The truck rumbled and began to move forward. Virgil stared out the window and watched the horde spill into the parking lot. Annabelle punched the gas and accelerated through the mob, sending them hurtling through the air. The truck wobbled and rolled, its massive rubber tires rolling over the fallen corpses.
Virgil glanced out his window, trying to catch his breath, and saw Gritz and Dar sprinting through the parking lot toward the truck idling behind them. Gritz jumped in first and reached down to help Dar, but the horde had already converged around her and began moving in for the kill. Dar choked up on the handle of her ax and tried to chop at them but she had little room to swing. Virgil rolled down the window and looked back, frightened at the prospect of possibly losing their trusted leader.
A burly zombie lurched close to take a bite out of her but Gritz leaned down at the last second and picked her by the collar. The rig accelerated and Dar's suspended legs collided with the dead, all of whom reached up and tried to grab hold of her. The forward progress of the moving rig prevented the zombies from getting a proper grip. Gritz reached down with his other hand and plucked Dar up and inside the cab's window as they sped away.
Virgil pumped his fist in the air and leaned out to wave. Annabelle honked the horn as she sped out onto the main road and headed toward 84. Everywhere he looked he saw zombies staggering toward the parking lot. Had a heightened sense of smell drew them here or was it a case of herd mentality?
Annabelle barreled straight ahead, smashing into rusted cars and trucks, as well as any dead walking in their path. She cut over to the right lane and headed for the ramp leading to Interstate 84. A swarm stumbled across the entrance to the ramp and upon seeing the truck coming at them turned to face the oncoming caravan.
“Stupid bastards!” Annabelle said. “It's like they have no fear.”
“Slow down, girl, if you want to get on that on ramp or else this entire container will tip,” Felicia said.
“Think I don't know that?”
“Never hurts to make sure.”
“You just worry about commander-in-chiefing and leave the driving to me. Okay?”
“Please, dear Lord, watch over us," Felicia said, clasping her hands in prayer.
The truck blasted into the pack of zombies, sending their bodies hurtling through the guardrails and into the tall grass on either side of the road. Annabelle struggled to keep control of the rig as she negotiated the ramp at fifty miles-per-hour. The torque of the turning radius caused the container to tilt on its wheels. By the time she managed to straighten it out, Virgil realized that they'd made it safely back onto Interstate 84. He stared into his rearview mirror and watched Jamaal pull the same maneuver, hoping that the frightened souls in the back had not suffered any serious injuries.
No sooner had they begun to cruise on the open interstate when Jamaal pulled up next to them. Dar rolled down her window, leaned out and began to shout to them. Annabelle rolled down her own window and tried to listen, but the roar of the engines made it difficult to hear. Glancing at the speedometer, Virgil saw that they were doing seventy. Up ahead was a huge pile-up that would require them to peel off in opposite directions.
“Those Army shits are on our tail!” Dar shouted. “I saw them coming up behind us!”
“How far away?” Annabelle shouted back.
“About a mile or so! I'm not really sure!”
“So what do you want us to do?”
“Haul ass and hope for the best. Virgil says he know where he's going.”
Annabelle turned to Virgil. “Dar says you know where you're going?”
“Tell her I do.”
“Says he does!” Annabelle shouted back to Dar.
“Good! Now move!”
Virgil leaned over Felicia and gave Dar a thumbs-up sign. The two trucks split off to make way for the pile-up pushed into the middle lane. Dar hung out the window to locate the Army troops in pursuit of them. Her Mohawk flapped in the breeze and she looked terrifyingly surreal holding her ax out the window. He was glad that she'd survived the attack no matter how cruel and psychotic she was. If Gritz hadn't pulled her up at the last second she would have been history.
Virgil felt confused by the latest series of events. Why had the Chinese traveled all the way here to their shores? And why was the Army so desperate to track down his group when there was an entire horde to deal with? He glanced over at Annabelle and President Roberts, wondering if it had anything to do with the two of them. Of course it had everything to do with them.
As important as Dar had been to their survival, he knew that Annabelle had been the real reason the group had survived. Back at the Boston Common Dar had kept Annabelle's prodigious talents a secret so that her own reign would not be diminished. It was a Machiavellian maneuver in order to consolidate her iron-fisted grip over the camp. And it had worked. Annabelle had no desire to lead and that only made it that much easier for Dar to maintain control.
Only later had he realized that the occasional, excruciating headaches had been caused by Annabelle’s absence. She exuded a protective force field that somehow shielded them from the horde's debilitating effects. He oftentimes underestimated the incredible contributions Annabelle had made, such as going out into Boston and providing them with food, water and fuel, and then guiding them out of camp after Brabas had purposely destroyed it. All that time he thought Dar had been responsible for their incredible bounty when in fact it had been Annabelle.
The landscape sped past them. It almost seemed as if the trucks were in a race to see who could emerge from the wreckage first. Jamaal's truck edged ahead on the far left lane, debris and road dust spiraling off its massive set of tires. Between them lay the piles of cars, trucks and rusted chassis pushed into the median strip and formed into an ugly heap. Virgil glanced down at the gas gauge and noted they had just under half a tank of gas left. Would it get them to their destination? He wasn't sure, despite having made this trip many times in the past.
“So tell us more about your history with the Amish, Mr. Virgil Snow,” Felicia said.
“You could say we developed a mutual bond.”
“But why are we even going there in the first place?”
“What other choice do we have? Our fuel is running low and the Amish compound is within reach. They may be our only hope of surviving this ordeal.”
“If they're alive,” Felicia said.
“Yes, assuming they're alive and I'm betting they are. The Amish believe in a separation from the outside world. They call this separation 'The English', which generally translates to the pollution of their traditional ways by modern society. Some sects are more liberal than others. This particular group was probably the most conservative sect of any of the Amish groups out there. They believe in a complete and total separation from the outside world.”
Felicia laughed. “Then why in the world did they ever let you in?”
“Ironic, isn't it? They're such an isolated community that over time they've come to develop an incredibly small gene pool and because of this small pool certain genetic diseases have become prevalent in their closed-off society. The main reason they let my team and I inside was because many of their children were dying from an unknown ailment.”
“What was it?” Felicia asked.
“Some sort of respiratory or cardiac affliction, but of course I'm no doctor. The baby girls had no symptoms whatsoever but the boys with the disease sounded like sheep when they cried. It was very weird.”
“Were you able to cure them?” Annabelle asked.
“No, but I was able to take blood samples back to my lab and using an advanced technique was able to isolate a segment of DNA on chromosome 7 that contained the gene causing their illness. All the afflicted children had a pair of mutant copies of that same gene. Their parents carried the gene as well. This particular gene switches off and on, and when the mutant gene is in play it causes these ailments in children.”
“So you were able to reverse the process?”
“Unfortunately, there's no cure for these types of genetic ailments. We were studying it for our research and to try and identify carriers of this gene in order to prevent future mutations. In this particular instance, my role was to better understand the nature of such genetic mutations.”
“So what's your take on this current plague? Are the dead coming back to life because of some weird new virus?” Felicia asked.
“I have my theories, ma'am, but don't really know. The truth of the matter, and this sounds like a cop out, is that there's much about viral behavior that we still don't fully understand. Many of the processes that happen within the agent we simply have no clue as to the why or how.”
Just as the words came out of his mouth a loud explosion occurred that caused the truck to rumble, and he wondered if the other rig had been hit by a mortar round. He looked out the windshield and saw flames coming out of a pile of parked cars stacked up along the road. Jamaal's truck swerved to avoid the flaming debris. Annabelle cut hard to the right, violently scraping the guardrail to avoid hitting the metal fragments landing along the road. Looking through his side mirror, he saw sparks shooting out between the boxcar and guardrail.
“Who the hell is shooting at us?” Felicia said.
“Who do you think? The United States Army, the same one that you're supposed to be commanding,” Annabelle said, glancing out her side mirror. “And those boys got some serious firepower.”
“It's me they want,” Felicia said. “Townsend wants to use the presidential office as his own personal tool for power and domination. He all but told me that when we were together on Nag's Head.”
“It doesn't matter who he wants at this point. They're going to catch us if we don't put the pedal to the metal.”
Annabelle pushed the truck up to eighty, but out of nowhere one of the Army Humvees pulled up next to them, its machine-gun swiveling in their direction. A second Humvee pulled out in front of Jamaal's rig and pointed the machine gun at his windshield as well. They had no place to go and nowhere to hide; they were at the complete mercy of these two-armed vehicles.
Virgil scanned the horizon and saw the horde approaching the interstate from both sides. The trucks slowed to a halt and the soldiers, using bullhorns, ordered them out onto the road. But leaving the confines of this cab was tantamount to suicide as the horde was converging on them. The soldiers manning the M2 machine guns fired off a quick burst at the dead, dropping the first wave to the ground. They immediately swiveled around and pointed the guns back up at them.
“Get the hell out of the truck!” the soldier shouted. “I know you people have President Roberts and the spook in there.”
Barely a moment after the words came out of his mouth another explosion went off and shook the ground. Through his side mirror Virgil could see that some kind of battle was taking place behind them. Two Army battalions began exchanging mortar rounds and some of the shells obliterated the buildings just off the highway. Virgil heard an undulating low whistling and when he looked up he saw a missile raining down from the sky and heading in their direction.
“Get down!”
The explosion rocked the truck and shook everything in their vicinity. Virgil peeked up over the dashboard and saw that the missile had created a crater just off the shoulder of the road. Scattered along the rubble lay the shredded body parts of the zombies that had been caught in the line of fire. The sight of those disgusting, steaming chunks of meat made him sick to his stomach, despite all the virus-ravaged victims he'd seen during his travels throughout Africa chasing down the most lethal primate plagues.
The force of the explosion overturned the Humvee on the other side of the road, catapulting the driver and gunner onto the hot pavement. The injured soldiers lay there for a second, staring in confusion at their surroundings. They appeared confused and discombobulated, and he figured they must have suffered a concussion from the blast. Not far away the next wave of zombies began to move in for the kill, stumbling over the gelatinous and charred body parts.
Dar opened the driver's side door and hopped down onto the pavement. Had she a suicide wish? Not only had the horde been arriving in successive waves but enemy missiles were also now raining down upon them. Dar swung the ax, dispatching one creature after another. Gritz jumped down behind her, swinging his metal weapon and causing their skulls to explode on impact. Virgil thought them a two person wrecking crew, but he wondered what in the world they were doing by trying to save the injured soldiers.
The winds abruptly began to pick up for no apparent reason and trees everywhere began to bend at an unnatural angle. The sky began to blacken and swirl malevolently. Another missile landed about a hundred yards in front of them, causing the ground to crest and shake. The soldier driving the Humvee in front of them turned the vehicle around and headed over to his injured comrade. Virgil realized that neither group would get to the injured men in time to save them from the encroaching horde.
The gunner fired off a quick burst, ripping the first line of zombies to pieces, but the massive wave kept coming, relentless and unstoppable, and converged upon the two injured men. Virgil felt sick to his stomach watching the savages jump on top of the soldiers and begin to claw the meat off their bones and stuff it into their disgusting mouths. Annabelle and Felicia buried their heads, not wanting to see such senseless slaughter.
A stream of blood shot through the air and landed on the backs of the frenzied cannibals. Their tattered clothes and wispy hair flapped in the gusts blowing down from the north. The reddish-green sky appeared like something out of a special effects movie, the storm clouds rotating in fast-forwarded eddies. Dar and Gritz continued to swing their weapons and fight their way forward but the wall of dead began to close in on them. The gunner in the second Humvee pointed the machine gun down at Dar and Gritz, looking as if he might shoot them in cold blood. The two groups were only yards apart as the horde converged upon the idling Humvee.
The Humvee attempted a three-point turn, intending to leave Dar and Gritz to fend for themselves. Without the aid of the machine gun keeping the horde at bay, Virgil knew that Dar and Gritz stood no chance at making it back to their rig. He shouted at the soldiers to assist them. Annabelle started to climb out of the cab but even she wouldn't get there in time to protect them.
Dar swung the ax until she reached the Humvee, which was still attempting its three-point turn through the crowded zombies. She tomahawked the ax over her head and it flew through the air until it stuck in the gunner's chest. He fell back inside the vehicle and lay sprawled on his back. Gritz and Dar sprinted toward the Humvee, keeping the dead at bay. As soon as they got close enough, she climbed onto Gritz’s shoulders and dove through the air. She landed on the driver, still struggling to turn the Humvee around. The vehicle swerved violently as Dar punched him repeatedly in the ear. The soldier collapsed, dangling over the side of the Humvee until the horde reached up and pulled his hands. The soldier reached for his pistol but Dar kicked him over the edge and into the awaiting arms of the dead, who swarmed over him and immediately began to devour his flesh.
Dar pulled her ax out of the wounded soldier's chest and climbed behind the machine gun. The injured soldier, still alive, clutched his bleeding wound and rose up unsteadily, reaching for his holster. Dar reared back and mule-kicked him in the face, causing the injured soldier to topple out of the vehicle. Gripping the machine gun, she fired a round into the zombies converging on the exhausted Gritz. Their heads exploded in a reddish cloud and the mist hovered just above the pavement.
Another missile exploded just beyond them, sending shards of rotten flesh and body parts hurtling through the air. The skull of a woman landed with a splat along the windshield in front of Virgil, sending spider cracks fingering outward. Black ooze squirted along the glass and down toward the hood. The sight of the still-chewing skull caused him to shriek back in horror. He reached over and switched on the wipers, causing the zombie head to get swiped off to the side. The cleaning fluid watered down the ooze and the wipers washed away the disgusting mess.
Gritz sprinted into the Humvee and jumped behind the wheel, immediately turning the vehicle around. The gusts whipped in vortices, causing the zombies' tattered rags to flap violently in the wind. Once Gritz had the vehicle turned westward, Dar waved her arm and beckoned the two truck drivers to follow.
“Come on, Annabelle. Snap out of it. You need to steer this rig out of here before one of those missiles blows us to pieces!” Virgil shouted.
“Okay, Virge,” she said, sniffing back the tears. “You'd think I'd be used to all this blood and gore by now.”
“You never get used to seeing such horrible things, hon,” Felicia said.
“In all my years in Africa, I never got used to seeing victims ravished by some lethal monkey pox. Threw up just about every time I came across one of them.”
“At least you were doing some good back then,” Felicia said. “More than I can say about being a politician and kissing every Tom, Dick and Harry's ass.”
“Who's to say we're not doing good now? Maybe we're on this earth for a reason, which is to bring about change and help any remaining survivors who might be out there. And of course to repopulate the planet.”
“I've gone through enough changes in my lifetime, Virgil, and am now closed for business, thank you.” Tears fell from the President's eyes. “Damn, I miss my husband and kids.”
“How did Dar and Gritz manage to commandeer that Humvee?” Annabelle asked.
“Those two soldiers were going to leave them there to die. Dar, obviously, had other ideas.”
The truck began to rumble forward, the sounds of the dead crackling under the truck's weighty tires. The ubiquitous sound of bones crunching filled Virgil's waking consciousness and darkened the furthest corners of his soul. He tried to imagine it was freshly fallen snow, like on the rare occasions when he'd rent a car and drive up to Vermont to go cross-country skiing with a good friend. But he couldn't quite eradicate the image of those crushed cannibals out of his mind.
“Holy shit! Is that what I think it is off in the distance?”
“Hoo-boy, I think it is,” said Felicia, staring out the windshield. “Holy mackerel! Didn't think you Yankees had tornadoes up in these parts.”
Another missile exploded about a quarter mile behind them. Glancing in the side mirror, Virgil realized that the round had struck exactly where they had been parked.
“If this plague has affected the human population, who's to say it hasn't altered the entire ecosystem and the climate as well?” Virgil remarked.
“As if we haven't got enough problems to worry about,” Felicia said.
Virgil stared at the cluttered road up ahead. The horde had thinned out, but there were still many thousands of them stumbling through the overgrown fields and heading to where the dead soldiers were being ripped apart. Gritz tried to swerve the Humvee around the staggerers, but every so often he clipped one of them and sent the corpse flying through the air. Dar turned toward the two trucks and lifted her ax triumphantly. She looked demonic, almost possessed with an iron will to live. Nothing could kill that girl, he realized. A truck's length separated the two eighteen-wheelers. Dar placed her ax down in the Humvee and then sat behind the machine gun, firing off rapid bursts into the dead's corroded flesh. They collapsed like rag dolls and then got steamrolled by the massive wheels.