The Fast and the Dead - Day 21

They progressed cautiously, passing several more of the truly dead. One feature stood out among all the bodies they saw; many of them had been visibly shot through the forehead, others had damaged facial bones; enough of them that they began to think someone had intentionally come through and put down all of the trapped zombies many years ago.

It had to have been some time ago; zombie flesh didn’t suddenly become more appetizing just because the zombie had been dispatched, but afterward they did fall apart more easily. Neither Ben nor Claire knew why, nor did either care very much at that moment; they were just grateful they could make some progress, even if it would lead them to ground level and into danger again.

When the highway did finally give them the chance to descent, they faced a choice. They’d reached the next off-ramp, this one unblocked and leading down and into a section of the old city some distance from the Core.

“Do we go down now, or stay up here?” Ben put the question to words. They’d relaxed a little on the silence since realizing all of the dead had been put down long ago, but were still keeping their words to a minimum.

Claire frowned in thought. “How long does it go on like this? How far is it elevated?”

“Goes on a few more exits I think. It’s been a while since I drove it,” he added with a sardonic smile.

“Some of the zombies … the dead could be stuck up here with us.”

“True,” he agreed. “But odds are probably not a whole lot of ‘em, and we know for sure there are a lot of ‘em down there, especially so close to the city core.” Ideally he’d prefer to stay above the ground until they were entirely clear of developed areas, but unfortunately the highway just wasn’t built that way. It’d be back on the ground eventually.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 20

As they made their way slowly along the other side of the highway, Ben thought wistfully of flashlights and other modern conveniences, like matches, that once had been taken for granted. It didn’t take much to spawn such thoughts; after they third time bashing your knee on an unseen car fender such thoughts and memories came easily to mind.

At least he hadn’t cut himself. If matches and flashlights were rare these days, antibiotics were priceless even in well stocked enclaves, let alone out in the wilds. Zombie movies used to make a big deal about one scratch being enough to doom the poor unfortunate victim. The reality was that that one scratch didn’t have to come from a zombie to be potentially fatal.

Next to him, Claire froze again and her posture, tense and almost humming with tell-tale fight-or-flight adrenaline, told him all he needed to know about what prompted it. He quickly scanned the windows of the cars within sight, but once again he couldn’t see it. Wordlessly, she pointed.

He moved ahead a few steps, eyes fixed where she’d been pointing, and he froze as well. It was close. He kicked himself for having missed it.

He held still, barely allowing himself to breathe. It wasn’t moving at all, but he didn’t know if that mattered. They didn’t breathe, their hearts didn’t pump, they had none of the life processes that would cause involuntary movement in a person.

He looked back at Claire; their eyes met in the dim moonlight, mirroring anxiousness. They were too close to the last one to cross back over, but this one was even closer.

Ben closed his eyes, and with an apologetic shrug, he started edging forward again. Based on everything he’d seen, if it were risen, they were already too close. Hiding was pointless. So was sitting still. He shot glances at it as he kept his eye on where he was going. Fortunately it was one car out into the road, not in a car right on the shoulder; there was a car between it and him. He didn’t have to worry about it suddenly reaching for him, even though the windows of the car it sat in were all broken out. Or in, he thought.

It was slumped in the passenger side seat, hair all a disarray. As he drew abreast of its position, he tried to get a better look. As the years dragged onward, the survivors had found there were ways to tell the difference between an old body and an old zombie. It was the more recent zombies you had to be really careful about; they were really hard to distinguish.

There were few known living creatures that could stomach snacking on zombie flesh, and that included the majority of scavengers, vermin and even most bacteria that would normally contribute to the decomposition of an animal or human corpse. There were a few that were hardy enough to do it, but so few that the decomposition of zombies was much slower and far less complete than a typical body.

For a body that had presumably been strapped into a car for the last 10 years, that should make telling whether it was risen pretty easy. If it was a skeleton, it was safe. If it still looked like a fleshy corpse, then either it hadn’t been there for 10 years or they were in for more noise and more risk.

He drew abreast of its position and glanced back over, almost sighing audibly with relief; the face was a bare white skull, and what was visible of the body looked thin enough to be in similar condition.

“It’s dead then,” he heard from just behind him.

“Yeah. Lucky for all of us,” he said, including the unnamed victim in the car in the sentiment. 

The Fast and the Dead - Day 19

They froze in place, unwilling to take another step. Ben bit his lip. “We could go around,” he said in a low, whispery voice. “If it’s risen, at least we won’t be within reach.” Most of the cars on the road were in bad enough shape that the glass had long since broken, if it had survived the rioting unbroken in the first place.

Claire’s face was pensive in the moonlight, staring at the ground under them. It looked more like ground than road. The years of disuse had cracked and broken the blacktop to pieces and blown dust and dirt and seeds in enough quantity that there were stretches that looked more like wild lawn gone to seed than like an elevated highway. “I don’t think we have a choice. It’s gonna make a racket if it notices us.”

“Me neither, but if there’s one here, there’ll be more later. Guess nobody cleared the cars of ‘em. With the noise we made getting here I’m not real worried about them moaning themselves hoarse, at least not till we’re closer to the ground. Might even do us some good to have a distraction that can’t move.”

“I guess … as long as it doesn’t pull more up onto the road with us.”

They picked their way carefully to the other side of the road, making as little noise as possible. That ended up being more noise than either of them would have preferred; the remains of cars were packed in close in places, and bumping and brushing them was impossible to avoid. At times this would even cause bits of them to break off and fall to the ground. That wasn’t so bad in places where enough dirt had built up and things were overgrown, but on bare asphalt Ben found himself cringing.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 18

The road was quiet when they left the car. Ben did a cursory check of the vehicle’s interior, finding nothing much of interest; a few coins, a pack of gum, scattered trash in the center console storage.

Claire checked the mass of cars ahead of them, giving as many as she could a quick glance; many were too dirty to see through easily, but those she paid more attention to. She didn’t spot any trapped bodies, but did notice how tightly the cars were packed in, and how many had open doors.

“I guess back then when these were abandoned they got trapped, tried to leave the cars behind and make it on foot,” she said quietly.

“Let’s hope we have better luck.”

Their options were limited. They could hike back the way they’d come and hope for the best, but that would lead them back to the Core eventually. Probably not the best way to go. They could try to get off the highway, but that didn’t seem likely until they got closer to ground level. It was a long drop onto a hard surface covered with who knew what.

They took the only reasonable option open to them. They started picking their path through the sea of cars, imagining all the while the chaos of years gone past as people sat in locked traffic, frantic with panic, finally leaving vehicles and homes behind to escape on foot, at risk from people both living and dead. For a while, it was said, the living had been the bigger threat.

Ben realized with a sinking feeling that in this part of the world at least, that was certainly now true for them.

Their slow progress had lasted long enough that it was well and truly dark. “I’m so glad there’s a moon tonight,” Claire commented. Without it they’d have been truly sunk. With the effective end of civilization had come the end of light pollution. The number of stars visible in the night sky was breathtaking, but did nothing to light the way when the moon was new, or covered by clouds.

They stuck to the edge of the highway, keeping hands on the raised side for guidance and keeping an eye on the closest cars. The moon lit their way, but not terribly well; it was a crescent, only a few nights away from leaving them in the dark. They couldn’t see into the more distant cars well enough to check what was inside.

They’d been picking their way carefully through for at least an hour by Ben’s best count when Claire spotted one. “Psst! There,” she said, pointing. She seemed to have better night vision than he did; he couldn’t see what she meant.

“There!” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but even that seemed suddenly loud. He sighted along her arm and moved forward a bit; several cars ahead, maybe the top of a head slumped to the side of a headrest. He couldn’t see well enough to be sure.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 17

Ben ran into the eroded hulk slowly, raising an ear-piercing grinding squeal as the metal undercarriage of the wreck broke and dragged across the pavement. Once he’d gotten it pushed out of their way, he drove around it and headed off down the highway and away from the Core.

They’d gone about fifty meters when their tires blew.

“Oh no. Oh crap.” Ben started sweating. After all that noise, it couldn’t be long until they had company.

“The highway’s raised here, it’ll take a long time for anything to get to us,” Claire said. There was an edge to her tone that suggested she was reassuring herself as much as him.

He let the car roll to a stop and let his head hit the steering wheel, then just sat there. Claire sat and looked at him a moment. “What…”

Ben got out and walked around behind the car. There, stretched across the width of the road, difficult to see from the car in the growing twilight, a long chain of tire spikes like the police used to use. “Where’s a tank when you need one?” Ben asked. Claire didn’t respond, instead moving over to the edge of the highway and peering down to the road below.

“There’s a few starting to gather, but they can’t get up here.” She looked almost … relaxed. Or maybe resigned. He joined her at the edge and looked down and out in all directions. There weren’t nearly as many here. He judged there probably wouldn’t be another huge horde. He also planned to be far away before he could verify whether he was right or wrong.

He sighed and looked at the car. The tires were shredded, and service stations weren’t of much use these days. “Driving like this will destroy the wheels fast,” he said.

“Maybe, but we can’t stay here all night. They’re slow, but they’ll get here eventually.”

He looked back at the chain of tire spikes. There was no rust, he noticed, no worn-away paint to speak of. They’d been put down relatively recently.

“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go. We’ll keep going till the wheels won’t go anymore.”

They’d gone about a kilometer, roughly a third of the way to the next exit, when they started spotting cars on the road again. They were in as good condition as the ones used for barricades had been; they hadn’t seen a living passenger for many years and the weather had taken its toll.

The wheels made a horrible amount of noise as they ground along the road, but the highway was still raised, and remained so for some time if Ben remembered correctly, so he tried not to worry about it. It wasn’t easy; if this day had taught him anything it was that silence really was golden.

Another loud, painful kilometer later, they stopped. They still had almost a kilometer left to go, but no more road to get there; instead there was just a great sea of ruined cars blocking their way. “Well,” he said, a lump in his throat as he peered into the growing darkness. “I guess we walk.”