Free 900 Miles: A Zombie Novel by S. Johnathan Davis Page B

zombies; some of which had a couple dozen; others we passed only had a two or three.  Knowing that we would not be able to stop for any real length of time, we tried to put as much distance between the last one we saw and ourselves before we pulled over to tend to our passengers wound.  In the meantime, I had handed him my boss’s old coat, and Kyle applied as much pressure as possible to his stomach to slow the bleeding. I wondered how long it would take him to change from human to zombie. I couldn’t shake that thought.
    A mile or so in, the guy stopped screaming.  I glanced back, sure that he was dead. He was an older gentleman, still in great shape for his age, and had a full head of silver hair.  He lay bleeding all over the back seat, clutching his briefcase as if his life depended on it.  Kyle and I were discussing where to head when the man began to speak.
    “Water.  Do you have any water?” he croaked.
    I looked back at him, and saw blood pooling on the floorboards, as Kyle reached into the small cooler and pulled out one of the bottles we scavenged the day before.
    Twisting off the cap, he tried to hand it to him, but the old man couldn’t lift his hand to grab it.  Instead, Kyle reached over and poured some into his mouth.  He tried to swallow, immediately choking on the liquid, and shot blood splatter across the back of the front passenger seat.
    Minutes later, he passed out from shock.
    Kyle and I drove for twenty minutes or so in silence.  We passed a number of wrecked cars, a downed power line and the remains of a small house that had burned to the ground.
    When we were convinced that we had taken enough turns and detours to shake even the smartest zombie, we began looking for a place to pull over. We finally found a small bridge that had an access road, which twisted down to a sewer drainage system below.  Agreeing that it would be a good place to hide, we parked under the bridge and positioned the Hummer so we could see one hundred yards or so in both east and west directions.
    We pulled the old man out of the back of the vehicle, and laid him down on the concrete floor of the bridge. He was breathing, but just barely.
    Kyle tore open his shirt, and we saw that there was something lodged in the right hand side of the old man’s stomach, keeping the wound open, allowing the precious red-black liquid to pour from his body.
    Kyle pulled out the less than adequate emergency kit that we had scavenged, and rummaged through the Band-Aids and Neosporin before he found a small needle and thread.
    Taking a nearby stick, and shoving it sideways into the old man’s mouth, he asked me to put my hands over the guy’s face to keep him from screaming too loud and alerting any nearby creatures.
    The gentleman’s eyes went wide, as he woke up in that instant, and realized what we were about to do.  Kyle reached down, and grabbed the end of the metal object in his gut and carefully pulled it out.  The man’s eyes closed hard, and he tried to scream through the stick and my hands, his entire body tensing and arching into the air.
    Kyle fell back before he regained his balance and began sewing up the wound with the needle and thread.  Still trying to scream, the man’s face was bright red, and had a mix of tears and sweat running down to the pavement, when he finally passed out again.
    Kyle was no expert, and this guy was going to have a nasty scar, but he was able to close up the hole.  Only time would tell if we did it soon enough.

Chapter 10
     
    Enjoying the finer things in life.
     
    We used the water under the bridge to help clean out the Hummer.  Washing away dried blood, old food wrappers and that half-eaten sandwich from my boss.  I found myself wondering which was really more disgusting.
    Not spending too much time in that particular spot, we used the rest of the day scavenging through more cars for food and siphoning more gasoline.  We had a good system down, and were mindful to keep an eye