Warm Bodies: Awakening

Crashing the Apocalypse

Jesus, the world was a mess. They'd only been at the shelter for about three weeks, but it hadn't been anywhere near this bad when they'd gone in. This was the fucking apocalypse, for real. They'd driven through a couple of neighborhoods now where there was maybe one house on the street fully barricaded, where some industrious person had wired up lights or barbed wire, and their yards were covered in corpses. He'd actually seen the shadowy figure of a man sitting in an upstairs window in one house, behind the long barrel of a rifle. It was the only other living person he'd seen so far, and he wasn't even sure if they really counted, because he never saw them move.

Dead cars sat everywhere, abandoned. How they were moving through this mess he had no idea, but figured the government had cleared the path before deciding to evacuate them again.

Where the hell were they going to go though? Was there anywhere left? His dad had said something about a military base in Alaska. Perhaps that made sense? Did that mean they were just giving up here? What about the museums, galleries, libraries? There'd still been an internet the last he'd seen at the school. How long would that last?

He kept trying to wrap his brain around what was really happening. Around the collapse of humanity. Because that's what this was. Humanity going down. He'd always thought it'd be due to some dickhead starting a religious war, with a bunch of overinflated egos jumping in and flattening the earth. Instead it was monsters. Dumb ones that shouldn't be able to do anything in the first place, what with being dead.

And they were everywhere. They'd surrounded the barricade back at the school when they left, and that had been the most he'd seen in one place. As they got closer to the city and the airport though, he'd seen more. Strange lopsided staring people with sunken alien eyes, bad color, black teeth, dressed in robes, business suits, runners and ipods, overalls, dresses, even some that were completely naked. And a kid. That had been the most fascinating, repulsive, disturbing thing he'd ever seen in his life. He'd wanted to turn away as they'd passed, and had heard the sobs and cries of a few other passengers when they'd spotted him too. The boy couldn't have been any more than five or six, wearing a Batman t-shirt, shorts and one shoe. A jagged gash in his arm oozed something dark. The boy had just watched them pass, then stumbled after them for a while, dragging along something furry and mangled, something very dead.

He'd watched the boy, looking out the back window, until the Humvee that was following them stopped alongside the child. The boy reached out and lurched towards the soldier at the top as the man had leveled his rifle.

Quickly turning away before hearing the faint pop, he'd had to fight the sudden urge to throw up. One lady hadn't stopped crying since then.

Now that they were closer to the airport, he recognized the exits as they neared, and felt a small sense of relief, a tiny spark of hope that they were going to be okay. It wouldn't be long before they were up in the air. And as everyone knew, zombies couldn't fly.

They didn't swim either, but all he did was puke on boats, so he was glad they weren't going that route.

The bus driver swore. Immediately, everyone craned their heads to look up front. His dad turned to look back at him first, frowning. He just shrugged back.

They'd taken one of the airport exits, and were heading down the ramp. It was one of the first exits though, and as they continued, the cluster of abandoned cars thickened.

A tendril of unease coiled through his gut. This didn't seem right.

Behind them came a rapid series of honks. It was the backup escort vehicle, waiting at the top of the exit, the soldier on top waving them back.

A wrong turn? How the hell could the guy take a wrong turn?

Heavy footfalls came from behind him, and he turned to watch the dark clad soldier with the rifle walk past and up to the driver.

"You seriously take the wrong exit?" The man asked, staring out at the cars.

The driver raised a hand and shook his head, "I'm fixing it, I'm fixing it, just hold on." He jerked at the gears, trying to get the bus in reverse on the slope. It wasn't cooperating.

"Oh god," somebody moaned, and heads swiveled throughout the bus as anxious passengers tried to work out what was wrong.

"People!" the soldier barked, "Keep calm, we'll be back up the ramp in a moment."

"No, no look!" said a man close to where his father was sitting.

They all looked where he was pointing. A big group of corpses were steadily shuffling their way, coming up a road and field across from the exit.

Oh shit. C'mon bus driver - move it! His dad glanced back at him again, his face dark with concern. This was ridiculous. How the hell did they let this happen?

Everyone's voices rose in volume, and the bus was swallowed in a cacophony of questions, people yelling at the driver, at the soldier. A couple of people had disappeared behind their seats, obviously not wanting to look at the dead heading their way.

Behind them came a burst of gunfire. Everyone looked to see if their military escort had hit the approaching corpses, but none of the dead dropped. Some of them actually started to run at them now, excited by the sound.

He turned to stare back at the Humvee, and his heart trembled. The soldier on top wasn't firing on the group approaching the bus - he'd turned away and was firing back down the highway, back the way they had come. Just beyond the car he could make out the bobbing heads of a bunch of dead moving fast towards the vehicle.

Holy shit.

"Come on!" he yelled, his voice barely audible above everyone elses screams.

The driver managed to get it into reverse, the gears groaning, and the bus started to move, way too slowly. The dead were running up the ramp now towards them, and more gunfire echoed from above.

"Everybody shut the hell up and stay in your seats!" roared the soldier, above the din. He flicked open the top of a window near the main door and leveled his gun at the fast approaching dead. When he fired, the sound was deafening in the enclosed space - everyone grabbed their ears and ducked their heads. A couple of corpses dropped, and were merely run over by the rest.

The noise was insane, people were screaming, the gunfire was shredding everyone's eardrums. In the midst of the chaos he looked back at the Humvee and his mouth went dry.

The vehicle was being swarmed. Not just from behind, but from the highway in front of them too. The guy on top was waving frantically at them now, not to come back, but to keep going, and the car was speeding down to them. Did the driver see this? He turned to look, and the guy was wrestling again with the gears. They'd stopped again, so apparently he had.

Holy shit! How the hell were they going to get through this?

The dead reached the bus, just as the driver got it in gear and slammed on the accelerator. Immediately the bus lurched forward, running over the two closest dead, and clipped the headlights of an abandoned BMW. Another corpse, a middle aged man with a comb over, slapped up against the window and hung there for a moment gnawing pointlessly on the glass before sliding down and under the bus.

They clipped another car and the driver swung wildly to compensate, veering straight into a crowd of dead. Black gore sprayed the windscreen and door as several were crushed, a horrifying sound over the screams of panic all around him as people were thrown out of their seats. The driver veered again to miss another car, but hit the collapsed front end of a old beetle instead, and suddenly they were airborne, going over the edge of the ramp in a spin.

Gravity reversed itself, and for a moment, he found himself floating eerily, one hand desperately clamped on the seat in front, as the world spun wildly around him. He had a second to see his dad engulf his little brother in the midst of flying bodies, and then the ground met the side of the bus with a shower of sparks and glass, and he was wrenched violently sideways.

Something hard smashed into his head, and the world vanished in a blink.