In Harm's Way by Shawn Chesser Read Free Book Online Page A

waiting for the gate to rise so they could escape from Denver.
    Wilson hadn’t been joking when he said the passengers would be expected to disengage the garage door. “Pull the pins, ladies!” he hollered.
    Megan and her friend, Wilson still couldn’t recall her name, pulled the release pins, and started the metal gate on its upward journey.
    Wilson tried hard to ignore the baby shoe and focused only on the rear view mirror as he watched Megan get back into the Toyota Tacoma driven by her husband. Behind them, what’s-her-name rejoined her boyfriend in the white compact car.
    Ted was in the driver’s seat of his blue Subaru Forester. William, sick and useless, was sprawled in the reclined front seat.
    The black Suburban rocked subtly on its suspension as Sasha swayed anxiously on the edge of her seat. Wilson chewed his fingernails and watched the gate slowly disappear into the ceiling. When it finally cleared the middle of the windshield he tromped the accelerator. The roof rack atop the three-quarter ton Suburban scraped the gate as it raced up the incline to street level and took flight. Wilson didn’t know that the horsepower-to-handling ratio of the Suburban was extremely lopsided, suffering excessively on the maneuverability side of the equation; furthermore, he had never driven anything with more balls than his six cylinder lipstick-red Mustang which his friends called a girlie car.
    “Slow down, slow down, slow down...” Sasha chanted. She had a death grip on the grab handle near her head, and when the zombies came into view she stopped the mantra and began to hyperventilate.
    The big rig left the ground for a second or two, attained a cruising altitude of six inches, and then landed slightly sideways, slapping three of the walkers to the pavement. Yellowed puss and gray brain matter streaked the truck from the b-pillar all the way back to the taillights. Wilson, gripped by panic, stabbed the brake pedal. The SUV’s anti-lock device pushed back against his foot, further confusing him. The crunch of bone, gristle, and muscle resonated through the floorboards as the fallen creatures were ground into the road. The slimy, brownish-gray mess spit out by the Goodyear radials bore a strong resemblance to liver pâté.
    After the truck lurched to a near stop, Wilson quickly inventoried his situation: only a handful of walkers occupied the road in front of the slow rolling Suburban, and one lone female zombie clawed at the passenger window, smearing more viscous fluids along the tempered glass.
    Sasha shrieked and lunged towards Wilson, nearly crawling into his lap.
    “Calm down. I can’t hear myself think!” Wilson shouted to be heard over her hysterics. “We have to wait for the others... we need to stick together!” His eyes darted between the open road ahead, the garage, the girl zombie loping alongside, and the condensed cityscape reflected in the rearview mirror.
    After a few agonizingly drawn out seconds the Tacoma 4x4 nosed out of the garage and little by little inched across the sidewalk, followed by the white car, with the Subaru bringing up the rear.
    Wilson gingerly pressed the gas pedal, urging the rig forward. One more glance in the rearview confirmed that all three vehicles were lined up behind him. “Oh shit!”
    “What’s wrong now?” Sasha asked nervously. Her eyes were riveted on the zombie limping alongside trying to keep pace with the creeping Suburban. Every so often its brittle fingernails would skitter and tink on the glass, causing the short hairs on Sasha’s arms to stand at rigid attention.
    “They’re back and it’s too soon. No... no... no!” Wilson wailed, shaking his head vehemently and slamming his hands on the wheel as if his disagreement could change the reality of their situation. With Marty Feldman eyes and mouth agape, he froze in mid breath and his chest convulsed violently. The dry throaty rasp that came out when he coughed sounded like a dog fighting to expunge a