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moment, I bet she couldn’t have even yelled the word help .  Instead of calmly letting go, she panicked and started to run further ahead of me.
     
    Passing the last car in the line of wreckage, I attempted to catch Gwen.  She ran until she came to the condemned remains of the old Christian school, and instead of trying for the truck again, she ran to try to get inside the building. I thought to roll down my window and try to get her attention.  All of my efforts were in vain.  She did not seem to hear a word I yelled at her.  The front door of the school was boarded up, but still she tried to pull the door.  Unsuccessful with the front door, she found a brick and threw it through one of the downstairs windows.  She cut her hands up pretty bad, but she did manage to make it inside the window.
     
    A few of the people following her first went to the door and started to pound and pull on it.  About three of them went to the newly broken window and began to try to climb in.  I saw one or two of them make it into the building behind her.  I started to drive into the school parking lot just as I realized that some of the sick people had not followed her to the school.
     
    I looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see one of them slam into the back of the truck.  I locked my eyes back onto the road ahead and pushed the pedal to the floor.  I dragged at least one of them for about fifty feet before he let go.  I could hear the sound of cloth and flesh grinding against the asphalt behind me as I drove.  The weight of the truck shifted, as they couldn’t hang on to the bumper any longer.  I looked in the rearview mirror again and could see one of them rolling across the road.
     
    Once I had made the turn back onto Mercury Boulevard, the traffic was a little thicker, with close to thirty moving cars in sight.  All of the fast-food restaurants and convenience stores were dark, no longer fast nor convenient.  The parking lot of Wal-Mart was insane.  I could see people and cars packing the lot to it’s limits.  Gas stations were also extraordinarily busy; each one had its own little traffic jam.  I nervously looked at my gas gauge, only to be calmed by the recollection that I had filled the tank yesterday.  A few of them had signs outside stating they were out of gas, or closed due to pump failure.  I began to notice a lot of things that I would usually drive by.  Police were beginning to gather around certain streets, apparently to set up barriers, and they looked like they were wearing riot gear.
     
    I pushed the gas a little harder at the thought of not being able to get to the house.  I raced down Mercury Boulevard toward the overpass going over North King Street and, I glanced over to my right at the Food Lion.  Outside, cars gathered and people were rushing inside, but quite a few of them were coming out empty handed.
     
    A strange smell coming through the window snapped me out of my daze.  Just as my eyes focused on the road in front of me, I saw the smoke from the huge car accident at the bottom of the hill right at the intersection at Mercury Boulevard and Fox Hill Road.  There must have been six or so cars piled into a mangled mass of metal and glass.  It looked like a milk truck had swerved into oncoming traffic flipped on its side.  As I got closer to the bottom of the overpass more details were visible, and from the look of things the police and ambulances had already taken care of everything.  That is what I assumed considering there were no bodies or spectators.  However, it did seem odd that no one had taken any of the wreckage.  It had only been moved aside to allow vehicles to move through.
     
    It was hard to believe that this had all happened in the hour and a half I was gone.
     
    After navigating my way through this second bloody, mangled parking lot, the road looked clear.  As I turned onto my street, from Fox Hill Road, nothing seemed out of place.  Today was trash day