By the time we reached the outskirts of Port Gibson, the sun had already risen. As I turned onto U.S. 61, the main highway through town, I realized I was on the same damn road known as Airline Highway in Louisiana—the one, in other words, that the assholes of Gonzales had blockaded. If not for them, I would’ve reached Baton Rouge much sooner—maybe in time to spare Jill from such a terrible fate.
Then again, if the bastards hadn’t waylaid me, I never would’ve been able to assist Bertha and her pals in taking them down. Clare and I never would’ve befriended George and Casey, Jess might indeed have stayed inside that dumpster until she starved to death, and we wouldn’t have a chance to shave six hundred miles off our northward journey.
“Wake up, gang!” I hollered. “We’re here!”
Casey and Jess immediately ceased their chitchat, rose from the dining table, and crowded into the cockpit for their first look at Port Gibson. Clare and George roused themselves, too.
I braked atop the bridge that arched above Bayou Pierre. Overlooking the small town, we had a decent view of the maddening scene that spread out before us.
The undead storm had indeed preceded our arrival, and it was mightier than even I, with my lifelong pessimistic streak, had anticipated. Thousands of zombies, maybe even tens of thousands, crowded the roadways. Flames engulfed half of the buildings, and the air crackled with sporadic gunfire and heart-wrenching screams.
Worse, we spied several humans running for their lives and ultimately losing the race.
An utter, mind-numbing nightmare… and somehow, we had to find our way to the other side of it.
Fucking figures.
Then, just as I nearly succumbed to fatigue and despair, the good-luck stick once again hit us square in the face.
I didn’t want to be a pessimist for the rest of my life, but I hesitated to embrace complacency either—especially when I was about to drive through a town besieged by hordes of the undead. From what I could see through the binoculars I’d plucked from my glove compartment, even daylight hadn’t given the poor residents much of an edge.
As I scanned the teeming streets, my gaze paused on Port Gibson’s old county courthouse. Likely dating back to the early 1800s and sporting a tall tower at its center, the historic, whitewashed structure might’ve seemed quite lovely and inviting had hundreds of zombies not presently surrounded it. The relentless creatures pushed against one another to breach the building, undulating in twenty concentric rings of bodies, like an enormous amoeba preparing to engulf its food.
Like many antebellum edifices that had survived the American Civil War, the courthouse seemed stalwart enough to withstand the undead pressure. But looks could certainly deceive.
In fact, as I passed the binoculars to Clare so she could have a look, the zombie horde shoved the facade so hard that part of the front wall collapsed. As the creatures streamed inside, the main doors opened and two dozen or so people rushed out, their guns blasting everything in sight.
I respected their moxie—or was that desperation?—but they were sorely outnumbered. Even more so when countless other zombies—preoccupied with breaking into other buildings, smashing car windows, and chowing down on the locals—suddenly noted the gunshots, screams, and cries of despair and made a beeline for the beleaguered courthouse.
“Jesus,” George whispered. “It never ends, does it?”
“Not for them,” I replied. “And not for us either.”
It wouldn’t take the zombies long to decimate the survivors, no matter how well armed they might seem.
In other words, our window of opportunity was closing.
“Hang on, everybody!”
I didn’t even wait for my passengers to reclaim their seats and brace themselves before I gunned the engine. By the time we reached the first nonoperational stoplight, the van had hit eighty miles per hour. I tried to avoid colliding with the roving zombies in my path, but for the most part, I focused my attention on less pliable obstacles, like abandoned vehicles, as I careened down Church Street, only two blocks from the raging battle at the courthouse.
As we crossed Orange Street, I glanced to the right, past the Confederate monument standing on a grassy knoll in front of the courthouse—and discovered the brief skirmish had become a definitive bloodbath. We hadn’t even made it halfway through town when the gunfire ceased, and all the humans had presumably perished.
Naturally, we became the new target for the insatiable undead. Thousands of the fuckers converged upon us as we barreled through town. In keeping with their usual mode of operation, they moaned, hissed, and tried to ram our van with their reanimated bodies. I attempted to knock aside as many as possible, but it wasn’t an easy feat.
Perhaps worse, the wipers fought a losing battle as pieces of rotten flesh clung to the windshield. With each swipe, more blood and zombie goo smeared across the glass, and recognizable body parts got lodged within the protective cage enfolding my front end. After a particularly vicious splat, a zombie’s eyeball ended up right in my line of sight, and the cockeyed, overtaxed wipers couldn’t budge it.
“Holy crap,” Clare cried from the passenger seat. “This is insane!”
“No kidding,” I grumbled.
George and Casey, once again seated, also put their eyes to work, gazing out the small barred windows behind the sofa and next to the dining nook.
Jess shrieked when one particularly aggressive zombie banged against the glass beside her.
Most step vans didn’t feature more than the windows up front, and if the previous owner of my kick-ass van hadn’t installed extra panes in the living area, I certainly wouldn’t have.
At least sturdy metal bars covered every window, including the slender rear ones. I’d even fitted the driver’s-side and passenger-side doors, which opened by sliding
