This is the End 2(690)

“On my mark,” Vaughan instructed when we were as ready as we could be. Most of us knew exactly what to do, but he had to spell it out for the new arrivals, “Head straight for the van, do not stop, and do not kill unnecessarily. Just get in the van and get out of the way for the next person. Kids and the females first.”

“Am I a kid?” Miller whispered sounding legitimately afraid.

“After Page, alright?” Vaughan asked with a softened tone.

Miller nodded, and then Vaughan was off. He took the butt of his gun and slammed it against the flimsy chain King had used to secure the front doors. The chain went flying and the doors were officially opened.

Vaughan was first into the fray and Hendrix and I were close behind- spreading out so that with the help of King, Harrison and Haley, we could protect those in our center.

The Feeders looked up slowly at us, their eyes vacant depths of starvation and their mouths drooling milky saliva. They seemed just as stunned to see living creatures walk out of the Publix as we were to see them bump into our van and then teeter off, not affected at all.

With slowly dawning intent they altered their paths for us. We were the only thing that mattered to them all of a sudden- their addiction kicking in immediately.

We started running then, making the mad dash to the van. Vaughan hadn’t bothered to lock the thing so when he reached the passenger door he flung it open. Taking Page from Nelson’s arm, he tossed her to the floor. Miller was next and then Tyler flung her body through the door. Haley crawled in and I pushed King and Nelson in before Hendrix picked me off the ground and tossed me inside. He crawled in after me and then Nelson slid the door shut. By the time I could lift my head from the mountain of bodies I was sprawled on, Vaughan was already in the driver’s seat begging the van to start.

Nelson was the last one in and I felt Haley’s sigh of relief as she let one out from underneath me. We were a tangle of bodies, tightly wound in each other. It was like the clown car in a circus. We were a mess.

A banging sound had more than one of us screaming. I lifted my chin from King’s thigh and was startled when the blood red eyes of a Zombie stared back at me through the glass.

Another fist pounded on the passenger window just above my head. The strength from these guys was insane. The van was rocking back and forth from their combined effort and their sickly death-bed smell was starting to waft through the windows.

“Let’s go, Vaughan!” Haley screamed as a third fist came down on glass.

“I’m trying!” he snarled.

The sick whirring of the engine every time he turned the key did not sound promising, but it had been doing this lately and Vaughan always seemed to pull off the start. Although he had never had to do it so fast.

He kept turning the key and the engine kept sputtering and clicking, but nothing was happening. More Feeders were moving our way the longer we sat here.

The pounding of fists became louder and more furious. I glanced over to see a lone bead of sweat trickle down Vaughan’s temple and my stomach dropped to my toes. This was the first obvious sign of panic I had ever seen from him and I was not Ok with that.

And in the backseat we were a mess. Page was shoved into a corner behind Vaughan’s chair and the wall, King, Harrison and Miller had somehow squeezed in around her. Tyler was taking up the captain’s chair to my left and Haley, Hendrix and I crouched in the middle of the aisle. Not a second of this was comfortable, but I was too afraid to move closer to the incessant beating.

A hard crack ripped another scream from my throat as the latest hit created a fissure down the middle of the back window. This seemed to electrify the entire horde and the pounding grew louder and stronger. If Zombies could show emotion then excitement was written all over their gaping, half-eaten away faces.

Finally Vaughan got the van to start but it was still spitting and now there were bodies on every side of us. Hands slapping the glass mingled with pounding fists and we were forced to watch as they dragged their disgusting mouths over the glass as if they could just eat right through to us. Their rotted teeth and sickly white tongues scraped against the glass and broken, bloodied, inhumanly thick yellow fingernails followed.

I swallowed down the nausea coated in terror and prayed for a break.

“I’m going to shoot some of them,” Nelson declared and reached for his manual roll-down window.

“No!” Haley screamed on a choked sob.

There were too many Feeders, and even a crack of his window would give them the opening they needed, but what choice did we have?

Vaughan looked at his brother and revved the pathetic engine again, but we had no leverage and there were too many bodies. We couldn’t go anywhere. They shared a look and then Vaughan reached over and picked up his own gun up off the arm rest between them.