Chapter 3
What had I done?
I'd read a review once about my model year of Ford Taurus. I'd already bought the car, I'm not the type that reads all the reviews, buys all the magazines and does the research before plumping for a new car, I'd read this one in a significantly out of date motoring magazine whilst at the Clinic once. It had described the interior, which if it were light I would've seen was quite possibly the drabbest, greyish environment known to man, it was depressing; borderline out-right suicide-inducing. But it wasn't the décor on this journey that was suicide-inducing, nor depressing. It was the silence that existed between Jen and Me. The silence that my head internally filled with replaying what I'd done over and over again.
I loved Jen. Sure she was anti-gun, and had various other lefty leanings, but I wasn't really that set in my ways so much that so I could dig just about anything she liked. THIS was the reason she was anti-gun. What idiots like me, without the mental capacity to weigh the pros and cons and discharged their firearm. Those without the philosophical maturity to see another solution.
"You just killed that kid," she said, it was the first thing she'd said since we'd gotten out onto the road.
We were no more than a couple of minutes in. I'd already decided before we'd left we wouldn't be taking the turnpike, that thing was probably clogged to high hell with folks reacting to whatever was going on. Instead we'd make our way to my Mom in Yorktown via the surface streets. I'd done it before, it wouldn't take an extra 10 minutes… on a normal evening. Even so we'd already seen our fair share of the night's terrors.
Just as we'd pulled out of the parking lot a man, he was groaning and struggling to walk just like Latoya, walked out into the street. I'd slowed and moved to avoid, but; damn him, he'd stood in my way. He made a move to Jen's side of the car and had grabbed my wing mirror so I took my chance and sped off. I looked in my mirror as I went on, my move had sent him to the ground; but he was still moving; so was the least of my crimes this evening.
After this we'd passed the 7-Eleven on the corner, it had been ransacked. The looters, three white males; probably a little younger than me, stood triumphantly hoisting an opened beer over their acquired stash. The scene was illuminated by a car fire, presumably one they'd started. I drove past slow, fortunately none made eye contact. I gave them one final look in my mirror once we'd gone past; you could hear them crying out and firing their weapons into a small crowd that was approaching them.
Then we started passing the bodies. At first it was just a guy; he looked homeless, his body was strewn in the middle of the street, shot multiple times judging by the blood stains on his shirt. Another; this time a young black woman, was half submerged in a storm drain, she had a gunshot wound to the head. Then they got worse; A decapitated man and woman; a man in a suit with a gunshot wound to the side of his head and the pistol still in his dead hands.
"I just shot that kid yeah."
Shot sounded better to me than killed. Was he definitely dead? I'd shot the poor kid in the head, yeah he was dead.
I turned the Taurus onto 6th, the buildings on each corner were on fire, people; both the groaning shuffling kind and the running, yelling kind, littered the street. It was pure chaos.
Seeing the opportunity to change the subject; both for my standing with my beloved; and my own sanity: I needed to think about something other than sho – killing that kid.
"I'll find another way."
"It's carnage," Jen admitted, leaning forward in her seat; the first time she'd seemed engaged with the outside world.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked as I threw the car into R and looked over my shoulder.
As the car began to move backwards I took my eye away from the rear for a second and there was a thud. I'd hit more than my share of rabbits, coyotes, raccoons etc. to know what it sounded like when you hit a critter. This sounds like that; ten fold.
"Oh my god, we hit someone," Jen said, she was craning her neck to see behind us in the passenger mirror.
I'd immediately brought the car to a halt and was holding the wheel at ten and two, staring straight forward; as if this sudden adherence to this arbitrary rule would save me from whatever ramifications were going to come from my actions.
"I… I didn't see them," I stuttered.
"Go see," Jen said. I want to say right now, Jen was a smart girl. She could run rings around me when it came to; well pretty much anything; but god damn: "Go See?" WTF! I wasn't setting foot outside the car.
"I ain't – " was as far as I got before it stood up. The guy, person, thing; whatever I'd hit. It got straight up and was shuffling toward my driver's door, holding onto the side of the car.
Jen was following it's progress, same as me, but she got the better view being a couple of feet back in the other seat. She screamed. Maybe you'd think I'd forget that scream, after all I heard Jen scream; heard a lot of people scream a lot, since all this began but they always say you never forget your first. And this was the first time I'd heard anyone give that kind of primal scream. A scream our cavemen ancestors gave us to serve as a last ditch attempt to ward off danger, that really served no purpose now other than to let someone know you're scared.
The figure, half hunched over; and groaning with excited hunger, was leaving a blood trail down the side of the car as it lurched toward us. The driver's side rear, the one Jen was looking through was coated thick in, not just blood but also, what appeared to be somesort of entrails; as if this guy was walking along with his guts cut open.
I was frozen, some part of me had to see what was going to emerge once he reached my, thankfully locked, door.
"Oh jeez," I recoiled at the sight of him.
I was always bad with guessing people's ages; something made even more difficult now with the state of this guy; but I'd say he was maybe mid to late twenties. His jeans were drenched In blood, you could tell even in the dull fire light. His torso was bare, there was a laceration about the length of my forearm running from just below his navel upward towards what remained of his chest. His arms were pit marked with what looked like bite marks, dozens of them. But it was his face. It was one of the many haunting images I still see when I close my eyes.
I didn't really know what I was looking at, I just knew I needed to get away. Jen was still screaming. I floored the gas, and I could feel the panic brimming like a kettle coming to boil on a stove, when the engine roared into life; but the car didn't move. I managed to tear my eyes away from the horrific figure, just as it was starting to writhe and flail against the glass of my car door, and look down at the shifter. My brain managed a dose of fortitude and I threw the car into drive, having seen it was sat in neutral.
We sped forward, toward the flaming horror we'd first stopped and attempted to avoid, but away from this crawling, festering demon.
I spun the wheel and managed to turn the car in one manoeuvre after using both sidewalks (Caring not for the damage to my tire walls) and sped off in the opposite direct. Trying to simultaneously remember an alternate route around as 6th was a horror show and forget what I'd just seen.
Jen was quiet now. She'd just seen me shoot that kid. Then she'd seen me run over this guy. Then whatever the hell was happening on 6th. I looked over at her occasionally, but I didn't know what to say. I mean, I was freaking out as well. I just let her sit in the silence.
When I looked over a minute or so later she had screwed up her eyes. I couldn't quite tell if she was crying, trying to not cry, or just shutting the world out.
"Are you okay?" I said, making my fifth turn in as many minutes as I wound my way through the back streets, I was the other side of downtown now; making progress and managing to avoid the horror show.
She didn't respond; that was okay I decided, I didn't push her. In reality I needed that Human contact, just knowing she was there; that I needed to protect her was good enough for me.
The streets I was taking were relatively quiet. Occasionally you'd hear gun shots, but mostly they were distant. Most of the driveways of the houses we passed were empty, it looked as if most folk had got out of dodge; or were at least attempting to. A couple of times we saw police cars flash past at high speed headed back toward downtown. First time I was worried they may stop us and ask where we were going, maybe even turn us around. The news had said… Mom had said… they were gonna lock the town down. They never did. I guess they had bigger fish to fry than a guy and his girlfriend driving the speed limit in a Ford Taurus.
We turned onto Lennox Boulevard, it ran north to south and was the most major road we'd used in a while. I came to a halt at the stop sign and looked in both directions. We needed to head North, it was even sign posted Yorktown now, but I could see not more than a few blocks up the road was blocked. There was an overturned semi blocked the north carriageway and an unattended police barrier on the southbound. The other direction was clear; but that was the wrong direction. I sat for a moment, looking back and forth when I realised Jen had opened her eyes.
I was about to say something to her, but that's when the Dodge Ram slams into the back of us.
Next thing I remember was waking up with my ears ringing. All the shit that I'd left strewn across the backseat had joined me in the front and the airbag in my steering wheel had deployed. I looked to my right to check on Jen, but only her airbag was there. I fumbled for my seatbelt release, and then checked for my gun. I managed to fling the door open and fall out of the Taurus. My legs need a minute, understandable; but this wasn't the normal post-wreck scenario. There wasn't a small crowd of bystanders offering me help and saying I should "sue that guy" or asking if I needed to get to the hospital. Instead there was a din of muffled groans; all at a different pitch, as if it were many voices acting as one. I forced my body up, using the car as leverage. I surveyed the scene. The Taurus had been forced forward and it'd gone head first into the wall on the other side of the street. The Ram had stopped about mid way across; it looked in ok shape to say it'd just hit me. The driver's door was open and I couldn't see the driver. I looked over to the passenger side of the Taurus, off in the distance was the source of the multiple groans, a pack, or pod; or brigade or whatever the group noun is for those things, were approaching. I guess these guys were all getting along as they didn't seem to be attacking each other.
I hobbled around the car, still leaning my weight heavily on it, to find Jen on the floor. She'd evidently awoken just before me and had managed to open her door and roll out. I could see she was breathing and in my relief I uttered the words normally reserved for the climax of a horror movie; "We need to get the fuck out of here."
She heard me, opened her eyes and sat up. Apparently she'd weathered the crash better than I. I was seeing something different in her now, as if she'd been cleansed of her fear and reborn. "Where is that sum' bitch that hit us?" she asked, it was cute when she said slang in her East Coast accent.
"Don't know, don't care, we need to move," I pointed in the direction of the shuffling crowd.
"They're sick," she said, "Crazy. Just like they said on the news."
"My Mom's isn't too far, we can make it on foot," I re-assured her. In fact it might be easier as we could really stick to the seldom trodden paths that way. I'd had friends in these surroundings neighbours, and spent many a summer's evening biking to and fro so I knew my way back to my Mom's house.
"Which way?" Jen asked, she was ready to go.
"Actually," I said managing to finally stand under my own power, "The crash has done us a favour and opened a hole in the wall." I looked through the hole the Taurus had made in the road's 8ft side wall.
What was my plan now I asked myself. I was driving to my Mom's to rescue her, and drive off into the sunset; get out of town. Now, like in every other tough situation in my life, I needed her to rescue me. All I knew then was that we needed to get off that street, we needed to get to my Mom and then we could all jump in her Corolla and head into the Arklays.
Where the Taurus had hit into the wall a hole had opened up big enough for a person of medium build to slip through. I opened the Taurus' trunch with the key, for some reason in my delirious state in escaping the car I'd had enough thought to remove the keys from the ignition. I grabbed out my flashlight and began shining it through the hole in a vain attempt to make sure the coast was clear. I was distracted from my duties by Jen; "Mickey hurry up," she said. Patience was another one of her virtues, Christ I'm making her out to be a saint; heck I don't know but she's an definitely an angel, so for her to tell me to hurry meant something was really a miss.
"The f…" it was a man, clad in dirty blue jeans and a brown leather jacket slung over a wife-beater white vest. "The fuck you doing in my way," he asked. He was unsteady on his feet, I presumed this was the driver of the Ram.
I turned now to address the man, one hand on the flashlight, the other fondled the butt of my handgun in the back of my jeans.
The man was unarmed and seemed a little dazed. I could see both his hands and they were empty. I let go of my gun and outstretched my hand, making a downward gesture you would instinctively do to calm scared livestock.
"It's all gone to hell man, it's okay," I said. I could sense Jen looking at me, then to him, then back to me.
Whilst this was going on the groaning had grown louder; the horde closer.
"I…" the man said, going limp in one leg just for a second. He caught himself but stumbled backward, leaning against the tire on his truck.
"It's okay," I repeated the hand gesture.
Jen, I guess she sensed the damage was passed, took the flashlight from me and moved toward the opening in the wall. "We gotta go," she said. "Yeah," I agreed, making out the shadowy figures of the approaching horde.
I let Jen squeeze the hole first, and just as I passed through I heard the man cry out; "Hey wait up, I…" then the screams, the ravenous moans, then what I could only image was the ripping of flesh and the snapping of bones. I did whatever the hearing equivalent of screwing your eyes shut is. I took Jen by the hand and lead her away.
