Crash Landing: Survival in a Dystopian World (BONES BOOK ONE 1)

by Jim Rudnick

  “Shots. We know where that’s coming from—so let’s get going. Remember, take lives and then their arms,” she said as she trotted off down a narrow path through the thickest part of the thicket. Behind her, more than two dozen others followed in single file as they made excellent time and cleared the thicket in less than a couple of minutes. They ran now, full tilt, the Taxa leading the way as they took the side of a rise ahead and motored around it toward the on-ramp that was now only a few hundred yards ahead.

  The Taxa made even better time, and while the number of gunshots had slowed and almost stopped, the cat stretched out its gait and ate up the rising ramp quickly. At the top, it dived for the edge of the merging lanes from the left and slowed as it hid and crawled along that edge.

  The leader of the women did likewise, and all of them now hid behind the edge of the merging lanes, keeping their heads below the guardrail but still tipping up a head to see when they could.

  Ahead of them were more than a dozen of the attackers, all with either rifles or bows. Most were dressed in rags—shirts with no arms and jeans with holes and missing legs even.

  She knew who they were—zombies that were smart zombies but not so much.

  Something had happened to them that made them different from others, and while they were smarter than the normal type, they still didn’t understand language. Tools, and yes, weapons they could master, but that was all.

  She and her tribe had killed every single one they’d ever found—and here were a dozen or so more.

  She shook her head. More to kill.

  One of them—waved a trio over to the guardrails and dipped his hand down suddenly to indicate some kind of move.

  “Must have been the leader,” the head woman said to herself.

  The three zombies crept over slowly toward the far right side of the highway and hid behind a stack of those pallets.

  And as she watched, the three attackers went right up to the guardrail and pulled out what looked like some kind of wire harnesses. One served to help the others as each of them thrust an arm deep into what looked like a big curved hook. There were a couple of buckles to fasten, but soon all three of them had their own arms extended by the wire harnesses that ended in that big solid steel hook.

  One by one, they hoisted themselves over the edge of the guardrail to then grab ahold of the circular rail itself with that hook. Sort of like a giant fishhook, the woman thought, and while she could no longer see the lead attacker over the edge, she could see that he slowly moved the first hook to his right a few feet and followed that with the hook attached to his left hand next. Slowly he crept away, the hook making no noise at all and the guardrail wall covering his presence. The next man did the same and then the third man too. All were now sliding along the outside of the guardrail, unseen by the people inside the fort. All would be surprised when they were suddenly flanked by them too, she noted.

  A gunshot rang out from the fort’s tower, but she heard the ricochet as that bullet missed its target.

  ”It’s time,” she said to herself and slowly brought up the woman behind her so that they were now two deep behind the wall of the merging lanes. She held out a fist and then two fingers, and they all strung an arrow and waited.

  She rose just enough to see that ahead of them were only ten attackers. Up on the interstate they were closer to the stars, but still the enemy was hard to see clearly.

  Her front row was nine strong, so the second row would finish these zombies off, and then it was just the three over on the guardrail.

  She counted down, and at one, she and the front nine rose smoothly, drew their bows, and the arrows flew.

  Seven fell in an instant, and as the remaining two began to look around, the front row of women squatted down and the second row rose and loosed their arrows. The remaining twosome died where they stood.

  The second row then squatted too.

  The lead woman called out to the fort as she got someone to hold her Taxa by the scruff of its neck. “We’ve just killed your attackers—zombies. Could that earn us a talk?” she said. She rose slowly, leaving her bow on the ground, and walked very slowly around the lead edge of the ramp wall and turned to her left to face the fort.

  No shots, which is good.

  “However, there still are three of them on the right-hand side over the guardrail who’re crawling past you to flank you. You might look at that about now,” she offered as she pointed at the area where the attackers would probably be now.

  From inside, a single man came out, wearing a jumpsuit, vest armor, and a shotgun, if she knew her arms, on his chest.

  Beside him, a dog appeared too—and she was glad that her Taxa was behind her and being held back.

  He walked toward her cautiously until he reached the body of the first attacker. He checked that the zombie was dead. He checked them all, which took another minute or so, and she grew nervous.

  “Sorry, but those three are about—”

  The sound of gunshots—four gunshots—rang out, and from a distance away, she heard “Yippee, got ‘em all.”

  The man in front of her pushed his shotgun down and to his side and came closer.

  “You the group from back in that thicket behind us near the last pylon?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You women aren’t zombies, right?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You mind telling us why you’d kill off these zombies—they weren’t attacking you. We do thank you though,” he said, and he dipped his head as a sign of respect.

  She nodded. “We know this type of zombie. They can master tools and arms and as well, we now see, some kind of tactical thinking too. They eat us—or any flesh at all, really. So we kill all we find of them, as they would have come down the on-ramp to our own encampment sooner or later. So no thanks needed, really,” she said.

  From behind him, a woman was helping one of their group, who had taken an arrow in his arm.

  She carefully lowered him down onto a pallet that lay in front of them, reached back into her pack, and pulled out something that she clicked—and the area lit up with light. She placed it in one of the group member’s hands and then helped the wounded man take off his upper body clothing to get to the wound.

  The arrow had pierced the man’s left bicep and had gone halfway through the arm. He winced and nodded, and the woman grasped the arrow behind the entrance point with both hands.

  “On three, Wayne,” she said, and as she counted from one, she broke the arrow in half when she got to two.

  “Yeah … I knew you’d cheat,” he said and groaned as she slowly slid the arrow ahead and out of his arm. No spurting blood came out, so the woman said, “Missed the big artery” and then held out her hand.

  From the other side, the man with the shotgun handed her a pouch of something, which she carefully sprinkled within the wound on both sides. She accepted a series of bandage materials and slowly bandaged up the wound.

  The man with the shotgun turned back to face her, and he looked at her directly, staring into her face as if seeking something.

  “And there is no price either, for your help?” he asked, and she had a feeling that he was aiming at something, but she still had to demand her price.

  “We’d like to take their arms—all guns and ammo as a price. Would that be okay with you?”

  Worried she might add more to her price, he nodded and said, “Fine by us. Take all of them. We don’t need them.”

  Bixby growled and the man looked at his dog.

  “You have a Taxa, yes?” he asked as he looked back and over her shoulder.

  She nodded and waved her arm to signal that her group could now stand up and come forward. One of them held a tight grip on the Taxa’s collar to prevent any kind of an issue.

  The man said, “Down, Bixby,” and the dog sank to lie on the concrete highway.

  As the rest of the women came up to stand behind their leader, Javor waved too. From behind him, the balan
ce of his group came out of the fort and stood with him as well.

  He looked at one of them and tilted his head.

  “Yup, Javor—got all three. The last one saw it coming though and just unhooked himself from the guardrail and dropped. Don’t think he could fly, so he’s as dead as the other ones just hanging there. Nice trick though … I woulda never thought of that one,” Jimmy added.

  The woman who’d done the wound dressing stood back up. “My name is Sue. I’m the leader of this group, and we are a Regime cadre. Our headquarters is over in Arlington, which is where we’re headed—and I’d like to thank you for your help today too,” she said as over the far horizon to the east a pink wash was now appearing. Dawn was coming and as the light was now better, the scruffiness of the dead around them was very much a matter of both smell and distastefulness.

  “We wish you luck—the interstate is fraught with peril, and you should always be on guard,” she said as she stepped forward. “And my name is Josie, and we call ourselves the Interstate Tribe because of where we live and where we control our destiny.”

  Javor nodded and was going to ask more but was interrupted by Sue.

  “We need to get a move on—we’ve only got so many days to get to Arlington and back,” she said and smiled.

  “Maybe when we come back this way in a couple of months, we can drop by your camp and we can chat further. For instance, I’d like to know why the Interstate Tribe has no men and where you got those food items from yesterday—but that can all wait,” she said.

  Josie was surprised but didn’t show it and she nodded. “We would be honored to have you visit when you’re back this way—just be cautious at your approach, and that’ll work fine,” she said. She turned at that point, took her Taxa from another woman who looked glad to give up that handful of collared fury, and then smiled as she turned to her right and picked up her bow.

  Josie turned back around. “Remember—travel on the interstate is much quicker, but always be vigilant—at least as far as the Adair Dam. That’s as far as we ever go, but be careful—and if you find this sign, it’s our own meaning the area is safe,” she said as she pointed at the arrow with a star halfway along same, the star spray-painted in green and the arrow in blue.

  Javor nodded and again dipped his head as the tribe of women slowly moved to the right to go down the on-ramp and back to the ground.

  Sue nodded. “I’ve got point—well, Bixby does—but then me, and Javor would you take the rear, please” she said as she turned and marched away down the interstate staying to the left as the on-ramp was on the right. Ahead lay miles and miles of concrete …

  #####

  Walking along in tactical formation on the interstate began to wear on the group, as mile after mile presented nothing but a few cars or trucks, long since holding anything of interest. Burned wreckage was all they found. Bixby continued to be up on point, but Sue had dropped back from point to walk with Wayne and Jimmy, while Rick, Bruce, and Javor followed a few footsteps behind.

  “Think we’re okay with this,” Sue said, “as there’s nothing that can get to us without showing up hundreds of yards ahead—or behind us too. Javor, you do need to look back every so often, right?” she asked, and he grunted a yes back to her.

  After another hour or so, Sue called a short rest break, and each broke out something to snack on.

  Whistling for Bixby, he took a bite of another of the dog’s favorites, the jerky bar, and tossed it at him. As Bixby smacked his lips, those big canine teeth shiny and white, the dog looked at him for seconds and got a head-shake instead.

  “Not now, boy—later,” Javor said, and the group started up again.

  Jimmy said, “We’re heading like southeast, right?”

  Sue nodded.

  “So then if one were to look back at the northwest saw that huge line of black on the horizon, what would one begin to think?” he said as he stopped and turned to look behind them.

  On the horizon lay a black bank of clouds with gray above. As they watched, the black shelf clouds were coming closer. Even this far away, one could see that they reached from the ground up high and higher still, foreshadowing what could only be called an enormous storm.

  “A bloody big storm on its way,” Sue spat out, “and it’s looking like it’s a nor’wester too.”

  She went to the edge of the interstate, looked over first, and then back as far as she could..

  Then she did the same thing but looked ahead, as far as she could.

  She shook her head.

  “We’ve already come almost six miles from the last ramp—and if I look ahead, I don’t see any more ramps for more miles than that. So we’ll need to find a car or truck to weather this out—let’s double-time it to the next group,” she said as she hoisted her backpack up a little higher and turned to take the point again.

  “Move out,” she said, and they all began to trot at a good clip.

  Ahead, about a half mile, they could see another group of vehicles, and then as the interstate slowly angled to their left, another group lay ahead. The trot wasn’t too bad. Javor slowed for a moment as the boxes of ammo for his Colt tucked way down at the bottom of his backpack had twisted to rub on his spine. He shifted the pack, which moved the ammo off his vertebrae, and he sped back up to catch the group.

  As they came closer the first group of vehicles, Sue stopped a hundred yards away and looked back.

  “We’ve got like maybe an hour or so is all—FYI,” she said as she looked at Javor and held out her hand.

  He nodded, said, “Bixby—with me,” and slowly walked toward the vehicles.

  Someone eight years ago had been following a little too closely to a big truck that carried a flammable liquid cargo—and when the bombs fell, they’d not braked in time and had plowed right into the back of the truck.

  That had probably made it ignite and slide sideways on the four-lane interstate, which had made four cars in the middle lane all crash into each other and the truck too. Two of those cars were squashed under the truck, which now lay canted to one side, almost up against the steel guardrail. The other two had run into an RV, which also must have been involved in the accident too.

  All of the vehicles had burn stains on them, little glass in the windows and windshields, and two of the cars had also been stripped of the interiors. No seats were left, no headliners, and no door panels … just plain metal, connecting rods and pins, and carpet that had been half-burned and half-stained with what looked like carrion fodder.

  Few skeletons, Javor noted, as he slowly walked up from the back right side. He prodded each of the cars with his shotgun, giving it a smack to see what might come out, and nothing did. No scavengers at least, he thought.

  The big liquid cargo truck had been tilted to one side with one car half-buried under its rear wheels. He banged the big steel tank and it rung like a bell—but again nothing crawled out from under it.

  He put down his backpack and gun, got on top of one of the rear tires, and used it to climb slowly up the stained outer steel shell of the liquid tank. He reached the top mounted door to the tanker cargo hold in a few careful seconds.

  Pulling out the Colt, he looked at the mechanism of the door lock. It was not protected by a security panel or any kind of technology. Only a simple safety, holding down a latch.

  Clicking the safety took a bit. He had to turn the Colt on its back and use it like a hammer, but the safety finally swung to OFF. He lifted the latch carefully, pulled back the round manhole cover, and held his breath.

  Empty. Leaked out the contents long ago, he thought.

  No smell at all, but it did have some light within from below where the tank had been pierced by the two cars. One had ripped a slash in the bottom that was about five feet long but only a few inches wide. The other had buried its hood and the engine into a crease in the tank it’d made, and that hole was a couple of feet across.

  He could also see the remains of whatever the cargo might have been sta
ining the very bottom. But it was empty and again no scavengers. He clicked on the flashlight that was attached to his vest belt, and the tank lit up inside.

  It was empty. Someone had been in there though because the remains of a fire were directly below the manhole at the foot of the ladder that connected the top and bottom of the tank. As well, car seats had been dragged in up front too. Someone had camped here for a while, he figured.

  He took a couple of steps downward, shined the light to both ends, and then made the conclusion that yes, they could all take refuge here if that storm was going to be the doozy it was supposed to be.

  Moving back and up from the inside, he propped the door out of his way, cautiously slid down the curved side of the tank to the wheel frame assembly, and then dropped over the tire to the concrete once more.

  Bixby was sitting there, looking at him, one paw on his backpack, as if to say “where you been?” and he smiled at the dog.

  Sue, however, was also there, her head cocked to one side.

  He nodded to her. “Interior is fine—totally dry and we’d survive any kind of storm,” he said as he glanced sideways behind Sue.

  The storm was closer, much, much closer, and it was lit up occasionally by lightning. No thunder, he noted, just the flashes of jagged lightning. As he stared, he thought he saw a tornado funnel cloud off to the east.

  He nodded once more. “Someone else has been in same, there’s a fire pit that was used. Light too, from those two cars that plowed into the truck and pierced the tank, which is, yeah, empty. We’ll make out fine, I’d bet,” he said.

  Sue smiled. “Hope so—‘cause it’s all we got,” she said, as she left the group to walk one time all around the whole pile of vehicles.

  She came back in less than a minute and said, “Then it’s the truck for us today and tonight—well, until that nor’wester goes on by. I’ve checked too for the truck—she’s a Faraday cage for us. Whoever made this thing ensured that the cargo would not be affected by a lightning strike—the copper wires that carry the current are still there and fine. She’s insulated is what I mean, so even though it’s the tallest metal structure here on this part of the road, we should be fine. And we’re going to be the cargo today, so let’s get in, shall we?” She hoisted off her backpack, and they all got to the business of getting to safety.