Her eyes flew to the crowd at the end of the street. “I really hope those are your average shoot-em-up thugs.”
As if they’d heard her, the crowd began to move. It took us a few seconds, squinting at their dark forms against the blackened street, to figure out if they were coming toward us or not. They were coming toward us. And quite fast. They weren’t Olympic sprinters, but they might pace well in a marathon.
“Get in the car,” Rose said quietly. “Now.”
She slammed down the hood and we jumped in the front seats as she tried the ignition again and slammed her foot down on the gas, pumping it. Like before, there was nothing. And now the mob of people was only a few yards away.
“Are those zombies or real people?” I cried out. “Zombies or real people?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. But I knew she did. Now that they were closer, I could make out their shapes and faces. Their expressions. They were mainly bigger-framed black men, though there were a few white derelicts sprinkled in there, the types with crazy tattoos on their faces, stained wife beaters and meth-crazed eyes. People that no one would care about if they went missing or ended up dead. People who would have people spitting on their graves. Expendable members of society.
They all looked absolutely insane. They faces held no humanity. They were drooling, with snapping teeth and outstretched arms. Just like the zombies of your nightmares. Only these were much, much worse. Because this group moved in tandem, in unison, like a flock of evil birds, and they could be quick when they wanted to be. They had already started to run.
I could see Rose was about to abandon ship and make a run for it, but that would have been certain death as well. I grabbed her arm to hold her, and panicking, said, “Let me try the car.”
I put my hand on the key, and concentrating as much as I could, hoping that somewhere inside of me I could fight back against what was being done to me, to us, that if I had this power it could be used for something, I turned it.
The car started with a roar. The lights went on.
And Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask” came blaring out of the speakers, as if we were listening to that song at high volume just before the truck died.
Rose let out a whoop of joy and immediately slammed the car into reverse, hitting the gas hard. We lurched forward in our seats, my hands crammed against the dashboard to prevent my head from going through the glass, and Rose whipped it around so we were going in the opposite direction.
Right into another car.
It clipped the front of the truck, Rose’s side, and then we spun around in a three-sixty before we slammed into the side of telephone pole. My head knocked against Rose’s, and then the door and everything went a sickly shade of red.
Slayer shut off.
I thought I was out for maybe a few seconds. My head hurt in two places, where I hit Rose and where I hit the window. I winced and looked up, the window totally cracked. I touch my temple and looked at my hand. My fingers were covered in sticky blood. What had happened?
I carefully turned my head to see if Rose was okay, wincing through the pain, trying not to vomit. She was gone. The seat next to me was empty. There was blood on the cracked windshield but her door was closed. It was like she just calmly got out of the car and left me here.
I tried to call her name, but my mouth felt like it was filled with sawdust. I needed to focus. What happened? The car. A car hit us.
Oh my f**k, the zombies.
I straightened up, grinding my teeth at the immense pressure in my head, at the wooziness, and forced my vision to line up. The mob was gone from the street and I couldn’t see the car we hit. Maybe they’d driven off. I tried to look through the cracks on the window to see if there was damage on the road but something else caught my eye.
I was wrong about the crowd of zombie people being gone. I didn’t know how long I was out—long enough for Rose and everyone else to disappear. But that wasn’t true.
Up ahead on the road. There was someone walking—no running—toward me. I panicked, adrenaline pushing through the fatigue and taking over, and I was about to jump out of the car when the dark figure suddenly dodged to the left, disappearing into a mound of high bushes.
Fuck this noise. I had to find Rose. I had to get out of here. I moved over to the driver’s seat and was about to turn the ignition when I realized the keys were missing. I frantically searched the ground, the seat, the middle. There was nothing.
“Fuck!” I screamed, wanting to bang my head against the wheel, knowing it would probably make me lose consciousness.
“Think, Foray, think,” I muttered to myself, forcing my brain to catch up. My eyes darted nervously to the road and back, feeling like I could be attacked at any minute by whatever had run into the bushes. At this point I was hoping it was just some neighborhood derelict because I would gladly hand over the guns, the cameras, whatever money I had if that was the case. I’d smile at them and kiss their feet. I could be their bitch, I’d make it work. It would be far better than having to face the walking dead.
I had two choices, really. I could either make a run for it or I could hotwire it. It was an old truck; it shouldn’t take all that long.
I leaned down, and with an impatient fist, broke through the panel beneath the wheel and pulled out the wiring. I fished out the flashlight from the center console and stuck it in my mouth and did my best. Blue wires to blue wires, twist. Check.
Once I did that, I readjusted my angle, trying to see better, when I heard a god awful moan from beneath me. As in beneath the floorboards, coming from the ground. Suddenly the whole truck shifted, as if someone or something was trying to lift it up. It tilted to the left then to the right.
The flashlight fell out of my mouth and I put both hands on the dash, trying to steady myself. The movement stopped, the truck settling, but the groan was still there. I wasn’t alone. There was something or someone underneath the car.
I sucked in my breath, trying to regain control, to keep myself from freaking out. It was barely working. I could either run or keep hotwiring and hope I dragged this thing away with me. And there wasn’t time to really weigh either choice.
I kept trying to hotwire. I picked up the flashlight and ignored the moans and groans right beneath my feet, a mix of human agony and mechanical failure. Come on, come on, come on.
When I got those wires twisted, I felt like maybe the end was in sight. That I just needed a few more seconds and a bit of luck. Well, luck was on vacation that night. I raised my head for just one second to see what the outside situation looked like, and in that second, everything changed.