Across the Horizon

A couple of young lovers on a college road trip encounter a group of zombies on a desolate highway where salvation is just over the next hill.

It started simply as most things do.  Mitch was driving across country, following nothing more than impluse.  His motivation nothing more than the great American journey, a tradition he felt was slipping away under corporate constriction and the rising cost of fuel.  The first few days of his journey were fun, he had started in San Francisco, and stopped at the large roadside bars and some of the more bizarre attractions.  The money he spent in the bars he saved by sleeping in the car.  He read dime novels in the laundromats.  When he reached Denver he came to a crossroad.  He could simply continue to head west and drive through Nebraska, or head north into Wyoming.

            “Dude,” His friend Nick had said, “You should see Wyoming.”

            “Oh yeah.”

            “Yeah man, you should definitely do it.  I mean, you need to choose, beautiful landscapes or an extra day of nothing but cornfields.”

            So when he reached Denver, and saw some of the sites scented by the ghost of Kerouac and a time he didn’t understand, his spirit of adventure rekindled, and soon he was heading north.

            His friend was right, the land was expansive and different.  He could not believe how quickly the scenery changed from the metropolis of Denver to the open monolithic countryside of Wyoming.  The hills rolled by, small country houses rolled their crests and then dipped below as he drove past them.  Small herds of cattle dotted the distance.  Fields of pale dry grass waved hazily in the wind, under a perfect blue sky.  They blended into golden yellow hillsides and red shaded rock formations, looking as if they were stained by repeated sunsets.  However, despite the regional beauty, his zest for adventure became quickly challenged by the isolation and fuzzy sputtering twanging of FM country music.

            He consulted his map, and began to look for the nearest route east.  As he switched from scanning the map to the open road in front of him, he thought he noticed some kind of animal wandering along the shoulder ahead of him.  The distant black shape was wavering, wandering slightly into the road.  He pumped the brakes on his rundown Oldsmobile, peering through the dirty windshield and the shimmering heat of the road.

            He let go of the map and let it crumple on the seat next to him when he saw it was a person.  He checked his rearview mirror and scanned the horizon for houses.  There was nothing on the distance but dust and wind.  He cruised closer and closer, lifting his foot off the gas.  He was close enough now to see that the dark shape was forming into an old man in a suit, haphazardly rambling into the center of the road.  Cotton stuffing peeked out from the shoulder of the man’s jacket.  His gray hair blew in the wind, his hands flopped limply at his sides.  He moved in shuffling staggered steps, lurching.  He slowly rolled behind him, and the man turned.  A large gash ran from the top of his head down into the middle of his face.  His milky eyes were rolled up into his head.  Blood ran dark into his saturated shirt.  His arms rose slightly and he started to stumble towards Mitch’s car.

            His cell phone lay in front of him next to a collection of change by the ashtray.  Instead he opened the door.

            “Hey man, you need help.”

            The old man shambled forward.

            “Look, just relax alright.”

            The old man’s arms rose higher.

            “Hey maybe you should just sit down or something.”

            The old man let out a gurgling moan and reached out and grabbed Mitch by the shirt with his gnarled hands.

            “Alright, it’s okay, you’re hurt.  Do you know where you are?”

            The old man pulled him forward.

            “Relax.  Hey relax.  Let go.  Let go sir.  Sir, please.” 

            He struggled against the old man’s grasp as he pulled him closer.  Mitch grabbed him by the lapels of his ruined jacket, the clammy dried blood rubbing against his hands.  The man’s mouth opened and his ragged chunk of a tongue flopped out drooling black sludge.  His lips curled back across broken teeth.

            Mitch began to panic further.  He pushed the man away, but he was relentless.  His small wiry frame shook from Mitch’s effort, but he could not shake the man’s iron grasp.  The old man let out another gurgling moan, his open mouth widened.  Mitch panicked further, yelling for the man to stop.  Mitch threw a punch.  It was short and savage, the man’s head rocked back.  Blood splattered through the air.  The man pulled him harder.  Mitch threw another punch.  They fell to the ground.

            The pavement was hot from the passive midday sun.  The man was moaning and pulling and pulling him in.  Mitch placed his hands on the old man’s face and pushed, the fabric from his shirt ripping.  The old man made a slight turn of his head and sank his broken yellow teeth into the soft flesh of Mitch’s thumb.  He reeled back his head and screamed into the sky.  The man’s hands were reaching out again, flailing in the air blindly.  Mitch raised his hand to his face, bright red blood streamed down his wrist.  He sprang to his feet and tried to turn and run, but an iron hand grasped his ankle.  He fell mid-step once more to the hot road.

            Teeth sank into his exposed ankle as his kicked the old man in the head repeatedly with his shoe.  The man took another bite, the two writhed across the black pavement.  The man bit down again.  Mitch rolled over on his back and looked down to the old man with a mouthful of his flesh.  He tried to punch and kick and pull away from the face eating his leg.  He reached down and grabbed the man’s head and tried to pull, but it was as if every muscle in the man’s body was working to this one purpose.  The old man bit down again.  Mitch took his working thumb and drove it into the man’s eye, rich yellow pus oozed down his face, yet the man did not flinch, and still he pulled and pulled at Mitch’s leg.

            Mitch cried out in searing agony.  His blood flowed and flowed out onto the pavement.  He began to grow weak.  His thumb was still buried in the old man’s face.  The old man’s jaws opened and closed mechanically, scraps of his leg meat falling from his shattered teeth.  A black ring appeared across Mitch’s vision, his blood flowed out from his leg.  His arms burned and he screamed out.  He turned his head and scanned the horizon.  The black ring around his vision deepened and his arms burned, and strained, then collapsed.  The old man’s clamp jaw locked down again on his exposed leg.  Mitch screamed and screamed and screamed while turning his head to scan the horizon, but nothing was coming.  His blood was flowing down the man’s face and head as he bit down again.  His vision turned black and he faded into nothing.

 

            Ed Tom sat in a plastic deck chair and stared out across the expanse of the open plains.  His trailer was a good ways from the highway.  He was as he always was most of the time, alone, save for the lone falcon or eagle lazily hunting across the vast blue sky.  He had no gas for his generator so the three cases of beer sitting next to him in the dirt were going to stay warm.  The sun blazed quietly overhead, it was brisk eighty degrees with a slight cool breeze making things nice and comfortable despite the grit that followed it.

            Ed Tom considered whether to bother to go into his trailer to masturbate or just stay and take care of it in his chair.  A field mouse scurried through the brush near him.

            “Hey watch out up ‘er buddy, sum b***h goan gitcha.”  Then he belched.

            He dropped his empty into the bucket on his left, then reached down and pulled a fresh one off the rings.  The beer was warm, but Ed didn’t mind that as long as it was there, didn’t mind being alone as long as he wasn’t bothered.  He sat quietly drinking for some time.  Then thought of the girls back in town, and once again considered his recurring business.

            He turned his head scanning the horizon, weighing his pros and cons.  He started from his right and slowly turned his head.  He discerned nothing but slightly rolling hills and scruffs of brush.  Dark colored mountain tops off in the distance.  Then as he turned further to his left there were two figures drifting out from the wavering haze of the horizon.

            Ed Tom gulped down the beer he had just opened and deposited it neatly in the bucket with the rest of them.  He squinted at the stumbling figures and pulled a fresh beer from the rings and popped it.  He took a casual sip and sniffed loudly. 

            He downed a full six pack by the time he could make out clearly the two men slowly approaching him.  Ed Tom got to his feet and swayed as his equilibrium caught up with him.  His beer frothed over.

            “Hey!” Ed yelled.

            The two figures continued their shamble.

            “Hey!”

            One of them was dressed in dark suit and covered with dark matted blood.  The other was wearing a light green tee-shirt with torn ragged khaki pants shredded below his left calf. The second man’s exposed leg was ragged and torn as if he had had a run in with some kind of wild animal.  He dragged it behind him with strained lurches.

            Ed Tom hailed the two men again and getting no response he began to stagger towards them.  When they were a few yards apart he stopped, his beer still gurgling white foam.  He didn’t put up half the fight that Mitch had.  He was simply enveloped.  They lashed at him and tore him apart with their teeth. 

 

            Matt and Sue were cruising out of Larimer, heading out for a long four day weekend stay from the University of Wyoming to Sue’s family’s place in Montana.  They settled into the seats of Matt’s black Suburu and waited for the radio to fizzle before switching to their iPod.  They drove mostly in silence, speaking only when there was a disagreement with the other’s song selection.  The sky was clear and the road stretched out before them like a black ribbon.  A never ending mobius strip cutting the expanse.  When the faint shadow of Larimer became a distant memory, Matt lit a cigarette.  They were deep into the state.  The distance between human made structures widened to mere miles to tens of minutes of driving.  Technicolor rocks sculpted by wind erosion filled the blanks.  They were passed by a car, a large pickup, then for all intents and purposes were alone.

            When Sue felt the car make a left turn, she diverted her attention from the iPod to Matt.

            “What are you doin’?”

            “Shortcut.”

            “Shortcut?”

            “Shortcut baby.”

            “What shortcut?”

            “I stayed up late last night studying Mapquest.  I studied our route and I saw that by turning off here, we can save an hour.”

            “Shut up.  Turn around.”

            “Relax.  We’ll save an hour.”

            “Matt, I’ve made this trip a thousand times.  I have never heard of this shortcut.  We need to turn around.”

            “Relax.”

            “Do you realize that they start and stop building roads out here?  You need to keep to the route,” she reached into the back seat and rummaged around.  She fell back into her seat holding a road map.  “What’s this shortcut?”

            “I don’t know, I got it all memorized.  Turn a left back there, then the first right.  Then skip a right, then skip a left, then make a right, then a right…”

            “Are you kidding me?  Turn around.”

            “I’m f*****g with you Susan.  It’s under control.  Relax.”

            “Do not get us lost out here.  I mean look around.”

            “C’mon baby, we got Mapquest on our side.  It’s the information age, have a little faith.”

            “Ain’t no information age out here sweetheart, not out here.”

 

            They drove and drove and drove on.  Towns that marked on the map were nothing more than a bar and a liquor store flanked by trailers.  The black ribbon of the road rolled and bobbed across the rising dips of the plain.  It coiled around hills, rust colored in layers and etched from where they blasted to lay the road.  Ranches switched off between groups of cows or horses meandering near the fence by the road.  Matt stopped for gas and bought a cup of coffee.  Sue sat in the car and fretted with the map.

            Matt sipped at his coffee while Sue slowly nodded off to sleep.  Matt leaned back and settled himself deep within the seat.  The paper of the cup was thin, and he had to pinch the cheap plastic lid to keep his hands from burning.  He blew at the seam escaping from the hole punched through the lid.  The scenery rolled past him, the songs played on, and Sue’s head lightly bounced against the glass of the window.  She had the iPod in her lap when she had fallen asleep, so when the music selection turned south, Matt was put in bit of a pinch..

            All of the cup holders were full of spent beverages.  The road was relatively straight, but the cars wheel alignments were off.  Matt rested the small heated cup between his thighs.  He didn’t realize it, but when he did so, the cheap plastic lid on the cup popped off a little.  He reached across Sue, reaching for the iPod resting in her limp hand.  The lid popped off all the way, spilling hot coffee over Matt’s crotch.  He screamed and swerved, hitting the cattle strip on the shoulder of the road.  Sue snapped awake and joined him in yelling.  Matt inadvertently stepped on the gas, lurching the car forward up and over one of the hills.  They crested the top, completely blind, and sped over the side.

            They heard a thunk.  Then the sound of dragging.  Then the back of the car lurched up and crashed down.  The wheel jerked, the car flung to the right and crashed into the drainage ditch.

            Sue opened her eyes to the spider-webbed windshield.  She glanced over to Matt, who was reaching for his neck and unbuckling his seatbelt. 

            “Are you okay?” She said.

            “Yeah.”

            She pushed the car door open and pulled herself out of the car.  She turned to the desolation of the open plain, to the faded view of a distant mountain.  Then back to the direction they had come, to what appeared to be a bloody bundle of clothes lying in the road.  Then beyond that, a group of four people staggering along towards them at the top of the hill.

            “Oh my.” Sue turned and helped to pull Matt out from the car.  “Easy, take it easy,” she said.

            “I think I burned my dick off.”

            “Oh my.”

            “S**t, my neck.”

            Sue stared blankly at the bloody mess in the road.

            “S**t,” Matt said, “Did we hit a deer or some kind of coyote or something?”

            The bloody mess of clothes lay in the road.  It was a woman, a brown skinned young woman in a blood smeared pair of jeans and a white tee shirt.  Her feet covered in white socks, her shoes gone.

            Sue vomited.

            Matt walked down to the back of the car and stared down at the woman lying in the middle of the road.  She was terribly mangled.  Her shirt ripped open, ripped and torn down her back.  Ragged chunks ripped off of her arm exposed the blue red meat of her muscle.  She was covered in dried crusty black blood from below the waist.  Matt stared down at her, then turned back towards Sue hunched over and dry heaving.  He walked over to the front of the car.  He looked over the windshield, the hood of the car, and all the blood splashed all over it.  He turned back to the five staggering shapes heading down the hill towards them.  Sullen figures drifting in the harsh light of day through a flickering could of flies.

            A fear gripped Matt through his spine.  He felt the blood rush from his head as shock officially set in.  All moisture in his mouth vanished.  We walked back over to Sue, who stood wiping vomit from her mouth.  The windshield and the hood splashed red, the woman’s stripped arm, the wrong way her mangled body lay in the road.

            “This ain’t right.” Matt said.

            “No s**t!  What happened?  How did this happen?”  Sue’s hands were shaking.

            “I don’t know, I didn’t see her, I didn’t see any of them.”

            “Them?”

            Matt pointed to the five haggard forms slowly making their way towards them.  “This is wrong.  This isn’t right.  This shouldn’t be.”

            They were in a staggered line, in the middle was a man in a dark suit, his face badly battered in.  Next to him was a man with bite marks across his arms and a gaping hole dangling gore from his beer gut where it poked out from under his dingy white shirt.  Next to him was a young man about the same age as Matt and Sue in a gas station attendants uniform.  A patch of hair was missing from his head that continued to dribble.  His right hand was hastily bandaged.  To the suited man’s left was a woman in a flannel shirt, her throat half severed, her head hanging limply almost to her exposed shoulder, which was stripped of flesh almost to the bone.  Her left hand was badly mauled, fingers were missing.  Next to her, was another young man in a pale green shirt, his leg stripped to the bone and staggering slowly after the rest of the crowd, his face and chest splashed with blood.

            The brown skinned woman in the road twitched.  Matt and Sue jumped back, Matt tripping on his own feet and falling backward.  Her body lurched, her mouth opened and a gout of ink colored dark red blood flowed down her face.  Her mangled arm began to flop on the pavement, her mid-section rose.  Her head flopped back and twitched.  Her thigh muscles flexed and extended her legs out from under her, flipping her onto her side.  More blood poured out from her mouth.  Then slowly, as if she was falling in slow motion, her limps began to move.  She rocked a little like a stranded turtle, then, as if she caught her bearings, righted herself and began to stand.

            This display held Matt and Sue’s attention like an open flame.  It took a rapid change in the wind to bring the tangy smell of death upon them, and snatch their attention back to the motley line of mauled wanderers.  Their minds blanked.  The brown skinned woman joined in with the rotting file.  Their bloody hands opened and began to reach for them.  The stink of death was thick, it filled the two young lovers entire being.  Hawks circled lazily across the blue cloudless sky.

            Sue stood hypnotized, staring into the milky dead eyes of the man in the dark suit.  Tears began to stream down her face.  The man’s hands brushed against Sue’s arm, and before they could begin to close, Matt pulled her back and the two began to instinctually jog away down the road.  They created a good distance away from the mob of dead stragglers, then stopped to catch their breath.

            They cursed and chattered mindlessly as their panic ran over them like a wave.  They turned and spun in the middle of the road scanning the quiet desolation of the open plains expecting to see some instrument of salvation, an open portal to safety.  They found nothing but the endless black ribbon of the road flowing endlessly in both directions over and across the horizon.  Behind them the mob followed, slow yet steady, and soundless.

            “What do we do?”  she asked.

            “I don’t know?”

            “What the f**k’s going on?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “What do we do Matt?”

            “Just…uh, just keep moving.”

            They started walking.  The image of their car lying in the ditch, steam still whisping from the engine, doors open, the tie-died splatter of blood across the hood.  It was still early in the day and both of the lovers were beginning to calm down.  The cooling numbness of a dim sense of denial settled in.  They both wordlessly held the same assumption that at any moment they would be saved by the glint of a windshield coming across the horizon ahead of them.  They turned to look over their shoulders every few seconds, determined that the group of bloated grey-green bodies would simply disappear.  This type of scenario was simply impossible.

            Denial carried them for three miles, their eyes endlessly scanning the line of the horizon.

 

            Around midday they cleared a hill and saw a gas station off in the distance.  The dust that had began to line the back of their throats prodded their feet forward faster.  Soon the shuffling line of death was left behind them, a mere spot in the distance.  They burst through the door, the dull metallic tinkle of the door’s bell amply described their disappointment.  A pair of twitching feet peeked out from behind the counter.  A wide chunky swatch of blood streaked the wall, disappearing behind the candy display next to the register.  They bounded to the edge of the counter and stared down.  An axe blade was sunk deep into the skull, the entire body convulsed in a thick messy puddle of gore.  The one remaining eye flickered then locked on to them.  The body began to spasm and a dry throaty groan emanated from deep within the bloody mess on the ground before them.  Red mucus bubbles formed and burst on the thing’s purple lips.

            Their stomachs churned.  Sue hocked up briny dry globs of vomit, black with dirt.  Matt’s stomach cinched tight like leather strap under his skin.  The world began to dissolve, to drip down like melted wax.  He stepped backwards as his vision began to darken, sweat poured down his face.  A tingly feeling spread like static across his brain.  His feet continued to moved backwards, catching on the food products strewn about the aisles.  He crashed in a pile of powdered corn chips and candy coated chocolates.

            Sue bounded to the beverage cooler and pulled a few bottles of water.  She cracked the cap, poured some out on onto the head of her hyperventilating mate, and took a deep drink herself.  She lightly slapped Matt’s face until he began to come around.  Matt stirred then sat up, grasping a bottle of water, ripping the cap off, drinking, than spitting out and coughing from the dust and dirt.  The two sat in the empty silence, covered in water, while the thing behind the counter continue to spasm and wheeze.

            Sue looked down and noticed that she was sitting in some broken glass from one of the giant blown out front windows.  “There’s a truck outside.” She said.

            Matt nodded, “Did you see a phone?”

            Sue exited the store with the same dim tinkle as when she entered.  She turned and looked up the hill.  The line of living death had moved closer, still a way off, shimmering in the heat of the road.  She pushed it from her mind and quick jogged over to the brown Ford Bronco.  She threw the door open and did a quick peer of the interior.  Empty coffee cups scattered the dashboard, punctuated by flattened cigarette boxes.  Loose scraps of paper and discarded fast food bags mixed in with the decaying dust smell of old used car.  She quickly rummaged, looking for a key.

            Satiated with disappointment she turned and went back inside the gas station scanning the ground as she went.  She ran to the back and checked the back office, then retreated again to the store.  She walked over to the counter and gazed down at the spasming mess groaning pink froth through its mouth.  He stared at the pockets of the things’s jeans, trying to steel herself for action.  Then her eyes drifted up the red apron to the name tag.  The thing’s name had been Carl.  Across the room, Matt was on the payphone.

            “Hello?  Yes, my name is Matt Preston and I’m calling from a payphone, um, a payphone at a gas station.  Uh, I’m not sure.  No I’m not sure the name.  I didn’t see one.  No.  No.  Look, let me explain please, me and my girlfriend are being followed…No there’s nobody here.  No.  Can’t you just trace the call?  Yes.  Yes.  Please let just me explain.  Me and my girlfriend were driving and I swerved not to hit someone and drove into a ditch.  No, we’re fine, but you may want to send an ambulance anyway.  No we didn’t hit anyone.  No.  No.  I know it sounds crazy but please, well they’re injured.  No I didn’t hit anyone.  Yes, they’ve been following us for miles.  Yes, miles.  I don’t know four or five.  Yes, I’m sure they need an ambulance.  No, this is not a joke.  No.  Yes, are you listening this is serious.  Well fine, then come arrest me!”  Matt hung up the phone.

            “So what do we do now?”  Sue asked, at her feet the corpse quaked in a congealing pool of ruby black goop.

            Matt let out a sigh, ran his fingers through his hair.  He considered the storefront’s large broken windows.  He considered the confined nicotine stained walls of the back office, with no windows to break and little else.  He considered the open road before them, the black ribbon cutting through the rolling hillside destined to lead them to a point of civilization.  The six lumbering figures reached the bottom of the hill and were now closing in on the gas station.  The women in the flannel shirt’s head rolled and lobbed with each of her awkward steps.  The exposed tendons of her neck holding fast like tent ropes. 

            “We need to keep moving.”  He said.

 

            Back on the road, they walked quietly.  The only noise being the harsh wind whipping across the plain.  It stung their eyes and filled their mouths with dust.  From behind them came the stink of the six wandering corpses.  The sun slowly raced them across the sky.  They would stare up to its blinding glare, notice its position, and then span the horizon again.  Every time they crested the hill, or turned around a hill they gazed at the distant expanse desperate for the twinkle of the sunlight off a windshield.  Each time there was simply nothing, just the endless black ribbon stretching on forever.

            Three years ago, Matt injured his knee in a high school football game.  The injury was speaking to him now, filling his leg with tiny sharp stones.  He had been up all the previous night, drinking at a party.  His body felt spent.  His mind began to wander. 

            A dull ache had begun to creep up from Sue’s lower back.  The pain steeped up her spine to settle an area deep in her shoulder.  Her neck burned with thirst.  She looked down at her feet and noticed her shoe was untied.  She stopped where she was and stooped down to tie her shoe.

            Matt leaned on his thighs then removed his and wiped his brow.  Then he lit a cigarette.  They turned back to view the small mob following them.  The cloud of insects intensified, and the man in the suit now had maggots dropping out of his eyes.  The waves of adrenaline that had hit them earlier in the day had abated, leaving behind a black hole of groggy haze.

            As the sun began to finally recede behind the far off hillside, dipping down under a banner of brilliant shades of purple, red, and gold, the constant steady wind combined with a biting cold.  Shivering and hunched over Matt turned to Sue and said, “We just need to get over those next few hills and we’ll be fine.”

 

            They walked all night long.  Talking and shoving each other to stay awake.  The night sky filled with billions of points of light.  They felt like they were wandering in a vast sea of ink, or exploring the floor of the ocean.  They walked with their hands outstretched in unintentional imitation of the rotting stragglers behind them.  They stared ahead with wide eyes, searching the blackness for a glimmer of light.  Desperate for any sign, not just a headlight, but a light in a window, a lantern at a campsite, any sign of living breathing humanity.  There was nothing but the cold light of the moon, large, looming, and illuminating, yet a million miles away.

            They turned and saw the pale blue light of the moon forming the silhouettes of their pursuers.  The only sound was the howl of the cold bitter wind and the patter of footsteps.  They were hunched and shivering, their muscles ached and pounded with slow burning agony.  Their throats burned from thirst.  Their eyes hung heavy from exhaustion.  These afflictions had built up slowly, steadily, undetectably, until finally flourishing in blossoms of misery.

            Their suffering drowned out any arguments of who was to blame.  Any urge to direct anger towards each other, or even their decaying followers faded and directed to building enough willpower to take the next ten steps.  They would turn and look behind them and see the faceless swaying forms, could smell their putrid flesh, could feel their hunger.  The darkness cloaked the wounds of the walking dead, allowing their minds to exaggerate their grizzly memory.  There was nothing for them but to stay ahead of the horde.

            They wanted to stop, but they couldn’t.  Stopping meant death.  Stopping meant facing whatever private unspoken fear the horde would inflict.  They marched endlessly through the night, willing the image of two bright white beams of headlights to burst from the crest of the far off hills.

            There was nothing but the darkness and cold wind.

            Then the sun came up, peeking out from under the horizon.  They watched the sunlight creep across the beige beauty of the plain.  And in those first waning moments of the morning, staggering in the fresh sunlight, Matt raised his aching arms and pointed.  Sue smiled, blinking cold sweat from her eyes.  They began to slowly jog, awkwardly waving their arms at the small brown car glittering in the middle of the highway.

 

            The car had been abandoned, that was clear in its lack of movement.  They kept their hope intact, remembering that they too had left their keys behind.  When they got closer to the car, the shrill guttural sound of screaming grabbed them deep in their chests.  Matt stopped and bent over and sighed from deep in his throat.  He dropped to his knees and succumbed to the dull flames crawling up his back.  Sue pressed her hands to her face and cried.  Then Matt stood.  He rubbed her back.  He peered into the small brown car, and not seeing anyone sitting in any of the seats, took a tentative step forward.

            He knew it was a baby, knew they needed to get into the car, but she didn’t want to see.  She didn’t want to see the body of a small baby bitten and eaten to death, its organs spread across the fake leather of the back seat.  She didn’t want to see a small baby sitting in a pool of dried blood.  No not a pool, it wouldn’t be a pool, she had seen the proof of that back at the gas station.  It would be a patch.  By now it would be a sticky patch full of dried black brown bits of gore crawling with maggots and whatever those little black bugs were.  She didn’t want to see a little purple-gray lump of child screaming in the backseat of a small battered abandoned brown car.

            Matt looked back at the shimmering forms of the undead, “We need to get in that car,” he said.

            “I can’t look in there.”

            Matt nodded.  He walked over to the car.  He placed his hand on the warm metal of the trunk and peered into the backseat.  He walked around to the back, cupped his hands and put his face to the glass.  He dropped his aching arms and threw his head back, eyes closed, and winced.

            Sue looked up from where she was hunched over in the middle of the road and instantly her inner fears changed.  She hoped to see a small dead baby.  She wished upon wish for the purple-gray lump of undead flesh.  She wanted to see the sticky dried gore patch.  At that moment it was infinitely better than what the alternative cause for the screams coming from the backseat.  She instantly hated herself for thinking it, but it was what she was thinking.

            She stepped up to the car and peered in.  The baby was sitting in a rear facing car seat, its faint brown skin reddened by the harsh glare of the sun from the rear window.  Its face was contorted in an endless scream.

            “F**k,” Matt said.  “What do we do?”

            Sue opened the back door and reached in.  “We can’t just leave it here.”

            He nodded and walked to the driver side door.  He swung it open and collapsed into the driver’s seat.  It had been sixteen hours since he had last been off his feet and his body immediately seized and constricted with relief.  His face contorted, his eyes slammed shut, he lifted his hands for the keys and hoped against hope.  He wasn’t surprised that his hand hit nothing but air.  He scanned the local area, under the seat, under the visor.  He reached across the passenger seat and opened the glove box.  He pulled the owner’s manual out and began his vain search for information on how to hotwire a car.

            In the back seat, Sue unclipped the seatbelts around the base of the car seat and pulled it closer to her.  She undid the fasteners and curled the tiny little human in a towel lying in the back seat of the car. 

            “Did you find the keys?”  She asked.

            He looked into the child’s sunburned little face and back to the mangled brown skinned woman he had hit with his car yesterday morning.  She was lurching her mangled form, her left arm dangling loose from the socket.  She was caked with gore, the purple-red meat of her muscles dangled in the mid-afternoon sun.  Her wounds were grotesque and extensive.  She was clearly dead and yet continued to ceaselessly, tirelessly, relentlessly, and painfully slowly come for them. 

            This was her child her vehicle and it was possible she had the key.  He stared down the road at her thinking how he could get her down, search her pockets, without being torn apart.

            “I don’t know.” Matt said.

            Sue didn’t respond, she just sat slumped in the seat, her eyes closed, door open, arm hanging loose in the breeze.

            Matt’s emotional dam cracked and the veil of shock that had sustained him finally dissolved.  He lifted his head and stared up at the empty blue sky, wisps of white clouds floating, and the dark silhouette of a hawk moving in slow lazy circles.  His throat clamped and then broke open with a sudden burst of emotion straight from the diaphragm.  He felt himself begin to hyperventilate.  He wasn’t supposed to be here. 

            “C’mon,” Sue said.

            Matt didn’t move.

            “C’mon, we need to keep moving.”

            “Just let me sit a second.” he said.

            “We need to keep moving.”  The baby squirmed in her already weak arms, getting heavier and heavier by the second.

            “Just a minute.  All I need is a minute.”

            Sue felt herself faltering, pulling the car seat out and dumping it in the road, yet she said, “C’mon, let’s go.  We need to keep moving.”

            Matt sounded like he was fading away, “I just need to sit for a second.”

            Sue laid down herself, felt her eyes closing, her mind shutting down, almost like a dream, like watching a candle flicker out.  The child shrieked and cried in aimless fury blubbering on her chest.  Her aching muscles relaxed.  Her skin burned against the hot plastic leather but it relaxed her.  She felt the world quiet down, settle.  Her eyes cracked open into tiny slits and she stared out at the pale blue sky and the lazy wisps of clouds.

            This is how it should be, she thought to herself.  This is how life should always be.

            She let her eyes close even though the image of the walking corpses slowly yet surely closing in on their position.  Even as she gleefully allowed her body to shut down for the glories of sleep, the image of the line of walking dead turned to one of them smashing in the car windows and dragging them out into the middle of the street.  She knew that not only would Matt and herself be dragged out of the car, but so would the baby, and that they would all be pulled to pieces.  She could see the little white bundle being yanked and torn apart, the little brown skinned baby splattering into tiny puddles of meat.

            Sue forced her eyes to open.  Then she forced her arms and legs to move.  She cradled the baby and sat up.  She reached over and shook Matt.  He mumbled fidgeted in his chair, then she stumbled to her feet and looked to check on the position of the undead.    They were less than three feet away, the man in the suit raised his arms.  A deep gurgle burbled from his throat and dark black blood flowed from his mouth.  To her left was the brown skinned woman, flecks of caked blood dropping off her body.  Her arms were also outstretched, reaching out for Sue, and her own baby.

            She took a few panicked steps backwards, squeezing the child tight to her.  The baby screamed, its tiny voice cracked and raw.  Matt, was still sitting motionless in the driver seat, eyes closed.  Sue yelled to him, hit his hand against the warm metal of the car.

            Mat stirred.  The man in the white tank top and the gas station attendant were closing in on him, White tank top leaning heavily on the car, leaving thick smears of blood where he touched.  Suet ran to the driver’s side and threw open the door, she grabbed Matt by the shoulder and shook him.  His eyes cracked open and he groaned.  He lurched out of the car, struggling with the invisible net of sleep.  His eyes were wide with panic.  He kicked spewing the gas station attendant back into White Tank Top, they sprawled to the road.  Sue was standing, the baby was beginning to quiet down.  They walked away from the car while still facing it.  The chain of dead bodies reforming as they slipped past the car.  Matt and Sue exchanged uneasy glances and turned and increased their pace.  When once more they felt they had a comfortable distance Matt turned to Sue.

            “Is that really a baby?”

            “Yeah.” she said, she turned down to the small murmuring bundle in her arms.

            “Is it okay?”

            “Yeah.  I think so.”

.  The car slowly drifted away like an oasis in the desert until it too was swallowed by the horizon.

            A fresh wave of exhaustion washed over them both.  Their bodies ached, muscles burned.  Matt’s feet burned with blisters.  The dull numbness of his knees turned into a throbbing ache.  The fissure of pain that had been crawling up Sue’s back was expanding and forming a small pond of misery in the space between her shoulder blades.  Already her arms were weakening from the weight of the small child in her arms.  Their eyelids hung heavy from their eyes, their throats burned from being dry and covered in harsh dust.  Dehydration created sharp points of pain in the center of their brains. 

            “What the hell are we going to do?” She said.

            “We just need to get over these next few hills and we’ll be alright.”

            They shambled onward in silence, the only sound the endless static of the wind across the plains.  Their dry eyes locked more and more desperately on the line of the horizon.

 

            The dark cloud of insects around the line of walking dead bodies intensified, attracting more and more bugs.  They took turns carrying the baby, but as the sun moved across the sky, even this system was getting harder and harder to maintain.  The brief sanctuary of the car was a minor blip behind them, and in front of them lay only the slight dips and rises of the plain.  They continued their silence, there was nothing to say.  The only sounds they made was thick hacking as they tried to clear the back of their throats of dust.

            The baby began to scream again.  The sound pierced directly into their minds.  They exchanged nervous glances at each other as the smell of the baby’s s**t hit their noses.  They didn’t know what to do.  They had nothing to wrap the baby up in, or even a glimmering of how that process would be accomplished if they did.  They were shocked at how insanely frightening the baby’s lack of well being made them.  Sue wondered why she didn’t feel this way about the gas station attendant shivering in his own blood back at the gas station.  They were both complete strangers, but for some reason, the small child seemed more human.

            Her mind wandered, diving into the issue as an escape from the terror of the moment.  Exhaustion and want of sleep carried her mind away, sent it drifting along the winds.  Her arms began to burn and as she turned to hand the child off to Matt she realized that he was gone.

            She turned and stared down the road behind her. Matt sat in a clump in the middle of the road.  Legs askew, arms splayed out at his sides.  He lifted his head and stared at her with dead eyes.  She stopped walking and returned his glare.  The line of the dead were already upon him, arms outstretched bloody mouths open.  Sue raised her hand in vain call for help, but they both knew that he had already given up.  Over the course of two days, they had been slowly ground down into the same dust swirling across the road.    Sue wanted to run over and help her lover, her friend, she wanted to save him.  Yet she knew that if he did she would be dead as well, and then so would the child.

            Then from the back of her mind came the thought that Matt would buy her time.  He was dead now, there was no solving that.  When she thought about it, she didn’t really know him anyway.  They had been in a relationship for a year and a half, in the long run it wasn’t really that strong of a connection.  She could surrender Matt to his fate, and get away.  She could escape with the child.  All she had to do was cross the horizon.

            The sound of Matt’s screaming snapped her back to reality and punctured her rationale and added another heavy block of guilt.  The sight of the fresh bright blood spouting from Matt’s neck as the broken teeth of the dead ripped out large chunks of flesh.  Their greedy grey hands gripped and pulled him as he feebly resisted.  The man in the red smock yanked his arm and bit into his fingers.  The man in the dark suit had a fistful of his hair and was using it to pull his head up.  His decrepit putrid hand slowly curled around Matt’s chin, and he wrenched him backwards by the face.    A dark viscous drought of blood splattered Matt’s face as the dark suited man opened his mouth and bit heavily into the meaty center of his face.

            Matt continued to scream, but Sue had turned and began to walk as briskly as she could down the road.

 

            Alone, pushing through exhaustion and pain, Sue made her way down the middle of the road, the pain in her back so intense she exclaimed with every step.  Her arms burned with the weight of the child. She focused on the hazy blue line of the horizon.  She limped and shuffled and shifted the child. Where could she go?  What could she do?    There were no answers, and the sun drifted farther across the sky.

            She turned to check behind her.  The line of dead were gone, dropping behind a hill.  She felt like the last person on earth, and found that without the spur of walking dead to force her feet, each step became harder and harder to complete.  She continued to walk, unable to decide if she should stop and rest or to continue.  She knew that she would be saved if she waited long enough, but she also knew that soon the dead would finish with Matt and continue to walk on their endless search.  If she stopped she would never start again, and then it would be a race between salvation and certain death.

            The baby continued to scream and bleat and she couldn’t think she was so tired.  Her feet continued to move of their own volition, the wind whipped across her face.  Finally she stopped.  Her muscles burned and her legs shook and deep fiery pain was exploding down her spine and creeping down her shoulders.  She could feel herself drooping, falling to her knees.  Her legs were shaking, and she lifted her head for one last look at the horizon, desperate to see the glint of a windshield coming to whisk them away to safety.

            Instead, just over the hill, she saw the peaking of a rooftop.

            She stood firmly on her feet and practically yelling with the pain of each step made her way across what she had decided, one way or the other, was the end.  The sun dribbled across the sky and it was midday as she approached the porch of the farmhouse.  She began to tackle the stairs, her body erupting into immolating pain.  She reached the front door.  It was made of dark wood with a large window running down the center.  She shifted the child to her drooping left arm and reached for the door knob.  Before she could turn the knob, she looked up and saw the milky dead eyes of a corpse staring back at her.  The thing was bloated with a few days of dry rot, the skin almost completely stripped from its face.

            It pounded its fist against the glass and a spider web of cracks instantly appeared.  Sue took a few staggered steps back and leaned against the post.  Her brain shut down, what minute drops of hope had remained instantly drained from her body. 

            The thing continued to pound against the glass shattering it fully and with a clumsy squeeze stepping through the new entrance.  Instinctively Sue took a blind step and fell down the porch steps sliding down her back.  She looked back up the steps at his approaching doom slowly descending.  The child had fallen from her spent and useless arms.  It lay a few feet away from her screaming in the dirt.

            “I’m sorry.” She said, the thing’s heavy footsteps adding punctuation.  “I’m sorry.”

            This statement became her epitaph.  She closed his eyes and screamed as the thing tore into her flesh.

Author's Note

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Reviews

[Goat]

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Well then....I wasn't expecting that. Good thing I wasn't planning on sleeping...ever! Nice write, very descriptive!