In a Jam
04 Nov 2019Today’s prompt: “You are stuck on the highway in the world’s worst traffic jam for at least two days. What happens?”
In the space of an hour, you inched ahead approximately two feet. That was the first day. Things gave up moving at all after that. People shut off their motors to save the gas.
After a few hours, people begin leaving their cars temporarily to relieve themselves behind the bushes on the side of the highway. They always return to their cars. Somehow they can’t bear to leave the dead metal giants that took them to work, to the grocery store, to kids’ soccer games, and finally to this freeway.
What could be going on up there? No accident could make things this slow. No construction.
You’re glad you filled up your Nalgene bottle before you left. But you’re famished. You dig through your belongings and find a Milky Way. You guess that’s dinner tonight.
You pull out a novel and do a little reading by the dome light. Eventually you switch it off to sleep, so you don’t drain the battery.
The next morning, you wake up to the same damn traffic snarl. You turn on the radio. Your regular station doesn’t seem to be working. You flip to another. No news, but there’s some music at least.
Hours later, and still nothing’s moving. The guy three cars up in the right-hand lane executes a 17-point turn in the tiny space between the cars surrounding him. He manages to pull off to the side of the road. The shoulder’s too narrow to drive on, though, and there’s nothing all-terrain about his vehicle. So he just gets out to walk.
You call out the window to him. “Where are you going? Police? Nearest place of business?”
“I’m going up there to see what’s going on,” he says, facing forward, the same direction as the traffic jam. “I’ll come back and let you know what I find out.” You watch him walk away.
People are starting to come out of their cars more and congregate, asking for help and pooling their resources. You trade some of your water for half a warm sandwich.
You keep your eye out for the man who pulled over and started walking, but he never comes back.
As the evening gets cooler, you pile back into your car. You turn on the radio. The new station is dead too, now. You flip through all the channels. Nothing.
On the third day, a small, exhausted, haggard group of survivors approaches from the direction you’d all been driving. And an equally exhausted and haggard group of survivors approaches from behind you. The zombies coming after them are slow, but they are nearly impossible to kill. They are relentless, and their numbers are overwhelming. You get your tire iron out of the trunk, but you know even then as you gaze out on the sea of dead eyes, you’re not making it out of this alive. You’re as dead as the radio stations. As dead as your car sitting unmoving on this freeway.