“Is the detonator button still lit?”
“Yes,” the woman said, “but I told you, it’s just—”
“Local,” Sitterson said. He shuffled further beneath the unit and probed with his penlight, sniffing, smelling burnt plastic.
There!
He held the penlight in his teeth.
“Gary, we don’t have long,” Hadley said in his ear.
“Uh-huh.” He pulled the melted mass of wires apart.
“I mean it.”
“Uh-huh.” In the artificial light, orange and red were too close, indistinguishable, so he stripped all four wires with his thumbnail.
“They’re approaching the last bend. Damn, that kid can drive.”
“Shud the huck up!” Sitterson growled, and he touched wires. Sparks flew, he flinched, and then from above he heard a brief, victorious yelp.
“We’re up!” the man said.
Sitterson spat the torch aside and held the wires together.
“Blow it!” he shouted.
The woman smacked the big demolition button and Sitterson winced as he was shocked. Been sweating, wet, this might kill me. But the pain was brief, and when it passed he called out.
“So?”
“We’re good,” the man said.
“We’re good,” the woman echoed.
Sitterson twisted the wires and snaked his way out from beneath the unit. The guy and woman were staring at him, faces slack with almost unbearable relief. The man actually held out his hand to help him up. Sitterson stood on his own, wiping imaginary dust from his sweat-soaked shirt. He examined the burns on his thumb and forefinger, pus-blisters already forming there. That was going to hurt, but all was still.
Downstairs, all was still.
“Wipe your ass,” he said and, leaving them to their shame, he smiled and left the room.
NINE
Back up back up back up!” Holden shouted, and Curt slammed the Rambler into reverse, stomping on the accelerator and not even bothering to look in the mirror because he wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.
Holden and Dana crouched close behind Curt’s driver’s seat. We should get in back and hide, Holden thought, but that would have been unfair to Curt. Something kept them together. United by their near-escape, perhaps now they would all die together. At least being crushed by falling rocks was better than—
This is beyond the zombies, and we all know that now.
Ahead of them the tunnel was in chaos—ceiling falling, slabs of rock pounding down, walls blasting out, dust and grit billowing and scraping against the Rambler’s chassis and windscreen. Visibility was quickly reduced to zero, and their only hope of survival would be if Curt steered them back out into the open air.
A big rock scraped down the front of the vehicle, fracturing the windshield and tearing metal. Nevertheless, Curt held the wheel straight, foot pressed all the way down on the gas. The engine screeched in protest. They shook from side to side, and at the rear of the Rambler one of the sunroofs shattered and let in a shower of stinging debris.
Holden twisted to look and winced as his wounds distorted, and fresh blood flowed.
Through the back of the Rambler he saw a flash of trees.
“Almost there!” he shouted.
The roof was being battered now, dented and ripped where rocks struck. If the whole mountain comes down into the tunnel we’ll be squashed without even knowing what happened, he thought. He held Dana and kissed her, one hand around the back of her neck, another cupping her breast, and he felt her own desperate realization of their predicament.
If there was any way he’d wish to go…
And then they were out, and it was as if the weight of the world had been lifted from around them. There were no more impacts, and Curt looked back past them as he steered the vehicle far from the collapsing tunnel and up against the wall of the roadside cliff. He left the engine running and pulled on the parking break.
Their gasps mingled, and Holden did not let go of Dana’s neck. Given a choice, he never would again.
“Well… ” Curt said. He got up from his seat and kicked the door open. Bent metal shrieked in protest. Dana followed, and she reached back for Holden’s hand as they all exited to stand beside the battered Rambler.
Rumbles still issued from the tunnel’s mouth, and a pile of debris had spilled out across the road. Dust rose in billowing clouds. Grit rained down around them like hard rain.
“They might be following,” Dana said, glancing around nervously. Holden looked as well. The road was bathed in moonlight, but beneath the trees lurked the gloom that might hide anything.
“We drove really fast,” he said. “Even if they can run they’ll be a mile or two back, easy.”
“Yeah,” she said uncertainly, squeezing his hand. “No!” Curt shouted. “No fucking way! This isn’t happening! It’s right there! He gestured across the ravine at the ground beyond, and freedom. They could even see the road curving out from the tunnel, and a ponderous cloud of dust was making the onward journey that now eluded them.
Holden scanned the cliff face opposite, then walked to the edge on their side. The bottom of the ravine was hidden in darkness. There could be anything down there, but then… there was anything up here, too. There were fucking zombies up here.
“You got any climbing gear?” he asked Curt. “Ropes?”
“Yeah, in my fucking dorm room.”
“We can’t climb this. This is limestone, it’s slippery and it’ll crumble under pressure.” “We can’t go back,” Dana said, standing beside them at the cliff’s edge. “There’s no way across?” “What are we gonna do, jump?” Holden said, closing his eyes, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Dana said. “Not in the mood for a jump anyway.”
“No? Zombies don’t do it for you?”
“Dude,” Curt said quietly.
“What?”
Curt nodded back at the Rambler.
“The dirt bike on the back,” he said. “I’m good.” For a few seconds Holden didn’t really comprehend what he meant. So he was good on a dirt bike, how did that help them if…?
“You’re serious,” Dana said, and then Holden got it. He looked from Curt to the other side of the ravine, then back again.
“You really think you can…?”
Curt shrugged, frowned then nodded. Nodded again, harder. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah I can. Now help me get the thing ready, will you?”
The three of them lifted the bike from the rack, and Curt checked it over to make sure it hadn’t been damaged in the rockfall. All we need now’s a puncture, Holden thought, but the bike had survived in good shape, protected by the bulk of the larger vehicle. Curt sat astride, fired it up and did a couple of gentle circuits around the Rambler, making himself comfortable and spinning the rear wheel a few times.
“Holden, we should stop him,” Dana said. “You think he’ll listen to us?”
“No, but we should try.”
Holden knew she was right. But at the same time he was looking at the jump and trying to judge the distance, the arc the bike would take, and the chances of Curt making it across. And the more he looked, the more he thought it looked good. There was a decent rise on this side just before the drop-off, and the other side was clear of trees and boulders. A good place to land, so long as he stopped before the cliff face over there. And then if the bike made it in one piece he could go for help, be back here within a couple of hours with cops and the army and—