Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

  “Fuck,” Charlie said. “This is getting old.”

  “At least this time you guys hid most of the ammo,” Sarah said.

  The Reservation Police vehicle, a big Yukon or Suburban, sat in the road with its overhead lights running. The Southern Ute Indian Police seal displayed on the door told them it was Indian Police, not State or Municipal. A middle-aged man in uniform approached the Isuzu and Sarah rolled the window down.

  “Hi, folks,” the man said. “How are you all doing today?”

  “We’ve been better, to be honest,” Sarah replied.

  The man chuckled. “That’s true enough for everyone, I guess. Let me ask you, where are you going?”

  Sarah sighed. This line of questioning was getting old. “We’re headed to the safe zone in El Paso.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I need to check you guys over, make sure no one in your group is infected.” He looked back at the Mercedes. “Is he with you?”

  “Yes. That’s my husband.”

  “Okay, what I need you all to do for me is get out of the vehicles.” He gestured to the SUIP vehicle and waved someone over. A heavyset woman climbed out of the passenger side and started walking their direction.

  “Ma’am, you’ll need to go with Susan. She’s going to search you for bites, scratches, and any signs of infection. Sir,” he pointed at Charlie, “come with me please.”

  He led Charlie back to the Mercedes, where he asked Jack to get out and join them.

  “What I need you guys to do for me is strip down to your skivvies. If you want, I can have a privacy curtain brought over, but it will be faster if you just do it here.”

  “Where is my wife going?” Jack asked.

  “A female officer is going to conduct her search.”

  The two men stripped down to their underwear, shivering even though the temperature had risen to fifty degrees. The officer had them turn around while he looked over their bruises and scrapes. After looking them over, he told them to get dressed.

  “The only thing I need you to do now is to remove the bandage from your arm,” he said to Jack.

  Jack looked at Charlie, who gave such a slight nod that Jack wasn’t sure he actually saw it. He peeled the tape back from the top edge of the bandage, wincing as it pulled hair from his arm. The gash from his fight with his infected boss in Denver several nights ago was red and inflamed around the edges, with pus seeping from the cut itself.

  “That doesn’t look good,” the officer said.

  “He has the sickness,” a voice behind them agreed.

  Charlie and Jack were startled by the voice. An older, shorter version of the officer had appeared behind them, seemingly by magic.

  “Dad, I told you to wait in the car,” the officer said.

  “You can’t see it,” the older man said. “Your eyes are modern eyes. You see with your phone and your camera. You don’t see with your eyes.”

  “You have the latest iPhone and satellite TV, Dad. You’re not exactly living like our forefathers,” the officer said, but then asked for verification. “You’re sure it’s the same infection?”

  “I see it in him. His spirit is gray and has no feathers. It is plain as the sun.”

  “What does that mean?” Charlie asked.

  “Your spirit is the same as that of all men, of the colorful men. It is red and yellow and black and blue and white, the same as all men with life in them, the men who have the feathers of the great spirit,” the old man said and nodded at Sarah as she approached the group with the female officer in tow. “Her spirit is colorful too. But his spirit is dying. None of the colors of the rainbow live in him now.”

  The policeman frowned. “I can’t let you on the reservation.”

  “What?” Charlie exclaimed. “Yes, the cut is infected. But otherwise, he has no symptoms of this disease. He’s no risk to anyone; he just needs antibiotics.”

  “My responsibility is to the people on the reservation. We’ve already had to deal with too many of the infected. We don’t need to lose any more of our people to this outbreak.”

  “Give him an escort,” the older man said. “I see in him a purpose. His spirit is dying, but he can still do good. You can lead him through our lands and send him to El Paso.”

  The policeman sighed. He seemed frustrated with his father interfering in the inspection process, but at the same time, he didn’t argue with him. He turned to the female officer. “Susan, get a hold of Leonard. He can guide them through the Res.”

  Jack and Charlie exchanged glances with Sarah. The policeman continued, “I’ll need to finish checking your vehicles and trailer. My son will be here soon, and assuming I don’t find anything bad in the vehicles, he’ll take you through the reservation. You won’t stop, you won’t deviate from the course he leads you on. If you do, well, you won’t live long enough to regret it. Do you agree to this?”

  “Do we have a choice?” Jack asked.

  The policeman smiled. “Of course you do! You can go back to Highway 160 and head east. Go around my reservation. Your choice.”

  Before Jack could respond, Sarah said, “We’ll take the escort. Thank you.”

  The police finished searching the vehicles and the trailer, and while they waited, Sarah put more antiseptic and a fresh bandage on Jack’s cut. A few minutes later, an old orange Ford pickup with patches of primer scattered around it rumbled up the road and stopped behind the police SUV. A tall, thin, dark-skinned boy got out of the truck and walked toward them. His close-cut hair and wiry build made it hard to determine his age. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five.

  “Hi, Grandpa! Hi, Susan. Hey, Dad!”

  The policeman walked to the boy and pulled him aside. They talked in hushed tones for a minute. The policeman shook his head, and Sarah heard him say, “No, it’s too dangerous.”

  The boy kept speaking and finally wore his father down. They walked back to the group together. “This is my son, Leonard. He will escort you through the reservation. But he wants to do more than that.”

  “I want to come with you,” Leonard said. “We haven’t been able to get new information for a few days now, and if I go with you, I can get some intel from people in El Paso and bring it back here. Plus, I can get you there without ever going through a big city. And in some areas, you’ll need someone like me to vouch for you palefaces, especially now. No one in the sticks trusted any outsiders before. It’s even worse now.”

  The three Washburns traded glances and then nods of agreement. “Sounds good to us, Leonard,” Charlie answered for the group.

  “I’m against this,” the policeman stated. “But we need information, and I know he’s been itching to go. Fact is, he’d probably run off on his own anyway.” He raised a finger. “If you put him in danger and get him hurt, I’ll find you, and you’ll pay. You understand me?”

  “As one father to another, I understand,” Charlie said. “Not that I think your boy needs protecting, but if it’s in our power to do so, we will.” He stuck out his hand. “Promise.”

  The policeman took his hand and shook it. “Okay, Leonard. Get them out of here.”

  The boy smiled a broad, toothy grin, and ran to his truck. He grabbed a backpack from the bed and an AR-15 from the cab. On the way back to the group he handed the keys to his grandfather. “You remember how to drive it, Grandpa?” he asked.

  “It was my truck once. It will remember me,” the old man said.

  “Great! Thanks, Gramps,” Leonard said. “All right, guys. Let’s go. I’m with you in the Isuzu, I guess?”

  Sarah seemed confused for a second. “Aren’t we just going to follow you?”

  “Nah, it will be easier with fewer cars.”

  “How will you get back here once you get your intel?” she persisted.

  “I’ll sort that out later. Let’s roll before my dad changes his mind.”

  She shrugged and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Shotgun!” Leonard called out and ran around to the passenger side. He
looked at Charlie for approval. The old man just smiled, and Leonard climbed in.

  “Hey, Jack,” Charlie called out and walked over to his son. Jack stopped and waited for him to draw near.

  “Yeah?” he replied.

  “Are you doing okay? You good to keep driving? I can drive the Mercedes if you want.”

  Jack waved him off. “I’m fine. Still no zombie urges. Let’s stick to the plan.”

  “All right. You let us know if you need help, though. We’re almost there; you just have to hang in there a little longer.”

  Jack gave him a thumbs-up and walked back to the other SUV. Charlie climbed into the back seat of the Isuzu, and Sarah pulled onto the road.

  The female officer backed the police SUV up enough for the vehicles to squeeze through, then pulled it forward after they passed. Leonard was beaming in the passenger’s seat, excited to be off on an adventure and away from the reservation.

  43

  Outside Cuchillo, New Mexico

  April 3rd

  The Washburns made it south and east with little trouble. After passing Cuchillo, New Mexico, they got onto I-25 toward El Paso. With around one hundred miles to go, using the interstates was unavoidable. They had to weave through several wrecks, sometimes using the push-bar bumper on the Mercedes to move cars out of the way. Bodies were lying on the road and in the median. Some looked like they’d been hit by cars, others had been shot. Everyone avoided looking at them, but it wasn’t always possible.

  While Jack was clearing the cars at one spot, Charlie grabbed a hose and a couple of gas cans from the trailer and siphoned ten gallons of fuel from the wrecks, stepping over bodies as he went. He topped off the tanks on both vehicles and refilled the five-gallon jugs before they got moving again.

  “Did you see all the brass lying around?” Leonard asked. “Lots of fighting to get south.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie replied. “Makes me glad we went around Albuquerque. I bet it was a lot worse there.”

  Sarah and Leonard nodded, silently wondering if they were going to have to fight their way through something soon. The youth checked his rifle to make sure it was ready to go.

  Soon, they passed an orange electronic construction sign near the exit to the oddly-named New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences. The sign read:

  MOVE CARS FROM ROAD

  OR ELSE!

  Charlie pointed to the antenna that stuck up from the back of the sign. “Remote access. Good sign someone up the road is alive!”

  “Or else what, I wonder?” Sarah asked.

  Leonard pointed to a car on its side just off the road. It looked like a bulldozer had shoved it violently from the roadway. “Or else it will get moved for you,” he said.

  As they headed south, they saw more of the cars tossed casually aside. With the road clear, they sped up to seventy miles per hour. North of Radium Springs, they saw what was clearing the highway of stalled or abandoned cars. A snow plow led a convoy, with a line of military supply trucks following it. They heard a massive crash, and the plow sent an old Chevy Chevette flying off to the side of the road. The large plow barely shuddered and kept rolling down the road. They slowed their speed to fifty miles an hour to match the other vehicles and stayed in line behind the procession. A few minutes later they saw another programmable hazard sign.

  This one read:

  MILITARY CHECKPOINT

  50 miles

  It then cycled to say:

  BE

  PREPARED

  TO STOP

  “Well, I guess it’s going to get fun soon,” Charlie said.

  They rode in silence for a while, each person lost in their thoughts. As they passed through Las Cruces, New Mexico, the snow plow pulled off at an exit and turned to head back north. The military trucks peeled off and went right, toward a Walmart Supercenter. Several other, similar vehicles were already lined up at the dock, loading supplies into the cargo compartments. The military presence was getting more pronounced the farther south they drove.

  They passed the rest of the way through Las Cruces, following directions to stay to the left to merge with I-10 East to go to El Paso. They were getting close. Two miles over the Texas border the traffic slowed down to thirty, then twenty.

  They passed another sign, this one larger and more foreboding:

  Slow Down And Prepare For Inspection

  VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT

  NO QUESTIONS ASKED

  All traffic was being diverted at Exit 3, by an outlet mall. They slowed to ten miles an hour; then it was stop-and-go, then it was a dead stop for a few minutes at a time. Off to the right, they saw a Discount Tire with a long line of cars waiting for service.

  “This is why I always told Jack to take care of his cars, to never let the tires get down to nothing. Get the brakes done before they need it. Fill the tank at half, never let it get down to empty,” Charlie said.

  “You always told him to keep good tires on his car in case a zombie apocalypse broke out?” Leonard asked.

  “No, smart ass, it was so he’d be ready for anything. An early snowstorm. A tornado. Whatever emergency might come along.”

  “He hates it when I let the tank go down to E,” Sarah said. “Every time I do it he says, ‘One day this is going to bite you in the ass.’”

  “Holy shit,” Charlie replied. “He actually listened to me. That’s exactly what I would say to him. I told him that if he ever ran out of gas that I’d…”

  “Not come running to the rescue,” Sarah said, completing the sentence for Charlie. “He says that to me all the time too.”

  “Will wonders never cease? It warms my heart to know he paid attention and carried it forward.”

  “Why did you guys become so distant?” Sarah asked.

  Charlie gave her a dirty look and stole a glance at the back seat. “Not in front of the kids.”

  “I’m serious, Charlie. Jack won’t tell me, and I’d like to know.”

  “I’m serious too. I won’t go into this stuff right now. Let’s just get through this checkpoint.”

  Sarah looked in the mirror and saw Leonard, who mouthed the word “Awkward” to her. At least, that’s what she thought he said. In any case, she smiled at the comic relief.

  While they waited for the vehicles ahead of them to move, four soldiers came walking down the line, two on each side of the cars. On each side, one soldier used a mirror on a pole to check the underside of the vehicles while the other one watched the occupants of each car, rifle at the ready.

  “What are they looking for?” Sarah asked.

  “Robert De Niro,” Charlie replied and chuckled. Leonard and Sarah just stared at him. “You know, Cape Fear? No? Never mind then.”

  “If you’re going to use Cape Fear you should use Robert Mitchum,” Sarah said. “Always go with the original.”

  “Who’s Robert Mitchum?” Leonard asked from the back seat.

  Charlie jerked a thumb toward Leonard. “You see?” he asked Sarah. “You have to know your audience. I figured Lenny here would be clueless about ol’ Mitch.”

  Leonard persisted, “So, he’s an actor?”

  “Yeah, he’s famous for playing drunken tough guys in westerns in the sixties,” Sarah said.

  “I thought that was Dean Martin.”

  “Well, yeah, he did that, too. In fact, I think most of the guys back then were drunk for their movies.”

  Charlie scoffed. “That was back when being a functioning alcoholic didn’t make you a pariah. Now you have to beg everyone to forgive you for all the shit you can’t remember.”

  “It’s called atonement, Charlie. It’s one of the twelve steps,” Sarah said.

  “It’s bullshit,” he said, all the humor gone from his voice.

  Gunshots from behind them made them jump in their seats. All three craned their heads to see what was happening, but the trailer blocked their view. Sarah got a glimpse in the side view mirror as a woman ran away from one of the cars farther back in the line. She fire
d a pistol blindly behind her as she ran, just coming into view for the other two to see. A three-round burst from one of the soldiers’ guns put her onto the ground. She tried to crawl to the edge of the off-ramp, but the soldier walked over and knocked her from her knees to her belly with his boot. He stood over her and fired one round into her head. Her legs twitched, and she lay still.

  “Violators will be shot. No questions asked,” Charlie mumbled.

  “Shit,” Leonard said, dragging the word out to a few seconds in length.

  “You got that right,” Sarah replied.

  She considered getting out and checking on Jack in the Mercedes in front of them but thought better of it as she saw the woman’s body in the mirror, lying in a pool of blood on the off-ramp. She didn’t want anyone getting a twitchy trigger finger.

  They pulled forward a few feet at a time every five minutes or so. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the front of the line. A soldier walked up to Jack’s window. He hit the button to roll it down as the man approached.

  “How many in your group?” he asked.

  “Four,” Jack replied. “Me, and the three people in the car behind me.”

  The soldier looked back at the Isuzu. “Pull forward, to the left,” he instructed Jack. He waved Sarah forward, motioning for her to stop when she pulled even with him. She rolled down her window.

  “Put it park and turn off the motor. Leave any weapons in the vehicle, dismount and come with me please,” the man said, and turned and walked up to Jack, repeating the same thing.

  Several other soldiers walked around the vehicles, inspecting them again, looking inside this time. One raised his rifle at the door of the trailer while another pulled it open. They did a quick sweep of the interior, then walked back to the group.

  “All clear, Lieutenant,” one of the men said.

  “Good,” the lieutenant said. He turned to the Washburns. “I’m Lieutenant Gordon. Welcome to the first checkpoint for the greater El Paso Safe Zone. Let me tell you what happens next. If you’ll follow me…” He turned without waiting for a response and walked into a collapsible canvas structure, twelve feet square. It was not quite a tent, but more than a canopy. Two large flaps were tied open. He walked through the opening, not bothering to see if the group followed.