Noah flicked the machete into the overgrown grass. It stuck in the ground like a dart in a cork board. He pulled out a box of tracer rounds from his shirt pocket and loaded three cartridges into Charlie’s Sedona rifle. Taking aim at the massive, cylindrical fuel tank, he fired.
A reddish streak of burning strontium trailed in the wake of the tracer round. The bullet winged a corpse in the shoulder, spinning her in Noah’s direction.
The high-caliber gun kicked like a horse. “Argh!” He cried, doubling over as the pain ripped through his arm. The near-continuous surge of adrenaline pumping through his body over the past couple days had allowed him to forget about the bite on his shoulder.
More dead turned in time to see Noah stand and reload. They shuffled in his direction, but they were too slow. Switching shoulders, Noah awkwardly fired again. The incendiary round pierced the tank and ignited the gasoline. The rig exploded in a huge fireball, incinerating the surrounding corpses. The dead that eluded the fire were killed as well, their brains turned to mush by the blast’s pressure-wave.
“Now die!” shouted Noah.
A cadaver on the edge of the blast radius stumbled around, engulfed in flames. Noah smiled as it flailed its arms and then fell onto the ground to writhe and cook.
He dropped the rifle and headed for the toolshed. Charlie and Abby’s graves would need to be dug quickly as the commotion was sure to attract more attention.
VII
Noah barreled down a back road in an Olympic blue Ford truck. A pack of Marlboro’s sitting on a bed of coins in the center console caught his eye. He picked up the pack and thumbed the lid open. It was nearly full.
“What the hell,” he said.
Using his lips, Noah pulled a cigarette from the iconic red and white box. He pushed the knob on the truck’s electric lighter and then slipped the pack into his shirt pocket. When the knob popped out, he pulled it from the dash and pressed the glowing red coils against the tobacco. Noah took a long, satisfying drag and then let out a series of coughs from deep in his lungs. It was his first cigarette in over a year. He used to smoke a pack a day until Abby learned about the harmfulness of cigarettes in school. After that, she embarked upon a crusade to end her big brother’s smoking habit, which she successfully accomplished after only a few months of relentless nagging. She had even made him sign an agreement promising that he would never smoke again.
The road was clear until he reached the cemetery. A man in his seventies wearing a soiled gray suit stumbled into the street from behind a small mausoleum, attracted to the truck’s rumbling engine. Noah punched the gas and aimed straight for the gray-suited man. His body bounced off the truck and flew into a drainage ditch.
As the truck cruised along the hillside that led past Noah’s old high school, a tall corpse wearing a green and white Lyon’s basketball uniform stepped into the road. They collided, but instead of plowing him aside as he had the man by the cemetery, the former athlete slid up the hood and crashed through the passenger-side windshield.
Startled, Noah jerked the steering wheel. The truck swerved onto the road’s shoulder. He corrected the wheel and had almost regained control of the truck when the corpse suddenly came-to and began thrashing around. With his attention divided between driving and fending off the gangly basketball player’s flailing arms, Noah lost control of the vehicle. The Ford tore through the guardrails and rolled onto its side. It tumbled down the hill and crashed into the side of the school’s cafeteria, punching a hole through the brick wall.
Slowly, the world came into focus. Noah hung upside down, suspended by his seatbelt. The corpse that had been lodged in the windshield was gone, but now another one was trying to slip through the broken passenger window. Stuck between the cafeteria floor and the door panel, she swiped at the air, just inches from Noah’s head.
“Jesus!” said Noah when he saw the girl. Her lips had been chewed off revealing the bloodied bottoms of her gums, and there was a gash on her forehead that went all the way down to the bone.
He unclipped his seatbelt and fell onto the roof. The girl hissed. Noah lightly tossed the machete and rifle through the driver-side window before dragging himself out of the truck. He labored to his feet and performed a brief skeletal inventory. Despite feeling like he just got off the Scrambler at the Barrel County Fair, nothing seemed broken.
Halfway up the hill, the basketball player lay on his back, his pelvis crushed, feebly waving at the languid sky. Noah considered finishing him off but then reconsidered when he noticed several twisted faces appearing in the windows of the cafeteria. More would come from outside the school.
As Noah headed down Smoke Street, he came across his former high school chorus teacher, Professor Hendrick. His dried intestines hung from his gut, dangling over the crotch of his black slacks like the purse worn over a Scotsman’s kilt. Noah waved without thinking, but then caught himself and lowered his hand. Hendrick had the slow, rigid gait of someone who had been long-dead—probably since the very beginning. Noah sidestepped his old teacher with ease, but he hadn’t gotten more than a few paces before stopping. Hendrick had taught Noah to sing, had believed in him
