He wasn’t.
“Why not drive most of the way, say get within two miles? Then send out a couple of scouts to take a look and come back and tell us how it looks?”
“And what if they have a picket set up on a three-mile radius around the place? All four cars drive right into it, that’s what.” He squared his shoulders and held up his hand to David when he tried to respond. “Hang on, David. Let’s do this. You can load up, take your wife, and anyone that wants to go with you. Take your weapons, and we’ll give you one car and some food. You drive on tonight, but we’re going to wait and head out in the morning.”
David shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. Unless George comes with me I don’t have the slightest idea where to go. And I wouldn’t know what to do when I got there. And you’re the one always saying it would be bad to break up the group.”
Will felt hot anger rising inside him and fought to control it. When the group had found David and his wife they were buck naked on the side of the road with no food and no way to protect themselves. He’d saved them and kept them alive, fed and protected for six months. A line from the movie A Few Good Men came bubbling to mind- I have neither the time nor inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the very blanket of the freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
“So what’s up, David? I’m not going until the morning, and you don’t want to go without me. I don’t see where that leaves you.”
David threw his hands in the air. “It leaves me saying you might not always be right and somebody else might have an idea sometimes.”
Will clenched his fists but kept his hands at his sides.
Before he could say anything Jiri stepped forward. “You’re out of line, David. This isn’t some totalitarian regime. Will comes to me all the time
for help and advice; me, Danny, Tara,- hell, half the people here. If you want to get more involved in the decision process that’s great. But we’ve decided on a plan of action, and now you’re just holding things up.”
David’s eyes flitted around the group like he was searching for a friendly face, someone on his side. He must not have liked what he saw because he shook his head and walked off, his wife trailing behind him.
Will caught Jiri’s and nodded his thanks; the professor shot him the thumbs-up sign back. Will focused on the group. “Let’s set up for the night inside. Danny, set up a guard rotation- one at the door and two watching outside. Then we’ll get supper.”
He helped Becky get the two of them situated and laid down atop his bedroll. His intention was to rest while she got a small meal together, but he was fast asleep thirty seconds after he closed his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
* * *
The dawn broke crisp and cold. Danny crept through the sleeping bodies spread around the gas station floor, his bare chest dotted with goosebumps and his breath creating a faint fog in the air. He dug through his pack and pulled out all three of his shirts, trying to determine in the murky early morning light which one was the least dirty.
For as long as he could remember, he valued neatness and cleanliness. As a boy he never argued about taking a bath, getting his hair cut, or getting his nails cleaned. And no matter how hard he played and how dirty he got over the course of a day, he always went to bed clean, decked out in a fresh pair of pajamas.
As a single man in his early twenties, his home was the complete opposite from those of his friends. He would visit his buddies and find their houses appalling. Empty beer bottles scattered about, pizza boxes and burger wrappers moldering in the kitchen and dirty laundry strewn all over the floor. His small house on the edge of Will’s property was a study in contrast. He kept it neat as a pin on the inside and the outside immaculately landscaped. A boutique interior design firm from Manhattan to come out and decorated the place. He’d eschewed the predictable western theme for a minimalistic tech-look with lots of light and metal. He had his shirts, jeans, and dress pants dry-cleaned and heavily starched, and sent the rest of his clothes to a laundry service.
Over the last six months, he’d become accustomed to being covered in blood and dirt and laying down filthy at the end of the day. But he never missed a chance to clean up when he had one. The Conoco had a small kitchen consisting of a grill and a fry station; in the corner, a sink with three large basins was bolted onto the wall. There was no hot water, but he cleaned himself as best he could with a sink full of cold. He washed his hair with a bottle of old dish soap he found under the sink. He didn’t know who or what they would find at the end of their trip, but he wanted to look his best for it.
After his makeshift bath, he plucked a tee-shirt from his bag. Shivering, he pulled it over his head and wrinkled his nose as he stepped into a pair of jeans stiff with dirt and muck. He put on a flannel shirt over his undershirt, and then a wind jacket over that. Satisfied that he had enough layers to stay warm, he padded across the store in his stocking feet to where he’d slept. He packed away his bedroll and put on his boots, leaving the laces untied. He stepped outside and bumped fists with Casandro, who had worked the last watch detail of the night. “Everything go all right?” he asked as he walked by.
“It’s all quiet,” the muscular Latino replied. He fell in beside Danny. “There were three that walked through there,” he said, pointing at a pasture catty-cornered from the station. “But they were far back so I say nothing.”
Danny rummaged through the food boxes in the back of the Tahoe and came up with packages of jerky. He tossed one to Andro and opened the other for himself. Jiri stepped out of the station and hurried around to the side. He stopped just around the corner and peed with his back to the two men.
“Hey, go where we don’t have to see you,” Danny called.
Jiri answered with a no-look middle finger.
Will stepped out from around the other corner and ambled toward the front entrance. Jiri walked over to stand beside him, adjusting himself along the way. The pair strolled over to the Tahoe.
Danny greeted them, then dug through the food boxes again. He frowned at the slim pickings.
“I can’t believe we’re running low on food again,” he said, shaking his head.
“Add some tortillas and peppers and a family in Mexico could make that box last a month.”
“Yeah? So why’d you come here, ya wetback?” Danny smiled.
Casandro answered with a string of Spanish curse words.
Danny looked at him with mock gravity. “Someday I’m going to figure out what that means, and you will be finished, my friend.”
Coy walked up from the pasture behind the station, Betty padding alongside him. He carried a pair of fat rabbits and joined the huddle next to the Tahoe.
“Everything go okay?” Will asked Andro, his voice still deep and gravelly.
“It was all okay, boss.”
“He saw a few creepers, but they were way out and didn’t come close,” Danny added.
Will nodded and looked off to the west. “Big day,” he said.
The other men nodded in agreement.
“This feels like right before we hit the base at Fort Leonard Wood,” Jiri said. “What was that- a month ago?”
“Something like that,” Will said.
“It seems like a year,” Danny said. Jiri was right- there was a buzz of excitement to the day that hadn’t existed since the Army base.
Will stared at the Western horizon as if he could see what the day would bring if he just looked hard enough. After a long silence, he turned his attention to the men. “Coy- what are you going to do with those rabbits?”
“I’m going to fry them for whoever wants meat with their breakfast.”
Will shook his head before Coy finished talking. “Nope. No time, Son. Not today.”
“Let them eat cake,” Jiri said with a laugh. When no laughed with him, he added, “That was what Queen Marie Antoinette said in 1765 when her advisers told her the peasants were on the verge of re
volt because they had no bread.”
“I know where it’s from,” Will said. “It wasn’t funny.”
Danny determined right then not to speak unless spoken to until Will was in a better mood.
“All right,” Will clapped his hands. “Let’s get everybody up and ready to roll. I need George and Justin with me in the Expedition. And fellas- stay alert today. Everybody will be excited and anxious. I don’t want that to make us careless. There’s a chance that by the time the sun goes down we’ll be somewhere where there’s safety. We can’t let our guard down and lose somebody this close to the end. Be vigilant, be careful, be smart and take care of our people.”
The other four men bobbed their heads in agreement; Danny and Coy added a ‘yes sir’. Then they broke off to get started on the day.
The caravan pulled out of the station at a little past eight. The day was clean and crisp, beautiful like only autumn mornings in the Midwest can be. By nine the sun had chased the chill from the air and a pleasant breeze blew in from the east.
They made remarkable time. 96 highway was two lanes, but the shoulders were nice and big- almost big enough to be a second lane- and it had wide, shallow ditches. The entire drive was through rural areas- plenty of houses and farms lined the highway, but they were spaced out and well back off the road. They passed the occasional abandoned car and saw the odd creeper out in the fields but came across nothing that slowed them up.
The only negative, until things went balls-up just outside of Carthage, was the thick, almost palpable odor of funk in the cab of the Ford truck. Will spent his days among men who dripped sweat from hard effort and terror nearly every day and night, and who had to go days sometimes without cleaning their bodies, much less their clothes. Body odor was so prevalent that Will rarely even noticed it anymore. But George? George’s smell was in a league of its own. Will thought if a truckload of hog waste crashed into a stagnant pond filled with two-weeks-dead fish, the resulting stench might approach that emanating from George. But he had to have the old truck driver along to guide him over the last few miles of the trip. So he cracked his window, breathed through his mouth, and tried to keep his mind on other things.
They drove through tiny ghost towns with names like Phelps, Rescue, and Plew. Eight miles east of Carthage, they came to the slightly larger town of Avilla. The residents of Avilla apparently tried to barricade the virus out of their town.
Right at the city limit sign a twelve-foot high palisade blocked the road and extended another fifteen feet in each direction. Attached to both sides of the palisade was a six-foot high chain-link fence with a roll of concertina wire attached at the top. On the inside was a platform where the townspeople could stand and see over the top; the wall above the platform had battlements cut in at regular intervals. They’d built a duplicate structure across the highway on the other side of town.
Will and Danny used bolt cutters to cut away a large section of chain link to make an opening for the trucks to drive through.
“These folks put in a lot of effort on these barriers,” Danny said as they cut.
“For all the good it did them. Not one live person in town, at least not one that’s showed themselves.”
“It goes to how you want to live, though.” Danny pointed to a trio of creepers shuffling toward them from around a corner two streets over. “Come on; we’re attracting attention.”
“What do you mean, ‘it goes to how you live’? Here- pull hard after I cut these two links.”
Danny used both hands to grasp the section Will had cut, pulling it away from the rest of the fence, and then he and Will dragged it off to the side. “I mean going out fighting. The people who lived here could have hidden in their homes until the dead picked them of or overran the town.” The creepers were about thirty yards away now. The pair of men headed toward the hole they’d just cut. “But instead,” Danny continued, “they fought and did everything they could to stay alive.”
The creepers were fifteen feet away when Danny and Will got back to the fence; the men pulled their knives. “When all that’s left to do is die, die well,” Danny said. “I admire their spirit.”
The creepers came close; Will’s knife arced twice and Danny’s once and the creepers fell.
“Nice work,” Will said. “Let’s get back to the truck before we attract more dead.”
“You bet.” Danny turned and walked through the hole with Will close behind.
They were about halfway between Avilla and Carthage when things started to get hinky. All at once, cars and trucks littered the highway. Left discarded the road at haphazard angles, many had one or more doors hanging open. Several times the caravan had to cross over onto the shoulder because a cluster of empty cars blocked the highway.
They couldn’t use the Jeep’s winch to move cars because there was also a big uptick in the number of creepers on and around the road. The dead stood in the road, gathered on both shoulders, and shuffled across the landscape on each side. No matter where they were when the caravan passed, they turned to follow.
Will stared at the creepers as he drove past, and something niggled at the back of his mind. After a minute, it clicked.
“Were there any military bases near here?” he asked the truck at large.
Justin shrugged and Becky didn’t answer. George thought a moment before he replied. “No sir, I believe not. There are some National Guard units around, more-n-likey. But I never heard of no base. Why do you ask?”
Justin was staring out the passenger seat window and answered before Will could. “Because a lot of these creepers are wearing army uniforms,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
The caravan weaved through the growing number of empty cars, twice having to drive outside the shoulder with their passenger wheels on the slope of the ditch.
Will looked back at George in the rear seat. “This highway’s turning into a mess. Didn’t you say we turn off it at some point?”
“Oh, sure do,” George answered with a vigorous nod. “Near here, if I recall right, we round a bend and go down a hill. At the bottom of the hill sits a lake on one side of the highway. We turn the other way.”
“How much further after we make that turn?”
George scratched his head. “I reckon about three miles.”
“Shit.” Will gritted his teeth and turned to check on the other trucks behind the Ford. “So we could run into their security at any time, and there’s no way I can warn the other trucks.”
“I doubt they have anybody patrolling or standing guard with this many creepers around,” Becky told him in a reassuring voice.
Justin broke a short silence. “What the hell is that?” He stared at the highway in front of them.
Will looked ahead and froze, and he felt a quiver in his stomach at what he saw. “That’s a Humvee with a fifty caliber machine gun mounted to the top,” he said in a slack voice.
They took in the Humvee as they drove past. “We ought to grab it,” Justin said, looking at Will.
“Use your head, Justin. We don’t know if it will run and don’t have time to find out- we’ve got three hundred creepers on our ass. Besides, how are the people already living in those shafts going to feel if we come rolling in, pointing a fifty cal at them? How would we react if somebody did that to us? We know where the thing is at- we can always come back for it.”
Justin’s shoulders drooped and he nodded, his eyes on the floorboard.
Fifty yards beyond the Humvee there were two military-style jeeps. They were empty and in the middle of the highway; one had both front doors hanging open.
“What the fuck is all this?” Will wondered aloud, looking at the jeeps with a wrinkled brow.
The caravan crept and weaved its way west, passing three more jeeps and another Humvee. There was a faint but distinctive and large splash of blood on the driver’s door.
They came to a long curve to the left. George came alive, leaned up, and whacked Will on the shoulder. “This is it,
up yonder!” he said. “Go round this curve, down a hill, and the turn will be on the right.”
“Are you sure?” Will asked.
“Yes’ir. I drove this route a hundred times. Make that turn and then it’s just two, maybe three miles to the caves.”
Will leaned forward with anticipation. They inched between a Mazda Miata and a bread truck laying on its side as the curve straightened. He could see where the road’s started to slope downhill, but that was all.
Parked nose-to-nose at the top of the hill and blocking the road entirely were two large troop transports. A makeshift guard shack with a large sign in front of it took up the eastbound shoulder. The sign said NO ENTRY ALLOWED. ARMED SERVICES MANEUVERS AHEAD. There was a large X, and underneath the words, VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT.
The road forward was blocked. Creepers came at them from both sides from each side. And somewhere behind them a couple hundred more dead headed their way.
Chapter Thirty
* * *
Will jumped from the Ford and raced toward the other trucks, banging on their hoods as he passed. “Everybody out,” he yelled. He watched the creepers as he ran- three shuffled toward them in a group from the north; four came from the south, with a few stragglers further back.
Once everyone was out of the trucks, he gave directions.
“Tess, fast as you can, run back up that curve until you can see down the highway. When the dead get to the start of the curves, run back and let me know. Jiri and Tara- get the creepers over there on the north side of the highway. Danny and Coy- with me. We’ll take out the ones to the south. David, go around the other side of these trucks and see what’s over there. If you see creepers come right back and let me know. Andro and Justin- keep the women folk right here in a group and make sure nothing happens to them.”
“Guns,” Jiri asked, “Or keep it quiet?”
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