“I think we need to modify that entrance plan,” Shakey said, climbing back to his feet.
“Agreed.” Said Gunny. “Those things are wicked fast.”
“We need to hit a good gun store,” Griz said, not for the first time. “We need some Saiga 12 gauges. I can make them full auto.”
Deputy Collins glanced over at him. “Where’d you learn that trick?” she asked, her pistol still in low ready, still scanning the interior of the store.
“After the Marines, I was a contractor.” He said. “We couldn’t always get the cool toys, had to make our own.”
Gunny stepped over the fallen bodies and made his way towards the kitchen area of the little truck stop. That’s where he figured the ladder to the roof would be. They had made enough noise, they were pretty confident that anything undead left in the store would have already come after them if it wasn’t locked away. Still, they were careful at the swinging door to the kitchen, doing room clearing maneuvers as they entered. The ladder was tucked away in a small maintenance closet full of mop buckets and brooms. There was a body blocking the door open, its head crushed and a bloodied fire extinguisher lying near it. When Gunny looked up, dirty faces were staring down at him from the roof, concerned but relieved looks on them.
Introductions were made as the bedraggled group went to the coolers and grabbed bottles of water and power drinks, trying to re-hydrate. They had been up there for five days with only what they had managed to carry up in the mad rush to escape the little truck stop carnage that had started with just one customer attacking everyone else. It had been a guy on a motorcycle touring across the country and he had complained of being sick from something he ate a few towns back. He had gone into the restroom looking pale and had come out screaming and ripping chunks of flesh out of everyone. The women had both worked there and the four men were drivers who were in the cafe having breakfast when everything went crazy. One of them had a .38 but it had been useless against them. He didn’t know to aim for the head and his six rounds went fast. Gunny sent a few of his men up to the roof as sentries while they talked, telling them of their plans, the dangers of staying where they were and offering them a ride to Oklahoma if they wanted it. The women wanted to go check their homes. Cobb said they couldn’t stop the convoy for everyone they met, they were on a very serious deadline to get out of the radiation fallout zone if the Muslims failed in their efforts. The ladies had become pretty good friends with the drivers while trapped on the roof and the men had promised to take them to their homes if they ever made it down. With a few guns donated to them, they agreed to join the convoy after they checked out their houses. They had husbands. Kids. Gunny understood. He was doing the same thing. He had to know, he had to see for himself if his family had made it. No amount of logic, no matter how many times you said ‘your husband would have come for you if he was still alive’ would work on them. They had to see.
They offered Cobb whatever he wanted to take from the store in fair exchange for the guns and their rescue so some of them grabbed a few snacks but there really wasn’t much they needed. The drivers with newer trucks loaded up on boxes of DEF to add to their supply. It was a government mandated additive the new motors needed to run. It was supposed to cut down on emissions but really all it did was clog up the injectors and filters and cause expensive repairs. That’s why a lot of the owner operators wouldn’t trade in for a new truck, they’d keep rebuilding their old ones. You could get a million miles out of a good Cat engine. Caterpillar, who had been building diesel engines since the 30’s, pulled out of the North American big truck market. They just couldn’t make quality engines anymore with all the regulations put on them so drivers kept overhauling their old motors. California didn’t like that so they passed a law to stop trucks older than ten years old into their state. That was one reason a lot of truckers kept the Three Flags in business. They were running the backroads with their older trucks to dodge the California inspection stations on the highways.
The boys grabbed rolls of lottery tickets though, and were happily scratching them off as they headed back to their trucks. Cobb told the small group if they decided to join up with the convoy, swing back by and empty out the kitchen of all the restaurant sized food cans to add to Cookies’ stores. As they were getting ready to leave, one of the women mentioned that the tanker that had been blocking the fuel drops was full, the driver hadn’t started to unload. He was among the dead piled up at the door. Cobb asked for a volunteer to drive it and there was a race among the mechanics to get there first. They were tired of being cooped up on the bus with Bastille and his never ending complaining about everything. Gunny made sure everyone from the little truck stop knew where the rally point was in Lakota and wished them luck as they headed for the parking lot and their rigs. Julio, one of the mechanics, wanted to take the bike. It was a big touring BMW, not particularly nimble and after a quick discussion, they decided it was safer for him to ride near the back.
“He can stop and tell folks where we’re headed to, if we see any more along the way,” Griz said. “That way we don’t have to stop the convoy and if Scratch stays with him, he’ll be safe enough.” It was a good plan and Scratch’s big Western Star wouldn’t have any trouble catching up, he always bragged it was a triple digit truck.
Within a few minutes, everyone was back on the road, two of the men they had rescued from the rooftop deciding to follow them down towards Oklahoma before they split off to check on their own families. The convoy was getting longer.
Chapter 4
884 Miles to Go
It took them a lot longer to get around Cheyenne than anyone had expected. The population was growing denser the farther east they moved and the towns and cities were well populated along the highways. They had to keep moving, Gunny’s truck was taking a hard beating as he constantly had to shove cars out of the way, the blade becoming dented and the sharp edges becoming broken and dulled. Sara radioed back that there was a pileup they would have to bust through or backtrack 20 miles to get around it.
“Wait for us, you can put the bike on Griz’s wagon.” He told her. “We’ll just have to force our way through.”
When Gunny pulled up, he could see it had both sides of the freeway jammed up for about a half mile. There was a subdivision on the south side. It was easy enough to figure out what happened. The jam wasn’t too bad and it was simpler to plow through it than backtrack. He told the rest of the convoy to hold back a little in case he ran into something he couldn’t move and had to back out to go at it at a different angle. There didn’t seem to be many of the undead stumbling around so Sara didn’t wait to load up on Griz’s lowboy. She started winding her way through the stalled cars, sometimes having to reach up and slam a door shut that was blocking her way. She was half way through when she realized she was in trouble but it was too late to stop. She mentally kicked herself for not trailering the bike when she had the chance. She thought she could thread her way through the jam pretty quickly, it wasn’t that long. But the cars were packed in tight and there were a lot more of the undead than she had first noticed. If she slowed she would be overrun and it was much too late to turn around and go back. Gunny saw them chasing the bike and kept blowing his air horn to try to draw them away from her but she was getting too far ahead, the bike being much faster than the rig clearing a path. She thought she could keep her speed up and outrun the undead as they stumbled and tumbled through the maze of cars after her, there was only a handful of them at first. She kept scanning the road before her, spotting openings and aiming for them. She would zoom up to 40 and 50 miles an hour with scant inches on either side of her as she threaded the needle before she had to slam on the brakes and maneuver around another stall or wreck straddling the lanes. The zombies were too stupid to aim for where she was going to be, they only chased after her in the spot she was in. If it wasn’t for this, they would have quickly run to intercept and would have overwhelmed her. At times she shot through the grass with the street tire
s slipping and fighting for traction, sometimes splitting the lanes. Both sides of the freeway were clogged, a lot of the cars stuck in the grassy median. She really should have stopped and turned around when she first saw this tangle of cars. Now there were so many followers behind her it was too late. She could only keep moving forward, try to keep ahead of them. Try to keep enough distance between her and them as she zig-zagged, squeezing through narrow openings. As she swung around a jack-knifed grain truck, searching the road ahead of her for the next opening, a hand shot out and grabbed the exoskeleton tubing of her bike, pulling her off balance and slamming the bike to the ground. She rolled free and kept moving under a pickup truck, the scrabbling thing diving in after her, clawing and keening, trying to grab her ankle. She rolled out of the other side and stood to run but they were coming in from all directions now, her heart was in her throat, her mind screaming at her to get away.
From their vantage point 100 yards back, Gunny and Deputy Collins couldn’t see around the jack-knifed grain hauler and he was silently cursing with every grinding impact on his blade. A few more of these kinds of jams and someone else would have to take the lead or they’d have to stop somewhere for repairs. He didn’t know if they were going to be able to push the grain trailer out of the way. If it were loaded, it would probably rip his plow off the front of the truck before he moved it. Those boys got paid by the pound and they tended to haul heavy. He aimed instead for the tractor. There were a few feet between the nose of it and the guardrail. He hoped he could snap the guardrail posts off at ground level, not leave a sharp chunk of metal sticking up out of the ground to rip tires or puncture fuel tanks. As he cleared the last minivan out of the way and started to pick up some speed to snap the posts, they heard Sara come over the emergency channel. She was gasping for breath and they could hear the sounds of the undead screaming near her.
“I’m down! I’m down!” she yelled into the microphone and at the same time Gunny saw her bike laying on its side at the front of the grain hauler. He didn’t hesitate, just nailed the pedal to the floor and slip shifted up a gear, going for every ounce of speed he could wring out of his Pete. The blade dug into the guardrail and the front of the jackknifed truck simultaneously and the doghouse of the fiberglass and plastic Freightliner exploded in a shower of debris, both trucks shuddering from the impact. The freight shaker slid sideways and the rails curled off out into the grass, the uprights snapping at ground level from the blunt force slamming into them. Gunny kept it floored, punishing his truck and sending cars rolling and sliding away from the severely abused blade. They could see her ahead of them now, running between a line of cars with a half dozen dead quickly catching up to her.
She slid over the hood of two sedans blocking the lanes that had gotten into a minor fender bender. That bought her some time as the zombies plowed into it, packed so tightly they interfered with each other when they tried to leap over it to bring her down.
She ran. Lungs burning, legs aching, arms pumping, heart racing. She could see the end of the traffic jam, just a half dozen cars ahead and knew they would catch her once she hit the open road. There would be nothing to slow them down. She had her gun but she couldn’t bring them down when she was at a dead run. She tried a car door. Locked. “Who the hell locks their car when you park on the freeway?” her mind queried uselessly.
Gunny saw the same thing she did, silently urging her to circle back towards them in a different lane if she couldn’t jump into a car and close the door. They would be there before those things had a chance to break in. But she was running for her life, wasn’t thinking of anything except her next step, her next lungful of fiery breath. He grabbed another gear and aimed the rig back onto the freeway, knocking a police cruiser out of the way, sending it spinning into a few of the slower zombies as they ran screaming out of the traffic jam and onto the open road.
“Take the wheel!” he yelled at Collins and unbuckled his seatbelt. She had hers off and was leaping over to his seat, her foot finding the pedal and keeping it mashed to the floor as Gunny opened his door and leaned way out, hanging on with one hand and reaching for Sara with the other. She was only a few yards ahead of the closest zombie as they came flying up behind her. It was within leaping distance.
“Closer!” Gunny yelled at Collins and she adjusted the wheel, the big diesel screaming at red line and the black smoke rolling out of the stacks.
Sara heard them and chanced a look over her shoulder, saw Gunny’s outstretched hand as he held onto the open door with his other, both feet planted on top of the battery box, leaning at a precarious angle to swoop her up. Just as the creature leaped at her, arms outstretched with every intent to drive her down to the ground, she turned and jumped, both arms reaching for him as he caught her. The impact nearly shook him loose, the door slamming into them and bouncing hard against her helmet but she clung to him. Hard.
“I got you.” he told her then hollered up to Collins “Let up a little, you’re gonna blow the motor!” They came to a stop and Collins found neutral and set the brakes. “Rifle.” Gunny barked and she handed his M-4 down to him as he and Sara half tumbled, half hopped down to the ground over the still missing battery box step.
Gunny kneeled, quickly checked his impact area then started double tapping the runners. Within seconds, they were down. They could hear the rest of the trucks coming, slowly winding their way through the path Gunny had cut, oblivious to the life and death struggle that had just happened.
“I need to get my bike.” Sara panted.
Gunny couldn’t believe it. Surely this little scare, this close call, this incident of near death and dismemberment would make her second guess the whole bike riding thing.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Deputy Collins said.
“I do.” was all Sara said and she was already jogging back the short distance to where it was lying.
Gunny stood, unable to do anything except look for targets with his carbine and yell for her to hurry up.
By the time the rest of the trucks were slowly making their way through the end of the maze, the undead that had started to clamor after them had caught up. Most of the rigs in line were covered with screaming zombies trying to claw and bite their way in. Scratch was bringing up the rear with Stabby and Lars riding shotgun and his Western Star was idling along in the path that had been cleared. It was covered with the undead. Julio had long ago strapped his recently acquired BMW to the back of Griz’s Lowboy and was riding in the cab with him. They weren’t going fast enough to do much more than shunt the keening masses aside but they were safe, as long as no one panicked and did something stupid. The rebar cages over the side glass and windshield protected them, the howling undead could pound all they wanted on the rigs and all they would do is break their hands. Griz came over the radio occasionally, words of encouragement, engaging drivers in conversation like this was just another Sunday stroll through the park. He kept them talking, even cracking jokes as faces blind with rage and fury slammed against his caged windows, screaming an undead lust for their blood. Scratch and Stabby joined in, cracking wise remarks and pointing out any particularly hot zom’s. Especially if they were half naked. Would a condom protect you against the zombie virus? It was dark, dark humor and Gunny was hoping the bus driver had turned the radio down low. The civilians, especially the children, didn’t need to hear how warriors tried to swallow their fears by acting fearless. When he saw the first of them make its way around the grain hauler, Sara was already a half mile up the road, processing her close call the best way she knew how. In her mind, if she didn’t get right back on the horse that threw her, she’d be too afraid to do it in the future. It wasn’t an option. She had to get her bike, fire it up and ride. Maybe tomorrow she wouldn’t want to but as long as she forced herself to do it today, it would be okay. Gunny gave a whoop over the radio.
“Hammer down, Boys. We’ve got clear roads for miles and not a Smokey in sight!” He started winding out the gears, letting the bi
g Caterpillar roll coal out of the twin stacks. There was a joyous sound of air horns and train whistles from the trucks as they started shaking off the undead. It didn’t take long before bets were flying back and forth across the radios as to whose zombie could hang on the longest as one by one they fell off the trucks as they picked up speed. It was a cruel spectacle, watching them try to hang on in the wind, still trying to claw their way through the armor. One by one though, they would slip, bounce off the road and tumble into guardrails exploding into flying body parts on impact or just slide along the road, their skin being eaten off all the way to the bone in a nasty case of road rash.
The Wal-Mart they had decided to stop at was a small one, well outside of town, but in a growing community. It would have a Pharmacy and making sure Shakey had time to get in there and get what he needed was the top priority. Gunny didn’t let on that he knew about the diabetes and he hadn’t told anyone else. It was Shakey’s secret to tell if he wanted to and he had Sara and Stacy both keeping an eye on him, making sure he wasn’t showing sign’s that he had run completely out of his insulin. He would let him keep his secret, if that’s what he wanted, as long as it didn’t put anyone else in danger. Old soldiers knew about keeping secrets.
They were all waiting on Sara’s report, waiting to see if it was completely overrun or if it looked like they had a chance to get in without anyone being eaten. She came on the radio a few minutes after she had opened the bike up, putting a few miles distance between them to let them know it didn’t look too bad. She sounded calm. In control. Gunny and Collins exchanged a look and a shrug.
“Sounds like she’ll be okay.” Collins said. “I guess she really did need to ride.”
Zombie Road (Book 2): Bloodbath on the Blacktop Page 4