Silence hung in the air and Griz clicked the safety off his M4. It was loud and the Human Hunters knew the two new guys weren’t playing. There would be a slaughter if they pushed the issue so the man with the paint can stepped forward.
“Welcome to the tribe.” he said and opened the lid so they could mark their faces.
52
Jessie + Scarlet
Jessie pulled up to the gate at the Anselmo outpost the next morning hungry and looking forward to a breakfast plate from Fubar’s. He had to rev the engine to wake up the guard and recognized the old man from the last time he was here.
“Hey there, Jessie.” he said as he came through the man door, rubbing his eyes. “Good to see you. I think ol’ Harry is gonna want to kiss you on the lips.”
Scarlet arched her eyebrows at him. “You have boyfriend? Why you not tell me this?”
“What? No.” Jessie answered “Why’s he so happy Mr. Hainey?”
“Oops. Excuse me Miss.” he said and doffed his hat when he got close enough to see her in the car.
He leaned over and squinted in. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
“Why does Harry want to kiss my Jessie?” Scarlet asked him and the old man got flustered.
“Well, not really.” he said. “He’s just real happy with the girls. Hell, the whole town is. Pardon my language, Miss, and they seem to like it here, too.”
It took Mr. Hainey a few minutes to explain, he was still trying to wake up. They didn’t have a whole lot of people in town to pull security duties and the guard usually made the rounds once in a while then kicked back at the gate and nodded off.
“All those foreign girls from the ship.” he finally clarified. A whole busload of ‘em turned up at the Hutterites. Too many for all the single men so the rest have kinda been on tour with the convoys. Some of them decided to stay here, call this home, and Harry couldn’t be happier.”
They talked for a few more minutes and Jessie caught up on all the local news. When the old man finally wound down, he waved them on through, not bothering to go through the whole process of checking for bites. That practice was slowly going away in the smaller towns and although he was glad because Scarlet would have been rejected, he knew it was dangerous. As long as there were zombies, there should be precautions. Just one of them could wipe out a whole community.
Fubar’s was busy with the breakfast crowd, like a lot of the smaller places it was easier and more efficient to have community meals. As long as the settlements weren’t huge and had limited resources, the practice would last. There were only a few tables free and they wound up at a booth near the bathrooms. There were a lot of new faces Jessie didn’t recognize as locals, some he’d met in other towns. People were moving around, choosing where to live and could fall in with a supply convoy as they ran the established routes so it was safe to travel. The map was dotted with towns and strongholds and each had its own personality. Jessie, the retrievers and a few bold explorers had remapped middle America and most of the Northwest over the past six months.
Some people were drawn to the quiet and isolation of places like Anselmo because there was little chance of zombie attacks. They wanted to farm and raise a little livestock and have kids that would never even see one of the undead. Others were drawn to the bigger towns where there was night life and thousands of people. For every outpost, there was a group of survivors that favored the lifestyle they offered and they were all becoming more distinctive. The Island was a steam powered fishing village, Lakota had the 1950’s charm, Blackfoot was where the young and the bold went to make a name for themselves, Tombstone had turned into a cattle town, Cascade was becoming a logging center and the list went on. The Tower was the only community that didn’t take in outsiders and as far as Jessie knew, none of the residents had ever wanted to leave.
Anselmo itself only had generator power, they had an industrial genny that ran on ethanol and could supply basic power to everyone. It couldn’t run a hundred different air conditioners or electric ovens but everyone had adapted. Most of the houses had their own generators but it wasn’t worth the bother to keep one running all the time. Like a lot of farming communities of years gone by, they went to bed early, got up with the cock’s crow and only used basic electrical appliances.
Fubar’s was the only place that kept an air conditioner running and a deep freezer for the towns meats. Small as it was, Anselmo was an important town in the rebuilding, though. They had an ethanol still up and producing and had mechanics that traveled from town to town with the convoys to adapt cars and generators to run on it. So far, the settlement down in Texas hadn’t had any luck refining oil into usable fuel. There was still plenty of diesel to run the big rigs but good gas was starting to get scarce near the bigger population centers.
No one openly stared at them but everyone was sneaking glances. Jessie was used to it, he’d been putting up with it since the beginning because of his scar but now it was something more. With all of Bastille’s prattling on about the Road Angel, he was becoming a new celebrity along with some of the more colorful retrievers. He’d never been interviewed on the radio, the one time Bastille had shoved a recorder in his face and tried to ask him questions, Jessie had smashed it. Many of the other retrievers went to Lakota just to get on the air, to be on a live broadcast. The better known you were, the higher recovery rates you could charge. It seemed like the world was quickly trying to get back to what it once was. There were entertainment shows and a new breed of celebrities were being made on Radio Lakota.
The Tower had started broadcasting but mostly music and old, boring survival podcasts their DJ pulled from the internet. Since he had never left the Tower, he didn’t realize how outdated and useless the information was. He probably thought he was doing everyone a service. Next time he went there, Jessie would try to talk to whoever was running the show, maybe give him some tips on what the people outside the glass and steel walls really wanted to hear. Most of the world still listened to Bastille’s shows, he had a knack for knowing what the survivors wanted to hear. Hard news on the hour, call in shows from ham radios, lots of tabloid type talk which he excelled in and nitty gritty how to interviews from various experts about things that mattered.
When Jessie had left Lakota, Bastille was already rebuilding the career he had before the fall. He’d been a movie producer, had always loved entertaining people, and now he was doing it again but with things that were important, not fluff films that no one remembered a month after they were released. He was doing his small part to help rebuild the world.
A hand came down on Jessie’s shoulder and he reacted without thought. Before the man could utter a word, Jessie wrenched his arm forward and sent him face first into the plate of biscuits and gravy. He sprang out of the booth, had one hand holding the man’s head down, the other had with a Glock pointed between an Asian lady’s wide, startled eyes. Scarlet had jumped up a scant millisecond after Jessie and stood with her back against his, deadly black steel in both fists, ready to kill. A plate crashed to the floor and dead silence filled the room, every eye turned to stare. Even the ones who had been looking right at them when it happened would later swear they barely saw them move. It was a blur too fast to follow. One second they were sitting and talking quietly, the next they had smashed Charlies head on the table and were ready to kill the whole town. If you blinked, you would have missed it.
“Jessie, it’s me!” the man said through a face full of gravy, his free hand outstretched to show it was empty.
Jessie and Scarlet’s eyes still darted, still checked shadows and corners and searched for hidden danger out of the windows for a few seconds before they relented.
“Sorry, Charlie.” Jessie finally said and holstered his gun. “You surprised me. You okay?”
He helped him up off the table and offered him his napkin. The man with the graying beard and the Santa Claus build didn’t seem to mind, he was licking as much as he could off with his tongue.
“I
forget you’re a mite jumpy.” Charlie said rotating his aching shoulder. “Say, that’s some pretty good gravy. How’s the biscuits?”
The room settled down and conversations started back up but everyone eyed the scarred-up pair a little differently. They’d heard the Road Angel was rattlesnake fast, that he had the devil’s right hand, but the girl with the black and blonde hair had been just as quick. She looked like she was ready to take on the whole room all by herself with just the batons. The fury on her face when she thought Jessie had been in danger was fearsome.
A few of the girls who had been working up the courage to ask for an autograph changed their minds.
Jessie sat back down, invited Charlie and his friend to join them and ordered more food.
“Scarlett,” Jessie said. “I’d like you to meet Charlie Safari of Las Vegas. We met on the road a while back. He helped me clear out a little town in Utah that had a bad zombie infestation problem.”
“More like you cleared it and I kept out of the way.” Charlie laughed. “And I’d like to introduce you to my wife, Ting Wei. The bravest, kindest, most beautiful woman I have ever met. I reckon I’ve got you to thank for that. She’s from the boat, they followed your directions and I met her up in Blackfoot.”
“You are married?” Scarlet asked “That’s so nice. There should be more weddings and babies.”
She threw a meaningful glance at Jessie who ignored it.
“Yup.” Charlie said. “I performed the ceremony myself. Couldn’t be living in sin, now could we.”
“No, we shouldn’t.” Scarlet said, looking directly at Jessie who managed to ignore her again.
Ting smiled and ruffled Charlies graying hair. She was twenty years his junior but she was happy. Her lifelong dream had been to travel and see the world, that’s why she’d left everything behind and signed up to be a mail order bride. She never thought she’d be seeing it in an up armored crew cab pickup truck and she wished the zombie curse hadn’t happened but it did and like everyone else, she had adapted. She and Charlie appreciated each other and shared a sense of adventure and insatiable wanderlust.
“How did you marry yourself?” Scarlet asked. “Is that allowed?”
“Charlie was one of those Las Vegas chapel preachers.” Jessie said. “When we first met, he was dressed like Elvis.”
“Killing for the King, baby.” Charlie grinned. “And marrying my queen.”
They both giggled like school kids and rubbed noses. Jessie had to smile at them, so obviously in love and completely care free. They were on honeymoon and weren’t going to let a little thing like rampaging zombies dampen their spirits.
“We’re off to see Mount Rushmore.” he announced when they’d finished eating and were giving their machines a once over before rolling into the wastelands.
“There’s a secret room in one of the heads with some hidden national treasures in it. There’s a client in the Tower who is offering big credits for whatever is inside.”
“You don’t know what it is?” Scarlet asked
“Nope.” Charlie said. “No one does but as long as we film us opening it, he said he’d pay no matter what it was.”
“Probably empty whiskey bottles from the builders.” Jessie said and closed the hood on his Merc.
“All pays the same.” Charlie grinned. “Me and the Mrs. want to climb up Washington’s nose and look out of Lincolns eye anyway. I heard they’re hollow.”
He managed to pull Jessie aside under the pretense of asking him to check out his new gun while the girls were discussing the easiest ways to find crash houses that didn’t stink like the undead.
When they were out of earshot, Charlie lowered his usual bombastic voice and motioned Jessie close.
“I don’t really know how to say this so I’m just gonna come out and say it. Has your girl been bit?” he asked. “She’s got those black runners on the cuts on her face.”
“No.” Jessie lied. “She got scratched. You’ve seen them, their weeks old, almost healed. They got infected but she’s taking penicillin. It was the dirty fingernails; those undead guys never wash their hands.”
He tried to make light of it but Charlie had that worried look in his eyes. He considered Jessie a friend and it was rare to find someone to care about in this world. Him and Scarlet made for a cute couple and she was just as twitchy as him. They were a good match and he would hate to see anything happen to her.
Jessie could see his friend wasn’t going to laugh it off so he told him they were on the way to Lakota to get the SS sisters to check her out. He didn’t add that they were accustomed to dealing with his ‘unusual’ abilities and would have a better idea of how to treat her.
“Might want to check in with the Doc’s out at the Tower instead.” Charlie said. “They’ve got all the machines and testing equipment from before the fall. It’s like you’re stepping back in time when you go there. Everything is just like it was last year. That zombie bug ain’t nothing to mess with, brother. And those runners on her face kind of scare me. They usually mean infection. The kind penicillin won’t cure.”
He looked into Jessie’s worried eyes and felt a pang of guilt for scaring the kid, for laying it on kind of thick, but the youth thought they were invincible. If he wasn’t afraid, Jessie would probably just blow him off as another old dude who made a big deal about everything.
“You need to take that infection seriously.” Charlie said. “Who knows, there might be a slow acting strain of the virus. Maybe it has mutated somehow. They’ve got the best doctors in the world at the Tower, Jessie. It’s hard to get in but you’re the president’s son. They’ll treat her if you ask them. If I was you, I’d have them look at it. They can do everything the Sisters can down in Lakota and if it is something to worry about, they’ve got the tests and machines to figure it out.
They looked over at the girls talking animatedly, smiling and happy and Jessie’s heart swelled a little. He couldn’t lose her.
“You’re probably right, Charlie.” Jessie said, thinking about the Fabergé egg tip that Darren had given him. “Maybe we should do that.”
53
Hasif
“Wait here.” Hasif whispered and slipped into the water.
The colorful flat-bottomed rowboat tilted and the girls held on. He hadn’t been able to find a power boat that wasn’t water logged or smashed up. The original flood surge when the dams were blown had destroyed anything near the banks. The little skiff had served them well, though. Some parts of the river had spread out far beyond its banks on low lying areas and the water was shallow. They slid by the silent cities, some of them full of the wandering dead, others desolate and empty. A few had been bombed to ruins by the cruise missiles the Russians had sent in, one after another, using up their entire inventory on the middle east. Any country that hadn’t been infected, all the nations that thought they’d ride out the zombie uprising in safety, hadn’t anticipated any resistance. All the infidels were supposed to be dead.
They weren’t.
Hasif swam over to the dock, his family safely anchored some twenty meters away in the deep-water bay. They had made it to Rasheed in a fairly uneventful two-day trip. It was mostly boring as the boat flowed gently down the Nile, him steering occasionally with an oar. He’d stopped twice in empty villages, slipped up to houses above the flood line looking for food but found nothing. Egypt had been in the middle of a famine before the first undead creature came running across their borders. If anything edible was growing wild along the shores, he didn’t recognize it. He managed to salvage some nets and they had fish cooked over an open fire to supplement their meager supplies. The days were long and tedious, the girls complained of the merciless sun beating down but no one wanted to go back to the pyramid. Not that that was even an option. Last they saw of it, Fariq and his family were trapped inside, completely surrounded, by ten thousand of the unnatural ones.
The floods had come through here also but the bay stretched far inland and there were st
ill boats moored that hadn’t been damaged. Not many, most were gone. Anyone owning an ocean-going vessel had tried to flee when they realized the allied nations were destroying the dams, the power plants, the water plants and everything else a country needed to function. They were literally blowing them back to the stone age then smashing the walls to let in millions of undead. They stockpiled all they could and took to the seas only to be shelled and sunk by the ships, planes and submarines. No one was off limits, they killed them all. Rich, poor, young, old, black or white. If you were in a country that had been part of the annihilation of the rest of the world, they did their best to annihilate you.
The Alliance succeeded for the most part. None of the pleasure craft, sailboats or hundred million-dollar yachts had a chance. They all were forced to run aground or be sunk at sea.
Hasif made his way down the dock, checking out each boat, hoping to find one that was still sea worthy. Maybe someone was late leaving the port, heard the reports and decided to stay. If there were any boats like that, if there were groups of people who waited out the floods, avoided the zombies then set sail after all the gunships left, they were long gone. The only boats left were rough. They had broken hulls, torn sails and flooded engine compartments. He wouldn’t trust one of them to float across the bay, let alone out into the open sea. His dream of finding a fancy man’s boat, fully stocked with food and fuel, was finally crushed out. This was the last marina before they reached the Mediterranean Sea. His last hope of sailing out of Egypt in comfort and style.
Massika saw the disappointment on his face as he came back down the dock and had been ready for it. It had been a good plan, he couldn’t have known the devastation the floods and the gunships had done. They were out of the pyramid, they were all safe and healthy and they would find a way. Somehow, they always did.
Zombie Road (Book 5): Terror On The Two-Lane Page 31