The Plague Unto The End (9 page)

I pulled my door shut and yelled, “It’s unlocked! Get in!”

Matt ripped the door open and jumped inside.  They were everywhere when we started to pull out of the parking lot.  I gunned the gas and flew down the Mercury Boulevard toward the sporting goods store.

“What set them all off?” I asked.

“When I came out, there weren’t too many of them close to the store.  So I just loaded all the stuff into the truck bed and tried to slip by without them noticing.  But there was one lying on the ground at the end of the truck and he noticed me.”

“But I didn’t hear your shotgun go off.  I know that would have woke me up,” I asked.

“That’s because I didn’t shoot it.  I was startled for a second and that gave it a chance to howl,” Matt replied.

“Howl? What like a dog?”

“No, haven’t you heard them howl?”

“I guess not.  What does it sound like?”

“It’s starts out very deep and throaty, but if you let them keep going, it becomes higher pitched and louder.”

“What happens if they howl?” I asked.

“From what I can tell, they make that noise when they suddenly come in contact with an un-infected person.  At least that seemed to be the situation every time I’ve heard them do it.  I’m guessing it’s just a side effect that it alerts the others in the area.  That’s the way I would think it happens.  I mean, they’re dead.  I’m sure they don’t really know what’s going on around them.”

“Yeah that’s true,” I said.

“But who knows.  It’s not like there is going to be an editorial on the subject,” Said Matt.

We both chuckled halfheartedly.  Matt looked out the window and stopped talking.

The truck’s radio said it was 8:24 in the morning.  The sun had broken through the clouds but the clouds still lingered in the area, threatening to once again make things worse.  It seemed that there was smoke on the horizon in every direction.  We were now headed back the way I had come earlier, toward the campus.  Somehow the roads managed to look worse than they had on the way home.  Then I found myself wishing that I could go home but deep down I knew that the house I had left earlier today would never be my home again.  Then I remembered Thomas.  “I bet Thomas is still standing in the hallway in my parent’s house,” I thought out loud.

Matt looked over at me and said, “Yeah but he’s...”

“Yeah I know but I hate to think of him walking around like that…The camera! I never got to watch what he recorded on the camera.  Maybe he knew where mom and dad are or maybe he noticed something important about them.”

“Or maybe he just touched the camera before he turned,” said Matt in a less than excited tone.

We both just stared ahead for couple of minutes.

“Where are we going to get more ammo? I’ve only got a few more shotgun shells,” said Matt.

“The Sports Authority is the biggest gun shop I’ve been to in the area and they’ll probably have other supplies we could use too.  I know there is another bigger one somewhere in Hampton, but I’ve never been there,” I responded.

I had never seen so many car accidents.  Everywhere I looked there was another wreck.  I had to make myself concentrate on the road ahead of me.  Matt had to get my attention a few times.  A few of the wrecks were nothing more than too many cars trying to fit through a narrow space, but a lot of them looked like high-speed collisions.  I expected to see bodies lying in the street but there wasn’t much else to see other than the vehicles themselves.  The blood I expected to see wasn’t there either.  The constant rain earlier must have washed most of it away.

I navigated the small truck through the debris carefully as I rounded the corner onto Coliseum Drive.  The Sports Authority was about half a mile up ahead on the right.  Right in the middle of the road we were on was a smoldering pile of metal and glass.  It didn’t look like a car though.  As we got closer to it, Matt said, “Holy crap I think that’s a news helicopter.”  The tail rotor was sticking out of the pile and what was left of the small blades was still spinning.

“Well I guess we can’t go this way,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Hold up a second.  I think you can get around it if you jump the median,” said Matt as he attempted to position himself to get a better look.

“This little truck isn’t a four wheel drive.  And what if we get stuck on the median?” I replied.

“I think we can make it if you cut the median at an angle,” said Matt as he pointed to a lower spot on the concrete median.

I inched my way over to the edge of the median until I felt the front left tire make contact.  The body of the truck shuddered as the wheel made contact.  I pushed the gas pedal in a little farther and the truck began to move over the median.  I moved slowly until I felt the left side drop and the tire again made contact with the road.  We both breathed a sigh of relief as the last wheel touched the road.

“Waaaaaaaagghh!”  “Screeeeeeech!”  “BOOOM!”

Another vehicle had just come around the same corner we had, but he was going way too fast.  In the rearview mirror we watched the Ford Mustang slam into the median just feet behind the truck.  The black Ford didn’t make it over the concrete in one piece.  Most of the exhaust system, the oil pan, and one of the front wheels were ripped off of the speeding car.  A Dodge minivan was sitting just on the other side of the street and was broadsided by the flying car.

We both just stared at the wreck for a few moments, but neither of us moved.  The driver of the vehicle appeared to be still inside but he wasn’t moving.

“We should check it out,” I said.

“He’s probably dead or, if not dead, infected,” said Matt.

“Then I’ll take care of it,” I said as I opened the door and pulled out the Glock.

I slowly walked toward the fresh accident, looking all around for more infected as I approached.  I heard Matt get out of the truck and charge his shotgun.  As I walked around to the passenger’s side of the vehicle, I could see the driver.  He looked to be younger than me, but it was hard to tell at the time.  He had dark brown, shaggy looking hair and a patchy goatee.

He appeared to be wearing his seat belt and the air bags had gone off when the Mustang hit the van.  He looked like he was a little banged up but alive.  I shoved my gun into my pants pocket and tried to pull open the passenger’s side door.  I very slowly reached over to the driver and shoved his shoulder.  He slumped over to the driver-side window and bumped his head on it.  He didn’t appear to have been infected.  His skin was still fleshy toned and he didn’t smell like the infected did either.

“Hey, buddy! Wake up!” I yelled at the unconscious driver.

I heard Matt starting to walk back and forth outside the vehicle.

“So is he alive?  Because we need to go now!” exclaimed Matt.

I looked up and saw why Matt was concerned.  We couldn’t see them when we approached because the cars at the mall were so tightly packed in the parking lot.  It seemed as though they were coming from everywhere.  The vicious mob of approaching corpses was darting out from between cars, from inside of businesses, and they were more than anxious to get to us.  I reached over, unsnapped the driver’s seat belt, and dragged him out of the passenger’s side door.  He was heavier than I was counting on.  I dropped him on the ground just as I pulled him free.

“Wha...wha...what’s happening?” said the driver as he began to fade back into consciousness.

“Grab his legs.  Get him in the back of the truck,” I yelled to Matt.

Matt grabbed the guy’s legs and lifted while I lifted the guy from under his arms.  The man began to weakly kick his legs, causing Matt to lose his grip and drop the man’s legs.  I dragged the guy to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate.

“They keys are still in the ignition!  Get in and drive!” I hollered to Matt as I pulled the man into the bed of the truck and Matt fired two shots into the quickly advancing crowd.

Matt turned toward the truck and sprinted for the driver’s side.  I pulled the tailgate and the camper window shut just before the first of them slammed into the side of the truck.  I felt the body of the truck rock side to side, and I watched as some of them inched their way around the outside of the truck toward the camper widow.

“Get this thing moving Matt!”

“I got it. I got it,” yelled Matt.

Just as the truck jerked forward I heard the passenger’s side window shatter.  I turned and saw several pairs of gray, rotting arms reaching into the window.  Matt gunned the gas and all but one pair of the arms vanished from the window.  The last set of arms had grabbed onto the inside of the cab and left the lower portion of the hitchhiker hanging from the broken window.  The window that connected the bed to the cabin was locked from the inside and the decaying figure was dragging himself further into the cabin.

“Open the window! I can’t get a shot!”

“Just hold on, I’ve got this sack of crap!”

I felt the truck swerve to the right and—with a violent thud—the man was no longer hanging from the window.  I looked behind the truck and saw the remains of him splattered and broken on a telephone pole.

“If you had opened the window, I could have shot him.  What were you going to do if that didn’t work?”

“I would have opened the window and told you to shoot him,” said Matt as he looked into the rear view mirror with a smirk.

I chuckled to myself for a moment and shook my head.  The man we had pulled from the car lay sprawled out in the bed of the truck.  He was once again unconscious.  I rolled him over to check for obvious injuries from the wreck.  Not that I had any medical training to help him if he did.  More importantly I was looking for bites.  If my theory was right I didn’t want to be caught off guard.  He appeared to have a bump on his head and maybe a broken left arm.  I wasn’t sure if it was broken but it was black and blue.  He was alive still, though, or at least he had a pulse.

“Where is this Sports Authority we’re headed to?” yelled Matt.

“Up ahead on the right, just passed Todds Lane,” I replied.

As we continued passed the Peninsula Town Center I noticed the power must have been working because the signs were lit up.  We also passed quite a few of the wandering sick people.  As Matt slowed to navigate his way around another crash, I noticed some movement next to a row of shrubs.  A light brown sleeping bag flopped back and forth.  I could see a torn area around the area the legs would have been.  That portion of the bag was stained with dark red almost black around the hole.  On the other end of the bag a bearded man’s head was sticking out.  The beard was almost the only recognizable part of his head.  His nose, ears, cheeks, and most of his scalp looked like they had been torn off of his head.  In spite of all of the damage his body had obviously taken, he was still moving.

We saw a bunch of cars, trucks, vans, and those hybrid things.  Most of them were either smashed into one of the others or just another vehicle in the parking lot where a road used to be.  One vehicle caught my eye, a brand new BMW M3.  It was black, had alloy wheels and tinted windows.  The kind of car I could never afford.  Oddly enough I found myself wishing I had the kind of high-paying job that it takes to buy a car like that.  But as we drove past the BMW I noticed the blood streaks on the driver’s side of the car and what looked like the keys on the ground next to the car.  A high-paying job and a high-class car hadn’t stopped the sick people from killing the owner of that car.  Then I thought about the keys being on the ground.  On any other day that car would have been stolen a long time ago.

“Hey, this is it right here, right?” said Matt while he pointed to the right side of the road.

“Yeah, that’s it.” I lifted my eyes to scan the front of the store.

The front of the store didn’t look so inviting, and it looked as though we weren’t the only ones who had thought to go there.  The parking lot wasn’t very crowded but there were cars all around the front door area.  Some of the vehicles were literally on top of each other.  There were bodies on the ground all around the vehicles, but unless the sick people could also drive cars, someone had shot at least one of the drivers before he could get out of his car.  The bullet hole in the front windshield of the SUV looked to be from a very large weapon. It also appeared that the window, the man in the driver seat, and the seat itself were not enough to stop the large-caliber bullet.