by Hoaks, C. A.
Steve looked at the clean plate in front of him and laid down his fork. “We escaped San Antonio a week after the attack. Once we got outta the city, we did pretty well driving and hiding until we lost two of our group. One thanks to Willie Baker and his buddies.”
Tony looked stern. “Ollie let me know they’re no longer a problem.”
Steve nodded as he began to realize just how fast news traveled in the small town. “It was their choice to come after us. We were spending the night in a barn. We had no idea we were close to other people until we settled down for the evening. We saw the lights and heard screams.” Steve looked pained. “Around dawn, something happened, and they realized we were there. They came after us. We got away, but they followed us to a store where they killed three people. Long story short, I set up a trap and killed them. One bunch is at the country store, and the others are now part of the pile up down the road near the intersection.”
“Ollie sent a couple men to check out the Baker place right after you got here. He let me know what they found a few minutes ago. That bunch of assholes had ambushed folks driving a couple trucks. They killed the drivers and were holding the women out on the farm. The men said the two women they found were in bad shape and one may not make it. The other probably won’t ever be the same. You did the world a favor when you killed that bunch. Ollie may have a few questions, but no worries. Times have changed. They did bad and paid the price. Not much loss.”
Della added, “We lost a nice young man because of those bastards.”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. We knew they were bad news but didn’t know what they were up to until you folks showed up.” Tony nodded then cleared his throat. “Ollie says there was another body. It was hanging in the old barn where you folks stayed.”
Della sighed. “That was Martha.” She covered her mouth and turned from the table. “She couldn’t face the loss of her family and fiancé and hung herself during the night. We didn’t realize how hard this had been on her until morning and then those men came after us…” Her voice trailed off.
“No need to say more. Glad it verifies what the sheriff’s men figured. They will be taking care of her and the dead out at the farm along with the people at the station.”
“Thank you,” Della answered.
“Look, I know you folks have had a hard time, and if you’re done eating, I’ll pick up here, and you can get some rest or look around.” He began stacking dishes on the cart. “Is there anything you need that I can get you?”
Everyone answered in the negative until it came to Della. “I need a heat gun.”
Tony looked confused. “Heat gun?”
“Yes. I need to heat up the thermoplastic on Steve’s prosthetic and make some adjustments.”
“Oh, okay. Ollie told me our friend here had a problem and why he scrounged up the chair. Let me do some checking.” Tony finished clearing the table. “If we find a heat gun, I’ll see you get it.”
Tony walked away, leaving Della, Steve, Zack, and Sandy sitting at the table. Sandy started to stand, but Steve reached out to stop her. “We need to talk for a few minutes.”
Sandy sat back down. “No problem.”
“So what’s up, man?” Zack asked.
“I think we need to look around. The first impression is good here, but even a rotten egg looks good on the outside,” Steve answered.
Della nodded. “Looking for a heat gun will give me lots of reasons to talk to people, and while I’m at it, I’ll look around.”
“Zack, if you don’t mind a bit of a walk, I want to see how they’re set up,” Steve announced.
Sandy smiled. “I need some shoes. Maybe I can go to the school and ask around for some help. If there’s someone there my age, I can talk to them.”
Steve smiled. “Sounds good. Be careful, though. I think we’re okay here, but before we give the place a thumbs-up, I want a clear picture of where we stand and how well they’re set up.”
Steve pulled on fingerless gloves and rested his handgun under his leg, out of sight. He used his hands to grab the big wheels at the side of the wheelchair and performed a perfect three-sixty. He eased the chair to the parking lot, then gave the wheels a spin. Zack hustled to catch up.
Steve laughed. “Sorry. I won’t make you run to keep up.”
Zack settled into an easy gate with his long legs alongside the wheelchair while Steve guided the chair to the side of the street. He kept the pace brisk, but Zack didn’t complain.
They made the full length of the first block and looked down the side street just as Tony exited a nearby building.
“Well, fellas, I guess you decided to tour our quiet little town.” He fell into step with the pair. “How about I give you the fifty cent tour?”
Without waiting for an answer, he began, “As you see, there’s the school. The street goes back about three blocks in both directions. Down here, we’re really on the back side of the town. We have a total of seventy-eight buildings altogether, sandwiched between the bridge you came across and the opening of the canyon down Main Street about a mile.”
“Sounds like you people have been busy,” Steve commented.
“We had a few issues when it first happened, and we shut down the road. We let a few survivors come through the roadblock. We’d ask if any of them were sick, but we didn’t know shit about what was happening. Someone got in that shouldn’t have. We lost about a hundred people before we got it under control.”
Steve nodded as he calculated a third of the population was gone. “You’re town folks must be pretty resourceful. That kind of infection rate could have decimated the entire town.”
“Sheriff had a cousin in the PD in San Antonio. He gave the sheriff a call when it started,” Tony continued. “We just didn’t understand about people hiding bites.” He grimaced. “It got pretty brutal until we got it under control. I lost a brother and most of his family.”
Steve rolled along with Zack at his side. “No one wants to admit they’re dying.”
Tony continued, “Anyway, we set up so we could check everyone coming in. Since then, it’s been pretty calm. Eventually, we’ll have to start looking for supplies, but for now, we’re okay. We got lucky. A new Walmart on the other side of town had been scheduled to open that week. It would have drawn in traffic from a fifty-mile radius. It was all set up for the grand opening. It was overstocked. Three trailers of non-perishables sat in the back parking lot. We got enough tuna and pinto beans to last a year even if we eat it twice a day.” Tony chuckled then continued. “The sheriff locked the town down immediately, and since then we’ve let people “buy” non-food stuff on credit, but limited food to a single point of access.”
As they toured the town, Steve noticed multiple vehicles along the street. They had a big X painted on the doors and keys dangling in the ignitions.
“What’s with the cars?” Zack asked.
Tony laughed, “Sheriff’s idea. Cars belong to people that aren’t here anymore. If we get in trouble, we have exit vehicles handy no matter where we are in town.”
Steve laughed. “Damn. I don’t think I would have thought of that. Good temporary shelter too.”
Tony nodded. “Sheriff said that, too.”
“What about joyriders?” Zack asked.
Tony shrugged. “Everybody was required to show up at a town hall meeting, after the problem with the infected. The sheriff explained the logic of leaving the cars around. Besides the fact, no one feels too much like joyriding after what happened to half the townspeople. There won’t be anyone messing with the cars.”
The trio completed the sojourn and headed back to the motel. When they arrived, Tony shook both Zack and Steve’s hands. “You boys might want to park the truck at the side or back of the building. That way, you got a clear line of sight from your rooms. Can’t be too careful.” He threw off a casual wave. “See ya’ll at breakfast. Meals are served in the school cafeteria. Breakfast is between six and eight, lunch, eleven until one, dinner five t
o seven.”
“Thanks, we appreciate it,” Steve answered.
An hour later both Della and Sandy returned. Della had a heat gun in her hand. She walked in grinning from ear to ear. Sandy was smiling herself. They went into their room, and each settled on one of the two double beds.
Della laid the heat gun on the table. “We have to wait a few days, then go to the school. They said I can use a plug-in in the kitchen. It’s the only building with a gas generator.”
Sandy stuck up her foot, and everyone saw a new pair of jogging shoes and new white socks. In her hands, she clutched two pairs of jeans, two shirts, and a sweatshirt. “I made a haul.”
Steve spent the next hour discussing what he had seen in the town. He took a long time to point out the advantages of staying in Utopia for the time being. He also explained the disadvantages.
Chapter 12
Let’s Make a Deal
“Shit,” Tate whispered. “Guess we got a problem.”
Tate reached for the bag Matt had taken from her truck and opened a side pocket. She stuck her hand inside and retrieved a white bottle with a red label. Spilling out two pills, she tossed them in her mouth, then washed them down with Matt’s bottle of water. She dropped the pill bottle back into the bag and opened a long zipper across the top. She pulled out a silenced handgun.
When Tate saw Matt looking at her, she quipped. “I lost my knife the last time I got gas. It’s stuck in some dead fuck’s head.” She checked the load in the magazine, then slid it home with the palm of her hand. “Quiet is better.”
“You don’t have to do this. We can handle it,” Matt answered.
“I'm all right,” Tate responded. “Besides, I’m calling dibs on that rig. Figure I need to earn it if I’m planning on taking it.”
Matt spoke into the radio, “Got about a dozen infected ahead. We move close enough to draw them toward us, then take them out. We use machetes to keep it quiet. Jake, hang back and watch our six.”
When the Hummer got to within thirty feet of the closest infected, Matt stopped the vehicle and reached for the door handle. Meanwhile, Tate slid her door open and placed one foot on the ground before she took her first shot between the door and vehicle. A small black dot appeared in the front of the closest gray forehead, and the back of the head exploded in a mist of red and gray matter. The sound was little more than a hand clap.
Matt looked over the hood of the Humvee and nodded at Tate. “Nice.”
She grinned, then winced at the pain it caused. “Let’s get this done so I can use the sleeper in that truck. My head is killing me.”
Jenkins and Dreschel walked up with machetes in hand. Matt gave the nod, then the team with Tate approached the white truck. The infected furthest away didn’t seem to notice them until Matt stepped up to a man in overalls and took the top of his head off. The hair thatched disk sailed past the pair, and suddenly they turned, and their focus changed.
Tate laughed. “Hey, shitbags! Come on down. Let’s make a deal. I’ll trade lead for you dead. Again!” She fired again. Another infected fell to the ground as if strings holding him up had been cut.
Matt stepped up to a man in terrible shape. The stench was nearly overpowering when he cleaved in the head, trying to avoid the viscera hanging from the massive damage to his midsection.
Jenkins and Dreschel took out two men, both with strips of flesh torn from their arms and chest. Flesh on their faces sagged and drooped in grisly crusted folds. Flies swarmed around the bodies but seemed hesitant to land on the decaying flesh.
When Dreschel took out the last of the infected, he turned to Matt and commented, “Have you noticed, even the old ones don’t have maggots? You would think as bad as they smell they would have maggots all over them by now.”
Tate stepped closer and pointed at their feet. The soles of their feet were bare and the flesh shredded and torn down to the bone. “See what I mean? You can tell they have on everyday clothes, so they probably had shoes when they died, but they’ve walked right out of them.” She pointed to another body with remnants of shoes clinging to his ankles. “Ain’t that just the damnedest thing you ever saw?”
Matt looked them over, then walked toward the last four. “These are fresher than the rest of them.”
The group included four men of varying ages. One man was young, probably in the early twenties, had his throat torn out. A handgun hung from a holster on his hip. Another man looked to be in his fifties or so. He was a rough looking man dressed in torn and tattered overalls with flesh torn from his arms and face. The side of the man’s neck was ripped open, the blood leaving a dark brown crust over the front of his clothes.
The last two men wore a mismatched collection of clothes that spoke of a hasty gathering of resources. Again, they bore terrible wounds that indicated they suffered horrible deaths. The rest of the gathering of infected included office drones wearing the remnants of business suits and workplace attire. Somewhere, families had expected them home that afternoon, and they had never made it. There was even a waiter wearing black pants, and blood splattered white shirt with a name badge still pinned to the breast pocket.
Jake nodded toward more dead monsters approaching from around the white truck. “It looks like this bunch is more of the same that killed these fellas while they were filling the truck.”
“Only five of us, how many can you take out before we have to deal with them, Tate?” Matt asked.
Tate grinned back at him. “How many do you want me to take out?”
He laughed. “I’m in a generous mood, as many as you want.”
Tate tapped a pocket on her cargo pants to verify an extra magazine, then raised her handgun and took aim. She fired, again, and again. She took out six infected before the group of monsters stumbled close enough for the men to step up and kill the rest.
Matt walked up to the nearest infected and slammed a machete into its head. The body fell at his feet. He stepped over the body and Tate stepped forward to fired at a woman in nursing scrubs. She stumbled but failed to go down when the bullet hit the side of her head. Tate shot, again. This time the nurse fell in a heap.
Jake sidestepped around the twice-dead nurse to reach an overweight infected woman. He slammed his foot into the side of her knee, and she face-planted on the pavement. Her face slapped with a nose-breaking crunch. She pushed herself up on her thick arms, ignoring the black sludge spilling from the center of her face. Jake slammed his blade into the back of her head.
Meanwhile, Jenkins used a tire iron to crush the head of a teenage girl, then turned to the second girl. She had an athletic build and wore the remnants of a t-shirt that exposed the injuries she had suffered. Strips of flesh had been torn from her face and shoulders. Jenkins struck out, and she fell to the ground.
In less than three minutes, all the infected were put down. Matt glanced around, then leaned down to wipe his blade against the clothing of the closest infected. “Everyone okay?” With a chorus of affirmative responses, he continued, “Let’s check out the truck.”
“I’m checking out the rig!” Tate called out, as she gave a loose wave over her shoulder and headed toward the cab of the white truck. As she neared the vehicle, she picked up the pace and jogged to the front door of the white cab. With the gun in her hand, she climbed up the gas tank at the side to peer through the driver’s side window. She slapped her hand against the window, but nothing appeared inside. She tucked the gun into the back of her pants, then jerked open the door and climbed inside the cab. After a full minute, she reappeared. Her face announced her disappointment. Tate walked around to the back of the truck. “No fucking keys.” Tate lamented.
Matt walked up to her. “That could be a problem.”
“No shit.” Tate glared at Matt as she pulled a cigarette from her pocket, stuck it between her lips and lit the end with a Bic. She inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke at Matt.
“Dumb shit. Why in the hell would the asshole pull the keys?” Tate asked.
&n
bsp; Jenkins and Dreschel walked up to see what was going on. Hearing Tate’s rant, Jenkins laughed and called over his shoulder. “Hey, Jake! Can you hot wire the truck?”
“Dickhead, just because I’m black don’t mean I know how to boost a car, much less a fucking truck,” Jake answered. He walked up to the closest body and gently tapped at the pockets. It was the youngest of the new turns. After a quick search, he looked up and moved his head from left to right.
Dreschel headed toward another body dressed in office attire. The body had no shoes, torn flesh hanging from arms and legs. Most of the clothes had been torn and shredded.
Matt called out, “Just the fresh ones.” He pointed toward to other bodies.
“What if he ran?” Jenkins asked.
“Wouldn’t make any sense to run if he had keys in his pocket. It’s one of these fresh ones.” Matt pulled on a pair of gloves and answered, “I’m really getting tired of smelling these guys.”
He began dragging bodies to the far side of the road while the two men and three women hunted for keys to the truck. He swallowed bile, trying not to lose his breakfast. He dropped the leg of the body into the ditch and used his boot to roll it into the trench. Walking away to retrieve two more, he did the same exercise. He struggled to hold his breath, mentally listing the mixture of shit, piss, and rotten meat.
Jake walked up to Matt and began helping him move bodies. “There’s just nothing easy about the dead walking around killing people,” he commented.
Tate headed toward a body dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. She leaned over and patted one pocket after another until she suddenly stopped and jammed her fingers into the front pocket of his jeans. Tate pulled her hand away with a finger inside a round key ring. She examined the bloodstained keys until she found one with a GMC logo.