She looked at Jared.
“Anna, you drive. We’ll put the old lady in the middle and I’ll ride shotgun. That way I can shoot if I need to.”
“’Kay.” She wasn’t thrilled about driving but scooted over anyway.
“Maria, the kids, and the other woman can ride in the back.”
She looked at the broken window as they got in. The woman didn’t look concerned about the window. In fact, she didn’t look concerned about anything. She looked far away. She felt bad for her.
“Are we all ready?” she heard Bradley call up.
“Yep,” Jared said.
Anna accelerated slowly, mindful of the men in the back. She didn’t think they would appreciate being tossed around like ping pong balls.
“You know, this reminds me of a trip I once took in my Daddy’s truck,” Violet said.
“Really?” Anna glanced at her.
“Oh yes. We went over to the state lines to the fair there. Us girls rode in front with Mama and Daddy, and the boys rode in the back with the pigs,” she said brightly. “That was 1948, I believe.”
“Well, I hope this trip is as good as that one,” Anna said.
“Oh no you don’t. Daddy got kicked by a mule at the fair and died a few days later. He just never woke up,” Violet added.
Jared made a comically horrified face over Violet’s head, widening his eyes like a demented owl, and Anna didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Daddy was a no-good scalawag. We were much better off. I’m feeling tired now. Being a soldier is exhausting. I think I might rest my eyes a little.”
Anna kept her eyes on the road. Everyone else was silent. Jared rattled around in the glove compartment and took out a tin of cinnamon Altoids. She caught a glimpse of the inside of the compartment and noted the cans all stacked up in there.
“Seriously? Who needs twelve tins of Altoids? And you were teasing me about my kidney beans?”
“You’re nagging me already?” he said, shoving a small handful in his mouth. “This is making me rethink our relationship.”
She smiled as she watched the road.
This side of town was mostly residential. Jimmy Don Booth had effectively limited their route options by destroying the main street. She drove slowly through the old neighborhood. She remembered coming here as a child to stay with a babysitter. The woman passed away several years ago, and Anna had gone to the funeral. She passed her old house and Anna noted that it looked mostly the same.
She looked in the rearview mirror and saw Alejandro resting against his mother’s side. Carlos looked apprehensive. She was sad that Juan’s children wouldn’t have a carefree childhood.
“Contact!” she heard yelled from the back.
She whirled around and saw a cluster of pale-faced crazies pouring from a nearby yard. Their movements became frenzied as they saw the truckload of people nearby. She felt like a food truck driver.
Their bodies were scratched and bleeding. Some of them had chunks missing from their thighs and arms. She accelerated, the momentum of the truck making the men in back sway violently. She forced herself to calm down. Panicking wouldn’t make her drive any better, and as long as they were in the truck those things wouldn’t be able to catch up to them.
“Nice and easy, Anna!” Bradley called up to her.
She took a deep breath. He didn’t sound scared. She slowed.
“They looked like they’d been attacked by dogs or something,” Jared said.
“I haven’t seen any dogs.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of weird. I hope they make it. I’m not much of a cat person. They always look like they’re plotting mass destruction,” he confided.
She slowed more, staying ahead of the runners by several car lengths. The speed limit through the neighborhood was ten miles per hour for good reason. Speed bumps dotted the road at intervals. Families once praised these obstacles. They had kept their kids a little safer.
Now, they had become comical impediments for the enraged sick. Anna hit another bump. She glanced back as Jared snorted. The first row of biters stumbled and fell. They caused their comrades in pursuit to fall as well. They went down in a cluster of limbs and snapping teeth.
Then they got back up.
The third time this happened, the guys in the back busted out laughing, and even Maria and Carlos giggled.
“We could just keep circling the neighborhood. Eventually, they would die from repetitive head trauma,” Jared suggested.
“We’re going to have to pull back to the main road. We’re coming up on Rolling Hills,” she reminded him.
“Let’s hope the road is clear,” he said.
“Let’s hope Jimmy Don hasn’t been hard at work on this side of town,” she added.
“I wonder if he’s an ally to the Civil Defense League or more like an auxiliary? What if they’re rivals?” Jared’s forehead wrinkled and he seemed to be seriously considering that.
“Which would you join? Jimmy Don’s One-Man Guerilla Force or Rolling Hills Civil Defense?”
“Definitely Jimmy Don,” he replied.
“What? Why?”
“I bet he does some pretty cool stuff that we know nothing about. The CDL probably sits around rotating watch all day. Booooring.”
“Well, it’s only been two days. I’m sure they’ll branch out. They have to come out for supplies some time,” she said.
“I’ll re-evaluate, if and when that happens.”
They were getting close to the edge of town. The homes on either side of the street were larger and had a bit more acreage. In better days, this was the ideal neighborhood. She had often drove through and fantasized about having a home here, maybe a couple of kids and a husband.
“What should we do with our groupies?” she asked. “We basically led them right to Rolling Hills.”
“Let me think. Hold on.”
“Better make it fast young man. Those ailing folks back there don’t look like they want to wait,” Violet said, waking suddenly and joining the conversation.
Anna had always admired elderly peoples’ skill at sleeping and waking in an instant as if nothing had happened in the meantime. She intended to cultivate that one day…if she lived long enough.
Jared leaned down and rummaged around under the seat. She heard a lot of trash under there. Maybe that’s where he got his building supplies.
“Civil Defense League, this is Achilles, can you hear me? Over.”
She smirked at Jared.
“What?” he asked and keyed the radio again. “Rolling Hills Civil Defense League, this is Achilles. Come in. Over.”
“This is Captain Anderson. Is this Jared? Over.” Harry sounded put out.
“This is Achilles.”
Anna bit her lip and listened to it play out. She was torn between wanting him to hurry and wanting to laugh her butt off. Maybe she had been awake too long.
“That’s not how these things work, Jared. You can’t pick your own. Now, what’s going on? Over.”
“We’re rolling back by with some survivors from the stadium. It didn’t go well for them. We’ve got trouble on our ass. Over.”
“How many? Over.”
“Maybe thirty?” Jared responded.
“Wait one. Over.”
Anna sighed and spoke up. “We’re running out of time. They need to hurry. Maybe we should just shoot them and go.”
“Not enough ammo.”
The seconds ticked by and they weren’t getting anything back from the CDL. They would have to make their own decision. The end of the neighborhood was only a couple of blocks away. From there, they could turn left onto the main highway back into town, or they could turn right, back to Rolling Hills and Jared’s. The armory was another ten minutes and two highways away.
She couldn’t bring herself to just speed up and leave these creeps behind. She would be responsible if they got into Rolling Hills and killed people.
“They still following you? Ove
r,” Harry finally asked.
“That’s affirmative. Over.”
Why couldn’t he just say yes?
“Take them back to town, as far as First Street. Try not to ever do this again. Over.”
“Okay,” Jared answered.
“Say ‘Out’.”
“Yep, I forgot…Out.”
Jared stowed the radio again as she made the left turn back to town. Hopefully, there weren’t any left lurking out there from earlier in the day. It seemed a lifetime ago since they left Jared’s house.
The beam of the headlights swept over the carnage down the road. More bodies lay in the road around the blocked entrance to Rolling Hills. It looked like a killing field. It was a killing field. Sometime they would have to clear that mess up. Diseases spread easily among the dead.
“What’s going to happen at First Street?”
“No idea.”
“Should we trust them? What if they were just trying to get rid of us?”
“They didn’t seem like the type,” he said.
“You know. That Harry Anderson used to come over to my house every afternoon to play with Robbie. He used to be a fat little thing, always wanting to eat. Of course, his Mama was fat too,” Violet interjected. “He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Well…” Jared said. “Anyway, if Harry was just trying to get rid of us then we could always collect more Twitchers and go lay siege to his neighborhood.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Nah, I forgot they had machine guns.”
She saw First Street up ahead about half a mile away. In the headlights of the truck, it looked black and desolate.
And dangerous.
Smoke still rose from the burned section of town. Thank God it hadn’t spread. She looked back. They were still there.
Chapter Eighteen
First Street Harvest
Anna switched on the brights. Fog settled sluggishly in the low places on the highway. The air in the truck was damp and smelled strongly of body odor, even with the broken back window. Her eyes drooped with fatigue. She couldn’t sleep yet. They had to finish this.
She had a good view of the intersection where First Street crossed the highway. She saw nothing. She bit her lip as they approached. They had no backup plan and no time to make one. Maybe she should just accelerate and leave the bastards in town and hope they didn’t turn around. They seemed somewhat intelligent, but she didn’t know if they could think or if it was all instinct. She would be interested in finding out some day.
Just not tonight.
“Jared…”
“Keep going. If we hit the Main Street intersection, just flip a bitch and get us to the armory.”
“Roger that,” she said.
He grinned. “Look at you, being all G. I. Jane.”
There it was. They passed First Street. She watched the rearview mirror. Nothing.
“That’s it. Let’s get the siege weapons ready,” Jared commented.
They passed the Second Street intersection. The crazed runners behind them were approaching First Street, still tailing them. One track minds, for sure.
“What the hell is that?!” Jared exclaimed, turning completely around in his seat.
She glanced back and saw the men in back pointing toward the First Street Intersection. She stopped for a moment as she noticed what the others had already seen.
A large, dark-colored mass was moving at a moderate rate of speed. At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at. It didn’t belong in town at all.
“That’s a fucking combine!” Carlos suddenly said from the back.
“Carlos! Language!” Maria scolded, but there wasn’t much heat behind her words. They were all too busy watching the carnage behind them.
The flashing lights and headlights illuminated a gruesome scene. The large green beast-like machine, equipped with a large header, sped through the intersection. Metal spikes lined the front, catching the seething mass of biters off guard. Torsos and legs were impaled. Flashes of blood dripped in the light. The sick ones who weren’t impaled on the spikes were ran down, crushed like chaff under the huge tires.
“That’s for corn…that head on the front there,” Violet imparted.
“It’s for crazy people now,” Jared said.
The combine made the first pass, taking out a significant number of the runners. Anna quickly checked the front and sides of the road. She had been so distracted by the awful mess behind her that she had forgotten they were still in danger.
It was a stupid mistake. She turned the truck around again and watched as the combine spun around. It was going back for more.
“That is completely badass,” Carlos breathed.
“You’ve got that right,” Jared said.
Boys…
The combine drove back in the opposite direction, but this time it shifted trajectory. It was coming toward them. One of the crazies avoided the fatal crush of the tires and sprinted to the side of the vehicle. It lunged for the platform. The thing held on to the bar and gained the step.
“It’s going to make it up!” she said.
It was then that she noticed their deadly position.
The operator of the combine was driving toward them, but he was also struggling with the door. She wasn’t sure if the thing had managed to open it, and it didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was that it didn’t look like the driver was going to slow down.
“Go! Go!” Jared yelled.
She mashed the accelerator and yanked the wheel to the right just before the first spike would have punctured the side of the truck. Under the loud grumble of the diesel engine and the scream on the truck tires, she heard a faint pop.
“He shot it!” Carlos said.
Anna looked over her shoulder and saw that the man had regained control of the combine. It slowed and turned back toward them again. She prepared to smash the accelerator again, just in case. Bradley gestured for her to stop. She put the truck in park as the combine came up beside them.
It was a little intimidating, being parked so close to something so large. Especially with the body parts hanging from the front. She grimaced distastefully and avoided glancing that way again.
Bradley jumped out and Jared did the same. She rolled down the window as the men converged on her side of the truck.
“I see y’all got yourselves into some more trouble!” the amused man drawled.
“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Don Booth. How are you? I’m glad to see you’re alive,” Violet said, leaning across Anna.
“Ms. Violet. You’re looking fit as a fiddle as always. How’d you end up with these folks?”
“It’s a long story. They got us out of a little jam,” she said.
Anna raised an eyebrow as Bradley and Jared smirked. Little jam?!
“Is that Elliot Richardson’s combine?” Violet asked.
“Yes’m. He won’t be needing it anymore. I was up to his place when Harry called. Figured this ortta do the trick.” He slapped the bloody tire of the machine with affection. He didn’t seem to care about the gore on his hand. Anna felt bile rise in her throat and forced herself to turn her attention elsewhere.
“Thanks for helping us out,” Anna told him.
“Any time, young lady. I hate these damned things, pardon my French. I was all set to retire next year and wouldn’t you know it, this happened. I always told my wife, rest her soul, that I’d be setting myself on a porch somewhere when I was through working. Now it looks like I won’t be doing that. Reckon my 401K is shot all to hell too, pardon my French.” He took off his hat and scratched his head before putting it back on.
“Well, I’ll be going now. I was fixing this corn header when I got the call. I aim to get Richardson’s corn in come harvest time.”
Bradley and Jared nodded and the rest of them sat in silence. She was still somewhat stunned by the whole thing.
Jimmy Don looked at the front of the combine. “Reckon I ortta sp
ray her off a little bit…”
Anna cringed.
“We’ll be seeing you Jimmy Don Booth. These folks were headed somewhere and I for one am about to nod off right here.”
“Y’all have a good night. Keep your eyes peeled,” he said, nodding toward the smashed-up bodies down the road. “Them femurs may pop your tires,” he warned helpfully.
“Will do,” Jared said, shaking his hand. “See you around.” He looked at her with an extremely funny expression of incredulity on his face. “What the fuck?!” he mouthed silently. She hoped Jimmy Don Booth didn’t catch it.
Anna waited for the men to load up before she started the truck. She checked the gauges.
“We’re kind of getting low on gas.”
“We’ll stop and siphon some,” he said. “Let’s get out of town first. Watch the femurs.”
She nodded and stepped on the accelerator and swerved around the tire-popping femurs. She could go faster now, and that made her more comfortable. The snail’s pace she had been driving was nerve-racking, she just didn’t realize it until now.
She cracked her window, needing the fresh air to stay awake. She didn’t remember ever being so tired in her life as she was right now. Her ears cracked with a wide yawn and her eyes watered.
“Stop at the Dollar Store,” Jared said about two seconds before she passed it.
She stepped on the breaks, hoping the men in back were holding on. She reversed into the parking lot carefully. She hated driving in reverse, but it was probably better to be facing the road in case things went bad.
“Why are we here?” she mumbled, yawning again.
“Gas.”
She got out with her bat. If she sat there any longer, she was going to fall asleep. The men got out of the back.
“Why did you stop?” Bradley questioned.
“We need to siphon some gas,” she told him.
The older gentleman stretched and winced. She still didn’t know his name. She watched him murmur something to Stewart and they walked off toward the side of the building. Jared was looking at several cars in the lot. They were all unlocked. One of them had the keys left in the ignition and the door cracked. She watched him lean in.
“Battery’s dead,” he said.
The Salvation Plague | Book 1 |The Turning Page 17