Zombies in Paradise (Love in the Age of Zombies Book 2) (7 page)

He was suddenly very cold and went to the trouble of pulling another blanket underneath him. It had been a long time since he’d slept in an aluminum canoe, and he’d forgotten how easily the metal conducted the cold of the water. The extra blanket helped, but even so he knew it would be a long, chilly night.

The morning broke very slowly. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but gray. A fog bank had rolled in and he was cold, damp, and stiff. He couldn’t see the shore; he could barely see more than ten feet. He got the impression that even with the anchor he’d drifted in the night. He wasn’t sure how far, so he folded up his blankets, placed them on the bench he’d been leaning against, then sat down atop them and waited for the fog to lift. He looked at his watch. It was six-thirty, just before sunrise.

Doc was never one who had to be in constant motion. He was able, when he wanted, to slow down and just
be
for a while, paying attention to all of his senses. This was one of those times. He felt the softness of the blankets he was sitting on but beneath that the cold hardness of aluminum. He felt the cool damp air as it slowly moved over and past his cheeks. He heard the call of a cardinal, then soon other birds. He heard a fish splash into the water. It was the only fish he heard. The fog was even making the fish cautious.

Until you’ve been immersed in it, you wouldn’t suspect that fog coming off a lake or river has its own peculiar smell, but it did. It was a familiar smell, but one he’d not experienced in years. He could smell a slight wet-dog odor coming off his red and black plaid wool hunting jacket. He noted the fishy smell common to freshwater this time of year as trout, crappie, bluegill and even frogs and turtles spawned.

He may have lightly dozed. When he next looked at his watch it was nearly eight o’clock. He was glad he hadn’t started blindly paddling when he first woke up; he’d drifted thirty feet downstream.

His neck was stiff, he was cold, he was hungry, and as much as anything he wished for a hot cup of coffee. He opened the can of baked beans he’d forgotten to eat for dinner (thankful for the pull-off top), pulled the last can of beer out of the river, and had the breakfast of champions. He ate in silence until both cans were empty, then began paddling to the riverbank.

He pulled the canoe out of the water and placed it back on the sawhorses, putting his empty cans of beer and beans inside a small trash bag in his Jeep. He started the engine and wheeled around, then followed his own tire tracks toward the road.

About halfway, he passed a zombie about thirty feet off the track. It stood nearly motionless as he passed, only swiveling its head. Dried blood and dark stains permeated the creature’s shirt and jeans, and one arm was at a strange angle.
Broken humerus
, he thought. The air was cool this early in the morning, and the zombie was moving slowly. Both lower pant legs were wet and he concluded this was the creature he’d heard in the middle of the night. He kept driving and soon pulled onto the road.

According to the map, he still had at least three hours until he reached Ann Arbor. He hoped the day would be uneventful, but even as these thoughts passed through his mind, he suspected it was merely wishful thinking. He’d gone a dozen or so more miles on M-18 before he saw a sign indicating the intersection of I-75 ahead. Long before he approached the intersection he slowed down. Something didn’t feel right. There were a few wrecked vehicles in the road, but that wasn’t uncommon. Doc had seen many already. But instantly he was aware of wrecked cars blocking both the I-75 exit and entrance ramps, looking arranged. Just as he slammed on his brakes, several men stepped out from behind the wrecked cars, rifles in hand, and started firing. Doc saw dust spray up from the road and bits of pavement snicked against the Jeep. One shot caught his fog lamp and he heard and saw yellow plastic explode into the air. That pissed him off.

He slammed the Jeep into reverse and floored it just as a car and a pickup raced from around the wrecked cars. He knew better than to try to outrace their vehicles going backward and looked for level enough ground to turn around. Within seconds there were sandy two-wheeler tracks adjacent to and almost adjoining the road. He cranked the wheel while continued to floor it, spraying sand high into the air as the Jeep did a quick one-eighty. Still throwing sand, Doc shifted into gear and the Jeep jumped ahead.

Another advantage to having a very comfortable retirement plan is being able to buy the best toys. The Jeep had an eight-cylinder engine, and even weighed down as it was, it reached ninety miles an hour in just a few seconds. His mind raced even faster than the Jeep. He couldn’t see his pursuers in the mirrors; his speed was making the chassis kind of jumpy and it was difficult to see much of anything in the mirrors.

Just ahead on the left was a tan building made of aluminum sheeting, a church he’d noticed before. A sign proclaimed it was
The Church of the Living Tree
. It looked like a lot of the faithful took shelter in the church, as the parking lot was filled with cars and a couple dozen zombies shuffled about. A few turned their heads to watch the Jeep race past. Doc got about a hundred feet beyond the church then slammed on the brakes and started honking his horn. He opened his window and started yelling and waving while still honking.

All the zombies’ heads swiveled as they turned to look, and just as Doc hoped they started ambling his way, hungry for human flesh. Doc waited until they were only ten or so feet away before he once again floored the accelerator, flying ahead on the road. After another hundred feet or so, he jerked the wheel and brought the Jeep to a screeching halt sideways on the road, the passenger side facing south. He grabbed his hunting rifle and jumped out.

Now that he wasn’t driving ninety miles an hour, Doc could clearly see the lead vehicle approach the horde stumbling down the road toward him. He lifted his rifle and took careful aim, then eased down on the trigger and fired. Almost instantaneously a spider web of cracks appeared on the driver’s side of the car and it suddenly swerved, ran off the road and into the yard of the church. It crashed into the side of the building, crumpling a large piece of aluminum sheeting and destroying part of the wall.

Instantly more zombies swarmed out of the church where they must have been penned inside. Doc didn’t have the luxury of time to see what was happening, as he now had the second vehicle—the truck—to contend with.

Had he looked, he would have seen a man try to jump out of the passenger side of the car. Doc would have seen the zombies fall in on him, and would have seen the man belatedly try to get back inside the car. But it was too late. The door was open and zombie hands grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him out of the car.

Looking through the scope of his rifle, Doc was only momentarily distracted when he heard a loud scream. But his sight didn’t waver, and as the truck plowed through the zombies, causing bodies and parts to go flying, he aimed not at the driver this time but at the driver’s side tire. He pulled off two quick shots and was satisfied to see the car swerve as the tire exploded. He quickly aimed for the other tire and shot it out as well. Within a second the tires had shredded and the truck ground to a halt, the rims sparking off the pavement.

As more zombies swarmed out of the church, the mass of them quickly approached and surrounded the truck, making a huge commotion. The zombies that were headed toward Doc turned at the sound and headed for the truck instead.

A woman’s arm holding a rifle came snaking out of the driver’s window. Doc saw the arm jerk and a split second later heard the report, then another and another as the driver tried in vain to shoot the zombies. But there were too many of them. A man jumped out of the truck and hopped into the bed, carrying a rifle. He leaned back against the truck cab and began firing, rapidly hitting zombies in the body, slowing them down but not stopping them.
Guess nobody told him about shooting zombies in the head,
Doc mused.

By now the woman had pulled her arm back into the truck and closed the window, and her high-pitched voice was nearly drowned out by the rasping of the zombies. Either the man couldn’t hear what she said, or she ignored it. Had he listened, he would have heard her yell
Look behind you!

Zombies were climbing over the hood of the truck and were about to crawl up the windshield. The volume of the woman’s screams increased, and suddenly her window opened. Doc could hear her shout “Chris! Behind you! There’s—”

A mass of zombies descended on the vehicle and reached into the open window as she tried to close it. As it shattered, her shrieks echoed against the church’s aluminum siding. The zombies pulled her through the broken window, the glass slicing through her skin as the creatures ferociously tore at her flesh, blood dripping down the truck door. The caustic thought passed through Doc’s mind,
For unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood  .  .  .  

It was grim watching, but no more grim than when the man in the bed of the truck ran out of ammunition. Zombies reached into the bed and pulled him down, a mass of heads and mouths and teeth and faces all going for the nearest piece of flesh. Doc heard the man shouting, desperate and pleading. With a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, Doc raised his gun, sighted the man’s head, and quickly fired a couple of shots. Zombies were splattered with the man’s flesh and blood as they continued devouring him.

Feeling a mixture of satisfaction and revulsion, Doc got back in his Jeep and headed north, the way he’d come. He remembered telling Kevin that the first thing they should to do was kill all the humans who’d turned mercenary. Kill anyone who would murder a living human unless in self-defense. Today he’d done just that; killed mercenaries. They got what they deserved. Poor unfortunate souls.

Doc kept an eye on his rear view mirror as he slowed down to check the map. He needed to find a way around the I-75 intersection. The alternate route took him many miles out of the way and wasted hours. He knew he’d eventually have to cross I-75, as it lay between him and Ann Arbor no matter what route he used. But he deliberately drove north to put some distance between him and the roadblock, not knowing if other exits were blocked. When he finally did cross the interstate, over an hour later, he was fortunate to have picked an overpass without any entrance or exit ramps onto I-75. He drove very slowly across the overpass, his mouth agape as he looked past the railing and down onto the interstate.

As far as the eye could see, all lanes northbound and southbound were filled with dead cars. Some had crashed into each other, others looked like they simply ran out of gas or were abandoned. Even the grassy median was filled, as it looked like cars had attempted to bypass stopped vehicles by going around them, only to be stopped by other wrecks that happened in the median.

Even from the overpass he could see zombies in some of the cars. A few of them saw the movement of the Jeep and started flailing around, captured by their seatbelts and having no intelligence to work the clasp. Most bodies remained still, and Doc couldn’t tell whether they were unmoving zombies or simply dead people. In a few cars and trucks he saw obvious evidence of bloodshed, but because of the distance he couldn’t tell whether the bloodshed was the result of zombie attacks within the vehicles or if the occupants had chosen a more dignified way to end their lives than turning into a zombie.

He never quite stopped the Jeep, as there were literally hundreds of zombies filling the I-75 corridor, and some began moving his way. He’d been noticed. Fortunately a galvanized wire fence blocked the banks of the overpass, but he knew the fence would fall due to the sheer weight of all the bodies should they move en masse against it. He kept going, picking up speed in an effort to put the scene behind him, and decided to take as many unmarked roads as possible to avoid any more roadblocks, pile-ups, or hordes of zombies. Some of the time he was on roads not marked and not on the map. He knew only roughly where he was, but as long as he drove south and east he knew he’d be okay. The roads he picked, even the unmarked ones, usually intersected narrow county roads, not state roads.

He travelled down one road for a good seven miles, making what he thought was good time, until he came upon a bridge over a small creek. The bridge was a choked with a dozen cars and trucks while zombies milled about vacantly. He had to backtrack the way he’d come—not the first or the last time his detour would take a detour.

He had one nasty surprise when he began to pass an abandoned car in his lane. A decrepit zombie stepped into Doc’s path. He swerved, but it was too late, and he clipped the zombie’s body. Bones shattered and the head snapped off then smacked into the windshield. The skull caved in while numerous cracks spread across the windshield. Doc
cursed.

Soon the light would be fading. He had a quick inner debate: should he look for another canoe to paddle into a lake, pond or creek? Should he find some natural barricade to hide behind, or find high ground with a view all around to warn him of any impending danger?

In the end, he decided high ground made more sense, but even so, as he approached a long, slow incline he stopped and waited until darkness closed in, then slowly moved to the top of the rise. He hoped in the dim light the Jeep wasn’t noticed by the living or undead.

It took Doc a long time to fall asleep, but finally the sound of the crickets in the field and the hooting of a pair of owls lulled him to sleep. He was under his blanket and his head rested against the pillow jammed in the corner between the seat and the door.