Zombie Chaos Book 2: Highway to Hell

by Daniel Martone

  Just be hiding in the damn van!

  From the rear of the vehicle, I flipped on my hand-crank flashlight and scanned the van’s interior. Only a few tense seconds passed, before I was rewarded with the sight of two glowing eyes peering at me from the driver’s side footwell.

  I smiled, the relief evident in my voice. “Always knew you were a smart girl.” She blinked once, and I returned the gesture. “Sorry about the ruckus. I’ll try to keep it down. Just sit tight, OK?”

  Then, I pulled the tarp over my exposed cache of weapons, secured the doors, and strolled to the front of the van. With the lantern perched on my radiator, Ray leaned over the engine compartment, gripped the busted hose, and examined the area for additional damage. When he sensed me beside him, he stepped back from the van, wiping excess coolant from his hands.

  “I can fix dis for ya.”

  “Seriously? That would be awesome.”

  He nodded toward the side-view mirror. “Can fix dat, too. Course, in a pinch, all ya need is a little duct tape.”

  “Yeah, I forgot a few key items when I was packing up, but luckily, a nice guy back in New Orleans took pity on me and gave me some tape before I left town. Just haven’t had a chance to fix it yet.”

  “Well, ya gotta chance now. Hard enough to drive out dere without bein’ half-blind.”

  “True enough,” I said. “But I don’t know how I could repay you. I already owe you for my life.”

  Ray gazed at his son, who sat on the cement floor, surrounded by dead bodies and wrestling with the dog.

  “You saved da dog. Dat’d make him yours, but… let Travis take him an’ do me one other favor, an’ I’d say we’re even.”

  “Looks like Frankie already made that decision for us,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think Azazel would appreciate him much.”

  This Cajun dude and his son had saved my life, rescued me (and Azazel) from a bunch of murderous rednecks, and now, he was offering to repair my radiator and my side-view mirror. Figured the least I could do was give him Frankie and help him with whatever task he had in mind.

  I glanced at Ray. “What do you need from me?”

  Ray’s focus shifted from me to Travis. “Son, go git my red toolbox. An’ bring your li’l sis back with you. Tell her to pack her 9mm.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replied with the discipline of a Marine sergeant. Then, he rose to his feet, approached the garage door, and flipped on a small flashlight.

  As he peered through the glass window, no doubt checking for trouble, Frankie scrambled to his feet, too. Obviously protective of his new family, the dog trailed behind Travis and nudged his leg.

  Turning, Travis simply said, “Stay here, boy. I’ll be right back.” Then, he readied his gun, turned the knob, and slipped into the darkness, shutting the door behind him.

  “Wait,” I said to Ray. “Should he really be out there by himself?”

  “Trust me,” he said. “Dat boy know his way aroun’ a gun.”

  Instinctively, I glanced down at Kevin’s mutilated skull and recalled how Travis had killed him without hesitation.

  Yeah, no shit he can handle himself. Ray had obviously taught him well — a fact for which I’d be eternally grateful.

  CHAPTER

  8

  “Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days.” - MacReady, The Thing (1982)

  Frankie sat on his hindquarters a few feet from the door, fixated on the glass and patiently awaiting Travis’s return.

  Ray, meanwhile, surveyed the bodies still lying on the cement floor, his expression stoic. Not remorseful at all. Hell, I wasn’t sorry either that the assholes were dead. Better them than me. Besides, if vigilante justice was ever socially acceptable, I had to believe it was during a zombie apocalypse.

  I just didn’t think I could’ve dispatched the rednecks as rapidly as he and his son had. I’d only shot my first man that morning, and even though it had been a clear case of kill-or-be-killed, murdering humans didn’t come as easily to me as putting down zombies. Ray, however, was as solid as iron, as sharp as nails, and as accurate as a heat-seeking missile, and Travis seemed to be following in his father’s footsteps.

  I felt like one lucky bastard, thankful they’d decided to sneak into the Hamiltons’ garage when they did. Armed and ready to take out the neighborhood looters. If they’d waited a few more minutes, mine might’ve been one of the bloody bodies on the floor. My only consolation was knowing that I would’ve stayed dead and not arisen as an undead carnivore.

  First, because the rednecks would’ve likely shot me in the head. Thanks a lot, assholes. And second, as far as I knew, you had to be bitten to turn into a zombie. It didn’t seem like a situation where a virus lay dormant in every living human, ensuring we’d all turn into zombies after death, no matter if we’d been bitten or not. At least, I’d seen no evidence of that yet. Every zombie I’d encountered so far had sported an obvious wound or missing body part.

  All I’d learned from my friends, Samir and Dibya, was that the zombie epidemic had started in their home country — India — and, if I’d correctly grasped their reasoning, that the infection itself had likely come from “somewhere else,” whatever the hell that meant.

  Of course, the details of the epidemic’s origins were still nebulous, and with Samir and Dibya likely dead by now, I certainly couldn’t ask them for a better explanation. Someday, perhaps, someone would uncover the real facts of how the whole end-of-the-world crisis had begun, but for now, all I needed to know was that the zombie infection had spread around the globe and that I had to stay alive long enough to protect my feline spitfire and see my beloved wife again.

  I glanced at Ray. “Did you know those guys?”

  He shook his head. “Not from ’round here. We saw ’em go into several houses ’long da street. Thought ’bout dropping ’em den, but dey were only goin’ into empty places.”

  I nodded in understanding. Why risk his life, and those of his kids, to stop some armed looters? Though tempted, I refrained from asking why he and his children had opted to stay behind in the first place when most (if not all) of their neighbors had already fled.

  “But din Travis saw ’em enter dis house,” Ray continued, “as you was savin’ da dog out back.”

  I waited for a smart-ass comment about putting myself at risk for a damn dog, but it never came. I almost justified myself anyway (and what some might’ve thought was a misguided love of animals) by saying that pets could become zombified creatures, too, and turn on their families, but I hadn’t actually witnessed that yet. So far, dogs, cats, and other non-human animals appeared to be just more fodder for overactive, ever-present undead appetites. And after the corpses I’d already seen in the French Quarter and elsewhere, I couldn’t have stomached watching poor Frankie get eviscerated by those two zombies. Especially since he reminded me of my parents’ old wirehaired pointing griffon, Gypsy — the best dog I’d ever known.

  “Knew we better git over here before dey did you in,” Ray admitted.

  Once the gunshots had stopped ringing in my ears, and I’d realized my new pals had no intention of killing me as well, I’d briefly wondered if rescuing Frankie had saved my life. I gazed at the dog, who still stood by the door but had turned around to watch me. For a moment, I held his eyes, just long enough to convince myself we shared a mutual understanding and perhaps even mutual respect. I’d saved him from the zombies, and he, in turn, had spared me from the rednecks’ bloody fate via the neighborly intervention of Ray and Travis.

  Suddenly, Frankie shifted his focus beyond me and unleashed a guttural bark. Turning, I noted Azazel’s face, forepaws, and upper torso in the passenger-side window. She’d apparently climbed onto her carrier, leaned against the glass, and spotted Frankie in the shadows with her impressive night vision. Now, of course, she was hissing and growling at the strange if friendly-looking dog. And Frankie, who now stood on all fours in a protective stance, was growling in return.

  Sighing, I turne
d to Ray. “See what I mean? Taking Frankie was never a possibility.”

  Ray chuckled, then frowned. “We better calm ’em down, or dey’ll lure every zombie in da area.”

  I certainly didn’t want such an outcome, not the least of which because Travis and his little sister still had to navigate their way back to the Hamiltons’ garage. In the dark, no less.

  So, while Ray clutched Frankie’s collar, I carefully slid open the driver’s side door of my van, stepped inside, and scooped up Azazel before she had a chance to wonder what I had in mind. Gently, I guided her inside the cat carrier, and naturally, she cried with displeasure as I secured the gate. To placate her and distract her for a while, I opened a can of tuna, spooned about a third into a porcelain ramekin, and slipped it through the little lid atop her carrier.

  As expected, she stopped meowing immediately and dug into her favorite treat. I stroked her furry head, shut the carrier lid and the van door, and rejoined Ray near the dead looters.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “I forgot those idiots left the back door wide open when they grabbed me.”

  Hoping the barks and gunshots hadn’t enticed any unwanted visitors into the Hamiltons’ house, I retrieved my trusty axe from the passenger-side footwell in my van and led Ray up the steps, over Paw’s bullet-riddled corpse, and into the den. By the light of the lantern my companion carried, I didn’t see any zombies inside the house, but I could certainly hear a few undead interlopers moaning along the rear fence. Without hesitation, I shut and locked the sliding glass door, then picked up my shotgun from the tiled floor. Felt good to hold the Mossberg again, even if the barrel was still covered in zombie foulness.

  After performing a quick sweep of the rest of the house, we returned to the garage. While we awaited his children, Ray briefly related the tale of how he, Travis, and his daughter, Nicole, had returned from a fishing trip on Lake Maurepas to find the boat launch overrun by decomposing carnivores. Although he didn’t strike me as a fan of horror movies, he matter-of-factly explained how he’d encountered and dealt with the sudden zombie epidemic. Obviously, he didn’t care whether his enemy was an Iraqi insurgent or an undead corpse; he’d handle either situation without hesitation.

  As I’d assumed, Ray was a former Marine. He’d dedicated twenty years of his life to the service before taking early retirement when his wife got cancer. After she’d died, Ray willingly raised his children on his own, teaching them all he knew about defending their home, property, lives, and loved ones. So, naturally, all three of them had been armed, even his daughter, on their shocking return to the boat launch. A few well-placed head shots, and they’d reached their truck and made it home more safely than most people surely had.

  Based on his accent, I’d also assumed Ray was a native Cajun, and I was right. Raised on the bayous of southern Louisiana as a shrimper and a gator hunter, he’d returned to his fishing and hunting heritage during his retirement. But he’d obviously kept up with his shooting practice and physical conditioning, too. Shit, the dude couldn’t have been more of a badass if he’d tried.

  He certainly put my own attempts to prepare for the zombie apocalypse to shame. While I’d spent the past two weeks gathering supplies, walking twice a day, and learning how to use my varied firearms, I was still overweight, out-of-shape, and nowhere near ready for such a species-ending challenge.

  Just as I wondered whether Ray and I should stack up and cover the bodies of the dead looters, Travis returned with his little sister and his father’s toolbox.

  I’d worried that the sight of the three corpses would upset the young girl, but perhaps not surprisingly, she turned out to be as tough and imperturbable as her father and older brother. Roughly three-foot-nothing and maybe seven or eight years old, she marched right up to me, stuffed her Glock in a side holster, and thrust out her hand. Despite her small stature, she had the same black hair and no-nonsense vibe that Ray and Travis possessed.

  “I’m Nicole,” she said.

  With a wry grin, I accepted her hand and shook it. Her grip was almost as firm as her father’s. “I’m Joe. Nice to meet you, Nicole.”

  Ray, meanwhile, took the toolbox from Travis and placed it on the workbench. Dents, rust, and even what resembled dried blood marred the large red box. It looked as though it had already survived an apocalyptic event.

  “Four more zombies walkin’ out front,” Travis reported to his father.

  “Recognize them?” Ray asked.

  “Three of them were so messed up I couldn’t tell, but one was definitely Mrs. Kerry.”

  “Damn, dat’s a shame. She was a nice lady.”

  A moment later, Travis and Nicole were sitting on the ground, petting Frankie without a care in the world, and their father was once again examining my engine compartment.

  “So, where ya headed with dis rig?” he asked me.

  “Well, first, I have to make it to Baton Rouge, to pick up my wife, Clare,” I said. “And then we’re headed to northern Michigan.”

  With any luck, my parents would be up there, and if possible, I intended to collect my brothers, John and James, and their daughters along the way.

  Ray squinted at me like I had lobsters — or more appropriately, shrimp and crawfish — crawling from my ears. “Why you wanna head all da way up dere?”

  “It’s a pretty isolated location, and I’ve been sending stuff up north to prepare for this.”

  “To prepare for dis? For da dead to rise?”

  “It’s a long story, but a couple of weeks ago, some friends of mine told me this was gonna happen. People I trust. Not many of the folks I told believed me, of course, but well, I guess my friends turned out to be right.”

  Briefly, I explained what little I knew about how the zombie infection had begun in India and eventually spread to New Orleans. I still had some questions about the whole thing, but Ray took my story in stride — despite its obvious holes. He might not have trusted me had I shared the same news two weeks earlier, but nowadays, seeing was definitely believing. In the end, it didn’t really matter how the zombie chaos had started. All the survivors could do was deal with the rotten consequences and try to, well, survive.

  Nodding stoically, Ray turned back to his beat-up toolbox, opened the lid, and revealed a neatly arranged assortment of tools. After a quick search, he grabbed a slotted screwdriver, a box cutter, a stainless-steel duct clamp, and a roll of thick black tape.

  “I told you, I have some duct tape,” I said, edging toward the passenger-side door of my van. “Hate to use up your stuff.”

  “No problem,” he assured me. “I got a ton of it. An’ it’s a helluva lot sturdier dan duct tape.”

  Without awaiting my response, he reached into the engine compartment and pulled off the busted hose leading into the radiator. Even though the van had been cooling down in the garage, I’d pushed her to her limit, so I wasn’t surprised to see steaming antifreeze coolant pour from the radiator and the hose. The radioactive-looking green shit was surely still hot to the touch, but this guy didn’t even flinch.

  Yep, definitely a badass.

  Using the box cutter, Ray sliced the holey end off the hose, then wrapped the rest of it with his heavy-duty tape. He slipped the duct clamp onto one end of the hose, forced the hose onto the radiator fitting, and tightened the clamp with the screwdriver. In less than a few minutes, he’d fixed my ride.

  “It’ll need some more antifreeze,” he said, “but for now, we can just fill it back up with water.”

  I nodded, figuring I’d just swipe some water from the Hamiltons’ toilet tanks or, if it had cooled down enough since the blackout, their hot water heater. While I hadn’t provided for every occurrence during my frenzied two-week prep phase, I had definitely filled my van’s built-in and portable water tanks. But there was no point in wasting my own supplies. Although my parents’ Michigan property curved around a freshwater lake, had access to a well, and was equipped with a couple generators (thanks to my maxed-out credit cards), I want
ed to make sure we had enough water for the long journey north. There was no guarantee, after all, that we’d encounter handy resources along the way — or folks as generous as Ray and his kids.

  Turning to my latest savior, I simply said, “Thanks, Ray. I really owe you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  With my assistance, he then proceeded to repair my side-view mirror. I held it in place while he taped the shit out of it. It wouldn’t last forever, but unless I ran into any more parking lot doors, it would likely hold until I could replace it in Michigan.

  “So, lemme get dis straight,” Ray said when we’d finished. “You bought all dat stuff, but didn’t get yourself a good set of tools or spare parts or even some duct tape?”

  From most people, such a question would’ve come across as you’re a fucking idiot, but Ray seemed to be genuinely asking me. I felt foolish admitting that I’d left several rolls of tape behind during a recent supply run to Home Depot — and that I’d forgotten to remove my own tools from beneath the backseat of my pickup truck when I’d sold it to purchase the step van. So, I merely shook my head. What else could I say?

  Smirking, he shut the toolbox lid and slid it toward me across the workbench. “Take dat. Got more tools dan I know what to do with.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, dumbfounded by the guy’s generosity.

  I was tempted to ask if the non-rust stains on the toolbox were indeed blood, but thought better of it. Assholes might’ve made up 99.98 percent of the world’s population, but Ray and his children were certainly part of the .02-percent contingent, and I didn’t want to repay his kindness by insulting him.

  Ray lowered my hood, then turned back to me. “An’ now… ’bout dat favor.”