“My life for yours,” he had said, his fist over his heart. Casey heard a few other of his faithful murmur it also. He liked the sound of it and decided that soon, everyone would be saying it. It was kind of like a salute.
Kind of like a “Hail Caesar!”
Kind of like a “Heil Hitler.”
Kind of like “Hail to the Chief.”
He smiled.
They rolled up on the prison the following afternoon, bristling with weapons and wearing their new Wal-Mart clothes, ready to break all the zombie heads necessary to get in. The men had seen the devastation of the undead with their own eyes for the past week. They hadn’t seen any survivors, just dead bodies walking around. They had convinced themselves the women would still be alive, all of them hot, horny, grateful and waiting for their rescuers with open arms. And legs.
Casey and Paco stood by the Mustang as the advance team came back to give him a report on what they saw. The double row of chain link fence was covered with the undead, hundreds of them pushing at it, trying to get inside.
“That’s a good sign,” Casey said. “They’re still alive. Pounder, do we have enough guns and bullets to kill them all?”
Pounder was a big biker with Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on his arms and neck, a slightly uneven swastika covering most of his chest. He had done a stint in the infantry before he got a dishonorable and knew the most about tactics and guns. Casey had put him in charge of the men with Gumbo, a hulking bad-ass from Louisiana, as his second. He was big enough to intimidate every man there and had a reputation for violence. He was from the swamplands near the Gulf, raised up wrestling alligators. He had been doing a thirty-year sentence for crippling a man who he’d caught cheating at cards. It was the maximum allowed by law and the judge made it clear he wouldn’t be getting paroled early. The charges of assault with intent, aggravated felonious battery, grievous bodily harm, wounding with intent, kidnapping, and a long list of others, all stuck and the jury only took twenty minutes to convict him. The photographs of the victim after the hours-long torture had been admitted as evidence. One of the jurors had even thrown up.
Casey was trying to copy the chain of command they had in Lakota as much as he could. It worked and, if he could make the men all fall in line under some leaders, he wouldn’t have to be in charge of every little thing. If something didn’t work out the way it was supposed to, he could blame them.
“No worries, boss,” Pounder replied. “We’ve got nearly a hundred guns. If everybody just shoots one or two, we’ll be good. The fields of fire are clear for hundreds of yards. We’ll just line up behind the cars and blast away.”
It was a simple plan. What could go wrong, Casey mused as he waved them forward to spread out in the open field.
The answer to that was, nearly everything. One of the Corvettes got stuck right away when it bottomed out on a prairie dog mound. The racing engine caught the attention of the hundreds of zombies a quarter mile away and they turned and ran for the new blood.
Casey nearly froze in fear when he saw the horde racing toward them. He yelled for the trucks to go around the high-centered car, but no could hear over the roar of the undead and the revving of the motor. They just sat in their vehicles like a bunch of morons, waiting for the car in front of them to move.
He should run, get out of here while he still could. These idiots were idiots, and they’d wind up getting him killed. He gripped the wheel in indecision. They were about to get overrun and none of the cars were armored. The glass would be shattered and they would be drug out of the windows, kicking and screaming, to be torn apart.
“Boss?” Paco asked, the fear in his voice starting to show.
Except me, Casey thought. I’m armored. I’ve got the Mustang. They can’t get to me. I’m safe. He loosened his death grip on the wheel and smiled. He pulled the bottle of Jameson from the cup holder and took a long swig, watching the undead stumble through the hundreds of holes the prairie dogs had made over the years. He was the leader of the baddest gang in America. He would show these jamokes how it’s done. What would Gunny do?
Oh, hell no. That wasn’t the question.
What would Casey the Cannibal do!
Now that was the question.
“Do I gotta do everything?” he said and spun the wheel, heading straight for the pack.
“Get on the radio. Tell Pounder to get them lined up and be ready to start shooting!” he yelled at Paco. “And make damn sure nobody hits me!”
Casey had seen the way the mindless zombies would run after anything that moved, anything human, so he would give them something to chase, and then lead them right along the row of cars and all the guns. He aimed for the lead runner and Paco held the microphone in a death grip as the body thumped over the brush guard on the stolen Mustang and bounced off the bars protecting the windshield, leaving splatters of blackish blood. Casey hooted in triumph, he was back in the game.
He was large and in charge.
He wound the motor out before grabbing third gear and aiming for the next in line, the oversized tires and shocks bouncing effortlessly over the mounds. The horde was like a flock of birds, screaming straight for the men scrambling to get in position one second, then turning fluidly to chase after the roaring machine tearing through their ranks the next. Casey led them in a huge circle, nearly all the way back to the fence, blowing the horn merrily at the women he saw watching in the guard towers. The old muscle car drifted sideways easily in the field, sending up rooster tails of dirt and dust into the chasing horde. They screamed and roared and keened, arms outstretched, reaching for the flesh that was so close. A quick glance showed him Pounder had most of the cars lined up and the men were behind them, rifles and pistols aimed over hoods and roofs. He was having fun, spinning around and taking the undead out one at a time. It seemed like half of them had broken legs from stepping in the prairie dog holes and were hobbling after him now, screaming in frustration. Bones stuck out of the sides of ankles and their brackish blood stained the earth as they kept running, feeling nothing but rage. Casey sped up and spun the wheel, going into a power slide, then bringing the car back along the front line of men. Hundreds of zombies followed and the men opened fire as soon as the cackling Mustang passed them. The air was filled with explosions of gunfire and chunks of meat flying from freshly blown holes in decaying bodies. It was only luck that any of the prisoners survived, not a grand battleground strategy.
The horde turned toward the sound of gunfire and even though they were being riddled with round after round, most shots were missing their heads, the only ones that counted. If most of the undead hadn’t been struggling to stay upright on broken bones and uneven ground, they would have been overrun. The horde would have sprung over the cars and sank teeth into faces, staining the ground with fresh blood instead of the weeks dead sludge pouring out of holes in rotting bodies.
They were slow, many on hands and knees with both ankles broken, and the men just kept hammering at them, thousands of rounds chewing them to bits, until finally even the smallest of them finally took one to the head and lay still. Casey did a victory lap to the cheering of the jubilant men. As he bounced over the bodies, doing holeshots on the corpses and slinging blood and muscle and chunks of skin yards into the air, they celebrated and toasted each other. They slicked back their hair and straightened their collars. They had just liberated a whole prison full of women. They were heroes and they were going to get their rewards.
11
Casey
Casey led his jubilant army to the front gate of the prison. He had his pistol out, strutted up to the fence, and was getting ready to shoot the padlock holding it closed. The original high-security gate lock had already been shot to pieces, the only thing on it now was a bicycle chain.
“You just cool your jets right there, hero,” came a stern female voice. She was tall, black, and muscular, with a tight afro.
He looked up in surprise at this most unwelcome of welcomes. Twenty women were coming
through the inner fence, all of them armed with AK-47s. They flanked the tall woman and leveled their weapons at the men, who just stared at them dumbfounded. Pounder and a few others were the only ones to even think to shoulder their rifles or pull pistols out of waistbands.
Casey almost panicked and dove for cover, but was so surprised he just stood there staring with the rest of his men. It took the women of the prison a moment to spread out and it gave him time to recover from his moment of panic. Time to ask himself, What would Gunny do?
Gunny would be cool, he told himself. Gunny wouldn’t bat an eye.
The women already had the drop on them, and his dumbass guys were just standing there in their new Wal-Mart clothes and slicked back hair, most of them holding bottles of booze. Casey flipped up the safety, then spun his .45 in a gunfighter’s twirl with an air of nonchalance, before he holstered it.
“We came to your rescue, but I see it’s not needed,” he said with an air of indifference. He snapped his fingers at Paco who was standing next to him, indicating he wanted the bottle of Makers Mark he was holding.
“You come to rescue, or to rape?” the cynical woman said. “Because if you came to rape, you’ll get the same thing they did.”
She pointed to a far corner of the fenced yard, where a stack of about thirty bodies was festering with flies. Gray skinned men with sunken eyes and full, unkempt, beards. A group of the jihadis had come here for a little gangbanging debauchery and wound up getting shanked to death by a hundred pissed off women. From the state of their undress, probably when they were in the middle of what they came to do. That would explain the guns and the bruises on some of their faces, Casey thought. He quickly decided he wouldn’t be doing a little bit of raping after all. It was the only way he liked it, if it was rough and he was the one doing the punching. He’d have to find some other girls to suit his tastes, not these hard bitches who knew how to fight back. At the other end of the yard, there were fresh dug graves and handmade crosses. Looks like the muzzies didn’t all die quietly, they took a few of the women with them.
He smiled and assured the woman their intentions were honorable.
“We come bearing gifts,” he said and passed the bottle through the gap. One of the tall woman’s girls reached for it, then handed it to her.
Damn, Casey thought. I should have had Paco pass it over. A real leader wouldn’t have done it himself.
She cracked the lid, took a long drink and smacked her lips.
“Ahhh,” she said. “That is one thing we are missing in here. We brewed up some jailhouse hooch before all the fruit went bad, but pruno ain’t the same as good whiskey.”
“Can you ask about my wife?” Paco whispered again, his voice carrying in the quiet. Casey felt that rush of power he held over these men. This dyke wasn’t going to intimidate him. He wasn’t going to grovel. She’d better watch her ass or he’d have to teach her a lesson. A plan was starting to formulate in his head. An idea just conceived, but he instantly knew it would work. It was human nature.
“We came here to get you out, but it looks like you’ve got things under control. However, my lieutenant’s wife is in here and we won’t be leaving without her,” Casey said in a calm, but firm voice. The same voice Gunny had used on him. The voice that conveyed a message of more than just what the words said. The voice that finished the sentence with an unspoken “or else I’ll kill you and everyone else that stands in my way.”
Paco heard the power and the promise and thumped his hand over his heart before it dropped to his pistol. Many of his men did the same, sensing there might be a fight coming.
My life for yours.
The tall, dark woman heard the change in his voice, saw the sign of fealty made and looked beyond the fresh clothes and at the men themselves. This wasn’t just a group of survivors making a raid to get themselves some caged women. This wasn’t a bunch of Arkansas Hill Jacks or Oklahoma Rednecks. She saw the spider web tattoos on elbows, the teardrops tattooed on different faces. There were black, brown, and white men staring back through the fence. Muscles rippled from years behind bars and long workouts, gang tattoos, brands and scars still showed, despite their shiny new clothes.
“Which big house y’all bust out of?” she asked, deflecting the demand for one of her girls.
“Does it matter?” Casey asked.
Hard.
Cool.
In control.
It really didn’t and Lucinda decided she was actually glad to see them. Her girls didn’t have enough bullets to shoot their way out through the horde of zombies, and they’d already been rationing food to one small meal a day for the past week. They could try to run these guys off and then try to make it on their own, but why? This was a hard bunch, they had just killed hundreds of the undead things. They obviously knew how to take care of themselves and it would be good to share leadership with someone else. She was giving herself ulcers trying to figure out a way to keep her girls alive. Last month she was just another hard-ass doing hard time and only hanging with her own kind. She’d have happily bashed any white girl’s teeth out if they gave her any shit. Well, anyone but her Cindy. She loved that girl more than she had loved any man. Now she was their protector. They all looked to her to keep them safe. It was them against the world. With these guys showing up, their numbers had just doubled, and so had their chances of survival.
She smiled and pulled the key from around her neck.
“Come on in, boys and bring the food and booze. I think it might be conjugal visiting day.”
12
Gunny
Gunny was right, the dead following on the tracks found them in the middle of the night and started their keening and pounding on the cars. It was safe enough to go back the way they came in the dark. The train headlight was powerful, but they didn’t trust it, they preferred the sun to illuminate the myriad of dangers that could be lurking around every bend in the track. Behind them was clear of any debris and they knew all the bridges were still good, so he fired up the engine and headed back west, picking up speed and butchering the undead by the thousands. He ran it at a steady thirty miles an hour. Plenty fast enough to plow through the horde and splash body parts for yards down both sides of the track. It was easy to doze with the steady click-clack of the rails and the high idle hum of the engines, and there was no reason to stay vigilant. Gunny double checked that the doors were solidly latched, set his alarm and hooked up his Deadman switch. He let the gentle swaying of the train lull him back down into dreams, completely ignoring the quiet thump of exploding corpses and their mindless cries for blood.
His alarm went off after three hours and he brought the train to a stop, disengaged the transmission and cut back through the cars to the other engine, holding his breath when he passed by the bunk Griz was snoring in. That 15-bean soup was deadly the next day. He got the front engine fired up and headed back east. If his timing were right, they’d be going past the spot where they’d stopped the night before right about dawn, and it would be safe to carry on toward Atlanta.
He rolled a smoke and stared out into the blackness. No lights anywhere, no campfire glows in the distance. Only millions of dead wandering around aimlessly. It was well past witching hour and in the quiet predawn, with the steady and comforting noise of the train, he let down his guard and felt the sadness of the world on his shoulders. He’d been going so hard for the past month, staying so busy, he hadn’t had much time to just feel the emptiness and the death of seventy-five percent of the people. If the general was right, if most of the world’s Muslims had crammed themselves into the middle east for this year’s mandatory Hajj, there were only about two billion people left alive. There were ships with nukes and conventional artillery headed that way to blow the walls wide open and soon they would be in the same position they had put the rest of the world. It wouldn’t affect them quite as bad. Not initially. They knew what the enemy was, they wouldn’t be taken by surprise. They had advance warning and knew how to combat the unde
ad scourge. He wondered if some of the things he’d done in the previous years had hastened this plan of unleashing the undead. If maybe some of the operations he’d been on after he was out of the service had spooked someone into acting brashly.
He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, field stripping the tobacco and putting the paper in his pocket before he settled down to doze.
The Muslims could fight the undead, sure. But it was the Middle East. They wouldn’t be able to fight the famine or disease that was coming their way.
13
Lacy
As they neared Lakota, they started seeing signs welcoming them and telling them to contact the town on channel 19 if they had a CB. As they approached the short line of cars waiting to get through the sally port, a squad of heavily armed men in uniform came to the driver’s window of the Earth Roamer.
“Welcome home,” a grinning soldier said. “We’re glad you made it.”
Before he could launch into the little speech he had given dozens of times about the procedures to get in the gate Lacy cut him off.
“Is John Meadows still here?” she asked. “Or did he already take off for Atlanta?”
The man was taken aback a little, but quickly recovered and looked closer at the blonde woman leaning past the driver of the oversized RV, and the teenager behind her.
“President Meadows left yesterday, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Meadows?”
“What?” she said “No. Sergeant Meadows. We heard him on the radio, I guess he’s using his old army rank.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the soldier beamed. “One and the same. He’s President Meadows now, and he’ll sure be glad to know his family made it safe and sound.”
Lacy’s smile faltered as she glanced over her shoulder at Doug. His smile had faded also.
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 7