The Last Words

From the journal of Jude Guerrero 12/25/2012

First we had to ram the entry gate, which shouldn’t have been a big deal, the delivery van was big enough. The problem was that there were a whole lot of affected on the other side of it, trying to get in to see what all the commotion was. In fact, it quickly became quite obvious that the gate had been keeping a whole lot of affected away from the hospital this whole time, making things easier on us. And now here they were, crowds coming from all over the island to get us.

I built up speed and we hit it hard plowing through a crowd of wackies several bodies thick. But we slowed down quick, running over bodies as we went, almost getting stuck like we were going through mud. The van was sliding and shifting, I didn’t want to think about on what.

“Shoot, thin them out,” I hollered.

Tim Tom had already burned a couple of holes in the sides just big enough to shoot through, and Cassie started with the .45 on one side, taking several shots as we all realized the problem with this plan.

“Fuck, Cassie, stop!”

My ears were ringing, but probably not as bad as Tim Toms and the Doctors. Course, Cassie didn’t notice because she already had earplugs in and her head wrapped.

“Oh yes,” I think the Doctor said as I saw him reaching into his pocket in the rear view mirror. He pulled out some more earplugs. “Thought we might need these.” And he handed them to me and Tim Tom, putting some in his ears too.

Tim Tom was busy welding more holes as best he could with the van rocking. He had a few at eye level some big enough that he was able to start with his shotgun on the opposite side of Cassie.

We were so fucking surrounded that there was no way you could take a shot without hitting some of them. The front windshield was swarmed, the affected grabbing onto the bars we had welded on. But the van kept moving, and soon we were through the worst of the crowd and I was moving faster. Blind, but faster. I was able to get back up to speed as I turned onto the road that would take us to the sewage treatment plant and slammed on the brakes. Everyone lurched.

“Sorry, I should have warned you.” I needed to get the affected off the windshield. “Get down,” I yelled and motioned with my hand and started driving again, swerving to try to get them off. It was working, but they did leave a few fingers behind, broken off in the criss crossing bars. I tried to look behind us and took my earplugs out to see if I could see or hear Eric in the police car. I was hoping we had managed to make a path for him through the crowd. He made it, even covered in affected. Now we were on the way.

I took a hard right turn, heading towards a wasteland of smoke and gases, hoping we would even be able to make it on this side. I had studied the map right before we took off so I knew which way to go if it was still open.

It was, to some extent. It was smoky, but it was coming from the other side, so it definitely could have been worse. The affected were also getting thicker, I guess they were attracted by the smoke or explosions, I’m not sure, but they didn’t seem to give a fuck that they were taking in deep breaths of acrid smoke.

There were even bodies of affected scattered about that must have passed out or even died from the smoke. Man, these fuckers were dumb. The ones who were all over the road were actually harder to deal with than the ones running at the van. I could knock the standing ones right out of the way, but had to start trying to dodge the bodies to avoid the bumping and the possibility of puncturing a tire on their bones.

The smoke seemed to start clearing out and that is when I saw the bad news, a wall of flame right in the path I had been planning to take.

As I was trying to figure out which way to go the Doctor got up in the front seat with the map. “Try left, this way.”

It took us through a crowd of affected but it did seem to get us clear of the fire, although not the smoke.

It was then that I realized the police siren was getting quieter.

“What? What is Eric doing?”

“He’s drawing them away, Jude. He knew it was only a matter of time before he slept enough that he might succumb.”

“You knew he was going to.”

“He didn’t say anything, but I had a feeling. When he said good luck it felt very… final.”

“Dammit.”

I kept driving as the smoke was getting thicker and coming in through the AC and the holes in the side. Maybe that part wasn’t that well thought out.

Coughing I asked, “can you get us through this?”

At this point I wasn’t’ seeing the affected until I hit them, but they were still there in the smoke.

“I’m trying, just don’t hit anything. And definitely don’t go over into the tanks.”

Great. I had slowed almost to a crawl, afraid to hit something and be unable to keep going, but then it started to clear up a little. I think the wind had actually shifted.

I sped up, seeing a fairly clear path ahead of me.

Hell yes.

And then the fucking world exploded.