The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (9 page)

Other dead hands found the doors
and yanked them open.  There was too many of them and they poured into the van
after him.  Jeff scrambled towards the front of the van, his hands digging in
his pockets. 

Jeff glanced back and met Jenny’s
eyes as she closed the loading bay doors, her eyes wide with fear.  He was
afraid it would be the last time he’d ever see her again.

He crawled to the front of the van
and slid into the driver’s seat.  The zombies behind him were clogging the back
of the van, clawing forward and knocking out some of the boxes.  There were six
in the van, creeping over the boxes and each other, digging their fingers into
the solid steel floor as he jammed the key into the ignition and turned it.

The van sputtered, caught, and
died.

Jeff screamed and looked in the
rearview mirror.  They were closer now, just four feet away, moaning and
stretching forward, their greedy hands reaching and their hungry mouths
snapping open and shut. 

He turned the key.  The van
revved, sputtered, and died again.

Jeff punched the dashboard.  The
zombies were two feet away now, crawling, slowly but surely, like a scene from
a nightmare.

He turned the key and jammed on
the gas.  The closest zombie’s fingertips scraped the back of his neck.  The
van roared to life.  He threw it into drive and slammed on the pedal.  The rear
tires smoked and spun and the van lurched forward and shot off, careening
across the small parking space behind the Food Bank and crashing through a set
of wooden fences, waist tall, spurting out into the street.

The zombies behind him rolled away
with the momentum.  Three of them grabbed at the stacked boxes and pulled them
after them as they tumbled from the back of the van.  Two of the remaining
zombies slapped against the sides of the van and toppled from the open doors as
Jeff weaved the van violently, jerking the wheel to the right and to the left,
attempting to shake them free like a dog with fleas. 

One zombie was left inside, the
one who'd touched the back of his neck.  It was a woman, dressed in a business
suit, with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, the flesh of her face
greasy and gray.  Her left arm was wound in the seatbelt and she flopped along
with every jerk of the van, moaning and looking up at Jeff, teeth clattering.

He hit the brakes and skidded to a
stop.  He looked out the windows and saw his actions had gotten him noticed, as
up and down Constitution Street, dozens of zombies all lurched onto the road,
spilling out from the shopping center across the way and other apartment
buildings.  He had maybe minutes before they swarmed the van.

Jeff spun in his seat to face the
zombie behind him.  It had regained its balance and was reaching for him again,
her other arm still tangled in the seat belt.

He batted her free arm away,
risking a glance outside.  The zombies were getting closer by the second, the
ones from the Food Bank and from the neighborhoods.  For a second, he caught a
glimpse of Jenny’s face in the window, watching him.  He raised his  hand to
wave but dropped it, feeling foolish.   

The Woman Zombie moaned and lunged
forward, her teeth snapping and grazing the front of his shirt.  He screamed
and jumped back.  He grabbed her by the ponytail and yanked her head back,
keeping her jaws away from him.  He shoved her onto the floor and stepped on
her free arm to pin it so she couldn’t claw him.  He used his other leg to
stomp the trapped arm.

Outside, the moaning grew louder
and closer as the zombies moved in.  The nearest ones were from the Food Bank
and they were ten yards away.  The mass of zombies behind him were fifteen
yards away and the ones from each side were about twenty away. 

He tried to ignore them.  He had
one thing to do here and he had to do it right.  He stamped on the zombie’s arm
at the shoulder, just above her biceps.  He would either stomp it free or tear
it off. 

The living dead from the Food Bank
were five yards away now, at least thirty strong.  The others from the
neighborhood were ten yards away and pouring towards him, like an avalanche in
slow motion. 

Jeff cursed and kicked harder.  He
heard bones snap.  The zombie arm tore free and stayed tangled in the
seatbelt.  Jeff screamed in triumph, jumped over her body, and yanked her out
the back by her ponytail, his feet smacking hard on the ground.  He sent her
skittering across the road like a bowling ball.  She slid into the closest zombies
and tripped them up, scattering like pins.  When she hit the pavement, her
ribcage exploded, spraying dried organs and   brittle bones into the air.  

A zombie hand scratched his
shoulder.  Jeff shrieked and spun and shoved it away.  The zombie—an Indian guy
with a long beard and crusty forehead with a face split in two—stumbled back. 
It would have fallen if not for the pressing, living dead bodies behind it. 
The hundreds of them.

More and more of them had poured
from the neighborhood, and what had at first been a couple dozen had grown to
at least a hundred, if not more. 

And they were only a few feet from
him.

Jeff threw himself back into the
van and slammed the doors shut.  He scrambled to the front, jammed it into
drive, and drove forward. 

The front of the van crunched into
the mass of dead before, thumping and shoving them back.  He was going gentle
on the gas because he didn’t want to wreck, but they were so thick in front of
him and coming up on the sides, he was afraid they would stop his momentum. 
And if they stopped him, he was dead. 

He punched the gas and swerved to
the left, whacking four zombies and sending them flying.  The tires screeched
as he made his U-turn and plunged into the oncoming zombies.  They hit the
front of the fan with sick, wet thuds and fell to the left and the right.  He
kept going, feeling the tires spin out as they ground the dead beneath them,
blood and pus spurting up and coating the sides of the van.

He aimed for the loading doors of
the Food Bank.  There was no way he was going to leave Jenny behind, and if
they were going to die, they were going to do it together. 

The van broke free from the clump
of zombies and roared over to the building.  More zombies came around the sides
by the dozens and behind them, from the charred remains of the apartment
complex and the suburban homes on the other side, dozens more came. 

There was no turning back now.

He pulled in front of the loading
doors, slammed on the breaks and threw open the passenger door.  The loading
dock doors banged open and Jenny leapt towards the van.

The zombies on either side swarmed
over her.  She vanished beneath their bodies, screaming.  The shotgun bared
twice.  Two zombies fell back, one with a hole in its chest and the other with
its face sheared off.  Jenny popped up to her feet and spun, firing the shotgun
twice more.  Brains and blood and bones flew through the air like shrapnel from
a grenade.  She wiggled in the small space she'd cleared, her face drenched
with blood.  Jenny slipped out of the grip of another zombie and flung her body
through the open door as Jeff punched the gas and the van screeched away.  

Jenny looked over at him, gasping
for air and laughing hysterically. 

Ahead of them, the dead thronged
the road, choking it, leaving little room for the van to go forward.  Jeff
slowed down, gazing at the road ahead, not sure what to do next.  Jenny looked
out the side windows and then back at him.

“What are we going to do?” she
said.

He didn’t have a clue.  There were
hundreds of them now, coming out from nowhere.  The road ahead was thick with
them, as were the field to their right and the shopping center to their left. 
A quick glance in the rearview confirmed there were just as many behind them. 
They had nowhere to go.

Jeff turned to Jenny. “Are you
okay?”

She nodded, holding up her arms. 
There were long scratches and tiny divots running up and down, all blistering
with blood, and other claw marks on her face and neck. 

“They didn’t get me,” she said. 
“They almost did but I got to the ground and squirmed through them until I saw
I was almost clear.”  She slapped the side of the shotgun.  “This came in
handy, but it’s empty now.”

Jeff, nodded, looked up ahead, and
bit his lip.  “Hold on,” he said.  He put the van back into gear and stomped
the gas.  It lurched forward and surged, headed straight for the closest of the
walking dead.  He rammed the van into it, a schoolteacher with her hair in a
bun and one arm missing.  She went flying to the right, landing two feet away
on the other advancing dead. 

He drove straight on, slowing down
some to keep from crashing the van, but trying to keep their momentum up.  He
feared going too slow because if they did, they might get stuck, and if he went
too fast, he'd wreck the van, making it useless.

As it was, they were getting
stuck, anyway.  The van, once at twenty miles an hour, was now down to ten, and
the zombies were surrounding it, beating the sides and scratching the windows,
miring its momentum down with their sheer numbers and weight. 

“We’re not going to make it!”
Jenny said.  She’d slid over in her seat so she sat near the middle and held
the shotgun up with both hands.

Jeff stepped on the gas, cursing
the van and the living dead.  It pitched forward, the front end plowing into
the dead, pushing them back and to the side and under the vehicle, but there
were so many zombies in front of them and to the sides and in back that no
matter how hard he raced the engine, there was only so fast and far they could
go. 

They barely reached the end of the
block before the engine stalled.

The back windows burst as the dead
pressed against the vehicle.  The metal sides popped and bent and groaned under
their weight.  Jeff could feel the van start to crunch from all sides now. 
Next to him, its head pressed against the door, a female zombie with her hair
wrapped in a towel, suddenly exploded from the pressure of the bodies behind
it, her head popping off like a zit and flipping up and over the short hood of
the van.  Her neck stump sprayed blood for an instant before her body
disappeared under the crunch of  the dead.

The van rocked back and forth and
Jenny screamed.  Jeff didn’t want to die this way.  He didn’t want to die at
all, but he couldn't imagine anything worse.  They were going to be crushed and
eaten and then, if anything was left, they were going to come back as one of
those things.  He shoved those thoughts away, desperate to stay live.  There
had to be some way out.

He tried the ignition.  The van
started up again and this time he pushed the gas pedal down to the floor.  The
van sputtered and screamed and jumped, launching into the teeming mass of the
living dead, pushing them away and under and over.  The vehicle rumbled,
pitching and tilting this way and that, the tires spinning and sliding over the
dead caught beneath them.  Jeff could feel the wheels as they burned skin and
bones, slick with blood and organs and brains.  The back end fish-tailed as
Jeff guided the van the best he could, moving forward and sideways at a slow
pitch.

Jenny’s window cracked and broke,
the glass spilling in like tiny pieces of popcorn.  Zombie hands reached
inside, clutching and clawing for her, but she was far enough way they couldn’t
grab her.  Still, one of them did manage to clutch the side of the door and
haul itself up so its head was eye-level with them.  Jenny flipped the gun and
rammed the butt-end into its face.  Nose bone and eye sockets crunched like the
snapping of twigs, but it could barely be heard under the din of the dead as
they moaned and scraped at the van. 

The zombie didn’t give up.  Its
face was shattered, its nose falling off to the side and the front of its jaws
dented in, the teeth broken in some places and splintered in others.  Still it
reached for her, its groan a gurgle now as she punched its face again and again
with the shotgun, beating the zombie until it fell back, other living dead
hands clutching it and using its body to climb up and into the window. 

Jenny screamed and rolled over
onto her back.  She kicked and pummeled the next one to come through—this one a
naked man with a fork jammed into the side of its neck—bashing it backwards and
out the window.  Another zombie popped up to replace it and Jenny was sitting
back up again, using the shotgun to beat it back until it, too, fell.  Then
another came, and another, and it was a never-ending stream of the living dead,
undaunted and eternal.

Jeff, in the meanwhile, was
plowing the van forward, gaining ground inch by inch, foot by foot.  They were
past the shopping center now and were headed towards the tunnel, but the dead
were so thick they clotted the road and there seemed to be no end to them. 
Next to him, Jenny screamed yet again, collapsing into him, as a zombie made it
past her tired legs and  halfway through the window. 

Then the van stopped.

It could go forward no further,
the weight of the dead pressed against it halting its progress.  Jeff shouted
and pressed the gas pedal to the floor and smelled the tires smoking and the
heard the engine straining but they were getting nowhere, unable to move
forward. 

He let off the gas, hit the
brakes, and threw the van into reverse.

The back end slammed into the dead
behind them, smashing them down and running them over.  There were fewer coming
from the rear, but there were still dozens of them, and they’d all clustered
together and followed along as the van had made its torturous route down
Constitution Street. 

Jeff felt body after body go under
the van as he grit his teeth and cursed God and his Mother and everything he’d
ever hated in his entire life.  He was determined to get free of this, to punch
through this nightmare and see the other side of it.  The problem was, all
those bodies getting run over were jamming up the wheels and the axles.  He
could feel it, like any driver can feel when something is going wrong behind
the wheel, and he knew it was going to spell their doom unless he was able to
do something about it.