Two of the walkers have clamped on to the driver’s side, one on the passenger side—and they hold fast— either caught on the truck, or strong enough in their spastic hunger to hold on. “Bob! You got any more of them shells in the cab?”
“They’re in the back!”
“Shit!”
Bob shoots a glance at Lilly. “Darlin,’ I believe there’s a crowbar on the floor behind the passenger seat —”
The truck swerves. One of the walkers tears free, tumbling to the road and pinwheeling down an embankment. Muffled screams come from the back. The sound of glass breaking comes through the wall. Lilly finds the greasy three-foot length of iron with the hooked end on the rear floor. “Found it!”
“Give it to me, honey!”
Josh looks out at the side mirror and sees a second zombie slip free of its mooring and fall to the rushing pavement beneath the wheels. The truck bumps over the corpse and keeps barreling.
Bob hollers in his gravelly wheeze, twisting around toward the sleeper window, raising the crowbar. “Get back, Lilly, cover your face!”
Lilly cowers, shielding herself, as Bob strikes out at the zombie in the window.
The curved end of the crowbar slams against the window but merely chips a divot out of the reinforced safety glass. The zombie snarls, tangled in bungee cords—its toneless growl a Doppler echo on the wind.
Bob lets out a cry and then slams the crowbar into the window again and again, as hard as he can, until the curved tip breaks through the safety glass and plunges into the dead face. Lilly turns away.
The crowbar impales the cadaver through the roof of its mouth and gets stuck. Bob gapes in horror. Behind the mosaic of fractured glass the skewered head hangs suspended in the wind for a moment, the dull glow behind its sharklike button eyes still animated, the mouth still pulsing around the iron as if trying to eat the crowbar.
Lilly can’t look. She presses back against the corner, shaking convulsively.
Josh swerves again, and the zombie finally tears loose in the wind, falling to the pavement and vanishing under the wheels. The rest of the window blows away, a tissue of shattered glass imploding and swirling into the cab. Bob flinches, awash in adrenaline, and Josh keeps barreling forward as Lilly curls into a fetal position in back.
They finally reach the main access road and Josh heads south, picking up speed, calling out loud enough for the folks in the back to hear: “Everybody hold on!”
Without another word, Josh accelerates, hands welded to the steering wheel, weaving and lurching around pockets of wrecked, abandoned vehicles for another couple of miles, keeping an eye on the side mirror, making sure they are clear and safely out of range of the swarm.
* * *
They put five miles between them and the cataclysm before Josh applies the brakes and stops on the gravel shoulder of a deserted stretch of rural wasteland. The silence that descends on the truck is unreal. Only the sound of their heartbeats in their ears and the high, lonesome whistle of the wind can be heard.
Josh glances over his shoulder at Lilly. The look on her faintly bruised face, the way she’s curled up in the corner of the floor, hugging her bended knees against her chest, shivering as though suffering from hypothermia—all of it worries him. “You okay, babydoll?”
Lilly manages to swallow the lump of terror in her throat and gives him a look. “Just peachy.”
Josh gives her a nod, then hollers loud enough to be heard back in the camper. “Everybody okay back there?”
Megan’s face in the window says it all. Her ruddy features screwed up with nervous tension, she grudgingly gives them a noncommittal thumbs-up.
Josh turns and gazes through the windshield. He breathes hard, as though recovering from a sprint. “Damn things are definitely multiplying.”
Bob rubs his face, breathing hard, fighting the shakes. “Getting more brazen, too, you ask me.”
After a pause Josh says, “Must’ve happened fast.”
“Yeah.”
“Poor bastards didn’t know what hit ’em.”
“Yeah.” Bob wipes his mouth. “Maybe we oughtta go back, try and draw them things away from the camp.”
“What for?”
Bob chews the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know … could be survivors.”
Another long pause hangs in the cab, until Lilly finally says, “Not likely, Bob.”
“Could be supplies left over we could use.”
“Too risky,” Josh says, scanning the landscape. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”
Bob roots a map out of a cluttered door pocket. He unfolds it with shaking hands and traces his nail across the tiny capillaries of unmarked farm roads. He still labors to catch his breath. “Best I can tell, we’re somewhere south of Oakland—tobacco country.” He tries to hold the map steady in his shaking hands. “Road we’re on ain’t on the map—at least it ain’t on
Josh stares into the distance. The morning sun hammers down on the narrow two-lane. The unmarked road, which is fringed in weeds and littered with an abandoned wreck every twenty yards or so, snakes along a plateau between two tobacco farms. On either side of the unmarked two-lane, the fields have overgrown with neglect, the weeds and kudzu twining up the slats of weather-beaten guardrails. The shaggy, ramshackle nature of the fields reflects the months that have transpired since the plague broke out.
Bob folds up the map. “What now?”
Josh shrugs. “Ain’t seen a farmhouse for miles, seems like we’re far enough out in the boonies to avoid another swarm of them things.”
Lilly climbs back onto the bench. “What are you thinking, Josh?”
He puts the truck into drive. “I’m thinking we keep heading south.”
“Why south?”
“For one, we’ll be moving away from the population centers.”
“And…?”
“And maybe, if we keep movin’ … we can keep the cold weather in our rearview.”
He gives it some gas and starts to pull back onto the road when Bob grabs his arm.
“Not so fast, captain.”
Josh stops the truck. “What is it now?”
“Don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news.” Bob points at the gas gauge. “But I just put the last drops of my reserves in her last night.”
The needle is riding just below
SEVEN
They search the area for tanks to siphon or gas stations to plunder, and they come up empty. Most of the wrecks along this desolate stretch of farm road are burned to crisps or abandoned with bone-dry tanks. They notice only scattered dead roaming the distant farmlands—lone cadavers wandering aimlessly, far enough away to easily elude.
They decide to sleep in the Ram that night, taking shifts sitting watch and rationing their canned goods and fresh water. Being this far out in the boonies proves to be a blessing as well as a curse. The worrisome lack of fuel and provisions is offset by the lack of walker activity.
Josh admonishes everybody to keep their voices down and make as little noise as possible during their exile in this barren hinterland.
As darkness closes in that first night, and the temperature nose-dives, Josh runs the engine as long as possible, then resorts to running the heater off the battery. He knows he can’t keep this up for long. They cover the broken sleeper window with cardboard and duct tape.
They each sleep fitfully that night in the cramped quarters of the truck—Megan, Scott, and Bob in the camper,
