But when Lacy came in after her shift at the McDonald's to wait for him to finish up, things got ugly. He hadn’t meant to break Billy’s jaw, he honestly didn’t realize he had the ratchet wrench in his hand when he swung on him after he had grabbed her ass. The only way the judge wouldn’t charge him with felonious assault as an adult was for him to join the military.
The judge made it clear he was going to be leaving one way or another. He wasn’t going to have a small town feud between two hotheads causing more violence or bloodshed. He was leaving as a recruit in boot camp or as a new fish in prison. Not much of a choice really so he decided to join the Army as a mechanic. Repair their trucks and tanks. Good work experience and enhance his resume.
The recruiter said there weren’t any slots available for any mechanic jobs. If he could wait until next quarter, there would be some opening up. But he couldn’t wait. Judge needed his early enlistment papers at the next court hearing in a week, or he was looking at jail time. Air Force or Navy didn’t want him with the charge pending and he didn’t know if he could cut it as a Marine.
So, he went back to the Army recruiter and went over his list of available positions. Supply Clerk, clerical assistant, ammo specialist, trumpet player. A whole list of dreadful options in his opinion. But infantryman was always open, the recruiter had said. And there’s even a ten-thousand-dollar sign-on bonus.
Gunny sighed, coming back to the present. He reached out to touch the cross, to say goodbye, then turned and headed to the CB shop.
There was a new voice on the radio He introduced himself as Captain Barnett and called Gunny “Mr. President” when he addressed him.
“Yeah, no need for all that, Sir,” he said. “Where’s the General, is he all right?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” he said “He is sleeping and asked me to relay this information to you when you checked in. Shall I wake him?”
“No, of course not,” Gunny said. “What’s the good news?” He crossed his fingers, hoping it WAS good news.
“We were able to pull messages from your wife and son’s phones. They were uploaded from the Atlanta towers, but that’s as far as they got, they were never delivered.”
No shit, Gunny thought but said, “Can you read them to me?”
Jessie
In the Woods
Day 3
They were miserable. Utterly exhausted.
Parched beyond belief and eaten up by mosquito and ant bites. Jessie didn’t even care if the whole world watched him take a morning leak on the zombies still milling around down below. Not that he had anything left to pee, he was so wrung out. The crowd below knew they were still up in the trees.
They had settled down, stopped their screaming and frantic jumping after a few hours but they weren’t giving up. Some had wandered off but there were still dozens gathered around each of the trees they were in. It was like they knew all they had to do was wait them out, the meat would be falling from the sky soon enough. It didn’t matter if it took a day or a week, they would blunder around and wait. They had nothing better to do, no pressing engagements to attend.
Jessie, Doug and Gary had been able to lick a little moisture from the bottom of the leaves that had accumulated during the night, it wasn’t much but he supposed it helped. Sheila had it worse than all of them. She had climbed a pine and the needles didn’t have any place for the dew to form. And she was covered in the tacky pine sap.
They had spent a dangerous night trying to be as quiet as possible, tying themselves to the trunk of the tree with their clothes, belts or vines so they wouldn’t nod off and fall out. It was really a sign of how bad things were for them when Sheila, bare to her jeans, didn’t try very hard to hide herself as she struggled back into her sticky shirt and Doug barely noticed.
“No more!” Gary shouted, struggling around on the branch he was perched on to face them. That got the undead gathered around his tree animated again and they started their keening and jumping.
“Listen, they aren’t going anywhere, they can outlast us and I’m freaking ate up with mosquito bites. I’m tired of this shit. I’m gonna get them all over here and then you guys make a break for it.”
“How you going to do that?” Doug asked “Jump?”
“Yep,” he replied. “You guys would have made it if I hadn’t slowed you down. Thanks for trying but this is the only way. You know we can’t last another day up here. Sheila, can you show me your hooters before I go?” He was trying for nonchalance and bravado. He almost nailed it.
“Wait up a minute,” Jessie said. “I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas. Let’s figure something out.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” She teased, her voice cracking a little from the dryness. “For now, what are you thinking, Jessie?”
He grinned at that one. Good for her.
“When I was little and we would visit my Grandparents in Kentucky, my dad showed me something he did as a kid. He used to climb saplings up until they would bend over from his weight and ride them back down to the ground. He’d let go and the tree would spring back with him ready to find another. We called it the hillbilly roller coaster. I think we can do the same with these trees.” He finished, cracking on the last words, trying to swallow with nothing left to moisten his throat.
“These trees are way too big,” Doug said. “There’s no way.”
“Only gotta bend to the next tree, closer to the water,” Gary said, seeing where this was going. “Do a Tarzan kind of thing, tree to tree.”
Jessie could only nod. His voice was shot. He grabbed a few of the fattest leaves he could find and tried to suck anything damp out of them.
“And if you miss? Wind up out in an open area?” asked Sheila
“Better than staying here for another night,” Gary said and laboriously started to make his way to the thin branches at the top of his tree.
Doug shrugged to the rest of them as if to say ‘there isn’t a better plan, why not?’ And started to climb. They were all exhausted from the miserable night they had spent slapping mosquitoes and trying to find a position that was comfortable for a few minutes. It could have been worse, Jessie guessed. At least he didn’t pick a tree that was infested with ants.
He looked up, trying to determine the best way to climb, wishing now he hadn’t picked such a huge tree. It went a long way up before it looked like it was thin enough to bend with his weight. He followed the path it would go, determining which tree he would need to land in. It was the pine that Sheila was in.
He watched her climb for a minute then got started himself, the milling horde of undead getting agitated at their movement and starting to keen and claw skyward towards them again. Gary had the farthest to go out of the four, he was the first one they tossed up into the gnarled old oak. He was managing though, using only his upper body, swinging and scrabbling, steadily moving upward.
They all climbed until the branches were too thin to stand on and the tops of the trees swayed back and forth dangerously with them. They could see each other clearly now, three figures with arms wrapped tightly around the narrow tops of their trees, each nearly a hundred feet off the ground. Gary was far below them, resting. He didn’t have the strength to go on, his arms were shaking from the exertion.
From this vantage point, Jessie could see he didn’t have a chance. Even with a good set of legs, the old Oak towered a long way above him, and he doubted if Gary could get it to bend in the right direction.
“Forget it, Gary.” He yelled hoarsely over to him. “Your tree tapers off the wrong way, you’ll never get it to swing towards the lake.”
“Just hang on, dude,” Doug added. “When we get down, we’ll figure out a distraction to draw them away.”
Gary just nodded, too tired to disagree or even answer. Jessie looked over at Sheila who was frozen, arms wrapped tightly around the gently tilting pine. It was going the right way, if it bent far enough, it would take her all the way to the lake but he knew it wouldn’t. It would snap before i
t went that far down. But there was a decent sized something… Oak? Maple? Poplar? He didn’t know but it was there, right in the path of the Pine and it had branches that stretched out over the water. All she had to do was go a little bit higher and ride it over.
“You good?” Doug yelled over at her. “Ready to do this?”
She nodded her head but didn’t move, her eyes were tightly shut and they could see she was breathing in short little gasps.
“Crap.” Jessie thought. “She’s afraid of heights.”
They tried to talk her over it, to get her to move but she was stuck in place, couldn’t commit to another step higher and the irreversible bending of the tree that it would bring.
“I need that tree.” Jessie croaked out, his voice nearly gone. They’d only had a few sips of apple juice each in the last couple of days. “Go back down.” He whispered as loud as he could and she nodded again, slowly inching her foot back towards the thicker branches.
Doug’s voice was no better and he finally just reverted to hand signals, pointing to himself then the lake. He was going to go first. He had at least one tree to get to, maybe two before he was close enough to ride a branch down into the water and he started his final ascent to the upper level of his tree.
The water. So close but so far away. “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” Jessie thought, wondering where he’d heard that from. If he hadn’t understood what it meant before, he did now. They were dying of dehydration, tongues starting to swell, lips cracked and chapped and just a hundred feet away was millions of gallons of cool, crisp, life-giving water.
Sheila was halfway down the tree, the thicker the branches got, the faster she climbed and Jessie decided he wasn’t going to wait to see if Doug made it or not. He would die today if he didn’t get to the water. Either from sheer exhaustion causing him to fall out of the tree and into the waiting arms of those things below or simply from dehydration.
If Doug didn’t make it and he had to listen to him crashing through the branches then being torn apart, he might lose his nerve, might just belt himself to the trunk, fall asleep and never wake up. It was go time and he drew on his inner strength, hoping it was enough and climbed another ten feet, the top of the tree leaning slowly at first then picking up speed.
His back was towards the pine and he let his legs dangle, holding on only with his hands a hundred feet from the ground and swooping quickly now. The treetop was tender and green and had a lot of bend in it, more than was needed he hoped, before it would snap. He looked over his shoulder and saw he needed more distance and reached his hand over hand a few more feet towards the top of the tree.
Gravity had taken over and there was no turning back, it would bend until it broke and it was a long, long way to the ground. His stomach was in his throat and he knew why it was called a rollercoaster now. He heard a snapping, not a complete break like old dead wood but the slow letting go of fresh growth and he fell towards the pine trees branches.
He let go of the maple and it whipped back as he used his entire body to fall across the pines prickly limbs, grabbing for a handhold wherever he could. He crashed down through a few layers, hearing Sheila’s scream below him, before he got a good grip and jangled to an abrupt halt, splayed out over two different branches, bending precariously with his weight.
He held on tightly, not caring about the myriad of cuts and scrapes. Not feeling anything except his heart thudding against his ribcage. He opened his eyes and looked to see if Doug had made it. To see if he was sprawled out in a tree hanging on for dear life or if he had missed and fallen. Neither. He was standing on a branch laughing and giving Jessie the thumbs up.
“Show off,” Jessie croaked out, flipped him the bird and started pulling himself to the trunk of the tree so he could do this all over again. One more time then he would be trying to drink up the whole lake.
Jessie
Day 3
The Lake
He and Doug had both made it to the trees closest to the water, the undead howlers screaming up below them. This particular section of the lakefront was undeveloped because it was a low lying area. It was prone to flooding during the rainy season, mosquito infested and swampy the rest of the year.
There were no boats or private docks nearby and neither boy wanted to continue to risk tree swinging down the shoreline until they came to one. Both had come dangerously close to plummeting all the way to the ground in the barely controlled falls between trees. There was a swimmers dock a few hundred yards out and down shore maybe a quarter of a mile.
“Let’s just hope Zed don’t swim.” Doug had said, judging the distance to the platform.
“What if they can?” Sheila had asked, far down below them in the thicker branches of the pine.
Jessie didn’t answer, just looked at the distance he had to cover and started making his way out on the branch that hung the farthest over the water. There wasn’t a choice. Staying here equaled one hundred percent chance of death. Risking the water equaled a fifty-fifty chance as far as he figured.
As fast as they were on land, he was sure he couldn’t outswim them if they did have the ability to tread water. If they didn’t, if they could only try to run underwater in the muck and mud, he was pretty sure he could outdistance them. Maybe they would get lucky and those things wouldn’t even go in the lake.
But they did.
They followed him out on the branch, staying underneath and waiting for him to fall. They kept their blackened eyes on him, arms outstretched, as the branch got thinner and thinner and he started dipping towards the surface. This wasn’t going to work. They were only chest deep and he couldn’t get out past them.
They were still moving around even though the muck was sucking at their feet. Slower than normal, sure, but if he jumped in now he was fairly certain they could move well enough to get to him before he put the ten or twenty feet between them and deep water. He started scooting back towards the base of the tree. He would have to come up with a different plan.
Doug had been watching from his vantage point near the top of the poplar tree he was in. He was going to ride his tree down like he had the others getting over to it. Another hillbilly rollercoaster ride. The height and closeness to the shore would put him way out in deep water. Jessie didn’t have that option. He was in a huge old tree but the top wasn’t bending in the right direction, it was leaning back the way he came. That made it easy to get to it but impossible to make it take him to the lake.
“Can you get a run on the branch, just dive off the end past them?” Doug rasped at him.
Jessie had made his way back to the trunk of the tree and was leaning against it, trying to figure something else out.
“I’m not that coordinated.” He managed to croak out. “It’s small and I’d be bouncing it every step. I’d just slip and wrack my nuts.”
He was so thirsty. The water was only a few feet away. He’d drink anything right now, even the murky bug filled swill pooled here and there on the ground.
“Maybe when Doug goes in, they’ll chase after him,” Gary said from his tree.
“It looks like they’ve zeroed in on each one of us.” Sheila said, “You notice the ones from your tree followed you over and these on my tree haven’t left, they stay right with me?”
Jessie looked down, really looking at who was below him for the first time. He hadn’t wanted to identify them, it was easier when he was high up and they were just figures far below, just “them,” not actual people. Now he looked and saw who they were. These had been his classmates. There was Tyreese still in his letterman’s jacket, one of the starters on the football team.
Sharon, the mousy girl who never said anything now snarling and reaching for him. Porsche, the light skinned girl whom he’d had a bit of a crush on for months now. He didn’t know all of them by name but he recognized them. Every one of them. Even one of the ladies that worked in the office missing a lot of her hair and nearly topless, her blue-veined skin dully shining o
n her exposed breasts.
Jessie looked away, closed his eyes. There was at least twenty down below him. People he had known, joked with, been annoyed with, teamed up on class projects with, ate lunch with and cheered on at the pep rallies.
Now all of them were screaming for his blood. Something his old man had said during one of their sparring practices came back to him. He was explaining how people got themselves beat up or killed. How women got raped or used as punching bags. He had said it wasn’t because they were helpless, it was because they didn’t have the killer instinct in them anymore. It had been forced out by years of civility. Jessie had argued that a hundred pound woman didn’t have a chance if some big bruiser came after her. His dad had disagreed and then had started showing him ways to kill people with anything.
An ink pen. Car keys. An empty soda can. Your fingers. He had said even though someone was hurting you, maybe even killing you, most people wouldn’t fight back. It was almost as if they were afraid of injuring their attackers. They were victims with a victim’s mindset. They were sheep he had said dismissively. They wouldn’t stick their fingers knuckle deep in someone’s eye. They wouldn’t go for an artery with their teeth and rip it open.
Just look at all those videos of ISIS chopping people’s heads off or the Germans executing the Jews. The people just sit there and take it. Instantaneous Stockholm Syndrome or something, he had said.
Jessie had never hurt anyone. About the worst he’d ever done was bloody Kyle’s lip. He daydreamed about kicking his ass but he knew he’d never actually do it. He needed to be more like his old man, wished they would have kept up with the sparring. They hadn’t been getting along very well the past few years and he really didn’t know why. They just seemed to get on each other’s nerves so easily now.
He knew his dad had killed people. He wasn’t supposed to know about it, not any of the specifics anyway, but sometimes Army guys would come over and hang out. His old man was in some group that was supposed to help vets, but mostly it seemed they would just come over and barbecue then go in the garage. They would drink beer and mess around with that old Mercury he’d been working on for years.
Zombie Road: Convoy of Carnage Page 24