half too big for him.
He looks at his watch. “Almost noon.”
“Good … gives us a good six, seven hours of daylight to get the hell outta Dodge.”
“You guys pick out your bikes?” Brian asks.
Philip gives him a cold smile.
They choose two of the biggest metal masterpieces in the place—a couple of Harley-Davidson Electra Glides, one in pearl blue and the other in midnight black. They choose them for the size of the engines, the roominess of the seats, the cubic inches of storage space, and also because—hey—they’re fucking Harleys. Philip decides that Penny will ride with him, and Brian will ride with Nick. The gas tanks are empty but several bikes in the repair garage in the rear have fuel in them so they siphon as much as they can into the Harleys.
Over the course of the fifteen minutes it takes them to get the bikes ready and find helmets that fit and transfer all their belongings into the luggage carriers, the street outside the front of the place grows hectic with dead. Hundreds of Biters crowd the intersection now, wandering aimlessly in the gray drizzle, brushing against the glass, groaning their rusty groans, drooling their black bile, fixing their pewter-colored eyes on the moving shadows inside the windows of Champion Cycle Center.
“It’s busy out there,” Nick mumbles to no one in particular as he rolls the massive two-wheeler toward the side exit, where a small vertical garage door faces the parking lot along the side of the dealership. He straps on his helmet.
“Element of surprise,” Philip says, pushing his black Harley over to the door. His stomach growls with hunger and nerves as he puts on his helmet. He hasn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. None of them has. He shoves the iron rod from the bus into a seam between the handlebars and windscreen (for quick and easy access). “C’mon, punkin, hop on,” he says to Penny, who stands sheepishly nearby with a kiddie helmet on. “Gonna take a little spin, get outta this place.”
Brian helps the child climb up onto the rear seat, a padded perch above the black lacquer luggage compartment. There’s a safety belt in one of the side compartments, and Brian snaps it around the little girl’s waist. “Don’t worry, kiddo,” he says softly to her.
“Gonna head south and then west, y’all,” Philip says as he mounts the iron beast. “Nicky, you follow me.”
“Copy that.”
“Everybody ready?”
Brian goes over to the door and gives a nervous nod. “Ready.”
Philip kicks the Harley to life, the engine howling and filling the dark showroom with noise and fumes. Nick kicks his bike on. The second engine sings a noisy aria in dissonant unison with the first. Philip revs the throttle and gives Brian the high sign.
Brian jacks the manual lock on the door and then throws it open, letting in the wet wind. Philip kicks the gear and takes off.
Brian leaps onto the back of Nick’s bike and they blast off after Philip.
“OH SHIT! OH GOD! PHILIP! PHILIP! LOOK DOWN! LOOK DOWN, MAN! PHILIP, LOOK DOWN!”
Brian’s frantic wail is muffled by his helmet and drowned by the noise of the cycles.
It happens mere moments after they slam through a mass of Biters choking the intersection, the ragged bodies bouncing off their fenders. After making a hard left turn and zooming south on Water Street, leaving the throngs in their dust and fumes, Brian sees the mangled corpse dragging along the pavement behind Philip’s bike.
The bottom half of the thing is torn away, its intestines like electrical wiring flagging in the wind, but the torso still has fight left in it, its moldering head still intact. With its two dead arms, it clings to the rear fenders, and it starts pulling itself up the side of the Harley.
The worst part is, neither Philip nor Penny seem to be aware of it.
“PULL ALONGSIDE HIM! NICK, PULL UP!” Brian screams, his arms clutched around Nick’s midsection.
“I’M TRYING!”
At this point, roaring down the deserted, wet side street, the bike hydroplaning on slick pavement, Penny notices the creature stuck to the bike, clawing its way toward her, and she starts screaming. From Brian’s vantage point, thirty feet behind her, the child’s scream is inaudible—like an exaggerated gesture of a silent-movie actress.
Nick opens up the throttle. His Harley closes the distance.
“GRAB THE BAT!” he screams over the din, and Brian tries to root the baseball bat out from beneath the luggage carrier behind him.
Up ahead, almost without warning, Philip Blake notices the thing attached to the back of his bike. Philip’s helmet cocks around quickly as he gropes for his weapon.
By this point, Nick is within five or six feet of the black Harley’s taillights, but before Brian can intercede with the bat, he sees Philip drawing the iron rod from its makeshift scabbard on the front of his bike.
With a quick and violent motion, which causes the black Harley to veer slightly off course, Philip twists around in his seat—one-handing the handlebars—and thrusts the hooked end of the metal rod into the zombie’s mouth.
The skewered head of the monster gets stuck inches below Penny, the rod wedged between the gleaming exhaust pipes. Philip draws his right leg up and—with the force of a battering ram—he kicks the corpse (rod and all) off the bike. The thing tumbles and rolls, and Nick has to swerve suddenly to avoid it.
Philip increases his speed, staying on course, heading south, not even bothering to look back.
They continue on, zigzagging through the south side of town, avoiding the congested areas. A mile down the road, Philip manages to find another main artery that’s relatively clear of wreckage and roaming dead, and he leads them down it. They are now three miles from the Atlanta city limits.
The horizon line is clear, the sky lightening slightly to the west.
They have enough gas to get four hundred miles without refueling.
Whatever awaits them out there in the gray rural countryside has to be better than what they suffered through in Atlanta.
It
PART 3
Chaos Theory
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
—Mary Wollstonecraft
SEVENTEEN
Around Hartsfield airport, the rain lets up, leaving behind a scoured, metallic sky of low clouds and dismal cold. It feels terrific, however, to get this far in less than an hour. Highway 85 has far less wreckage blocking its lanes than Interstate 20, and the population of dead has thinned considerably. Most roadside buildings are still intact, their windows and doors battened and secured. The stray dead walking about here and there almost seem like part of the landscape now—blending into the skeletal trees like a ghastly fungus infecting the woods. The land itself seems to have turned. The towns
