A piercing scream was the only answer, followed by a pause, a second scream, and silence. Zombies can scream. They just generally don?t.
?Buffy? Answer me!? I ran the rest of the way to the truck and grabbed the handle of the nearer door, wrenching it as hard as I could. I barely noticed removing a layer of skin from my palms in the process. It didn?t matter; the door was mashed in when the truck fell, and it wasn?t budging. I tried again, yanking even harder, and felt it shudder on its hinges. ?Shaun! Help me over here!?
?George, we have to make sure we?re covering the area in case of??
?Rick can do the goddamn covering! Help me while there?s still a chance that she?s alive!?
Shaun lowered his pistol, cramming it into the waistband of his pants and moving to put his hands over mine. Together, we counted, ?One, two, three,? and yanked. My shoulders strained until it felt like I would dislocate something. The door groaned and swung open, creaking along the groove of the broken frame. Buffy tumbled out onto the glass-sprinkled pavement, coughing hard.
That cough was reassuring. Zombies breathe, but they don?t cough; the tissue of their throats is already so irritated by infection that they ignore little things like smoke inhalation and caustic chemical burns, right up until they render the body unable to function.
?Buffy!? I dropped to my knees next to her, feeling glass crunch through the reinforced denim of my jeans; I?d have to check for slivers before I put them on again. I put my hand against her back, trying to reassure her. ?Honey, it?s okay, you?re okay. Just breathe, sweetheart, and we?ll get you away from here. Come on, honey, breathe.?
?Georgia??
Shaun?s voice was strained enough that he sounded almost sick. I looked up, my hand still flat against Buffy?s back. ?What??
Shaun gestured for silence, attention fixed on the interior of the truck?s cab. His right hand was moving with glacial slowness to the gun shoved into the belt of his jeans. Whatever he was looking at was outside my range of vision, and so I stood, leaving Buffy coughing on the ground as I reached up to remove my sunglasses. The smoke wouldn?t irritate my eyes more than they already were, and I?d see better without them.
At first there seemed to be nothing but motion inside the cab of the truck. It was slow and irregular, like someone trying to swim through hardening cement. Then my pupils dilated that extra quarter-centimeter, my virus-enhanced vision compensating for the sudden change in light levels, and I realized what I was looking at.
?Oh,? I said, softly. ?Crap.?
?Yeah,? Shaun agreed. ?Crap.?
Buffy fell out of the cab when we opened the door; Buffy hadn?t been wearing her seat belt. Buffy never wore her seat belt. She liked to ride cross-legged in her seat, and seat belts prevented that. Chuck, on the other hand, was a law-abiding citizen who obeyed traffic regulations. He fastened his seat belt every time he got into a moving vehicle. He?d fastened it before the convoy pulled out that morning. He was still wearing it now that he was too far gone to remember how to work the clasp, or even what a clasp was. His hands moved against the air in useless clawing motions as his mouth chomped mindlessly, stimulated by the presence of fresh meat.
There was blood around his mouth. Blood around his mouth, and blood on the seat belt, and blood on the seat where Buffy had been sitting.
?Cause of death?? I asked, as analytically as I could.
?Impact trauma,? said Shaun. The creature that had been Chuck hissed at him, opening its mouth and beginning to moan. Unconcerned, Shaun raised his pistol and fired. The bullet hit the zombie square between the eyes, and it stopped trying to reach us, going limp as the message of its second, final death was transmitted throughout the body. Continuing as if he?d never paused, Shaun said, ?It must have been instantaneous. Chuck was a small guy. Amplification would have been over in minutes.?
?Source of the blood??
Shaun looked toward me, and then back to Buffy, who was still down on her knees in the broken glass, hugging herself and coughing. ?He didn?t have time to bleed.?
I stayed where I was for a seemingly endless moment, staring into the cab of the truck. Chuck remained slumped and unmoving. I wanted to find something, anything, I could use to explain the blood away. A scalp wound, maybe, or a nosebleed that started when he hit his head and didn?t stop until he reanimated. There was nothing. Just one small, sad body, and bloodstains on the passenger seat that didn?t match to any visible wounds.
I turned to Buffy, numbly unsurprised to see that Shaun had his pistol out. My feet crunched on the glass as I walked over to her. ?Buffy? Can you hear me??
?I?m dead, not deaf,? she said, and lifted her head. Tears had left clean trails through the soot staining her cheeks. ?I hear you just fine. Hi, Georgia. Is everyone all right? Is? is Chuck???