Of course, Clayton was having none of it.
“Holy shit!” Clayton said as bullets filled the air.
Two yahoos were firing at him from the truck that had just burst onto the scene. The driver of the truck yanked the steering wheel hard to the left to keep from ramming into the dune buggy, fishtailing the truck, and nearly tossing the four guys in the back onto the road. Despite being tossed around like soft action figures, they continued to fire away. Bullets bounced off the roadway, flew into the sky, and into the woods. A few of the shots winged past Clayton.
He decided that he couldn’t let their “good deeds” go unpunished and banged away at the truck. Where their shots were wild, his were not.
As the truck burned rubber down the road and away from Clayton, one of his bullets took one of the passengers in the bed of the truck in the head, tossing him over the side of the truck. The body rolled along the highway, its arms and legs bending and breaking in unnatural ways.
“Take that, mother fucker,” Clayton said under his breath.
Another vehicle broke from the trees. One of those block-long SUVs. The driver of this vehicle saw the mistake of the first driver and avoided bounding up onto the road and rode along the slope at a dangerously canted angle.
Clayton tried to get a bead on it, but the angle was bad. He fired off three shots, but none of them hit.
A third vehicle burst from the tree line, another monster truck. There were only two guys in the bed, but like the second truck, the driver worked to stay out of Clayton’s aim.
Clayton decided not to waste the ammunition.
“Are they running away?” Casey asked as she came down the road toward Donovan. Like him, she sensed that the immediate trouble was over.
“I think they weren’t ready for someone who fought back,” Donovan said. “My guess is that they probably picked on single vehicles. We weren’t easy pickings like that.”
“Maybe we dodged the worst of it,” Casey said.
Something moved off to the left of the road, and Donovan caught it immediately, spinning and jerking his rifle up. The woman who had helped pull Terry off the road stepped out of the tree line. Blood dripped off her hands, and her head was down.
Donovan lowered his rifle and started toward the woman, “Ashley, what is it?”
The woman named Ashley looked up, and it was clear to see that she had been crying.
She took three unsteady steps toward Donovan and said, “Terry didn’t make it.”
Chapter 12
Captive
Jo glanced to her right, looking for her rifle, but it was a good five-feet away. Her shoulder throbbed from the hit she had taken from his rifle butt. The blow had knocked her rifle from her hand and sent her down to the forest floor.
She looked back up at the man with the rifle aimed at her face and slowly moved her hand down her side toward her holstered revolver.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” the man said, his face a mask of rage. At least what she could see of it. Most of it was covered in a dark brown mustache and an unkempt beard.
She relaxed her hand at her side and let it fall back down to ground.
“Who the fuck are you people?” the man asked.
Jo didn’t know exactly what to say. The man was so angry, she was afraid whatever response she had would only piss him off more, and she could see the pressure he was already putting on the trigger of his rifle.
“I asked you a question,” he said, and he lashed out with a foot that struck her shin.
A sharp pain shot up her leg. She winced a little but didn’t give him the satisfaction of a yelp or scream.
“We’re just normal people, like you. Trying to survive,” she said.
“Then why do you have so many guns if you’re just trying to get by?” he asked.
She so badly wanted to say, ‘Because of marauding assholes like you,’ but thought better of it. “It’s what we have to protect ourselves from the zombies.”
“Where are you going?”
“We’re heading east,” she said.
“Do you have a place there? A compound? A headquarters?”
“No, we’re just looking for a safe place to hide, like everyone else.”
The man leaned back and peered off to his right, trying to get a view back onto the roadway, but they were too deep into the woods for that. When he looked back to her, she could see something other than fury in his face this time. This man was scared.
They had heard the shots being exchanged out on the road. They heard the sound of car engines racing away. Neither one of them knew whether it was allies or enemies fleeing the scene. Whatever it meant, one of them was most likely on their own.
Deep down, she knew Del and the others wouldn’t leave her out in the woods on her own. Donovan might move on, but she doubted it.
She got a strong sense from the man that he strongly suspected that he was left high and dry. She wasn’t sure if this worked for or against her. He could have nothing to lose and just might shoot her and take off on foot in search of his friends.
“Listen, you can just go off by yourself,” she said, her hands held above her head, trying to look submissive. “There’s no need to do anything rash.”
“Shut up,” he shouted, and the rage was back.
He rubbed hard at his beard, and she could see behind his eyes that he was thinking. Again, she didn’t know if this was a good or bad thing. He could be weighing his options, and one of them could, again, be just shooting her, taking her stuff, and hightailing it east as fast as his feet could carry him.
He stood over her for nearly five seconds before he said, “Slowly reach down and grab your gun from your holster between your finger and your thumb and toss it away. You so much as twitch when you’re doing it and I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes.”
“It doesn’t have to go this way,” she said.
“DO IT!” He shouted.
She could sense that he was so very close to pulling the trigger. She kept her left hand raised above her head and slowly and deliberately reached down for her holster.
“I’ve got to unsnap the safety strap,” she said as her index finger and thumb grasped the buckle of the safety strap.
“Do it slowly,” he said.
She followed his command and unsnapped the strap, the noise sounding unnecessarily loud against the quietness of the woods. She slowly pulled the revolver free and tossed it a few feet away, where it slid under some dead leaves.
“Now, roll on your back,” he said.
“Hey, what are you thinking?” she asked.
“Don’t give me a reason to shoot you,” he said. “Just do it.”
She didn’t like this. Not at all. When she rolled onto her face, spots tingled on her back in several places, expecting a bullet to slam home there. None did.
“Put your hands straight out from your side,” he said. She complied and he said, “Cross your ankles and look to the right.”
“What?” She asked.
“Just do it,” he said, and she heard a sense of calm command sneak into his voice.
She did as she was told, and as soon as he had hands locked together, he stepped over her until he was standing over her head. Then he grabbed her right wrist. He made two slide-steps to the right and leaned down in a practiced way and grabbed her wrist, twisting her hand uncomfortably. He slid his hand down over her fingers and bent back her index finger, sending a shocking pain down her wrist and up her arm.
“Hey!” she said, her voice raising in pitch and volume.
He let up, and the pain subsided. After that, he looped the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and then pivoted his body and lowered his knee onto her shoulder. The moves were smooth, and it seemed like he was on automatic. The next thing she knew, he had her arms together and wrapped a tie-wrap around her wrist, latching them tightly together. He gave the tie wrap a little tug, cutting them into her wrists. It was just a little message, telling her who w
as in charge.
He stood up, and she thought that he might have been admiring his work.
He had done this before. A lot of times. Whether it was before or after the fall of the world, she did not know, but she decided to take a chance.
“Did you used to be a cop?” she asked. “You know, before the world went down the drain.”
“It doesn’t matter what I used to be. That world is dead and gone. It only matters that you do the shit I’m asking you to do, right here, right now. Get up.”
“How am I doing that with my arms tied behind my back?” she asked.
“Figure it out,” he said.
She wriggled around for a few seconds, feeling like a worm or some other invertebrate. She almost made it onto her knees but flopped back down in the dirt.
He must have gotten tired of waiting because he bent over and grabbed one of her shoulders and yanked her to her feet, where she tottered back and forth for a few seconds. She was both shocked and surprised by his strength. Her rifle lay on the ground just a few feet away, but it might as well have been on another continent.
“Come on. Let’s go,” he said, giving her a hard nudge with one of his hands. She staggered along for a few feet before catching her balance.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Wherever I want to,” he replied and chuckled a little. It chilled Jo to her bones.
He started to shove her again when a voice spoke from behind him. “I don’t think so.”
The man started to wheel around, but the barrel of a rifle rammed into the side of his head, knocking him off his feet. He sprawled across the forest floor and tried to but was unable to get his rifle free from his shoulder. He pushed himself to all fours and readied himself to get to his feet.
Del sprang forward and followed his rifle’s movement, jamming the barrel into the man’s side -- hard. The man grunted in pain, fell over, and then rolled onto his back.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Del asked.
Chapter 13
Back on the Road Again
“You see anyone down there by the dune buggy?” Jones asked, turning his head to talk to Clayton.
“I don’t see anyone moving at all,” Clayton said.
“Should we go down and check it out?” Ryan said.
“Probably,” Clayton said, but there was clear reluctance in his voice. He didn’t mind battling, but his preference was always to do it from afar, if possible.
Jones said, “Clayton, you and Ryan should go down there.”
“Why don’t we wait for the others to come up?” Clayton asked.
Jones leaned out of his window and looked down the roadway, checking in on Donovan and the rest of his people. He saw a lone man making his way cautiously down the side of the tree line.
“It looks like Donovan’s got his hands full, but here comes Mason,” Jones said. “No matter what, I think we should check it out.”
“What’s the rush?” Clayton asked.
“If what you’re saying is true, then a few thousand zombies are the reason we want to get going,” Jones replied. “We just need to get this done.”
“I’m not sure you are in a position to be giving me orders,” Clayton said. “Didn’t you leave your soldiering behind?”
It was true that, when Colonel Kilgore and some of his men had started brutalizing people at the Manor, Sergeant Jones had stood up to Kilgore. It was also true that Jones had been taken into custody by one of Kilgore’s henchman and confined to his quarters. That led to Jones siding with the people at the Manor and playing a part in a rebellion that left more than a few soldiers getting killed.
This wasn’t something Jones like to think about, but Clayton had thrown it in his face.
“You’re damned right. I don’t have any authority here. I’m just a man trying to survive and keep the people around me alive. If my leg would carry me, I’d go down there myself, but we can’t get past that roadblock until we know that no son of a bitch is going to pop out of that dune buggy and start picking us off.”
Gertie, who had been lying on the floor of the truck during the shootout, rose up from the back seat and said, “Oh my.”
Clara sat up and said, “Clayton, Sergeant Jones does have a point.”
Clayton looked skyward and exhaled in an exaggeratedly long breath. “Well, shit.”
“Clayton,” Clara said, stretching out his name. “Language, please.”
His shoulders fell, and he said, “Sorry, ma’am. Again.”
Mason jogged up beside the truck and looked in the back seat. The Benton sisters gave him an uncomfortable smile.
“Everybody okay here?” Mason asked.
“We’re all fine,” Jones responded. “How about your people?”
A dark cloud of an expression passed over Mason’s face. When he spoke, there was a thickness to his voice. “We lost a man.”
With some alarm in his tone, Jones asked, “Who?”
“Terry,” Mason said. “I know you haven’t had a chance to get to know our folks by name, but he was one of our best hunters and a good man.”
A heavy silence hung in the air for several seconds, but Jones knew they were on the clock, and nothing was going to change that. He quickly described what had transpired at the front of the convoy and the fact that they had to clear the roadblock out of the way. But before that, they had to check out the dune buggy for any attackers.
“You up to helping with that?” Jones asked.
Mason sucked in a breath and said, “Okay.”
“Ryan stays behind then. It’s you and Clayton,” Jones said. “You good with that?”
Mason eyed Clayton up and down, checking out his military fatigues, and an immediate sense of leeriness nearly overcame him, but he let it go. Clayton had just battled some marauders to help save the caravan. You simply had no choice but to learn to go with things sometimes.
Clayton looked back to Mason and said, “We’ll each take a side of the road.”
“What about me?” Madison asked. “I can go, too.”
“Can you shoot that rifle?” Clayton asked Madison.
“Yes, my dad taught me before…” She trailed off, and they all knew what before meant.
“Good. We need you and Ryan here in case anyone comes out of those woods,” Clayton said, pointing off into the woods. “You can cover us. We’re going to watch the dune buggy.” He switched his attention to Ryan. “You watch the woods. You guys,” Clayton said, pointing to the three other teenagers in the bed of the truck, “watch the woods, too. Shout out if you see a anything bigger than a rabbit come out of the trees.”
The three teens all went wide-eyed and slowly nodded their heads.
“Jones, that plan fly with you?” Clayton asked.
“Sounds good enough,” Jones responded.
Clara said, “Clayton, do be careful.”
“Will do, Miss Benton,” Clayton said, his tone softening as he spoke to this elderly woman. The obvious deference he always showed the Benton sisters whenever he spoke with them came through.
Gertie spoke through the window, “Ryan, you be careful up there, too.”
“I sure will,” Ryan said in his raspy voice.
Clayton climbed down from the truck and joined Mason on the road.
Madison and Ryan took Clayton’s position behind the cab of the truck. It was bit of a struggle for her, as she had to put a foot on the side of the truck and push herself up to be able to lay her arms across the roof of the cab. She didn’t look all that comfortable, but she was making it work.
Ryan looked a little more than nervous about his given task. Even though a cool breeze from the west wafted over them, Ryan felt dots of perspiration form on his forehead. After twenty seconds, sweat dripped down onto his eyebrows, and he was forced to wipe it away.
Clayton looked up to Madison. “Little girl, you have our backs. Don’t fall down on the job.”
“No way,” Madison said as she narrowed her eyes and
aimed her rifle down the road.
“Let’s go,” Clayton said. “I’ll take the right side of the road. You take the left.”
“Slow and easy,” Clayton said. “I think that driver’s toast, but we have at least one man unaccounted for. Maybe more.”
With that, they started toward the dune buggy, moving slowly and deliberately, each one of them matching the other’s pace.
Clayton moved cautiously along, his total focus on the dune buggy and the area around it. His hand never left his rifle, as he had it aimed at the dune buggy, and his attention never faltered from taking in the whole scene in front of them. He knew he was depending on a teenage girl as back-up, another kid to cover the woods in case any attackers came out of them, and three other teenagers to watch his back. It wasn’t the backup he would have picked, but you went into war with the army you had, not the one you wanted.
They cut the distance between the truck and the dune buggy in half, and they still detected no movement from the dune buggy, but Clayton could now clearly see the leg of the driver dangling partially out of the opening that would have been called a door on any other car.
The dune buggy was a four-seater with a sturdy steel frame and was outfitted with knobby tires suited for off-roading. Like most dune buggies, it had no doors, just openings for easy entry and exit. There was nothing fancy about it, but it did have a roof-rack basket on top and what looked like a modified crash bar welded to the front.
Clayton said, “Hold up,” while putting a hand in the air in a stop-sign gesture. Mason stopped and looked Clayton’s way, waiting for direction. Clayton glanced back at the truck, making sure Madison was still in position.
She looked very small and very far away. He glanced at Mason and felt a little bit better.
“I’m going to approach the dune buggy,” he said. “You cover me.”
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 7