“They’re everywhere,” Åsaa says, her voice trembling. “We made a huge mistake coming down here …”
Dan looks out over the row of cars and realizes she’s right in both statements. Dozens and dozens of dead people are coming this way like ants drawn to an ice cream cone someone dropped on the sidewalk.
William is swinging for his life, using the rifle not as a firearm but as a baseball bat, knocking over zombies left and right, Ozzy biting and tackling and thrashing alongside him. Together, they’re just able to keep a few feet of space between them and the dead.
But it’s a losing battle.
Dan can tell.
Unless he does something, William won’t make it.
He looks back down at the fat lady, who’s now been joined by a younger and much skinnier woman. Then he looks over at the next car. It’s a station wagon, not as tall as the van, but still tall enough that the zombies probably can’t reach him from there.
He looks at Åsaa. “We have to get out of here. We have to try and make it to the white car.”
“What?” she exclaims. “How?”
“We’ll have to jump.”
“No, I can’t!”
“You have to,” Dan repeats. “Or you’ll be trapped. Come on.”
Åsaa is about to object, and so is Dan’s own mind, which is why he simply acts before either of them can talk him out of it. He takes one step back, then lunges forward and jumps through the air. He lands on the roof of the station wagon and almost tumbles off the other side, but manages to stop just in time and regain his balance.
He looks back over at Åsaa, who’s staring at him like he just jumped clean over the Golden Gate Bridge. “Now it’s your turn,” he says, holding out his arms. “Come on. I’ll make sure you don’t fall!”
He and Åsaa being almost the same height, Dan doesn’t feel at all confident that he can actually stop her from falling if she slips, but he looks at her with all the certainty he can muster. And it seems enough to convince her—although she obviously doesn’t care at all for what she’s about to do.
She takes as much a running start as she can, then jumps over onto the station wagon. Dan halfway catches her, both of them fighting to keep their balance for a second.
“All right,” he breathes, once they stop wobbling. “So far, so good. Only two more to go.”
“We can’t,” Åsaa says, glancing down at the zombies reaching for their feet—there’s five of them now, and more are joining all the time.
“Sure we can,” Dan says. “We just did it once. Come on!”
He steps down onto the hood of the car, using its length as a very short runway for him to take off. He flies through the air and lands on the rear end of the next car, quickly stepping up onto the roof and out of reach of the dead people.
He looks back, waving at Åsaa. “Come on, your turn. Quickly!”
Åsaa steps down onto the hood of the car. But unlike Dan, she doesn’t jump right away, which gives the zombies a chance to reach for her.
Åsaa screams as their fingers scrape against her bare legs.
“Jump! Now!” Dan shouts.
Åsaa jumps.
She doesn’t get enough air.
She lands with only one foot on the car. The other one slides down. She screams and clamps onto the trunk like a drowning mouse. The zombies close in on her immediately.
Dan reaches down, grabs her by the coat and yanks her up at the last possible second. She escapes the eager, dead hands by mere millimeters.
She clings to Dan and begins to cry. “I can’t do it … I can’t do it …”
Dan looks over her shoulder at William and Ozzy, who are both still battling the zombies. They’ve moved off the road, as though William was trying to flee back up the hillside, but the zombies are cutting him off from every direction now, and he has no choice but to keep swinging at them, knocking them over. Most of them get back up, though.
Dan looks over at BMW. It’s the next car over. And the rear door is still open. He can almost jump right in from here.
“Listen to me,” he says, pushing Åsaa gently off of him. “Listen. It’s okay. You just stay here; I’ll get the car.”
She looks at him like she has a hard time picking up the meaning of the words, her eyes spilling over with tears of fear.
“Just stay here, and keep away from their hands, okay?” Dan says.
Åsaa nods, glancing down at the zombies trying to reach them from both sides of the car.
Dan turns towards the BMW. He looks at the open door and takes a deep breath. There are no zombies blocking his way. But he will have to be quick; as soon as he makes the jump, they’ll turn and come for him.
His ankle, which he sprained back in the basement, trying to get away from Jennie, has been getting better every day. It hardly hurts anymore. But the jump he’s about to make could make him sprain it again, maybe even worse than the first time. Maybe he’ll hurt himself badly enough that he won’t be able to walk. Maybe—
Stop that, he tells himself firmly.
He looks over at William and Ozzy—who are getting into a random car to seek refuge—reminding himself what’s at stake.
He takes another deep breath, then he jumps.
FIFTEEN
“Fuck me!”
William scrambles to reload the rifle, while at the same time pushing himself back, trying to create distance to the woman who has managed to scale the backseat and is now reaching her arms between the front seats to grab at him. But there’s very little room to move inside the car, and William only manages to press his back against the steering wheel, causing the horn to go blaring.
Ozzy bites down on the collar of the woman’s coat—she’s wearing an expensive-looking fur coat, which she
