“Jenkins, slow the eff down!” Daymon bellowed.
Looking down at the speedometer, Jenkins noticed the needle pulling back from sixty. That meant he had to have been doing as least seventy while perseverating about his hand in the death of a few animals. “You drive, then,” he said. He put the big disc brakes to work and brought the Tahoe to a sudden stop on the shoulder. “I’m fatigued as it is. Maybe even a little depressed... but I’m no shrink.”
“So you’re sleepy... and she’s hungry. Then what dwarf am I?” Daymon said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Certainly not bashful,” Heidi quipped.
Jenkins slipped the truck into park, popped his seat belt, and traded places with Daymon.
Once they were moving again Heidi spoke up from the rear seat. “You didn’t answer the question, Charlie, which dwarf is Daymon?”
Not wanting to offer up an answer that would be taken the wrong way, he glanced over his shoulder and shot her a look that said, Leave me the hell out of this.
“Come on Charlie... play along,” chided Heidi.
“Goddamnit, I just killed six of those things. And the only difference between me and them is that I haven’t been bit yet. And the fact that I lost my cool and did them in with a machete makes me feel like some kind of serial killer.” He looked away at the barren countryside flashing by.
“Get used to it, Charlie,” said Daymon as he steered around an overturned car. “They aren’t ever going to stop coming.” And as if to confirm his statement, a pale arm reached out from the crushed passenger compartment, groping for the passing SUV.
Daymon suddenly slowed at the bottom of a long sweeping curve and pointed up the hill, where tendrils of black smoke curled into the air. At the end of a short drive that teed off of a narrow feeder road was a small plat of land, with a large oak standing sentinel over a pale blue garage and some remains smoldering where he guessed a house once stood. Milling about the property were more creatures than Daymon cared to count; some were charred black, but most were just your garden variety zombie—pale, shabbily clothed, and relentless. Suddenly, the gaunt faces turned at once and locked their milky eyes on the white and black Tahoe. Then, as if a switch was flipped, a ripple of movement coursed through the amassed dead and the herd began to shamble towards 33.
“Shit... there’s gotta be a hundred of ‘em,” exclaimed Daymon. “And that is the same yellow Hummer I saw yesterday.”
“There’s not much left of the house,” added Jenkins as he swapped his glasses for the binoculars. “Just a few bricks that used to be a chimney.”
“I remember seeing that ugly yellow truck parked at the House,” Heidi hissed.
“Yeah, I’ve seen it before,” Jenkins admitted. “It belonged to that movie star prick who owned the House. He drove it around town whenever he decided to jet in from Hollywood and grace the little people of Jackson with his presence. We used to joke about the color... called it ‘look at me yellow.’”
“Fitting,” Daymon said. “For a 5-foot-2 shrimp. Probably has blocks on the pedals so he can reach ‘em.” He rolled up his window, trying to shut out the stench, and eased his foot from the brake.
“I hope that whoever was in there died a painful death... no, make that a thousand painful deaths,” Heidi spat. “Just the thought that those animals who drugged me and did who knows what while I was under might still be running around out here makes me sick to my stomach.” She slumped into her seat, blinking away tears. Although her memory of the events was like a patchwork quilt missing many pieces, the slices of time that she couldn’t recall were filled in by her very vivid imagination.
“You’re going to be just fine,” Daymon said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.” He really wanted to tell her about Cade and how the soldier had scooped up Robert Christian, and that there was undoubtedly a gallows and a hangman’s noose in the rapist’s immediate future. But if just the sight of a vehicle linked to her ordeal was enough to bring everything to the surface, he reasoned, then letting the fact be known that the main culprit was still alive and kicking was totally out of the question.
They had only been moving for a minute and had covered less than a mile when Daymon stopped the rig abruptly on the centerline. “Lu Lu!” he cried. He’d thought he had been seeing things the night before, and yet, as he looked off into the distance at the green Scout with the unmistakable black E painted on her, he still couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Who the hell is Lu Lu?” inquired Jenkins.
“My International Scout.”
“Sure as shit is Lu Lu,” rasped Heidi, who had composed herself and had her upper body wedged between the front seats again and the binoculars pressed to her face. “But there are a couple of those walking corpses hanging around.”
Incredulous, Jenkins asked, “How in the hell did your Scout get here? We’re what, ten... fifteen miles from where you left it.”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try and find out.”
Heidi shook her head. “What are you going to do about those things?”
He put the truck in neutral and allowed it to coast down the slight grade. Then, once gravity had taken over and they were barreling silently towards Lu Lu and the zombies, he held his right hand out, palm up, like a surgeon in the OR demanding a scalpel. “Machete,” he said, without taking his eyes from the road.
Jenkins obliged, and when the Tahoe had pulled parallel to the smaller Scout, Daymon secured the brake, put it in park, and then hopped out.
From inside the truck Heidi called out to Daymon. “Be careful,” she hollered. Then she curled up on the bench seat, and covered her head with Jenkins’s uniform jacket. She couldn’t stand to watch. Between the zombie bodies Daymon and Jenkins had piled up at the farmhouse outside of Driggs and the head chopping spree at the horse farm, she had seen enough splattered brains to last a lifetime.
The first turns staggered from the road’s shoulder and approached the Tahoe on the passenger side.
Daymon got as low to the pavement as his lanky frame would allow, and when he rounded the front end of the rig he was doing some kind of contorted duck walk, only the top of his dreadlocks visible to Jenkins. Scudding along, seemingly floating over the white hood, the tightly wound locks looked like some kind of mutant tribble from Star Trek.
In the back seat, Heidi jumped when the two creatures bashed into the sheet metal in an attempt to get at Jenkins.
Hurry the hell up, Jenkins thought to himself as the flesh eater swiped its bloated tongue along the window inches from his face. Then, in his side vision, the abomination’s head disappeared from the nose up. When he turned his head to the right, he caught a glimpse of gray brain nestled in a honeycomb of white as the creature’s chin bonked against the window channel on its way to the ground.
Daymon watched the ghoul collapse in a heap, and with the well-balanced machete in a loose, right-handed grip backpedaled to create some distance between himself and the other staggering mess. Minus one ear and missing a majority of its fingers, the hissing cadaver—whether male or female he hadn’t a clue—looked like it had fended off one hell of an attack before dying and joining the ranks of the walking dead.
“Hey Stumpy. Over here,” Daymon called out. Then, just as the zombie pivoted and set off headlong towards the new meat, the Tahoe’s window lowered and Jenkins straight-armed his pistol and shot it in the head from less than a yard away.
Daymon winced as what seemed like ten pounds of gray matter exited opposite the bullet’s entry point and splattered all over Lu Lu. God, how he’d missed his truck. He’d been so overwhelmed with emotion when he had abandoned her that he hadn’t had a chance to say a proper goodbye. Now that she was wearing half a walker’s brains, he didn’t know if he even wanted to go near her.
“Thanks Chief,” he said sarcastically. “Why did you have to go and do that for? I had it covered.”
“Wasn’t in the mood for any more head splitting,” Jenkins
replied as he slid out of the Tahoe.
The rear door creaked open and Heidi stepped out timidly, tip toed over the bodily fluids and bolted to Daymon’s side.
As Jenkins looked on, Heidi gave Daymon more lovin’ in the span of a minute than he’d seen her give the man in three days.
“Get a room,” Jenkins said.
Daymon flipped him the bird and the couple walked arm in arm towards the gore-splashed Scout.
“If only you could speak, little lady,” Daymon said to Lu Lu as he used the machete’s rounded blade to scrape detritus from around the door handle. Then, as he went to open the door, the vehicle lurched once and then shimmied on its worn springs.
He looked over at Jenkins and cast his gaze to Heidi. Both were nowhere close enough to the vehicle to have touched it, let alone have caused the movement. And neither one of them seemed to have noticed the tremor. Daymon wondered if he had imagined the whole thing, then reminded himself that getting bit was usually the penalty for displaying a cavalier attitude. So before he opened the door, he decided to check the interior from the relative safety of the outside. He wiped a four-inch square of road grime from the rear glass and peered in. All he saw was his firefighting turnout gear. On them, the words Property of JHFD were stenciled in white, inch-high letters. Underneath the Nomex protective clothing he could see his old, double-bladed axe poking out.
Next he walked around to the passenger side and looked into the back seat area, where days ago three Delta Force operators had been sardined hip to hip with all of their weapons and gear and attitude. He didn’t expect to find anything, and was shocked to discover what looked like a bruised and bloody corpse. Legs and arms drawn into a fetal curl, the slight man looked to have been of Asian descent. And the longer he stared at the man’s profile, the more he felt like he had seen the man somewhere before.
“Jenkins, can you come here for a second?”
“A second is about all we have,” Jenkins answered. “We got an undead posse heading our way.”
“How far?”
Jenkins lowered the binoculars. “’Bout a quarter mile,” he said. “Maybe a little less. Gives us about three or four minutes, I gather.” He made his way around the front of the Tahoe. “What do you got?”
“This guy look familiar to you?”
Jenkins cocked his head and furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, guy?”
“Just look in there,” Daymon said, stepping back from window.
“Well I’ll be. Looks like he ain’t going to be serving High Tea ever again,” Jenkins said. “You haven’t seen him move?”
“No... I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
“Why don’t you forget about him and forget about Lu Lu... and let’s go.”
“Lemme see those binocs,” Daymon said.
Jenkins handed them over.
“We’ve got time,” Daymon stated. Then he whistled. “Jesus... would you look at the critter in front, he’s huge.”
“I noticed him already. That was Lucas Brother, one of Ian Bishop’s guys.”
“What did you just say?” Heidi said sharply. She stormed over and snatched the field glasses from Daymon’s hands. She adjusted them to fit her narrow feminine features and had a look for herself. As soon as the charred zombie came into focus, a week’s worth of horrible memories came flooding back. Without a doubt it was Lucas—matted and singed blond locks and all. The mere sight of him caused her hands to shake uncontrollably.
While everyone’s attention had been focused on the advancing throng, Lu Lu began to rock gently on her shot springs and the driver door popped open.
Daymon pulled Heidi behind him and looked to Jenkins, who had his pistol aimed over Lu Lu’s roof in the general area where the thing was most likely to emerge.
“Save your ammo,” Daymon barked as he stalked around the SUV, holding the machete loosely in his right hand. “Don’t watch if you can’t hack it.” He chuckled at this. “Get it? Hack it.”
Jenkins stared daggers at the dreadlocked former firefighter. Smartass, he thought. Then he returned his gaze to the abomination scrabbling from the vehicle, then back to Daymon who had the machete in the air, ready to bring it down for the coup de gras.
Muscles tensed, Daymon wondered how the hell a zombie had wormed its way from the back seats to the front and
then managed to work the goddamn door handle. Hell, if he didn’t know any better he was probably looking at the zombie evolution taking place right before his eyes. Then he about shit himself when the battered creature turned and uttered the words: “Help me.”
Chapter 52
Outbreak - Day 16
Draper, South Dakota
Jasper steered the dusty old Chevy onto the shoulder. He didn’t know why. Habit, he guessed. He could have stopped smack dab in the middle of the road without repercussions. Hell, he coulda jammed the brakes on without looking; there was no chance of getting rear-ended.
Truth was he hadn’t seen a vehicle or a living soul traveling this lonely stretch of blacktop since July turned into August—a full week into this madness. By that time he had already put down his wife and his two kids. One of the wandering monsters had gotten to them while he had been out disposing of the human shells that had been his closest neighbors.
He had arrived back into town to find Delores, his wife and best friend of a dozen years bleeding out on the kitchen floor of their old house with the monster’s face still buried in her guts. He decapitated the thing with one of Delores’s prized Henckels, the ones they’d gotten as a wedding gift so many years prior. Two or three quick sawing motions and the serrated knife relieved the undead stranger of its head. After which Jasper buried the blade into his wife’s eye socket when she began to reanimate.
In the backyard, in the shade of the elm under which two cats and way too many goldfish were interred, he found his oldest eating his youngest—Bobby with a mouth full of Jenny’s entrails was a sight that would haunt him ‘til the day he died—and he nearly did that day.
But in the end he couldn’t bring himself to add another body to the gun that had put down his only two children. He buried his family that day, but not under the elm. He took the time and did it right. Three graves, each one of them three feet wide by six feet long, and dug six feet deep into the earth. It took him all day—backbreaking labor for certain—but his family deserved no less.
He sat in the truck with the engine running, thinking about his family and what he could have done different. Drawing a blank, he ran a hand through his chestnut-brown hair. It was short from the razor cut he’d given himself prior to conducting the solemn graveside service, and hadn’t grown out much since. His face had a week’s worth of reddish stubble working hard to cover up two weeks’ worth of heartache and stress. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow and glanced in the rearview at the twisted limbs and contorted death masks worn by the dead—the same folks who had been his good neighbors.
Still, the Mathersons wouldn’t receive the same courtesy as his family. Their moldering bodies would go on the growing pile in the cemetery with the rest of the townspeople—seventy-something in total—who had succumbed to this thing the people in Sioux Falls called Omega. The same desperate folks who had been so thoughtful as to have delivered it here, to Draper, a hundred and eighty easy miles due east, right down the I-90.
Omega, thought Jasper. Couldn’t have picked a more appropriate name. No coming back from this one. No way. Not breathing and possessing a pulse anyway.
He looked through the back window at the white church steeple. Woulda been nice to have had a service for the Mathersons but it was only him now. No priest. No pall bearers. No choir. Just him and the birds.
He shifted his gaze to Dale. The extra puckered eye on his forehead was not becoming of him. It sure was amazing what a little deuce-deuce pistol could do to a zombie at point blank range, and the lead, Jasper supposed, was probably still hanging out with Dale’s scrambled brains somewhere inside of his blood-sl
ickened dome.
He had stopped short of the overflowing graveyard for a reason. Not because he wanted to gaze at his dead cargo. It was the sight and sound of the strange-looking whirly birds heading northeast towards the capitol that had drawn him to pull over. High in the sky they droned along. One black and angular. The other seemingly built out of spare parts. It had two forward facing propellers ten sizes too big. How the thing landed without chewing up the runway was anyone’s guess.
He watched for a beat as they cut through the azure sky, and then when his personal airshow had concluded and they were out of view he jammed the truck into drive and headed for the mound. As the truck jounced over the rounded shoulder and back onto the smooth roadway, he put one hand on the shotgun on the seat next to him. Just in case, he thought to himself. Just in case disposing of the dead proved too hard to bear and he couldn’t see the task through to the end.
He already knew what the muzzle of the little .22 pistol tasted like. Gun oil commingled with the mineral tang of cordite. If he used the shotgun he’d decided he wouldn’t put the thing in his mouth. He’d already run this scenario through his head a hundred times. He’d park the Chevy next to the holes in the ground where Delores, Jenny, and Bobby were slowly doing the ashes to ashes and dust to dust part of the short service he’d performed for them. He’d stay inside the truck with a photo of them on the dash. Under his chin is where he would place the business end of the twelve gauge—then he’d pull the trigger. No way he’d chicken out. Not with the shotgun.
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