The Zombie Plagues (Book 1)

by Sweet, Dell

  “Sounds like a plan... I'm shot,” Johnny agreed.

  “Okay, so take the next road that crosses, slow down to keep the dust down and let's start looking for a place to hide for the day... We've got enough gas in the back we can get a long way before we need to find a station if we don't burn it up running in circles and backtracking.”

  Johnny slowed the truck and began heading to the right, the east. “One of those towers will do... High voltage lines? Something like that. Just scrap metal now, but that will hide us if we drive right up to it,” Lana said.

  They drove to the tower and a dirt service road that circled it and continued to the north. Johnny pulled the truck up close to the tower and shut it down. The silence held for a few moments, he fisted his hands into his eyes. “Jesus, I'm shot.”

  “Come here,” Lana said. She pulled him down to the seat and laid his head in her lap. She began to rub lightly at his temples.

  “God, don't do that, It'll put me to sleep,” Johnny told her half jokingly.

  “Which is why I'm doing it.” She stretched her legs, angled them across to the driver's side floorboard, and leaned back into the door. The last thing she remembered was smoothing the hair out of his eyes and then she spiraled away into a series of dreams.

  FOUR

  It was the most tired I had ever been. I laid my head down and I was gone for a little while...

  The sun is down all the way here. I went back upstairs. Nothing on the horizon. That time of evening when the sun is down and the moon has yet to rise. Very dark. Can't see anything in any direction. Thought they must be all sleeping in the barn, but I heard some movements out near where I... Never mind what I did there, I'll get to that soon enough, I guess. I only heard it once, but I know damn well it's one of them... Some of them...

  I don't believe the whiskey is going to make it to daylight, but I have a feeling I'm not going to make it to daylight either... Feeling funny now, not myself... I'll try to get this done...

  It was the 15th when I came awake in that truck. Hot, but desert heat...

  September 15th

  It was late afternoon when Johnny awoke. Somewhere in the day Lana had wound up beside him. He lay still, unwilling to let her go, his hand was curled protectively around her. Lana moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One moment soft and willing, the next a live wire.

  “You didn't cop a feel did you?” Lana asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.

  “Lana, can't you ever just say something like, good morning?”

  She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it wasn't that secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched, yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV so we have some place to sleep too.”

  “I don't know, I kind of liked this,” Johnny said before he could shut his mouth down.

  Lana laughed and it was the unguarded Lana once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking directly into his eyes.

  “I... I know the deal,” Johnny said. The press of her body was maddening.

  “We really don't need to talk it out?”

  Johnny shook his head and looked away. “I'm a little too old for you, Lana. I know.”

  Her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I considered sleeping with you before you became my friend, before I knew it couldn't work between us. I even considered it after... Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost me a friend because it wouldn't mean to me what it would mean to you. It has nothing to do with age or anything else.” She held his eyes as if willing him to understand.

  “It's like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Johnny. So far. I can't see why you try to see me that way.” She laughed. “It's a thing men do. Like... Like that is love, you see? Instead of love just being about all the other stuff... The things I admire about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix... But no, I'm a princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It's not possible... The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks at me as me.” She watched his eyes.

  “I think I can do that,” Johnny told her.

  Lana laughed.

  “No, really. I think I can separate those things... I'm pretty sure.”

  “Yeah? I think you like the idea of me... I think it might even hold together in a situation like this... At least for a while. And I think you could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant that we were together, and it wouldn't mean that at all. It would mean we were scared and we took some comfort in each other... Because the attraction was there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath. “But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that's the way this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I've seen it... I've felt it... And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my friend, because he doesn't want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one hand up and pushed Johnny's hair away from his eyes. He looked vulnerable, maybe he would love her forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be reacting to something in her that didn't really exist. Something only he saw. Awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to feel, to be in with her... She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his eyes.

  “We probably should get going,” Johnny said. A smile played across his lips, tentative, but there.

  “Okay,” she laid her head against his chest. “I need a toothbrush... That little puta made me lose my toothbrush.”

  Johnny laughed. “I got extras.”

  She lifted her face up, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She bent and kissed his forehead and then rose from the seat and looked around at the scrub brush and sand before she rose all the way up and sat on the edge of the seat while Johnny straightened his long frame out and sat on the driver’s side of the seat.

  “That felt sort of, I don't know, brotherly... That kiss,” Johnny said.

  “I hated my brother,” Lana said. She levered the handle and stepped down to the ground.

  “Hey?” Johnny said. Lana stopped and looked back at him, her eyes careful.

  “I'll work at it... I mean,” he looked at a loss. “I don't want to lose our friendship either.”

  Lana smiled. “Thanks... I mean it. Now get out here and get me a toothbrush, Johnny.” She laughed as she finished.

  ~

  “So, look.” Johnny jabbed his finger at the map and Lana leaned across and looked at the map, “Teddy Roosevelt Lake... Tonto National forest... Connected to Gila National forest... Cibola National forest. Pretty isolated.”

  Lana turned her eyes back to the desert. There was little to see, but twice she had hit bushes that popped up out of what seemed like nowhere. They had passed under the truck, but there were cactus out here too in places, and she was pretty sure a cactus wouldn't just pass under the truck.

  “So... Why there?” Lana asked.

  “Just a place to get ourselves together: Breath for a few moments, really look the map over and pick a destination.”

  “Isn't that taking us closer to Yellowstone, or whatever is causing the problems to the north?” Lana asked. They had both noticed thick plumes of black on the far horizon in that direction. The radio in the truck was dead. Static all across the dial.

  “It is... But,” Johnny checked the scale and did some quick measurements. “Still close to a thousand miles away from there.�
� He looked up. “I think it is Yellowstone. I heard something just before everything hit the fan, something about the park in Yellowstone.”

  “What was it?” Lana asked.

  “I don't know,” Johnny answered. He shrugged. “I wasn't paying attention... Wish I had been... Something like everyone in the park went off line... Like they couldn't reach any of the stations, rangers, whatever you call them... Something like that. And seismic activity, like an earthquake centered there.” He shrugged once more and shook his head.

  “So it's a good place to stay away from,” Lana said.

  “Yeah... I would say so, but we'll be a thousand miles away.” Johnny shrugged once more.

  “So?”

  “So, head north... We'll have to cross a few highways... Just keep out from the cities... I mean Phoenix turns to suburbs that spread out a long way, at least that's what the map looks like. Like it just kept spreading and so they just kept adding names.”

  Off to their left the city was easy to spot. There were fires all through it. In some places huge sections were on fire, in others it was scattered fires. There were no areas that didn't seem to be affected, and with the fires it was easy to track the edge of the cities as they drove.

  Lana laughed. “So they just added names. Well, couldn't the same be said about Los Angeles? About any large city as it grows? Isn't that the way it works?”

  “I guess... I hadn't thought it out.”

  ~

  “Going to have to cut through part of the city,” Lana said a few moments later.

  Johnny looked up from the map as the truck rolled to a stop. “A river.”

  “Probably a canal...” Lana said. “Either way we can't drive over it... Does it break anywhere?” She turned the truck and began to run along the side of the canal heading for the city once more. In the distance several fires burned, but the fires seemed to be several miles distance, nothing close. “Like a housing development or something,” Lana said a few minutes later as the truck bumped up onto a road that was paralleled by a brick wall. The wide concrete gutter was bone dry, the pavement smooth after so much time in the desert

  “Not on the map...” He shrugged. “I just don't know, Lana.”

  Lana had stopped on the edge of the housing development. It was dark, lit only by the headlights of the truck. Cars and trucks sat neatly in driveways. The streets were empty. Heavy dust seemed to blanket the whole scene. Little trails cut from place to place.

  “Spooky,” Johnny said. “Volcanic ash?”

  “Probably... What do you think the trails are?”

  Johnny frowned. “It has to be the dead.”

  “It doesn't have to be the dead... Could be small animals raiding house to house... No garbage any more so they have to get into those houses and get what they can or starve... Or it could be the dead.”

  “Great, you had me ha...”

  Something hit the truck hard and it rocked on its springs. The smell of death hit them about the same time, and Lana hit the gas, mashing the pedal into the floor boards.

  A rotting hand came through the open back window and fastened around Lana's throat, her hands left the wheel as she was yanked backwards; the truck spun hard to the left and accelerated, her foot still mashed on the gas.

  Johnny lifted his gun and shot the zombie in the face. It seemed slow motion at first, the face exploded as it fell away into the back of the pickup, Lana drew a deep breath and tried to grab the wheel, but it was too late. Everything sped up to real time and the truck roared forward and slammed into the side of a house, continuing on through the wall and into it. Her foot had slammed down on the brake and the truck finally stopped several feet inside the house.

  Johnny hit the dashboard hard and then rebounded and slid under the dash as the truck plunged into the house. Seconds later he scrambled out from under the dash, the smell of gasoline was strong, the smell of the hot motor equally strong. He looked over at Lana but she seemed dazed, her eyes unfocused, a trickle of blood running from somewhere under her hairline, mumbling softly under her breath. Johnny levered his door open with a little help from his foot, it screeched as it opened. The screech of metal was very loud in the silence of the house. The headlights were still on, illuminating what looked to be a kitchen.

  The smell of death came to him over the smell of gas and hot motor.

  “My God, Lana, we've got to go,” Johnny said loudly. He reached down, gabbed Lana's rifle where it had fallen to the floor and then shoved his gun into his holster. He was surprised he had the presence of mind to actually pull the strap over the hammer and snap it in place to hold the gun in. He reached over and pulled Lana to him, she came willingly. A second later he was outside the ruined truck and staring out the hole it had punched through into the house. He saw no dead, but he could smell them. He debated only briefly and then ran for the hole and the moonlit night outside.

  The dead were all around, pulled from their wanderings by the sound of the wreck and the smell of the living. Johnny shifted Lana's weight more fully onto his shoulder, and lifted the gun, but before he could fire, the truck blew up behind him and he felt himself pushed by the blast out into the street where he struggled to stay on his feet. A warm rush of air moved rapidly past him and Johnny got his feet moving only a second later.

  The dead scattered. They made an odd clicking sound, a sort of strangled scream, which Johnny supposed was all they could do with no air to move their lungs, as he ran they slowly disappeared into the hiding places they had stumbled from. An SUV loomed out of the darkness, illuminated by the flames and the moonlight: Dusty, sitting in the driveway of a house three houses over from the one they had plowed into. A second later and Johnny had the door open and he tumbled Lana inside onto the passenger seat. He ran around the car to the other side and fired a quick burst at three of the dead that came from the side of the garage and started toward him in their stumbling, dragging way. They all three went down, but they were back up again almost as quickly as they had gone down. He was too far away for head shots. He got the handle open and jumped into the car pulling the door shut behind him.

  He sat, his breath coming in ragged gasps and pulls. His lungs hurt, there was a stitch in his side and his heart felt like it just might explode at any second. He looked over at Lana, but her head was rocked back against the seat back. A sob escaped his throat, but he bit down on it, breathing hard, and checked the ignition.

  No keys, but that was what he had expected. What he hoped for was gas. The car should start, the gas was the important thing. He reached to the floorboards for his knapsack and a screwdriver to jimmy the ignition and that was when he realized he had nothing to get the truck started with. All he needed was a screwdriver to hammer into the ignition, pop the cylinder, and then start it, but he had neither the screwdriver nor a way to get it into the ignition in the first place. He fisted his hands and slammed them against the wheel. His head sank onto his hands.

  “Smash it,” Lana said. It was not much more than a whisper, but it bought Johnny's head up fast. Outside the truck the dead were gathering. Just three or four, but they could smell them, and it wouldn't be long until more showed up. He focused on her face which was ashen and blood slicked, unsure if she had really even spoken. She turned her face to him, eyes heavy lidded, unfocused. “Smash it, Johnny... Rock... Rocks by the driveway... Saw them... Smash it.” Her head sank down to the dashboard and stayed there. A trickle of blood ran across the dusty plastic and rolled toward the edge of the dash before it slipped over the edge and continued down into darkness.

  “Lana. You're hurt bad, Lana.”

  “Johnny... Johnny, shut up and get a rock... Get it, Johnny. Stop whining, get the rock.” Lana told him. Her words were muffled, whether from the effort or the position she was in he couldn't tell. He picked up the rifle by the barrel and looked through the glass at the dead that were trying to figure out a way into the truck. He waited for the one near the driver's door to slip backwards along the side of the SUV
and then he threw the door open and jumped from the truck.

  He landed bad, on the very same rocks Lana had been talking about, and nearly went all the way down before he caught himself and slammed his knee into the pavement to stop himself. He had been unable to close the door as his ankle twisted and he fell away. The one that had just slipped past the door was already turning to get inside. He couldn't shoot, if he did he might hit Lana. He launched himself at the shambling wreck instead and dragged it backwards and to the ground. They were both snarling he realized a moment later when he shot it in the head.

  A second one came around the back of the SUV. Johnny took two steps and shot it in the head. The third was on the opposite side of the truck and seemed frozen, unsure what to do. Johnny turned, picked up a large rock, and tried to step back into the truck. The ankle collapsed and he went sprawling, losing the rock, barely holding onto his rifle as he once again slammed his knee into the ground to stop himself from planting his face on the steel door sill of the car. The zombie on the other side made up her mind, stood to her full height, and sprang to the roof of the car. Johnny heard the metal buckle as she landed.

  A second later he forced himself to his feet, adrenaline flooding his body, leaving that sour electric taste in his mouth as it did. The zombie stood to her full height once more, nothing but tightly stretched skin and protruding bones, but determined to have him. Johnny raised the rifle and shot her under the chin. She collapsed on the barrel and he turned as she spilled past him and burst open onto the driveway behind him. Johnny took two shambling steps of his own, ankle and knee screaming, pain so hard that it made him stop and double up. He vomited, losing control for a brief instant, the pain was so hot. A second after that the adrenaline kicked back in and he finished his shambling travel, managed to stoop and pick up another large rock and get back inside the SUV. He slammed the door on the hand of another zombie that had come out of the darkness. He heard the bones snap, and the fingers fell away into the SUV as the door thudded home. Johnny collapsed against the steering wheel. He couldn't seem to catch his breath. He waited for his heart to slow down.