Little Neil rounded the corner of the restaurant, and she spun around and went the other way, pushing her way through the decorative foliage that ran around the east side of the restaurant. She received a few scrapes and cuts from branches that needed to be trimmed, and then she was at the front of the restaurant. Her car was in the distance, the woman with the injured leg between her and it.
The knife quivered in her hand. She managed to sling her purse over her shoulder without stabbing herself. Then she ran. Her legs felt shaky, but not as shaky as her mind. The world bounced before her, and she began to feel light-headed. She dodged around the woman and then skidded to a stop in front of her car. She set the knife on the roof of her white Toyota Corolla, and she began digging furiously through her purse for her keys. She threw lip balms and tampons on the ground, and then she pulled the keys free. She pressed on the fob to unlock the doors, and then she grabbed the knife and plopped inside the vehicle.
After pounding the button to lock the car's doors, she threw her purse and the knife on the passenger seat. She looked out her window to see that the woman was coming, but she saw no sign of Little Neil. She fumbled with the keys for a moment, then started the engine. She turned on her wipers for some mysterious reason that she couldn't explain, and then she threw the car in reverse, spinning the wheel at the same time. As she backed out and turned at the same time, the front, driver-side fender of the car slammed into her female pursuer. The woman flopped on the hood, one of her legs completely broken.
Mercy's first instinct was to get out of the car and check on her. Surely, she would be too injured now to be a threat. But as she sat with the engine idling, the woman began clawing her way up the hood. "Fuck that," she said to herself. She stomped on the gas, her head rocking back against the car seat. She reached 30 miles-per-hour, and then she slammed on the brakes. Her tires squealed on the warm pavement. The woman slid off the front of her car just as Little Neil came around the corner of the P.F. Chang's building. She spun her wheel so she wouldn't run over the woman and spared a second to give Little Neil the finger; then, she was off. Her eyes scanned the streets with a feverish intensity. There were cars everywhere. She exited the Streets of Tanasbourne and took a right onto Cornell. A traffic snarl loomed ahead of her.
Mercy tried to turn on the radio in her car, but all the antenna-less car could pick up were a few staticky channels, and she wasn't able to consistently make out the words. Still, she pressed the seek button hoping for any sort of update. The car moved slowly, inching along the busy street. Where were all these people going?
It looked as if the entire cities of Beaverton and Hillsboro were on the move. She saw trucks piled high with coolers and camping equipment. She saw the faces of scared children in the back of a vehicle. The fear on those faces spread like a disease. She looked down at her phone and called Duane again.
"Where are you?" he asked immediately, foregoing a greeting.
"I'm on Cornell Road. Stuck in traffic. There must be an accident or something up ahead," she said.
"Can you go around them?" he asked.
"No, we're stuck," she said.
"Isn't there a bike lane or something, a turning lane? Don't look at the road thinking about the lines and the laws; look at it for what it is, drivable space. Is there any drivable space that you can use to get home faster?"
"What is going on, Duane?"
"I think the dead are coming back to life."
She was about to say, "You're crazy" when a naked woman stumbled out from the woods to her right. The three fingers on her left hand were gone, and she had a vacant expression on her face. Mercy sat completely still, hoping that the woman would pass her car.
"Mercy, are you there?" Duane asked. "Mercy?"
In the back of the SUV to her front and right, the children with the scared faces saw the woman, and they began to scream. The woman turned in their direction, unmindful of her own nudity and the blood dripping from her hand. She began bashing on the back windows of the SUV with the kids inside.
"Mercy!" Duane yelled.
The SUV lurched forward, trying to get away from the lady, but it didn't have enough room to maneuver. The woman banged on the glass with her fists, and she wondered how long it would be until she could break through.
"Mercy, answer me, goddammit!"
She scanned the road to her left. There was a turn lane that she could use to move. The traffic from the other direction was lighter. Not many cars were interested in going back into Portland. If what Duane said was true, and she had no proof that it wasn't, Portland would be the last direction she would head in.
"I got this,"
