Knowing the hissing, groaning kids and their adult-sized chaperones could easily swamp the van, I shifted into drive and stepped on the gas.
“Joe, where did Azazel get that pink ribbon?” Clare asked, gazing at our cat, who was napping on a blanket behind my wife’s seat.
“No idea,” I responded.
Clare reached down to caress our purring furbaby. After a few seconds of maternal bonding, she faced forward again and secured her seatbelt.
“Everybody OK back there?” I asked, glancing in my rear-view mirror.
Casey and George nodded from the dining nook, and Jill grumbled something incoherent from the couch. I assumed she was about as “OK” as you could expect from a disgruntled mother-in-law not long for the living world.
A moment later, I busted through the tripwire, exited the crowded campsite, and cautiously drove down the tunnel of trees leading to the Williams Cemetery. The overhead branches formed a lower ceiling than I’d originally thought. They scraped eerily along the van’s roof. But before I could worry about how low the limbs hung, Casey shouted from the rear of the van.
“Joe, the kids are picking up speed!”
He’d moved to the back to keep an eye on our pursuers.
“Have they hit the trail yet?”
“They’re just getting there,” he informed me. “Course, it’s hard to see with only the brake lights.”
I flipped a switch on the dashboard, and the van’s exterior floodlights blazed in front and back.
“Oh, that’s better,” he said. “Yep, they’re definitely inside the tunnel now.”
“Terrific. Just what I needed to hear.”
Chapter
17
“It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?” – Gaff, Blade Runner (1982)
Despite the dogged pursuit from Troop Undead, we eventually exited the creepy tunnel of trees—only to enter the fantastically creepy graveyard. The place seemed bigger than I’d previously thought, filled not just with weathered tombstones but also with overgrown shrubbery, untamed weeds, and more trees than I’d expected.
Not sure why the layout—and state of it—surprised me. The Williams Cemetery was a century-old graveyard nestled within a national forest. Before the zombies arrived and fucked up the world, the rangers had likely had more pressing daily tasks than maintaining an abandoned burial ground.
I shut off the floodlights mounted around the roof. The standard headlights shed enough illumination to see the access road that linked to the pedestrian trail we’d used to escape the overrun campsite. I figured if there were zombies beyond the cemetery, the brighter lights might attract them. Then, we’d have double the fun.
One look at my side-view mirror to verify that we’d put at least a hundred yards between us and our pursuers. Just one glance. That was all it took to lose focus and inadvertently run over an obstacle along the trail.
The van tilted to the right before slamming back to the ground and continuing onto the access road. Murmurs of concern drifted from the rear, followed by a disgruntled shout from you-know-who.
“Watch it, dummy!”
“Sorry, guys.” I glanced at the side-view mirror again—but more quickly this time. “Looks like we hit a tree stump.”
“You mean, you hit a tree stump,” Jill hollered.
“Yes, thanks for clarifying,” I grumbled.
Although I’d bought brand-new, heavy-duty, all-terrain tires in preparation for our long-ass road trip from Louisiana to Michigan, I must’ve hit the short, ancient stump just right. Or just wrong. Perhaps it had an unusually sharp edge, or maybe I’d simply weakened the tire tread with two full days of zombie-fleeing antics.
Whatever the case, I’d managed to puncture the front driver’s-side tire. I couldn’t hear a hiss over the rumbling engine, but I could certainly read the gauges on the dashboard from the air pressure monitor I’d installed the week before. While three of them reported normal pressure, one of them (the one in question) indicated an unhappy sensor. A very unhappy sensor.
Shit. It’s like the damn Mardi Gras Indian all over again!
The semi-slow leak hadn’t forced me to drive on the rim yet, but it definitely made our ride more lopsided and the steering more difficult. Still, I had no choice but to press onward and upward. Literally.
As we crested a low hill overlooking the back half of the cemetery, I spotted an old bridge in the distance. The same one I’d noticed on one of the forest maps I’d downloaded before the apocalypse hit New Orleans. Supposedly, it would lead us to the other side of the Homochitto River and, hopefully, ensure a clean getaway from the tiny terrors chasing us.
If, that is, my punctured tire could hold out a bit longer.
“Hang on, everyone!” I shouted as I veered down the hill.
Even with the bum tire, we descended the slope too rapidly, causing the front end of our van to slide to the left, just enough for us to hop over an old headstone alongside the road. The vehicle lurched to a halt, the wheels still spinning fruitlessly, the engine straining to dislodge us.
“Dammit!” I lifted my foot off the gas pedal and shifted the van into park.
Clare scanned the eerie graveyard through the grimy windshield. “Now, what’s wrong?”
“We’re hung up.” I glanced at my wife, noting her furrowed brow. “We’re riding too low to get off the headstone, so I have to change the tire.”
The furrows only deepened. “But, baby…”
“I know,” I replied grimly, unhooking the tire iron from under the driver’s seat. “That’s why I have to hurry.”
Before she had a chance to protest again, I climbed out of the vehicle and assessed the situation. I had to work fast to jack up the van, remove the flattened tire, and replace it with one of the two spares I’d stowed beneath the undercarriage. Gazing at the hissing tire impeded by the slanted tombstone, I knew the task wouldn’t be easy, but luckily, the job didn’t require a separate jack.
Why? Because while revamping my home-on-wheels in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, I’d installed four jacks beneath
