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                  “Come on, asshole! Get that piece of shit movin’!” he yelled as he leaned out the open window and threw his hands up. He laid on the horn.
                  Instead of pulling himself back inside he remained frozen, hanging halfway out the rusty metal truck. He hadn’t been able to see from behind the steering wheel facing the rear end of the line of cars, but at that angle the horrible view of what blocked traffic was laid out before him.
     
     
     
    VIII.
     
     
     
    A construction crew had half the road closed off with orange cones and a slow traffic sign. That would have been enough to give any of the desperate drivers in line a bad case of road rage, but there was a more pressing issue at hand, one that came from the shadows of the lush green trees that lined the side of the road.
    Dozens of bodies stumbled out, one after another, like a group of drunks at closing time. There was no end to the rows of undead it seemed. Their sites were trained on the exposed workers scrambling in the middle of the road, unsure what was going on, who the people were, and if they were in any sort of danger.
                  Some of the men didn’t wait around to help their fellow laborers. They hopped in whatever vehicle they could get to and took off in the opposite direction, leaving a few misfortunate souls trapped to receive a slow, painful, miserable death. The three left behind huddled together on the yellow line, their backs to each other to see from every angle.
    Lonnie watched as the drooling zombies surrounded the crewmen who had nothing to defend themselves with aside from a sign attached to a metal rod. The man holding it swung out in front of him as the group converged from all sides. A tall male with a portly belly torn open and hollowed out swiped back at the sign and almost knocked it from the man’s hands.
                  Eight cars back, Lonnie squinted his eyes to try to make out the faces of the orange vested men on the road. It was a small town and likely he went to high school with one of them or it was the dad of somebody he knew. When his eyes roved over one, he stopped scanning.
    He was incredibly tall, his brown hair styled with mousse to look like a California wave, and had tan muscles that tightened as he gripped the rod of the traffic sign. It was Rowan Brady, the guy he’d met the night before in his drunken haze, the one who left his number for Lonnie on a bar napkin.
    If he didn’t do something quick, Lonnie was going to have to watch his new friend be ripped apart by the cold, dead hands of those things that inched their way closer. There was also the possibility that if he tried to help, he would also face the same gruesome death. Another one of the things reached the men and tried to get a grasp around anyone’s neck as it was shoved backwards over and over again.
                  Before his brain had time to process, Lonnie stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel to the left. He bypassed the other cars and hit the orange cones as he sped down the road toward the group of cowering men. A tall, fat male clad in overalls and a camo hat with half his face clawed, the flesh hanging loosely from his cheeks, stopped and turned to the truck just in time to see it plow over him, sending him high into the air. When he hit the pavement the back of his head cracked open and leaked thick black cerebral fluid over the hot pavement.
    Another one stepped in the path of the Ford and suffered a similar fate, though the blonde female clung to the front end of the bumper for several seconds before it slipped and was crushed by the weight of the truck. Its pulverized insides remained stuck in the grooves of the rubber tires as they spun wildly.
                  Lonnie let out a whooping cheer and grinned like a madman as he ran zombies down left and right. “Take that fuckers! Woo! Yeah! How’d that feel?” He pulled up