The Wilsons' Saga (Book 1): The Journey Home

by Gibb, Lew

  “Unfortunately, I only know how to drive the ambulance.”

  “I was in the Mexican army,” Alberto said. “We had a lot of American military vehicles. It was fifteen years ago, but I doubt their basic operation has changed much since then.”

  Alberto pulled up next to the one with the smallest pile of bodies around it. When he opened his door, a smell like an entire warehouse of rotting hamburger assaulted them.

  Jerry pulled his shirt collar up over his nose. “You go check it out,” he said. “Holly and I will keep watch.”

  The two of them got out and shadowed Alberto to the open back hatch.

  “Why aren’t they attacking?” Holly asked, frowning and shifting her gaze among the zombies scattered throughout the vast parking lot. “They have to know we’re here.”

  “Maybe they have so much food they aren’t in hunting mode?” Jerry’s eyes were actually watering at the stench. There were about twenty individual zombies spread far apart in the lot. Each was feeding intently on the body beneath them and not one had even looked up at their arrival.

  Alberto appeared at the rear door. “The controls are the same, and there is plenty of gas. I suggest we transfer our supplies before starting the engine.”

  While Maria and the kids moved the duffel bags and weapons, Jerry and Holly scanned the area.

  “Gives me the creeps that they aren’t chasing us,” Holly said.

  “Me too, but I’d rather that than having a pack of them screaming at us.” Jerry looked at the vast quantity of loose weapons lying around. “We should probably scoop up some of these weapons and ammo while we’re out here.”

  They collected several assault rifles, pistols, and a good-sized supply of ammunition for each weapon. By the time they’d loaded everything through the rear ramp, Alberto was ready to go.

  “Man, this thing is awesome,” Jerry said, opening some of the storage compartments. “We could probably get ten or twelve people in here.”

  “Yeah,” Holly said. She poked her finger through a small square hole in the side. “I guess you can shoot through here?”

  “I think so.” Jerry pointed to the circular platform near the front of the roof. “If that big machine gun isn’t enough to take care of them.” Zebulan Picke would piss himself if this thing came cruising up his street, Jerry thought.

  “Where are we going?” Alberto asked from the driver’s seat. Maria sat in the passenger seat.

  Jerry moved forward and leaned into the driver’s compartment. He pointed through the windshield to left of the stadium. “If we circle around to the east, there’s a road under the highway. Then we can catch the bike path that goes between the river and the amusement park and comes out two blocks from my building.”

  They had just started rolling when a woman in her mid-thirties popped up from behind a car and began waving her arms. She had long brown hair tied in a ponytail and was wearing jeans and a bloody tan jacket.

  Alberto took his foot off of the accelerator. “She does not look like a zombie. Shall we stop?”

  “Of course, we stop,” Maria said.

  “What if she’s infected?” Jerry looked out the side window as they drew even with her.

  Maria responded with calm authority. “We will find out if she has been bitten, and then we will invite her to join us. Does anyone have an alternate suggestion?”

  “Okay,” Jerry said, checking the rear window. “But make it quick. Some of them are interested in us now.” Some of the zombies at the other end of the lot had started moving their way when the engine started.

  Maria rolled down her window and spoke with the woman.

  After she removed her jacket, displaying her bite-free arms and torso, Maria called back. “Jerry, why don’t you come up here and give Alberto some directions. I will come back there while Holly and I examine her for bites.”

  They made the switch while Holly let the woman in. As soon as she was aboard, Alberto hit the gas. The woman introduced herself as Tracy and explained she had been quarantined when the local National Guard commander decided to move all infected people to the football stadium.

  Isabella eyed the new arrival with skepticism. “But you said you didn’t get bited.” She and Tracy were side by side against the wall on the passenger side, and Isabella scooted as far away as she could get, which wasn’t far since she was already against the front wall of the compartment.

  “I didn’t.” Tracy held up her rust-stained jacket. “This guy got attacked on the sidewalk right in front of me. It happened so fast, I got sprayed with blood before I could do anything. Then when I ran, it was right into a group of soldiers who grabbed me and loaded me in a truck. They didn’t even want to hear that I wasn’t infected. Pretty much everyone in the truck was like me or bitten but not turned yet.”

  Maria grabbed a couple bottles of water from one of the duffels and passed them to Tracy.

  Tracy drained the first one without stopping. “Oh-my-god-that’s-good.” She wiped her mouth, twisted the cap off the second bottle, and drained half of it. “I’ve been so scared I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.” Maria passed her an energy bar, and she smiled. “Hungry, too.”

  “Then what?” Marco said.

  “Right when we got here, one of the people turned into a zombie and bit the person next to him. One of the soldiers shot him in the head and got even more blood on me.” She looked at her hands, which were stained red. “It was just chaos after that. A crap-load of screaming and shooting. I got knocked over by some guy trying to get out.” Tracy’s eyes teared up as she related the rest of the story. “The driver yelled something about a breakout. Then there was more shooting. I crawled out and hid under the truck. That was two days ago.”

  They were almost at the bridge when Holly looked out the truck’s back window. “Wait! There’s someone else out there.”

  Alberto slowed.

  Jerry looked out his window. A tall black guy in his early twenties was running toward the truck. He was overweight and losing ground even as Alberto slowed a little more.

  “He looks like a zombie,” Tracy said.

  “Zombies don’t wave their arms over their heads,” Holly said.

  “Oh my god,” Tracy said when the guy got closer. “It’s the soldier from my truck. The one that shot the zombie.”

  Alberto stopped the truck, and after checking to make sure he wasn’t bitten, they let him inside.

  His name was Zach, and he had a bullet wound in his left side just above the belt along with a fairly nasty looking exit wound on his lower back. It had stopped bleeding, and Jerry was able to clean and bandage it using the first aid kit while Alberto kept them moving.

  “Lucky you have a little extra skin there,” Jerry said as he finished wrapping Coban around Zach’s waist to hold the bandage in place.

  “Yeah,” Zach said, smiling. “I guess I like my French fries a little too much.”

  The major details of Zach’s story matched Tracy’s except for being shot during the breakout. He had crawled under a car to wait out the attack and was trying to work his way around to the edge of the lot.

  “I thought you guys were a military unit here to finish off any survivors. I was lucky I caught you.”

  “Thank Holly here,” Tracy said, looking at Zach with undisguised anger. “I would have left you.”

  Zach didn’t seem to hear the last part or notice the stink-eye Tracy was giving him. He was too busy enveloping Holly in a bear hug that made her almost disappear within his huge arms. “Thank you so much,” he said.

  “It wasn’t anything special,” Holly said, leaning away from the big man’s awkward embrace. “I would have done it for anyone.”

  “I don’t know,” Zach said, oblivious to how uncomfortable he was making her. “I haven’t seen too much of that.” Tears were running down his face, and he wiped them with his sleeve. “I even tried to get them to let this lady go.” He indicated Tracy with a wave of his hand, then flinched when he noticed her gla
ring at him.

  “You assholes didn’t even listen to me,” Tracy said.

  “I’m sorry.” He held his palms up in a pleading gesture. “There wasn’t anything I could do. They would have just shot me or put me in the truck with the rest of them.”

  “Maybe that’s what you deserved.” Tracy crossed her arms and looked away.

  “Yeah.” Fresh tears were running down Zach’s face. “Maybe so.”

  Jerry was trying to decide if there was anything he could say to deescalate the situation when Alberto yelled that they had arrived.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  They were fifteen minutes into the trip, and the little car was already rebelling against Rachel’s rough treatment. The Subaru’s wheel kept pulling hard to the left forcing Rachel to use all her strength and concentration just to keep the little wagon going the direction she wanted. Driving over the zombies had done something to the alignment. Or maybe it was blasting through the fence. Or the off-roading through the greenbelt. If she hadn’t let Cindy get to her so badly, she probably could have avoided at least a couple of those zombies.

  Rachel flicked a look at Cindy in the rearview. The woman hadn’t said a word since she’d stopped screaming. She just sat there with a look on her face like someone had shit in her Cheerio’s. Rachel shook her head. She really needed to work on her people skills. But the swearing was probably going to stay, at least till she found her husband. He made her want to be better.

  “How do you know so much about fighting zombies?” Brent’s question prodded her out of her thoughts.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tricked those zombies into following you into that house. Plus, you killed those ones in the other house. And you already had blood all over your jacket. That means you killed, like, a bunch more. Right? My mom doesn’t even know what a zombie is, and you’re even older than her.”

  “Didn’t your mom teach you it’s not nice to tell a woman that she’s old?”

  “Oh, shoot.” Brent shot a look at his mom in the back seat.

  Rachel flicked her eyes at the rearview. Cindy seemed lost in her own thoughts.

  “Sorry.” He shrugged. “She tells me all the time not to talk about her age.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Rachel patted him on the shoulder but had to put her hand back on the wheel to keep the car on the path. “Anyway, I’m pretty much faking it. My husband’s the expert, if there is such a thing. I guess I just sort of picked it up without realizing what was happening.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “Okay.” Rachel bit her upper lip. Thinking about Jerry and the fact that she was moving in the wrong direction made her eyes prickle with tears of frustration. “First thing is, I’m pretty sure the virus is transmitted by their saliva.” Brent looked confused. “Their spit.”

  His lip curled. “Gross.”

  “No kidding.” She smiled. “So you don’t ever want to get bitten. And stay away from anyone who’s been bitten.” A few days ago, discussing how to kill zombies with a ten year old would have seemed like something from a movie. She’d even criticized Jerry for talking with their neighbor’s teenaged son about zombie video games. Now here she was, seriously trying to think of the most important things to tell him. “Are you listening, Cindy?”

  “Don’t get bitten.” She sounded more like a ten year old being lectured than the mother of one. Rachel’s outburst seemed to have gotten through to her—or at least made her think twice about crossing the violent psycho with all the knives.

  “Good. Second, it’s always better to run then fight. If you can’t run, at least keep moving.” Brent was taking it all in like her rambling on about whatever came to mind was the most important thing in the world. “Don’t let them grab you. And fight like a maniac if they do. Speaking of grabbing, Cindy, you might want to think about cutting your hair or at least putting it up so it’s not so easy to reach.” Cindy looked like Rachel had just suggested she cut off an arm, and Rachel caught sight of her own hair in the rearview. It looked like it had been styled by a family of pack rats. A piece of dried grass out on top. When Rachel plucked it free, there were little rust colored speckles on it. She frowned and dropped it on the floor. She didn’t want to take her hand off the wheel to roll down the window. When they stopped she was going to need another bleach-bath.

  “How about chopping them with the hatchet?” Brent said. He was holding up his new weapon. His eyes were wide, and he was practically bouncing in his seat.

  Before Rachel could answer, Cindy interrupted, “Now, Brent, you be careful with that. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Can he hurt the zombies?” Rachel asked in her best snarky drawl.

  “Um.” Cindy looked like she knew the right answer but didn’t want to say it. “Well, I guess so.”

  “Good, since that’s about all that’s left to hurt in this world right now. So, yes, Brent, you chop them with the hatchet if you have to. But unless they have a hold of you, don’t try to take them on from the front. If you have to attack one, try to come at it from the back or the side. Aim for the side of their neck.” She rested her finger to her jugular vein before she had to grab the wheel again. “That’ll kill them pretty fast. But mostly, I want you to watch our backs and let us know if any of them are getting too close. Okay?”

  “You got it, Rachel.” Brent smiled. He looked at Rachel like she was his new best friend. Since she had just given him a pistol and a hatchet, that might actually have been true. Plus, she had saved his life.

  “Brent,” Cindy said, getting a little command in her voice. “You don’t call adults by their first names.”

  Rachel responded, “Seriously? We’re fighting for our lives, and you want him to be polite? Like, ‘Pardon me, Mrs. Wilson? Perhaps you would like to evade that zombie?’”

  “You make it sound silly.” Cindy’s face puckered like someone farted in church. “Just because things are a little different doesn’t mean we can’t be civilized.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “A little different?” She looked at Brent, who looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “Brent, you have my permission to call me Rachel.”

  “Uh oh!” Brent said, pointing forward.

  “Shit!” Rachel yelled. Her eyes scanned the area, looking for a way to avoid the metric-ass-load of zombies filling the greenway from fence to riverbank. The horde had to be a hundred feet wide and moving so fast they were raising an actual dust cloud behind them.

  Rachel began to notice things that she probably would have picked up on if she hadn’t been preoccupied with yelling at Cindy. The grass and bushes on both sides of the bike path were all matted down like a cattle drive had gone through. And parts of the six foot fence separating the houses from the path were pushed over from the path side like the mob had been roaming up and down, killing anything that got in its way. There wasn’t time to think harder on the subject because the leaders were starting to pick up the pace and closing the distance fast.

  Trying to drive through them in the little Subaru wasn’t an option. Rachel was pretty sure she wouldn’t do it in a bigger car. Maybe a tank could mow down or plow through what had to be at least a thousand ravenous zombies. Rachel yanked the wheel to the right and floored the accelerator, heading directly for the nearest wood fence.

  When the little wagon hit the fence at over forty miles an hour—with the steering wheel shaking like a live thing trying to wriggle out of Rachel’s grasp—pickets splintered and blasted in all directions. The effect couldn’t have been more spectacular if there had been a bomb attached to the hood. As they drove through the rain of debris, it sounded like someone was pounding the roof with a baseball bat. Then there was a heavier boom, and a jagged piece of two-by-four impaled the windshield and skewered the armrest between her and Brent.

  Guided more by the afterimage in her mind rather than what little she could see through the opaque web of cracks spreading out from the two-by-four, Rachel careened ac
ross the yard, shot through the gap between the house and the side fence, then sped up to ram the front fence. The windshield took more damage when the wagon burst through with the same explosion of building materials and banging of lumber on sheet metal. Rachel kept her foot on the gas and whipped the wheel to the left. The car fishtailed across the lawn and into the street. Since she still had the accelerator pegged to the floor, the wagon picked up speed as it skidded across the road and banged into the curb on the far side.

  A zombie appeared in front of them. With no time to correct, Rachel could only hold onto the wheel and watch as the body slammed into the hood, cartwheeled into the air, and thudded across the roof sounding like a sack of potatoes. When she slammed on the brakes to miss an abandoned motorcycle lying in the road, the body on the roof rumbled forward and snagged on the two-by-four, folded sideways at the waist and its face against the windshield. Its upper lip was peeled back and the teeth clicked against the glass as the deformed zombie tried to bite through the window.

  Rachel’s side window wouldn’t roll down, so she drew her pistol and fired through the glass. The sound of the shot hammered her ears, and the window spiderwebbed around a small round hole and blood from the now dead zombie’s mouth streamed through.

  “Fucking idiot,” Rachel said, and jerked the wheel but the zombie wouldn’t come lose.

  More zombies were sprinting toward them from between the houses and both directions in the street. A horrific grinding, thumping noise was coming from the back wheel on the Brent’s side.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Rachel screamed while doing the only thing she could which was floor the accelerator and try to put some distance between themselves and the zombies before something gave out and the car stopped working.

  Brent stuck his head out his window and looked back. She hadn’t even noticed when it broke. There were little pebbles of safety glass everywhere. “We got a flat,” he yelled over the thumping, the wail of the engine, and his mother’s screaming.