by David Smith
"I can't drive this." She rebutted.
"It's simple." He flipped a switch and there was an airy hiss. "That locks in the differential. Use that in the deep gravel but don't go in the grass. These buttons," he pointed to a red one and a yellow one. "These release the brakes. It's already in fourth gear. That'll get you started. Just push the left pedal to the floor to crank it and let it up to go. Get somewhere safe and Vladimir can drive it the rest if the way." He said then slid out of the seat and out of the way and looked at Choppa. "You first, big boy."
Choppa grumbled under his breath as he stood slowly, stepped around the gear lever and got in the driver seat. He took a deep breath then pulled the door handle and we all poured out.
There were a only a few between us and the bunker, not far outside the truck. They were distracted by the motorcycles and Choppa ran past them without taking a swing. This caused them to take notice and as they turned toward us Dave took two down with his hatchet, chopping one in the side of the neck then swinging around to hit the other in the back of the head. DeMarkus swung the bat like a home run derby winner, crushing one squarely across its ear, its jaw tearing loose as its head spun and it fell. I hit another across the face with the tip of the bat, stinging my hands. It's face caved in on one side, spinning it away from me and dropping it to one knee. I swung again, cracking the back of its head with the satisfying 'ting' of aluminum and it fell.
We caught up to Choppa halfway to the bunker and passed him. I hoped he would trip and be eaten alive by the scattered crowd that were still filtering out of the woods and gathering through the gate.
We reached the steps down into the bunker and there were still five or six piled up behind one another, trying to force open the door. I turned to cover our backs, more to make sure Choppa didn't cheap shot me from behind, and saw that a few of the bikers were down, several of the dead around each one, pulling them limb from limb or tearing out their insides as they screamed.
Dave chopped their heads, dark blood splattering back at us, and pulled them back, one at a time, DeMarkus grabbing them and making sure they were dead before passing them back to Choppa who would throw them out of the short stairwell. A few of the dead broke off from the herd while they were clearing the door and I quickly got better at the bat. I looked up to see Mac standing on the hood of the truck, swinging the AK-47 down into a crowd of dead, holding it like an ax.
Distracted by this, I let one get too close and when I tried to step back I stumbled and barely got the bat up in between us as it fell on top of me. I struggled to hold it up away from me with the bat across its chest, it reaching its arms over, grabbing my shirt and pulling itself closer to my face. It's lips were rotted away and its teeth opened and closed slowly, chewing the air, its stringy jowls stretching and flexing. My arms gave slowly under the weight until my elbows rested on the ground. It stretched its neck to get closer, its teeth inches from my face and I could smell its rotten insides as the air squeezed in and out of it like an accordion. Finally, Choppa bashed the back of its head and it went limp, thick blood slowly pouring out of its mouth and nose and onto my face and neck as I turned my head and closed my mouth and eyes tightly. He kicked it off of me to the side and kept fighting as I got to my feet. My ribs were killing me, stealing my breath.
"Hey! Let us in! We're here to help you!" Dave shouted as he beat on the metal door.
Finally, it opened and we rushed in, closing it behind us.
"Lean against the door." Dave told Choppa.
There were eight people inside; Chontelle and four others alive plus three dead with their brains bashed out on the floor or against the walls. Their ragged clothes were smeared with blood and their dark skin shined with sweat. I looked at Choppa and he was looking at them with a murderous sneer, his face like an overfed demon.
"Any of you bitten?" Dave asked.
"Just those three." Chontelle answered.
There was a loud knock at the door. "Let me in!" and Chontelle's face lit up.
Choppa just stood there, his fat backside leaned against the door.
"Move!" Dave ordered him and after a moment of childish defiance, he stepped out of the way and Mac burst through the door.
He fell to his knees as Choppa slammed the door behind him. He looked just as haggard as one of the dead, his blood matted beard and ragged bandages, his mangled fingers twisted inside the ones wrapped around his hands to where his fingernails weren't exactly on the backs of them anymore.
Chontelle's face contorted as her eyes filled with tears and her chin quivered. I had never, and have never since, seen such intense joy and agony and relief and worry in someone's face all at the same time. "Sean!" She said weakly as she began to move toward him, so overcome with emotion that she fell to her knees in front of him. She put her hands on the sides of his face and with the ever-so-lightest touch, lifted his face to kiss him.
"Well, now I seen it all." Choppa complained.
"We've got to go." Mac said quietly. "They're growing." and he slowly got to his feet with her help.
"Shit!" Dave said slowly as he craned his neck to see out of the glazed over windows. "We gotta get out of here fast."
"What about my truck?" Choppa barked.
"Mister," Dave said to Mac. "What's wrong with that truck?"
"Just stuck in the gravel." He replied painfully.
"I suspected as much when I saw that single axle. What's wrong with you?" He asked me.
I was hanging on to the window sill with one hand and holding my ribs with the other. "A few broken ribs."
"Alright, give your bat to this guy here." He said and I handed it to one of the farmers. "Chop, give yours to him." He said, pointing to one of the others.
"Hell no!" He rebutted.
"He'll bring it back." Dave said and Choppa threw him the bat with a look of disgust. "Okay, DeMarkus, me and you are gonna make a run for the other truck and get it started. When they get the other truck pulled around, you drive and I'll push you out. Hero," he said to me. "Tell your girlfriend to pull it around and put the passenger door close as she can get it to the bunker, then y'all load him in and pick me up by the other truck."
"That ain't his girlfriend." Choppa said. "That is my daughter."
Dave looked him up and down and said, "That is questionable." Mocking his rhythm and pitch. "Let's go."
We lined up on the door; one man, then myself and then the other, then DeMarkus and Dave. "Ready, set, go!" Dave shouted quickly.
We ran out and the first thing I noticed was that the two hundred yards to the truck were completely full of dead, walking toward the circling bikers with no more than five or six feet between any two of them. The bikers themselves, their numbers had dwindled. Motorcycles and bodies of infected dead and uninfected dying lay strewn all around where they still rode. Instead of all the dead being in the middle of the circle, the circle was now surrounded by a larger circle, the dead now to their left and their right. They were definitely loyal to a fault. Smarter men would have ridden away and led the dead away with them.
We ran through the herd, seemingly unnoticed at first as all the dead were distracted by the bikers and walking in the same direction as ourselves. The two men used the bats to push them down mostly, only swinging when they approached one larger than themselves. When we reached the other side of the circle of death, running straight into them now, Kara noticed and the truck lifted, spinning all four tires once in the deep gravel, then began moving toward us as it settled back down.
The first of the two men moved too fast and ran straight into one, dropping the bat and being bitten on the face. I picked it up, took a deep breath and started swinging, unable to move through the crowd. The second man stepped up beside me and we both kept swinging our way forward as the ones behind us kept moving away from us, toward the bikers. They flowed around us like water around a rock and kept going as they passed. Kara made it to us just as I ran out of breath and the man reached up and opened the door and nodded for m
e to get in. I took another deep breath and climbed up into the cab as I heard him scream. I turned to try to help him and he slammed the door, giving himself over to them.
I winced in pain and told her, "Circle around and get back to the bunker, close as you can."
She let out the clutch and we were on our way. The blade on the front was pushing them aside, knocking them down but not killing them so I decided to try to thin out their numbers as much as I could and climbed up the ladder. I saw Dave and DeMarkus, already in the fuel truck with black smoke puffing out the exhaust. I also caught sight of Spider, riding in a big circle between two others. I could have wiped all the bikers out and many of the dead easily, being crowded so close together but it just didn't seem right since we had a common goal at the moment. Kara had said some of them were good people besides, and I didn't want to risk killing anyone she cared for so I concentrated my fire on the outer edge of the ring. I must've killed a hundred of them by the time she got us back to the bunker and the belt ran out. As they loaded Mac into the truck, I climbed down and up to the other gun, which was on the side of the truck away from the bunker and facing the fuel truck, simply by way of luck, and opened fire again. She spun the truck around again as I tried to clear Dave a path back to it and as soon as she bumped the front of the fuel truck he was out and running toward us. I felt her bump my leg as she scrambled out of his way and a moment later, I was being yanked back down into the cab.
"Did you run that other gun out?" Dave asked.
"Yeah!"
"Boy!" He said and turned around with a disapproving look. "Good call." He said then turned back around, put the truck back in gear and held up three fingers. I could hear the remaining motorcycles speeding away from us, slinging gravel against the side of the truck. He counted down to DeMarkus through the slot, his fingers touching the windshield, and eased out of the clutch. I could feel the bump of the center of the blade meeting the front bumper of the fuel truck. The truck lifted up then the tires broke traction and it began jumping up and down. The fuel truck began to jump as well then slowly moved backward as they both continued to break and find traction with every bounce. Once freed from the deepest part of the gravel, DeMarkus backed it around the corner then to the right and into the main road. We took a left out of the driveway and were off.
Kara was in the passenger seat. I was on the bench, wrapping each one of Mac's smashed toes in gause from a first aid kit I found in one of the cabinets above the windshield. Choppa was sitting in the center of the front of the bed with Mac sitting behind him and to the right, reclined on Chontelle who was leaning against the back wall. The other two, James and LaDarius, were on the top bunk with their legs hanging down.
Once I had finished wrapping Mac's toes, he lifted his leg off the bed and planted his heel squarely in the middle of Choppa's back. "What size boots do you wear...Fat boy?"
Slowly and staring straight ahead he spoke. "Get your damn..." he paused and I knew what he wanted to say by the way he looked around at the bare, black feet hanging down behind his head. "foot off of me."
"That's fine." Mac said. "I'll just get them after I bury you."
Choppa sat for a moment then stood up, retrieved his big pistol from the cabinet and turned to face Mac. He then picked his shirt up slightly, lifted his overhanging belly up and tucked the pistol into the front of his jeans. He bent down and looked under the top bunk to see Mac eye to eye, just to make sure he had made his point. Mac leaned up off of Chontelle to give him a closer look and there was something in his one good eye that made him look unkillable; like he, himself, was death. It sent a chill up my spine and he wasn't even looking at me. Choppa looked away and down, feeling his life getting shorter by the second, I suppose, then turned and sat on the far end of the bed.
Mac whispered something to Chontelle and then she shouted to Dave, "Sean says if you need more ammo for the 240s or anything else, there is still some in the bunkers at the ASP."
Dave gave a thumbs up and moments later we turned and went through a gate. After he stopped and popped the brakes he said, "We'll load up. Y'all just sit tight." and jumped down, slamming the door behind him.
I did sit for a minute, listening to the fuel cap being unscrewed, the other truck backing up next to us and the back door if the trailer sliding up with a rattling whoosh. I couldn't sit in that box anymore without being able to see what was going on outside so I got up and went to the driver seat. Kara was already looking out of the other window slot, her hand fidgeting with the handle.
"Maybe we should go help."
"Maybe we should go help." We said to each other at the same time. "Jinx." She said.
We got out of the truck and she walked around to my side where Dave was holding a big hose, letting fuel slowly gravity feed out of the tanker and into the fuel tanks of the Freightliner. His crew was carrying small wooden crates from a bunker to the back if the trailer while the bikers sat around, about ten of them left.
The bunker was identical to the one I had grown up in except there was no loading dock and there were a multitude of them all lined up in perfect rows with a concrete road running down the length of each one. The row we were on was so long that I could barely make out the fence at the far end.
"Didn't I tell y'all to stay in the truck?" Dave asked.
"I know but, I need to negotiate another deal with you." I said and he cut his eyes up at me. I was hoping that he would be our ticket out of there. There were only 10 or more bikers now and if Kara could point them out and we could find a way to ditch Choppa and Spider and any other of the bad seeds, then find a way to get Beth and Nicholas and his family out of Magnolia Ridge, then we could ride off into the sunset and never look back. "You've got your fuel, where you going next?" I asked.
He looked back down at the hose, concentrating on holding it steady and looking down into the tank. "Well, one fill up ain't nearly half. Besides, I think we're gonna stay for good. I haven't seen my hometown in over 20 years and I've always liked that big house off Sycamore Road."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Choppa didn't tell you?" He said without looking up from the hose. "We're gonna help him take the place, get rid of the guy in charge there."
"I'm all for getting rid of Jennings but, I thought y'all didn't take anything from anyone."
"We ain't taking nothing from 'em. Chop's told us about the place. They got it bad there."
I knew there was something going on here more than I was aware of. "What has he told you?"
"He said the guy killed his wife, your mother," he said, nodding up at Kara. "I'm not for revenge killing but she's not the only one. That's obvious from the look of your compound down there. He's gotta be stopped."
"He killed her himself!" Kara spoke up. "If you help him take that place, those people will have it worse than they do now."
"Cut it off!" He yelled to DeMarkus and the flow stopped. Then he lay the hose on the ground, pushed it under the truck, stood back up and looked at her. "I don't doubt what you say but that's not for me to judge. We got a deal and I always keep my word."
"What's the deal?" She asked.
He walked around to the other side of the truck and we followed. Then he bent down and drug the hose the rest of the way, stood up with it and started fueling the other side. "Let her rip!" He shouted then looked down at the hose again. "We help him take the place and we get to stay there. That, and we get all the fuel we want."
"And you trust him?" I asked.
"I need him to trust me. That don't mean I have to trust him."
"This all started because of that fuel truck." Kara explained. "Jennings used to give us a little just to stay on our side of the river. Daddy got greedy and Jennings offered him a little more but Daddy wants it all. You deal with him, that's a deal with the Devil."
He looked up at her and sighed. "I don't like him. He's a racist, hate filled S.O.B. I can see that but if what you say is true, we have to kill him, this Jennings guy, all these guys
out here probably. That's a lot of killing and I'm not comfortable with that unless I know for sure. Are you?"
She looked at the few bikers we could see, parked behind the trailer, squinting her eyes in thought.
"I didn't think so."
"So let's just kill him now." I suggested.
Dave shook his head. "Nah. His time'll come if what you say is true. Killing him right now, just wouldn't be right."
"I'll do it." I said. "Give me a gun and I'll go in there and shoot him right now."
"You're okay with that?" He asked Kara.
"I watched him smash my Mom's head into the concrete. Yeah, I'm okay with that."
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "You seem like a good kid, Dane. You too, Kara. There's not a lot of that left in the world. It's your choice and I'm not gonna stop you but look at him. I kept him away from his gang to see what kind of man he is. He's weak, powerless without them. The only thing that gave him power was their weak mindedness. Now, look at 'em." He said and turned his head to see them, broken and defeated looks on all their faces. "They're done." He said and looked back at me. "If you can kill a man who's that weak, if you can kill him when he's already down, you're not the man I think you are."
"You're wrong." Kara said. "You're underestimating their loyalty."
"If I am then you'll get the chance to kill him the right way." He replied.
Once the truck was loaded and fueled, we hit the road again, heading south for Magnolia Ridge. Choppa was sitting in front now and Kara was curled up on the bed asleep, Mac and Chontelle sitting on the other end at her feet. I was thinking about what Dave had said. Kara was right and he was wrong. He just didn't know Choppa like I did and definitely not like she did.
I looked at her lying there, beautiful, peaceful, sweet and vulnerable and I hated him. I never wanted anyone to hurt her or mistreat her again. I could get up, grab a bat out of the cabinet and bash his head in before he even knew what hit him. Spider would be next. I pictured him sitting there with his head caved in, eye balls hanging out and blood from there to his belly and even though I knew the world would be a better place without him, the brutality of it all made me feel like a murderer. When I killed those men that killed Dad it was different. I knew they would come for me next. I believed Choppa would do the same eventually but that was eventually, not right now. Dave had called me hero. Was I? I hadn't been raised in this world, I had been sheltered and I wondered if I was strong enough, hard enough to do all that had to be done to survive it.