Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (12 page)

He asked, “You okay little girl?”

Danielle had long since stopped protesting
that she wasn’t a little girl and accepted the epithet with good
humor. She wiped away a tear. “Yeah. Just thinking about my
brother, Wassillie.”

William continued to look at her for a
second longer. The road ahead was requiring more of his attention.
He watched the Chevy Suburban in front of him fishtail on the cool,
wet pavement. It was cold enough to freeze, and neither vehicle had
tires for the weather. He slowed down a bit while his rig climbed
the sloping road.

As they drew closer to Whittier, Danielle
noticed that the big Blazer’s speed reduced significantly but her
heart rate increased steadily. Everywhere she looked she imagined
she saw Kameron’s ghoulish face staring back at her. Danielle was
terrified by what they might encounter; what
she
might encounter.

When they reached a familiar turnoff from
Shotgun Cove Road, the two trucks came to a rolling stop. William
looked over his shoulder at his passengers and announced, “I think
this is close enough. We don’t know what we’re driving into. Maybe
we should park up here and walk into town.”

From the Suburban, idling next to him with
its passenger window open, a female voice barked, “Why the hell
would we do that? I don’t want to walk down there.”

“What if we get trapped?” William asked. “It
might be easier to get out of tight corners on foot. If we leave
the trucks up here, we’d still be able to get away.”

The other driver, Nakissha, called back, “If
we don’t let ourselves get into any tight corners then we won’t
have to worry about it. Anything gets in front of me, I’ll run it
down.”

William protested, “But we don’t know for
sure what—”

“Then they better stay outta my way. I ain’t
takin’ no chances.”

William breathed deeply but said nothing. He
looked through the windshield and pondered their next move. He
didn’t like the idea of walking any more than Nakissha did but
something told him that the road would not be easy.

He could sense the tension in his car and
the worried looks. No one wanted to walk. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll
follow you. Don’t go too slow, but don’t stop...ever.”

The Suburban, its wheels spinning on the
gathering ice, drove off without an acknowledgment. William was
quickly and tightly on the vehicle’s tail but not feeling entirely
comfortable. It felt like someone was looking over his shoulder all
the time. Maybe it was the mountains, still thick with trees
appearing as if they had been piled atop one another all up the
distant slopes. It could have been the Sound’s dark currents with
its blanket of misty haze hovering close to the surface.

When they came within sight of the enormous,
vacant Buckner Building to their left, his discomfort approached a
mild panic. He detested not knowing what to expect. It was like
going over the first big hill of a rollercoaster; only he had no
idea if there was even track still laid out in front of them. He
was heading into unknown territory, which was anything but normal.
He was a planner and rarely set out to accomplish anything without
significant preparation.

Regardless, he found himself following
Nakissha into the unknown. They passed the Buckner Building,
thankfully without incident, but when they came to one of the few
intersections of roads through the diminutive downtown side of
Whittier, things changed. At the intersection, a clog of vehicles
had been formed around a former ambulance that had been turned into
a taxi cab for the small community. The Funbulance, as it was
called, was resting on its side with three other vehicles smashed
into it from three different directions. Around this jam, other
cars and trucks and even a four-wheeled ATV had formed a tight and
immovable obstacle, forcing Nakissha and William to make hard right
hand turns away from the mess.

Unfortunately, turning that direction took
them away from their objective. Moving dangerously fast on the
untested road, Nakissha’s Suburban fishtailed again, but this time
she wasn’t able to reign in the momentum of the vehicle. Feeling
the tires lose traction, she tried to gain control but
overcorrected. By the time she was able to deal with the problem,
it was too late.

The big, rusty Suburban crashed into first a
car and then a pair of ovens that had been removed from the nearby
Whittier Manor apartment complex, which was a stout rectangular
building with the fading color of watered down mint mouthwash.
Nakissha tried to reverse her truck out of its predicament, but the
aging appliances grabbed hold of the truck and refused to let go.
Nakissha was stuck.

She gunned her engine, trying to force
herself free but only made matters worse. Her tires spun until they
smoked; the Suburban only inched forward. William’s heart sunk. He
looked into his rearview mirror out of habit to verify there wasn’t
any oncoming traffic. Of course, there was none.

If William had looked more closely, he would
have seen movement of a different sort starting to stir. The sounds
the vehicles were making were drawing attention to themselves from
a relatively dormant presence in the city. Weathered sections of
the landscape moved and shifted as nerves flickered and muscles
responded eagerly. Statues slowly came to life, becoming walking
nightmares.

Nakissha slammed her fists onto the steering
wheel and shifted the truck into park. For a few seconds, no one
moved. Nakissha’s door opened and shut quickly with a slam. She
wandered around to the front of the truck and was quickly joined by
two of the three passengers from her vehicle.

William watched for a moment, knowing what
was expected of him but finding no comfort in those expectations.
If he had any hope of getting them back on the move, he would have
to go extricate the other truck from its trap. Looking around
quickly, William reluctantly opened his door and took a breath. The
familiar smell of the fall rot, a pungent odor created primarily by
patches of unpicked berries decaying on the vine, swept at him and
filled his lungs. He could taste the damp smell on his tongue when
he exhaled. The strong odor hung as heavily in the air as the
moisture that left every exposed surface moist with beads of water
forming quickly. The temperature had dropped significantly as of
late, helping to form his exhaled breath into a thin, white cloud
around his head.

Now out of the security of his truck’s
cabin, William cast a wary eye about. He still didn’t know what to
expect but the complete stillness was not it. The city looked
abandoned by everything in God’s creation. There were no lights, no
voices, no activity. There were no birds, no dogs, and no people
anywhere to be seen.

Stepping out onto the road, which was an
uneven mixture of gravel and pavement, William was quickly joined
by Danielle, Allen, and Sandra, all the passengers from the Blazer.
They ran over to the front of the vehicle where they joined
Nakissha and Gus, a stout, olive skinned man with more thick, curly
hair growing on his cheeks and chest than on the top of his head
atop which always rested a dirty, graying blue and white Dodgers
cap.

They kicked and pulled at the lodged
appliance with no luck. Allen even went so far as to use the butt
of his shotgun as both a lever and a bludgeon but nothing worked.
Prying the ovens loose seemed more reasonable to William but they
needed the crowbar that he had left in the back of his big
vehicle.

He turned and took one step toward his open
driver side door and shouted, “We gotta gooooooo!!!!
Nowwwwwww!!!”

Coming down the road toward them at a
determined, if slightly stilted, walking pace was a crowd of
ghastly, horrifying individuals. He was unable to focus on any
single person. To him, it was an amorphous, swelling, reaching,
gray-green wave full of eyes and snapping, hungry jaws. Much of the
mob had already passed the Funbulance roadblock and was only a few
horrible steps away.

Gus shouted, “What do we do?”

“Just put it into drive and hit the gas!”
William shouted back. “We’ll push you!”

Nakissha tried her best to right her course
through a combination of maneuvering with the steering wheel and
using the horsepower of her V8 engine but was struggling to
accomplish much of anything. When William’s Blazer hit her larger
truck, Nakissha, as well as everyone else with her, jumped in their
seats despite anticipating the collision. Regaining her composure,
Nakissha tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried to keep
them pointed down the road.

The smell of burning rubber coming from
Nakissha’s tires filled the road but they were starting to make
progress. A gap opened between the two vehicles and the horde
chasing them. They crossed the halfway point on the Whittier Manor
Estates apartments and started to feel like maybe they were going
to be able to get away.

That was good news to Danielle, starting to
see more of the abominations coming from around corners and out of
doorways along the apartment complex. The creatures were everywhere
all at once. As far as Danielle was concerned, they couldn’t get
away fast enough.

The steady, vibrating grind of the metal
appliances along the road, like nails across a chalkboard, was
unbelievably nauseating and without respite. Danielle couldn’t
stick her fingers deep enough into her ears to muffle the sound.
The irritating buzz pounded in her temples and pressed itself
through her chest. She worried if the sound didn’t stop soon, she
might vomit. By the look on Sandra’s face, Danielle was not the
only one suffering through the discomfort.

The smells, sounds, sights and kinetic
activity were all threatening to boil over into an uncontrollable
storm. Danielle would have screamed but she was afraid no one would
hear.

And then all of it came to an abrupt,
screeching halt. Nakissha pushed the ovens into a seam in the road,
which stopped the two appliances cold in their tracks.
Unfortunately, the Suburban did not get the memo that the parade
was coming to a rest and continued on its way. As a result, the big
truck drove up and over the now embedded barriers, lifting tires
and all possibilities for forward momentum out of reach of the
street below. William realized too late what had happened and only
worsened the problem.

There was no time and no room on either side
of Nakissha’s truck to drive around. With a quick look in the
mirror, William said urgently, “Everybody out. Grab what you
need.”

“What?” someone asked incredulously,

“We don’t have time. We gotta go now.
C’mon!” William demanded of all of them as he threw open his
door.

None of them wanted to but all of them felt
compelled to look over their shoulders. The street behind them was
filled to overflowing with ugliness and rage. Faces, arms, teeth,
and eyes rolling toward them as a single entity. A horrible sound
similar to that of a train preceded the throng and washed over
Danielle and the others like a tidal wave. Its force propelled them
all forward.

Nakissha and her passengers hurried out as
well. The quick foray into and out of town was taking on a very
different tone. It was suddenly a race for survival and the clock
was quickly winding down.

With options few and far between, there
looked to be only two ways out: straight down the road, running a
gauntlet of ghouls crawling from the last few doors on their left
or up the heavily inclined slope next to them which led up to
Shotgun Cove Road above.

William had already considered the slope up
and had dismissed it. The incline was too great to be able to make
good time. He was worried they would be overcome too easily. He
also wasn’t quite sure they would do once they did get up to the
road. It was a long road back to Shotgun Cove; made all the longer
if those things were trailing all the way.

For whatever reason, those things weren’t
able to keep up much pace so he reasoned that if they could move
quickly and put some distance between themselves and those things
then they could hide away somewhere and let things quiet back down.
Maybe if they disappeared those things would return to wherever
they had come.

The simple reality was that if he and those
with him kept running, they would be able to put those things
behind them. Nakissha and two of the women with her decided on the
other route. They ran to the slope but not before Nakissha fired a
single round from the hunting rifle she was carrying. The first few
steps up were smooth but the surface itself posed an unseen and
unknown challenge.

It was like running on ice. The leaves were
wet and as loose as the soil underneath that gave way with every
slippery step. The crowd of zombies caught up to the three ladies
as a result of their lost momentum but had no more luck ascending.
They needn’t bother to chase.

Nakissha reached out for a thin, weak tree
but lost her footing. She slid a couple of feet back down but using
the butt of her rifle as a brake of sorts she halted her slide. Her
fall had upset the footing of Charlotte climbing behind her.
Charlotte fell flat on her face and, yelping piteously, slid all
the way back to the foot of the slope and the scores of awaiting,
thrashing hands.

The fiends set upon her without a moment’s
hesitation. Her skin, so soft and white, was ripped viciously from
her body and stuffed gluttonously into gnashing, hungry mouths. The
sweet, soft organs from inside her body were harvested with all the
tenderness of a meat grinder.

With the sound of wet chomping, smacking
lips behind them, Nakissha and the other woman, Olivia, clawed
their way further and further up toward the road above them. That
was the last William, Danielle, or any of the others saw of the two
of them.

The other passenger with Nakissha, Gus, a
wiry and seasoned fisherman carrying an equally seasoned axe in his
hands, had elected to join William’s group. He didn’t think he
would be able to make the climb and he trusted William.