Zombie Fighting Goodness: Chapter 1 of GRACE AMONG THE DEAD, Part 4

Click here for Part 3.

Click here for Part 2.

Click here for Part 1. 

All right, zombie fans, let’s tuck into another series of excerpts, this time from GRACE AMONG THE DEAD. This first chapter, “Drugstore Cowpunching,” opens with straight-up zombie-fighting action and carries on straight into the next complication.  

As Frank Zappa said in Joe’s Garage, “You’ll love it. It’s a way of life.”

“Leaning forward, trying to hold on, trying to get at all the living, breathing meaty goodness in the cab”

I drive out of the parking lot with maybe 18 or 20 rotters clinging around the truck and in the flatbed. You can feel them weighing down the chassis. If this was an ordinary car we’d be so much tenderized meat pulled through busted safety glass. 

A young man in a wife-beater and board shorts falls away from the front grille. I don’t feel anything under the tires, so he misses getting run over. The bug-eyed woman at the passenger side beating on the window and making, “Ah-OOOH! Ah-OOOH!” noises is flicked off as I bang through one of the deeper potholes on this crumbling street.

The rest are hanging tough. Good for them. I turn right. The road looks clear, but that’s going to last one minute, two at best, before the inhabitants of the neighborhoods to either side come pouring out at the sound of the engine.

I bring the truck up to 50 mph, careful not to pull away so fast that the ones in the flatbed fall back. No, I want them all leaning forward, trying to hold on, trying to get at all the living, breathing meaty goodness in the cab. I’m up to 65 before I hit the brakes. Not too hard, this thing is too easy to flip. Just enough to send these ugly wastes of skin sailing over the cab. 

Once I’m sure we’ve slowed enough, I cut the wheel to send the ones who slammed into the back window tumbling over the side. Their heads crack on the wide asphalt and they’re done. Assholes in suits, assholes in T-shirts and jeans, at least one dress. No, make that two. Plus a pantsuit.

“How many?” I ask my new companion.

“Nine down for sure. I see five others. They’re…crawling.”

“Good.”

The impact breaks bones in every one of them. The ones that miss splitting open their skulls in the westbound lanes have one or no legs to walk with. Most don’t even have intact arms with which to pull themselves along. They twitch furiously, their broken, useless limbs hanging limp besides their torn bodies.

I turn the truck back towards Falcon, aiming the big tires at the heads of the floppers and crawlers. Sklutch-snap, sklutch-snap. Poppin’ bubblewrap. I’ve got to make two more turnarounds in the road to get them all. 

My new companion makes a sound. “I…” she says.

“What?”

“I….”

“Speak up, dammit!”

“I think—no, there’s one still in the back. There!”

I glance at the rearview. “Son of a bitch.” 

NEXT: “I wonder if they got their faces chewed off for their trouble”

Grace Among the Dead Copyright © 2014-2015 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.
All rights reserved.

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