Hardin had been outdrawn and went to surrender his guns by holding them out with his trigger fingers in the guards. When Hickock went to reach for them, with a flick of his wrists he rolled the Peacemakers up into his hands and had them pointing in Wild Bill’s face.
As the others looked on, their scoffs and jokes soon came to an end. Even Evans finally stopped cracking on them when he saw the deadly bullet ballet they were doing together. The men were suitably impressed and were soon trying the one-handed magazine reloads themselves. They were watching a master at work. The tricks and the movements were second nature to Lars, one transitioned smoothly into another and Bridget flowed gracefully with him, mimicking his moves. There was a beauty in the katas, and like many things borrowed from the Asian cultures, there was a practicality behind it. Lars called the movements as they were performed, and Bridget lent an exotic quality to them. Black Crow Spreads Wings was guns extended to opposite ends of the car. It flowed into Jack Rabbit Dancing, where a pistol was spun into the same holster where another was just drawn. Dragonfly on Water had two guns spin up and land on the back of his flattened hands. A delicate twisting of the wrists and that flowed into Two Monkeys Laughing when he dropped to a knee and aimed both guns upward.
Bridget took to the tricks like a duck to water. Her long fingers, her years of ballet and gymnastics training, and her sheer determination all adapted seamlessly to the movements, and soon Lars had met his match on many of the gun dances.
Gunny had to smile as he watched them play, tossing magazines and pistols back and forth on the run, and practicing combat reloads. This whole zombie apocalypse seemed like a bad joke sometimes. If the initial outbreak of shock, surprise, and viciousness would have had some warning, even one minute of dos and don’ts from someone in the know, tens of thousands of lives would have been spared. The undead weren’t hard to deal with if you were prepared. They were dumber than a box of hammers, and much more predictable.
It didn’t take long before they were having quick-draw contests. Hollywood was faster than them all, that was no surprise, but with some practice, Bridget might catch up with him. Everyone was having a little fun, forgetting their troubles for a while, and the laughter was good to hear.
“C’mon, Griz,” he said when he’d bested everyone else. “Let’s see what you got, think you can beat Kid Lightning?” He grinned and spun his guns, slipping them in and out of the holsters, Angry Lotus Jumping, first one then the other, equally adept with either hand.
“I think I can beat you with this frying pan,” Griz grumped, brandishing it at him, then went back to chopping onions for the soup he was making.
“What about you, Mr. Gun Meister Man?” Lars said, unfazed, turning his grin on Gunny. “Rumor has it, you’re kinda speedy. Wanna try the kid?”
“I’ll pass,” he said. “You’d just embarrass me.”
Lars didn’t give up so easily. He was competitive by nature and he knew if anyone on the train was as quick as him, it might be Gunny. He had to know.
“This one is Yellow Chicken Clucking,” he said, as he kept dropping his guns and catching them by the barrel or sideways or pointing at himself.
Everyone else joined in, calling for a contest, pounding their feet and chanting. Gunny finally saw they weren’t going to give up and stood, shaking his head at them, but he was grinning. Like the rest of them had done, he cleared the bullet in the chamber, then holstered his Glock. He put on a little show, tilting his head back and forth and limbering up his fingers. Everyone was still laughing and catcalling, but there was a little bit of a seriousness filling the car. Everyone knew Lars was faster than them when they went up against him. Jellybean didn’t even get his out of the holster before Hollywood put two into him with a shouted BANG BANG! They expected to lose, the kid was good. This was different, this was a real contest. Lars had some real competition. Bets started flying.
Hollywood gave his guns one last flourish then holstered them as Gunny stood, smiling, and tucked his jacket behind the Kydex holster he preferred. They stared at each other for a moment, not five feet apart. Everyone got quiet and the only sound was the continuous click-clacking of the wheels as they spun over a new section of rail, as constant as a ticking clock. Gunny rolled his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other and squinted as the smoke curled up. Lars spread his hands and waggled his fingers, a small intimidation, a little mind game to let his opponent know the draw might be coming from the left hand, or maybe from the right hand. Maybe both. If they looked, if they darted their eyes to one hand, he would draw with the other. Gunny had noticed this as he watched them, thought it was a pretty good trick, but it didn’t affect him. He kept his pale blue eyes burrowing into Hollywood’s. The big, toothy grin faded and Gunny slowly gave him a half smile, then dipped for this gun.
Hollywood’s hands were a blur and he had both guns up and in Gunny’s face just as he had his rising at chest level. Gunny froze, Lars had beat him. Cheers, and more than one groan, went up and bets that were won or lost were paid.
Both men holstered their guns, bumped fists, and laughed at the losers.
“Man, that was close,” Hollywood said, his big smile back in place. “Don’t feel bad, my slow-handed brother. Nobody can beat Kid Lightning.”
“WATCH OUT!” Griz screamed and there was a loud clatter of metal on metal.
Gunny and Lars spun as one, both pulling iron, but Gunny hit the slide, chambered a round, and had both hands steadying his aim before Lars had even cleared his holster.
Everyone else had jumped up, too, and all stood staring at Griz, who went back to calmly chopping his onion.
“I was talking about that fly,” he said, looking up, feigning surprise at their reaction and waving his knife in the general direction of the ceiling. “He was getting near my soup. I was just shooing him away.”
“You were holding back,” Lars accused, dropping his gun back in its holster.
Gunny glared at Griz, who went back to acting innocent and humming to himself.
“Damn, son. You got the devil’s right hand,” Jellybean said. “I didn’t even see you move.”
The radio crackled to life and Gunny stepped over to it.
“Hey, we got Lakota broadcasting!” he said and turned it up, forgetting his annoyance with Griz.
“Wire Bender finally got it up and running?” Griz asked, stirring the onions into a pot of his infamous fifteen-bean soup. He was pleased with himself. He knew ol’ Shaytan had been playing possum.
Gunny was already planning on sleeping as far away from him as he could tonight because he didn’t have a gas mask. Griz’s fifteen bean soup was legendary in mess tents around the world.
Everyone crowded around to listen. It was Bastille, sounding smooth and silky, trying to introduce Cobb, who could be heard in the background.
“Just read what I wrote. You do know how to read, don’t you?” they heard him grumble, then the sound of a door slam.
Bastille wasn’t bothered at all, and continued on in his smooth DJ voice, taking the paper and only sounding a little bit pompous as he read it.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen of the free world,” he started and Gunny rolled his eyes. He was laying it on thick. “As most of you hearing this know from our sister station broadcasting Sergeant Meadows’ message, Lakota is the new capital city. It is safe, secure, and we have reestablished running water, flushing toilets and electricity, the hallmarks of any civilized society.”
Bastille rambled on, not really coming out and saying it, but making it sound like he had played an enormous role in establishing the new Capital city. When he finally got to the meat of the matter, after waxing eloquent for a while, he told the world there was a rescue train coming through the southern states and if anyone wanted to board, all they had to do was hang a bed sheet or two across the tracks, anywhere along the line. The train would stop, pick them up, and bring them back to Lakota where there were plenty of free houses, quality food, and meaningful work
to be had. He outlined the route and the towns they would be passing through on their way to Atlanta, then music started playing.
“Don’t worry if you missed some of that,” he went on. “We’ll repeat the route on news breaks, every half hour. So, stay tuned and enjoy a musical interlude with Yanni.”
“Really?” Evans grumbled. “The only radio station in the world and the first song played is Yanni?”
The signal was coming in strong and it wasn’t even dark yet. Once the sun set, it would blanket the States. They still had plenty of room in Lakota, but if thousands started showing up, they’d have to build a wall around another town. Gunny was good with that, the more the merrier. Numbers meant strength, and maybe they would get some skilled professionals rolling in. Doctors or dentists. Electricians and carpenters. Perhaps a pilot or two.
“Guess we better start figuring out some protocol for loading passengers,” Gunny groused. “He was supposed to wait until we were on the way back.”
“It’ll probably never be out in the middle of nowhere without a zombie in sight,” Griz said. “Dollars to donuts, we have to lay down a lot of lead at every stop.”
Gunny pointed at one of the men kicked back on the sofa. “Can you run up and let Stabby know about the sheets strung across the tracks, that it’s a signal from survivors?”
“Yes, sir,” he said and darted toward the front of the train.
He came back a few minutes later with the news that Stabby already knew. He’d been talking to Cobb on the ham.
“Soups done,” Griz announced and started spooning it into bowls. Gunny grabbed one to take up to the front of the train. He ate with Stabby, watching the miles roll by as the train clicked steadily along.
As they passed through Rayville, in Louisiana, the clouds that had been threatening rain all afternoon finally opened up. Everyone had been looking for signs of life in every town, but there were none. Stabby bounced an old, rusted pickup off the tracks and they slowly continued east.
“Let’s stop outside of Tallulah,” Gunny said, looking at the rail map, the heavy clouds, and the setting sun. “The track splits away from the roads for a while, it’s out in the middle of nowhere. It’ll be a good place to hang out without much chance of an ambush by the hajis.”
They had all agreed, Gunny the last to do so, that it was too dangerous to run at night if there wasn’t an urgent reason to do so. Now that Bastille had broadcast their route, the radicals could easily sabotage the tracks. A bridge could be out. Rails could be torn up. Another train could be running right at them with the throttle wired wide open.
“As soon as the undead catch up, I’ll run the train back the way we came and take them out. It’ll be safe backtracking at night, we know the rails are clear,” Gunny said. “I’ll take first watch.”
9
Daniel
Daniel had been talking to his fellow Marines, they were ready to make something happen. They’d been kept in the dark too long, treated like dirt too often, and had overheard enough to know that something was rotten in Denmark. They had been on short rations for a week, and they were used to hardships, but they couldn’t help but notice the civilians that they were supposed to be protecting and guarding weren’t cutting back any. They were throwing away more than the Marines were being given to eat. They’d come to the conclusion that this whole operation was being run by incompetents. Something had to be done, and they’d volunteered him to do the talking for them. Daniel was going to demand answers today. They no longer trusted or believed anything the weasel-faced man who was in charge of them said.
The man came bustling into their barracks area that morning and clapped his hands like he was trying to get the attention of a bunch of kindergarteners.
“We’re leaving soon,” he announced. “I need you all down in the garage to prepare the vehicles. We’ll be traveling to the new capital that has been established in Oklahoma.”
Daniel jumped up and faced him, refusing to salute like he’d been told to do dozens of times. “We still don’t have any idea who the enemy is, what we’re going to be facing,” he said, a little heat in his voice. “You’ve kept us all in the dark for a month with no communication, no intelligence and no news of the outside world. Have we been nuked? Are we at war? You need to fill us in on the situation so we can plan for contingencies.”
“You just need to follow orders, soldier,” the man shot back. “You’ll be informed of all the details you need to know by the president when the time comes. Now take your soldiers and get busy preparing those buses. There are men down there who will tell you what needs to be done.”
With that, he turned and huffed out like he was a very busy man who didn’t have time to be babysitting a bunch of hired help.
Daniel turned to the rankingest officer in the barracks, a 1st lieutenant who had graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis. His father had been a congressman, so he was assured a commission. He wasn’t a bad guy, but his expertise was in pushing papers around and laughing at jokes at cocktail parties. He hadn’t been through the training most of the men had gone through. He wasn’t a grunt and the enlisted men had naturally turned to Daniel for leadership after a few weeks, when it became apparent that things weren’t at all what they seemed. They didn’t need someone to ensure they kept their uniforms clean and the barracks tidy. They were looking for a two-fisted bar-fighter that would lead them into battle, if it came to that.
Daniel was their man when it came to questioning authority, not blindly following orders that were more and more seeming to come from a rogue government. From the Deep State Players, as Wire Bender called them. Daniel had a pretty diverse childhood, growing up at the Three Flags. He was always in contact with new people, many of them foreigners, a lot of them fleeing persecution or poverty in their own countries. He befriended men from the Eastern Bloc countries and South American drivers, when he was washing their trucks or later, working in his dad’s shop. He grew up in an environment of men and women who didn’t quite fit in with polite society, a lot of them veterans of many different armies, all of them distrustful of “Big Government”. If he’d heard it once, he’d heard it a thousand times: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.”
He wasn’t very political, he was only in his twenties, but years of being around men like that had rubbed off on him, whether he realized it or not. He saw how his grandpa used money from the Vet’s Box to help people. He’d listened in with Wire Bender to Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell and learned to decipher truth from lies. He’d learned to make decisions, to take charge, and the importance of being honest. Little lies would come back to haunt you. If you tried to softball the dollar amount on a major repair on a man’s truck, if you didn’t play it straight, there were hard feelings when his bill came in a thousand dollars more than he was expecting. Daniel learned early to tell the whole truth, no sugar coating. The Marines had reinforced that in him and right now, he had nothing but disdain for the men who had been giving the orders.
He glowered at the door the weasel-faced man had just slammed behind him, staring daggers at the puffed-up bastard’s back. The men in the barracks were quiet. Waiting to see what they would do. Waiting to see what Daniel would do.
He finally turned and looked around at them, then nodded to the LT.
“Sir, shall I take the men down to the garage?” he asked, still pretending the other man was in charge. Still following the rules. Still obeying orders.
For now.
10
Casey
It didn’t take them long to gather enough cars and trucks up to get everyone rolling, heading for greener pastures. Once he hit up the first car dealership and broke open the key locker, everyone was riding in style. They stopped at nearly every bar, drug store, and gun shop at first, as they kept rolling east. Each time got easier with every new gun they found. The first few battles at the car lot and Wal-Mart had been hard, they’d lost a few me
n, but they learned quickly from their mistakes. By the time they raided the third town and everyone was armed, they just blasted their way in and out, leaving trails of the dead in their wake. They started hitting the truck stops, too. Circling cars would keep the undead occupied while a crew ran in and stole all the CB radios and antennas. After a few days, most of them had two-ways and it was easier to keep everything organized.
They were headed to the Women’s Correctional Facility south of Fort Smith, Arkansas. A wiry Mexican man said his wife was locked up there, both of them were doing twenty-five to life for a series of armed robberies that ended up in a shootout. He wanted to go there, see if she was still alive and get her if the women there had survived. The men all agreed it was a good idea, maybe there would be hundreds of horny women waiting to be rescued. Maybe they’d been turned out into general population like the men had. If so, there would be survivors. Casey didn’t have a plan, wasn’t sure what to do now that he had his own private army, so he acted like he had to think it over, see if he could work it into his master plan. When the little Hispanic man had stood in front of him, head bowed and asked, “Please, Ese.” Casey felt the rush of power. The feeling of control over someone else’s life. The men looked on, awaiting his decision, and he relished the moment. He finally acquiesced and they cheered as Paco swore his allegiance.
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 6