“Hold on.” Jessie said and popped it in reverse.
More rotting dead things were pouring down the street, moving in a wave and he caught a glimpse of the concrete barrier and abandoned police cars, doors still open. They had tried to contain the hospital in the beginning and had set up road blocks on some of the streets. He’d never punch through them, not at the slow speeds he was going. He threw an arm over the seat, aimed back the way he came in and ignored Natty’s constant stream of cursing as she strafed back and forth. He knocked them aside and she filled them with lead. Bullets passed right through the leathery bodies taking streamers of noxious black blood and fetid intestinal juices with them. They also took bone splinters and moldering bone marrow. Broken arms could no longer grab. Broken legs and shattered hips dropped them on the ground to crawl. Broken heads dropped them to the asphalt to be trampled underfoot.
Jessie bounced over the bodies, got up some speed and flung the wheel all the way over. The front and back of the car traded places as he grabbed first gear and stomped it. Natty squealed, jacked the 60 one way then another and continued to cut them down, her harness holding her tight in the seat. She spit an endless stream of curses in three different languages. Jessie cut down the next street, tore a hole through a wall of undead and kept rolling coal until they thinned out. The machine gun came to an abrupt stop as it ran out of ammo. Natty started to release the harness and grab another can out of the back but Jessie stopped her.
“Leave it.” He yelled over the motor and the music. “Let the barrel cool down.”
It was cherry red.
She nodded and grabbed the 12 gauge from the dash mount but the horde was thinning. Thousands were behind them and only hundreds in front.
“We’re approaching the docks.” Wallace crackled over the radio. “It looks good, the slowest ones are still here but they’re chasing after you.”
The Mercury shuddered as it careened into a group of twenty or thirty zeds that were tied together. He didn’t have time to wonder what that was all about or what the hell they had been thinking. The ropes caught on his bumper and a bunch of them were dragging behind, bouncing around but still trying to claw their way into the car. He let off the gas, slowed to stay just ahead of the fastest deaders chasing him and ignored the ones staggering out of the side roads and grabbing for them as they passed. Natalie locked the machine gun back in place and rolled the window up. She was splashed with gore and reeked.
Jessie rolled his window down, turned the music off, aimed the vents at his face and turned the air on high. He made a face at her and wrinkled his nose.
“You did good.” He said and punched a man in the head who had managed to grab onto the bars across his window. “But where did you learn how to cuss like that? You could give lessons to the truckers.”
They weren’t out of danger, not completely, but they were safe and she started to come down from the barely controlled panic she’d just lived through. She forced herself to breath in and out, ignored the stench and the bits of yellow brain matter splashed on her clothes.
And in her hair.
And on her face.
She licked her lips then spit and almost gagged, started wiping furiously at her mouth and cheeks but only succeeded in smearing the vile slime even further.
Jessie reached behind him and pulled out a roll of paper towels, handed them to her.
“You okay?” he asked after a few minutes after she’d managed to get most of it wiped off.
“I didn’t think it would be like that.” She said. “I thought it would be like clearing houses. Not so much chaos. It feels like we barely made it out alive. It seemed like we were on the verge of being overrun at every second.”
“We were.” Jessie said. “But if we didn’t do what we did, if we didn’t risk everything, the plan wouldn’t work.”
“JESSIE!” a panicked voice blared over the radio “Jessie are you there? Can you hear me?”
He grabbed the mic dangling from the little bungee cord.
“Loud and clear.” He said. “What’s going on, Wallace?”
“They broke through! They broke the plywood! We’re in the pharmacy and they’re coming over the counters! There’s too many! There’s too many!”
“Get in the safe!” Jessie yelled. “Get in the safe, I’ll come for you!”
They could hear the screams and shrieks of the living and the dead. Day one zombies, fresh and fast and strong. There was gunfire, shouts of close the door, close the door and then nothing.
The car idled along at a sedate seven miles an hour, thousands of undead just behind and keening in hunger. Jessie turned the CB volume all the way up, adjusted the squelch and gain and listened. There was something, someone was transmitting but he couldn’t hear anything other than a break in the static. They were inside a concrete and steel room; they wouldn’t be able to transmit or receive. He tried
