Overwhelmed: Turncoats, #2

Chapter 1

Nathan Bristol swerved the van to the right, clipping two of the zombies. Luckily, neither ended up under the vehicle. He had already rolled over four of the creatures and was in no hurry to repeat the crunchy chorus of bone snapping that had occurred with that.

Trina Bivens sat in the passenger seat fastening her seat belt as she braced her feet against the dashboard to stabilize herself. There’s too many!

A zombie in bloodstained overalls leapt onto the hood and clawed at the windshield. It managed to latch onto a windshield wiper and hold fast. Nathan jerked the wheel left, hoping to throw it off. Instead, he felt the left front tire drop onto the rough shoulder. The hood zombie flew to the left and flopped off, taking the wiper with it.

Trina blurted out, No way we can offroad it. Too steep here.

Nathan knew she was right. The narrow country road had sharp drops after about only two feet of gravel shoulder. If they went farther afield from the blacktop, they’d be sure to roll the van.

He slipped back onto the road and slammed into a heavy-set zombie. Their speed forced its bulk under the van, and they drove over it. Thanks to its size, the sound of bones breaking was more muffled than before.

Ahead, there was a fifty-foot break in the horde, but the headlights revealed another line of the undead. This one looked far more substantial. The zombies were pressed in tight, nearly seven or eight thick.

How had it gotten so bad so quickly? One minute, the road had been smooth sailing, not a single shambling corpse as far as the eye could see, and around the bend a gauntlet of the things.

Was their massive presence here deliberate? Had the dark force lording over the zombies guided them to block his and Trina’s way?

He yanked his foot off the gas and looked back. A dozen zombies moved through their fallen comrades toward them. He thumbed the lock button on the car door, nervous that he hadn’t already done so a dozen times on their trip.

Why are you slowing down? Trina said.

He looked at his companion. She wanted him to plow through the undead. She didn’t care if he crushed them under his bumper or under their wheels. She just wanted to move forward. With Trina being dead herself, he found her ruthlessness worrisome. While she had turned a few days before the black towers unleashed the rest of the zombies on the world, she had retained her humanity. From the crazed look in her dull eyes, he was uncertain just how much humanity she had left.

Do it! Go through them! Flecks of spittle torpedoed across her pale cheeks as she reached for the wheel.

He swatted her hands away and put the gas pedal to the floor. The van surged forward, smashing into those who had been living days, even hours, ago. One fresh zombie, a teen girl, charged at them in a bright yellow cami, its hair still surprisingly styled. It hit the bumper and fell to the ground. Nathan heard a sharp thud as its tiny body flopped once or twice in the left wheel well.

A man in a rumpled brown business suit, half his face missing on the left side, headbanged the windshield and bounced off to the right. Two zombies belly-flopped on the windshield and flew over the top of the van. The smaller one left a smear of blood and intestinal fluid across the right side of the glass, obscuring Trina’s view.

Keep going! she shrieked.

He gripped the wheel tighter and leaned forward. The throng of zombies parted left and right with several falling under the van. He flicked his high-beams to see that the band of zombies arranged across the road was only two or three thick now. He could hear more of the creatures smacking into the side of the van and pounding at the glass.

Four zombies disappeared underneath. The front half of the vehicle heaved sharply upward as it lurched over them.

Two more glanced off the sides, their spindly arms twirling madly in the early-morning light.

They thumped over two more fallen zombies, and then the road was clear. Nathan looked back to see the horde of undead racing toward them. He accelerated and soon watched their pursuers dwindle in the rear-view mirror.

He wiped a slight slick of drool off his chin and settled his gaze on Trina. What was that? They were all bunched up together like they were waiting for us.

She nodded but didn’t meet his eyes.

That dark force thing did that, right? Just like it sent all those zombies to swarm the house?

Trina nodded, but less emphatically this time.

So it knows precisely where we are? Is it still linked to you somehow?

She shook her head. No, it only figured out where we were because of the vision I had back at the house. It sniffed us out from that. She looked at Nathan, her eyes wide and pleading. It’s not tied to me now. It must’ve sent out a bunch of zombies along roads it thought we might take. It got lucky.

Nathan glanced at the road ahead. Another sharp turn to the right. What lay around it was obscured by a thick stand of trees mired in kudzu. He slowed.

The shoulders to either side were slim to none, dropping off sharply into deep ditches.

So we need to switch up our path, Nathan said. Take even more side roads, right?

I think so. She reached into her jacket and retrieved a road map. She unfolded it and tapped at a spot near the middle. We’re getting close to Oxford. We don’t want to go directly through any populated areas, so . . .

Nathan took the turn and inhaled sharply. Less than fifty feet away, cleverly hidden from view until the last second, was another undead roadblock. Only this one wasn’t like the last. The dead didn’t stand erect and mill about in a dense crowd. Instead, they lay atop each other, forming an uneven barricade eight or nine bodies tall. And all of them squirmed.

With less than twenty feet until impact, Nathan instinctively jerked the wheel to the left, and they slipped off the road. The front end canted sharply downward into the deep ditch.

Trina screamed as the grill of the van mashed into the ground and the vehicle rolled on its side.

Nathan unlatched his seat belt and fumbled to help Trina with hers. She hung over him thanks to the ungainly angle of the van in the ditch. Her weight pressing down on the belt made it hard to unfasten. He scrambled to free her, knowing the zombies would extract themselves from their deliberate undead dogpile and be all over them very soon.

Trina pushed his hands away and tugged at the belt. The pinkie on her right hand bent back. She didn’t react at all. Nathan wondered just how much pain she could still feel.

The buckle detached and she fell on him, her skin cold.

She reached for the map and unlocked his door. He grabbed at the door handle and shoved it open. It swept wide for about three feet before digging into the ground.

She reached back behind the driver’s seat and grabbed two baseball bats as he scrambled out of the van and stumbled to his feet. Trina maneuvered out of the overturned vehicle with far more finesse.

She rose to her feet and jammed the map in her jacket pocket. Flinging one of the bats at him, she looked up at the shoulder. Already, five zombies were approaching their wreck. One, a zombie with its right arm missing, locked onto them and moaned, exposing metal-lined teeth. The sight of braces on the creature unsettled Nathan, a reminder of the ordinary past the thing had lost.

Trina nudged him in the side with her bat handle. C’mon. Time to hoof it. She high-stepped it through the vine-ridden ditch toward the less dense forest floor only twenty feet away. While it was still covered in kudzu, it was not mounded as thickly as the vegetation in the ditch.

He gripped his bat tight and tore off after her into the woods, once again fleeing through a sea of kudzu.

Chapter 2

After a few minutes, they no longer heard the moans from the zombies trailing them. Trina cocked her head and listened intently. With the sun poking over the mountains, any attack would be easy to spot. Behind her, Nathan gulped in breath after breath, his body exhausted from their sprint.

Her own chest didn’t rise or fall. She didn’t need to catch her breath, but she knew how important a rest was to Nathan.

She tapped the end of her bat on the thick end of a fallen tree and pointed her chin at the log. Let’s rest. I think we lost ’em.

He eased onto the log, slumping forward and leaning on his own bat. We lost everything. That van had all our food and supplies.

Trina pulled the map from her jacket and unfolded it as she held it up. Not everything.

So two bats and a map? Not an advantage when you’re facing a big bad evil, Trina.

She surveyed the map. We have our wits. She crudely marked with a smudge of dirt the approximate place where she thought they might be. Her eyes traveled across the map to where the topography became more mountainous. They needed to head west. And we know where we need to go.

Nathan glared at her. To the mountains? Talk about vague. Why can’t your light thingie be more specific? What’s running to higher ground going to accomplish? He sneered. Unless there’s a big bad flood coming. Is that what it is? First zombies and then a good flush? Does that dark force want to wipe the earth clean of us?

I don’t know. She knew he was being antagonistic because their situation felt so desperate and hopeless.

We’re failing, Trina. There’s no way the two of us are going to save the world.

Not with that attitude.

He rose slowly. I should’ve stayed with Jessie and Mom. They need me. I should be protecting them.

She stiffened. You did that by leaving. If we hadn’t, that house would’ve been overrun. What she said next came out forced and flimsy. We didn’t have a choice.

Nathan took a few halfhearted swings with his bat, knocking random hunks of bark from the fallen tree. This is crazy. Why aren’t they regular zombies? At least then we’d know what to do. A headshot and move on. He knocked the bat against a rock. But no, we have to deal with some evil baddie moving them around, setting up roadblocks. How are we supposed to beat that?

They’re its army. I don’t think it could control them at first. Its power must be growing.

He crossed his arms. You really know how to cheer up a guy. Heaping bleak on top of bleak doesn’t make a positive.

A thread of logic spooled through her mind. She plucked at it, following a line of thinking that might give them hope. If it’s light against dark, then we can do the same.

I don’t get it, he said flatly.

Her voice quickened, excited by her revelation. There’s something in the mountains that will help us fight back. It can’t be about one side having the advantage. You can’t have night without day.

That’s a weak argument. So we go to the mountains and find our own army. What do we do with them, bite back? I doubt that’ll do any good.

Trina furrowed her brow. No, nothing equivalent. Something else. Some different advantage. I don’t know what it is yet, but it has to be something.

Because the cryptic and not really helpful being of light says so. He wagged a finger at her. No, wait. It never said so. It doesn’t tell all. It tells us nothing we need.

Trina nudged his bat to the ground with her own. No, it doesn’t spell things out. The two of us have to look within each other for our answers. We have to do this together, I know that much. I can’t do this alone. She gave him a plaintive look.

A moan came from a good distance to their left. Nathan’s eyes flitted in the sound’s general direction.

"We have to keep moving. We keep moving, we stay alive." He brushed past her, his expression tense.

She bit her lower lip as her shoulders slumped. Their argument wasn’t over. He still questioned their outlandish mission. She’d have to show him she was right, that their future and the future of the world lay ahead on a path only the two of them could travel.

Trina scrutinized her map for a few seconds and followed.

Chapter 3

He didn’t say much to her for the next few minutes. They plowed through the underbrush in silence. Nathan knew his last comment had hurt her feelings; he had intended it to.

What could he do to stop some dark force that turned people into zombies? It was all too much.

The two of them couldn’t even keep a van on the road. They hadn’t been on their own for two hours and already things had gone from bad to worse. Seeing the zombies stacked across the road like bricks had really rattled him. The power at the dark thing’s command felt too much. Was the dark creature even here in their world? Did it exist in another dimension, directing its puppets from afar?

He didn’t understand its motives. To do that, he’d need to know what it was. That frustrated him the most. If it was just the zombies who were the bad guys, he could handle that. If the zombies behaved in a way that aligned with science, he would know their limits. But some massively powered force that orchestrated everything from afar made him feel small, ineffectual. No way he could fight something like that. The scope of the threat was too big. Why couldn’t Trina see that?

Because she was something beyond human. She was connected to a force for good. He knew that to be true. Of course, she also had a rapport with its counterpart. How else could it send her nightmares?

They trudged through the woods together. Ahead, the trees thinned. They eventually found themselves in a field filled with waist-high grasses.

He looked at Trina for guidance.

She patted the folded map in her hand and pointed her bat to their left. We go around this. Too easy for any of them to pop up out of nowhere.

He nodded but didn’t move. She had more to say.

Her eyes softened. He sensed this was because she was happy he wanted her to continue. About a mile or two we should come to a small local airport.

He frowned. I can’t fly a plane. Can you?

No, but maybe we’ll find another car.

He again nodded. Better hope we can find keys. I have no clue how to hotwire anything.

Me neither, she replied.

He slipped a few feet back into the woods. Keeping the field to his right, he hiked forward, pushing back low-hanging branches and holding them in check as Trina passed through. Why only you? he asked.

Why only me what?

Why did the light bring just you back with your soul intact?

She scrunched up her nose and shot him a quizzical look. You think I have a soul?

He rolled his eyes. Church and all things spiritual were not his area of expertise. "Well, yeah. You came back and don’t want to chow down on us. He hated how exclusionary the last word came across and tried to rectify his mistake. I mean, you still know right from wrong. You have a mind of your own. Why did the light just send you and the dark let loose with a whole army of zombies?"

She slipped ahead, keeping her back to him. Maybe one is all it takes.

What if there are others like you? Maybe doing the same thing you’re doing with me, shepherding others to someplace where they can fix things.

I don’t know. Maybe. The light doesn’t tell me that stuff.

Yeah, it’s pretty tight-lipped. He meant his comment as a joke.

Luckily, she received it as such and snickered.

They plodded on, fording two narrow streams and scaling a gentle slope rife with kudzu. Nathan was feeling good about their progress. They should be coming up on the airstrip soon. If it was a small, laid-back place, maybe they’d find a truck with the keys in the ignition. Maybe the airfield’s mechanic was a retired military engineer who trusted others and left his vehicle unlocked and ready to go. He pictured a metal biplane dangling from the imaginary keychain he was conjuring in his mind.

A shrill scream cut through the air. Trina dropped into a guarded position. He gripped his bat tighter.

He vaulted forward, knowing the screamer wasn’t too far ahead. It had sounded like a young girl.

He high-stepped through the kudzu, not caring how much noise his progress stirred. Two birds leapt from an overhead branch, disturbed by Nathan’s crashing.

Trina snaked through the vines with far more care. She hissed at him, What are you doing? You can’t just rush in! What if it’s another mob like the roadblock zombies?

Another scream, this time more to their left.

A stand of young loblolly pines prevented him from seeing exactly what was going on. The tall grasses of the field that had been a steady companion on their right for the past few minutes were giving way to thick forest again. At least whatever rescue they mounted wouldn’t involve wading into that dangerous minefield.

Trina grabbed him by his wrist and twirled him around. We don’t know what we’re running headlong into.

He grimaced. I know, but that was a little girl, I think. I can’t ignore it.

Trina looked at him intently. It felt like she was measuring his resolve. Finally, she said, Okay, but let’s use a little more stealth. No sense telegraphing where the cavalry is coming from.

He nodded and moved forward, weaving through the thinning kudzu at a more cautionary speed. Soon, they left