He had no idea how to reply to that. If the man didn't see the problem with delivering zombies in the first place, how could he convince him otherwise? Liam didn't even know why they were transporting them. Maybe, as Dave suggested, they were collecting the infected for later disposal. Maybe the locks and explosives were rigged wrong? What if they were designed to kill the zombies rather than blow apart the truck and release them?
He admitted his mind was prone to drift toward conspiracies and seldom to the simple explanations.
Yet, it did seem like overkill to have trucks explode at all, especially as it would almost always endanger the driver. Wouldn't it make more sense to tell the driver what they had back there, so they could be careful?
“I've been thinking about that and the only answer I have is that the zombies are being hauled for some evil purpose. Did they give you guns to protect yourself? Did they give you any warning about the dangerous cargo?”
Liam looked around the truck stop and made a show of counting every trailer he saw, including the few coming and going on the nearby connector road.
“There are fifty trucks here, give or take. If you all have a load just like ours, that means you are each carrying two or three hundred zombies. I'm not a trucker, so I can't answer this, but would you do things any differently if they told you these were zombies? Does it help not knowing?”
He tried to keep accusation out of his voice, but the driver's question about money rubbed him the wrong way. He'd spent three weeks fighting the government's abuse of the elderly, so he would be an instrument of good versus the evil of the zombies and their creators. Now he dealt with men who seemed more interested in the almighty dollar than doing what was right.
Liam eyed the contractors and wondered if they were much different than the trucker. Were they aware of the payloads and willing to keep quiet so that they could take food home to their families? What would he do if Victoria needed to protect their child?
That gave him butterflies in his stomach. It was the first time he'd directly thought of Victoria as the mother of his child.
I'm way too young for that.
A few drivers left the group and slinked away as if they feared being associated with the owner of the destroyed trailer, but most of them stuck around while he spoke.
“I believed him,” Dave said as he came up next to Liam and Victoria. “I drove this truck and met, um, Pierre, and some others not far out of Wilson. The kid was the first to hear the man's taps for help and he risked his life way more than I ever would have. I can't say for sure what you might find if you opened your own locks, but I'm 100% sure they didn't want me to find out I had zombies in the back of my trailer. I think it's worth considering, especially if we have ten or fifteen thousand zombies parked here on this lot with us.”
A couple more of the drivers left the group and jogged away. A few drivers arrived late, and one guy parked his truck next to Dave's so he could hop out and find out what was being discussed.
“The problem is the fancy locks,” Liam continued. “I can't tell you how to open them without having them go off.”
One of the female drivers raised her hand and started talking. “We can unhitch the loads and drop them into the river or into a lake. That will make sure those zombies don't get out.”
Liam nodded and caught sight of a black drone hovering near the truck stop's sign high above everyone's heads. He looked away as fast as possible but wondered if he'd been obvious about it.
Who's at the other end of that thing?
“And what if we're hauling gold or food?” a driver yelled from the back row.
“Just tap on your trailers. See if you hear zombies.” It seemed so obvious.
“I want them gone,” someone yelled.
The discussion continued with ideas about neutralizing the trailers. One guy knew about a cement factory where they could bury the boxes and seal them up forever. Someone suggested pushing them off a high cliff to flatten all the zombies, though there was some disagreement whether that would do the trick of killing them all. One woman used to work for the power company and suggested lining up all the trailers and electrocuting all the zombies.
“Can we all agree the cargo is probably really dangerous?” Liam finally said after waiting and listening.
No one objected.
“Now we have to stop all the others out there.” He faked sounding upbeat as the drivers returned to their rigs. “Stick around at the restaurant until we all figure this out,” he shouted at their backs as they walked away.
During their talk, more trucks entered and left the parking lot. Each second of delay meant other trailers were that much closer to their destinations. He'd watched the trucks drive by for hours while sitting on the roof of the farmhouse and had no illusions that stopping the fifty trucks on this lot was going to make much of a difference.
But it was a start.
5
“That went rather well. My audience will love your speech.” Dave held his camera, but Liam felt certain it wasn't broadcasting live because they'd been over the danger.
“I did my best, 100%,” he said mimicking Dave's common phrase.
“I'm sorry about broadcasting at the last truck stop. I hope I didn't get you in trouble.”
Liam didn't look up but felt the robotic eyes of the quadcopter drone above him.
“Don't worry about it. The important thing is that you had nothing to do with my actions. You were just a guy who picked up a couple of hitchhikers.”
“Well, no, I was more than that,” Dave protested. “I wanted to open the cargo and help that guy.”
“Right, but you had nothing to do with anything else. I was the one who alerted you to zombies inside your truck and all that.”
“Okay, yeah, but I'm on board. I want to figure out who did this and make them pay.” The driver held his web camera. “Look, Liam, um, I mean Pierre, you've turned me on to some serious shit baking in the oven of American government. I'm not going to sit by and let those people get away from it.”
Liam smacked his own head. He leaned in and gave Dave the shush sign and then whispered to him. “There's a drone up above listening. I was trying to get you off the hook.”
Dave immediately looked up and since there was no point pretending he didn't know about it, Liam looked up as well.
The drone was still present, as was a second aircraft about a thousand feet in the air. The higher one had two long fuselages joined together by a boxy middle part, kind of like a catamaran in the sky. He also noticed the sound of jet engines on the horizon, but they quickly faded away.
Dave looked at his camera and pointed it to the sky. “Well, my friends, it seems as if your host has bitten off more than he can chew. My young accomplice has pointed out winged predators above our heads and suggested they are listening to us. It may not be safe for you to be watching this.”
Dave looked at Liam with a serious face. “Hey, kid. You seem plugged in. Have you ever heard of government agents hurting people for just watching an illicit broadcast? Is my audience in danger?”
Liam shrugged at first, but the man deserved more than that. He knew for a fact his mom had used a multiplayer online video game to pass information around to other patriots. Even people like Mom got away with it during the period before the zombie apocalypse, but now he assumed there were many fewer channels and a lot less living viewers tuning in. Maybe the government had more overseers than there were people alive to watch illicit channels. That would mean that Dave's people were in danger.
“Dave, the honest answer is that I don't know, but I've seen and talked to a bunch of people from the other side. Defectors, I think. They told me to be careful in everything I did. If you and your followers are using the internet, you may be almost the only ones, now. That would make it very easy to track, you know?”
It was kind of funny to imagine that with the whole world in the crapper, anyone would tune in to watch a random trucker, but then he remembered how so
me of his friends would spend hours watching and laughing at videos of guys getting their nads smashed. If given the choice between Truckaduck and a blank screen, most people would watch a guy drive a truck.
“Will you excuse me? I need to think about some things. I made a down payment on ridding myself of the contents of my stomach after seeing what was inside my trailer. I think I'd like to finish that transaction in the bathroom, if you know what I mean?” Dave headed for the restaurant behind most of the other drivers but spun around as if he'd thought of something important. His ponytail twirled with him.
“When I met you, I was pretending to use the can. Now, here I am talking about the toilet again. Funny how that works, huh?”
He trotted off to catch up with the others.
Victoria hip-checked him as he stood there looking at the truck stop restaurant from the front. He was glad for the distraction.
“Heya, you did good,” she said.
“I don't know. It didn't have the satisfaction of really putting the knife into Elsa's people, if these are her guys.”
“We saw her die, Liam. Whatever was making her voice come out of the radio, it wasn't her. You shot her in the eye and we drowned her for good measure.”
“Yeah, I know, but someone is driving the drone up there. Someone is flying those jets. These security men are paid by someone.”
“You know I'm with you all the way, but maybe we can relax a little bit. These might be leftovers from the rest of the government that isn't led by a corrupt CrossFit champion and her savage minions. Am I right?”
She hipped him one more time. “Come on, let's go inside. I need to get this smell out of my nose, and I want to see if they are baking something yummy in there. Wanna check it out?”
A couple Humvees sped by and left the truck plaza like there was an emergency somewhere.
“It's ten miles up the highway!” he shouted to them. “You'll find a couple hundred of your missing zombies!”
They both laughed as they started across the parking lot toward the restaurant.
“There's a drone over your head,” he said in a discrete manner. “Don't look up there.”
“Who would do that?”
“Dave,” he said with a chuckle. “I tried to help the guy out, but now he is more invested in this conspiracy than we are, I think.”
“I like Dave,” she replied. “I hope he's okay.”
“Yeah, he's alright,” he said. He was a little spacey, but otherwise seemed like a standup guy. He did come back for them at the bridge, which was nine-tenths of his opinion.
They walked into the restaurant ready for the smells, but they were caught off guard by all the people.
“It looks like your message is spreading,” she said with awe as she slung her rifle over her shoulder.
“Um. Yeah.”
Unlike the last truck stop, this one was full of people holding and passing around guns. More people brought in guns from the back doors like they'd gone out to their trucks to get them.
“Excuse me, ma'am,” Liam said to a young, attractive woman walking in right next to him, “why are you carrying a gun here?”
The woman stopped and glared at Liam, but then softened when she saw Victoria was with him. She patted the little revolver tucked into her belt near her belly button. “Rumor has it the rigs out there are all full of zombies. Ain't no one taking any chances of one of them getting out, y'know what I mean?”
The woman swished her blonde hair out of her eyes. “Besides, you two seem to have me beat in the firepower department. I want to stick with you if the zombies come.”
Liam felt powerful knowing he had the heavy weaponry needed to fend off zombies. He got the feeling all the time with Victoria, but it meant a lot that the stranger woman looked up to them to support her in the event of a zombie outbreak. He took that as encouragement to do everything in his power to guard the woman and others at the truck stop.
He was also glad to see folks ready to defend themselves, too, as that took a lot of the responsibility from his shoulders. For so long it was just him and Victoria, or him and Grandma. These were average American people--not government agents or helpless refugees. After reading so many depressing zombie books, he knew there was no such thing as a safe haven in the zombie apocalypse but being around so much weaponry made him almost feel safe.
He smiled as the woman strode away.
“Another citizen helped,” he said as if he was a superhero.
“Don't get a big head,” Victoria replied with good humor.
“Liam and Victoria,” a woman called to them.
Sabella came running up a second later with her daughters in tow like ducklings on a pond. She had her shotgun in her hands and pointed it at the ceiling.
“Liam, where's Dave? We have to leave right now!”
“What? Why?” He looked around expecting something obviously wrong, such as a horde of zombies marching in.
“The security people are gone. They sped away and left us here.”
He'd noticed the two Humvees leaving and knew that couldn't have been all of them.
“That's crazy,” he said before halting. He looked out the windows of the restaurant toward the grassy areas flanking the truck stop. The parked trucks blocked much of his view of the grass at the edge of the parking lot, but the guys weren't visible in those gaps.
He saw something odd in a long opening between two rigs near the back of the property. A lone man stood on top of a large pile of dirt, but he couldn't tell which way he faced.
“Don't freak out,” he advised her, while taking the same advice. “Let's find Dave,” he agreed.
6
Liam couldn't stop himself from getting excited as they crossed the restaurant. His palms were greasy with sweat in moments and his heart rate began shifting through all the gears toward the top end. The pace maxed out when he finally caught sight of a line of Humvees getting on the nearby highway. That meant it wasn't Sabella's imagination.
“Liam--” Victoria began.
“Those guys were a bunch of scrubs,” he snapped back. “They're leaving civilians behind. But why?”
He slipped into conspiracy territory and frowned inwardly that it felt like familiar territory.
I started a rebellion.
His first instinct was that he'd been too glib with Hamilton in front of the drivers. Not only did he refuse to drop his weapon, but he tried to get the prisoner to talk about the Patriot Snowball movement.
“He tried to kill him!” he blurted out as if it was obvious.
Victoria didn't stop walking with him and didn't ask what he meant.
“That Hamilton guy knew someone was going to be in that cage. He tried to kill Preston before I knew he was alive. That's what that was all about.”
“Yeah, I think you're right but why are they leaving?” she replied. “They got what they wanted.”
“I may have, um, started some trouble.”
“Liam Peters, when have you ever started trouble?” Contrary to how he felt, she seemed to enjoy ribbing him about it.
“Well, there was that one time ... ” he said with laughter. “And this time I think the drone people knew I stirred up all these drivers. I mean, look at them all.” He pointed to a big man standing by the side door with a shotgun in his hand and three pistols tucked into his tight belt.
“Wouldn't that help them if there are zombies around? Where in the world can you go where people aren't armed and ready to help each other?”
He could think of a lot of places outside of America, but here in the heartland almost no one could go ten feet without meeting someone carrying a weapon anymore. The rules prohibiting guns might have worked while security ringed the gas station, but not once the contractors bugged out.
“If those were Elsa's people and they figured out who we are, they may have decided to pull their old tricks on us.”
“What,” she said, suddenly very serious. “Are they going to drop a rocket on us? Use big b
ombs? Send in the Marines?”
“We have survived a lot,” he said in agreement.
“And we'll survive this. We'll get everyone on the road and out of here as soon as we find Dave.”
Liam tried to quell his anxiety, but he felt that old sense of impending doom. He was used to it, now, and wasn't willing to ignore it for much longer. If they couldn't find Dave, and none of the other drivers would help, he was ready to start running again into the nearby farmlands. Safety had to be somewhere out there.
“Awe, hell,” Sabella groaned. “Why is he leaving?”
Dave's truck had already made most of a U-turn on its way out of the front entrance.
“He must have doubled back while we were inside,” Victoria said with sadness, “but why?”
Liam stood and watched the truck pull away and could imagine him furiously recounting his story to his followers as he spoke into the camera. Did he scare the guy too much with his warnings about drones and attacks on his audience? Sabella wanted to be clear of him and Victoria, too, so maybe that was just the sentiment going around.
The utensils and plates of the restaurant rattled as something powerful shook the whole building.
Liam scanned the front parking lot and saw nothing but normal activity. He jogged toward the back and made his way into a clump of other drivers looking toward the gas pumps and parking area in the rear.
Victoria came up next to him.
“Someone blew a lock,” he said with caution so only she heard him.
She pointed to smoke rising from behind the front row of trucks at the pumps.
“Idiot,” Liam murmured. “I shouldn't have said anything until we figured this out. Now security is gone, and people want to know if I, the young boy who can't possibly have a clue, was telling the truth.”
“You can't blame yourself,” she replied while watching with rapt attention to the parking lot. Several drivers ran toward the sound of the blast, a few with red fire extinguishers in their hands.
“I know. But--” He stopped cold.
It escaped his notice until now, but as he watched the drivers running toward the flames he happened to see a unique vehicle parked at the far-left pump. Several people stood near the front tires as if they were about to walk toward the restaurant when the explosion interrupted their plans.
Zombie Escape_More Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 38