Dan has also never really driven a car, which is something that just dawns on him now, expect for that one time not that long ago, where his dad let him drive down the block, while instructing him from the passenger seat.
“Learn by doing, I guess,” he tells himself and looks for the ignition as the zombies outside begin groping the windows.
He can’t find either the key or the ignition; instead, there’s a button saying START. He pushes it. The dashboard lights up, but nothing happens.
“Shoot!” He looks back out at Åsaa, holding up his hands, mouthing: “How do I turn it on?”
Åsaa seems to pick up on the question, but she just shrugs and shakes her head.
Dan bites his lip. He looks around for something to help him; a manual or something. His gaze falls on a cell phone left on the passenger seat. He picks it up and activates the screen. It shows a picture of a blond-haired woman standing in what looks like Disney World. Next to her, arm in arm, are three kids. Dan recognizes them and feels a lump in his throat. For some reason, Jennie’s face appears in his mind, and he has to gently push it aside.
Not now. Focus on what you’re doing.
Luckily, there’s no password needed for accessing the phone, and Dan opens a browser. The front page is from a Norwegian news media, and the headlines are all yelling at him things he already knows.
He pauses for a second, recalling what make William had told him the car was. Then he types in a search for “How to start a BMW X5.”
A brief YouTube video tells him what to do: step on the brake, then hit the Start-button.
Dan puts down the phone and follows the instruction. The engine comes to life immediately. It’s surprisingly quiet and produces only a very subtle vibration in the seat.
He sends Åsaa another thumbs-up, then puts his hand on the steering wheel, muttering to himself: “All right, you can do this. Remember what Dad told you.”
Dan puts the BMW in reverse, and a monitor gives him a live feed from a camera somewhere on the rear end of the car. The zombies are completely surrounding the car now, and as soon as he puts it into motion, it begins pushing them aside. Some of them trip and get caught underneath the car—Dan can hear them bumping against the undercarriage—and some are even dragged under the tires and get run over, causing the BMW to bump softly and sway a little.
Dan does his best to ignore them, concentrating instead on getting the BMW turned around. In order to do so, he needs to drive farther out into the roadside where the grass is tall. He worries for a moment that the car will get stuck, but William turns out to be right: it has no trouble at all driving on the uneven ground.
It would be a hard challenge driving the car even without the dead people crowding him, constantly blocking his view. But Dan manages to get as close to William as possible; he can’t get all the way there, since the car William sought refuge in is on the far lane, meaning there’s one lane separating them. And the cars in that lane are parked bumper to bumper.
He stops and looks over at William’s car. He can see him waving briefly before he’s cut from view by the crowd of zombies swarming around both cars.
Dan rolls down the window half an inch. The dead people outside immediately push their grey fingers through the crack, and their moaning voices fill up Dan’s ears.
“William!” he calls out. “Can you hear me?”
He waits for a reply, listening intently. Then, over the choir of zombie voices, he picks up William shouting: “… barely hear you!”
Dan bites his lip. This won’t work. If they’re going to work out how to get William from his own car to the BMW, they need to be able to communicate.
Dan looks at the phone on the seat beside him. William has a phone, too, but Dan doesn’t have his number.
He shouts out the window: “What’s your number?”
He stretches his neck and catches a glimpse of William looking back at him. Dan holds up the phone. William raises his eyebrows. Then he holds up two fingers. At first, Dan takes it as a peace sign, but then William holds up four fingers.
“Oh,” Dan says. “Hold on!” He types in 24.
William signals the rest of the number using his fingers. Since Dan loses him from sight every other moment, he gets the number wrong a couple of times. But finally, he gets it. He makes the call, and William answers right away.
“Johnny’s Auto Repair, what can I do for ya?”
It’s such a lame and unexpected joke, Dan can’t help but snort with laughter. “I’m glad you made it to safety.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not celebrate too early. Hey, I didn’t know you had a driver’s license?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, you’re a natural, then.”
“How do we get you out of there?”
William sighs. “I really don’t know, dude. I just don’t know. It doesn’t look good.”
There’s suddenly something in William’s voice that Dan cares very little for. He has seen William angry and upset, even sad, but he has never picked up on this tone of voice before. It sounds like William is about to lose hope.
“It’s okay, we just need to figure it out,” Dan says.
“Yeah, well, there’s like twenty feet between us, and those twenty feet are crammed full of zombies. I don’t see how we’re going to make that happen.”
Dan feels his heartrate rise. “Let’s just think for a moment. There are three options as I see it. We either get you over here. Or we get the car to you. Or we get rid of the zombies. Right? You see any other ways of doing it?”
“I think that about covers it.”
“Right. So, can we get you over here?”
“Not unless I spontaneously sprout a couple of wings.”
“There’s no key
