Eye Witness: Zombie by Lederman William & John McCuaig & Mike Harrison & Stephanie Kincaid & Patrick D'Orazio & Ron Harris & Tonia Brown & Andrew Black

Author:Lederman, William & John McCuaig & Mike Harrison & Stephanie Kincaid & Patrick D'Orazio & Ron Harris & Tonia Brown & Andrew Black [Lederman, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: May December Publications LLC
Published: 2010-08-25T07:00:00+00:00

***

After a block or two, Jeff shrugged off Mark’s hand and said, “I got it. I can make it.” Mark obviously didn’t believe him and Jeff immediately started to fall behind, but Mark let him walk on his own. Linda fell back and walked beside Jeff, talking to him.

“Jeff don’t look good,” Mark said to Chris. I was close enough to hear them.

“Fuck him. Let’s leave him.”

“Like we left Angie?” Mark went from worried to livid in under a second. “Fuck him? Fuck you!”

Whatever Chris was going to say in reply was cut short when a pick-up truck with a bed full of boisterous men turned the corner ahead of us and abruptly stopped. The men looked like a bunch of rednecks and were hooting and yelling like frat boys. Some wore bright orange hunting vests and chewed toothpicks. None of them looked like they had shaved in the last week, and all carried hunting rifles and shotguns.

I noticed that Chris dropped his pistol and kicked it away into a pile of overturned trash cans. I wondered if the men in the truck had seen it.

“Oh Jesus…” Mark’s voice trailed off. The pick-up truck had the upper torso of a female zombie chained to the grill. The thing’s breasts were cut off and a piece of her spine was wedged into the grill to keep her in place. The zombie was thrashing back and forth, clacking its teeth, its eyes intent on those in front of it. On us.

“Sue—weeeeeeeeeeeeee—” one of the men who hopped off the back of the truck yelled at the top of his lungs “—eeeet!”

“Hey, thank goodness,” Mark said, but he didn’t sound reassured. “Can we get a ride, guys?”

“Look, Manny! Zombies!” another man yelled. Two or three of them raced forward a few yards, braced their legs, raised rifles to their shoulders, and commenced to firing on the hundreds of zombies that were lurching and swaying towards all of us.

“We ain’t got no room.” One of the men moved forward. “Except for the women and the children.”

“Fuck the children,” a heavy set Hispanic man whispered none too quietly.

“Just the women, then” the first amended.

“No, I meant—Hey you! Where the hell…”

Michelle must have seen what was coming because she bolted forward and ran off down the street alone. Her dreadlocks trailed behind her.

“Awww, shit, now why’d she have to go and do that?” One of the men shook his head and spit a mouthful of tobacco onto the street. “This city ain’t safe for woman or beast.”

“This woman’s with us,” Jeff spoke up weakly in Linda’s defense.

“This city’s not gonna be here in fifteen minutes, soldier boy. Or haven’t you heard the news?”

“Frank, she’s getting away. She gonna get killed out here.”

“She sure is, Jorge. Lady, come with us. You got my word, we ain’t gonna mistreat you.”

Linda looked from Jeff and Mark and me, to the man who had spoken, to the truck, and to the men firing on the advancing zombies at our backs.

“Let’s get got!” A man in the passenger seat slapped his hand on the side of the truck.