After the Apocalypse

Zombie Apocalypse 300 - Act One

In the darkness the metal of wrecked and shattered cars glinted in his peripheral vision as the car headlights danced past them. They had worked over the months to clear this lane by pushing the abandoned hulks off to the side. He still had to fight the normal reaction of his brain to start at the glimpse of these automotive ghosts lurking and inert, crowded against the side of his open lane.

One had to drive with faith that the one lane was still clear.

The tires hummed on the asphalt. A strong smell of hot rock and dirt came through the window like the center of some ancient forge. The autumn moon hung full and ochre just above the naked trees. It was the harvest moon, partially obscured by stringy clouds, like something from the Halloween cards of old.

He scrunched forward in the seat, pulling himself forward with the steering wheel, shimmying his shoulders to loosen his neck. The landscape rushed by. He had gotten used to, and even started looking forward to his weekly run between the survivor outposts. Something routine and constructive to measure the days of the apocalypse.

The camp engineers, not much more than handymen and auto mechanics really, had welded and bolted a pipe framed cow catcher of sorts to fend off collisions of a non-lethal sort. The occasional deer or stray, but mostly the staggering undead.

It was like something in the old movies he’d watched as kids. They’d turn dumbly with hollow eyes into the onrushing vehicle. His cage would catch them with a surprisingly violent “chunk!” that would shudder through the frame of the truck. The splintered, gaping form would pinwheel, sometimes in pieces, up into the air and off the road.

He doesn’t like these encounters but he knows he has to tough it out and keep going if he wants to make it to camp B alive in the morning. He has to hang tough if he wants to survive. He always survives.

He sees them stumble out of the mist from the side and resists the urge to swerve. One catches low under the guard pipes and drags on the driver’s side, catching weirdly in the front wheel and causing the truck to pull hard left.

Standing on the breaks and fighting the wheel the other catches the side of the cage on the right and slingshots through the passenger windshield with a horrifying crunch. Trapped half in and half out the thing with great flaps of gory skin hanging snaps at him as he loses control and the truck digs into the shoulder.

The world turns in sickly slow motion as the truck flips, he doesn’t know how many times down the guard rail and across the median coming to wrecked and rocking stop against a ruined tractor trailer.

He blacks out.

…