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“Turn around,” Eric says.
“What? Here?” Gilfoy exclaims. “No! We have to get out of here.”
They’ve just passed the last of the infected at the mouth of the alleyway. It had been slow going, as Gilfoy tried his best to avoid running any of them over. Eric’s not sure if it’s out of regard for the victims, squeamishness, or if he’s worried the car might get stuck or damaged.
“We can’t leave those people back there.”
“And how are we going to save them?” the police officer demands. He swerves around a smoldering car, its doors flung wide as if they’d been blasted open. “I can fit four more people in here, max. Maybe five. There are more than twenty people back there. Let me get you out of here first, then I’ll—”
“Now,” Eric says. He wipes the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve. He can feel the adrenaline of the escape attempt leaking away from him already, leaving him exhausted and trembling with weakness. “There’s not a single person back there who can deal with this situation properly. They’ll die, all of them. They need someone who—”
“They’ll be safe, Daniels. They just need to get onto the roof and wait.”
“And then what? They know they’ve got no food, no water. They’re going to panic. That guy, Fortini, he’s going to start something, you know that.” Eric reaches for the door handle. “I’m not worried about what the infected will do to them. I’m worried about what they’ll do to each other. Desperation and ignorance cause as many casualties in these sorts of crises as the infected themselves.” He opens the door and starts to lean out.
“Damn it, Daniels!” Gilfoy slows down. “You’re in no shape to— All right! Stop! I’m turning around, but we need a plan. And really, you’re not going to last long with your arm like that. You’ve lost too much blood, and it’s infected.” He shakes his head. “Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could do what you did.”
“Desperation,” Eric replies. He looks out the window. “Like I said, it makes people do stupid things.”
He knows if he’d just waited another twenty minutes... But how could he know anyone was coming for him? He’d had to cut off his hand to survive.
“There,” Eric says. He lifts his arm to point at a delivery truck parked in front of a bakery. It takes all his strength just to do it. “We should be able to fit everyone inside that. It’ll be tight. Pull over next to it, and keep an eye out for me for infected. I’m going to jump it.”
“With one hand? You can barely even sit up in that damn seat!”
“You have a better plan?”
Gilfoy pulls up next to the driver’s side door and gets out. He leaves his own door open and the engine running. He climbs up into the truck cab and reaches for the visor. When he pulls it down, a key falls out onto his lap. He wonders what that means, whether it’s a sign they’re doing the right thing, or whether it’s just a bit of luck, a favor that the universe will soon call back in order to maintain cosmic balance. He dangles it in his fingers out the window for Eric to see. “It’s a stick, though,” he calls over. “So I’ll have to drive it. And the back’s already empty.”
He starts the motor to make sure it runs, then climbs back down and switches off the car and pockets the keys.
“I can drive this,” Eric says. “Two vehicles are better than one.”
“You’re barely managing to stay conscious. Get inside the truck.”
He retrieves the shotgun from the trunk of the patrol car, then helps Eric into the passenger seat of the truck.
“You really aren’t looking so hot.”
Eric gives him a weak nod. “You keep saying that, but I’m fine.” In truth he feels like the entire world has collapsed onto his back. Just walking between the two vehicles has taken a lot out of him. He’s suddenly very dizzy.
He stares out through the windshield. The road ahead is nearly empty, a deep, quiet canyon between the steep cliff walls of warehouses lining both sides of the street. Only a few stragglers remain, wandering aimlessly about and—
mooing
—moaning. They apparently haven’t gotten the memo that breakfast has been relocated to the rooftop atrium because of—
infected
—inclement weather.
Eric rolls his head onto his shoulder and presses his forehead against the window. The sky is green. Not a turtle in sight.
He giggles.
There are snakes, though. A lot of them, fat and slow, slithering across the sky. He can feel them biting his hand again. He raises his stump and shakes it to get them off.
daniels
“Hey, Daniels!”
Gilfoy grabs his shoulder and shakes him. “You still with me, man?”
Eric blinks a few times, then nods. “Yeah, I’m good. Just drifting.”
The cows and snakes are gone, and the sky is back to being the same slate gray it had been all morning. Tendrils of smoke billow up from several directions around the city. He hopes it’ll rain soon. There’s no one to put out the fires.
Gilfoy pulls around to the rolling door, then backs in. He’s got a couple feet of clearance on either side and only inches on top. He stops when the front is aligned with the door. There’s no way more of the dead are getting in, or any of the ones already inside are getting out.
“You stay here,” he orders, and climbs out through his open window onto the roof of the cab. “Hey!” he shouts. “Anyone hear me?”
The dead inside the warehouse begin to attack the truck, slapping their hands against the sides as if trying to climb it and not knowing how. Only the tallest of them can reach the bottom of Eric’s window. He watches them warily, wondering if they might be able to climb onto the step beneath his door. From his time in the Marines, he knows they can’t, not without someone driving them. But these are freshly deceased, and he’d seen some of them do things that surprised him, even without cybernetic control.
Gilfoy climbs back in. “They’re all up on the roof, apparently trying hard to burn themselves to the ground.” He gives Eric a slight nod, as if to say You were right, but what else can we do now? “We’ll back up against the ladder and they can climb down and get in through the windows. It’s the safest way, I think.”
Eric grunts. It bothers him the way the walls are pushing in and the floor is heaving. And everything smells like cottage cheese.
He doesn’t like cottage cheese. It gives him gas something terrible, makes his stomach hurt.
The truck jolts backward. He’s not expecting it and nearly hits his head on the dash.
“You might want to move into the back,” Gilfoy advises. “No, after I stop. And open your window so people can climb in. The quicker we can get everyone moved in, the quicker we’ll be able to leave.”
Eric nods, but he can’t find the switch on the armrest to open the window.
“It’s got a hand crank, like the cars from the beginning of the century,” Gilfoy says. He remembers how you could once go to the island of Cuba and it was like a living museum of cars from before the American embargo. Here, after the Six Days War, very few new cars were made, and none were imported, so it wasn’t uncommon to find well-preserved older vehicles like this one. He checks the mirrors on both sides and gently nudges the truck back until it touches the ladder. The metal squeals as it bends. He points to the handle for the window and reminds Eric to open it. Then he gets out and disappears onto the roof one more time.
Eric can hear him stomping around overhead. He opens his door to get out before remembering the infected and slams it shut again. His foot gets caught in the opening. Pain spreads up his leg. He lifts it up and pulls the door shut.
He knows he’s supposed to do something, he just can’t remember what it is. So he sits there and thinks about it, watching the people milling about on the ground below.
Open your window.
That’s it. Except he can’t find the switch.
Crank. It has a crank.
God, why is everything so damn confusing all of a sudden? He feels hot, then cold. He’s hungry, but also nauseous. And his damn arm hurts like a son of a bitch.
Someone’s knocking on the top of his head. He needs to answer the door. He turns to open it, but a foot appears from the ceiling.
That’s a foot. Someone’s in the ceiling.
“Open the damn window!”
The heel kicks at the glass.
Gilfoy appears in the windshield and slaps it, drawing his attention. Eric smiles at him. Should he wave? It feels like they’re playing a joke on him.
“Open your window!”
He senses a presence next to him and looks over and someone’s sitting in the driver’s seat staring at him. He sees more feet coming down out of the sky from that side. It’s like it’s raining feet.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, man?” Fortini demands. “Open your damn window and get out of the way!”
Everyone’s talking all at once. He can hear them, but he can’t make sense of any of it.
Fortini tries to pull him out of the seat. Eric resists, slapping at him with both hands. Pain rockets up his arm. Oh, God, he thinks. I’m having a heart attack!
He feels his seatbelt release, feels hands on his shirt, pulling, grabbing.
“Let go of me!” he yells, except his words sound like little more than an angry wind.
Something slams into the hood. He looks over and is surprised to see a woman there. There’s a bulge under her sundress, and he realizes she’s pregnant. She scrabbles on the slippery, sloped surface. She twists around onto her back, her big fat pregnant belly bulging out. Her dress has worked its way up her tanned legs. That’s not decent, Eric thinks. She’s holding onto a windshield wiper with one hand, trying to get some traction under her heels. Eric cheers her on. You’re doing great! The people below are pulling on her.
Tug of war! Tug of war!
She’s laughing, too. Hysterically.
No, screaming. She’s screaming!
He suddenly remembers this isn’t a game!
“I think she’s having her baby,” he tells the man next to him. It’s a different man now. Fortini’s gone. Eric wants to know where he went.
“Get out of the way!” the man shouts. “Get out of that seat!”
“Are you a doctor? We need to boil some water for the baby.”
With a scream, the woman loses her grip and disappears into the forest of arms. She resurfaces a moment later, when someone pulls her back onto the hood. Eric sees the truck’s hood ornament rake across her distended belly. He cringes. It looks painful. It must really be painful, given how much she’s screaming.
“Get her back. Get her back!” someone shouts.
The team on top pulls harder. For a moment, they seem to be winning. Eric wants to cheer them on. This is fun. But then the team on the ground gives up. They let go at once and the woman crashes back onto the hood, scrabbling for purchase. Her helpers tumble back against the windshield.
“Don’t stop!” Eric yells. Or he tries to. But when he opens his mouth, instead of words, out comes a stream of vomit. It splashes against the dash and windshield. He can’t see anything out of it anymore. But it doesn’t matter, because the team on top have grabbed her again and resumed the game.
He feels hands on his own body now, grabbing him, shaking him. They pull him out of his—
MY SEAT NOT ANYONE ELSE’S!
The woman has stopped screaming. He can see her again through the scrim of dripping puke on the glass, a vague shape being passed around the sea of arms. He thinks her belly is bleeding where the hood ornament raked across her. Or maybe it’s a new cut. It looks like it’s on her leg. Blood’s running down it. Everyone lets go of her a second time. In fact, they’re pushing her away now. The game is over.
We’ll get you a bandage, Eric thinks. It’s just a small cut. No worries. Or maybe a tourniquet.
“Oh god,” she shrieks. The sound is shrill in Eric’s ears. “Oh god, no! Please no! Noooo!”
It’s okay, he wants to tell her.
“I’ve been bitten! I’ve been bitten!”
Bitten? Those pesky snakes!
And then it all comes back to him in a flash of clarity. He pushes the hands away from his arms and leans forward and swipes a palm across the windshield. The woman locks eyes with him for just a moment, just a heartbeat, as she climbs back onto the hood. Then she turns away. She stands up and faces the mass of gnashing teeth. Nobody touches her. Nobody tries to stop her as she steps out and plunges into their arms.
“Noooo!” Eric screams.
But the other team has already claimed her as their prize.
