by Jon Schafer
Bristling, Steve said harshly, “That’s because they didn’t listen. And that’s why they’re probably dead now. We told you to get on the trucks, and you stood around like a bunch of idiots. When me or any of my people tell you to do something from now on, you don’t hesitate, you just do it as fast as you can or we’ll leave your ass to get eaten by the Z’s.”
Sean opened his mouth to say something but Steve cut him off by saying loudly, “This isn’t a committee or some kind of half assed encounter session anymore. Those days are gone. This is real life. Unless you failed to notice, a few months ago the dead came back to life and started eating everyone in sight. If you get bitten by one of those things or get that black shit they have for blood on you, then you’re through. I’ll personally put a bullet in your head.”
Sean opened his mouth again to protest, but this time was cut off by Brain, saying, “Sit down shitbird, or I’ll make you.”
Sean turned around to berate him then saw the venomous look in his eyes and thought better of it. With a grumble, he slowly sank down into the bed of the truck.
“That’s it,” Steve called out. “It’s a done deal. Keep up and do what you’re told or you’ll get left behind.”
None of them said anything, but from the second truck a hand tentatively raised.
Expecting to hear more bullshit, Steve reluctantly asked, “What?”
A voice called out, “I just wanted to know when we’re going to eat.”
***
The spot where the tracks crossed the road that led into the preserve had been the scene of an accident. From what they could tell, cars and trucks had been backed up across the tracks in both lanes and in the breakdown lanes on both sides of the road as people tried to flee from the dead. That was when the train crashed through them. Decomposed bodies lay where they’d been thrown from the impact, some burned to a crisp, their arms and legs curled up in a fetal position, while others were only pieces of bone scattered across the tracks. Parts of vehicles were strewn around, making it impossible to follow the tracks anymore and navigate the turn. Beyond that, they could see where the train had derailed. Tanker cars had left both sides of the tracks and were piled up on top of one another. The smell of gas hung heavy in the air, and they wondered how the whole area hadn’t blown up.
Turning to Denise, Tick-Tock said, “Call Brain and tell him we’re going cross country. Let him know not to follow too close because it’s kind of swampy through here and I don’t want us both getting stuck if I bog down. I’ll need him to pull me out.”
To conserve fuel, they had switched out of six-wheel drive so Tick-Tock stopped and reengaged it. Turning off the tracks, he felt the truck’s wheels bump over the rails. The grade wasn’t steep this near the crossroads, so he easily navigated down to the edge of a watery marsh. He stopped as he tried to decide how to proceed. There was only about a hundred feet of bog to cross before he could make it to where he could get to the road and travel down its side.
Thinking back to a show he had seen on television about swamp buggy racers in Florida, he backed up along the edge of the swamp for a hundred feet and stopped. Revving the engine, he said to Denise, “You might want to roll your window up and put on your seatbelts.”
Cindy sat between them, so he said to her, “You’re going to love this, kid,” before jabbing his foot down on the gas pedal and yelling for the people in back to hang on.
The truck lurched forward and slowly gathered speed. From behind him he heard a confused babble from the people in the bed.
He smiled when above them all, he heard Mary shout, “What the fuck are you doing, Tick-Tock?”
Once he felt he had enough speed, and just before he reached the wreckage at the intersection, he twisted the steering wheel to the right and plowed into the swamp, raising a spray of water that drenched the people in the back. As the truck slowed, he started pumping the gas pedal when he felt the wheels slip. The truck gained traction and chugged through the swamp. A rooster tail of swamp water and mud flew from its spinning tires that further sprayed the people in back.
Tick-Tock’s smile widened when he heard Cindy and Denise laugh and cheer while Mary screamed, “Tick-Tock, you asshole!”
The water was only two feet deep, so he crossed the bog in no time.
Steve watched from the second truck until he could see they’d made it to the road. He turned to Heather with a smile, “Ready to get wet or do you want to ride inside?”
She laughed and replied, “That actually looks like fun.”
He slapped the top of the cab and called out to Brain, “Do it just like Tick-Tock did, but get a better running start.”
***
Driving along the side of the road, the trucks had three wheels in the water of the drainage ditch and leaned at such an angle that the people in back had to brace their feet against the downward side. Sheila held Pep so she wouldn’t slide around and hurt herself on the splintered wood of the floor. Five times they came across vehicles that had tried to do the same thing and had gotten stuck.
When Tick-Tock came upon the first one, he eased forward until their bumpers touched and started to push it out of the way. As he goosed the accelerator, he was surprised to see the passenger side door open. For a second, he thought they might have found another survivor until a child in a Boy Scout uniform emerged and began to whine at them hungrily.
They attracted many of the dead as they moved past the line of stalled cars and trucks. When the Z’s heard the roar of the diesel engines, they always came out long before the trucks reached them. The dead would stagger and run at them, but had difficulty making their way down the angled embankment at the side of the road. Most slid into the swale and floundered about until the two trucks either rolled over them or by them.
As he looked closer, Tick-Tock could see hearing aids in the scout’s ears. This explained why it hadn’t come out earlier like the others did. It’d been deaf in life and was now deaf in death.
Pushing the vehicle in front of him out of the way, he only glanced at the scout as it grabbed at the driver’s side door. He knew Denise was ready with her rifle if the thing managed to climb up the side of the truck.
Once past, he sped up slightly and watched in his side mirror as the Z scout tried to grab at the back. Failing to get a purchase, it went after the second truck. He saw Heather lean over the side and shove it away with the end of her bat. He would have bashed it in the head, but he couldn’t fault her. There was no way he would ever consider Heather weak, but she had a soft spot when it came to kids, whether they were dead or not.
The traffic jam caused by the accident at the rail crossing ended, which allowed them to move up the embankment and onto the pavement. Tick-Tock increased his speed to forty miles an hour and rolled down his window. They still came across the occasional car or truck, but these were pulled off to the side of the road. Some of the dead came out to grab at the trucks, while others remained in their seats; rotting corpses in eternal metal coffins. As they came upon a pickup pulling a trailer behind it, an idea occurred to him so he slowed the truck.
Steve called him on the radio, asking if everything was okay.
“I’ve want to try something,” Tick-Tock told him. “A lot of these cars might be full of stuff we can use. These people were running from the Z’s so they would have loaded up on food and water. Maybe even guns and ammo. We need to check it out, over.”
“Damn good idea, over.” Steve said.
“We’re coming up on a pickup pulling a trailer,” Tick-Tock said into the radio. “There’s nothing else around except for a car a couple hundred feet down the road. I’ll pull up in front of it and you pull up behind. We can check it out, over.”
“Sounds like a plan, over,” Steve replied.
Tick-Tock pulled over to the side and got out of the truck. He reached under the seat, grabbed his chainmail and pulled it over his head. Before closing the door, he asked Denise, “Do you think you can drive this thing?”
“Then slide over behind the wheel,” Tick-Tock told her. “I don’t think it will, but if everything goes to shit, I want you to get out of here.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” she told him.
“Just in case,” he said.
Lifting his M4, Tick-Tock saw where Brain had stopped about fifty feet behind the abandoned pick up and that Steve had already gotten out and was heading toward him. Above the cab, he could see Heather covering them with her CAR-15 while she also kept an eye on the surrounding woods. He called up to Sheila to do the same then went to meet his friend.
They stopped outside the cab of the pickup and could see that the inside of the driver’s side window was splattered in blood that had dried and turned reddish brown with time. Circling the truck, they saw a similar stain on the passenger’s side window, only this time it was black, the same color and consistency of the fluid inside the dead. The front and back glass was covered with a collection of both of these, but the main difference was that, while the blood had dried, the black slime seemed fresh.
Steve leaned forward and looked through the windshield. He cleared away the accumulated dust and dirt on the glass as he studied the inside of the cab. Turning to Tick-Tock, he said, “Two bodies. Looks like one of them turned into a Z and attacked the other before getting shot in the head. Then the one who got bit used the gun on herself.”
Steve moved around to try the driver’s door. It was locked, so he retrieved his ball bat and smashed in the window. A foul stench wafted out, so he let it air out for a moment before reaching in to extract a pistol. Checking the clip, he saw it was a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson with
two rounds missing. He set it on the hood of the truck then said to Tick-Tock, “Let’s see what’s in the back.”
They started with the trailer. After cutting the tie-downs that held the tarp covering its contents, they lifted it away and found only household goods. Somewhat disappointed, they moved to the back of the pickup and broke the lock on the fiberglass bed cover. Steve let it go up on its hydraulic lifts and stepped back to cover Tick-Tock as he cautiously looked inside.
Letting out a low whistle, he said, “Jackpot.”
The entire bed of the truck was filled with neatly stacked boxes of canned food and bottled water.
Lifting out a scoped hunting rifle and a box of ammunition, Steve was about to say something when he was interrupted by the crack of Heather’s CAR-15 and the snap of a bullet going overhead. He turned to look at what she was shooting at just in time to see a Z drop to ground a hundred feet away.
“Only one,” she called from the second truck. “It got out of the car up ahead so I took it out.”
“Tell Sean that I need him and a couple of his people to move some stuff,” Steve told her.
They stopped and searched three more abandoned cars, gathering a little more food and water, but nothing in comparison to the pickup truck. Steve surmised that most of the people with guns had stood their ground while the rest ran. They also found another handgun, but it was in such bad shape that they left it. They only ran into two more of the dead, both getting out of their cars when the trucks approached. The Z’s ended up getting shot through the head for their trouble.
Reaching the turn off into the preserve, they easily pushed through the gate that barred their way. The woods closed in on both sides of them as they drove deeper down the fire road. A light rain began that slowly soaked everyone in the back of the trucks. Then the wind came up, making them even more miserable and cold. Because of the overcast skies and the trees all around them, darkness came early. At that point, Steve called a halt. The light drizzle that made them so uncomfortable had stopped, and in the silence of the forest, they could hear water dripping from the trees after the engines were turned off.
Meeting Tick-Tock near the back of his truck, Steve said, “We’ll stop here for the night. I’m going to split up our people to stand guard for a couple hours each.”
“Our people?” Tick-Tock asked. “I’ve been driving all day and I’m beat.”
Steve pointed to where the refugees from the Battleship Texas were clumsily climbing down from the back of the truck, “Do you trust any them not to fall asleep or run off if a Z shows up? And what are they going to do if something does jump out, since none of them will carry a gun?”
Tired and hungry, Tick-Tock said angrily, “Well, they need to do something besides take in oxygen and put out carbon dioxide. Give one of them that .40 caliber we found and make them walk the perimeter.”
“I already gave it to Mary.”
“Mary?” Tick-Tock asked in disbelief.
“She said she wanted a gun,” Steve replied.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” Tick-Tock mumbled.
Thinking about it, Steve said, “You’re right about us doing everything and I apologize. I know you’re wiped out, but someone has to stay awake tonight. I’ll split the shifts up between one of our people and two of theirs.”
“That still doesn’t help me get any sleep.”
“You and Brain are off the watch,” Steve told him. “You both did enough today.”
Appeased, Tick-Tock asked, “So, what’s for dinner?”
“Beef stew and chili mixed together,” Steve told him. “It’s going to be cold though since I don’t want to risk a fire. We don’t want to attract any attention.”
Tick-Tock said, “Now that we’re on the road, we need to come up with some kind of routine like we had on the boat. For one thing, we need to stop earlier so we can scout the area.” Looking around at the rapidly darkening forest, he added, “We don’t know what’s around us.”
“Good point,” Steve told him. “I put a plan together and part of it is stopping sooner, I just didn’t think it would get dark so fast. What I want to do from here on out is hit the road when it’s light enough to see and go for a few hours. We’ll stop and eat about one o’clock and then get back on the road. About an hour before dark, we’ll stop for the night and check the area. If we’re far enough away from anything, we can risk a fire so we can get some hot food. I also want to rotate the driving from here on out between a morning shift and an afternoon shift.”
Tick-Tock considered this before saying, “Sounds good, but who’s going to do the driving besides Brain and I?”
“Me and Heather,” he answered.
Shaking his head, Tick-Tock said, “Denise and I can handle our truck. We’ll keep Cindy between us so she’s safe.”
“Works for me,” Steve told him. “Let’s go eat.”
The stew ended up being hot since Heather had taken a case of Sterno from the Dead Calm.
They sat in the bed of the first truck while the people from the Texas gathered in the second after they got their food. Brain told them that if they touched any of the supplies, he would find out who it was, shoot them in the foot and leave them for the dead.
After eating, Tick-Tock leaned back and said, “You know what I miss the most?”
“What’s that?” Sheila asked.
“Bread,” he replied. “Even on the Dead Calm it was all stale.”
“I miss the Internet,” Brain spoke up.
“All you used it for was to surf porn, Pork Chop,” Tick-Tock told him.
When the laughter died down, Brain put his arm around Connie and mouthed the words, ‘Not anymore,’ to Tick-Tock.
He smiled at that and asked Sheila, “What do you miss?”
She ruffled the fur on Pep’s neck and said, “I know she misses dog treats.” Everyone was looking at her, waiting for an answer, so she thought about it for a second before replying, “I miss walking into a dark bar at high noon on a bright sunny day and ordering the first drink of the day.” Turning to Heather, she asked, “What do you miss?”
“In some ways I miss being a cop, but mostly I think it’s walking down to the convenience store when I need something. It was
all there, right at your fingertips.” Heather looked at Steve “What do you miss?”
A thousand things ran through his mind that they didn’t have any more. He missed the sound of airplanes flying overhead and drinking a fresh brewed cup of coffee every morning. He missed watching a football game with a cold beer in one hand and a plate of nachos on the table at his side.
His mind struck on something though, so he said, “What I miss the most is walking the beach.”
“I miss my legos,” Cindy chimed in.
“Well, we don’t have any bread or legos, but we might be able to have that drink,” Steve said.
Going back to the cab of the second truck, he returned with a bottle of rum he’d taken from the Dead Calm and a Snickers bar for Cindy. After twisting off the cap and taking a drink, he passed it around while Cindy shared her candy bar with Pep. The can of Sterno burned with a blue glow as they all sat around it in a circle going over the things they missed the most in this new dead world. When the bottle had gone around twice, he capped it and returned it to the truck.
As he walked back to join his people, a glint of light in the woods caught his eye. Stopping to focus on it, he could see it was a fire burning deep in the forest.
Steve called out to the others, “We’ve got company,” then readied his rifle as he watched them pile out of the back of the truck with their weapons in hand as they searched for a target. With satisfaction, he saw that even Mary had the pistol he’d given her out and ready. He remembered when Heather tried to teach her to shoot while they were on the sailboat, and that she was lucky to even hit the water, this at least showed her willingness to help.
Pointing out the campfire burning in the distance, he said, “It’s not Z’s because they don’t cook their food.”
“But are they people like us?” Sheila asked.
“Or people like them?” Tick-Tock said as he motioned toward the second truck.
“Or land pirates?” Heather added.