I can’t build them and I can’t fix them. That’s what my brother Tommy does, and he does it well. He could make a lawn mower outrun a flathead Ford, but if I’m short in the mechanic department, I sure can drive them. No brag, just fact.
That’s what Tommy was trying to explain to Matt.
“She may be a girl,” Tommy said, “but she can drive.”
“May be a girl?” I said. “What the hell is that?”
“You know what I mean,” Tommy said, glancing back at me.
I knew what he meant all right.
Matt leaned on the hood of his Pontiac GTO and studied me, his hands thrust into his blue jean pockets. I thought he was taking a bit long for the evaluation. His friend Duane stood nearby. He looked amused.
“She looks all right, and she’ll make someone a good wife, but drive?” he said.
“Goddamn you,” I said.
“Okay,” Matt said, “she might not make someone a good wife either.”
“You scared a girl will beat you?” I said.
Duane snickered. Matt didn’t say anything, but even in the dying light, I could tell he didn’t like that. Duane wasn’t quite the asshole Matt was, but my rule of thumb is simple. You’re an asshole until you prove otherwise. It’s just that right then I took Matt to be the bigger asshole of the two.
Matt studied me again. Now I was doing the leaning, my blue-jeaned butt against the apple-red Dodge Charger. I cocked a foot against the bumper so that my knee was up high, in what I thought was a cool-looking position. I stuck a finger into the pocket of my blue jeans like I might have money in it. And I did.
I gave Matt what I thought was my movie star smile and tried to look as smug as a duck with a june bug. The Charger I was leaning on was Tommy’s, being bought and paid for by part-time work. It might as well have been mine. It liked me best. Tommy drove it, shifted gears, it sounded like someone was trying to beat a cat to death with a logging chain, but when I drove it, it purred like a tiger cub and ran like a cheetah with its ass on fire.
“Are all the girls from Texas like this one?” Matt said.
“Well, they got their similarities,” Tommy said, “but Janey is a little bit special.”
“You Yankees afraid I might blow your asses in the trees?” I said.
Matt turned and looked down the road. The sun was dropping down at the end of it, seeming to melt into the earth like a heated snow cone. It looked like a northern sun to me, not a Texas one. The one in Texas was a whole hell of a lot brighter and warmer. The air here, even on the edge of summer, was nippy.
“All right,” Matt said. “She can race me.”
“Why thank you, Mister Matt,” I said. “You’re quite the sport.”
“Don’t push it,” Matt said.
“You don’t race me, who else you going to race?” I said. “No one else is here.”
“I thought I was going to take money from Tommy, not some cute girl who likes to hang on to a stick shift.”
“Oh, you’ll never know what I like to hang on to, Matthew,” I said.
He gave me a sour look.
“What I got is this,” and I reached in my jean pocket and pulled out a wad of bills that would have choked a horse and made its stablemate cough.
“This here, Matthew, is two hundred dollars. You ever ran for two hundred dollars?”
“I’ve ran for more than twice that much. And I won.”
“Then you can sure run for two hundred.”
“Hate to take your makeup money, baby.”
“Just show your dough,” I said.
Matt turned to Duane, said, “Hey, I’m short about a hundred and forty.”
“Damn,” Duane said. “Might as well ask for the whole enchilada.”
“Come on, man. Help me out.”
Duane removed his billfold from his hip pocket and peeled some bills out of it with all the enthusiasm of a man removing layers of skin from his forehead with a pair of tweezers.
“You lose, you owe me double,” Duane said, and gave it to him.
“Man,” Matt said, “double?”
“You’re the one so all-fired certain,” Duane said.
“All right,” Matt said. “All right. Let’s fire ’em up. See who makes those hard left turns.”
“What hard left turns?” Tommy asked.
“Couple of them,” Duane said.
“First one, it’s not so bad,” Matt said, “but then the road gets so narrow another coat of paint and you’re rubbing the bark off the trees. Got a ways to go then, but there’s another curve, down by the old quarry. Dead Man’s Curve. Take that one too quick you’ll find yourself airborne, sailing over the rim. Drop don’t kill you, you drown.”
“It’s like a lake,” Duane said.
“After that, if you make that curve, because I know I will, we’ll end it at the hospital parking lot,” Matt said.
“Hospital?” Tommy said.
“What are you, a fucking parrot?” Matt said. “Yeah, the hospital. Just beyond it is the city morgue. We can end it there if you prefer.”
“Hospital is fine,” Tommy said.
“Bunch of dead old folks in the morgue right now,” Duane said, “some kind of convention, they all got sick at the hotel. Bet twenty of them died. Hospital has a bunch of sick ones packed in, some in bad shape, probably buying a ticket for the morgue right now.”
“Read about it,” I said. “Some kind of mold in the ventilation system, I think.”
“Who knows?” Duane said. “All that’s certain is that stuff is killing them and packing them in the dead house.”
“Let’s talk about racing,” Matt said. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Cops?” Tommy said.
“No worries there,” Matt said. “Law rarely comes out here.”
“What if you’re wrong, and they’re sitting around the corner?” I said.
“Well, girly, we get a ticket. You up for it, or are you just going to stand there trying to look good?”
“Oh, Matt, honey,” I said, “I have no need to try.”
* * *
As I settled in behind the wheel, and Tommy sat beside me, I had a small faint feeling that I might have mouthed myself out of some money. I had enough confidence to loan some of it out, but I was uncertain about those sharp curves. If I had driven them once before, that would be different. But when we agreed to meet Matt and Duane on the road, we didn’t know the route. That was a bit of a mistake, and it was too late now. Matt was revving his engine.
“You sure about this?” Tommy said.
I lied a little. “I was born sure.”
“I was there,” Tommy said. “I don’t know how certain you were then.”
“You were at Grandma’s house playing with building blocks or some such shit,” I said.
“That’s true,” he said.
He was the older sibling by three years, but most of the time it seemed the other way around.
Matthew revved his engine some more, then pulled his Pontiac to the right side of the road. I was on the left, of course. We hadn’t seen a car yet, and we’d been there talking and wheedling about who drove against who for half an hour. I think Matt was afraid of me and wanted Tommy to be his opponent. I had a bit of a reputation.
“You know he’s got more under the hood than came with it,” Tommy said.
“So does this one,” I said.
“But I don’t know if he’s got more or less.”
“You wanted me to race him,” I said. “That’s how you find out who’s got more or less, who’s the best driver. Have I ever let you down?”
“Twice.”
“Blew a tire once, bad carburetor the time after. Tonight, everything under the hood is as fresh as a baby’s first fart.”
“You know, half that money in your pocket is mine.”
“The die is cast, brother mine. Grab your ass and grit your teeth.”
Matt rolled down his window, and Tommy rolled down his.
“What we do,” said Matt, “is I count to three, or you can do it, no matter, but count to three, and on three we go for it. And watch those curves. Something happens to you, we just go home and have a hot chocolate like it never happened.”
“Quit talking, and start counting,” I said.
“One,” said Matt, and when he got to three you could hear those motors roar, hear those tires scream for mercy. We both blew out of there like rockets to Mars.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing like it. The car leaps, and then it grabs the road, and then it doesn’t feel like there is a road, just you and the machine floating on air.
Glanced to my right, saw that Matt and I were neck and neck. He had his teeth clenched, his window still down. That was a mistake. It gathered up air that way, pushed it to the back insides of the car, lay there like a weight. Tommy knew that, and he had rolled up his window to streamline us.
Let me tell you, that first curve came up fast, and we had to make it together, and the road, just as you made the curve, grew narrow, and then there was another problem.
The road was full of people.
There were at least twenty, men and women, and one of the men wasn’t wearing any drawers. He had it all flapping out. The rest wore hospital gowns. They stretched across the road in a thin line, seemed drunk the way they staggered, and that was all I could tell in that moment when they suddenly appeared, dipped in moonlight as pale as Communion wafers. Even the one black lady seemed pale.
I fought the wheel and tried to avoid them, but they were straight across the road and there really wasn’t anywhere to go. On the left were trees, on the right was Matt’s car. I veered as far left as I could, and fortunately, two of them on the left wandered right, and I missed them, but I’m sure I made enough breeze to blow up their gowns. My car threw up gravel, a bit of forest dirt, and then I spun beyond them like a top, turned the wheel in the direction of the skid and righted myself onto the road again. In my rearview mirror I saw Matt hit a couple of them staggering in front of his car. It was a hard, loud smack. They went flying like Mighty Mouse.
Matt was braking, and it made his car scream like a panther. It slid sideways, almost up to where we sat in the road, and then it stopped, rocking like it had palsy.
Duane rushed out of the car on his side, started running toward the people lying in the road, the ones wandering about.
“You okay?” he said.
Me and Tommy were out of our car too, wandering back to Matt, who opened his door and jumped out, stumbled a little.
“I didn’t see them,” he said. “They were just there.”
That’s when the two lying in the road tried to get up. One of them, a woman, managed it, but stood with her head dangling to the side, like it was held there by a thin string. Something like that, that kind of injury, you don’t expect people to be walking around. The other, an old man, his legs smashed, pulled himself forward with his hands, his fingernails scratching along on the blacktop. His legs as useless as mop strands.
The others closed around Duane, and then, as if he had been lowered into a pool of piranha, they swarmed him. They could move pretty fast when they wanted to. They grabbed Duane.
I could understand they were angry, and had reason. We were irresponsible jerks driving too fast on a narrow road—
And then they began to eat Duane.
The one crawling had him by the ankle and was biting through his pants legs, gnawing at his high-top boots, and the others were all over him, biting and pulling at him. I saw the black woman bite his ear and rip it off.
Duane screamed. I started toward him, but Tommy, who had come around on my side of the car, grabbed me and pulled me back.
I could see more clearly now, but somehow, what I was seeing was too strange to be real. Yet, there I was, standing next to Tommy on a moonlit road, far from where we grew up, watching a mass of people bite and gnaw at Duane.
Duane screamed. Blood flew. Teeth snapped. They took him down. I could see naked asses through the hospital gown slits as the crazed crowd bent over him and began to rip at him with their hands and pull guts from his belly, lifting them to their mouths as if they were huge strands of spaghetti coated in marinara sauce.
I could see too that some of those people had awful bite marks on them, like they had just escaped a pack of wild dogs. And the other thing was, well, they all looked dead. There was no spark in their eyes and they moved like puppets. And those two Matt had hit with his car, there was no way they should have survived, but they were going at poor Duane like he was a buffet.
I ran around to the trunk, stuck the key in there, popped it, and pulled out the tire iron.
“No,” Tommy said, but it was too late. I was weighing in. Those people were murderers, and they were killing … well, had killed, Duane. His body steamed in the cool air where he had been ripped open. One of those things was pounding Duane’s head with its fists, cracking it apart like a giant walnut. Brains oozed and hands tore at the break in his skull. Brain matter was snatched and eaten.
My hits were good ones. I turned my tire iron blows to their heads. If I hit their heads hard enough, they went down and didn’t get up. Otherwise, I didn’t hit the head, they just kept coming. None of it made any sense, but I knew I hated those things, and I was proving it. I knew too, without having to really think about it, they were all dead and I was making some of them deader.
There were a lot of them, and then there were more. Tommy grabbed me, was pulling me back toward the car. Matt climbed into his GTO, woke the engine, and roared around us, nearly clipping us in the process.
“Look,” Tommy said.
I was no longer swinging the tire iron or struggling, so I looked. There were more of them coming down the hill, out of the woods. Some of them looked to be little more than skeletal structure with a thin parchment of skin stretched over them. Many were naked.
“In the car,” Tommy said.
The ones who had been snacking on Duane were close to us now, and I had no more than closed the car door, Tommy slipping in on the other side, when those things began to beat on the door glass. I fired up the engine, gunned it, hit one in front of the hood and sent it flying backwards into the road, and then I ran over it.
We drove on, had to stop once and pull a small tree out of the road. It had taken that moment in time to fall and block our path. It took some work, but thank goodness it wasn’t too big a tree and those things weren’t around.
Some time later we saw Matt’s car. He had skidded out and hit a tree. Driver’s side door was open, but he wasn’t in view.
Eventually we came to Dead Man’s Curve, and since we had outdistanced those things by quite a bit, we were going slow and made the curve easy, but I was glad I hadn’t been racing. That curve, let me tell you, it was a bitch. I saw off to our right that the earth fell off into a man-made cut about the size of the largest moon crater, and it was full of still water. The old rock quarry. It stretched for a great distance, and across the way I could see the straight-up wall on the other side, slick and snot-shiny in the moonlight.
That’s when we came to more of those things, wandering across the road, and there was a driveway on the left, and I took it. I thought about smashing through those things, whatever the hell they were, but they were too thick, and if I wrecked the car we’d be out here with them, just me and Tommy fighting for our lives with a tire iron and wishful thinking.
Still, didn’t mean the driveway was a good idea. It was a reflex move. It was a long straight shot on concrete, and in the rearview mirror I could see those things lumbering after us. The drive ended at a nice farmhouse. Out beside it was a large barn. Behind a long white-board fence on the left was a lot of pasture.
As we drove onto the looping driveway in front of the house, I saw the front door to the place was open, and wandering out of it were two of those things. The yard was full of them. Not all of them were wearing hospital gowns or were naked. Some were fully dressed. Young and old. No doubt they were like the others, way their bodies jerked, way their heads rolled from side to side and their eyes seemed to look off in one direction or another, not latching right on you. Some of them were bloody, fresher.
“Damn,” said Tommy.
“Double damn,” I said. It was something we almost always said when one said damn, or hell. Double damn. Double hell. This time it was not pure fun and hyperbole. It was accurate.
I glanced toward the barn, saw a woman there. She had pushed one of the two wide doors open, probably hearing us roar up, and was waving for us to come that way. Then I saw Matt appear, grab her by the arm and jerk her back.
I gunned it. There was a gravel drive from house to barn, and I went that way fast as a bullet. When we got in front of the barn, Matt was struggling with the woman, had her bent back and was flinging a fist into her face, time and again, until she fell down.
The tire iron was in the seat beside me. I got out of the car with it. Matt tried to grab the open door and close it. I leapt forward, swung the tire iron, hit his arm through the crack in the doors, made him scream and stumble back. Tommy had slipped to the driver’s seat, and he tooled the car inside as I pushed both doors wide. Up at the house I could see dead people wandering around in the yard, starting to trudge toward the barn.
When Tommy had our ride inside, I closed the doors. Tommy got out and helped me put a large and heavy wooden slat between two metal supports, barring the doors soundly.
That was done, I took a moment to kick Matt in the head. Within seconds the barn doors began to rattle, and you could hear those things moaning on the other side of it. The noise they made caused me to feel like my panties were crawling up my ass like a spider.
Tommy was helping the woman up, and he sat her on a bale of hay. A boy came out of the dark, ran over to her. She hugged him to her. Three more children, a couple of boys and a girl, eased out of the shadows too. The girl looked to be the oldest, but she wasn’t more than twelve, if she was that old. They didn’t go far. The boys were wandering about more than moving forward, and the girl seemed frozen, as if her feet had been stuck down in a tub filled with cold water and held there until the water turned to ice.
“You damn near broke my arm,” Matt said. “And that kick cracked my jaw. I can feel it.”
“Why thank you,” I said.
“Bitch,” Matt said.
“My middle name,” I said.
“He was trying to force us out,” said the lady, who held a hand to her battered eye.
“It’s survival of the fittest,” Matt said.
“You’re not that fit,” Tommy said. “A girl whipped your ass.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.
“You sons of bitches,” Matt said. “A woman, some brats, and one of them a retard, what the hell?”
“And you such a sterling member of society,” Tommy said.
There were electric lights burning inside the barn. It was a class thing with front and back double doors, lots of hay. A tractor with a trailer fastened to it was parked near the back door. Two of the horse stalls had horses in them. A sorrel and a paint. I liked horses. Me and Tommy used to ride all the time at summer camp. That was before our parents split up.
I went over and took a look at the lady’s eye. She was pretty bedraggled. She looked to be in her sixties, solid and sun-coated, time-worn. There was a toughness about her. The boy she had her arm around was obviously disabled. Must have been thirteen or fourteen, oldest of the children. I could tell he was disabled because of the way he looked. He had a sweet and innocent appearance that most of us lose about the time we realize the shit in our diapers stinks.
“My grandchildren,” the lady said.
“What’s happened?” I said.
She shook her head, tears streamed down her face. All of the children had come over now and were sitting on the bale of hay with her, close to her like a cluster of grapes.
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But those people, they’re dead. You can tell.”
“I’ll say,” I said. “But again, why?”
She shook her head. “Can’t say. No idea. I have my daughter’s kids with me. One of them left the front door open. I went to close it, and the yard was full of them. Kids were playing outside in the moonlight, and I saw those things coming up on them. I yelled at them and then, for whatever reason, we all broke toward the barn. We got here just as that asshole,” she pointed at Matt, “showed up. He was trying to barricade himself in the barn. I struggled with him so the kids could get inside. I saw you pull up, and I wanted to help you, but he started fighting with me. He wanted to leave you out there, with those things. He wanted us out there too, to keep them busy I guess. So they’d forget about him.”
As if to emphasize that, the barn doors on both ends rattled like giant dice.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I keep trying to figure it. What brings people back from the dead? Old Man Turner was with them, and he died yesterday. He was in the morgue. I knew him well. He was ninety years old if he was a day.”
“Did you recognize others?” Tommy said.
“I did. Friends. Neighbors.”
“How far is the town from here?” I said.
“We’re practically in it. Town’s not far from the hospital and the morgue. Couple miles maybe.”
Tommy looked at me, said, “They could be all over town as well.”
I said to the woman, “People out there, recognize any from town?”
“Don’t know everyone in town, of course,” the lady said. “But it’s not that big. Everyone I recognized was from out here, houses nearby, but there were plenty I didn’t know one way or another. They could have been from town, I suppose.”
“Or the morgue and the hospital,” Tommy said.
“Way some of them are dressed, sure,” said the woman.
Matt started to get up.
“Lie down,” I said, and lifted the tire iron.
He stayed where he was, said, “What we do is we stick the woman and the kids out there, get those things busy on them, and then we make a break for it. Drive out of here.”
“So now you and me and Tommy are a team,” I said.
“Please don’t,” the lady said.
“Of course not,” Tommy said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“You can’t think the old way,” Matt said. “You got to think about how it is now. This could be happening all over.”
“Just stay there and shut up,” I said.
“You need to think of yourself,” Matt said. “You don’t even know these people.”
“Can’t say I actually know you,” I said. “And what little I do know of you, I don’t like.”
“We’re racers. We go fast and live fast, and we survive. We know how to take a curve.”
“You don’t,” Tommy said. “You smacked your car into a tree. Hell, it was a straightaway. Unfortunately, you survived. My guess is you’re part cockroach, and the rest of you is all asshole.”
“They are our way out,” Matt said, nodding toward the woman and her grandchildren.
“I said shut up.” I slapped the tire iron in my open palm and Matt went silent.
I turned to the woman. “Does the tractor run?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t have a lot of speed, more if you drop the trailer.”
“We want to keep the trailer,” I said.
Tommy said, “What are we talking about here?”
I turned and looked at Matt lying there on the ground. He had abandoned us back on the road, and then he had tried to lock us out, and now he wanted us to take him and leave these people to their fate.
The barn doors rattled.
“Ma’am,” I said, “would you and the children go to the back of the barn, over behind the horse stalls? Stay there for a bit. And you might want to cover your ears.”
They didn’t stir.
“Now,” I said.
They moved then, quickly. When I saw they were behind the back stall, out of sight, I walked over to Matt. He saw it in my eyes. He tried to get up and make a break for it. But it was too late. I think the first swing of the tire iron killed him. I can’t be sure. It knocked him down and out, that’s for sure. And if it didn’t kill him, the other blows did.
I hit him a lot.
* * *
Me and Tommy fastened Matt to the back bumper of the Charger with baling wire, several strands. I felt like Achilles tying Hector to the back of his chariot.
The woman and her grandchildren came back into view. I was covered in blood and I was shaking. But there was nothing for it. They would see what they saw. Therapy was in their future. If they had a future.
“What’s going to happen,” I said, “is Tommy is going to open the door, and I’m driving out. I could try and stuff you all in the car, but if they’re thick on the road, well, you can only get so far, even in a car. But Tommy here, once I’m out there, once they get after Matt’s body, which I think they will, you guys will go out the back with the tractor and trailer. Head toward town. Maybe it’s safe there. Just sit quietly and ready to go until I can give them a whiff of this guy, let them smell the blood.”
“I can’t let you do that,” Tommy said.
“Yes you can. You have to. I’m going to be the Pied Piper, but it’s going to be my car engine and the smell of this dead bastard that’re going to lead the rats away. You and the family go out the back.”
The woman came up closer, stared down at what was left of Matt’s head. I had hit so many times you could have slipped his head through a mail slot.
“You’re going to go the opposite way I go,” I said. “You might come across some of those things, so you’ll need to take something to fight with. I see farm tools on the wall, that pitchfork, the hoe, things like that. It’s not a perfect plan, but we can’t wait here in the barn until we eat the horses. Two horses might last a while, but not forever.”
“Grandma,” said the granddaughter, who had started to cry. “We can’t eat the horses.”
“Of course not,” the woman said, but the look in her eyes made it clear to me she knew they would have to if they stayed, and probably raw.
“You let the horses out of their stalls, let them run. What you do is you drive that tractor to town, pulling Tommy here and the kids on the trailer. He can help you fight if you run into more of those things. It’s the only choice.”
* * *
Tommy helped me lift off the door barrier. When we dropped it, I ran and got in the car. Tommy pulled one of the barn doors open slightly, then darted back to the tractor. The lady had already started it. The kids were on the trailer. Everyone had a farm implement. That was a little like giving everyone switches to fight a bear, but it was all they had.
I could hear the things outside not only the front door, but the back door as well. This was going to be tricky.
When that unlatched front door was shoved wide open by those monsters, I turned on the headlights, startling them, put my foot on the gas and made the engine roar. I popped the clutch and jerked the car into gear. It leapt, knocking several of those things back. I let the car bunny hop a little, and die. They were smelling Matt back there, and they all went for him. It was like someone had rung the dinner bell. They had started crawling over the car too, pounding on the window glass, as if I was a pie on display and they wanted it.
I started up the car again, eased forward, but not too fast. Enough I was able to break free of them, and yet keep them interested in Matt, the hot lunch.
I drove around the barn. There was a well-worn path, and the car went smoothly. When I had driven around a couple of times, the car was covered in those things. I could hardly see out the windshield, they were gathered on it so thick. The back way was open.
I didn’t want them to eat all my bait, so I drove faster, onto the drive. I reached the road, and they were still with me. I heard the back glass crack from the pounding the clingers were giving it with their fists. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The back window still held, but it was starred and lined with breaks.
If Tommy was lucky, they would have the tractor going now, following slightly behind, turning the opposite direction toward town. Maybe all the things were following me. Maybe Tommy, that woman and her grandkids, would do all right.
The moon had brightened up the road as the night had worn on. It was like having your own night-light. I decided it was time to pick it up a little, make it hard for the things to keep clinging to the car. As I increased speed, they peeled off the Charger like dead skin.
I sped up enough to get ahead of them, but not so much they couldn’t see me. They kept following.
I wondered how much was left of Matt. Way I had him fastened on back there, I couldn’t see him in the rearview. That was probably best. I had killed him in cold blood, and now I was feeding him to those things. Was I any better than him, choosing to do such a thing?
I thought on that for a short time, came to a conclusion.
Yeah. I was.
* * *
I kept teasing those things with the body, speeding and slowing. I checked the gas. Low. When I glanced up from the gauge I checked the rearview mirror. The road behind me was a wall of those things.
And then I saw him. He was on horseback. He was carrying something shiny and swinging it as he rode through the mass, surprising them, smashing heads, sending them sprawling.
It was Tommy playing cowboy. He had saddled up one of the horses and was riding it through the drooling crowd toward me. When he burst out in front of that bunch, I slowed to a stop.
Tommy rode up to the passenger door, swung off the horse. I leaned across the seat and opened the door. Tommy dropped what he had been carrying into the seat—a lawn mower blade. He unsaddled the horse, dropped the saddle in the road, peeled off the bridle, and slapped the horse on the ass. It went off the road and up through the trees and out of sight, a flock of ghouls pursuing at a considerably slower pace.
“Good luck, noble steed,” Tommy said.
He jerked the door open and climbed onto the seat, placing the lawn mower blade in his lap.
I turned and looked back. Those things were almost to us. I clutched and geared and we started rolling.
“What the hell?” I said.
“What the double hell, you mean. The lady is driving the tractor, taking the kids into town. I saddled a horse and rode along with them. When I figured they were doing good, because we didn’t see any of those things, I turned around and came after you. I always had that in my head.”
“You’re a good brother, Tommy. I never thought you were before.”
Tommy laughed.
As we came around a patch of trees we saw the road had quite a few of those things in it. I put the pedal to the metal and knocked a couple aside, crunched one under the wheel. Now I was gaining speed. I glanced at the gas gauge. Before long we’d be walking, and that wouldn’t be good. I only had one headlight now, the left one. The other one had been broken in my collision with those things. Bless the moonlight.
I was picking up speed.
“Buckle up. We’re going to straighten out the curve.”
“Damn, girl.”
“Double damn,” I said.
Tommy reached across me, got my seat belt and strapped it over my lap, and then he buckled his own.
I was hot on the straightaway now, and Dead Man’s Curve was coming up, but I wasn’t slowing. I could see those things in the faint light from the left head-beam. They were coming down the wooded hill on our right. A better-dressed group than before. Probably from farmhouses that had been attacked, survivors who had not been consumed. It was clear that being bitten made you like the others. You died and came back. Hungry.
“We’re going to overshoot the curve, out into the quarry,” I said.
“Big drop, Sis. Full of water. You know that, right?”
“You can swim.”
“Only if the fall doesn’t kill us, and then, swim where?”
“To the other side.”
“Walls are slick.”
“Maybe there’s a way up.”
“Maybe?”
“We’re short on options. Roll down your window. Water pressure may not let you later.”
Tommy frantically rolled down his window, and I did the same.
Now the curve was ahead, and when I made it those things were in the road. I clipped a few of them, and long past when I should have turned the wheel, I kept going, wearing a few of those monsters on the windshield. I put my foot through the floor, and we went sailing off the edge of Dead Man’s Curve.
There were bits of tree limbs and brush growing out of the side of the quarry, and we shot out over it. Limbs and brush scratched the bottom of the Charger like a pissed-off cat. Out of instinct I looked in the rearview and saw what was left of Matt floating up in the air on that baling wire, coming apart in pieces that were sailing backwards in the draft like wet confetti.
Way, way out that car sailed, and in the moonlight I saw the wall of the quarry on the other side. It looked slick and straight up. The Charger dipped and the car was an angular shadow shooting toward where the moon floated in the water like a target. The water looked as firm as a giant piece of sheet metal.
The air whistled in the windows. The back glass of the car, already cracked and pressured by the wind, shattered into a mass of moon-colored stars and was gone.
We smacked the water.
I don’t know exactly what happened after that. I guess the impact knocked me out. My head may have bounced off the steering wheel. The water eventually brought me around. I didn’t know where I was right away, but the water went in my mouth and nose and I finally realized I was drowning. I felt out for Tommy, but he wasn’t there. I reached for my seat belt. There wasn’t any. I came to understand I had somehow gotten out of the car, that I was free and floating, twisting around underwater like a strand of weed. I couldn’t remember how I got out.
Then something had me. I was pulled up and out of the water, gasping for breath, sputtering and spitting. Tommy was holding on to me. We were moving our feet to stay afloat.
“You all right, Sis?”
“You saved me,” I said.
“Yep. Started to leave you, but then I remembered you win all the races. That’s too good a money to throw away.”
I thought about that fine Dodge Charger, down below in the deep dark wet. What a waste.
Those things, maybe half a dozen were in the water, having grabbed at the car, or having run off the cliff after us. They weren’t close and they weren’t swimming. They bobbed a little and sank like anvils.
I was coming back to myself by then.
“What now?” Tommy said. “So far, I’m not crazy about your plan.”
“We swim together,” I said, “then we take turns with one swimming, the other hanging on. Then we go back to swimming separate. We take our time, do that until we get to the other side.”
“It’s a long ways,” Tommy said. “I already feel like I was eaten by a wolf and shit off a cliff.”
I looked at the far quarry wall. It was a lot more distant than it had seemed from above.
“And the walls are high and slick as glass,” he said. “What do we do if we get there? Levitate?”
“If we have to.”
We started seriously swimming, first side by side, and then I put an arm around Tommy’s neck and he swam. Then we switched and he held my neck. I was the stronger swimmer by far. When I looked around after what had seemed like forever, I couldn’t tell that we had covered much distance at all. But I thought I saw a trail going up the far wall, and then the moon was shadowed by clouds and the shadows lay on the quarry wall like a curtain. I couldn’t be sure if I had seen a trail or not.
Maybe the moon would break the clouds apart and I would see the trail again. If it was there, and I hoped like hell it was, I thought we might just make it.