by Dirk Patton
It took me half a second to see that the road was completely blocked by a jack-knifed semi no more than 300 feet in front of us. I jammed both feet onto the brake, pushing so hard my ass rose out of the seat as all my weight was on the brake pedal. The tires screamed and the front end wanted to turn, but I fought it for all I was worth. If we went sideways at this speed the big vehicle would roll. Dog had slammed forward off the seat, bouncing off the dash and wound up on the floor when I stood on the brakes. This probably saved his life as we were still going too fast when the front bumper hit the wrecked truck and the air bags deployed with a loud pop and a huge burst of the white powder they use to keep the material from sticking.
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I can honestly say I’ve never had an air bag deploy in my face before, and I don’t ever want one to do so again. It’s not a pleasant experience. I sat there for a minute we didn’t have, slightly dazed but intact. Dog started scrambling on the passenger floor and succeeded in pushing his way past the deflated airbag and back onto the seat. He looked none the worse for wear but he had a coating of fine, white powder frosting his fur. He sneezed and shook, re-filling the slowly clearing air with another cloud of the damn stuff. Coming back to full alertness I checked the clock. Nine minutes gone. Checking the mirror I was thankful to see that the backboard Rachel was strapped to was still in place and she looked like she’d come through the crash better than either Dog or me.
The engine was still running and I batted the airbag out of the way, shifted into reverse and was flooded with relief when the ambulance started moving backwards. Stopping, I threw the selector into park and spent a few seconds slicing the airbag off the wheel with my Ka-Bar. I stepped out of the vehicle and tossed the heavy fabric away as I went forward to check the damage. The front of the ambulance was dented and banged up, but the heavy duty bumper had done its job and protected the vehicle. I didn’t readily see anything that would prevent me from continuing to drive it.
The semi I had rammed into was a different problem. It was a specialized trailer that the 40 foot shipping containers from the rail yard back in Murfreesboro were loaded on, and currently all 40 feet of the trailer and container was effectively blocking the road. On either side of the pavement were guard rails that protected drivers from steep drop offs. There was no going around with the ambulance. Leaving Dog inside to guard both Rachel and the vehicle I climbed over the rail and made my way around the blockage.
The trailer was still connected to the truck, and both were still upright on their tires. There were no other vehicles around and I was starting to get worried that I was stumbling around a road block that had been set up for an ambush. Rifle up and ready I moved forward, slowly circling around the cab. Moving in front of the truck’s grill I scanned a full circle but didn’t spot anything to concern me, but my internal clock was bonging like Big Ben in warning that the bombs were about to start dropping. Turning to face the truck I looked up at the windshield and saw the problem. An infected male sat in the cab, pressed forward against the inside of the glass as he tried to reach me. The poor bastard must have turned while he was driving. Fortunately for me the truck stayed upright and I should be able to move it out of the way.
Stepping to the passenger door I lowered my rifle, drew the Kukri and tried the door handle only to find it locked. Hoping for better results on the driver side I circled the cab, took a deep breath and pulled the door open. I stepped back quickly as the male tumbled out and onto the ground, no longer smart or coordinated enough to use the steps built into the outside of the truck body to climb down. Before he could clamber to his feet I buried the Kukri in his head, stepped over the body and climbed up behind the wheel.
The keys dangled from the ignition switch and were still in the ‘on’ position. Pressing the clutch in, I wiggled the long gear shift until it was in neutral then hit the starter button. There was a loud whine, then the diesel engine roared to life and settled into a smooth idle. Clutch pedal still pressed to the floor I stared at the markings on the shifter, trying to figure out how to get into gear. Any gear. The damn thing appeared to have 18 speeds, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t know which gear would get me moving, so I pushed it into what I thought was fourth. Giving some throttle I let the clutch out slowly and the truck jerked hard and died. Needing a higher gear I restarted the engine and tried sixth, this time getting the rig moving. The left front edge of the trailer was jammed against the guard rail but I kept feeding in throttle and the truck drug the trailer free with a horrible screech of tearing metal.
I drove the truck far enough to clear room for the ambulance to pass, shut off the engine and climbed down. Trotting back I paused long enough to grab the dead infected’s belt and drag the body to the side of the road so I didn’t have to drive over it. Running back to the ambulance I piled in, shifted into drive and floored the throttle. We slowly accelerated around the truck and down the road and I checked the dash clock. 15 minutes gone and we’d covered maybe ten miles. We were going to be well short of I-40 when the Air Force started dropping their bombs. One thing about the Air Force. They are always on time. Usually to within a couple of seconds, and I didn’t have any reason to believe they wouldn’t be in this case.
I pushed the ungainly ambulance as hard as I could, and to its credit the crash into the semi didn’t seem to have affected it one bit. It still drove like a chuck wagon with three lame horses pulling it. 16 minutes. I started trying to think of any alternative, but when thousands of bombs started falling out of the sky it would be luck that kept us from getting our asses blown into a couple of million pieces. Glancing at the clock I saw we were at 18 minutes. Raising my eyes back to the road the switches for the red and blue emergency beacons caught my attention. Would the pilots try to avoid dropping on our location if they saw an emergency vehicle’s lights? Worth a shot, I thought as I flipped on the overheads.
19 minutes. The high intensity red and blue lights from the roof alternately lit the hood of the ambulance and the trees along the side of the highway as I kept us heading north. For the moment we had left the sharp curves and steep grades behind and were running on a fairly straight and level stretch of highway. The speedometer needle was buried beyond 100 and the wheel vibrated in my hands like a living thing trying to escape my grasp. I was splitting attention between the road and clock when we hit 20 minutes. A few seconds later the deep, bass rumble of multiple 750 and 1,000 pound bombs, sounding just like distant thunder, reached my ears. I tried to press harder on the throttle but it was already mashed as far down as it would go and was probably embedded into the floor by now.
The rumbling steadily rose in volume. Thankfully, for the moment at least, it was well behind us. In the rear view mirror I could see a constant ripple of flashes across the horizon as bombs detonated. Carpet bombing is exactly what it sounds like. Bombs are dropped in sufficient quantity to literally ‘carpet’ the terrain. These aren’t the smart bombs that you see on the news with a camera in the nose and the target getting bigger and bigger until the image blinks out on detonation. These are just big, dumb, iron bombs that aren’t really any more sophisticated than what was used in World War II. They are devastating as all hell, but I wondered just how many the Air Force still had in inventory. They really hadn’t been used in large quantities since Vietnam. If there was a sufficient stockpile then the Air Force could destroy enough of the herds to make clean up by ground forces manageable. But then, just how many would be needed? The herds were reported as numbering in the millions. How many square miles did millions of people fill up? How many bombs did it take to carpet all that geography? That was for bigger minds then mine. Right now I needed the ambulance to go faster as the bombs were getting closer.
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I pressed on, wrenching the ambulance through curves that were thankfully not as sharp as some of the earlier ones, but still forced me to back off the speed to keep from rolling over at a hundred miles an hour. The bombs were getting closer, or more accurately there were more bom
bs falling and they were falling closer to our location. Negotiating another curve I held my breath when a small herd of frightened deer dashed into the road and we went up on the outside set of wheels as I steered to avoid them. It seemed to take forever for the tires in the air to come back into contact with the pavement and I nearly lost control when they did, but fought through the instability with small corrections to the wheel and throttle.
Tactical and evasive driving skills were another part of my training from years ago, but that training had not been used since I’d left the Army. I was surprising myself how well I was doing. Remembering my uncanny ability to jinx myself I shut down that line of thinking and focused on my driving as more bombs came down close enough to rattle the ambulance with their shockwaves.
They kept getting closer, one close enough to lift the back of the big vehicle completely off the ground for a moment and shatter the windows in the back doors as well as both side mirrors. One of the four rear tires shredded from shrapnel and there was a hell of a racket as chunks of rubber tore off the damaged tire and smashed into the underside of the ambulance. I fought the wheel some more, letting speed bleed off to get the vehicle back under control and in a straight line, absently noting the sign that said I was two miles from I-40 as we roared past it in the dark. As if seeing that sign was a talisman the bombing stopped. Well, at least the bombing that was nearly right on top of my head. I couldn’t tell if the Air Force was still pounding away farther south without the side mirrors and didn’t feel like stopping to get out and look.
Less than two minutes later we reached the intersection with I-40 and I had to slow to navigate through some abandoned wrecks, then clearing the Interstate I accelerated again. Yes, I had been told the bombing was only supposed to be south of I-40. However, I knew that unguided, iron bombs were being dropped and to expect precision placement of them during carpet bombing would be foolish. I wanted at least a few miles of buffer in case some pilot was just a little too far north during his bombing run.
Pushing on for a few more miles I slowed to a more manageable speed as I passed a sign welcoming me to Lebanon, Tennessee. Soon I had to slow to less than 30 to work my way through the wrecked and abandoned vehicles that littered the highway. Houses and small businesses started appearing, but they all appeared to be deserted.
Looking down at the dash I found the controls for the overheads and shut them off. No need to be any more noticeable than we already were, but a bright red ambulance will draw attention even at night. The dash clock told me it was almost 0530 and the computer map showed us slowly moving towards what looked like a medium sized town. There was still no sign of any habitation and I started to suspect that Lebanon had already been evacuated.
I shouldn’t have looked at the time. I had been operating on adrenaline for quite some time and I could feel both my mind and body starting to shut down. In the old days I would have popped a couple of ‘go’ pills to keep myself awake and moving, but I didn’t have any. There was probably something in the back of the ambulance that would do the trick, but it wouldn’t be labeled with a name that meant anything to me and I didn’t feel like experimenting right now.
Exhaustion setting in, I started eyeing the abandoned homes we were passing, looking for a good candidate to hole up in for a few hours of rest. I wasn’t particularly concerned about the infected we had left behind in Murfreesboro. They were 40 miles away and had just had the snot bombed out of them by the Air Force. Not that I thought for a second the carpet bombing had been very successful in stopping the herd, but it should slow them down. Assuming that if they were not in active pursuit of prey, the herd was probably moving at around four miles an hour. That gave me 10 hours before the leading edge made it to Lebanon. If they were even coming this way and not angling to the northwest to go to Nashville.
My sluggish brain didn’t register the house on our left until I had already driven past. Hitting the brakes I made a slow U-turn then turned onto the dirt road that cut through a recently mown lawn. A couple of hundred yards from the highway a neatly maintained brick house sat dark and silent, but I was interested in the large barn another fifty yards behind it. The barn was large enough to hide the ambulance and us, and was the best choice I’d seen so far. The other advantage was not having to go further into town where we might encounter more infected or other survivors.
The road was smooth, soft dirt and I let the ambulance idle down it at about five miles per hour. Headlights on bright I scanned the house and saw no sign of anyone in residence, either infected or not. Blinds were open and as we drew closer I could see that the front door was also open, the entrance protected only by a screen door. This made me feel confident that there weren’t any survivors inside, but there could still be infected waiting to invite me in for breakfast.
Rolling past the front of the house I tried to peer through the windows, but it was pitch black inside and I couldn’t see anything. Relaxing a little, I felt it was a safe assumption that if there were any infected in the house they would be charging out through the screen door in response to the clattering diesel engine. Continuing on past the corner of the house I followed the road to the barn, coming to a stop a dozen yards from its closed double doors.
The barn was painted the classic red that one expects to see and looked to be as neatly maintained as the house and rest of the property. Shutting off the lights I sat there for a few minutes to give my eyes time to adjust to the darkness. Without the headlights I noticed the sky to the east was lightening with the approaching dawn. I also noticed the horizon to the south glowed reddish orange in a few places from fires burning as a result of the bombing. Shutting off the engine so I could hear I told Dog to stay and stepped out of the cab, rifle coming up to the ready position as soon as my boots hit the ground.
Stepping away from the ambulance I carefully scanned a full 360 degrees, but didn’t see anything that concerned me. Keeping a nice wide buffer, I circled the barn, finding nothing to worry about. There was only a huge fifth wheel horse trailer parked on a cement slab behind the barn, but it was empty and clean. Back in front of the ambulance I moved to the barn doors and banged on one of them with the steel toe of my left boot. I took a quick step back when there were a couple of answering snorts, then relaxed when a horse softly neighed from inside the building.
Pulling the door open wide, I exercised a great deal of caution, stepping back with rifle ready in case any infected were lying in wait. I hadn’t forgotten the female infected in the forest that had shown the intelligence to set up an ambush and had no clue if the horses I could hear would be calm around an infected. After a few minutes of waiting and watching and detecting no threats I clicked on the flashlight mounted to my rifle and moved quickly into the barn, stepping sideways and putting my back against a wall.
Still no movement other than what I now saw were four horses in their stalls. I scanned across all the walls and looked up, but there was no loft and no place for an infected to hide. A few feet down the wall I was pressing my back against was a large panel with half a dozen electrical switches. Figuring it was worth a try I slid along the wall to it and started flipping them on. The inside of the barn lit up as banks of overhead lighting popped on.
This wasn’t an old barn. It was fairly new and modern and cleaner than many houses I’d been in. I was sure the owners either raised, trained, or both, the horses that were all looking at me. This set off alarm bells in my head. I grew up around horse people and knew that even as the world was falling apart, horse people would not leave their animals locked in stalls and untended. Stepping off from the wall I thoroughly cleared the barn, even checking each stall to make sure someone wasn’t hiding with a horse. Nothing. Shit. I hadn’t wanted to have to check the house, but something was off here.
The horses were getting agitated, most likely hungry and thirsty. I didn’t want them to get too worked up and start making a lot of noise, so I spent a few minutes feeding and watering them from gleaming buckets that were
neatly hung on pegs by each stall. That chore done I stepped out of the barn and closed the door behind me. I took a moment to wedge a short length of straw into the hinge side of the door so I would know if anyone opened it while I was gone. After I checked on Dog and Rachel I headed for the house.
The back of the house boasted a large screened in porch that had a pair of matching chairs positioned so that when you were sitting in them you were facing the barn. A small table sat between them with a tall stack of magazines resting on it; Horse & Rider, Equestrian, Horse Illustrated, Cosmo and People if it matters. Moving across the porch I came to another open door that was only protected by a screen and slowly pulled it open and slipped inside.
The smell had hit me when I was opening the screen door, and it was stronger as I moved into the house. Not the overpowering stench of a long rotting body, but still the smell of death I knew all too well. I had the rifle up and ready, flashlight on as I moved deeper into the house, clearing rooms as I went. The house was as clean and organized as the barn, until I entered what I assumed was the living room.
The room was a shambles, every piece of furniture knocked over and broken glass from several photo frames and crystal vases twinkling in the light. In the middle of the floor a large man who looked to be in his early 40s lay face up, the rug underneath him black with his blood. He had been stabbed in the chest and stomach more times than I cared to count. I played the flashlight over him and noted the condition of his hands. He’d put up one hell of a fight before dying.