Maggie screamed as well.
More glass tinkled.
Ken saw another three zombies had pounded through the window next to his wife. Grabbed handfuls of her beautiful hair.
He froze. Not because of fear this time, but because he could not believe what was happening.
And the universe jerked sharply to the side.
13
Ken spun on the axis of a single toe, a deranged top spun by the hand of an angry child.
He heard screaming. Not Buck, not Maggie.
The redhead.
He turned a one-eighty, came to face front, and saw that their savior had her own attacker. A zombie was on the hood of the bus, reaching around the smashed driver’s side window to grab her jacket. It had hooked some mottled, scabbed fingers through her jacket and was drawing her toward the jagged edges of the glass that lined the window.
She spun the wheel, the movement sending the bus into a sharp sideways leap the twin of the one that had just sent Ken into his drunken rotation. He didn’t spin back around, though, because he fell sideways. Landed on his shoulder on the nearest seat. Pain pounded through the shoulder. Lanced through his left leg. His back.
The zombie on the hood of the bus fell sideways as well. The turn pushed it off the hood, so it was hanging off the side of the bus, hanging solely by its grip on the redhead’s vest.
She screamed in horror and disgust.
Turned the wheel sharply.
The bus slammed into a curb. Bounced up, the wheels leaving the ground before slamming back to earth so hard Ken’s teeth slammed against one another with an audible clack. He tasted blood in his mouth, felt teeth loosen in their sockets.
The zombie outside the bus growled.
The bus careened toward the storefront of a trio of businesses. What had once been a store selling board games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride next to a Jamba Juice and a place selling charmingly kitschy odds and ends.
Now they were none of those things.
Now it was after the Change. They weren’t stores.
They were just one big boot, and their redheaded savior intended to wipe the filth off her bus with them.
The zombie shrieked again, then the bus hit.
14
For much of his adult life, the sound of glass breaking had been an oddly comforting one. When he and Maggie went to Kauai on their honeymoon they went to the touristy places designed to steal as much money as possible from starry-eyed folks who were so enamored of the view that they barely felt their wallets lightening.
Ken felt it, though. He was a teacher who had gone into deep hock for the wedding and the honeymoon. So when they window shopped they just looked. It was enough.
Until Ken made fun of a Christmas ornament – odd to see in June on a tropical island – and in doing so poked it and sent it crashing to the floor. It broke, right under a sign that said, “You BRAKE You BUY!” The fact that the sign was misspelled struck both him and Maggie as tremendously funny, and the laughter they enjoyed – not to mention the good-natured ribbing he got over the years – more than offset the criminal expense of the trinket.
When he heard glass breaking, he usually thought of that.
But not here. Not in the bus. Not when the glass meant Buck was having his head ripped off, that Maggie was being pulled out to her doom.
And certainly not when it meant the bus was going through the plate glass windows of three different businesses in quick succession.
Ken was still facing more or less forward. He saw the bus’s hood careen off the concrete surface between stores, then edge back into the store, driven by The Redhead’s manic turn of the wheel. The glass of the display window tore into a million pieces, the bus bounced again. She turned back into the next store.
The zombie was pulled to pieces by a combination of glass cutting it apart and impact pulping it.
The pieces – many still moving independently, already frothing yellow – thud-thump-clunked over the side of the bus. They hit the two zombies that were pulling at Buck. They barely noticed the hits, kept pulling at him.
The Redhead careened into the last store. The last two zombies disappeared, leaving behind only Buck’s screams and bloody forehead as reminders of their passage.
Ken looked at Maggie.
The zombie that had her leaned in. Mouth open.
15
Ken wanted to scream for her.
There was no one close enough to do anything. Buck was sobbing through blood. Holding tight to Hope like she was a comforting toy and he a huge child.
Christopher was down, he must have fallen during the intentional crash.
Aaron was on his hands and knees. Broadsword in good hand, but not in a position to use it and too far to hit the zombie.
Ken had no way to get to his wife.
The growl hit him. And he smiled in the instant it did. Because it wasn’t the usual one. Not give up give in but a feline shriek of rage.