"Two"

It was safe in here...but was it? Harley had said there wasn't going to be any help coming, and if he was right, then sooner or later they were going to have to make a run for it anyway. Once daylight came, and the storm ended, the dead were going to be able to see inside...and then these windows would only last so long.

"One"

And she understood on a gut level that if she remained here, they were through. Gerald wouldn't look back. He would take it as her choosing the people here over him and would wash his hands of her. That would have consequences of its own.

"Go," he stated in the same calm voice, stepped out of the booth, and rushed around the seat for the fire door.

In the end, habit made her decision for her.

Something inside, some lost voice, wailed for her stop as she found herself taking off after him. She shut it out, sick with the knowledge it was the fading voice of who she had been two years ago. The voice of the girl who had real friends, real passions, and real opinions...the girl who hadn't met Gerald yet, and all the opportunities that came with him.

Now was not the time to indulge in going over past choices, she told herself.

Now it was time to run.

Gerald hit the door ahead of her at full speed, and she followed right at his back. An ear splitting, electronic shriek assaulted her ears as the door flew open and she understood they had just made a critical mistake. They had forgotten that opening the fire door would set off an alarm. Now, instead of making their run for safety with the advantage of the monsters not knowing they were coming, they had just announced their presence outside to the entire countryside.

As she staggered out into the blinding chaos of the downpour, she realized they were committed. Any attempt to stop and turn back would cost valuable seconds, allowing the zombies to react and attack. Besides, a flicker of motion to her right caused her to turn and see several wasted, loping figures coming from behind the truck stop towards her.

The monsters had been closer than she realized! They must have been back there, out of sight of the action up front, and only now drawn around the building by the sound of the alarm. There were at least a good half dozen of them. Even worse, they had already spotted her and were well into the process of running them down. Lightning flared, bringing their gaping jaws into stark relief in the wild storm. Then something came around the building behind them...

...something truly awful.

C'mon, don't look back, just run! Don't look back, just run! Just run, just run, just run!

Gerald began to widen the gap between them, and she had a sudden image of him leaping into the car and hitting the electronic lock switch as soon as he slammed the door, leaving her outside to be ripped to pieces. It wouldn't be malicious on his part. He simply wouldn't think to wait for her until it was too late.

And she would be just as dead.

Holly fled through the rain with desperate eyes fixed on the approaching car and a grinning pack of the living dead snapping at her heels. Ahead of her, the dark shape of Gerald ran into the hood of the car then fumbled his way around to the driver's door. The sight of him grabbing for the handle prompted a burst of even greater speed.

"Geralllldddd!" she wailed as he yanked the door open and jumped inside. "Waiiiittt!"

The slam of his door shook the car as she grasped the handle of her own. She yanked on the handle with a ragged cry, ripping her own door open, and saw his finger punch the lock button at the very same instant.

You son of a bitch! You would have actually done it!

Holly didn't have the breath to scream at him as she dove into the car and snatched the door shut behind her. She could wait till later. When they reached Austin, she fully intended to inform Mr. Gerald Plimpton that they were through...while he lay clutching his thrice kicked balls on the ground. But until that glorious moment, getting out of here would do.

Holly made a silent promise to send help back to the Textro as she wrestled on her seat belt. At least she could do that much for them. She knew she had done it for all the wrong reasons, but maybe turning this last act of submission into something useful would help her face the girl in the mirror a little better. Assuming she made it out of here...

The smack on the window caused her to look over and directly into the eyes of the nightmare only inches away.

It must have once been somebody's little girl.

Like all the others, the face was now gone...but the pigtails still remained. The smallish claws slapping the glass had bone tipped fingers, and Holly realized that even this little thing had ripped its way up through wood and earth to the world above. Its child-sized skull was level with Holly's own, and it snapped and scrabbled at the glass like a maddened animal.

Other hands started smacking the windows around her.

"Gerald! Get us the hell out of here!"

Gerald finally managed to slam home the keys, and the engine roared to life. Holly gave silent thanks that he had just had the BMW overhauled. A second later he found the headlights and turned them on.

She almost wished he hadn't.

"Holy shit! Look at that!" Gerald breathed and pointed out the windshield, "I was right! That ignorant yokel animal doctor had the nerve to lecture me and I was right! HE sure as hell didn't come from no graveyard! I wonder what that backwoods bitch has to say about this!"

His finger shook in triumphal justification as it pointed at the cause of his outburst.

Outside, the enormous, ravaged corpse of Buddha Boy Norville stood bathed in the headlights.

Unlike the other dead things roaming the parking lot this night, he still had most of his face. Only one section that included a cheek and part of his neck was missing, giving him a strangely bulldog-like appearance. But the damage didn't stop there.

Massive tears ran down the sides and front of his vast torso, giving his once great belly the appearance of pleated cloth. Large gobs of fat and meat protruded from the bottom of most of the ripped sections, and a two foot length of colon hung from his left side. His pleated flesh wobbled and swayed like a skirt as he lumbered around to the side of the car.

"Gerallllld" Holly moaned. "Get us ooouuut of heeeerrrrree..."

"Shhhhh...." Gerald's head swiveled to track the huge monstrosity. "Just don't move and let them settle down. Remember, they can't really make sense of what they see through wet glass. Pretty quick they'll lose track of us and go back over to where the action is."

"Goddammit, Gerald..."

"Just hush!" He turned towards her with a finger to his lips. "And relax. This glass is a lot tougher than the stuff in those windows anyway. Now be still. Everything is okay."

"I don't think so," She frowned through the rain pebbled windshield. The pale monster swatted one of its skeletal companions out of the way as it reached the driver's door. "I think this one is different. I'm serious! I think you need to hit the gas right now!"

"I just had this thing refurbished. I'm not panicking and plowing over a bunch of these things and wrecking the front end. Not when..."

She saw the huge zombie lean down and peer through the glass at the back of Gerald's head. The bloated white face almost filled the window. Its milky eyes zeroed straight in on the oblivious redhead, and Holly had no doubt it knew exactly what it was looking at.

"Dammit, Gerald!" she shrieked. "Floor it! Now!"

Too late.

The man turned back to the window just as it exploded inwards in a shower of fractured glass. Holly screamed and threw up her hands to keep the flying fragments out of her face. A split second later Gerald's flailing elbow caught her in the side of the head, causing her to see stars. She could feel him thrashing in the seat beside her, as she tried to clear her vision and get a grip on what was happening.

Holly shook her throbbing head and looked over to see Gerald dying.

The monster had driven its fist through the window and now it's massive hand clenched most of her boyfriend's face, with its fingers hooked under his jawline. She could hear the bones of Gerald's face crack under the things grip, and knew the thrashing was due to him suffocating. It seemed to be trying to drag him headfirst out the window. Holly realized the only reason it hadn't already succeeded was due to the seatbelt holding the man in.

Not that it helped him much.

He made a strangled gurgle behind the massive hand as it tightened further, causing more popping noises. Blood began to squeeze out between its thick fingers. Gerald flopped in the seat like a dying fish, the visible portions of his head now blue from oxygen deprivation. Holly knew he was going to die if she didn't do something, and do it damn quick.

The girl grabbed the gear shift and ground the transmission into gear. Then she unsnapped her seatbelt, threw her leg over the gear shift and stomped the gas pedal. Beside her, Gerald twitched and spasmed, his head now twisted up and back as the monster continued to pull. The engine roared and the tortured squeal of rubber on slick asphalt cut through the din of the storm.

For a moment, the car didn't move.

Then the wheels found their purchase and the BMW leapt forward. Unfortunately, physics were not to be denied and that meant something had to give. In this case it was Gerald's neck...

...as his head tore loose in one wet, gristle popping, rip.

Holly shrieked anew as the headless corpse geysered blood and fell over against her. Gore fountained from the severed neck, drenching the girl as she fought to get the grisly thing off of her. It wasn't easy due to the reclining position she was forced into by having her foot on the gas pedal. She kept it jammed to the floor, barely noticing the multiple thuds against the car's bumper as it rocketed blindly past the truck stop towards the rear of the parking lot.

With a howl of despair, Holly pushed the corpse back upright...only to have it slump forward now that it had slipped free of the shoulder restraint, and fall forward onto the steering wheel. It turned under the cadaver's weight, and she felt the car veer sharply to the left.

Even dead, the jackass was still doing all the driving that mattered.

Holly fought to push herself up so her head would be above the level of the dashboard and she could see. At the same time her foot groped for the brake pedal, but Gerald's legs were in the way. In the end it didn't matter, for she got her head up just in time to see it was too late.

A wall of corn stalks filled the headlight beams outside the windshield.

The BMW went off the asphalt and into the soft, deep mud of the plowed furrows at over sixty miles per hour. It was almost like hitting a wall.

Out of her own shoulder strap due to her efforts with the gas pedal, Holly slammed against the dashboard with bone crunching force as the vehicle smashed into the drenched soil, bounced out, then plowed another long trench into the mud. The airbag deployed after the bounce, almost smacking the slight girl unconscious while sparing her a second impact during the final collision with the soft earth. After another couple of seconds the heavy car bulldozed to a stop...buried up to its axles in the streaming ground.

Nothing moved for a moment, the hissing of the rain in the corn stalks closing back in as a substitute for silence.

Holly became aware of the storm hammering the roof in the darkness, unsure if minutes or mere seconds had passed since the crash. She lay, half slid down the seat to the floor. Every part of her body hurt, and she didn't want to think about the weight now leaning against her from the driver's side. She knew what it had to be, but this time she felt pretty sure the blood on her face belonged to her...

...along with assorted fractures, contusions, and god only knew what other damage.

A feeble attempt to raise one arm sent jagged shards of crystal sharp agony through her back and side. She was hurt...hurt bad. The only reason the girl didn't scream was because the pain from inhaling almost caused her to black out. She barely clung to consciousness, and the effort to do even that drained her by the second. Her grip on the world was fading. It felt as if her mind circled a black hole at the back of her head, soon to be sucked in by its inexorable pull.

Some small part of Holly realized with a remote sense of sadness that when that happened there would be no coming back. It would be her final exit. The big goodbye.

She was dying.

And she wasn't even scared.

Holly lay there in the dark wreckage, barely moved by it all. The thought of dying in a half sunk BMW in the middle of a soggy Texas cornfield only generated a mild sense of bemusement. It sure didn't live up to the dramatic passings performed by many of the actresses she had aspired to follow. It didn't appear she would even get the benefit of an audience.

Then a flare of lightning lit the night, and she saw she wasn't alone.

Not even the skeletal face peering in over the edge of the driver's side window alarmed her. Her only response was to think the pigtails were a sad touch.

You were somebody's baby, weren't you. Her mind did another shallow orbit of that black pit, and she understood the next one would be its last. You know what? When I was your age I wore pigtails, too. I guess compared to you, I got bonus time. No point in complaining...you get what you get. And once you're dead, what difference does it make?" You just sleep the Big Sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell." Right?

Paraphrasing the line of Raymond Chandler's reminded her of Humphrey Bogart, and Holly smiled at the thought she still had control over one last thing in this life. One last thing...even though it would be unwitnessed by any audience that would appreciate it, it would still be hers.

Her exit line.

The dim outline of the thing shifted position, as if trying to discern whether somebody inhabited the car or not. In silhouette, it looked like a child peeking over a candy counter. Holly supposed in its own grisly way, it was. She gave it a feeble smile, and summoned the last of her strength.

"Here's lookin' at you, kid."

It was barely more than a whisper, but it was enough.

The small horror locked its gaze on the source of her voice, and scrabbled frantically at the edge of the window. The scratch of its claws and shoeless feet made a loud, frenzied staccato against the metal of the door. After a few seconds, the little monster's struggles pulled it over into the car and it immediately launched itself at the still form in the far seat.

But Holly wasn't there anymore.

Behind the gentle smile, the girl had made her final orbit and fallen down that endless hole into nowhere.

Back at the truck stop, three horrified pair of eyes stared out the windows at the monster that used to be Buddha Boy Norville. It calmly tore a chunk out of Gerald's fleshy head with its teeth as it lumbered towards the gas pumps.

"Oh my God," Rachel breathed aloud in open disbelief, "the poor little bastard was right."

Chapter Eight: Stormbreak.

Stormbreak - Rachel.

"Marisa," Rachel carefully used one of the last strips of cloth available to wrap the end of the girls foot, "I can't tell if you have a broken toe or not...not without an X-ray. Truthfully, I don't think it is. But I can definitely say you aren't going to be winning any footraces for a while, so keep that in mind. Okay?"

The dark haired waitress hugged herself and nodded, not bothering to reply. That worried Rachel more than the injury to the girl's foot.

It's getting to us, the doctor reflected as she glanced around the kitchen. We're all tired, scared, and starting to wear down. And it just keeps getting worse. Every time something happens, it ends up being worse than before.

"Hey." She gently shook Marisa's uninjured foot to catch her attention. "You still with us?"

"I'm okay," the girl responded in a distracted voice, "I'm just trying to figure a couple of things out. Have you talked to Harley yet?"

"Not yet." She gently worked Marisa's sock back over her injured foot. "I know he wants to show me something, but first things first. So I've got him doing something for me until I'm done here. Somebody's got to keep you two tough guys patched up, you know."

That elicited just the hint of a smile at the corner of the young woman's mouth.

"Thanks, doc. So I'm still good to go?"

Rachel eyed the girl judiciously.

"Well, I suppose so." She handed the waitress her shoe, then held up a warning finger as the girl reached to take it. "But you're going to have to use your own judgment, depending on what you're doing. I would recommend you avoid situations that require you to run. Even if you can force yourself to do it, you won't be as fast and you won't be able to keep it up long. And of course, it's going to be sore as hell."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"Just remember," Rachel held her gaze, "we can be as tough as the guys...or at least some of us can...but we have to be smarter about it."

"I know."

I bet you do, Rachel surveyed her patient. You've been through hell tonight, in more ways than one, but you're still ticking. And if you're willing to do what it takes to get us out of this alive, I guess I shouldn't complain and get on with doing my part.