Bruce rolled up to the truck Krantz was driving on a scooter. It was the standard scooter they loaded on the trucks to enable them to get around the town quickly. It’d been used a few times as a last resort escape vehicle as well with mixed results. The electric scooters were way quieter than a dirt bike or something like that would’ve been. They were basically the perfect vehicle for getting around town at night without waking up all the Zombies crashed in the buildings around you. They also kept dirt bikes hanging off the ceiling and walls of the trucks for those times when quiet didn’t matter as much as speed.
“Good evening sir.” Bruce said to Krantz once he rolled down his window.
“Evening. I understand you have some information on the fugitives you’d like to share?” Krantz responded to the smarmy roid freak on the scooter.
“Yes sir.” Bruce got off the scooter and walked over to stand by the truck. Krantz didn’t bother getting out he just rolled the window all the way down. Bruce held up a cheap looking digital camera and started showing him pictures.
“What are these pictures of?” Krantz asked. Bruce had been nervously clicking through random pictures of the inside of a house and some dead bodies lying on a road.
“Sorry sir. We think the fugitives were staying at this house. These are pictures showing they dragged a bunch of dead bodies under a table in the dining room and poured detergent on them to try to make them stink less. The den has a bed that was pulled out and looks like someone recently slept there. Upstairs there’s evidence of someone recently giving themselves a sponge bath. Here’s a picture of a bucket they were using to take pisses in. They’d filled it up with detergent to make it smell better. Here’s some crayons and pictures that we found that looked new.” When Bruce showed the still image of the crayon drawings Krantz got excited. He knew the traitors were traveling with their children.
“Anything pointing to when they were here?” He interrupted Bruce who was showing a picture of a bunch of canned food that’d been poured out all over the island in the kitchen.
“Yes sir. We were doing clearing drills last night. That’s basically where we roll into a neighborhood and setup and let the lead fly. We’d already knocked out the day one drill and were starting on the night drill. We all knew we were looking for the traitors sir so everyone on my team had their eyes open. The one abnormality one of my guys noted was the sound of shots fired that weren’t coming from us. No one really thought much of it at the time. It’s kind of hard to tell when shots are coming from somewhere else when you’re shooting to stay alive. This morning I sent out the teams that got the pictures on this camera and they also found some dead Zombies on the other side of the neighborhood that looked like fresh kills. That would match up with the shots my men heard the night before.” Bruce wrapped up his report flourishing the camera showing shots of bodies with holes in them laid out on the asphalt.
Krantz took the camera from Bruce and started going backwards through the photos. There were lots of photos showing the inside of the house and the dead bodies on the street but not any showing which house Bruce was saying the fugitives had been hiding out in. There also appeared to be an inordinate number of photos of dead women in the photos prior to the ones of the house Bruce had been showing him. Bruce reached in the window and grabbed his camera back when he saw Krantz was going a little far back in the memory.
“That’s all the picture we took here sir. Make sense that they were probably here though?” Bruce asked.
“Yeah. Seems like that’s the case.” Krantz said distractedly. He was thinking this meant the family had probably been in the house the night they’d gone around checking the neighborhood.
“Which house did you take the pictures in?” Krantz asked looking back up at Bruce.
“This was one of the houses in the front. Next to one where some guy had on a full suit of armor.” Bruce looked like he was daring Krantz to ask about the suit of armor guy.
“I remember the suit of armor guy.” Krantz said. What he didn’t say was he remembered the next house there’d been a Zombie banging on the sliding glass door. It’d been getting close to time to leave so when they saw the Zombie, they’d just marched right on out. Now he found himself wondering if the family had maybe captured a Zombie to shove downstairs or if the Zombie had even been a real Zombie. He wasn’t about to admit that they may have been fooled by a fake Zombie to Bruce though. The pictures of the canned food poured out all over the kitchen painted a picture of how they could’ve been fooled.
The main thing he got out of the visit with Bruce was the fugitives were close. Krantz had been given operational control of the three separate cleaning crews now operating on I-575. Knowing that the fugitives were somewhere around here he decided he needed to switch the objectives for the clearing crews. He’d give the order to move them from their clearing missing to actively searching for the fugitives over the next few days. He had Bruce standing right in front of him, so he decided to just tell him directly.
“The town clearing can be put off for a few days. The new priority is tracking down the traitors. Based on what you’re telling me they should be around here somewhere. I need your team looking for them and I’m going to get the other teams looking as well. Let everyone know there’s a guaranteed promotion for the team who finds them first. Also, I need someone good from your team to come with me as a driver.” Krantz requested.
“I’d be happy to drive for you.” Bruce responded immediately.
“No. I need you leading your team. Send me over a good driver who’s smart. I’ll wait here for them to show up.” Krantz said. He needed Bruce to stay with his team. He also thought Bruce was kind of creepy. He got a little grossed out thinking about having to spend the night in the truck with the guy. There was just something off about him. Luckily Bruce didn’t seem to realize he’d been passed over by Krantz. Or, at least he didn’t let it show in his actions.
“Yes sir. Give me about five minutes to get on the way and get someone out here to drive. I’ll hit them up before I leave. They should be out here soon. We have another scooter they have access to. If you can just help them put it in the back of the truck that should work.” Bruce said. He stood there for a minute to see if Krantz had any additional feedback. Krantz had become super interested in reviewing the notes in his notebook. Bruce took that as the sign it was and scooted away.
Krantz breathed an involuntary sigh of relief at Bruce leaving. He hadn’t realized how much the man had been bothering him until he was gone. Now that he was gone, he had to wait until the new driver showed up to partner with him. He was on the edge as far as using the radio to coordinate the search for the fugitives, but he didn’t see any way around it. He’d just have to chance that they weren’t monitoring the radio. He’d get the group to use different frequencies and bounce them around to different channels so that even if they were being monitored it’d be complicated to follow everything going on. The other thing he could do was practice some information overload. He’d let them know to fill the airwaves up with chatter to make it even harder for anyone listening in to get any useful intel. He could do things like tell complete lies at the top of every even hour and let the different groups know those times would be the lie times.
Brainstorming through how he could do this without hiring a bunch of Navajo Indians to talk in code it occurred to him he was working this hard to try and catch a family running around with a bunch of kids. This wasn’t an elite group of special ops soldiers he was after. He realized he was probably overthinking it by a lot. He needed to chill out and get this operation moving so he could get himself a nice desk job back at HQ.
He got on the radio and made contact with the clearers in Ball Ground to get a status on his driver. He put the clearing mission on hold and told them they were now dedicated to trying to find the fugitives. He gave them their search sectors and roads but not what times to be anywhere. They could figure that out on their own so he could avoid doing it over the radio. Might
as well apply at least the minimal operational security. Done with them he checked in with the other two clearer groups and assigned them search zones as well.
He’d drawn a circle on the map around the house in Ball Ground where it looked like they’d been last night. He made sure they had men headed out to block any roads leading out of that circle. He’d extended it assuming they might have been able to snag a vehicle as well. If they made it outside that circle, he assumed they’d head north so he had men guarding the passes into the mountains. The clearers would be going door to door searching all the houses in their zones. They’d quietly kill Zombies as they went so, they’d actually still be knocking out the clearer mission as well. They’d just be doing it in a much more dangerous and less efficient way. Krantz was ok with that as long as the mission was completed.
The clearer themselves were ok with the added risk as well. They knew they were expendable. They knew they had to earn their keep. With the promise of an easy promotion dangled in front of them they leapt at the opportunity to risk their lives searching for this family. The few who grumbled about it were quickly shut down by the others since if anyone on the team found the fugitives, they’d all get bumped up to the regular army. Orders given Krantz waited for his driver to show up then ordered him to drive south first. He wanted to just make sure the family hadn’t tried to be sneaky and set off south instead. He intended to drive for about twenty minutes looking for any sign of the family. If he didn’t see anything, he’d reach out to the outposts in that direction to get them to keep an eye out. He wanted to move north pretty soon though to check in physically with each of the clearer groups.
While Krantz drove south Kyler and Rodriguez drove north. They reasoned that if the family was headed north and hadn’t been caught yet then they must’ve gotten off the main road the first chance they had. Kyler drove while Rodriguez stared out the window. Kyler had to focus on the road in front of them to avoid crashing into anything. In the days since the outbreak the Brotherhood worked on clearing the main roads and any others that were deemed strategic. Evidently a scenic secondary road around the town of Ball Ground did not match either of those criteria.
On the highways you had to worry about stalled cars, accidents, living and dead Zombies all over the road and that sort of thing. These secondary roads the main problem was that nature was creeping back in on them. Branches and pine needles covered the concrete making it slippery and hard to negotiate. You definitely couldn’t go very fast without risking a spin out into a ditch. A fallen tree could render these roads pretty much impassable. There weren’t going to be any road crews swinging around cleaning up the trees and patching the potholes any time soon.
Of course, the secondary roads sometimes had the same problems as the main road and when they did the smaller size of these roads caused the issues to be exacerbated. A car wreck on the highway you could just drive around it. A car wreck on one of these roads could render it impassable. A group of Zombies was also considerably harder to deal with in the confined space as you lacked the space to maneuver around the Zombies that you had on a larger road. The little roads always made Kyler think of Custer riding into a valley and looking up to see red faces staring down at him from every direction.
Moving slowly and sitting in a truck with the headlights on made them easy targets for anyone who wanted to ambush them. Someone could have a tank parked five feet into these trees they were driving past and they‘d probably never see it. If a certain family saw them coming and jumped in the woods to hide, they’d be able to shoot into the truck from about ten feet away. Keeping that in mind Kyler made sure he was ready to jam his foot down on the pedal at the first sign of trouble. They’d probably just spin out and crash into the ditch, but it’d be better than getting shot at by a desperate family at point blank range.
“How much longer are we going to look for these assholes?” Rodriguez wondered out loud. He was getting pretty bored staring out the open window at the endless trees going by while Kyler drove over and around junk laying in the road.
“If they make it another week without being caught then they’re probably not getting caught. They could be pretty much anywhere by then. I know we have lots of people but tying up almost a hundred fifty people to keep looking for them? It’s a bit of overkill if they ask me.”
“If they’re smart, they’ll just grab some tents and go setup in the middle of the woods somewhere. They sit there for a couple of weeks then I think you’re right. The search will die down and they’ll be able to get out as long as they avoided the main roads.” Rodriguez seemed to ponder his own statement for a minute before opening his mouth and saying. “But they won’t do that.’
“Why not?” Asked Kyler. He was genuinely curious what Rodriguez was thinking.
“These people are like scared rabbits. They’re going to be hauling ass to the finish line. Finish line being the state line in this case.”
“I don’t know. They’ve been pretty good at escaping so far. They must be smart. I’d love to know how they managed to bring that plane down and get away.” Kyler said.
“Yeah good point. If they’re still alive at this point, they’re bound to have some skills. People who can fight through this garbage and keep a bunch of kids alive at the same time. They’ve got to be fierce.” Rodriguez said with some dawning respect as he actually put some thought into the people they were chasing. Until then they’d just been faces on a piece of paper to him. An objective versus a living, breathing group of people with kids.
Kyler pictured the face of the Zombie smashing into the window back at the subdivision. That woman had been smart enough to fool them. She’d also had the balls to smash her face into the window half naked covered in gunk in front of men hunting her with automatic weapons. He’d definitely say she ranked as fierce.
“You really good with dragging them out in the street and popping them right there? Even the kids?” Kyler asked him.
Rodriguez hesitated for a second.
“I don’t think it’ll come to that. If it does though and it’s a direct order, it’s not the same as you just doing it yourself. You’re just the guy who has to flip the switch on the electric chair. It’s someone else who’s ordering you to do it and it’s the guy your frying’s fault for pulling the crime in the first place. They’ll probably waste the parents but not the kids anyway.”
“Yeah. I don’t even know about killing the parents. I’ve got no problem killing Zombies or people who are shooting at me. I just don’t know about hunting down and killing some people who are just trying to escape to someplace they can raise their kids. Like this world isn’t hard enough you know?” Kyler said. He was only partially focusing on the road. He wanted to hear what Rodriguez had to say. He needed to hear it to know what would happen if they did find the family. Kyler had already made up his mind he was going to let them go. Now he was wondering if he’d have to kill Rodriguez to let them go. Hopefully they just never found them.
“They should’ve thought about that before they killed a bunch of our men.” Rodriguez said without any sympathy in his voice. “This world’s hard enough without people like them killing the ones trying to keep them safe. As far as the kids go, I don’t think it’ll come to that with them.” He turned his head back to searching out the window for any sign of the fugitives they were looking for ending the conversation.
“Yeah. You’re right.” Kyler said quietly. On the inside he was loudly cheering for the murdering family to make it to the state line and be gone.
They drove in silence with the sun coming up. The driving got much easier once he could actually see. They got to a part of the road where a truck hauling a boat had jackknifed into a tree that was spanning the entire road. Rodriguez made a note on their map and waited for Kyler to figure out how to turn the truck around on the narrow road. After a minute of Kyler screwing round with the backup video trying not to get them stuck Rodriguez took pity on him and got out to direct him on the fifty-point turn t
o get out of this mess.
“Rover one this is clearer main actual over.” Came across the radio. Kyler waved at Rodriguez to get back in so he could hear whatever Krantz had to say.
“Clearer main actual this is rover one over.” Rodriguez had grabbed the mic to answer. Kyler always screwed up the radio lingo. Rodriguez did too but he knew it better than Kyler.
“What’s your twenty rover one? Over.” Rodriguez consulted the map and responded with the name of the street they were on and that they were turning around now to head back to the highway. Krantz acknowledged their message and signed off.
Driving back was easier than driving out had been. The sun being up helped a tremendous amount. It wasn’t long before they knew they were close to the highway. Up ahead they saw the white pickup truck Krantz was driving. Kyler slowed down to pull over so they could meet up. His stomach was once again doing flips. He hoped the information the clearers had given Krantz wasn’t going to make him suspicious. He didn’t know how that could happen in this situation but his guilt over not telling Krantz about the kid in the house was clouding his reason.
They parked by the first little private road heading into the woods and got out to see what Krantz wanted.
Zombies! (Book 5): Greater Love Hath No Man Page 22