“What is it?” Madison called from outside the door.
“You don’t need to come in here,” Jo said.
“What is it?” Madison asked, more insistently. “Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“You don’t need to handle it,” Jo said. “There’s nothing here to handle at all.” She let out a light sigh. “Can you head into the kitchen and see if there’s any food?”
The lock broke easier than Del thought, and the chain fell away, clattering to the ground. What further surprised him was how fast the zombie came out of the doors. It snarled and had its arms out to grab for Del, ready to take him down.
It looked like a teenage girl. Or had been. Now it was just another thing, only it wore a tattered striped dress.
Fortunately for Del, he didn’t come alone. Donovan was ready and whipped his rifle up just in time and blew the zombie’s brains across the barn door. It fell into a heap, never to move again.
“Thanks,” Del said.
“No problem,” Donovan said.
Footfalls came from the front of the house as Casey and a couple of the other people came running at the sound of the gunshot. They held hand weapons, since guns were in short quantity, but they looked ready to do what needed to be done.
“It’s okay,” Donovan said, holding up a hand in a stop motion to them. “We’ve got this.”
The group slowly came to a halt. Casey said, “The search will go faster if you have more people.”
Donovan scratched a hand through his hair then replied, “Let’s clear the barn first.”
The search of the barn and the house didn’t give them a cornucopia of items, but it did net them a couple cases of water, three cases of canned food, and one rifle plus the handgun used in the living room. The barn netted them a number of hand weapons, ranging from a couple of axes, two hoes, a mattock to some decent pieces of lumber. They could be wielded as clubs when it came down to it.
The real find came when they found to two jerrycans filled with gasoline. On a shelf above the cans was a small bottle of gas stabilizer. Del thanked God that someone had decided to future proof the gasoline.
With the efficiency of a pit crew, they were done with the search in less than nine minutes.
When they regrouped, Donovan and Jo compared notes, and the picture came clear pretty quickly. The teenager in the barn must have been the daughter. She had been turned somehow. The parents locked her in the barn and then, filled with grief and hopelessness, they decided to check out.
It was a sad story that had been told thousands of times across the globe as the dead rose and the living fell. Dwelling on it for more than a minute only weighed you down, and both Jo and Donovan put it out of mind as quickly as they could, but they both knew that there was no getting away from the human toll. This tragic tale would be just another one that haunted them when their guard was down. When the lights were low and when they even considered that they might be safe, it would return like an unwelcome guest.
It was just another harsh object lesson of this fallen world.
Chapter 6
Road Kill
Del overreacted and slammed on the brakes, sending the occupants of the truck hurtling forward. Both of the Benton Sisters let out surprised yelps. Sergeant Jones grunted as his bad leg jammed into the front seat.
Just after his head bounced off the back window of the extended cab, Clayton yelled, “What the hell?”
The caravan was fortunate they had planned a safe assured distance between each vehicle or else there could have been an ugly scene on the road. Still, the ATV trailing the truck nearly ended up in the bed of the truck as it duck-tailed in the road. The Jeep and other vehicles had had enough distance that they were able to power-brake and stop safely.
Coming down the centerline of the road were over two-dozen zombies, shambling along in a herd-like fashion, spreading out and blocking the way. It only took them two seconds to take notice of the caravan of vehicles stopped just ahead of them on the road. The people in the trailer must have looked very delicious as they were out in the open and vulnerable.
The zombies did not hesitate but instead steamed ahead toward the caravan.
“What should we do?” Del asked.
“There’s too many to drive through, unless we have to,” Jo said. “Plus the people in the trailer are totally exposed.”
Someone stood up in the bed of the truck, and a moment later, Clayton asked in a loud voice, “Should I start shooting or what?”
“We’ve got a minute or two. Wait for Donovan and the others,” Jo said. She turned to Del and said, “Pivot the truck so that Sergeant Jones has a shooting angle.”
“Stop calling me Sergeant,” Jones said.
“What should we call you?” Jo asked.
“Nate or just Jones. I’m done with Sergeant.” Although, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be done being a military man. It was just too much in his bones.
Del took his foot off the brake and let the truck slowly turn to allow Jones to have a shooting view onto the road and the oncoming zombies.
Footsteps sounded from down the road, and when Jo looked back, she saw Donovan, Mason, Casey, and Troy, along with two other men she hadn’t gotten a chance to know. Donovan, Mason, and Casey had rifles. Troy and one of the men had handguns. The final man, a portly fellow, held a long piece of metal pipe.
Donovan waited for Del to complete his maneuver and slid up next to Jo’s door.
“Where did these deaders come from?” he asked.
“Hell if I know,” Del said.
“Do you think they’re a part of the horde you saw and a swath of them flanked us?”
Jo said, “No, I think this is a random herd. I don’t see any behind them or any in the woods.”
“What’s the game plan then?” Donovan asked.
Jo felt a sense of unease, and she wondered when she became in charge. Sergeant Jones had infinitely more battlefield experience than she had. She suspected that Donovan had similar experience, but everyone kept deferring to her. It was somewhat flattering, but also frightening as it made her responsible for whatever choice was made and whatever consequences resulted.
After years of playing second fiddle to a mostly domineering husband, there was a part of her that was ready to take charge.
“Too much risk to run through them,” she said. “I think there’s too many to take on hand-to-hand.” She turned her head and looked past Del back down the road at Donovan’s people and made a quick assessment. “It looks like only a few of your people have any guns. So, in my opinion, this is one of those times we’ll have to shoot our way out.”
“I concur,” Donovan said.
Jo turned and looked back to Jones. “What do you think, Serg...Jones?”
“I’m with you.”
“We have to be careful and not burn through too much ammo,” Donovan said. “We don’t have that much.”
Clayton leaned over the cab and said, “That’ll mean letting them get up close and personal.”
“Yes, it will,” Jones said.
The zombies were about to make that ‘up-close and personal’ a reality as they had cut the distance by half since they had been first been spotted. That put them close to fifty-feet away.
Del stepped out of the truck, leaned his arms onto the hood of the truck, and positioned his aim at the zombies. “We waiting until we see the whites of their eyes?”
“About that,” Donovan said.
“Who gives the go ahead?” Clayton asked.
“Jo, is that you?” Donovan asked.
She contemplated that for a moment then said, “Why not?” She turned and situated herself to get the best aim down the road at the approaching mass of undead. “Donovan, put some people on guard to watch for any that might slip through the woods on either side.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” he responded then shouted down the road at the others in their party to keep an eye out for any stragglers possibly slipping through the woods.
Everybody on the front guard turned their full attention to the rotting undead headed their way. As always, the undead varied in size and shape. And in the state of decomposition. Some were missing arms. Some limped on broken legs. Others had seeping wounds that could be smelled even from twenty-five feet away.
Jones leaned forward in his seat and got as close to Jo as his bad leg would allow. “Is that a solar charger lying on the dashboard?”
The solar charger Jo had taken from back at the Manor lay splayed across the dash for maximum exposure to the sun. Its wire led down onto the dashboard and into the closed glove compartment.
Jo gave him a sideways glance but didn’t say anything.
“What are you charging?”
“We can talk later,” Jo said, “after we take care of them.” She pointed down the road toward the oncoming zombies.
Given the wait, a few on the front guard even thought of who these creatures might have been before. They could have been teachers or cops or pizza delivery guys. They had just been normal breathing humans before they had been bitten or scratched or otherwise mauled by some undead creature. Before they knew it, they were no longer themselves but something less. Something driven by the basest and most primal desires of hunger.
You tried not to think of who they had been. It might slow the trigger response. You might aim a little high or a little low. You might not pull the trigger at all.
No, it was best just to think of them as things. Creatures that needed put out of their misery. Putting them down was really a mercy killing.
That was the best way to go. Any other way and you just might start crying.
Jo waited until the first row of zombies hit the fifteen foot mark, and she shouted, “Fire!”
No one hesitated, and they made each bullet count. While not all of them would be considered marksman, each shooter acquitted themselves well as the zombies fell from headshots. A few bullets hit torsos, and a very few went high, but the volley went on for nearly a minute.
When the smoke settled, the road was littered with bodies. A few convulsed with some vestiges of life, but none of them moved.
What the shooters felt was not universal. Some were filled with a cathartic sense of relief. Some felt a simmering, low-level rage that was barely contained. A few felt wrung out and depleted as if something essential had been drained out of them. And a few others wondered just what the cost of survival was.
Most were just glad the road was clear again.
All the creatures in the woods that had been chittering and chirping away just before the shooting had gone silent, and none of the humans said a word for nearly ten seconds until Jones said, “I think it’s clear now.”
“Yes,” Jo said, but she had trouble getting the word out and had to say it again. She took another few seconds before she said, “Let’s get going.”
Chapter 7
Surprise Encounter
“This looks like a trap,” Jo said.
“Yes, it does,” Del responded.
The caravan had been on the road for only an hour after the encounter with the zombies, and there seemed to be a universal groan among the people in the truck when Del had slowed down the truck. After the zombies in the road, the decision had been made to cut the speed of the convoy -- just to be safe. With the massive horde behind them, a pervasive sense of impatience permeated the collective consciousness of the people in the caravan as they wanted as much distance between them and the sea of zombies heading east.
From the back seat, Clara Benton leaned forward and asked, “How can you know that?”
“Because we’ve seen something like this before,” Jo replied.
“But couldn’t it just be a collision?” Clara asked.
“It looks too staged,” Del said. “The truck is positioned in just the right way to block most of the two lanes. That’s a million to one. The way the car is sitting, just enough to keep from letting anyone get around it. Plus, it’s happen in a place where the slopes on each side of the road are just steep enough, if you did try to go around, you’d risk tipping over. Plus look to the side of the road.”
Del pointed to an overturned car lying on its side off to the side of the road. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw some bullet holes pockmarking the side of the car.
“I’d say they tried it but lost. This has trap written all over it,” he added.
The picture ahead of the caravan was just how Del had described it. An extended cab pickup truck lay on its side, nearly spanning across both lanes of the road. It faced away from anyone in the caravan, so there was no seeing what was on the other side of it.
A dark, mud covered sedan was backed into the front end of the truck canted at such an angle that it covered the rest of the road, blocking any passage. Steep sloping grades sat on each side of the road, extending about thirty feet before giving way to deep woods.
“You two don’t trust anything, do you?” Clara asked.
Jo and Del answered in unison, “No.”
Jones leaned forward, poking his head between the seats and said, “This reminds me of what the insurgents would do over in Iraq when I was there. They set up a fake accident and then we’d stop and they’d sneak in from the sides.”
“Oh yeah,” Del said. “I remember that, too.”
Everyone in the truck peered off into the once innocent woods. They now seemed darker and more ominous.
Jo picked up the walkie-talkie, pressed the talk button, and said, “We have a wreck up here that looks suspiciously like a trap.”
Donovan asked, “Why do you think that?”
Jo sighed for a moment then said, “It looks like what you did to Del and me, but you used a tree.” That was how they met, and it hadn’t been on the best of terms. Donovan and his men had been searching for the soldiers that had taken their people. To trap travelers on a road, Donovan and his men had felled a tree across the road. The only people they caught were Del and Jo. Initially, the meeting had been acrimonious, but when they discovered they shared an enemy in common, a partnership had been formed.
She described the scene ahead of them to Donovan. After she was done, she let up on the talk button and surveyed the scene again. She pressed the talk button again and said, “None of our big vehicles could make it around it without tipping. The ATVs probably can.”
“That’s no good,” he responded. “If it is a trap, we could be picked off in a second.”
“Agreed,” she said, but she was beginning to feel the hairs on the back her neck stand on end. The longer they sat there, stationary, the more vulnerable they became. “We either back out and find another way or we check this out.” Again, she paused. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I’m just paranoid.” She let up on the talk button.
“Trust your instincts,” Jones said from the back seat. “A little paranoia can save your ass sometimes.”
Clara Benton spoke next, “While I might not like Sergeant Jones coarse language, relying on your instincts in this new world is a good course of action.”
Donovan came over the speaker of the walkie-talkie again, “Turning back would mean backtracking miles. I don’t like burning the fuel if this turns out to be nothing.”
Jo knew Donovan’s assessment of their fuel supply was spot on. Even with their discovery at the farm, every ounce counted.
She turned to Jones asked, “How would you handle this?”
“I’d back us off a good distance and send two teams down each side of the road along the tree line.”
“Okay, that’s how will play it,” Jo said and pressed the talk button again. “We need to back up a hundred yards or so and then send exploration teams out to check the wreck and the surrounding woods.”
“Let me tell the rest of the caravan,” Donovan responded.
An uneasy silence filled the cab for several seconds. Being the lead vehicle, they were on the frontline for any trouble. The truck was probably the best vehicle for that role, but it wasn’t without consider
able risk. Del’s leg bobbed up and down nervously, and Gertie Benson let out a nervous cough.
Donovan’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie’s speaker, “We’re ready to go.”
Del looked in the rearview mirror and saw the vehicles in their little caravan start to back up slowly. The accordion-like movement of the vehicles happened at a snail’s pace. He held in place as he watched the vehicles behind them slowly back down the road.
They had made it two-hundred yards when the rough sound of an engine of some sort growled out of the woods, getting louder with every second. No one in the caravan needed to be told that they needed to put on the brakes as the caravan ground to a quick stop.
“What’s that sound?” Donovan asked over the walkie-talkie.
Jo’s response was quick and short. “Not sure, but it’s coming out of the woods on our left, and it’s coming fast.” She let up on the talk button and spoke in a loud voice to everyone in the truck. “Jones take a look out the right side. Clayton, Madison, and Ryan, divide your attention equally to each side of the woods.”
A second later, Donovan’s voice sounded, “We have movement in the trees behind us.” He left the microphone open as he shouted, “Everyone stop!”
Del looked once again into his rearview mirror as all the vehicles came to an abrupt halt. He couldn’t help but see several of the occupants of the trailer nearly be pitched into the road as the tractor lurched to a stop.
“Dammit, I hate being right,” Jo said.”
Donovan scanned the woods and saw dark figures moving into position behind the trees. He caught only glimpses, but he knew immediately that these were not zombies. The undead were not subtle and did not hide. When they came at you, it was direct and with great intention. Really, only one intention, and that was to tear you to pieces, a bite at a time.
Whoever this was, they were concealing themselves.
“Mason, get those people off the trailer,” Donovan said.
Mason leaped from the Jeep and sprinted for the trailer. Some of the people on the trailer were ahead of the game and were leaping over the side. But then they stood on the road, hanging onto the trailer, not knowing what to do next.
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 4