I pulled the truck around a copse of four or five trees to see a mostly deserted cityscape. Nancy stopped laughing. The streets were unfamiliar to me, I’d never really been this far north. The sun was out, and everything was lit up brightly, but it still looked grey. There was a semi-circular drive coming up to a parking lot before a baseball diamond and chain link dugouts. Beyond, large divided roads intersected the one road I could see heading straight west, unfortunately it looked like there were lots of abandoned cars on it. In between the buildings streets and signs were zombies. They were stooping, or shuffling slowly. They moved plaintively and looked pained, or bored, or anxious. There were some in the outfield, some crossing the roads farther west.
Two of them, in the ATM vestibule of a bank nearby began banging on the glass when they noticed us. Strength left my arms when I saw how their frenzy was still sedate, and I almost let go of the wheel in the middle of a turn.
“I hope they’re sitting down back there.” I said, gassing the truck, and preparing the clutch to shift up a gear. The truck, or the trailer made a horrible scraping sound when we went over the curb and back onto the road, drawing attention of a small knot of zombies in the bleachers. The starting hobbling toward us, some dragging what looked like feet, broken at the ankle.
“Oh God.” Nancy said as her hand shot to her mouth, her breathing quickened. “I can’t take this.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “look at how slow they are.” I glanced over at her, to see that her face’d turned pale. Her lips were clutched in her right fist and her left hand clenched onto the hammer. “We could out-walk them.” I said, leaning back into my chair. I swung the truck onto Springer, a street I’d never heard of before, and began to weave around the abandoned cars, and crumpled bicycles that littered the road.
As Springer became more tangled, getting around the wrecks became more of a problem. It was nearly impossible to maneuver the huge streamline, and the truck didn’t like the back and forth. At one point, during an ill fated three point turn, one of them got too close to the window and Nancy started crying. I began to hear banging coming through the back of the Streamline. I swore under my breath and dropped the truck into drive and plowed into a car with the gas on the floor. There was a great rending sound, and soft tinkling of broken glass audible over Nancy’s quiet sobs, but the little Volkswagen gave way, and swung out of our path and into the shoulder.
“Alright.” I said.
Nancy shook her head, forcing in short quick breaths.
“We’re okay.” I said, looking over at her, grabbing her hand and patting it into her lap. I looked back at the road and had to swerve to miss a zombie who was standing in the middle of the road. My breath got caught short, and a lump began to grow in my throat. “We’re okay Nancy.” She shook her head.
