The Reanimates (Book 2): The Highway Read Online Free PDF Page B

were gnarled and looked like branches from a tree. The skin was leathery and cracked along the knuckles, like worn gloves. The hand slapped against the glass trying to get to me. This zombie had been encased in a virtual tomb, unable to operate the car door latch. Her body was emaciated, her hair had fallen out in clumps, but long strands of blonde hair still remained. Her eyes seemed unnaturally large as her face had been otherwise shrunken. Her cheek bones jutted out in sharp angles. Her mouth was open, emitting the ever popular moan. Her teeth were black with rot, several broken from snapping against the other. I figured that there had been people wandering by that she had desperately wanted to eat. I looked at the zombie and actually felt bad for her. She had not eaten at all since converting to her zombie self. I wonder if she thought that maybe she would be fine, that whatever bit her maybe didn't bite hard enough. Maybe she thought that she could get to the hospital and be treated. Whatever her decision was, it didn't seem to work, and now she was trapped. Her eyes were locked on to me, not wanting to lose the prey that stood only feet away from her.
    It struck me in that moment how infant like the zombies were in completing tasks. I thought of Drew as a baby and how his coordination was so limited. His problem solving skills were limited to what he could see. I thought of other zombies we had run across. If they saw us they could track us. As long as they knew where we were they would follow, much like if I had hidden a ball under a pillow in front of Drew, he could find it, but if he didn't see me hide it, the interest in locating the ball was not there and he would find a different thing to do. If the zombies didn't see us they kept looking for something better.
    That realization didn't help the situation much. There was still a zombie in the car that needed to be moved off the road so we could get through. I turned to Trent who came up to me wondering why I hadn't yet started to move the car.
    “Aww, man, I knew this was going to happen.” he said with a sigh. “We had been too lucky before with getting these out of the way free and clear.”
    I nodded in agreement. “So, what's the plan on this?”
    Trent surveyed the scene. “She's still wearing her seat belt. I bet she can't take it off. I'm going to go over to the passenger door and get that opened up. She's going to lunge at me so I'm going to use that hunting knife I found to take care of her. Then I can just slide the shift lever to neutral and it is business as usual.”
    It seemed easy enough. The door had been locked so Trent broke the window. She leaned over the seat, struggling against the belt to try to get a hold of him. In a lunge Trent buried the knife to the hilt through her eye socket. She stopped thrashing about. To be extra careful Trent stirred the knife around a couple times, almost as though he was giving her a lobotomy, just to be sure that she would stay dead. He pulled the knife out of her head and grimaced at all the black gloopy gore that had now coated the once shiny blade. He stabbed it through the passenger seat to wipe it off. He put the car into neutral and we started pushing, glad to be done with this particular car.
    After what felt like hours of road clearing and scavenging, as well as killing several more trapped zombies, we were on our way. I rode with Trent for this leg of the journey. We were coming up on one of those little strip malls with a mattress store in it.
    “ Trent, let's get off the freeway here. I want to go to the mattress store, I have an idea.” I said suddenly. Trent has known me for a while and seems to trust that my ideas have some value. He still looked at me as though he wasn't sure what the plan was. “I think those memory foam mattresses would be nice back there. We could cut them to fit the floor and bunks so it would be more comfortable back there.”
    Trent looked at me with appreciation. He