by Adair, Bobby
Logic told me that was impossible. After all, the tower’s resilience was proven by the fact that it stood at all. It made it through the storm a few days prior. It survived the hurricane several months ago, and had been enduring the weather for years. One reason it did not collapse in any of those winds was probably its ability to flex and sway. Nevertheless, it was hard to keep logic in mind while the framework moved around me.
I stopped, wrapped an elbow over a rung, and locked my hands to hold myself in place. I took a hard look at the fields near the base of the tower and saw Murphy looking up at me. I let go my hand-locked death grip and gave him the thumbs up. No Whites were nearby that I could see.
As I looked farther and farther out, I spotted the movement of cattle and horses. I saw Whites in groups of a few here and there, and even saw a long line of naked ones winding their way on a road leading into a small town a mile north of us.
I looked east to see if I could spot the silos where we’d stayed the night. The horizon was spiked with water towers and silos of varying heights and diameters—some clustered, some attached, others in pairs, and many standing solo. Unable to find the line of five silos, I tried to piece together the landmarks we'd passed along the way to find the path back; instead I only managed to lose myself.
Realizing I was wasting time for something that served only to satisfy my curiosity, I looked down again at the fields below, to see if I could spot any Whites closing in on Murphy’s position. Nothing. I stuck my arm out through the tower’s metal frame and showed Murphy another thumbs up.
I looked west, thinking I’d see a giant black smudge snaking over the rolling farmland to where it terminated at an amorphous white splatter.
Nothing so obvious presented itself.
In fact, the more I looked, the more I noticed how all the colors seemed to lose their brilliance and distinction as they slowly faded to shades of gray the farther away I gazed.
Way off to the west, I spotted black specks floating across the sky. Three of them. Those specks were familiar to me. They were the Survivor Army’s helicopters flying south. Probably toward Austin, unless they got bored with that plan. Well north of the three specks flying south, I spotted two more that seemed to go nowhere, other than to circle the same patch of gray ground below.
I examined the landmarks between my position and theirs, thinking that I’d be able to reconcile those with Murphy’s map when I got back down. My hope was that I’d be able to confirm our strong suspicion that the Survivor Army was indeed making Fort Hood their home.
I continued to look west and south, thinking I was plenty high enough up the tower.
Then I spotted the horde.
Chapter 46
We spread the map out on the tailgate. With a finger, I traced a road on the map that ran past the radio tower. I looked up. “See those two barns up there?”
Murphy looked across the field.
I tapped the map on an intersection, and pointed at an adjacent road. “This road goes north just on the other side of those barns.”
“Okay.” Murphy looked again, though we couldn’t see the road from where we stood.
"Then about a mile up that road is a little town,” I said. “I saw a line of about forty, maybe fifty Whites running into that town.”
“Let’s avoid that place.” Murphy took his attention away from the map and slowly turned, scanning the area around us.
“Yeah,” I agreed absently, keeping focused on the map, looking at the roads, and trying to associate the map with the landmarks I’d seen from up on the tower.
I missed my smartphone.
I traced roads and tried to figure out where the horde was on the map. I groaned.
“What?” Murphy asked.
Frustrated with what I figured out, I shushed Murphy and went through my analysis again.
“You need to go back up and look again?”
Shaking my head, I said, “We don’t have time.”
“How could we not have time?” Murphy looked around again. Second-nature paranoia.
“See this road here?” It was labeled a highway, but it was just a two-lane road with a wide shoulder and a seventy mile per hour speed limit.
“Yeah?” Murphy acknowledged.
“They’re headed toward it right now," I told him. “They’ll cross it before too long. I think it’s our best chance to get ahead of them.”
Murphy traced his finger back along the road to that little town a mile or so away, the one I’d seen the line of Whites run into. He frowned and shook his head. “Why’s this road important?”
I showed him another way to get ahead of the naked horde. The detour would send us on a road that cut across their path, but at a point much farther north. “To skirt around the town to get to this other road,” I said as I showed Murphy the path, “assuming we don’t have to detour again to get there, we might burn off an extra hour or two. I think the horde might get too far north by then.”
“What do you mean by that?” Murphy asked.
I showed him where Fort Hood lay on the map. “I saw some helicopters flying around over here. I’m pretty sure that’s where the Survivor Army is. If we want to get the naked horde over there, I think it will be easier to get them to veer that way than to coax them into a hard left turn. The farther north they go, the more they’ll have to turn, and the harder it will be to get them to do it, I think.”
Murphy sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know where this is going.”
“The urgency is real,” I said.
“So is the risk,” Murphy told me.
“I think getting the Survivor Army and the naked horde together is worth it.”
Murphy shook his head in defeat. “At least it’ll be exciting.”
“The other thing is, we can’t take the main road through town,” I said. “It’s blocked. But when I was up there, I think I saw a way through town. When we get to the other side, we can get back on this highway.”
“Did I say exciting?” asked Murphy. “I meant excitinger.” He laughed at his word joke.
I smiled. “Don’t be a pussy. You know you dig this shit. Stop whining and let's go kill some golf ball heads.”
“Killing Mark better be worth it. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Chapter 47
The road curved on the way into town, passing old houses built of native stone, some of institutional reddish-orange brick under flat roofs, and even a tall, Victorian-style house in disrepair, with vehicles that hadn’t run since the seventies on the lawn. The trees in what was left of the yards stood tall and broad enough to hang over the road and muffle some of the sound that our big, diesel engine rattled out from underneath its hood.
Half the trees had large boughs broken and lying beneath. Other limbs were partially ripped from the trunks and hanging from tree to road. Smaller limbs lay everywhere. Most roofs were partially torn away or had wide sections with missing shingles.
The town had gotten hit hard when that hurricane blew into central Texas a few months back.
We passed a grocery store with all the plate glass windows across its front broken away. The metal shelving units and cashier stations were piled into ramparts around the front of the store. Bare bones lay scattered across the asphalt. The folks in this small town had made their last stand at the Piggly Wiggly.
A road scattered with vehicles in disarray straightened out as it ran through the center of town. Among those vehicles, several dozen Whites jumped to attention, pulled away from whatever they were scavenging by the sound of our engine.
I floored it.
The exhaust roared and spat out a cloud of smoke.
The heavy truck accelerated faster than a Humvee, but didn’t instill any confidence in me as for how well it would maneuver through town, where lots of slow turns and subsequent accelerations would be necessary to keep infected hands off its faded paint. Still, all the engine and exhaust noise had the effect I'd hoped for when I pushed the pedal down. Whites ran i
nto the street several blocks ahead of us, eager to be the first to get a bite.
“Put on your seatbelt.” My voice ratcheted up with excitement. “It’s gonna get fun.”
Murphy quickly strapped himself in, left his M4 in his lap, and readied his pistol.
I swerved around a dead pickup. Pickups were the most common form of transportation in that part of Texas.
I ran down some Whites with a bang of bone against steel. The truck bounced as it rolled over their bodies.
We passed a feed store on the left and a barbecue shack on the right. After that, the one- and two-story buildings on both sides of the street filled in wall to wall.
“You see the road blocked up there?” Murphy asked.
“I’m turning left at the corner." I didn't slow the truck much. Instead, I swerved to the right side of the road and cut a wide turn through the intersection, smashing more Whites with the pickup’s heavy-duty brush guard. The truck leaned hard and the tires complained loudly, but they held the road.
Murphy pointed his pistol at some Whites who got close to his side, but not close enough for him to waste a bullet.
Just as well. The truck fishtailed coming out of the corner and slammed a running White full on the side, batting him twenty feet across a sidewalk and into a wall.
Murphy laughed out loud. “Damn, did you see that?”
I was laughing, too, as I proudly checked my mirror to see whether the White was getting up.
“Dude!” Murphy shouted.
I looked forward just in time to avoid slamming into a parked delivery truck.
“Keep your eyes out front.” Murphy was getting revved up with the excitement, too.
“Yes, sir.” I sped the truck past two more blocks. “I think this next one is where I turn.”
Murphy reached out and held onto the dashboard. We were going too fast to corner. I braked and the truck skidded into the turn. I gunned the engine again and straightened out on the road.
“Oh, shit.” I mashed the brakes to the floor. A tree was down across the road in front of us.
The tires skidded and bounced. The engine knocked and stalled as we smashed into the branches.
"Good thing you put on your seatbelt," I told Murphy as I turned the key to crank the starter.
He turned in his seat to see if any Whites were coming around the corner behind us.
The engine didn’t start.
“Let me know if you see any,” I told him loudly.
“Oh, you’ll know.” Murphy holstered the pistol and swung the barrel of his rifle over the truck’s backseat to point out the rear window.
I cranked again as I looked for what I could see through brown leaves and gray branches. “C’mon, you old piece of shit.”
“Don’t pump the gas pedal,” Murphy told me without looking. “You’re flooding it.”
“Can you flood a diesel?” I asked, wondering if old diesels had carburetors or fuel injection, but mostly thinking we should abandon the truck before Whites came around the corner. It would be easier to evade them before they got eyes on us.
Murphy fired his rifle. The bullets shattered the truck’s rear glass.
So much for running away.
Murphy fired off several more rounds.
I looked over my shoulder and saw a half-dozen Whites sprinting around the corner behind us.
I cranked the starter, keeping my foot off the gas pedal. The engine rattled to life. I pushed the shifter into reverse and floored it again. The rear tires spun and then caught, dragging the truck backward toward the Whites.
The hood was barely out of the downed tree branches when the first White disappeared under the rear bumper.
I had an arm up on the back of the seat and was half turned around by then as I raced.
A female jumped onto the back of the truck. Another thumped against the tailgate.
Murphy shot the woman climbing into the bed and two more jumped up to take her place.
I hit a clump of Whites at the corner and cut the wheels hard. The truck spun sideways into the cross street.
One White fell out of the back. The other hit his head and fell over, bleeding and unconscious.
“Go. Go!” Murphy shouted.
I shifted into forward and put the pedal to the floor, keeping my eyes ahead.
Murphy fired at least a dozen more shots.
“I think I took the wrong turn back there.”
“No shit?” Murphy laughed. He glanced forward. “What about staying on this road? It looks clear.”
“Can’t,” I told him. “We need the road going out of town to the west. This will take—”
“Don’t care,” Murphy shouted. “Just get us out of here.” He fired a few more shots.
We didn’t have much of a lead and didn’t have many choices. The road we were on only had three more cross streets before running out of town. If any roads existed out past the edge of town that would get us to where we were going, I didn’t know which ones they were. I hadn’t looked at the map in that kind of detail.
I chanced the next right turn we came to. "Hang on." The truck wasn't moving fast enough for the tires to squeal much, but it leaned hard anyway.
The truck started to bounce.
“Damn,” Murphy complained.
“Potholes,” I told him. “Write a letter to the mayor.”
The way ahead looked clear for several blocks between houses roughed up by the storm. I slowed and tried to avoid the biggest holes in the road. By the time we passed the first intersection, Whites were rounding the corner behind us and coming our way.
At each intersection, I looked right to get a glimpse at the road through the center of town, the one we needed to be on when we drove out the other side. We were paralleling it, and if we could get past the roadblock and get back on that road, we’d be home free.
At least that was my plan—or hope.
We came to a jumble of branches that looked more and more impassable the closer we came. Rather than risk getting hung up, I took a right turn, hoping we’d gone far enough to get past the roadblock. Whites, the clothed variety, came at us out of the houses as we passed. Not in big numbers; a couple here, a couple there.
More debris had to be avoided, so I drove through somebody’s front yard. Murphy had to shoot a White who was waiting on a front porch for the opportunity to pounce on us as we passed.
I made a left turn onto the main street as Murphy shouted, “Dude, perfect!”
In my rearview mirror, I caught a glance of overturned pickups blocking the road just behind me. The thump of a White hitting the brush guard pulled my attention forward again. We were back among the naked ones. Not many, but enough.
I raced the big noisy engine and swerved back and forth in the road. I needed to avoid stalled vehicles and debris that looked like it could put a hole in a tire. Murphy shot down a few Whites who took advantage of our reduced speed.
Moments later, we were out of the center of town and racing past storm-thrashed houses again. I kept an eye on the road signs, hoping the ones I needed hadn’t been run down by fleeing motorists.
At a Y-intersection, I saw the sign I’d been looking for, along with an arrow pointing right. I sped the truck up over sixty and took the right leg of the intersection. The road up ahead looked clear. Farms spread out on both sides of the road and the last of the town's houses disappeared behind us.
I was riding high on my victory and shouted, “All right! Let’s get this show on the road!”
Chapter 48
We made the first ten miles pretty quickly over roads that were mostly clear. That’s when we reached a blocked bridge over a shallow river. The terrain along the banks took the possibility of attempting a crossing in the truck off the table. We spent nearly an hour backtracking for a way around.
When we finally got back on course, we were getting into the later hours of the afternoon. Murphy spotted a tall sign for a bed and breakfast standing on a hill across a wide field planted
in a uniform, grassy, green crop that hadn’t died. The two-story main house, the barns, and a silo—which stood half again taller than the house—were all painted in red with white trim, and looked just as unperturbed as if awaiting weekend visitors from a pre-virus world.
From up there, I immediately guessed I’d be able to see for miles in all directions.
We needed to stop and get our bearings.
The dude ranch, or whatever it was, had a fancy iron gate that stood fifteen feet tall at least, and looked to have successfully kept out the casually wandering Whites. It, however, was designed for ornamental value rather than security. I drove through it at twenty and my much-abused farm truck jolted, but didn't lose any momentum. The caliche drive crackled under our tires as I rolled the truck cautiously around the curves on a winding driveway up through the green grass toward the house.
I stopped the truck with the passenger side facing the house.
Murphy said, “Honk the horn a few times. I’ll shoot whoever comes out.”
What didn't need to be said was that if too many Whites came out, I'd drive off, and we'd try somewhere else. I leaned on the horn. That, along with the noisy diesel, was bound to bring any infected residents out to greet us.
We waited.
I honked again, and before the sound ended, three Whites came running around a corner of the house, vocalizing and grabbing, though the truck sat thirty yards beyond their reach.
Murphy squeezed off five shots to get them all.
Two were dead. That was easy enough to tell. The last was badly wounded and writhing on the ground, babbling nonsensical sounds full of anger while blood pulsed out of the torn artery that would soon be the cause of its death.
Another White was kind enough to come running around the same corner, and Murphy shot her through the throat. She collapsed, twitching and gurgling blood.