by Jake Bible
“You see something?” I asked. Then I looked around and realized I was standing by Critter’s Jeep alone. “Hey, where’s El?”
“Down in there,” Critter nodded towards the drop off. “Girl heard somethin’ and just took off. You were too busy gettin’ lost in that head of yours to notice.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. I truly was sorry since the spacing off thing really was a pain in my ass as well as everyone else’s.
“Well, as long as your little trips to outer space don’t get me killed, then I could give a crap about your sorry,” Critter said. “But hows about you pay the fuck attention right now?”
“Will do,” I said and walked back to the Explorer as Stella rolled down the window. “Critter says Elsbeth heard…”
“I know,” Stella said. “I saw her take off down the mountain. Here.”
She handed me a 9mm Beretta and smiled. “You going to be able to shoot that left handed?”
“He can shoot it, but can he hit anything?” Greta asked.
“The love and support is overwhelming,” I said as I took the pistol then stared at it. “Uh, could you rack the slide for me?”
“I already did,” Stella said. “There’s a round in the chamber, but the safety is on. Be sure to flick that off before you start shooting.”
“I know about the safety,” I mumbled as I walked away. “Don’t need to tell me how a gun works.”
I got back to Critter’s Jeep and saw he was smiling at me. I hate it when Critter smiles at me.
“What?” I snap.
“You’re like a little kid that needs his meat cut up,” Critter chuckled. “Man can’t handle a pistol on his own, what kind of man is he?”
“The kind that’ll put a cap in your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up,” I growled.
That made Critter chuckle even harder. He didn’t stop until we heard the first scream. Then a second one.
“I think our girl found company,” Critter said, his rifle to his shoulder. “Let’s hope she can handle things on her own.”
“Up top!” John shouted from the haul truck as I heard his suppressed rifle cough out a couple of shots. “Zs!”
And he wasn’t shitting us sideways. There were a fuck ton of Zs about to come tumbling down on our heads.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I turned to the small part of the convoy I could see behind us. “Get ready!” I tried my walkie, but only static came out of it. “Fuck!”
The mountainside to our left was not quite a sheer cliff, but it was close enough so that the undead that came at us barely set a foot on the ground. They fell from above, their mouths open and rotted hands reaching for some tasty, tasty people meats.
The first few splatted just short of the convoy, but the rest started smacking the tops and sides of the vehicles, causing all kinds of havoc.
“Mother fuckers!” Critter shouted as he ducked and dodged the falling corpses. It took him all of two seconds to realize that it was a waste of bullets to shoot the fuckers, so he dropped the rifle and picked up a baseball bat that had spikes driven through the end.
“Hey!” I shouted at him as I jumped out of the way of a Z that exploded all over the road. “That’s the Bitch!”
“Long Pork, I ain’t never gonna call nothin’ a stupid name like that,” Critter grinned as he steadied the bat by his shoulder and then took a swing, ripping the head off a Z that came falling right at him. “But I ain’t gonna let a sweet design like this go to waste neither.”
Fair enough.
The Zs kept coming, but luckily, gravity did most of the work for us. Now, I know Zs aren’t too bright, what with the lack of a living brain and all, but rarely do you see them get all lemming and shit and go for a suicidal leap. So I wasn’t too surprised to see some living faces peering down at us when I looked up at the top of the mountainside.
I gave them a quick wave. Okay, not so much a wave as a couple shots with my 9mm. They ducked back from the pistol fire and I was feeling pretty good about myself until the rocks started raining down.
Yep. Rocks.
My first thought was that they must have run out of arrows at some point. Second thought? Fuck! Falling rocks!
“Sons of bitches,” Critter snarled as he slammed the Bitch into the skull of a Z that was crawling at him over the windshield of the Jeep. A rock smacked his shoulder and he snarled, giving me a look of pure hurt rage before he dropped the Bitch and picked his rifle back up. “You gonna throw rocks in a gun fight, ya fuckers? Fine!”
He unloaded his rifle at the men above that were busy tossing rocks down on us, but it made no difference since those fuckers had gravity ontheir side. They could stand way back from the edge and just let the rocks fly. Fuckers.
Fuckity fucker fuck fucks.
I attribute all the cursing to the fact a rock nailed me in the forehead. Fucking hurt, man. Otherwise, I’m such a mild mouthed fella.
“We’re clear!” Stuart yelled from the haul truck as the beast of a machine roared back to life and started to lurch its way up the road as the last tree was shoved from the road. “Get moving!”
Those with rifles on top of the haul truck kept firing at the mountainside, trying to take out some of the still falling Zs as well as keep the rock-throwing fuckers back. I dodged it all as I raced back to the Explorer while Stella yelled at me to move ass. I jumped into the empty passenger seat and just had the door closed when she floored it and sent us chasing after Critter and his Jeep.
“What about Elsbeth?” Greta asked.
There was a loud thump from the top of the Explorer and suddenly Elsbeth’s face was looking in at us upside down from my window.
“I’ll move,” I said as I rolled the window down and scrambled into the back seat with Greta and Charlie.
Elsbeth did this flip spin thingy and was comfortably in the passenger seat before I even got my seatbelt on. She smacked her hands on the dashboard and gave us all a wide grin. She was pretty much covered in blood from head to toe.
“Haven’t had a good killin’ time in a long while,” she said as she clapped her hands together. “Fun, fun, fun!”
“Were there a lot of Zs down there?” Charlie asked.
“Zs? Nope. No Zs,” Eslbeth replied. “Just lots of stupid, stupid men. Came at me with sticks and rocks. Kinda felt bad for them and I said so. They didn’t listen. Should have listened.”
“Uh...if you were down there, then how did you get on top of the Explorer?” Greta asked, looking from the drop off to our right and then up at the roof of the car. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Trees go up,” Elsbeth said. “Elsbeth comes down.”
Greta just shook her head.
“How much farther is it?” Stella asked. “We need to get off this road and back onto the interstate.” Rocks continued to rain down on us and one smacked into the windshield, sending cracks spider webbing this way and that. “Because I am done with this shit!”
Stella rolled her window down, grabbed a pistol stashed next to her and started firing up at the mountainside.
“FUCKERS!” Stella screamed.
“MOM!” Greta yelled. “STOP!”
We all yelled at her to stop, but she couldn’t hear us over the gunfire. When the pistol clicked empty, she casually handed it to Elsbeth, who was sitting there giggling like it was the best thing she’d ever seen, and then let out a long sigh.
“I feel better,” Stella said.
“You just wasted a whole magazine,” Charlie snapped. “That’s ammo we can’t get back!”
“But damn if it didn’t feel good,” Stella replied.
“See? Everyone needs killin’ time,” Elsbeth said.
“I don’t think I actually hit anyone,” Stella said, “but who fucking cares, right?”
“Fucking right,” Elsbeth nodded. She pointed at the stereo. “We need tunes. Tunes are good.”
“Yes, we need tunes,” Stella said and hit the power button. A Johnny Cash CD started playing and
soon Elsbeth and Stella were singing along to the Man in Black, drowning out the sounds of rocks and falling Zs.
The kids both looked back at me as if their mom had completely lost her mind. Which she may have. In the apocalypse, you gotta find your bliss where you can, so I just shrugged and started singing along.
“This family is so fucked,” Greta said.
“No shit,” Charlie agreed.
***
It took us an hour to get back onto I-40, and we had highwaymen on our ass the whole way, so we didn’t risk stopping the caravan until we were down out of the pass and onto the straighter stretch on the Tennessee side.
“Hold up!” Critter barked over the radio. The interference was gone since we had no mountains and ridges between us anymore, but the signal sounded weak and I had to wonder how long we could rely on the walkies for communication.
The convoy came to a slow stop and Critter began barking orders for his men to go up and down the line and take inventory of the damage. We may have made it out of the mountains alive, but it didn’t mean we hadn’t taken some bad hits.
“Come on,” I said to Elsbeth. “I want to see what the problems are.”
“You need me to come with?” Elsbeth asked, her feet propped up on the dashboard as she relaxed back into her seat. “Why you need me, Long Pork? You’re missing an arm, not a leg.”
“I’ll go with you,” Stella said.
“Cool,” I grinned. “Charlie can get in the driver’s seat in case we have to take off fast.”
“Charlie drives just fine,” Elsbeth agreed. “Get your butt up here and take the chair.”
Stella and I got out of the Explorer and smiled at each other.
“She’s in a funny mood,” I said.
“I think she’s glad to be back in the action,” Stella said. “It keeps her mind off Julio.”
“True,” I agreed. Losing Julio had been hard for her no matter if she wanted to admit it or not. “Nothing like killing some crazies and Zs to keep one’s mind off tragedy.”
We walked along in silence the rest of the way as I studied the damage to the trucks and SUVs from the Zs and the rocks. People were out of their vehicles and doing the same while also taking the time for bathroom breaks along the side of the interstate. Supervised bathroom breaks, of course, since the grass was pretty high and no one wanted to accidentally squat on a Z and have their ass bitten off.
Critter’s people had things pretty much under control until we reached the last two vehicles. Eight men and women had their rifles up and pointed at a double cab pickup and Volvo station wagon.
“What’s up?” I asked, wishing I had brought a pistol with me. I looked over and saw Stella held hers down to the side of her leg and could see she was ready to bring it up and start firing if anything fucked up happened.
“Folks won’t roll down the windows or step out so we can make sure they’re okay,” a man named Gary Wilkes said. “We been knocking and they just say they’re fine.”
“Hello in there!” I shouted. “Could you roll the windows down please?”
The driver’s window on the double cab truck rolled down a fraction of an inch.
“All good here!” a man said. “Just ready to keep rollin’.”
“Who’s supposed to be in these?” I asked Stella. “Do you have the driver list?”
“Didn’t bring it with me,” Stella said.
I looked at Critter’s folks and they all shrugged.
“Great,” I sighed as I looked at the truck. “What’s your name?”
“Uh...Bob,” the guy said.
“Okay, Bob. Can you hop on out so we can just do a quick health check?” I asked nicely. “We need to make sure no one in the truck was bitten by a Z. You understand, right?”
“We’re good,” Bob said as he rolled the window back up.
Fucker.
“Bob!” I yelled. “Open the fucking truck, please!”
“Nice use of please,” Stella smirked.
“Thanks,” I said as I started to step towards the truck.
I made it all of a foot before the door swung open and the road erupted into gunfire.
Three of Critter’s people went down hard, their bodies riddled with bullets. I instinctively dove at Stella and covered her with my body as I shoved her towards the side of the road and into the high grass. We rolled and rolled down an embankment and came to a painful stop against a group of pines.
“You okay?” I grunted.
“Yeah. You?”
“As good as can be,” I replied.
The sound of the truck engine roaring back to life reached us as we scrambled back up to the road. The driver’s window was shattered and blood dripped down the side of the door as the truck roared past us. Two wheels were on the road and two were on the overgrown shoulder as it dodged past the convoy. People still taking care of their business had to dive this way and that, pants down around their ankles, to keep from being run down.
“That’s not one of ours!” I shouted, but I think people figured that out.
“JACE!” Stella yelled as she shoved me back into the grass.
The Volvo zipped past only inches from us as we fell back on our asses. All of the windows had been shot out and I could see only two people inside, one of which I’m pretty sure was no longer living.
“What the fuck?” Stella shouted as she got to her feet, lifted her pistol, then lowered it again as she realized she was just as likely to hit one of our people as she was to hit the Volvo.
“They must have hijacked the cars when we were stopped back on the detour,” I said.
“Ya think?” Stella snapped. “We should have been prepared for that.”
“Well, doesn’t look like they’re getting far,” I said as the truck reached the haul truck, swerved one way, then the other before slamming into the giant rear tire of the huge machine. I could see John standing on top of the haul truck, his sniper rifle to his shoulder. He gave a quick wave and I waved back. “Yay for snipers.”
The Volvo only went a little farther before taking a sudden lurch towards the left and drove off into the grass. We lost sight of it, but then the sound of crunching metal and glass filled us in on the car’s fate.
A bunch of us raced up to it and found the car smashed into a large oak tree, its front crumpled. Steam and smoke hissed from under the mangled hood, but that wasn’t what got our attention.
“Damn,” Greta said from my side. “I guess that one turned fast.”
“Hey, why are you out of the Explorer?” I snapped. “It’s not safe out here!”
“Not safe in there,” Greta said as she pointed at the Z that was busy munching on the driver of the Volvo. “Sucks to be that guy.”
“The one being eaten or the one doing the eating?” Buzz asked as he came up to us, his pistol out. “Wouldn’t want to be either of them.”
He moved past and put a bullet in the head of the Z, then in the head of the dead driver, who would have come back in just a few minutes anyway.
“The passenger turned fast,” I said. “That’s not good.”
“Turning times have gotten weird lately,” Buzz said as he holstered his pistol and walked back to us. “Whatever makes us turn is accelerating the process.”
“How very unfortunate,” Kramer said. “That does not bode well for the survival of the human species.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be up in the haul truck?”
“Oh, am I?” Kramer said. “I figured since my guards left that I was free to come out and see what all the commotion was.”
We could hear Critter cursing and shouting. Then he joined our large group of looky-loos. His arms gesticulated this way and that as he frothed at the mouth.
“YOU POSSUM ASS SUCKING MORONS!” Critter yelled at a pair of men that tried to duck away, but just weren’t fast enough. “YOU HAD ONE FUCKIN’ JOB! ONE JOB!”
“Someone’s getting fired,” Greta smirked as she t
urned and walked away. “I’ll be waiting in the Explorer. Let me know when it’s time to get moving again.”
“Come on,” Buzz said as he grabbed Kramer’s arm. “Back to your cage.”
“You realize you are talking to a man with seven PhDs and over two thousand patents?” Kramer snapped. “I do not need to be manhandled like a child!”
“Do you realize you are talking to a man that doesn’t care whether you live or die?” Buzz replied. “Personally,y your science crap doesn’t impress me. These days, all I need is God and I’m good.”
“You’re one of those religious nuts, are you?” Kramer sneered.
“Nope,” Buzz said. “Just a man of faith that has been tested again and again since the dead started to walk the Earth. And that faith has gotten me a lot further over the years than science has.”
“You think science hasn’t helped…” Kramer started, but stopped when Buzz smacked him in the back of the head. Hard.
“Save your breath,” Buzz said. “I’m not stupid. I just have room in me to believe in both faith and science. Try it sometime. You’d be surprised what worlds open up to you.”
“Damn,” I said to Melissa. “Your brother has gone all guru and shit.”
“Cram it up your poopchute, Long Pork,” Buzz called back to me.
“Hey! I was giving you a compliment!’ I snapped.
“Hard to tell with you sometimes,” Buzz replied as he basically dragged Kramer back to the haul truck.
“It is hard to tell sometimes,” Melissa said from my side.
We got up to the haul truck and Buzz forced Kramer to climb into one of the shelters while the rest of us walked to the side of the road where Stuart stood over a bleeding man that didn’t look like he had much longer to live.
“Not highwaymen,” Stuart said as he nudged the guy with his boot. “At least not the ones Critter was used to. From what I got out of this guy, it sounds like new gangs were starting to move across the mountains.”
“Gangs? What gangs?” I asked.
Critter knelt down next to the dying man and ripped open is bloody shirt. The man’s chest was scarred by all kinds of crappy tattoos and burn marks.