Fiction – Ruth’s Story #20 – Struggling Through Down Town Seattle Avoiding the Cannibals

I cannot get anywhere on these roads. The Pike overpass over I5 is entirely blocked with wrecked and abandoned cars. Many of these cars contain trapped zombies.

I loathe getting out of my car because I am sure if I leave it unattended someone will steal it. With the rear window smashed out, it would not take much for someone to climb in and steal my car. Thinking of which, I better keep an eye on the back seat in case some ass hole attempts to climb in the car.

I stop my car in the center of Hubbell Place and put it in park. I consult the GPS in the dash attempting to find an alternate route. Unfortunately, this model of Garmin GPS was not programmed with a zombie apocalypse mode.

As I sit and fool with the GPS, I reach over to my Scottevest jacket and dig out one of the Power Bars and a water bottle from the coat. Sipping sparingly of the water while munching the tough as John Wayne Power Bar, I consult the GPS attempting to find a way back to I5 now that I am north of the Convention Center.

The stupid GPS is telling me to go north to Olive Way to get back on I5. Looking at how clogged the surface streets are with abandoned cars it is near impossible for me to get to Olive Way.

As I sit in my little car sipping water and absently munching on the Power Bar, I keep an eye on the surrounding area. I do not need to be surprised by a group of thugs again. Thankfully none of them had a gun otherwise I might have been in trouble.

The zombies do not appear to move with much purpose, unless something attracts their attention, at which time they all hone in on the target. From what I can see, there is no form of communication between the zombies.

There are quite a few wandering zombies that do not seem to be interested in me at the moment. It seems as long as I remain fairly still, the zombies will walk right past my little car. Most of the wandering zombies are adults; there are surprisingly few child zombies.

While I do see a few child zombies they are rarer than adult zombies; I wonder why. I finish the chocolate and peanut butter Power Bar and toss the empty wrapper on the passenger floor board. I drink half the liter of bottled water cap it and lay the bottle in the passenger seat. The stupid GPS is no help I am going to have to figure out how to get around the traffic jam.

Parked as I am in the center of the road is not a terrific idea. Looking at the clock on the GPS, I see that it is nearly 14:30 in the afternoon. It is going to be dark in a few hours. I do not relish the idea of sleeping in my car in the middle of the street so close to a rumored cannibal haven.

In the distance, I continue to hear the deep, heavy sound of artillery. A large dark, thick billowing cloud of smoke and dust rises from that area contrasting sharply with the pretty blue sky. Thankfully there is little wind, so it is not drifting towards me, but is slowly rising into the clear blue sky.

As I sit pondering my actions, I hear in the distance slowly getting closer the unmistakable sound of a large diesel rig.

I slap my little car into reverse. Putting my foot on the gas I gun the little car and do an illegal three point turn around in the intersection between Hubbell Place and Terry Avenue.

I see in front of me coming down the center of the road a large yellow snow plow. I pull off to the side of the road and watch this mechanical behemoth shove cars out of the way with its wedge-shaped snow plow.

I grab my pistol and one of the M67 frag grenades and wait for the approaching truck. There is nowhere I can go, as the truck is blocking my only means of exit.

As the truck gets closer, I notice there is a woman in the passenger seat and an older man driving, both Caucasians. Between them are two young girls, probably around ten years of age in pigtails and bright red ribbons. The children and the woman look alike enough that I assume they are mother and daughters.

As the massive snow plow pulls alongside my car the woman rolls down her window. I see that the vehicle is a large Washington State Department of Transportation dump truck. The dump bed of the truck is full of people many whom look down on me sitting in my little car.

The woman leans her head and shoulders out the window. She holds a silver Smith and Wesson 686 .357 Magnum revolver in a death grip so tight the knuckles of her right hand turned white. I wonder if the 686 is the six or seven shot model. I also wonder how familiar she is with the weapon because the way she holds it in a death grip and as much as she is shaking I doubt she could hit anything.

She looks at me as I nonchalantly as I can hold my own pistol but keep the muzzle of mine pointed at the asphalt. I watch her wandering pistol muzzle with keen interest as she waves it around quite a bit. It does not appear that she has any training with a pistol and definitely needs to be taught muzzle control.

“Where are you going?” she asks me breaking my thoughts of her supposed lack of training.

“I am trying to get on I5 north” I tell her.

The woman ducks her body back inside the cab of the truck, and I can hear the sounds of a discussion but not what is being said. After a moment, the woman sticks her head and shoulders out of the cab again, this time without the pistol so I put my pistol and the frag grenade back in the passenger seat.

“Lady, if you follow us we’ll clear a path for you” she says to me.

“Thanks I appreciate it” I tell her.

“You are not from around here are you?” she asks. “Are you good with those weapons?”

Hmm, she must have noticed my Israeli accent. Even after all of these years living in the States I still cannot shake the accent of my motherland.

“Better than most,” I tell her.

The woman nods at me pulls her body back into the cab and rolls the window up. Before the woman has the window fully closed I hear the air breaks of the snow plow release and the whine of the turbo on the monstrous diesel engine as the driver guns the engine.

As I fall in behind the dump truck several people in the dump bed of the truck wave at me and give me a faint smile. I smile and wave back although I feel like a phony. For a truck load of refugees, they do not look too pathetic, but I notice the distinct lack of weapons among them.

I count seventeen women and seven men of different races and ethnic backgrounds. Might be some children in there too but they are too small for me to see over the truck bed rails.

The truck smashes though the abandoned cars as the angled wedge-shaped blade of the snow plow shoves cars and zombies aside with ease. We make excellent time with the snow plow leading.

The zombies do not have the sense to get out of the way of the massive snow plow. Many zombies are smeared all over the road, or pinched between the plow and a vehicle. The carnage is impressive and sickening.

The facial expressions of the zombies smeared by the snow plow never change. The only time I have seen a zombie’s facial expression change was while eating or when it detected a source of food.

We make the right at Pike Street and continue down the street leaving mass carnage in our wake. The snow plow does a marvelous job pushing the cars out of the way. But it must be hard on the truck, and I wonder how much diesel it is guzzling. I wonder how much diesel the truck has and if they are going to try to steal the diesel I have in this little car.

We swerve to the wrong side of Pike Street at the intersection of Pike and Melrose because of an abandoned lorry blocks the roadway. As we get beside the abandoned lorry the dump truck suddenly stops, locking and skidding the rear tires. I hear the air breaks hiss again.

I put my car in park and grasp my pistol ready for action as the man and woman both leap out of the truck. The man has some sort of hose contraption in his hands while the woman still clutches the S&W 686 like her life depends on it. Her life and her daughter’s lives probably do depend on her keeping that weapon. She also is carrying something else in her left hand that I cannot quite make out from here.

The man, dressed in common work clothes, is an older possibly middle-aged white male who badly needs a shave. He runs around the rear of the dump truck to the fuel tank of the lorry.

I watch as the man checks the fuel tank on the lorry and shoves part of the hose contraption in the lorry tank and part in the dump truck’s tank and starts cranking the red handle. Ah hah, now I understand he is siphoning the diesel out of the lorry.

The woman walks up to the driver’s side window of my little car and motions for me to roll the window down.

I roll the window down a little bit and she says to me, “I hope you are good with those guns because I only have four rounds left in this gun, and it’s the only gun we have. This was my husband’s pistol. Rick told me to give this radio to you, so you could talk.”

With that, she shoves the old, battered silver and black Motorola radio up against the glass. I nod and roll the window down enough, so she can pass me the radio.

“Channel three,” she says and walks quickly back to the cab of the dump truck. She walks past Rick without as much as a backward glance. Rick shrugs and keeps cranking the handle. The woman gets in the passenger side slamming the door behind her.

I watch the man crank the handle on the hose contraption transferring diesel from the abandoned semi to the dump truck for a while. I notice he is sweating profusely it must be hard work cranking that handle. I keep an eye out looking around as do several of the people in the back of the truck.

I see the man, who I am still assuming is Rick; holler something at the woman in the cab of the truck. The radio suddenly crackles in my hand startling me. Damn this thing is turned up way too loud! After a minute fooling with the volume, I turn it down to a more reasonable level.

The woman’s voice comes over the radio, a little strained “Rick wants to know if you need fuel.”

I find the Push to Talk button (conveniently labeled PTT) and say “Thanks anyways, but I am still full.”

“Well Rick says the semi still has about a third of a tank or so of fuel and doesn’t want to leave it” she says.

I do not wish to reveal that I have ten gallons of diesel in Jerry cans secreted in the bonnet of my car.

Rick looks up as the woman must have told him that I do not need any fuel. He nods and shrugs and rolls up the hose contraption, tightly closing both of the fuel tanks. Rick is distracted walking while rolling up the hose. As he comes around the rear of the dump truck, I see a naked young teen aged white male zombie reach for him between two cars. Rick appears not to see the zombie.

I quickly open my door and step out holding my pistol with both hands. The pistol comes up smoothly; I hold steady, concentrate on the front sight and slowly squeeze the trigger. I hear the familiar cough of the AAC suppressor followed by the clack of the Hi-Power pistol’s action cycling.

The back of the young zombie’s head explodes depositing its brains all over the cars behind it. As the zombie falls with a thump and lays twitching on the asphalt, Rick sees it and looks at me with a shocked look on his face.

I smile and nod at him and get back in my car. The shot was only about twenty meters or so. Not the most challenging of shots I have ever done with a pistol.

Rick is visibly shaken now and has a hard time getting the fuel siphon wrapped up. He even has a hard time opening the cab door. He finally gives up and throws the fuel siphon in the cab of the truck. He leans against the side of the truck still hanging on to the open driver’s door, and I wonder if he is going to be ill.

Rick suddenly shakes himself climbs in the truck and fires it up after slamming the door. I hear the air breaks release, and away we go down Melrose on the wrong side of the street, well unless we were in Britain.

As we continue down the road, a single word “thanks” in a man’s deeper voice comes over the radio lying in my passenger seat.