Nightfall brought the rain, the fires burning throughout the city hissing in protest. Big drops hit the roof of the van in random pats, distracting us as we kept on the lookout for any threats ahead.
We reached a bridge that crossed over a jam of vehicles on the highway below. There was a shotgun blast and pellets pelted the van, the spray louder than the rain.
“Stop here,” Tarah said, eyes on the street ahead. “Let’s find another way around.”
“I can’t think of a worse place we could stop. Ever heard of a ‘sitting duck?’”
She pointed to the shadowy outline of a church at the next corner, the steeple rising into the gloom, nearly covered from foundation to roof by writhing revenants climbing each other towards the bell tower. Some had fallen on the bird spikes that ran along the roof’s ridge, squirming to free themselves from the thin metal wires piercing their dead gray bodies.
A man’s shadow appeared as he leaned out of a tower window, blasting away at anything that moved, which included our van as soon as we came into range. “Back to Hell with you!” his voice carried in the wind, cursing the undead all around him. Vastly outnumbered, he was taking his last stand.
Tarah countered before I could even utter a word. “We are not going over there to get ourselves killed with that guy. Understood?”
“What about luring them away with a distraction? He’s trapped up there.”
“He’s safer up there than we are down here.”
“There’s no reason to split hairs. We’re all fucked.”
Above Tarah’s objections, I floored the gas pedal and aimed it for the church’s front steps, where fewer revs were vying for the tower. We plowed into a small group congregating near the front doors and they flew off into the soggy darkness like bowling pins, except for two revs crushed against the top steps by the van’s bumper as the vehicle came to rest at an angle. Whatever energy they had left their bodies and they wilted like flowers, resting their heads against the van’s hood.
I lowered the window and crawled out to my waist, where the man could spot me from his perch in the tower. Fighting through the din of pouring rain and wind and violence, I waved my arms in the air until he spotted me and swung the barrel of his shotgun right toward me. I swallowed hard and chalked myself up as a goner, only moving enough to clench every muscle I had in preparation for death.
“Wait!” I yelled.
Thankfully, the man didn’t fire.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Jump down!”
“What?”
I pointed to the roof of the van, where the giant chicken gently swung back and forth in the gale. “Jump down to the van!”
He stopped to survey the scene, frantically calculating. Then: “It’s too far!”
“Get closer to the ledge and jump!” I cupped my palms around my mouth like a megaphone, as if that made a difference. “The ledge!”
The man fired a couple more rounds from his shotgun to clear his personal space and then disappeared as he headed toward the tower’s rear window. Then he shortly reappeared, shotgun in one hand and the other holding onto the tower’s slick brickwork, slipping and then recovering before reaching the edge of the roof, just above the elaborate ornaments framing the church’s front doors.
He judged his distance once again. I heard him clearer this time: “It’s still too far, man. It’s gotta be 30-40 feet to the ground.”
“Don’t worry about the ground. Land on the roof of the van. Aim for the chicken!”
“Do what?”
“The chicken! Hug the chicken!”
The man hesitated, reassessing, even shaking his head in disbelief a couple of times. He was about twenty feet above the van…just high enough to fuck something up…break a bone or twist an ankle, wounds that became more serious in the current environment. He watched revs approaching as they crawled over others that were gripping the bird spikes, or becoming impaled on them.
The man planted his ass on the edge of the eaves and, using his arms at his sides, pushed himself off the ledge. He fell awkwardly and caught a loafered foot at the top of the doorway trim that caused him to tumble in the air, yet still able to land on his feet on the van’s roof with an “Oof!” He slid across the slick metal that sloped toward the street until he wrapped his arms around the giant chicken in the center of the roof like a pining lover, using it to stop his momentum. The giant spring caused chicken and man to lean to and fro as they settled, like the ticking of a Salvador Dali metronome. Then the man released the chicken from his arms and rolled to the ground at the top of the church steps.
“You all right?” I asked him. “That was quite the spectacle, buddy!”
Hector opened the side door for the man, who climbed inside next to him. Both would have to make-do in the back of the cargo area without seats. I shifted the van into reverse to the street and then floored it forward, away from the mob overtaking the church, the chicken leaning back above us with the force of acceleration.
“Thanks for the help,” said the man, futilely wiping his face and head with a dirty wet handkerchief. “I’m Payton. The Reverend Payton.”
“I’m Neil. That’s Tarah…Hector’s next to you. What the hell were you doing on the roof?”
“That’s my church. I was trying to protect it…like a damn fool.”
“Why not be at home with your family?” Tarah asked.
“That is my home. And I’m divorced.” Payton balanced himself behind the two front seats, his shotgun getting a chance to cool off. He looked ahead through the windshield. “You might not know this, but we’re not getting too far heading the way we’re going. The streets get hairy on the other side of the stadium…another half-mile or so.”
“What do you mean by ‘hairy?’” I asked. “We need to keep heading south. We’re looking for a bridge.”
“There’s a bridge to the south all right, but the roads to get to it are impassable.”
“Impassable? How?”
“Look, everything I know comes from people running for their lives in the opposite direction we’re heading. The streets are jammed. Cars…bodies…rubble….a sea of death. Five hundred thousand living dead people and not a single soul can be saved.” He pointed ahead. “You might want to slow down. See what I mean? There’s a blockade.”
“Don’t stop unless you have to,” said Tarah, a hand on my right arm.
I peered through the rainy darkness ahead, the narrowing street causing unease. As big as the city was, there was barely enough room to maneuver, giving a claustrophobic vibe.
The approaching intersection contained an elevated pedestrian bridge crossing between two identical high-rises. Vehicles and debris were piled against the bridge at that choke point, blocking passage directly underneath the bridge.
We were getting close enough that I needed to decide in an instant whether to turn at the intersection or stop altogether. I rested my foot on the brake pedal, all eyes scanning for movement around the blockade area we’d just pulled up to.
“I get the feeling we’re going to regret this,” said Tarah, peering from her window.
“It seems quiet enough,” I said. “We should take a closer look. Maybe we can get around it somehow. Maybe further down a block or two.” I shifted into Park and reached for the door handle, before feeling Tarah’s hand again on my arm, this time gripping tightly.
“Are you crazy? If you step out of this vehicle, we’re leaving you here. Whether we put you out of your misery first is up to you.”
“All right, fine.” I jerked my arm back and it hit the center of the steering wheel hard enough for a short toot of the horn. Big mistake.
Faces with dead eyes appeared inside the twin buildings’ dark windows lining the ground floor, hostility blooming as they spotted the van’s headlights with fresh food inside, like we were canned meat. They threw themselves against the glass with abandon until the double panes gave way and then the rush was on…bodies flowing to the street like a wave of rancid water.
While the others readied their weapons, I threw the van into reverse and floored the gas pedal, the neglected vehicle hesitating like a cranky old man. I turned the wheel but not enough, and we slammed into something behind us I hadn’t seen in the mirror. Payton was thrown off balance, his shotgun putting a galaxy of buckshot holes in the roof like a yokel at a rural stop sign.
Bodies hit the van like a tidal wave, rocking it violently. I shifted back into Drive and turned the wheel hard to the right, trying to compensate for the sluggish response from the extra weight. As I stomped on the gas, a rev dressed in a professional baseball uniform cracked and shattered the window inches from my head, its veiny hand grasping a palm-sized chunk of concrete that was subsequently aimed at my skull. I leaned forward, dodging the swipe, while Tarah fired and missed with her pistol.
The rev dropped the rock and grabbed the steering wheel to try to climb through the window, causing the van to veer sharply to the left and into the path of a cement pillar doing its part to hold up the pedestrian bridge we were rapidly approaching. It was too late to turn away.
“Hold on!” I yelled, slamming the brakes and slowing our momentum, but not enough to avoid a collision. We slammed into the concrete column with enough force to bring the rear tires off the ground, sending revs flying forward all around us. The windshield broke and flew outward, landing flat on the remains of the van’s hood in one spidery-cracked piece. With every window in the van broken, revs struggled to get inside as the four of us recovered from the impact. Airbags had helped Tarah and me with the impact, but Payton and Hector weren’t so lucky and they were thrown into the backs of the van’s seats.
Dazed, I grabbed the bag near my feet where it ended up near the pedals, and I thought I heard a voice calling out from above. I ignored it until I determined my imagination wasn’t deceiving me and looked up into the sky, squinting from the rain falling on my face through where the windshield used to be. A lone head poked over the edge of the ped bridge like a bump on smooth skin. “Hey! Up here! Everyone OK?” the head asked. “Can you climb up?”
I looked up silently, feeling the icy rain, knowing the right words if only they’d come to me…or any words at all. I looked down and to my right, where Payton nursed a head wound with that same dirty handkerchief. “Who the hell taught you how to drive?” he asked me, holding his bleeding head. I wasn’t able to answer. Everything was moving in slow motion.
I looked upwards to the bridge again, but the head was gone. Then a yellow strap fell from over the ledge, the kind that flatbed truckers secure their loads with. The metal bracket at the end clanged against the wet plastic of the dashboard.
The head reappeared above us. “Come on! Grab the strap and climb up!”
“Go!” Tarah yelled to me, as she twisted and grabbed Payton’s shoulders to help him pull upright.
“Can he climb up?” I asked her.
He waved us off. “I’m okay…just trying to stop the blood. I’ll be right behind you.”
I swung my bag over a shoulder and grabbed onto the yellow strap, slick from the rain. I tied a thick knot at the end of the strap and put it between my feet, hoping it would add some stability. After I felt a strong tug from above, I put all my weight on the strap, swinging a few feet over to the side of the pillar we’d crashed into, and where I found good footing on the rough concrete. With help from above, I reached the bottom edge of the bridge and then climbed onto the platform, momentum rolling me across the puddles. My soaking-wet clothes must have added an extra ten pounds.
I got to my feet on the bridge and moved to where three helpers were, two of them holding the strap and one holding a rifle. All wore balaclavas, hiding their faces.
Tarah was next to climb up, taking the opportunity to blast a couple of revenants encroaching on Payton back at the van.
“Hurry!” I yelled, firing right where I’d been sitting moments earlier, as revs breached the vehicle, slipping and sliding on the faux-leather seats.
“Shut up!” Tarah replied, climbing over the edge and onto the platform next to me, with Hector right behind her.
The van was swarmed with revenants, cutting off Payton’s escape route through the front window. Instead, he scrambled deeper into the van, dumping his ammo bag, shotgun shells falling near his knees. He loaded two shells and shot upward in the same spot he’d accidentally shot earlier, the blast pumping more pellet holes through the steel roof. Then he reloaded two more shells and shot again. With the structure weakened, Payton flipped the shotgun around and used the butt to bust out a crude hole in the roof, where he squeezed out to safety, leaving everything except what he was wearing while the revenants filled the van but only finding each other.
On top of the slick, dented roof, Payton used the giant chicken as a brace to get to his feet. Reaching the top edge of the windshield, he leaned forward and grabbed the yellow strap, wrapping it around his waist before making the quick swing to the pillar. We were all pulling on the strap by that point and Payton landed on the deck of the bridge, just as the revenant mob below covered the van like ants on a dropped candy.
“We can’t stay here long,” one of them said. “They’re frenzied.”
“Then let’s go,” I said. “We’ll follow you.”
We headed down the ped bridge to the other side of the building, where a stairwell—blocked off at the street—met the second floor of a building that turned out to be a hotel. We entered a single-bed hotel room through a broken window, then down a hall and into another stairwell, also blocked from the first floor with furniture and other debris jammed into the path to block (and control) access.
We started up the stairs, our rescuers’ headlamps illuminating the stairwell’s gray walls.
“Where are we headed?” Tarah asked.
“To the roof,” one of them, a woman, responded.
We climbed and climbed without a further word until we reached the top floor of the hotel, where we continued down a hall and through a maintenance room full of pipes and machinery that opened to the roof. Then we marched single-file across the roof, splashing through the water the whole way until reaching the far side, further into the block. From that vantage point high above the street, I got a good look at the other side of the blockade, where a vast, writhing crowd of revenants stood and swayed like docile drunks, as though unsure of what to think about the pouring rain or the proximity to each other. Now that we weren’t making as much noise, they’d become more passive. But they were still on alert because they could remember something was amiss, somewhere.
We crossed to the roof of the next building via a metal utility bridge that strained under our weight, then finally to the building at the end of the next block, where we ducked inside and joined three more people from their group—also masked—in their primitive living quarters inside a large unused studio apartment. Bedrolls laid on the tile floor next to storage bags for things both collective and personal, while towers of storage boxes stood out of the way, many stacked in front of windows. Black trash bags were taped to the windows themselves to keep visibility on either side to a minimum.
“How many people are we going to see heading in the wrong direction today?” one of them asked as we entered. “Is there a Crazy Convention downtown we don’t know about?”
“Since you brought it up,” our guide asked, “where’s the new guy?”
“Taking a leak…hopefully where I showed ‘im. You know the window where you can tinkle on a few on the street.”
“You’re just aggravating them, you know. You sure the guy’s not raiding our supplies?”
“Mr. USA? Did you get the thief vibe from him?”
The guide shrugged. “I guess not. I’m still a little surprised he wasn’t carried off by a bald eagle to sit at the feet of Abraham Lincoln.”
“I know a guy like that,” I said.
“Here he comes now.”
My jaw dropped as Sam walked through the door, zipping his fly. “Any hand sanitizer around here, fellow Americans?”
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