by SP Durnin
“Show off.” Kat said with a grin.
“Size isn’t everything.” He replied loftily.
Her grin widened. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s not what you said the other night.” Jake coughed. “In fact, if memory serves you were pretty vocal about—”
Kat gave him an arch look while she twisted a suppressor of her own onto the barrel of her Glock 9mm. “Hey. That was the good kind of hurt, okay? And we’ll talk about that later too.”
“Whatever you say.”
Kat swatted his right buttock. “See? You keep that phrase firmly in mind and you’ll continue to be a very happy fella. And Rae tried to tell me you can’t teach guys anything…”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye but wisely let that pass. You just knew some conversations wouldn’t go anywhere good.
They advanced quickly into the campground, weapons held low and ready, moving in synch after so much time covering each other’s backs in the new world brought about by the zombie apocalypse. The farther in they went, the more signs of occupation—and recent confrontations with the dead—they found. A pair of motionless corpses, both so desiccated it was impossible to say whether they’d been male or female, greeted them not thirty yards from the river’s edge. Another trio of bodies lay moldering near what used to be the first camping spots closest to the water. These were three local cattle farmers that had been turned during the second wave of creatures.
Five additional bodies lay in the road just outside that same camping spot.
Eighteen more a hundred yards later.
Three dozen more another a hundred yards after that.
“Not good.” Jake knelt and inspected one of the bodies. “This one was put down within that last day or so. The saliva on its chin is still moist.”
Kat wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t touch it when you checked, did you?”
“Oh, for… While I’m fully prepared to admit I am not the most intelligent guy on Earth, I’m not that stupid.”
“Good,” she sighed, keeping her eyes roving around behind them, “because let me just say if you had? I’d have, you know, been like Yuck!, with a side of Eww!, and a big ol’ heaping, helping of Ick! Yeah.”
Jake’s mouth narrowed into a slim line as he rose and they set off again. “Your faith in me is comforting. Really.”
“Now don’t be that way.” Kat patted his arm. “Everybody knows little boys like to poke icky things with sticks and stuff. That urge never really goes away as you mature. At least, for some it doesn’t.”
“I’m just learning all sorts of things today.” Jake scanned their route ahead, his tone quite dry. “And for the record, I never poked icky things.”
“One word: Nichole.” Kat shot him an even glare. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why you wasted your time with such a meat-pipe crazy, man-sauce addict.”
O’Connor winced. “That’s below the belt.”
“Apt phrase when describing her.” Cho sniffed.
“Do I comment on your previous boyfriends?”
“You’ve never met any of them.” She replied.
“Yeah, I have.”
She gave him The Stink-Eye. “You have not!”
“Um, Allen?”
Cho considered that for a moment as she walked along beside him. “Touche.”
While quite careful not to display any satisfaction at his small victory, Jake smiled inwardly. “Hey. Do you hear anything?”
Kat paused and he came to a swift halt beside her. As Jake watched, her eyes went slightly out of focus as her other senses extended out to take in their surroundings. He attempted to keep his movements to an absolute minimum so as not to contaminate the vibe or clog up the ether, or whatever the hell she accessed when she did this, and waited patiently. Nearly three minutes passed before Cho’s eyes refocused and her awareness receded from… Well, he didn’t actually know where. When she did her thing, it worked. That’s all that was important, really.
“Anything?”
“Nothing human. Some of them about for sure. And a lot more than what we’ve seen so far too. The wildlife is pretty freaked.” She pointed to their left while staring up the dirt road. “There’s a group of deer about three hundred yards that way who are so frightened, none of them have taken a leak all day.”
Jake started along the muddy road again. “Don’t think I really need to know about local herbivore bladder habits, but all right. Let’s take it slow and quiet.”
“Two things neither of us have had much practice at lately.” Kat’s smile was naughty.
Well, she is very enthusiastic, the Voice in Jake’s back-brain consoled as he strove mightily not to roll his eyes, or foolishly attempt to shush her, And I seriously doubt you’ll ever hear the ‘I have a headache’ brush-off. Ever. In life. Oh, while we’re on the subject. What do you think the chances are during this trip—you know, just since we’re out here anyway—that we’ll run across a little plaid skirt we could loot for her? Maybe a tight, white, button-up shirt, and a cute little pair of librarian type glasses too?
As interesting as that thought was, O’Connor mentally booted the Voice back down into its gutter and tried to concentrate. He did file that particular image away for further consideration first though. “Okay. You do your ninja thing, since you’re way stealthier than I am. I’ll watch your butt—Back! I’ll watch your back.”
Kat smiled and mischievously stuck her tongue out at him. Shoving the Glock into its holster on her thigh, the pretty Asian reached over her shoulder and drew her grandfather’s sword. Originally forged during the Edo Period (1630 to 1867AD) the katana had seen plenty of use over the last four hundred-plus years. Kat’s family had once been samurai but, after feuding with a powerful house in the north, were nearly wiped out until they’d gone into hiding. They’d raised their children to become ninja, the silent assassins, the blades in the night, and Kat was very adept in those frightening ancestral techniques. Her grandfather had given the blade to her one morning when she and her parents had visited Japan years ago, just before taking his favorite —and only—granddaughter to Okina midori no tokage. That translated as ‘Big Green Lizard’. The proprietor had chosen said name because if he’d just gone and named it Godzilla Burgers he would’ve been sued. They’d had cheeseburgers for breakfast and on the way back, both of them stuffed with bovine goodness and French fries, Grandpa’ Cho had also bought Kat her very first Hello Kitty doll.
She’d adored the character ever since.
Worry squirmed in his gut, and Jake made it a point to keep close to her while the two of them made their way deeper into the campground. There were ample signs exclaiming living people had been about recently. Plenty of bodies that had unmistakably been the infected too. There never seemed to be a shortage of those, regardless of where his groups’ journey took them. Nearly everywhere from Ohio to Oklahoma had been full of nothing save the repulsive creatures.
O’Connor didn’t have the first clue what had caused the zombies to rise. Maybe it was a secret government project—or an attack by a group of goat-humping terrorists—gone horribly wrong. Perhaps Mother Nature finally had quite enough of the pesky humans and ‘struck back’? It could very well be that Hell simply was full and the dead were overflowing back into the land of the living too, he supposed. Could it even a space-borne virus that (somehow) managed to survive millions of years in the absolute vacuum of space, and then a fiery entry through Earth’s atmosphere, that had brought humanity to the edge of extinction? Zombies might have been caused by aliens for all he knew. Giant, highly-evolved, super-intelligent space-badgers, or something of the like, cleaning up the planet before they took possession. To be frank, he didn’t give a rat’s ass what caused the dead to walk. Why it had happened wasn’t really important to him. Only surviving it was. He’d leave it to people far more intelligent than himself to puzzle out the “Why,” when, or if they all actually made it safely past the Rocky Mountains.
Th
e pair skirted past over a dozen campsites. Some sat totally empty, some not so much. That was because during the first days of the zombie outbreak, people had fled their homes in droves. Many had sought safety in what they considered to be remote areas of the United States, thinking that they’d hunker down and outlast the creatures. That worked in truly isolated or inaccessible places like Alaska, the Florida Everglades, and the Badlands in South Dakota. Even nearly all one-hundred and thirty-eight residents of Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island (a popular getaway spot in the middle of Lake Erie) continued to survive in relative comfort. But as days turned into weeks, the zombies began spreading out from the cities and urban areas in search of living human prey, much of the countryside became overrun. Surely there were small communities holding on somewhere out there, but Jake and his friends had yet to run across very many. Only the Purifiers, their once-companion Penny Carson’s old group (all of whom were now also deceased), the RUST forces of General Winston Hess, and the former citizens of Langley, Oklahoma. Save those few, it seemed like everything between them and the East Coast did only three things: stagger, drool, and eat people.
Realizing he’d been wool-gathering…again…the messy-haired writer shook off his reverie to focus on their surroundings.
Kat rounded a sharp left turn in the road next to a rusting Dodge “Ram-tough” truck and went still. Being well acquainted with her body language after months of shared danger and conflict, O’Connor froze in place behind the truck. He didn’t speak, and waited for her to either react to what she’d observed or give him the all-clear.
Cho did neither. Jake couldn’t even see her breathing. Whatever was around that corner had to be really, really bad.
Keeping her eyes downrange, Kat slowly turned her head in his direction. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Taking his cue from her, Jake peeked around the Dodge.
Their Humvee, affectionately dubbed The Troll by the rest of their party, was parked not fifty yards away.
While their friend and the Mimi were nowhere to be seen, Jake could’ve wept in relief. The Troll was a ghoul-pulping ATV—with the obvious exception of Foster’s baby, Screamin’ Mimi—like none other, thanks to its previous owner and outfitter: one Rachael Norris. A mesh of steel bars protected some seriously bulletproof windows, turning the vehicle interior into a zombie-proof mobile cage. The heavy armor of the Humvee was augmented further by military grade combat tires, a reinforced gunner turret on the roof, and last—but certainly not least—a two-inch-thick crash plate that covered its entire front grill. The heavy steel had cut-outs for forward facing headlamps and, far more noticeably, someone (likely Rae herself) had spray painted a large, fanged mouth upon it. The sharp-toothed ram made it look like the Hummer was smiling.
As they stood there staring at it, Jake didn’t give two shits about the goofy painted mouth. All he cared about was the fact that mean-green-machine meant one thing: They had a set of wheels. A set of wheels that was the zombie apocalypse equivalent of the Batmobile. One that had enough room to crash out in for the night if need be. They’d be virtually unreachable inside its heavily-armored, steel frame and could sleep without worry. Unless large numbers of the dead discovered them and flipped the vehicle over. Then they’d be trapped. But otherwise…
“Hello-o-o-o nurse!” Relief was plain on his face. “Damn! I thought that thing looked awesome when I first saw it at Rae’s junkyard, but I could kiss its ugly crash plate right now!”
“I really hope the others remembered to leave us the keys.” Kat trotted forward, clearly eager to be safely within its confines. “Please God, let Rae have finally fixed the air conditioning!”
After a brief search they located the keys. They’d been duct taped to the underside of the Humvee’s rear axle, along with a note inside a Ziplock sandwich baggie. Once inside, Jake pulled the folded paper from the baggie and read aloud.
“D, circle north on 351. Heading for secondary in Bixby. Remind our favorite Cat that Tender Vittles will be waiting, but Ray says to eat a bowl of barf and fuck off…” Jake frowned at the paper. “Who the hell is D?”
Kat grinned. “Oh, that means Don’t. We need to do the opposite of what the note says. It’s part the code George and I agreed on. You know, just in case?”
“When did you cook that up?” Surprise was plain in his voice as Jake charged the glow plug and brought their Hummer to life.
“I had a couple of slow weeks back in Langley, when you were all catatonic.” Cho cranked the AC up full blast and leaned back in her seat. “Why?”
Jake shook his head. “You continue to amaze me. And I have no idea why. I know you’re not really a bubble-head. Must be the Smurfy-blue hair.”
“Really? Because I can always dye it another color.” Her voice held barely restrained mayhem.
“Don’t you dare.” He shifted into first and threw her an apologetic glance while setting the Hummer in motion. Kat was a tad sensitive about the whole Smurf thing. “Just teasing. I think it’s adorable.”
She smirked and put her booted feet up on the dash. “Good. Oh. Remember this when you feel another joke coming on there, Gargamel: I know where you sleep. And I’m real sneaky. And I don’t have many scruples.”
“I’d contradict that last bit, but it would be a lie.” Pulling out onto Route 20, O’Connor brought their speed up to a whopping 45mph. While the Hummer was capable of reaching speeds far greater, it was never a good idea to haul ass unnecessarily in the apocalypse, and not just because you might hit a stray upright corpse either. Highway maintenance was nonexistent, sink holes and washouts were common occurrences, and coming over a hill to find an overturned tanker in the middle of the road—thereby turning yourself into an impromptu barbecue for the zombies—was a good way to ruin your whole damn year. “Besides. That’s kind of flattering.”
“You think?”
Jake shifted gears and nodded. “Um. Yeah. The fact you actually want a half-baked, kilt-wearing Mick—especially one with a bad habit of getting people killed and a tendency for navel-gazing—around at all, let alone have big-ol’ lady-boner for me? You be just as sneaky as you wanna be, you blue-haired, bubble-brained, sex kitten you.”
“Oh,” Kat’s smile was enormous, “You’re so-o-o-o-o going to regret saying that.”
* * *
Davis Airfield had been a good fallback spot.
Though only four or five miles south of Muskogee, Oklahoma, the small airport still had a nice ten-foot-tall, industrial grade chain link fence, topped with rolled razor wire that hadn’t been breached. The expanse inside were understandably overgrown due to no groundskeepers or maintenance teams operating for nearly six months—because, you know, zombie apocalypse and all— but all in all, the location was nearly ideal.
As if anything could be ideal at the end of the world. Elle smiled at that thought as she, Leo, and Foster’s niece Beatrix again pulled guard duty up on the sites modest air traffic control tower. There are a couple of weak points. No many, but they’d become issues during an extended stay. Thankfully we won’t be squatting here long. Through tomorrow evening maybe, but then we’ll have to move to another site if Jake and Kat don’t shown up. Fuck. I hope those two are actually alive. George insists they’re out there somewhere, but Mooney and his people aren’t used to being outside Langley’s walls and are about to snap. We might get away with another move, maybe another few days, but after that? We’ll either have to keep heading south or leave Mooney’s folks on their own. And I don’t like their chances of making Pecos if it comes down to that…
Elle felt a nudge against her hip and took her eye away from the scope of the Longarm sniper rifle. Leo Salazar —aka: their little survivor groups chef-in-resident, since he’d been about to begin taking classes in Culinary Arts when the world went belly-up—lay beside here, continually searching the airfield fence line for signs of the dead through a pair of binoculars powerful enough to see the interior of Uranus.
“You’re frowning.
” He said.
“Just thinking.” The blonde sergeant passed one hand through her sweaty hair, pulling strands that had escaped her short ponytail—and her watch cap—back over one ear.
Leo gave a short chuckle. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do that anymore. At least, after the whole Let’s park right under the watchtower and hope that part of the wall doesn’t get blown up by a jumbo-sized war wagon. You should leave the brain-work up to me, and you just kill anything that looks like it’ll mess with us. You’re really good at that.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Elle smiled into her optics, “but keep the fact that I’m tougher than you are in mind. That I could snap all your fingers, without breaking a sweat, mmm-kay? Also, I’ve got —at least according to you and I quote—An awesome rack! Also, I’m pretty sure I heard Oh my god! Please, don’t stop! come out of your mouth in the recent past too, and if you want to be panting it again let’s say that I win this debate.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
“God, you guys are as bad as Jake and Laurel were. Get a room!” This was gagged out by one green-haired, slightly top-heavy ex-college student, with a few strands of DNA in common with George Foster by way of his brother. Bee rolled her eyes and went back to searching the opposite end of the airport through her own set of binoculars. “Jeez. I can understand Leo being a total sex fiend. What with him being male—”