Clayton shot her a sideways glance and said, “Boring is good. Boring means no one is shooting at us. No, boring is what you want.”
“But I’m really tired,” she said.
“Then why the hell did you decide to come with us?” Clayton asked. “The whole reason we’re taking this break is to let the most exhausted people rest. If you were one of them, then you just missed your chance. As my grandmother used to say, ‘Grab your ass and get glad.’”
Madison let out a loud yawn in response to Clayton’s comment. In his eyes, she put it on a bit big, but he could see the dark circles under her eyes.
“Okay, close your eyes,” Clayton said, throwing his hands in the air. “I’ll watch.”
“I’ll watch, too,” Ryan said.
“Good,” Clayton said. “That leaves one of us watching ‘cause I’m going to sleep.”
Ryan let out a small laugh in his raspy voice. Madison leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes. She was out in less than a minute. Snoring lightly.
Ryan yawned, pinched his nose, smacked the side of his face a couple times, but only lasted twenty minutes before his head dipped against the side of the window. He didn’t snore.
Clayton shook his head and said under his breath, “Go team.”
The minutes passed, and Clayton felt the weariness seeping into his body. It was like a physical force, threatening to pull him down under the waters of sleep. He looked over at his sleeping passengers, reached for the door handle, and slowly pulled it. There was a gentle click, and the door slowly opened. He slid his left leg out and pivoted his body and let himself out of the truck. He was careful not to slam the door. As it clicked shut, he looked in at Ryan and Madison, and he saw them as what they were -- two kids. Young and almost innocent.
As he looked in, a sense of melancholy fell over him, as he remembered his two brothers and his sister. He had no idea where they were. He had no idea if they were dead or alive. He only knew that he’d probably never see them again.
“You can’t go there,” he said and reached his arms above his head and stretched his body, trying wring out the fatigue. He dropped his arms and ran in place for thirty seconds to get the blood pumping.
While he didn’t feel in peak shape, he was fully awake again. Being a world-class pessimist, he wondered how long that would last. He took a look at his wristwatch and saw he had at least two more hours. He wasn’t sure how he’d make it, but he damn well knew he’d sleep once they got back to the school.
For now, he’d refuse to get back in the truck. He knew, if he did, once his head hit the seat, he’d be gone.
He had to remain in motion to stay awake, making slow circles around the truck every few minutes. While he tried to avoid it, he checked his watch every few minutes, despite vowing to himself that he would not check until the call came to return back to the school.
It was on his twelfth revolution and his upteempth time at checking his watch when he heard the rumble of an engine in the distance, and he stopped moving. Nothing moved on the road, but the sound was getting closer by the second, and Clayton was afraid to move at all.
He froze beside the front fender of the truck, his hand on the rifle hanging from his side.
The sound of the engine continued to increase in volume, but Clayton didn’t see any cars or trucks on the road. It was completely empty, looking more like a still life painting than anything else.
Where the hell is it? Clayton thought as he pulled up his rifle and leaned against the side of the truck, bracing himself there and getting ready to aim down the road.
The sound got louder and seemed as if it was right in front of him, but the road remained empty. He took the briefest of glances back inside the truck and saw that both of the passengers were still asleep. He weighed the option of waking them but decided to focus down the road.
All of his attention locked in on the road ahead, waiting and ready for something to appear.
And it finally did. An SUV bounded out of the woods, mostly obscured by a dust cloud that it had kicked up. It entered his view from the left side of the road about a quarter of a mile down the road. It was moving left to right in his vision. From where he was positioned, he wasn’t able spot the small break in the tree line. A break big enough for a gravel covered road.
The SUV stayed in Clayton’s view for no longer than three seconds before it drove into the fallow farm field and disappeared from view again, but he could still hear the rumble of the engine. It gradually diminished but not completely.
Clayton closed his eyes and pushed every bit of his focus on listening. In his mind’s eye, he was a giant ear, reaching out, trying to pull in any sound.
The engine volume dropped to a low level but seemed to have settled down to a steady low rumble. After five more seconds, it snapped off as if someone had shut it off.
Curious, Clayton thought. Could that be one of the road bandits?
There was no way to tell for sure. In the three seconds it was in view, it was barely more than a blocky dark shape because of the cloud of dust.
He asked himself the next question - why did it stop?
He knew he had no idea. Maybe they really hadn’t stopped and he just hadn’t heard the vehicle slip away into the distance.
He looked back at the truck and then back down the road. He knew there was only one way to find out. He back stepped down the side of the truck, while maintaining his focus down the road. When he got beside the door, he grabbed the handle and slowly pulled the door open. After he had it fully open, he leaned in and said, “Pssst.”
Ryan didn’t stir. Neither did Madison.
Clayton tried again but a little louder.
Nothing happened.
Clayton leaned across the driver’s seat and gave Ryan a hard poke in the shoulder. “Wake the fuck up,” Clayton hissed out.
Ryan jerked awake, knocking his rifle against the dashboard, making a loud clattering sound that woke up Madison. Her reaction was similar to Ryan’s as her hands flew up in the air and her legs kicked out, slamming into the back of the front seat.
“What? What! What?” she said.
“Calm down,” Clayton said in a hushed voice.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan said, still blinking away sleep.
“Somebody just drove across the road ahead of us,” Clayton said.
“Who was it?” Madison said while she pushed her face over the back of the seat.
“If I knew who it was, I wouldn’t have said somebody,” Clayton shot back.
“Geez,” Madison said. “You don’t have to be such an a-hole about it.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, counted to five inside, and said, “I don’t have time for explanations or apologies. I don’t think they saw us at all, but we need to know who it is.”
“How do we find that out?” Ryan said, not looking fully awake.
“We don’t find out anything. I do. I think they stopped just off the road up to the right. The two of you will stay here while I slip up the road to see what I can see.”
“Why don’t we just call it in?” Ryan asked.
Clayton thought for a moment and said, “Because we don’t know who it is. It could be the road bandits. It could be anyone. I didn’t get a good look at it. It was only one truck.”
“Why don’t we just drive up?” Madison asked.
“Because this truck is pretty damn noisy,” Clayton said. “We need to show a little stealth, and that is what I can do.”
“What do we do while you’re gone?” Ryan asked.
“Do you know how to drive?” Clayton asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “You said you were going to teach me back at the farmhouse but never got around to it.”
“So, it’s my fault?” Clayton said. “It’s not enough that I’m taking care of the sisters and you, but also doing some hunting and keeping all our asses safe.”
“I can drive,” Madison said.
“You can?” Clayton said as he rai
sed a skeptical eyebrow.
“I drove the truck that Mr. Schultz and I took back to the Manor,” she said. She left out the fact that she had only really driven it down an old logging trail at around ten miles an hour. And she nearly ran over one of her friends.
“Okay, then,” Clayton said. “Get up in the driver’s seat.”
Madison slid between the seats and plopped into the driver’s seat, wearing a self-satisfied smile. Ryan seemed a little stunned by the quick turn of events.
“Here’s how it’s going down,” Clayton said, and he laid out his plan to use the woods to sneak up closer to get a possible peek at where the SUV went. They were to sit tight. If they heard any shooting, they were to start the truck and turn it around. He went on to explain that, if they heard three shots spaced out, then they should just run for it. He’d make his way back any way he could.
“What if we get an emergency call on the walkie?” Ryan asked.
Clayton needed a moment to think. “If it’s an absolute emergency, then turn the truck around, get up on the center of the road, and honk the horn three long blasts. If I don’t come running in four minutes, get the hell out of here.”
“Why four?” Madison asked.
“Just because,” Clayton replied. “Everyone always says five minutes. Can’t a man be different?”
“Sure,” Madison said as she shrugged her shoulders.
“How many shots do you have to hear before you turn the truck around?” Clayton asked.
“Three spaced out shots,” Ryan said.
“How many times do you honk the horn if there’s serious trouble?” Clayton asked, directing his question at Madison.
“Three,” she said.
“Okay,” he said as he stepped away from the truck. “Here I go.”
Chapter 18
West Lookout
Troy’s head slumped down, and his chin nearly hit his chest when Casey jabbed him in the shoulder.
“Huh?” he asked with the bewildered look of a small child who had been awakened in the middle of the night.
“Stay awake. They’re counting on us,” Casey said, and there was nothing soft in her tone.
“They said we had a five or six hour head start on the zombies,” Troy said. Again, he sounded like a child with a slight whine in his voice.
“Nothing is certain,” she said. “We both need to be watching.”
“Okay,” he said.
They watched. The minutes ticked by. They were in the jeep under the canopy of two side-by-side oak trees. The shade cut down on the midday heat, which was a blessing.
The weariness and boredom of watching an empty road for two and a half hours wore on them. The road lay ahead of them like an unbroken ribbon. Only about a half-mile away, there was a slight bump in the ribbon. That small rise that blocked the view of anything past it. At the top of the bump, a heat mirage shimmered like an impressionist painting
“I don’t know why we’re sticking with these people,” Troy said. “What do we really know about them? We should cut loose from them and go our own way.”
“Go where?” she asked. “Our whole plan was to stay at the compound. The soldiers screwed us on that. We don’t have another place to go.”
“Are you saying that Donovan fucked up?” Troy asked. She thought she heard some satisfaction in his words.
“He is the reason we had a place to stay after the world went down the toilet. We...you...me. All of us would have been dead long ago if it wasn’t for him.”
“If he’s half as smart as you say he is, then why are we here? Why are we on the run?” He paused for a moment, not meeting her eyes. “We should dump these guys and go our own way.”
“These people helped pull our asses out of that basement,” she said. “Your ass included.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Casey rubbed her eyes, trying to push away the fatigue that weighed on her like an anchor. She had lied to everyone when she told them that she had slept down in the basement back at the Manor where the soldiers had thrown them. She was awake every minute they were locked down in that black hole, thinking they would die down there.
No one was coming. They would starve there. Like rats.
Then Donovan appeared at the door, and they were saved. At least, physically. There were parts of Casey still locked down there in that dungeon. When you come face to face with your death, it just doesn’t go away. It haunts you.
The specter was in her mind when Troy said, “Hey.”
She didn’t hear him, and he could tell that.
“Hey, do you see that?”
She came only partially out of the haze of her memory and saw a black mass starting to fill the mirage on the rise down the road. Her mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the mass. It told her it was a swarm of large black bees spreading out across the road and into the trees that lined it.
“Holy shit!” Troy almost yelled, his voice sounding three octaves higher than normal.
Reality snapped back into place for Casey, almost like someone had pulled the pieces of a broken mirror back in place. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
Zombies trudged toward them, more and more of them coming over the rise. One of the zombies at the head of the mob hit a pothole, stumbled, and fell face first into the road. It tried to get back to its feet, but the ones behind it paid it no heed and continued their deadly march.
The mass didn’t seem to notice or even care that they were pulverizing their comrade into the pavement. One moment, it was legs and arms, trying to push itself back up, then it was a mass of exploding blood, bone, and muscle. Then it was gone.
Troy’s trembling hand reached for the walkie-talkie, but instead, it knocked it onto the floor of the jeep. He was transfixed on the zombies, and instead of looking for the walkie-talkie, he kept his eyes straight ahead while his hand searched for it on the floor.
Casey held herself together and started the jeep. A second later, her foot was on the gas pedal, and she was cutting the steering wheel in a tight turn to head them back toward the school.
The turn slid the walkie-talkie back into Troy’s hand, and he snapped it up to is head, pressed the talk button, and shouted, “They’re coming.”
Chapter 19
Reconnaissance
Clayton eased his head around a tree trunk at the edge of the woods. The field was full of mostly weeds with a few brown and dried out corn stalks sticking above the weeds. A quarter mile across the field stood a two-story farmhouse. Before the fall of the world, it had been painted yellow, but a lot of that paint had flaked off, leaving bare wood exposed.
Parked next to the house was a dark blue SUV. An SUV that looked very much like one of the vehicles that had driven away from the roadblock on the road.
A lone man stood next to the SUV, smoking a cigarette. The longer Clayton watched, he caught movement inside. Forms moved past the windows. It was impossible to tell how many men were inside. He could only guess there were at least six men. Six heavily armed men.
Clayton was left with a decision. He could attempt a stealth move, try to sneak across the field, and take them out. But two words came to his mind the longer he contemplated it, and those words were -- fuck that.
He was no one man army. He was no superhero. And there was no way he was going back to get those two kids. Ryan was raw. The girl was even less experienced as far as he could tell.
If he had Del, Jo, and a couple of Donovan’s men, maybe, but he was no hero.
It was time to return to the truck slowly and quietly and get the hell out of here. So, that was the perfect time for the truck’s horn to sound. Three long, spaced out blasts. Too long and too loud.
Clayton whipped his attention back to the farmhouse, where the man threw down his cigarette and took a long stare across the field toward the road. A door opened on the front porch, and two men came out carrying assault rifles. A moment later, two more men walked around the side of the house. One carried a shotgun; the other had a b
ad ass machine gun.
Three more horn blasts sounded, and Clayton looked back over his shoulder and said, “Shut up.”
When he looked back to the farmhouse, he found that his estimate of men at the house turned out to be right as another man appeared on the front porch. He grouped up with the other men. All of them stared across the field toward the road.
The horn blared again, and that’s when the men went into motion, heading toward the SUV.
“Shit,” Clayton said, and that’s when he turned and started running.
“Where is he?” Madison asked with some insistence.
“Should we honk the horn again?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know,” Madison said. “Let’s give him a minute.”
Her hands sat at ten and two on the steering wheel just as Mr. Schultz had taught her. Ryan’s leg bounced up and down as he tightly gripped his rifle. Both of them split their time staring down the road and scanning the tree line down the right side of the road where Clayton had disappeared.
The walkie-talkie speaker squawked to life again, startling Ryan.
“We have hundreds of zombies heading our way,” a man’s voice nearly screamed.
A woman’s voice sounded, “Calm down. We just need to drive away.”
“There might be a thousand of them,” the man said.
There was a pause, and the only thing that came through the speaker was the sound of the man’s heavy breathing.
“Take your thumb off the talk button,” the woman said.
There was a click as the transmission cut off.
Two seconds later, a man’s voice came over the speaker. “Get back to the school as fast as you can.”
The first man said, “We’re on our way. Thank God.”
The transmission clicked off again. The second man’s voice came back on, “Clayton, get your team back here ASAP. Please confirm.”
Both Madison and Ryan looked at the walkie-talkie as if it were something dangerous. Neither one of them wanted to pick it up.
A different woman’s voice came over the walkie-talkie., “Clayton, this is Jo. Where the hell are you?”
The Deadland Chronicles (Book 2): The Undead Horde Page 11