“Too old and ugly,” Griz said. “Must be somebody important, though. I doubt he breaks bread with the peons.”
“She looks familiar, I’ve seen her before,” Griz added after a moment. “You recognize her?”
Gunny brought the scope back and concentrated it on the middle-aged woman sipping her coffee from a tiny cup, little finger extended.
She signaled impatiently and the maid hurried to refill it while the woman looked bored.
. “That’s Edmunds,” Gunny said. “She’s supposed to be the president. Dani told us about her, she led that train full of radicals to Lakota. Double-crossed him and killed all of his Marines. Put a bullet in her, too. But Casey first.”
“With pleasure,” Griz said. “Didn’t Carson say she was one of those New World Order clowns that helped the Hajis get the virus? I wonder how she wound up here.”
“She was in the back of Sammy’s Mustang after the battle,” Gunny said. “I saw her, but didn’t know who it was, she was a bloody mess.”
“Guess ol’ Casey likes to hob nob with the high and mighty,” Griz said. “Betcha he’s banging her, too. He looks like the type who would poke anything. Better hope you don’t get captured, Mr. President. He might make you his boy toy.”
“Piss off,” Gunny laughed, went back to scoping the house, trying to find Casey.
Griz chuckled quietly then said, “Got him.”
Casey walked in, cruelly twisted the maid’s breast as he passed and flopped down in a chair at the table. He seemed pleased with himself and grinned broadly. Gunny checked their perimeter, ensured nothing was impeding their escape route and said: “All clear, fire when ready.”
On a shot this close, it was less than 600 yards, Griz didn’t need instruction. He didn’t need to be told to check his parallax and mil, he didn’t need a computer to adjust for the wind or bullet drop or the curvature of the earth. He was loaded with .338 Lapua Magnum rounds, Casey’s grinning face filled his scope. He just needed to know if it was safe to take the shot.
It was.
He paused at the bottom of his breath and applied the last little bit of pressure to the trigger. The gunshot exploded in the still morning air and he jacked in another round, his eye already adjusting to Edmunds. Gunny was waiting until he confirmed the kill before he keyed the walkie-talkie to set off the Claymores. Griz reacquired his target and cursed softly under his breath. Instead of two surprised looks, a shattered window, and a very dead Casey splashed all over the table, he saw a dark splotch and a small spiderweb of cracked glass where the round had hit. He fired again at the same spot, hoping to punch through the bulletproof glass, and was jacking in a third round before the startled people in the room had begun to move. The fourth bullet finally burst through the window, but it was too late, they were out of sight and scrambling for the door.
“Blow it,” Griz said and sprang up. “This is fubared”
The guards were already pulling guns and firing haphazardly at the shrine. They knew where the shots were coming from. One shot, they would have been clueless. Two and they would have gotten an idea. With four, they had seen the flash from the muzzle.
Gunny keyed the mic and small explosions were immediately followed by larger ones. The cars parked across the street from the guard shack leaped off the ground, spewing flames, and in another part of town, a gasoline-fueled inferno sent a black mushroom cloud boiling into the sky. Gunny and Griz ran down the steps, their plan of firing a single shot and the guards not sure where it came from was gone. There was no stealth, now. It was an all-out race to get out of the town before Casey’s men could get organized and cut them off. Gunny twisted the wires together, tapped the starter wire, and the old truck groaned to life. Men were pouring out of the compound, running toward them and shooting as they came. Gunny hit the gas and the truck lurched forward. Gunfire filled the air, but running men firing from the hip couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, let alone a speeding vehicle. Gunny turned on the first road they came to, got out of the line of fire, then concentrated on driving. There was only one road out of town, within minutes every gun Casey had would be on their tail.
“Must have been some paranoid drug lords house,” Griz said in frustration. “Should have brought the .50.”
The tired old truck wheezed through the gears, its bald tires spinning on the dirt roads. Gunny pulled out of a power slide, threw the column-mounted shifter into second, and hit the gas again, trying to coax a little more speed out of it. Chickens and cats and people ran out of the way, the dogs barked and gave chase. A new pickup truck, shiny, lifted and armored, came racing down the street straight toward them. They both saw the whip antennas on the bumper of the patrol truck. You can’t outrun a radio. Gunny and Griz had an advantage over them, even if the bandits didn’t realize it. They wanted to catch whoever had violated their town, whoever had tried to kill the Boss. They’d be rewarded and have honor. They’d do just about anything, put themselves in danger, and take crazy chances. But they wouldn’t risk everything, they wouldn’t die for it. It wasn’t worth that.
Gunny and Griz would, they had nothing to lose. If they were captured, they would be tortured very slowly, probably eaten. Maybe parts of them cooked while they were still alive and forced to watch an arm or leg being consumed. They had no choice. Escape or die. They would risk everything.
The truck was bearing down on them, trying to force them to turn or stop. Gunny aimed right for it, flat footed the gas pedal. The man corrected, moved a little to the left. Gunny matched his move, steered a little to the right, keeping himself centered on the fast-coming Dodge. The wheezy old truck was screaming, ready to blow, and Gunny slammed the shifter down into third. The men in the bed of the Dodge were aiming over the cab, trying to shoot pistols at a fast-moving target from a fast-moving position.
They missed.
Gunny saw the face of the man behind the wheel when he realized he was going to lose in this game of chicken. When he realized that the men in the clatter trap old beater weren’t going to turn, or stop, or even slow down. His eyes got big and he jerked the wheel at the last second, over the yells of the men in the bed. The jacked-up Dodge bounced over a curb and plowed down a wooden fence, sent more chickens squawking and bounced off a parked car. The men in the bed went flying, slamming into the house next door or the ground, breaking them, crippling them and killing them. The driver slid back out into the street, overcorrected, and sent the lifted truck tumbling; tires, glass and the last of the men in the back spinning off in all directions.
Gunny bounced past the last house on the dirt road and cut the wheel, skidding onto the highway that would take them back north. He pushed the truck, wringing every last ounce of speed that he could. Griz got on his handheld, called the rest of the crew, letting them know they were coming in hot.
“Yeah, we kind of figured,” Hollywood said. “We heard you tearing shit up.”
“Set up some claymores on trip wires,” Griz told him. “We’ll be there in a few minutes if this old tub will make it. We’ve got company right on our six.” He hoped the Dodge had blocked the road when it wrecked, buying them a little time while the rest of the Raiders had to backtrack and go around.
Gunny couldn’t tell how far back their pursuers were, the old road was windblown with dirt and sand, barely distinguishable from the desert in places, and he was leaving a cloud of dust behind them. He saw the line of their cars up ahead, idling and ready to go. He slammed the brakes at the last second, skidded to a stop and jumped out, running for his fifty-five. Bridget and Stabby ran across the road as soon as he zipped by them, trailing wires to the claymores, attaching them before darting for their rides. Griz tossed his gun case in the panel van and hit the gas with the rest of them, wanting to get on the open road and outdistance the Raiders. They heard the explosions a few moments later over the roar of their engines but couldn’t see through the cloud of dust how many they’d managed to take out.
“How’d it go?” Scratch ask
ed, when they were up to speed, eating up the miles.
“Failure,” Griz barked, still aggravated, anger in his voice. “Absolute and utter failure.”
They kept the hammer down, putting miles between them and their pursuers, who had lost the first four trucks in the chase.
Casey was pissed. That asshole Gunny had gotten within shooting distance, and his patrols hadn’t stopped him. He knew it was him. No doubt in his mind. He wouldn’t put it past one of the locals to take a shot at him, but they would have known the house had bulletproof glass. They couldn’t have set off all those explosions, either. No, he knew who did this, and it was time to make them pay. He’d been sitting around too long. He had a dozen trucks in pursuit and they had radioed back that there were only four cars. The overconfident asshole thought he only needed a tiny little team to take out Casey the Cannibal. Well, he had another thing coming, didn’t he? He was going to run them to ground, keep on their tails until they broke down, wrecked, or ran out of gas. He didn’t care which, as long as he took them alive. He had plans. He wanted Lakota and it would be so much easier with their president strapped to the front of his truck. He’d just drive right in the front gate. He wanted out of this oppressive heat, he wanted unlimited electricity, and he wanted to rub their faces in it. Especially that Collins bitch. She was the one who started all of his troubles, thinking she was better than everyone else. He couldn’t wait to make her pay.
His gang of Raiders was nearly ready to go, they’d been planning on leaving soon, anyway. He told his radioman to call in all the raiding parties, have them all head for Lakota. He had scores of small groups out feeding him intel, raiding small settlements, and letting everyone know that Casey was the new war chief. Casey the Cannibal ran this country. Casey would do whatever he wanted, and as long as they toed the line, paid their taxes like he demanded, they would be left alone. Mostly.
He climbed into his Mustang and tore out of San Felipe for the last time. His men hurried to finish loading their equipment and fell in behind him. They were done with Mexico; nobody could tell them where to live. They had been recruiting and building their army for months, they were ready to go back home and take what was theirs.
36
Scarlet
She watched from the shadows as the boy with the scar went to wash the blood from his hands. She thought he’d show up eventually, he was consistent, even if he wasn’t predictable. She’d lost track of him after he’d spotted her, and was starting to second guess herself. She’d tried to pick up his trail, but Casey’s men had oversized tires on their trucks and they’d been all over the roads in that area. She didn’t know which set of tracks to follow. She came to the reservation; pretty sure this was where he’d been headed before the battle at the farmhouse. He’d finally shown up, and he was as good as the rumors had said he was. She’d seen the aftermath of his work, had watched him from long distance through binoculars, but this was the first time she’d seen him go hand to hand with real people. They were much harder to fight than the undead, even the fastest, freshest ones. The undead didn’t have any guile. They only attacked in one way and never used weapons. Him and his dog had just killed eight heavily armed, and fully prepared men. It had only taken a handful of seconds, less than a minute from start to finish. He hadn’t wanted the fight, she’d heard him ask the man to leave him alone, but once it started, he was brutal and ruthless. The Road Angel was good, she admitted, but not all that good. If she’d been in the same situation, she never would have let herself get shot. That was dumb. Her machetes or batons had the reach and speed his knuckle dusters didn’t. But still, overall, he had done a fine job. The results of the good doctor Stevens’ injections, even the early ones she had given him, were still very remarkable.
She was at an impasse now. She wasn’t quite sure what to do. She was starting to admire him. She’d made contact with her father, had given her report about the settlements they could easily take in North Dakota and eastern Montana. She told him they might have a tough time in the mid-western states, the new government in America wasn’t just preaching propaganda on the radio, they really did have zombie trains killing the undead by the thousands and leading the rest out into the deserts to wither away. They were well armed, and they already had a network set up to help each other if they came under attack. She’d suggested maybe they should concentrate on Canada, they were taking town after town without much resistance. He said he’d continue with Canada for now, but the world was his, it was his divine right and he wouldn’t be denied.
The conversation had disturbed her. Her father really believed that crap he was preaching. He wasn’t struggling to survive, giving people some sort of hope to hang on to, promising things would get better and using a hokey new religion to knit them together. She’d seen the wisdom in that at first, the people needed something bigger than themselves to fight for. Now, she was starting to regret it. Things were getting out of hand. The religious movement had morphed into a conquering army.
Her father had scores of men like her now. More than human. Faster, stronger, and better in almost every way. They were super soldiers, like the original intent of the virus was meant to make them. It was key to their success, they would lead in hordes of the undead, walk among them and show the fortified towns their power. It almost always worked, they would assimilate whole communities without firing a shot. Only once had she heard of a community refusing to surrender and their walls were over run. That had been on one of their far southern forays deep into Lakota territory.
Now Lakota had a super soldier. Not as strong, though, she told herself. He had an early version of the inoculation, the immunity effects had worn off, she’d seen the undead attack him. He couldn’t walk among them. He couldn’t blend like the Anubis Warriors could. He was fast though, insanely fast, and so was his dog. She wondered if it had been given the injections. They’d never tried it on animals, there was no need. They had humans to use when they’d been trying to perfect it, to strip all of the bad bits that turned you into the undead.
As soon as he walked into the bathroom, she was up and away. She didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want him to know she was following him. She was conflicted about him, she knew she’d saved a decent boy who had been making a difference in the world. She’d heard the stories about the Road Angel, had heard that pretentious ass Bastille broadcasting on Radio Lakota, bragging about him every chance he got. She hadn’t believed half of his so-called exploits at first, but she’d seen what he could do. With the zombies and with people. He’d jumped right in, killed them all, just like he said he would. He’d moved like lightning, even her enhanced eyes hadn’t been able to follow some of his movements.
He concerned her.
She knew the new government in Lakota was spending a lot of effort trying to link together every stronghold, getting everyone set up with radios to communicate and help each other. She knew Casey’s Raiders were spread out and wreaking havoc wherever they felt like it, but that wouldn’t last. They wouldn’t be able to run free and do whatever they wanted for much longer, maybe a year or two and their time would be over. People would start fighting back. With the backing of Lakota and the firepower they could bring to bear, most of the disorganized Raiders would be mopped up and eliminated. Tracked down and destroyed. If they were to survive, they would have to concentrate their forces in one area, but she doubted they could. They were too unorganized, too kill crazy, and apocalypse mad. They thought they were the toughest kids on the block but they were wrong. Lakota would mop them up or if they couldn’t, the jackal headed Warriors would.
The Anubis Movement, on the other hand, could last and grow.
They had done the things that needed to be done, they had the serum. In the end, only a few hundred people had been sacrificed, lost to the experiments. Now they could control the undead, they could walk among them and not be attacked. They could be massed and used against the enemies of the Movement. She could see there was a war coming because L
akota wouldn’t surrender and neither would the Raiders. Her time on the road had helped her see things more clearly. She could see that three major factions had come out of the chaos and there was going to be bloodshed. The last survivors were going to try to kill each other, each wanting their way of life for everyone.
She cut behind the casino, slipped down an alley, and headed back to the traveler's lodge she was staying at. Her father had told her to kill him, he was a threat. She’d always done what he said, always carried out his orders, but this one she was struggling with. She’d been watching Jessie for weeks, and she knew he was one of the good guys. Was pretty sure his moral code would hate the new religion, and he’d try to end it. He was so American, so caught up in the whole freedom thing. Where she’d spent half of her life, in the Middle East, they didn’t have such a fervent belief in self-reliance, that whole macho rugged individualism mindset where you lived like you wanted and the government was supposed to serve you, not the other way around.
“Where you going in such a hurry, you pretty little thing?”
She looked up. She’d been lost in thought, deciding what to do. It was the rest of the gang that had ridden in with the Raiders Jessie had just killed in the bar. She forgot to bypass this street, her mind had been somewhere else. The Raiders had taken it over because it had a garage with tools and they were continually making changes to their vehicles. Mostly adding useless ornaments, a few more spikes, bloody scalps, or painted skulls, anything to make themselves look more fearsome. The people of Blackfoot had learned to avoid them, it was easier to walk around, than put up with their crap. Some of them had bottles in their hands, already half lit. She made a quick count, never breaking stride. There were eight of them she could see. She’d just told herself Jessie had been good, but she was better. If they wanted a fight, she’d give it to them, but she wouldn’t let herself get shot.
Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Page 26