Dead Set - Book 2 of a Zombie Reverse Harem

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JACKSON CARTER

The smell of gasoline and burning rubber filled the air. Pain radiated throughout my entire body as I struggled to release my seat belt. Flipping the van was not my greatest idea but the closer we had gotten to my aunts farm without a plan the more panicked and desperate I had become. I needed to find a way to get Blake back without sacrificing Agnes but when Johnny the driver, a twenty year old recruit, still wet behind the ears and playing soldier- let it slip that there wasn't actually going to be an exchange. That he had been informed that they would be bringing both of them back with us. That's when I lost it. Todd had given separate orders to that of the doctor and planned to renege on the agreement that had been made with Clara. It was only due to the boys assumption that I had been given the same orders as him that he freely laid down Todd's duplicitous plan at my feet.

In his eagerness to please and the slight panic from the reports of an agitated Blake coming from the back, he took the hidden turning onto Clara's farm with a bit more speed than physics would allow. That's when instinct over thought kicked in. My hand threw itself towards the wheel, almost as if I was going to help the boy correct the sidewards tilt we were now riding on but instead turning into the corner and using the vans momentum to roll us into the grassy field along the side of the road. The van rolled and bounced over the uneven terrain for what felt like hours. Tossing us around inside as though we were merely rag dolls. Thankfully I'd had the forethought to get the guards to tighten Blake's restraints. If only I had taken my own advice and buckled up. But let's be honest, I hadn't planned to roll us.

Finally the van came to a mental crunching and bone jarring stop, just aside the small natural lake that sat on the outskirts of Clara's property. Looking around, I saw Johny passed out cold, crumpled in the footwell with a nasty cut creasing his forehead and leaking bright crimson blood onto the carpet and seat around him. Flashes of mutilated bodies buried in sand ambushed me before I could stop them. The copper tang of blood increasing in the balmy air around us and mingling with the increasing smell of gasoline.

The smell pulled me from my nightmares as the thought of a perforated gas tank became my sole focus. I had to get us out of here before the thing blew us to kingdom come.

The van had landed right side up but that was where my luck had ended. The dash had crumpled and wrapped around my legs, squeezing them in a vice like grip. Jagged metal digging into my skin stealing my breath as I tried to wriggle them free. There wasn't much room in the cab anymore so reaching over to my door, I pulled on the handle and rammed my shoulder against the interior hoping to push it open. It didn't budge.

I tried again and again as sparks jumped out of the crumpled dash, as if the van was spitting at me with disgust for flipping it. Panic rose within me. It was only a matter of time before one of those sparks ignited the fuel that was currently being spilled into the grass beneath us. I really should have thought this through better.

Metal groaned and twisted around me as I rocked into the door over and over. The window creaking but not giving way. I was trapped. Claustrophobia filled me. Seizing my lungs in a vice like grip and ripping my heart out of my chest and ramming it down my throat. Smoke began pouring into the cab, letting me know that the fuel had ignited and that I had only mere seconds to get myself and Blake out of this wreckage alive. Blake, who was currently strapped to a gurney, locked in the back and was eerily silent as compared to only minutes ago. I had doomed us both.

I coughed and sputtered as smoke filled my lungs, choking me with a thick blanket of sut coating my insides. I supposed asphyxiation was better than burning to death, I thought morbidly. My vision blurred and darkness crept in as I began to lose consciousness. The cab of the van spinning wildly as if we were still tumbling through the grass made my stomach nauseous.