Behold, a rider on a dirtbike, and hell rides with him.

Jason Duncan
Central Florida Panhandle near Big Bend

My friend Travis and I made it to Port St. Joe a week ago. We made it by the skin of our teeth. Somewhere north of Highway 98 four guys riding double on a pair of heavy-duty dirt bikes came screaming down a small hill from out of nowhere. They crossed the road about two or three hundred yards ahead of us. The driver of the lead bike saw us driving towards them and stopped abruptly right in the middle of the road. His passenger was carrying some kind of wicked little sub-machine gun. They spoke a few words then the passenger fired a dozen rounds into the road between themselves and us.

The message was pretty clear. STOP! Needless to say, we did.

Just then, a massive herd of screamers and groaners crested the hill behind the riders. The other bike had stopped by this point. The passenger on this bike turned around, fired a few shots from an identical weapon into the ever-growing mob cresting and overtopping the hill. None of the dead fell to these shots. In fact they seemed to move faster, closing the distance to the stopped bikes. The first driver and passenger were yelling at each other. The herd was getting bigger and bigger. The bikes took off hell for leather, heading south away from the hill. Travis slapped me on the side of the head. I was in the driver's seat and wasn't driving. The weird scene had me mesmerized but the smack broke the spell. I stomped the accelerator pedal and cut the wheel to follow the bikes off of the road down a dirt track I'd have completely missed had the two wheeled road block not stopped in my path. The truck bounced through the roadside ditch and up into the dirt track. The front ranks of the herd were just yards behind us as I accelerated hard, trying in vain to keep up with the powerful bikes. I fucked up and looked in the mirror. The group of screamers following us was bigger than any other congregation of these fucking things I'd seen. I saw wave after wave of the dead marching on St. Pete before the QZ there fell beneath their numbers. This crowd dwarfed that massacre by an order of magnitude. It was still growing. I don't know where they came from. I don't know how the riders had managed to attract this much attention. But I knew we were well and truly fucked...just as fucked as the guys on the bikes. We'd never clear this. The end is nigh. I knew it.

Then something even more strange happened. We were hauling ass down this dirt road. I know dirt roads. I grew up on dirt roads. We were hauling ass. Way too fast for anything remotely resembling safety. The passenger of the bike closest to us reached into a small pack slung over his shoulder, pulled something out, played with it for a few seconds, then threw it over his shoulder. It was a little white cylinder and it spun into the wood line to the side of the dirt track. As we passed it, a strangely familiar sound screamed over the roaring of the truck's massive diesel engine. That guy threw an air horn into the woods. It was one of the medium sized ones you buy at Walmart....bought at Walmart.... to prank your friends and scare your girlfriend. The screamers were still behind us but not quite keeping up. We were going way too fast.

Just then the bikes split up, one to each side of the dirt track. They stopped. With these fucking things chasing us, the bikes stopped. I had no intention of stopping. As I drove past the bikes, the drivers both waved me on frantically, gesturing for me to continue down the track. I wasn't going to argue. A second or two later, I looked back, and the passengers were again firing their weapons into the not-distant-enough horde now filling the woods behind us.

The track ended in a clearing that broadened out into a beach beside a lake. A dune lake. We had reached the gulf. I could see the dunes just beyond the lake and the faint haze of salt in the air beyond. We had nowhere else to run. Definitely fucked. The bikes came screaming out of the woods and passed me. I had slowed the truck down trying to figure the path ahead around the lake that was most likely to keep Travis and me alive for another minute or two. Oh. Yeah. Somewhere after the air horn, Travis had jumped in the back seat, opened the rear window, and started pointing my rifle back towards the screamers. He wasn't firing but I think he was getting ready to do so. I sped back up to follow the bikes. The drivers seemed to have some kind of plan in mind. They raced around the shorter curve of the dune lake, the right side, and were flying up and over the dune at what I knew would be the edge of the beach. I quickly decided the truck could probably make that climb too. The horde was only about a hundred yards behind us when I stomped the pedal and raced after the bikes. We hit the dune like a ton of bricks and somehow bounced up and over it without destroying the front suspension. I hadn't even had time to engage the four wheel drive.

Going to die. Going to die. That kept repeating in my brain.

We cleared the top of the dune and bounced over the other side. Travis hit his head pretty hard on the roof of the cab and landed in a fucked up heap in the back floorboard. The rifle flew from his hands and a round went off, punching a cute little hole through the roof. I started to take stock of the beach and my brain just went, NOPE. What I saw didn't register for a long time. The bikes had driven right to the water's edge and rolled up a ramp onto the front of some kind of small military boat, like a landing craft. I had seen videos of the bigger versions used in world war 2 so I recognized the concept. The boat was backing away from the beach as fast as it could. The really shocking thing in front of me was the three gray ships sitting parallel to the beach about a mile off shore.

With a few yards to spare I cut the wheel and sped off West down the beach trying to put some distance between us and the horde.

Then everything went nuts. I don't know what kind of ships they were, but they were armed. Heavily. The air split and thundered with whatever they were shooting. The shockwaves from the shells and explosions did their damndest to pick the truck up and throw it around like a fucking matchbox toy. I kept going. About a half mile from where I jumped the dune, I stopped and turned around in my seat. I could see the screamers pouring over the dune and flooding onto the beach. They were trying to flood onto the beach at least. The pounding coming from the ships was relentless. It was terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. Huge geysers of water, and sand, and blood, and bone were screaming up into the air with each round's impact. The bodies of the undead dead were torn apart like tissue paper. The firing continued for more than five minutes. I didn't even try to count the shots. They all blurred together in an unending, overlapping roar. The shells were so close to the water, I could see white lines of devastated turbulence racing from the ships to the beach with each shot. I've never seen anything so amazing in my life. After an eternity the firing stopped. Travis and I were just staring at the devastation in slack jawed amazement. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I almost shit myself when someone knocked on the drivers window of the truck. The boat had pulled back up to the shore. One of the bike riders came up and decided to scare the life out of us.

We're on a ship now. I can't say where. I can't say much of anything. I have to show this to somebody before they'll "let" me post it. I'll find a way to fill you in as soon as I can.

We might be ok everybody.

Will advise.