by Mark Clodi
Turning her attention back to Steve's truck she saw one of the supers there toss out little Vince Salm, a fifteen year old that Paige had gotten on with well. The super zombie picked up Vince and casually tossed him out of the pickup bed and under car driven by Tiller, Paige noted the black lines flowing from the zombie and raised her gun aiming right for Steve's head.
The zombie turned and dived through the window right into the back of Steve' seat. Steve's eyes opened widely in surprise as he stared down the barrel of Paige's shotgun from less than twenty feet away. Then the zombie crushed him forward, seat and all into the steering wheel, a split second later Paige fired, driving the shotgun pellets through the top of his head and down into his neck for good measure. Killing the zombie was not enough to save the pickup, Steve couldn't recover from being slammed into the steering column or pull himself up and away from the newly broken seat to regain control. The truck veered off to one side and crashed into the side of a semi-trailer that had been abandoned by the side of the road. The front of the hood on the driver's side hit the trailer and spun the truck around. Only the fact that the nose was caught under the trailer stopped the truck from flipping over. The other super zombie flew out of the pickup bed and rolled to a stop against the larger tires of the semi-tractor. When one of the three trailing zombie vehicles slowed to pick up their companion Paige shot again and anticipated the zombie's dodge, hitting it through the windshield and taking off the top of the thing's head.
"Fuck. We are out of trucks. You killed three of them!" Chris said with awe in his voice, "I haven't even hit one!"
Two shots, thought Paige, I only fired twice, the other zombie near the trailer was not dead, hopefully neither was Steve, but he was on his own now. "Here they come." she said, bringing up her shotgun.
"The trucks are gone Dora!" yelled Chris just before one of the two vehicles touched bumpers with the bus. The bus slowed drastically as Dora slammed on the brakes, this caused the zombie filled car to hit them harder than they had intended, smashing in the front and splattering the back of the bus with radiator fluid. Paige had dropped her shotgun at the last possible second and grasped the window sill at the back of the bus, she was braced for the rapid slowing and impact, Chris was not so lucky, he flew forward when Dora braked, hitting his head hard on one of the large bolts on the floor from where the seats had been taken out.
Chris was then thrown into the back wall of the bus when the zombie car slammed into it, his face slammed nose first into the metal side then he spun into the corner and lay moving feebly. He was bleeding from both the front and back of his head, Paige could tell he was alive, but he seemed unable to focus or move coherently. Paige's shotgun slid forward, then back with the impacts and the young woman picked it up casually as if she had expected it to be where she put her hand when she reached down.
"Didn't see that one coming did you fucking flesh eaters, did you?" yelled Dora, followed by, "Take it Jamie, I am going back."
Paige looked out in time to see the air distortions converge on the bus, the little blond girl and the bald zombie in business clothing from the back seat scrambled onto the hood of the car and then leaped through the shattered windows of the bus. The girl bounced off of the ceiling and dove at Paige, but Paige had moved and the girl slammed into the wall. The bus swerved from side to side and one of the boys from the back of the bus screamed as he charged the six year old wonder twin. He had a sharpened metal stake in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paige saw the streams of distortion coming from the barrel of his gun moments before he fired and made sure she was not in position to intersect any of his shots.
The zombie girl just stood up and took three shots to the chest as the boy charged her trying to impale her with his pig sticker. The girl moved sideways with contemptuous ease and the boy's stake pierced the side of the bus and stuck there about waist height at a slightly upwards angle. Then the boy was shoved backwards as the other zombie came through the window and forced him back a step, this was the bald zombie, he twisted the gun out of the boy's hand and then shoved the boy onto his own stake, driving it through his body until it came out just below his ribs.
While he was doing this Paige jumped forward and hit him with the butt of her shotgun, not quite understanding the lines she was seeing around him. She learned soon enough when the blow didn't land, instead the zombie girl had stepped between them and deflected her attack with uncanny speed, leaving Paige to wonder why she hadn't seen the lines from the zombie girl. She realized, with a second glance, that she could see the lines, but they were moving very, very fast. Throwing her head to one side quickly Paige avoided the first fist of the wonder twin.
"You get them Mo! You kill them all!" yelled the bald zombie as it ripped out the side of the boy's neck with his teeth.
For a moment Paige was caught up in the lines around her, she knew where Mo's hands were going to be and didn't want her body to be in the way of those blows. However being able to see slightly ahead of time where the little wonder twin named 'Mo' was going to be didn't mean that Paige could avoid her entirely and she was grazed with a heavy blow against her ribs that sent her spinning into Dora's arms. The two looked at each other for a moment, eye to eye, practically lip to lip, Dora gave Paige a quick kiss on the lips and shoved her sideways to avoid a rabbit punch by the zombie girl.
"Jim Tiller says eat later. So does Mo. You stop eating Randall Craw and kill them first." said the little girl to the other zombie in the back.
Turning, the other zombie glared at the girls back, his chin and teeth were a wet red mess as blood poured from his mouth. Behind him the impaled boy squirmed and moaned in pain as his blood drained out of the ragged tear in his neck. Dora, moving faster than Paige had ever seen pulled her revolver up and shot the zombie girl in the back of her head. Sliding sideways the girl avoided having a bullet enter her brain, she spun and kicked backwards with her little foot in a blow that would crush Dora's knee. Paige had seen it coming and knocked Dora out of the way into a pile of luggage on the side of the bus. Off balance and reeling from the head wound the girl spun and fell into Chris, who was struggling to get to his feet. He reached around the girl with his arms, trying to hold her there for a moment while Paige finished her off.
Randall Craw didn't hesitate, when he saw his mistress go down he leaped in front of her and tackled Paige back onto the floor. The front of the bus started thumping, a steady thump, thump, thump that went on and on as it plowed ahead. Dora saw Paige wrestling with Randall while Chris held Mo tightly. Her decision on who to go after was taken away from her as Jim Tiller vaulted off of his slow moving car into the back of the bus to confront her.
"Fuck, when it rains it pours." The bus was passing through a slow moving horde of zombies. It had slowed to around ten miles an hour, not quite slow enough for the zombies to get on board, but nowhere near fast enough for Dora's tastes. She aimed at Tiller and fired as he came towards her. One of his hands fumbled at his belt for a pistol and when he pulled it out he fired at the people in the back of the bus, which caused a general panic among the passengers.
"Fucking bastard!" yelled Dora flinging her empty revolver at the man, he deflected it using his own pistol, but something from the impact must have broken part of his gun, when he turned to fire at the youngsters it exploded in his hands, sending a piece of metal spinning into his face.
Chris couldn't hold onto the girl any longer, she twisted around in his arms like a python, kicking with her little feet into the man's groin. When he saw her head bend down to bite his arm he released her and pushed her forward into the back of Jim's legs, causing both of them to go down in a heap.
Wrestling with Randall was a one sided affair, he had strength on his side, plus he was on top of her. One of the seat supports was digging into Paige's back; it felt like it was slowly impaling her. With a frantic twist and heave she managed to get the man shoved to one side of her, but she could not make use of the momentary edge she had created to do more than b
ack up a few inches.
As Randall came at her again she raised her knee up and kept him from getting a full grip on her. When he went to bite her arm she saw it coming and tore away from him, then she delivered a blow to the center of his face with as much strength as she could put into such a short punch. He howled and lowered his teeth towards her thigh and the offending knee that was preventing him from getting close. Just as his teeth were about to close on her leg Paige pulled it back away from him. Dora's hand reached down and plucked the man away from her. She tossed him into the emergency door at the back of the bus. Randall hit it hard and the door popped open, giving the passengers a better view of the last zombie car coming up on them. The car was smoking horribly as the engine overheated and the anti-freeze from the shattered radiator burned off. One of Randall's hands caught the side of the doorway and he swung himself around the outside of the bus onto the bumper.
Dora offered Paige a hand and pulled the woman to her feet, at almost the same time Mo and Jim got themselves untangled and rose up to meet the humans. From where Dora and Paige were standing they could see the other zombie vehicle roar up to the back of the bus, then they watched as the blue Caliber Dora had left behind with Willy came up and nudged the back wheel, firing a shotgun into it as it did so. Dora was pretty sure she saw Jake driving the vehicle.
"Yes the cavalry has arrived!"
The distraction worked on Jim Tiller, but Mo was too young to understand the reference so when Dora attacked she only caught one of them off guard. In the front of the bus the volley of fire increased as the passengers continued to fire out at the slow zombies encroaching from the sides.
Paige saw Dora's intentions moments before the woman leaped and she saw Mo's as well, she knew the two were going to collide in mid-air in front of her and saw a dozen places they could end up on the ground at the back of the bus. She made her own move in that instance, diving for her shotgun, she saw the black lines of her hands intersecting the gun and knew she was going to reach it. Grabbing the gun and rolling over she aimed it at Tiller who was bending over to pick Dora off of Mo.
Randall used the distraction of the melee to climb back inside of the bus. Tiller put Dora into a head lock while Paige studied the lines. Randal scooped Mo up and put her on her feet, the girl shook him off angrily and brushed by him, leaving him open for a shot from Paige, she saw him ducking in a hundred versions of the future, but there were good shots she could take and her shell hit him in the upper right shoulder throwing him back, where he landed against the boy he had impaled earlier. A surprised look crossed his face as he saw the metal rod spring up through the middle of his chest, then his body started trembling as he lost control of his legs. Randall's body would not heal itself while he was still impaled and the angle of the metal rod made getting himself off of it nearly impossible.
Mo was around behind Tiller punching Dora in the head, Paige saw she could not do any lasting damage to the man, he was constantly moving Dora around as a body shield, then called out, "Drop it girl or I will snap her neck like a twig!"
Looking at the man intently Paige let a small smile creep to her face. Dora yelled, "Shoot the cocksucker! Shoot him! Quit hitting me you little bitch!'
Paige looked outside and saw the beat up caliber come up to the rear of the bus, the firing from the buses passengers slacked off as Jake mentally pushed the weaker zombies out of the caravan's way.
"What the fuck? Do you want her to die?"
"Kill her, you'd be doing me a favor."
"What?"
"Yeah. She bet me she would live through this and I wouldn't. So if you snap her neck then that means, for once, Dora wasn't fucking right."
Tiller's eyes widened as Paige's finger softly caressed the trigger. The man was fast and he brought Dora's body up in an arch, lifting the woman completely off the ground as he tried to block Paige's shot, but Paige wasn't shooting at him, when he lifted Dora to protect himself he exposed Mo almost completely and the shot took her dead center just below the neck, the girl was flung back into the corner on top of Chris, where she gurgled out a wet sounding, "Jim Tiller!"
Tiller dropped Dora to the ground where she landed on her hands and knees. Paige pulled the hunting knife out of her belt and waited for a brief second. Jim Tiller scooped Mo up and leaped for the back door. Paige tossed her knife, watching the black lines converge as Dora stood up then dove for Tiller. Screaming, "Oh no motherfucker! You aren't getting away!"
Meanwhile the knife moved through the air, it was travelling slowly towards the door, spinning lazily as it over took the diving woman. Dora's hand came up in an effort to grab Jim Tiller's ankle and met the handle of the knife. A look of comprehension dawned on Dora's face when her hand hit the knife, she snatched it out of the air and brought it down through Tiller's lower leg and into the floor below. His body from the waist up was hanging outside the bus's emergency exit, pinned by his leg to the bus. Tiller tried in vain to hold onto Mo as he fell, but the girl hit the pavement and was torn from his grasp. Mo came to a rest just in front of Jake's Caliber as he screeched to a halt. The bus was also slowing down and Jamie screamed that she didn't know how to stop it right.
Paige took a bead on Randall and blew a bowl of spaghetti into the side of his head. She pulled three shells out of her pocket and reloaded her gun while still lying on the floor. Dora picked herself up off of the ground as the bus started to come to a stop, turning she said, "I need a gu…" Her sentence was cut off by the shotgun tossed to her by Paige.
"There are three shots, that's all you'll need."
Dora nodded while Paige closed her eyes and tried to block all of the lines from her vision, the white lines were fading to be replaced by black ones as she did so. The future seemed to becoming more set, with fewer options, making it easier for Paige to see. The shotgun blasted once.
"Hold still you twitchy fucker." Another blast rang out. "Goddamn it!" followed by a third, "Got the fucker Paige."
Ahead the rattle of automatic weapons fire heralded the arrival of the National Guard Soldiers.
A quarter of a mile behind them the Caliber came to a stop just in front of the twitching zombie girl. Mo saw the booted feet step out of the car and approach her head, where they stopped. A tall man in bloodstained, torn clothing squatted down in front of her and said, "You must be Mo. Hello Mo. My name is Jake. I knew your sister."
Chapter 45
The National Guard surrounded the buses, rifles pointed towards them while other troopers formed a perimeter facing the outside to fire at the smattering of zombies around them. The soldiers seemed nervous and close to firing on the living humans, one of their superiors stepped forward and yelled, "Come out of the first bus one at a time."
His men and women troopers were quietly calling out to each other to be careful and stay alert. They had not found any living humans in the past month, almost all of the ones who showed up were super zombies trying to pass themselves off as humans so they could get into the land of the living. And super zombies died hard, if the buses were full of supers they could be in a lot of trouble.
It started at the rear bus, one of the men yelled for their commander, who yelled for the lieutenant, who told everyone to stop what they were doing to stay absolutely still as he jogged back to the third bus. Dora stood a few feet outside of the emergency rear exit of the bus, behind her Paige was resting against the bumper, gingerly touching a small bloody stain on the back of her shirt. The body of a man with several shotgun wounds was crumpled on the ground, he had a hunting knife sticking out of his lower leg.
The lieutenant stopped in his tracks when he saw the women.
"What the fuck is wrong with you people? We have a bunch of kids who have been shot in there and you are standing around with your thumbs up your asses."
"Excuse me ma'am." said the lieutenant, "I am Lieutenant Strafer. John Strafer." he said holding out his hand.
Dora looked at it, then at Paige and said, "What the fuck?" she took his hand f
or a brief shake and asked, "What the hell is going on?"
"You've reached the newly formed first company of the third battalion of the first division of the mid-western army. We are the third platoon and I am in charge of it."
"So? Can we come in or not? 'Cause if we can't I am going to be mighty pissed off."
"You can come in. You of all people…" he glanced at Paige, "You two of all people are very welcome, if you are not contaminated."
"Do I look contaminated to you? Cut me, I bleed, if you want to check. What is going on Johnnie?" The men behind the lieutenant smiled, trying not to laugh.
The lieutenant said, "Excuse me ma'am, but your name is Dora, right?"
"Yeah. But I don't have any monkey's named Boots or friends named Diego. All I've got is a Paige." said Dora pointing at the young woman leaning against the bus.
"No, ma'am, but you're 'the' Dora?" Strafer asked, "out of Kansas City? Your husband is Roger?"
"Oh fuck, I might have known! Did that bastard start some rumor about me? Let me guess, 'shoot to kill'?"
"No, it's from the video. From what Ned filmed, about two months ago? You remember that?"
"I am dirty, sore and tired, not suffering from Alzheimers. Of course I remember Ned! What ever happened to that son of a bitch?"
"He died."
"Oh."
"We thought you did too. No one could find you when the horde came in on highway seventy. We just assumed you and everyone with you were lost."
"Well, we weren't. Can my kids be unloaded now? While we are sitting here jawing they are laying there dying."
"Right away ma'am! Medics! We have wounded!"