Apocalypse of the Dead - 02

by Joe McKinney

  Gunfire rolled through the square. Men were running in every direction. Some were injured and screaming for help. Others were hollering for more ammunition. A few had taken off between the buildings and were running north into the residential part of town.

  Jeff managed to get Colin into the cab of the truck and then climbed in after him. The keys were in the ignition, and Jeff thanked God for at least that one small mercy. The truck started up the first time, and Jeff wrestled with the stick shift to get it into gear. His little Honda Accord back home was a stick, but the truck was a more cantankerous vehicle and he had to grind the gears before it finally seated into first.

  They started off with a lurch. The wheel was big and hard to control. Plus, Jeff was starting to hallucinate, and the road ahead looked like a writhing carpet of ants where men ran like lunatics through a fog of gun smoke.

  But the truck picked up speed. Twenty miles an hour. Thirty.

  Beside him, Colin braced against the door. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Keep your head down,” Jeff ordered.

  He braced himself for impact. The knot of bikers ahead of them was thick, all of them shooting into the sides of the bus. Jeff pointed the truck into the heart of the crowd and mashed down on the gas.

  A few of the men turned and saw them coming and managed to jump out of the way, but most never even saw it coming. The truck hit the crowd and it was like suddenly driving off-road as the bodies got sucked down under the front of the truck, the engine straining furiously against the sudden resistance. The wheel turned in Jeff’s hand and the truck started to drift sideways. Jeff struggled to regain control but the vehicle was already spinning. They hit the rear of the bus and glanced off, the back end of the truck racing to get ahead of the front as they spun completely out of control.

  The truck slid to a stop with the hood pointed back in the direction they had come from. Bikers were looking at them in shock. Men were on the ground, some dead, some still moving.

  The windshield exploded, and glass rained down into Jeff’s face and into his lap.

  The bikers were shooting at them now.

  Jeff got the truck back into gear, popped the clutch, and peeled out, heading right back into the crowd.

  This time they were ready for it, and all but two of the bikers were able to get out of the way. Jeff didn’t give them a chance to get organized, though. He backed the truck up and hit a biker who was running for the cover of a parked car. Then he pulled forward and drove down another one who was running for the sidewalk.

  At the same time, the zombies from the gazebo were entering the street. A few of the bikers had run that way and straight into the arms of the infected.

  Their fighting line was broken. Even in his drugged state, Jeff could see most of the remaining bikers were running for the shelter of nearby buildings. He used the confusion to back the truck into the front bumper of the bus.

  To Colin, he said, “Go inside and get the girls.”

  “What?”

  “Break out the windshield and get the girls. Hurry, Colin.”

  Then Jeff climbed out and scanned the bodies on the ground. A few of them had dropped their weapons in the street, and he ran over and picked up a pistol. A bullet hit the pavement next to him and sent up a tiny umbrella of powdered rock and dust, but he couldn’t see where the shot had come from.

  He turned to Colin and yelled, “Move it, Colin. Hurry.”

  Colin climbed into the bed of the truck and then through the broken windshield. Jeff could hear him yelling inside. A shot whizzed past his head and this time he could trace it. Gaines was across the street, surrounded by zombies. His men were fighting them, but Gaines was ignoring them, focusing his shots in Jeff’s direction instead.

  Jeff fired back at him, but missed. It was hard to hold the gun steady. Aiming was impossible. The front sight kept floating off the gun.

  “Jeff!”

  He turned and saw Colin and the girls climbing through the windshield. Colin was carrying Kyra in his arms like she was a child. Robin had an arm around Katrina’s waist and looked like she was supporting most of her weight.

  Jeff ran to help them. Colin handed Kyra down to him and Jeff took her weight. Then Colin was beside him, taking Kyra back into his arms. The girl was like a rag doll, no resistance. She could barely hold her head up.

  “Is she okay?” Jeff asked. He had to yell to be heard over the gunshots and the screams that were filling the square.

  “Unconscious,” Colin said. “I don’t see any wounds.”

  “Where are Sarah and Tara?”

  “Dead,” Colin said.

  “What?”

  “Shot. Both of them.”

  Colin steadied Kyra in his arms, then carried her to the passenger seat and helped her inside.

  “Jeff!” It was Robin, calling to him from inside the bus. “Behind you.”

  A man in denim coveralls, his white, chest-length beard crusted and stiff with dried blood, was staggering along the length of the truck. Jeff pulled the revolver from his waist and fired point-blank at the man, hitting him in the chest right below the nape of his throat.

  The man fell back against the truck and coughed and gagged, but he didn’t go down.

  Jeff took aim again, sighting the weapon this time squarely on the man’s forehead, and fired. The bullet hit its mark with a loud, wet smack, like a raw steak slapped on the kitchen counter. The man’s head jerked back and he tumbled to the street in a motionless heap.

  Jeff looked over to the square and tried to find Gaines in the throng of bikers fighting with the zombies, but he couldn’t make him out.

  He turned back to Robin and took Katrina from her.

  “Careful,” Robin said. “Her stomach.”

  The inside of Katrina’s shirt was soaked with blood. He could feel it as soon as he touched her. She groaned with the pressure of his hands on her midsection, but she didn’t cry out. In shock, probably, he thought.

  Her head lolled onto his shoulder and he could hear her breathing, a wet, raspy sound mixed with whimpers of pain.

  “Easy,” he said. “I got you.”

  “Here,” Robin said, jumping down into the bed of the truck beside him. “I’ll take her.”

  Robin put her arms around Katrina and slowly lowered her down to the bed. She turned so her back was against the cab wall and pulled Katrina into her lap, cradling her as best she could.

  “Get us out of here, Jeff,” she said.

  Jeff jumped out of the bed and climbed behind the wheel.

  “Everybody hold on,” he yelled.

  He got the truck in gear and mashed down on the gas. The back tires chirped on the asphalt and the truck leaped forward. In front of them was a knot of people, both bikers and infected. Those bikers lucky enough to find an opening through the infected were running for their lives, while others not so lucky had resorted to hand-to-hand fighting, using anything they could to fend off the zombies.

  Jeff scanned the crowd as they accelerated, looking for Gaines. He saw him running toward the street from the gazebo, on an intercept course with Jeff and the others.

  Jeff jogged the wheel to the right and went up on the curb. He was aiming right for Gaines, mowing down bikers and zombies alike when they couldn’t get out of the way.

  Gaines stopped running and pulled his pistol.

  He took slow, measured aim at the approaching truck and fired.

  The rear windshield behind Jeff’s head exploded, and Jeff instinctively veered to his left. More bodies disappeared beneath the front of the truck and the vehicle bounced over them before landing back in the street and straightening out.

  As they sped away, Jeff looked back at Gaines. Gaines was standing in the middle of the crowd, zombies all around him, though he didn’t give them even a passing glance. Instead, he leveled his pistol again and fired at the truck.

  Robin screamed.

  Jeff immediately hit the brakes and looked back. Robin’s face was spl
attered with blood. Beside her, Katrina’s head was blasted open on one side, a yellowish-gray mass of tissue visible through the huge hole in her skull.

  Another shot hit the roof next to Jeff’s face.

  Colin said, “Go, go, go!”

  Jeff took one last look behind him, saw Gaines standing there with the gun in his hand, and stepped on the gas.

  Three hours later, Jeff pulled to the side of the road. Colin was still holding Kyra as tightly as ever, and Jeff wasn’t sure who was comforting whom. But he couldn’t drive anymore. The acid was coursing through him stronger than ever, and the road was moving like a living thing. He got out of the truck and went to the back. Robin was still there, holding Katrina in her arms, stroking the corpse’s blood-matted hair. She hadn’t wiped the blood from her own face, and when she rolled her eyes in Jeff’s direction, the whites stood out in stark contrast to the rest of her face.

  “We should bury her,” he said.

  Robin pulled Katrina closer to her and stared at him.

  “I can do it,” he said. “If you want me to.”

  “No,” she said. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “No, I’ll help.”

  Together, working silently, they lowered Katrina’s body from the truck, took a shovel from behind the driver’s seat, and headed off into the brush. They followed a trail to the top of a small rise and stood, side by side, looking down over a desert landscape silvered with moonlight.

  “Do you like this place?” he asked.

  She nodded. He could hear her sniffling.

  Two hours later, the grave was finished. It wasn’t deep, but it would do.

  Jeff took off his shoelaces and used them to lash two sticks together into a cross. Then he hammered it into the ground at the head of the grave and stepped back.

  Robin muttered, “I love you, baby,” and knelt forward and kissed the cross.

  Then she took Jeff’s hand and together they walked back to the truck.

  Colin and Kyra were waiting there, standing outside the truck. Colin turned when he heard them coming down from the trail and he motioned them over.

  He was staring up at a green highway sign that announced the Guadalupe Mountains National Park thirty miles ahead. Somebody had written over the sign in white paint.

  WE ARE GOING TO THE CEDAR RIVERS

  NATIONAL GRASSLANDS NORTH DAKOTA

  JOIN US

  “What do you think?” Colin said.

  He turned to the others. Jeff turned away from the sign. Something about those letters, the strong, confident brushstrokes, tugged at him. Finding them out here in the middle of nowhere, and at a point when he stopped because he couldn’t make himself drive any farther—it felt like some kind of sign. A shot in the arm when they needed it most. Like it was meant to be. He raised an eyebrow at Robin.

  She closed her eyes, lowered her head, and nodded.

  And just like that, it was decided.

  “Let’s find a map,” Jeff said.

  CHAPTER 36

  Athens, Texas, was just like all the other small towns they’d gone through. Lots of trees. Lots of sun-baked asphalt. Not a hill in sight.

  Ben Richardson was tired. His eyes hurt from the sun reflecting off the road. He’d been walking all morning, dragging himself along, keeping a weary eye on the little houses and buildings they passed, and trying not to breathe too deeply whenever they passed the dead rotting in the sun on the side of the road. Ahead of them, about a quarter mile down Garrison Street from where he stood, was a shabby, redbrick building with a sign out front advertising it as Lewis & Sons Mercantile. Garrison Street curved right around the other side of that building, and Barnes, who was walking point as usual, had already turned the corner.

  Richardson stopped, cradling his rifle in his arms like a baby, and drank most of a bottled water in one gulp. Every stitch of clothing he owned was crusty from dried sweat, and he was pretty sure he was developing shin splints. There was a pain in his legs that ran from the bottom of his kneecaps all the way to his toes. He put the cap back on the water and found it difficult to muster the will to keep walking.

  And then he heard yelling coming from the front of the caravan. He groaned inwardly. He was tired of zombies, tired of fighting. That part inside him that used to hum with fear at the sight of them had gone numb. But he knew his job. As rear guard, it was his responsibility to make sure they had a place to retreat to if they needed it. He spun around and scanned the street, already considering the buildings for the shelter they might offer and the streets for the easy, fast getaway.

  But something was different this time. It took him a moment to realize it, but when he did, he looked back over his shoulder and saw people running toward the redbrick building. They were jumping up and down, waving their arms in the air. He saw people laughing.

  “What in the hell?” he said.

  Sandra Tellez and Clint Siefer were in the bed of a truck up ahead, tending to a woman who had broken her ankle the week before.

  Sandra stood up and watched the scene over the cab of the truck, then looked back at Richardson.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  Tired as he was, he broke into a trot. He rounded the corner next to Lewis & Sons Mercantile and stopped. He lowered his rifle and stood there with his mouth agape.

  “Can you believe it?” a man next to him said. He was laughing, and he gave Richardson a playful push.

  Richardson smiled.

  Ahead of them, five, maybe six hundred feet up the road, was an immense parking lot full of brightly painted recreational vehicles.

  “Are those Winnebagos?” a woman asked.

  “No way,” said the man who had pushed Richardson. “Those are Fleetwoods, top of the line. Even the cheap ones cost more than our house did.”

  Excited people pushed their way past Richardson. He stood there, letting himself get jostled.

  He said, “Sweet Jesus. No more walking.”

  Then he let out a yell and started running.

  Richardson was thumbing through a brochure for the Fleetwood Revolution LE, the stripped-down, no-frills edition starting at $289,600, when he stepped onboard one of the demo models.

  The brochure slipped from his fingers.

  “Holy hell,” he said.

  Sandra Tellez was sitting next to Clint on a white leather couch, giggling like a six-year-old little girl. Barnes was seated in the driver’s seat, checking out the exterior cameras and nodding with grudging admiration.

  “Pretty respectable,” he said.

  Richardson thought the living room looked like a cross between a luxury private jet and the Playboy mansion. The floors were tiled. The leather furniture looked like fluffy white clouds. Recessed lighting ran the length of the ceiling. The kitchenette, directly across from where Sandra was sitting, was done up with stainless-steel Viking appliances. There was rich mahogany wood trim everywhere.

  “You gotta see the shower,” Sandra said.

  “There’s a shower?”

  She nodded toward the back. Curious, he walked that way, slipped through a doorway, and nearly cried. In front of him was a bedroom the likes of which he had only seen in television shows about the rich and famous. The shower that Sandra had referred to was to his right, and it did bring tears to his eyes. Oh God, how he yearned for a shower.

  From the brochure, he knew this thing had a washer and dryer, too. What a joy that would be. Clean clothes, a hot shower, a meal cooked on a real stove.

  He dropped down into a chair in the corner and just stared at the room.

  “Well,” said Barnes from behind him. “What do you think?”

  Richardson looked up at him.

  “You want to know what I think?” he said. “I think I can’t wait to brush my teeth.”

  From the notebooks of Ben Richardson

  Waurika, Oklahoma: August 22nd, 4:38 P.M.

  Thank the lord, we finally made it out of Texas. Thank the lord. I could hear the che
ering from the other RVs even as we were driving down the road…

  Chickasha, Oklahoma: August 23rd, 3:50 A.M.

  Drunker than Cooter Brown tonight and feeling pretty damn good about it.

  We pulled into Chickasha earlier today and found a liquor store. These RVs have got ice makers on board, so, yeah, I made vodka martinis for everybody on our RV.

  I don’t know how many I had. A bunch.

  So, something a little lighter for the old notebooks tonight.

  We’ve been on the road for a couple of weeks now, and we’ve seen a lot of infected wandering the roadways. One of the things I’ve seen quite a bit of is something I call the walking epitaph, people clipping little signs to their chest to let the rest of us know who they are, and maybe to give us a little glimpse of who they were in their uninfected life.

  I suppose the epitaphs were inevitable, really. Nobody wants to be forgotten. We’ve all seen how the necrosis filovirus robs its victims of their sense of self. It only seems natural to want to hold on to a piece of who we are for as long as possible. I can’t blame anybody for that.

  The quality of the poetry—and I’ve noticed that it’s almost always poetry of some sort—is fairly uneven. But the humor is consistent, and I think that our need to poke fun at death speaks volumes about us as a species. I guess I’m not the only one who does his best work with a deadline.

  Here are just a few of the epitaphs I’ve seen. They’re not the best. Not by any means. But they all struck me as special when I saw them, and that’s why I’m recording them here.

  This walking corpse is Marvin Reece’s.

  Have mercy on my soul, dear Jesus,

  Just like I’d do if I was you, Jesus,

  And you was this corpse of Reece’s.