Chapter 1: Z

Today

                “Oh my god! Watch out!” The shrill squeal came from the passenger seat of the crowded Isuzu Trooper as the vehicle careens down the flaming and destroyed main street. Jolting from the scream, the driver rips hard on the wheel, his thick knuckles bleaching white from the strain of keeping control of the blue SUV. Tires scream in agony as the vehicle weaves around a ragged man in the street, waving his broken hands pleafully at the people inside. “Stop! He needs help!” The screaming passenger locks her eyes on the man in the road, twisting and scoping him through the other panicked bodies inside the truck.

Seeing the ride as one of salvation, the man struggles to chase after the Trooper, only failing in his pursuit as three bodies rush and tackle him from behind one of the many brick buildings framing the wreckage filled street. The foursome skid across the pavement, grinding to a stop. An eruption of glass, flame and smoke from a passing storefront cloud the woman’s view of the four bodies in the road. The billowing volume of the explosion coupled with the peeling heat of the fire rock the little SUV, sending the mass of crying, bleeding, wounded passengers rolling to one side of the vehicle. Some of the cluster upright themselves while others groan at the pain. One of the more coherent passengers in the far back of the ride yells in frustration, “Keep this damn rig steady” as he rolls a large woman onto her back and juts the fingers of one hand back into the gaping hole in her neck while ripping the sleeve off his plaid cotton shirt with the other.

The driver says nothing, his cheekbones beginning to match the absence of color in his hands. His breathing becomes rapid and miniscule while his eyelids pulse slightly before sweat begins to take form on the surface of his chilled skin.

The crusty man with the bloodied fingers barks again at the driver, “Why don’t you put a little speed on? She’s dying here!” He wads the cuff of the shirt sleeve up against the void in her soaked neck and wraps the remainder around her gurgling throat.

“Why don’t you back off?” Another backseater fires at the man, “He’s doing all he can!”

The crusty man opens his mouth to spill his anger and is thrown violently toward the front of the vehicle along with every person and object not bolted down. The tires howl and the Isuzu lurches to a halt, scarcely avoiding violent contact with a maroon Subaru Legacy barreling through the intersection on the cross street. The smaller vehicle drifts through the intersection at incredible speed, obviously trying to make the turn to a new street and failing. The tires trip over an unrecognizable piece of machinery, the car tips into its turn and flips into the air, rolling skyward into an unoccupied truck on the other side of the intersection. The impact throws the small car directly skyward and the force pushes the truck with the newly smashed cab backward into yet another abandoned vehicle. The Subaru lands nose first on the pavement, ejecting the driver head first with great anger out the front windshield and onto the pavement below then rolls end over end off the streets, through a metal fenced railing and down into a creek bed just off the sidewalk.

Three passengers howl in pain. The middle-aged woman defending the driver and the abrasive man in the back begin hollering at one another. The front seat passenger wails at the terror that just flew by her and the driver vomits on the steering wheel and into his lap. The driver’s wretching turns into a laborious dry heaving, his thick hands glued to the steering wheel. Grimy hands slap the passenger window causing the redhead up front to shriek again, then once more as she sees the half mulched face of the hands’ owner closing in on and trying to bite through the smooth glass surface. Teeth and fingernails slide impotently across the clear barrier and multiply as four other people in various states of damage attempt to pry open the sealed vehicle. The screaming up front spreads to the man woman and child huddling together in the center bench seat and even to the back cargo area of the van with the worn faced man and his obese patient along with a bruised man huddling against the seatback of the bench, clutching his stumped arm where a hand should be.

“Go! Go!” The redheaded passenger screams at the convulsing driver. He seems not to hear her wail so her fists pound on his awareness, “Come on! Please?” She pleads as she pummels, “Oh god, please just go!” One of the mutilated outsiders climbs atop the hood of the small SUV and drags herself closer to the windshield using the wiper blade. She follows the passenger’s lead and sends her own mud caked fists down against the glass barrier. The passenger shakes her driver out of his stupor, screaming in his ear, “Please just go! I don’t wanna die, oh god I don’t wanna die!”

Driver swallows a large volume of air and saliva, raises his head involuntarily and smashes the gas pedal of the Trooper lurching everyone backward and peeling most of the outsiders off the vehicle. The forward momentum slides the woman on the hood directly onto the windshield, sending her body across the wiper on her way up. The slender metal contraption pulls the woman’s tanktop down hard against her body and rips through the mid-section of the cloth, then digs into her abdomen and burrows deep down her torso. Oblivious to the intrusion, the woman still pounds and bites at the window, trying to get in to the wailing passengers.

The driver snakes through vehicle wreckage and the load of a spilled log truck as he forces his transport out of his small hometown of Weston Oregon. After a small stretch of straight road, driver banks hard right to the onramp of freedom. This change in direction tosses the impaled hood ornament, snapping off the wiper blade and ejecting the woman across the driver side of the vehicle and onto the gravel roadside. The parental passengers in the bench seat turn watching the crazed woman stand and run in a completely different direction, chasing after some other notion in the distance. Their burning eyes trail from their stowaway back to the smoke populated town they knew so well and watch the distance and the surrounding hills swallow their home.

The passenger rubs her chewed up shoulder gently, trying her best to avoid blanching from the thick scents of vomit, shit, and violence. She is startled by the abrupt demands from the cargo hold, “Now can we hurry up and get to the damned hospital? My wife is dying back here!”