The Fast and the Dead - Day 20

As they made their way slowly along the other side of the highway, Ben thought wistfully of flashlights and other modern conveniences, like matches, that once had been taken for granted. It didn’t take much to spawn such thoughts; after they third time bashing your knee on an unseen car fender such thoughts and memories came easily to mind.

At least he hadn’t cut himself. If matches and flashlights were rare these days, antibiotics were priceless even in well stocked enclaves, let alone out in the wilds. Zombie movies used to make a big deal about one scratch being enough to doom the poor unfortunate victim. The reality was that that one scratch didn’t have to come from a zombie to be potentially fatal.

Next to him, Claire froze again and her posture, tense and almost humming with tell-tale fight-or-flight adrenaline, told him all he needed to know about what prompted it. He quickly scanned the windows of the cars within sight, but once again he couldn’t see it. Wordlessly, she pointed.

He moved ahead a few steps, eyes fixed where she’d been pointing, and he froze as well. It was close. He kicked himself for having missed it.

He held still, barely allowing himself to breathe. It wasn’t moving at all, but he didn’t know if that mattered. They didn’t breathe, their hearts didn’t pump, they had none of the life processes that would cause involuntary movement in a person.

He looked back at Claire; their eyes met in the dim moonlight, mirroring anxiousness. They were too close to the last one to cross back over, but this one was even closer.

Ben closed his eyes, and with an apologetic shrug, he started edging forward again. Based on everything he’d seen, if it were risen, they were already too close. Hiding was pointless. So was sitting still. He shot glances at it as he kept his eye on where he was going. Fortunately it was one car out into the road, not in a car right on the shoulder; there was a car between it and him. He didn’t have to worry about it suddenly reaching for him, even though the windows of the car it sat in were all broken out. Or in, he thought.

It was slumped in the passenger side seat, hair all a disarray. As he drew abreast of its position, he tried to get a better look. As the years dragged onward, the survivors had found there were ways to tell the difference between an old body and an old zombie. It was the more recent zombies you had to be really careful about; they were really hard to distinguish.

There were few known living creatures that could stomach snacking on zombie flesh, and that included the majority of scavengers, vermin and even most bacteria that would normally contribute to the decomposition of an animal or human corpse. There were a few that were hardy enough to do it, but so few that the decomposition of zombies was much slower and far less complete than a typical body.

For a body that had presumably been strapped into a car for the last 10 years, that should make telling whether it was risen pretty easy. If it was a skeleton, it was safe. If it still looked like a fleshy corpse, then either it hadn’t been there for 10 years or they were in for more noise and more risk.

He drew abreast of its position and glanced back over, almost sighing audibly with relief; the face was a bare white skull, and what was visible of the body looked thin enough to be in similar condition.

“It’s dead then,” he heard from just behind him.

“Yeah. Lucky for all of us,” he said, including the unnamed victim in the car in the sentiment. 

The Fast and the Dead - Day 19

They froze in place, unwilling to take another step. Ben bit his lip. “We could go around,” he said in a low, whispery voice. “If it’s risen, at least we won’t be within reach.” Most of the cars on the road were in bad enough shape that the glass had long since broken, if it had survived the rioting unbroken in the first place.

Claire’s face was pensive in the moonlight, staring at the ground under them. It looked more like ground than road. The years of disuse had cracked and broken the blacktop to pieces and blown dust and dirt and seeds in enough quantity that there were stretches that looked more like wild lawn gone to seed than like an elevated highway. “I don’t think we have a choice. It’s gonna make a racket if it notices us.”

“Me neither, but if there’s one here, there’ll be more later. Guess nobody cleared the cars of ‘em. With the noise we made getting here I’m not real worried about them moaning themselves hoarse, at least not till we’re closer to the ground. Might even do us some good to have a distraction that can’t move.”

“I guess … as long as it doesn’t pull more up onto the road with us.”

They picked their way carefully to the other side of the road, making as little noise as possible. That ended up being more noise than either of them would have preferred; the remains of cars were packed in close in places, and bumping and brushing them was impossible to avoid. At times this would even cause bits of them to break off and fall to the ground. That wasn’t so bad in places where enough dirt had built up and things were overgrown, but on bare asphalt Ben found himself cringing.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 18

The road was quiet when they left the car. Ben did a cursory check of the vehicle’s interior, finding nothing much of interest; a few coins, a pack of gum, scattered trash in the center console storage.

Claire checked the mass of cars ahead of them, giving as many as she could a quick glance; many were too dirty to see through easily, but those she paid more attention to. She didn’t spot any trapped bodies, but did notice how tightly the cars were packed in, and how many had open doors.

“I guess back then when these were abandoned they got trapped, tried to leave the cars behind and make it on foot,” she said quietly.

“Let’s hope we have better luck.”

Their options were limited. They could hike back the way they’d come and hope for the best, but that would lead them back to the Core eventually. Probably not the best way to go. They could try to get off the highway, but that didn’t seem likely until they got closer to ground level. It was a long drop onto a hard surface covered with who knew what.

They took the only reasonable option open to them. They started picking their path through the sea of cars, imagining all the while the chaos of years gone past as people sat in locked traffic, frantic with panic, finally leaving vehicles and homes behind to escape on foot, at risk from people both living and dead. For a while, it was said, the living had been the bigger threat.

Ben realized with a sinking feeling that in this part of the world at least, that was certainly now true for them.

Their slow progress had lasted long enough that it was well and truly dark. “I’m so glad there’s a moon tonight,” Claire commented. Without it they’d have been truly sunk. With the effective end of civilization had come the end of light pollution. The number of stars visible in the night sky was breathtaking, but did nothing to light the way when the moon was new, or covered by clouds.

They stuck to the edge of the highway, keeping hands on the raised side for guidance and keeping an eye on the closest cars. The moon lit their way, but not terribly well; it was a crescent, only a few nights away from leaving them in the dark. They couldn’t see into the more distant cars well enough to check what was inside.

They’d been picking their way carefully through for at least an hour by Ben’s best count when Claire spotted one. “Psst! There,” she said, pointing. She seemed to have better night vision than he did; he couldn’t see what she meant.

“There!” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but even that seemed suddenly loud. He sighted along her arm and moved forward a bit; several cars ahead, maybe the top of a head slumped to the side of a headrest. He couldn’t see well enough to be sure.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 17

Ben ran into the eroded hulk slowly, raising an ear-piercing grinding squeal as the metal undercarriage of the wreck broke and dragged across the pavement. Once he’d gotten it pushed out of their way, he drove around it and headed off down the highway and away from the Core.

They’d gone about fifty meters when their tires blew.

“Oh no. Oh crap.” Ben started sweating. After all that noise, it couldn’t be long until they had company.

“The highway’s raised here, it’ll take a long time for anything to get to us,” Claire said. There was an edge to her tone that suggested she was reassuring herself as much as him.

He let the car roll to a stop and let his head hit the steering wheel, then just sat there. Claire sat and looked at him a moment. “What…”

Ben got out and walked around behind the car. There, stretched across the width of the road, difficult to see from the car in the growing twilight, a long chain of tire spikes like the police used to use. “Where’s a tank when you need one?” Ben asked. Claire didn’t respond, instead moving over to the edge of the highway and peering down to the road below.

“There’s a few starting to gather, but they can’t get up here.” She looked almost … relaxed. Or maybe resigned. He joined her at the edge and looked down and out in all directions. There weren’t nearly as many here. He judged there probably wouldn’t be another huge horde. He also planned to be far away before he could verify whether he was right or wrong.

He sighed and looked at the car. The tires were shredded, and service stations weren’t of much use these days. “Driving like this will destroy the wheels fast,” he said.

“Maybe, but we can’t stay here all night. They’re slow, but they’ll get here eventually.”

He looked back at the chain of tire spikes. There was no rust, he noticed, no worn-away paint to speak of. They’d been put down relatively recently.

“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go. We’ll keep going till the wheels won’t go anymore.”

They’d gone about a kilometer, roughly a third of the way to the next exit, when they started spotting cars on the road again. They were in as good condition as the ones used for barricades had been; they hadn’t seen a living passenger for many years and the weather had taken its toll.

The wheels made a horrible amount of noise as they ground along the road, but the highway was still raised, and remained so for some time if Ben remembered correctly, so he tried not to worry about it. It wasn’t easy; if this day had taught him anything it was that silence really was golden.

Another loud, painful kilometer later, they stopped. They still had almost a kilometer left to go, but no more road to get there; instead there was just a great sea of ruined cars blocking their way. “Well,” he said, a lump in his throat as he peered into the growing darkness. “I guess we walk.”

The Fast and the Dead - Day 16

They drove for a half hour by the car’s clock, though it felt like hours. The sun was getting too low in the sky for Ben’s liking. It was going to make navigation difficult without using the headlights, and increased the chances they’d attract unwanted attention if he turned the headlights on. Even the running lights were iffy.

“Hey,” he said suddenly. “Did we miss a turn back there?” He wasn’t looking at street signs; there were so few intact that there was little point.

“I have no idea. Where are you trying to get to?”

“I was trying to head back west so we could get north. I remember the streets in that area better. Or at least I thought I did,” he said.

“Do you really want to risk running right back into that mob?” Her voice was low but incredulous.

“No, but still, I’m not seeing ANY open paths to the west, no matter how far we—” he slowed the car. Now north was blocked. “I’m so confused.” He turned east.

The roads were a bit better here, fewer cars strewn to the sides. Instead they all seemed to be blocking side-streets, forming one relatively clear path. They could go forward or back, but couldn’t turn aside.

This continued for several blocks, Ben and Claire both keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of an alternate route anywhere without success. Finally they came to what had been a major intersection, with the northbound route unblocked—but now the path further east was closed off.

“This had to have been intentional,” he growled. He tried to relax; time and time again he’d seen what happened to people who let the stress get to them. He stretched and worked his bad ankle. Could be worse; they could still be on foot.

“Let’s just keep going, the sun’s almost down. Maybe it was part of the containment plans?”

“Maybe… I never heard of any long paths like this though, just streets blocked off all grid-like to try and keep them from moving around or grouping up at all.” They continued north a short way before they were again shunted onto a different path; an on-ramp to a major highway running across the city. It had been a toll route once upon a time. A string of lights lit a strip of pavement across the ramp where once cameras and sensors had detected cars ramping onto the highway and photographing their plates. “The lights are still lit.”

“Why would anyone bother keeping power going out here? What a waste,” Claire groused.

He started forward again, rolling up the ramp. The cameras were all in place, as far as he could tell. “No way to know if those cameras are still working,” he said. At the top of the ramp they found the route east blocked once more, while the west was clear.

“This’ll take us back closer to the Core.” Claire didn’t sound especially overjoyed.

“Yeah. No thanks. I’m tired of being railroaded.” He eyed the line of wrecked cars. Most of them were rusted piles of junk after years of exposure. “We can probably push our way through that. There must not have been enough cars on this part of the road to block all 4 lanes heavily. This is going to make some noise though.”

Claire nodded in agreement, going more alert.

None of the cars used in the barricade had been occupied, he noticed, or at least none still were. He picked a spot where the only wreck in the way had been a smaller car. He aimed theirs at it. 

The Fast and the Dead - Day 15

They were several blocks out from the city core when Ben brought the car to a stop. “Have you seen any? It’s been a while since I last saw one.”

“No. And we’ve gone too far for them to have left on account of us back there,” Claire said.

“I knew the roads were bad out here but I didn’t know they were this bad.” Ben’s face was white with worry.

“Do you think …”

Ben bit his lip. “We may have to abandon the car.” He sighed. “The roads are getting impassable the farther we go, and so covered with crap that we’ll make too much noise while we crawl along. It’d be faster and quieter on foot.”

“There has to be another way! Can’t we backtrack, cut out to the side, then head back down to the lake when we’re not cutting so close to the Core?”

“There aren’t many places to get boats out that way, and the Core runs close to the water—” He stopped talking at the sight of movement further down the road. “Damn. Looks like a few of them.” He looked at her questioningly. She was squinting further down. With a sigh, she turned to him.

“Let’s turn around. If we can,” she looked at the crumbled debris around them. This area looked like it had been bombed. They both knew there were parts of the old city where that was literally true. “Road’s blocked further ahead anyway. Head back up and away and we’ll figure out what to do then.”

He started the awkward process of turning; the rubble and wrecks of other cars left him little room to maneuver. They felt a jolt as Ben backed the end of the car into the side of another vehicle, but both started violently at the gnashing moans that came after. They craned their necks; Claire blanched. “There’s one in the car. It looks like it’s buckled in,” she said quietly.

“Buckled in? But how would a … Oh.” He shivered. That ex-person must have been in the car and belted in when he or she — it was hard to tell now — died, and still buckled in for the rising.

He started off again at the best speed he could manage, being very careful about every other car he passed. That was sure to draw more in and he couldn’t take being that close to the center of another horde again so soon. Or ever again, for that matter.

He started paying more attention to the windows of cars as they passed them; the number of corpses in them was disquieting. It was impossible to tell if they were just unfortunates who’d never been properly tended to, or if they were risen and ready to kill.

A feeling began to settle over Ben, a drifting accumulation like grave dust. He needed to just get out. Out of the city, away from the core, away from this craziness. “There was a major highway back this way wasn’t there? How badly do you think it’s clogged?”

“I wouldn’t bother, they were all pretty choked up with wrecks.” Her voice was as tight as his thoughts felt.