And that’s what he did. For one moment, he stopped and stared at me and almost looked liked he had listened to what I had said. It was a little bit disconcerting, but that didn’t stop me from doing what I had to do. I took that opportunity to drive my pole forward, passing it through the chainlink fence, and piercing the zombies eye just as planned and drove my spear deep into the thing’s skull.
The entrance made a sickening piercing noise when it entered and made an even worse sucking sound as the zombie slid off the pole and collapsed backwards.
“That is so gross,” Jay said.
Jane stepped up to the fence, her pole up, and bobbed around on her feet for a few seconds until her zombie finally settled down. As soon as the zombie leaned in toward the fence, Jane shot forward, much like a javelin thrower.
The zombie was a slight female who looked like she had been a teenager when she was alive. She wore a Back Street Boys T-shirt which made me feel sad for some reason. I’m sure it was because she was now a zombie and not because the band was so lame.
Jane put everything she had into the thrust and the momentum did the rest and then some. Her pole struck home and when Jane pulled it back, a long geyser-like flow of blood shot forth from the thing’s now gaping eye socket and splashed onto Jane’s shoes.
“Shit, these are my favorite shoes,” she exclaimed.
“They’ll wash off,” I said.
“I know, but still,” she said getting close to whining.
We each took turns taking out zombies in this fashion. Some did better than others. Jay got tentative with one his thrusts he got his pole stuck in the side of one zombie’s head, but didn’t kill it. It flailed around for several seconds looking like human lollipop before I had to step in and put the thing all the way down.
We left the bodies of the undead there on the other side of the fence along with the others we had dispatched earlier. The pile was getting impressive, but if this kept up, we were going to have to do something about them.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that never became a problem.
We were about to enter the building when I picked up distant rumble rolling our way. When I looked up, I didn’t see a cloud in the sky and that’s what I felt my stomach almost do a double roll.
“Do you hear that, Grant?” Randell asked.
“What is that?” Jane asked.
The rumble got louder and closer.
“I hope it’s not what I think it is,” Randell said.
“What is it?” Jay asked.
I cut to the chase and said, “I think it’s jets.”
“Jets to do what, Grant?” Jane asked.
“When we left San Antonio, the government dropped big ass fire bombs on the city to eradicate the zombies,” I said while scanning the skies. There was nothing in view yet, but the roar was getting closer by the second. “It sounds like that again.”
All four of us stood looking into the north sky. The sky was as clear and blue as I’d ever seen it. It almost looked innocent, devoid of any bad intent or malice, which it was, but the six jets that suddenly appeared just a few miles north of us seemed as frightening as the ones that nearly blew all of us to kingdom come not that long ago.
“Should we be running inside now?” Randell asked.
I stood watching the dark blips of the jets coming closer and closer. “I don’t think so. We’re only seeing handfuls of undead here. I doubt if they’d waste the ordinance on those. I’d guess they’re headed south.”
“You sure about that?” Randell asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
Traveling at Mach 1, the jets, which were just seconds ago dark smudges on the sky, ate up the miles between us and them ravenously. They were down to just a few miles, but maintained a safe altitude. It was when they lowered to bombing run level that worried me, but I was no expert.
They kept on coming and in a few short seconds, they were on their way, then over us in a flash, and past us. When we turned to watch their southward progress, I saw them start their descent, dropping down closer to the ground.
Since we were following along the Red River, I suspect that Texas was just about ten miles south of us. The jets had dipped down to bombing level at just about that point in my best estimation.
I really didn’t need to estimate for too long because a hellacious set of booming noises sounded in that direction, followed by a fantastic orange glow that seemed to be expanding with each passing second. Randell and I had seen this before and if he was feeling like me, he probably wanted an adult diaper about then.
Even at this distance, I could see the flames. I stood partially mesmerized for what seemed like an hour, watching the flames leap upwards into the sky casting an angry orange and yellow glow across the pale blue.
Maybe it was the fact that I rarely saw such raw power in my life that left me standing, rooted in place? Despite the fact that the last time I saw it, it nearly burnt me to a crisp, I stood as still as a statue.
What brought me out of it was Jay as he came up by my shoulder and said, “Grant, dude, should we be doing something?”
“Like what?” I responded.
“Like getting the hell out of here,” Jay said.
I was about to say something when the back doors burst open and Joni came running out with Martin and Jessica. All three of them looked like they were ready to run to Ontario at that very moment and I felt like I wouldn’t be too far behind them.
“Grant, are they bombing us?” Joni shouted her question.
The doors opened again and Chuck mossied out the door, seemingly unhurried by the commotion. He looked south, his hand shielding his eyes, then looked down and spit on the ground.
“I don’t think so, but it’s awfully close,” I said.
“What do you think it is? Joni asked.
“I’m thinking they’re having problems keeping this contained and are bringing in the heavy hitters. Which makes me think they aren’t going to be able it keep it contained.”
“What should we do?” Joni asked.
Before I could respond, Robbie shouted down from the roof, “Holy shit, did you see that?”
We couldn’t miss it,” I shouted back.
We all stood in awkward silence for several seconds watching the glow spread westward, becoming more fierce by the second.
“I think we need to leave,” I said.
“But what about Texas?” Randell said, his voice sounding like a child who had just lost their favorite toy.
I turned and looked him in the eye and said, “Randell, Texas is lost for now, but I’m sure it will rise again.”
“You think so?” Randell said, reaching for some kind a hopeful straw.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said. What I didn’t tell him was that it was a good chance that Texas would rise again, but this time it would be undead.
“Let’s get everyone together and see how fast we can bug out,” I said. “Joni, can you still drive a school bus?”
She just looked at me with a scowl and shook her head.
Three hours later, we had the bus packed and after another set of trips around the neighborhood had scavenged up a few more gallons of gas. I only hoped it was enough to get us to the next town.
Randell, Robbie, and Mo helped me wrangle all the people. Jay was heartsick about leaving his sprouts behind and even brought one along in a small clay pot, saying it was a “just in case plant.” Randell wheeled Rosalita out of the school doors in a wheelchair we had obtained from the school nurse’s office. Rosalita looked miserable. Along with her bad ankle, she was still mourning the loss of Sammy, a young Hispanic kid who had died saving her life on our run out of Texas.
“Mr. Grant,” she said, “you should just leave me here. I will only slow you down.”
“Rosalita, you’re the heart and soul of this operation,” I said. “We can’t go anywhere without you.”
She managed a weak smile and reached out and patted my hand. “You’re a good man, Mr. G
rant. A good man.”
I had my doubts about that. Robbie and Mo helped Rosalita up the steps and she only groaned once in pain during the move.
The last person out the doors was Chuck. I could tell a part of him was connected to the school just like Randell’s heart was rooted in Texas. There were no outward signs of distress, but just a vibe that I felt when I said we were leaving. When I invited him, Robbie, and Mo along, I sensed some hesitation from Chuck, but logic won out. That or survival.
He still had on on his dark janitor’s outfit and wore heavy black combat boots. He carried two large duffle bags that sagged heavily from the weight of what was in them. He didn’t look to be laboring from the effort as he moved from the side door of the building to the bus.
“What’s in the bags?” Randell asked.
“My stuff,” Chuck said and moved past Randell to the back of the bus. He set down one of the bags and hoisted the other one up into the back of the bus.
“You need help with those?” Jay said leaning out the back door.
“No, thanks,” Chuck said.
Jay ignored him and reached down with one hand to pick up the first bag. I saw his face strain and go red from the effort. He shook his head and grabbed the bag with both hands and, straining, was able to pull it out of the doorway.
“Told you, I don’t need help,” Chuck said as took the bag from Jay with one hand and lifted it into the back of the bus. Chuck reached up onto the floor of the bus, pulled himself up and into the bus in one fluid move that looked almost acrobatic. There was more to this man than met the eye. A lot more I suspected.
We loaded the final items on and got everyone in seats. I took a quick inventory and discovered we were missing someone.
“Where’s Robbie?” I asked.
“He said he had a couple more things to get,” Mo said, twitching nervously in his seat.
“Well, this train is leaving,” I said and started to get off the bus when the building doors burst open with Robbie pushing a cart filled with all sorts of electronic gear on it. I saw a couple laptops, something that looked like a mini-satellite dish and a vast array of gadgets and gizmos along with four car batteries.
I stepped off the bus and met Robbie at the back door. “What is all this?” I asked.
“It’s things we might need,” he said.
“Laptops? We’re back in the stone age here with no internet. Why do we need computers?”
“No, that’s not entirely true,” he said. “No terrestrial internet, but the satellites are still floating up there,” he stopped and pointed into the sky.
“So, you can get on the internet with this setup?”
“Well, not yet,” he said and looked down at his feet.
I almost told him to leave it all behind, but gave in. “Just get it on board.”
That only held us up another ten minutes. I took the seat behind Joni and asked how the gas situation was.
“Three quarters of a tank,” she said. “That should get us out of the state.”
“That’s good,” I said and leaned forward and whispered, “I’m almost as sick of Oklahoma as I was of Texas.”
She looked back at me and smiled, but it faded quickly. I turned my head to see Dave giving us both the an eyeful of pissed off attitude.
I decided to change the subject, “I guess the question of the day is where should we go?”
I looked to the back of the bus and saw nothing but blank expressions. We had survived day-by-day since the outbreak and that hadn’t allowed any long term planning. The government wasn’t offering many solutions other than either telling people to stay put or to evacuate, usually at the last minute when the situation was about to rise up and bite them on the ass. Literally, not figuratively.
Being the leader, I think the weight of the decision rested with me. Oh boy.
“Okay,” I said and cleared my throat. “From our experiences in San Antonio and then driving by Dallas, I think we should avoid any big cities. Since it seems like the epicenter of the Outbreak was in the west and southwest, I think we should avoid going that way.”
Robbie interrupted, “But there have been reports of outbreaks in the east in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.”
“All near big population centers like Boston, New York, and Phillie,” I said. “I have this idea.” At that moment, it seemed as if they all leaned a little closer to me. “Since we don’t know how this thing is going to go, we should find a safe place to ride it out. My family has a very large house on an island just off North Carolina on the Outer Banks. I think it could house us and maybe there will be open houses around that place we could settle in.”
“I think we need to get to a place like Washington D.C.” Dave piped in. “Since all the politicians and military muckety-mucks are there, there’s no way they’d let that place fall.”
“D.C. is a large population center and Baltimore is right there,” I said. “I’m not too certain about the safety of being around that many people.”
“But what do you know?” Dave said in a challenging tone. “We don’t know diddly about what is really going on. We only get occasional media reports and most of those are days old. We need to get around people with big guns.” He rose from his seat and stood as if he were trying to generate enthusiasm for his idea.
“Dave, I hear your point,” I said trying to be diplomatic. “I lived and worked in D.C. You could barely get around the place with only the living there. If the undead showed up, you could get caught in there and never find your way out.”
“What about our extended families?” Robbie asked. “I’ve got family up east, but the reports up there haven’t been good. Plus, we’d have to travel that far. Anyone else have family somewhere else?”
I looked around the bus and it was a sad story. With the exception of some distant relatives in Idaho who would probably outlast this whole zombie shit storm, I was alone on this planet. Most of the people coming out of Texas lost entire families and anyone left behind there was probably dead or worse. I was assuming Jay and Jane were in the same boat.
“Anyone have family they need to get to?” I asked.
“All my family is back in Czechoslovakia,” Mo said.
No one else spoke.
“I guess that leaves us at a decision point; go with me to the island I talked about in North Carolina or go with Dave’s proposal and head to D.C. We can do this by a simple show of hands. All those in favor of North Carolina?”
Nearly everybody’s hands went up including Martin with Jessica and Joni having their hands poised to go up, but a hard stare from Dave held them in place. The only other noticeable hand that stayed down was Chuck’s.
“Okay,” I started to say, but Dave cut me off.
“What about you Chuck?” Dave asked.
“I’m just along for the ride,” he said.
“North Carolina it is,” I said and slid back into my seat.
Dave sat down hard and made no attempt to hide his displeasure, crossing his arms and glaring at me. That was just another notch on the board against me, I guess.
Martin sang lightly as we pulled out onto the street, “The wheels on the bus go round and round, go round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round…”
I liked the kid, but I hoped he didn’t keep that up. He didn’t as everyone on the bus got quiet for our new adventure. It felt good to be getting some distance between us and the undead, and everybody, but Randell felt a little more relaxed. He mourned the loss of his Texas in respectful, but somber silence.
Joni drove us out of Idabel and then out of Oklahoma and into Arkansas. Traveling was a hot and sticky affair as we decided to forego air conditioning to save on fuel. Before we were thirty miles down the road, I felt my shirt sticking to my back. By my quick calculations, we had well over a thousand miles in front of us. Joni thought we had few hundred miles of fuel, at most, so that finding a new source would become imperative in a our near future.
Lit
tle Rock was to the north, but we skirted around it for fear of any encounters with the zombies. We saw a few other vehicles on the road riding along with us away from Texas. Most of the little towns we passed through were either dark or boarded up with very few lights on. Damn few people were going back towards the west and most of those were military vehicles. We saw a few military aircraft in the sky as we made our way east. It was mostly high flying planes and a few attack helicopters who paid us no heed.
We did spot several bodies beside the roads. They looked like they had once been alive, then undead and alive again only to be taken down. We didn’t stop for any in-depth inspections, but these little pop-up Outbreaks were quite unsettling. The virus was finding a way behind enemy lines and we were the enemy. None of this bode well for us or the rest of the humanity.
We attempted to stop at a small gas station in a small burg south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, but the pumps were locked up tight and I strongly suspected that they were most likely empty. We tried again at another small town east of there, but found a small well armed militia surrounding the place and just breezed by, thankful that no one shot at us. We had a very bad experience with local yokels playing “end of the world/anything goes” rules once before with a group like that. It didn’t go well for them, but I didn’t want to push our luck.
Robbie used his tech skills to monitor whatever media was still on the air in the area with some of the gizmos he brought along, but most of the local operators had disappeared during the spread of the infection. Besides the national media, the only independent reports came from fringe sources. For some reason, Robbie seemed to key on them.
“This guy says all of California has been taken over by the undead,” Robbie said.
“Ay, dios mios,” Rosalita exclaimed as she crossed herself.
“What does the national media say?” I asked.
“They say there are outbreaks in Southern California around San Diego and it may have reached L.A., but I think the military is sanitizing all that.”
“Can you get a corroborating source for your guy?” I asked, putting air quotes up when I said ‘your guy.’
Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America Page 2