To take the dog’s mind off his new clothes, and so Jessie could check the fitment, he brought out a tennis ball and started bouncing it off the side the building, making Bob chase it in a game of keep away. As they were wrestling over the slobbery thing, with Bob growling and wagging his tail, the annoying new clothes already forgotten, they heard the sound of an engine coming through the forest. Jessie rolled free and the ball fell to the ground forgotten and the growl became menacing instead of playful. Jessie ran for the picnic table where his guns, holsters, and armor were laying and Bob kept by his side.
A U-Haul truck pulled off the two-lane and hit the brakes abruptly when the two men inside noticed Jessie standing by a wooden picnic table, his too-long hair blowing away from his scarred face in the spring breeze. His guns were strapped to his hips. The worn and scuffed plastic guards covered his legs. His bloody old Mercury with a machine gun hanging from the roof rack sat in the parking lot, looking menacing. The armored dog bared his teeth at them, ready to spring. Jessie watched the two bearded men exchange a few words then show him their hands through the windshield.
Jessie stood unmoving, still as a statue, his own hands hanging loose near the pistols slung low on his hips.
“We ain’t looking for trouble, kid,” the driver yelled out of his window. “We wanted to get some machinery out of the store, but we can come back later if you want. Ain’t nothing worth getting killed over.”
“Let’s just go,” the passenger said. “He looks like one of them raiders. There’s got to be more around.”
Jessie heard this, softly but clearly, even though the man spoke low to his friend. It had taken him months to realize how extensive the changes to him had been from the injections. It took him just as long to learn how to control some of them, dial them back down to normal so he wouldn’t hear every little thing from everyone around him. Or see things distinctly from far distances.
“It’s alright,” Jessie said. “I was just taking a break. I’m not one of Casey’s goons. You guys plan on making ice cream?”
The men stared at each other, then back at him. They were both armed of course, who in their right mind wouldn’t be nowadays, but the kid looked like a gunfighter, not just a guy with a gun.
“We don’t want trouble!” the man declared again and got out slowly. “I’m Darren, and that’s my brother William. We’re traders, kid. We ain’t robbers or raiders.”
The man called William got out of his side of the truck, not trying to hide the fact that he wore a pistol on his side.
“I’m not sure what they’re going to do with the machines,” he said. “We just get them what they want and they pay us pretty good.”
Jessie reached down and scratched Bob behind the ears, said a few soothing words, and let himself relax. The quiet exchange between the men had told him what he needed to know. They were who they said they were.
“I hope they do,” Jessie said. “I haven’t had a hot fudge sundae in ages. Is there a town with electricity nearby?”
They didn’t shake hands, Jessie didn’t do that anymore, but they all relaxed and talked for a bit before the brothers jimmied open the back door and determined what kind of tools they would need to remove the old-fashioned ice cream makers.
They were affable enough, Jessie decided, and they made him laugh as they constantly bickered and insulted each other as only brothers can. He helped them muscle the machines out of the doors and into the back of the nearly full truck. They had heard about Lakota, everyone with a radio had, and were pleased to meet him. He was a bit of a celebrity. They made a pretty good living by retrieving things people in the settlements wanted. They spread out their maps on one of the tables and Jessie showed them where all the communities he’d found were located and then copied the markings off theirs onto his. There were two outposts he’d never heard of and a high rise the brothers claimed was a self-sufficient city.
“That’s who most of this load is for,” Darren said. “They don’t ever go outside, it’s a bunch of those city people, but they have a pretty good setup. We even brought them some chickens and some goats. We ain’t allowed past the first floor, but they say they turned the roof into a little ranch.”
“I’ll have to give them a visit,” Jessie said as they folded their maps back up. “Wonder why they never contacted us.”
“Got no way to do it, I reckon,” William said. “Phones don’t work, now do they?”
“They don’t have ham radios?” Jessie asked, tucking his map into a cargo pocket.
The brothers looked at each other and their mouths fell open a little. “Tarnation!” Darren said “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“I bet the Radio Shack down to Eugene has some,” William said. “I bet they’d pay real good chips for a couple of ‘em.”
“What do you use for money?” Jessie asked and Darren pulled out a small pouch and showed him a handful of poker chips with the Lucky 7 casino stamped on the back.
“These here are good at most places, although Ryan’s Roost and the group down at Crater Lake won’t take ‘em. They only trade goods for goods or gold. Can’t nobody seem to agree on what a ten-dollar chip is worth.”
“Yeah,” William said. “Paper money is worthless. Some folks like real gold, but nobody can agree on what it’s really worth because if you wanted, everybody could just blow open a bank vault and be rich. So, in some places, a gold coin is like spending a dollar. In some places a little more.”
Jessie grinned at them and went over to his car to pull out a box of the Lakota gold.
He came back with it and set it on the table.
“How much money y'all got between you?” he asked.
The brothers got quiet and eyed him suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?” Darren asked.
“Because I’ve been authorized to buy up anything people are using as currency in exchange for real money. New American money,” Jessie said. “This is what’s being used and it’s good anywhere, not just in certain areas. It’s real gold, minted by the government, and a twenty-dollar piece is worth twenty dollars.”
The brothers eyed the box as Jessie opened it and pulled out a coin to show them. “They only make so many so there’s not a glut. I’m passing these out everywhere I go, but only this one time. Once my trip is finished, this is the only money that’s going to be good everywhere.”
The brothers left twenty minutes later, their load strapped tight, their maps marked with more places to trade and their money bags quite a bit heavier, the painted clay chips exchanged for newly minted gold. Jessie looked at the pile of poker chips on the picnic table, pretty sure he’d paid a lot more than what they were worth and left them laying there as he headed back to his car. He wanted to check out the high-rise building that had a farm on the roof.
24
Jessie
Bob’s tongue was lolling as he had his head stuck between the bars of the passenger window, breathing in the crisp mountain air. Jessie was driving relaxed, one hand on the wheel and adjusting the heater controls to aim more hot air at himself. It was still a little nippy this high up in the pine forest. He’d been wandering around the forest roads and county two lanes for nearly a week since he’d left the survivalists. He’d hit up a few of the hot springs, had taken long baths, washed all his dirty laundry and generally let himself relax. He did a little trading at Ryan’s Roost, spending the gold and spreading the word. He cleaned out a few little towns, using the Merc to lead the small hordes off until he could get a clear shot, then brought out his .22 rifle and sniped them as they came stumbling down the road. He found a few survivors, but they were well fortified. They were taking care of their own and amassing stockpiles of supplies by the easy scavenging runs they did. He was surprised he didn’t find more people, the mountains were a reasonably safe area to be in, but a family holed up in a hot springs lodge told him almost everyone had gone into one of the fortified towns near the coast. There weren’t a lot of genuine mountain people left, most of
the inhabitants that survived the outbreak had either been work from home consultants, or rich enough they didn’t have to commute to the city. They didn’t want to try to live in the wilds on their own and had packed up and moved once word got out that there were safe places to go. The few that were left were the hardy ones. Second and third generation mountain people who liked the solitude and having the forests to themselves again, without all the city folk building McMansions and driving up property values.
Little by little, Jessie was adding dots to his map. New settlements and trade routes. Everything from fortified towns to hardened, oversized, lodges tucked away in the mountains. Most people were friendly once they realized he meant them no ill will, but they all warned him about raiders. Gangs out raising hell for no good reason, not trying to rebuild anything for themselves, just taking whatever they wanted from others. Casey’s Raiders came in, terrorized or recruited, then moved on, working their way up the coast. The Raiders were why many people moved to the towns. There was safety in numbers.
Jessie knew his dad and his crew of soldiers had taken off for Mexico, the last known place Casey had been spotted. Apparently, he was sending out his bandits to do all the dirty work while he was relaxing at the beach all winter.
Not for long, he thought. When my old man finds you, he’ll be checking you off his people to kill list.
Jessie had found a handful of phones at the last hot spring lodge he’d stayed at and was plugging them in one by one to charge so he could see if there was any decent music on any of them. Most of them were password protected, but enough weren’t that it made it worth the bother. He was scrolling through the music folder on an android, only half paying attention, when a car roared out from a side road. Jessie dropped the phone and hauled the wheel over hard to avoid slamming into the pickup truck. The oversized tires squalled in protest as the nose went into the grass and started sliding. Jessie counter steered, dropped a gear and hit the gas, breaking the rear wheels loose and sending the car into a controlled drift. He kept it sideways, white smoke rolling and engine roaring, as he steered into the slide. The moment of panic was over, he was going down the road at a crazy angle, but he’d done it a hundred times before, practicing his car skills in the dirt. He let off the gas and let the car straighten and looked around for the truck, thinking it had careened off into the woods.
Bob barked a warning a second before impact as the big Dodge slammed into the side of the Mercury, forcing him over toward the shoulder again. Jessie slammed the brakes and the truck shot by him, swerving on the edge of control. Bob was barking frantically behind him and a glance in the rear view showed him headlights looming fast. He let off the brakes, floored it, and hit the nitrous button on the shifter. The big horse motor leapt forward, throwing both of them against the seat. Jessie ran it up to redline, grabbed third, and tapped the nitrous again, easily pulling away from the chasing cars.
He flew past the Dodge in a long curve, the driver hesitant to try to ram him again and saw the flash of guns. He ducked low, heard a few of them hit. The layers of Kevlar stopped them and within seconds, he was rounding another bend, getting out of the line of fire.
Casey’s Raiders, he thought. We meet at last. Hope you’ve got good insurance.
The Mercury wasn’t built to carve through twisty mountain curves like a Ferrari. It sat too high, the tires had off-road tread, and the suspension was too soft for high-speed curves. He could keep ahead of the trucks, though. They were set up about the same way, they wouldn’t be any good on the turns, either. He was pretty sure he had a lot more motor than any of them did, so all he had to do was lose them in the straights until he could find a cut off to slip down when he was out of sight, maybe come back up behind them and see how they liked getting rammed off the road. He concentrated on his driving, taking up both lanes and aiming for the inside of the curves, sliding to the outside and trying to put distance between them. He worked the transmission hard, slamming through the gears and trying to keep at least one curve ahead, so he was out of gun range. At last glance in the rearview, he was walking away from them, widening the gap at every bend.
He glanced at the side mirror when he heard a different sound from behind and saw three headlights carving the curves and coming up fast. The high-pitched whine of crotch rockets was unmistakable and they would be on him in seconds. He saw guns come up when they straightened out of the last curve. They must have had them in the back of the trucks. Silly raiders, he thought. You don’t bring a bike to a car fight.
“Hold on, Bob,” he said, when the lead bike twisted the wick and came zipping up beside him, the passenger aiming an Uzi for his head. Jessie threw open his door, slammed on the brakes, and hunched his shoulders against the flying debris when the bike plowed into it. The passenger went flying over the top and landed face-first on the asphalt at a good eighty miles an hour. The other rider tumbled and bounced into the woods with the motorcycle
Jessie hit the gas and his door came slamming shut, cutting off the view of a wide streak of red painting the blacktop. Bullets tore into his car, stitching a line of holes across the trunk as he powered into another curve.
“One down, two to go,” he told Bob.
Bob said, “Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” Or probably something similar, Jessie thought. He was barking enough to say that and a whole lot more.
There was a hard curve coming up, Jessie could see through the trees that it doubled back around in a hairpin. One of those turns where you could nearly see your own tail lights. He came in fast, jerked the handbrake, banged reverse, and slammed the gas. The car slid around, nose and tail swapping places in a whiskey runner spin and he let the clutch fly, rocketing him backwards down the road. He swung the machine gun around, pulled the trigger, sending tracers into the corner as the two bikes came flying around it, low to the ground, knees nearly dragging.
Jessie slammed the brakes again, bringing the Merc to a smoking halt. The first bike took a dozen rounds and spun crazily into the trees in an explosion of fiberglass and bones. The other slid to a stop and tried to get turned around, the passenger abandoning the fallen bike and sprinting for the cover of the woods. He didn’t make it. The rider pulled the bike up, spun it around as a continuous line of red fire walked its way toward him. He had time to twist the throttle before the tracers found him, sent pieces of him spraying out in long, red arcs. He tumbled off and the bike wobbled, fell and slid to a stop against a tree.
Jessie could hear the screaming of the truck engines as they were approaching the curve, catching up after they had unloaded their high-speed rice rockets. Jessie waited, and when the nose of the Dodge came around the bend, he lit it up, walking the tracers up the grill and through the windshield. Steam and glass exploded from the truck as blood and brains splashed from the driver’s head. He spasmed once and fell across the wheel, the engine as dead as him, the pickup bouncing over the fallen bike and careening for the ditch line.
The second truck almost got stopped in time.
Almost.
Jessie sent a few hundred rounds into the cab and it plowed into an old pine before spinning off and rolling down the incline to the creek. Gas, oil, antifreeze, and blood marked the path it took. Through the trees, he could see the last vehicle sliding to a stop just before the hairpin curve and throwing it in reverse. A van with bars on the windows.
Jessie jumped out and tore off up the hill through the woods, trying to intercept it before the driver could get turned around. Bob stayed beside him, charging up after the last of the screeching and smoking metal cages, barking his excitement at the chase. Jessie made it to the road as the driver was getting ready to floor it out of there. He shouldered his rifle, aimed at the head behind the wheel, and stood like a statue. Eyes squinted, finger on the trigger, breathing calm. The driver saw him as he pulled the shift lever into first and his foot hovered over the gas pedal of the prisoner transport van. He saw the kid clearly, standing alone and still, big as Billy Be Damned, unfazed tha
t he was facing three thousand pounds of steel getting ready to run him down. Unfazed that he had just single-handedly killed eight raiders as easy as swatting flies.
It was him.
It was the Road Angel.
The kid with the fucked-up face that Casey had offered everything to anyone that brought him back to the hideout in Mexico. The little brat that would make anyone that captured him royalty in Casey’s Court. They met each other’s eyes. One pair bloodshot and yellowed from too much liquor, too much sin, and too much hate. The other icy, clear, and penetrating, staring down the iron sights of an M-4. His head was tilted into the aim, his hair laying across the armored shoulders of his leather jacket. Metal and plastic and pads, all black leather and raw steel. The gun didn’t waver. The kid never said a word. He just held his aim. Waiting.
The man swallowed. No way would he get past the boy without getting his head blown off. He’d have to try something else. He slowly reached to turn the key, then kept his hands up to show he wasn’t armed as he eased out of the door.
Zombie Road IV: Road to Redemption Page 17