Kim unbuckled herself, and began to climb out of the truck as Will got out.
When they were all out, they huddled around the front of the overturned truck.
Two more trucks rolled up just behind them, their passengers leaning out of the window firing at the undead bottlenecked by the truck and a collapsed building. In a panic, they didn’t bother aiming for the head.
“Where’s the driver?” Kim asked as the three climbed into one of the trucks. The reaming two trucks went back to the main road and skidded off at speeds to put a NASCAR driver to shame.
“He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure enough.”
Kim looked back at the truck, lying on its side as smoke began to billow out of the engine.
The driver’s eyes shot open. For a moment he was unsure of his surroundings. The last thing he remembered is jerking the wheel in the opposite direction of a group of zombies in the road.
He wasn’t confused for long, as one of the walkers pounded on the cracked passenger seat window. He saw the smoke pouring out from under the hood, and smell the gasoline in the air.
They didn’t realize the front window was broken open, maybe confused by the smoke and gas. Either way, the driver knew there was only one way out of this.
Reaching into the glove box, he pulled out a revolver. It had been in his family since the First World War.
He looked over the revolver as if remember some great story about it. But he didn’t know any. Instead, he shot the zombie overlooking him, sending blood and shattered glass raining down on him.
Finally, he took a cigarette he had stashed above the visor. He didn’t have a lighter, he didn’t even smoke. He just figured that’s what a man should do in his final moments.
He raised the gun, said a brief farewell to the people he didn’t know, wished he knew, and gave thanks to the god that just let him die, and raised the gun to his temple.
Click.
As Ronnie, Kim, and Will sped off, Kim kept her eyes and ears focused on the rising smoke. She could swear she heard a man screaming in that direction, but she wasn’t sure. Not with all the voices vying for her attention at the present moment.
“So,” Will began, “you were just about to tell us where we were going, I believe.”
Ronnie leaned back in the chair, and gave the driver a tired look.
“There’s a camp just outside the west end of town. Coupla folks out there tryin’ to get by,” said the driver.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Only when he spoke did it become apparent to Kim that the driver was practically a child, no older than thirteen or fourteen. He inspected the two Marines through the rearview mirror with great care.
“What’s your name kid?” she asked.
“Uh, names Boyd, ma’am.” She waited for part two. It never came so she extended the offer herself.
“My name’s Kim and this here’s Will. You don’t need to worry about us, we’re former military.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and you might want to keep your eyes on the road kid,” interjected Will. “Marines, in case you were wondering.”
“Here that Boyd? That coulda been you one day.”
“It woulda been me one day.”
Kim was about to offer up “I’m sorry” but stopped herself when the absurdity of the statement hit her. Instead she gazed out the window, watching as they exited the city and were entering a more wooded area.
“You’ll still have the chance kid. As cliché as it sounds, you gotta hold out hope, you know? No point in going on otherwise.” Will patted Boyd on the shoulder. A brief grin flashed on his face but was as quickly replaced by the same nervous, impassive frown.
“No point in having hope when everyone you know and love’s dead,” said Ronnie, life of the party.
The two vehicle convoy pulled up to a barricade made of fallen timber and household objects. It was located somewhere in a wooded area on the edge of the city. Kim thought she saw a sign saying something about a camp ground, but she stopped paying attention to what was outside the window when she saw the body hanging from a noose in the financial district in the city.
Two men were standing beside the wall, each holding bloodied baseball bats. They pulled back two overturned dinner tables acting as a sort of gate and the vehicles pulled in. The men were quicker to close it back up again.
As the cars came to a stop, Ronnie and Boyd jumped out. Kim and Will did the only thing they could and stepped out.
The camp didn’t seem to have much of a structure. Tents, cars, and campers sat around the perimeter of the fence in random order. The only constant was that they were all huddled close in the middle, far from the jerry rigged fence.
Most of the people there looked like they were alone, all sitting in their tents or cars, ignoring each other.
A family of four, with two children, was sitting beside the cars on a picnic blanket. The mother was combing her daughter’s hair, and the man was reading a book to his son. They existed in their own world, as if none of this were going on.
Towards the back an elderly man missing an arm balanced a shotgun between his left arm and chest.
Two women walked past them, picking up Boyd as they strolled by, and entered a tent Kim hadn’t noticed before, in the front corner of the encampment.
“You can stay as long as you want, but you’re gonna have to pull your own weight around here.”
“We can
