Message in a Bottle
The cab of the truck was as silent as the grave as Eric followed close behind Sanchez who was keeping his own car barely above twenty-five MPH. Less than a quarter mile ahead at the intersection of 29th and Grand signs of the carnage that had enveloped the world started to rear their ugly heads. A red SUV was resting on its driver’s side door where it had taken the turn at 29th too sharp and had caught the curb sending it tipping over. There were other cars some with open doors, the upholstery painted with blood splatter. There were parts of bodies too, Eric could see hanging from one window that had been rolled down the remains of a pale white arm. The limb was jaggedly torn above the elbow and there was at least one obvious bite mark where someone had torn a roundish hunk of flesh from the forearm. Whoever’s arm that had been had held on for dear life until they had been pulled apart.
The more Eric’s eyes scanned the scene in front of him; of abandoned cars standing like the broken teeth of headstones dotting the road the more he realized what had likely happened here. Good Samaritans had tried to help as best they could. They had tried to help those being attacked by rabid humans by giving them a safe place to hide in their cars or trying to stymie the bleeding while they urgently called 911 and hoped for AMR to come. Those people’s hearts had been the right place and whose mind would have automatically jumped to zombies in a situation like this? The truth was there good deeds had lead to their deaths as surely as if they had put a gun to their own heads.
Sanchez swerved to the left and took the left hand turn down 29th heading west. It was a good idea Eric thought. This area of town was densely populated but it once they reached Cliff Drive a mile away they would have only half as many houses to be wary of. That and Cliff Drive was one of the major arterials that lead to the highway and their easiest route out of Spokane. Two miles and They’d be on the highway and fleeing the city of the dead.
Eric followed the cop to the left. They slowed the cars down to fifteen MPH as they had to continuing weaving in between abandoned cars and occasionally hop the curb to squeeze pass the cars that had piled up behind the stalled out cars. They had unknowingly driven themselves right up to the hordes of zombies like they were pizza delivery men. Eric assumed that the only reason that the roads weren’t choked with the bodies of undead people was because they had spread out and were now terrorizing the homes dotting the landscape around them.
“They’re like locust.”
The road cleared ahead and Eric took a second to look behind him into the back seat where the words had come from. The bleached blond with the large pale eyes was curled up in a sitting fetal position her eyes blank and staring out the window as the quiet empty world passed by them. Eric had been getting his afternoon coffee from her for a few months now. She was a willow thin woman, probably didn’t weight more than a hundred and ten pounds. She wore too much make-up made all the more obvious because the color of her honey tan face didn’t match the complexion of her porcelain white arms.
Eric just nodded his head and turned his eyes back to the road. He did peak at the bleached blond woman in the rearview once and saw that the long haired brunette back there as gently rubbing her back. Eric knew most of the women at the coffee shop had boyfriends or husbands; they talked often about them which Eric thought was silly. They had seen him with Lindsey getting coffee enough times to know that he was friendly but not flirtatious. But maybe it was something that was ingrained in them from too many men in their late twenties taking more than a friendly interest in them. Eric put the thought away. It wasn’t worth dwelling on, not today and not every again.
He looked to his right and Eric saw that the red head with her phone out. Her fingers furiously danced across the screen of her phone hammering out a frantic text. She hit the send button and put the phone into her lap. There was a good chance that the cell towers were still up and running and would be for some time. But with the possible traffic on the tower system and the potential widespread nature of the crisis in Spokane he wasn’t entirely sure that her text would get through. She looked down at the screen and then quickly brought her eyes up again like the thing had burned her. She was anxious for a response and she’d drive herself crazing waiting if she didn’t have something to distract her.
“You’re Rachel right? We talked about you wanting to work at a zoo someday a few weeks back.” Eric remembered the conversation cleared. It was not something that everyone grew up wanting to be.
“Hmm, of yeah. You’re the guy with the twenty ounce soy mocha right? Where’s your girlfriend?” Her cheeks burned red against the delicate white bumps of her cheeks as she realized what Lindsey’s absence in the truck probably meant.
“she had to work. She’s out on the North side so I’m hoping that this hasn’t gotten that far yet.” Eric’s voice trailed off as his hope slowly evaporated. This thing was clearly widespread. He’d only just been woken up to the reality of the zombie apocalypse an hour and half ago and he’d already witnessed the killing of at least two or three dozen of them. He had seen far more of them moving about. He was slowly coming to accept that the reality was that this infection or disease had already swept away most of Spokane. His only hope was the Lindsey had found other people to stay with, people to fight their way to safety and then make some semblance of civilization with after the escaped the bloodshed.
“I’m sorry.” Rachel looked down at her phone again. The screen remained black and unresponsive. “Do you think they’ll make it?” her words were light with hope, one she didn’t seem to be able to fully embrace without confirmation from someone else.
“That’s my hope, in a desperate world like this the only thing we’re going to have is hope. Your boyfriends a tough guy right?” Eric had never met the guy, why would he but the way that Rachel had talked about him he seemed like the type of guy to go out fighting. Maybe he had lived. Eric wasn’t in great shape and he wasn’t a great shot but he had lived this long. Maybe Lindsey had found a fighter inside herself and was alive too.
“He hasn’t texted me back. I’ve sent him eight or nine messages over the last half hour and he hasn’t sent any back.” A frown smacked her face and tears began to flow over the soft hills of her cheeks. Rachel was a curvy woman but her face was smooth and thin and Eric want to brush away the tears from her cheeks but that was far to intimate of a gesture. He realized it was his compulsion to save people that made him want to do it and the resisted the urge.
“I hate to ask but do you mind sending a message for me?” Eric took his right hand off the wheel and fished in his cargo pants pocket and fished out his phone. He held in his hands for a few seconds until Rachel nodded her head and then he handed to her. “Lindsey is the first contact in my messages. When you’ve got it open let me know.”
Eric turned his eyes back to the road as Sanchez drove through the red light at Bernard and 29th. From what Eric had seen so far he doubted they were going to be in any danger of getting T-boned by another car. He flew through the red light two and watched through the rearview ad Fred in the SUV barreled through the light as well.
“Ready.” Rachel looked at Eric. Her eyes were already turning red and puffy and tears continued to streak down her face.
“Okay.” Eric took a deep breath. He didn’t know if Lindsey would see this. He wasn’t sure if she still had her phone on her, if she was still alive, if she’d been bitten, or if she was already one of the living corpses but he had to send his message anyway. It would be confirmation or closure. Either way it would give him hope to keep trying to save her or it would give him a reason to let that piece of himself go and become a more barren and brutal creature with no purpose but to kill the dead. “Tell her I love her, that all the things we ever fought about aren’t the memories I’m taking with me. That I’ll keep looking for her and save her or die trying and if I don’t find her I’ll find her in another life.”
Eric herd the steady clicking of the keys as Rachel punched in his message to Lindsey. When the clicking of the keys stopped the truck cab fell silent again. Looking through the rearview mirror Eric could see that the two women in the back had their heads down and their phones out. Everyone was sending their last message to their loved ones hoping against hope that the receiver would still be alive.
Rachel tapped her finger against Eric’s shoulder and then held his phone in front of his face. He took his right hand off the wheel and gently plucked the phone out of her fingers. He tenderly stuffed the phone back into his pocket secretly hoping he’d feel the vibration of a returned message any second. They pulled up behind Sanchez who was turning the car to the right and heading down Cliff Drive into the heart of Spokane and I-90, their path out of the city.