Coy glared at him in silence.
Danny pushed him again, but not as hard this time. “Huh? Is that what you want, boy? You want to die? Huh?” Another push. “Huh? Or do you want to fight?”
Coy sagged as if a thousand bolts held his body together and they were all loosened a quarter turn at the same time. He stood motionless and looked at the ground. “Fight,” he said in a small voice.
Danny hooked one arm around Coy’s neck and pulled his head forward until they were cheek to cheek. His whispered in the younger man’s ear for a long while, then pulled back. Coy smiled at him, his eyes swimming with tears. Danny put a hand on each side of Coy’s head and pulled it to him until their foreheads touched, then pushed him gently away.
“It’s okay, everybody,” Danny called in a loud voice. “Coy is back. He’s a crybaby pussy now, but he’s back.” Coy blushed and ducked his head, but he wore a wide smile.
“If you guys have finished making love, you should take a look at this,” Justin said, nodding toward town. Creepers dotted the hill across the creek. Will watched the nearest one. The spot where the bridge used to be was now a twelve-foot drop to the bottom of the ravine. Chunks of pavement and pieces of the bridge still laid in piles at the bottom, unmoved from when they made the antibiotic run. When the creeper reached the edge, it never slowed- it walked off into the void, landing with a wet splat on the concrete below. There were a half-dozen others already laying there, looking like so many broken and bleeding sacks of meat. A pair of creepers walked side by side over the edge.
“What do you think is drawing them?” Will asked Jiri. Neither took their eyes off the hillside. “The sound of our trucks or our voices?”
“I don’t know, but there’s around forty of them coming this way now. They’re like lemmings.”
Will snickered. “We just solved the zombie crisis. If we sit here long enough, every creeper in the world will come down that hill and tumble into the ravine.”
“Except for the ones that attack us from the rear,” Danny said grimly, pointing in the other direction. A trio of creepers had emerged from a wooded area near the road and shuffling in their direction, moaning.
Will sighed. “There you go, Coy. Shoot you some creepers. Just don’t make it personal.” He raised his voice. “Everybody else, load up.”
The dash through the town of Buffalo went without a hitch- if you didn’t count the hellscape they encountered on the far side of town.
Will drove the Ford truck with Becky riding shotgun and Danny and George in the back. They ran along at forty-five miles an hour- fast enough to avoid any trouble that might arise, but not so fast they couldn’t stop on a dime if they needed to.
The smell descended on them halfway through town. Even inside the trucks with the windows up, they could smell it- a dank, think odor of rotted meat, feces, blood, and death. As they neared the city limits it became almost unbearable.
Becky saw it first. She had her shirt pulled up over her nose to dull the stench, muffling her voice when she pointed up the road ahead of them. “What is that?”
Will slowed the truck and looked. All he made out was a large building set back from the road, so he drove another hundred yards, then slowed again. “What the hell?” he muttered.
Scores of what appeared to be people wandered the highway where it ran by the building, making their way around dozens of unidentifiable mounds scattered across and alongside the road. The people moved with no clear purpose and the mounds were different shapes and sizes.
“Take it slow, Boss,” Danny said. “Only creepers move like that.”
He rolled forward two hundred yards and stopped as the mounds came into focus. “My Lord,” he said quietly. He felt his stomach do a flip-flop and wondered if he might be sick.
The building sat in the middle of a large gravel lot. Silver pipe-fence surrounded the lot, and a hand-painted sign out front said ‘Buffalo Livestock Market.’ Cattle littered the grounds around the livestock market- 150, maybe 200 head. The cattle’s remains were scattered helter-skelter around the market grounds and the highway out front. Their mutilated bodies were in various states of decay.
During a lifetime spent raising livestock, Will saw cows brought down by wild dogs and coyotes. Twice, he saw cattle after cougars attacked them, and he saw what a black bear did to one of his neighbor’s calves. On one memorable occasion when he was fifteen, a sounder of feral hogs ran down a heifer of his dad’s. (His dad took him on a three-day hunt after that, during which they shot thirteen hogs and his Dad got him drunk for the first time.) But he’d never seen cattle savaged like this. They rotted in great pools of blood, eviscerated, most with their throats ripped open. Partially eaten intestines and organs laid everywhere, as if the dead munched on them and then left them forgotten when they noticed some other stimuli. A few carcasses too small and underdeveloped to be newborn calves were in the mix; the dead ate the fetuses and discarded their bones. Flies covered the carcass like black blankets and there was no escaping the constant buzz of their beating wings.
The dead covered the landscape, more creepers than Will had ever seen in one place, including on the night they overran his ranch. Many of the cows had groups of creepers crouched around them, holding long, ropy strings of intestines and eating unidentifiable organs. Hundreds just shuffled among the carcasses, their faces brackish with dried blood. Most looked like they’d been dipped in blood from head to toe. Others sat and stared ahead, their eyes glazed and stomachs distended.
By now the other three trucks had pulled up next to Will’s Ford. Often, one or more of the dead looked in their direction, but most of the creepers ignored them.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Becky said, her shirttail still over her nose.
Will, who had seen plenty of creepers get up from a kill to pursue a live person, shook his head. “I guess they ate so much that they’re not interested in chasing after more,” he said. “I imagine you’d garner some interest if you walked through there. But they have all the food they need right here, so why go chasing after a meal that’s a ways off?”
“How many do you think there are?”
“Cows or creepers?”
“Creepers.”
“I’d say at least a thousand. I bet the corrals were full for a sale. Things went bad so fast that the sale never occurred. Over time, the cattle finished off the hay and water in the corrals. They got hungry and thirsty and started bellowing, and the noise brought in the dead. At some point, either the cattle got hungry and scared enough to bust out of the corrals, or the creepers broke through. Either way, the cows were weak and starving. It was a bloodbath.” He waved his hand at the scene in front of them to illustrate his point.
“But this whole mess started what, seven months back?” said George. “How could them cows get along all that time with no feed or water?”
“It wasn’t as long as you think, George. Judging from how decayed the cows are, and the odor, they’ve been out here awhile. Beyond that?” Will shrugged his shoulders. “A cow is a resilient animal. Unless the sale barn was from the dark ages, they’d have an automatic watering system. That would have kept working for some time, and after it quit, rains here and there added water to the troughs. They wouldn’t have had any feed, but there is always plenty of hay in these corrals. And the cows were fattened up for sale, so they’d have a lot of reserves to draw on. A fat cow can live a long time with a little bit of water and hay. You just don’t want to cut your T-bone from it.” Will tapped a beat on the steering wheel while he thought for a few moments. “Let’s backtrack and get away from this mess. Then we’ll stop long enough for Justin to get in his map and find us a way around it.”
They got off the highway five miles outside Bolivar. They came upon two obstacles in the road after they left the nightmare scene at the cattle market. The first was an abandoned car they skirted around with no trouble. A few miles later, they came upon a collision between a Ford Explorer and a tanker truck carrying
a load of milk. The wreck knocked the truck on its side, and its long tank blocked all of one lane and half the other. The upside-down Explorer clogged the other half and the shoulder. David and Casandro hooked the Jeep’s winch to the frame of the Explorer and pulled it off the road. The jagged, grinding noise the SUV’s sheet metal made as it scraped across the pavement was jarring in the stillness. A creeper shambled out from around the corner of a nearby house. Will watched it approach, wondering if the noise attracted it or if it would have wandered by anyway. It had braided hair- the braids were stiff with dried blood- and scuttled toward them, dragging one useless leg behind it. As it drew near it reached out with both hands and snarled.
David flicked the winch’s power switch into the ‘off’ position. The group watched the creeper come at them and waited. The only noise was the chatter of nearby birds and the creeper’s snarls. There was a sudden and audible ‘snap’ and the creeper tumbled to the ground, its injured leg bent at an impossible angle, a jagged end of its femur sticking out of its thigh. It arched and bucked in the gravel on the side of the road, trying to rise on its one good leg. After the third failed attempt to get back on its feet, the creeper stayed on its stomach, clawing towards them with swollen hands tipped by blackened nails.
David and Casandro had pulled the Explorer far enough to create a lane in the wreckage they could squeeze the vehicles through. Will gave the order to load up, then he walked over to the creeper. He held his pistol just out of reach of her grasping hands and put a bullet in the center of her forehead.
Becky was looking at him grimly when he climbed back in the truck. “Does it make you feel manly, shooting a woman like that? You disgust me,” she sassed with a sad shake of her head.
“One of these days, woman. One of these days,” he grumbled. He dropped the truck into drive and squeezed it around the tanker.
Will loathed leaving the highway for the smaller county roads, but he loathed the idea of driving into town more. He sent George to ride in the Grand Cherokee and pulled Justin in with him to act as his navigator. The shy and unassuming young man had plotted out a convoluted course that involved about a dozen turns but got them from the state highway they just left to the road that led to their destination. It required them to travel through the outskirts of Bolivar, but they would be barely inside the town, and for such a short amount of time, that Will figured they could handle whatever came at them.
“Got your map ready?” Will asked Justin, sitting in the back seat.
“Yeah, but wouldn’t this be easier if I sat next to you?”
Becky turned and looked at their new navigator with indignation. “Did you really just ask my husband to put me in the back and let you ride shotgun?”
Justin’s cheeks turned pink. “What? No! No ma’am!”
Will turned and glowered at him. “Then you must have just asked my wife to sit on your lap.”
Justin’s face went from pink to beet red. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. He stared at Will, goggle-eyed.
Danny came to his rescue. He clapped Justin’s skinny shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Breathe, buddy. They’re fucking with you.”
“Fucking with me?” Justin repeating in a cautious tone.
Will and Becky turned back around. “Yep,” Will said.
Danny squeezed his shoulder again. “It’s a good thing. It means they like you.”
Will caught Justin’s eye in the rearview and gave him a wink. He heard Justin breathe a great sigh of relief, and laughed. Sometimes he could almost forget the world had gone to hell.
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
They rolled along. Highway U turned into UU, and then they traded the state highways for county roads. It was the craziest road system Will had ever seen. One five-mile stretch of highway would have three different ninety degree bends in it. Once they followed a long, gentle curve and then the road made two sharp bends, one after the other. Another time, he was certain they backtracked over the same route they had been driving a short time before. They would travel five miles with no crossroads, then there would be three of them in a quarter mile’s distance. Back in Northern Kansas the roads were straight and laid out in simple mile-square grids. The entire setup here offended his sensibilities.
They passed a gorgeous home. A two-story ranch style with an extra wing on each side, it sat next to a big equipment shed and in front of a cluster of grain silos. As he admired the house, Will noticed Jiri, bringing up the rear of the caravan in the Jeep, flicking his lights on and off. He stopped the truck, looked back, and saw why Jiri flagged him down. Two teenage girls ran across the front lawn of the ranch house toward the caravan, waving their arms wildly. The other three trucks stopped behind The Ford, and in the quiet, he could hear the girls screaming for them to wait.
Will and Danny jumped from the truck, and Will spied Coy and Casandro emerging from their vehicles. All four men kept an open door between them and the house. They each had their weapons out, but only Danny’s was up and pointed at the girls. Will motioned him to take the lead.
“Stop!” Danny ordered in a commanding voice.
They froze about two-thirds of the way across the yard. The girls looked like sisters, one a few years older than the other. They wore their medium-length brown hair pulled back in matching ponytails. They were too skinny and wild-eyed with fright, and when Danny bellowed at them the younger girl put her hands in the air as if she were under arrest.
“Are you bit?” Danny called to them.
They shook their heads in unison and the young one started to cry.
Danny looked at Will, who gave him a come here gesture.
“Come over here, quickly!” Danny said, keeping his voice loud and harsh.
The girls ran to the truck. Danny took them by the arm and led them around to the other side. “Becky, you want to come check them for bites?”
Becky got out and smiled at the girls. “You can put your hands down, sweetie,” she said. “No one here will hurt you. I’m Becky. I need to look you over now, and then we’ll find a safe place to talk.”
“Who else is in the house,” Danny demanded.
“Quit barking at these children,” Becky snapped. “Look at them. They’re scared to death. Do you think these little girls are part of an elaborate trap?”
Danny blanched and stepped back. He glared at Becky, but Will knew he wouldn’t dare talk back to her.
She inspected the girl’s arms and legs, their hands, and the bottom of their feet. She ran her fingers through their hair to check their scalps.
“I’d better not catch a single man looking this way,” she said in a loud voice. She had the girls pull their shirts up and turn in a circle, then slide their jeans down and do the same. Satisfied, she caught Danny’s eye. “No bites or scratches,” she said.
The younger girl was crying hard now, and Becky hugged her close. When her sobs tapered off, Becky looked at both of them. “Is it safe in your house?”
The older one crossed her arms over her chest and sadness clouded her features. “It’s safe, but there’s nothing to eat. Don’t open the tractor shed. Poppa is one of those monsters and he’s locked up in there.”
Danny had stared out the window for the last fifteen minutes, uncharacteristically quiet. With no warning, he reached over and backhanded Justin on the thigh. “What’d you say the name of this town is?”
“Bolivar,” Justin answered. He rubbed his leg and shot Danny a petulant look.
Danny grinned at him and pointed at the window. “This must be where Bolivar keeps its rich folk.”
“Some nice places, aren’t they,” Will said. They had passed a golf course on their right. Set amongst the greens and fairways were numerous cul-de-sacs, each lined with over-sized, and expensive-looking homes. Out past the golf course, McMansions lined each side of the road. Wide, rolling lawns led to multi-floored stone and brick houses with columns out front, multiple roof lines with steep slopes, gables, and dormer window
s. It seemed the local homeowners association mandated circular drives, fountains, gazebos, and swimming pools.
“How do you think one small town has enough wealthy people to pay for all these?” Danny said, never taking his eyes off the houses as they drove past.”
“No telling. I’d like to know if having a big house in a fancy neighborhood helped the owners to survive. How many of these places still have people living in them?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to start knocking on doors to find out. It’d be a contest to see if a creeper ate my face or if I got my balls blown off first.”
They made a left-hand turn and Justin sat up a little straighter in his seat. “It might get a little hairy up ahead,” He said.
“How’s that?” Will asked, slowing the truck.
“You’re going to cross one, two, three, six lanes of traffic and then be back on a highway and inside the city limits.”
Will nodded and picked up the pace, followed a curve in the road, and the intersection Justin referred to was before him. The signs called it Highway 13 and its two outer roads. Cars choked the highway in all four lanes, though the outer roads were clear. As Will picked his way around the empty cars and trucks, he noticed they had attracted the attention of some creepers wandering amongst them. Fortunately, the dead were too far away to pose a threat. After the highway, they passed a family restaurant on their left and a trucking company on their right. A had a handful of creepers shuffling about in their parking lots of both businesses. Just past the restaurant was a salvage yard littered with debris. Behind a tall chain-link fence, smashed up cars and trucks were strewn about in no pattern Will could discern. It looked as if a giant had turned over a big bucket of beat-up toy cars and left them where they landed. About a dozen creepers moved about amongst the wrecks.
“What’s with all the creeper traffic?” asked Becky.
“Damned if I know, but I’d hate to be coming through here on foot,” said Will.
Journey Page 18