She held it in the air and announced, "I've gotit!" They key sparkled in the sunshine, and to Joan's eyes it seemed as ifit were producing its own light. Katie unceremoniously snatched it from herhand and plopped into the car with it. Joan watched as she jammed it into theignition, and turned the key. The vehicle's engine made a sick whine, and itdidn't sound like it was going to start to Joan.
They all crowded around the car, ready to hop in themoment they heard the smooth idling of the engine. The dead walked towardsthem, just a handful, but enough to be dangerous. Joan didn't look at them asonly a few dangerous beings but as another opportunity for something to gowrong. It didn't matter that there were only five of them. Say you turn thewrong way at the wrong moment and the sun temporarily blinds you. That could beit for you. Say you're turning to flee, and you trip on a shoestring or a looserock sitting on the ground. That could be it for you. Though there were onlyfive of them, they treated them as if they were more. They would only fightthem and kill them as a last resort. It was another unspoken rule among them.
The car whined again, sounded like a chain-smoking cattrying to hack up a hairball, and for a second, Joan heard the pistons in theengine chug to life. Then it died. Katie tried again as Joan tried to make outthe tattoos on the forearms of the dead man on the left. Was it a cartooncharacter? Some sort of comic book hero?
The car sprang to life.
"Thank Jesus," Katie yelled, but they all knewthere was no Jesus to thank.
Black smoke erupted from the tailpipe of the vehicle, andthey all hopped in, rolling down the windows in the vehicle. The doors slammedshut, and for a few brief seconds, all they did was listen to was the purringof the car's engine and the soft scrape of shoes on concrete as the dead approached.
God, it felt great to be in a car. They could sit. Theycould move without expending energy, and if those things got too close, theycould escape without fear of twisting an ankle or stumbling at the wrongmoment.
From the back seat, Joan watched as the tendons inKatie's wrist flexed when she put the car into drive. The engine whined, andthey heard the obnoxious screech of a fan belt in need of servicing as the carlurched into action. The dead were honing in on their position, and Katiepushed through them, not fast enough to damage them or the car, but fast enoughthat the dead were bumped out of the way. One went under the car, and theybounced as the car's tires rolled over it. Joan looked behind her to see theghoul rise up from the ground its arms hanging limp and broken ribs stickingthrough its blood-soaked t-shirt.
Then they wound through parking garage, swerving aroundthe occasional shambling monstrosity, their arms held out the way childrensometimes reach for their parents. Children. She wondered if there were evenany children still left out there. Such fragile things, they would behard-pressed to survive in this world. She had already seen that first hand,and the ranks of the dead were swelled by their numbers, knee-high thingstottering along the streets, unable to keep up with the hordes.
The gray face of a girl in a white dress zoomed by thewindow, and Joan was overcome by a feeling of hopelessness that she could onlythink of as a bottomless pit. The car wound around a road, and they came to anintersection.
"Which way?" Katie asked.
Joan, lost in her own morose thoughts didn't hear thequestion.
"Which way?" Katie repeated.
"Left," she responded. The car lurched forwardagain, the fan belt squealing. Joan guided them through neighborhoods, usingmostly back streets. It seemed as if every major artery was clogged by wreckedcars, the stoplights having run out of power long ago. To Joan, they seemedlike dead eyes looking down on them, sad reminders of how the world used towork.
Unkempt yards flashed by them, and they all rode insilence, their breathing heavy, and the ever-present forms of the dead aconstant reminder that there wasn't much alive anymore. Wild dogs darted in andout of the dead, rushing through overgrown yards and dodging the clumsyattempts of the dead to grab them. She wondered how long it would be until theonly things left alive in the city were former house pets gone wild. How longuntil those dogs saw everything human as an enemy? How long until packs of wilddogs swept through the city's as dangerous as the dead that now populated them?
They drove on.
Chapter 19: In the Burbs
Somewhere along the way, Joan had given them baddirections. They pulled into a quiet cul-de-sac, a man dressed in a redbathrobe swayed in the middle of the circular court. His bloody footprintscriss-crossed the asphalt, as if he had been stuck there forever.
Oh, Katie thought, the bathrobe's not red. It'sjust bloody. The thing dangling from the bathrobe was not part of the robeeither. It was a string of intestines, black with rotting stool. The man stoodin a daze, his hair wild about his head, and it took him an abnormal amount oftime to notice the wailing vehicle as its dusty brakes screeched to a halt a fewyards from him. Katie immediately killed the engine, silently praying that thevehicle would start up again when they needed it. She knew it wouldn't, justlike in those horror movies that her husband used to force her to watch. Themoment they needed it, they would all be piled in the car, the dead bearingdown upon them, the engine whining and trying, but ultimately failing to start.Then they would be dead.
"Seems pretty quiet here," Lou said as the manin the bathrobe gimped towards them, more bites on his ashen legs becomingapparent. "Maybe we should get out and see if we can find some supplieshere."
"Yeah, maybe we can get a car that doesn't soundlike a dinner bell for all those things while we're at it."
Without urging, they
