As the bus approached, we gained interest among the herd. They turned toward us, arms out, as they stumbled forward.
“You’re going to have to gun it,” Dave said. “There are so many, we could risk getting stuck.”
“Buckle in,” I said.
“You want me to get us across?”
“I have this.” I stomped my foot down on the pedal. The engine let out a whine as it picked up speed. Gene must have tweaked things under the hood. This bus had some serious pick up.
I held the large steering wheel in both hands. I switched from the center to the left lane. Seemed like less disabled vehicles, as if most drivers had tried to pull over to the side before turning into zombies. How very thoughtful.
I sucked in a deep breath and held it.
The bus gained momentum. The speedometer indicated we were going nearly fifty. I looked at the road.
The cow-scoop was made of steel. It came to a nice point. It would plow these monsters easily out of the way. I braced for impact.
They looked up at me. All of them. The bus barreled into them, but I saw it happen individually.
The front of the scoop sliced into a woman who’d looked too thin, dressed in clothes that were tattered and worn. Loose skin hung from her face in jagged flaps. Large yellow pus boils oozed on her forehead. Both congealed eyeballs, white, cloudy and lifeless, stared up at me as her body was split in half.
The man next to her was shredded. The scoop caught his feet, knocked him onto his back. I imagined the steel peeling back flesh off his legs, and gut. With a bump, he was gone, under the scoop.
The rest of them I saw differently.
I saw lawyers and doctors. There were construction workers and waitresses. I ran over coworkers, peers. I was crushing fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. There were grandparents. Friends.
I couldn’t keep doing it. The screams filled my head; resounded like hollow echoes inside my skull. My mouth was open. My jaw ached.
I was screaming, too.
I know I was. I heard me. My voice mixed with the lost voices of all the beings I ran over.
All the lives coming an end.
They may have been dead already. Monsters. Zombies.
No. They were dead. Dead, and gone.
I cut the wheel to the right, and avoided an SUV, and a VW. I knocked more creatures out of the way. They fell under the tires. The bus bounced over corpses. We lost the road many times, riding solely on limbs and torsos and innards.
And I screamed, but I had it. I kept control of the bus. We were safe inside, safe as I decimated the herd, the horde of zombies. Destroyed them.
“Chase! Don’t stop.” Dave was beside me. He braced both hands on the dash. “We’re almost there. We’ve just about made it!”
My foot must have come off the pedal. Subliminal, or something. I wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t. This was a curse. It would be a part of me forever. I knew I’d never be able to bury the memory. Instead, I finished watching the destruction unfold. I would never forget it. These were more images added and burned to memory; more material that would wait to play out in nightmares destined to keep me from ever again getting a full night’s sleep.
I used my forearm to wipe away tears, as I punched the gas pedal. The bus picked up speed, climbing back toward fifty miles per hour.
Chapter Twenty-Five
2227 hours / 305 miles to go
Any time I think of Waco, all I can remember is the Branch Davidian shoot-out. It took place in 1993. Four ATF agents and six members of a cult were killed. What followed was a fifty-day standoff that the entire world watched. I recall being riveted to my television at home, and it was on at work, even though little to nothing happened during those days, just a ton of views of the infamous compound at Mt. Carmel. It came to a head as the explosive climax erupted for everyone to see. A fire was started and David Koresh, the cult leader, along with seventy-three of his followers, including men, women and children, perished.
It seemed fitting that this was where the bus broke down. Waco, Texas.
Steam spat from the radiator. We’d been riding the bus hard for over a thousand miles. The few stops we took along the way did little to let the engine rest and recoup, if, in fact, engines rested and recouped. Andy, Dave and I stood at the front of the bus with the hood lifted and played flashlight beams over a broken engine.
“Overheated?” Andy said.
“Seems like it.” Dave shook his head. “We just add water?”
“I guess,” I said. “We should let it cool down before we remove the cap.”
“Where’s the cap?” Andy said.
Dave pointed. “That it?”
I shrugged. “Could be.”
Melissa stuck her head out of the driver’s side window. “How we doing?”
“Have it running in no time,” Andy said. Dave and I looked at him. “What? We can fix it, can’t we?”
I bit my lip. I knew shit about vehicles, and even less shit about repairs. I could put gas in the tank. Air in the tires. Wiper fluid in the reserve. “I hate to use up the last of our water.”
“We have three hundred, three hundred fifty miles to go, still. I’d rather be a little thirsty on a bus for the next six hours
“Well, this is the radiator right here in front,” Dave said. “The cap is, it’s . . . there it is.” His light caught a cap on the side of the radiator. “We let it cool down a little, add a gallon of water or two, and we should be good.”
“If it is just the radiator,” Andy said.
“It’s just the radiator,” I said. “Let’s close the hood and get back on the bus.”
We were already on Interstate 35. This road led right to the bridge at the border. Three hundred and some-miles was tasteable, that’s how close we were. It was near impossible not to imagine getting across the Rio and into Mexico and everything just being rosy and wonderful.
It wouldn’t be.
I wasn’t stupid. It just helped to think that way. It helped keep me focused, I guess. Helped keep me motivated to move forward. I had mourning that needed to be done. Desperately. I was holding off as best I could. I wouldn’t be able to hold off much longer. My heart felt shredded.
“Back on the bus, then?” Dave said.
“Yeah.” I switched off my flashlight. We didn’t need to attract attention. For the most part, we were stranded. Sitting ducks. I think we all knew it. No one said it though. Seemed if you left things unsaid, they couldn’t possibly be true. Apply liberal sarcasm, but it is what it is.
Once on the bus, we closed and locked the door.
“What’s going on?” Charlene sat near the front. She kept the folded map in her hand. “You can’t fix it?”
“We need to wait for the radiator to cool down. We’ll add water to it, and be on our way,” I said.
“How long until it’s cool?”
It was warmer in Texas than it had been in Pennsylvania, but it was night time. The sun was gone, so it was still somewhat cold out. “Shouldn’t be long.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” Melissa sat in the seat behind my daughter.
“Maybe relax,” Andy said. It was a lovely thought. Wouldn’t happen. Like I said, we were fucking sitting ducks.
“How is Michelle doing?”
“She has a fever,” Melissa said. “Kia is back with her now. She’s lost a lot of blood. This trip isn’t helping. There’s still a bullet in her leg somewhere. We’re going to have to get that out. If we don’t, she’s going to die.”
I didn’t want to see anyone else die. We’ve all suffered horrible losses. I didn’t know how Melissa was holding herself together. For that matter, I didn’t know how I was.