“I see your legs!” Agnete calls. “You want me to grab you?”
“Not yet!”
Iver gathers all his strength, then lets himself drop as gently as he can. Even though he uses his arms to lower himself, there’s still a strong tug at the gutter as his full weight is put on it, and it gives off that awful metallic scream again. But this time, it also gives way, and Iver feels the drop in his stomach.
It’s only a couple of inches, but it’s enough for him to cry out and almost lose his grip. He flails his legs, searching for the windowsill, and he feels Agnete grab his pants and pull him in.
As his feet touch down on the windowsill, he can ease of the pull on the gutter and instead bend down to grab the upper frame of the window, allowing him to squat down and tumble into the bedroom.
He almost knocks over Agnete, who just manages to step out of the way before he lands on his hands and knees on the floor. From the crib Adam is standing up, holding the rails, pacifier in his mouth, looking at him curiously. Iver feels like kissing the floorboards but makes do with closing his eyes and sending a quick prayer of thanks.
“My goodness,” Agnete breathes. “I was afraid you were going to fall.”
“Me too,” Iver says, panting as he looks back out at the gutter. It’s been pulled free and is hanging in a slope. Just thinking about how close he had gotten to plummeting down into the crowd of zombies makes his skin crawl. “Well, there’s no way we’re going back out that way, that’s for sure.”
SEVEN
The engine comes to life right away—as though it’s just as eager as William to get going.
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! Fuck yeah!” He punches the ceiling harder and harder, unable to keep it in. “Fuck yeah! We’re getting out of here! Fuck you guys! Fuck you all!”
He flips the zombies off with both hands, making sure to cover every direction. Ozzy—uncertain what William is happy about, but feeling his excitement—begins barking.
“You’re goddamn right, buddy!” William says, breathing fast. “Those assholes can go fuck themselves, because we’re outta here!”
He puts the car in reverse, places his right arm around the passenger seat and slowly begins to make his way backwards. It feels like driving in mud. The car is somewhat reluctant to move due to all the dead bodies pressing up against it. So William revs it up some more and gets it moving, shoving the zombies back. Some of them stumble clumsily out of the way, others trip and fall. William can hear them scramble around under the car as he backs right over them. The car rocks as the tires make their way over legs and arms and torsos, producing crunching noises as the bones give way, which brings William a sick satisfaction.
“Fuck you guys,” he mutters, concentrating on steering the car. “Thought you were getting an easy meal, did you? Well, chew on this!”
He stops and puts the car in drive. Then he begins making his way forward while pulling right, moving out of the line of cars. He can barely see anything for the horde of zombies, and he has to go mostly by feel. The darkness doesn’t make it any easier.
Suddenly, the rear end of another car appears, and William has to hit the brakes hard to not collide with it.
“Shit! Thought I was past that one …”
He backs it up a few yards, and immediately the other car disappears from view as it’s swallowed up by the zombies crowding around William’s car. He turns more sharply to the right this time as he goes forward again. He doesn’t meet the other car, but instead he feels how his own car begins tilting to the right as he gets too close to the ditch.
“Fuck me, this is gonna take forever.”
He bites his lip and thinks for a moment, the engine idling away, the zombies pushing and shoving from all sides.
Ozzy whimpers from the backseat, impatient to get going.
“I know, I know, buddy. But we need to be careful now. Can’t jump the gun and end up screwing our last chance up.”
After half a minute of pondering the problem, William comes to the conclusion that there’s really no other way; he needs to drive out of here. Which means he needs to drive alongside the line of cars, striking the balance of not hitting any of them, while at the same time keeping close enough to them so as to not go into the ditch by the roadside.
The problem is that in order to do that, he needs to go very slowly. And this in turn means that the zombies will have time to follow along. The horde is very big—in fact, he has no way of telling exactly how big—and it might take him a very long time to drive his way through it … provided he doesn’t crash the car or get it stuck before that.
“It’s going to be a grind,” William tells Ozzy. “But we’ll have to do it.”
He gets the car moving again, pushing the zombies out of the way. He sees the next car coming up on his left, and he adjusts the course so that he passes by it within six feet. Then, after another few yards, the next car appears, and William again adjusts accordingly.
The system seems to work.
Whenever he’s too close to the car he can see, he pulls little to the right. When he’s too far away, he pulls to the left. Slowly, steadily, he makes his way down the highway, plowing gently through the zombies as he goes, passing one car at a time. After ten minutes or so, he begins to feel confident enough in his system that he ups the speed a few miles per hour, still making sure to keep the course.
The slight upping in the speed means that he’s finally
