they had built this, though. Now the dead were coming
over the fence from every direction and it didn’t matter if they turned left or
right, they wouldn’t be shaking the dead off their trial anytime soon. It would
have been better the just have a straight shot and they might have out run them
but instead they had to slow way down, make the turn then speed up again
letting the dead get closer and closer each time they did.
 

The
Missouri Surprise was a risky, last ditch effort to escape the dead. They were
headed down East Idaho right now and had two more turns to make before they hit
a long, straight stretch of road. At the end of that road was a cluster of
small buildings around the overpass of I-25. Birch and his crew had spent weeks
wiring those buildings and the overpass up with enough explosives from the
warehouse to blow an entire city block. In just a few minutes, they’d hang a
right on South Solano Drive and then a left onto Missouri avenue. The road from
Missouri to the I-25 overpass was a straight shot completely cleared of wrecks.
They’d hit Missouri and gun it down the road, pass under I-25 and blow the
explosives collapsing the buildings and overpass down and cutting off the dead.
That should give them enough time to reach Dripping Springs Road that would
take them all the way out east to the foot hills of the San Andres Mountains.
There they had sealed off a police armory depot. They would get in, seal up
tight, and wait for the waves of dead to taper off. If they ever did.

Birch
had just a second to glance to his left and see a wave of sprinters clear the
fence and leap onto the shuttle, “They’re on us!” he said as he heard the dead
scramble along the sides trying to keep hold of the madly swerving vehicle. A
second later he heard Allen scream and the sprinters got him, then saw his legs
disappear up and out of the shuttle as they dragged him out, “Fuck, they got
Allen! Someone get up there!

*
     
*
     
*

I
heard Alan scream as three of the dead grabbed hold of him and yank him free of
the shuttle. I ran to the open hatch and climbed up the two step poking my head
out. There were half a dozen sprinters clinging to the sides and trying to get
up on top. I pointed my rifle at them and removed their heads one at a time
until the shuttle was clear, then set my rifle on the floor and took over the
.50 caliber. I could see James up ahead. He had managed to keep his shuttle
completely clear of the dead. I swept the gun back and forth keeping the
closest of the dead out of our path and off of the sides of the shuttle. I
glance again at James, he waved at me and then slowly, ever so slowly turned
those big guns on me. I should have known he would take the first chance he had
to kill me. I dropped like a sack of lead bricks just as James opened fire.

A
spray of bullets swept the shuttle, “Jesus Christ!” Birch yelled, “Anyone hit?!
What the fuck was that!? Doc, your boy is hitting us!”

I
popped back up just as soon as the firing stopped intending to grab the gun and
take James out. As I did, James had already returned to fire at the wall of
dead swirling around the vans. I glanced back just in time to see two dead
bodies minus their heads where James had shot them, tumble off the back of the
shuttle. I glance at James and he threw me a kiss.

Doc
came on the radio, “James just took out a couple of sprinters that had come up
over the back. Anyone hurt?”

“No,
no one hurt but fuck a duck, Doc!” Birch said, “Thomas! When we turn onto
Missouri, I want you to seal up. We’re going to be hauling ass trying to lose
the dead, OK?”

“OK,”
I said as I laid down a steady stream of fire. The shuttle hung a sharp right
and I caught a glimpse of a road sign that said South Solano and felt the
shuttle speed up. We were putting some space between us the dead so I used up
my last rounds and grabbed my rifle to clear off any that might latch on before
we hit Missouri.

“Get
inside, Thomas!” Birch said from up front, “Marti! Get ready to hit the button
on your right! That will blow the overpass and all the nearby buildings cutting
off the dead.
  

I
stepped down into the shuttle, closed the hatch behind me, and made my way to
the back of the shuttle with Marti. She sat their looking at the wall where a
large remote had been duct taped.

“Birch,
we have another problem!” Marti called back.

Oh
fuck, what now? Birch thought, “Tell me.”

“I
don’t think the detonator is going to work,” she said.

“Why
not?” Birch yelled back.

“Because
it has a giant hole in it,” Marti replied putting her finger through a huge
hole that had been blown in the remote. I looked and saw where the round had
come in from the right side of the van and exited through the remote when James
had sprayed us. Just an inch or two more to the left and that hole would have
been in Marti’s head. I wrapped myself around her and held her close then heard
Birch cussing up a storm.

I
made my way up to Birch, “What was that remote for?”

Birch
told me. I quickly went to the back. We had put a little over a quarter of a
mile between us and the masses of dead but they’d be able to see us and they
would follow us all the way to the warehouse. I went back up front again,
“Birch. Do you have a manual switch?”

“We
do. It’s in the floor of an office building right on the east side of the
freeway. Why?”

“I
can set it off manually. Let me off in front of the office and then drive to
the other side of the overpass a safe distance. I’ll set off the explosives and
catch up.”

Birch
thought about it for a second then said, “Get ready, it’s coming up on the
left. Take the radio there with you.”

We
watched as Harriet’s shuttle passed beneath the underpass and sped up clearing
the last of the fenced in area and heading towards Dripping Springs Road. Birch
pulled the shuttle to a stop and opened the doors. I leapt out scanning the
area around me. The pre-dawn light made everything fuzzy and indistinct that
the dead could be anywhere but I didn’t have time to check out every place they
might hide so just I ran towards the office building Birch had pointed out with
my rifle, flashlight, and radio in hand.

Birch
gunned it as I ran across the street and into the building. Before I went
inside
 
I looked back the way we had
come. The dead were maybe a half a mile away racing down the road towards me. I
went inside the building looking around for the manual switch and any dead that
might be hanging around. The front office was empty but the box that was wired
to the explosives was supposed to be was nowhere to be found. I frantically
searched the area around the front reception area desk with my flashlight and
spotted the box on the floor.

Relieved,
I set down my rifle and radio next to the box and then stopped. The wires that
lead from the box to the explosives had been torn out. The box was useless.

I
pressed the send button on the radio, “Birch, you there?”

“Yeah,
Thomas, what’s up? Make it quick guy because the dead are closing in fast.”

“The
box is broke.” I said simply and began to gather my things to get to the
shuttle. We’d just have to hope the dead didn’t follow us all the way to the
warehouse.

“What!?
How?”

“The
box must have fallen off the counter top. All the wires are pulled out of it,”
I said.

There was a
second of silence on the radio and I readied myself to sprint back to the
shuttle.

“Thomas,
you can fix it.”

I
thought for a split second of the absurdity of it all. I, a kid with no
experience at all, could, MacGyver-like, fix the detonator to the explosives.

“Really,”
Birch said as though reading my mind, “All you have to do is open up the front
of the control box and connect two wires to the terminal on the inside. It’s
easy. All the other wires are for timers and shit. Just connect the read and
the blue wire to the matching terminals, rotate the timer knob for thirty
seconds, and hit the ‘start’ button. That’s it.”

I
dropped to the ground, pulled out my pocket knife, and undid the screws that
held the front plate on the controller. Inside, just as Birch had said, were
two metal terminals: one red, one blue. I grabbed the box and set it on the
counter and yanked the wires to me. I found the red one and quickly screwed it
to the terminal but as soon as I attached the blue one, before I could even
reach the detonate button, the whole world exploded.

Boom.

*
     
*
     
*

From
the shuttle Marti watched as the freeway overpass detonated with such a force
that it actually lifted the back of the shuttle up and then dropped it down
tossing her back on her behind. She scrambled up to see what had happened and
saw the buildings on the other side of the overpass exploding shooting up huge
columns of fire and debris. The sound of the detonations went on for nearly a
full minute one after the other with the explosions sending thousands of tons
of concrete, steel, and debris down into the streets.

When
the dust cleared, Marti could see that the overpass had not only collapsed, but
the explosive concussion had taken out all of the surrounding buildings as
well.

“Thomas,
can you hear me?” Birch said getting out of the shuttle, “Thomas!?” he yelled
into the radio, jumped out of the van, ran back towards the collapsed overpass.

Marti
climbed out of the side door and was running to catch up with him. They reached
the edge of the blast zone at the same time as the wind blew away the smoke and
dust from the explosions. The building Thomas had been in was almost completely
gone.

*
     
*
     
*

I
opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feel
anything, I couldn’t hear anything.

I
must be dead. Hooray for me!

But
if I was dead, where was the bright tunnel of light? Dudes in robes? Angels
maybe?

Maybe this was
Purgatory. If so I’d just sit back and relax until someone came along and told
me what to do.

Then
I felt something shift above me as the pale light of dawn trickled in revealing
that I was not in Purgatory or even dead for that matter. Dammit. I was alive
and trapped under the debris of the office the detonator was in.

And
lucky, lucky me, the dead had found me.

“Thomas!”
I head Marti yell from above, “Thomas can you hear me?!”

So,
not the dead after all. I tried to call out but I was so tired and it felt so
good just to lay there. No running, no shooting, no dead. At least, no dead
yet.

More
light streamed down as Marti and the others cleared the rubble that had buried
me. Soon the hole above me was large enough and I saw the vague outline of a
head above me, “Here! He’s here!”

Others
joined the effort and soon they had the debris of the building off of me and
were pulling me from the wreckage. I looked around and spotted the two vans a
few hundred yards away, the wreckage the explosions had created and the
collapsed overpass to my right, “The dead?”

“Stopped
cold,” Birch said handing me a canteen full of water, “But we need to get a
move on before they get interested again and try to find a way around.”

I
nodded and Birched helped me to my feet. We slowly walked towards the vans. I
spotted James sitting on top of the front shuttle smoking a cigarette. He saw
me a tipped his head,
 
put out his smoke,
and dropped down into the shuttle. Birch helped me up into the passenger’s seat
and we slowly drove towards the Organ Mountains.

The
sun broke over the sharp, rocky ridges of the mountains just as we hit Dripping
Springs road and the final leg of our escape to the warehouse. Marti was still
at the back of the shuttle watching for any of the dead following after us,
“Anything?” Birch yelled back.

“Nothing.
A few have climbed to the top of the overpass rubble, but none seem to have
spotted us,” she replied.

“Great!
Doc,” Birch said into the radio, “Looks like we’re in the clear.”

“Thanks
be to God,” Doc replied as we made their way down the single lane road clearing
the outskirts of the city. There we sped up and were soon coming up to the base
of the mountains. Along the road I started seeing signs that read “State Police
Armory: Authorized Personnel Only,” and “Restricted Area: Keep Out,” then a
sign that said “New Mexico State Police Armory; 5 miles.”

We
pulled up to the armory a few minutes later. It looked almost identical to the
armory I had found outside of Phoenix: it was ringed by a heavy, metal fence
that looked like it could withstand an armored tank attack, had multiple
vehicle barriers that could be raised up, and the warehouses were made of
concrete looking like munitions bunkers in the early morning light.