Aunt Meredith pushed mom away just in time. The zombie – the asshole zombie – was hiding behind the trees by the car, just waiting for its chance.
"Get in the car!" Aunt Meredith yelled at me, as she pulled my mom up with one hand and elbowed the zombie with the other.
More came out of the woods. Three. Four. Seven.
Too many to count.
It didn't occur to me then, because I was still under the impression that zombies were mindless creatures, but after I was bitten I realized it -- that flat tire was probably the zombies' doing.
They were hiding in the woods waiting for us. An ambush.
Aunt Meredith threw Mom inside the car and made way around, fighting zombies like a badass. She banged the door shut and started the car.
We roared ahead with the throbbing sound of the flat tire.
"Is everyone all right?" Aunt Meredith asked, as the car gained speed down the deserted road. The smell of burnt pavement and highway filled my nostrils.
"Meredith, be careful!" Mom said. "You're going too – MEREDITH!"
Meredith swerved the car to avoid the zombie, and I swear I think the front left wheel actually went past the cliff's edge for a second, spinning against the nothingness of the drop below before screeching back to the road.
"They're coming from everywhere!"
"Meredith, slow down!"
There's a lot I didn't realize at the time. A lot that was clear to me only after I turned. Zombies are not stupid. They don't throw themselves in front of cars and risk being run over for no reason.
The fact that that herd was doing all it could to stop us meant that the world had ended already. We were doing eighty on a flat tire down a deserted road in search of a safe place that didn't exist anymore. If zombies were willing to go this far – to throw themselves in front of cars and hide in the middle of the Bear Mountain road – it was because the food was ending.
The non-infected were turning into a delicacy. A rare dish.
We were lobsters.
"Where are we going?" I asked, in the midst of the confusion. As Meredith swerved again, a hand crashed through the back seat window and closed its fingers on my arm. "Ahh!"
I tried pulling it away. The zombie was holding on tight, the rest of its body hanging out the window being dragged down the road, leaving patches of dead, rotten skin painted on the pavement.
Finally, the arm was cut off elbow-length, and I was left with a zombie forearm clutching to my wrist. Which is as disgusting as it sounds.
"Get it off me, get it off me!" I yelled, as Mom turned back and tried opening the fingers closed around my wrist.
More and more zombies were coming out from the woods. A couple managed to jump on the hood of the car, and were blocking Aunt Meredith's view as they held on tight to the windshield.
"Fucking assholes!" Meredith yelled, turning on the wipers. It didn't help.
The car was slowing down and pulling hard to the left because of the flat tire.
"We're not gonna make it!" I yelled.
"Yes we are!" Mom said. She let go of the zombie hand still clutching to my wrist. "Shit, Eve. We'll deal with that later!"
"They don't stop coming!"
More and more zombies. Aunt Meredith must have ran over five at the very least. The road grew narrower and darker, and the cliff to our side steeper.
I started crying (fuck you, leave me alone).
"Eve, you cut that shit out right now!" Aunt Meredith screamed over the sound of cold wind gushing inside the car. "Woman up!"
"It's gonna be ok Eve," Mom said, turning again to face me. She touched my chin and forced me to look up. "Look at me. It's gonna be ok."
"Mom, we're in a car with a flat tire speeding down a zombie infested road in the middle of nowhere! It's not gonna be ok!"
Aunt Meredith's eyes found mine in the rear view. "God damn it, Eve, if I knew you were gonna be a downer I wouldn't have invited you to my house!"
"I don't wanna die, that's not being a downer!"
"No one's gonna die!" Mom yelled.
"Everybody's gonna die!" Meredith spat. "We're just not gonna die at the hand of these fuckers!"
"I wanna talk to Damian! I don't wanna die without talking to him one last time!"
"Will you shut up about Damian, already!?" Meredith grunted. "God damn, this kid must have a huge d –"
"MEREDITH, THE ROAD!"
The car screeched and spun around itself, knocking zombies down at fast speed. Mom and Meredith's face swapped places in a swirling movement in front of me as the world turned to a blur of motion and screams.
All the weight left my body, and the last thing I saw through the front window was the cliff's edge, rising up, up, up as the car drifted off it and flew down the three hundred feet drop towards the ground down below.
YOU ARE READING
Eve
Teen Fiction-Featured Story -Wattys 2016 Winner Eve's a vegan zombie, and she really doesn't care what you think of it, so shush it. All she wants is to get by and find some pigeons or a fat rat - anything without a name she can eat before she starves to death...
