He went another hundred yards and thought he saw something off in the gloom. Is that a car in the field? He stumbled on a little further and saw a someone standing next to it. Jesus Christ… he’s watching the town burn through fucking binoculars.
The binoculars swung Tommy’s way.
Hayden saw the man staggering along in the dirt. He focused in on the lone figure and calculated the distance. Four-hundred metres. He looks pretty fucked up. Maybe I should go help him.
A massive explosion ripped through the center of Brayburne. Hayden trained the binoculars back that way and saw an orange cloud bursting up into the sky. Must have been a gas station… maybe a big propane tank.
He hoped the flames would spread and burn all the creatures with it. They had been people minutes before, he thought grimly; soldiers, volunteers, citizens of Brayburne, and a few other thousand survivors that had found refuge in the small town. It was an awful thing to wish them all dead, but after seeing what they’d become—after seeing them stand back up and start feeding on the others being shot down—Hayden figured it would be a mercy.
Had he kept moving towards the vehicle compound, had he attempted to sneak back into Brayburne to steal a car, Hayden could very well be one of those un-dead things now.
The man in the field started yelling. Hayden swung the binoculars back his way. He knows I’m watching. He wants me to help. Hayden dropped the binoculars into the front seat of the Buick and started towards him. The man continued shouting at the top of his lungs. “Easy, guy,” Hayden muttered. “I’m coming.”
The shouting continued, and Hayden started to worry the things left in Brayburne would hear him if he didn’t shut his mouth. He looked towards town. Most of Brayburne was on fire now, and Hayden thought he could see something else as well. A black line was moving outwards from under the orange canopy of flames.
Hayden shouted back at the man still three hundred meters distant. “Keep quiet! They’ll hear you!” He waved his arms above his head, trying to signal the idiot into silence. It only made him yell louder.
Hayden hesitated fifty feet away from the car. The black line from town was growing, moving. He ran back to the Buick for the binoculars. “No. Shit, no.” The creatures in Brayburne were headed his way. They’d heard the man’s screams, and they were moving out into the field. There were hundreds of them, and they were moving fast.
Hayden tried starting the car again, but knew it wouldn’t work. The piece of junk was dead. He’d been under the hood and gone through the entire thing. He couldn’t see a thing wrong with it. The battery had plenty of juice, it turned over, but just wouldn’t catch. There was half a tank of gas inside, but it wasn’t doing him any good. At least that’s what the gauge read when he tried turning the engine over. Could the thing be out of gas? No, I couldn’t have been stupid enough to miss something as simple as that.
Hayden remembered the old Ford half-ton his father had given him for his sixteenth birthday. He always had to keep the gas tank half full, because once it hit an eighth of a tank, it would be bone dry empty. He’d been caught more than once learning that trick. Perhaps he’d been caught once again.
There were still three full canisters of gasoline sitting in the trunk. Hayden ran to the car’s back end and pulled one out. The things in the field were getting closer. His hands shook as he tried unscrewing the car’s fuel lid. He got it off and went to work on the cap of the 18-litre fuel container. Gas sloshed over his hands, stinging the cuts and abrasions on his knuckles. He screwed the attached spout in place and jammed its end into the car’s fuel tank. More gasoline leaked down the rusted fender. “Hurry! Hurry up and get inside the goddamned thing!”
The corpses were closing in. Some had split away from the main group and were running for the lone man in the field now less than a hundred meters from the Buick.
More gasoline was sloshing down the side of the car than was going inside the tank. The container was only half-emptied. Hayden looked up—they were less than fifty feet away. Fuck it. He dropped what was left and it splashed over his shoes and spilled into the dirt. As long as there was enough fuel in the tank to get him a few miles from here… if that was even the problem. He got behind the wheel and tried starting the car. The engine turned over, but wouldn’t ignite. He cranked it again and again to no effect.
The first bloated body flopped onto the hood and started raking at the windshield with its grey finger nails. Another slammed into the passenger door with enough force to rock the Buick back and forth. A third body jumped onto the trunk and scrambled up onto the roof.
Hayden continued turning the engine over, but it was draining the battery quickly. It was beginning to slow-churn. If he kept cranking it at this rate much longer, the entire thing would be dead. It’s an older car, he told himself. Like my old Ford pick-up. You have to tromp on the accelerator—pump the fucking thing up and down to work the gas through.
Hayden did just that. He pushed the accelerator pedal down and released it. Fat fingers were working their way in through the slit of open driver’s side window next to his face. Hayden ignored them. He pumped on the accelerator repeatedly and kept the key cranked over in the ignition. The engine was still making that mournful dying sound, like a helicopter rotor whirring down. Three bodies were now on the hood of the car. Their faces were pressed up against the windshield. Fat grey tongues were licking at the glass.
Hayden pressed the pedal down and kept it there. The old Buick roared to life three seconds later. It continued to scream until Hayden remembered to lift his foot off the pedal.
Drive. I have to put it in drive.
He had driven his first car at the age of eleven. It was like learning all over again. The windshield cracked. Hayden dropped the car into drive and punched down on the accelerator again. The Buick leapt forward and one of the bodies on the hood slipped away before its weight could push through the windshield altogether. He cleared the cluster of bodies around him, running over half a dozen more along the way. He drove north, towards the man he’d seen stumbling across the field. They hadn’t gotten to him yet, he was running west, keeping ahead of the things, but just barely.
The corpse on top of the car slid down onto the hood and Hayden slammed the brakes. It spun the body around, but the thing’s fingers dug into the hood’s edge where the windshield wipers met. It started pulling its grotesquely swollen form up towards him. Hayden recognized it as the young soldier from town that had given him and Caitlan directions to the supply tent. He wasn’t old enough yet to shave, Caitlan had said.
Hayden sped up, swerving hard to the left and then to the right, attempting to dislodge it from the hood. Its throat swelled out, like a giant bull frog taking in air. Hayden heard the skin pop over the roar of the car’s engine, and black liquid splattered all over the cracked glass in front of his face. It was how they spread whatever it was inside them, he realized. That crap would work its way through the cracks in the windshield and enter into his body. Hayden slammed on the brakes again and the thing finally fell away. He turned on the wipers to clear the black shit away, and slammed into two more bodies standing in the field. An arm detached and smacked into the side mirror of his door tearing it clean off. Hayden swerved and the car bounced up, crushing one of the bodies up into the wheel well. He could no longer see where the man in the field was. Hayden’s sense of direction was lost.