Surge (40 page)

Road Trip

We’ve been on the road for about two hours, before we hit a snag. Olivia’s been taking us back roads the whole way to wherever it is that we’re headed, but there’s a detour sign indicating a closed bridge. I see her hit the hazards and hop out of the car, before running back to the van, so I roll the window down in time for her to arrive.

“We’ll have to make a U-turn and go back three blocks, to get around the bridge,” she says without preamble. “Can you handle it in this beast?” I raise my eyebrows at her in show of being insulted.

“I’m a guy, of course I can handle it,” I answer and Olivia rolls her eyes.

“Fine, Mr. Macho,” she says. “I’ll leave you to it, while I kick that fucker’s ass.”

I look around to see who she’s talking about, and spot a wheezer coming up the hill from the woods, running upright at full speed. Olivia slips her machete from the holster and dashes straight for it. She doesn’t even have her freaking helmet on, but does that stop her? Hell no. She just sprints straight toward it, with her braid bouncing behind her. When she’s about three feet away, she pulls her machete up to the right like a bat, and swings. The indistinguishable gendered wheezer takes a direct hit to the head, it splits in half at an angle; dropping a portion of its left eye and forehead one way and the body the other. Not a pretty kill, but it does the job.

“Move the fucking van, Jared!” Olivia shouts.

I’m about to yell back why she’s rushing me, when I see the pack emerging from the tree line. I flip the van in reverse and attempt a three point turn on the narrow road. It’s raised in the middle, with ditches on both sides that lead to woods; so it’s a little nerve wrecking to maneuver this monster, all the while worrying about my tiny Tomb Raider. My concentration is split, and that’s probably why I punch the DVD screen that John’s watching, in order to get his attention.

“Watch Olivia,” I demand and he cocks his head.

“Huh?”

“She’s fighting off a real pack, while you’re in here pretending to be part of a fictional wolf pack, you asshole,” I snap and flip the van in reverse. “Do something, before we wind up in a ditch.” John’s head swishes to the window and he whistles.

“Don’t worry about her,” he says. My heart starts pounding.

“What the fuck do you mean don’t worry about her!” I shout and slam the van’s brakes. “Get the fuck out, and help her!”

“Calm the fuck down!” John shouts back. “She’s perfectly fine, now concentrate on your driving.”

“Actually, she looks like she’s having fun,” Carlos answers wryly from behind me.

“She’s even singing,” Oscar adds.

“Disturbed’s ‘Let the Bodies Hit the Floor’ to be exact,” John says and they laugh. “Here, listen.” John flips the DVD off and I hear groans from the back but ignore them in favor of listening for Olivia.

“Lenny, turn that shit up!” Olivia orders. My heart rate slows at the sound of her husky voice and the music immediately raises another ten notches. “There we go, now we’re talking.” Olivia continues swapping back and forth between using lyrics and cursing at the wheezers. For example, it goes lyric, then
‘Take that you bastard,’
lyric,
‘Die you prick,’
lyric,
‘Fucker broke my nail,’
etc. It’s actually pretty damn funny, until I hear a comment from the back.

“There’s plenty wrong with her,” some bitch, I’ll let you guess, says from the trunk.

“There must be, since she allowed us to take you,” Sarah retorts.
John picks up the chorus and starts head banging in the passenger seat.

“She’s the freaking Terminator,” I hear Danny say, as I finally get the van turned around.

With us safely reversed, I stick my head out the window to check out how Olivia’s doing. There are about fifteen bodies that have hit the floor, but she’s still going. I prepare to hop out and go assist her, deciding against it when she kicks a wheezer in the balls. Surprisingly, it went down, so they must have some pain receptors left after all. While that one’s down for a different reason, Olivia hurls a knife with her left hand at another wheezer, and swings with her right hand to bring the machete onto the wounded one; who was rolling around in a disturbingly human male reaction.

“That was just cruel,” I hear a male voice say.

It was one of the twins, but they sound so similar it’s hard to tell sometimes. My attention is still glued onto Olivia, so I see her spear a wheezer in the stomach, before bending to flip a runner over her back. The wheezer doesn’t have a chance to get up, since she stabs it in the temple with a knife, and then uses that same knife to pierce the eye of the one still reaching from the other end of her machete. Using her foot, Olivia boots the body from her weapon, pulls out her whistle, and blows. The remaining two stop abruptly and face plant, when they move to block their ears. Skipping over, Olivia stabs the back of their heads with the tip of her machete.

The song changes as she collects her weapons. It’s another one I recognize of Disturbed’s called “Down With the Sickness.” Bobbing her head to the drums, she begins air guitaring her machete, as she steps through the carnage.
Olivia continues singing all the way to the car, where she pauses to look over to the right. “Start that bitch up, Cory, so we can move on.”

“Are you sure?” Cory calls back. “I was enjoying the concert.”

Olivia smiles and curtsies, before holding up her thumb. I hear Cory’s laugh at the same time I spot Leonard’s head start bobbing with the music. The BMW starts up and flips direction with ease, due to the coupe’s small body. As they pass, I hear the music pouring out of the open window, and see Leonard’s head banging in unison with Olivia’s. It’s too ridiculous to not laugh. I mean, Leonard is in his late seventies, but there he is, rocking away with a twenty year old girl after she’s single handedly kicked wheezer ass.

Suffice to say, they get along just fine.

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“I think I’m in the wrong car,” John says beside me.

We’ve driven four extremely slow miles in pretty much silence. Even with the DVD player turned back on, it’s a monotonous drone of background noise, that no one’s really paying attention to. I guess that it loses its draw when the world ends, and we no longer are attached to technology. I mean, if someone were to hand me a fully functional iPhone right now, I’d probably scratch my head and ask
‘what good does playing an app do for me, if it doesn’t involve killing a wheezer?’

Instead, focus is centralized on the sights passing by the windows. Those awed expressions belong to those who have been cooped up, namely Sarah and the girls. Or they’re sleeping like Mike, and the narcoleptic twin called Carlos. So long as he’s sitting down, Carlos can fall asleep within seconds of just about anywhere.

“Why do you think that?” I ask John. “You got to pick your movie.”

“Screw the movie,” he replies. “Olivia looks to be a hell of a lot more entertaining.” John points at the BMW swerving side to side in order to whack the wheezers with her car door, while Leonard laughs his ass off beside her. “I could be playing Whack A Wheezer, but no. I’m stuck with you miserable lot.” He crosses his arms and pouts like a toddler told he couldn’t have a cookie before dinner.

“Quit your bitching,” I say. “Olivia knows what she’s doing.” Even if it happens to give me a heart attack every time she opens the damn door. What if she fell out? Or got pulled out by one them? I’d probably monster truck over any bastard who tried, but it’s still scary as fuck. “Besides, you’d probably wind up a speed bump if you tried.”

“Fuck you,” he retorts. “I’m a freaking champ at every sport I’ve tried.”

I ignore the cocky bastard boasting beside me, and keep my eyes peeled on the car in front of me. It’s pretty easy to do since we’re only going about twenty miles an hour on this dusty country road. Other abandoned cars were left back in the city, but we’re in a more rural part of Massachusetts now. Not exactly sure which town, since Olivia wasn’t lying about using the back-est of back roads. Both sides of the road are covered in thick tree lines, which haven’t been trimmed back in years, so the only wheezers visible are the ones walking in the street.

Like the one wearing a hat that Olivia’s coming up on. I see her door open and this time, instead of whacking the guy like I expected, she climbs out while the car is still rolling at the decreased speed of ten miles per hour. Jogging back, Olivia hurls a knife at the guy to take him down, but she’s still not done. Ignoring the wheezers who start upping their pace from a pitiful crawl, to a steady walk, Olivia goes and spits on the body’s hat.

“Fucking Yankee,” she hisses. “Should have stayed in New York, instead of leaf peeping up here, you asshole.” Giving the corpse one last kick for good measure, Olivia runs back to the car that’s still rolling down the road. Popping the door open, she jumps in, and the BMW starts picking up a little more speed.

“I’m in love,” John mutters with goo-goo eyes. I elbow the fucker daring to break our number one rule,
‘don’t fuck with each other’s girl.’
Fine, she isn’t my girl, but I sure as hell want her to be; so that counts and I’ll remind John later if I see him look at her that way again.