The truck slowly moved past a car with a child about Autumn’s age in the back seat. He’d probably slipped free of his seat belt because he was moving around freely. Lindsey could almost envision the scene as it had happened, as he had attacked the others with him. The blood smeared across his face lent credence to her scenario. After that, she quit looking at the cars they passed and turned her attention to the road before them. Not only did the truck have to weave around stalled vehicles, but Snake usually tried to dodge the infected, which cost even more time.
“Why don’t you just hit them?” Lindsey asked, curious.
“No point in damaging the truck if we don’t have to,” he pointed out. “It’s a pretty tough vehicle but if we destroy the radiator and get stuck out here, could be bad news.”
They both knew how hard it would be to get back to the hospital without the truck. “I do it when I have to.”
“Maybe we could find a plow for the front or one of those things they have on trains.”
“A cow catcher?” he grinned.
“Sure, why not?” she asked. “It would bounce the infected right out of the way.”
“I’ll have to talk to the boys about that,” Snake said, contemplating. “Just might work.”
In places where there weren’t many dead around, the bikers jumped down off of the top of the truck and moved vehicles out of the way. Snake’s intention had been to clear many of the roads to allow easy travel through the city, but with the military’s plans for the area, he knew that it might not be quite so easy.
“So tell me about this group of yours,” Lindsey asked, curious about the bikers. “Are you guys together all the time?”
“No, most of us have lives outside the group,” Snake said glancing at her. “We meet up on weekends mostly and help out around the city at the shelters or wherever we’re needed. It was kind of a fluke that we were together when all this happened. We were building an add-on to one of the shelters and those of us who didn’t have day jobs were there all week. The others planned to come in when they could, but a lot of the guys took Friday off so we could get the whole addition finished over the weekend. It just so happened that about seventy of us were together when all hell broke loose.”
“Seventy?” Lindsey asked, knowing there were only about half that many of them now. “Did the others go home when things started getting bad?”
Snake didn’t reply right away. His eyes grew distant for a moment as though he was lost in a memory. After a few moments he shook his head. “I wish that were the case. We lost a lot of good men.”
“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. “That had to be tough.”
“It was,” he replied quietly.
Wanting to change the subject, Lindsey said, “I notice there aren't any women riding with you. Will there be a problem with me joining you?”
“Well,” Snake pulled on his beard and thought for a second. “It’s been a policy of mine lately to only allow men, but we can make an exception.”
“What’s the problem with including women?” Lindsey asked, slightly put out.
“No offense,” Snake said, “but in the past we had some problems with the women becoming a little distracting. A lot of my guys were really into the biker lifestyle, and the certain sexual freedoms that came with it. This is something they’re trying to overcome, and there’s no reason to surround them with all that temptation. To make it worse, we had a few in the group that were a little aggressive and hard to keep in line. When the cat calls and innuendos became too much, I had to put a stop to it.”
“I see,” Lindsey replied, understanding Snake’s dilemma. “I suppose you didn’t want to be dealing with a bunch of sexual harassment suits either.”
“I doubt any of my guys would’ve lawyered up,” Snake said. “But poor Wombat felt like he was just another item on the lunch menu. Those gals wouldn’t leave the poor dude alone.”
Lindsey did a double take at Snake, and chuckled to herself when she realized he was dead serious.
“Wombat, he’s the Australian, right?” she asked. She remembered him helping out when the family brought the infected baby in.
“Right,” Snake replied.
Lindsey thought about it and she could see how the women would be drawn toward him. He was a good looking guy and seemed to have a great sense of humor, though she hadn’t spent much time around him.
“Well, I promise if you take me along, I won’t harass poor Wombat or any of the other guys,” she said with a grin.
Snake just laughed at the comment.
After almost half an hour, they finally reached the gun shop, which was only about a mile from the hospital.
Lindsey pointed to a sign. “That’s the gun shop where my dad used to go.”
Snake glanced over at Lindsey with a question in his eye. “Is he still in the city?”
“No,” she told him. “He and my mom moved to Wyoming a while back. I was lucky enough to be able to contact them and they’re all right, so far. There are a lot of survivalist types up there and they’re already getting together to make plans.”
Snake nodded. “Glad to hear it.”
The shop was in a corner of a strip mall and nothing was moving in the parking lot. Snake flashed his lights to tell his men who were riding ahead that they had arrived at their first stop. They circled the parking lot and signaled that all was clear. After dismounting, they said silent prayers. Snake opened his eyes from his devotional and looked at Lindsey.
“Need all the help we can get.”
“It can’t hurt,” she agreed, looking around nervously. The sound of the bikes was sure to have attracted attention. She got out and waited for the others, suddenly apprehensive about going into the building.
“Do we have any light?” she asked Snake. The building was gloomy inside and could be home to any number of dark, creeping things.
Snake handed her a plastic mini-flashlight and shrugged his shoulders.
“We had to leave a flashlight on each floor in case of another power outage. That leaves us with this penlight. Seems like flashlights were one of the first things to come off the shelves when this thing started.”
Lindsey said, “Maybe we can find some today.”
She turned on the little penlight and followed one of the bikers inside, hating that she didn’t have a weapon. When she almost walked into a zombie, she yelped, but quickly realized that it was dead and not just semi-dead. The deceased was pinned to the wall through his forehead with a metal pole of some sort. Lindsey hurried to get around him, her heart racing as she did it. The flashlight threw shadows everywhere and, more than once, Lindsey started when she thought she saw a dark figure looming up in front of her.
“Looks like most of the weapons are gone,” Wombat said.
Lindsey walked over to the counter where the Australian biker stood and was disappointed to see that it was true. The glass in the case was broken and there wasn’t a single gun in sight. Then her eyes lit on the bows on the wall.
“The guns are gone, but what about taking some bows?” she asked.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said with a grin.
Lindsey climbed up onto the counter and flashed the penlight around to make sure there was nothing on the other side before jumping down. She looked over the compound bows and long bows but finally selected a cross bow and pulled it down.
“It seems like this might be the perfect weapon for those times that we need to be quiet,” she said. “You could shoot a, what do they call them, bolt through the eye and hardly make a noise.”
“They can shoot bolts, but most of the modern crossbows use arrows,” the biker told her. “It’s a little shorter than an arrow you’d shoot from a bow, but I agree, it could be a handy weapon.”
Unlike most of the other bikers, Wombat was only in his early thirties and in excellent shape. He easily vaulted the counter and joined Lindsey on the other side.
Lindsey took one of the arrows that the biker handed he
r and examined it. “I’ll bet we could make these ourselves if we could get the right materials from the hardware store.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but they have to be balanced just right, so I’m sure it would take some practice. It would give us something to do this winter to keep busy.”
“If we’re here that long,” she replied. “Maybe by then everything will be back to normal.”
“Maybe,” Wombat said, but Lindsey could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe it.
He took down a compound bow and looked it over, then placed it on the counter before grabbing a couple more. He rejected a few of them, but he took some of the superior quality long bows and placed them on the counter with the other bow.
One of the others scooped the weapons off the counter and took them out to the truck, though Lindsey held onto the crossbow, deciding that it would be hers. Now she just needed to learn how to shoot it. She grabbed as many arrows for it as she could find and then helped Wombat collect the other arrows and place them on the counter.
“Alright Xena,” Snake laughed as Lindsey strapped the crossbow over her shoulder. He had to admit that, from what he could see in the shadows, she looked pretty good in it.
“Who’s Xena?” one of the bikers asked.
“Are you kidding me?” Fish answered. “Xena the Warrior Princess. Used to be a TV show. It was awesome.”
The other one shrugged and said, “Never watched much TV.”
“Now we just need to get you something to hold your arrows,” Snake said.
“Good idea,” Lindsey said. She looked around and found a leather quiver that looked as though it would work nicely.
“This should do the job,” she said, admiring the leather tooling on it.
“Hurry up in there, we’re starting to attract some attention,” someone quietly called from outside the building.
“There’s some ammo back here,” one of the bikers said, sticking his head out of a room at the back, “and I found a .357 Mag. in the desk drawer.”
Snake looked at Lindsey.
“Well, Xena, you need some lead to back up your crossbow, or is your heart set on the Middle Ages?”
“I kind of like the whole crossbow idea, but I wouldn’t mind having a gun for those times when I need something a little faster.”
She took the gun and found a holster to fit it, then helped the others to load up everything that they thought might be useful. Besides finding more ammo, they picked up a couple of hunting knives that had been overlooked by the previous marauders of the gun store.
The bikers stationed outside were killing off the undead with crowbars and other silent weapons as the infected stumbled into the parking lot, but there were more arriving by the minute.
“Well, so far so good,” Lindsey said as they got back into the truck. “Now let’s just hope the rest of this little shopping spree goes as well.”
“Dude, here you think you’ve covered everything,” Snake said as he started the engine, “and we’re lacking something as basic as flashlights. Too bad we didn’t have some of those lights the miners wear on their heads. Don’t suppose there’s a ‘Miners R Us’ store around here?”
“Sure, just take the next right,” Lindsey said, running her finger over the map. “No, but seriously, maybe someone could rig something up if we can find some hard hats and some of those high-powered penlights. Or, you know, I think people use those things when they’re exploring caves, too. Maybe a sporting goods store would have something. Keith is into climbing so maybe he knows where we could find something like that.”
About three blocks down the road, she pointed at a building on the right. “That’s the medical supply store.”
“Looks a little crowded,” Snake pointed out. The parking lot was full of the infected, though the glass front of the supply store wasn’t broken.
“Might be secure. Maybe even empty,” Lindsey said, hopefully.
“Or might be locked or crawling with the undead,” Snake said. “We don’t want to get trapped in there, either way.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’re going to give ourselves a bit of breathing room,” he said, pulling back out of the parking lot. The undead reached for the truck, moving forward as quickly as their mangled limbs would carry them. In some cases, they crawled, but they all had the same goal.
Snake watched in his side mirror to make sure the crowd followed. The street was choked with vehicles and it took some effort to carve a path through them. Once they reached a clear stretch, they sped up then turned down a side street and then another.
“With a little luck, they’ll just keep going straight,” Snake said, circling back to the place where they’d started.
The parking lot was empty now except for a couple of crawlers and Snake’s men were able to dispatch them silently after jumping down off the truck.
“Let’s hurry, boys,” Snake said. “Our friends may be back before we know it.”
He tried the door and found it unlocked. “Here goes nothing,” he said, pulling the door open.
The dead thing that rushed out at them came as close to running as any that Lindsey had seen yet. She didn’t expect it and she let out a gasp, backing away.
Fish swung his weapon and cracked its head with a sickening thud. His weapon of choice was a metal pole with a small iron ball welded onto the end.
“Next?” he asked, peering into the building. He grinned when another one came walking out, dragging one twisted leg. He put it out of its misery just as quickly as the first one. There was silence as he stepped aside and let one of the others shine a light into the darkened building.
“I think that was it,” he said, moving inside to do a more thorough check. Wombat followed and moments later called out that it was clear.
“After you,” Snake said to Lindsey, still holding the door. “You know the routine, everybody. Get in, grab what we need, and get out fast.”
Lindsey thanked him and stepped inside, pulling out the list to look it over. Normally she would have been concerned about taking too much from the store. Now that they knew that the military was pulling out of Lansing and writing off the city as a loss, it didn’t matter so much. It was evident that most of the survivors who had been able to evacuate had already left. Those who were left were most likely trapped inside buildings and unable to get to the shops anyway.
They took everything that they thought they might need and, as an afterthought, Lindsey left a note mentioning that they had taken the supplies to St. Mary’s Hospital and that survivors were welcome there.
“Too bad we didn’t think to make that sign before,” Snake said. “We could have made copies and left them around town.”
“We could still do that,” Lindsey said. “The hospital might be the only safe place left.”
As they drove on, they were able to find a gas station that had electricity and was still taking credit cards, though the place had been abandoned. A few of the bikers went inside to salvage any food they could find. Others stood guard as Snake filled the truck with diesel.
“Wow,” Lindsey said, watching as the total came up on the pump. “That’s ridiculous. This is why I drive a Honda Civic.”
“Well, one good thing. You may never have to pay that credit card bill. I doubt anybody will come and hunt you down for it, anyway.”
“Now that’s what I call looking on the bright side,” she said with a grin as Snake put the gas cap back on. “Where do we go next?”
“Now that we know we can get diesel here, we need something that’ll hold some fuel so we can take it back for the generator,” Snake said, looking at the sky. It would be dark before long. “If we can’t find anything, we can just haul the diesel in the tank of the truck, then siphon it out to use for the generator, but I’d rather not do it that way if we don’t have to.”
“Probably the fewer trips we take, the better,” Lindsey agreed.
“Let’s do some grocery shopping then h
ead home,” he suggested. “We can keep our eyes open for a container along the way.”
They stopped several times to check out shops that had storage yards behind them. Their perseverance finally paid off when one of the men spotted a rusty fifty gallon tank inside one of the yards. He called to Snake from his perch on the roof of the building to let him know.
“Got a pretty big fence around it, though,” he added.
Snake got out and walked over to look at the fence before returning to get a set of bolt cutters from the truck. It didn’t take long to cut through the padlock but when the gate swung free, two of the walking dead lumbered out and grabbed for the big biker. Snake stumbled backwards, not having expected the onslaught. He glanced at the bolt cutters still in his hands and decided that they weren’t the best weapon but maybe they’d work. He closed them and lifted them in one hand, bringing the metal down hard onto the head of the closest zombie.
“Guys!” he yelled, when the creature stumbled but kept coming. “Could use a little firepower here.”
Two of the men had been watching the parking lot and a couple of the others were nearby, waiting to help with the tank, but they’d been having a conversation and not paying attention. At Snake’s words, they all jumped into action.
The first of the two was now close enough that Snake could see the rotting flesh in its teeth and the missing nail on one hand. The second one was also closing in fast. Snake kicked the first one high and hard, sending it back at the second one. It didn’t take them down but it bought him the time he needed to move away so the others could come in with weapons and finish off the two ghouls. When the biker who had been on the roof climbed down, Snake grabbed him by the front of his jacket. The man’s eyes grew wide.
“S-sorry, Boss, I was so busy looking at the tank that I forgot to check for zombies.”
In the old days, Snake would have probably taught him a lesson that would have taken him years to forget. Instead, he growled in a low voice, “Don’t let it happen again. Got it?”
He let the grateful man go. Snake knew that the move had been a sloppy one on his part, too. Normally he would not have opened the gate without someone standing by with weapons, but he was tired and so were the others. It was the kind of move that could get them killed, and he knew it. They had to be alert at all times on the supply runs.
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