Free Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel by Jay Wilburn Page A

Plymouth.
    We dove down the slope sharply spraying light into the tall grass. Equipment in the back clattered and banged. Doc slid forward on the floor and caught himself with his feet on each base of the front jump seats. It felt again like the truck was going to flip.
    Chef turned and power slid along the grass as we moved off the slope on to flat ground. He moved us through the wave of bodies hitting as few as possible. He turned and accelerated again as he swerved away from the trees toward the gap of trail leading to the paved road. He hit several bodies from the side jarring the truck as he forced his way through the mob to reconnect to the road.
    The shocks smashed against the undercarriage as we bounded up on to the cracked pavement over the low shoulder. We coasted for a moment as Chef wheeled us to the left and then back to the right.
    He mumbled, “Which … which side of the …”
    Doc and Short screamed over the top of each other.
    Doc yelled, “Right, right, go to the right … mostly north to the right. Go!”
    Doc couldn’t see from the floor, but he seemed sure.
    Short yelled, “Away from the zombies. Go to the right before they pin us in again.  Go to the damn right, David, please!”
    Chef wheeled us right and drove away just as the fingers of the late arrivals began scratching at our abused fender.
    The lights cast shallow beams on the dark road as we sped along with wind rushing through the grating of open windows in at least two places where the plastic had fallen away in the cab somewhere. Short Order slunk down inside his coat to protect his ears from the cold. Chef gripped the top of the stirring wheel with both hands as he stared forward. The lights would get lost in the trees as the remains of the road turned sharply one way or the other. Chef and my heart barely slowed down as we slid through the curves in the blind darkness.
    This seemed like the time we would go off the road and have to start walking.
    Doc stumbled back up into his seat and strapped in this time. He fumbled with the tanks and gear in the back.
    “How bad is it, Doc?” Chef asked.
    “You talking about the gear or whether I shit my pants?” Doc called back.
    “John, please,” Chef yelled.
    Doc answered, “The fuel didn’t spill. Stuff is thrown around and dumped out. I don’t see anything broken, but we won’t be able to tell until we stop or its morning.”
    Chef kept driving.
    Doc said more quietly to me just over the wind, “Mutt, did you see the one in the ‘Kiss My Clover’ shirt. That looked just like the one Donny Gordon used to wear all the time. I didn’t know they made two of them. If that zombie was fatter, I would have sworn it was him.”
    It had said Pluck My Clover, they probably didn’t have many of them, and that zombie had been fatter before we busted his gut open back near the Complex. I didn’t say anything and Donny was probably slowly dragging his guts back to the road to slowly follow us again.
    Chef kept driving.
    As my heart finally began to give up and slow down again, I wondered if I had been that scared the night I lost my mother or any night since then. If I knew what was going to happen in one week, I wouldn’t have even wondered. Most likely I would have begged Chef to take us back mostly south through the zombies again. After the dead rose, we just survived and figured we knew what scared us most as we ran from them, but then we opened a trunk and found a den of snakes or something much worse.
    As the zombies dropped back behind us, we kept driving into the dark road ahead.  They were slower, but they would keep coming as we ate or slept. It didn’t matter how far we drove unless we found somewhere to go.
    Chef kept driving.

     
     

     
    Chapter 4: The Week We Worked on Our Recipes

     
    We fell into a routine of sorts over the next few days.
    We slept less in the truck. Buildings were tough to find in any livable condition. Nature had proven to be a tough landlord once