by Dave Lund
A shot pierced the air. One of the women had fired her rifle at an approaching corpse, its skull bursting as it fell backwards into a heap on the pavement about thirty yards to their east. She fired again and again; the other woman began firing at corpses. The men on the ground threw the looted gear into the back of the bus as quickly as they could.
The younger man leapt into the back of the bus, while the older man pulled a pistol out of his waistband and began firing, turning around to face the ruined bridge.
Sliding forward, Bexar peered over the ruined edge of the roadway and saw at least a dozen undead flopping through the rubble towards the old man, some of them getting close. The younger man made his way to the front of the bus and began yelling at the women still perched on the roof. They quickly climbed in through a hole and disappeared into the interior.
Focused on shooting into the rubble, the old man didn’t see the corpses closing in on him from the south.
“Shit.”
Bexar rose into a kneeling position and picked off the corpse closest to the old man, the rifle round cracking loudly as it passed his head. The old man spun around and saw the dead closing in behind him, the nearest now crumpled on the pavement with a ruined skull. Bexar stood and began firing rapidly; Chivo joined him, giving the old man the chance to dive into the back of the bus. The bus lurched forward and onto the curb next to the raised roadway. Through the broken windshield and bars Chivo saw them waving him on.
“Fuckit mano. Time to go.”
Chivo leapt over the barrier, dropping onto the roof of the bus. Bexar joined him with a heavy thud, denting the thin metal. As they climbed through the hole cut into the roof, the child in the driver’s seat let the clutch out, shifted gears and turned an impossibly large steering wheel. The old bus rattled loudly as it accelerated, turned east at the next intersection, and moved out towards the rising sun.
Albuquerque, NM
The distant rumble of a motorcycle brought Jessie out of her trance-like state. Quickly, she reassembled her rifle and did a functionality check as she stood ready to pull the chain and raise the door. Magazine seated in the magazine well, Jessie ripped the charging handle back just before the motorcycle honked.
Once inside, Erin and Sarah climbed off the motorcycle. Erin’s short M4 hung from the single-point sling across her chest. Jessie dropped the roll-up door, pushing the chain into the locking slot. Erin took her backpack off and pulled out three fan belts, a section of large flexible hose, some bottles of oil, and assorted things from the parts store. Sarah did the same; it seemed they’d had a successful run.
“Jesus. What all did you get?”
“If we’re traveling together to Groom Lake, we’ll have to be ready. We have replacement radiator hose, oil, tire patch kits, cans of Fix-a-Flat, tape, wire, and a few other knick knacks we might need.” Sarah listed parts, holding up each item as she named it.
“I didn’t think about that.”
“Figured you didn’t, although you look trimmed for war with all the shit you have in your Toyota.”
Jessie nodded at Erin’s comment, which was true. Ammo, food, water, shelter; she was set. Vehicle problems? She was not. If I could go back, I would spend more time with Bexar in the garage and learn how to do all of the mechanical things. I should have learned about vehicles.
“There was a bunch of gunfire towards the north,” Erin said.
“Did you two see who it was?”
“No, and we’ve been around long enough to know it is better to not find out. Besides, the deaders will start showing up to gunfire.”
“Erin—they’ll what?”
“Sound, they’re attracted to sound. Gunfire travels for miles; they’ll have every deader in this part of the city zeroing in on them by now. Fuck that. They can deal with it.”
Jessie glanced at Sarah who shrugged. Her daughter, her rules Jessie thought.
Thirty minutes later, the FJ was repaired, the radiator topped off, Sarah and Erin’s gear loaded into the back (including the huge fifty-caliber rifle that Erin had), and they drove out of the metal building with Jessie behind the wheel.
In The School Bus
The whole bus shook every time the kid shifted gears, the gear shift nearly as tall as he was. Black smoke poured from the back of the bus, filtering through the missing windows and bars. Chivo made first contact, wiping his face with his shemagh and extending a hand towards the old man.
Nearly having to shout over the old diesel motor, he said, “My name is Chivo, and that was our ride and our dead friends back there.”
“Well Mr. Chivo, thank you for your assistance. If you hadn’t stepped in, I would have been got. When we get back to the compound we can talk about the stuff. For now, I’m Jeff, that’s Brandy, the kid behind the wheel is my nephew Danny. This is my daughter, Amanda, and her husband, Terry Don, otherwise known as T.D.”
Chivo smiled at each of them, although both Brandy and Terry looked at him cautiously.
“This is Bexar.” He nodded at the acknowledgement. Dust and fumes filled the bus. All but the first three seats were missing. Brass casings rolled around on the bare floor; a homemade rebar ladder extended from the floor to the hole in the roof. Bexar pulled his shemagh over his mouth and nose, coughing at the dirty air.
Bexar didn’t check his watch, but he estimated that they had been driving for close to half an hour. He glanced at the dashboard, but the speedometer was broken. Guessing that the bus averaged about thirty mph as it lurched hard from side to side to miss the undead in the street, Bexar figured they couldn’t have traveled all that far from where they had been.
Bexar keyed his radio. “I hope they pulled the maps. I have no fucking idea how to get back to our route.”
“Stand easy, mano. It’s like when I was an advisor to the local forces in ...” Chivo looked around and shrugged. “… Guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I was an advisor in Argentina. You’ve got to be cool; act cool. Act like you trust people, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
Terry stared at Chivo as he spoke into the headset; Chivo winked back at him and smiled, which seemed to upset the man. Chivo estimated him to be in his mid-twenties; he had the look of someone who used to be heavyset but had lost a lot of weight.
The bus rattled westward, farther from the Interstate and closer to the mountains.
In The Garage
Erin held up the hand-cranked shortwave radio, climbing out of the FJ. “What’s this?”
“That’s a radio.”
“Does it work?”
“It did. Crank that handle around for a few minutes to charge it up. I’ll try to find where I wrote down the frequency for the BBC, which was the last station we found still up.”
Erin cranked the handle and looked at the radio, while Jessie dug around inside the FJ. Sarah walked over to her daughter. “Honey, try the emergency button or one of the weather buttons.”
Erin stopped cranking and turned the radio on, which filled the metal building with static until she pushed the first weather channel button.
“… and remaining military personnel. The secure location is located at the following grid coordinates ...”
“Holy shit! Mom, it’s a real person!”
“… civilians: We are a safe haven. If you have a working HAM radio you can contact us on the following frequencies ...”
“Jessie, you were right. There are people there!”
“… if confronted with a reanimated corpse, do not approach. Flee if possible. Striking the skull and destroying the creature’s brain is the only known way to stop the threat. If traveling overland, be warned that the last known location of mass herds of undead were tracked on the following Interstates, cities and directions ...”
Jessie walked to where Erin sat with the radio in her lap; tears ran down Sarah’s cheeks, and she saw the first smile on Erin’s face since they had met the day before. “We should really be writing this down; some of the information might be important.�
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Sarah focused back on the radio. The broadcast was past the notifications of danger and was back to stating information for military personnel.
“I bet he repeats it.”
Sarah quickly left and came back with a small grease-stained notebook and pen.
Cortez, CO
Cliff walked slowly in the middle of the large hallway. Normally, he would have been closer to a wall, but he was more worried about running into undead than cult members. So far, he estimated, he had cleared half the school. People never change, he thought, scanning rooms with bedding and items that obviously belonged to the survivors—the general life clutter that people accumulate even after the end of the world. The only useful items he had found so far were a couple bottles of water and some cans of dog food. The dog food would be his dinner.
The only thing he found that was wrong were the letters painted on the wall in blood in the first room. The chemistry labs looked untouched; Cliff checked the storeroom and found it locked. With three hard kicks the door broke free of the frame.
Looks like everything is still here …. Score one for the home team.
Cliff pulled the door shut and re-stacked the lab stools in front of it to hide the door and the damage from kicking it in. Exiting the lab, Cliff continued his self-guided tour of the middle school. Reaching the gym, he found the metal doors locked. The door frames were metal as well. If I had my pick set this would be easy work … but I don’t have it, so get over it.
Continuing on, he tried the rest of the gym doors and found them all to be secure. The women’s locker room was unlocked, so he opened the door. This locker room didn’t smell like he remembered his middle school locker room smelling. The mixture of shower room humidity and teenage sweat was missing; the pungent odor of death assaulted his senses. The beam coming from the combat light at the end of his rifle swept back and forth methodically as he checked every corner and crevice where someone or something could hide. The rows of lockers all stood open and empty. The hair on the back of his neck stood; his heart rate quickened when he neared the entrance to the showers. During his entire career, the one time he had ignored his own personal spidey sense was the only time he’d gotten shot. After that experience, Cliff had never ignored his intuition again. Sometimes it was wrong, but most of the time it was spot-on.
Cliff edged to the row of lockers next to the doorway and concentrated on his breathing, slowing his heart rate before taking a step. Planting his foot firmly, he launched into the dark showers, rifle sweeping left then right. He took another step to the right and tripped over something large on the floor.
The rifle clattered to the tile as he stumbled, rotating his body like a cat as he fell. His hands free of the rifle, Cliff drew the pistol on his right hip and flipped the tactical light on in one swift motion. The light found a body lying face down; or it would have been, if the body still had a head. The floor around it was thick with heavy pools of congealed blood. The body’s skin rippled as maggots crawled just beneath the surface, eating the rotting flesh beneath. Cliff stood and retrieved his rifle, taking a moment to clip his one-point sling into the loop on the back of the lower receiver.
Searching the rest of the room with his rifle and attached light, Cliff found three more headless bodies to his right. They appeared to be men, but they were so bloated and discolored that it was hard to tell. The wall had big red letters spelling “SINNERS.” This time, he didn’t have to check to see if the letters were painted in blood. He knew it was blood.
These are some sick fucks. We’d all be better off if they would all just drink the Kool-Aid and take the big nap.
The heads were not in the shower nor the rest of the locker room—the women’s locker room at least. He paused by the exit to the gymnasium, straining his ears to try to hear a sound that was just barely caught by his conscious mind. But the harder he listened, the more he only heard his own heartbeat.
Not able to hear anything clearly, he slowly crept into the open gym. The windows, high upon the roof, allowed enough sunlight for him to see. The bleachers were pushed closed, forming towering brown wooden walls on either side of the court. Blankets and bedding were piled in a corner; at center court stood a basketball rack.
Well, found the heads. Damn.
Eight heads sat in the rack in place of basketballs. Their teeth were snapping and gnashing at Cliff, unable to reach the flesh they so wanted.
How in the fuck … how in fuck can they survive like that? Jesus.
Keeping to his noise discipline, Cliff quietly dispatched each of the heads using his knife, their dead faces wretched with horror and anger. Without having to check, he knew that the rest of the bodies would be in the men’s locker room. Five minutes later, he confirmed his suspicion. After seeing their faces, he was sure that the bodies were the missing men.
That’s eight of the other survivors, I think. Where are the other twelve ... where are the women and girls? This place is a tomb. I need to find the rest of them … I need to check out that church. I need to end this bullshit so I can get back to the real mission. I need to get to the SSC!
In The Garage
Road atlases were spread across the dusty concrete floor as Jessie showed Sarah and Erin her planned route to Groom Lake. With a red pen, Sarah looked at the notebook and drew circles around the known locations of the large hordes of undead from the shortwave broadcast. They had no way to communicate with “Bill,” who was the new voice of Groom Lake. Jessie guessed he was a civilian by the way he spoke, which was decidedly different than the manner in which Cliff had spoken.
“Flagstaff and Las Vegas are off limits, so is the southern route is on 40.” Sarah drew big red X’s in the circles around each.
Tracing routes through the mountains, Jessie and Sarah were confident they had a good route planned, but at best guess it was over seven hundred miles. Jack and Sandra’s Toyota FJ45 was a big solid beast, even if it was sort of rare. The fold-down windshield made sense, especially with Erin’s exceptional rifle skills, as long as they could stay warm. The problem still lay in the eighteen-gallon fuel tank; Jessie didn’t have an exact number but was guessing they’d get about ten mpg. Before, her sole focus was just getting on the road and driving. But now that Sarah was helping her to plan, the details she had forgotten starting ringing in her mind. Eighty gallons or more for the rest of the trip to be safe; that means stopping every one hundred fifty miles to top off to keep from running on fumes ... so roughly four and-a-half fuel stops. If we average fifty mph, we’ll cover the route in fourteen hours. So, we will have to stop every three hours … if everything goes right. If.
“How many fuel cans do you think we can round up and top off over the next day or two?”
Sarah shrugged. “We haven’t really been focusing on that lately. My old Jeep had five jerry cans, twenty-five gallons of extra fuel, but that Jeep and those cans are long gone. What are you thinking?”
“I’m guessing we’ll need at least eighty gallons of fuel for the trip. With my three gas cans we have fifteen extra gallons. We have no way of knowing how many vehicles will be on the road for us to syphon gas from when we go through the mountains.”
“We never had any problems with that, well, for the most part. But if we could round up another seven or so five-gallon cans, we would have a spare fifty gallons on the roof rack. That would give us a lot of wiggle room.”
Erin shifted back and forth, trying to sit and listen to the two “olds” plan. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she went and sat on the roof rack of the Land Cruiser and began playing with the shortwave radio.
The Compound
Bexar never saw a highway sign, but the road across the brush looked like a four-lane road with a median, probably a major road or highway. But the bus wasn’t on that road. The bus rattled to a stop. Terry opened the back door and jumped to the ground. In short order, he had the padlock holding the chain that secured the gate opened and had pushed the gate wide. The bus coughed more black
smoke and rolled up the driveway. The home seemed like it had been a nice one, with a three-car garage on a large lot. A row of tall privacy walls made of construction siding panels stood in front of a once-expensive ornamental iron fence. The adobe-style home next door was also fenced into the compound. Once the engine shut off and the group could speak without yelling, Terry called from the gate, “We’re secure.” Chivo watched Terry push the gate closed, securing it into the ground with a thick metal rod followed by a heavy pipe across the whole front, locking it tight against attack.
“OK, boys—let’s keep your hands where we can see them.”
Chivo and Bexar turned to see Jeff pointing a pistol at them, the smile gone from his face. Chivo nodded slightly to Bexar and raised his hands, leaving the M4 hanging across his chest by the sling. Bexar did the same, hoping his partner had a plan.
“Go ahead and climb out the back door there. Don’t get stupid or you’ll find T.D. happy to assist your stupidity.”
Chivo walked to the open door at the rear of the bus and hopped to the blacktop driveway only to find Terry standing to the side with a pump shotgun, using the edge of the bus for cover. These guys are smooth; got to give them credit for that. Chivo winked and smiled at Terry again, who did not look amused.
Bexar followed Chivo out of the rear exit of the old bus. Jeff and the rest of the family walked out the regular side door and joined the group on the driveway. Chivo kept smiling; Bexar couldn’t figure out why. He held his arms casually above his shoulders, his hands relaxed and closed slightly.
Growling brought Bexar’s attention towards the house, where Amanda, T.D.’s wife, appeared with a quite large and angry-looking German shepherd.