Donna hit the gas once again as they cleared around the side of the wreck. The road ahead looked clear.
"Don’t go too fast," Jack said, "We might round a bend and come across another accident."
Donna eased up on the gas slowing the vehicle down to around 35 miles-per-hour. She breathed out and felt her fingers aching from how hard she squeezed the steering wheel. She let the blood flow back into them by relaxing her grip.
The road ahead was covered in a thick blanket of smoke.
"Jack, I bet the shopping plaza by the sewage plant is on fire."
"It could also be the gas station or hotel," he replied.
A figure emerged out of the smoke; the man's clothes and flesh had been burned off, yet he still walked.
Donna drove the vehicle by him and into the wall of smoke. The thick cloud poured into the vehicle. Her visibility cut down to around ten feet, and she was forced to slow the vehicle.
She covered her mouth and coughed when smoke hit her lungs and her eyes burned. She tensed waiting for the dead to emerge from the smoke and attack them.
The vehicle punched through the ash to clear air.
Donna reached out and hit the window button on her side of the car to help clear out the lingering smoke in the car.
To the right they drove past a Burger King; an SUV sat half inserted into the front glass of the building. A body hung inert out of the driver's side window.
Halfway up the hill heading south on Route 8, things got interesting.
They came across the first dead body lying on the road.
"Hold up," Jack told Donna.
She slowed the vehicle to a stop to the left of the body. Jack opened the door and stood up halfway out of the vehicle.
"Been shot", Jack stated.
Donna looked around the area, scanning for zombies. Up off the road, and underneath a billboard, a zombie moved in their direction. "Look by the billboard, Jack."
"I see them," Jack said. "The rest of the area looks good. In fact, this is as good an opportunity as any we could hope for."
"Opportunity for what?” Donna said.
"Grab your .22; it’s time for you to be blooded."
Donna pulled the latch and pushed on her car door; it took a bit of effort with the added weight of the hill pressing down. She brought the gun up in her hands and examined the wood-stocked, bolt-action rifle.
"Do you need some help?" Jack said.
"No it's exactly like one of my Dad's guns."
Jack continued to examine the body on the highway while Donna loaded ammunition into the gun.
"Donna, the good news is that someone obviously knows how to kill these things. Looks like a few dozen more of them were killed up the road. The bad news is that whoever did these things in is no longer here. In other words, what ever they were dealing with they could no longer hold the ground they were standing on."
The zombie continued at them; when it got closer, they could see it was wearing a grey suit and yellow tie. The suit had dark red sections from where he had bled underneath. His white button-up-shirt hung open at the waist and was torn.
"This guy dressed for his own funeral," Jack smirked.
"Yeah, bet he was a lawyer," Donna replied. She brought the rifle up to her eye and aimed it across the roof of the car at the zombie.
"Shit, if that’s a lawyer how are we going to know if it’s a zombie or not?" Jack said.
Bang! Donna fired the gun at the man now 25 yards away. The bullet hit him on the right side of the head above the ear. The round bounced off the side of the head not having the force to penetrate the skull at this range. It sent a tuft of skin flapping off the skull that continued to hang down over his ear.
Donna felt her stomach tense as the zombie continued to approach. Keep breathing she thought to her self.
"Donna,” Jack said. “He could still be a lawyer. They are known to be thick in the head."
Jack moved around behind the car as the zombie dropped the yardage to them. Donna pulled the bolt open and chambered another round.
She remembered her Dad telling her about shooting as a kid. Don’t pull the trigger, her dad would say. Just squeeze with the tip of your finger as you exhale. The zombie was less than ten yards away.
Bang! The round hit it dead center in the forehead. The head jerked back, and the body fell forward falling on the pavement. It didn’t move.
"I’m going to put another round in its head just to make sure,” Donna said. She walked around the side of vehicle and loaded another round with Jack following close behind. The zombie lay face down on the pavement re-expired.
"Looks like the round didn’t penetrate out the back," Jack said. "Punctured the skull on entry, but didn’t have enough snot to get out the back. Bet it kind of rattled around in there a bit."
Donna brought the gun up and fired into the head again. It made a mess on the concrete around the dead man's mutilated body.
"We’d better go," Donna said, "but if he was a lawyer we should have used silver bullets to make sure he doesn’t come back."
The joke helped her stomach relax, but she felt her hands shaking now after the fact. Jack reached out and touched her shoulder.
"You alright?" he asked.
"Just nerves," she replied. “I'm scared."
"Donna, you're doing better than me, you had to pull me off the street yesterday in front of my house. We just need to learn to deal with this, and we can make it. The airport is only a few miles down the road."
Inside the car, the cat "meowed" out.
"Naomi, it’s cool, we are getting back in the car now," Jack said.
Donna got behind the wheel of the car and drove them up the hill. Corpses dotted the highway, and she swerved left and right to avoid them. At the top of the hill by the car dealerships, the bodies covered most of the road forcing her off to the side as she drove.
"God help us," Donna said, "There are so many bodies."
"Looks like it thins out a bit as the highway heads into the dip, but someone made a good effort to thin them out."
Donna weaved the vehicle through the bodies dotting the highway for the next couple of miles till they reached the northern edge of the big dip in the highway. On the opposite edge of the dip across the valley, they could see several emergency vehicles with their light bars flashing behind some kind of roadblock.
"Jack!" Donna said, "There are police over there."
"Look down," Jack said. "The authorities might as well be on the moon for all it's going to matter to us. Somebody blew up the bridge."
Dozens of vehicles were left parked near their end of the bridge. Obviously there were survivors who arrived throughout the night to find the bridge blown. Many of the doors to the vehicles hung open.
"It’s the end of life as we know it,” Donna said. “People know they’re not coming back to their cars."
As they got closer, they could see hundreds of bodies in front of the vehicles. Donna slowed Jack's car to a stop a hundred yards up the highway.
"Looks like we’re going to have to back track or take a side road," Donna said. "There was one near the top of the hill we can take."
"Actually there is a side road on the other side of that van to the left. It’s kind of cut into the hill so you can’t see it at the moment."
They neared the van and found a few bodies blocking the path around the van. Jack reached under his seat and pulled out a pair of work gloves. "I am going to have to move those bodies if we want to get through," Jack said.
"Do you think that’s a good idea?" she said.
"I don’t see much choice," he replied.
Donna watched as Jack got out of the vehicle with his shotgun. It looked like the driver's door to the van was open from her vantage point. Jack was already pulling a body out of the way with his shotgun strapped over his back.